Excerpt from A Garden of Vipers
Prologue
Eastern Mobile County, Alabama, early 2000s
“Are you sure he ran this way? I don’t see
anything.”
“Keep your damned voice down. Don’t touch the blood.
And just use light when you need it.”
Lucas heard the voices in the distance and his eyes
snapped open. The world was spinning slowly, like he
was caught in a syrupy vortex. Lucas threw his arms
out to his sides to hold on and felt his fingers
touch grass. It was night, but he saw the dark
shadows of nearby trees. Comets were spinning
between their trunks, blinking on and off: comet, no
comet. It smelled fresh here in cometland, like dew
and wet leaves. A very peculiar effect, he thought.
Also peculiar: a single star straight up in the sky,
flashing, like the comets and the star were
conversing.
“I see a car! Hidden behind the trees, branches over
it. He’s around here.”
“We’ll have to get rid of the car. Fast. Call for a
trailer.”
Lucas closed his eyes, took a deep breath of the
cool air. The solitary star blinked. Another comet
flashed across the sky. No, not comets, his clearing
mind registered, it was flashlights pressing through
fog. He was in a field beside a woods, damp weeds
bristling against the sides of his face. Why was he
in farmland? Had he gotten drunk? Why the
flashlights? Looking for something.
Looking for him.
What had he done?
Lucas took a deep breath. The footsteps started up
again, with the sound of bodies pushing aside
branches, stepping on twigs. The flashlight beams
swept side to side across the weeds and trees.
Lucas’s world turned white as a beam crossed him. He
made himself lay absolutely still. The light passed
by.
But in the moment of illumination he had seen
something odd: His hand was red. The dark color
smeared across his fingers. He stared at his hand,
perversely entranced. Then he realized it wasn’t
just his hand: he was covered with blood.
The voices started again. Louder and closer.
“I saw something at the base of the microwave tower.
It should be to your left; can you see the tower
light blinking above the trees?”
“Be careful. He’s . . . resourceful.”
A montage of pictures formed in Lucas’s head, recent
memories playing like a jittery movie. He started to
remember and his gut went cold. He should have
figured they’d be coming. He knew too much.
“Shouldn’t the doctor be here? Why didn’t you bring
him?”
“Shut up. I’ll circle to the far side of the tower.
Keep the walkie talkie low, light off. I’ll tell you
when to move in.”
It was black and quiet for several minutes. Lucas
wiped the blood from his hands to his pants, flexed
fingers, arms, legs. He could move now, escape. He
drew himself into an unsteady crouch as the comets
started flashing again. His world turned white.
Black. He stumbled to his feet, his knees like
gimbals, seeming to wobble every direction. Run! his
mind screamed.
“I see him, he’s up.”
“I’m coming in from my side. Get the stunner out.”
Lucas took a deep breath, calculated the angles his
pursuers had chosen, figured his way past them. He
gathered his energy into his core.
Just as he ran, the world turned white.
“Damn, he just ran into a tower support. He’s down
and rolling around.”
“Go!”
He heard running feet. Felt bodies fall over him,
wrestle him over, his face pressing deep into the
wet grass. He felt metal wrap his wrists, pain. He
smelled sweat. After shave. And a piercing reek of
fear, not his own.
“Zap him!”
“He’s not fighting.”
“I told you to--”
There was a shivering blue explosion and the comets
returned, each bringing a hundred stars to the
party. They whooshed and tumbled and danced. It was
beautiful.
In the distance, the voices started up again.
“There’s something all over him. Jesus, Crandell,
it’s blood.”
“Get him up and moving. We’ve got to get out of
here.”
And then a mouth at his ear, hot and wet. A happy
mouth, it seemed, like it had just consumed a
delicious meal.
“What did you do, Lucas?” the happy mouth whispered.
“What terrible thing have you done this time?”
Chapter 1
Present time
A stalled weather front bred thunderstorm cells from
New Orleans to Pensacola. Rain dropped in sheets and
lightning shredded the sky. Then, as if on a switch,
the deluge halted and the air turned sweet and
balmy. Ten minutes later, earth and sky were at war
again. Mobile, Alabama, was dead center in the
conflict.
“What do you think, Carson?” My detective partner,
Harry Nautilus, peered through the windshield
wipers. “Time to start loading up animals two by
two?”
“How about this time we leave the mosquitoes
behind?”
It was nine-thirty p.m., the streets almost dead,
sane people safe at home. Harry and I were parked
near the downtown library. We were working four to
midnight, something we did a couple times a week,
most bad guys being nocturnal as owls. Not that we’d
see much of them tonight; of the five hours we’d
been in the car, two were spent against the curb,
blinded by sheets of rain.
The radio came to life, the signal mangled by nearby
lightning.
“DB . . . Eldredge and . . . truck driver heading to
hosp . . . ains.”
“Did I hear DB?” Harry said. DB was Dead Body. He
grabbed the microphone.
“Nautilus here, Dispatch. You’re breaking up.
Repeat.”
“DB . . . corner of Industrial and Eldredge. Called
in by a truck driver. Driver on route to hospital
with chest pains.”
We were eight blocks away.
“Nautilus and Ryder confirm message received,” Harry
said. “We’re on our way.”
Harry jammed the Crown Vic into gear, roared toward
the scene. I figure we left a wake like a speedboat.
The radio crackled again. Not Dispatch, but another
detective team in the vicinity.
“This is Logan and Shuttles. We’re closer, just five
blocks. We’ll take it.”
Harry growled and keyed the mike again. “Nautilus
and Ryder have the call.”
“Why’s Logan out at this hour?” I said. “I’ve never
seen his lazy ass work past five-thirty.”
The radio crackled with Pace Logan’s voice.
“Dispatch, this is Logan. Mark this one ours, we’re
almost there.”
I felt the car accelerate. Harry growled, “Negative
on that, Dispatch. Carson and me are making the
run.”
“Goddamn it, Nautilus, it’s ours,” Pace Logan barked
over the radio, no longer using Dispatch as an
intermediary.
Harry threw the microphone to the floor. “It’s
whoever gets there first,” he muttered, flicking on
the lights and screamer and taking a right so fast
it about threw me in his lap.
Pace Logan was a disgruntled, hotheaded old-timer
waiting to grab his retirement pay, buy a trailer in
Florida or Branson, and make life miserable for a
succession of lonely women picked up in bowling
alley bars. Logan’s young partner, Tyree Shuttles,
was a good guy, a new-made detective with the
misfortune of being assigned Logan as a partner,
like being chained to a dinosaur.
Harry cut another corner hard, skidding toward a
line of parked cars barely visible through the rain.
I held my breath and braced for an impact that
somehow never arrived. We blew through a deserted
intersection and I saw a flashing red light
paralleling us one block over: Logan and Shuttles.
We were three blocks from the scene.
“Jeez, Harry. It’s a drag race.”
“I’m not picking up after Logan again,” he said. “No
goddamn way.”
Six or seven weeks back, Logan’s mishandled evidence
in a homicide case almost bought the defense a
dismissal. Harry and I got called in at the eleventh
hour, eleven forty-five, maybe. It took weeks of
twelve-hour-a-day work to re-trace Logan’s
investigative steps, supplanting tainted evidence
with new finds. Harry’d finally nailed it using
information Logan had overlooked in his own records.
I’d spent the bulk of my time handling our standard
overweight caseload, meaning Harry had mopped up
pretty much on his own. Both of us had worked
doubles most days, and Harry’d ended up postponing a
vacation with family in Memphis. He was still
royally steamed about Logan’s screw-up.
I rolled the window down an inch. Between the beats
of our screamer, I heard Logan and Shuttles’s siren.
It would be close.
“Next block, Harry. Turn right.”
A radio car at each end of the block had secured an
intersection at the edge of a warehouse district. On
one corner was a restaurant equipment wholesaler,
cattycorner was an industrial laundry.
We raced down the street from one direction, Logan
and Shuttles from the other. A semi sat dead in the
street, a red Mazda a dozen feet from the big
truck’s grille. Harry skidded to a stop and dove
into the rain, no time to pull on his rain gear. I
slid into a plastic slicker and followed.
Harry splashed toward the Mazda as Logan jumped from
his vehicle, almost on the Mazda’s bumper. Logan
stepped in front of Harry, finger jabbing, voice
angry. The uniformed officers closed in, drawn by
the smell of confrontation. I hurried over, rain
pouring into my eyes.
“I’ve got the scene, Nautilus,” Logan said. “Get
back in your vehicle and haul ass.”
“Not gonna happen, Logan,” Harry said. “It’s ours.”
“I got seniority, Nautilus.”
“Then join AARP,” Harry said. “I’m not saving your
worthless ass anymore.”
Logan froze. His eyes tightened. “It was a Forensics
screw-up, not mine.”
“You almost blew the case, Logan,” Harry said. “Have
the balls to own up to it.”
Logan’s hands squeezed into fists. “For a simple
fuck, Nautilus, you’re a sanctimonious son of a
bitch.”
“And for a cop, Logan, you’re a helluva defense
lawyer.”
Logan made a guttural sound and launched a punch
toward Harry’s gut. Harry blocked it, grabbed
Logan’s wrist, twisted, dropped to a knee. Logan
went down. Harry rammed Logan’s arm behind his back.
He writhed on the wet pavement, cursing and
threatening.
“Knife!” someone yelled, a nightmare word. Everyone
froze, heads turning, hands dropping to holsters.
“Easy guys,” Tyree Shuttles said, a few feet behind
the Mazda. He pointed into shadows by the curb. “I
found a big-ass knife. Over here in the gutter.”
Harry released Logan’s wrist. Logan squirmed up,
gasping and wheezing, a heavy smoker. He leaned
against the Mazda to catch his breath. Something
seemed to catch his eye, and for a moment he seemed
transfixed by an image near the sidewalk. I turned
to look, but all I saw was water rushing down the
gutter, dumping into a storm sewer.
Harry and I jogged to Shuttles, kneeling beside a
metal object in the gutter, only a portion of the
handle visible above the water. Logan wheezed up,
looked at the weapon, then at Shuttles. Harry backed
away and sighed, having the civility to invent an ad
hoc protocol.
“Shuttles found evidence, Logan. You guys get the
case.”
Logan leaned against the driver’s side of the Mazda,
looked inside. He stared a moment, pulled a
flashlight from his pocket, checked again, shook his
head. Logan laughed without a trace of humor.
“You want this one, Nautilus? It’s yours.”
Logan turned away, walked back to his vehicle,
climbed in the passenger’s side. Shuttles shot a
glance at his vehicle, Logan sulking within. The
young detective looked embarrassed.
“I’m sorry about what went down with Pace,” Shuttles
said. “He’s been in a shitty mood the last couple
weeks.”
Harry brushed rain from his face, stepped closer to
Shuttles, lowered his voice so the uniforms couldn’t
hear. “I know you won’t request a new-partner
assignment, Tyree. I respect that. But transfer to
another district. Get a new partner that way.
Logan’s not doing your career any good.”
“Pace is retiring in two months, Harry. He’ll be
gone soon.”
“You sure?”
Shuttles nodded. Harry said, “Hang in there.”
The slender black officer walked back toward his
car. He paused, turned to Harry and mouthed Thanks.
Shuttles climbed in, flicked off the flashers behind
the grille, pulled away. I didn’t envy him the rest
of his shift with Logan pissing and moaning and
inventing ways he got screwed.
Harry told the uniforms the show was over and to get
back to diverting traffic, if any happened to show
up. I put on latex gloves, opened the door of the
Mazda. The victim’s bowels had released and the car
was thick with the smell of blood and excrement. She
was tumbled across the transmission hump, her head
on the passenger seat, braided and beaded hair flung
like a rag doll’s. Her nose appeared broken. Her
lower lip was torn. There were wounds across her
torso, her blouse glossy with blood. Her throat had
been slit.
I took a deep breath and continued my visual
inventory. One of her hands looked odd. It was
hanging down on the passenger side, in shadow. I
went to the passenger side and opened the door, my
fears confirmed. Three fingers broken, the digits
bent backward. It was unsettling, like a hand
assembled incorrectly.
I made myself concentrate on the pillaging of the
vehicle--sound system removed, wires dangling. The
glove box was open, contents scattered. Maps half
open on the floor, registration, manual,
tire-pressure gauge. Sunvisors pulled forward.
Sometimes folks clipped a few spare bucks there, for
toll roads and the like. Blood was everywhere, like
the interior had been hosed down with an artery.
I knew why Logan passed on the case. This one had an
immediate bad feel, a one-glance Creep Factor. I
studied the woman again, a cold wave spreading
through my gut. The smell overwhelmed me and I
withdrew.
“She was beaten and cut,” I told Harry. “It’s bad.”
Harry had gone to the car for his rain gear, not
that it would do much good. He leaned in and scanned
the scene for several minutes, his mind taking
pictures. Now and then a detail pulled a grunt or a
sigh. He studied the floor at the woman’s feet, put
his hand in, touched the floor, looked at his
fingertips. Then, aiming the flashlight close to the
floor, he repeated the motion.
“What is it, bro?” I asked.
Harry didn’t hear me. He turned his face to the sky,
like looking for the answer to something.
Reprinted from Garden of
Vipers by Jack Kerley by permission of Dutton, a member
of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. Copyright © Jack
Kerley, 2006. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or
any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without
permission. |