Smoke Screen

CHAPTER 20

I SEE MR. JONES HASN’T MADE ANY HOME IMPROVEMENTS SINCE I was last here,” Raley said as he brought the car to a stop.

The mobile home squatted on a barren lot and had an aura of general neglect. A short-haired, heavily muscled dog bared his teeth and strained against the chain securing him to a metal stake.

“How do you know he still lives here?” Britt had to speak loudly in order to make herself heard above the dog’s ferocious barking.

“I looked up his name in the phone book while you were showering.”

“Do you think he’s home?”

“Truck’s here.”

Parked only a few feet from the door of the mobile home was a pickup with a camouflage paint job and mud-caked tires almost as tall as Britt. The Stars and Bars flag of the Confederacy hung from the radio antenna. “He should live in the pickup and scrap the trailer,” she remarked. Of the two, the truck was in far better condition.

She had insisted on coming along, and Raley had put up only a token argument. For one thing, if the men looking for them tracked her to the motor court, she had no way to protect herself. Even if he left the pistol, he doubted she would use it. She flinched each time she looked at it.

And if the pistol had stayed behind with her, he would have had no way of protecting himself in case of attack, except with brute force, and he didn’t trust himself to be as ruthless as men who would smother a terminally ill man with a pillow and force a woman’s car into a river, leaving her to drown.

The only solution had been to bring both the weapon and Britt with him when he came to call on the late Cleveland Jones’s next of kin, his father.

He opened his car door and put his left foot on the ground. The dog went berserk. “I hope that stake holds.”

“Do you think a doughnut would appease him?” Britt picked up the Krispy Kreme bag containing the leftovers of the doughnuts they’d eaten for breakfast.

“I doubt it. He looks pure carnivore.”

Raley got out and gave the dog a wide berth as he approached the rusty mobile home. He’d left his shirttail out to cover the pistol in his waistband and checked now to make sure it was still concealed. Mr. Jones hadn’t been at all cordial five years ago. He would be even less so now if he saw Raley coming to his door armed with a.357.

When Britt joined him at the steps leading up to the door, he gave her a critical once-over. She was supposed to be incognito, but he didn’t think she would pass for anything other than a babe who happened to be wearing a baseball cap, maybe because of a bad hair day.

She wasn’t made up and camera ready, but the facial bone structure that made her photogenic was hard to disguise. Today she’d dressed in a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt. Raley thought maybe he should have gone up a size on both. The white cotton hugged her torso, and the denim molded to her ass. They looked great on her but weren’t the best choice of clothing when the goal was to make her inconspicuous and forgettable.

“Remember,” he said, “if he recognizes you, we’re outta here immediately. No ifs, ands, or buts. Don’t say anything that would give away where we’re staying. Don’t-”

“We already went over this, Raley.”

“Yeah, but this is still a bad idea.”

“I’m not an idiot. I won’t give anything away.”

“You should stay in the car.”

“I have better interviewing skills than you.”

She’d taken that position during their argument about whether or not she would be present when he talked to Jones. He’d said no, definitely not. She would stay in the car and not risk exposure.

“I interview people for a living,” she argued. “I get information out of them, often when they’re reluctant to give it up.”

“I got information out of you.”

“By tying me to a chair!” There was nothing he could say to that. “Besides,” she persisted, “you tend to get impatient. Chances are good you’d rile Jones and shut him up before we learned anything useful.”

He knew firsthand that she did have a talent for getting someone to tell more than he intended. She would know the questions to ask and how to ask them in a way that required more than a yes or no answer. One earnest look from her, a blink of those oh-so-interested baby blues, and a person heard himself babbling.

Also, and this was the biggie, he was afraid that, if he let her out of his sight, she would vanish and never be seen again. He had flashbacks of her engulfed in river water, her palm futilely pressed against the window of her car.

So, here she was.

They started up the steps, but before they reached the door of the mobile home, it was pushed open with a strong whoosh of air and a bellowing voice. “Shut up, you goddamn mutt. That barking’s driving me crazy!”

The man hurled a chunk of something that looked like the fatty meat from a can of pork ’n’ beans. Barely missing Raley’s ear, it landed on the bare dirt of the yard with a wet splat. The dog fell on it like he hadn’t eaten in days.

Bracing the door open with his shoulder, the large man pointed toward a No Trespassing sign nailed to the utility pole at the corner of his trailer. “Can’t you read?”

“Lewis Jones?”

“That ain’t what it says.”

Britt had been right. Three sentences into the conversation and already Raley was impatient with this asshole. “Lewis Jones?” he repeated.

“Who’re you? What do you want?” He was asking Raley, but his beady, close-set eyes were fixed on Britt.

“My name is Raley Gannon. Remember me?”

The flinty gaze cut back to Raley. “Why would I?”

“I was investigating the police station fire. We never actually met, but I spoke to you on the phone about Cleveland.”

His eyes narrowed, and he divided a suspicious look between them, ending on Raley. “I remember your name. Vaguely. Told you then, telling you now, I don’t want to talk about Cleveland. He’s dead. End of story. Now beat it.”

He backed into the trailer, pulling the door closed as he went.

Britt lunged across two steps and grabbed the edge of the metal door before it shut. “We apologize for coming without calling first, and promise not to take up too much of your time. Please, Mr. Jones? Can’t we talk to you for just a few minutes?”

Jones didn’t close the door, but he was still regarding them warily. “What for? It happened a long time ago. Anyway, what’s it to you, lady?”

“Britt Shelley.”

Raley couldn’t believe she’d told Jones her name, especially since he’d emphasized to her that she should remain anonymous. Then, to his greater dismay, she extended her right hand. Raley curbed an impulse to push it away before Jones could touch it, but he didn’t. She apparently knew what she was doing, because her straightforwardness totally disarmed the man.

He looked at her hand and seemed to be as taken aback by the friendly gesture as Raley was, then he wiped his hand on the seat of his pants before giving hers a brisk shake. “Guess I can spare y’all a minute or two,” he mumbled grudgingly.

He turned his back on them, and they followed him into the mobile home. Britt shot Raley a cheeky grin over her shoulder. He scowled.

The interior of the trailer was even more oppressive than the outside. The floor was uneven, causing them to walk uphill to reach the sofa that Jones motioned them toward. It was filthy, but Britt sat down without hesitation. Raley was more reluctant as he took a seat beside her.

In addition to the sofa, which was essentially the width of the trailer, there was a round end table with a gaudy Hawaiian print cloth draped over it and, separating the living area from the kitchen, a dining table pushed against one wall with two chairs beneath it.

No TV, Raley noted. No newspapers evident. Which explained why Jones hadn’t reacted with recognition to Britt’s name.

In fact, the man seemed to have entirely shut himself off from the rest of the world. Every window had been covered with black poster board. The sheets were taped to the walls so securely, they prevented any natural light from getting in. There was one ceiling light fixture, with a naked yellow bulb that made them all look jaundiced. It shone onto the top of Jones’s head, which had been shaved but was dusted with several days’ stubble.

He had on a pair of camo pants that had been cut off just above his knees so that the pockets hung down beneath the ragged legs. His black combat boots were shined, but the laces were untied and he wasn’t wearing socks. Completing the outfit was an olive drab tank top that showed off his muscled arms and chest, as well as an array of elaborate tattoos.

Most depicted either a lethal weapon or a symbol of death. The most detailed tattoo covered his biceps and shoulder. It was a rendition of the grim reaper with a jeering skeleton’s face, waving a frayed Confederate flag in one hand and a saber dripping blood in the other.

He hooked the toe of one combat boot around the chrome leg of a dining chair, dragged it across the buckled linoleum floor until it was directly in front of the sofa, and sat down in it. He crossed his arms over his chest, rattling the dog tags that hung from his neck on a silver bead chain, and stared at them.

Britt opened the conversation by asking politely, “Did you serve in the military, Mr. Jones?”

“Not the official one.”

“I see.”

It was readily apparent that Jones was affiliated with a paramilitary group. Photographs covered nearly every inch of wall space not taken up by the black poster board. There were pictures of men in camouflage fatigues, men in black balaclavas, men holding the leashes of vicious-looking dogs wearing spiked collars, men standing over the eviscerated carcasses of deer, men armed to the teeth.

Weaponry catalogs were scattered about and stacked on the floor, their pages curled and dog-eared. The only oasis of neatness amid the clutter was a three-level shelf constructed of concrete blocks and plywood planks. The planks were lined with felt. Laid out on them like a museum display was an extensive collection of handguns, rifles with scopes, one sawed-off shotgun, knives, bayonets, tripods, a fully loaded bandolier, and most disturbingly, grenades. All the firearms were highly polished so they gleamed in the yellow light. In fact, the smell of gun oil permeated the trailer.

“I’m sorry about your son, Mr. Jones,” Britt said, trying again to start a conversation.

Jones looked her over, his expression doubtful. “You knew Cleveland?”

“No,” she admitted.

“Then what’s your stake in this?”

“I’m just a friend and associate of Mr. Gannon.” He seemed about to pose another question when she said, “Losing a child is a cruel tragedy.”

He shrugged. “Cleveland wasn’t a child. He was old enough to take care of hisself. We hadn’t seen each other in…hmm…maybe a year before he died. The last time I saw him, I told him I’s done, I was washing my hands of him and wasn’t going to bail him out no more. Guess he took me at my word, ’cause next I heard of him, they called to say he’d died down at the police station during that fire.”

“It must have come as an awful shock.”

Misinterpreting her meaning, he said, “Not really. I couldn’t keep up with all the times that boy was in and out of jail.”

Britt looked past his shoulder toward the end table on which was an eight-by-ten framed photograph. The quality was poor, the color resolution too vivid, but the costume couldn’t be mistaken, and neither could the hatred channeled through the gleaming eyes of the man wearing the pointed hood.

Jones followed Britt’s gaze to the photo, and when he brought his head back around, he was smiling proudly. “My daddy.”

Raley asked, “Are you Klan?”

“You a fed?”

“No, a firefighter.”

“Maybe I am, and maybe I ain’t. What difference would it make to you?”

“None.”

Britt said, “Mr. Jones, on that day, Cleveland was apprehended for assault, correct?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess.”

“Do you know the circumstances of his arrest?”

“Circumstances?”

“The nature of the crime, why he was arrested.”

“No, all I was told was assault,” Jones said. “Later, you know. After Cleveland was dead. Didn’t seem to make much difference what he’d done. Anyway, he never said-”

“He?” Interrupting, Raley sat forward, leaning toward Jones.

“Some guy.” Jones’s expression became belligerent, obviously disliking Raley’s encroachment. He didn’t say anything more until Raley returned to his original position. “A cop. Came by to tell me none of Cleveland’s effects were salvaged after the fire.”

“Do you remember the cop’s name?” Raley asked. “Was it Burgess?”

“I don’t remember.”

“McGowan?”

“I said I don’t remember.”

Britt nudged Raley’s thigh with her knee, her way of saying to let her ask the questions since his, as predicted, seemed to rub Jones the wrong way.

“You never knew what Cleveland had done that caused him to be in the police station that particular day?” she asked.

Jones snorted a sound that could have been generated by either humor or disgust. “No telling. He’d just about done it all. His mother run off, you know, leaving me with him. He was wild from the get-go. Always skipping school and causing trouble when he went. Getting expelled, stuff like that. Busted his gym teacher’s nose once when he made him run extra laps. He quit after tenth grade.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I didn’t make him go back. I’m not that big on public education myself. Schools only teach you what the government wants you to know. Not the truth. Not the real history of this country.”

He paused as though waiting for them to take issue with his stance on education and government interference, but when they didn’t, he continued. “I tried to discipline the boy, knock some sense into him, but…” He made another gesture of indifference. “He was just one of those kids born bad. Stole, lied, fought with anybody who looked at him crosswise.

“He killed a neighbor lady’s cat once for keeping him up all night. It got romantic outside his window. Next day Cleveland went over to her trailer and wrung the cat’s neck while this old lady carried on something awful. She threatened to call the police, but she didn’t, or else they didn’t care about her dead cat because they didn’t come for him that time.”

Suddenly he sat forward in his chair and shook his index finger at them. “But that business with the girl? Now that? Un-huh,” he said, shaking his head adamantly. “That was a bad rap, was what that was.”

“The business with the girl?” Britt asked, her voice going thin.

Jones sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest again. “She looked more twenty-two than twelve,” he said scornfully. “You ask me, I think she was a little tart that got scared after her cherry got popped and blamed it all on Cleveland. But I don’t think he had to force her into doing nothing.”

Raley’s gut tightened with repugnance, and he sensed Britt was experiencing much the same. Cleveland Jones hadn’t been any great loss to the world. By his own father’s admission he was a thief, a violent thug, and a rapist.

But was his character really the point? He’d been in police custody when he died. The sworn duty of law enforcement officials was to protect every member of society, no matter how loathsome that individual might be or how heinous his crime. Until society changed the rule, that was the prevailing one, and it had been broken.

But it was unlikely that Lewis Jones would be able to help him prove it. He seemed to know no more about his son’s arrest than Raley did.

“The policeman who came to see you,” he said, “did he mention that Cleveland’s autopsy revealed that he actually died of an acute skull fracture, not smoke inhalation or burns?”

“Yep. Said he’d had his head busted in a fight just before his arrest. Said the officers who brought him in didn’t know the injuries were serious till he started acting funny. They were going to take him to the hospital and get his head X-rayed, but then he started the fire. If the brain injury hadn’t killed him, he’d have died anyway.” He rubbed his jaw. “Actually, I was glad to know he just blinked out and didn’t suffer. And he didn’t have to answer to that arson business and all those folks dying. That’s some serious shit.”

After several moments of silence, Raley asked, “Where is Cleveland buried?”

Jones got up and reached past Britt’s head toward a shelf affixed to the wall. On the shelf was a small statue of Jesus with bleeding palms and side, a metal swastika soldered onto an upright pipe, and a cardboard canister that might have contained a half gallon of ice cream.

“Cleveland.”

Raley and Britt stared at the cylinder Jones held out for their inspection. Raley said, “You had his remains cremated.”

“Not me. That cop told me there wasn’t much of him left, especially after the autopsy, and the PD felt bad on account of him dying while he was incarcerated, so unless I had already made other plans for burial, they’d take care of the arrangements and pay for everything. I said sure. I signed the paper saying it was all right for them to burn the rest of him. A few days later that cop brought me this.”

Raley looked at Britt; she looked at him. Each had things to say about this information, but their discussion would keep until they were alone.

Lewis Jones returned Cleveland to his final resting place and sat back down. Raley said, “I never got to complete my investigation into your son’s death, Mr. Jones.”

“Why’s that?”

“Circumstances suspended my involvement. But now, new evidence has come out.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not prepared to disclose that yet, and won’t be until I’ve gathered all the facts.”

“That’s why we’ve imposed on you,” Britt said. “Will you help Mr. Gannon by answering some more questions, particularly questions relating to Cleveland’s arrest?”

“Already told you, I don’t know nothing. Have you asked the cops? Wouldn’t they have records?”

Dodging that for the moment, Raley asked, “Do you know the names of any of Cleveland’s friends?”

“No.”

“Enemies?”

Jones snorted. “He was sure to have plenty of them, but I didn’t know them.”

“You don’t know who he fought with that day, or who may have struck him hard enough to fracture his skull?”

“No.”

“You weren’t told?”

He shifted impatiently in his chair. “Ain’t that what I said?”

Raley pressed on. “Was he employed?”

“Ain’t likely.”

“Was he involved with a woman?”

“Prob’ly ever’ night and twice on Sundays,” Jones said with a proud grin. “But not one woman in particular. Not one I knew of.”

“Do you know where he was living?”

“No.”

Dead ends. They sat through another silence. Finally Britt said, “You mentioned that none of Cleveland’s effects were salvaged.”

“Nothing. The stuff they’d emptied out of his pockets when they hauled him in got burned up. So did the list they’d filled out, but this cop remembered what Cleveland had on him.”

“Did he mention anything in particular? A weapon?”

“Nope. Just the usual stuff. Some money. Sixty dollars and thirty-seven cents. That cop paid it back to me. He said Cleveland had a key, but it never turned up, and I wouldn’t have known what it belonged to anyway. A pack of cigarettes. That’s all.”

Raley sat forward again. “Cleveland was a smoker?”

“Since he was a kid. Used to steal cigs from me and my old man, and wasn’t long before he was up to three, four packs a day. Never without one.” He hitched his thumb toward the photo of the Klansman. “Once, when we all went to this carnival that came to town, Daddy bought Cleveland a lighter. Not the cheap disposable kind, but the real thing. Had a naked girl on it. A whachacallit. A hologram. When you turned it a certain way, her legs opened.” He slid a sly glance toward Britt.

“The old man thought it was funny. Cleveland felt all grown-up. He loved that thing. Even when he wasn’t lighting up, he played with it. Always was fiddling with it, like a nervous habit, you know?”

“You’d think the policeman would remember an unusual lighter like that,” Raley said. “He didn’t mention it?”

“No. And I even asked. He said he didn’t recall Cleveland having a lighter.”

“A heavy smoker without a lighter? That didn’t strike the cop as unusual?”

“I’m just tellin’ you what he said.” Jones stared into near space for a moment, then said ruefully, “I’d have liked to have that lighter back. As a keepsake, you know, of Cleveland and my old man. But I guess Cleveland lost it, had it stole, something. He shit away everything else of value in his life, I guess he did that lighter, too.”

Raley and Britt looked at each other again, then Raley turned back to Jones. “Can you think of anything else that could be useful to my investigation? Was there a special place Cleveland liked to go? A favorite hangout?”

“Like I said, we hadn’t stayed in touch.”

“Was Cleveland a member of a gang?” Raley cast a glance toward the photos tacked to the wall. “A member of any group?”

“Not that I know of,” Jones replied. “I tried to get him to join up with me and some guys. He was good with weapons and enjoyed being out in the woods. But he didn’t have the patience to be a good hunter. Too fidgety, you know. And a true soldier needs discipline. Cleveland didn’t want nobody telling him what to do.”

Raley was disappointed that the interview hadn’t yielded more, but he could think of nothing else to ask. When he silently consulted Britt, she shook her head. Seeing no reason to continue, they thanked Jones for his time. Britt preceded Raley out. Jones ordered the dog to be quiet, but it growled deep in its throat, hackles raised while its slitted eyes followed Britt as she walked to the car.

His owner was watching her just as hungrily. In a confidential voice he said, “You got yourself a sweet and juicy peach there, Gannon.”

“Thanks,” Raley said tightly.

“She’s that TV gal gone missing, ain’t she?”

Raley vaulted the last of the cracked concrete steps and whipped back around.

“Relax,” Jones said as he sauntered down the steps. “I ain’t going to rat her out. I got all the respect in the world for a high-toned piece of tail like that.” His gaze shifted to Raley, and he winked. “Y’all are thinking there was something fishy about that fire and the way my boy died. Right? You’re trying to sniff out some bad cops and expose the corruption within the P fucking D.”

“Something like that.”

Jones grinned, showing gold caps on most of his molars. “More power to you.” He extended his fist, palm side down.

Raley stared at the tattoos on the man’s knuckles, then bumped his fist against Jones’s.

The grim reaper twitched as every muscle in the hard body contracted. “Gig ’em good, brother. I fuckin’ hate those commie government sons o’ bitches.”