Karen G. Berry - Mayhem 01 - Love and Mayhem Read online

  She breathed deep, getting a lungful of creosote for her troubles. And then, into the void of her drawn breath came a noise. A high tone, a musical wail, the spiraling shriek of imminent death made by a jet sucked out of the sky and on its way to oblivion, the engines singing a suicide song while every passenger screamed to God for mercy. Beauty and terror. It swirled round her head in echoing chorus, a call, a cacophony, love and mayhem and hatred and blood. The sounds of hellfire and wrath.

  “I don’t believe in Hell,” she said out loud as her vision greyed. “I don’t.”

  Anyone who saw her fall would have called it graceful, how she sank to her knees and onto her side, her long fingers curled up gently into her palms. But no one saw it. Raven was out cold.

  Around her, the Park was still.

  SHE WOKE IN a panic. A jackhammer headache pounded behind her eyes from that demon-noise or hell-song or whatever it was, but at least that noise was gone, that song from Hell or whatever it had been. She sprang up, boots hitting the blacktop, turning like a top to find her direction. She wanted to get to her rig. That was all she wanted, to get to her rig. Her rig was safe, and if she had to stack her family up in it like firewood to keep them safe with her, she would.

  She would do whatever she had to.

  The rig was parked by Levi Skinner’s. She made herself remember where that was, where she should go. She’d do that first, that one thing, find her rig. And then she’d do the next damn thing, whatever the hell that might turn out to be. As she approached the ugly lump in the road, she was focused on getting around it, not what it might be. It was a lump. It was an obstacle.

  It was the Reverend.

  He was preaching to the pavement, facedown, arms spread, the moon shining off the white topstitching of his royal-blue polyester suit. It was only a matter of time until a Park resident rolled down the street and mistook the Reverend for a Dacron-clad speed bump. She didn’t mind the idea of the Reverend checking out, but the impact would send the driver through the windshield and send a perfectly nice truck to the body shop. Might even bend the frame.

  She pushed him with her boot and stepped back instinctively, expecting a grab at her ankle. “Hank Heaven! Wake up!” He didn’t move. She gritted her teeth and grabbed his humped shoulders and rolled him over. She expected to see that leering set of false white teeth flash up at her.

  His teeth were not catching the light. Like the rest of the Reverend’s face, they were beaten in, flattened, unrecognizable under a thick layer of congealing blood.

  THREE SILENT SHERIFF’S cars showed up within minutes. Memphis LaCour, Sheriff of Ochre River County and uncle to a certain Raven LaCour, made a quick call to dispatch. “I have a 10-57 here at the Park. I need a 10-79. Over.” He unfolded his long body from his car. That was something of a process. He was close to 6’-5” and every bit as handsome as his younger brother, though Tender had slightly lighter skin and a very handsome and well-tended mustache. His grey eyes swept the scene as he spoke out in a melodious baritone.

  “Could you gentlemen cut some of these lights? This is not the Grand Ole Opry. Thank you.” With a flashlight, he took a better look, wincing at the pile of gore that used to be the Reverend’s face. “You moved him?”

  Raven barely shrugged. “I turned him over.”

  “He was on his face?”

  “What’s left of it. I rolled him over, then went to my rig to call for help, and then I came back here and waited for the circus to come to town.”

  “Very funny, Raven.” As the crime scene came to life, five men with instrument cases walked past in the dark. Any other resident of the park would have stopped, gawked, started hollering for folks to come on out and see what had happened to the Reverend. But the five men from Bone Pile didn’t slow, or even stare. They walked on past toward Space 13 while Memphis watched their unconcerned backs. The deputies’ men made a ring within the ring of cars, guarding the corpse from eyes that thankfully, didn’t hold any interest at all for the doings of the Law.

  Nothing suspicious there. Bone Pile men wanted nothing to do with the law. But Memphis knew it was only a matter of minutes before another Park resident stepped out have one last smoke before bed. “Hiram, go find Gator Rollins.” Memphis spoke slowly to Hiram Tyson, since he was a Tyson, after all. “Check the bar and the Reverend’s trailer. When you find him, call me. I’ll tell you what to do next.”

  Hiram shuffled off with a “Yessir, Sheriff.”

  Memphis turned to the deputy he trusted most and spoke softly. “Garth? Those boys from Bone Pile? I want you to go over there and sit there with them in Space 13.”

  Garth’s boyish face registered his disgust at this idea. “Sit with ’em? You mean, indoors?”

  “Yes, indoors. I don’t want them on the phone, the CB, anything. Just sit there with them. Don’t let them talk to anybody.” His radio crackled and he turned it down before talking on it.

  “Sheriff, I got a 10-89 here.”

  Memphis took a quiet breath. “You have a bomb threat, Hiram?”

  “No sir, I got a. You know. A 10… something. A 10-22? I got Gator here.”

  “That’s a 10-95, Hiram. I want you to take him on in, then.”

  “Arrest him?”

  “No, just detain him for questioning. But go ahead and cuff him up real tight. And let’s just forego the codes for now, Hiram.”

  “All right, Sheriff.”

  The coroner arrived next, and he got right to work measuring, scraping, and talking to himself. His mutters were the only noise above the sound of a few trucks on the highway, the bark of a dog or two. But his work was fast. By one-thirty, what remained of the Right Reverend Henry Heaven was a rusty smear.

  Raven waited beside him, as silent as her father, his brother. Memphis studied her under the bright moon. She was a pale hat over a dark shadow, bare arms and long legs and that shining, branching scar tracing the side of her face like a river delta. He had never known quite what to make of this young woman, his family by blood, a stranger in every other way.

  “Raven? We need to talk about the Reverend.”

  Raven had her father’s silver eyes. His niece was capable of looks so icy that a man’s future generations might retreat right up into his abdomen.

  “RAVEN, I’M JUST clarifying things, here.” Memphis had been sitting with his niece for most of an hour. That was his duty, to find out who was at the bar and who wasn’t.

  “I gave you what I got. And why, why didn’t you tell me Gator Rollins was here?”

  Memphis removed his hat and rubbed his eyeballs hard enough to possibly cause retinal damage. He had no good answer for her, so he didn’t even try. He replaced his hat and smoothed his mustache. “Why don’t you get some sleep. And don’t get it in your head to leave the area. You’re a person of interest in this case.”

  She lay her hands on the wheel as if she’d be leaving the moment he exited the cab.

  MEMPHIS GOT IN his car and drove the two blocks to the Reverend’s trailer. As far as a clue, Memphis found nothing in his quick tour of the singlewide. Ancient, clean and bare, with foam-back drapes pulled tight and the AC unit turned up high. The noise from its compressor must have been hitting seventy decibels, making shouting a necessity. Two Lazy-Boys and one small sofa in the living room. The television left on to 24-hour religious channel. There were a few boxes of Bibles stacked in the spare bedroom, and a framed piece of sheet music signed by Chet Atkins hanging over the commode. The Reverend drank instant coffee, ate from paper plates and kept every suit he’d ever owned hanging in a closet. Each of the two bedrooms contained a double bed made up with white sheets and a navy blue corded bedspread. It reminded Memphis of a motel. He went through the solitary suitcase Gator had stashed at the Reverend’s. No weapons, drugs, pornography, nothing. Not a family photo or a personal letter from home. Just some spare clothes, a shaving kit. Gator had a nice Fender guitar.

  He put up some yellow tape and left the rest of it to the county.
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  According to his watch, it was after closing at the Blue Moon Tap Room. Beau was pretty punctual about that. The bar would be empty. A good time to ask questions.

  He exited his vehicle with dignity after driving the five blocks to the Blue Moon Tap Room, where he stalked around the parking lot on his long legs, peering at the dirt and gravel. He hoped for blood, carnage and the like, but he would have settled for a place where a pair of boot heels had dug themselves into the ground in resistance, or a place where the ground looked like a man had rolled, twisting away from blows. It just looked like a bunch of dirt and gravel, disarranged from the ins and outs of the night’s traffic.

  Some heavy pounding brought Beau to the back door of the bar. “Sorry if I woke you, Beau.”

  Beau’s face wore an alarmed expression familiar to the sheriff from many late nights of knocking on doors to deliver bad news. “Not a problem, Memphis.” Beau swallowed hard. “Is it Old Beau?”

  “No, no. As far as I know, Old Beau is fine. He was out in the yard wagging his tail yesterday.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. Word is, she’s spoiling him, taking him to a professional groomer’s and giving him ice cream. Truth is, she treats my dog better than she ever treated me.” Beau’s alimony payments were so high that he slept in his back storeroom on a cot. The last Mrs. Neely currently had possession of Beau’s truck, his bank account, and his trailer in Space 21 on Faded Love Lane. She’d kept it all: the truck, the big screen TV, the chest freezer. She’d even kept his dog, Old Beau.

  Memphis looked at Beau. “Beau, there has been a death. The Right Reverend Henry Heaven.”

  Beau whistled. “Are you serious? The Reverend? How?”

  “He was probably run over. It was pretty ugly.”

  “Well, alive he wasn’t all that pretty.” He walked behind the bar, poured himself a shot and drained it down. “Seltzer and lime?”

  “Thank you.” Memphis was parched, and the bite and tang of seltzer helped, though a ginger ale would have tasted wonderful. But he avoided sugar as scrupulously as he avoided alcohol and white women. He carefully wiped his mustache. “According to my niece, the Reverend was up here last night.”

  Beau rubbed his eyes, remembering. “It wasn’t that late. He was up here talking to Gator Rollins and some boys from Bone Pile, and then he left right about the time Raven got here.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Around ten. But Gator and the boys stayed. They set up and played. They sounded damn good, Memphis. Damn good. I think they might take the talent show.”

  “And Gator was here the whole time?”

  “He was. He was playing with those Bone Pilers.”

  “Anyone else might be able to verify that?”

  “The usual suspects. Jeeter Tyson, probably.”

  “Jeeter?” Jeeter was maybe the dumbest man in the park, and he only won the honor because his brother, Deputy Hiram Tyson, lived in Ochre Water. Memphis wondered how the Tyson family had managed to pass on the family name. The Tyson men crawled up on their trailer roofs and adjusted aerial antennas during thunderstorms. They walked across the highway in the middle of the night while drunk. They jacked up cars and crawled under the chassis without setting the emergency brakes. Jeeter had nearly killed himself by using an electric shaver while sitting in the bathtub. Memphis wasn’t excited about the idea of trying to get any information out of Jeeter. “Anyone else?”

  “Well, Quentin Romaine was in here, blowing off steam about unemployment among decent white Americans. He was trying hard to get the men riled up to go out and hunt Mexicans.”

  “You’ll call me if that ever sounds serious?”

  “If a time comes when it seems he might actually have a taker on that redneck vigilante border patrol idea of his, I’ll call you, Memphis.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate that.” Memphis knew that ragged Mexicans moved silently around their community every day and every night. He knew they stole and carried drugs and upset the community. He knew the Border Patrol was understaffed and under-budgeted. He also knew that whatever the answer was, it wasn’t some dimwit like Quentin Romaine roaming the desert with a shotgun, a flashlight, and a pair of inbred bloodhounds, hunting those desperate people for sport.

  “Well, Memphis, there’s one thing more. I hate to tell you this, but…”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, yesterday afternoon, the Reverend had a few words with your brother about a certain lady. It was just a little charged, there, for a moment. But then, your brother left before it got too ugly.”

  “My brother is not under suspicion of killing anyone, Beau.”

  “Oh, I know, but there might be talk.”

  “There’s always talk.”

  Beau, known for his personal fondness for such talk, nodded. “Say, you and Tender given any thought to joining us for the talent show?”

  “We’ll be there, I’m sure, but in the audience, not onstage.”

  “A shame, that. The more acts we have, the bigger the prize. Plus there’ll be a talent scout from Nashville here. And I’d like to see that old trick you did.”

  “Which one is that?”

  “I hear you’d toss your instruments to each other, mid-song, and never miss a beat.”

  “Well, we were twenty and seventeen when we came up with that one. I think we’d miss more than a beat if we tried that after all these years.”

  “I’d love to see you try.”

  “Those days are over, Beau.”

  “Well, you think about it. As it stands, you understand that Gator will win.”

  “If he wins, he wins. I have one other question. My brother never drinks anything alcoholic, does he?”

  “Seltzer and lime, or iced tea with lemon.” Beau shook his head. “I have too many teetotalers in this bar. This is a bar, not a soda fountain.”

  Memphis looked down at his seltzer and nodded.

  “Beau?” A very young and very sleepy female voice came from the back room. “I’m about falling asleep. Are you coming back to bed?”

  “In a minute, sweetheart.” He looked back with equal parts apology and self-congratulation playing on his lined face. “I better get back there before my luck runs out.”

  Memphis cleared his throat. “Well. Good night, Beau.”

  “Night, Sheriff. And pat Old Beau for me, would you? She says she’ll take out a restraining order if I go near him.”

  Memphis nodded, wondering about that back room, who waited, warm and young and welcoming.

  He shook his head and returned to his car.

  FORENSICS WOULD NEVER replace good common sense, thought Memphis as he took one last look around the parking lot. When he got back in the cruiser, Garth was on the radio. Memphis could hear fiddling in the background, and a few whoops. “Sheriff, how long do I have to stay here?”

  “As long as I need you to.”

  “You should smell the inside of this place.”

  “Open a window and stay there. That’s an order.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Sunday:

  just after midnight

  RHONDALEE HOPPED AROUND the kitchen in her robe, wild-eyed. “So you’re telling me that the Reverend left here in an ambulance?!”

  Common sense, prayed Memphis. Please, God in Heaven, send this woman a little common sense. “Well, the Reverend left in an official vehicle, Rhondalee.” Memphis wasn’t ready to divulge the complete truth to her. “He wasn’t in any shape to walk.”

  “He’s been assaulted?”

  “That’s police business.”

  “I don’t see why you won’t just tell us what’s going ON!”

  “I will in due time.”

  “I deserve to know NOW! I can’t BELIEVE this!” Memphis was transfixed by the herky-jerky dance of Rhondalee LaCour, his sister-in-law, his niece’s mother, grandmother to his beloved great-niece Annie Leigh, his brother Tender’s partner in trailer park management. “I am the manager! This is my husband! You are
my brother-in-law!” she hollered, her arms slicing the air, her head bobbing.

  “I’m not disrespecting you, Rhondalee. But I need some information. And I was hoping you could help me.”

  Tender shot his wife a pleading look from under the bill of the John Deere cap he wore. “Rhondy, could you just tell Memphis what he needs to know and not make a scene of it?”

  Rhondalee turned her angry little eyes from one man to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Her unhappiness hung damply around her like a load of dingy bed sheets weighing down a clothesline.

  Memphis stroked down his mustache and gave her a smile. “Rhondalee? I’m counting on you.”

  Rhondalee looked at his eyes. His eyes had always calmed her down and Tender’s had always riled her up, because Memphis had grey eyes, but Tender’s were quicksilver. “Well, Memphis, back in the day, he was somewhat of a wild one. I mean, I know he had Jesus in his heart, but he seemed to have quite a bit of the Devil in him elsewhere.”

  “That’s what I keep hearing. But what about lately?”

  “We talk when he comes by to pay his rent after church on Sunday. He’s a true man of God, now. He’s given up that Mormonism and got things square with the Lord.”

  “No drinking. No philandering.”

  “Oh no. He won’t go NEAR that woman next door. If he did, I think I’d have killed him myself.”

  Memphis’s eyebrows shot north. “Is that right, now?”

  “Oh for heaven’s sakes, that was just a figure eight of speech. Do you think I did it? Do you think I assaulted him?”

  Memphis, who of course had never even entertained such a possibility, watched her pumping fists and wondered if indeed, the old girl had it in her. “Of course not. But I thought as manager and publisher of the community newsletter, you might have some information or insight.”

  “Well.” Flattery always worked with Rhondalee. And the community newsletter was her pet project, a place where her ability to ferret out information paid off in inches of print devoted to happenings that were none of her business. “I was real busy, yesterday, I was setting up for the community meeting up at the Clubhouse.”