Racing the Devil Read online

I’d been away from the job for awhile, long enough for the protective veneer to crack. But I was a good homicide cop. I knew how to detach, and finally, fitfully, I slept.

  On Monday morning, I settled in for another surveillance of Samuel Avery. When the black sedan pulled out of the driveway, I sighed and steeled myself for another exciting Piggly Wiggly run. This time, though, the sedan rolled onto I-40, edged into the downtown traffic, and made its way to West End, where a series of convoluted twists and turns led him to a dirty white clapboard building with a sign in the window that said, “Massage.”

  Ministering to the whores of Babylon?

  I snapped a couple of photos as he went in and a few more when he came out an hour later, dabbing at his bald pate with a handkerchief. There was a spring in his step that hadn’t been there when he went in, and while a good massage could do that, I suspected he’d had something a bit more intimate.

  I stuck with him until he pulled into the driveway of the parsonage. Then I drove on past, stopped at an ATM to make a withdrawal, and headed back to the massage parlor.

  A bell tinkled as I pushed the door open, and a pale woman with tortured white-blond hair looked up from the scarred desk where she was polishing her nails.

  “Help you?” she asked.

  “What are your prices?”

  “Thirty dollars for an hour. Swedish or Oriental.”

  I cocked my head and grinned. “What if I had something else in mind?”

  She pursed her lips. They were fire-engine red. “We’re not that kind of business.”

  “Friend of mine says you are.” I gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Heavyset guy. Mostly bald. Mid fifties, early sixties. He was in here just a little while ago.”

  “You a cop?” she asked. The standard ritual.

  “Nope.”

  “‘Cause you look like a cop.”

  I laughed. “What does a cop look like?”

  She made a wry face and fanned her wet nails. “It’s the way you walk. You walk like Marshall Fucking Dillon.”

  “I’ll give you fifty for a blow job,” I said, and she visibly relaxed. A police officer wouldn’t have made an offer. “Or whatever my friend had.”

  Now she was all smiles. “Sammy? He likes Leona. Hundred-and-fifty for a full massage and a blow job or hand job. Fifty more if you want to get laid.”

  I whistled. “I didn’t know Sam was such a big spender.”

  “Yeah, well, you can never tell.” She held up her hands to admire her nails. “So, you want to book Leona or not?”

  I pretended to think it over. “Why not? You only live once.”

  The massage room was cramped and dingy, with the dank smell of sex and mildew.

  A dark-haired woman with café-au-lait skin met me at the door. She was wearing three-inch heels and a black satin robe with a crimson dragon embroidered on one lapel.

  “You must be Leona,” I said.

  The woman from the desk waved me in. “Give him the works,” she said, and returned to her manicure.

  Leona stepped around me and closed the door. “The works, huh?” She traced one cherry red claw down my arm. “Mmm. I like a man with muscles. Why don’t you get undressed and lie down on the table?”

  She reached for my shirt buttons.

  I caught her wrist and stepped back. “I’d rather talk about Sammy.” Her eyes narrowed, and I could tell she knew who I meant. I described him anyway. “What can you tell me about him?”

  “Nothing.” Her tone was hostile, but there was something else in her eyes—fear, helplessness, a sense of resignation. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Look,” I said. “I’m not here to hassle you. It would be a shame to have to call my friends in Vice to come in here and shut you down. Especially considering the valuable service you provide.”

  “Damn straight, valuable service. You gonna bust me?”

  “I’m not a cop,” I said. “I just want to know what you can tell me about Samuel Avery. The guy who was in here about forty minutes ago.” I pulled a fifty from my wallet and held it out between two fingers.

  She snatched it away and stuffed it into the crease between her breasts. “What do you want to know?”

  “Whatever you know. How often does he come here? Rough trade or pussycat?”

  “Pussycat,” she said, baring her teeth in an artificial smile. “Couple of times a week. Nothing kinky. An occasional slap on the ass, but no real rough stuff.”

  “He come in at the same time every week?”

  She nodded. “Like clockwork.”

  “How about Fridays? He come in on Friday nights?”

  “No, he comes in the daytime. During the week.”

  So. All that sinning, and it didn’t even win him an alibi. It didn’t mean he didn’t have one, but it made me mighty happy all the same.

  AT TWO A.M., A CRUISE THROUGH Avery’s neighborhood told me he had two hunter green, thirty-nine gallon garbage cans and glossy plastic lawn and leaf bags with twist ties.

  At three, after a detour to Wal-Mart, I drove by again. This time, I stopped long enough to exchange two brand-new lawn and leaf bags stuffed with crumpled paper and cheap dish-towels for Avery’s, which were, if fate was smiling on me, full of information.

  In the pale circle made by Jay’s side porch light, I dumped out the bags and pulled on a pair of rubber medical gloves. Then I sat cross-legged on the ground and sifted through the soggy detritus of Avery’s week. Sodden paper towels, old coffee grounds, broken eggshells with a sticky sheen. The glamorous life of the private detective.

  The smell wasn’t as bad as a decomposing body, and it wasn’t as bad as the mess I’d found at the Hartwell house. Still, I wondered if I’d ever get the stink of stale coffee, rancid yogurt and rotting vegetables off of my skin. Even through the gloves, I could feel the slimy slickness of decomposing broccoli.

  The screen door creaked open, and Jay stepped out onto the side porch wearing a pair of tartan pajamas. “My God,” he said. “What’s that stench?”

  “Just fishing,” I said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “You didn’t.” He sat down on the steps and hugged himself. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  I didn’t ask why. Bad dreams. Night sweats. If he wanted me to know, he’d tell me. I held up a blackening banana peel and said, “Wanna play?”

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Chicken.”

  While I sorted through the trash, I filled Jay in on everything, from Avery’s fondness for hookers to the grisly scene at the Hartwells’.

  “Does Frank have any theories?” he asked, when I’d finished.

  “He thinks Amy’s murder may have been incidental to framing me. Beyond that, he’s not saying. Look at this.” A pile of stained strips of paper told me Avery was a shredder. And since people don’t usually shred things like letters from Aunt Mabel, I set the strips aside.

  “What do you do with those?” Jay asked.

  “I’ll show you when we get inside.”

  When I’d been through it all, I had a couple of ice cream cartons and four Dixie cups that might have Avery’s fingerprints, and three piles of shredded strips, each about the size of a pith helmet. I stuffed what was left back into the bags, scooped up my treasure trove of shredded paper, and went inside to dump it on the kitchen table.

  “I don’t see how you’re going to get much out of those,” he said, whisking the salt and pepper shakers to the safety of the counter. “They all look the same.”

  I showed him how to match the perforations and the fragments of type on the strips and then glue them onto poster board to recreate the original. It was tedious. Like watching paint dry. No, worse. Like painting your bedroom wall and blowing on it until it dried.

  “Now, this I can do,” he said. He pulled on a pair of gloves and picked up a strip, fluttered it at me. “Why don’t you go out and investigate something while I put these together?”

  I reached for the glue. “You don’t want to spen
d your day doing this. It sucks. It’s monotonous.”

  “I program computers,” he said. “Monotony is my life.”

  “I’ll let you help,” I said. “But no way am I letting you do it all. I don’t need that kind of karma.”

  By suppertime, we’d reconstructed Avery’s credit card bill, his telephone bill, his most recent bank statement, the church’s bank statement, and the reverend’s social security number.

  “Nice work,” I told Jay, picking up one of his posters.

  He looked tired but pleased. “It’s not that hard once you get the hang of it. Just time-consuming. Is there anything here you can use?”

  I gave him my passwords and showed him how to search the databases. It was like teaching Mozart how to play the xylophone. By bedtime, we’d learned that Avery had gotten his first driver’s license at the ripe old age of fifty-four, that he’d married the well-to-do Margaret just this past April, that there were no personal or church records before February of this year, and that the church had paid out over $240,000 in maintenance fees to a company called “Fogerty and Sons.”

  Call me crazy, but that seemed like a lot of maintenance.

  The next morning, I turned to the phone books and the courthouse records. There were four Samuel Averys of the right age in Nashville and the surrounding areas, but only one with the middle name Zebedee. Samuel Zebedee Avery, born sixty-three years ago to parents Lacey and Ozell Avery. I found an obituary for Ozell, but Lacey’s last recorded address was Pine Ridge Nursing Home in Antioch.

  It wasn’t far, and twenty minutes later, I was at the Pine Ridge Home for the Aged and Infirm.

  “Lacey Avery,” I said to the woman at the front desk.

  “Room 211.”

  I thanked her and walked down the long institutional-green corridor to Lacey’s room. The hallway smelled of urine and cheap industrial cleaner.

  Lacey’s room was small, with pale yellow walls that made it look larger than it was. It smelled like the hallway, but with a dusting of baby powder. The bed, standard hospital-issue, was draped in a navy crocheted coverlet. The gaps in the design showed the pale blue bedspread underneath. Photographs festooned the walls. Her family, I assumed.

  None of them resembled Avery.

  On the far side of the room, a small, hunched figure sat in a rocking chair facing the window. A black leather Bible with gilt-edged pages lay across her lap.

  “Mrs. Avery?” I asked.

  She cocked her head to one side and smiled. Her ivory skin was clear and sweetly wrinkled, her refined features nothing like Avery’s blunt bulges. I thought she must have been a beauty in her day.

  “Yes?” she asked. “What is it? Time for my medicine already?”

  “No, Ma’am.” I stepped across the room and knelt beside her chair. Her cloudy blue eyes followed me. Not blind then, but nearly. “I’d like to talk to you about your son.” I didn’t tell her who I was, and she didn’t ask.

  “Jeremiah?” A look of alarm crossed her face, and her chin quivered. “Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine,” I said, as gently as I knew how. “It’s Samuel I need to ask you about.”

  “Samuel.” She clutched her Bible to her chest and rocked, forward and back, forward and back. “Poor little thing.” She reached out and touched my face with a gnarled hand. “Do I know you?”

  “No. I’m just looking for some answers. What happened to Samuel?”

  “They say I smell bad,” she said. “Do I smell bad to you?” I leaned in and touched my cheek to hers. “You smell fine. Nice. Like roses.”

  She gave me a sad smile.

  I smiled back and said, “Samuel. Can you tell me what happened to him?”

  Her eyes welled, and she rocked again, stroking the Bible as if it were a child. Then the words tumbled out of her as if my prompt had pulled out an invisible stopper. “I only left him for a minute. The beans were boiling over, and I went to lower the heat. Young people know better now, but in those days . . . I only left him for a minute.”

  Her hand trembled, and I laid my hand across hers. It felt fleshless, fragile, like a newly hatched robin. “It was an accident,” I said. “How did it happen?”

  “The little creek,” she said. Her eyes were glazed, and I knew she was seeing it again. “Who would have thought? Hardly ever any water in it, but we’d just had the spring rains . . . Poor little thing. He was only three years old the day he drowned.”

  SO, SAMUEL ZEBEDEE AVERY was dead.

  The reverend had constructed a whole new persona from the dead child’s identity. He’d searched the obituaries for an infant or toddler who would be the right age if he’d lived, obtained a copy of the birth certificate, and used that to apply for a driver’s license and social security card.

  It was the most common and least risky way to create a new identity. It didn’t prove that Avery was Walter Christy, but it meant he had something to hide.

  I took the ice cream cartons and the Dixie cups by Frank’s office and asked him to run the prints.

  “You’re bringing me garbage now?” he groused. “After all I’ve done for you?”

  “I’m solving your case. You should be grateful.”

  “My case is solved,” he grumbled. “Calvin Hartwell. His girlfriend hasn’t cracked yet, but she will.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re not clear yet, either, you know. Just because Hartwell offed himself doesn’t mean he’s the one who did his wife. Maybe he was overcome by grief.”

  I ignored the speculation. “You still got those pictures our guy planted in my car?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Can I look at them again?”

  He frowned. “What for?” “Just let me see them.”

  He spun his chair around and reached into the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet. “Here.” He tossed me the file. “I’ve seen sicker, but it’s bad enough. They’re doctored.”

  “Doctored, how?”

  “Katrina’s head, some other kid’s body. Maybe got the body off the Internet.”

  I opened the file, and Katrina Hartwell’s pensive features stared back at me. I was relieved to know she hadn’t posed for the photos, but it was a small consolation. Someone had posed for them.

  “How’s she doing?” I asked. “Any news?”

  “She’s hanging on. Other than that, too soon to say.”

  I shut the folder, not wanting to look at the picture anymore. “You remember Walter’s photos?” I asked.

  “Christ, what’s this jones you got for Walter? Walter’s dead, for God’s sake.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Okay. Yeah, I remember them.”

  “Little girls and white cotton panties. Wearing them, holding them. Always the white panties.”

  “So?”

  I showed him the photographs. “The white cloth in her hand. Panties. I’m telling you, this is about Walter.”

  “You think Avery’s Walter. But I met him, and I didn’t think the resemblance was that strong.”

  “A lot can change in thirteen years. He would have aged, gained weight, gotten balder . . .”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that he’s dead.”

  “Maybe he’s dead. Explosion like that, I bet there wasn’t much of an autopsy.”

  “I guess not.” He stuffed the file back into the cabinet and picked up the bag with Avery’s cups and cartons in it. “I’ll run these prints, if it will ease your mind. But don’t get your hopes up.”

  “I never do.”

  His smile was smug. “Bullshit,” he said. “You already have.”

  ON THURSDAY MORNING, I was wrenched out of a sound sleep by the shrilling of the telephone. I managed to force my eyes open and felt for the receiver of the cordless phone I kept on the bedside table.

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah?” I recognized Frank’s gruff voice. “What kind of way is that to answer the phone? Your mama raise you in a barn?”

  “Frank.�
��

  “It’s ten o’clock. You still asleep?”

  “Not anymore. What’s up?”

  His voice lost all its jocularity. “That woman you say you were with the night of Amy Hartwell’s murder . . .”

  “The woman I was with.”

  “Barbed wire and blue rose tattoo around the right ankle? Butterfly tattoo on the left shoulder?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I said.”

  “I think we’ve found her. But we need you to come down and I.D. her for us.”

  “Sure.” My brain still wasn’t functioning, but a vague uneasiness was seeping through the fog in my mind. “I can be there in an hour. Is that soon enough?”

  His sigh was heavy. “Take your time, son. She ain’t going anywhere.”

  “Aw, no. Don’t tell me, Frank.”

  I could almost hear him nod. “She’s in the morgue.”

  “IT AIN’T PRETTY.” Frank stood beside the metal morgue table and unzipped the plastic body bag. “She’s been dead awhile.”

  The smell knocked me back a step. In Nashville’s humid heat, a body could be skeletonized within a matter of weeks, but the woman on the slab was still recognizable. Barely. I covered my nose and mouth with my hand and prayed for olfactory fatigue.

  “What’s awhile?”

  “Probably since the night you picked her up. That’s when she apparently went missing.”

  “Buried?” Burial would slow decomposition.

  “He wrapped her in plastic first.” He gave a little bark of humorless laughter. “Garbage bags.”

  Freudian, pragmatic, or a deliberate message? This woman is garbage.

  What was left of her face and neck were dark red, indicating manual strangulation. A ring of livid, broken bruises marked the place where the ligature had been.

  Something besides insects had been at her.

  “It’s her,” I said. “Any idea who she was?”

  “Hooker. Worked the Dickerson Pike area.”

  My bowels clenched. Ninety percent or more of the hookers who work that area are HIV positive. “Any connection to Amy Hartwell?”

  “Not that we could find.”

  I tried to keep the fear from my voice, tried not to think of the pills, the pneumonia, the purple lesions that advertised the presence of Kaposi’s sarcoma. I tried not to think of AIDS.