by A. S. French
What happened to my phone?
The frustration had seeped through her that night, reaching a painful height when a couple arrived and sat in the opposite corner. She watched them arguing; only they weren’t arguing as he was the only one shouting. His mouth moved up and down like a deranged kangaroo; his cheeks puffed out like a balloon as his skin resembled a blazing sun. She couldn’t hear his words over the noise of the band, but she noticed how he squeezed the woman’s hand as the colour drained from her.
Astrid couldn’t make out their faces at first. The man tightened his grip on the woman’s wrist, and she leant into the light, and Astrid remembered it was Caitlin Cruz, her face creased in agony. Astrid kept on drinking, never seeing him properly, but noticing the two skull rings on the hand transforming that pain to Cruz; skull rings she’d seen the following day at the gas station: Jimmy Sawyer.
She was about to go over and break those fingers when Caitlin stood and stumbled towards her. Cruz leant into her face, and she thought they were going to kiss. Then her hand was in Astrid’s pocket.
That’s where my phone went.
Cruz whispered something to her as she stumbled away.
‘I’ll not be…’
Astrid forgot about it at the time and kept on drinking. Then she staggered to the stage, and everything kicked off. Many people described it as a fight, but it wasn’t because she never retaliated; she just stood there and took it.
Some words came back to her, what Stella Starr had shouted in her face.
‘You’ll pay for that.’
Astrid didn’t know what the hell she meant. She was still laughing when the woman shoved her to the ground and slapped her head.
Astrid’s memories of that night disappeared again. The next thing she remembered was waking up in that cell. Now she opened her eyes and stared at the bar, tasted the tequila, smelt the damp of the wood and pictured the skull rings of Sawyer.
Why did Cruz take my phone, and where is it? What did she say to me?
‘I’ll not be…’
It was two more words; Astrid knew it. Two words. A name. A name she’d heard again.
It was no use; it wouldn’t come to her. She got out of the booth and left, wanting to ask Moore if the police had her phone, needing to see if there were any witnesses that night who saw her brief interaction with Caitlin in the bar.
Caitlin stole my phone on purpose.
If it had been with the victim, like Astrid’s passport and fingerprints, the police would have used that to make a greater case against her.
So they didn’t have it. Why did Cruz take it? To call someone without Jimmy Sawyer knowing?
The questions were running through her skull when a voice like nails on glass drove that thought from her head.
‘We told you to leave town, girl.’
10 Pretty Vacant
Astrid glanced up to see the two dumbass cowboys from the diner glaring at her. The silver from the handles of their guns glistened in the sun. A shaggy dog wandered around with its tail between its legs. She’d have sworn it was the same mutt that pissed on Campbell’s car at the gas station. It must have been an omen.
‘Do you really want to do this now, boys?’
She saw the excitement in their twisted eyes, witnessed their eagerness to beat on this female foreign invader in their town. Perhaps these were the next attempt after the thug with the garrotte.
‘We told you to leave, woman.’
That was an improvement of sorts, the progress from being addressed as a girl to a woman. She stood outside the bar on the raised wood, two feet above them. A few other locals milled about, and she assumed they were hanging around to watch her get a beating again. She waited for the cowboys to make the first move; what she was about to do had to be in self-defence. But they weren’t moving, so she gave them some extra motivation.
‘Did you check your sausages to see if they measure up?’
The one in the white hat lunged at her. If they’d attacked together, they’d have had a better chance. She stepped to the left, catching him under the chin with the palm of her good hand. He flew backwards as if shot by a sniper, startling the dog, which ran away with a whimper. The movement shook the bloke in the black hat long enough for her to bring her arm around and strike him in his cheekbone. His jaw crunched as he crumbled to the ground.
She jumped down as White Hat went for his gun, stamping on his wrist as he howled. Astrid kicked his weapon underneath the wooden supports of the Ranch House. Black Hat got up quicker than she expected, grabbing hold of her damaged hand and squeezing more pain into her. He pulled her towards him and held her in a bear hug.
‘There’ll be no fancy moves now, girlie.’
His garlic breath crushed her nostrils as she thrust her head upwards, hitting his jaw and cracking teeth. Her skull throbbed as he screamed and released her. As he flailed around, she kicked him in the balls for good measure. When he fell to his knees, she relieved him of his gun and threw it with the other one under the bar. The people gazing at her from across the street stared in amazement. She waved at them and tossed her hair back, running her fingers against the bruise forming on the top of her head. The wounds were collecting on her body the longer she stayed in town.
‘Thanks for the workout, boys; perhaps we can do this again later.’
She marched away from them towards the police station, obsessing about what had happened to her mobile and those words she couldn’t remember.
It was a hive of activity when she got there. Detective Moore was a bundle of stress holding on to a phone, while the other Officers did the same. There was no sign of the Chief of Police.
Astrid sidled up to Campbell and gave her best smile.
‘How’s it going?’
It’s probably not the right time to ask Campbell about her husband.
Campbell’s eyes were narrow, her cheeks shrunken as she flexed her hand as if about to lift weights. She handed Astrid a newspaper, which was still warm.
‘The entire country went to shit overnight.’
Astrid scanned the pages. ‘This isn’t a hoax?’
Some of the most influential American institutions had suffered cyber-attacks: the Whitehouse, the Pentagon, NASA, Homeland Security, the CIA, and the FBI.
Campbell shook her head. ‘Nobody’s claimed responsibility, but the best guess is it’s connected to the President pulling troops from the Middle East. Or it’s the Russians again.’
‘Which means our human trafficking website got pushed down the list of priorities.’
Moore stood at Astrid’s shoulder. Pain zipped through her damaged fingers, up her arm and across her shoulders, where it nestled with the bruise on her neck and the fresh damage to the top of her head. She forgot where she was, stormed past him and grabbed his computer and keyboard.
‘If the FBI can’t do it, I’ll find these people myself.’ Her hands skimmed over the keys before he could snatch it from her.
‘What are you doing, Astrid?’
‘Everybody else’s job by the look of it.’
Her hand ached as she stopped beating on the keys. He took the wireless device from her as the buzz of activity increased in the room. As she watched them work, she wondered if this was the whole of the Bakerstown Police Department. She did a quick count and got to twenty as Moore spoke to her.
‘You’ll need to clean this first.’
He held the bloodied keyboard up to her face. She stared at her hand and saw a sea of red. Moore dropped the plastic back onto the desk.
‘Officer Campbell, can you please take Ms Snow to the hospital to get her hand fixed and then find her somewhere nice to rest while I do my job.’ She tried to protest, but he stopped her. ‘A little bird just told me what happened in town.’ Then he returned to his work.
I guess news travels fast in such a small place.
Campbell took Astrid’s healthy hand and led her from the building. She assumed the dizziness was because she was leaking bloo
d and not due to the touch of the other woman’s skin.
‘The hospital’s ten minutes away, then you can stay at my place.’
Astrid slipped into the passenger side. ‘Won’t your husband have something to say about that?’
Campbell started the car and it skidded off. ‘Robbie’s had to go back to Washington because of these cyber-attacks. He won’t be around for a few days. Hopefully, we’ll have this mess sorted by then.’
Astrid wasn’t sure if she was talking about the murders or their brief dalliance. She focused on a simpler conversation.
‘What does Robbie do?’
Campbell broke the speed limit as Astrid’s blood dripped onto the floor of the car. ‘He works for the Secret Service. Don’t ask me what, but I guess it’s something to do with wheeling the Prez’s girlfriends in and out of clandestine meetings.’
She pulled her damaged hand into her chest. ‘The President is a philanderer?’
‘Even worse than JFK, according to the media.’
‘He’s single, so what difference does it make?’
Astrid had never understood why people were obsessed with others’ private lives. The hospital lights flickered ahead of them. Campbell headed for the parking space closest to the entrance.
‘This is one nation under God, Astrid. We’re a Christian country, and the Prez represents traditional family values. If he doesn’t satisfy his base, there’ll be no re-election next time out.’
A cool breeze drifted across Astrid’s face as she stepped out of the car. ‘The country’s under cyber-attack and the troops are coming home. I would’ve thought the people had more important things to focus on.’
‘Sex sells, Astrid.’ Campbell winked at her as they entered the hospital. Astrid’s hand burned and tingled at the same time. The policewoman led her through staff and patients into a side room. ‘I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
Campbell returned to the reception. Astrid peered at the posters on the walls, warnings about drinking too much alcohol and sleeping with the wrong people.
It’s too late for both.
The pain disappeared in her hand as she stared at it, seeing where her recent brawl had worsened the wound from the garrotte earlier on. She assumed it was improving until she realised the ache had only been superseded by the throb vibrating through her skull. Somewhere in the back of her head, the Specials continued to sing about a ghost town on a repetitive loop. Her fight hadn’t been on the dance floor, but outside in the dirt of Bakerstown; she’d lost control, lost her phone and lost her purpose. None of that made her feel any better.
As she tried to find a new tune from her internal jukebox, creeping down a list of Birthday Party tunes, Campbell reappeared with a doctor who looked like a young Jane Fonda. Astrid sank into the medic’s pale blue eyes, sitting back to embrace the stitches fixing her fingers. The doctor offered her painkillers, but she refused, needing to keep her mind as active as possible. She was barely three days into Bakerstown and had already had two fights, with one victory and a defeat, plus one unsuspecting attack. And then there were the things she couldn’t remember.
How had she forgotten meeting Caitlin inside the bar, well before the woman helped her outside of it? Why didn’t she notice her phone missing on the night, and why did Cruz take it? And what was the rest of the sentence Cruz had said to her when they bumped into each other?
She’d initially put this lack of memory down to tiredness from travelling all day and too much booze, but she’d drunk much more than that before in her life and never suffered this type of memory loss.
What if someone spiked my drink that night?
That thought rattled through her brain as the doctor patched up her hand and checked her other wounds. The cuts on her fingers looked worse than they were, and the doc gave her some soothing cream for them. The bump on the top of her head was only a slight one and nothing serious, and she put a fresh dressing on her ribs. Her treatment was speedy and efficient, and they were in and out of the hospital in thirty minutes. Officer Eleanor Campbell kept schtum all the way through and as they left the building, so Astrid broke the ice.
‘We should visit Maggie Delaney.’
Campbell stopped near the car, her eyes wide in surprise.
‘You think she knows something about Caitlin’s murder?’
‘It’s worth checking. If Caitlin spent time there helping Delaney, she might know something useful. There’s not much else for us to go on at the moment, is there.’ She felt like the walking wounded even though she wasn’t moving. ‘Unless you want to return to the station and help your colleagues with this cyber-attack thing?’
Campbell laughed and shook her head. ‘No thanks, we’ll keep away from that. It’s bad enough Robbie’s been sucked into it.’ She opened the car. ‘Come on; I know where the Delaney place is.’
It was an ordinary house in an unassuming community. Some of the neighbours had American flags fluttering out front, but everywhere else was well-cut gardens and freshly mowed lawns. The sound of silence filled the street as Campbell knocked on the door. It was Monday morning, and they’d passed the school on the way there, but Astrid expected Angie to be in if what she’d said in the diner was true.
Campbell spoke before rattling the wood once more.
‘Remind me why we’re here again?’ She didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Oh, I know, because of a hunch.’
A leaf drifted off the tree next to them and landed on Astrid’s shoulder. She flicked it on to the ground.
‘As an Officer of the Law, aren’t you concerned one of your citizens is incapable of looking after themselves, and their fifteen-year-old daughter is staying off school to care for her mother?’
‘We might be a small town, but we still have social services.’
‘So, you can contact them if there’s a need?’
‘And you think that’s the best use of both our time, Agent Snow?’
Astrid grimaced. ‘Stop doing that, Eleanor.’ The use of Campbell’s first name surprised her by the look on her face. ‘You’re giving people the wrong idea about me.’
‘And what’s the right idea about you? Are you here to find justice for the Cruz family or to discover who framed you for their murders?’
‘Can’t it be both?’
Before it turned into a more heated argument, the door opened.
‘We’ve got enough coal for now, thanks.’
Maggie Delaney looked nothing like the photo Campbell had shown her before they left. In that, she was a thirty-five-year-old with shoulder-length blonde hair and a smile as warm as the sun. Campbell had told Astrid it was taken six months ago at the Bakerstown annual carnival. The image was from the town’s Facebook page. Now, on the doorstep, Delaney seemed ten years older, with a face caked in makeup and short hair shorn by Edward Scissorhands in the dark. She peered straight at Campbell’s police uniform as she spoke.
‘We’re not here for coal, Mrs Delaney. I’m Officer Campbell, and this is,’ she looked at Astrid, ‘this is Astrid Snow. Can we speak to you inside?’
Delaney’s eyes shifted from side to side.
‘It’s about your daughter, Angie.’
This was the shaky plan they’d come up with in the car. Talk to Delaney about Angie’s apparent truanting before broaching the subject of Caitlin Cruz. Officer Eleanor Campbell hadn’t been happy about it, but was left with little choice.
Maggie Delaney’s trembling fingers rubbed against her cheek. ‘Angie? Is she okay?’
Astrid placed her hand on Delaney’s. ‘She’s fine, Mrs Delaney. We need to talk to you about a friend of hers.’
So much for starting on Angie’s absence from school.
‘A friend of hers? Angie doesn’t have any friends.’ She pulled at her scalp. ‘I’ve tried to get her out with other teenagers, but she won’t. She’s always stuck with her nose in a book or listening to music on that phone of hers.’
‘Do you know Caitlin Cruz?’
Delaney’s face lit up
like a crashed UFO. ‘Cat? Cat’s my friend, not Angie’s.’ Her eyes sparkled as she shook her head. ‘How silly to believe such a thing. You two better come inside.’ She stepped aside to let them in.
‘Thank you, Maggie,’ Campbell said. Astrid followed her in, and Delaney led them to the living room. The place was spotless and smelt of lavender. Astrid ran her fingers over the sofa as she sat, noticing the lack of dust as she touched the leather. Campbell sat next to her as Delaney took the seat opposite.
‘What’s Cat been up to this time? Has she been upsetting people again?’
Astrid and Campbell exchanged knowing glances.
‘What do you mean by that, Mrs Delaney?’
‘Please, call me Maggie. I haven’t been a Mrs for years.’ Her eye twitched. ‘Are you English, Astrid?’
‘I am, Maggie. All the way from London.’
‘How wonderful. I’ve always wanted to go to England, maybe meet the Queen and the Beatles. That Ringo Starr is such a cheeky monkey, but John’s the thinking woman’s dreamboat, don’t you think, ladies?’ She stared at Astrid before slapping herself in the head. ‘Silly me, I should get you tea and biscuits, shouldn’t I? You’re English, so you must love tea.’
Astrid smiled. ‘That’s great, but before you do, can you tell us what you meant about Caitlin, Cat, upsetting people?’
Maggie stood. ‘Oh, that’s just our little joke. Cat comes here to work, brings her laptop, so no one knows what she’s up to. She’s always doing things online that people won’t like, so she says, but she won’t tell me what.’ Maggie touched the side of her nose. ‘This is the only place she has piracy, she says. Now I’ll get those tea and biscuits.’ She headed into the kitchen.
Campbell turned to Astrid. ‘Piracy?’
‘I think she means privacy.’ She monitored the door as Maggie Delaney hummed Paint it Black in the kitchen. ‘She doesn’t know what’s happened to Cruz and her family.’
‘Perhaps she does, but she’s forgotten.’
