Sand Sharks

CHAPTER

23

To be learned in the law (jurisprudentia) is the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of the just and the unjust.

—Ulpian (ca. AD 170–228)

DETECTIVE ANDY WALL (TUESDAY AFTERNOON, JUNE

17)

Using his car’s GPS system and the address Kyle Armstrong’s aunt had given him, Andy Wall navigated the narrow roads that branched away from River Road, deeper into a swampy area of Brunswick County, and turned at last into a rutted drive that curved through a tunnel of live oaks and yaupon made even darker by the rain clouds overhead. The branches scraped along the side of the car and made him wince for the paint job.

If the GPS had not sounded so sure of itself when it said “Arrive at destination on right,” he would have backed out and tried somewhere else. Eventually the tunnel opened up into sky and water and a grassy yard in bad need of mowing, and he caught his breath. This was exactly the sort of lot he hoped to buy when he retired next spring: isolated, no near neighbors, on the Intracoastal Waterway so that his boat would have easy access to the Atlantic, yet sheltered from the worst of hurricanes and high water by one of the barrier islands.

A single-wide house trailer sat squarely in the middle of the yard and was shaded by five or six live oaks. If this were his lot, though, his first act of ownership would be to tow that trailer to the nearest landfill. There was a burn barrel off to the side, but trash was everywhere—cans, plastic bottles, sodden cardboard boxes, fast-food cartons. Dozens of flimsy plastic bags had caught in the bushes around the edges of the yard, and the trailer itself had a forlorn dilapidated air of neglect. The storm door had either fallen or been torn off its hinges and now stood propped against the side, a couple of screens lay on the ground, and one broken window had been patched with duct tape.

No red Geo. No car of any kind and no sign of life.

He drove across the yard, following faint signs of car ruts right up to the door, where he rolled down his window and blew his horn.

No response, but at least he was on the leeward side of the wind so that rain did not beat in on him.

He blew the horn again and this time he leaned on it for a full thirty seconds. Out on the waterway, a hundred or so feet away, a huge white yacht sounded its own horn as it passed, evidently thinking the detective’s land blast was some sort of greeting.

Wall waited till the yacht had moved out of sight, then blew his horn again. At last the door cracked open and a gray-faced woman peered out at him with bleary eyes. Mrs. Rudd had told him that her daughter was the same age as Kyle Armstrong.

Twenty-six.

This woman looked to be at least forty.

“Ms. Rudd?” he called. “Ms. Audrey Rudd?”

“Yeah. Who’re you? Mama send you? You got somethin’ for me?”

As he got out of the car and started up the shallow wooden steps, she drew back and began to close the door. He quickly pulled out his badge. “Detective Wall, Ms. Rudd. I need to ask you some questions about your cousin. Kyle Armstrong.”

“Kyle? What about him?”

“Could I come in and talk to you a minute?”

She shook her head. “No, you don’ wanna come in here.”

From the odor of stale bourbon and general decay that met his nose, he was ready to agree with her. There was an overhang above the door. Too small to be called a proper porch roof, it did keep the worst of the rain off and he decided it was better to get a little wet than to have his clothes permeated with a smell it would take dry cleaning to get rid of.

“Can you tell me when you last saw your cousin, Ms. Rudd?”

She looked at him blankly. “He’s not here.”

“I know, but he was here this weekend, right?”

“Mama give you some money to give me?” With dirty fingernails she scratched at her scalp and her unbuttoned shirt fell open to reveal a chest so thin that every detail of her collarbone and upper rib cage could be seen above a pair of flaccid breasts. It could have been the chest of a starving refugee in Darfur.

“No, Ms. Rudd,” he said gently. Disgust mingled with pity. “But she told me she sent you some food and things when your cousin came a couple of days ago.”

“Oh, yeah… tha’s right. Kyle.”

“Did he talk to you about his job? About the restaurant?”

“Jonah’s. He’s a waiter at Jonah’s.”

Wall took a deep breath and willed himself to be patient. “That’s right, Ms. Rudd. He works at Jonah’s. Did he talk to you about it when he was here?”

“I gotta sit down,” she said and pushed past him to lower herself to the top step.

She seemed oblivious to the rain and he realized that she was probably too deep into her alcoholic haze to give him anything useful. Nevertheless…

“Where was he going when he left here, Audrey? Did he say?”

She lifted her face to the warm rain and smiled; and for a moment, he could almost see the young woman inside this physical wreck.

“What did he tell you, Audrey?”

After a long career on the force, he should not have been shocked by the string of profanities that spewed from her mouth, but he was. Equally unexpected was the way her face crumpled with grief.

“Tha’s what he said I was,” she wept. “Tha’s what he called me. And then he got in his car and said he was never coming back. Never—ever—ever.”

“Let me help you back in the house,” he said, taking her arm. “You’re getting soaked.”

She flinched away from him. “Go away!” she sobbed. “Leave me alone.”

She drew her skeletal legs up under her chin and buried her face in her arms. The rain beat against her bowed head and turned her unkempt hair into snakelike strands that seemed to writhe in the wind and wet.

With nothing to be gained by staying, Andy Wall got back in his car, turned it around, and drove out of the yard. Just before the tunnel of yaupon and live oaks closed in around him, he glanced back in his rearview mirror. Another big expensive boat was passing, but she hadn’t moved.

He gave a weary sigh, knowing that one of these days the Brunswick County sheriff’s office would get a call that buzzards were circling this trailer and “y’all really need to send somebody out here to take a look.”