Fire and Rain Read online

  I especially remembered the night—not long after I’d come to North Carolina, having left a short stretch in a Florida prison and a lousy ex-husband behind—when Rats had seen me flirting with a red-boned man in a black hat outside my favorite bar at the time, a bar I liked mostly because drinks had only been a buck back then and I barely had enough money to survive. Rats had lingered to watch our exchange and then approached me the moment the man in the black hat got into a town car and drove away. Rats was fearless and determined in his directness toward me. “You don’t want to have anything to do with that man, Casey,” he said, taking the man’s business card out of my hand and shredding it into little pieces that he threw into a trashcan waiting by the curb for pick-up. He guided me into the bar, not giving me a chance to protest. He was, quite literally, taking me off the streets for the night—but then he made sure I did not return to them in search of a living. “He’s not a very nice man,” he explained. “Trust me on this one.”

  “He seems like a pretty good guy to me,” I had protested. “He offered me a smoke and a place to stay.” I balked at telling him more. I didn’t know Rats all that well at the time, he was just a skinny little guy who hung out at the same bars I did. But then I’d decided to tell him the truth. “I’m running out of options. And money. I don’t want to go back to Florida, but I can’t find a job. Leon said he might be able to help me out.”

  “Yeah,” Rats had agreed, gesturing for the bartender to bring us a round of drinks. “He’ll give you a job all right. But it’s not exactly a job with Social Security benefits and an office, if you know what I mean. You’re too smart for his kind of work, Casey. I’ve been around you enough to know you deserve better. Just because your ex-husband was a jerk doesn’t mean you deserve what he did to you. You’re just in a rough patch, that’s all. Starting over and finding your self-esteem again is always hard. You’ll find your way out if you steer clear of people like him. Leon Baptiste is not your friend. Hear me? He wants to be your employer.”

  I’d flushed at my own stupidity. Prison had made me stale. It had been a long time since I’d had to recognize a pimp.

  Rats had ignored my discomfort. Instead, he gently took each of my arms and turned them over, searching the skin for puncture marks. When he saw that I was clean, he pulled a wad of cash out of his pants pocket and peeled off $500, then insisted I take it. “I know a woman who will give you a room off Blount Street for a hundred a week,” he told me. “And there’s a bail bondsman I know near the courthouse who says there’s a PI in his building looking for help. Says the guy’s too fat and conspicuous for tailing people anymore. Smart as you are, you’d be perfect for the job.”

  And he’d been right. The bail bondsman introduced me to Bobby D. and my life had finally found a direction. I owed Rats everything and, yet, he had never once called in the marker and demanded more, not even when it took me a good year to pay him back his money. And he’d never told anyone about the incident nor spoken of it again.

  Just the memory of his decency brought tears to my eyes. Bill pretended not to notice.

  “Tell me about Rats,” he said instead. I couldn’t tell if his intention was professional or personal. I wasn’t sure it mattered. It was what I needed.

  "He never really knew his father,” I told Bill, instead of sharing my personal history with Rats. That was something I could not bear for anyone else to know. “I don’t quite know the details, but I got the feeling that it was for the best. Rats grew up in a tiny little mill house outside of Goldsboro and never made it past the tenth grade. He had to drop out of school to support his mother and sisters. He never knew anything but hard work his whole life. Sure, he went through a lot of women, but there were reasons for that. He lost someone he really loved and spent the rest of his life trying to replace her. And, yes, he could be sleazy. But he had his heart in the right place and he was a friend of mine."

  "Then he was a lucky man," Bill said quietly.

  I stared at him. "Are you making fun of me?”

  "Not at all. I understand why you liked him so much. Does it make you feel better to know that he died with enough money to take care of his family for a long time to come?"

  I looked up, surprised. "Really? I thought he was plowing all his profits into opening new clubs. I'm surprised."

  "So are we." Bill took a long sip of his whiskey and stared at me over the rim of his glass. “You wouldn't happen to know why a hundred thousand dollars was flowing through his club each week, do you?"

  "No way," I said. "Rats was doing well, but not that well. He doesn’t have the capacity to pull in that kind of money."

  "We’ve already accessed his bank accounts and they tell us he had a hell of a lot of money going through that club. We're just getting started, but it was either the strongest performing topless club in the state or he was up to something dirty. Was Rats running drugs out of there?”

  "No way," I said firmly. "No way in hell. Rats hated drugs. Everyone knows he was crazy in love with a redheaded stripper who overdosed on heroin about twenty years ago. After that, he wouldn't let drug dealers in the door of his clubs. He wouldn't hire performers who did drugs. And if he caught you doing drugs in his clubs, you were out the door whether you were dressed or not. He hired me more than once to follow people he was about to hire, to find out whether they were using or not. He would not do business with anyone involved in drugs. There's no way he was selling them himself. I’m telling you, Bill, when it came to drugs, Rats made everyone else look like a liberal."

  Bill seemed to accept my answer. "Okay. But something was going on there and we need to know what. Will you tell me if you find out?"

  I nodded. "Did you get in touch with his ex-wife?" I knew Rats and his wife had just divorced, but someone had to claim his body.

  Bill shook his head. "Every time we call, she hangs up the instant she hears it's the cops and she refused to come to the door when I sent a squad car for her. She thinks Rats is in trouble and she doesn't want to be a part of it. I may have to start calling his other ex-wives.”

  I looked up, horrified. "You mean to tell me that there's no one to claim his body? That poor, sweet Rats is lying there in the morgue and there's no one to come and get him?" To my great horror, I began to cry. I'm not quite sure why the tears came then exactly, but they did. In rivers. I was mortified but helpless to stop them.

  Bill handed me a wad of bar napkins and waited silently while I sobbed.

  It's hard to say why it hit me like that, the thought of no one claiming Rats. I kept thinking about how hard he had worked, and how he had come from nowhere and clawed his way up to success. I thought of how much he had loved that redheaded stripper and how all the wives since had not even come close to her, of how he’d eventually let them go, even though it always cost him, because they didn't come close to her. I cried for Rats and the chances he’d never have to find love again or realize his dream of a Pink Pussycat empire. He had lived his life the best way he could and someone had shot him in the gut and left him to die like a dog. It didn’t seem fair.

  I don't remember how long I sobbed. All I remember is that shot glasses full of Jack Daniels started to line up in front of me, like tiny planes waiting on a runway. Bill was patting my back and, every now and then, he picked up a shot glass and offered it to me. I’d slam it back and bang it back down on the bar, then cry some more.

  Somewhere along the way, I remember Bill gesturing for one of the nearby dart players to come over. The guy was there in seconds. Bill had rank.

  "You live in Durham, right, Jacob?"

  The kid nodded.

  "I want you to let this woman drink as long as she needs to. And when she's ready to go, I want you to drop her off at home and make sure she gets inside and in bed safely, without anyone hassling her and without her getting anywhere near the wheel of a car. Got it?"

  The young cop nodded, eyeing me uneasily.

  “And if you do that for me, you get to pick your shifts for
a month,” Bill promised. “I’ll make sure that happens.”

  I hiccoughed and sobbed at the same time, then slammed down another shot. The kid evaluated me some more and looked back at Bill. “Three months, sir, and it’s a deal.”

  “Done.”

  "Here's where she lives." Bill scribbled my address on a napkin and handed it to him. I went back to crying and Bill patted me on the back some more. "Sometimes you just have to drink it out, Casey. Sometimes it doesn't make sense."

  "Can you stay with me?" I asked between tears. I was turning into a useless mess.

  "I wish I could," Bill said and something in his voice made me believe him. "But I've got to get back to work. There’s something I need to check on. I want you to be careful on this one, Casey. I want you to keep me informed on everything you find out. We’re missing a big piece of the puzzle. Be careful."

  "I'm always careful," I said defensively as I contradicted my own words by picking up another shot glass and throwing the whiskey back. "To Rats," I said out loud, holding the empty shot glass up. "May you be reunited with your redhead in heaven."

  "Maybe I'd better call Shep," Bill said quietly.

  "Shep?" I asked as I stared at him defiantly. Shep was a sheriff I’d met in the mountains on a case about a year before. I guess when you live in a drug-ravaged mountain county fill of meth heads with no teeth, someone like me looks pretty good. We saw each other whenever we could, which wasn't much. But when we were together, it was amazing. Maybe too amazing. Last time, it felt like I was falling off a cliff into territory I did not recognize. It had scared me and I still didn’t understand why.

  Through my drunken haze, I realized I had not called Shep in a month. Maybe I was a coward. I knew what to do when things went wrong, but I was adrift when things were going well. I was avoiding Shep and I didn’t quite know why.

  "I hate that the two of you are friends," was all I could manage to say to Bill. I stared glumly at the three shots of whiskey remaining on my runway.

  "Casey, far be it from me to tell you what to do," Bill said. "Not that it would do any good anyway. But in my experience, you either go for a bad guy, sometimes a really bad guy, or you go for a really good guy. I like to think I was one of the good ones. But in the end, no one ever seems to stick, good or bad. Maybe you need to leave the bad guys alone and realize that you deserve a good guy. A guy like Shep. You really do. Why don't you just let yourself have it?"

  In my mind, two images simultaneously emerged—one of Shep, clean and smiling in his always immaculately pressed sheriff uniform, and another of Cody Sherrill, black tee shirt stretched tight across his biker shoulders and a too-confident smile that told everyone he always got the woman in the end.

  It wasn’t even a close contest and I didn’t understand why.

  "Thanks for the advice," I mumbled rudely. I reached for another shot. Tomorrow, I would jump back into the case and lose myself in action again, but it was late, and I was drunk, and all the frantic activity of the day had not staved off the inevitable: Rats was dead. Worse, there was no one to claim his body. Who would claim my body if I died? I thought to myself, which only triggered more tears.

  "If you want to make his arrangements," Bill said quietly. "I can probably make that happen." He knew what I had been thinking.

  I nodded mutely, the tears threatening to start again. Bill patted me on the back one last time before he turned to go. I didn’t particularly want to be alone, which was unusual for me. But I knew his friend Jacob would look after me and get me home safely and that gave me some small comfort.

  I waved to the bartender for more whiskey and settled in for my own private wake. It was time to do some serious drinking in memory of my friend Rats.

  Chapter Four

  I crawled back to consciousness hours later, fighting to escape a dream of black rats swarming over dead bodies, including the lifeless body of Sammy Templeton. Miraculously, I was in my own bed when I woke, but my head was pounding like a tom-tom and my mouth tasted like I had licked a stable floor. When I moved, my stomach roiled. It was going to be a doozy of a hangover and I knew I deserved every single stab of pain it brought me.

  I could not move for a good fifteen minutes. My entire body felt like it had been pummeled with a meat tenderizing mallet. All I could do was lie very, very quietly and pray for death to release me.

  Noises in the kitchen finally permeated my alcohol-soaked brain. I reluctantly acknowledged that there were two realities I could not escape, no matter how much alcohol I consumed: Rats was still dead and I was still alive. The pity party was over. It was time to do more than mourn him. I had to find out who killed him.

  I remembered virtually nothing of the night before beyond the point when Bill Butler had arranged for some wet-behind-the-ears patrolman to take me home. What was his name? As I struggled to remember those dark, Jack Daniels-drenched hours, the smell of coffee infiltrated my agony. At least the kid had gotten me home intact and knew his way around a kitchen.

  But it was not the young patrolman who entered my bedroom, bearing a mug of coffee topped with steamed milk, just the way I liked it. It was Bill Butler himself. He had clearly gotten a better night’s sleep than I had. In fact, he looked downright sharp in his creased black chinos and a fresh golf shirt. I hated him for it.

  "Drink this," Bill ordered as he dragged a chair across the carpet and took a seat beside my bed. "I have a lot to tell you."

  I struggled to sit upright. A thousand poison darts careened around the inside of my skull and I winced. My hands were shaking as I gripped the mug and managed a few sips. "What time is it?" I mumbled.

  "Almost noon."

  I looked up in alarm. Damn it. I had lost an entire morning.

  "Down girl," Bill said. "You needed to work it out. And, remember, you're not the only one who's trying to find out who killed Sammy Templeton.”

  “Rats,” I said stubbornly. “His name was ‘Rats.’”

  “I’m not calling the man that,” Bill said calmly. “He’s dead and he deserves more respect than that.”

  "What happened to that kid you bribed to babysit me?"

  "He's waiting outside to take me back to Raleigh. I drove your car over this morning. Didn’t see me palm the keys, did you? You need a new clutch, by the way."

  "I know. I just can't afford one." I stared at him resentfully. "What the hell gives you the right to look so good this early in the day?"

  "Like I said, it's almost noon." His smile reeked superiority. "Before I get started reaming you out, I want you to know a few things. We found your friend’s family. Rats has a mother, a couple sisters, and a whole bunch of nieces and nephews. They’re going to take care of his service and burial, but I don't think they have a whole lot of money. We have to freeze his assets for now, but I was going to see if there was a way they could get enough to bury him properly."

  “Was going to?” I asked.

  “Bobby took care of it before I could,”

  “What?”

  “Your boss, Bobby D., took care of covering the cost of the service before I could. He found out where the family wanted his body sent, called the funeral home, and covered the cost. Anonymously. I had to pull rank to find out it had been him.”

  My eyes filled with tears. I didn’t deserve such friends. The thought made me cry harder.

  Bill got up without a word and disappeared into the bathroom. When he returned, he handed me a wad of toilet paper.

  "Thank you," I managed through my hiccoughs and tears. "As good news goes, that kind of sucked. What's the bad news?"

  "Burly called me."

  I choked on my coffee.

  "He was worried about you," Bill said. "He heard about the murder and called me. He said you were all over a guy named Cody Sherrill the night before and said he was definitely bad news. He didn't come right out and say he might be involved with what had happened to Mr. Templeton, but it seemed like he was hinting at it."

  "What the hell could C
ody Sherrill have to do with Rats getting killed? Burly is just jealous. He dumped me and he’s sorry he did it. Now he doesn't want me to move on."

  Bill was smart enough not to respond to that one. Instead, he opened up a case file he had been holding in his lap. My stomach roiled again. This time it wasn't the liquor.

  “You’ve made a lot of progress," I said, staring at the file. It was an inch thick.

  “This isn't your friend’s murder," he said. "If it was, I wouldn't be showing it to you. This is an old case file I want you to see.”

  The thickness of the file meant it probably went back to pre-computer days. If that was a file on Cody Sherrill, it was not good news for my love life.

  “Is that what I think it is?" I asked.

  "Yes. And Burly is right. Cody Sherrill is not one of the good guys. Where do you want me to start? These are only the things we suspect him of, mind you. We’ve never been able to even bring charges against him.”

  "Is this some sort of special intervention techniques only cops get to practice?"

  "I just want to make sure you stay out of trouble," Bill said. I hated the way he could keep his temper. "I think we can both agree that you often let yourself get carried away by a pretty face." He smiled at me. "I am, of course, a case in point."

  "You wish," I mumbled. Who was he to tell me who I could and could not sleep with?

  But what if Cody did have something to do with Rats being dead and Candy disappearing? I had to know. I liked bad boys, that much was true. But murderers? Not so much.

  "Do you really think he's involved?"

  "I don’t know yet," Bill said. "But I'm not ruling it out. The thing that worries me the most about this guy is that we’ve never been able to get him. He’s smart and he’s lucky." Bill flipped through the file, lingering on a page. "Here's one that concerns me. It’s an oldie but a goodie. This was before my time, but the detective who caught the case knew what he was doing. He looked hard at your friend Cody for years about the disappearance of a rival motorcycle club leader named Firewalker Coombs.”