Chapter Forty

Speck sat cuffed to the ring on the metal desk when Raven returned to intake. He smiled when he saw her, smiled wider when he noticed the mess that was the right side of her face.

“Looks like you got a hurtin’ on you, Rave Girl.”

She stood with her back and one foot against the door as she regarded Speck. One of the last times she saw Noe, he was surrounded by people who loved him and by people who were beginning to love him, like Edmée, Imogene and Billy Ray. She remembered his birthday party being the first time she had ever seen him smile without trying since he had come to live with Cameron. She remembered poking instead of hugging him because he didn’t like to be touched, not yet. She remembered rubbing Clyde’s shoulder and that silly memory game he played with Edmée.

And then she thought about how she last saw Clyde. She tried not to imagine seeing Noe that way. With every ounce of will in her body that her exhausted mind could control, she resisted the urge to fly at Speck, to beat out of him what he had done to Noe. Instead, she walked over, squatted on her heels so she could look up into his face.

“What happened, Willie Lee? To the house, to the wife, to the two-point-five kids? Where are they?”

He spat in her face. She took a Kleenex from the box on Marna’s desk and wiped it away. She crumpled the Kleenex in her hands dangling between her knees. She wondered how fast she could get to her weapon if she had to use it.

“It was a secret, wasn’t it? The hoard? The filth? Is that why the wife left you? Or did you make her up?”

“Hell no,” he said. “I ain’t that crazy.”

“Can you tell me how crazy? Because what I saw was that you’re crazy enough to kill animals. Does that crazy extend to boys?”

“I ain’t had nothing to do with that. I ain’t no fucking animal,” he said.

“There were corpses everywhere, Willie Lee.”

“You invaded my space,” he said. “Besides, you didn’t find corpses, only carcasses.”

“What will they find in that hoard? Your son, JoJo? Lucy, your daughter? Are they going to find Suzy?”

He went to spit again. But suddenly she was pressing her hand so hard over his mouth that he couldn’t part his lips to bite her, like he was trying like hell to do. He swiveled his head from side to side, his lank hair swinging with each movement, brushing the back of her hand. Raven had one foster parent who used to press her knuckles into the side of Raven’s head. To make the pain as deep as she could make it, the woman would hold the middle knuckle higher than the others, digging until Raven cried for her to stop.

That was what Raven was thinking when she pressed her hand over his mouth, how easy it would be to increase the pain by squeezing as hard as she could with just her forefinger and thumb. She didn’t like the way the pain in Speck’s eyes made her feel. His discomfort flooded her with good feelings. Speck pressed his big body against the back of the chair. He tried to speak but couldn’t get his mouth open beneath her hand.

“I don’t like being spit on,” she said, her voice soft, unhurried, devoid of emotion.

His movements stopped at the sound of her voice. She could see the fear in his eyes.

“I want to remind you that it’s just you and me here,” she said.

He nodded slowly.

“Now, are you going to keep your bodily fluids to yourself?”

He nodded again. She took her hand down. His eyes glittered with pain. Spittle frothed white at the corners of his trembling mouth.

He took a few deep breaths before answering. “I done told that Stevenson guy that I ain’t touched none of them boys, and I ain’t done nothing to my family.”

Raven said nothing. She waited for him to continue.

He told her that at first the job didn’t get to him, cleaning up after the dead, most from violent or horrific deaths, some from old age, filling dumpster after dumpster with the things they loved, photographs no one cared to look at again, books with writing in the margins and forget-me-nots pressed between the pages. He didn’t mind heaving a favorite chair into the trash or throwing out magazines they liked so much that they had kept them years after the publication date. Not a lot of sentimental things survived. He was fine with that.

What got to him was how the relatives would only hang around until they could get their hands on the belongings that could be worth money, and Ozy waiting there all the while in his cowboy hat like a greedy ghoul.

“It got so that I couldn’t throw anything of my own away. I didn’t have no trouble with anybody else’s stuff, but mine, I just couldn’t do it. I just saw myself disappearing tiny piece by tiny piece every time I put something in the trash can. And I had to have more. I kept buying stuff. The wife put up with it for a bit, but next thing I know I come home to a note saying she was leaving and filing for divorce.”

“Is that when you started killing those boys?”

“I ain’t killed nobody!” he said. “I just got a few head problems, that’s all. You would, too, if you saw what I saw.”

“I understand that, Willie Lee. Just tell me where Noe is,” Raven said, hoping that where violence failed pleading would work. “Just tell me and I swear I’m gone from your life.”

He jerked at the chain. “I ain’t killed nobody!”

“Come on, Willie Lee!” she shouted over the rattling chain.

She whipped out her phone and started swiping through the crime scene photos of the victims, ending with Clyde lying on the autopsy table, and Noe, smiling and alive, in the last picture. She tapped the screen.

“I can’t do anything for those other boys,” she said. “But I promised my brother that I would bring this one home.”

He didn’t even look at Noe’s picture. “Then maybe you done gone and lied because I ain’t got no idea where he is.” He shouted it so loud that he was out of breath. He wiped his mouth with his free hand.

Raven tried another tactic. “Why did you kill all those animals? Were you practicing, trying to figure out how to move up to human beings?”

Speck threw his head back. “Fuck, you just don’t listen, do you?” he said. “I ain’t killed no boys!”

“Then why the animals?”

“Ain’t no crime to study animals. That’s what I was doing. Studying how to stuff ’em. Just another way to make money. Taxidermy.”

They both knew he was lying. Raven didn’t challenge him. He did his best to try to cross his arms without much success because of the chain. Raven hung her head.

“Let me see the picture again,” he said.

Raven showed him the picture of Noe.

“I ain’t got no use for the live one,” he said. “Show me the other one. The one of Clyde.”

“Why. So you can get off?”

“You know, you’re a sick fuck. You might not like me but I’m a human being just like everyone else. I know I got some problems, but I don’t like it that somebody did Clyde like that.”That’s why you were so willing to talk to us earlier, she thought. But instead of challenging him more, she showed him the picture.

“Huh,” he said. “That’s why y’all think I did it? Because I have a bolt gun?”

“Not a lot of people run around with bolt guns, Willie Lee,” Raven said.

“Maybe not,” he said. “But farmers do. And it looks like whoever did this used a bolt gun. But I can guarantee you that it wasn’t mine.”

“Then whose was it?”

“That I don’t know. All I did was kill a dog or two, feral dogs, tormenting the kids in the neighborhood….”

Raven snorted. “So you say. Does that make you feel better?”

“As a matter of fact, it sure does. And I’m telling you sure as shittin’ that I ain’t done no human being that way.”

“Well, you better do something to convince me of that, because that’s what the chief and Stevenson are looking to take you down for.”

He chewed his lips. “That thing hurt what you did with my mouth.”

Raven waited.

“And you looked crazy while you did it, so if you’re calling me that, I guess I’m in good company.”

“You got anything for me?”

“You need to talk to Ozy,” he said. “He the one gave me that bolt gun.”

“Ozy?”

“Yep, just like us, he’s crazier than a bag of cats.”

“You’re telling me that you don’t know where he got it?”

“He said it was in a box of stuff he took while we were cleaning the office of that lawyer that got beat. Ronnie True.”

“Ronnie True?” Raven said. “Breaker said you didn’t clean up that scene.”

“Aw, what does he know?” Speck said. “Who do you think Mr. Goody Two Shoes Trauma Cleaning Service comes running to when he gets too busy for a job but still wants his money? He contracts with me, throws the job my way. He don’t care as long as he gets his cut.”

“So you telling me you cleaned the True scene?”

“Yep,” he said. “I remember I had two jobs that day, so I had Ozy helping me box stuff up. I told him he could take anything he wanted for helping me.”

“Real free with other people’s belongings, aren’t you, Willie Lee?”

“The family said they didn’t want anything in that office. Blood was everywhere. I mean everywhere. They told me to get rid of it all. What did you want me to do? Burn it?”

“If that bolt gun was at the scene Breaker would have had it bagged for evidence,” Raven said.

“Well, maybe he was in a hurry. I heard the police hurting for people.”

“So why would Ozy give you the bolt gun?”

“He was thanking me for all the other stuff I gave him that day. He knew I was studying taxidermy, and told me I might be able to use it.”

“Did you let him take the bear shoulder mount taxidermy, too?”

“What bear taxidermy?”

“Are you playing with me now? There was a mounted bear in True’s office. I saw a piece of it, a claw, in Ozy’s truck with a whole bunch of other junk.”

“No,” he said. “I ain’t let him take no taxidermy from that office. Why, if I saw anything like that, I would have kept it for myself.”

“Where is Ozy?” she asked him.

“What’s in it for me?”

“I don’t really have to answer that, now do I? You’re about to go down for being a serial killer. I’m trying to find the man who killed Clyde and kidnapped Noe. I believe the man who’s been going around killing these boys has him stowed away somewhere. I find him, you walk. We’re not working at cross purposes, Willie Lee. So where is he?”

“Ozy usually hangs around the abandoned bridge out of town,” he said. “But all ain’t right with him upstairs. You might not get much out of him.”

She stood up and walked to the door. Before she could turn the handle, Willie Lee said, “Raven, when I get out of here, are you still going to let me do that Oral Justice job for you?”

Raven felt sorry for him. He didn’t know it yet, but his life had changed. Once the news about his hoard hit the paper, and the Byrd’s Landing Review got their hands on that house of horrors in the shed, especially after what he did to those dogs, he wouldn’t ever work in this town again. She gave him a wan smile, and said, “Sure, Willie Lee. I’d appreciate you helping me out on that.”