The White Road

The boy went into the notebook, along with Cyrus’s other observations that evening: the movements of the redheaded woman in her house and the brief, troubling sighting of the large black man who now shared it with her. It made Cyrus unhappy.

Cyrus didn’t like getting the blood of men upon him.

19

THE HEADQUARTERS OF the Charleston PD occupied a redbrick structure on Lockwood Boulevard, opposite the Joe Riley Stadium and facing out over Brittlebank Park and the Ashley River. The interview room didn’t have much of a view, though, unless you counted the faces of the two irate detectives currently sharing it with me.

To understand the Charleston Police Department, you had to understand Chief Reuben Greenberg. Greenberg had been chief since 1982 and was that contradiction in terms, a popular police chief. In his eighteen years in charge he had introduced a range of i

Unfortunately, the deaths of Albert, Gi

I was very unpopular at 180 Lockwood Boulevard.

After an hour spent waiting in a locked patrol car outside the East Side house, I was brought to a room painted in two shades of ugly and furnished by Functional-R-Us. A cup of coffee had since grown cold in front of me. The two detectives who questioned me weren’t noticeably warmer.

“Elliot Norton,” the first repeated. “You say you’re working for Elliot Norton.”

His name was Adams, and there were patches of sweat beneath the arms of his blue shirt. His skin was blue black and his eyes were bloodshot. I’d already told him twice that I was working for Elliot Norton, and we’d gone through Albert’s final words half-a-dozen times, but Adams saw no reason why I shouldn’t do it all again.

“He hired me to do some background work on the Jones case,” I said. “We picked Atys up from the Richland County lockup and took him to the Singleton place. It was supposed to be a temporary safe house.”

“Mistake Number Two,” said Adams ’s partner. His last name was Addams, and he was as pale as his partner was dark. Somebody in the Charleston PD had a warped sense of humor. It was only the third time that he had spoken since the interview had begun.

“What was Mistake Number One?” I asked.

“Getting involved with the Jones case in the first place,” he replied. “Or maybe stepping off the plane at Charleston International. See, now you got three mistakes.”

He smiled. I smiled back. It was only polite.

“Doesn’t it get confusing, you being called Addams and him being called Adams?”

Addams scowled. “No, see I’m A dd ams, with two d s. He’s A d ams, with one d. It’s easy.”

He seemed serious about it. The Charleston PD offered an ascending scale of incentive pay based on educational achievement, from 7 percent for an associate’s degree to 22 percent for a Ph.D. I knew this from reading and re-reading the notices on the board behind Addams’s head. I was guessing that the incentive box on Addams’s pay slip was pretty empty, unless they gave him a nickel a month for his high school diploma.

“So,” his partner resumed, “you pick him up, drop him at the safe house, go back to your hotel…?”

“Clean my teeth, go to bed, get up, check on Atys, make some calls-”

“Who’d you call?”

“Elliot, some people back in Maine.”

“What did you say to Norton?”

“Nothing much. We just touched base. He asked me if I was making any progress and I told him that I was just getting started.”

“Then what did you do?”

We had reached the point, once again, where the paths of truth and untruth diverged. I opted for the middle ground, hoping to pick up the path of truth again later.

“I went to a strip joint.”

Adams ’s right eyebrow made an ecclesiastical arch of disapproval.

“Why’d you do that?”

“I was bored.”

“Norton pay you to go to strip joints?”

“It was my lunch break. I was on my own time.”

“And after?”

“Went back to the hotel. Had di

Adams rose wearily from the table and exchanged a look with his partner.

“Doesn’t sound to me like Norton was getting his money’s worth,” he said.

For the first time, I picked up on his use of the past tense.

“What do you mean, ‘was’?”

The look passed between them again, but neither replied.

“Do you have any papers relating to the Jones case that might prove helpful to the course of this investigation?” asked Addams.

“I asked you a question.”

Addams’s voice rose a notch. “And I asked you a question: do you, or do you not, have material in your possession that might assist this investigation?”

“No,” I lied. “Elliot had it all.”

I caught myself.

“Eliot has it all,” I corrected. “Now tell me what happened.”

It was Adams who spoke.

“Highway Patrol found his car off 176, down by Sandy Road Creek. It was in the water. Looks like he swerved to avoid something on the road and ended up in the river. The body’s missing, but there’s blood in the car. A lot of blood. Blood type is B Positive, which matches Norton’s. We know he participates in the city’s blood drives, so we’re checking the samples from the car against a sample of his donated blood.”

I buried my head in my hands and took a deep breath. First Foster, then Truett and Mobley, and now Elliot. That left two names: Earl Larousse Jr. and Phil Poveda.

“Can I go now?” I wanted to return to my hotel room and get the material there out of harm’s way. I just hoped that Adams and Addams hadn’t gone looking for a search warrant while I was locked up.

Before either of the detectives could answer, the door to the interview room opened. The man who entered was two or three inches taller, and at least two decades older, than I was. He had buzz-cut gray hair, gray blue eyes and carried himself like he’d just stepped out of Parris Island to hunt down some AWOL marines. The military impression was enforced by his immaculate uniform and name badge. It read “S. Stilwell.” Stilwell was the lieutenant colonel in charge of the Charleston PD’s Operations Bureau, answerable only to the chief himself.

“Is this the man, Detective?” he asked.

“Yes sir.” It was Addams. He shot me a look that told me my troubles had only just begun and that he was going to enjoy what came next.

“Why is he here? Why is he not currently occupying a holding cell with the worst filth, the most disgusting reprobates that this fine city can furnish?”

“We were questioning him, sir.”

“And did he answer your questions in a satisfactory ma

“No sir, he did not.”

“Did he not indeed?”

Stilwell turned to Adams. “You, Detective, you are a good man, are you not?”

“I try to be, sir.”

“I do not doubt that, Detective. And do you not, to the best of your abilities, look favorably on your fellow man?”

“I do, sir.”

“I would expect no less of you, Detective. Do you read your Bible?”

“Not as much as I should, sir.”

“Damn right. Nobody reads his Bible as much as he should. A man should be out living the word of God, not studying on it. Am I right?”