South Of Hell

a scribbled name, and the year: 1968.

“How long you guys keep this stuff?” Louis asked.

“Forever,” Shockey said, walking on. “A few years back, we had a guy who was awarded a new trial after twenty years in the pen. Lucky us, we still had the evidence, and he was convicted again.”

Louis followed Shockey around the corner of the building. The red Falcon was parked nose-in against the fence. A weather-worn tarp covered the front end, but the wind had blown it up to expose the trunk. Shockey sighed in disgust as he brushed mud and dead leaves from a back window. Then he looked back at Louis.

“This is it,” Shockey said.

Louis stepped closer and peered in the side window. The interior was clouded with gray shadows, but there was enough light to see. The ashtray was still stuffed with butts, and the Arby’s bag was still in the backseat.

“Have you had anything examined yet?” Louis asked. “Dusted the car for prints?”

“Not yet,” Shockey said. “This sat here for nine years. I told you, I just recently reopened the case.”

“Okay,” Louis said. “What was it I was supposed to have missed?”

The trunk was still secured only by the rusty coat hanger. Shockey unwound the wire and lifted the trunk. Louis peered inside. At first, he saw the same tools and old newspapers he had seen nine years ago, but then his eye caught something else. Tucked under a crumpled Detroit Free Press, the strap of a bra.

He picked up a screwdriver and used it to lift the newspaper. The bra was once white, but the fabric was dull and yellow now, the lace across the left cup rotting away. The right cup was smeared with a brown liquid.

Blood.

Louis looked at Shockey. His first impulse was to deny the existence of the bra back in 1980, but the truth was, he couldn’t be absolutely sure. In the dark and in a hurry to wrap up a report on an abandoned vehicle, it was possible he missed it.

“So, what’s the problem?” Louis asked. “This is evidence of a crime. Why haven’t you bagged it and turned it over to the lab?”

“This is why,” Shockey said. He reached into his raincoat for a piece of paper and handed it to Louis.

It was a report — his 1980 report on locating the Falcon. And it was not a copy. It was the original. Louis scanned it quickly.

Upon a routine search of the vehicle and the trunk, I arranged a tow. Tow truck responded at 12:45 a.m. Notification made to AAPD detectives and to Livingston County 12/11/80 that vehicle wanted in their BOLO had been located at 325 Depot Street, Ann Arbor, Mich. Neither Owen Brandt, owner of the vehicle, nor ATL subject, Jean Brandt, was on scene.

Louis handed the report back to Shockey. “I still don’t understand what the problem is. This report is accurate and doesn’t change your finding the bra.”

“I don’t think that’s how a defense attorney is going to see it,” Shockey said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Look at it this way,” Shockey said. “The wife disappears in December 1980. Her car is found a week later, and a cop searches it and puts in writing that there was nothing in the car to indicate a crime. Nine years later, a bloody bra turns up in the trunk.”

“Stuff like that happens.”

“It could happen if there hadn’t been a search of the trunk in 1980,” Shockey said. “Aren’t you smart enough to see how a defense attorney will play this?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“Okay, you’re up on the stand,” Shockey said. “Officer Kincaid, you put in your report you searched the trunk. Inside were some tools and old newspapers. Did you move the newspapers, officer? Of course I did. Did you have a flashlight, Officer? Of course I did. Then how come you didn’t see the bra, Officer? Could it be you didn’t see it because it was planted later by the police?”

Louis looked back at the trunk. He understood what Shockey was saying. He’d faced enough defense lawyers to know how things could get twisted, but he wasn’t sure that’s what this was about. The trunk wasn’t that cluttered. There was a screwdriver, a wrench, and a crowbar. An old can of oil and some newspapers. Even in the sleet, he would have sifted through it. It was procedure, and back then, he never broke procedure. No way did he miss this bra.

“Look, peeper,” Shockey said, “I’m just telling you that it won’t work for a judge or a jury the way it is now. I need you to change your report.”

“You want me to say I never looked in the trunk?”

Shockey reached into his pants and withdrew a second sheet of paper. “I got a blank form here,” he said. “Just like the ones we used in 1980. I want you to rewrite everything and leave out the fact that you searched the car. Say it was frozen shut or something.”

Louis took a step back so he could get a better look at Shockey’s face.

“You’re one stupid sonofabitch,” he said.

“Let’s not get personal-”

“Not only are you asking me to commit a crime, but there are other copies of my report out there,” Louis went on. “How could you expect to get away with something like this?”

“The only other copy was in the missing persons file on Jean Brandt. And it no longer exists.”

“You destroyed it?”

Shockey was quiet, his hand still extended to Louis, the blank paper growing limp in the rain. In the gray light, the lines and whiskers on Shockey’s face looked etched in dried clay, and his eyes were swimming with a sick kind of desperate hope.

Another plane whined overhead.

“You planted the bra, didn’t you?” Louis said.

“I’m telling you, it’s Jean Brandt’s bra, and it’s our only hope of getting a warrant to search the farm,” Shockey said. “Owen Brandt is a monster. He killed her, and she’s buried out there on that farm. I know it.”

“I don’t care,” Louis said. “I won’t falsify a report for an over-the-hill dick who has no other way to hang on to his job than to lie his way into a courtroom with phony evidence.”

Louis walked away from Shockey. In the distance, he could make out the mist-fuzzed lights of the runway at Detroit Metro. The heavy air was suddenly cold. He dreaded the drive back to the city with this jerk.

“I’ll pay you!” Shockey hollered.

Louis spun to face him. “Pay me?”

Shockey came to him. “Look,” he said, “if you had any guts or brains at all, you’d still be wearing a badge. I know all about you. You barely get work as a PI, and your real job is a part-time security gig watching rich people get a tan.”

“Shut up.”

“You got three hundred smackers in the bank, a car that’s damn near older than you are, and your net income for last year wasn’t enough to feed the fishies down where you live. Tell me you couldn’t use ten grand.”

Louis wanted to slug him. “Take me back to Ann Arbor — now,” he said. “And if you say one more word about any of this on the way, I’ll report you to your chief. You got that?”

Louis walked away. When he got to the gate, he looked back. Shockey had returned to the Falcon. The wind had picked up, and he was fighting to secure the tarp back over the trunk, searching for a way to fasten it down.

The blank report was lying in the mud.

Chapter Four

The College Inn was a motel hard by the I-94 spine that connected Ann Arbor with Detroit. His room had the disinfectant, moldy-carpet smell of a place that had hosted one too many beer