South Of Hell lk-9 Page 4

  Shockey stopped at the gate and stared at the house. He hadn’t said much on the way out here, and Louis had not pushed it, sensing that whatever else there was to this story was not something Shockey talked easily about.

  But now that they were here, only a few yards from where Jean Brandt had lived, and maybe died, it was time.

  “Did it look like this when you knew her?” Louis asked.

  Shockey stuffed his hands into his pockets. Again, he seemed to steel up, and Louis gave him a few seconds to get a grip on his thoughts and memories.

  “I drove by here a couple of times right after she disappeared,” Shockey said. “It looked a little better than this but not much.”

  “Tough way of life,” Louis said.

  “It wasn’t the farming that wore her down,” Shockey said. “She grew up on a farm not that far from here. It was Owen Brandt who made it rough.”

  “How’d you meet her?” Louis asked.

  “She used to come to the farmer’s market in Ann Arbor and sell potatoes and cukes and things,” Shockey said. “I loved the vine-ripened tomatoes, and I’d browse the market on Sunday mornings and pick up the fresh stuff I couldn’t get from Kroger’s.”

  “She came to the market alone?”

  “Yeah.” Shockey nodded. “That’s why I noticed her. She was a little thing and used to unload all those baskets by herself, set up her table herself, and load back up again at dark. After watching her a few times, I offered to help.”

  “When was this?”

  “June 1980.”

  “How long after that first meeting did you start an affair?”

  Shockey’s jaw ground in thought and maybe a little embarrassment. Again, Louis let him have his time.

  “A month,” Shockey said finally. “But it was hard to be together. Brandt kept a tight leash on her and expected her home exactly three hours after sundown. If she was late, she got beat.”

  “So how’d you make time?”

  “About an hour before dark, if she hadn’t sold all her stuff, I’d buy it, and then we’d do a quick load-up and head for the motel.”

  Louis glanced around. The rain had thinned to a fine spray, blurring the land for miles, leaving everything obscured in fog. He wanted to suggest that they sit in the car to finish this conversation, but Shockey seemed more unguarded, as if he felt he was giving Jean Brandt more respect by telling her story out here in this godforsaken place.

  “What about when summer ended?” Louis asked. “She wouldn’t have come to market then. Did the affair continue into winter?”

  “She could only get away a few times after October,” Shockey said. “She told Owen she had female problems and had to see a specialist in Ann Arbor. Bastard never questioned that, didn’t want to hear anything about her problems, so he let her go.”

  “You said you met at motels,” Louis said. “Why not go to your place?”

  Shockey sighed. “I was married. I had a kid.”

  “So that’s why you didn’t come forward when she disappeared,” Louis said. “You didn’t want your wife to find out.”

  Shockey sniffed and pushed his wet hair off his forehead. He was staring at the house again. “That, and I didn’t want to lose my job,” he said. “We had — hell, we still have it, but no one pays much attention to it now — we had a morals clause in our job description. I would’ve been fired.”

  “Not to mention you might have been considered a suspect in her disappearance.”

  “Yup.”

  “Why now?” Louis asked. “Why open this after nine years?”

  “Brandt’s been in prison in Ohio for the last seven years. He beat up a woman and threw her out of a car,” Shockey said. “He was paroled a week ago.”

  Louis was looking at the farmhouse.

  “He almost killed that woman. I know he killed Jean,” Shockey said. “And I am not going to just stand by and let him kill again.”

  “You’ve let this get personal,” Louis said. “I don’t need to tell you that’s not right.”

  “I’m older than you,” Shockey said. “And the older you get, the heavier the shit becomes, the shit you didn’t take care of when you were younger. You live under it, thinking it will go away by itself. But it doesn’t.”

  Louis was quiet.

  “And no matter how much good you do later, it never makes things right.”

  “Did you plant the bra in the trunk of the Falcon?” Louis asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who did it belong to?”

  “My ex-wife.”

  “Whose blood was on it?”

  “Mine. I got the idea almost a year ago,” Shockey said. “I knew Jean and I had the same blood type, and I cut myself and bled on it and then left it in my backyard for months trying to make it look old.”

  “And the ten grand and my expenses to come here. Where was that money going to come from?”

  “My retirement fund.”

  “You’re a real piece of work, Detective.”

  Shockey faced him, his eyes as empty as the farmhouse’s windows. “I’m not sorry,” he said. “I’d do it again if I thought I could get away with it.”

  Louis shook his head. This case was about as cold as they came. Not one shred of evidence or a viable lead.

  “Kincaid,” Shockey said, “Owen Brandt abandoned this place like a month after Jean went missing. But he never hired anyone to work this farm for him, and he never put it up for sale. Why do you think that is?”

  “You think Brandt buried her out here?” Louis asked.

  “I know he did.”

  “How big is this place?” Louis asked.

  “Sixty acres.”

  Louis took a long look around. There was nothing but a cold, lonely grayness as far as he could see and he thought about the possibility that Jean Brandt’s bones were buried out there somewhere, forgotten by everyone but Shockey.

  “Are you going to help me?” Shockey asked.

  Louis met Shockey’s eyes. But his mind was churning backward a few years. Kneeling in the sand in Florida, digging a hole with his hands to bury a piece of evidence, the only thing he could do to bring justice to a dead girl. He did understand. He understood something else, too: what it was like to love a woman so much you’d do almost anything for her.

  “I’ll help you, Detective,” Louis said. “But it will be my way. Are we clear?”

  “Yeah,” Shockey said. “We’re clear.”

  Chapter Six

  The soft knocking came through to his ears like the tap-tap-tap of a hammer. The sound lay tangled in a dream he was having about fixing the air conditioner in his cottage during a hurricane. The dream was a strange kind of paranormal slide show with a parade of characters he hadn’t seen in years. Some jock buddy from high school, an old bearded professor, and a girl who had laughed when he asked for a date.

  He opened his eyes with the sense that those same people were there in the motel room with him, but there was no one. Just darkness and a glow of neon against the curtains.

  The knock came again.

  Had to be some drunk kid looking for a leftover keg. Louis shoved back the blanket, flipped on the bedside lamp, and stumbled to the door. The fluorescent light in the hall blinded him.

  “Look, I told you guys-”

  Then she came into focus.

  Pale face with chiseled cheekbones, thin lips the color of peaches, and a mane of brown hair, not pulled back in her usual ponytail but down around the collar of her rain-beaded black leather jacket. She had a.45 automatic clipped onto her belt.

  “Joe.”

  She glanced down at his boxer shorts, then raised a brow, amused at his shock to find her at his door at five a.m. Then she put a hand behind his neck to pull him to her for a hard kiss. The kind that had been building during the four-hour drive down from Echo Bay.

  He broke away first. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Mel called me and told me you were going to stick around her
e and help this Detective Shockey, so I asked Mike for a few days off and came on down.”

  “Mel called you?” He blinked, not yet fully awake.

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?” she asked.

  “Of course I am. Come here.”

  He pulled her to him this time and shut the door. In a clumsy dance of turns and wet kisses, he walked her backward to the bed. She dropped her purse and the envelope she was carrying, and they fell onto the bed.

  Her arms circled his neck, and for the next few seconds, they wrapped themselves in each other. She worked his boxers off, but he was having a harder time with her leather jacket and the stubborn snap on her snug jeans.

  “Wait, wait,” she said, breathless. “I’ll do it.”

  Joe stood up, unclipped the gun, and began to undress. Louis reached down to pick up her purse and the envelope to set them aside. He noticed the writing on the front of the envelope: BRANDT/JEAN AND OWEN.

  He looked at Joe. Her back was to him as she peeled off her blouse. “What is this?” he asked.

  She glanced over her shoulder. “Oh, just some research I did for you.”

  He unclasped the envelope and pulled out the papers. The top sheet was a copy of the missing persons bulletin Ann Arbor PD had sent out nine years ago. Under that were a few newspaper clippings from various southeastern Michigan newspapers that covered the story, then a six-sheet compilation of Owen Brandt’s criminal record.

  “How did you even know Brandt’s name?” he asked.

  “Mel told me,” she said. “I just thought I’d do you a favor and pull some background.”

  “You didn’t have to do this, Joe,” he said. “Shockey’s trying to keep things low-key.”

  “I was just trying to save you time,” she said. “I know how hard it is to get the information when you don’t have a badge.”

  He looked up at her quickly.

  She was standing there in just her bra and panties, all sharp angles, long, lean muscle, and silken hair. The image should have been enough to wash away all thought and the sting of her last comment, but it wasn’t. He turned away slowly and found himself looking at the missing persons bulletin.

  It was a standard photocopy, the same thing you’d see hanging in police stations anywhere in the state.

  NAME: Jean Lynne Brandt

  DATE OF BIRTH: June 6, 1956

  HEIGHT: 5'3"

  WEIGHT: 102

  HAIR: Brown

  EYES: Brown

  DISTINGUISHING MARKS: None

  LAST SEEN WEARING: Blue dress, brown coat.

  JEWELRY: Gold wedding band

  MISSING SINCE: 12-4-80

  There was a blurry picture in the upper right corner. Jean Brandt stared back at him, a heart-shaped face and dark eyes that had a defeated glaze to them. Her hair was covered in a scarf, a few wisps of dark hair framing her forehead.

  A solid gray sky filled the small space around her, and even though Louis couldn’t see any buildings, he had the sense that the photo had been taken at the farm.

  It was a bad picture to attach to a police bulletin, taken from a distance, unfocused, and sloppily cropped too close to the right side of her head. It probably had been cropped to remove Owen before they copied the bulletins. But Louis was sure the cops hadn’t done the cutting. Maybe Owen had.

  And he knew Shockey was right. Owen didn’t give a damn about Jean, alive or dead.

  Suddenly, the light went out, and the bed jiggled. Joe’s arms came around him from behind, folding over his chest and beginning an eager caress.

  “Come on,” she whispered in his ear. “I just wanted to help. Don’t be mad.”

  Her hands slipped down the front of his body, and she started chewing at his shoulder with catlike nibbles. He finally closed his eyes and tossed the folder, turning to take her into his arms.

  Chapter Seven

  They were standing at the side of the gravel road. The light rain that had started around six that morning was still coming down.

  “So you’re just going to leave me here?”

  Louis turned to look back at Joe.

  “You know you can’t come,” he said.

  She pursed her lips. “I’ll wait in the car,” she said.

  He heard the thud of the car door as he walked away but didn’t look back. At the padlocked gate he stopped at the trespassers will be shot sign. He thrust the flashlight into a back pocket and scaled the fence, landing in the wet grass on the other side.

  He paused to glance back at Joe’s Bronco. He could see her watching him, and he knew she was pissed. As a cop, she couldn’t set foot on this property without a warrant. She knew that. Just as she knew that as a PI, he wasn’t subject to the same strict legal restraints.

  He trudged through the high, wet weeds, a small nubby pit in his gut relishing the fact — for once — that she had a badge and he didn’t. Even as his head was telling him what a macho asshole he was for thinking that, even as his dick was telling him how much he had loved being inside her last night, even as his heart was telling him how much he loved her.

  He climbed the three steps onto the sagging wood porch and looked back one more time to the car. Hell, she was just trying to help. He would make it up to her tonight with dinner and a good bottle of wine.

  There was another padlock on the front door. This one was new. Something else new — a bright orange foreclosure sign — was pasted to the glass of the front door. Louis didn’t remember seeing it the first time he had been here with Shockey, and even out by the gate, the bright orange would have been noticeable.

  Louis looked around for options. Some of the windows were boarded up, but a few were still exposed, the rippled old glass filmed with years of dirt.

  He walked around the corner of the house, looking out over the land. The sheer size of the rolling land and the overgrown trees and weeds shielded the house from any neighbors. He couldn’t remember even seeing another house on the drive down the lonely and rutted Lethe Creek Road.

  There was no sound except the caw of a crow. He spotted the huge black bird perched on the wheel of a rusting tractor. It was hunched down in its oily wet feathers, staring at him.

  He jumped up onto the side porch. Three weathered planks were nailed over the door. He grabbed the edge of the top plank with both hands and pulled. With a loud crack, the board came off. A heavy fluttering sound. He turned. The bird was gone.

  It took five minutes to work the other two boards off. He peered into the dusty window of the door. It looked like a kitchen beyond.

  No lock on this door. He tried the knob, and it turned easily — too easily — but the door didn’t budge. He pressed a shoulder against it and gave a hard shove. The door creaked open.

  He looked back at the road. The Bronco wasn’t visible from where he was. With a final glance around the grounds, he went into the house.

  The smell. Not what a house should be but weirdly familiar. Then it hit him what it reminded him of: the basement of one of his foster homes in Detroit. Closed and fusty, with the powdery smell of old decaying newspapers.

  He closed the door behind him and took in the small room. It was a kitchen, though most of what anyone normally would identify with a kitchen was gone. No appliances, just dusty outlines on the scuffed blue linoleum. Dark scarred wood paneling halfway up the walls, then faded yellow paper spotted with black mold. One wall of built-in cupboards in the same dark wood, the doors flung open to empty shelves. A dripping sound drew his eyes to a sink under the room’s single small window. The water had left a vivid streak of dark red rust in the grimy white sink.

  He moved to the next room, stepping carefully over the piles of trash on the dull wood-plank floor.

  An archway led to what he assumed had once been a dining room. It was filled with stacks of cardboard boxes. He could make out a round oak table in the middle with several slatted chairs. The table was heaped with more boxes. Each was sealed with packing tape and imprinted with the same letters: HANSEN BROS.
AUCTIONS AND ESTATE SALES.

  He started down a narrow hallway, clicking on the flashlight against the gloom. The beam picked up old pictures and carved frames propped against the blue-papered walls. More Hansen cartons. A broken ladderback chair.

  The place was a warren of small rooms, each with a different wallpaper and different linoleum. Faded stripes, pastoral scenes, and flowers on the walls. Checkerboards, geometrics, and ugly patterns on the chipped and peeling floors.

  He had come to the front of the house. Two large windows, draped with yellowed lace panels, let in the gloomy light. He clicked the flashlight off. The room — he guessed it was called a parlor at one time — was empty except for a dust-covered upright piano shoved in the corner. The top of the piano was stacked three feet high with long, thin boxes. He took one down, and the box crumpled in his fingers. It held a player piano roll, the paper as fragile as papyrus.

  He set the roll back on the piano and left the parlor.

  The flashlight led him back to the hallway. He shined the beam into two small closets. Empty. At the staircase, he paused, his fingers on the railing. It had been a beautiful thing once, this mahogany staircase, its posts intricately carved and beaded, its newel topped by a crown. It was the only thing in the whole house that still whispered of the grandeur this home must have had a century ago.

  Dusting his hands, he started up. The stairs groaned under his weight. The rooms grew smaller, dingier, and more barren. He poked the flashlight into each of the three doors. More peeling wallpaper and wet, cracked ceilings. No furniture, no boxes. No signs of life.

  He pushed open the last door. He thought it was just another closet, but then the flashlight beam picked up the dull white of a filthy claw-foot bathtub. No sink, no toilet. Nothing else in the room except a string hanging from an empty socket in the ceiling.

  He closed the door. A tendril of cold air curled around his neck. He turned in a slow circle, looking for its source, and saw the small window at the end of the hall. The rippled old glass had a hole in it with a web of cracks, as if someone had thrown a rock through it.