Chapter 13
“Forgive me. I’m not following.”
“I’ve got the bastard what’s been nailing up these freakshows.” Again, raising and waggling his phone.
I stared at Slidell.
He looked at me with what might or might not have been a smile.
“Jordan Allen Bright,” he said. “Goes by Jax.”
“Better than Jab.”
“What?”
“Forget it.” My mind had gone to Bright’s initials.
I waited for Slidell to elaborate.
“Bright has a nasty habit of wagging his weinee at kids.”
“So do dozens of other creeps. What makes you think—”
“This creep lives smack in the center of our rainbow overlap. And—you ready for this?”
Hating Slidell’s guessing games, I circled a wrist.
“The guy’s a vet tech.”
“Which gives him access to animals.”
“Bingo.”
I considered the implications.
“You tell an owner that his dog or cat didn’t make it, or that the animal has to be put down, then offer humane disposal of the remains,” I said. “You return an urn full of ashes, keep the pet, and do what you want.”
“Pretty cold, eh?”
“Glacial.”
“You up for a surprise drop-in on this blight?”
I got to my feet and grabbed my purse.
Bright. Blight.
Not bad, Skinny.
The Cherry neighborhood, historically Black, lies about a mile southeast of Uptown. The area has caught on in recent years, like Elizabeth and Dilworth benefiting from its proximity to the city center.
Unfortunately, Bright’s street hadn’t hitched a ride on the gentrification train.
Enormous elms lined both sides, keeping everything beneath them in perpetual shade.
The homes were small and single-storied, some with detached garages, all fronted by tiny sun-challenged yards.
Most were frame. A few were brick. All looked tired and discouraged.
Bright’s house was a yellow bungalow whose foundation hosted thriving colonies of algae and mold. Dingy white trim. Gray door. Tiny front porch surrounded by wrought-iron railing painted to match the door.
Following Slidell up the mud-coated walkway, I heard music playing somewhere inside. Jazz piano. Maybe Thelonious Monk.
Slidell paused for a moment, then knocked.
A dog barked, high and frenzied.
No human responded.
Slidell knocked again, louder.
The music stopped but still no one appeared.
“CMPD, Mr. Bright. We need to talk to you.”
Hearing Slidell’s voice, the dog went batshit. Its paws made soft thupping sounds as it jumped up and dropped back to the floor.
“Easy, Millie.” Though muted, I could tell that the voice was male.
Millie paid no attention and kept on yapping.
“Millie! Shut the freak up!”
Millie stopped in mid-yap with a sharp expulsion of breath. Locks snicked, and the door opened.
Bright was pale, baggy-eyed, and disheveled. His shorts were cutoff sweats. His dingy white tee was stretched to its full tensile capacity across a frame not yet obese but poised on the edge.
Millie eyed us from a position of safety tucked under Bright’s right arm.
I wouldn’t say she was the ugliest dog I’d ever seen.
But she was a contender. Her eyes were simultaneously beady and bulging, her snout unnaturally long and pointed.
She may have come from a gene pool involving long-haired chihuahuas but could easily have passed as a rat.
Bright took in the scene with a slow five-second sweep. Slidell. Me. The Trailblazer parked on his drive.
“What’s up, officer?”
“It’s Detective. You Jordan Allen Bright?”
“Oh, my God. Here we go again.”
“You Bright?”
“What? Did some child go missing in Outer Mongolia?” Then, to Millie, “Have the police nothing better to do than harass honest citizens who’ve paid their debt?”
“I’ll bet you was honest with that kid you groped at the A&W.”
“Oh, my freakin’ lord. That was eight years ago.” To Millie. “Eight years!”
Millie rendered no opinion.
“I know you’re real busy these days squeezing puppy glands and all, but we’re hoping you got a minute to do your civic duty.”
“Actually, I was—”
“You got a minute.” A statement, not a question.
“Of course.” Bright stepped back, Millie squirming and whining in his grasp. “Please, come in.”
We followed Bright through a foyer into a parlor, both floored in linoleum trying to look like oak. Gesturing us to a sofa draped with dog hair–coated red wool blankets, he dropped into a chair opposite.
I sat, already planning a trip to the dry cleaner. Slidell remained standing. Millie settled on her master’s lap.
Propping his chin on one hand, Bright assumed an expression of bored tolerance.
Millie watched us warily, growling low in her throat.
“Don’t bite the nice policemen,” Bright said, stroking the dog’s head. “We may need to cite them for harassment.”
“You’re a real cocky guy.” Slidell’s voice had that edge.
“I try. Look, detective, I get it. I’m registered. Give me the date of the current incident. I’ll tell you where I was, and you can be on your way.”
Cocky doesn’t play well with Slidell. Seeing color blossoming in both his cheeks, I spoke up.
“We’re looking into a series of pet disappearances.” I left it at that.
“What in the world does that have to do with me?”
I explained the decorated remains. Bear’s killing and beheading. The missing body parts. Kumar’s suspicion that the displays had a sexual component. All the while watching for a reaction.
“Ghastly.” Accompanied by a theatrical shudder. “But getting it on with dead animals is not my thing.”
Either Bright was a world-class actor, or the man was genuinely not involved in what I’d described.
“The pattern fit the bill for any of your pals?” Slidell asked.
“I don’t have ‘pals,’ detective.” Digging into a pocket, Bright withdrew a treat and offered it to his dog.
Slidell cut me a sidelong glance. I knew the message. While he continued the interview, I looked around.
Saw nothing amiss.
Except the dreadful décor.
We’d just buckled our seat belts when Slidell’s mobile buzzed. He pressed it to his ear, effectively muffling the caller’s voice.
“Yo.”
Skinny listened, face revealing nothing.
“How long ago?”
Pause.
“Which one?”
Longer pause.
“You’ve contacted next of kin?”
A few more exchanges, monosyllabic on Slidell’s part, then he disconnected.
Perhaps to annoy me, perhaps digesting what he’d just learned, Slidell said nothing until we’d gone several blocks.
“That was your boss,” Skinny finally piped up.
“Dr. Nguyen?”
“No. The head of MI5.”
I bit back a snarky reply.
“She’s got a possible ID on the remains dumped at the tree.”
“Oh?”
“Eleanor Godric.”
“What’s the bio-profile?”
“White female, age forty-seven, short, maybe five-two.”
“That fits.”
Slidell turned from East 4th Street onto Queens Road.
“Cause of death?” I asked.
“Don’t really matter.”
“What? Why?”
“Godric died of natural causes. Something to do with her liver.”
“When?” I queried. Jesus. I felt like I was playing twenty questions.
“Eighteen months ago.”
I understood where this was going. “Her remains were stolen from a cemetery?” I ventured. I’d suspected as much when first eyeballing the corpse.
“Give the lady a—”
“Which one?” I asked. Just curious. The grave’s location didn’t really matter.
“I got people looking into that.”
“How does someone pull that off? Don’t graveyards have cameras?”
“Either our doer’s real crafty, or their security is shit.”
“Do you think—”
“I said I got someone working it.”
Alrighty then.
I glanced at my phone, still on silent mode.
Four calls. All from Ruthie.
Digits on the screen indicated the time was five twenty-nine.
“Crap! I’ve got to pick up my niece.”
“Don’t streak your undies. The kid won’t mind waiting a few minutes.”
My ex, Janis “Pete” Petersons, still lives in the home we purchased early in our marriage, a two-story frame affair in an unrelentingly family-friendly hood in southeast Charlotte.
Over the years, he hasn’t done a thing to change the layout or appearance of the house.
Same Williamsburg-themed siding, shutters, and front door.
Same double-car garage. Same overgrown half acre of fenced backyard.
I find the setup an odd choice for an attractive, single man closing out half a century of life. But then my ex is an odd guy. Witty. Sexy. Generous. Pete is a rockstar father, but made a lousy husband. Too much of the “sexy” generously shared with others.
Pete claims he stays put because of his dog. Boyd is an enormous Chow with spikey red-brown fur, scary teeth, and the gentleness and patience of a Sunday school teacher.
Rush-hour traffic was brutal. It was going on six when I finally pulled onto Pete’s drive.
Slidell was wrong. The kid did mind.
Ruthie was sitting on the front stoop, looking tense and on edge, thumbing the screen of her mobile with irritated jabs.
“You said you’d come as soon as I called,” she said, chucking her shoulder bag onto the floor and herself into the passenger seat of my car. “Uncle Pete left thirty minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry.” There it was again.
“I rang you four times.”
“I silence my phone while working.”
“I was about to call an Uber.”
Why didn’t you?
I didn’t say it.
“What would you like for dinner?” Big smile.
“Food.”
Easy, Brennan.
“Does Greek sound good?”
“Whatever.”
We rode the rest of the way in prickly non-conversation mode, Ruthie working her phone, me focusing on traffic.
A quick stop at the Mad Greek and we were home by seven.
I put the bag holding our gyros on the kitchen table, added plates, napkins, and utensils. Got two cans of LaCroix sparkling water from the fridge and set one at each place.
Ruthie’s hunger overrode her inclination to pout.
We were eating in relatively amiable silence when my iPhone rang. Retrieving the device form the counter, and noticing Slidell’s number displayed on the screen, I clicked on.
“You somewhere you can talk?”
“Hold on.”
Mouthing “sorry,” I pushed through the swinging door into the dining room.
Ruthie glanced up at me but didn’t respond.
“Okay,” I said.
“Timeless Peace,” Slidell said.
It took me a moment to make the mental bridge.
“The cemetery from which Godric’s body was snatched.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the one on Central Avenue?”
“Yeah.”
“Is Timeless Peace one of those operated by the city?”
“Negative. It’s private.”
“When do the owners think the body was taken?”
“Sometime last week.”
“Did they report it?”
“They were unaware of the situation until yesterday. Like I suspected, their security is shit.”
We spoke a few more moments, then disconnected.
I returned to the kitchen.
Looked around in shock.
Ruthie was gone.