The Stranger You Seek

31





White Trash met me at the door, brushed up against my legs, looked up at me squinty-eyed, and began herding me toward the kitchen. In her fantasies, I fully believed, White Trash was a border collie, obsessively tending her herd, keeping everything in a tight little circle. Her meager belongings—catnip mice and a catnip pillow, a ball—she leaves neatly under the table when she’s done playing, and when she had occasion to encounter a helium balloon in the house on my birthday, she spent days pulling it by the string each time it drifted away and carefully stashing it back under the table. I indulge her. It’s easier this way. She’s very focused. There would be no rest until she had what she wanted.

I dutifully removed a slice of deli turkey from a bag in the fridge, tore it into little pieces for her, then leaned against the counter with a can of Reddi-wip and tilted it into my mouth. That couldn’t have been more than a serving, I thought, reading the can for serving size. Two tablespoons. Hmmm. I did it a few more times. White Trash showed some interest in what I was eating, so I squirted a little on her plate. She tried it, liked it, stretched, and left me there in the kitchen, used and alone.

It was Thursday morning, five days since Jacob Dobbs died, and I was back in my office by eight after sleeping hard and entirely without dreams. I checked my voice-mail messages. Tyrone from Tyrone’s Quikbail: “Hey, baby. An absconder done absconded on me. Need you to haul his butt in. No big thing. A kid about twenty. Failed to appear on a DUI.”

Diane left a message. “Hey, you, witness subpoenas are ready on my desk. Seven of them. Cha-ching. You’re buying dinner next time.”

My mother called and extracted a promise out of me for dinner Saturday night. Saturday nights was homemade potpie, sliced tomatoes, mustard greens, and banana cheesecake. The only variations in this menu were seasonal, when we might have spinach or kale instead of mustard greens.

Before we hung up, she said, “I know this is none of my business.”

Uh-oh. When Mother began a sentence that way, no telling what was coming next.

“Dan made some mistakes, Keye, but that’s just the way men are. I spent some time with him after you left for your trip and we had a lovely talk. He loves you.”

“I’m bringing Rauser with me,” I said, astonishing myself. Ha, take that. She wouldn’t push the Dan thing with Rauser there at Saturday dinner. She was unsure of our relationship. Hell, everyone was unsure of our relationship. Rauser had acted as protection against my mother’s matchmaking many times.

I returned Tyrone’s call and arranged to swing by to pick up the paperwork. It was a small job, not a lot of money, but it was important to be available to Tyrone now and then or he’d write me off, and I never knew when I might need the work. The law firms paid well, especially Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze, but it was a competitive business and I could hear my daddy saying something about all the eggs in one basket. I still had a king-size mortgage to think about every month. I try not to burn bridges, no matter how small.

My mind drifted back to my trip to Jekyll. I thought about the water and the pure salt air and my heart lurched a little. I wanted that, wanted to walk the beach, adopt a dog, buy an old truck, maybe even introduce White Trash to sand crabs. How could I make a living down there? How could I leave Diane and Neil and Rauser? I let that movie play in my head for a few moments. Then I thought about Mrs. Chambers living there in that beautiful spot, about her pain all these years. I thought about mine. It changes and dulls a little, but you never live without it once someone you love has been murdered.

Tyrone’s Quikbail is in the 300 block of Mitchell Street, only a couple of blocks from the capitol, city hall, and the courthouses, on the fifth floor of a steadily declining yellow stucco building. There were at least a dozen more bail bond companies within the surrounding blocks. My personal favorite is Mama’s Gonna Get You Free Bail Bonds & More, off Memorial Drive.

I took the stairs. I’d been in the elevator here before—fingerprints all over the buttons and filthy carpeting and the feeling of not wanting to touch anything. The stairway smelled like pee, but at least I knew I’d make it upstairs, something that was always in question with the elevator, which groaned at the slightest provocation. What if I was the last little bit of weight it could bear? I’d already had three Krispy Kremes today. What I like in an elevator is no element of surprise.

The outer lobby in Tyrone’s office was quiet, the secretary’s desk unmanned but neatly arranged. I’d seen lots of different faces at that desk. Tyrone used a temp service a couple of days a week.

“Yo, Keye. What up?” He was wearing a lemon yellow blazer over a red silk shirt. When he leaned back from whatever he’d been reading and crossed an ankle over his knee, I saw that his pants matched the jacket and his socks matched his shirt. In contrast to the drab offices, he was like a flare in a desk chair, a bright and shining light. Tyrone was six-four, with a strong jaw, square weightlifter’s shoulders, and dimples when he smiled. I thought he was pretty. So did he.

“You gonna get the kid for me?”

I shrugged. “What’s it pay?”

“Come on now.” He laughed and dimples broke out everywhere. “Don’t do me like that.” He lifted a manila envelope up off his desk and held it out. “Kid’s name is Harrison. You take this and I’ll make sure you get a good one next time.”

Lyndon Harrison had been pulled over on I-75 inside the Fulton County line, the file said. He had agreed to a breath test, which put him just over the legal limit for alcohol. He’d behaved badly when the officer told him he’d have to go to the station, and the cop had promptly added resisting arrest to the DUI charge. His mother had put up her house to guarantee the bail. The house would have been quite a return for Tyrone on a six-thousand-dollar guarantee, but he wasn’t that kind of guy, he told me, and grinned.

I took Mitchell Street to Capital Avenue, got over on DeKalb Avenue near Grady Hospital and drove east toward the Oakhurst section of Decatur. Oakhurst had once been a run-down area of shut-ins and crack-heads, dealer-infested and dangerous. In the last few years it had been undergoing a sort of face-lift. The combination of urban sprawl and soaring property values in Atlanta and Decatur, which now meet at several points, had changed the life of many longtime Oakhurst residents. Tiny frame houses on quarter-acre lots were suddenly worth hundreds of thousands, and residents began putting up For Sale signs in their yards. Gradually these neighborhoods were being renovated or razed. Still, some of the old residents stayed, so it was not uncommon to see renovated homes with towering additions and privacy fences next door to a weather-beaten shack in stunning disrepair.

The Harrison home was on Winter Avenue near the East Lake MARTA station, a little white brick with black shutters and a pampered square of green lawn. Lavender plants bloomed under the front windows and gerber daisies had been planted around the mailbox. A golden retriever spotted me through the front window when I rang the bell, and barked ferociously, but his entire body was wagging.

The boy who answered the door looked eighteen at the most. He didn’t fit the picture I had of Lyndon Harrison, the bail jumper. I could smell pot smoke through the screen.

“Hi,” I said. “Is Lyndon around?”

He smiled. “Hang on, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, and as soon as he disappeared, I let myself into a small slate foyer with a coatrack and a mirror and a golden retriever who nuzzled my hand until I consented to giving him some attention. I knelt down next to him and rubbed his ears.

“Can I help you?” a male voice asked.

“Hi, Lyndon,” I said in the most nonthreatening tone I could come up with. As I stood, my left hand moved to my back pocket, where I had a pair of cuffs. “My name’s Keye Street.” I held out my right hand to Harrison, but he didn’t take it.

“Yeah, so?”

Lyndon Harrison was tall with the wire-thin body of a boy who hadn’t quite begun to fill out the frame he’d sprouted. I smiled. I was still hoping he was going to play nice, but the sour expression on his face said otherwise.

“I was just wondering if maybe you forgot your court date.”

“Who the f*ck are you?” he demanded, and the kid who had opened the door stepped into the room.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked, and leaned his head on Lyndon’s shoulder.

“She’s trying to take me to court,” Lyndon whined, and wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist. His eyes were very blue and bloodshot. His hair was white blond on the tips and he was wearing baggy blue jeans with the crotch nearly to his knees and a rope for a belt—Old Navy on pot.

“You’re taking him to jail?” the boyfriend wanted to know. His eyes were bright—someone who appreciated a good drama, I could see.

I shook my head. “He just needs to come down to the office with me so we can make up a new agreement and reschedule some stuff.”

Not.

“I don’t feel like doing that today,” Harrison announced.

Oh boy.

“Your mom put up her house for you,” I reminded him. “You know that she could lose it?”

He looked down at me as if I was the most pathetically boring human on earth. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” he said with a lazy blink, and turned away.

I grabbed his right wrist and clamped the cuffs on, and when he spun around, I got them on the other wrist. “Sorry, but tomorrow just doesn’t work for my schedule.”

“Who are you?”

“Bond enforcement,” I answered. “Let’s go.”

“Cool,” gushed the boyfriend as I pushed Lyndon out the door.

“Can Clifford go with us?” Lyndon wanted to know. We were heading down the sidewalk with his boyfriend and the dog trailing behind us toward my car parked curbside.

“Can’t your boyfriend take care of him?”

Lyndon sneered. “Clifford is my boyfriend. Duh!”

I opened the passenger door and helped him into the front seat, ran the seat belt through the cuff chain, and buckled him in just in case he had any bright ideas about a quick exit. “What’s the dog’s name? John?” I asked.

“You’re a total buzzkill.” Lyndon pouted.

In the rearview, I saw Clifford and the dog standing in the center of the oak-lined street. Clifford gave a little wave with his fingers as we pulled away.





Honey, I’m home.

The voice was loud enough to travel over the polished hardwood and through the quiet Morningside house. Setting the briefcase on the table next to the door in the foyer, the killer opened it and slipped into a skintight pair of surgical gloves. A four-inch fishing knife slid easily out of an unsnapped compartment.

How was your day?

The question was delivered loudly but pleasantly, standing at the refrigerator with the door open, a fresh bottle of water in one hand, searching for a snack. Really long day. No time to eat, to do anything. The intruder stomped on the kitchen floor a few times, hard enough and loud enough to be heard downstairs.

Why so quiet? Still mad about last night?

Something stirred. A fat cat was standing at the kitchen door watching the stranger he knew only from the street outside. He opened his mouth and a tiny squeak came out, nothing more.

Where have you been hiding?

The stranger knelt, peeled off a glove, and held out the back of one hand. The cat didn’t hesitate, just walked right over and bumped into it.

Do you have food and water? Let’s get you fixed up. And then I’ll take care of your mother, your needy mother, your silly, stupid, needy f*cking mother.

The killer sat at the kitchen table, drank the bottled water, sliced off a few pieces of sharp white cheddar, tried to shake off the day, relax a little while watching the gray tabby crunching dry food.

I’m so sorry to have to leave you alone, buddy, but I have so much to do. So many people are waiting. Time to deliver.

Melissa Dumas was bound to an old straight-back chair in the partially finished basement, where the washer and drier and all the yard tools were stored. She had been dragged down the hard steps by her hair a day ago, barely conscious, head bumping against each step, moaning quietly. She couldn’t have known how many times she’d been stabbed, because she had faded in and out after the second wound. She had begged for water and received only a few drops, just enough to keep her alive.

Her eyes half opened at a sound. What she must have seen surely would have startled her—the intruder was standing in front of her wearing only a paper bonnet and booties and surgical gloves.

Do you know how long you’ve been here? Can you understand me? What does it feel like? Can you hear me? HOW DOES IT FEEL?

Melissa’s head drooped downward and the killer tilted her chin upward, looked into her eyes and smiled gently. The smile was genuine, not meant to be taunting or malicious. A certain love for them sometimes developed during their time together, love for what they’d given of themselves, for the hours and the patience.

So tired, you poor baby. Don’t worry. I fed your kitty.

A sigh, a twinge of regret. Not for what had happened there. Not for what was about to happen, but because it was nearly over.

Ah well, time to move on. Time to make my marks. Time to clean the scene.