Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel Read online

  Rauser leaned over and gave them mascarpone off his finger. This does nothing to improve their behavior but it is really cute. I gave him a kiss. His skin smelled like shaving cream. His thick black-and-silver hair was damp and raked back off his face. He was wearing a light blue dress shirt he hadn’t gotten around to buttoning. A glimpse of tight abs and chest hair isn’t a bad way to wake up.

  Rauser had been sharing my loft for a little over a month now. An EF4 tornado had blown into town early in July, chewed up a path through Atlanta, then slammed Rauser’s neighborhood full-force. About ten thousand pounds of pine tree sliced the house in two like an axe splitting wood. I remember it well. I was inside the house at the time. Rebuilding was supposed to take a couple of months. It now looked as if it might take six. We hadn’t discussed this extension. Maybe we were both trying to figure out how we felt about it.

  “You get any sleep?” I asked. I’d felt him climb into bed with me at about three. This was not unusual. Seems like the bad guys always come out at night. I reached down and gave Hank and White Trash a pat.

  Rauser mumbled an answer at me. He was more like my father every day. I thought about that. Maybe he’d always been like my dad. Oh God. I did not want to be one of those women who look for a father in their partners. The idea pretty much makes me want to shove an ice pick in my eye.

  Rauser got up, poured coffee into a mug, handed it to me, then refilled his own. In certain light his gray eyes are flecked with gold. But this morning with the sun bleeding through the windows overlooking Peachtree Street, the flecks were green on a field of blue-gray. And boy, did he look grumpy.

  “Want to talk about it?” I asked.

  “Long night. A fatal stabbing. A security guard was shot and killed because some thugs wanted the copper pipes from a warehouse where he made rounds. And a drive-by. Nineteen-year-old victim. Gang tats. Couple thousand bucks in his pocket.”

  Murder was not an unusual topic for us over breakfast. It works for me. I don’t need Care Bears and roses. “You have the best stories,” I said sarcastically.

  Rauser almost smiled. He’d gotten awake enough to remember he liked me. “Heard you brought in the shooter in that car theft and shooting last night.” He said it casually. Depending on Rauser’s mood, this could be a delicate subject. He didn’t always approve of my bail recovery jobs. And I’m not open to discussing the work I take or the choices I make. Again, I don’t need a daddy. So the tension usually just hangs there. “Heard there were shots fired,” he added.

  I took a sip of coffee, set the mug down. “What else did you hear?”

  The skin crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “I heard there was a Ronald Coleman–size dent in the hood of a Buick.”

  I laughed. “The guy locked himself in the bathroom and then tried to shoot himself out. He was a total doofus.”

  “Criminals usually are.” I reached for his bagel. An eyebrow came up. “You want one of your own?”

  “No. I want a bite of yours,” I said. He put another bagel in the oven while I took a moment to admire the way he wore his jeans. “Why are guys so weird about food sharing? It’s a knuckle-dragger thing, isn’t it? You want to take it to your cave and be alone with it?”

  He closed the oven door and looked at me. “I know you don’t wanna pick on me this morning.”

  “I kinda do,” I told him. “I think it’s your grumpy face.”

  He opened a kitchen drawer, pointed down at the contents. “Want to tell me why you felt the need to label the silverware?” He began to read the bright green sticky notes inside. “Knives, small forks, long forks, short spoons, long spoons. What the hell is that, Keye?”

  So now we were getting to what was really wrong with his mood. I didn’t say anything.

  “Not only have you labeled the silverware drawer, you’ve dumbed it down. You think I don’t know what a salad fork is?”

  I tried unsuccessfully not to smile.

  “This isn’t a joke, Keye.” He closed the drawer too hard.

  “Okay,” I said. “So what is it?”

  “Exactly. What the hell is it? Because from where I stand somebody who feels they have to label the goddamn silverware drawer is not ready to share their space.” He leaned across the counter and grabbed his bagel. I didn’t move. I just sat there with my coffee and watched him walk out.

  My detective agency, Corporate Intelligence & Investigations (CI&I), sits in a row of refurbished warehouses off North Highland Avenue in Atlanta. The dock door was raised when I pulled into the parking lot. We can get away with this early in the day. But by noon the sun is as hot as an arsonist’s match. Even our concrete offices won’t stay cool. Atlanta’s weather had been extreme again this year. Summer came out swinging, pummeled us with violent storms, then turned up the dial and took away the rain. Television meteorologists were so friggin’ excited about tornadoes, then drought, they were practically huffing into paper bags, reporting new watering restrictions like they were brand-new commandments from God. I think they secretly hoped they’d have heatstrokes or deaths by dehydration to report, which was probably preferable to a television death by reporting gorgeous, hot weather every damn day.

  My neighbors had their big doors up this morning too—the gay theater company, the hair studio two doors down, and the tattoo artist and piercing salon on the corner. The sounds from our businesses mingled like a scene from Hitchcock’s Rear Window—show tunes rehearsed, customers chatting from high swivel chairs while haircutters buzzed around with scissors, a faint bass rhythm from the piercing guy, whose throbbing music distracts customers while he drills silver posts into their nostrils. I smelled the ovens from Highland Bakery as I came up the metal steps to the landing that had once served loading docks. Actors from the theater company were clustered outside around a tall metal ashtray, alternating sips of coffee with long hits off their cigarettes.

  “Y’all are here early,” I said, and smiled as I passed. I’d been here long enough to know that when actors show up for work before I do, it’s the final week of rehearsals before the curtain goes up. Hell week, they call it, and the sheer terror of it wakes them up early. I’d married an actor once, which was probably why I was taking pleasure in their pain this morning.

  I could hear my business partner, Neil Donovan, in the kitchen with our new and, well, our only employee. Latisha had been with us nearly a month. To give you some sense of Neil’s priorities, he was training her on the espresso machine.

  “Morning,” I called out as I headed toward the fenced-in corner I call my office—the brainchild of the overly enthusiastic design firm I’d hired to bring our old warehouse into this century.

  Latisha showed up in front of my desk. “Look what I made.” She set down a cup with a foamy top. Her nails were lavender and so long they had a little curve at the end. I find this creepy. She apparently finds it attractive. Latisha is Tyrone’s daughter. That’s Tyrone Eckhart of Tyrone’s Quikbail, a substantial contributor to my monthly income. I owed him a favor. Right now it was standing in my office in a too-short skirt that matched the color of her nails.

  I took a sip and licked froth off my top lip. “Delicious,” I said, then opened my briefcase, handed her a receipt from APD. “I got Ronald Coleman last night. Get it to your dad today so we can get paid. And I need you to stop by Nussbaum, Kaplan, Freed, and Slott. Bernie called my mobile last night. They’ve got divorce papers they want me to serve tomorrow morning.”

  Neil came in holding his coffee and slouched into one of my chairs. He hadn’t combed his hair or shaved. Golden stubble covered his jawbone and chin. He was wearing a Cuban shirt and baggy white knee-length shorts, Vans slip-ons, plaid—the usual. His lids looked heavy.

  “Hey, I get to visit the offices of Assbalm, Complain, Fried, and Snot today,” Latisha told Neil. She had taken to changing the names of our clients when she felt underappreciated by them. Bernie Slott would forever be referred to as Mr. Snot after he was less than overjoyed about being left
on hold one day.

  “Miss Keye, you ready to go over your day planner?” Latisha wanted to know.

  I wasn’t. I was ready to drink coffee and stare. “Can you drop the Miss thing? I feel like I’m in a scene from The Help.”

  Latisha held up a palm. “Oh no you did not just go there. Don’t even talk to me about that movie. And then they had the nerve to turn it into a book!”

  “I think the book came first,” Neil said. He was looking at his coffee mug, moving the frothy top around with his index finger.

  “Whatever. I’m just trying to be professional when I address you.” She sat down in one of the two chairs across from my desk and crossed long, muscular, nineteen-year-old legs. She was wearing white athletic shoes with girl-jock socks that had a little fuzzy ball at the heel—lavender to match her nails and the skirt that barely covered her ass. I reserved comment on how professional I felt that was. Truth is, Neil and I had never run a tight ship. Life is tough enough on the outside. Might as well have some fun. “Remember you told Fairy Chin, I mean Larry Quinn, you’d get on that slip-and-fall this week,” Latisha told me. “He needs to know if she’s for real. Between us, that silly ho did not slip on that milk.”

  Latisha might be right. I’d done some checking myself. The woman was recently divorced, two mortgage payments behind, and she’d had an injury claim pending against a former employer. “What else?” I asked.

  “Half a dozen deposition subpoenas for that nasty-ass criminal attorney,” Latisha informed me.

  Latisha had taken over a lot of the routine duties that had clogged my day—my schedule, the filing, the endless trips to county courthouse clerk rooms, delivering the background reports Neil and I compiled for the head-hunting agencies and employment services on our client roster. She answered the phone and didn’t mind running errands. But she had a mouth on her.

  “I’ve got the Monday-night sweeps as usual,” Neil said. “Plus the background reports for the headhunters.” We’d recently invested in state-of-the-art bug-sweeping equipment. The money was great but we needed more business. The technology was constantly evolving, as was our investment in countermeasures equipment. I prayed paranoia would seize Atlanta’s corporate giants so Neil could lug his equipment out every day. I was beginning to fantasize about a bank account so full and a business so functional I could have an actual vacation—the beach, naps, hot sweaty middle-of-the-day sex, chocolate cake for dinner, no alarms, no phones. But that’s just crazy talk.

  “Can you get me a look at the slip-and-fall lady’s neighborhood?” I asked Neil.

  He pushed himself up like an old man, made a little noise, half grunt, half sigh. He was mopey this morning. Neil’s moody. He has a lot of drama in his romantic life. That’s because he’s a philandering scoundrel. He’s also smart and funny and complicated, and just shaggy enough to look like he needs a mommy. It really plays with the chicks.

  He ordered the smart system in our super-wired office to bring down the TV, and a silver, dungeon-like pulley system lowered the thin, flat screen smoothly from the rafters. It is hands-down the sexiest addition to come from the high-strung group of designers who swooped in a couple of years back. And because the television is usually stashed neatly fifteen feet above our heads, it had survived a thug who’d broken in and smashed up the place last month. The cops thought he’d probably used a bat or a tire tool. We’d had to replace almost all the electronics, including the ridiculously expensive panel that controlled the animation system Neil had installed and trained to understand our voice commands.

  Latisha lowered herself into one of the soft leather chaise longues scattered around the office, stretched out, crossed her ankles. Neil’s busy fingers tapped at his keyboard until a satellite image of Beecher Street SW appeared on screen. He took us on a virtual ride down the street that made me dizzy. On a computer it’s fine. But on the big screen it’s like a roller-coaster ride. I saw a few cars parked curbside, some good-size oak trees lining the street. It’s a lot easier to hang out in neighborhoods with trees and cars without being spotted.

  “There it is,” he said, and we looked at a small frame house with a wide porch and a yard spotted with patches of Georgia red clay that hadn’t seen grass seed in a few seasons.

  “I know that neighborhood,” Latisha said. “I got cousins on the next block. The West End gets a bad rap, but those little neighborhoods are nice. You go there on a pretty day and people are sitting on their porches. Not like those fancy neighborhoods where you never see nobody in the yard. You ever notice that about rich white people? They don’t come outside.” She looked at Neil. “What’s wrong with white folks anyway?”

  The office phone rang. Latisha answered in her sugary-sweet fake-nice voice. “C, I, and I. This is Latisha. How may I help you?” She listened. “May I say who’s calling?” Another pause. “Hold, please.”

  “Well done,” I said. She was getting better on the phone. The first couple of weeks were touch-and-go. Turns out Latisha can be a little bit of a German shepherd.

  “It’s a Sheriff Meltzer,” she told me. “Seven-oh-six area code.”

  I had no idea who Sheriff Meltzer was. “Run that real quick, would you, Neil?”

  Neil’s fingers skipped lightly over his keyboard. He could do this blindfolded. He’d begun his hacking career in high school, a for-profit test preparation program, as he called it, which really just meant he hacked the teachers, got the tests in advance, and sold them. “Kenneth Meltzer. Hitchiti County sheriff. In his second term,” he reported. “Central Georgia. Lot of buzz about speed traps. They’re housing state prisoners at the County Jail.” Neil kept reading, his blue eyes quickly sweeping over pages of information. “He’s bringing in a lot of revenue. The department is beefed up. Website bio says Meltzer’s the youngest sheriff to serve the county. Thirty-three when he was elected. Forty percent drop in crime since he took over.”

  “So what’s he want with me?” I said, pressing the SPEAKER button on the conference table console. I had never been crazy about county sheriffs. I’d worked with a few at the Bureau. They’re elected. It tends to skew their priorities. “I apologize for keeping you on hold, Sheriff Meltzer. This is Keye Street. What can I do for you?”

  “Good morning, Dr. Street.” His voice was smooth with a rich, deep rumble. I thought I caught a hint of the western United States in his accent. “Major Herman Hicks at APD Homicide referred me to you, said you’ve worked repeat violent offender cases with the FBI and with APD.”

  I thought about the day I’d been escorted to my old convertible with a special agent trailing behind me, the pathetic remains of my life at the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in a cardboard box. I had pushed toward the Bureau’s Behavioral Analysis Unit with single-minded ambition and aggressively pursued the education in psychology and criminology that would guarantee me notice there. And then I blew it all to hell. It wasn’t the first time I had walked away from something with my tail between my legs. I was never good at endings. Or perhaps I’m really good at them. If you like drama, I mean.

  “Do you have a minute to talk?” the sheriff asked.

  “Of course.” I found paper and pen and sat down.

  “My department received a call about three weeks ago,” the sheriff began. “A father and son fishing a creek up here noticed an article of clothing caught up on the bank. It’s a fairly isolated spot, away from the developed tourist areas, and there’s not a lot of trash. So it was obvious. They pulled it out and realized it was a blouse. We had a young woman disappear up here eight months ago. Word got around—”

  “How young?” I interrupted.

  “She was thirteen.”

  “And it was her shirt?”

  “Yes. According to the state crime lab, the skin cells they recovered from the collar belonged to the victim,” the sheriff said.

  “Did you recover a body?”

  “We combed the area for a couple of days and didn’t see a thing, then went in w
ith cadaver dogs. We found her body upstream a ways. We also found the skeletal remains of another victim. A forensic odontologist identified her as Tracy Davidson, also thirteen years old when she disappeared. They were found at the bottom of a natural embankment half a mile into the woods.”

  “Same school?”

  “No. But both girls lived in my county. And neither town has its own police department. That makes it my problem. Tracy Davidson lived in Silas, twenty miles away from Melinda Cochran, our second victim, who lived here in Whisper.”

  I made a note. 2 victims. Female. 13. Silas, Whisper, 20 miles. “They determine cause of death?”

  “Blunt-force trauma to the skull on the first victim. Wounds are consistent with something like the blunt side of an axe.”

  Heavy with a good swing, I thought. Nice and quiet, nothing to disturb the serenity of a Georgia forest. “And the second?”

  “Could have been the same weapon, but he used the sharp side. Almost took her head off.”

  “How can I help, Sheriff?”

  “I have two people in Criminal Investigations and they have their hands full with meth labs and pot growers and robberies. We’ve never used a criminal consultant or anything like that. How does it work? What exactly did you do for APD? I guess I’m asking what happens if I hired somebody like you.”

  “The primary goal would be to evaluate the nature of the forensic evidence, and the value of it. Interpret that evidence and behaviors at a crime scene in order to identify offender characteristics, help investigators gain some insight into the offender’s motivations, fantasy life, state of mind, levels of planning, evidence of remorse, risk, method of approach and attack, analyze linkage in series crimes. It’s all meant to assist with interview and investigative strategy and ultimately in the identification of the offender.” I paused. “I want to stress the word assist, Sheriff. Criminal investigative analysts assist law enforcement. We’re not psychics. We work from the evidence you provide.”