LITMIR.BIZ

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together in his room, the guard just outside the door. Jeremy had seemed in a regressive state, remote, bitter, bristling with tension.

       “Jeremy, what’s bothering you?”

       “You, Carson. You enter this stinking hellhole whenever you want, leave whenever you want. I’m trapped in here.”

       I looked around his room: the special harmless furniture, the Mylar mirror that distorted reflections, the walls and floor constructed of the rubbery material used in children’s playgrounds.

       “Not the room, Carson!” he snapped. “I’M TRAPPED IN HERE!”

      He slapped the side of his head. Then again, harder. He started punching his head and face as if they belonged to a hated rival, blood pouring from his ear and nose as I wrestled him to the floor, Jeremy screaming about needing to be free, me yelling for the guards.

       It had taken six of them to put my brother in restraints. As I wiped sweat from my face and retreated from the room, he’d called to me.

       “CARSON!”

       Jeremy was on the floor, bound tight as a chrysalis. An injected tranquilizer was kicking in as I stepped back inside the room, now reeking of anger and hatred and despair.

       “What, Jeremy?”

       His eyes began to glaze, his tongue to thicken. “The moment the old dog stopped breathing, someone became safe, right?”

       No one but Vangie knew of my relationship to Jeremy. The guards heard only disassociated rambling. Jeremy was speaking of our father’s death and how I had been kept safe, spared.

       “Yes,” I whispered.

       A fierce grin blazed over Jeremy’s face, the last sharp flare of light before a bulb dies. He shifted his voice to a perfect imitation of our father.

       “I gave you life, Carson …” Jeremy hissed, leaving unspoken the words with which my father had always completed the phrase …

       “And I can take it away.”

      Had Jeremy threatened me that day?

      “Are you in there, Detective Ryder?” Waltz’s voice pushed into my thoughts.

      “Sorry, what?”

      “I said I just called the Lieutenant. Get ready for a grilling.”

      Thoughts banging in my head like bumper cars, I slipped off to grab a bottle of water from the machine. Folger thundered in minutes later, Bullard and Cluff and several other dicks in tow. She paced the office, asking Waltz about the encounter, looking to me for the occasional confirming head bob. She was asking incisive questions; focused, like Waltz had said. She turned the focus to me.

      “What Ridgecliff told you, Ryder – this Shaw quote – sounds like he was joking. You actually got along well enough with this crazy to joke?”

      “Joking’s part of the bonding process. Ridgecliff’s big on quotes, since he spent most of his time reading.”

      “What was that bit about you being heroic on land or sea?”

      “‘Ever the hero on water or land’ is the exact phrase,” Waltz said, referring to his notes.

      “Yeah, that.”

      I shrugged. “Land and sea may refer to my living a hundred feet from the Gulf. I may have mentioned one of my cases where I got rammed by a boat while in my kayak, but made it ashore alive and solved the case. I expect the hero reference is sarcastic.”

      “Ain’t it cute?” Bullard said. “Ryder tells police stories to his crazy buddies. Part of their beddy-bye reading, maybe.”

      Folger said, “You think he’ll make contact again?”

      I held up my hands, No idea.

      “Then I want you people to start thinking about how to throw a net over this psycho. You got any ideas on how to do that, Ryder? This is your good buddy out there.”

      “I’ve been thinking about it.”

      “He’s thinking?” Bullard mock-whispered. “We’re fucked like five-buck whores.”

      One of the dicks in the rear of the room glanced up from his note-taking. “Instead of throwing a net over Ridgecliff, how about we do the world a favor and put this son of a bitch in the ground instead?”

      Three detectives reached over and slapped the guy high fives. I understood how they felt, had thought the same about other killers on the loose. It troubled me. But not as much as my next thought:

       If Jeremy dies, I’m the one that’s finally free.

       Chapter 10

      Harry Nautilus pulled up the long gravel drive to Dr Evangeline Prowse’s two-story frame house. It was tucked against a wood, a pair of ancient live oaks in the front yard, their branches like tentacles exploring the hot air. Nautilus stopped in the drive. He walked through dappled sunlight to the nearest oak, its trunk a good twenty feet in circumference, and laid his palm against the bark.

      The tree had lived there since antebellum times and Nautilus always felt thrilled to touch a survivor. He patted the tree as if congratulating it on a good journey, then returned to his car and continued to the house. It was smaller than he had imagined, knowing Dr Prowse must have made a nice living from her books as well as a decent salary and a consultation fee now and then. He climbed the steps to the shaded gallery, waited.

      Two minutes later a gray unmarked vehicle entered the drive, tires crunching over the gravel. A second man was in the passenger seat. The car stopped and a six-six black man in a blue suit stepped out, Sergeant Nathaniel Allen of the Alabama State Police, Western Montgomery post. Allen was two inches taller than Nautilus, but at a hundred-eighty pounds to Nautilus’s two-fifty, he was a carrot beside a yam.

      “Hey, Nate, s’up?”

      “Hey, Harry. This is Bill Turnbow, best lock man in five counties.”

      Nautilus shook hands with the locksmith, sixtyish, who pulled a toolbox from the back seat, glanced at the lock on the door, shook his head, said, “Twenty seconds.”

      “So no one from your side’s been in?” Nautilus asked Allen.

      “The killing happened in New York. No need.” Allen looked at the locksmith as he opened his case, and drew Nautilus a few feet down the porch, speaking softly. “A patient wandered?”

      Nautilus nodded. “He’s in New York.”

      “You’re certain?”

      “I’m positive. Carson’s up there now, looking into it.”

      “We’re keeping the lid on the box right now, don’t want to freak out the entire county. But …” He raised an eyebrow at Nautilus.

      “If he even looks south, Nate, we’ll tell you.” Nautilus shifted gears. “You said there’d been a police call here, right?”

      “Three weeks back. I was working late, heading home, when the call came in.”

      “It’s done,” the locksmith said, pushing the door open with his pinky. “Eighteen seconds.”

      Nautilus and Allen walked back to the door. “You’re good,” Nautilus said to the locksmith.

      “The lock’s bad. Piece of crap. It cost a shitload, so the homeowner thought it was good, but if the maker spent as much on the lock as on fancy sales brochures, it might even protect someone.”

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