by L T Vargus
“Whatever.”
They stopped off at a gas station long enough for Vince to load up on a dozen donuts, a bagful of roller egg rolls, and two-for-one Funyuns, then headed north toward the little pay-by-the-week roach motel they’d checked into earlier.
Vince licked Funyun crumbs off his fingers.
“You ever see a detachable shower head before?”
Frank pinched his cigarette between his lips while he talked. “There’s one in the motel room.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about,” Vince said. “It’s the first one I ever saw not on TV. In real life. IRL, like the gamers say.”
“I get the sense fixtures like that are more for, like, older folks or seedy places like trailers and roach motels than respectable houses.”
“I don’t know why,” Vince said, pointing the open chip bag toward Frank and offering him a not-really-onion ring.
Frank grimaced and shook his head.
“They’re fucking brilliant,” Vince went on. “You can get a direct stream anywhere.”
“Don’t get weird on me,” Frank said. “I gotta use that shower head, too.”
Vince popped another handful of rings in his mouth and chewed.
“Nothing weird, I’m just saying it’s convenient as hell for all those hard-to-reach areas. I was thinking about it while I was in the shower earlier, so I take it down and try a few rinse angles. Eventually gave it the up and under, you know.”
He set the Funyuns on the console and made garden hose motions between his legs like he was spraying his junk.
“Power-washed my undercarriage, so to speak.” He looked at Frank, brows high. “Total game changer. My gooch meat has never been so clean.”
Frank screwed up his face with disgust.
“So what I’m hearing is that you somehow navigated thirty-odd years of life without once washing your taint?”
“What?” Vince shook his head. “No!”
Frank bulled on ahead, finally finding something to entertain himself.
“That’s… I mean, that’s something,” he said. “I can understand the exhilaration, I guess. Welcome to, I don’t know, indoor plumbing? Adult life? Hygiene? All of the above.”
“Now, hang on a minute,” Vince snapped, his face half annoyance, half embarrassment. “Of course I washed it.”
Frank grinned out the driver’s side window as he whipped the Buick around a left-hand turn, ignoring the protests coming from the passenger seat.
“Did no one teach you anything as a child? Because you gotta wash your taint, Vince. That’s just basic human decency, man. Especially considering the kind of shit you eat. It’s a sanitary issue. Even apes in the wild probably wash their taints. I mean, they must, otherwise that fur would all be matted and whatnot. So yeah… Gotta wash your taint is all. That’s a mandatory upkeep area for mammals.”
“I said I washed it,” Vince insisted. “I just never gave it the full blast treatment. I, like, cupped handfuls of water to rinse. The old cup-n-splash, you know? I didn’t know there was a better way. What I’m trying to say is, it was an epiphany, using the detachable shower head. It was like a spot cleaner or something. Got it extra clean.”
“Well, sure, washing down under for the first time after thirty years’ll do wonders for it,” Frank said. “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Chapter 23
He’d meant to head straight from the movie theater to a well-lit, well-videoed Wal-Mart across town and buy a bunch of mundane grocery type shit to help his alibi if it should ever come to that, but something went weird with the drugs. He was walking back to the junk car, Uzi swinging along in his right hand, then he blinked, and he was unlocking the employee door to the pharmacy in the CVS.
Boom. Jumped in time. No memory of the interim.
The keys clinked and rattled as he flinched. He looked down at himself, checking his clothes for blood splatter.
Not only were there no bloodstains, but he was also in an entirely different set of clothes. He wore his usual work outfit — a navy polo shirt and khaki pants. So he hadn’t gone straight from the scene of the shooting to work. That was good, at least.
According to the clock over the counter, it was 4:45 AM. He was somewhat astounded that he’d gotten himself to work on time despite being in some kind of drug-induced fugue state. It also made him nervous.
He let himself into the pharmacy and headed straight for the bathroom. Almost jogging. Heart picking up speed.
Raeanna wouldn’t be in until seven, but the store manager, Clint, would be there wandering around the CVS somewhere, doing petty managerial shit. He wanted — needed — to see himself in the mirror before crossing paths with Clint or anyone else. His clothes were clean, but since he couldn’t remember changing them, he also couldn’t be sure he’d showered. Clean clothes didn’t help so much if he had blood matting his hair or anything.
This wasn’t the first time he’d glitched like that. Seeming to jump in time by way of the drugs. His body following the routine while his conscious mind was checked out. It was, however, the first time he’d done it after cutting a bloody swath through Chicago. The notion made him shudder. What if he’d screwed up somewhere along the way? He had no way of knowing.
Out of habit, he flipped on the computer as he passed. The lights he didn’t touch. He’d learned early in his career that you never turned on the lights behind the counter when you first got in. If you did, every asshole in the city would immediately line up at the drive-thru, no matter what the opening hours on the sign said.
The motion-sensor light in the bathroom flickered on, and he put both hands on the sides of the sink and leaned toward the mirror. Clean-shaven, teeth brushed, hair lightly gelled. No blood dripping down his face or shimmering out from under his fingernails. Everything in perfect order to blend in with the masses.
He smiled at the copy of himself in the mirror, his partner in crime. Flashing that sarcastic smile he always gave himself while making eye contact with his reflection. Smiling so hard his cheeks stung.
The uppers were still going strong, his heart pounding away, but the sweats had stopped, and the restlessness was gone. The hallucinatory stuff had mostly pulled back, too, his liver fighting to metabolize it enough that his brain could perceive the world like the rest of the sheep did. Just enough remained in his system that his face looked slightly warped in his reflection, the eyes going pear-shaped and wrong if he turned his head just right, and the mouth seeming to move when he wasn’t staring directly at it — an electric throb dancing around the edges of his lips. Weird.
Mostly human by outward appearances, anyway. Good enough.
He left the bathroom and went to the lockers, put on his white coat. Clipped on the little laminated badge that had all the letters behind his name and a picture of himself smiling like a dog trying to hack up a bone lodged crosswise in his throat.
Back at the computer, he had close to a hundred overnight scrips to run, including a bunch of stuff from the ER near the theater. That brought a glimmer of interest. Maybe some of the scrips he was filling today were for people who’d been at the shooting the night before.
He ran those first, even though he was technically supposed to run the prescriptions in the order they came in. While he worked, he slipped one tab from every tenth prescription he filled into his pocket. He couldn’t just take meds from the safe because it was all closely monitored by the DEA, but filled prescriptions were different. Once they were taken out of the safe for a prescription, the DEA considered the pills the patient’s responsibility. Only the elderly and chronically-ill counted their pills as soon as they got home, so he made sure not to skim anything from them. He stuck to post-ops, postnatal, and ADHD cases, and his bounty remained plentiful.
Later, he would hide the collection in the bottom of his empty reading glasses case. All except one or two pills, which would go into a baggie in the back of Raeanna’s locker, under the white nurse shoes she had
stopped wearing last year. This was his insurance policy, just in case Clint, the store manager, ever noticed pharmaceuticals were going missing and called the DEA. Not bloody likely with that high school dropout.
The phones rang at least a dozen times before six — people who couldn’t understand that just because the CVS was a 24-hour store didn’t mean the pharmacy inside was — but the beige landlines started bleating as soon as the clock rolled over. Which was also right about the time the old folks started tapping on the barely cracked shutter out front, and assholes started honking at the drive-thru. Of course Raeanna wasn’t due to come in until seven, so he had to log in to the checkout computer and run everything himself.
While he collected HIPAA forms, counseled patients on their medications, and explained to some fuckhead in the drive-thru that he wasn’t going to go pick her up a gallon of milk and a carton of cigarettes even though he was already inside the store — basically did Raeanna’s job on top of his job — he tried to replay the shooting. Tried to feel that screaming aggression again. Tried to escape this dreary pharmacy, lose himself in the memories of his fantasy made real.
He focused on the close-up: the faces behind the popcorn counter staring up at him, frightened and small. Then the texture of the marble cracking as the bullets ripped into it. Shattering glass everywhere.
Every time the Uzi started to spit ammo in his imagination, though, the image of that little girl kept intruding. She wouldn’t stay away. Her eyes all wide and terrified, her chest inflating and deflating at top speed.
He couldn’t find it again, that cleansing rage. Maybe it was just that the drugs were wearing off, his energy fading. Or maybe it was being trapped in this place. Penned in like more of the mindless cattle. Smiling that sickly hacking dog smile, serving up meds to the sheeple. He couldn’t tap into that other side while he was here, maybe. It wouldn’t work.
Raeanna came in at ten to seven, clipping her nametag to her shirt.
“Good morning, Ben.” She smiled, and for a second her teeth looked like tiny mirrors he could see himself in. Then she slipped in front of him and took over at the checkout computer, and the illusion passed. “How was the weekend? Did you get up to any big fun?”
She started in with the same shit every Monday as soon as she showed up. Good morning. You good? Good weekend? Good, good, good.
“No.”
He rolled his eyes and headed back to run more scrips. He wanted to be caught up on the overnights by the time the delivery guy showed up at ten.
The workday trudged on, in most ways indistinguishable from any other day. Every now and then while he worked, he caught a glimpse of his fingers out of the corner of his eye, and they looked like worms trying to crawl out of his sleeves, but for the most part everything had gone back to normal.
Chapter 24
Loshak groaned as he folded himself into the driver’s seat of the rental, then twisted to set his coffee in the cup holder and the little plastic cup of donut holes between his legs. Hands free, he shut the door and buckled up.
Spinks slipped a little on the icy sidewalk as he came around the car, but didn’t fall. The reporter jumped into the passenger side and slammed the door behind himself.
“Start the car, start the car, start the car,” he yelled, shivering theatrically and huddling around his steaming coffee. “Great Scott, man, start the car!”
Loshak huffed a laugh, steam curling up from his mouth.
“Is that supposed to be a Scottish accent?”
“What the hell kind of weather is this, anyway?” Spinks snapped, glaring at the digital time, direction, and temperature readout on the dash as Loshak turned on the car. “Negative one? Is that even a number?”
“That’s the kind of debate you’ll have to take up with a mathematician.” Loshak twisted around to look out the back window but found it was still iced over. He had to roll down his window and stick his head out. Once he’d confirmed there were no cars or pedestrians behind them, he backed out of the spot in front of the Krispy Kreme.
“Oh my God, roll up your window. I don’t care if we crash and die. We can’t let that wind in here anymore.”
When the car was back on the road and pumping heat out of the vents, Spinks calmed down a little.
“We need to solve this damn case and get out of here, partner.” The reporter shook his head. “I did not sign up for an extended stay on Hoth.”
Loshak took a drink of his coffee and grimaced. The short trip from the donut shop to the car had cooled it off to lukewarm.
“You might be onto something there.” He gulped the tepid brew, trying to ingest as much caffeine in as few drinks as possible.
“Hopefully this car thing will get us somewhere,” Spinks said.
Loshak drank some more of his warmish coffee and didn’t say anything.
The call had come in at 5:09 AM, hence the wake-the-hell-up coffee and the race to the precinct. Traffic cam footage near the movie theater turned up a ski-masked driver exiting a dark sedan. An older Ford Taurus, dark green, and the images this time were clear enough to show the plate number. It was registered to a Ray Winston, a forty-four-year-old living out in the boonies south of Chicago. In spite of the early hour, detectives were en route to talk to the guy. Apparently, it was a three-hour drive.
Spinks eyed Loshak sidelong. “You don’t think it’s going to turn up anything?”
“Our shooter isn’t stupid. He’ll have thought of this. My guess is either the car or the plate is stolen.”
When they made it to the station’s conference room, however, it was clear that skeptics were in the minority on the task force. Millhouse started off the meeting by showing the footage, then a driver’s license photo of Ray Winston.
“He’s forty-four, living in Gardner with Marian Jackson, his common-law wife,” Millhouse said. “Winston is a registered gun owner with two DUIs on his record. Both times, he had firearms in the vehicle.”
Loshak’s mind jumped back to the notes he’d scribbled in the margins of the file in the middle of the night, the suggestions that they cross-reference for gun ownership. It was stupid now that he thought about it. Their killer wouldn’t have gone out of his way to avoid a traceable car only to buy the murder weapon in his own name.
He raised his hand to get the Deputy Chief of Detective’s attention. She nodded at him.
“What does Winston do for a living?”
Millhouse glanced down at her notes. “Works at the SC2 Packing and Distribution Center in Peoria.”
“Any higher education?” Loshak asked.
“Just a GED,” she said. “According to state records, he dropped out of high school in the tenth grade, then went back and got his equivalency a few years ago.”
Loshak shook his head.
“That doesn’t fit with the level of sophistication and planning shown in these shootings. Our shooter will have an undergraduate, at minimum. Most likely multiple levels of specialized post-secondary education. Doctorate, legal degree—” Without pausing, he threw in his latest hunch. “—pharmacology, that sort of thing.”
“Winston’s a member of the NRA,” Millhouse said. “He drives around with loaded guns in his vehicle. In the vehicle from the footage.”
A couple of the uniforms were looking around like they wanted to chime in, but none of them made a move. Each of them had probably been on patrol at one point or another and stopped people with loaded guns in their car or truck. Concealed carries in the glovebox, open carries on the hip, hunting rifles forgotten after an unsuccessful morning out in the woods. That kind of thing happened in this part of the country. Loshak was becoming more and more certain that Millhouse had just never experienced it because she’d never worn the uniform or gone on patrol.
He didn’t want to get into a fight with Millhouse in front of her task force, but if he let her bark up the wrong tree long enough to convince the rest of them, they would be chasing dead ends instead of finding good leads to their shooter.
<
br /> He crossed one arm over his chest.
“It’s not likely that our shooter will be a member of any organization, and it’s even less likely that the guns he’s using in the shootings will be registered to him. At most, Ray Winston is going to turn out an unwitting accomplice, but more likely the plate will have been stolen and not reported.”
“Or left on,” someone in the back said.
It was the detective who’d kept challenging Loshak while he gave his profile the day before. When she realized everyone was looking at her, she sat up straighter and frowned.
“Some people don’t realize they can drive for twenty-four hours without plates if they just bought the car, and they’re headed to get it registered. They think they’ll get pulled over, so they ask the owner if they can leave the old one on and mail it back when they get home.”
Spinks whistled. “That still works up here?”
“It’s illegal,” the detective said, “but yeah. Most folks are pretty trusting out in the sticks.”
“Well, in any case, we shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions before we’ve got the evidence to back it up,” Millhouse said.
Loshak clamped his jaw tight to keep from saying something that might get him in trouble. Apparently it didn’t count as jumping to conclusions when she did it herself. He could see it in the fierce glimmer of the Deputy Chief’s eyes that she was certain Ray Winston was their shooter. He wondered if she was already imagining the press conference to announce the apprehension of the shooter. Her victory speech.
“We’ll see what talking to Winston turns up, and we’ll go from there,” she said.
While Millhouse shuffled her papers, the detective caught Loshak’s gaze and gave him a minute nod. Not friendly or welcoming, but at least an acknowledgment that she didn’t dismiss his profile out of hand. He returned it.
“Now, I believe Captain Lindquist has the updates from the overnight squad,” Millhouse said.
She motioned and a heavyset black man near the front stood up. Before he got to the podium, though, the conference room door opened, and Officer Lennie poked her head in.
