She held a finger up, motioning Deidre to bring another stout.
24
Frank emerged from her office at six sharp and Johnnie crowed, 'Hey, look at this—Frank's imitation of Julia Child. Where's the other mitt?'
Noah asked, 'What the hell happened to you?'
'Didn't you hear?' Johnnie answered for her. 'Frank's taken up pit bull wrestling.'
Jill rushed into the squad room and Frank said, 'All right. Let's get going. What've you got, Taquito?'
She called on Diego first, knowing he wouldn't razz her or ask questions. She kept the briefing short, motioning Noah and Lewis into her office afterward.
'So what happened?' Noah insisted.
'Long story. There was this pit bull across the street. Dug out from under its yard and nailed me. Punched a couple arterial holes and made a helluva mess before Garcia beat it off with a board. I gotta give her a heads up for that.'
'Did you have to have stitches?'
'Forty-two. And a little reconstructive surgery, but it's fine.' Frank held up Danny Duncan's preliminary autopsy report. 'Couple things Boo Radley failed to mention.'
Noah turned to Lewis, marveling, 'You gotta love her. Forty-two stitches and reconstructive surgery, but its fine. You're like the freakin' Black Knight, Frank. 'Oh, it's nothing! Just a flesh wound!''
'Don't change the subject. Lewis, did you see the bruises on Duncan's wrists?'
'No,' she answered, embarrassed. Frank handed her the autopsy report and recited it from memory for Noah's benefit.
'Track the body down. If it's been released, get to the funeral home ASAP. I want you
'Didn't Boo Radley get pictures?'
'If you'd have been there you'd know that. I just got the text faxed to me. Did you see him take pictures?' she asked Lewis.
'I, uh, well, yeah, he took some,' Lewis admitted. 'They were peeling this old lady's face back on the table next to me. I must've got sidetracked.'
Frank sighed, 'When you're with Seuter, question his every move because he won't volunteer anything. Duncan could have had a time bomb ticking inside of him and fucking Boo Radley'd take a picture and sew him up without a peep.
'I dropped in on Jesse Helms. She wasn't there, but her husband gave me some names to look up. Lewis, run a male black name of Lincoln Roosevelt. Used to own the church the Mother's in now. Might trace him through property records. That would have been back in the sixties. Helms said he might have moved to Kansas around that time.'
Lewis was making fast notes, bobbing her head.
'Run the second husband, too. Eldridge Jones. He ended up at the 'Dad on felony possession. Got a back door parole. And here's some names Kennedy dug up for us.'
Frank passed Lewis a sheaf of papers. She'd called Kennedy to apologize for standing her up Friday afternoon. Kennedy had rightly figured that unless Frank was dead she'd want the notes ASAP so had taken them home with her. Frank picked them up Sunday before visiting Helms.
'How's she doing?' Noah grinned.
'Good. This should hold you two for a while. Now go away.'
Uncoiling his long frame, Noah declared, 'Well, this talk meant a lot to me too, Frank.'
With her left hand Frank awkwardly signed off for personal leaves and overtime. She scanned a collection of 60-days, deciding to send them up to Foubarelle. Let
'Fuck you,' Frank whispered to it. She concentrated Kennedy's data. The narc had uncovered a nugget that neither Gough nor Joe had dug up during their investigations.
In 1967 Lincoln Roosevelt bought two life insurance policies, both naming Crystal Love as beneficiary. Seven months later, the insurance company identified his bones amid the rubble of an unexplained fire in a St. Louis boardinghouse. The Mother had collected $50,000 from the first policy and a cool $300,000 from the second.
Helms pronouncement, that his sister-in-law 'can make things happen,' echoed in Frank's head. Too many accidents around the Mother, and unexplained deaths. While her supernatural talents were debatable, Frank decided her maliciousness was not. If all these cases were connected, then Lewis was chasing a career serial killer.
Frank was plotting a time line of the Mother's suspected criminal involvements when the phone rang.
Bartlett, from Sheriff's Homicide, said, 'Look here, see. I gotta do this. 'All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.' Okay, so it's a little trite, but you can't go wrong with Saint Matthew. But seriously, I've thought about this. Stick with me. The first is Wilfred Owen. Great war poet. You gotta love him. Listen.
' 'Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade how cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood; blue with all malice, like a madman's flash; and thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.' Great, huh? Now listen to this. 'For—' '
Frank interrupted, 'So they were both cut. Was it swords or bayonets, Bartlett?'
'Houseman. Another great war poet. 'For when the knife has slit the throat across from ear to ear, 'twill bleed because of it.' '
'English, Robbie.'
'Their throats were cut. Both of 'em. It didn't happen where they found 'em though. They were cut, then dumped.'
'You got pictures?'
'Sure, I got 'em. Got the whole enchilada here. Whaddaya want to know?'
'How do they look? Kind of tidy or the usual mess?'
Frank heard him flipping pages, muttering something about bloody blameful blades and boiling bloody breasts. She was never sure which irked her more; the endless quotations or his normal conversation, which was more like dialogue from a 40's B-movie.
'Looks normal to me. As normal as guys can look with their windpipes letting the rain in.'
'So pretty messy?' she persisted.
'Whaddaya think, Franco? They got their throats cut, for crying out loud.'
'Let me borrow the book?'
'Oh, most pernicious woman! Oh, villain, villain, smiling damned villain!'
The murder book was archival. It wouldn't sweat Bartlett to loan it out.
'Come on,' she coaxed. 'I gave you Ackerman.' Then she tested a foggy line from a college humanities class.
'We gotta stick together. 'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers we ... for he today that sheds his blood with me ... forever shall my brother be ... ' Close enough, huh?'
Bartlett burst out, 'He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart!'
Frank pinched the phone against her shoulder and rubbed her eyes while he finished.
'Come get your book, Franco! 'Come cheer up, my lads, 'tis to glory we steer—remarked the soldier whose post lay in the rear!''
She started to interrupt his next soliloquy, then fell silent, all too familiar with the feel of gooseflesh rising in her skin.
'Say that again,' she told him.
'You're a scholar and a gentleman, Frank. I knew you'd appreciate me someday. 'Cry Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men groaning for burial.' Shakespeare, my lady fair. The bard himself.'
Frank fumbled the phone into its bed, the dog's searing teeth and the dream of the battlefield fresh upon
