CHAPTER 40
I drifted off again. My dreams were dark and inchoate, whether the result of my situation or drugs, or both, I could not tell. I dreamed of two balloons bobbing in an indigo sky, one light, one dark. They floated above and around me. I knew I was an object of interest.
“What do you suppose will come of this?”
“We can only give him so much.”
“What do we do?”
“Wait and watch.”
Later-no idea how long-I heard metallic clattering and opened my eyes to a black woman pushing a cart into the room. She was five-nine or — ten, slender and strong, her forearms dancing with muscle as she jockeyed the cart across the threshold. Her hair was pulled back. Her skin was dark and luminous, her face high-boned and classical, Egyptian. I read her age as early sixties. She wore a lime-green nurse’s uniform of jacket and skirt. White hose hissed over her legs. Towels were stacked on the cart beside a box of something called Steri-Wipes.
The cart bumped my bedside and she snapped a towel open; no, not a towel, an adult diaper. She whisked the sheet from my body, naked save for a white bunching at my waist. I smelled urine.
“You been sleeping past your bladder calls. I need to make a change so you don’t get the rash. Lift yo’ butt in the air.”
The whole incident was so incongruous I couldn’t speak, but could lift a few inches. She removed a wet diaper, cleaned me off with a wipe, taped on a fresh diaper. All in under thirty seconds.
“Where am I, ma’am?”
“You’re in heaven.” She said it like she’d say You’re in a shoe store.
“What?”
She flapped the sheet back over me. “It’s the only name we’re allowed to call it, and the only answer you’re gonna get.”
“Where the hell am I?” This time my voice was angry.
“I got others to do for,” she said, checking her watch. “There’s a schedule.”
“What’s your name?”
“Folks call me Miss Gracie. That’s always been enough for the others.”
“What others? Where am I?” I called at her retreating form. But all I heard back was the clatter of the cart.
Lucas sat crossed-legged against the wall, the Mobile Register in his lap. It seemed Detective Ryder had met an ugly fate.
He read from the paper.
…confirm that Ryder was an avid kayaking enthusiast who enjoyed rough waters. Records in the Mobile Bay Pilot’s Office indicate three freighters entered the bay during the period Mr. Ryder might have been in the water, the Argentine Star, the Lady Hannah, and the Bali Pearl. The kayak, recovered on Ft. Morgan point, was bent and scarred.
Convincing, Lucas thought. But Crandell was an expert in convincing others of false events. Lucas closed his eyes and his head flooded with memory. Comets turning to flashlights. A strobing white light high above. Voices through a predawn fog.
“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.”
Resourceful? Hardly. But one learns from mistakes…
Lucas shook the past from his head. Even if Ryder had died in a natural accident, things would start moving fast now. And if Ryder were alive somewhere, albeit temporarily? They’d move like a whirlwind.
What was the advice his mentor had provided? His beloved teacher?
“When a shitstorm starts blowing, cover your ass and figure a way to get your enemy to walk into it.”
I heard a car pull close outside, tires crunching over gravel. Two minutes later Crandell entered the room, shutting the door behind him. He wore khaki Dockers and a polo shirt. A heavy gold watch wrapped a thick wrist. His arms were pelted with golden hair. He was broad-chested, tanned, powerful-looking.
“Hello, darlin’,” he sang in a raspy baritone.
I stared at him.
He said, “Now, I didn’t mean that as an endearment, Ryder. It’s a line from a song that goes-”
“Spare me, Crandell. You have any idea of the prison time you’re racking up?”
He clapped his hands and laughed like I’d shared my favorite joke. “What’s the sentence for abuse of a corpse?”
“What?”
He leaned close. “You’re missing and presumed dead, Ryder. You were blown by a storm into the path of a freighter. By the way, your little pointy boat confirms the story; it’s in real bad shape, sorry ’bout that.”
His breath was disgusting, like something in him was rotting. I turned my face away. He picked up a pencil on the table, began pricking my cheek with the point.
“Question time, if you get the point. What do you know about Lucas?”
“Lucas?”
I felt the pencil point break my skin.
“Ouch, Jesus.” prick
“I’m moving up to your eye next.” prick, prick
“He’s one of the Kincannon brothers,” I said. “The prodigal son, or something. He’s a psycho.”
Crandell pecked the sharp lead randomly on my face as he talked: forehead, chin, nose, cheek.
“Where is he?” prick, prick
“How the hell would I know?” prick
“What did Taneesha Franklin give to DeeDee Danbury?”
“What?”
Crandell swung the pencil in a roundhouse arc, like he was driving a knife into my right eye. I gasped. He stopped an inch short. I stared at the pencil point above my pupil. Crandell’s hands were absolutely steady. My heart hammered in my chest. Crandell set the pencil back on the table. He reached into his pocket.
“I’m showing you two photographs. Tell me what they represent.”
“I don’t know what you’re-”
“Shhh. Two pictures. Ready?”
He pulled a photo from his pocket. “Number one.”
A long shot, Dani and Taneesha Franklin in the front window of a Waffle House, coffee on the table, pages spread between them.
“If I recall, they’re discussing reporting techniques.”
Crandell retrieved a second photo from his pocket, held it before my eyes. It had been taken in late afternoon, the shadows lengthened. Taneesha Franklin stood on Dani’s porch, handing her a small parcel.
“What is Miss Franklin handing Miss Danbury?” Crandell asked.
“A copy of All the President’s Men.”
Crandell tucked the photos back in his jacket, then jangled the change in his pocket.
“I want to know what Danbury got from Franklin. And where it is.”
“It’s a fucking book. A gift. Have your boss ask Ms. Danbury. Buckie-boy’s your boss, right? He hired you to put loony brother back in his pen?”
Crandell grabbed the handles at the foot of the bed and whisked me from the room.
“Come on, Ryder. I want you to meet a friend of mine.”
