by Lex H Jones
“No,” Duggan groaned.
“Well get there fast. I’ve been taking a look at the hooker your boys brought in last night,”
“You matched the bullet already?”
“You kidding me? No, I found something else, something that didn’t need all that much paperwork,” Glass replied. “She was pregnant.”
“Huh. Well that might answer a couple of questions,” Carl sighed, sitting up in bed and wiping the dried yellow crust from his eyes.
“We’ve got some girl coming down in a couple hours to give us a positive ID on the vic. You might want to come along, ask her a few questions.”
“I’m on the way.”
Carl hung up the phone and wearily shuffled his way into the bathroom. It was a miserable effort, having to search your entire body for enough strength just to put one foot in front of the other. Like walking the last few feet of a hundred-mile run, except that Carl hadn’t been running anywhere. He’d been asleep for eight hours, so why was he so tired? Maybe he’d go see a Doctor, or Kenny the pharmacist, and pick up some sleeping pills. The strong kind, not the crap they advertise on TV.
There’d be time for that later, for now Carl had to get ready for his shift. His feet managed to find the bathroom despite their complete lack of energy or motivation, and he was now stood before the mirror that hung above the sink. It was an old mirror, the kind that seemed to be going rusty at the edges, and just wouldn’t come clean. Carl wondered how the hell glass could go rusty, but still refused to buy a new one. That didn’t stop him thinking about it every night when he was forced to look in it. He’d bought just about every cleaning product he could think of to bring the damn thing clean, even that spray they advertised incessantly on the tube. The one where the annoying prick shouts far too loud and enthusiastically for someone who’s talking about a cleaning product.
Carl hated staring in this mirror, and it wasn’t anything to do with the dirt. He hated looking at the man who stared back at him; the lonely, miserable old bastard who was doomed to die alone in the worst side of a bad city. If he lived long enough to retire, he still wouldn’t leave, Carl knew it in his bones. He had the disease, the infection that came with living here. No use spreading it, just stay right here in the quarantine zone, with the rest of the walking damned. The mirror in the bathroom was worse than the only other mirror in Carl’s apartment, because it showed the truth. At the start of the day, this mirror was the first he looked into. It showed him as he was, before shaving, before cleaning up and making himself feel halfway human. This mirror was absolute truth, and Carl hated it.
The full-length mirror in the corner of the living room was hardly used, but in much better condition than this one. It had been Carl’s mother’s, and despite how out-of-place it looked here, he couldn’t bear to part with it. Jimmy had pointed out the mirror almost as soon as he had arrived. Said it belonged in a mansion house somewhere, with wooden banisters and family portraits. Not here, in a dirty apartment whose hollow walls were filled with rats, half of its only bedroom illuminated by neon pink. Jimmy had been relieved that he got to sleep on the couch, as he knew that trying to sleep with the company of the incessant pink buzzing would be impossible for him.
Washing and dressing took as much effort for Carl as making his way to the bathroom had done. Still, the splash of cold water on his face served to sharpen him somewhat, although it did nothing to remove the weight from his eyes. Keeping them open was a chore, but it would be easier once he’d passed by Stu’s Coffee Pot. It always was. Stu ran one of those little vending carts, the kind that usually sold ice cream or hot dogs. For some reason he’d decided coffee was an untapped market in this respect. Get people the hell away from one of those faceless brands where every outlet is the same before they needed to take out a goddamn bank loan just to drink. Stu served old fashioned coffee, the kind that Carl liked. Black or with milk, sugar or none at all. That’s it. No mocha latte chocolate sprinkles or any of that pretentious art-student shit. Just coffee with the options of milk and sugar. The way God would have intended had he created coffee. Maybe he did, and just forgot to put it in the Bible.
Carl didn’t see Jimmy as he left the apartment, so he assumed he’d gone out for the night. Wasn’t much of a gay scene on the East side, but Jimmy was no doubt desperate to prove this theory wrong. Let him have his fun. If anyone caused him grief then they’d hear from Carl, and the threat of that alone was enough to deter most of the city’s scumbags. Carl had something of a reputation for being excessive in the use of force with regard to people who pissed him off. He wasn’t a bad cop, he just had a temper. Maybe that was due to the lack of sleep, he wondered. Or maybe he was just an irritable asshole. Either one was possible, each no more or less likely than the other.
Stu, the coffee vendor, was standing proudly on the street, the steam from his coffee rising above his cart to join the night sky above it. The smell greeted Carl first, fresh ground coffee beans, the kind that tasted the way coffee should taste.
“Evening, Detective Duggan,” Stu smiled, already pouring a black coffee, no sugar, as Carl walked over.
“Stu,” Carl nodded, handing him the correct change for the coffee.
“Got a case tonight?”
“Yesterday we pulled a dead girl out of the river. Tonight I’m gonna try and find out who she is. Got to act quick though, before City Hall decides they don’t give a crap.”
“Still riding your asses every time you investigate something like this, huh?” Stu asked with a sigh.
“They don’t like having cops over this side of the river, period. Far as they’re concerned, no one over here deserves police assistance one way or the other,” Carl remarked as he blew the steam from his coffee. “Maybe they’re right, maybe this place is beyond any hope of redemption. But that girl was young, and now she’ll never get any older. Someone should know why, should know her damn name at least.”
“Amen,” Stu nodded.
“Take care of yourself, Stu,” Carl nodded before continuing his walk to the station.
“Same time tomorrow?” Stu called over.
“You know it,” Carl replied without turning around.
Chapter Four;
Smoke-Coloured Soul
D octor Glass ran the city morgue. As the Chief Coroner on the East side of the city, any corpses that turned up found their way into one of his drawers. He didn’t like to leave his morgue much, preferring to send one of his staff out to the crime scenes themselves. Once the bodies arrived in his domain, then he would usually take over. Or not, if he was high, which had become more frequent of late. The police knew about his habit, but there were few people with his qualifications on the East side, so they let him be. What other choice did they have? Allow a smaller sin to slip by unnoticed so larger ones can be discovered. Pay a dime and get back a dollar. Selling your soul by degrees is less noticeable, after all.
“Evening, Glass,” Carl remarked as he entered the morgue, putting his hands in pockets to shield them from the cold that was necessary in such a place, but no less discomforting.
“Detective Duggan,” Glass nodded, looking over the rim of his narrow spectacles.
Glass was wearing a white apron which was covered with spots of blood and dirt, but not as much as Carl had seen it lathered in before. There were smears along the waistline from where he had wiped his hands at some point. Carl was slightly uneasy at the thought of this, that you could so easily wipe away the blood of another human being like it was any other crap you’d put your hands in. Comes with the job, Carl supposed. If Glass saw the bodies lying in his drawers as anything close to human, he couldn’t cut them open so casually with his scalpel. To him they were a puzzle, a Rubik’s cube, and it was his job to make all the sides match. Nothing more, nothing less. Any deeper connection with them paved the way to madness.
On the cold steel table in front of Glass was a body, mostly covered by a white sheet. Only the head and feet were showing, and Carl wondered what it
looked like underneath the cover. He assumed that Glass must have cut into it, partly at least, to discover the pregnancy. From the face, Carl recognised the body as that of the young woman he had seen pulled from the river the previous night. Her lips were even paler now, her blonde hair dry and clean, but her face was still as ashen. She’d never have any colour in those soft cheeks again. No more smiles, no more frowns, never a laugh or cry to be uttered from her pouting lips.
“Poor gal,” Carl muttered out loud in conclusion to his own thoughts.
“Forensics are matching the bullet to a gun right now, for what it’s worth,” Glass shrugged. “I don’t need to tell you that most of the shitheads in this city buy guns from the same two or three runners, so matching it to an individual owner is practically impossible. Might have traded hands five times since it was last fired.”
“I’ll work with what we have.”
“Her pimp is the first port of call, I assume?” Glass suggested.
“Seems like a logical start.”
“If it was Dice, I want you to kill him,” came a new voice in the room.
From beneath the green-lit ‘Exit’ sign, Carl watched as a slender, female figure walked towards him. She was wearing a long red dress that clung to her every curve, her arms covered by black lace gloves and her face painted with dark eye makeup and deep red lipstick. Her blonde hair hung down loose over her shoulders and around her neck was a necklace centred with a diamond larger than any that ever existed in the stores on the East side. The heels of the woman’s shoes echoed in the morgue as she approached.
“You’re the Detective?” She asked, taking a long drag from her cigarette.
“That’s right,” Carl nodded.
The blonde nodded and blew the smoke out between her pursed lips, letting it curl softly around itself as it rose up towards the ceiling. It moved slowly, dancing in the air as it reluctantly left the touch of those deep red lips. Carl watched the exhalation with a mesmerised feeling of wonder, as though he were observing a fragile, smoke-grey soul rising from its host and reaching up for the Heavens.
“Felicity,” the blonde said suddenly, offering her hand to Carl. “Felicity DuBois.”
“Carl Duggan,” Carl nodded, shaking her black-gloved hand gently. “I’m assuming you’re related to the deceased?”
“She was my sister,” Felicity nodded. “Amber.”
“And you’re in the same business as Amber was?”
“No,” Felicity said firmly. “She was a prostitute. I work for Diamond Experience.”
“That’s an Escort Agency on the West side,” said Carl. “Which means that you are in the same business as your sister.”
“It’s not the same,” Felicity said again, her blue eyes growing narrow.
“You wear fancier clothes and leave calling cards...but you’re still a hooker,” Carl remarked.
Felicity slapped him hard across the face and scowled at him without saying a word. Carl touched his cheek where she had hit him and then said; “Alright, I probably earned that.”
“You shouldn’t judge what you don’t understand,” Felicity replied.
“What I don’t understand is how a West side escort could have a sister that worked the streets over here on the East.”
“Are you here to discuss our family feuds and history or arrest the bastard that did this to her?” Felicity hissed.
“When you walked in, you said the name Dice. Who’s that? I’m guessing it’s some pimp that gave himself a fancy nickname, but I find it hard to distinguish between one of those pricks and all the others.”
“I thought everyone knew Dice. He owns the Three Lions Casino over the river.”
“I don’t go over the river much, Miss DuBois,” Carl informed her. “So you’re telling me this guy’s not a pimp?”
“He also owns one of the larger agencies, the same one that I work for. I suppose in your eyes that makes him a pimp,” Felicity said with a scowl, before taking another drag from her cigarette.
“What makes you think he’s a murderer, and why would he come over here and kill an East Side hooker?”
“Dice has a reputation for abusing his girls.”
“And Amber was one of his girls?”
“She used to be, before she quit and came over this side of the river. Amber was always one of his highest earners.”
“Then why quit? Was he hurting her?” Carl asked.
“No, she wasn’t happy with some of the things Dice wanted her to incorporate into her services.”
“Like what?”
“Let’s just say that some of Dice’s richer clients were fond of the idea of two sisters that looked alike.”
“And you were okay with that idea?” Asked Carl, raising an eyebrow.
“No, of course not. I was going to discuss it diplomatically with Dice, try to reach some sort of agreement. I could live with slapping my little sister round the ass a few times if that gets them off, hell knows I had to do it enough once Mom ran out on us...but anything more than that was a definite ‘no’. Before I got chance to talk it over with him, though, Amber made a run for it, came over to the West side.”
“And I’ll take a guess that Dice was pissed off.”
“Just a little,” Felicity nodded nervously, her hand shaking slightly as she took another drag from her cigarette, the ash dangling from the end in a desperate attempt to avoid the pull of gravity. “Amber had clients booked through the month. If they were let down, they’d make sure Dice knew about it, and their friends. That was bad for business, and Dice is always thinking about the business.”
“Why didn’t Amber at least try and discuss this with him?”
“She was scared of him. All the girls are, but Amber was new to the agency. She hadn’t learned how to charm him, how to play things to her advantage. She just freaked and ran, like she always has. Even when we were kids, if something scared her, she’d just run away.”
“Do you know where your sister was staying whilst she was over here?” Carl asked.
“She called me and gave me an address, but I never went there.”
“I’m gonna need that information, I want to see her home.”
Chapter Five;
Ninety-Seven Percent Effective
T he Home from Home Hotel was probably the most poorly named place in the entire East Side, unless your home was a rat-infested crap-hole with dirty sheets, rotting wallpaper and lights that decided whether or not they’d work on the toss of a coin. Carl looked down at the sheets that covered the bed in Room 402, studying them for details that others might fail to notice. They were creased in a way that revealed they’d been slept in recently, but it wasn’t clear by how many people. Carl didn’t know if this was where Amber would bring her clients or not, however that wasn’t really very relevant given that her clients weren’t currently suspects. He hadn’t ruled out the possibility altogether, but since hookers were some of the only forms of entertainment on the East side, it was a rarity for them to be killed by their own clientele.
“I can’t believe she lived here,” Felicity said with a sad sigh, standing in the doorway of the room, not wanting to step foot inside. If she stayed where she was, perhaps the room wasn’t real. Perhaps her sister had never come here, had never died and ended up washed down the Styx.
“I’ve seen girls on this side of the city that lived in worse,” Carl remarked.
“You trying to make me feel guilty?” Felicity scoffed.
“Why would I do that?” Carl asked with a tone of genuine surprise at the comment.
“I got out, okay? I was raised in crap, told that all I would ever have was crap, and I moved past it. I got out, took my sister with me. She came back to it, but I didn’t want to. Even if it meant leaving her alone here.”
“You can’t go home again,” Carl said quietly with an understanding nod. “Look, Miss DuBois, I get that you don’t like me. You think I’m an asshole, probably think all men are, which is fair enough, given the kind
of men you’re used to. You evidently raised your sister from a young age, which means your dad wasn’t around any longer than your mom was. At a guess I’d say he left first. Now your sister is dead and I’m not the soft-hearted and gentle cop you might have hoped for, but for what it’s worth, I’m not judging you, okay? You’ve had a hard life and you’ve had to make hard choices, I get that. Sometimes they take you down roads you don’t want to walk down, and sometimes you get so far down them that you can’t head back. Sometimes you don’t even want to head back. None of that changes the fact that, whatever you think of me, whatever I think of you, I am going to find out who killed your sister and they are going to spend the rest of their goddamn lives in jail.”
Felicity looked at the floor for a moment as though she were slightly ashamed, or embarrassed—Carl couldn’t tell which. Then she looked up at him through her long black eyelashes and quietly said; “Thank you.”
“Just doing my job, Miss DuBois,” Carl nodded as he stood up from where he had been crouched. “I’m fairly certain that she didn’t die in here. No blood anywhere, no signs of struggle, and anyone could tell that this place hasn’t been cleaned in years. Whoever killed her, they didn’t do it here.”
“Dice wouldn’t know where she was staying. He must have found her on the streets,” Felicity suggested.
“If it was him.”
“Of course it was him, who else would have...”
“All due respect, I know that finding someone to blame makes this kind of loss a lot easier. You can turn your loss into hate and direct it at a single target. Easier to deal with, less frustrating. But we have no evidence to really suspect Dice over anybody else at this point. He had motive, but that’s about it. If we go looking for evidence purely to support the theory that he did it, we’re likely to miss a bunch of stuff that says otherwise.”
“Easier to be objective when you don’t know the victim, huh?” Felicity said with a sigh, opening her expensive snakeskin purse and taking a pack of cigarettes from inside.
