Cul-de-Sac Page 6

  “Teddy it’s me.”

  Camel put the revolver away and turned to Annie. “Ed Neffering … from downstairs.”

  She said she remembered.

  Camel opened the door, Neffering giving Annie a big smile. “How you feeling honey?”

  “Embarrassed.”

  “Don’t be silly.” Then to Camel, “I didn’t know your friend was still here, I was going to ask you to take the stakeout tonight.” He looked back at Annie. “We got a flasher bothering women in our parking garage, I’ve been working on a pattern when he hits and I think he might be due again tonight. The stakeout wouldn’t take but an hour.”

  “Teddy could do that while I do some shopping.”

  Camel started to say no but Eddie spoke first, “It’s all right, we’ll catch him next time. I’d do the stakeout myself except—”

  “You and Mary are having dinner with Mike and Kathy.”

  Eddie asked Camel how he knew but Camel just smiled that strange, pained smile of his … Eddie finally shrugging. “It’s up to you about the stakeout, if you decide to do it you know the drill.” Then to Annie, “Hope to see you again honey.”

  After Neffering left, Camel relocked the door.

  “You go do your stakeout,” Annie said. “I need some time anyway. I have to buy a few things, a change of clothes, maybe when I get back we’ll have a chance to eat something too, then you can go get Paul. I’ll keep calling Cul-De-Sac so I can explain to him you’re coming. I’ll pass you off as an old friend of my mother’s.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Teddy? Telling him about all my old boyfriends? That didn’t include you, I keep you in a separate room … no one else gets to go in there.”

  Camel nodded.

  Annie smiled for the first time since awakening. “Did I hurt your feelings when I said I could pass you off as an old friend of my mother’s?”

  He shook his head.

  “Teddy.”

  “A little.”

  “Good.”

  13

  For half an hour now state police associate superintendent Parker Gray and his ex-partner Gerald McCleany, retired, had been sitting in a car parked across the street from a bungalow owned by Lawrence and Judith Rainey. Gray wore a dark suit, the pants showing a powdered sugar stain above the left pocket, McCleany dressed like he was heading for the golf course.

  “Maybe they’re taking a nap,” McCleany said, producing a cigar, taking off the cellophane, sticking the cigar three-quarters in his mouth then drawing it out between fat wet lips in a manner both loving and obscene.

  When the match struck, Parker Gray who’d been making a point of not looking at his old partner finally glanced over. “This car has never been smoked in.”

  McCleany held the match just in front of the cigar and sucked in with rapid puffs until the tip of the cigar itself began spouting flame. “Has now.” Then laughed like it was a great joke.

  Gray rolled down his window. He genuinely hated McCleany … was embarrassed by him when they worked together, had avoided him since McCleany was forced into retirement, and hated him all over again now that Growler’s release from prison had thrown them back together.

  “Tell me again about this asshole got Growler out,” McCleany said puffing thoughtfully on the cigar.

  “Paul Milton, belongs to a prison ministry group called Our Brothers’ Keepers, they work with the parole board and when a prisoner is identified as a likely candidate he’s paroled to the care of someone from this program who’s supposed to be responsible for—”

  “Jesus Parker I don’t need to hear the whole goddamn annual report … what’s Milton’s angle?”

  “I don’t know, he might be legitimate except—”

  “Yeah and I might be number one on the seniors tour this year … but I seriously fucking doubt it. Milton’s from where?”

  “North Carolina. Growler is supposed to be down there with him so Milton can keep an eye on—”

  “Supposed to be my ass. Growler’s back here, I can feel it in my nuts.”

  Gray rubbed his eyes. “You and Kenny Norton.”

  “What?”

  “I told you, Norton is convinced it’s Growler who’s been asking around about him, trying to find out where he lives—”

  “Norton … skinny Kenny Norton getting all squishy how we owe him protection, I should go over and pop one in that artsy-fartsy fucking fairy’s head.”

  Crude bastard, Gray thought … I wish to God I’d never met you.

  “Raineys’ number in the phone book?” McCleany asked while puffing on the cigar, producing enough smoke to fog the car’s interior.

  “Yes.”

  “But Norton’s unlisted?”

  Gray nodded. “He said he keeps a low profile, moves around a lot, never leaves a forwarding address—”

  “If you were half the detective I tried to teach you to be you’d figure it out … Growler comes back here to knock off everybody who testified at his trial, he has to go around looking for Norton but to find the Raineys all he has to do is open the fucking phone book.”

  “You think he’s already got to them huh?”

  “And Norton’ll be next.”

  “Then us,” Gray said.

  “Yeah I hope that bastard shows up at my door some night.”

  “No I mean this whole thing we did, it’s going to come back and bite us in the ass after all these years isn’t it?”

  “Not if I bump into Growler first.” Saying this, McCleany got out of the car without waiting for Gray or explaining where he was going … just like the old days when Gray was always being forced to second-guess his senior partner.

  The afternoon was darkly overcast, the air wet and feeling a lot colder than it said on the thermometer. McCleany and Gray went to the front door and knocked, rang the bell, waited for a response that never came. Again without saying anything to Gray, McCleany left the front porch and headed around back. Following in McCleany’s smoky wake as they walked to the side of the house Gray remembered all over again how McCleany delighted in bullying people, breaking rules, feeding his various appetites, wanting Gray to join in on bouts of drinking and whoring, calling him a weak sister when he wouldn’t … but of course Gray never informed on his partner, eating cheese was taboo even for an ambitious young trooper who otherwise believed in conducting himself by the book.

  McCleany dropped his cigar, still lit, on the ground. “Remind me to get that on the way back.” He went down a flight of concrete steps and stood by the basement door, when Gray got there McCleany was holding out a hand. “You got the gloves?”

  Gray gave him a pair of latex gloves, put on a pair himself. They’d discussed this. If the Raineys couldn’t be contacted by phone and didn’t answer their door, McCleany and Gray would break into the house to see if Growler had been there.

  “Look at this shit,” McCleany said, indicating marks on the door jamb.

  “Jimmied.”

  Still unlocked too. They went into the basement, McCleany pulling out a stainless steel snub-nosed .38. “Smells funny.”

  Gray sniffed … something like food that’d been left on the stove. “What’re we going to do if they’re just sitting upstairs huh?”

  “In the dark?”

  “How we going to explain being here?”

  “We’ll say we’re burglars.”

  “Come on I’m serious, they could be napping or something.”

  McCleany’s broad shoulders sagged in exasperation, something else Gray remembered from when they were partners.

  “Listen if we walk in on the old farts you make up some story about what we’re doing here, you’re the associate superintendent … I’m just this old stumblefuck forced out of a job because my partner wouldn’t go to bat for me.”

  “Wouldn’t go to bat for you? For chrissakes—”

  Again with the shoulder sag. “You want to discuss this now?”

  Gray walked past him and went up the basement steps to the fi
rst floor … using a small flashlight he spotted the red-splattered couch and had no doubts about what the staining agent was.

  Coming to stand next to him McCleany sounded almost delighted. “Growler.”

  Gray nodded … the bodies would probably be in one of the bedrooms. With everything unraveling, Gray was experiencing the same panic of the soul he suffered seven years ago … this was going to dog him until the day he died.

  Except the bodies weren’t in a bedroom, they were stuffed in a hallway closet and they were headless. As Gray looked at them he felt strangely unaffected, as if the bodies were mannequins.

  “Our lucky day,” McCleany said.

  Gray didn’t feel lucky, he felt doomed.

  “Not only does our boy Growler kill the Raineys,” McCleany was saying, “but he accommodates us by doing it with his signature style, beheadings.”

  “I got to call this in.”

  McCleany grabbed him by the upper arm. “Don’t be a sap, we’re going to give Growler a chance to knock off Kenny Norton before we start pulling any alarms.”

  “What the hell you talking about huh?”

  “Will you listen to your old partner for once. If this case gets reopened three people can testify we encouraged them to lie on the stand, Growler’s already killed these two, that leaves Kenny Norton. With him dead there’s nobody in this world can say we committed or abetted perjury.”

  “Elizabeth Rockwell—”

  “We didn’t tell her to lie, she testified she found the victim’s head in Growler’s room—the truth. She testified that once upon a time in some storage room Growler grabbed her tit and she was afraid he was going to rape her—the truth. That Rockwell broad can’t hurt us.”

  “I mean what if Growler goes after her too?”

  “As long as he nails Norton before the party’s over I don’t care who else gets it.”

  “Jesus that’s cold.”

  “Yeah well if we get sent to prison, that make you feel any warmer?”

  “Too many loose ends,” Gray said. “Somebody from a religious program gets Growler out of prison then buys Cul-De-Sac, you got to wonder what that’s about huh?”

  “I told you, the guy’s got an angle.”

  “And something else too … just before I left to pick you up I find out a retired homicide detective is making all kinds of calls about Cul-De-Sac—”

  “Who?”

  “Teddy Camel, used to be—”

  “I heard of him, Teddy Camel … a real hard-on, the Human Lie Detector they called him.”

  Gray muttered it again, “Too many loose ends.”

  McCleany got right into Gray’s face. “Not as many as there were seven years ago and we tied those up didn’t we?”

  “Obviously not, else we wouldn’t be standing here.” Gray looked again at the bodies … their being headless actually made them less horrible to him, no eyes to stare back.

  “We’ll go out the basement,” McCleany said. “If our luck holds nobody’ll stumble on what’s happened here until after Growler has had his way with Norton.”

  “This is stupid.”

  “I’ll take care of the loose ends,” McCleany continued as they went through the living room. “I’ll find out what Camel’s interest is, go have a talk with what’s-his-name, that asshole brother-keeper.”

  “Paul Milton.”

  “Yeah, why he got Growler out of prison, why he bought Cul-De-Sac … I can handle this just like I did the first time, the only thing that can bite us in the ass now is somebody suddenly coming up with those pictures.”

  Gray stopped on the steps to the basement. “I thought J.L. burned them.”

  “That’s what I always thought too but you know J.L., he was a cagey old bastard and—”

  “Jesus.”

  “Don’t let your bowels start leaking, Parker, all I’m saying is we got to face the possibility that J.L. kept the pictures in spite of what he promised us about burning them, you know how he was, liked to have leverage over people.”

  “Jesus.”

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  “You been sitting on this all these years, the possibility those photographs are still floating around somewhere?”

  “I didn’t see any reason to give my old partner any more sleepless nights than you were already having … I figured the pictures would either show up or not. And they haven’t. And maybe I’m wrong about it, maybe J.L. destroyed them like he said.”

  They were in the basement now, McCleany acting amazingly jaunty, taking a few practice golf swings, talking about getting to the driving range before it closed. Then he noticed something by the washer and dryer. McCleany walked over there and shined his light on the bloodstains. When he lifted the lids to the washing machine and dryer McCleany laughed out loud. “Hey come here Parker you’ll get a kick out of this.”

  14

  At six P.M. on April 15 Teddy Camel was cold, blowing warm breath into cupped hands, hiding in the shadows of a corner on level 3 of his building’s parking garage, waiting to catch the geek who’d been exposing himself to women … Camel just then remembering he hadn’t mailed his tax forms, they were still in the office. He took a moment to think what he should do … give this stakeout one hour like Eddie said, go up and have dinner with Annie, drop the tax forms off on the way to Cul-De-Sac to pick up her husband. With that straight in his mind he relaxed a little but felt cold again.

  Camel wondered if he should’ve gone to the store with Annie instead of pulling this stakeout, she still seemed shaky … but she also acted like she wanted some time by herself, away from Camel. They could talk at dinner, it’d be their last chance before the husband comes on the scene … maybe they’d talk about what Annie said, our baby.

  His feet hurt. Blood pooled in his lower legs. He should’ve put a coat on over the sports jacket. Checked his watch, one hour maximum he told himself.

  Twenty or thirty people had walked by on the way to their cars, no one had spotted Camel back here in his dark corner. Most of the men were on their own but the women clustered in groups of three or four. The word was out on the pervert. He was short, five and a half feet tall, he picked on women who were even shorter, he usually struck on the third level but a couple times up on 4. Camel hadn’t seen anyone suspicious.

  Around half past six a black guy came walking up the ramp from level 2, taking his time, stopping every few steps … obviously not the flasher but this guy wasn’t just looking for his car either.

  When he got closer Camel saw the man’s Air Force blue jacket, saw he was wearing a service belt heavy with flashlight and pepper spray and cuffs and radio, Camel finally recognizing him … Jake Kempis who worked for the shopping mall’s private security firm.

  Camel stepped out of the corner and Kempis turned quickly.

  “Teddy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Kempis’s shoulders relaxed, he came over. “Eddie said you were up here somewhere.”

  “Eddie’s still around?”

  “Just getting ready to leave, I think he’s bringing you coffee.”

  “Good.”

  “Staking out the flasher?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hiding in the shadows, that’s work for a brother ain’t it?”

  “Spadework.” Camel laughed.

  “What’d you say?” Kempis asked, bristling.

  “My old man. He wouldn’t abide racial slurs, if he was with guys who started talking about ‘niggers’ and ‘spics’ the old man would just walk away. But to the day he died he’d call a black man a spade. I’d say, ‘Pop that’s a slur too.’ But he’d insist it wasn’t, said it was simply descriptive.”

  “As in ‘black as the ace of …’ ”

  “The old man a product of his time, like we all are.”

  “Like my dad was,” Kempis said with no trace of wistfulness. “Too easy on white people. ‘They have their ways, we have ours.’ ” Kempis started to say something more but didn’t, instead
he asked Camel, “Will you give me a call if you catch the flasher, let me turn him in?”

  “You still trying to get that appointment to the state police academy?”

  “Yeah, might be too old though.” Too black, Kempis thought … then looked at Camel and smiled. “Except maybe you don’t plan to turn the pervert over to anyone, maybe you’re planning to lay a little vigilante justice on his nervous ass.”

  “No I don’t operate that way.”

  “Anymore you mean.” Kempis smiled. “I heard stories about you, back when you worked homicide.”

  “Yeah?”

  He nodded, relaxed now. “Hey Teddy, I came here looking for you ’cause I got something to tell you just between us girls.”

  Camel waited to hear it.

  “Boss calls me a few minutes ago, wants to know if I got anything on you.”

  “Anything like what?”

  “My question too. He says anything negative. Like did I think you were the kind of guy who’d run scams.”

  “Scams?”

  “He specifically mentioned shakedowns … but he acted like he might be happy hearing anything negative, like have I ever seen you falling-down drunk, had any complaints about you from people working on your floor, traffic accidents … the man was seriously hoping for bad news.”

  “I wonder why.”

  “My question again. He says it’s a police agency interested in you. I say which one, he dances around without answering me so I say well fax me over the sheet. He says there ain’t no sheet.”

  “Somebody keeping it unofficial.”

  “My thought exactly.”

  “But why?”

  “My question to you.”

  Camel said he had no idea and Kempis glanced over like he didn’t believe him. “I thought maybe something you’re working on, making people nervous you might be screwing up an active investigation.”

  “No.”

  Kempis again with that disbelieving look.

  “I’m telling you Jake the stuff I work on nobody would be interested.”

  “Well you’re making somebody nervous. My boss hinting like a bitch it would do us all some good if I could suddenly remember something bad about Teddy Camel.”