FIFTY-ONE
But, no, Gooch was not a hallucination. Two hours later we were turning into a development off a county road near Lake Sinclair down in Baldwin County.
“You got a plan here, Lieutenant?” I said.
Lt. Gooch said, “Look, I think we getting to the vicinity of using first names. I’m Hank.”
“Hank.” It sounded funny calling him by his name.
“Hank, you got a plan here? Are we just going in with guns blazing?”
“Nah, I reckon he’s liable to be on his guard right now. We go straight in, he’ll just blow us away.”
“Then what?”
“You gonna go in.”
“Me?”
“Look, we know what kind of man we’re dealing with. He’s ruthless, but he’s also a politician. He likes to talk, make deals. You come in talking about a deal, talking about saving your career, talking about some money, whatever you think will work. You’ll know how to play him better than I would.”
“But what if he just shoots me?”
“He won’t.” He smiled ironically. “I’d stake your life on it.”
“Hah, hah.”
“Look, Mechelle, right now he don’t know I’m alive. What we need is for you to go in and distract him. Just get him talking. Meanwhile I’ll reconnoiter, make sure he don’t have a bunch of goons hanging around. Once he’s distracted, I’ll come in and surprise him.”
“What kind of surprise do you have in mind?”
Lt. Gooch looked at me sideways. “If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise.” Then he swung the car off into the weeds on the side of the road. He popped the trunk-lid remote, then climbed out of the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. As I scooted across the seat behind the wheel, the lieutenant was taking something out of the trunk: a short-barrelled Mossberg riot shotgun, and something else in a long, thin cloth bag. The bag was about the size of a baseball bat, but whatever was inside was shaped differently—lumpier, and slightly curved.
“Give me about twenty minutes,” he said. Then he slung the cloth bag over his shoulder and disappeared into the woods.
What was in the bag? I wondered.
I sat there with the engine running, the air conditioner blowing full blast, the window open. In twenty minutes, not more than five cars came along the road. Heat shimmered off the sticky tarmac. It must have been close to a hundred degrees, the hot air pouring in through the window. I suddenly felt naked and alone, a craving for crank running through me so strong I almost couldn’t stand it. I had an odd, disconnected feeling like any minute this might turn out to be some kind of hallucination. But of course it wasn’t.
So the lieutenant was alive. On the drive down he had told me what had happened. “You remember how we went in to arrest Ferlin Joyner two weeks ago,” Gooch had said, “that fellow that was living in the trailer up in Rabun County? You and me solved the case, went in for the bust, and then he disappeared. Well, the reason he disappeared is I told him we were coming. I knew he wasn’t the right boy in the first place, and after what happened with Vernell Moncrief, I didn’t want anybody else getting falsely arrested. So he’s been staying at my place for the past two weeks, laying low. Of course he had to split on short notice, so he’s been wearing my clothes. He’s the same size as me. He left in his bare feet, poor bastard was so scared. I even gave him a pair of my old boots.”
Gooch had clenched his jaw. “Poor sumbitch, I got him killed. He must of heard them SWAT boys busting down my door, scared the crap out of him. He grabbed one of my pistols, they blew his head off. More or less literally. They expected him to be wearing a ballistic vest, so it was all head shots. Messed up his face so bad nobody even recognized it wasn’t me. They just threw him in the bag, trucked him on over to the morgue.
“I heard on the radio what happened,” Gooch had continued. “At that point, what could I do, right? I figured well, hell, they think I’m dead, maybe it’ll give me a edge.” Gooch had tapped an electronic box on his dash, a row of little red lights on the face. “This here’s one of them cell-phone scanners, runs up and down the cellular frequencies. I just followed you around, listened in on what you were doing, figured I’d help out if I had to.”
“No,” I had said finally. “It’s not that simple.”
The lieutenant hadn’t said anything.
“How long ago did you find that site, Lieutenant? The Captain Hunger site.”
After a brief pause, he’d said, “About six weeks.”
“But you never tried logging onto the Starvation Live section.”
The lieutenant had turned left onto a county highway, frowning at the road.
“You knew I’d get in there somehow, find Captain Hunger. You knew I’d get into that Starvation Live section somehow. And you knew that when I did, it would somehow trigger a more careful background search, one that would reveal I wasn’t who I said I was. Or that you weren’t who you said you were. Or whatever. And you knew that would force Captain Hunger’s hand.”
The lieutenant had rolled down his window, spit some tobacco juice out into the hot wind.
“You used me. You used me as a stalking horse,” I had said.
“Wasn’t like I had some big plan. But when Ferlin Joyner got shot, and I knew that for a couple days I’d be invisible, well, I just improvised.”
“You improvised with my life and my little boy’s life.”
Gooch had driven for a long time, the hot wind roaring in our ears. “I ain’t one to get all personal and everything. But I been working by myself for a long, long time. Not used to letting other people into what I’m doing.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Wait till you lose a child,” Gooch had said. “Then tell me.”
I guess Gooch must have realized finally what he had said, must have realized that in my own way I’d suffered an echo of what he had.
“I’m sorry,” the lieutenant had said finally. “I made a mistake.”
I waited twenty minutes, then I headed into the development where Chief Diggs had his lake house. There are lake developments all over the state, and they all seem to have a similar feel: slapdash, cheap, everything thrown up at minimum cost. This was a better one than some—no double-wides, no half-built shells left by builders whose finances had tanked in the middle of construction, no bass boats full of rainwater and algae. But still, there was something impermanent and third-rate about it.
The Chief had the biggest piece of property in the development, several lakefront lots and several roadside lots all strung together, so that the place was screened from the road by trees. I wondered if the Chief had brought down any guards—SWAT guys, or maybe people from his personal security detail. If I just drove up to the house, would I be gunned down before I could even get out of the car?
I had a fatalistic feeling as I steered the cruiser slowly up the gravel road. A thick swirl of gray dust mushroomed up behind the car. So far, so good. No Captain Goodwin, no security detail. I kept both hands on the wheel so that any watching eyes would know that I was not holding a weapon. Maybe that would discourage any potential barrage of lead.
Fortunately, bullets failed to materialize as I parked the car. For a moment I considered taking my pistol inside, but decided that wouldn’t be wise, that it might spook Diggs. I got out hesitantly, walked up to the door, and knocked.
I was surprised when it was answered by an attractive woman of about fifty, her hair braided close to the scalp. She wore a bright yellow kinte-cloth dress. “Yes?” she said, looking at me curiously.
“Mrs. Diggs?”
“Yes?”
“I’m looking for the Chief.”
“And you are?”
“Detective Deakes.”
Her eyebrows went up in recognition, then she smiled graciously. “Oh. From the Cold Case Unit. I saw you on the TV with Eustace the other day.”
I smiled blandly back at her. “That’s right.”
She turned and called over her shoulder. “Eustace? Eustace. Somebody from the department here for you.”
She asked me in and offered me a seat in the living room. The room was modest but tasteful, with nice reproductions of Thornton Dial pictures on the walls.
After a minute the Chief appeared, wearing a pair of wet swim trunks and a polo shirt that was wet around the waist where it hung against the swimsuit.
He turned to his wife. “My sweetest, would you give me and the detective a couple of minutes’ privacy?”
“Of course, dear.” Diggs’s wife smiled pleasantly, kissed her husband on the lips. “I’ll be out on the deck, reading.”
Diggs smiled until she had closed the sliding glass door onto the deck, then his smile faded. “You just don’t quit, do you?” he said sharply.
I lifted my arms out perpendicular to my body and rotated slowly. “See? I’m not armed.”
“Armed! What the hell wrong with you, girl?”
“That’s what I’m saying.” I sat slowly, keeping my hands visible. “You win. Okay? I surrender.”
Diggs kept glowering at me.
“What I’m saying is, I realize the error of my ways. I want to stay in the department. I got headstrong on you, I understand that. But I still think I can be useful to you.”
Diggs stroked his face, then sat. “Talk to me.”
“I have evidence now. Mark Terry, over at the GBI? He ran DNA on the hairs from the crime scenes. All of them.” I paused, but Diggs seemed unimpressed. He just stood there looking at me. “So now we know. But, here’s the thing. Neither of us want to make trouble. We just want this whole thing to stop. It’s getting out of control.”
Diggs’s face was still a mask. “DNA.”
“Yes, sir. Hair. Blood’s one thing. Semen’s another. But hair, boy, it’s hard to hide all that hair, isn’t it? We came up with six matches.”
Diggs kept looking at me with the same unreadable expression. Finally he smiled broadly, like he’d made some kind of decision. He clapped his hands together. “Okay, fine. We’re on the same page here. Monday morning we gonna sit down, you and me, we’ll work out the details. We’ll make a plan for you. Whatever you want and need and desire in that pretty head of yours, we’ll get it for you.”
“Good.”
“Excellent! Outstanding!” He stood, clapped his hands together a second time. “If that’s all you needed, a little reassurance, hey, then rest assured. Monday morning. We’ll work out the details. Pay scale, job assignment, you name it. Get it all squared away.” He was still smiling, a sort of strained, patronizing grimace. I could tell he was nervous.
“Well, see that’s the thing. I need to leave here with more than just . . . reassurance.”
“Monday morning.” He gestured to the door. “In my office. Eight-thirty sharp.” He waved his hand at the door a second time. I didn’t move.
“See, sir . . . I need to know if she’s still alive.”
He kept looking at me. He blinked. “She.”
“Oh, for godsake Chief, you don’t need to play dumb,” I said. “I’m not wearing a wire. And even if I were, we’ve already got the hairs. I just told you, we got six DNA matches.”
The Chief just kept looking at me with that blank smile.
“Where is she, Chief? Is she still alive?”
The Chief’s eyes slipped over toward the door for a minute, like he was thinking about going to get something. A gun, for instance. “You keep saying she. Mechelle, I’ll be honest here, you’re starting to lose me.”
“Jenny Dial,” I said. “Where’s Jenny Dial?”
He didn’t say anything, just kept eyeing me with this queasy expression on his face.
“Is she in the basement? Huh? You got some kind of little shed out back or something?”
“All right, all right, just hold on a second,” the Chief said. “I’ll go, ah, I’ll go get her.”
I was starting to get nervous now. It seemed too easy. Where the hell was Lt. Gooch?
“I’ll come with you.”
“Nah, nah. It’s okay. I just got to get the key.” He pointed at an end table next to the couch. Two quick strides, and he was there.
As he bent over and opened the drawer, I knew in a flash that something was wrong. What it was, I wasn’t sure. But I had a feeling things weren’t working out the way I wanted. He reached down and came out with a Glock, one of the little ones made for concealed-carry. He pointed it at me.
“Just stay calm,” he said. “I know you been under a lot of strain. A lot going on. I’m willing to take a certain amount of that into consideration. So I don’t want any violence here.” His voice hardened. “But I will do what I have to, to protect my family.”
Where was Hank? And what was wrong with the Chief? He just wasn’t reacting quite the way I’d expected. It was like he was trying to convince me he was not involved in this thing, acting all goofy and confused.
“You don’t have to act all innocent,” I said, lifting my shirt and turning around once so he could see there was no transmitter taped to my back. “I told you I’m not wearing a wire.”
“I’m sure you’re not.” He kept throwing me that big, phony, nervous smile.
“Besides, like I keep saying, there’s DNA.”
“Well . . . not exactly,” a voice behind me said. I turned, and there was Mark Terry. He was holding a short-barrelled Mossberg riot gun, department issue, that looked awfully similar to the one Lt. Gooch had carried into the woods. “Actually there’s no DNA at all. I sort of made that up.”
Mark Terry smiled genially, winked at me. Chief Diggs’s wife was standing in front of him, her face looking drained of blood.
“Who in the samhill are you?” the Chief said indignantly.
Mark Terry pointed the gun at the Chief. In a pitch-perfect black accent he said, “Yo, I’m the crazy brother gone blow your gotdamn head off if you don’t put that gun down.”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“Who-whooo!” Mark said, switching back to a white accent, this time sounding like some dumb hillbilly cracker. “Ain’t that the by-God truth, budrow.”
The room was silent for a moment. The Chief slowly lowered his gun to the floor, still looking dazed by the whole thing.
“Yeah, I ran into your buddy out there,” Mark said to me. “Lt. Gooch? He was kind of surprised to see me. Kind of surprised when I laid that stick upside his head, too.” Mark laughed again. “Took his very own gun, blew a nice little old hole in his chest.”
“Gooch?” Chief Diggs said.
“Lt. Gooch. He’s not dead,” I said.
“Yeah, well, he is now,” Mark Terry said in the same jokey tone of voice.
I wanted to do something, but I felt frozen. So I just sat there like a lump.
“It seems I screwed up,” I said to Chief Diggs. “I thought you were the guy. But I guess I was wrong.”
“I guess so,” Mark said, laughing.
“What guy?” Diggs said. “Who is this?”
“It wasn’t Lt. Gooch that killed those kids, Chief.” I pointed at Mark. “I guess . . . I guess it was him. His name’s Mark Terry.”
“But you can call me Captain Hunger if you want,” Mark said, still with his jolly smile.
“He’s a tech at the GBI crime lab. And it wasn’t just five kids like you said in your stupid press conference. It was seventeen.”
“Twenty-two actually,” Mark said, smiling brightly. “Y’all missed a handful up in Tennessee. Plus Gooch’s kid.”
Chief Diggs stared. “Look, son,” he said finally. “Let’s, ah, let’s be cool here, let’s be calm, cool, and collected, let’s just work this out before anything rash starts going down.”
“Have no fear, Chief,” Mark said. “No rashness involved here, none whatsoever. Don’t need any help from you at all.” He grinned. “Though, I must say, it’s mighty white of you to offer.”
“But—”
“Nah, nah, Chief. No yammering, no bargaining. This is the part where I kill all y’all and make it look like some type of murder-suicide deal. Like in one of them horror movies where everybody thinks the bad guy’s dead, only he comes back one more time. The crazed Lt. Gooch, everybody thought he’d been whacked by the SWAT boys, only in reality somehow he’s still creeping around, still up to his nefarious deeds and shit.”
I figured I had to play for time. “Well, look,” I said. “If you’re gonna kill us anyway, at least tell us how you did it. I mean, man—going fifteen plus years without getting caught, passing the blame on a bunch of other people! It may be sick, but it’s pretty impressive.” I smiled. What the hell. I figured if I appealed to his vanity, maybe he’d take some time to explain how he’d faked all the DNA evidence, how he’d abducted the children, how he’d worked this whole thing out. And why, for that matter. He had a long, interesting story that he’d never told anybody. I figured he be eager to tell us, to crow about what clever guy he was.
I was wrong.
“What?” Mark laughed. “You think this is a James Bond movie, the crazy villain sits around explaining himself, while 007 works out a plan?” Mark laughed, then pointed the Mossberg at the Chief’s face, pulled the trigger. Inside the house, the gun made an enormously loud noise, and one side of the chief’s face exploded into a red mess. I’d seen the aftermath of people getting hit in the face with shotguns, but never seen it happen. It was about the most horrible thing I’d ever seen.
Chief Diggs’s wife let out a horrible, screeching howl. Mark planted his shoe in the small of her back, kicked her over on her face. He racked the shotgun, fired into her back, racked it again, fired a second time.
I jumped up and started toward him. But I really had no chance. He racked and fired, racked and fired. The first shot didn’t feel like much. I think his aim was off a little, and the shot hit me in the left arm. But the second shot caught me dead in the middle of the chest. I can’t begin to describe what it felt like. It wasn’t just the physical pain, the impact of all those bits of metal plowing into my chest; it was the sure knowledge that I’d just received a death sentence. It pretty much took the wind right out of my sails.
I stood there for a second, and then I just sat down on the floor. A gray darkness started pushing in at the edges of my vision, and there was a terrible pain in my chest.
Still, I was conscious enough to see a dark shape move into the room, a smooth, graceful shadow with some kind of ragged red thing where a face should have been. There was something long and thin gleaming in his hands. It seemed like all the light in the room, maybe even all the light in the world, had been collected into that curved surface.
Mark Terry must have heard something, because he whirled to meet the shadow. But he was too late. The bright curved thing flashed.
Darkness pressing in.
The curved brightness gleamed and spun through the air.
A sound like a meat cleaver thunking down through a rack of barbecued ribs.
Darkness and silence.