The Hundredth Man (27 page)

“WHO SHOULD FEAR, CARSON?  IT AIN’T BRAIN SURGERY!”

Though he suckled from emotion, I couldn’t keep the anger from my voice. “The parents, Jeremy. How’s that? Question and answer. Call and response. Sound and echo. Are you done?”

He canted his head as if hearing faint music in the distance. “Is Mother all right?”

I sighed. Always the game.

“I asked if Mother was all right. She’s fine isn’t she?”

“She’s dead, Jeremy. She’s been dead for three years.”

He raised a curious eyebrow. “Oh? A pity. Was there much pain?”

“Yes, Jeremy, there was pain.”

White pain, black pain. Pain that scorched her small hands into iron knobs and she turned almost transparent before its snow-white fire. She never touched a pill nor, until the end and she could not resist, allowed me to do anything for her. She needed to go through hell just in case there was a heaven.

“Enough pain for three?” he asked. “I’m not including you in this list, of course. You escaped the flames. Oh, maybe you were a bit inconvenienced, a bit neuroticized, but your soul didn’t get burned. You were saved from the flames. Did your soul get burned, Carson?”

“You know, Jeremy, we could have handled this by mail: Question. Did your soul get burned? Please circle Yes or No.”

“DON’T YOU DARE MOCK ME! YOU NEED ME, I DON’T NEED YOU! I’ll try again: Did your soul get burned, Carson?”

I yanked the chair from beneath the table and sat eye-to-eye in front of him. “No, Jeremy, it did not.”

“How unusual, given the flames that seemed to be everywhere. Why?”

“You tell me, Jeremy. You seem to have little else to think about.”

Jeremy leapt up his bed, screaming and pig-squealing. “BECAUSE I KILLED THE BASTARD, THAT’S WHY! I wired that SQUEAL to the SQUEAL and I SQUEALED until his SQUEAL and his SQUEAL were pouring down his legs like tube worms and black honey. I stuck my face in his dripping SQUEAL while he was alive to watch. That’s why your soul didn’t turn to ashes, brother. I SAVED YOU!”

Jeremy jumped from the bed and paced the room, once, twice, then crouched before the mirror in a batter’s stance. He winked at me through the shifting image of the mylar.

“Maybe all of this could have been avoided if dear daddy had played ball with me instead.”

He lowered his voice and affected a perfect imitation of our father’s voice. “Hey, son, what say we go outside and throw the old pill around?

“Stop it, Jeremy.”

“No, son, that’s not the right way to grip a hat, hold it like this.”

“Stop it.”

“Dammit, boy, I said hold it like this.”

“Don’t.” I stood.

“Hold it, you little fucker!”

I jumped toward him. “Jeremy!”

“I’ll show you you little bastard I’ll fucking show you I’ll show you I’ll “

I grabbed his shirtfront. Jeremy threw back his head and a shriek from a corridor of long ago pierced the heart of today. My mother turns to me and says, Go to bed it will be quiet soon.

The door slat snapped open.

“Everything all right?” the guard asked. His eyes scanned the room to find Jeremy smiling calmly, me against the wall soaked in sweat.

I yelled, “Keep that window closed!”

The slat closed slowly and I went to the sink and splashed cold water over my face. Jeremy sat on his bed and smiled. “Now that we have the opening ceremony out of the way, what do you want to talk about, Carson? Let me guess … the recent incidents in good oP Mobile? I knew you’d need a little advice when the answers wouldn’t come. Did you bring the photos and files for me to diddle over for a day or two? Oh, and a lighter?”

It was midnight when I crossed to Dauphin Island. A heavy storm approached from the south with low exhalations of thunder, lightning diffused through clouds. I hoped Ava was asleep, that I could drag myself to bed, tumble into the black I craved. When I turned the corner and saw Harry’s Volvo in my drive, I jammed on the brakes and stared at his car. What could he want at this hour? I felt my head listing and eased ahead and parked. It was difficult to walk up the steps, as though the space between them had doubled.

Harry and Ava were as still as marble.  Harry was a statue in a chair; Ava a statue on the couch, a cup of tea poised between breasts and lips. Someone tossed hot paraffin over me as I moved through the doorway; the wax slowing my motions as it hardened.

“Why are you here tomorrow?” I asked the Ava statue, hearing the words twist out wrong, trying to remember what I had meant to say. I tried again and got, “I mean there Harry late …”

While I waited for my tongue to clear, the floor shivered, as though lightning had struck soundlessly at the foundation. It ignited the pilings because the far end of my house began to founder and sink. The pilings are failing, said a calm voice in my head. But why isn’t the furniture sliding down? I watched in fascination, my house had never done this before.

“Thar she blows,” I said.

I heard cold strands of harp music. The statues levitated from their seats and flitted to me like butterflies.

“Hold it just like that. Out a bit more. That’s it.”

Ava’s voice was on dry and failing recording tape, a constant hissing and crackling behind her voice.

“How bad is it?” I heard Harry say, recorded on the same tape.

“Second degree. Looks worse than it is. Infection’s the first concern.”

Sounds resolved. Another strike of thunder, distant and muffled.  The hissing was hard rain on my roof. I opened my eyes, swimming from deep water toward surface sparkles. I tried to sit up but Harry’s hand blocked my chest. “Don’t move, bro,” he said. I felt stinging beneath my bicep. My shirt was off and I lay on the couch. Ava smoothed on a medicated cream that smelled like paint made from spoiled cabbage. Harry held my arm tight as I winced and jerked.

“Where you been tonight, Cars?” he asked.

“Camp meeting,” I said, the room creeping into focus. Ava wrapped me lightly in gauze from shoulder to elbow. Harry gently lifted me to sitting position as Ava plumped pillows to brace my arm. She went to the kitchen.

Harry leaned close. “Was Jeremy at that meeting, Carson?”

My breath froze; Harry knew. I closed my eyes. “I talked about him while I was out, didn’t I?”

“You didn’t say a word.”

“Then how “

“I know about Jeremy, bro. I’ve known for a year.”

My mouth didn’t form the question but my eyes did. He said, “I’m a detective, I detect.” Ava returned with a glass of scotch in her hand. She knelt beside me and brought it to my lips. “Stuff’s bad for you,” I mustered.

“Bad for me, good for you. Drink.”

The warmth hit my stomach and spread. Lightning flashed outside and the lights flickered momentarily. Thunder echoed. Harry scooted a chair over and sat by my head. The pain beneath my arm started to subside and with it my sense of disconnect.

“You followed me to the hospital last year?” I asked Harry.

“Back then you couldn’t see a tail pinned to your forehead; I almost tailgated you to the door. And if that’s a hospital, Fort Knox is an ATM.”

“You couldn’t let it go. Not your style.”

Harry said, “Did I do some digging? Hell, yes. I’m still not sure what I found. I know Jeremy Ridgecliff is your brother. Were you going to him for advice about Adrian?”

I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I wasn’t sure if what I was doing was right, Harry.”

Ava said, “Could one of you please tell me what’s going on?”

I looked away. Harry scooched his chair to face Ava. “A year ago a patrol officer followed some crack heads into a rat-infested sewer beneath the city. He tripped over a girl from the projects, twelve-year-old Tessa Ramirez. Her eyes, face, were horribly burned. Forensics determined silk had been placed over her eyes and ignited. She was alive when it was lit.”

His words sparked unwanted pictures in my head: Tessa Ramirez, sprawled face-up among the rats and broken glass, her eyes dark cinders burning into my soul. Help me, she cried, though she’d been dead a week.

Ava said, “My God.”

Harry said, “A month later an old wino was found the same way.”

“Nothing to go on?”

“Zippo, nada. Then, from nowhere, a street officer tells me the burning silk pads might be a bonding mechanism between killer and victims. This cop also suggests the victims were chosen by a ‘bonding fire’ before the killings. I thought he was mouth-foaming nuts, but we checked both vies had been at arson scenes in the previous six month, gawkers. We told the brass. But the department had called in the feebs FBI and their profile types were saying the fires were a form of hiding, the bonding-fire idea was lunatic ranting.”

“What about the arsons?”

“Coincidence, the brass said. The fires were big an old apartment building downtown, a ramshackle farm near Saraland. Hundreds of onlookers. The patrolman and I got our asses chewed ragged for interfering.”

Ava looked at me. “You were the patrol officer.”

I nodded reluctantly and was glad a rolling surge of thunder prohibited speaking. Harry poured another glass of Glenlivet and continued.

“Cynthia Porter and her twenty-year-old daughter were found slain, eyes burned to cinders. Ms. Porter’s husband was a well-known auto dealer. He contributed heavily to both political parties. Unlike the previous instances the family was upper-income white. Everything went into uproar mode. The department created a parallel investigation, giving me and Cars a little room to pursue the bonding theory. Not believing it, natch, but wanting to cover all bases for PR reasons.”

Ava said, “Had the Porters been … selected … by a previous fire?”

“Selected? Good word. A month prior they’d been at the scene of a mysterious blaze at a strip center. Out shopping, saw the smoke, stopped to gawk. Carson figured we had to hit fire scenes, especially those that might be arson. He told me there was a good chance the perp used the fire to smoke out his victims, so to speak.”

She looked at me. “You were right, weren’t you?”

A blast of wind shivered the house and I waited it out before speaking. “There was a major fire in an abandoned warehouse by the state docks. I was following the fire department frequency and got there fast. I scanned the crowd and saw a guy more interested in gawkers than the fire. I snuck behind him and watched him yank out hunks of hair with his fingers, not flinching. It’s called trichollomania and a trichollomaniac “

The MD in Ava jumped in, nodding. “Pulls hair for pleasure and a tension release. I’ve read about it. Rare in adults, one of the impulse control disorders, like compulsive gambling, explosive anger, kleptomania and … ” She paused, raised her eyebrows.

“Right,” I said, “pyromania. I watched Joel Adrian pull a notebook from his pocket and walk to a dockworker. Adrian took notes before he booked. The dockworker told me the man was a reporter needing quotes for his story. He also told me the ‘reporter’ took his name and address for verification.”

“What about Adrian?”

The story approached the ending. Harry, sensing my unease, jumped in. I lay back into the pillow, trying to listen to the storm, hearing little but Harry.

“Cars caught up to Adrian and got his tag number. We shadowed him, every hour, every day. Four days later Cars followed him to the home of the dockworker. Adrian conned his way inside, the reporter angle. Carson called in backup and slipped to the window to see the dockworker wired tight and laying on the floor … “

Ava stared at me. I closed my eyes and saw Harry’s words become a movie. Adrian soaking a red silk pad with gasoline as the dock-worker struggled in wire bondage. Adrian putting the fuming pad over the worker’s terrified eyes, kissing him on the brow. Adrian pulling a lighter from his pocket, one of those pistol-grip tubes he’d fashioned to resemble a magic wand. I dived through the door. Adrian clicking the lighter’s trigger, smiling at me like we were about to share a wonderful dinner …

“Carson?” Ava’s voice, far away, again under rain.

The explosion of my gun was numbing. I scrabbled behind the couch, heart roaring, not knowing what I’d hit, if Adrian was armed. I heard loud thumping, like someone hammering erratically, and peeked out. Adrian was bucking on the floor, head and heels pounding the wood. He moaned, spasmed, hacked blood from his mouth. I watched it turn from a spray of pink to a torrent of red. He tried to squirm away from death, a broom-wide swash of red following him across the floor …

“Carson? You killed him?” Ava’s voice pulled me into Now.

“He did what he had to do,” Harry said, looking at me. “Don’t start that thinking, Cars.”

I shook my head; the moment never resolved. “Maybe I could have distracted him. Waited for the backup. He could have been studied for future “

Harry stood, jabbed his finger at my face. “I don’t want to hear that psychobabble again; you’re a cop, not a fucking psych student. Another second and the dock guy’s head would have been a ball of flame.”

Ava reached out and touched my hand. “You never told Harry about your brother? Where your ideas were coming from?”

I looked at Harry. “He figured it out on his own.”

Our strange moment at the Church Street Cemetery soared back to me and I realized Harry had been telling me not to go to Jeremy alone this time, we’d run it down the pike together.

I was ashamed to look at him. “I lied, Harry. I played Jeremy’s ideas like my own. Like it was me came up with all those leads to Adrian.”

Harry snorted. “Not telling ain’t the same as lying, Carson. If you had to lie to eat you’d weigh a pound and a half.”

“I wasn’t straight with you.”

“You were going to tell me you were getting ideas from a psycho? I had a hard enough time believing when you were selling them as yours.”

“You found where the ideas came from. And stayed in.”

Harry’s pointing finger came out again. “Not at first. I found out who you were visiting. I had no idea you were pumping him for info. I only figured that out when you kept adding pieces to the theory after visits. If you’d started off telling me you got your ideas from a mass murderer, I’d have busted down the door getting away. Don’t overestimate the length of my neck, Cars.”