Raising Cain Read online

  Davis was a lanky West Virginia boy who’d moved to the state ten years ago. His sandy hair, slow swagger, and slight drawl made him out to be a rube. But he wasn’t. He was sharp-witted and ambitious. He’d worked a dairy farm and driven an eighteen-wheeler, but those vocations hadn’t rung his bell. Then he tried law enforcement. That profession, he decided, was a keeper.

  Davis had just hit the bottom step when he encountered Brownie on the way up. “Sergeant.”

  Brownie stopped but didn’t reply. He was dressed in jeans and a denim jacket, unshaven and unkempt.

  “Sorry about your loss,” Davis said.

  Brownie glared at him through bleary eyes. “Thanks for your concern, Frank.”

  “Thought you were on leave.”

  “Does it look like I am?”

  Davis didn’t answer.

  “I’ve got work to do.” Brownie mounted a step. “Nice chatting with you.”

  Davis let him pass, then called out from behind: “Don’t worry about the case.”

  Brownie stopped and turned around. “What case?”

  “Investigation of your dad’s, uh… death.”

  Brownie grabbed the rail for support. “What are you talking about, Frank?”

  “Lieutenant gave it to me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m on it. Don’t worry.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah. Apparently there’s no quota system on cases. They decided to give the white guy a chance.”

  Brownie’s nostrils flared.

  “You’re not the only Sherlock Holmes around here.”

  Brownie wanted to rush down and deck him, but the bastard wasn’t worth it. He turned and ran up the stairs.

  “Don’t worry!” Davis yelled. “I’m on the case!”

  But Brownie had already passed through the front door on his way to see Lieutenant Harvis.

  Davis parked his squad car at the Blocktown senior center. It was almost dark, and lights were flicking on along the narrow commercial strip. In the west, the mountain range arched against the amber sky like a slate tsunami.

  Davis walked to the center and knocked. He was greeted by an elderly black gentleman and admitted into the outer hall. The man wore glasses and a hearing aid. He looked about eighty.

  “Are you Ernie Jones?” Davis asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m here about Mr. Brown.”

  Jones lowered his eyes.

  “You were with him yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What time was that?” The officer removed a pad from his breast pocket.

  “Afternoon.”

  “What time?” Davis tapped his watch.

  “Two o’clock. Round two o’clock.”

  Frank wrote it down. “And what time did you last see him?”

  “Playin’ checkers,” Ernie replied.

  “When did you stop playing checkers?” Davis raised his voice.

  “I went home ‘bout four-fifteen, four-thirty. Bus picked me up.”

  Frank took a breath. “What time did Mr. Brown leave here?”

  “Before me. We finished the last game after he left.”

  Davis wrote “Plus or minus 4:30” on the pad. “Do you know where he went?”

  Concern flickered in Ernie’s eyes. “No. I don’t know a thing about that.”

  “He went somewhere,” Davis said. “He didn’t go home.” According to his calculations, the last four hours of Joseph’s life were still unaccounted for. “You know, don’t you?”

  Ernie took a step backward. “No, sir. I don’t.”

  Davis moved toward him. “Don’t lie to me, Mr. Jones. What kind of hank-panky was he up to?”

  Ernie took another step backward. “Nothin’. He never done nothin’!”

  Frank gave him a skeptical look. The man was protesting too much. Maybe there was something here after all. The doctors insisted a heart attack had taken Old Man Brown out. But maybe Sergeant Shithead was right. Maybe there was something else involved.

  three

  Gardner entered the lab at police headquarters without knocking at seven-fifteen that evening. Lieutenant Harvis had just phoned him to say that Brownie was on the premises, so Gardner rushed right over to pay his respects.

  Brownie stood up behind his desk when he heard the door open.

  “Brownie, I’m so sorry.” Gardner grabbed his friend’s arm.

  “Gard…” Brownie touched his hand.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “No. It’s under control.”

  “You’re sure?” Gardner remembered the chaos of “arrangements” when his own father died six years ago. The details were hell.

  “I’m sure.” Brownie leaned against the desk.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Gardner said. “You should be on leave.” Brownie looked exhausted. “No. Too much to do.”

  “Brownie…” Gardner had been afraid of this. “Let’s get out of here, go up to Paul’s, have a few drinks, sort things out.”

  “No, Gard. I’ve got work to do.”

  Gardner drew a breath. The man was stubborn.

  “Phone calls to make, reports to read… and I wouldn’t be good company, not tonight.”

  “Jeez, man. I don’t give a damn if you sit there and spit beer in my face. You need to be with somebody right now. It’s not good for you to be alone, especially here.” The lab reeked of death.

  Brownie tried to smile. “Thanks for the offer, but I can’t. Not right now.”

  Gardner looked at a report on the desk. “What are you working on?”

  Brownie covered it with his hand. “A case.”

  “What case?”

  Brownie didn’t reply.

  “We need to talk about it.”

  “What?”

  “Your suspicions. Harvis told me.”

  Brownie sat down.

  “What do you think happened?”

  Brownie closed the report’s cover. “I think he was roped.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “They don’t know shit.”

  “But what did they say?”

  “Coronary.”

  “And you don’t agree.”

  Brownie looked up. “That was part of it, but not everything. Someone was with him when he went down, made the nine-one-one call on a cellular phone, disguised his voice, then disappeared. Obviously didn’t want to be identified. And Daddy had cuts on his wrists.”

  “Cuts?”

  “Ligature marks, I’m almost positive. Doctor says they were made when he fell down, but I’ve seen enough of those bastards to know what they look like.”

  Gardner crossed his arms. Brownie did know the difference between a fall-down abrasion and a rope burn. “But who?” he finally said. “Who would hurt Joseph?” Nobody from Blocktown, certainly.

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Do you have any leads, any evidence?”

  Brownie lowered his head.

  “What do you have?”

  Brownie’s eyes came up. “Nothing… yet.”

  Gardner felt a chill. “Take it slow, Brownie.” A bereaved cop with an itchy trigger finger could be dangerous. “Let the department handle it.”

  Brownie clenched his teeth. “You mean Davis, the hillbilly pinhead?”

  “I asked Harvis to assign someone else.”

  “But he didn’t do it, did he?”

  Gardner shook his head.

  “They don’t fuckin’ believe me. That’s why they assigned Davis. They think I’m overreacting, that there’s nothing there.”

  “But you just admitted that you don’t have any evidence.”

  “This isn’t about evidence, Gard.” Brownie thumped his chest with a fist. “This is about my instinct, my feeling. I don’t just think there’s something wrong here; I know it.”

  Gardner went silent. If Brownie’s instincts could be patented and bottled, they’d both be billionaires. His instincts were
uncanny and most times on the money. But they still needed proof. “You’re too close right now,” Gardner said finally. “You’ve just taken a hell of a hit. You can’t be objective. You have to let it go for a while.”

  Brownie stood up. “I’m not going to allow Frank Davis or anybody else to tell me how Daddy died. I’m going to find out for myself. With or without your permission!”

  “Take it easy,” Gardner cautioned.

  “I can’t. Please try and understand. Someone killed my old man!” His voice cracked and his jaw trembled.

  Gardner grabbed him in a hug. “Let it go, for God’s sake, let it go.”

  Brownie tried to pull away, but Gardner held him tight. And then the facade cracked, and the anguish poured out.

  Thomas Ruth drove his car out of the quarry gate and turned west, toward the secluded spot on the ridge where he could park and communicate in privacy. He felt tired. The snake routine had gotten him charged up, but then there was the depressing slide from elation into darkness later. Last night he’d gotten a real buzz. But then came the pounding in his head that lasted until dawn. He’d spent most of the day sleeping it off, and now, at evening, he felt a little better.

  The countryside swelled from the lowland to the mountaintop. It was mostly rocky farmland and groves of trees stippled with dusty turnoffs that led nowhere. After six months out here, he really knew the terrain. Every boulder, every tree: he knew them all.

  Ruth checked the rearview mirror for traffic and caught a glimpse of himself in the glass. There were dark rings under his eyes. He smoothed his hair and looked away. It was finally catching up with him. There were too many bodies, too much pain. His eyes had seen too much. Armageddon, the fall of empires, the slaughter of innocents. Enough blood to fill a sea.

  The road was clear, no headlights in either direction. Ruth turned off between two tall pines onto a hard-packed dirt road, and soon the car was surrounded by timber. He drove slowly until the vehicle nosed out into a clearing. He released the accelerator and tapped the brake. The car stopped a few feet from the rim of a five-hundred-foot cliff.

  Ruth shut off the engine and lights and leaned back in the seat. The sky to the east was black. At this elevation there was no horizon. Heaven and earth blended together, and there was no difference between the dots of light that were stars and the ones that were electric. From this perspective they were all the same: torches in the night.

  Ruth savored the solitude. There was too much noise at the camp, there were too many people. Silence was better.

  He unlocked the glove compartment and removed a cellular phone. It chimed as the numbers were keyed in.

  After four rings there was an answer. “This is the voice of truth,” he said to the person on the other end.

  “How is it going?”

  “It goes.”

  “How are you feeling tonight?”

  “Physically or spiritually?”

  “Don’t fuck around. Are you all right?”

  “I live.”

  “Are you taking your medicine?”

  “As the lamb doth suckle the ewe.”

  “Cut the bullshit. Are you popping your pills?”

  “Yes, master.”

  “How’s your supply?”

  Ruth reached into his pocket, grabbed a plastic bottle, and rattled it. “The coffers are full.”

  “When you need more, let me know.”

  “As you wish.”

  “It’s not as I wish. You have to stick with the program. Six a day. Every day.“

  “I know.”

  “It’s almost time for a cash drop. You know what to do.”

  “Yes, of course, my Savior.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  Ruth didn’t respond.

  “Hey! What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I grow tired….”

  “Well, drink some coffee and take your pills. We’ve got work to do.”

  “Thy will be done.”

  They talked some more, and finally Ruth pushed “end” on the phone unit. Contact points, cash drops, pill supplies. It was all so familiar, yet so strange. When he talked, there was another person talking. When he listened, no one was there. Ruth’s head pounded, and the screams began again, the anguish of the dead, wailing beneath his skin. He jammed a capsule into his mouth and swallowed it dry. Then he put his hands over his ears, lay back against the seat, and tried to focus on the shimmering lights that began at the base of the cliff and went on forever.

  Frank Davis was on the move. He’d worked the Joseph Brown case all day, interviewing the other feeble minds at the senior center who’d had contact with the deceased the day he passed from the earth. Except for the time out with Sergeant Brown at the station, he’d hardly had a break. Now his squad car was parked outside the center again.

  This was the hardest he’d ever worked on anything. But this case was the big one. If he could solve it, he’d move up the ladder. And Brown would have to eat his dust.

  Davis drove his car slowly up Mountain Road, past the center. Every checkers player there had sung the same tune: Joseph was a saint who never strayed from the straight and narrow. He didn’t smoke, he didn’t chew, and he didn’t mess with the girls who do. But the hospital records revealed that the “saint” had a blood-alcohol content of 0.14 percent at the time he died. And that was sinner’s level: legally drunk.

  It was dark now, after eight-thirty. Davis panned his spotlight up and down the side of the road. How far could Joseph have walked after checkers? Alcohol was forbidden at the center, and his house was dry according to his wife. To run the BAC level up that high, he must have consumed the liquor just before he started down the trail. But there were no taverns in the area, or liquor stores, either.

  Davis was approaching Shantyville, a short strip of abandoned migrant worker shacks. When the tobacco industry left town a decade ago, the workers did, too. The county had planned to tear the shacks down, but there was never enough money in the budget. He dimmed his headlights and switched off the search beam. Everything seemed quiet. He lowered his window. A dog barked in the distance, and a car went by. But Shantyville didn’t stir.

  Suddenly he saw a reflection in one of the cracked windowpanes, a light that flared and went out. He turned off the engine and exited the cruiser.

  There were two rows of shacks, one along the road, the other behind. The light he’d seen had come from the second tier.

  Davis gripped his flashlight and moved cautiously toward his target, stepping over rusted cans and discarded tires as he went.

  He moved into place beside the door of the last shack in the row. It looked sturdier and in better repair than the others. And there were footprints in the dust around the porch.

  Davis clicked on the light and put his hand on his service revolver, but didn’t unholster it. “County police,” he called. “If there’s anyone inside, come out!”

  Silence.

  “This is the police!” he repeated. “Come out!”

  The door opened slowly. “Okay,” a female voice called, “I’m coming out. Please don’t shoot!”

  Davis shone his light in the face of a young black woman.

  “I’m not doing anything wrong,” she protested.

  Davis directed the beam inside the shed. It was set up with a cot, a camper’s stove, tables, and chairs.

  “I live here,” she said. “That’s not a crime.”

  “Stand over there, keep your hands up, and your mouth shut!” Davis barked.

  The woman padded out into the dust in her bare feet.

  “Is there anyone else inside?”

  “No.”

  “There’d better not be.” Frank raised his weapon in the ready position and stepped into the shed. There was a sharp odor of burned food in the air.

  “I’m getting cold,” the woman said.

  “Keep quiet!” Davis was busy surveying the room. The light landed on a bottle of rum by the sink. He looked closer and saw that it
was almost empty.

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a picture of Joseph Brown, and stepped back outside.

  “Ever see this man before?” He shoved the picture into her face. The woman didn’t react.

  “If you know him, you’d better fuckin’ tell me. The son of a bitch is dead.” Davis shone his light on the photo.

  The woman looked at the picture and closed her eyes. And then she shook her head and began to cry.

  Joseph Brown lay on a table at the medical examiner’s office, awaiting autopsy. There had been a delay after the body came in because none of the pathologists wanted to open him up. They all knew Brownie and couldn’t face the task. A replacement had to be called in, and now, at 8:45 P.M., he was ready to go.

  Dr. Anthony Bellini stood at the head of the aluminum trough and dictated into a suspended microphone. He was thirty-eight and handsome, with curly black hair and a square jaw.

  “The body is that of a well-nourished African-American male,” Bellini said, “younger in appearance than seventy-six years.” He placed a latex-gloved finger in Joseph’s mouth. “Teeth are all natural, and in good condition.” He shone a light inside. “Palate normal. Throat clear.” He rolled back the eyelids. “Pupils normal and dilated, irises clear.”

  Bellini proceeded down the body, noting his findings: “Clear.” “Unremarkable.” “Normal.”

  He picked up a wrist. “Small abrasion on the under portion of the right wrist.” He placed a ruler next to it. “Approximately seven centimeters in length. Straight line cut, with serrations on each side.” Bellini adjusted his headband magnifier and bent close to the arm. “Several fibers embedded in the wound.” He picked up a pair of forceps and carefully extracted the tiny hairlike strands. “Samples removed for analysis.” He placed them on glass slides and sealed the slides in plastic.

  “Similar markings on the left wrist,” Bellini continued. “Four-and-one-half-centimeter abrasion, uneven edges, and…”—he eyed the wound through his magnifier—“similar fibers affixed.” Again he removed samples.

  Continuing down the body, Bellini found no other marks or wounds. Everything was “clear,” “normal,” or “unremarkable.”