Chapter Five
Guthrie was tired and hot and figured a few minutes of air conditioning wasn’t going to hurt anything, so on his way over to Doreen’s house, he stopped off at the diner for a large iced coffee. After all, Jordan Crow wasn’t going anywhere. As he waited for Jimmy Baston to prepare it, he watched a couple of minutes of the rerun of the ball game on the big screen TV. Atlanta was being killed. The score didn’t really matter,though; he just wished he had the time to kick back and watch a complete game; he didn’t think he’d seen one all the way through since he’d taken this job.
He used to be able to play pickup games with his buddies but becoming the chief put a stop to that; he no longer worked regular hours. When you were on-duty all the time, you could schedule a ball game but something always interfered; there was always some emergency that canceled the game.
He took the coffee over to the crime scene with him. Sipping from the styrofoam container, he walked over to Doreen Melson. She looked small and weak, in some odd way insubstantial. It stuck him that if he looked at her from the right angle, he might see through her. Shivering, she wrapped her terrycloth robe closer around her.
He stood next to her, the styrofoam cup cold in his hand, watching the CSI men from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation go through their paces. A red streak of false dawn broke across the horizon and when Guthrie noticed it, he recognized that in some abstract way it was very pretty but the sight didn't do a thing for his mood. All he wanted was to go to bed. Every muscle in his body ached He was supposed to teach a martial arts class tonight; he figured he’d rope somebody else into doing it for him. Maybe Kate could take it for him.
Jordan Crow's body still lay in the driveway, covered by a tarp. His right hand, curled up like a claw, stuck out from the edge of the tarp. The body might as well have been a load of firewood for all the attention the investigators were paying to it. A technician stepped over it to get to the garage door.
"Jesus, chief," Doreen said, over and over in a low, cracked voice. "Jesus."
He could remember the day his fifth grade teacher had made her stand up in front of the class and introduced her as a new student, who had just moved here from Birmingham. The moment stuck in his mind because even then he’d wondered why anybody would leave a big city like Birmingham to come to a graveyard like Channing.
Now, two, three times a week, she served him breakfast and coffee over at the diner. They joked around together, even flirted a little in the harmless way that old friends fell into. She was a tall woman, almost as tall as he was and, if it hadn’t been for the toll the hard work she did had taken, she’d’ve been a beautiful woman.
"Take it easy, Doreen." Even as he spoke, he was aware of how stupid his words were, but they were all he could come up with. What the hell did you say when something like this happened?
She nodded, then shivered again, even though it was not cold.
The air was moist and in the distance, Guthrie could see patches of fog over the street. Dew hung on the leaves of the shrubbery in front of Doreen’s house. In an hour, all of the moisture would be burned off and the day would be, like yesterday, like tomorrow, hot and humid as hell.
A short man in his fifties, with close-cropped, thinning gray hair and a bald spot on the crown of his head walked slowly over to them. He moved like a renaissance prince on his way to plan the war he intended to launch against a neighboring country. He wore an expensive navy suit that fit him as though it had been custom tailored when he’d weighed fifteen pounds more than he did now. A handkerchief was neatly folded in the breast pocket of the suit. As he approached, the short man unbuttoned his jacket so that Guthrie and Doreen could see the holstered gun strapped to his belt. A Georgia Bureau of Investigation badge was pinned to the holster.
"You Guthrie?" He looked up at the chief and spoke as though the act of actually saying words out loud annoyed him, as if it were an action he'd have preferred not to perform.
"That's right."
The GBI man did not hold a hand out to be shaken. "I'm Hank Price."
He said the name as though Guthrie was supposed to recognize it. Guthrie did. Anyone in law enforcement in this state would have. Price’s reputation walked half a mile in front of him. When they talked about him — and they did, a lot — cops called him the Closer because he closed a higher percentage of his cases than any other agent. For a while, Price had taken to referring to himself by that nickname in the press releases he sent out but then that TV show had come along and he didn’t want to be associated with some chick cop so he stopped using the name.
Among cops, he was what every good detective wanted to be. Among politicians, he was the name you shouted when a case threatened to embarrass you in the press. If you were touched by a crime, you wanted Price on it because he would make it go away quicker than a cake at a birthday party. Every once in a while, somebody complained about his methods, but Price worked in a business that admired results more than technique and he made honest busts. If there was criticism, it never got near him.
"Good to meet you," Guthrie said.
Guthrie had to look down to focus on his face. Pulling himself erect, as though he were trying to make himself taller by an act of sheer will, the GBI man slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. Glancing around at the crime scene, Price indicated the covered corpse.
"You know this guy?" he said.
"Sort of. He moved away from here, I don't know, must have been right out of high school. Never knew him real well. He was just one of the guys you used to see around, you know? We moved in different circles."
Price nodded. "What's his story?"
"Guy’s a nobody here, goes up north and makes a bunch of money, wants to come back and show off. Said he was looking into some business possibilities."
"Business, huh? He close any deals?”
“None that I heard about. And this is a small town. I would have heard.”
“Be a good thing for you if he didn’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“You don’t know how he made his money?”
“No clue.”
“Your man here’s a big time defense attorney, connected all to hell. Represented mafiosos, drug cartel people, you know what I’m talking about.”
“Makes his killing look a little different, doesn’t it?”
“You got a big drug problem in this county?”
“Not really. A few boys cooking up a little meth out in the country but we got them behind bars. A little weed out at the college. You figure drugs are why he was hit?”
“No,” Price had an edge to his voice. “He got blown all to hell by a shotgun because he wore brown shoes with a black suit.”
“You out to wiseass around or you want to get a fix on this situation?”
Price looked up at Guthrie, his eyes half closed, anger flashing in them. “Let’s get one thing straight. My getting a fix here’s got nothing nothing to do with you.”
“Man gets himself hit in my town, it’s got something to do with me.”
Price shrugged off Guthrie’s words. “You said he’s here to show off?”
“He flat out told my brother he came here for payback more than anything else."
"He'll know better than to try that next time, won't he?" He let the tiniest part of a grin break across his face. It faded before it could fully form. He pulled out a notebook and a stub of a pencil. “Who’s your brother?”
“Jonathan Guthrie. He’s the pastor out at the Church of the Rock.”
“You know anybody round here that’d want to take old Crow out?"
"Couldn't tell you."
"Nobody hated him from the old days?"
"Hell, I couldn’t say if anybody even remembered him. He was just one more face in the crowd. Nothing more than atmosphere."
Instead of shifting his face to look at Doreen, Price turned his whole body. Guthrie saw significance in the movement. Last summer, when his daughter had been here visiting, she’d been demonstrating that move for him, saying she’d learned it in an acting class. It kept attention focused on you, she said, while you shifted your attention to someone else. It projected authority, Abby declared.
"Turn your head and people look over where your eyes are going to focus," she'd said. "Turn your whole body, they keep looking at you."
Now Price looked into Doreen Melton's eyes, his own eyes almost slits. "Reckon he wasn't just atmosphere to you, was he, Miss..." he checked his notebook, "Melton."
Doreen recoiled. Guthrie slid an arm around her shoulder, steadying her, drawing a quizzical look from Price. Guthrie ignored the look.
"I only met him when he came back," Doreen said. "I never knew him before."
"You didn't know him in the old days?"
"No, sir. I might have seen him around school or something, but I didn't know him to speak to. School’s real cliquish, you understand? Jordan and me, we must not have hung with the same kids.”
"You got no problem hanging with him now, do you?" Price said. “A man you hardly knew?”
"No reason for that kind of talk, Price,” Guthrie said.
Price ignored him. "So you're screwing a man you only knew a couple of days?"
Guthrie took a step forward. "I told you, Price, there’s no reason for that.”
"Let's get this straight right up front, chief. This is my investigation. Mine. You don't tell me how to run it. You don’t tell me who I talk to or how I go about it. You take care of traffic tickets, I'll take care of murders."
"Your investigation, maybe, but my people. My county. You won’t be shutting me out and you won’t be treating my people like you're treating Doreen.”
"Sheriff..."
“Back off. I mean it.”
Price tried to stare him down but then sneered as if to say it wasn’t worth it. "She's a suspect, Guthrie."
"What are you suggesting? She got out of bed, managed to sneak a shotgun out to the street before Crow could even leave the house and blew him away? Then she got rid of the gun, ran back to the house and called my office? Give me a fucking break."
"Like I said, Guthrie, my investigation. I don't explain myself or my way of thinking. I’ll give you this, though: ain’t it interesting somebody knew he was going to be here tonight?”
"Let me give you a little tip: no secrets here. Town’s too small for that. Everybody knows everything. I guarantee you, a hundred people know what we’re doing right now."
Hank Price stared up at Guthrie for a long moment without blinking. Guthrie wondered if that expression really intimidated people; it was obviously meant to. When Price spoke, it was in a low voice.
"Line of authority's clear, Guthrie. You do your job and stay the hell out of the way while I do mine."
Guthrie moved a step closer, crowding Price, and looked down into the man's face. "Man gets himself murdered in my town, I'm going to be looking into it. You can damn well bet on that."
"You get in my way," Price said, "and I'll kick your ass till you bleed."
"No, you won't.” He took a deep breath and when he spoke again, his voice was calmer, but it still had an edge to it. “Look, Price, we ran through all the dialogue. We know you’re a tough guy, I’m a tough guy. We done sparred around enough to show each other how tough we are. What you say we just drop the act now?”
Before Price could answer, one of his detectives called from the street, "Sir? We need you over here."
"Stay the hell out of my way, Guthrie." Price said as he turned to walk away.
"He thinks I was in on this?" Doreen asked.
"He doesn’t know what to think. He's just covering all the bases," he said, although he knew damn well that Price was figuring she had a part in it. If she was in the picture at all, Price would assume she was part of a conspiracy. Guthrie removed his arm from her shoulder. "What did you see out there, Doreen?"
"Like I told them, I heard a car start up and I said, 'he couldn't get his car out of the garage that fast' so I looked out of the doorway and didn't see anything at first. Then I heard the shot. A flash came from the car, it was parked up on the street where they're standing now, and Jordan screamed and there was another shot and, Jesus, it was terrible. He went bouncing off the garage door and fell down. God, the sound when he hit the driveway. It was like dropping a big bag of dirt, you know?"
"You recognize the man in the car?"
"No. It was one of those little tiny imports, you know, those cars that look like SUVs but they’re too small? It looked like a foreign job. But the driver? Fact is, I never even saw him. Just saw the barrel sticking out of the window."
She began shaking. Guthrie took her arm and led her into the house. Sitting her at the kitchen table, he poured her a cup of coffee. At some point this morning, she'd made a fresh pot, so he threw away his styrofoam cup and took a mug out of her cabinet and filled it.
"It's going to be okay, Doreen."
As he watched her shudder at the sound of the investigators' voices outside, he wondered if anything was ever going to be okay again. Deep inside, he was afraid that Jordan Crow's shooting had, like a new seasoning tossed into a stew, changed everything.
"How'd you meet Crow?" he said.
"He came into the diner a few nights back. He was real sweet, Bobby. Sat there and talked to me till closing time."
"What'd you talk about?"
She watched the steam rise from her coffee cup. "'Bout growing up around here. We just chatted about the old days. I didn't even know who he was, didn't know he was rich or anything. He was just a regular guy. I mean, he was too well dressed to be rom around here but still he came across as an ordinary guy. Pretty nice, in fact."
"So you went out with him?"
"Not till night before last. He kept coming by the diner, just hanging out over a cup of coffee. Night before last he asked me to go out with him after I closed up. We had us a good time. I liked him.”
She looked at him, a challenge in her eyes, as if she expected him to make some comment about her morals.
"Doreen, the way these things go, you know we're probably going to have to talk again, don't you?"
"Sure." She raised her arms helplessly. "I don't know what I'm going to be able to tell you, though."
"Hank Price out there, he'll be having some talks with you, too."
"Oh, yeah, little banty rooster like that, he don't ever let up."
The little banty rooster looked up when Guthrie left, but he didn't bother to acknowledge the chief's departure. Or his presence on earth for that matter, Guthrie thought.
Lord, he needed sleep.
But he could tell he wasn't going to get any, not tonight and maybe not for a lot of other nights because if there was one thing he knew, it was that this wasn't a thing that had been done by a stranger. As he drove back toward his house, he felt old, tucked away on the outskirts of things like a broken fishing knife somebody had meant to fix one day and never got around to.
He felt old, out of his place and time for one simple reason: one of his friends and neighbors, one of the people he'd grown up with and probably chatted with every day, could be a murderer.
