South Of Hell

Chapter Eight

They stopped in Hell to call Shockey. Louis was furious and wanted to meet him as soon he and Joe got back to Ann Arbor. Someone at the Ann Arbor station told Louis that Shockey was working a murder scene south of the city and wouldn’t be back until dark.

A child. A child had been in that house.

How could Shockey not tell him that? And where was she now? Dead and buried, along with her mother? Or were they both safe somewhere, running not only from Owen Brandt but from Shockey, too? Maybe Shockey’s love for Jean was closer to obsession, and maybe Jean had fled from both men.

“Louis,” Joe said, “slow down, you’re coming into town.”

Louis eased off the gas pedal and swung the Bronco up the State Street exit ramp.

“You don’t know for sure a girl was there at the same time Jean was there,” Joe said. “Any kid could have had that wagon there at any time.”

“There was a name — Amy. And that wagon looked like it had been there a long time.”

“But you don’t know if she’s a daughter or a niece or maybe just a kid who lived nearby.”

“Nearby? You saw that place, Joe. The nearest house was a mile away, at least.”

Joe was quiet for a moment. “It could mean nothing,” she said finally.

“It means something.”

“You said you didn’t see any children’s things in the house.”

“Everything was boxed up,” Louis reminded her. “And I couldn’t unseal them, or they would know someone had been inside. I’m bending some rules here, Joe. You know that.”

She fell silent again, staring out at the road. Louis glanced at her. She had the same kind of look on her face now as when he had left her standing outside the gate back at the farm.

He steered the Bronco through the traffic, everything growing close and congested as they neared the city.

“Louis, there’s a cop behind us,” Joe said. “He’s been there since we crossed the river.”

Louis glanced at the rearview mirror. It was a white Ann Arbor PD cruiser, and it was definitely following them. In the slow sweep of the cruiser’s wipers, Louis couldn’t see the cop’s face. What did he want? It had been stop-and-go traffic since leaving the freeway, and he knew he hadn’t been speeding or run any stop signs.

The blue lights came on, and the siren yelped.

“Shit.”

Louis looked for somewhere to pull in, but the one-way streets and parked cars made it a tough task. He finally found a spot in front of a small store with a rack of books outside under its awning.

As he turned off the engine, his gut knotted. Here he was in this liberal hamlet of academia, but he still couldn’t shake the bizarre thought that he was being pulled over because he was a black man with a white woman in his car.

Louis put the Bronco into park and reached for his wallet, his eyes flicking to the mirror.

The cop got out of the car. Louis let out a breath. He was black.

Other things registered as the cop came closer. He was a hulking guy, with a weightlifter’s chest beneath the dark blue windbreaker. A body that complemented his don’t-fuck-with-me walk.

Louis rolled down the window, and the officer peered into the Bronco. The rain dripped from the brim of his plastic-covered garrison hat onto Louis’s arm, but the guy didn’t apologize or move back. His brown eyes went first to Joe, assessed her as being no threat, and dismissed her. He looked to Louis with a standard no-nonsense cop stare.

Louis held out his license and Florida PI identification card.

The officer took them, gave them a cursory glance, then stepped back. “Get out of the car, please.”

Louis blew out a sigh and shoved open the door. The cop had an inch on him and probably thirty pounds, all of it muscle. His name tag read: SGT. ERIC CHANNING.

“Turn around and put your hands on the car,” Channing said.

“What’d I do?” Louis asked.

“Officer,” Joe called, “I’m the undersheriff for Leelanau County. May I ask what this-”

“I know who you are,” Channing said, “and no, ma’am, you may not ask anything. Turn around, Mr. Kincaid.”

Louis faced the car and put his hands on the hood. Channing gently kicked his feet apart and began frisking him. The rain was cold on the back of Louis’s neck as it dripped inside the collar of his sweatshirt.

Louis bristled under the pat of the mittlike hands. He kept his focus on the weird white artwork in the bookstore’s window. A hunched old woman with the words aunt agatha over her head and underneath, in big letters, mysteries. It seemed strangely fitting.

“You’re licensed to carry a concealed weapon,” Channing said. “A Glock, if I remember right. Where is it?”

Louis wondered how Channing knew that, but he didn’t ask. “It’s in the glovebox.”

Channing told him to stay where he was and walked to the passenger side of the Bronco to get the Glock. Louis watched him, not understanding exactly what was happening. Channing knew Joe was a cop and had a weapon. He knew Louis had a permit for one, too. Yet he had not been concerned about either as he walked up to the Bronco. Which meant Channing felt he was never in any danger because he knew exactly whom he had pulled over.

“I could confiscate this until you leave the state,” Channing said as he came around the rear of the truck with the holstered Glock.

“You could,” Louis said. “But most law-enforcement officers are pretty decent about it. And I’m up here on police business. I’m working with Detective Shockey.”

“I know that.”

“And I’m a former cop.”

“I know that, too.”

“Then why are you out here busting my balls over nothing?”

“Is that what she is to you?” Channing asked. “Nothing?”

Louis glanced at Joe. What the hell kind of remark was that? This asshole didn’t know a damn thing about Joe.

“What are you talking about?” Louis asked.

“February 1980.”

“What?”

Channing shook his head in disgust. “You don’t even remember her name.”

“Who?”

“Kyla. Kyla Marie Brown. Ring a bell?”

The memory swept in like a punch. He’d thought about Kyla on and off for ten years, but it was never as powerful as it was right now. Maybe it was being back here in this city. Or maybe it was looking into the eyes of this stranger and knowing he knew.

Louis glanced across the street, searching for a response and trying to figure out just who Channing was, how he knew about Kyla, and why the hell he cared. Channing offered the answer.

“She’s my wife now,” he said.

Louis cleared his throat. “Look, if you’re here to tell me to stay away from her, don’t worry. I have no intention of seeing her,” he said.

Channing just stared at him. The man hadn’t moved a muscle. Louis looked at his holster in Channing’s hand. The leather was getting soaked.

“What do you want from me?” Louis asked.

“I just wanted to look a real asshole in the eye,” Channing said.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Louis held the man’s eyes. He didn’t know what the hell was going on, so he wasn’t going to say anything. But he wasn’t going to look away, either. He slowly held out his hand. Channing made no move to give him back the holster and the IDs.

“Are we done here?” Louis asked.

“I’ll be watching you,” Channing said. “I’ll be watching you real close. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

There was nothing he could say without elevating this to an argument or worse, so he nodded slowly.

Channing held out the Glock and Louis’s ID cards. Louis accepted them and watched Channing swagger back to his cruiser and drive away.

Louis tucked his wallet back in his jeans, but it took him a moment to find the will to get into the Bronco. When he did, he just sat there, hands on the wheel.

“Who’s Kyla Marie Brown?” Joe asked.

He picked the first place that he thought might be quiet and without students, a bar tucked into a red brick building on West Liberty called Old Town Tavern.

The place was almost empty, the Tiffany-style lamps casting the dark wood in shadows and the sound of the TV over the bar echoing off the tin ceiling. Louis steered Joe to a wood booth in the back. They both automatically started for the side facing the door. She looked up at him, and he let her slide in. He sat down across from her. The waitress came over, and Louis ordered a Heineken. He was surprised when Joe said she wanted only a glass of water. Joe waited until the girl had brought the beer and water, then trained her gray eyes on Louis.

“All right,” she said, “so who is Kyla Brown?”

“You remember last December when you told me about your rookie year in Michigan?”

Joe nodded.

“And I told you then that I had something to tell you, too,” he said. “Something that had been on my mind for a while.”

“I remember,” she said. “But you never brought it up again.”

He took a drink of his beer to buy some time, then set the bottle down. “Kyla Brown was a girl I knew in college here,” he said.

Joe picked up the water and look a long drink. When she set the glass down, her fingers found the napkin beneath, and she began curling its edge. He recognized the gesture as something she did when she was preparing herself for something that might be unpleasant. As a cop, she was never unsure of herself, but he could see a small glimmer of womanly concern in her eyes now.

“I wasn’t in love with her,” he said. “I was twenty, getting ready to start my senior year, and I had big plans for law school. Kyla was just…”

He stopped, realizing how shitty this was sounding.

“Just an easy lay?” Joe asked.

Louis looked up quickly. There was no judgment in her voice. It was just the way Joe talked, but still it stung.

“Not really,” he said. “I liked her, but I didn’t love her. I didn’t want to get involved with anyone then. I tried to let her down easy, but she kept calling. By January, it had gotten pretty bad. Finally, I stopped answering the phone.”

He paused again, a new memory slipping in. It wasn’t real important, but hell, he might as well tell her all of it.

“I was already seeing someone else.”

Joe sat back in the booth, her eyes fixed on his. “I think I will have a glass of wine.”

Louis left the table and walked to the bar. He kept his back to Joe as he waited, staring absently at the line of booze on the shelf but seeing faces in his head. Old faces came easily to him most of the time. Kyla’s was no different.

Skin the color of almonds. Hair always carefully arranged in a straightened sweep around her full, smooth cheeks. Eyelashes so long he could feel the brush of them against his face when he kissed her. Full lips, always glossy with cherry-red lipstick, something called Scarlet Fever. On anyone else, it would have looked cheap. On her, it was nothing but class.

The bartender set down a glass of red wine, and Louis took it back to the table. Joe had taken off her leather jacket and was sitting at an angle, her feet propped up on an empty chair. Fingers still working the napkin.

“House red okay?” he asked, setting the glass in front of her.

She nodded and took a drink before looking back at him. “So, if she didn’t matter to you then, why does she matter to you now?” she asked.

Louis let out a long, slow breath. “Somewhere around the end of February, she came up to my dorm room. It was sleeting hard that night, and she was soaked. And she was so mad she was shaking. She was screaming at me for not answering her calls. Guys were coming out of their rooms and watching all this, and I couldn’t calm her down.”

Louis looked up, making sure he had Joe’s eyes before he went on. “She told me she was pregnant,” he said.

Joe didn’t move, holding his stare for what seemed liked minutes, her eyes shifting with questions and possibilities.

Louis took a long swallow of his beer and set the bottle down slowly. It would have been easy to look away from Joe now, but he didn’t.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘I don’t want to fuck up my life.’” He hesitated. “The first thing out of my mouth was, ‘Get rid of it.’”

Joe pushed her glass aside, took her feet from the chair, and leaned back, drawing into the farthest corner of the booth. But her eyes never wavered from his face, and he still wasn’t sure what he was seeing there. He finally had to look away. Down at the green glass of the beer bottle. He focused on the little red star in the center of the beer label until it went blurry.

“She slapped me,” he said. “Then she started hitting me in the chest, so hysterical she could barely stay on her feet. Finally, she just stopped and looked at me and said, ‘Fine, I’ll just get rid of it.’”

“What did you say?” Joe asked.

“I said, ‘Go ahead.’”

Joe lowered her eyes. His found the exit sign over her bowed head and stayed there. The bar was quiet, not a sound, not even the clink of glasses. He wanted to look back at Joe, but he couldn’t. He was afraid if he did, something would different. Something would be gone.

Then Joe touched his hand, and he looked at her. “You’re a different man now,” she said. Her fingers laced themselves through his. “Which is probably a good thing. I could never fall in love with that other guy.”

Louis found a wry smile. “Yeah, well, that other guy gets worse,” he said. “A few days later, I borrowed a couple hundred dollars from my roommate and sent it to her to pay for the abortion.”

“You ever think much about why you reacted the way you did?”

Louis sat back, withdrawing his hand. “Fear,” he said. “Fear of being trapped, fear of being nothing.”

“Do you think you should go talk to her?” Joe asked.

“And say what?”

“Sometimes ‘I’m sorry’ is enough.”

Louis shook his head.

“Her husband must have had an eye on you since you got here,” Joe said. “That tells me she told him about you. Women don’t tell their men about other men in their past unless it was bad. You can apologize. Whether she accepts it or not is up to her.”

Louis was turning his empty bottle in circles on the scarred table.

“I have another thought to throw out at you,” Joe said.

“What?”

“Why do you think Channing even bothered to stop us and tell us who he was?”

“He didn’t want me anywhere near Kyla.”

“She hates you. You’re no threat to his marriage.”

“What are you getting at?” Louis asked.

“Maybe it’s not Kyla he wants you to stay away from.”

He knew exactly what Joe was suggesting, and the thought settled over his skin with an eerie tingle. Still, it took him a second to reshape it into any kind of real possibility.

“What if she didn’t have the abortion, Louis?” Joe asked.

But the question was in his head before Joe had even said it. And with it came the realization that the question had always been there inside him.