waited.
Soon the doorbell rang. He listened, counting until the chimes had sounded five times. He shouldn’t be in a hurry to answer and he wasn’t.
He looked out the keyhole at a square-shouldered white man, the man’s dark eyes staring back at him as if he could see inside the house. A tall black woman stood at his side, her eyes studying the windows as if Latrell might jump out of one. Both of them wore navy windbreakers, FBI stenciled in yellow letters over their hearts. He smiled. He’d been right, after all. The man on the utility pole had been FBI.
Latrell eased the door open, leaving the chain latched to the frame, cautious as he should be, looking at them without saying anything, rubbing his chin. Just as they expected he would.
“Sorry to bother you,” the woman said. “I’m Agent Iverson. This is Agent Day. We’re with the FBI.”
Ammara Iverson and Jim Day held up their badges and IDs. Latrell took his time, comparing the faces on the IDs to the two people at his door. He didn’t doubt who they were, but it was important to take his time. He nodded, unlatching the chain and opening the door, still not talking.
“Something happened at the house behind yours tonight,” the woman said. “We’re going door-to-door. Trying to find out if anyone heard anything unusual, maybe saw something, heard something.”
Latrell shook his head, answering slowly. “Only thing I heard was the storm. Kept me up at first, but I finally fell asleep. Next thing I heard is the sirens. Now I can’t get back to sleep.”
This time it was Agent Day who nodded. “You know who lives in the house behind you?”
“Marcellus and his people. I know him but I don’t know him. You understand what I’m saying.”
“You know what Marcellus had going on at his house?” Iverson asked.
“Everybody knows he deals crack,” Latrell answered. “But like I said, I know him but I don’t know him. That’s what I’m sayin’.”
“You do any business with him?” Iverson asked.
“No way,” Latrell answered. “I don’t want nothing to do with that shit. I got a job. I got a house. I don’t need no trouble.”
“You ever have any trouble with Marcellus?” Agent Day asked.
Latrell shook his head. “I stay out of his business and he don’t bother me.”
“Good for you,” Day said with a tight smile. “How about the other people in the neighborhood? You know anybody had a reason to come after Marcellus?”
“Nobody except you and the cops,” Latrell answered.
“And I’m glad you finally got around to it. Hope you put him away.”
“We won’t have to,” the woman said. “Someone beat us to it.”
Latrell looked at them, his breathing steady. “Marcellus? He’s dead?”
“Yeah,” the woman said. “He’s dead.”
“It don’t matter.”
“How’s that?” she asked.
“There’ll be someone else dealin’ that shit tomorrow afternoon. That’s why.”
“Mattered to Marcellus and it matters to us,” Ammara Iverson said. “You know Marcellus’s girlfriend?”
“Seen her around, that’s all. Her and her kid.”
“You know anyone might want to hurt either one of them?”
Latrell took a shallow breath, shaking his head again. “You saying they dead, too?”
“Both of them. Rondell and DeMarcus Winston, also,” she said. “You sure you didn’t hear anything? They lived right behind you.”
“Wish now I did,” Latrell said. “That’s not right. Kill all those people. Don’t care what they did. That’s not right.”
Ammara Iverson handed him a card. “No, it isn’t. You think of anything that might be important, give us a call.”
Jim Day also handed Latrell his card. “We need your name, sir. Just to complete our report. And where you work. If you don’t mind.”
“Latrell Kelly. I work at the rail yard in Argentine, in the terminal building. And I don’t mind.”
Chapter Nine
I felt Troy’s hand on my back, heard him ask if I was okay, saw him wave off the chopper as I turned my head skyward. Time got lost, seconds confused for minutes, moments for lifetimes. The involuntary muscle contractions that had folded me in half let go, allowing me to stand, clutching my sides, still shaking. I tried to talk, but words strangled in my throat and finally escaped in a stutter.
“I’m fine, just peachy,” I managed.
Troy cupped my elbow in his palm, guiding me past a gauntlet including my team and at least a dozen KCK cops, fresh contractions contorting my steps like I was a drunken puppet. Jim Day nodded, his chin tapping against his barrel chest, his massive arms hanging against his sides. Lani Hay-wood bit her lower lip. Ammara Iverson fought back tears. Marty Grisnik, my police department coconspirator on the fugitive warrant, was at the end of the receiving line, shaking his head like he should have known better.
“There’s an ambulance on the street,” Troy said as we cleared the crowd. “We’ll have the paramedics take a look at you.”
“Forget it. This will pass. Just let me catch my breath.”
I stopped in the darkened strip of ground between Marcellus’s house and the house to the north, easing Troy’s grip with my free hand. I tried the deep breathing again. The tremors were fading. I didn’t know whether the breathing was helping or whether the shaking had ended on its own.
“What’s going on, Jack?”
I looked at Troy, the worry obvious in his wrinkled brow and narrowed eyes. Some things were easy even for me to read in a man’s face.
I took another breath. “I’ve been having some shaking on and off for the last couple of months. It comes and goes but tonight it’s mostly been coming.”
“That was more than shaking. You were like an old man who fell and couldn’t get up.”
The shakes and the stuttering were nothing new, but this was the first time I’d lost complete control of my body. Something inside me had snapped like a mousetrap and I couldn’t stand up until the spring was reset. I didn’t want to speculate about it until I knew what I was talking about.
“I must have gotten excited when I found all that cash lying around.”
“Bullshit, Jack! What’s the doctor tell you?”
“Haven’t been. Too busy with this case.”
“Busy, hell! You’re going to get your butt in a doctor’s office when the sun comes up if I have to handcuff you and take you there myself. I ought to take you to the nearest ER right now.”
I smiled, put my hand on his arm. “I can handle this, Troy. I was waiting to get it checked out until we took Marcellus down. The timetable has changed after tonight. Let’s catch whoever did this and then I’ll get checked out. Probably nothing a couple of weeks on a beach won’t cure.”
“Jack, you need to find out what’s wrong with you. We can run this case until you’re ready to come back.”
I didn’t know what was causing me to shake, but I had figured out that the longer I worked and the less I slept, the more I shook. I also knew that if I walked away now, my chances of getting back to this case or any case weren’t good. FBI agents don’t do anything involuntarily-especially shake uncontrollably. I didn’t have a hobby, a wife, or a mistress, no matter what Joy thought about Kate and me. Ex-agents do a lot of things. They become private investigators, security consultants, or suicide statistics. I wasn’t interested in any of those options. I looked at my watch.
“It’s almost three o’clock in the morning. I’ll go back to the office, get some sleep on my couch, and I’ll be fine. You wrap things up here. Bag the cash I found and start thinking about why someone would leave a few grand lying under a tree that money doesn’t grow on. We’ll have a team meeting at six. I want reports on the
