Rusty Nails (The Dade Gibson Case Files) Read online

  Rusty Nails:

  A Dade Gibson Novel

  By

  Jason Brannon

  Copyright © 2012 by Jason Brannon

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  Jason Brannon

  Other Books by Jason Brannon:

  Visit the author’s website at www.jbrannon.net

  Rusty Nails

  Chapter 1

  Dade Gibson found his sister’s body swaying from a noose like the unsteady pendulum of an erratic clock. His legs went weak at the sight, but he remained steady long enough to run to the supply closet and get a ladder. He didn’t want to wait for the authorities to get her down. As her only sibling, Dade felt like it was his final duty to his only sister. He owed her that much after all she had done for him.

  As he carefully carried Jane’s lifeless body down the fiberglass steps and placed her on the cold floor, he couldn’t help thinking that he should have seen the signs and recognized the depression in his sister that drove her to this point. Had he really been that preoccupied with his own problems to notice her sadness?

  It seemed impossible that she was dead. No matter how hard he tried, Dade simply couldn’t fathom the idea that his sister had finally given in to the pressures of the world. At one point Jane had done volunteer work for a suicide hotline, counseling others, talking them through the difficult times in the hope of saving lives. That’s why it was such a strange, incongruous feeling to learn that she had fallen prey to the very feelings she had fought so hard to keep at bay in others.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Dade was suspicious of the circumstances surrounding Jane’s death but he knew it was simply denial on his part. He believed in souls and the afterlife and had attended church enough times to know where suicides spent eternity. It made him sick to think that his sister might be just another soul stoking the fires of forever. He quickly pushed that thought out of his mind as he smoothed Jane’s hair with a loving hand.

  It would have been easy to cry at the loss of his sister and place the fateful call to 911 that would whisk Jane away from him forever in a cold wash of harsh, flashing lights and the idle chatter of curious bystanders. But he knew that once that call was made he would have a limited amount of time left with her. So he kissed Jane on the cheek and cradled her head in his lap and wept silently while he ruminated on all the wasted days that could have been better spent with his sister.

  Wanting nothing more than to watch Jane for a while as she slept the sleep of eternity, he gently laid her head down and noticed something strange that he hadn’t before. There was an unusual purple mark on her neck. Dade’s first impression was that the mark was a bruise from the rope. Yet it wasn’t amorphous and unevenly discolored like most bruises. Instead, it had a definite shape, form, and outline. Like a tattoo.

  Dade tilted Jane’s head so that he might better see the mark. It looked enough like a bruise to make his heart sink and enough like a clue to give him hope. Yet it was the dark blemishes on Jane’s right arm that made him stifle a sob. He had seen enough of the seedy parts of the world to know the signs of addiction, and it was clear that Jane had turned to the needle at some point in her life when the pain had become too great. It was yet another sign he had missed. Dade could have just as easily been sleeping while his sister drifted away into oblivion for all the help he’d been to her.

  Numbed by his discovery and frightened to death of the truth, Dade wearily picked up the phone and called emergency services.

  Then he cried until the ambulances arrived.

  He never even noticed when the strange purple mark on Jane’s neck disappeared, vanishing like a puff of smoke.

  Chapter 2

  Five Years Later-The Zodiac Club

  “This is without a doubt one of the most bizarre clubs I’ve ever been in,” Dade said. “And that’s saying something.”

  “You’ve got my vote on that one,” Liz said, shivering inside her cashmere sweater. “But it really scares me when you think something is weird. You‘re the same guy that used to hang out with that cult of Baal worshippers in the District. What were they called?”

  “The Order of the Bull,” Dade said. “But that was a different time, and I was a different person back then. I was searching for answers, looking for something to fill the void that Jane‘s death left behind. I experimented with a lot of things back then that I’m not proud of. Anyway, I’m not that guy anymore. I’ve got a better sense of who I am now. Of course, this looks like the kind of place that might swallow identity whole so we should probably be careful.”

  The Zodiac Club was a monument to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, with each sign being somehow incorporated into the decorum. But it was more than just another bizarre themed bar. It was a fringe hangout, catering to freaks who believed they were seraphim and wackos who imagined themselves as fallen angels. In fact, it made most of the New Orleans vampire dungeons look positively amateur in comparison. Although he couldn’t exactly say why, The Zodiac Club made Dade’s skin crawl. Maybe it was the fact that there were grown people who actually took this stuff seriously and believed that they were in league with angels. Or maybe it was the possibility that some of them actually were.

  An homage to Pisces, the walls of The Zodiac Club were fish tanks made almost entirely of rune-etched glass and filled with strange bloodthirsty creatures that had mouthfuls of nasty curved teeth and wicked fins that looked like razors. The water in the tanks glowed an eerie radioactive blue in the dark, giving the club a suitably unsettling neon ambience. One rumor held that these fish had been donated to the club by the Cult of Dagon, and given the utterly alien appearance of the horrid creatures, it made sense. Dade had even heard stories that on occasion the local police would drop a homeless man or two into the water as a means of keeping the fish fed and the streets clean. Dade couldn’t help noticing a set of false teeth sitting on the tank bottom, smiling back at anyone who cared to look.

  Above the glass and running the complete perimeter of the club were the taxidermied heads of Mountain Goats, Rams, Bulls, and Lions….or Capricorn, Aries, Taurus, and Leo respectively. Dade laughed at the lengths the club owners had gone to in order to make the place as authentic as possible. His smile faded when, one by one, the trophies turned their heads to stare at him as he and Liz passed by. One of the lion heads roared fiercely, causing the entire club to go quiet for several seconds. Then, the music started up again, and the ravers went back to their dancing.

  “Boy, they really leave no stone unturned,” Dade remarked as they passed a huge set of scales where the merit of two scantily clad twin angels was being weighed against the luxury of bottled liquor. At the moment, the women were winning, but the cherubim bartender was steadily adding fifths of whiskey to the scales of Libra in an attempt to balance the sin.

  A little to the left of the bar were the marble statues of the water bearers. Only it wasn’t water that was running out of their barrels and into a small wishing well. Dade touched one finger to the trickling fountain and put it to his lips.

  “Vodka,” he said, making a bitter face. Several club goers dressed in seraphim regalia were dipping their shot glasses into the crystal clear pool and drinking themselves into the early stages of liver failure.

  Liz held up her fingers and looked around the room, counting all the signs of the zodiac that she recognized. “The best I can tell there are still a couple we’ve missed.”<
br />
  “Virgo and Scorpio,” Dade said.

  “I think I’ve found Virgo,” Liz said, pointing to a cage that was suspended from the ceiling. Inside the cage was a nun whose arms were covered in stained glass tattoos that were busy depicting a war between angels.

  “Those tattoos are moving,” Dade said as he stared at the nun’s flesh art and watched as angels killed angels in cold blood.

  “Now if we can just find Scorpio,” Liz remarked.

  It was only as they sat down at the glass-topped table that he saw them. At first they were inconspicuous. Then he noticed a slight movement beneath his hands as a glimmer of light reflected off of the transparent surface. He pulled away in surprise, nearly falling out of his chair, as he realized that the inside of the hollowed-out table was filled with scorpions.

  “Remind me again why I let you talk me into coming here,” Dade said, watching the freaks come through the front door in droves.

  “We’re here because you’ve got a customer that’s willing to hire you. Have you forgotten that so soon? I’m sure your creditors haven’t forgotten all those bills of yours that are due.”

  Dade grunted. It was the sound he always made when he knew Liz was right about something. It was a sound he made often.

  As they waited, Dade cased the club, scanning the locals in some attempt to figure out what made them tick. These weren’t people who believed that angels were real and could sometimes interact with human events. These were people who genuinely believed they were angels, cast out of Heaven for the simple purpose of engaging in every imaginable form of debauchery this side of Hell. Just seeing all the elaborate plumage and the razor-sharp talons made him wonder what kind of day jobs these people had. Somehow, he couldn’t imagine any of them holding positions at the local banks or insurance companies. He made a point to remember a few of the faces and try to pick them out when he ventured into town. It would be interesting to see what kind of image they presented to the general public.

  “Can I get you two anything?” the waitress asked. One of her tiny wings inadvertently brushed against Dade, and the urge to size her up was nearly irresistible. But the outfit she wore was too skimpy and Liz was much too possessive. Dade wondered what he would do if Louise Hartwell, the client they were meeting, turned out to be a knockout. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw a heavy-set redhead pushing her way through extended wings.

  “Mrs. Hartwell,” Dade said, extending his hand in a gesture of politeness. “I’m Dade Gibson and this is my girlfriend, Liz. Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thank you, darling,” she said with a hint of southern belle in her voice.

  It was dark inside the club and a techno beat was throbbing like a massive heart. Several of the angels were snorting something neon off of the bar. In another strobe-lit corner, two scantily clad cherubim were doing shots of a red liquid that gave off a faint cloud of steam. Louise Hartwell hardly seemed to notice.

  “This is quite a place you’ve brought us to,” Dade remarked. “It’s not everyday you see grown men running around in feathers.”

  “These people are definitely in a world of their own,” Mrs. Hartwell replied. “But they’re generally harmless.”

  “Does any of this relate to why we’re here?” Dade asked.

  “This is a delicate matter,” Louise explained, her red hair seeming to glow under the barrage of strobe lights. “I thought my problem might not seem quite so bizarre after watching some of the stuff that goes on around here.”

  Dade nodded as he noticed a seraphim with radioactive blue plumage getting nail wounds tattooed into the center of each palm.

  “I see what you mean,” he said. “Now, what’s your problem?”

  Louise took a deep breath. “I’m not really sure how to ease into the subject, so I’ll just jump in headfirst. The bones of my late husband are missing. Someone stole them right out of his crypt. I want to hire you to find poor Richard’s remains.”

  “The bones of your husband?” Dade repeated. “Why would anyone want them?”

  “I don’t know,” Louise said. There was enough of the Deep South in her voice to bring to mind cornbread and grits and black-eyed-peas. “It’s all a mystery to me. That’s why I need your help.”

  “Did your husband have any enemies?” Dade asked.

  “Don’t we all?” Louise said. “But enemies are usually satisfied with death.”

  “Do you know if any of the other graves around town have been vandalized?”

  “None that I know of.”

  Dade nodded his head. “Unusual set of circumstances we’ve got here. How did the two of you first meet?”

  “I’m sure that you’ve heard a lot about Internet dating. Ours was similar to that. Only I met Richard at an online Ouija board site. I was surfing the web as I’m prone to do when I’m bored and ran across a link for a site called The Ouija Room. The site was basically an online replica of a Ouija board. On a whim, I typed in ‘Crowley’s Point,’ thinking I might be able to talk to one of the town’s founders or someone famous from the area’s past. I got Richard instead. We must have spent three hours talking that night. I typed until my fingers were sore, and I went to bed feeling like I had found a new friend who understood me.”

  “Hold the phone,” Dade said. “Are you trying to tell me that you met your husband after he was already dead?”

  “I know it sounds crazy.”

  “I specialize in crazy,” Dade said. “But I have to admit that this is a little out there even for me.”

  “So your husband was already dead when you two fell in love?” Liz asked.

  Louise Hartwell nodded. “One thing led to another, and over the next few weeks, I spent more and more time online, talking to him. He was grateful for the company too. Said it passed the time in limbo.”

  “Limbo?” Liz repeated, hoping for clarification.

  “The place between this world and the next,” Hartwell explained. “It’s kind of like an eternal halfway house. Richard wasn’t sure why he was stuck there, but he said it was better than the alternative. He had been expecting Hell.”

  “Did you do any research to verify that this man ever existed?” Dade asked. “Weren’t you worried that this might have been an online predator pretending to be something he wasn’t?”

  “Oh sure, I considered that. But there was something genuine about Richard that came through during our chats. I went to the library and dug up some old newspaper articles on him. I’ve got a couple of friends that do filing at the Public Works office. They told me that he had been registered for electricity, water, sewage, and garbage pickup a few years back. The Internet brought up a few outdated listings for him too. As nearly as I could determine, he was real, and I was in love with him.”

  Dade cleared his throat, unsure of how to proceed. “Mrs. Hartwell, when did you last talk to Richard?”

  “He stopped talking to me the day his bones were stolen.”

  “This is too wild for words,” Dade sighed.

  “You sound as if you don’t believe me,” Louise said.

  “It’s not that. It’s just…” Dade found himself at a temporary loss for words. “Surely you see my perspective on this. You’re asking me to search for the bones of your dead husband who was dead before you ever met him. Does none of that strike you as odd?”

  “I think I may have been referred to the wrong person,” Louise said, her voice taking on a cold note of hostility. “I was told you were reputable and skilled. Nobody said anything about insulting.”

  Dade cleared his throat. “I apologize. I’m merely asking the same questions that any other investigator would ask. And to be truthful, I’m probably giving your story a lot more credence than most would.”

  “Richard told me something like this was going to happen. He prepared me for it. I just didn’t believe him at first.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He didn’t tell me anything directly. He said he was afraid of giving me too mu
ch information. The only thing he kept saying over and over again was that he was in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble can a dead man get himself into?” Dade asked.

  “That’s why I’m coming to you,” Louise explained.

  “Are the police involved?” Liz asked.

  “No. They wouldn’t take something like this seriously.”

  “You could have reported it as simple vandalism of the grave,” Dade suggested. “Or was there some reason you didn’t want the police involved?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” Louise said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I just didn’t want them mucking things up like they have a tendency to do.”

  “How did Richard die?” Liz said. “And is it possible that has something to do with his...disappearance?”

  “When the subject came up, the only thing he would say is that the he had planned on going home to be with the angels, only the angels had other plans.”

  “That’s it?” Dade said. “That was his explanation for how he died?”

  “It’s a sensitive subject with him,” Louise said.

  “And you didn’t try to find out on your own?” Liz asked, clearly not believing the story.

  “Richard was murdered,” Louise admitted, averting her eyes. “The murder is still unsolved. The police don’t really know what happened to Richard. He was found alone in a hotel room without a mark on him.”

  “So it’s possible that his murder might be somehow related to the disappearance of his remains.”

  “It’s possible,” Louise Hartwell admitted as she dug a tissue out of her purse.

  “Mrs. Hartwell, I normally don’t investigate murders,” Dade explained. “That’s usually a job I leave to the police.”

  “You haven’t lived here long enough or you’d know that the police wince at the name Richard Edgemore.”

  “I’ve lived here for several years now, and I’ve never heard that name,” Liz said.

  “You would if you traveled in certain...circles.”