Unloaded

by Eric Beetner

  “What happened to her? What did you do to her?”

  Startled by his fury, she sobs, “You’re hurting me! Let go!”

  Her apparent fear jolts him to his senses. He recalls his Mama, slumped over in her favorite chair in the living room.

  The television was tuned to a program he knew she didn’t like. He ambled over, thinking she lost the remote again and he clicked his tongue. When she was younger, Mama had been smart as a whip, but age had messed with her mind and now she needed reminding sometimes. But when he got closer he saw that the remote was right there where it always was, balanced on the arm of her chair so she could reach it easily.

  “Mama?”

  She didn’t react. Her eyes stared ahead blankly and she sat perfectly still.

  “Mama?” he repeated, shaking her gently. He’d gotten in trouble plenty of times for being too rough as a kid, even if the damage he inflicted was accidental. But when she didn’t respond, he shoved her a bit harder and she fell forward.

  “Mama! No! I didn’t mean to hurt you! Wake up!”

  Everyone says Jimmy didn’t kill his mama—that she had a heart attack and died right there in her chair. He doesn’t believe them.

  Now he drops his arms to his sides, horrified at what he’s done to Mrs. Hosharian. “I didn’t mean to do it, Mrs. H., honest I didn’t.”

  She steps away from him, adjusting the collar of her robe. “It’s all right, Jimmy,” she says. “We’re all upset. Just keep Trixie inside your apartment and don’t let her bark. And if the police want to talk to you, you be sure to cooperate.”

  The idea of talking to the police unsettles him. Will they take him to jail? That’s how it went on the cop shows he and Mama used to watch together. He doesn’t want to go to jail.

  He hears the running water in the bathroom and remembers that he left Trixie under the sink. He frees her from her confines but doesn’t turn off the faucet. She’s managed to untangle herself from the blanket and as soon as he opens the cabinet she leaps out. She zips around the bathroom, a happy dog enjoying in her newfound freedom. Jimmy laughs until she squats to take a pee, then he swats her. She stares up at him with her big black eyes and continues doing her business.

  Jimmy rests his back against the bathroom wall and sits down on the floor. It’s a small space and he has to fold his legs under him to fit, but it’s safe in here and the sound of the running water pacifies him. He thinks about what Mrs. H said about Regina.

  She can’t be dead. He’d talked to her just last night, hadn’t he?

  He can’t remember.

  Since the night she kissed him out on the street, his habit of looking for her out his peephole has become an all-day affair. He’s stopped going out except to walk Trixie and he set up a stool beside the door so he’d be more comfortable while he watched out for her. Last night he’d sat there for hours, as he usually did, waiting for her to come home from work. He never did find out what she actually did for a living, but sometimes she’d come home with men. When he asked her about it she told him they were her cousins. Regina had lots of them.

  “You must have a big family,” he’d said.

  She laughed at that. He liked it when she laughed. “I do, my family very large,” she replied.

  At some point during last night’s watch, Jimmy dozed off. He woke up abruptly, his back stiff from being hunched over on the stool. The digital clock read 3:13 a.m. and he stood up to squint into the peephole, concerned that he’d missed her. Should he go up to her apartment to check if she was all right?

  The thought excited him. He’d only ever seen her outdoors and he wondered what her apartment looked like inside. He decided that as her protector, it was his duty to make sure she was okay. He told Trixie to stay put and he went upstairs to the second floor, hesitating just before he got to her door. He raised his hand to knock but stopped when he heard noises coming from inside. He stepped closer and put his ear against the door. Was that Regina moaning?

  She’s hurt, he thought. He pummeled the door franticly. “Regina! Are you okay? Open up!”

  His fist was poised mid-knock when she finally opened the door. She was wearing a sheet around herself and her hair was undone and messy.

  “Jimmy, what you doing here?”

  “I—I—I heard noises. I was afraid you were hurt.”

  A gruff male voice spoke from inside. “Who’s that?”

  Regina turned away from the door and addressed her companion in a soft voice. Jimmy couldn’t hear exactly what she said but one of the words sounded like “retard” and he knew she was talking about him. His face got hot. He hated that word.

  Regina faced him, her head down. “Go to bed, Jimmy. I see you in morning.”

  She shut the door in his face.

  Trixie nudges Jimmy’s hand, letting him know she’s still there. She’s added a couple of little poos next to her puddle of pee. He straightens his legs some and lets her climb onto his lap, stroking her absentmindedly.

  After Regina closed the door, Jimmy didn’t know what to do. He knew for sure now that she had a man in there. Was he another one of her cousins? What was he doing there so late? He knew that sometimes women had boyfriends—Mama always called them her “special friends”—but he didn’t like the idea of Regina having one besides him. He was the only special friend she needed.

  The moaning and grunts started up again. That was it—Regina had to be in trouble. He rapped on the door again and as soon as it opened, he barreled in.

  The room’s only light came from candles burning on a nightstand. There was a heavy scent in the air, so dense that it nearly choked him. Regina was on the bed, pulling up the bed sheet to cover herself. Jimmy didn’t see her companion until was almost too late—the man grabbed a table lamp and swung it, nearly making contact with Jimmy’s head. Jimmy raised his forearm to block it and tore it out of his hands.

  “Get out, Jimmy, I call police!” Regina screamed.

  Her naked companion scrambled for his clothes. He held them in a bundle in front of himself and raced out the door without bothering to dress.

  “You wait,” Regina shouted after him. “You give me money! Stop him, Jimmy!”

  Jimmy responded like a robot, chasing after the man. But while he might’ve been big, he was slow and clumsy—he stumbled on the lamp on the way to the door and by the time he got outside, the man was gone. Jimmy returned to Regina’s apartment, ashamed.

  “I’m sorry, Regina,” he said sadly, “I couldn’t get him.”

  Regina had put on a loose robe made of shiny material patterned with flowers. She walked over to him and placed her hand on his arm. “That’s okay, Jimmy, I know you just worried about me.”

  Warmed by her touch, Jimmy smiled down at her. He’d never seen such a beautiful girl and he thought that maybe she wouldn’t mind if he kissed her. But the front of the robe was open and he saw that she was flat-chested, like a boy. At first, he didn’t understand but then he saw it: a ding-a-ling hung between her legs, just as Bertie had demonstrated. The blood rushed to his head, blinding him.

  Someone is banging on his apartment door again. The running water mutes the sound, but he knows they’ve finally come for Trixie.

  “Open up, Mr. Price!”

  Jimmy climbs into the bathtub holding the dog against himself. He sinks into the cold porcelain. Why won’t they just leave them alone?

  “I won’t let them take you,” he sobs into Trixie’s fur, rocking back and forth.

  Their knocking continues and Jimmy hugs Trixie closer until she squeals. He doesn’t seem to hear it. He just keeps rocking, squeezing her against him. Back and forth, back and forth. Tighter and tighter. Harder and harder.

  “I won’t let them take you, I won’t let them take you…”

  “We’re coming in, Mr. Price!”

  Trixie nips Jimmy’s hand and he pushes her down between his thighs, closing them around her to keep her still. She wriggles and
squirms and he presses them together until she submits. Finally, her body goes limp.

  He’s startled by the clatter as the police bust his apartment door open. His legs part and Trixie jumps to life, out of the tub and out of the bathroom.

  “Trixie!”

  All at once, two police officers appear at the bathroom door. “Get out of the bathtub with your hands up, Mr. Price,” one of them says. “A neighbor saw you leaving Regina Mookjai’s apartment a couple of hours ago and we need to ask you some questions.”

  Jimmy’s room at the Atascadero State Hospital is not as large as his apartment had been, but that doesn’t bother him. It reminds him of his room at Mama’s house.

  A nurse has just administered his medication. She was the pretty nurse, the one he liked best. Calm now, he sits on his bed with his back against the wall, rocking back and forth. He’s holding Trixie, the stuffed dog Mrs. Hosharian had given him, against his chest.

  “I won’t let them take you,” he whispers.

  Back to TOC

  BLOOD EYES

  Trey R. Barker

  I wasn’t asleep, but it was late in the day. So when she came in, a fragile body built on fried food curves, and slammed the door? Woke me right the fuck up. I stumbled up from my desk, tried to straighten my clothes.

  “Barefield’s best detective.” She said it with disappointment.

  “Barefield’s only detective.”

  “Even better. John Blood?”

  “That’s what the door tells me. What can I do for you?”

  She glanced at my office but there wasn’t much to see. Couple of books, a few CDs, old newspapers getting older by the minute. No pix of me with famous people or nabbing the bad guy or whatever real detectives hung on their walls.

  She licked her lips, a piece of paper wadded up in her right hand. “Can you find my son?”

  She said so starkly, almost pleading. “Ma’am, I can damn sure try. How long has he been missing?”

  “Couple of days.”

  “Name? Age?”

  “I call him Yo-Yo. He’s twenty-seven.”

  I’d expected someone younger. “Uh…did he maybe take off with a girlfriend?”

  She took a deep breath. “No. He’s got some…other…problems.”

  “Drugs.”

  “Not a user. More of a…distributer.”

  “Dealing.”

  “Just weed.”

  “Uh-huh. Did he—sorry—does he owe his contacts money?”

  A tear slipped from her already-swollen eyes and the anger drained from her face, replaced by melancholy. This job handed me sadness constantly, mostly from spouses who’d been certain of fidelity, but what I saw here was worse. What rocked across her face, through her soul, was a hurt endlessly deep and torturous.

  “I think a cop is looking for him.”

  “Arrested?”

  “No, but they have a history.”

  “Him and the cop?”

  Through my window, she looked into the Barefield afternoon haze. “He killed a girl. The cop, I mean. Arrested her and she got beat to death in the jail. Jenny.” She wiped a tear away. “Jenny was Yo-Yo’s friend. Mine, too. We’ve known her…knew her…for years. I miss her.”

  Silence slipped into my office like clouds into a funeral, regardless of the sunshine.

  “I just need to know he’s safe. Good or bad. As long as I know my baby’s safe.”

  By seven a.m., the next day, the sun was already scorching.

  As I headed toward the address she’d given me, I called Jesse. He answered immediately. “The fuck do you want?”

  “I sent you some info last night.”

  “I got it.”

  “Yeah? ’Cause I never heard from you.”

  “No, Blood, I had a date.”

  Jesse was a computer genius but women were not on his list of accomplishments. “So now you’re date’s over and—”

  “You don’t know, I could be getting blown right now.”

  “Okay…well, whatever. What’d you find on Yo-Yo?”

  He sighed, which let me know fantasy versus reality. “Some social media. Not a whole lot on the guy. Couple of arrests for possession, though.”

  “Address?”

  He read off a place in Hurricane, a small town about fifty miles from Barefield.

  “But I found Jenny. Arrested four months ago. Cannabis. Popped in Balmorhea. Got attacked by an inmate in the Reeves County Jail. Slipped in some water or pushed or whatever, smashed her head against a toilet.”

  “Who was the arresting officer?”

  “Nada. Sealed file.”

  Getting a file sealed took some doing. Not impossible, but tough. “Sealed because of the wrongful death lawsuit, I’d guess?”

  “Sealed before she was arrested.” He smacked his lips, which he always did when he had good information. Like it was the most delicious thing he’d eaten in months. “Rumors swirling all over Hurricane, too. Going big on dealers. Hired some hotshot undercover drug guy.”

  “Name?”

  “Sealed.”

  Again, odd but not uncommon. Undercover cops had to protect themselves.

  “So I’m wondering,” Jesse said. “If Yo-Yo is dealing and Cantrell’s hired this guy?”

  I saw it, too. The Hurricane chief was named Cantrell and he had forty stripes in a Hurricane uniform, thirty as chief. I didn’t know him but had heard he was a decent guy. Wanted a quiet town and a quiet career. I couldn’t see him hiring a drug wunderkind on his own, but if Hurricane was cracking down, Yo-Yo had probably gotten rolled up.

  “They haven’t started hooking people up yet.”

  That surprised me. “Isn’t that interesting.”

  “It’s coming quick, though.”

  Hurricane was my starting point. Yo-Yo might not be there but chances were good the neighbors would have a line on him.

  Especially if they’d bought his smoke.

  I’d say it the lesser side of town, except Hurricane—population 987—didn’t really have a lesser side of town.

  It was all lesser.

  I drove, mildly surprised at how empty the streets were. I turned here, turned there, made my way toward the address Jesse gave me. But when I turned a corner, the last one, I nearly shit myself.

  Cops were everywhere.

  Hurricane only had four or five part-time officers. Yet as I parked a half-block from the crime scene tape, I could have swum in the sea of cops I saw. A two-block stretch was locked down tight with cops everywhere and squad cars at each end.

  This was the hooking up. This was a mass arrest and it had only started a while before. I saw ten or twelve people, hands zip-tied, surprised and angry. They sat on the curb, guarded by fifteen or twenty cops, none of whom looked like an undercover drug officer. Everyone I saw had crew cuts, creased uniform pants, dark shirts with badges and name badges, duty belts crammed with gear.

  At either end of the two blocks, people stood anxiously behind the crime scene tape. Some cried, some pounded the air, others looked numb. Beyond them, a few cars—high mileage, low vintage, primer gray the paint scheme—were haphazardly pulled into the grass and on the sidewalks. One, a shit brown mid-’80s Camaro, had just turned around and was leaving.

  A Hurricane officer stopped me. “No access, need to know only. Official police operation.”

  I nodded deferentially. “I probably need to know…I live here.”

  His eyed me hard. “Name?”

  “Uh…Johnny. Johnny Bongiovi.” I pointed vaguely to a house. “I just started renting a few days ago.” I leaned in close. “Is this it? The big arrest?”

  “How’d you know about that?”

  “I called. Gave some information.” I put a finger in front of my lips. “Shhhhh.”

  “You called Officer Steiger?”

  Bingo. Score one for the detective.

  “I did. Didn’t think the arrest would be this bi
g.”

  He got all chest-puffy and official. “Tip of the iceberg. We’re cleaning house and we’re not the only ones. All of west Texas going to be clean soon enough.”

  “Better have enough handcuffs.”

  He pulled a couple of zip-ties from his pocket. “This what modern policing uses, sir. The sworn officers and us reserve officers.”

  “Ah. Didn’t know that.” I took one and played with it idly while we both watched the arrests.

  Eventually, he gave me a stern look. “Get on inside, Mr. Bongiovi, and don’t open your door for anyone but the police.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said, palming the zip-tie and hoping he didn’t remember it.

  “The fuck’re you?”

  This tough broad didn’t bother with screaming or running. She smashed the beer bottle she’d been drinking from and jacked it straight at my face.

  I stepped back. “That was…totally hot. Wanna go out?”

  Stony, pissed-off silence.

  “Sorry, inappropriate. I’m not the cops.”

  “’Cause a cop who’d illegally enter my house would tell me he’s a cop.”

  “I apologize. Let me start over. I’m not here to rape or plunder or whatever.”

  An amused smirk rolled across her thin face and it was somehow familiar. “Think you could get that done? That whole rape and plunder thing?”

  Tough and prepared. I could dig this chick. I lowered my hands, trying to make her see I wasn’t a threat. “Mrs. Dennis hired me to find Yo-Yo.”

  “Linda?” The woman looked away and, again, she looked familiar. Crack detective that I am, I had no idea why.

  I nodded toward the street. “What’s going on around here?”

  “You blind?” The bottle still under my chin, she craned her head toward her front window. The curtains, dirty but intact, were wide open. “They’re arresting everybody.”

  “All the dealers, I hear. Didn’t realize there were that many.”

  “Hurricane ain’t no South Dallas, but we got peeps doing their dirt.” She shook her head. “Dammit. They’re taking everybody.”