Little Girls Lost (22 page)

The electrical storm drifted from Sandhill’s head, leaving copper in his mouth and lead in his muscles. He shook wisps from his brain and found himself face down on his Oriental carpet, a field of violent color. He felt his wrists handcuffed behind him. He figured he’d been blasted with one of the new-generation stun guns. Knock an ox over, at least for a few seconds.

Sandhill heard the floor creak, someone standing above him. He’d pretty much figured who he’d see.

“That you, Terrence? Have you finally gone around the bend?”

Laughter. Not Squill’s. Followed by a pleasant, casual voice.

“Nice to know even the great Conner Sandhill can get it wrong once in a while.”

Sandhill struggled to roll on to his back. It took several seconds for the image to make sense in his brain.

“Tommy Clay?”

The mayor’s assistant smiled down at Sandhill. He held a black device loosely at his side, the stun gun. Clay surveyed his surroundings. “Nice place, Mr Sandhill. Very organized, despite the image you project.”

“Seems you’re different than your image too, Clay.”

Clay shrugged and walked to the kitchen area. A bottle of Scotch was on the counter. “Mind if I partake of your hospitality, Mr Sandhill?”

“Go for it, Tommy. I could use a few aspirin, myself. Top drawer on the counter.”

“Of course.” Clay filled a tumbler with ice and made a drink. He brought several aspirin, dropped them into Sandhill’s mouth. Clay nodded to the couch. “Mind if I sit?”

“
Mi casa es tu casa.
”

Clay nodded politely and sat. “Thank you, Mr Sandhill. I hope the stun gun didn’t cause much pain. I wasn’t overly thrilled about having to deal with you. I’m basically nonviolent.”

Sandhill narrowed an eye at Clay. “But you were sent to handle me because my old friend Terrence is otherwise occupied, is that it? He’s busy looking important and issuing commands and you’re running his errands. You’re a natural-born gopher, Tommy. Subservience is in your blood.”

Clay stiffened. He closed his eyes and let out a breath.

“I was warned that you like to get under people’s
skins, Mr Sandhill. Keep them off balance. It won’t work here, so you might as well make nice.”

“All right, then. I’ll be as docile as a kitten, with one request.”

“Which is?”

“I’d like to know what the hell is happening.”

Clay took a fastidious sip of Scotch, crossed his legs, and settled deep into the couch, a traveler fresh from abroad with wondrous stories to tell.

“A few months back the owner of a shipping line sent Mayor Philips an overview of plans to build commercial dockage facilities in Mobile Bay. Containerized shipping. Warehousing, railheads. First-phase expenditures between 180 and 200 million bucks, Mr Sandhill. Not a massive project, but for Mobile…”

Sandhill nodded. “For Mobile it’s a big, juicy plum.”

“New employment, good jobs, revitalization of the waterfront. And plenty of loose money floating around.”

“I take it you and Mayor Philips figured how to soak up some of those bucks.”

“Norma?” Clay laughed so hard he had to set his drink down.

Sandhill raised a perplexed eyebrow. “Didn’t I hear you right, Tommy? Didn’t you say the plans were communicated to Philips?”

Clay picked up his drink, his smile bright as a chandelier. “I open Norma’s mail, Mr Sandhill;
hand her the wheat and shitcan the chaff. If I didn’t, her mail would sit there until doomsday.”

Sandhill stared at Clay until the light dawned.

“You never showed the letter to the mayor, Tommy. You responded on your own.”

Clay’s eyes glittered. “Sixteen years of toiling in the vineyards finally produced champagne. I contacted the sender and explained the situation: An iffy election, a mayor who’d stumbled into the position—”

“The mayor’s a straight arrow, I take it?”

Clay rolled his eyes. “The woman’s oblivious to practicalities. She’d have questioned the project…Is it right? What’s the environmental impact? What control would the city have? All that obstructionist thinking. Don’t get me wrong, Norma’d be a wonderful mayor in some dinky town in Oregon, hugging redwoods, scrubbing oil off birds…maybe even reinstating disgraced cops on the sly.”

“You know about that?”

“I dug up that ancient statute, Mr Sandhill. Showed it to Norma. I wasn’t sure she’d use it, but she’s a trusting soul, right? She hid the reinstatment letter away in her desk, but…” Clay winked.

“But like with the mail, you spend a lot of time in her desk, right? Keeping tabs.”

“It helps my cause to know what Norma’s thinking and planning. And it was a wonderful boost to my plans to know she’d taken the responsibility of surreptitiously putting you back on the
force. That responsibility will soon explode in her face. She’ll never be electable anywhere.”

“Our wannabe mayor, Runion, know much of this?”

“I told Runion’s people of a major new industrial project planned for the region and said I might be able to delay its announcement a couple months…”

Sandhill filled in the thought. “Letting Runion deliver the news right before the election, like he had a role in the deal.”

Clay flicked lint from his cuff. “And, of course, there’s been all the recent unrest among our African-American citizenry.”

Sandhill smiled sadly. “Not bad. You’ve gift-wrapped the election twelve different ways and set it down in Runion’s lap. Little Tommy Clay finally squeezed his hand into the cookie jar.”

Clay’s eyes flared. “Screw you, Sandhill. I’ve been jerked around for sixteen years. Promised this, promised that. But always handed some shitpot position. I was parks director for three years, head of the police oversight board for six years, four in purchasing…” Clay twirled his finger in a circle. “Whoop-de-doodle.”

“You’re assistant to the mayor. That carries weight.”

“Wouldn’t you know? I finally get my foot in the door and Snow White’s running the castle.”

Sandhill said, “What you wangling for, Tommy?
Runion to appoint you somewhere you can suck graft? Code enforcement? Zoning?”

Clay walked to the kitchen and freshened his drink. “I’m leaving city government. I’m becoming MML’s governmental liaison in Alabama.”

“A lobbyist.”

“This time the movers and shakers dance for me.” Clay winked and snapped his fingers. “Doing that soft-money doe-see-doe.”

Sandhill thought for a moment. “Where’s Turnbull in all this? He kept the black community simmering until it finally boiled. What’s Turnbull’s prize?”

“Turnbull?” Clay wrinkled his nose. “He got to piss and moan about injustice, his forte.”

Sandhill shook his head, uncomprehending.

Clay said, “I had a couple late-night meets with the Rev and suggested the investigation was getting short shrift because the victims were black. Turnbull bought his bullhorn the next day.”

“Turnbull booked from the mob scene when he could have stayed and chilled things out. Why, if he wasn’t clued into the plan?”

Clay mimed dialing a phone. “An anonymous call claiming one of the righteous Rev’s roachy tenements was ablaze. His choice was hang with his people or scurry to his property. He scurried. Turnbull’s nothing but hot air. I just maneuvered him so it blew to my advantage.”

“Good puppeteering, Tommy. We always
wondered how Turnbull and the media made it to the scenes fast.”

Clay did a thumbs-up. “As soon as a potential abduction was reported, the mayor’s office was alerted. I’d make a few calls and presto: Instant demonstration.”

Sandhill nodded grudging admiration. He had a hundred more questions, but one stood a thousand miles above the rest.

“Listen, Tommy. Your buddy, the shipping magnate…I take it you don’t know about the girls?”

Clay frowned as if Sandhill was making bird sounds. “Did you say girls? What are you babbling about?”

“The guy’s a pedophile, the one taking the girls, or at least one of them—Jacy Charlane.”

Clay shook his head with amusement. “Nice try, Mr Sandhill. Resourceful use of current events.”

“One of the kidnappers, Truman Desmond, got caught tonight. I was there. He fingered your man.”

Clay’s brow furrowed. “You don’t mean that. It’s not possible.”

“It’s more than possible, Tommy-boy. By the way, the guy’s name is Walter Mattoon. Am I right?”

Sandhill watched a bead of sweat appear on Clay’s forehead. His voice fell to a whisper.

“Details, Sandhill.”

“Desmond used school pictures to offer the girls.
Over the web, I figure. He gave me Mattoon’s name as a buyer, told me the ship’s berth.”

More sweat appeared on Clay’s forehead. “Did you tell this to the cops?”

“Of course,” Sandhill lied. “Mattoon is fried meat. There goes the old lobbying doe-see-doe.”

Clay leapt from the couch and ran to the kitchen dialing his cellphone. “Call me as soon as you get a chance,” he spat into the receiver.

Clay closed the clamshell phone and paced the small kitchen space, his eyes alight with fear.

The phone rang before a minute had passed. Clay whispered into it, a frenzy of hushed words.

His eyes shot toward Sandhill. More confused whispering. Then Clay’s shoulders relaxed, as if an anvil had been lifted from them. He glared at Sandhill. Closed the phone.

“You lied, Sandhill. Whatever you know about Mr Mattoon, about anything…nothing’s been communicated to the police. Everything’s still safe.”

Sandhill shrugged. It had been worth a shot.

She and the Minute Hour had been eating cookies in the house on the farm. He had been telling her the men by the water were very nasty men that never, ever had anywhere pretty inside them, just something like poison. He said even if they had put her on the boat, he would have saved her. It made him start crying and walking in circles.

But then the door smashed open and the terrible bald man was standing right in front of them. The
Minute Hour puffed himself up until he was even bigger and made a terrible loud roar—
Rrrrrrrahhhhhhheeeeeee!
—and jumped at the bald man. The bald man aimed a big gun that made a loud click but no bang. The Minute Hour stuck his arms out in front of him and fell down with blood on his hand and pouring out of the middle of his head between his eyes.

Remembering made her cry harder. Her mind said to hide, but everywhere was filled with tools and pipes and rope and stuff. The metal-wall room smelled like the place Aunt Nike got her car fixed. There was a ball of string on the long table, like kite string, but brown and fuzzier. She touched the string. Picked an end loose from the grapefruit-sized ball.

Ball of string…ball of string…

“They-soos,” she whispered. In her favorite story by the Gumbo King, They-soos unwrapped string in the caves of the Minute Hour.

Maybe the bald man was the real Minute Hour. He looked like a beast and he sure smelled like a beast.

Atwan pushed through the door. Jacy turned to run but was yanked over his shoulder, looking down his back at the table. She grabbed the ball as Atwan started walking. Her idea was to pull string off the ball. If she somehow got away she could follow it back to the tool room, which was by the bridge from the boat to the ground.

Her idea didn’t work. The tail end of the string followed because she couldn’t pull it off the ball
fast enough. Then string got knotted up in her fingers. She started to cry again.

“Shut up,” Atwan growled. He pulled Jacy tighter, squeezing the ball of twine from her hands. She watched it getting farther away and wondered why it was spinning instead of just laying there. Then she turned a corner into a huge room and didn’t see the spinning ball any more.

The room was bigger than anywhere she’d ever been. It was open at the top and Jacy saw stars winking through her tears. The light in the room was yellow, and big metal boxes were like mountains. The nasty man put her in one of the boxes and closed the door.

Something was hurting her hand. She felt the end of the string caught in her fingers. She shook it away.

For the fourth time in ten minutes, Sandhill watched Clay check the window and his watch. After receiving the call about Mattoon, Clay had relaxed, the spring back in his step and a smile on his face. Clay walked to the wall mirror. He tightened his tie, flicked lint from his lapel.

“Got some business, Tommy?” Sandhill asked.

Clay produced a comb and neatened his hair. “I’ve got a late appearance at a cocktail affair with some of Norma’s pathetic constituency. Then it’s wait for the elections, express my deepest sorrow at her loss, and move upward and onward.”

“A lobbyist,” Sandhill said, “is hardly an upward motion.”

Clay’s face grew hard. He wheeled to Sandhill, but was distracted by the sound of a car outside. Clay spread the blinds and made an
all-clear
gesture. He stepped outside the door. Sandhill heard a buzz of conversation on the steps, the only clear word was Clay saying, “Later.”

The downstairs door to the street closed and Sandhill heard stairs creak, hesitant footsteps at the now-open door.

“Come on in, friend,” Sandhill said. “Join the party.”

Terrence Squill crossed the threshold, a tight, ambiguous smile on his lips. He walked with caution, chin out, hands behind his back. He stopped at the edge of the carpet and studied Sandhill.

“What the hell have you done now, asshole?”

“Ah, the final link in the chain,” Sandhill said. “Don’t be shy, Terrence; have a seat and chat with me. Tell me all the dirty things you and Tommy Clay have been doing.”

“I asked, what the hell have you started?”

“Got a gun behind your back?” Sandhill taunted. “You can show it to me, Terrence. Don’t be scared, I’m tied tight.” Squill turned around. He wasn’t holding a gun.

His wrists were handcuffed together.

Commander Ainsley Duckworth followed Squill at several paces, pointing a nine-millimeter semiautomatic at the small of the acting chief’s back. Duckworth kicked the door shut.

“You scared Tommy half to death with your lies, Sandhill. He really thought the department had been told some strange story about Mr Mattoon.”

Squill turned to Duckworth. “Whatever’s going on, Ainsley, you’re digging your grave here.”

Duckworth stifled a yawn and pointed the weapon at Squill’s eyes. “Shut the fuck up and get into the bathroom.”

Squill glared at Duckworth but obeyed. A minute later, Duckworth returned and stood over Sandhill.

“Hey, Ducky…were you as surprised as Tommy that your benefactor likes little girls?”

Duckworth dropped to his knees and closed his huge fist around Sandhill’s windpipe. “I been
waiting for this moment a long time, Sandhill. You and me and nothing between us. How’s it feel, you meddling asshole?”

Sandhill gagged, reddened, no air reaching his lungs. Duckworth bent until whispering in Sandhill’s ear.

“No breath, Sandhill? That’s how I used to feel when you were around. Like I could never get a full breath.”

Sandhill watched his world turn into a pinpoint of colorless light, Duckworth’s voice like water rushing down a hole. And then the hand fell away and air rushed into his lungs, great sucking draughts of life. Vision sparkled back into Sandhill’s eyes. Duckworth was standing above him.

“No, Sandhill. Not yet. But you were close. How’d it feel, scumbag, knowing there’s no dodging the bullet this time around?”

Sandhill looked into Duckworth’s eyes, saw a blistering hatred he couldn’t comprehend. “It was you that shot me, Ducks. Right?”

“I been wanting to nail you a long time, Sandhill. Get you out of my life for ever.”

“Why me? We had our dust-ups in the past, but so what, Ducky? You were in Internal Affairs. Everybody hated you, you hated everybody back. Why single me out? What did I do that stood out?”

Duckworth stared at Sandhill, as if deciding whether to confess some inner secret, let private
moments escape into light. Sandhill watched a smile crawl across Duckworth’s lips, a sparkle ignite behind his eyes, erotic in its intensity. Duckworth’s tongue slipped from between his teeth like a serpent and licked circles around his mouth. His eyes went far away.

It’s more than anger, Sandhill realized. He’s insane.

“What is it Ducks? Tell me.”

A clinking sound from the bathroom, Squill struggling with his handcuffs. Duckworth’s eyes flashed toward Squill and the strange moment passed. He pointed the gun at Sandhill.

“Motorboat into the bathroom and join your buddy. Make one false move and it’s over.”

Sandhill leg-pushed himself across the floor on his back, trying to keep Duckworth talking, engaged. “How’d you hook up with Tommy Clay, Ducky? You’re not a real likely pair.”

“Tommy worked with the police oversight board some years back. We each saw in one another a certain ambition. So we stayed in touch, Tommy moving from shit job to shit job, fucked by the city like I got fucked by the department.”

“You’re a damned commander. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Life’s finally gonna get good for me, Sandhill. No more living in shitsville. Did I mention I’ll be head of security at the new facility? Big bucks.”

Sandhill flashed back on the incongruity of Duckworth’s living conditions, the roachy apartment
complex with tumbled trash bins and beater vehicles in sagging carports.

“Come on, Sandhill,” Duckworth growled, pointing at the bathroom. “Get in there.”

Panting from the exertion, Sandhill pushed into the room. Squill was taped hand and foot in the corner, watching silently. Duckworth grabbed Sandhill’s collar and pulled him so that he was sitting against the cream tiles of the wall.

Squill said, “You fucked up my investigation into the abductions, didn’t you, Ainsley?”

Duckworth grinned. “I kept files shifting around, sent folks on wild-goose chases. Didn’t let teams compare notes as much as they’d have liked. I just took the usual Terrence Squill cluster fuck and ramped it up ten per cent. It made a big political stink that did what it needed to do.”

“Which was?”

“Keep the black community riled up.” Duckworth grinned. “I don’t know what the hell’s going down with the stolen girls, and don’t give a half-shit, but it couldn’t have happened at a better time. Anyway, Chief, you better hope I do better at my next assignment.”

“What the hell’s that?”

Duckworth pulled a phone from his pocket. “I’m trying to track you down, Chief; seems you disappeared.” He walked from the room dialing the phone.

Squill said, “What have you done, Sandhill? What did you dig up?”

“An ugly alliance, Terrence. High money and low politics. How’d Ducky get you here?”

Squill hung his head. “We left the scene to the techs, took off separately. He called and wanted to meet at that wrecking yard ten blocks west. Said one of his snitches saw you near there, I could nail your ass. Shit, everything seemed to be falling into place.”

“Clay and Ducky played me, played you, played the whole damn city. Give me some info, Terrence. Ducky’s a wacko. I need to figure what’s cooking in his mind. How’d I buy top slot on his shit list?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He acts like I’m some kind of personal threat.”

Squill frowned. “You haven’t been around for years. You’re paranoid, Sandhill.”

“He admitted he took the shot at me. Paranoia?”

Squill absorbed the information, took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “It’s not hard to get on Duckworth’s bad side. He’s got an angry streak in him most people don’t see, he hides it good.”

“Duckworth hide his anger? It’s as blatant as a ten-buck toupee.”

“I’m talking about a…a deeper kind of anger. A darkness. I don’t know…it’s my fault. I should never have let him…” Squill’s words trailed off.

“Let him what? What are you hiding, Terrence?”

Squill turned away, his face suddenly red. “Nothing that means a goddamn thing, Sandhill.
We’re in major fucking trouble here. Concentrate on that.”

“Maybe if I knew why Duckworth hated me…”

The door opened and Sandhill fell quiet. Duckworth stepped in. He spun toilet tissue from the roll and laid it across his palm.

Sandhill said, “Ducks, you don’t want to do this.”

Duckworth reached into his pocket and produced Sandhill’s .32.

“It’s not worth it, Ducks,” Sandhill said. “You’ll never pull it off.”

Squill looked at the unfolding scene, mute, a look between fear and confusion in his eyes. Duckworth cocked the weapon.

Sandhill yelled, “No, Ducks, don’t!”

A flat crack. Terrence Squill convulsed, a bullet in his heart. His eyes went wild with terror for a count of three, by four they were turning to glass.

Smoke drizzled from Sandhill’s .32. Duckworth touched the muzzle of the weapon between Sandhill’s eyes. He laughed.

“Tommy and I were debating how to make you disappear, Sandhill. After what you said about him, I’m sure Mr Mattoon will provide a solution.”

Duckworth tossed Sandhill’s .32 behind the bathtub, then pinched out several strands of Sandhill’s hair, laying the follicles across Squill’s palm and closing the hand. Duckworth flushed the
toilet paper, then pulled the stun gun from his pocket. He bent toward Sandhill with the device in his hand. Lightning danced between the prongs with the sound of electric laughter.

Mattoon was hanging up his phone when a knock came on the door. He disengaged the lock and Atwan entered, sweat glistening on his head.

“Girl in main hold. In container. She OK.”

Mattoon nodded. “In these troublesome times it’s best to keep her hidden until open sea.” He paused. “She is sad, isn’t she, Tenzel?”

Atwan knuckled his eye sockets. “Little girl cry, cry, cry.”

“It is the final outpouring of her old life. The morning’s ceremony will bind her to the future. Joy will surely follow. There’s one more small item where I need your expertise, Tenzel. It seems a former policeman somehow pierced the edge of both the business operation and my personal life. The man is neutralized and requires fast and permanent removal. I have offered our services.”

“What ‘services’ to mean?”

“That rusty container dropped from the crane in Kingston, we still have it, do we not?”

“Captain set on dock to sell to scrapyard.”

“The policeman is arriving shortly. Secure him in the container and lift it back aboard. When we are beyond the reach of eyes…”

Atwan swung his arm like a crane boom and opened his hand. “Give him ride in submarine.”

“I couldn’t have said it better, Tenzel.”

The front door of the farmhouse was open, the screen door kicked off its hinges by someone leaving with both arms occupied. A possum scrambled from the dense weeds, scurried beneath the white van and slipped up the steps to the door, rodent nose twitching, black eyes bright as sparks. It entered the house, the only illumination from a fallen lamp in the living room. The soft light filled the spaces with shadow.

The animal padded down the hall, following a wet and feral smell as strong as its own. It froze at a moaning sound, then crept forward, sniffing toward a mountainous shape blocking the hall…

Rose Desmond’s arms were flung wide. One outflung arm was swollen, blood leaking from the palm of his hand and a wound below the bicep. In the center of his forehead, directly between his closed eyes, was a small dot of red, no larger than a dime, the spent blood pooling in his eye sockets.

The damaged arm struggled from a sticky pool of scarlet blood, the fingers quivering. Gravity pulled the arm slowly back to the floor. Rose lifted his head from the wooden slats.

“Jacy?” he whispered. “Where are you, Jacy?”

Rose moaned, a lung-shaking exhalation, and
his head dropped back into his arm spreading blood. His body convulsed twice and fell still. Eight feet away, the possum hissed and scampered back into the night.

Sandhill felt like he was in a drunken elevator, lurching and swaying as it rose. Small patches of light shone from a corner. He heard voices in the distance, and the diesel growl of heavy machinery.

Next, descent. His vision cleared. He was on his back in a semi-trailer sized metal container. The light came through small ragged holes in one side of the box, rust holes probably, with edges like torn paper. The air smelled of brine and fuel oil.

“Left, left,” a voice echoed from somewhere below. Sandhill couldn’t place the accent. Eastern Mediterranean? Slavic?

“Stop. Back. OK, down.”

A jolting slam and everything was quiet save for the sound of disengaging metal latches. Sandhill rolled to a hole in the side of the box and looked into a huge room. It made sense now. He’d been boxed in a sea/land module and lifted by crane from the dock, then lowered into a ship’s hold.

There was a harsh squeal as the container’s door opened. Sandhill discerned the outline of a powerful-looking man, bald, backlit against the light in the hold. The man flicked on a flashlight and spotlit Sandhill’s taped ankles.

“Roll,” the voice commanded. “Want see hands.”

“Where the hell am—”

A hard kick caught Sandhill in the thigh. He grunted with the pain.

“Roll now.”

Sandhill rolled. The light played across his back as the man inspected Sandhill’s handcuffed wrists and taped ankles. The container doors closed and footsteps echoed away.