Detective Carson Ryder Thriller Series Books 1–3: The Hundredth Man, The Death Collectors, The Broken Souls. J. Kerley A.
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I thought back. For two days I was the man who stopped the mad Adrian. By day three it was the department’s triumph and I was a factotum. By day five I was a misspelled name nine inches into a ten-inch story. Harry said, “Squill’s Law: Kiss up, shit down. He pushed you off the horse so the brass could ride it, one of them being him. He rode it all the way to chief of Investigative Services.”
I shrugged. “So I got jerked around a little. When the smoke cleared, I was a detective. No complaints here.”
The argument at the pool table picked up steam. One man positioned the ball and the other slapped it away. Harry rolled his eyes at the scruffy duo and lit the match just to watch it burn. Matchlight turned his face to gold.
“You got a detective shield. But Squill grabbed what he’d been after for years, a seat at the big table. It was you that put him there, Cars.”
I frowned. “I don’t see the big deal.”
“You don’t see the big picture. Squill likes to think of himself as a self-made man. But when he sees you”—Harry tickled the air in a falling motion—“down crash them cards.”
“He can just ignore me.”
“He does. For a year you’ve been nothing but a name on the roster. And PSIT’s been nothing but words on paper. But if PSIT gets activated…”
I thought it down the line: Activating PSIT put Harry and me on center stage. We’d be the ones coordinating the efforts, signing the reports, meeting with the brass.
“There I am, up front again, in his face.”
Harry flicked the dying match into the ashtray. “Yeah. Only, think of it as in his sights.”
The pool-table argument turned loud. One man emphasized his point by bouncing a cue stick off the other’s ear. The struck man dropped, cupping his ear and moaning. The bartender looked at the pair, then at Harry. “You’re a cop. Ain’tcha gonna do something about that?”
Harry put his big fist to his forehead, opening and closing it repeatedly.
“What the hell’s that?” the bartender asked.
“My off-duty light.”
We stood and headed toward our separate cars in the sticky night.
“Thanks for the history lesson, Professor Nautilus,” I said.
“Read it and heed it, showboat,” Harry replied.
I drove to Dauphin Island slowly, windows down, letting the night smells of marsh and salt water wash my thoughts like a cleansing tide, but the headless man kept bobbing to the surface. Once home, I lit some candles, sat cross-legged on my couch, and did the deep-breathing exercises recommended by Akini Tabreese, good friend and martial artist. Akini does a lot of deep breathing before busting hay-bale-sized ice blocks with his forehead. Me, I’d do a little deep breathing and pick up a sledgehammer.
Walk the scene…. I instructed my oxygenating thoughts. See the park.
I breathed away my anger at Squill and Burlew and visualized what the killer saw as he met the victim, perhaps on the path. The streetlight so near, they slip back into the bushes; here Squill seemed correct, sex the lure, if not the motivator. The victim dies, gunshot maybe, or a hard blow. If the head is crucial to the killer’s delusion, it should have been removed deep in the shadows, the blade sliding quickly through its task. But, inexplicably, the killer pulls the body into the ribbon of streetlight, petals streaming in their wake. He kneels, performs his grotesque surgery, and disappears.
My mind played and repeated this scene until the phone rang at 2:45. I figured it was Harry. He’d be considering the scene as well, in a lit room with his stereo playing “thought jazz,” Thelonious Monk perhaps, the solos where he breaks through the membrane and flies alone in the raw wind of music.
Instead of Harry I heard a trembling old woman. “Hello? Hello? Who’s there? Is anyone on the line?” Then, as if years were dropped from the voice, I heard the voice of a woman in her thirties, my mother’s voice.
“Carson? It’s me, Mommy. Are you hungry? Can I fix you some lunch, son? A nice Velveeta sandwich? Some cookies? Or how about A BIG BOWL OF FUCKING SPIT?”
No, I thought, this can’t be happening. It’s a nightmare, wake up.
“CARSON!” The voice shrieked, no longer female. “Talk to me, brother. I need to feel some of that OLD FAMILY WARMTH!”
I closed my eyes and slumped against the wall. How could he call out? It wasn’t allowed.
The caller banged the phone on something hard and shouted. “Is this a BAD TIME, brother? Do you have a WOMAN with you? Is she HOT? I hear when they get hot, juice POURS out of them. Hi, fellas, I’d like you to meet my date, the Johnstown Flood. WEAR BOOTS WHEN YOU FUCK HER!”
“Jeremy,” I whispered, more to myself than the caller.
“There once was a girl from NANTUCKET, you wore boots each time that you’d FUCK IT…”
“Jeremy, dammit…”
“But the men in the town, one by one were each drowned, in the poison that poured out by BUCKETS!” He switched back to my mother’s voice, solicitous. “It’s all right, Carson, Mommy’s here. You haven’t finished your spit. Is it cold? Can I warm it back up for you?” He made a hawking sound.
“Jeremy, will you please stop—”
In the background I heard a door opening, followed by scuffling and a man cursing. My caller screamed, “NO! GO AWAY. It’s a PERSONAL CALL! I’m talking to MY PAST!”
A loud crack turned to skittering, as if the phone had been dropped and kicked across the floor. Other voices joined in with grunts, cursing, sounds of struggle. I stood in my cool room and listened breathlessly as sweat poured from beneath my arms.
His words became distant and I pictured men in white dragging him across the floor: “THE MURDER, CARSON! Tell me about it. There must be more than a MISSING HEAD, there’s always more. Did he take THEIR DICKS? Is he JAMMING SAUSAGES UP THEIR BUTTS UNTIL THEY SHOOT OUT THE NECK HOLE? Call me! You NEEEEEED ME AGAIN…”
More sounds of scuffling. Then nothing.
Channel 14’s affiliate in Montgomery must have picked up the beheading-in-the-park story, run it on the late news. Television was one of the few luxuries Jeremy was allowed, and he would have studied the story with a scholar’s focus. I blew out the candles and lay on the couch with my face in a pillow. Sleep, when it finally arrived, was paper thin and shot through with rats and the smell of burning silk.
My alarm fired just past daybreak. I stumbled numbly into the Gulf and swam straight into the waves for a half mile, then turned and dragged myself back. I followed with a four-mile beach run that left me sweat soaked and cramp calved. After a grudging, almost angry, session with the weights, I began to see events with a clearer eye, and wrote СКАЧАТЬ