Dead On Read online

  “How old’s this kid?” asked Dobbins in the tone of an interrogator.

  “Eleven, maybe twelve’d be my guess,” he lied. “Dunno for sure. You’ll have to ask her, but then she may not know herself.”

  “Where’s the girl now?” she pressed, looking about.

  “Bathroom and she has a doctor from Memorial in there with her.” He indicated the bathroom door. “Weapon she used to defend herself with—” he was careful to not call it a murder weapon and to keep repeating the term self defense in all its permutations—“is there.” He knew from experience that DA’s picked up on the wording of a police report. If the cops used the right wording, the DA would not be going out of his way to prosecute a murder of a defenseless man killed in his sleep. Not here, not today.

  “So you handled the weapon?” asked Denny, jotting down Marcus’s remarks in shorthand.

  “I had to get it outta her hand; kid was traumatized. And hey, don’t misquote me, okay?”

  “Not a chance, Mr. Rydell.”

  “Give me a moment with the girl, will you?” Marcus then asked.

  “Don’t know if that’s a good idea,” countered Dobbins, her eyes flashing at Denny’s.

  “I’m the one found her like this; I just want her to know she can call me any time for help, day or night. Besides, she doesn’t like cops. Says a cop sold her to this creep.”

  “An Atlanta cop? No way,” replied Denney Hodges. Dobbins looked equally dubious.

  “Says a cop sold her to this bag of shit Quinn.” He then brushed past them, ignoring any objections. He next rapped on the bathroom door and heard the doctor from inside say, “Just a minute. Toweling off.”

  Marcus hesitated a moment. “I’m comin’ in.” He stepped inside to find that the pretty, young Dr. Holley had the shivering girl cocooned in a huge towel. “Listen up, the both of you,” he whispered, automatically gaining their attention. “Things could go badly for you, Kim, unless we all keep a secret.”

  “What secret?” asked Dr. Holley.

  “Don’t tell anyone—no one—ever that the first blow to the head of Mr. Turd in there was while he was sleeping, understood?”

  “He was sleeping,” Kim managed.

  “No, he was raping you again. Held the camera over you. While raping you, you got hold of the hammer. Understood?”

  “Are you asking the child to lie?” Dr. Holley held Kim against her. “That’d be wrong.”

  “Keep your voice down.” He met the doctor’s lovely eyes. “Sometimes it takes a lie to prove a truth.” Rydell squatted to be eye to eye with the girl. “Look, Kim, so far as anyone need know, Pigman in there was awake when you defended yourself against him. Nod if you understand.”

  Kim nodded successively.

  “Say it.”

  “He was a-a-awake.”

  “When you struck him, yes, he was awake and attacking you. Understand, Kim?”

  “He attack me.”

  “Not for the first time.”

  “No, not first time.”

  Rydell caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and he thought, how terrible I look. He’d not slept well for months.

  “You expect me to stand by while you coach the child?” asked Dr. Mallory at his shoulder.

  “Otherwise, they can put Kim behind bars.”

  “Not for what she did.”

  “Yes, for what she did.”

  “That’s crazy,” said Dr. Holley. “The man was molesting her.”

  “I know the law, and the law will jail her or juvvie-hall her if she doesn’t do exactly as I say.”

  “But—”

  “The detectives and the uniformed cops’ll be sympathetic to the girl’s abuse. They’ll do a rape kit.”

  “I know all that but still—”

  “Kim’s what, fourteen, fifteen? They’re going to have to rule out consent, and it’ll muddy the waters if they think she’s a runaway and a prostitute. Her innocence’ll be questioned, whether she was kidnapped, held against her will, or came here willingly.”

  Kat Holley watched Rydell fill the washbasin with water, throw gobs of it into his face and eyes and then towel off. She watched him reach out then with a calm hand to touch and reassure the girl by fingering her cheekbone. “Remember, Kim, be brave and don’t volunteer any information, and once you tell a story don’t change one word. And at some point, the good cops, they’re going to want you to describe the policeman who sold you to Mr. Turd in there.”

  “His name is Quinn. He tell me his name is Quinn. Mr. Quinn.”

  “No need to be polite to a monster. He doesn’t deserve the respect of being called Mister. Just remember, you defended yourself against the turd in there?”

  “Yes, Quinn,” she reminded him.

  “Sounds like a name for a troll. Fits, doesn’t it? So did you ever hear what he called the other man, the one who sold you to him?” For the first time in months, Rydell felt alive inside.

  “Smith . . . Mr. Smith.”

  “Of course, Smith. Makes perfect sense.”

  “Whataya think?” asked Kat.

  “I rather doubt his real name’s Smith.”

  “She frowned at this. “Thanks for your having taken the time to advise the girl. I’ll stick with her through the hospital procedure, and I’ll get social services involved.”

  “Like before, huh?”

  “It’s the only game in town, sorry.”

  He put on a smile for Kat Holley. “I know some people over there; I’ll send someone who gives a damn to meet you at Memorial.” Rydell, gave the child a big thumbs up. “There’s a stretcher outside, Kim. You want a ride? Ride like an Empress? Big strong men carrying you, like on a magic carpet ride?”

  “I thought the stretcher was for the dead turd,” said Dr. Holley.

  “Nahhh . . . he can walk,” joked Marcus. “Besides, CSI team has to come in, do their thing before the body’s removed. We’ll let Kim take the stretcher.”

  Dr. Holley touched his hand, the one that’d reached out to Kim. “You’re a good guy, you know that?”

  He was taken by surprise at this. “Not really.”

  “World needs more like you.”

  Marcus thought about his sad dance with his depression and his Glock only a half hour before. He jokingly indicated his puffed up chest, beating it as an ape might. “I strong like bull.” He managed a weak smile.

  “Make light of it if you like, but I know better.”

  “Take care of the girl, Doc, and follow my lead, or you’ll be visiting Kim here in prison where her cesspool education continues.”

  The silence between them was like an impenetrable door for a long moment. He finally added, “So, it’s up to you, and you, Kim . . . keep silent on the subject of Quinn’s being asleep when you first struck him, understand? No one must know that the first blow came while he was totally defenseless, got it?”

  Dr. Holley nodded. “Got it. We got it.”

  “Kim?”

  The large-eyed child repeated the words. “Got it.”

  Marcus then added, “Don’t want some blind-justice DA getting hold of her for a law that’s all wrong for the circumstances.”

  “Sure, sure.” Dr. Holley held Kim’s hand now. “Just thank God you dropped whatever and came running.”

  “Instinctive for a former cop, I guess. Nothing heroic in it.”

  “We might have a fight over that one.”

  “When?” he said automatically but not seriously.

  “Over drinks maybe at O’Dule’s? Later?”

  “What do you know of O’Dule’s?”

  “ I’ve seen you there.”

  “Why haven’t I noticed?”

  Dobbins or Hodges began banging on the door, Dobbins calling out, “You comin’ out, Rydell, or do I gotta come in there and get you?”

  “Sounds like she likes you,” commented Holley.

  “Ahhh, yeah, a real fan.” Marcus yelled through the door. “We’re comin’!”

  “S
o…what about it?” the dirty blond asked.

  “About it? Oh, drinks? Really? You serious, Doc?”

  “Say around nine tonight?”

  He hesitated. “Well . . . I mean . . . if—”

  “If what?” She flashed a beatific smile.

  “If I can get finished with my business,” he replied, the thought of the gun deep in his throat tasting of metal.

  “You just find a way to get there. I want to get to know more about you, Detective.”

  He laughed. “No one’s called me that in a long time.”

  “I hear once a detective, always a detective.”

  “And you know this how?”

  “I was married to one, or rather he’d have been a detective . . . if he’d ever had the chance to take the exam.”

  “Was? Had?”

  “Killed in the line of duty. Got a tightly folded flag . . . handed to me at the funeral.” She looked as if she might tear up.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “People kept telling me time alone helps, but it’s not working for me.”

  Me neither, he thought but said nothing.

  “I’m never going to be over it,” she continued, “so I quit trying. It’s always there. Every waking hour.”

  “I know what you mean. Ahhh, listen, I’ll ahhh . . . see you at O’Dule’s, doctor,” he lied.

  “Promise?”

  “Ahhh . . . yeah, promise.”

  T H R E E

  Marcus rushed from the bathroom and the apartment, pushing past two incoming detectives who knew him from earlier days, one being JT—John Thomas, Atlanta Jack.

  “Whoa, buddy, where’re you heading?”

  Marcus grunted a hello at the younger investigators but kept moving. “Talk to the uniforms. They’ve taken my statement.”

  Jack stopped him cold, grabbing hold of his arm. “You know how these things go, Marcus. We gotta hear it from you direct.”

  In the hallway, Marcus repeated his story, again making sure to select his words with care. “The girl deserves our best, JT.”

  “We all hate child molesters, Marc—cut above private dicks,” he joked. “If I can slant the paperwork in the kid’s favor, well, you know me.”

  “Thanks, JT. Glad you caught this one. Now, we done here? I got other business to attend to.”

  “You look like hell, Marcus, and why’ve you gone missing lately?”

  “Thanks for the assessment Jack, but who asked you?” He skipped down the stairwell, more aware of his bare feet than ever, and once back at his door, he cursed himself for having left it ajar. He ended by stepping inside and slamming the door behind him and sliding down to the floor.

  The morning had taken a lot out of him.

  Still, he’d planned for this to be his last day on the planet. His fingers slipped round to the gun couched in the small of his back.

  He sat in the semi-dark, his curtains pulled tight against the world. In the near distance, he heard the wrecking ball again. It had become his requiem, and it and he had been rudely interrupted.

  “Now where was I?” He again placed the gun barrel into his mouth. He fingered the trigger, and then stopped himself again. “Where was I before the plaster snowfall came from overhead?”

  The aged, seasoned detective knew better. At fifty-two-years of age, he knew that no one would in the least take notice of his passing; much less his going out with a half-assed, puny punch line.

  Marcus had filled a dark little corner with discarded beginnings of his final remarks. Enough morbid notes to fill a wastepaper basket—the sour notes, the vague and bluesy notes, the brave new and courageous notes; the teeth-gritting defiant one, along with a swallowed pride, grief-stricken, broken spirited diatribe, and an excusing monologue. None of it Shakespeare.

  One note accused everyone else and no one at once. And one blamed life itself, a note on the danger of being unprepared: when life comes at you with a meat cleaver... He’d ended with jotting down a real gem indeed: I know it’s my own damn fault. Then he asked himself, “How serious am I in this, my final endeavor, if I’m cribbing lines for my suicide note from Jimmy Buffet?

  Maybe he’d just leave every twisted, torn up, balled up note for whomever to find and collate. A clear reflection of the scattered energies and broken pieces of his mind. If and when the officious ‘they’ finally looked in on the guy in 48-B. Sure, might be his best plan yet—a serialized suicide note in fifty-two parts, the number of years he’d spent on the planet and ironically the number of cards in a standard deck. Fifty-two sketchy layers of personality; fifty-two attempts at saying g’bye to it all. A ballet of delay until finally comes the single fire straight through the palate and into the brainpan.

  Who needs-be conventional about a suicide note? he asked himself and immediately became angry at this latest seesaw of indecision and silliness.

  Why haven’t I already pulled the damn trigger? No guts? Coward. Come’on, you won’t feel a thing . . . not ever again. Perhaps it was the finality of it all that made going through with it so difficult.

  But then there was the fear of doing it here in APD’s jurisdiction; it’d mean jerks like Dobbins and others would catch the call. The idea of former friends like Atlanta Jack working his suicide, people he knew in life pawing over his body, autopsy included, everyone making cop jokes over his suicide notes.

  Rydell had gone over all the missteps of his checkered career as a detective with the Atlanta Police Department, and the disgraceful way his career had ended. From all accounts, he’d gotten three other cops killed, his partner and two uniformed officers, on a routine errand—serving papers on a guy named Iden Cantu. But they all knew going in that it was a celeb job—as Cantu had become well known in and around Atlanta for two reasons—something bad that’d happened with men under his command in Iraq, and the fact he’d become a local “professional” hunter of big game. In fact, Stan had hoped to get the man’s autograph on something other than a legal document. The restraining order against the burly ex-marine had been violated. Now it’d turned into a subpoena situation. But it’d gone badly—very badly indeed. Backfired in fact, as in kill the messenger. Messengers in this case.

  It’d been a brutally slow month at headquarters. Marcus and his partner, Stan, wouldn’t normally be serving papers, but orders came through, and the stacks of un-serves threatened to tickle the roof. In addition, Stan thought it’d be a hoot to meet Iden Cantu, while Marcus had gone in resenting the duty. In fact, Marcus decided from the outset that their two uniformed guides would do the actual honors. After all, he and Stan were detectives, but at the last minute, Stan had insisted. Atop Stan’s idol worship—talking non-stop about Cantu’s ability in the bush with a high-powered rifle, Stan was somehow related to someone related to this creep’s wife and kids. Going in, it never occurred to any of them that the guy was wired on steroids.

  Deadly routine was the cop’s phrase for being shot while writing a parking ticket or serving papers.

  Iden “Big Head” Cantu had come at them with an arsenal. Out-gunned and taken by surprise, all hell’d broken loose that day, and Marcus had lost time—had actually blacked out. He’d done so amid a hail of gunfire coming at them.

  When Rydell awoke, shaken, perspiring, and confused, incapable of making any audible sense, he lay in a pool of blood that day. The blood of Stanislav “Stan the Man” Miersky commingled and congealing with that of Officers Terry Mallory and Joely Blankenship. He recalled how the blood looked purple and shinny against the two blue uniforms worn by Mallory and Blankenship. Saw how their nametags had been smeared with it.

  Sadly, Stan left a wife and two children, Mallory had a young wife in the picture, and Blankenship was a woman preparing to marry a stockbroker that summer. It’d been almost four years ago now.

  IAD had instantly swooped in on the shooting, and while the creep Cantu had disappeared clean away, Marcus hadn’t been grazed by a bullet or in the least harmed, despite a suit covered in blood. Marcus hadn�
��t an explanation for the lack of wounds, the black out, or why he was alive. And the more he used the black out as explanation, the more it became characterized as an excuse, and so the more it sounded like a lie, as if he’d simply lost his nerve and hid among the dead during the gun battle. Some did indeed assume he’d played possum among the dead, thus allowing Iden Cantu to literally walk through the carnage and the blood of his victims and straight out the front door.

  Cantu had left other carnage as well. Across town. Deep inside the ex-wife’s home, the bodies of his children and his ex—executed.

  Unfortunately for Marcus, this hadn’t been his first dance with Internal Affairs, and they set their combined will against him. He was a marked man after that, and the rumors and innuendo only mounted as the weeks, months, and years had gone by. Other cops began to avoid him, and he became more and more a pariah in everyone’s eyes, including men he’d held as friends, including his commanding officer, Captain Paul Brunner.

  Soon no one wanted to work with Rydell. “When IAD wants your head, they will have it eventually,” Captain Brunner had warned him early on. “They’re gunning for you, so you just go in for that psych evaluation and that physical, old man. No questions asked.” Old man was a term of admiration for any copy who’d lasted to his fiftieth year on the force without burning out or taking early retirement. Brunner had begun to hint that perhaps retirement was in the cards for Marcus.

  “To hell with tests and doctors and shrinks, Captain. I wanna go after Cantu.”

  ““You’re in for evaluation and overhaul, Marcus!” Brunner ordered. “That’s the holy all of it.”

  “I want that murdering SOB!”

  He was ordered to stand down, jockey a desk, take the tests, and all the while Cantu avoided capture, using the thick, Georgia Mountains as his refuge.

  In fact, Cantu had disappeared like smoke. No one knew where he was, and now four years later, the fugitive cop-killer remained at large. Some people wanted to believe he’d fallen off the earth, was swallowed by quicksand, gored by a monster razorback in the wilds and devoured by the hog. Certainly would be a fitting end to the monster. Satan wanted Cantu as much as Marcus did, but not by much.