by Lex H Jones
“For me?” she asked with a look of surprise.
“Yeah,” he shrugged. “I didn’t think you’d want to be wearing that pirate costume or whatever, so...”
“You bought me clothes?” The girl laughed, smiling so broadly that her lips almost touched her ears.
“Sorry if they’re crap, I don’t really...”
“You are the greatest guy I’ve ever met. Ever,” she beamed, taking out the clothes and looking at each item in turn.
“Well... glad you like ‘em,” Carl smiled again, hating himself for the fact that he was visibly blushing.
“You didn’t have to do this, you know. Any of it.”
“Yeah I did. You needed help and I was there. That’s kinda my job, I’m a cop.”
“What’s your name?” asked the girl. “You might have told me, but I don’t think I was in any state to remember.”
“Detective Duggan... Carl.”
“I’m Skye.”
“Okay, Skye, well, I actually need to ask you a few questions. Don’t think that’s the only reason I came here, but...”
“You gotta do your job, I get it. And don’t worry, you couldn’t do anything now that would change my opinion of you,” she smiled. “You’re my hero.”
“Don’t put that on me, I’m just a guy who...”
“You’re my hero and I’ll always think that no matter what you say, so just shut up and take it, okay?”
“Um… okay,” Carl replied, not really knowing what else to say. “So do you feel up to answering some questions?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you,” Carl nodded, grabbing a chair from the corner of the room and pulling it over, taking a seat next to the bed where Skye sat. He took out his notebook and then asked, “So how did you meet Taylor?”
“Who’s that?”
“Captain Zack, sorry. Guessing the asshole didn’t tell you his name.”
“Oh right. Well I was sleeping at the bus station and his boys came in. Shot a few of the homeless guys, scared ‘em off, then said I should come with them. They gave me a hit and I don’t really remember much after that. God, it must have been some strong stuff, I’ve never felt anything like that.”
“Nothing but the best from that prick,” Carl nodded. “So where did they take you?”
“This club... like a basement, but lots of graffiti everywhere in that neon paint. I was sat getting pawed at by some of the guys in his gang, whilst he spoke on the phone about some gig.”
“What gig?”
“I don’t remember, I was kind of out of it, you know?”
“Anything at all, Skye. Please, this is important,” Carl insisted.
“He called the guy Boss, said he’d ‘take care of the loose ends,’ and ‘clean up the mess’. Then we went off to that Asian woman’s house. God they... they killed her, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, they did. Don’t worry I’m not going to charge you with anything.”
“But I was there, I was part of it!”
“No you weren’t, not as far as I’m concerned. And if anyone asks, you weren’t even there, you understand?” Carl said firmly.
“Why do you keep helping me?” asked Skye, tilting her head to one side and looking right into Carl’s eyes.
“Because you’re as much as a victim here as Mrs. White was. This City has a habit of mixing up the bad guys from the good. I don’t.”
“I’m not a good person. I’ve done some shit that...”
“We all have,” Carl interrupted her. “But what I see now is a frightened young girl making whatever choices she has to in order to survive. You got hooked on drugs, ran away from home and everything since then has been a clusterfuck, right?”
“Yeah...” The girl nodded.
“You’re not the first and I’m sad to say you won’t be the last. But you’re done with it, okay? You’re out. I’m gonna get you set up in rehab, give you some money to get a place together and I’ll see if I can get you a job somewhere. I think I know a store that could use an assistant, since it looked like it had been set out by a moron...”
“I can’t take money from you, I can’t just...”
“I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer, so you’re gonna shut up and take it, understand?” Carl asked, deliberately paraphrasing the girl’s own words from earlier in their conversation.
“Okay,” she said quietly with a slight nod.
“Stay here a couple more days, get that stuff out of your system and we’ll get you fixed up. Don’t worry about the money, I never spend it. Friend of mine ribs me about it something fierce, but I never have anything to buy, so why waste it?”
“Bet you’re the kind guy that’s married to his job, right? You’re a cop when you go to sleep and a cop when you wake up?”
“Yeah. Except I don’t sleep that good,” Carl half-smiled. “So is there anything else at all that you remember? The guy Taylor was speaking to on the phone, who was it?”
“I don’t know, sorry. He never used a name.”
“That was probably deliberate,” Carl nodded. “Taylor’s a big player himself. Anyone he’s working for is seriously big money.”
“Sorry I can’t help you any more,” Skye remarked, brushing her hair away from her face.
“I got something to work on, it’s fine,” Carl assured her. “Look, I have to get going. I’ll come and see you again, but I don’t want you to worry about anything. Just concentrate on feeling better, okay?”
“Wait,” said Skye, kneeling up in the bed as Carl rose from his chair. “I want to say thank you. For everything.”
“You already did, and it’s fine.”
“No, I mean... I want to thank you,” Skye repeated, moving her right hand forward so that it was placed over Carl’s crotch.
“Skye,” Carl said firmly, taking hold of her wrist and moving her hand away. “Don’t.”
“But you need to know how grateful I am...”
“I know already. I don’t know what you’re used to, but I helped you because you needed help. That’s it. We don’t need to—do that. Okay?”
Skye looked at Carl and nodded, but he noticed that tears were filling her eyes. Finally she broke down into a fit of sobs and flung her arms around him. Carl stood motionless for a moment, not knowing what to do with himself, and then reluctantly put his arm around her back somewhat stiffly. He knew what this was, knew that she wasn’t upset that he had refused her advances. Rather she was simply overwhelmed with emotion. Invariably she was used to paying for ‘kind’ treatment in a particular way that Carl had refused. She’d grown used to it, probably even convinced herself it was okay. If it was that or hate herself then the choice was an easy one. But Carl had shown her a different way, and it had been too much after everything else she’d suffered of late.
“It’s alright,” he said quietly as she cried into his shoulder.
“Thank you,” she whispered directly into his ear, before kissing him softly on the cheek.
“You’re welcome.”
Chapter Twenty-One;
Damn This City
“Y ou’re back early,” Jimmy remarked as Carl closed the apartment door behind him. “Had expected you to go straight out to work.”
“Thought I’d take five first. Shift doesn’t start for another couple of hours,” Carl replied, tossing his leather coat over the back of his armchair and sitting down with a deep exhalation.
“How was the girl?”
“Her name’s Skye. And I actually think she’s going to be okay, odd as that sounds. There’s something about her, an innocence I don’t see very often. It needs to be protected but as long as it survives, she might just get through all of this.”
“That’s what seventeen year old girls should always seem like, Carl. You just don’t see any outside of this crap hole. Here they seem to get tainted fast and then that innocence is lost.”
“You’re sounding like me,” Carl smirked.
“I learn fast,” Jimmy shrug
ged, taking a cigarette and lighting it up.
“Since when did you smart smoking?”
“Just recently. Figured it’d help me lose weight,” Jimmy replied, taking a long drag from the cigarette.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Better than being a fat idiot.”
“You’re no heavier than I am, you vain old queen,” said Carl, wafting the drifting smoke away from his face and coughing rather violently.
“Yeah well it wouldn’t hurt you to lose a few, either. And don’t go blaming that cough on passive smoking, either!” Jimmy remarked, pointing an accusing finger. “’Cause it doesn’t set on that quickly, and the whole thing’s a rumour spread by health nuts anyway!”
“Probably that cigar Big Pauly gave me last night,” said Carl, covering his mouth with his fist as he coughed again. “Last time I accept a gift from a midget.”
“So this girl Skye, you gonna follow up with her?”
“Yeah, I think so. I promised her I’d get her into rehab, clean her up and get her a job and place to stay.”
“That’s a little extreme,” Jimmy remarked with a startled widening of his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I know you got this whole ‘seeing the victims as humans and not just corpses’ thing going on, which is great, and I admire you for it, but taking this kind of interest is a little much.”
“Maybe it’s because she’s actually alive,” Carl said with a low tone. “I’m not too late to save this one. If I move fast and hard enough, I can stop her taking a swim in the Styx like all the other girls her age that I’ve seen before.”
“That all sounds plausible and again, admirable, but I think you’re not telling me something,” Jimmy suggested, resting his chin on his fists.
“Quit analysing me, Jimmy. I haven’t paid for it, so I don’t want it.”
“Who’re you making up for? What’s making you overcompensate?”
“You’re a prick, you know that?” Carl informed his friend with a heavy and weight-filled sigh.
“If you didn’t want to talk to me about this then you wouldn’t. So go ahead.”
“Amber DuBois,” said Carl, his voice almost a whisper.
“The dead Escort you pulled from the river?”
“That’s her. I saw her the night before last, when I was crossing the Steel Gate Bridge. I slipped and got a little dazed, but I saw her in the water, staring at me.”
“You’re not about to tell me you see dead people, are you?”
“Don’t be an idiot, I’m not saying it was a ghost,” Carl snapped. “But it’s something. The last time I saw something like that, it was my mind telling me I’d missed something. That the case wasn’t as wrapped up as I’d convinced myself.”
“You think this is the same? That you’ve missed something with Amber’s murder?”
“I don’t know. All honesty, I don’t see how I could have. We got the killer, he’s where he belongs. It’s over, so why did I see her?”
“You can’t answer that question, so you’re taking your guilt about possibly missing something with Amber and putting it onto this thing with Skye instead.”
“I dunno, maybe,” Carl rubbed his sinuses and welcomed the brief moment’s quiet darkness as he closed his eyes. “I just know that I wanna help her.”
“Is she cute?”
“She’s pretty, yeah, but if you’re suggesting that my motives are—"
“Hey, hey, come on! It’s me, I wouldn’t dream of laying that on you,” Jimmy assured him, his words backed by an honest warmth. “I’m just saying, she’s pretty and she’s got this innocence to her despite everything you know about her. Just the same as Amber when you pulled her from that river. You see a young, pretty girl and it makes you want to help her twice as much as normal because less than a month ago you saw another young pretty girl laying dead on the ground. That’s called being human, Carl. Nothing to worry about.”
“Why did I see her, though? Why did I see Amber? It can’t have just been about Skye, I didn’t even know her name at that point,”
“Well then maybe you’re just messed up in the head.”
“Yeah, maybe I am,” said Carl, resting his head against the back of the couch and closing his eyes. “Damn this city.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Leather and Lace
C arl opened his eyes slowly, finding them even more unwilling to break their dried-on crust than usual. He’d interrupted his usual sleep pattern to go and visit Skye, and now he’d fallen asleep the first time he’d sat down. Bravo, Carl, real smart. Play the good guy, the nice cop and open the doors to sheer exhaustion. Least the guys who don’t give a crap get a good night’s sleep. Shaking off the last remnant of whatever forgotten dream he’d been having, Carl brought his head forward to find himself alone in the living room. Jimmy wasn’t anywhere in sight, and Carl was a little pissed that he’d left him to fall asleep. A glance at his watch revealed nothing until he rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, at which point the clock face grew clearer and he could see that it was only an hour since he’d arrived home. He hadn’t slept that long, after all. Still, it felt like he needed it. As the last lingering touches of sleep left his mind, Carl was suddenly aware of what it was that had awoken him.
“Hello? Duggan speaking,” Carl grunted, answering the ringing phone that rested on the coffee table beside his chair. He had no idea how long it had been ringing, but evidently the person calling had been content to wait.
“Detective Duggan? It’s... it’s Felicity DuBois,” came a nervous, panicked voice at the other end of the line. “I... I don’t know if you remember me, but... I kept your number when you called me about Amber’s killer... I hope you don’t mind me calling you, but...”
“It’s fine, Miss DuBois. What is it, what’s wrong?” said Carl, his Detective instincts not even required to sense that something wasn’t right.
“I... I need your help. Something’s happened, I just... please help me. I don’t know what to do.”
“Alright, just calm down. Where are you, I’ll come get you,” Carl said firmly, his mind snapping into fully-awake mode at the sound of distress in the young woman’s voice.
“Silver Crown apartments, room seven... second floor... please, just get here as soon as you can, okay?”
“I’m coming now, Miss DuBois, just stay calm,” Carl insisted, knowing the advise was useless. Why say something like that to someone who was probably close to breaking point for whatever reason? Just a stupid conversational convention, like so many other useless formalities of human interaction.
The Silver Crown apartment building was just over the river, in the area affectionately named ‘Limbo’. The reason for that was pretty simple, although like the Styx, no one knew where it had come from. The East side of the city was poor and dirty, the West side was rich and a different kind of dirty. Petty crime and sleazy motels could be found in the West, corrupt casinos and massive fraud in the East. That was the rule, hard and fast for the most part. Limbo, however, was something of an exception. If you looked at the City on a map, took a compass and stuck the needle just in the centre of the Steel Gate bridge, then drew a circle around that point, you’d be drawing a line around Limbo. The area you stepped into on either side of the cold metal walkway. A little bit of the West and East mixed together in a dirty brown pool of paint. In Limbo on the West side you might find a couple of upmarket stores, for instance, but you’d still get robbed in the street outside it. On the East and in Limbo, you might find a cheap motel whose prices suited the other side of the city, but whose clientele were more likely to be rich guys seeking anonymity in a hotel that didn’t feature hidden cameras. The Silver Crown was just such a place.
Although the walk wasn’t far, Carl hailed a cab to hasten the journey. He didn’t favour the idea of Felicity waiting too long for him, especially given that he didn’t really know what he was walking into. The cab driver was just what Carl had expected—an
ex-con whose prison tattoos were visible all over the back of his hands, wrist and neck. Some of these guys were clean and honest, others would mug their passengers or use their “business” to drive young girls to an old warehouse somewhere, the starting point of their new home in the sex industry. Whilst Carl wasn’t a likely target for the latter, he still kept his eyes on the locks above the door handle. If they went down, the driver would find a nasty surprise pressing into the back of his skull in the form of a shiny black Colt.
Carl paid his fare as he departed the vehicle, concluding that the driver was either one of the honest ones or not stupid enough to try something untoward. As the car drove away, tires screeching on the road still wet with snow, Carl moved quickly into the entrance to the Silver Crown. There was a desk with no attendant and an elevator that might as well have had a sign labelled “death trap” stuck to the front of it. Thinking better than to risk it, Carl took the stairs and raced up to the second floor. The speed at which he took the stairs, three at a time, made him glad that the room he was heading for wasn’t higher up, as a heart attack might have been on the cards had that been the case. His own welfare wasn’t on his mind as he tore up the stairwell, however. All he thought about was getting to Felicity. Saving her from whatever had happened. Making sure she was okay. Not like her sister. Not like Amber.
The door slammed back on its hinges as Carl barged into the room, removing any possibility of a stealthy entrance. He froze for a moment as he stared into the awaiting room, and then swore at himself for not taking more time before entering. What if Felicity had been taken hostage, and this was a set-up? Carl would have just walked right into it. Too busy thinking about Amber. Too busy letting thoughts of dying young girls cloud his judgement. Stupid and careless. That’s what emotional distraction will do for you.
The room Carl found himself in was the kind of room where the bedroom was the entire apartment. Bed in the middle, TV on a night-stand and a fridge in the corner. Not the kind of place you spend a lot of time in. Carl finally felt his heart resume its work when he saw Felicity, alive and well in the corner of the room, huddled against the wall with her knees to her chest. She was dressed in a lacy black night-dress over a black leather corset, with black boots that reached her stocking-covered thighs.
