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.
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 first 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.”