by Chaz McGee
THIRTY-FOUR
I hightailed it out of the courtroom after them, knowing that once Maggie made up her mind, you needed to get on board while you could. When Maggie brought their car around to the front of the courthouse, I was in the back seat, ready to roll, before Calvano even reached the car door. She took off like a bat out of hell.
‘Game plan?’ Calvano asked, bracing himself against the dashboard as she took a corner too fast.
‘Get evidence on Mullins so solid not even Gonzales can ignore it. We can’t find him alone. We’re going to need help or he’s going to get away for good.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Photo, diner, club, in that order.’
Calvano pulled out his cell phone and started making calls.
The two of them would have made excellent bank robbers. When Maggie pulled up into the parking lot at the station and made her own phone calls, Calvano ran inside the station and returned ten minutes later with a thick envelope. It had started to pour in that heavy, depressing way of spring and Calvano was soaked by the time he got back to the car.
‘Gonzales?’ Maggie asked him.
‘On the way back to the station,’ Calvano said. ‘He saw us leave the courtroom.’
Maggie’s response to that was to burn rubber out of the parking lot and speed toward the outskirts of town. I knew where we were going: to the diner where Darcy Swan had worked.
‘Any luck at his house?’ Calvano asked. His legs were stretched out straight as he attempted to brace himself for the inevitable rear-end collision. Maggie was in the zone.
‘No,’ Maggie said. ‘And he’s not going there, not with all the cops there searching through Adam’s things. Just in case, a car is going to swing by his house every half-hour. If they see his truck, they’re going to call me directly.’
Calvano looked relieved at that, but not as relieved as he did when they reached the diner safely.
It was warm and dry inside the diner and the air was thick with the smells of coffee, grease and frying potatoes. It was heavenly. A few hardy souls were lingering over their meals, staring out at the rain that pounded the world in fat, angry drops. No one was in a hurry to leave.
Maggie and Calvano’s entrance shattered the dreamy atmosphere. Maggie commandeered a booth and, while Calvano ordered them coffee and tea, spread an array of photos out on the tabletop and gestured for the waitresses one by one. They recognized her and exchanged glances with one another. This was about Darcy, they knew.
The photos were taken from the state driver database, meaning that everyone looked like a serial killer. Most of the men were on the force, nearly all of them tired-looking, middle-aged men with droopy eyes and unshaven faces. I had been a popular volunteer for photo line-ups when I was alive. Apparently, all those years of drinking in bars and other bad habits had transformed my physical appearance into one that resembled an unhealthy percentage of criminals. It was not an honor I had been particularly proud of.
I sat next to Maggie, feeding off the excitement in the air. With a stab of vivid memory, I suddenly missed my old life. I missed all the chances I’d had to make the leap from theory to reality, to feel the triumphant flush that comes when you realize you’ve finally cracked a case. It felt good to be closing in.
Most of the waitresses went straight for the photo of Eugene Mullins, explaining that he was a regular at the diner. One said, without hesitation, ‘Ham and cheese toasted, extra mayonnaise, fries and a regular Coke.’
Another told Maggie, ‘He’s a lousy tipper and plays grab-ass.’
One of the older women confided, ‘Darcy always asked me to take his table. She hated waiting on the guy. He didn’t bother me none, though.’
Still another offered the information that Eugene Mullins had last been in about a week after Darcy’s body was found. ‘He was with a heavyset woman,’ the waitress said. ‘She had a bad dye job and a worse attitude. Trash for sure. Which made her perfect for him. Only they were arguing, so I guess they didn’t think so.’
‘You sure it was after Darcy died?’ Maggie asked the waitress.
The woman nodded. ‘I remember thinking that the woman looked just like what Darcy would have looked like if she had lived. After about twenty years of cigarettes and bad food, of course.’ The woman smiled philosophically. She was describing her own appearance and she knew it.
But it was the busboy with a crush on Darcy who knew the most about Eugene Mullins. ‘Darcy hated that guy,’ he offered. ‘He always said crude stuff to Darcy, but she said she knew him and could handle him. She said she had shot him down in the past and he was going out of his way to come here and hassle her because of it.’
‘Was he here the day Darcy died?’ Maggie asked.
The boy’s eyes widened; he knew what she was getting at. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘He was here. I remember because Darcy had an argument with Ellen over who had to wait on him.’
‘Who did wait on him?’ Maggie asked.
The boy shrugged. ‘Sorry, it was dinner rush and I don’t remember. I was too busy cleaning tables. But Ellen would know. Ask her.’
Ellen turned out to be an overweight woman with over-plucked eyebrows and a bad attitude. Maggie’s conversation with her was brief and to the point. Yes, Darcy had left early the night she died. For a job interview, she’d told Ellen, at a place where she’d get ten times the tips she was getting at the diner. Ellen had known what that probably meant and had not asked questions. ‘Some of us got standards, you know,’ she added.
The comment pissed Calvano off. ‘Did it ever occur to you that the cops might need to know that?’ he asked her. ‘Did it ever occur to you to call us?’
She’d been meaning to tell the cops about it, she told him, but three kids, two jobs and life got in the way. ‘It wasn’t none of my business,’ she said. ‘But if you want to shake your ass for men, you better be ready to pay the price.’
Calvano looked like he was ready to kick her ass, but Maggie pulled him out of the diner before he lost his temper. Calvano slid into the front seat, muttering under his breath and wiping rain from his hair.
‘Are you praying?’ Maggie asked incredulously.
‘To St Anthony,’ Calvano explained. ‘He’s the patron saint of lost causes.’
Maggie stared at Calvano.
‘What?’ he asked defensively.
‘Tell me you know where that new topless bar is?’ Maggie said. ‘The one the Fahey kid talked about that’s out by the highway.’
‘I know,’ Calvano admitted. ‘But not for the reasons you think.’
‘Which way?’ Maggie asked.
‘North, about three miles.’
We made it to the club in under five minutes. Maggie left a spray of gravel in her wake as she pulled into the parking lot.
‘Sure is aerobic riding around with you,’ Calvano said drily.
Maggie ignored him. They stared at the Quonset hut and the blinking pink lights of The Pussycat Lounge. I recognized it from the night that Eugene Mullins had made his son wait in the truck, doing homework, while he drank and did god knows what else inside.
‘How do you want to play it?’ Maggie asked.
‘You question the owner. I know him from high school. It’ll be better if I just stand there and look menacing.’ Calvano smiled, and I realized that he loved this part of the job as much as I did. He liked the hunt.
The club owner was a greasy little man with a pencil-thin mustache and enough gold chains around his neck to keep him at the bottom of the Delaware forever. He may have gone to high school with Calvano, but his business had aged him a solid decade beyond his years. He recognized Calvano the moment he and Maggie entered the bar and waved the waitress away from his table. When he gestured for them to join him, his huge pinky ring glittered in the passing glare of a spotlight sweeping toward the stage.
‘Yo, Adrian,’ the club owner said.
Calvano smiled painfully. He’d probably been hearing that joke for thirty years.
Maggie got right to the point. ‘It’s about the girl who was killed last week,’ she said. ‘We heard she was over here, looking for a job.’
The club owner was silent as he gave Maggie the once-over, evaluating her body first before moving on to her face.
‘Hey, Richie,’ Calvano said, snapping his fingers in the club owner’s face. ‘She’s a detective. She’s not here looking for a job. Answer the lady.’
Richie smiled at Maggie and it made me wonder why anyone on this planet wore a mustache like his. It looked like two caterpillars had died across his upper lip. ‘We’ve been kind of busy at the club,’ he explained. ‘Business is booming. I haven’t exactly been following the news lately. So I can’t help you unless you tell me more about the girl who was killed last week.’
‘We are talking about this girl,’ Calvano said. He slapped a photo of Darcy Swan on the table. It had been taken for her high school yearbook a couple years before. She looked young and hopeful that life held good things for her. I was sorry she had not been given the chance to hold on to her illusions for at least a few years longer.
‘Oh, that girl,’ the club owner said. He looked up at Maggie and Calvano. ‘She’s dead?’
‘She’s dead,’ Maggie confirmed.
In the silence that followed, the lounge seemed to take on a presence of its own. I became acutely aware of the heavy metal music blaring from the speakers and the dim lights with their reddish glow. Everywhere you looked, sweaty men in suits were staring at bored women wearing little more than thongs gyrating on a narrow runway stage or wrapping themselves around poles. Jesus, it was depressing. The men all had that glassy-eyed look of afternoon drunks and they had not yet realized that Maggie and Calvano were cops. The girls knew, though. Most of them just kept dancing. But a couple of the girls, the ones on floor duty hoping to earn extra money giving lap dances, understood what the photo slapped on the tabletop meant. And they knew it could just as easily have been a photo of one of them. They inched closer to the table, circling like sharks. The club owner felt their presence and knew he needed to speak.
‘She was in here about ten days ago,’ he explained. ‘I remember her because she was a nice girl. Smart, too. Too smart to be dancing in this rathole.’ He glanced up at Calvano, as if seeking his approval. ‘She was young and she looked good, no signs of drug use. At least not yet.’
‘Did you give her a job?’ Maggie asked.
The club owner shook his head. ‘I knew right away she was under-age. She had a fake ID, but I didn’t buy it. I told her to come back in a couple of years. I thought she looked kind of relieved, to tell you the truth. I’m not sure she had ever been in a place like this before.’ He glanced out over the floor of his club. ‘In my next life, I’m going to open up a daycare center. Better for your karma.’
‘How did she react when you told her no?’ Maggie asked.
‘Like I say, she took it pretty well. But the piece of shit she was with threw a fit. This did not surprise me. I’d already thrown the guy out of here a half-dozen times and we’ve only been open a month. My guess is that he showed up with that girl, hoping to get in good with me so I’d let him have the run of the club. Trust me, he could’ve brought me Angelina Jolie and that wasn’t going to happen. I got standards and this guy doesn’t make the cut.’
Maggie exchanged a glance with Calvano. ‘What did this guy look like?’
Calvano leaned over the table and shook the file folder he was holding, spilling photos in a line across the glass. He must’ve practiced the move. It was perfect. ‘Any of these refresh your memory?’ he asked.
‘He looked like that guy,’ the club owner said, tapping the photo of Eugene Mullins. ‘Which is understandable, since he was that guy.’ He looked up at Maggie and Calvano. ‘Is he the guy who killed her?’
‘We don’t know,’ Maggie told him. ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’
‘Well, you can stop wondering, because that is definitely your guy.’
‘What do you mean?’ Maggie asked.
‘For starters, I’ve had to throw him out of here a couple of times for being grabsy with the girls. And while I run a completely legit establishment, and cannot vouch for this myself, I have been told by some of the girls, who operate their own businesses – totally without my consent or participation, you understand – that he likes to hurt them if he can.’
Maggie stared at him, evaluating his likely level of cooperation. ‘Would you be willing to testify about that in court?’
‘I would be willing to introduce you to girls who could testify about it in court.’
Maggie nodded. ‘And you were sure that he was with Darcy Swan – that’s the dead girl – the night she came in here?’
The club owner nodded. ‘Not only was he with her, they started arguing on their way out the door.’
‘Arguing about what?’ Calvano asked.
‘Toby will know,’ the club owner predicted. He waved over a huge man with a rectangular head and missing front tooth who had been standing near the front door. The guy had hands like hams and I was pretty sure he’d used them to toss Eugene Mullins out of the club on more than a few occasions.
‘You remember this scumbag?’ the club owner asked his bouncer, tapping on the photo of Eugene Mullins.
The bouncer’s eyes narrowed; he remembered him all right.
‘You remember the night he came in with this girl?’ The owner slid Darcy’s photo toward the bouncer.
The bouncer picked up the photo and as he looked at it, I could’ve sworn his shark-like eyes turned sad. He looked up at his boss, his jaw tightening. He didn’t have to be told what had happened to Darcy.
‘I remember,’ he said in a thick Slavic accent.
‘What were they arguing about as they were leaving?’ the club owner asked him, casting a glance at Maggie. She let him do the questioning.
‘She wanted to go home,’ the bouncer said without hesitation. ‘He said he knew a few more clubs where she could get a job and he would be glad to drive her to them. She told him to forget it, that she just wanted a ride home.’ The bouncer looked at Maggie and then at Calvano before addressing them both directly. ‘I told her that if she wanted, she could wait a few more hours and I would be glad to give her a ride home. But she said she was fine, that she could handle the guy.’
He didn’t ask if she had turned out to be fine. There was no point to that, he knew.
‘Anything else we can help you with?’ the owner asked, casting an anxious glance at his customers. They were starting to notice Maggie and Calvano and looked uniformly guilty at their presence. They fidgeted with their drinks and unconsciously reached for the pants pockets that held their wallets.
Hey, I could’ve told them, it could be a lot worse. It could be your wives standing there instead of the cops.
‘I don’t suppose you know where the guy who was with Darcy Swan might be holing up?’ Maggie asked the club owner. ‘We think he’s good for more than just her murder.’
The club owner shook his head. He looked genuinely sorry. ‘I got no idea,’ he said. ‘But I wish you luck, most sincerely.’
The bouncer held the door open for them as they left, and watched Maggie and Calvano carefully as they walked to their car. I knew he blamed himself a little for what had happened to Darcy. Sometimes having a conscience sucked.
‘What do we do now?’ Calvano asked when they were back in the privacy of their car.
She was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘We go to Gonzales and tell him what we’ve learned. Even he can’t ignore that Mullins was the last person seen with Darcy. He’ll have to give us some help searching for him.’
‘What good is that going to do?’ Calvano asked her. ‘The guy could be anywhere.’
‘We have to try,’ Maggie said. ‘He has to be somewhere.’
Maybe they didn’t know where Eugene Mullins would run, but I thought I did. He was linked to Otis Parker by a bond that had a power
of its own. Eugene Mullins intended to free Otis Parker before he left town. I knew it with a certainty. And it would be up to me to find a way to stop him.
THIRTY-FIVE
When you are dead, rain is like a gift from the heavens. It washes through you, leaving tiny jet trails of energy zinging around what passes for your body. But that afternoon, the heavens were going through mood swings like I had never seen before. As I left Maggie and Calvano at the station, preparing to tell Gonzales what they had learned, the rain stopped abruptly just as I reached the gates of Holloway. The clouds rolled back to reveal a sliver of late afternoon sun desperate to prove it had been there all along. A breeze wafted the clean scent of wet earth from the surrounding fields over the lawn. It was as if Holloway itself longed to be washed clean from its bout with death.
How I wished that it truly was over. But I knew that Otis Parker, at the center of it all, had not yet made his final move.
Parker was in the common room, watching the evening news with other inmates. There was no reporting on the arraignment’s details, only footage of Adam being led into the courthouse in chains while the news anchor announced with relief that the killer who had terrorized the town had been apprehended. Satisfaction oozed from Parker as he watched the crowd shouting threats at Adam. I wanted to slap the smile right off his face. But at least I knew it would fade soon enough on its own. He may have known that his lawyer had resigned, but he clearly had no idea that Eugene Mullins’ involvement had been discovered and that the rest of his scheme was unraveling.
He was so smug that even the other patients could sense it and, apparently, not all of them liked it. A gawky patient with a prominent Adam’s apple and bug-eyes kept glancing his way, annoyed at Parker’s attitude. Parker noticed his stare and casually shot him the bird, mouthing something obscene as a kicker.
The inmate lost it. He leapt for Parker’s throat, but Parker tossed him aside easily. He bounced off the wall and fell to the floor. While the other inmates laughed uproariously at this entertainment, the orderly with the braided beard rushed in from the hallway. He was in Parker’s face within seconds. He pinned Parker to the back of his chair and calmly warned him, ‘You touch another patient again, and I will see that you go into solitary for a week, and I don’t care what your lawyer says about it.’
