Chapter Seventeen

Come Sunday morning, I was feeling a twinge of guilt at not telling Garrity or Trey or anyone except Rico about my mysterious phone caller. I chalked my reluctance up to healthy suspicion. Rico, however, had a different idea.

"It's something you have that they don't," he said. "You're spiteful that way. Always gotta have something in pocket."

He'd called me as I was getting dressed, his voice rough with exhaustion and a night of talking too loudly. And he was right—I did like to hoard my secrets. After all, I wasn't telling him about what I'd discovered about Trey the night before, and I told Rico everything.

I took the phone outside to a secluded area off the lobby where the valets hung out on their breaks. They were a wholesome-looking bunch, young and well-scrubbed. They all smoked. I tried to stay upwind, but the spiky bite of secondhand smoke found me anyway. I shoved two pieces of gum into my mouth and took a seat on the edge of a planter.

"Hey, can you trace that call backwards,” I said, “just from the phone number?"

"Depends. Landline, cell phone?"

"I don't have a clue."

"Of course you don't. And it’s most likely spoofed. But yeah, I can give it a shot."

"I knew you could. You busy this morning?"

"Got nothin' but time."

"Cool." I hopped down off the planter. "How about giving me a lift? My car is still at Phoenix, and there's this field trip I'm dying to take."

* * *

I waited for him in the lobby. When he arrived, the two women sitting opposite me checked him out like he was some rap singer they should have recognized. Or perhaps a criminal from a wanted poster.

He was definitely eye-catching, built like a grizzly and twice as ornery, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. He’d dressed in baggy black pants flowing over high-top Converse, a red Falcons jersey completing the look. Silver studs in each ear matched the diamond in his nose.

I grabbed him in a hug. Up close, his skin looked darker than usual, almost as dark as his beard. I waited for the Hollywood smile, but it was low wattage.

I pulled off the shades. His eyes were red-rimmed and bleary.

"Jeez," I said. "How much sleep did you get?"

"Three hours, and that's roundin' up." He snatched the glasses back. "So what's the plan?"

I shouldered my tote bag and told him.

He sighed loudly. "Aw, hell."

*      *      *

Rico drove an old school Chevy Tahoe that wolfed down a quarter of his take-home pay. He'd recently converted the sound system to MP3, so I no longer had to kick through a pile of CDs to make room for my feet. He had one of his mixes playing, the bass cranked up so high his car was practically bouncing off the line.

"Go left," I said.

We inched down Peachtree for a half mile or so, past the Sunday morning church crowd as colorful as a patch of day lilies, past the newspaper men hollering the Journal-Constitution headlines. I saw a panhandler talking on a cell phone while another slept under a blanket of wrapping paper.

Rico followed my directions without question, heading south until we hit the old part of the city, where the lofts of Cabbagetown rose over the MARTA railway line.

He squinted ahead. "I hate it when you do this to me."

"Do what?"

"Drag me into your ghost shit."

We pulled in front of the arching brick gates of Oakland Cemetery, eighty-eight verdant acres dotted with some of Atlanta's most elite dead people. The azaleas had yet to burst into full glory, but daffodils dotted the walking path in profusion. Two runners and their dogs stretched at the entrance as a docent gathered a group of tourists.

I shook my head. "I told you, ghosts don't usually haunt cemeteries—not enough residual energy."

He continued reluctantly through the gates, parking next to an enormous magnolia. We got out with some door slamming on Rico's part, some kicking and muttering too.

He peered over his sunglasses. "White chicks and ghost shit. I do not get it."

As we walked, I unfolded the map I’d printed at the hotel, a basic marked-with-an-X number from an article about the reburial of Charley's great-grandfather. We followed the directions to the Confederate section of the cemetery, where I spotted the enormous stone lion I'd seen in the picture at Jake Whitaker's office. The Southern Cross fluttered crisply above the marble creature, its paws clutching a cannonball, its face contorted in dying anguish.

Rico stopped walking and took off his sunglasses. "Oh no, we are not doing the Gone with the Wind tour."

"At least it's not ghost shit."

"Shut up." He put his sunglasses back on. "You better have a good reason for dragging me to the Great Cracker Burial Ground."

"I'm looking for somebody."

"Clark Gable?"

"Shut up. Somebody who was buried here last year. Or re-buried here actually."

"So this is ghost shit."

I ignored him. The Oakland Preservation Society representative I'd spoken with that morning had been very helpful—when I mentioned the lion, she knew exactly which grave I was talking about. Even though the last plot had been sold in 1865, families occasionally put one up for sale, and the Oakland staff maintained a list of interested buyers, like Mark Beaumont. She'd demurred when I'd asked how much it had cost.

"Over there," I said.

Shadrick Turner Floyd's grave nestled under a dogwood. It wasn't in the Confederate section proper, but in a private plot next to it. I got out my cell phone and took a picture.

"It's a pretty spot," I said. "You can see the lion, the obelisk—"

"The MARTA," Rico replied.

To prove his point, a train rumbled by. Private Floyd didn't have as prestigious a plot as the late Maynard Jackson, the city's first African-American mayor—that gentleman’s grave had a prime view of the Atlanta skyline—but it wasn't bad.

"They imported him from Charley Beaumont's hometown in…" I peered closer at the tombstone. "Tennessee, apparently, not far from the South Carolina-Georgia border. Found the remains in a cotton field. The Daughters of the Confederacy contacted Charley about it, and here we are."

"I thought she was from Miami."

"Apparently she has these redneck credentials that she only drags up if it's politically useful."

"Why is it politically useful to drag your dead great-great-grandfather all the way to Atlanta?"

I pointed at the photograph accompanying the article, a twin of the one in Jake Whitaker's office, looking once again upon Senator Harrison Adam's beaming robust face.

"This, you cannot spin wrong. Somebody's gonna be pissed at you no matter what opinion you hold about the Confederate flag. But this…" I gestured toward the grave. It was well-manicured and tidy, with tasteful purple irises. "This is history."

"It's a stunt.” Rico plopped down on a bench and examined his fingernails. "The Beaumonts dug up this man and dragged him from West Boondock to be buried here, just to get some good press among the unreconstructed white folk so their boy will get elected."

"Looking like."

"And what does this have to do with the real live dead girl, the one in your brother's driveway?"

"I don't know yet, but I'm gonna find out." I pulled at his elbow. "Come on. I gotta get my car."

*      *      *

Rico drove me back to Phoenix. He put me out at the main entrance, and I shoved three squares of gum in my mouth. He gave the building the skunk eye, then rejected my invitation to come inside.

"Just call me later. I'll have that number looked up by then, unless it's something tricky." He examined me over his shades. "You quit smoking again?"

"Yeah, a week ago. Why?"
"Because you haven't lit up once all morning. And you just ground out that gum wrapper with your shoe."

I looked down. "Oops."

*      *      *

The parking garage was Sunday-morning deserted. My footsteps echoed damply in the emptiness, intensifying a dread I couldn’t shake. I quickened my pace, got out my keys. To my surprise, I spotted Trey's Ferrari—he'd parked it in a faraway corner, like a cowboy might tether his stallion before heading into the saloon.

My car was exactly where I'd left it, next to the elevator. Above it, I saw the empty spot where the security camera had been until someone had smashed it, that someone most probably being Dylan Flint. My paranoia quotient ratcheted up a few notches. Suddenly, my secondhand Chevy looked as sweet and welcoming as a fortress.

I unlocked the door and climbed in. I was fastening my seatbelt when I saw the flyer on the windshield. My first thought was annoyance. My second thought was surprise. And my third thought? There wasn't one. Fear will do that, short circuit your thoughts.

Because it wasn't a flyer. It was a simple round shooting target, black and white and clean as a whistle, except that instead of a bull’s eye, there was a photograph of me in the center. A bullet hole punctured my image—ragged edges, massive, probably something large caliber. Dead center. Dead perfect.

A definite kill shot.