River of Glass Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY JADEN TERRELL

  A Cup Full of Midnight

  Racing the Devil

  JADEN TERRELL

  Copyright © 2014 by Jaden Terrell

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication, or parts thereof, may be reproduced in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review, without the written permission of the publisher.

  For information, address:

  The Permanent Press

  4170 Noyac Road

  Sag Harbor, NY 11963

  www.thepermanentpress.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Terrell, Jaden—

  River of Glass / Jaden Terrell.

  pages cm. — (A Jared McKean mystery)

  ISBN 978-1-57962-360-9

  eISBN 978-1-57962-403-3

  1. Private investigators—Tennessee—Nashville—Fiction. 2. Mystery fiction. I. Title.

  PS3620.E753R58 2014

  813'.6—dc23 2014023887

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Mike Hicks, whose unfaltering support

  blesses my life, heals my heart, and makes me believe

  everything is possible.

  Acknowledgments

  To name everyone who has offered me support, encouragement, and assistance with this book would take volumes, so let me apologize in advance for the incompleteness of this list.

  My thanks go first and foremost to my husband, Mike Hicks, my mother, Ruthanne Terrell, and my brother, David Terrell, for their ceaseless love and support.

  Thanks to my agent, Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra agency; my publishers, Martin and Judith Shepard of The Permanent Press; cover artist Lon Kirschner; copy editor Barbara Anderson; and fellow Permanent Press authors Chris Knopf, Len Rosen, David Freed, and Baron Birtcher.

  Thanks to Clay Stafford and the whole Killer Nashville Crew for taking up the slack while I finished this book.

  Thanks to those who shared their knowledge and expertise with me on everything from law enforcement to HIV. Among them are Dan Royse, Mike Breedlove, and Patrick Looney of the TBI; Sgt. Derek Pacifico of the Writer’s Homicide School; Gene Kleiser for information about Vietnam; Susan Harris for her expertise in all things equine; and Greg Herren for providing information about HIV and AIDS; and Sheila L. Stephens for her insights into private investigation techniques.

  I would be remiss if I didn’t also express my gratitude to the Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Private Eye Writers of America, the Hardboiled Collective, and the Quill and Dagger Writers’ Group. An extra thank-you to authors Timothy Hallinan, Eyre Price, Rob Pobi, and Stacy Allen.

  Thanks to my friends and teachers at World Champion Productions. And as always, thanks to my friends at Measurement Incorporated, with special shout-outs to Christina Wilburn, Jeff Kirchner, Mary Beth Ross, and Steve Jones.

  There are so many of you to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. You know who you are. Much love to all of you.

  Tuyet

  The girl called Worm hugged her knees to her chest and shivered, listening to the storm. Wind shuddered the walls of the shed and whistled through the cracks. Rain hammered on the roof and trickled in through the seams where the steel walls met the concrete floor.

  In another life, she had been Tuyet, and she clung to the name now, lips moving in a silent recitation: My name is Tuyet. No matter what they call me, I will always be Tuyet.

  She blew on her hands to warm them, then rubbed her upper arms. Her nylon slip shifted, clammy against her skin.

  From a window in the ceiling, too high for her or the other women to reach, a wash of sooty light spread downward and was swallowed by shadows. The glass was gray with night and rain, but if she squinted, she could make out the other fourteen women in the dim light. She would have known them even without the light—by their shapes and by their voices, even by their smells. Fear and self-preservation might turn them against each other in time, but for now, this dank shed that smelled of sweat and shit and sex had made them sisters.

  The youngest and newest, a Japanese girl known only as Grub pressed her forehead against the shoulder of a young Chinese woman called Maggot. Maggot, who had suffered a beating for sharing that her true name was Hong, wrapped an arm around the younger girl and rocked her as if she were a small child. The gesture made Tuyet think of her mother, and that made her chest tighten and her eyes burn.

  She closed her eyes and let herself feel the touch of her mother’s hand on her cheek, let herself remember the smell of her grandmother’s coffee shop and the taste of pho soup—the savory broth, the tang of fish paste. She gave herself a few minutes to remember that other life. Then she pushed the thoughts away. A little memory could give you courage. Too much could make you weak.

  A Thai girl with a barbed-wire tattoo around her neck ran her fingers around the rim of her plastic dinner bowl as if an extra grain of rice or a sliver of fish might have appeared there. She was called Weasel, and while she too must have had another name, Tuyet had never heard it.

  A crash of thunder rattled the walls. Weasel moaned and pounded her thin mattress. Grub pressed her face to Hong’s shoulder and whimpered like a child. Someone groped in the shadows for the chamber pot, and a few moments later, the air grew sharp with the smell of urine.

  Weasel coughed. Hong began to hum. There was a lightness in the room that came, not from the rain, but because of it.

  The men would not come out in this weather.

  Hands outstretched, Tuyet made her way to the back corner of the shed. The rain had seeped in, and a puddle of rainwater chilled her bare feet. Where the two walls met the floor, there was a small gap. She knelt on the damp concrete, forehead almost touching the floor, and sucked in the smells of earth and rain, then laid her palm flat against the metal and pressed hard. With a tiny shriek, the gap widened. Moonlight and rainwater poured in.

  “You make trouble,” a reedy voice said in fractured English. Tuyet looked up to see a flat-faced Thai girl called Beetle behind her, arms crossed, jaw set. Like Hong and Weasel, Beetle knew even less Vietnamese than she did English, so by default, English was the language they used among each other. “Boss man catch you, he make everybody unhappy.”

  A few feet away, a Vietnamese girl called Dung huddled on her filthy mattress, scrawny arms curled around her stomach. Her magenta hair, now black at the roots, hid most of her bruised and swollen face. She was the smallest of them, but she had fought the hardest and the longest. Just this morning, she had raked her nails across the boss man’s neck and, without even flinching, he had caught her hand and snapped two of her fingers. The broken fingers and the bruises were partly punishment and partly an example for the rest of them: See what happens when you disobey?

  Tuyet thought they would kill the girl soon. Or maybe she would kill herself. Surely no one could take so much abuse for so long. The girl’s eyes, fixed on the gap in the wall, shone in the dim light.

  Tuyet said, “He make everybody unhappy anyway.” She pushed again, and more water washed through. Did they have monsoon season here in America? If it rained like this for weeks, would the men stay away? How long before, half starved, she and the other women fell on each other? As much as she hated the men, she hated her dependence on them more. “Anyway, I only looking. See what see.”

  “See nothing,” Beetle said. “Nobody get through there. Even if can, too sharp glass, too high wall. Too many ghost.”

  Tuyet shivered. She had never seen the shallow graves behind the shed, but she knew from the fear in the long-timers’ eyes that they were there. “I know. But maybe . . .”

  “You think maybe hope? Is no hope. You go sleep now, forget this foolish.” Beetle stomped back to her own mattre
ss, her lips a thin line in her flat face.

  Another flash of lightning lit the room. Then a loud crack, followed by the sounds of breaking wood and the crunch of glass. Tuyet lay down on her stomach, heedless of the water soaking through her slip, chilling her breasts. She pressed the wall outward with her palm and peered out through the gap.

  Forget this foolish.

  Rain pelted her face and chilled her skin, but she didn’t care. She would never get her fill of that smell.

  Across the grass, rain sparkled on a river of shattered glass. Beyond that stood a high stone wall, also topped with glass, if the long-timers told the truth. But who would know? Who could cross the river of shards to find out?

  Tuyet blinked. Wiped rainwater from her eyes and looked again. A tree, split by lightning, lay across the wall, its trunk and branches stretched like a bridge across the glass. Only four or five feet separated the trunk from the grassy turf. Four or five feet across the shards. It would hurt, it would hurt a lot, but it could be done.

  She looked over at Dung. The smallest of them.

  Tuyet climbed to her feet and brushed water and grime from the front of her slip. Then she pressed her shoulder against the wall and pushed as hard as she could. The metal squealed. The gap widened.

  Beetle looked up and wailed.

  Shoulder still pressed to the wall, Tuyet gestured for the other women to help. There was a way out, she said, and told them about the fallen tree.

  Beetle moaned. “Boss man come, put you in pit for sure. Maybe me, us, too.”

  Dung, who had once spent three days in the pit, whimpered.

  “No one come tonight,” Tuyet said. “Too much storm. We hurry, have plenty time.”

  Hong looked pointedly away, then buried her face between Grub’s shoulder blades. Beetle covered her face with her arms and keened, while Weasel turned her back and lay down on her mattress. The others were as still as stone.

  “I do it myself,” Tuyet said. She pushed, pushed harder. The gap widened to the size of a pumpkin, then held. Was it enough? She had lost weight since she’d been here. If the gap would stay open . . .

  She shifted her weight backward, and the metal popped back into place, only that small gap at the bottom.

  She pushed again. Pushed until her muscles trembled and sweat popped out on her upper lip. She pushed until her shoulders ached and her eyes stung and her breath came in ragged gasps and whimpers. She pounded a fist against the ungiving metal, then flung herself against it.

  Again. And again. Until she had no more strength. Panting, she laid her cheek against the cool metal.

  “Please,” she whispered. She turned her face toward her sisters and made her voice louder. “Please.”

  No one moved. Fear held them in place, and how could she blame them? There had been so many tricks, so many false hopes offered and then snatched away. But not even the boss man could call lightning from the sky.

  No, God or her ancestors, or whatever benevolent spirits there were, had given her this one small chance. She would not let her sisters’ fear steal it from her.

  She looked at Dung.

  Dung blinked.

  “You can do it,” Tuyet whispered. “Only you.”

  “They kill you,” Beetle said, from across the shed. “They kill you both. Then kill rest of us.”

  Tuyet said, “They kill us anyway.” She looked back at Dung. “But I think they kill you first.”

  Dung looked at the gap in the corner. Such a small gap. Tuyet knew what Dung was thinking—what she herself would be thinking, in Dung’s place. What if Tuyet had exhausted herself and the gap closed before Dung was through? The metal was heavy, the edge sharp. Would it slice through a leg? A spine? Would the next grave behind the shed be hers? Tuyet imagined a long line of dead women, a field of ghosts between the shed and the river of glass. She wrapped her arms around herself to keep herself from shivering.

  Dung’s lips moved, but no sound came out. She licked her lips and tried again. “I hear the dead.”

  “Only the wind.”

  “No.”

  Tuyet waited. What could she say? The dead were there beneath the grass. Maybe they walked, and maybe the wind carried their voices. Maybe one day soon Dung would be one of them. Maybe they all would.

  After a moment, Dung pushed herself up and scooted to the edge of her mattress. She moved like she had something broken inside.

  “Wait.” Tuyet lifted her mattress and slipped a creased photograph from a slit in the bottom. She pressed the photograph into Dung’s hand and said in Vietnamese, “Go to this address. Tell the man you find there about us. Bring help.”

  She made the girl repeat the address three times. Then Tuyet pressed her shoulder to the wall again and said, “Go.”

  “I bring help,” Dung said in English. “Thank you.”

  Dung pressed herself flat against the concrete and inched into the gap headfirst. She was small, and starvation had made her smaller still. Even so, she cried out as the metal scraped her shoulder blades, then her buttocks, and finally the backs of her thighs.

  Tuyet held the gap open until she thought her back might break. She watched Dung disappear inch by inch. Knees. Calves. Ankles. By the time Dung’s feet passed through the gap, Tuyet was trembling with exertion.

  She stumbled backward, and the metal sprang back into place, leaving only a small gap at the bottom where the metal had bent.

  She sank to her knees, then lay down on her stomach and pressed the metal outward with her palm so she could watch Dung push herself to her feet and stumble toward the fallen tree. Rain lashed Dung’s face, and the wind caught her small cries as the glass bit into her feet.

  “Run,” Tuyet whispered. Tears stung her eyes and ran down her cheeks, mingling with the rain. “Run far from this place.”

  She tried not to think of what the men would do when they realized what she had done. If there was anything she had learned since the day a man she’d trusted had brought her here, it was that there were so very many ways to be hurt.

  1

  The storm blew itself out around midnight and by dawn, a new bank of clouds had rolled in. They filled the sky from horizon to horizon, gray and roiling, swollen with rain. A few scattered drops fell throughout the day, as if God were spitting on us.

  That afternoon, I put on my father’s leather bomber jacket, locked my elderly quarter horse in the paddock, saddled my Tennessee Walker, and rode out into the woods behind the house. The air was cool and damp, thick with the smells of mud and moss, the mulchy scent of deadwood, and the occasional far-off whiff of skunk. The trail twisted like a copperhead, littered with broken branches and mottled with gray light.

  The wind rose and rattled the leaves. Crockett tossed his head and picked up his pace, hoof beats muted by the rain-softened earth. When I gave him his head, he slipped into a running walk, hips lifting and falling as his hind legs stretched beneath him in a smooth, ground-covering gait.

  He faltered at a side trail, turned his head toward it. The underbrush made the trail seem darker there, the air somehow less clean. Crockett drifted toward it, but I’d had my fill of darkness. I nudged him forward and past, into a band of sunlight.

  The saddle creaked as I shifted my weight and squeezed with my lower leg. I closed my eyes, felt the wind brush my cheeks, and the black gelding broke into the rocking-horse canter typical of his breed. His shoulder dropped, and my eyes snapped open as the trail bent sharply to the right. Just beyond, a downed maple crossed the trail. No time to pull up. I lifted my weight from the saddle, wrapped both fists in Crockett’s mane to keep from pulling on the reins, and squeezed his sides again. Another burst of speed, then his muscles bunched, and we were in the air, a moment of suspension that felt as close to flight as I would ever come.

  One rear hoof skimmed the trunk as we sailed over. His hooves struck the ground, and we skidded sideways, hurtling toward a wall of green. He scrabbled for a moment, got his legs beneath him, and veered back onto t
he trail.

  Grinning, heart pounding, I sank into the saddle and lifted the reins. Crockett slowed, then drifted to a stop and lowered his head to pluck a few blades of grass from the side of the trail. I leaned back, let him graze. Tilted my head back into a shaft of muted light and listened to the quiet sounds of afternoon—the riffle of wind through branches, the trill of a bird and the answering call of its mate, the sound of grass between my horse’s teeth.

  Somewhere to my right, the wheeze of Frank Campanella’s Crown Vic broke the stillness like a chain saw in the wilderness. I knew it was Frank, even without benefit of sight. He’d had the Vic long before he and I had worked homicides for Metro Nashville’s now-defunct Murder Squad, probably before I’d graduated from the academy at nineteen, possibly since before I was born.

  A thousand scenarios flashed through my mind—car crashes and drownings and God-knew-what-else involving my son, my ex-wife, my nieces, my brother and his estranged wife . . . Frank was my friend, but there was no good reason for him to show up at my home unannounced.

  Dread closing my throat, I got off and walked my horse around the fallen tree, then climbed back on and urged him toward the house.

  When I rode out of the woods, Frank was on the porch, a glass of lemonade in his hand, my friend and housemate, Jay Renfield, hovering anxiously beside him. I’d known Jay since kindergarten, and our friendship had survived both his revelation that he was gay and his ongoing struggle with AIDS.

  Frank looked up as I bent to open the pasture gate. He said something to Jay, set his glass down on the porch railing, and started down the steps. By the time I led Crockett across the pasture and into the barn, Frank was waiting for me.

  He was a cinder block of a man, shoulders straining against his regulation suit. Square jaw, bristling eyebrows, silvering hair. He ran a hand through it, leaving a ruffled patch above one ear. Then he gave me an awkward man hug and said, “How you doing, Cowboy?”

  I gave his back a thump and turned back to loosen the latigo of Crockett’s saddle. “You didn’t come here to ask me how I’m doing.”