Ugly As Sin (19 page)

The night had grown strangely quiet now. Things were beginning to wind down, and soon the crime scene would be just another patch of dark country road no different from any other. The broken glass would be swept up. The congealed mixture of spilled fluids—vehicular and human—would be washed away, or would eventually soak into the soil. Inexplicably, Nick found himself thinking of those roadside crosses you see along the highway, monuments marking the sites where loved ones have been lost to auto accidents. Leon wouldn’t even get that much. No cheap wooden cross, no wreath of wilted flowers. He would be forgotten. As if the little man had never existed to begin with.

Guilt racked his soul. He clenched his fists, mouthed a soundless curse.

“I promised him,” Nick murmured. “He said I was gonna get him killed before this was over, and I promised him that wouldn’t happen...”

If the sheriff heard him, he didn’t acknowledge it.

A big rig’s horn bellowed on the interstate. A man behind the wheel of a massive RV asked the female cop directing traffic at the top of the ramp, “What the hell happened to
him
?” (at first Nick thought he was curious about the corpse in the road, but then he turned to see the traveler pointing
his
way).

Finally, the sheriff told Nick he was free to go. He promised he would be in touch if he had any further questions.

For a minute Nick wondered if he was expected to head back to town on foot. But then Mackey called over one of his deputies, ordered the man to give him a ride back to his motel.

†

Nick couldn’t sleep. Not that he wanted to. There would be plenty of time to catch up on his beauty sleep once Sophie was home safe and sound.

Around two a.m. he looked up Midnight Taxi in the phonebook, called for a cab to take him to Eddie’s house. He’d been planning a recon mission at some point, still wanted to dig around and see what he could find out there. Attempts on his life kept getting in the way.

He asked the driver to wait. The driver said it wasn’t no problem. Nick told him it might be a while. The old guy shrugged, reminded him that the meter was still running, and pulled a dog-eared
Juggs
magazine out of the glove compartment to keep himself company.

Ultimately, Nick’s search turned up nothing new. The cops had already taken everything, or there was jack shit to find in the first place. Not a single utility bill had been left behind, no mysterious name or number scribbled on a scrap of paper that might suddenly break the case.

Nick felt beaten, in more ways than one. As he stood in the hallway outside the master bedroom, one hand massaging an ache in his neck while his nostrils itched from the stink of mildewed carpet and rotten goldfish, he thought about Leon Purdy.

He could hear the little weirdo’s voice echoing in his head, over and over, as if Leon were right here with him:
I’m a dead man...before all this is over, you’re gonna GET ME KILLED...

Guilt consumed Nick’s soul, nearly brought him to his knees. He coughed, and the sound was very loud in the otherwise silent night.

Suddenly his cellphone chirped, vibrated in his hand. He’d been using it as a makeshift flashlight to see his way around the dark house.

When he looked at the display, goosebumps broke out on his forearms: “LEON.”

†

“Who is this?”

“Mr. Bullman? Nick Bullman?” It was a male voice. The caller spoke quickly, as if he didn’t have much time.

“Who the hell is this? How did you get his pho—”

“Mr. Bullman, listen to me. I have information that I believe will help you find your granddaughter. But you have to do exactly as I say.”

“What? Who—”

“Meet me at Washington Park in exactly one hour. Do you know the place?”

“I know it,” said Nick.

“You’ll find me by the basketball courts. One hour. Come alone, or don’t come at all.”

The man hung up before Nick could say anything else.

When he tried calling back—again and again, at least a dozen times—Nick’s efforts proved futile. Eventually, his calls went straight to voicemail.

†

Washington Park was located in the middle of Midnight’s business district. Nick told the cabbie to drop him off in front of Annie’s Country Diner. When he was finished here he planned to walk back to his motel, since it was only a couple of miles from the restaurant.

The moon was full and bright. As Nick stalked through the night like a dirty secret, a slight chill in the air made him regret letting Claudette keep his hoodie (Christ, had that only been a few hours ago? So much had happened since his trip to the Skin Den with poor Leon). The streets were eerily quiet. If he had known no better, Nick might have thought he was the only living soul on Earth. A single vehicle had passed him by the time he reached his destination; its high beams flicked on as it sped by, temporarily blinding him. He hoped such a rude deed had at least spotlighted a dose of nightmare fuel for the dickhead behind the wheel.

The park’s hours of operation were from sunrise to sunset. The gate was padlocked. After squeezing his bulk between a PARK RULES & REGULATIONS sign and a prickly hedgerow, he accessed the property through a copse of dogwood trees that bordered the main entrance.

He’d been a teenager the last time he stepped foot in Washington Park. It looked nothing like he remembered, was at least three times the size it had been back then. He didn’t have a clue where he was supposed to go. Every thirty feet or so a streetlamp lit his way, its bulb softly buzzing overhead. He passed the bandstand, where a banner hung from the gazebo’s roof, fluttering in the breeze: FALL CONCERT SERIES COMING SOON – FEATURING YOUR FAVORITE LOCAL GOSPEL ACTS! Then a cluster of covered picnic tables. A small playground. A baseball field that was currently under construction. The air smelled of honeysuckle and freshly-cut grass.

Nick crested a dip in the path, and at last he saw the basketball courts up ahead—four concrete goals around a square of painted blacktop. At first he didn’t see the man who had called him here, although he was sure the man saw him. Then a hint of movement caught his eye, and he spotted someone sitting atop a picnic table in the thick shadows beyond the far side of the courts.

For some reason, Nick found himself thinking about his late mother. She had been a fidgety woman, perpetually distrustful of strangers. Although he had come of age in a simpler era—a time when families left their doors unlocked when they stepped out for the evening, a time when children could walk to school without fear of being abducted—he remembered his mother constantly fretting about the motives of any man she didn’t know. In her mind, you could spot the villains from a mile away. They dressed in black from head to toe, or wore their hair longer than society deemed acceptable.

Nick assumed it was the sight of his mysterious caller lurking in the darkness that made him think of his mother. Some sort of subconscious trigger. Sitting there within shouting distance of the jungle gym, it was as if the man represented everything Olivia Bullman had taught her son to fear from a young age.

Nick suddenly felt vulnerable. What if this was a setup, yet another attempt on his life? Had he willingly walked into a trap?
Screw it. Too late to turn back now
. If his mother had been right, and outward appearances were the deciding factor,
he
was the boogeyman here. And Nick Bullman could be one scary motherfucker when you backed him into a corner...

The guy stood now, stepped forward, and the light from a nearby streetlamp caught his features. He was a lanky fellow in his late thirties with sandy blond hair and a thick mustache. He wore a checkered flannel shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots, and a Midnight Mustangs baseball cap pulled down low over his eyes. He had a kind face, albeit a troubled one.

“Mr. Bullman? I’m really glad you came.”

They shook hands. The man’s palms were sweaty.

Nick said, “And you are?”

“Moseley’s the name. Roger Moseley. Sorry about all the sneaking around. But I gotta be careful.”

“You look familiar, Moseley,” said Nick. “Where have I seen you before?”

“I’m a reserve deputy with the Polk County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Which explains how Leon’s phone came into your possession.”

“I was in charge of logging in the evidence back at the station earlier tonight, after everyone else went home. Part of that included documenting the names and numbers saved in Mr. Purdy’s phone. Yours was the only one. I took that as a sign. I had to talk to you. Tonight.”

“So what is this about?”

The guy removed his cap, ran one hand through his thinning hair. “Mr. Bullman, I’ve been struggling with this for a long time. The stuff I’m about to tell you, use it as you see fit. Or don’t. Whatever happens, though, I’d appreciate it if you keep to yourself how you came by this information.”

“Okay,” said Nick. He crossed his arms, waited to hear something useful.

“I overheard some of what you said last night when you gave your statement to the sheriff. You told him that the shooter mentioned a black guy. A fella who calls himself ‘Coko Puff.’ ”

“You know him?”

Moseley reached into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt, pulled out a can of chewing tobacco. “I know him. Every law enforcement agency in western North Carolina knows him. His real name is Clarence Shabazz. He’s a known distributor of crack and methamphetamine. A couple months before your granddaughter went missing—this would have been late April, early May—we responded to a domestic disturbance call at the Shabazz residence. When we arrived on the scene, we found a young lady lying in the front yard. She’d been severely beaten. Clarence was inside the house, kicked back, drinking a club soda and watching
The Price Is Right
like nothing had happened. The golf club he had used on his girlfriend was lying across his lap. We arrested him. He didn’t resist. He claimed it was self-defense, said his hundred-and-five-pound girlfriend came at him first and he feared for his life.”

“This guy sounds like a prince,” said Nick.

“You ain’t heard nothing yet. In situations like this, we’ll typically send in a female officer, she’ll try to talk the victim into leaving her abuser. It usually doesn’t do any good—we just end up repeating the whole vicious cycle a few months down the road. Anyway...the officer spent some time at the hospital with this young lady, and at some point during their conversation, she said something that got the whole department rattled. She mumbled something about how he ‘deserved to burn in Hell for what he did.’ She was asked to clarify what that meant, and she said ‘he made mad coin off
that girl getting sold
. Doesn’t matter
who her granddad is
, she’s still just a kid and that shit ain’t right.’ ”

Nick’s heart skipped a beat. He would have offered the other man a stunned expression if such a thing were possible.

He settled for a hoarse croak: “What the fuck?”

Moseley flicked his can of tobacco with a middle finger a few times. “We tried to get more out of her, but she clammed up after that. Said she heard him mention it on the phone one night, and that was all she knew. Of course, we proceeded to grill Mr. Shabazz like a summer barbecue.”

“And?”

“He said exactly what we expected him to say. He ‘didn’t know what the hell we were talking about.’ Along with some other choice words.”

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing we
could
do. This happened months before Sophie Suttles went missing, you understand. We tried cross-referencing the young lady’s comment with every missing persons case within a hundred miles, in hope of finding some connection to Shabazz. Nothing came of it.”

Nick said, “But when Sophie disappeared, you questioned him again...?”

“We picked him up, interrogated him, held him as long the law would allow. Without any evidence, we were forced to move on. His old lady had recanted her story by then. Sheriff Mackey had that call from Sophie to her mother, from the payphone, so the investigation took a complete one-eighty at that point. The department was no longer looking at your granddaughter as a kidnapping victim, but as a runaway and a possible murder suspect.”

The two holes in the center of Nick’s ruined face flared like festering wounds.

“The sheriff warned us to stay away from Shabazz after that. Apparently, the feds have been building a case against this piece of crap for the last year-and-half, hoping to send him up once and for all for trafficking. The last thing the boss wants is to shoulder the blame for toppling that house of cards. Shabazz has the best lawyer this side of the state, and he’s already threatened to sue the department for harassment. Meanwhile, all we’ve got is an off-hand comment made months ago by a woman he had just put in the hospital. As much as it pains us to admit it, there’s not a shred of evidence that Clarence Shabazz ever laid eyes on Sophie.”

“He knows where she is,” Nick fumed, more to himself than the other man.

“I’m sure you’re right. Unfortunately, our hands are tied.”

Moseley put away his can of tobacco then, without ever putting a dip in his mouth. He cleared his throat, peered out into the darkness as if he feared the night had ears.

“However...something you might want to think about, Mr. Bullman: God knows I’ve lost a lot of sleep with this bouncing around in my head, especially after I heard you’d come to town...”

“I’m listening.”

“The law can only do so much. Can’t force a man to talk if he don’t want to. But there’s nothing stopping a civilian from paying this dirtbag a visit. That is, if said civilian knew exactly where to find him.”

“I smell what you’re stepping in,” said Nick. “Tell me where.”

Moseley was already reaching into his pocket, pulling out a square of yellow paper.

He placed it in Nick’s palm.

†

Nick’s mind reeled. Just when he thought this couldn’t get more bizarre, some new piece of the puzzle fell into place, forcing him to reexamine everything he had learned up till now.