Blind Shadows: A Griffin & Price Novel Read online

  BLIND SHADOWS

  By

  James A. Moore & Charles R. Rutledge ⌐2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the author and publisher.

  3rd edition

  Dedication

  For Karl Edward Wagner

  Acknowledgements

  Both writers wish to thank Cliff Biggers and the gang at the Doctor No’s dinner group for their comradeship and support.

  A shower of brown leaves danced and skittered across Wade Griffin’s windshield as he drove along the winding two-lane road. Though it was only late afternoon, the cloud filled sky was sheet metal gray, making the dense woods on either side of the road look dark and foreboding. Good, Griffin thought. It shouldn’t be a bright afternoon. Not to see what he had come here to see.

  Griffin slowed when he saw a Brennert County Sheriff’s department cruiser parked halfway across the road. Two uniformed deputies stood near the cruiser and one of them waved Griffin to a stop. Griffin rolled down his window and one of the deputies, a young kid with red hair and a bad case of acne, leaned down and looked into the window. Griffin gave the kid his name and said the sheriff was expecting him.

  The young deputy pointed toward a barely noticeable break in the trees and said, “Dirt road’s right through there, sir. It’s pretty rutted but your truck looks like it’s got enough clearance. Just take it slow.”

  Griffin thanked the kid and pulled slowly onto the dirt road. Shadows drew close immediately and it seemed to Griffin almost as if he were driving through a tunnel. The road was indeed scarred by deep ruts and Griffin bumped and banged his way for something like a mile before he spotted another cruiser and a white van parked near a dilapidated house trailer. He saw two crime scene techs in bright white HAZMAT suits walking slowly through the woods.

  Griffin parked behind the cruiser and stepped out of the truck. The wind was cold and smelled of dead leaves and recent rain. There were other smells too. A strong ammonia smell of solvents and an acrid reek of burnt acetone. Things one would expect at a meth lab. Underlying those smells was the unmistakable odor of death.

  As Griffin stood there, Sheriff Carl Price stepped into view from behind the trailer. He noticed Griffin and waved him over. Price hadn’t changed any in the year or so since Griffin had seen him. Not quite Griffin’s size, but still a large, burly man with close cropped, auburn hair and a mildly weathered complexion. He wasn’t in uniform, but instead wore a battered leather jacket over jeans and a black t-shirt.

  Griffin said, “The tech boys already done with this stretch?”

  “Yeah, Wade. You can walk anywhere until we go to look at the body.”

  The body. There it was. In Griffin’s own years behind a badge he had seen plenty of cadavers. But it was different when it was someone you knew. Griffin looked at the trash strewn area around the trailer as he went to join Price. Empty boxes that had once held the supplies used in the manufacture of methamphetamine were scattered everywhere. Various cleaning supplies. Denatured alcohol. A lot of over the counter cold and sinus medicines. These were a few of a meth cook’s favorite things.

  Price grabbed Griffin’s hand and shook it hard, as old friends do. He said, “Hated to make you come out here but I figured you’d want to be in on this.”

  “You figured right. Where is he?”

  “Around behind the trailer. Look, Wade, I want to warn you. I know you’ve seen bodies before but this is bad. And it’s Jerry. I just want you

  to be ready.”

  “I appreciate it, Carl. Let’s get it over with.”

  Price nodded and led the way behind the trailer. Griffin noted burn pits and spots of dead vegetation where old chemicals had been dumped. The rank, chemical smell was thicker here, as was the odor of putrefying flesh. Price pulled up short when he got to the trailer’s rear corner and moved to the side so Griffin could look.

  Someone had made a makeshift St. Andrew’s cross out of pine limbs and two by fours. Jerry Wallace was bound to the frame with ropes and some sort of heavy wire. His nude body was covered with cuts and lacerations, the biggest cut being one which stretched from ear to ear under the throat. What looked like small railroad spikes had been driven through each eye and through the genitals.

  The torso had the most extensive damage. It looked as if someone had taken a razor blade and cut a bunch of strange symbols or glyphs into Jerry’s chest and stomach. The weird letters, if that’s what they were, made no sense to Griffin but they had been etched in blood and pain. “Jesus,” Griffin said.

  “Yeah,” said Price. “Someone really went to work on him.”

  “Tell me most of this was done after he was dead.”

  “Wish I could, but the ME’s preliminary findings suggest he was still alive for most of it.” Griffin’s stomach was roiling but he didn’t look away. He wanted to remember it, needed to. It would help him find the bastards who had done it.

  Griffin said, “What was Jerry working on?”

  “Just what you’d imagine. A big expose on the methamphetamine trade in rural Georgia.”

  “So you do think the people who ran this lab were the ones who killed him.”

  Price ran a hand through his short hair.

  “Yes and no. I mean we’re standing in a fucking meth lab, yeah, but the place has been deserted for weeks. And this,” He indicated Jerry’s body. “This looks more like a ritual killing.”

  Griffin said, “Maybe a warning? His eyes were put out. Somebody saying he saw too much?”

  “Maybe. Too early to tell. Circumstantial evidence points to a drug tie-in, but the killing itself looks almost like what you’d expect from a serial killer.”

  “Yeah, there’s a definite signature here.

  Still, it had to be someone who knew this place was here. Who owns the land?”

  “Paper mill, but they lease it out to deer hunters. This trailer belonged to some people who used to hunt out here. The point being that a lot of folks knew this trailer was here.”

  Griffin didn’t move closer to the body but he knelt down.

  “Any ideas what these symbols are?”

  “None. I had the crime scene photographer get them from every angle though. Got copies of the pics off to VICAP and anybody else who might have seem the symbols before.”

  Griffin dug his cell phone out of his jacket. He pointed the phone’s camera at the glyphs. “Better look away for a second, Carl. I’m about to violate the rules of evidence.”

  “Do that, then let’s let the techs take the body. I don’t want Jerry to stay out here any longer.”

  “No. Me either,” Griffin said. He took shots from a couple of different angles, then put the phone away and stood.

  The two men walked slowly back toward the vehicles. Griffin said, “You remember what a bulldog Jerry always was. Even in high school. Never knew when to let something go.”

  “I remember,” said Price. “Never thought it would bring him to this though.”

  “No, you don’t think of things like that when you’re a kid. He was going to be the world’s greatest reporter. Go to New York, maybe. Instead he ended up working on the Brennert Tribune his entire life.”

  Price shrugged. “And you and me were always going to be cops. And yeah, I’m still in Brennert too. Were you still in touch with Jerry much?”

  “Talked to him a couple of times a year. About like you and me. I had lunch with him about six months ago. He was getting divorced again.”

  “Yeah, he was always too busy playing Ace Reporter to hold a marriage together.”<
br />
  “And he fooled around,” said Griffin.

  “That too.”

  “Have you talked to anyone at the Tribune?”

  “Only in the most basic terms. I wanted Jerry’s notes and his computer, but I don’t want details of this getting out so that the Atlanta cops come swooping in.”

  “You want to catch the fuckers who did this yourself.”

  “Hell yes.”

  “So what now?” said Griffin.

  “I plan to follow the drug angle. This doesn’t have the feel of any of the local players, but it might be someone new.”

  “And if it isn’t drug related?”

  Price said, “For now I’m going to go on the assumption that it is. Otherwise I’m at a dead end. How about you?”

  “Me? I’m a private citizen now.”

  Price snorted. “Remember, Wade, I know who and what you are. Your ID says private investigator, but mercenary or bounty hunter is closer to the mark. And you’re planning on going hunting, aren’t you?”

  “I would never say anything about that in front of an officer of the law.”

  “Just keep me in the loop, man,” Price said. “We need to do this together. Me and you. Just like in the old days. You learn anything, you call me.”

  “That go both ways?”

  “You know it does. Jerry didn’t die easy, and somebody needs to pay.”

  Griffin gave a quick nod. “Somebody will.”

  ***

  Carl Price was not having a good day. He didn’t think it was going to get any better, either. It never was when somebody murdered someone who’d been as close as a brother once upon a time. Had he stayed close with Jerry Wallace? No, not really, but they’d been tight back in the day and that counted for something.

  He rubbed at his eyes and desperately wished for a very large cup of coffee. Sadly, the wish went unanswered and he’d be getting to Denise Wallace’s place before he found a convenience store. There was nothing good about telling a woman her son was dead. Not a damned thing, and not a lady as nice as Denise had always been.

  His hands clenched at the steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckles crack and the wheel groan. “Fuck this. Sometimes I hate this job.” He meant it. He didn’t mean it. He wasn’t even sure right now. Seeing his friend splayed out and rotting had thrown him for a bigger loop than he wanted to think about.

  Jerry was one of those guys you were always happy to see. Unless, of course, you were married to him. Denise first, and then he’d talk to Sarah. She had to know, too. He dreaded telling her even more than Denise. There were differences, of course. Denise was a family friend. Sarah was, well, Sarah was a whole world of different situations.

  Sarah was living back out in the middle of nowhere with her family again, and she probably wouldn’t have heard a damned thing by the time he was done talking to Denise. Denise had no reason to speak to her future-ex-daughter-in-law. Sarah might actually call just to be spiteful. She was more than a little pissed at Jerry. She and her brothers were also, as a result of the bad blood, just possibly on the list of suspects.

  Not likely, but he couldn’t take any chances. He had to play this one close and tight.

  His cell buzzed and he answered without bothering to look at who was calling. Only a couple of people ever called him and they each had their own special ringtones. “Talk to me, Nichole.”

  Nichole Ward was the dispatcher. She was also under extremely strict orders not to use the damned radio to call in anything on any ongoing serious cases. There were at least four people in the county that he knew of who thrived on listening to the department’s radio frequency so that they could keep up on the juiciest gossip. Cell phones had their purposes and one of them was thwarting Nadine Crabapple and her cronies when it came to hearing the latest news.

  “Ed says he’s pretty sure it was the Blackbourne boys that were running that lab, Carl. Did you want him to stop by their place? Or do you want to handle it yourself this time?”

  The Blackbournes were trouble, but they were also a known quantity. He’d gone to school with Merle Blackbourne, and while they were hardly ever going to be friends, they also had a certain wary respect for each other. He also knew that while the family might deal with meth from time to time, they were strictly small time, just small time like cockroaches. Bust one and two more came crawling out of the woodwork. Merle was in charge. If he asked the right questions in the right way, he could avoid causing too much trouble.

  They were also on the way to Sarah Wallace’s place. The new place, out in the middle of nowhere.

  Denise was going to have to wait.

  “Shit, Nikki. That’s just...that’s a pain.”

  “If you keep calling me ╘Nikki’I’m gonna start

  wearing a halter top and Daisy Dukes to work.” Nichole was a lovely woman, but she also topped out the scale at just under three hundred pounds. She also really, really hated being called Nikki.

  “I keep hoping.” He sighed. “I’ll take care of the Blackbournes. But you make good and damned sure that no one talks about the scene. I haven’t spoken to Denise Wallace yet, and I don’t want her getting an unpleasant surprise. You understand me?”

  “Understood, Carl.”

  “I tell you how much I love you lately?”

  “You better watch that sort of talk. You know Johnny gets jealous.” Johnny was Nichole’s husband, and about as mellow as a man could be.

  “It’ll be our secret, darlin,’ I promise.” He killed the call and took the next right, which led off to Crawford’s Hollow, or as he liked to think of it, trailer park paradise. If there was a part of his county that could officially be declared a white trash zone, it was the Hollow. The area was owned by Neal Crawford on paper, but no one who lived there cared and old Neal had no plans to do anything with the swampy mess of woods that he’d inherited from his grandfather forty years earlier.

  The path leading into the Hollow was as uneven and twisted as a politician’s promises, with deeply rutted patches and areas coated in gravel to keep a car’s tires from sliding right into the ditches on either of the unpaved madness. It took Carl almost twenty minutes to reach the Blackbourne place.

  Despite his nickname for the area, the Blackbournes did not live in a trailer. They lived in an old house that had been on the land for at least a hundred years and had been altered time and again by the generations that had been born in the area. It had been a simple ranch house once, but these days it was a sprawling affair with a couple of wings worth of rooms. There was no rhyme or method to the construction, which only made it fit the family it belonged to all the better.

  Carl rolled to a stop at the edge of what could pass for a driveway and waited. It was best to wait for the Blackbournes to come to you, especially if you were on official county business and hadn’t brought backup.

  Merle walked out to meet him four minutes later. He was hardly old enough to be in charge of an entire clan, but the Blackbournes weren’t known for living long, calm lives. Violence was a stain on them as surely as they came from Irish stock. Merle was an interesting man, far more interesting than he’d been as a kid going to the same high school forever ago. Back in the day he’d been fairly scrawny and bordered on hyperactive. These days the patriarch of the family was far stockier and moved with a slow, deliberate pace. In his youth the man had been prone to leading with his fists, and now he kept his calm a great deal better. The main thing that had not changed was the sense of cunning that you got when you looked him in his eyes. Anyone who thought that Merle Blackbourne was a backwater hick was a fool. He had never been to college and he’d barely graduated from high school, but the man was well learned.

  Merle looked Carl over with a slow patience and nodded his head. “Should I be feeling honored or wary today, Sheriff?” His tone was friendly enough and his deep country accent reminded Carl that they might be from the same area but they were hardly from the same place. Carl climbed from his truck and returned the nod as a way o
f saying hello.

  “I’m here on official business, Merle. Just a few questions to see if you or yours might have any information for me.”

  Merle’s thick hands fluttered a little as if trying to decide what to do with themselves. They finally settled for resting on his hips. “Ask away. I’ll answer if I can.”

  Carl looked around and took note of the others that were moving around the place. There were easily ten members of the family within range. One word from Merle and he’d be surrounded. They both knew it.

  “Found an abandoned meth lab not far from mile marker , near the edge of the paper mill’s property.” He paused for a moment and waited for the man to nod. Merle did so with a barely perceptible movement. “I’m not much interested in the lab. It’s been closed a while. I just need to know if you and yours had anything to do with it. Off the record.”

  Merle looked away from him, his faded blue eyes scanning along the wooded hillside behind Carl as he pretended to contemplate the exact location. The sky above him was a darker gray now, and the shadows were growing longer. He’d need the headlights on the way back out.

  Finally Merle nodded again. “Not saying we’d ever do such a thing, of course.”

  “Naturally.”

  “But if I were to condone that sort of nonsense, I reckon it’s the sort of spot I’d choose. Isolated enough, with a good view of the road if you know where to park a lookout.” Merle always knew where to park a lookout. He also knew how to plant a few traps, a couple of men with rifles and a half dozen different ways to warn those men that anyone was coming too close to their labs. That was why there weren’t too many of the Blackbournes sitting in lockup.

  “If that were the sort of place you’d have chosen, when might you have stopped using it?”

  Merle looked back at him and those eyes of his gave away absolutely nothing. But damned if he didn’t look amused by the question. “If I had to guess, I’d say no less than four months back.” A ghost of a smile creased his lips. “Can’t be too close to the lodge up the road from there when hunting season starts, or you might get spotted. And I reckon a spot like that needs to get abandoned early on if the hunting’s gonna be any good.”