“Answering machine.” Meade closed the phone and handed it back.
I dropped it into my pants pocket. “He’s trying to finish up a new single before hitting the road. Drop by the studio over on Sixteenth. Can’t miss the black and silver sign.”
“I may do that.”
“So tell me. Straight up. You think my brother’s still in danger?”
“In light of the way you found him and the wounds you’ve described, it’s a possibility. Miss Lott’s abdominal wounds never went public, so it’s unlikely we have a copycat. It’s possible this murderer has come out of hibernation, and he may have intended your brother as his next victim.”
4
The detective headed out, while I stood and watched traffic move along Elliston. Was there really a connection between Nadine Lott and Johnny Ray? Why would someone kill a transient woman, then follow it a year later with an attack on a rising country star? Had my search at the park halted a more lethal plan?
I thought again of the Hyundai sedan circling like a hearse.
If I could just find that car, find that sicko …
No. I couldn’t give in to my “live by the sword, die by the sword” retribution. I imagined taking sandpaper to my skin, scrubbing away the words in raw, bloody patches. But they would still be emblazoned on my heart.
I pressed my head back against the padded seat, closed my eyes.
Since childhood, the closest I’d let a woman get to me was my girlfriend back in Portland. Felicia Daly—intelligent, nurturing, two years older than me. After living together a couple of years, she said she’d had enough of my self-destruction. She worried I’d end up another statistic if things didn’t change and—as if to underscore her point—admitted she’d started seeing someone else.
“Who?” I demanded.
“No one,” she fired back. “Someone who listens, who actually cares.”
It got ugly, and I stormed out, afraid of what I might say or do.
The next morning her haunting prediction came true in an abandoned warehouse off East Burnside, with a rival’s Glock jammed against my skull. I realized in that moment the shame I’d brought upon my mother’s memory. All her love. Her prayers. And I’d done nothing but coddle my own pain.
Three days later I was on my brother’s doorstep in Nashville.
I began turning things around—with Sammie’s help. Opened up Black’s espresso shop, started reading the Bible and trying to follow its instructions. I began to sense there was someone with me, holding me up, giving me strength.
But last year my past started catching up again. Old enemies. Family secrets. A FedEx envelope from an Oregon penitentiary. Some of those memories still rumbled through my head, including an evening at Brianne’s condo in which she was attacked with scissors while I was brought to my knees by a street thug’s Taser.
Dark thoughts and temptations crept back in, and it felt good the day I visited a gun show at the Davidson County Fairgrounds and bought a Desert Eagle .40 caliber.
Back on top. In charge.
One clear shot was all I’d need to take care of whoever had hurt my brother.
Shaking off these thoughts, I faced the dining area. College students conversed at a window table. A guy in tattered jeans and Birkenstocks sat on the edge of the corner stage, picking out a tune on his guitar. At the counter, customers waited for their caffeine fixes.
Way I see it, coffee’s better than the stuff I used to deal. Cheaper. Cleaner. And except for the one time last year, it’s kept me out of the line of fire.
I was heading to join my employees behind the bar when my cell vibrated against my leg. Was it Sammie? I’d left a message for her on my way in this morning, worried by her early departure from last night’s party. I looked at the line of customers. Debated. Flipped open the phone.
On the screen an icon blinked. A new e-mail.
From the subject line, one word screamed at me: AX.
“Everything all right?”
I looked up from the message on my phone’s screen. “Everything’s fine, Anna.”
“My, your detective looked stern as he left.”
“Meade’s a good guy. Just got a lot on his mind.”
“I’d venture to say he’s not the only one.” Anna Knight’s concern was evident in the creases of her matronly face. Twenty years my senior and a recent divorcée from Florida, she has a valiant smile that matches her work ethic and attitude. She closes weekdays, claiming it helps fill in the empty spaces in her evenings. “Something you want to talk through, hon?”
I rolled my shoulders. Shook my head. Tried not to think about the e-mail inviting me to a rendezvous only hours from now. I picked up a cup and saucer from a table nearby.
“You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? I have four sons of my own, so I—”
“Appreciate it.” I moved to place the cup in the dish bin. “Just not now, okay?”
“Have it your way then.”
“Thanks for holding down the fort. Didn’t mean to leave you hangin’.”
“You owe me one, I’ll have you know.”
“Big time. Listen, have you heard from Sammie?”
“Rosewood? Not since yesterday.” She handed a customer his change and smiled. “You sound concerned.”
“I am.”
Anna arched an eyebrow. “Why, Aramis Black, you like her, don’t you?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I think you know what I mean.”
“She’s a good friend.”
“And that’s why you share dinner on a weekly basis?”
“We talk business. She helped me get this place off the ground.”
Sammie Rosewood was one of the first Nashvillians I met—in the business aisle of Davis-Kidd Booksellers, of all places. Born and raised here, she graduated with honors from Vanderbilt, with family money, and her soft heart still intact. A Southern belle in designer jeans, she’s unassuming and generous.
And single.
Although she exudes an air of indifference to the men around her, it’s more the result of her steady stream of projects than any intended snobbery.
“So it’s all about her money,” Anna said. “Is that what you’d have me believe?”
“You little matchmaker. Don’t you have some cleaning to do?”
“I’ll have you know that despite my own experiences in the marital department—or maybe because of them—I have to believe in the possibility of true love.”
“Yeah?” I huffed. “Good luck with that.”
She blinked twice, then started scrubbing the espresso machine’s steam wand. Any thought of an apology on my part was cut short by a customer’s arrival at the counter. As I took his order, my mind returned to what lay four hours ahead. A showdown. A rendezvous with my brother’s attacker. A chance to settle a score. My fingers itched for the cool grip of my Desert Eagle.
I poured the drink and rang it up. “Anna, I’ll be in the back. Got some paperwork to do.” As I turned, my other employee appeared from the storage area with a container of chai.
“You leaving us again?”
“S’up, Diesel? Yeah, I have a … meeting this afternoon.”
He dropped the chai on the counter, causing utensils to rattle in the drawers.
“Careful there.” I pointed to a pallet of recently delivered supplies. “Think you can unload that while I’m gone?”
“Why not? I’m used to picking up the slack.”
“Slack? You did get your paycheck yesterday, didn’t you?”
His cold and translucent eyes glanced up, then looked away. With his habit of chugging ahead regardless of consequences, Diesel Hillcrest’s nickname fit far better than Desmond. A lumbering kid from Ohio, he has the stocky look of a farm boy and a deep voice that I suspect hides scars of a rough childhood. He also possesses a restless intellect, which helped him get into the local Psi Chi honor society. We first met in my social psych class at Lipscomb University.
“Here.” I gr
abbed a pair of tin snips. “Gimme a hand.”
“Don’t worry, boss. I’ve got it covered.”
“C’mon. Things’ll go faster with both of us.”
After a couple of minutes of stacking boxes of Ghirardelli chocolate under the counter, his demeanor turned playful. He pointed at me and cocked his thumb. “Okay. Pop quiz.”
“Right now?”
“No fear,” he goaded. “Just sharpening you for Monday’s final exam.”
“Don’t we have a study session tomorrow? Over at Sara’s?”
“Figure you could use extra help, being the oldest in the class.”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
“Like I said. So here goes.”
I groaned and handed over another load.
“Choose the true statement: chewing gum takes seven years to pass through the digestive system, the first TV couple shown in bed together was Fred and Wilma Flintstone, or Osama bin Laden was once slated to be Time magazine’s Man of the Year.”
“That one. About bin Laden.”
“You sure?” He waited for my nod. “Wrong-o! But thank you for playing.”
“Number two then.”
“Wrong again.” A high-pitched buzzer sound. “None of them are true. Two days till our group final, and you still can’t tell falsehood from fact?”
“Watch it now.”
“All right. All right.”
He backed off, but I had to admit he had me. I’d been a victim last year of a deception that had stirred all sorts of questions and murky emotions. What made us tick? What drove some people to murder and betrayal? And why did I always seem to attract trouble? In a move my mother would’ve endorsed, I enrolled for night courses at Lipscomb to see if an education in Christian truth and principles might provide a beacon of hope.
A few weeks back our professor had assigned us a project titled “Legends and Lies: Cultural Susceptibility in a Secular Age.” He’d told us to create an urban legend to disseminate via word of mouth and on the Internet. Diesel and I were teamed up with Sara, a girl from East Tennessee, and we brain-stormed and voted on an idea to float in online chat rooms, forums, message boards, and mass e-mails. Diesel even submitted it to Wikipedia, carefully couched among actual facts.
Ironic, huh? I was trying to understand truth by perpetuating a lie.
On Monday at last we would unveil our legend to the class and receive our score on its plausibility, scope of propagation, and an oral presentation exploring the public perception that determines a legend’s success.
“Diesel, listen. I won’t let you down.”
“We’re counting on you, man.” He put away another box. “I know you’re taking this class for your own enlightenment or whatever, but I need an A. You hear me?”
“Shouldn’t be a problem. You’re already acing the class.”
“Try telling that to my parents. They just got here from Columbus for the weekend, and my dad’s already reminded me twice of the money they saved for years to get me here. Like I’m their prize racehorse waiting in the gate. Go, Desmond, go!”
“Dude, that’s not right.”
“It’s no wonder you’re on edge,” Anna said, rejoining the conversation.
“And I’m telling you, Professor Bones has it in for me.”
Anna frowned. “Bones?”
“Our substitute,” Diesel said. “The guy’s drier than day-old grits. He’s got these narrow shoulders and a hollow face and wears tortoise-shell glasses that make his eyes bug out.”
“But please tell me you don’t call him that to his face.”
“ ’Course not. Only when his back’s turned.”
“Well then. Spoken like a true Southerner.”
“I’m learning.”
“Professor Boniface Newmann,” I explained to Anna. “That’s his real name.”
“Oh my. Parents can be so cruel.”
Diesel guffawed. “Tell me about it.”
“Okay, boys, here’s one for you.” Anna started stacking clean mugs. “True or false: daddy-longlegs are the world’s most poisonous spiders?”
“True,” Diesel jumped in. “But their fangs are too small to inject the poison.”
“You agree, Aramis?”
“Nope. That one’s a myth.”
She grinned. “A myth it is.”
“Ahh.” I pointed at Diesel. “Now who’s slipping?”
“I swear I read about that somewhere.”
“Heard it from the ‘friend of a friend,’ huh?” I wagged my head. “That’s why they call them FOAFs. Don’t you listen in class? Mix in a few lies with a shred of truth, and these things slip right into our culture’s collective database.”
“Surely there are ways of checking these things,” Anna probed.
“Of course,” I said. “There are a few debunking sites, but most people are lazy. You ever get one of those chain e-mails from exiled Nigerian royalty asking for money? People still think the Mormons own Coca-Cola.”
Diesel yawned. “I never believed that, not even as a kid.”
“C’mon.”
“I didn’t. You can ask my mother.”
The door chimed as two businesswomen entered, and I smiled to welcome them. In unison, they each raised a finger to silence me while they finished their cell-phone conversations. My smile started to cramp.
“Go on.” Anna nudged me. “I’ll take it from here.”
“You sure?”
“Hon, do I look helpless to you? I know you have paperwork. Go, go.”
Before slipping back through Black’s kitchen, I turned to Diesel. “You need anything, I’ll be in my office.”
“Your broom closet, you mean.”
“The very one.”
We both laughed. I moved on past the freezer and storage shelves.
“Don’t forget, boss. Tomorrow at Sara’s. We’re counting on you.”
“You know,” I said, “growing up I used to get a beating for anything lower than a B.”
“Do any good?”
“Dropped out my junior year of high school. Had to go back and earn my GED.”
“Well, there you go.” Diesel’s eyes turned dark. “It would have been worth trying, just to see the look on my dad’s face. School is like life and death to him.”
His words caused images to churn in my head: the charred body under the overpass, a sliced Stetson, a pair of letters carved in my brother’s skin.
I cracked my knuckles and marched off.
Nothing could keep me from making that appointment today at four. This AX character had no idea of the trouble he’d called down upon himself. I’d be there, locked and loaded, to show him a little urban legend of my own. Soon he would be in my arena.
5
Time to zero in. Confined by brick walls and the stale tennis-shoe odor of my back-room, broom-closet office, I plopped onto a three-legged stool. A dented file cabinet in the corner held hard copies of till reports and credit-card receipts. A safe sat beside the computer tower beneath my metal desk, while on top, stacks of Jack London hardcovers served as the base for my monitor.
Here’s the thing: I’ll read the classics someday, but for now I’ve got spreadsheets and bills to worry about.
At this rate, I’ll be a toothless wonder by the time I finish White Fang.
I waited for the ancient computer to boot up. Clicks and whirs preceded the monitor’s gradual awakening. I logged on to my e-mail account and found a smattering of messages, including a response to my complaint about a recent eBay purchase, but that could wait. The ultimatum from AX was all that mattered.
I moved the mouse, let the cursor hover.
Click …
The sender’s address was one of those encrypted accounts that requires no ID and makes it difficult to trace. My heart rate kicked up a few notches as I read the words once more.
Chop, chop, Aramis. Your sins are the razor that will slice you deep. “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not pro
duce good fruit will be cut down.” 4 p.m. Go to Cheekwood Gardens, the Fabergé exhibit. For the sake of your loved ones, I suggest cutting off all contact with your colored detective friend.
Had he seen me talking to Meade? What was his objective here? My brother had mentioned the caller’s comments a few days ago, about something stolen. Was it connected? Or a false lead?
I hit Print, and my ancient IBM printer snorted, brayed in protest, then sent dots galloping across the paper. The message was evidence, a glimpse into the mind of some sicko. Was that scripture he had quoted? I thought of Johnny bleeding under the statue. Anyone willing to slash his fellowman and torch a homeless woman was either severely lacking in moral fiber or …
Or just seriously screwed up in the head.
I dialed Johnny’s number, then Sammie’s. Left messages for both. Didn’t they ever answer their phones?
My fingers tapped at the keyboard, shooting off a reply to the threatening e-mail. Contact the cops? I asked. No. I could deal with this one on my own. I’d get some solid answers, or I’d rip out someone’s throat.
Call it a character flaw, but I don’t have it in me to play into fear trips. I have no problem defending those I love, and with a quick jaunt back to my place, I’d arm myself for the approaching rendezvous. Johnny Ray and I may have our differences, but he’s family.
“Aramis? Knock, knock.”
“Hey.” I stuffed the printout into my pocket. “Need help with the lunch rush?”
“Pretty dead actually.”
“Bet a lot of our business is over at the festival at Centennial Park. What’s going on?”
Diesel glanced over his shoulder and punched at the doorframe. “Anna won’t quit with the mothering stuff.”
I smiled. “She’s got a big heart, Diesel. She cares.”
“Like I don’t get harped on enough already.”
“She’s your shift supervisor, so work with her the best you can.”
“If you say so.” He mumbled something unintelligible, then diverted my attention with a finger pointed at the monitor. “You seen how our urban legend’s doing?”
“Let’s take a look.”
With a quick Google search, we found links to the Wikipedia article, a genealogical site, even an editorial from a respected local newspaper. The legend had also been noted by Snopes.com with a yellow bullet to indicate “undetermined veracity.”