“It’s a one-way.”
“No, not yet. Go under the freeway, and turn at the light.”
“Called the interstate here.”
“Just do as I say, please.”
The envelope was caught in my jeans, blocked by the crease at my hip.
“Left on Fourth,” I said. “Got it.”
As we approached, a lone figure on the other side of the street took a step off the sidewalk and waited for me to roll by. I tapped the brake to cover the straightening of my left leg. The envelope was out. In my hand. The razor was still wrapped inside.
“Look at that guy.” I shook my head. “He’s gonna get himself killed.”
But I knew this man. It was my homeless friend, Freddy C.
Beneath the streetlights, his ragged clothes and shuffling gait caught my attention, but it was his tapered beard that confirmed his identity. A resident of Centennial Park, most mornings he comes to my shop for the free java, and he always finds a few coins for the orange tip mug. He’s a jittery character who’s overcome a tainted past. Ever since Nadine Lott’s death, he’d been committed to fighting the crime and despair on the streets. His help in the police investigation last year had been instrumental.
“What’re you waiting for, doll?”
“Just letting the man cross,” I told Felicia. “Is that a sin?”
My Honda inched onto Fourth Avenue South, pointing toward Freddy. What was he doing out at this hour? His watery gaze met mine. Then: recognition. I angled my face to make visible my fresh wounds, and his sandy eyebrows wobbled with alarm.
You’re no dummy, Freddy. See this blood? Call the cops.
Attention trained ahead once more, I accelerated by him. My sideview mirror showed him standing in the middle of the street with his hand held high, cupped into the letter C.
C for Crime-fighter.
“You know that guy?”
“I do believe he just gave us an obscene gesture,” I covered. “You believe that?”
“Nearly there. I suggest we slow down.”
“Rough neighborhood.” I tilted my head toward a graffiti-tagged building where two women in miniskirts—one tall and black, the other rail thin and bone white—leaned against a Buick Regal on blocks. Behind them, glass shards glittered across the entrance to an empty lot. “Not the best place for a pit stop.”
“Just do it, Aramis. Is this Oak Street? Okay, turn right and park.”
“At the City Cemetery?” A chest-high stone wall encompassed crumbling monuments and tilted tombstones while a wrought-iron gate guarded the front entrance. “You sure this is the place? The gate’s locked.”
“Park.”
“If you say so.”
“Turn off the engine.”
“But of course. Now what, dear?” My saccharine tone caused the abductor’s arm to tighten, yanking me into the headrest, forcing my chin up. As Felicia looked back for clarification, my fingers wedged the envelope against the seat and tried to unfold it.
The blade popped loose. Slid down the side into the carpeted space beneath me.
“Hello?” Felicia’s hand was extended. “You’re supposed to give me the keys.”
“My keys?” I nodded at the cemetery gate. “They won’t work on that.”
“Honestly, you’re only making this more difficult.”
“Call it a personality defect.”
“The keys.”
“This car Blue Books at nine hundred bucks. I’ll take seven fifty.”
Her lips pressed together in exasperation, she waited. At my throat, AX’s grip prompted obedience. I surrendered the keys, then watched my ex-girlfriend step from the car, draw back her arm, and toss them toward the graveyard.
From the stone wall came a metallic jingle.
“Oops,” I said.
“You’re not helping, Aramis.”
Still wearing the jacket over the silk robe, she trotted across the lane, located the keys, and lofted them over the wall. She brushed her hands together, but her eyes showed no pleasure in the accomplishment.
Did she know something I didn’t? Why were we here?
With the car now immobilized, I’d have to run for it and hope he didn’t have a gun. The razor was under the seat, still in the envelope, and my .40 caliber was tucked beneath a bush at Cheekwood.
Trying to prep my muscles for action without telegraphing my intentions, I let my fingers crawl toward the door handle. I could endure the razor as long as it wasn’t rammed into my throat or an eyeball. One good yank, and I might just clear the car with minimal damage.
Felicia was stepping closer. She should’ve taken off while she had the opportunity, but she probably hoped her compliance would ensure my release.
This was it. The handle was in my grasp.
“Run!” I started to yell at her.
The arm cranked back into my larynx and stifled my command. Before I could react, the back door flung open, and AX exited in a flurry of motion that inflicted a nick along my ear’s ridges of cartilage. Okay, that hurt. My involuntary pause of pain gave him the half second he needed to grab hold of Felicia and start shuffling her down the street. His mask and hooded sweatshirt disguised his size. As he held the blade against her neck, I saw it was a fully extended razor knife. No surprise there: a terrorist’s weapon.
I sprang from the vehicle. “Let her go!”
Felicia offered him no help. Limp prey being dragged off to the lair. I took a step forward, but he arced his arm, and the knife angled toward her throat. If I could just get close enough to tear away his cover, smash my palm into his nose …
“What do you want?” I demanded. “Why’d you bring us here?”
“Stay back.” Felicia’s throat worked against the razor. “Please.”
The distance was growing between us, eliminating any chance for a quick strike. I’d lost my keys, but they could be recovered with a little luck. Lost a bit of blood too, but that was nothing.
What was the purpose behind this? Why had I been forced along?
Felicia and the hooded figure hesitated at the rear of a parked panel truck. There was movement, a scuffle. She let out a gasp. Another. Then, still entangled in his clutches, she was pulled out of view.
The following scream tore at the darkness.
I catapulted forward, stumbled on uneven pavement, touched a hand down to right myself. Back on my feet, I tried to bridge the gap as quickly as possible. Reached the end of the truck. Stopped. Angled wide and low, anticipating an attack.
Whimpers drifted in the stillness.
“Felicia?”
I crouched and ran to her crumpled form on the sidewalk. She was facedown, blond strands splayed over cracks in the cement. She lifted a hand from her shoulder. Something moist glistened in the moonlight.
“What’d he do to you?”
“Don’t let him … get away,” she sputtered.
I scanned my perimeter. No sign of him. By all appearances, we were alone along this stretch of warehouses where parked commercial vehicles waited for Monday.
I peeled back the shoulder of her jacket and saw the same initials. These were shallower, sliced in a hurry.
Nearby an engine turned over.
“Go,” she said. “Before he … takes her.”
“Who?”
“Your mother.”
What? The note in the bullet casing said my mother was still alive, but that was ridiculous. This surreal drama was trying to override all logic.
“Please.” Felicia’s back arched as she tried to lift herself. I saw defense wounds on her arms where she’d resisted him. She pulled herself forward and heaved onto the uneven sidewalk.
“Tell me what’s going on. Felicia—”
“Hurry.” A breath. “You have to stop … him.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“Go.”
I started to rise. “You hang on. I’ll be right back.” I saw an old white Dodge van lurch forward from the curb.
A cocoon
of blackness surrounded the driver, shielding his eyes behind the ski mask. His head turned my way, taunting me. Still playing games. With one stomp on the gas pedal, he could be gone.
I tried to breathe, evaluate. What could I do? Maybe if I ran after him, I could reach a door handle before he sped away. Seemed unlikely though, with him watching me.
A visual sweep of the area produced another possibility.
A red tricycle left out on the grass.
I stepped sideways until his view from across the street was obstructed by the panel truck at my side. I grabbed the plastic-fringed handlebars at my feet, hefted the tricycle up on my shoulder, and crossed to the center of the street as he pulled out.
Sorry, kids. Should’ve put your toys away.
The van, spewing exhaust, squatted on the gnarled pavement thirty feet in front of me. There wasn’t enough room for him to turn around, and if he accelerated, I’d have just moments to jump aside, ratchet back both arms, and crash this metal three-wheeler through the glass into the coward’s face.
“Bring it!” I beckoned.
Head to head—that’s how we’d do this. I bobbed on the balls of my feet, zeroing in on my mark behind the windshield.
One shot at this. Ready now. Ready.
The engine roared, and the front end leaped forward. For a moment I was blinded by the sudden glare of headlights. Then sharpened by adrenaline, I registered two things that would be forever seared into my memory.
A woman straining forward in the passenger seat.
And a weak yet distinct cry: “Aramis?”
17
If I’d paid more attention in social psych, if I’d noted the signals of subterfuge Professor Newmann was so adamant about, I might have been prepared there along Oak Street’s crenelated cemetery wall.
I wasn’t.
Back at the Steeple Dance sculpture, I’d grappled with irrational fear and used it as a tool. A catalyst for action. The emotional numbness that now took over, however, swept through my extremities like an injection of liquid ice, undermining any physical response. I was powerless. I stood in the path of the charging van, unable to breathe.
The Dodge gained speed, an old metal bull charging to gore its victim. It moved from beneath outstretched tree limbs into the moon’s gray yellow glow. The same guy who’d attacked Felicia and Johnny Ray leered over the steering wheel.
And in the passenger seat: my mother.
Go. Before he … takes her.
No. This was an illusion, a heartless prank. I didn’t believe in ghosts. Yet there was no denying the black silky hair framing that feminine face, wisps of gray—but that would be expected after all these years—and those round, dark eyes seeking mine with the direct attention of a bloodhound tracking a scent that’d nearly gone cold.
Nearly. But not quite.
No! It wasn’t possible!
It could not be real, could not be her. This was a fake, another attempt at fooling me into submission. Some clever makeup and a professional wig.
The van continued, seemingly in slow motion. The woman’s gaze locked on to mine. She was struggling, her elbows moving. Were those ropes tied about her chest and arms?
Like a person being buried alive, she lifted her mouth toward a gap in the window and screamed again. One word forming and bursting forth in an unmistakable tone.
“Aramis!”
The weight of more than two decades shifted.
The Dodge hurtled my direction on a collision course. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Twelve. Bridging the gap of twenty-plus years. Smells of gasoline and radiator fluid coiled from the onrushing beast.
My knees buckled.
The woman heaved herself at the driver, bound hands clutching the wheel and wrenching it toward her. The man jabbed his elbow and connected with her head. But she held on. The van jerked from its course, squealing, throwing the rear end to the left so that it sideswiped the parked panel truck. A shrieking wall of metal, it plowed toward me once again.
I remained kneeling on the asphalt, motionless.
Mom?
With another elbow jab, the driver snapped the woman’s head beneath a veil of disheveled hair. Her eyes widened in terror, but also concern. She wrenched the wheel again with her iron grip, willing the van to veer away.
The driver roared, this time cocking his arm back and smashing it into her face. Her body flew into the passenger door.
The ice in my limbs turned to fire.
My legs exploded from my rooted position, tendons twanging down my neck and shoulders. The Dodge skidded toward me until its tires started to catch on the pavement and guide it away.
She had fought for me.
She was alive. She was in there!
“Ahh-rrrhh!”
In one sweeping motion, I gripped the tricycle and ran full speed toward the driver’s door. My feet pounded over the rough road, and I tripped, nearly face planted, and regained my balance. With every ounce of sinew and muscle in me, I crushed the red trike into his window. Fringed handlebars stabbed at the glass, shattering it into fragments, but the van continued. Behind it, the tricycle clanged to the street in a twisted heap.
On the van’s dented license tag were the words Georgia … on My Mind.
I raced toward the cemetery wall. My hands clutched the stone, and I lifted, got a knee on the summit, and vaulted into the territory of the dead.
I paused, trying to calculate the trajectory and distance of Felicia’s toss. With my search narrowed, I trampled between grave markers and mausoleums. Scrambled over grass and gravel. Combed fingers through weeds and bunched flowers.
The deceased here along the hem of St. Cloud Hill were governors, mayors, generals, and Confederate soldiers by the thousands. Nearly two centuries of fathers, brothers, mothers.
Please, God. Help me here!
My hand brushed over a cool, dark clump, and a jingle verified my find.
I grabbed the keys, dropped them, grabbed them, hurdled a tombstone, raced toward the wall on Oak Street. Up and over. Hands scraped, bloodied. I landed on the sidewalk, felt my ankle twist. I hobbled across the road, threw myself into the Honda, and fired it up. A squealing U-turn brought me back to Fourth Avenue South, where I turned right and slammed the accelerator down so hard I thought it might punch through the rusty spots in the firewall.
The engine was screaming, nearly hysterical.
“C’mon! Where are you? Where are you?”
My throat turned scratchy. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I prowled the streets, up and down, back and forth, desperate to locate the woman who’d been taken from me, who’d fallen from a riverbank, who’d managed somehow to find her way back.
She cheated the grave …
At a private graveside service, Johnny Ray and I had watched a casket lower her into the earth—a symbolic ceremony since boats and divers had never found her body.
But somebody had found her. How? How could that be?
Someone had to be playing a cruel joke on me, and I was taking the bait, swallowing it whole. The hook was set. Reeling me in. For what purpose? So that some gold-grabbing fool could squeeze me for info about the family cache?
That one word, ringing in my ears: “Aramis!”
It was her. I couldn’t not believe it. Years of an alternate history argued against it, yet we’d locked eyes. Connected. Somehow—miraculously, unbelievably—that was Mom. How could I turn away from that possibility if there was even one iota of hope that it was true? She was in that van, trapped with that sad, sorry excuse for a human being who had struck her full force in the face.
Finding her would be worth any danger, any risk.
Dianne Lewis Black.
Mom’s alive! That was her. That was her …
I pounded the words into my mind, nailing them down so that nothing could shake them loose.
Her voice. Calling my name …
I weighed a late-night call to Metro Police, even started to dial Meade’s number. But the detective would
expect answers, explanations, proof of some sort.
Defying all reason, the driver of the van had paraded my aged, beautiful mother before my eyes. In the course of twenty-four hours, this freak had managed to flip my entire paradigm, handing me a new game with a new set of rules. Unless I played it his way, he’d make certain I never saw her again.
Rule number one: no cops. For the sake of your loved ones …
I closed my cell.
Already doubts were prying at my hopes, popping them loose quicker than I could hammer them down.
Where had she been for over twenty years? How had she gone undetected? Obviously, I was falling for an elaborate deception, just as Johnny Ray had been tested by a few shots of Jack, a red wig, and some soft kisses.
He’d failed. He’d been cut.
And my bleeding cheek proved I was no different.
So I’d seen a dark-haired woman in the shadows of a van, heard my name called, watched her fight to protect me. What did that prove, except the lengths to which this guy would go to fool me?
I’d almost bought into it. Almost believed. I’d been fooled before, but this time the stakes were even higher.
I headed back to Oak Street, wondering when I would ever learn.
“Some people never learn,” Professor Newmann had lectured the class in his reedy voice. “When a secular mind-set pervades a culture, fact and falsehood become interchangeable. For most people, seeing is believing. News channels parade wholesale misinformation as unbiased fact, and the average viewer suspects nothing. The Internet is equally pernicious.” In a habitual tic, he hitched the lapels of his tweed jacket. “Anytime such deceit pollutes one’s mind, it weakens his intellectual and spiritual fortitude. And such weakness is inevitably punished.”
I remember raising my hand.
“Do you have a question for the entire class, Mr. Black?”
“Not to be rude, but our previous instructor already touched on this subject.” Heads bobbed in agreement. “In fact, we turned in reports a few weeks back.”
“Two-page reports, if I’m not mistaken. I found them hardly comprehensive.” Twiddling his glasses, Newmann mulled an idea. “Why don’t you give us a brief recap of yours? Perhaps your summary will persuade me to move on to other topics.”