CHAPTER ELEVEN

Thursday, September 12

I was pretty sure whom I was going to find under those sheets last night. And there they were.

Whit Charles looked reasonably intact, although I could see that one of his hands was missing all its fingers. Gino, who didn’t turn out to be much of a bodyguard after all, took a couple to the face. He was still barely recognizable, although open casket is out of the question.

When I told the chief who they were, he was several levels beyond interested.

“So this guy, the one on the right, was Randolph Davis’s employer down there in the islands? And how the fuck did you know that?”

L.D. informed me that I was again waist deep in the big muddy when it comes to Stick’s murder.

I had no choice but to tell the chief how I came to know Charles. I told him about the concerns the guy had about his safety.

“And you’ve never been here to this house before? And yet you knew who was under those sheets, before we even showed you the bodies.”

L.D. was not appeased when I told him I knew generally where Charles was staying, that I knew he drove a black

Denali, and that he seemed sure some very bad men were trying to get something they thought he had. I told him I had a hunch as soon as I heard about the two bodies.

The chief, not a great believer in hunches, said I needed to start talking “right damn now.” I asked him if I could send in a story to the paper first. He told me I’d be lucky if my next story wasn’t sent from the city jail.

He and a couple of his detectives directed me into the house. The place was a wreck. Whoever let Charles house sit definitely is going to have to do some major remodeling.

“Like they were looking for something,” the chief says. He adds that neither victim seemed to have been robbed.

That, I explained to L.D., is what I’ve been trying to tell you. Somebody thought Charles had something they wanted.

By this time, the four of us were sitting in the living room, them on the couch and me on an ottoman facing them.

“If I knew what,” I told them, “I’d be a lot happier.”

I remind the chief about the guys Mrs. Woolfolk saw go into Stick’s place the day before I found his body, who left with paper bags full of something. I tell him again about Stick’s notebooks that weren’t there later when I was allowed to look.

“Why didn’t she tell us about it?”

“Again, dammit, because nobody asked her.”

The chief looked like he wanted to hit somebody.

Taking it a step further, I said that a friend of Stick’s told me that he had an iPad where he seemed to keep something he didn’t want on his desktop computer.

“Did we find an iPad?” he asked one of the detectives, who shook his head.

He turned his bloodshot eyes to me.

“So, you knew there were some missing notebooks, and that a couple of unknown males were in the victim’s home after he was killed, and now there’s this missing iPad.”

“I wasn’t sure what all this meant. I’m still not.”

“Bullshit. You just wanted to get a damn story out of

it.”

Yeah, I could have told the chief that I was in possession of that iPad, which the cops would have found themselves if they’d done a better job of searching Jerome’s mom’s house. But I kind of promised Ms. Sheets. Mainly, though, I wanted to get the first crack at whatever was so damned important.

It occurred to me that if Whit Charles had been aware of that iPad, he might have had something he could have traded for his life.

The chief and his minions grilled me for an hour and a half, long enough to keep me from getting any of the details of the double homi into tomorrow’s paper. All I could do was post it on our website, much to the irritation of Sally Velez, whose earlier calls L.D. did not allow me to answer.

When they were finally convinced that I almost certainly could not have killed Charles and Gino, the chief said I could go, but not to leave town.

On the way out, he pulled me aside.

“If you’re holding out on me,” he said, “you better watch your ass. This isn’t just your usual junior detective shit. These guys, whoever they are, they don’t fuck around. If you’ve got something they want, you are not safe.”

He told me then details I was not allowed to print. Gino had been dispatched pretty quickly, it seemed, but Whit Charles apparently was bound and gagged and more or less tortured to death.

“Believe me,” L.D. said, “if the guy had what they were after, he would have given it to them. They had started on the other hand, and maybe he bled to death or just had a heart attack. I don’t know what finally killed him, but he was probably glad to go, from what we saw.”

The chief had my attention. It occurred to me that Whit Charles might have told his killers about the nosy-ass reporter who also had access to Stick Davis’s apartment.

One shot at the iPad, I promised myself, and then I’ll turn it over to the cops.

AND SO, here I am. I have the tablet in front of me, taunting me.

Cindy’s already at work. I gave her the shorthand version of my busy night. I didn’t even tell her that I had the iPad, but I did call Marcus this morning.

“You need to give that thing to the cops right damn now,” he said. “If you don’t, I’m going to give them a call.”

I tell him to give me a couple of hours. I don’t think Marcus is all that concerned about my well-being, but he’s very fond of his own health and happiness.

I try several log-ons and passwords, variations of the ones Stick Davis used on his home computer, but nothing works. I try his first name, his middle name, his birth date, even Terri McAllister’s first and last names.

Then I give my hunch from the day before a shot. Apple pie with ice cream and a longshot horse.

I try a la mode as a log-in and bumpass as a password, then drop the French shit and just spell it alamode, and then I try Bumpass with a capital B, and voilà. Open sesame.

After fiddling around for a few minutes, I try the “Notes” icon. The only note inside the icon is slugged “Jordan.”

Jordan, as in Jordan’s Branch. The creek that once ran by Westwood, where Stick was living, and is now buried beneath the median strip on Willow Lawn Drive.

Stick has rather cryptic instructions about what to do “should anything happen to me.” So cryptic, in fact, that 1 don’t really know what the fuck he’s talking about at first.

“Look for Jordan’s Branch,” he tells me from the Great Beyond. “East of Dunbar. Look for two bricks. That’s the spot. Dig.” And that’s all the note says.

Since Jordan’s Branch is buried beneath a busy street at present, this doesn’t help me much.

I know I’ve seen that damn creek somewhere else in Richmond. So I get out my area map and start looking. It first appears above ground some blocks away from Westwood, and it eventually, after a million twists and turns, runs into the Chickahominy River north of the city. I remember now crossing it on Staples Mill Road. But that’s probably a mile from Stick’s last address.

Sitting there and yearning for a Camel, I wonder how long those guys tortured old Stick before they finally put him out of his misery. I’m guessing they looked on his home computer and didn’t find anything there, and then they or somebody else had to come back later for the notebooks. We don’t seem to be dealing with geniuses. In the meantime, in the course of one of young Mr. Sheets’s more unfortunate juvenile criminal moves, he absconded with the iPad. He probably left the computer because it was too unwieldy to haul off.

But then I go back and look at the map again. And then I see it. On the east side of Westwood, the side I never saw in my visits to Stick’s house, there it is. Dunbar. It runs parallel to Willow Lawn Drive, with a row of houses between the two streets.

East of Dunbar.

Well, who doesn’t love a scavenger hunt? Stick Davis must be laughing his ass off, thinking of me going down to Abe Custalow’s little office in the Prestwould basement and asking him if he has a shovel.

“What for?”

I convince him that it is in his best interest if he doesn’t know.

“Do you want me to come with you?” he asks, not even knowing where I’m going. Abe has been my salvation more than once when I’ve rushed in where angels or sane people fear to tread.

I tell him that I appreciate it, and I might be calling on his ass soon, but I feel pretty safe right now.

“This is about Stick Davis, isn’t it?”

I nod as he hands me the shovel. I leave before he can ask me anything else or run after me.

OK, I’m thinking. Just as soon as I get my hands on whatever Stick’s buried in the median of Willow Lawn Drive, I’ll put everything in the somewhat capable hands of Richmond’s finest.

I DRIVE out Patterson Avenue, turn right, and park near where Dunbar and Willow Lawn converge before the latter pulls away from it, following the path of the now-buried Jordan’s Branch.

Looking at the map, I see that the place Stick mentioned could be anywhere in the next hundred yards or so.

I get out of the car, put out my cigarette, take the shovel out of the trunk, and start walking up the median strip, ignoring curious stares from passersby on Willow Lawn.

The bricks are maybe fifty yards up. I almost miss them at first. They are mostly buried in the grass, side by side. They are low enough that city crews, should they ever mow out here, wouldn’t strike them.

I’ve dug a foot or so when the shovel strikes something hard. I get down on my hands and knees and dig out a metal box, maybe eight inches square, four inches deep.

Inside it, double-wrapped in plastic bags, is a DVD.

By now, it’s close to noon. I drive back to the Prestwould and go up to our apartment. The Blu-ray player Cindy insisted we had to have has a DVD slot.

I pop the disc in.

On the video, there are two men seated at a table, with a cloth hung behind them. In front of the cloth are a Nazi flag and our Dixie favorite, the Confederate battle flag.

The men are both literal skinheads, with necks about the same circumference as their heads. Both are wearing masks that cover the bottom half of their faces. This does not keep me from seeing the tattoo across one of their foreheads. It reads “Purity.”

One of them speaks:

“If you are watching this,” he says, “you know what we have done. The righteous mayhem we have unleashed is just a hint of what is to come. We are myriad, and we will emerge victorious over the mongrels and their lackeys. Today Virginia, tomorrow the world. We are Purity.”

They stand and give a Nazi salute. The video ends.

I am silent. While I was watching, Custalow came into the apartment for his lunch break. I don’t hear him until he says, “Shit,” making me jump about a foot. “What the hell is that?”

Something, I tell him, that needs to be in the hands of somebody smarter and better-armed than a night cops reporter.

I CALL Marcus to tell him, in general terms, what I found, and then I head down to police headquarters.

L.D. is out to lunch when I get there. Somehow I put enough fear into his snot-nosed aide to get him to contact the chief and put me on with him.

“I have something that’s scaring the shit out of me,” I tell him. “You have to see this.”

I have L.D.’s attention, apparently. He’s back in ten minutes with a speck of mustard on his chin.

“This had better be good,” he warns.

We watch the skinheads’ performance together.

“And you’ve had this how long?” the chief asks.

Just since this morning, I answer. I tell him where it was buried, not mentioning that I’ve had the iPad with the necessary directions since yesterday.

L.D. is not a complete idiot. He presses me on how exactly I came to know where to dig. I have to tell him about the iPad.

“Look,” I say, only lying a little, “the Sheets kid’s mother found it in his room, and she called Marcus Green, and he and I went and got it. I just wanted to see for myself what it was about before I turned it over to you. And I found the note that told me where to dig.”

I remind him of all the things linking the late Whit Charles to Stick and to whoever made that video.

“Suppressing evidence,” the chief mutters. I can tell, though, that the DVD has his attention, and that maybe tossing me in jail for withholding the iPad for a day or so isn’t at the top of his list. He isn’t even interested, for now, in why an accused murderer’s mom would want anyone to know about something else the kid had stolen.

Like me, his attention is on the DVD.

“There’s no date or anything on it? Nothing to tell us when they’re talking about?”

I shake my head.

“What you see is all I’ve got.”

I know L.D. likes to go it alone, that he hates to call in outside help. It’s something we have in common. When he says, “We need to take this on up the ladder,” he’s showing me he knows he’s in over his head.

By “outside help,” I’m sure he doesn’t mean the mayor. In a few minutes, he’s contacted the state police and the FBI.

I tell the chief that I have to get to work. It’s almost two o’clock.

“As soon as we get everybody together,” he says, “your ass is back here, understand? You might have stuck your nose a little too close to the hornet’s nest this time.”

I remind him that being made a suspect in a murder case kind of gave me the right to stick my nose in. I also tell him that I’m going to write about what I’ve seen and heard so far.

“If you write one word of this,” he says, sticking his finger in my face, “I will have you arrested.”

I remind him that he wouldn’t have shit if it weren’t for me.

“Yeah,” he says, “and if you’d have taken that damn iPad straight to us, we might have had a day’s head start on figuring out what these crackers are planning, and when.”

It would feel good to tell L.D. that, if I had given the iPad to his bonehead department directly, it probably would still be moldering in the evidence room.

We finally reach an accommodation.

I will write about the police gaining possession of a valuable piece of evidence in the death of Randolph Giles “Stick” Davis, and that there are indications that his death and the killings of lawyer and former Virginia resident Whitney Charles and one Gino Morelli, address unknown, could be tied to Davis’s murder.

No mention of an iPad, or any of the particulars that left a certain DVD in the hands of Richmond’s finest. I’ll even have a quote from the chief:

“We have been diligently searching for answers in this case. The evidence we have now goes a long way toward solving these crimes and achieving justice.”

The story also will note that one Jerome Sheets, incarcerated in regard to the Davis murder, is no longer considered a prime suspect, although he is still, of course, on the hook for breaking and entering.

That should make Marcus Green, Shakira Sheets, and Big Boy Sunday at least moderately happy.

“Am I off the hook too?” I ask the chief.

He says he’ll tell me when I’m off the hook.

I HEAD back to the paper.

As is often the case these days, there is news. Unsurprisingly it is not good.

“They’ve sold the building,” Sally Velez informs me even before I can go for my first cup of newsroom coffee.

It seems that the Grimm Group, in a frantic attempt to drain every last ounce of blood out of our anemic operation, has indeed sold our premises out from under us. Well, not exactly. The new owners, a bunch of local real-estate development sharpies, are willing to let us rent space in what is now their digs.

Our old masters lost this place through their incredible farsightedness. They borrowed big-time to buy some damn TV stations just before the goddamn market collapsed and the whole world realized that advertising in and reading newspapers was so twentieth century.

That was light years and two owners ago.

These days, we can put the whole shebang—the suits, advertising, promotions, the newsroom, everything—on one floor of this white elephant.

And that’s what they’re going to do.

Even Stine, our revered publisher, will have to move into what, for him, will seem like paupers’ digs and hobnob with the hoi polloi. That should be good.

I ask Sarah about Luther Gates. She says he’s still at large, and that she’s looking forward to meeting him “so 1 can kneecap his ass.”

I counsel her to be careful what she wishes for.

“We have bigger things to talk about,” I tell her and ask her to get Wheelie to join us.

When we all gather in Wheelie’s office, I tell them what I can write and what I know. Full disclosure for a change.

“So somebody’s planning to wreak havoc on something in Virginia, and we can’t tell anybody about it?” Wheelie says.

I explain that that’s what I promised. And when they catch these bozos, I assure them, we’ll have the whole story.

“If they catch them in time,” Sarah says.

There is really no other way to go. Our readers will know that new evidence is pointing to someone other than a night cops reporter or a kid thief killing Stick Davis. They will know that the two murders that made our website after midnight might be connected to Mr. Davis.

They won’t know that the same people might be planning to blow a great big hole somewhere in their home state.

I am put in the tenuous position of putting my safety and that of my fellow Virginians in the hands of the authorities. And, what the fuck, if we told the readers that something, somewhere in the state was going to go boom sometime, what would that do except cause people to crap themselves and hide under the bed?

I HAVE just finished tying everything together for tomorrow’s readers: the two deaths last night plus the “new evidence” tying those to Stick’s murder, when I get a call.

I don’t recognize the voice.

“You’re sticking your nose into something that doesn’t concern you,” it says.

I play dumb, not that big a stretch.

“Who are you? What are you talking about?”

All the voice says is “Stick Davis.”

I wait.

And then he adds the kicker.

“We know where you live, nigger. You and your wife and that half-breed Indian. What’s his name? Oh, yeah. Custalow.”

Passing as I usually do for white, I’m taken aback by both the slur and the fact that evil is a lot closer to my ass than I realized. What did Whit Charles tell them as they were lopping off his fingers? But Charles didn’t know about the DVD. Not possible. He just knew there were bad guys out there planning some bad shit.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Never mind who we are, asshole,” he says. “But you’ve got something we want, and you’ll give it back if you know what’s good for you.”

At this point, a wiser soul would plead ignorance.

But this guy, whoever he is, is pissing me off.

“You’re right. I do have something of yours.”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Tell me about it.”

I’m making it up as I go along.

“It’s going to cost you to get it back,” I tell him. “You and your pal look really good on camera.”

He’s silent for a minute. I’m thinking the guy knows there’s a DVD out there with his ugly mug on it, one that maybe would tip off the cops and spoil these monsters’ fun. I’m counting on the fact that he’s figuring I’m a money-grubbing bastard who’d sell anything for the right price, rather than pass it on to the cops. People have such a low opinion of professional journalists.

“How much?”

“I’m thinking a quarter of a million.”

“You fuckin’ jungle bunny,” he says.

“Well,” I reply, “I could just pass it on to the police.”

He’s quiet for a bit. Then it sounds like he’s talking to somebody else in the background.

“Yeah,” he says at last, “we can do that. Tomorrow. I’ll call you with a time and place. Two hours.”

What, I ask myself as I hang up, have I done?