36 Porter Hayes

The McKellar house was pretty fucked-up. Everything looked fine from the street but once you headed inside to the living room and kitchen, the place was shot to shit. Broken glass, old books turned to confetti, all that new kitchen cabinetry looking like Swiss cheese. Addison hadn't seemed to care one damn bit, impatient to get to her kids. Hayes stood in the shot-up kitchen with Sergeant Lantana Jones, who was doing her best to get a statement. But Addison kept repeating over and over: "I have no fucking idea who did this. I don't even know my husband's real name. Okay? Can I go now?"

"But you just spoke with him?" Jones asked.

"He called Mr. Hayes on our way back to Memphis," Addison said. "Looking for me."

"Where had you been, ma'am?" Sergeant Jones asked.

"That's a long story."

"I got a long time," Jones said. "Folks in Central Gardens aren't going to be happy about a fine old historic home like this turning into the damn OK Corral. Do you see that blood on the floor? That belonged to the two dead men we just hauled out of here."

"Who were they?" she said.

"Your daughter says they worked for your husband," Jones said. "Some kind of private security."

"Please don't call him my husband," Addison said. "I don't know who that man is."

Addison looked to Porter and Porter nodded. He had told her to play it straight with cops, no reason to hold anything back about the man she'd known as Dean McKellar. They'd need the police reports and records of the danger he'd put her in before she headed on into court.

"This sounds crazy," Addison said. "But everyone thinks I'm crazy anyway. Before Dean hung up, he told me he'd been kidnapped by some Russians. He said they were going to torture and kill him unless I could help him."

"Help him do what?"

"I don't know," Addison said. "He was screaming and yelling before we got disconnected. I have to be honest. He didn't make much sense and I kind of quit listening."

"Russians?" Jones said. "In Memphis?"

"I know," Addison said. "That's all he said and then the phone went dead as I was trying to find out what happened to Preston and Sara Caroline."

"The kids are with your sister-in-law," Jones said. "Just released them about thirty minutes ago. They're smart children, Mrs. McKellar. You got to be proud. When the shooting went down, they headed straight into that old basement and hid. They were scared but unharmed. You okay?"

Addison nodded and wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. The clothes had been some of Nina's old stuff she'd left at Porter's house.

"One more thing," Jones said. "What's your husband have to do with Russians?"

"I don't know."

"Why would someone want to kill him?"

Addison smiled. "I don't know," she said. "But I definitely understand."

"Russians," Porter Hayes said.

"In Memphis," Jones said, raising her eyebrows. "Ain't that some shit?"

Jones assigned two uniform cops to run Addison over to her brother's house in Chickasaw Gardens before Hayes and Jones walked outside the big front door. It was busted wide open, letting in all that cold air as they stooped under the yellow crime scene tape. He spotted that little fed, Duane Bickett, with two of his boys around the side of the house. They were all wearing those dumbass FBI windbreakers they loved so much. Bickett stared in Hayes's direction, and Hayes turned his back to him. "Come on," Hayes said to Lantana Jones. "I ain't got the time."

"They rolled up right before you."

"How about we roll on?" Hayes said.

"Fine by me," she said. "Me and you need to talk private anyway."

They were in Jones's unmarked unit and headed back downtown toward 201 and Hayes's office. He rode shotgun as Lantana raced along Union past the UT medical center and the old Scottish Rite Temple. "What if I told you this was the second time I heard about Russians this week?" she asked.

"Even if I weren't the best goddamn detective in the city, I'd say that just might be a clue."

"Best goddamn detective?" she said. "Shit. Maybe back in the day of the Disco Fucking Duck."

"Talk to me, Lantana," he said. "What do you know?"

"Yesterday morning, we got a call on two bodies found down by South Port," she said, navigating Union with her left hand. "A couple men on the daylight shift found the bodies along a private road. Took some doing, but we IDed one of them as this man named Davies, a river rat broker, working on getting containers off the ships and onto trucks."

"And the other was Russian?"

"Get this," she said, hitting a little bump as they passed Sun Records, Hayes's ass leaving the seat and then slamming back down. "Dmitri Sokolov."

"That's a name you don't hear much in Orange Mound."

"Flew into Memphis on a private jet with a bunch of other Russians," she said. "Once we got that, the feds took the whole thing over and I was glad as hell to clear my plate."

"Do you know what they were looking for?" Hayes said, lowering the window and firing up a Winston. The cold wind felt good on his face as they passed the Commercial Appeal building and drove on toward downtown.

"It was Agent Bickett who was in charge," Jones said. "A first-class motherfucker."

"Come on now, Sergeant Jones," Hayes said. "You giving that man way too much credit. You know his momma don't love him that much."

Jones couldn't help but grin and they rode for a while in silence as they headed deeper into downtown. Hayes checked his phone and saw a text from Deacon Malone that he'd changed out Hayes's car for his own and left the keys in the office. He'd get the vehicle situation straight and then roll back to Central Gardens to check on Addison. That shithole they'd found her in down in Marshall County wasn't any five-star hotel. Addison looked mad as hell but also fragile, pale, and half-starved.

"Followed up on that tip you gave me," Jones said. "I rode with the Quitman County sheriff to that hunt club and checked the freezer and the whole damn property down there."

"But you couldn't find that dead woman."

"We didn't find shit," she said. "Not that I trust any of those folks down in Quitman County. I planned on taking some prints, brought down one of our lab folks, but that place had been cleaned out. The whole damn house smelled of nothing but bleach and Pine-Sol. Must've moved that body right after you left. Wish you'd stuck around."

"Had to find my client."

"Ain't that just like you," she said. "Porter Hayes."

They drove past AutoZone Park and the Peabody Hotel before turning up Third and on over to Madison. She slowed and parked behind Porter's Mercedes, keeping the engine running. He reached out for the door handle.

"I don't know what those feds are looking at," she said. "But I can tell you they don't know shit about Memphis."

Hayes let go of the handle and turned to her.

"Two of my detectives worked that scene at the port before the feds took over," she said. "Looked to them like those two dead men had been arguing over something that came out of a shipping container."

"Okay."

"An empty shipping container."

"Someone else beat them there?"

"Maybe you are as good as you think," she said. "That dock was a secured site and we got video of the vehicles coming and going from the gate, although we didn't catch nothing on the shooting itself. Just those three trucks heading out. Feds following up on all that mess."

"What was in the container?"

Lantana Jones smiled. "Either the feds already knew or just didn't care."

"You gonna tell or you gonna make me beg?" he said.

"Security had called into dispatch two hours before the Russians got there about a break-in at the compound and folks looting containers along their docks."

"Memphis."

"Yeah," she said. "Those boys killed each other over something that someone else had stolen two hours before."

"Any idea who?"

"No," she said, tapping her long red nails against the wheel. "But I got some folks I like. If I were working this thing, not the feds, I'd be headed down to talk to Hotbox."

"Deonte Taylor in on this?"

She nodded. "Stolen shit from the port?" she said. "What do you think? Doesn't he owe you a thing or two?"

"Actually, I owe him."

"He'll talk quicker to you than me," she said. "Might be worth a ride down to Washington Heights."