The door opened a little, tethered by a chain. Part of a face — eyes, the side of a face, dark hair — were visible in the gap.
As if on cue, Carlisle and Elliot both manufactured smiles. Carlisle showed her ID to the gap in the door. “Good morning, ma’am. Detective Melissa Carlisle.” She nodded to Elliot with a tip of her head, putting away her ID in a practiced motion. “Detective Vincent Elliot. We’re here to speak with, uh, a Mr. Valentine Everard.”
Elliot nodded cheerfully at the woman. No response, just those eyes looking back and forth between the two of them.
“Uh. Ma’am. Is this Mr. Everard’s address?”
“Meestar Balentine not home.” The Filipino accent was clean and clear, first generation but softened by time away. She made to shut the door.
Elliot put his hand on the door, still smiling. “Ma’am. Do you mind if we ask you some questions? About, Mr, uh, Everard?”
“What queestions? Poleece queestions? I hab no poleece answers. I clean for meestar Balentine.”
“Clean? So you’re not his wife?” Carlisle’s smile remained firmly in place. Sotto voce to Elliot she said, “Put your damn arm down.”
“Wife! Meestar Balentine always bery proper!” She tossed her head, the motion visible through the crack in the door.
“Ma’am, I didn’t mean to suggest —”
“But you deed. As eeb I am puta! Anak ka ng puta yourseelf!”
Carlisle had seen enough bad movies to know when she was being insulted in a foreign language. Ignore it and move on, Carlisle. “Ma’am. We believe Mr. Everard may be in some trouble. We’re trying to get to the bottom of it, hoping he might be able to help with our inquiries. It would be tremendously helpful for Mr. Everard if you could answer a few questions for us.”
The other woman’s suspicion was starting to wane. After all, police didn’t lie to you, did they? Not in this country, anyway — it wasn’t like the Philippines. She nodded, just once, and unlatched the chain to open the door wider. She had a mop in one hand, an obvious if unromantic weapon if they’d turned out to be mother rapists or whatever she else had imagined them to be. It’d take some time to get over that natural distrust. Her apron was well worn but spotlessly clean. Maybe Carlisle should get her details to clean her place? Good cleaners were hard to find and Lord knew it’d been many years since it’d seen a professional touch.
“Thank you ma’am. We do appreciate it. Maybe if it’s not too much to ask, we could get acquainted. As I said, I’m Melissa Carlisle. Here’s my card. And this is Vincent Elliot. We’re with the Police, working on an investigation.” The offered slip of white card was taken, scrutinized and then whisked away to a pocket under the apron.
“I eem Baitan.” And then she put her suspicion away, tidied out of sight as if it had never existed. Smiling a signature Colgate smile, she led them through the small house chatting over her shoulder at them. Carlisle made encouraging noises in all the right places, taking note of the photos on the walls. There were only a few of them — what was presumably Everard with a woman, pretty in a youthful way, dark curls and an impish grin. He was definitely a reacher, batting outside his league on looks alone. Carlisle was never quite sure how plain guys with no obvious physique managed it — maybe he was comedy gold. Here’s a funny one: I kill people.
The inside of the house was cool without being cold, the heat of the day left behind with the cicadas outside. The place had plenty of windows, light from the surrounding trees brought in and diffused with softer greens. Those photos on the wall looked slightly faded, exposed to the light of years — they hadn’t been updated to change with the times. Everard’s life had stopped, time marching right on by a couple years back. Probably after the accident.
She snorted to herself. Accident. She hated how they had to describe things without attribution of blame, as if accidents just happened. In Carlisle’s experience, there were no accidents. Just a series of actions with consequences. Mostly stupid actions, or stupid people, and bad consequences, to an unlucky few.
Elliot was writing in his notebook with a black pen, attentive to Baitan’s words.
They arrived in a small living room of sorts, a couple of couches pushed up against the walls huddled around a too-large TV. Some DVDs were lying around the TV on top of some red Netflix envelopes. A garbage bag sat on the ground next to a vacuum cleaner, likely evidence of Baitan’s industrious efforts to make it look habitable. Chinese takeout containers vied for space with beer bottles in the bag. There wasn’t a lot else. The cleaner had thrown the windows open to get some air in the place, but it still smelled musty.
Baitan was sparing them no detail now she’d decided to open up to them. She continued to bustle about the room, tidying here and cleaning there, occasionally disappearing into an adjoining galley-style kitchen. Where the lounge was messy, the kitchen was positively austere, not a utensil out of place — Everard probably never used the thing. Baitan cleaned every surface anyway, but spent some special attention on the microwave. It reminded Carlisle of her dorm room days; she’d ignored the cafeteria, living on take-out and beer. The only kitchen necessity was a microwave, the only tool needed a fork. She’d managed almost an entire semester on frozen dinners.
It was hard to interrupt Baitan’s stream of words, but Carlisle managed it. “Have you been working for Mr. Everard long?”
“Oh yees, a few yeers. Meestar Balentine beery good to me, always leabes money on table.” She gestured to the small kitchen table, a vase in the center of it amongst some cut flowers. “He know I been, I take money and leabe him flowers. Since accident, he needs more habby thoughts.”
“Do you ever see Mr. Everard?”
“Yees, yees, a few times a yeer. And he write note to me, I write back.” Again, a gesture to the table.
Piece by piece, they got a picture of Everard. A man who ate nothing but take-out, whose fridge was full of beer. He’d hadn’t actually hired Baitan himself — a ‘Meestar John’ had arranged for her to start, Baitan’s daughter one of his clients at some gym downtown. She was proud of her daughter, beaming with stories of her living in everyday happiness.
Everard spent almost no time here, or at least Baitan never saw much of him. He paid well, always leaving twice their agreed rate on the table. “I tried to leebe him money on table, next week he leebe me four times money!” And because of this Baitan went a little further for him than for her other clients, tidying rather than just cleaning, washing clothes, doing a little ironing, leaving him the flowers. She was full of the tiny details — she knew he drank, not just by the bottles but by how many empty boxes of pain meds were in the trash. She knew he wore the same five shirts to work each week — and had thrown one out this week, the sleeve torn.
“Ma’am? The left sleeve?”
“How you know? Yees. Left sleeve. Here.” She fished a super-sized plain white shirt out of the trash bag from somewhere near the bottom, offering it to Carlisle. The shirt itself was unremarkable, a simple cut available at any menswear store. The left sleeve was torn, irregular lengths of cotton hanging from it. All of the left side of the shirt was tinged a gentle pink, as if Everard had spent some time lying in a pool of his own blood.
It was dry. Curious. Carlisle balled it up, ramming it into a plastic bag before tucking it under her jacket.
Baitan continued, as if the shirt was of no consequence. By her reckoning Everard spent time in just three rooms in the house — a home office with a computer, the bedroom, and here in the lounge drinking beer and eating frozen foods. She knew this because there were beer bottles by the computer and the bed had always been used — same side every time, the other untouched — and the trash pile here in the lounge. The lounge was where the worst of the drinking happened — she tidied up red wine and whiskey bottles here, a few each week.
Her description pegged Everard as a lonely man, perhaps even a recluse. Came back here each night, worked a little from home, and then probably drank himself to unconsciousness. W
hat she didn’t paint the picture of was a psychopath. Psychopaths could be lonely recluses, but they didn’t have cleaning ladies. If they did, they didn’t pay them extra to poke about their affairs and go the extra mile — killers needed places to hide the bodies. Carlisle lacked hard evidence either way but her gut told her that Everard wasn’t the guy.
Psychopaths didn’t really go in for cut flowers, you know?
They made their exit from the house — Baitan’s chatter following them out to the gate — and walked down the drive back to their car. Elliot was tapping his pen on the cover of his notebook, deep in thought. Back in the car, they both stared ahead, rows of parked cars and the clean lines of prefab housing stretching out ahead of them.
“He’s guilty as sin.” Elliot punctuated this with another tap on his notebook.
“Are you cracked? He’s as innocent as a schoolyard virgin.”
“He’s got all the signs. Lonely recluse. Drug problem. Woods to stash the bodies in.”
Carlisle snorted. “What, with the cleaning lady to wipe up the blood stains? And it’s not drugs, it’s Jack Daniels. C’mon. We’re getting out of here.” She put the keys in the ignition, firing the big six to life. A satisfying grumble came from the car, deep as the growl of a wild beast. “You might have forgotten, but we’ve got his arm on ice at the station. It’s hard for a guy to unzip his fly with only one arm, let alone disassemble a bar full of people.”
“She’s in on it.”
Carlisle turned to face Elliot in the seat. “You can’t be serious. She’s like four feet tall. She’s not the best assistant for a killer. Where’s her motive? Hell, where are the bodies? The thing is, Everard is likely to be one of our vics. We’ve got his hand, that’s pretty much it. We haven’t got his body, a weapon, or a motive. Poor bastard is probably dead in a ditch somewhere. The best we’ve got,” she said as she pulled the plastic bag from under her jacket, “Is his shirt, with DNA all over it.”
“It’s probably wine, not DNA.” Elliot was silent for a moment. “Nah, girlfriend. Remember I said it. There’s something funny about Valentine Everard.”
“Okay Matlock. How you figure it?”
“My gut says he’s guilty.”
“Your gut needs some work.” Carlisle looked at Elliot’s growing paunch. “Get the shirt down to the boys in the lab. Then we’ll talk. Your gut and me, I mean.”
CHAPTER SIX
“I’m still sweating.” Val pulled his wet shirt away from his skin. Much as he had to admit that transparent shirts on a fat guy looked bad, he’d carried his jacket rather than putting it on. A light breeze was nudging against the fabric. “I thought a cold shower after the gym would help. This isn’t selling it for me.”
“That’s a mark of pride, buddy. Just don’t get too close to me.” John grimaced. “Did you use deodorant?”
“Wait. I can’t remember.” Val sniffed under his arms. “Yeah. Smells like Axe. I’ll probably sweat it off, but my intentions were pure.”
“No doubt. You did good today. Really good.” John seemed distracted — he wasn’t checking out the women on the street, and he wasn’t really paying attention to where he was walking. His phone had rung a couple of times, and he’d just ignored it. John, the man whose digits were in more single women’s phones than anyone else alive, was ignoring his phone.
It was uncanny.
“You don’t sound like I ‘did good.’ You sound like we’re discussing my funeral.” When he’d been a kid, Val had come off his bike. He’d fallen a long way down a bank, rolling a couple times before the bike had caught up with him. The tumbled images of earth and sky along with the taste of green grass and dirt in his mouth stayed with him. He remembered the clank of the bike following him down, banging its way through the brush. He’d wrenched his shoulder pretty badly. Nothing serious, the doctor had said. Rest it, it’ll be fine. They say you don’t remember pain, but he swore his new after-gym arm felt the same. Wincing, he rubbed his shoulder. “Damn.”
“Well, shit. Okay. Give me a minute. I think I need to break this down for you.” John continued on a few more paces, then stopped. A couple of women almost walked into him, veering at the last minute. One gave him a look over her shoulder as she passed. John didn’t even notice. “Look. So you benched a lot today.”
“Dude. You just got a hair flick.”
“What?” John looked around, but she was long gone. “Was she hot?”
“I dunno. I guess. It felt like a lot. Man, I’ve never hurt this bad.” A memory came, stark against the mundane street around him. She’d been bleeding so bad. He could remember that damn headlight shining in his face through her shattered passenger window. “Except maybe after the accident.”
John didn’t seem to notice the reference, focused on something different. “Do you know how much is ‘a lot?’”
“I dunno. You said it was more than you could bench, but I figured that for a sort of motivational speech. So I guess maybe less than you, sure, but a lot, right?”
John just stared at him.
“What? Say something.” Val looked around the street. “What!”
“Okay, stupid, we’ll play it your way. Today, you benched around six hundred and fifty pounds. Maybe a bit more, a bit less.” John slapped the mixed roll of cash his back pocket. “It’s what’s buying the beers tonight. That six fifty press.”
“I guess that sounds like a lot. But it’s all Smurfberries to me.” Something else was hurting in his back. Val arched, trying to work the kink out. This is why exercise isn’t more popular — it hurts too damn much. You could read it in the papers: man killed while jogging. You never read about a man killed sitting on a couch.
“Smurfberries? Are you on coke?” John looked him in the eye. “You can tell me.”
Val snorted. “I’ve only got a thirst for Jack. There’s this iPhone app, Smurf Village.”
“I don’t see where you’re going with this.”
“Give me a sec. I’m trying to play your six fifty pounds game. Trying to get it in my head, okay? So in this app—”
“Smurf Village.”
“You got it. In Smurf Village, you can build houses, go fishing, whatever. I don’t know, bang Smurfette, whatever you want.” Val frowned. “Okay maybe not that, it’s for kids. But the game’s free, except it’s not.”
“Smurfette’s a hooker, right?”
“You’re on the right track John, but it’s a kid’s game for fuck’s sake. You need to work that out somehow, it’s creepy. You can play the game, but you can sort of ... I don’t know, incentivize your Smurfs. Buy them Smurfberries. And Smurfberries come right off your Mastercard.”
“So what’s a Smurfberry get me?”
Val clapped his hands together. “Exactly. We know how much a Smurfberry costs, because those thieves charge your Mastercard for them. But before you go in, before little Johnny —”
John winced. “Jemima, please.”
“Sure.” Val nodded. “Before little Jemima gets hooked on the game crack that Smurf Village is, you’ve no clue as a consenting parent what a Smurfberry costs. So when Jemima comes in and bothers you in front of the big game, asking for twenty bucks for some more Smurfberries, what do you do?”
“I dunno.” John rubbed his chin. “The big game. Is it half time? Does she leave me alone for another half hour? I might pay twenty bucks for that.”
“Sure you might. But that’s the thing. You just don’t know. It’s like any other arbitrary measurement, like—” Val waved his hands in the air. “Like, I guess, a megawatt hour, or a megabyte maybe.”
“I know what a megabyte is. I work in a gym, but I’m not prehistoric.”
“Okay wise guy. What’s a megabyte?”
“It’s, well...” John trailed off, then tried to man up to the challenge. “It’s a bunch of emails.”
“How many?”
“A lot?”
“Is six hundred and fifty pounds a lot?”
“You fucker.”
“Seriously, you’re an asshole.” John turned away and started checking out the talent, looking for the next hair flick.
Val dragged him back with a pat on the shoulder. “Can an ordinary dude lift six fifty pounds worth of cheese? I mean, it’s not something I’ve tried.”
“Fair enough. Okay. You got me.” John walked on a few more paces. “Here we go. You know a guy called Scot Mendelson?”
“Does he work with you?”
“I wish. Scot holds the current world record for the raw bench.”
“Raw?” It’d been a while since meals. “Like, uncooked?”
“Raw, like unassisted.”
Val gave John a blank look. “How can you assist a guy on the bench? Are there two guys pushing up? One pulling from above?”
“It’s not important. Well, it’s a little bit important, because you strap on a special shirt, and you can lift more. But the raw bench is where it’s at, okay?” John watched a woman walk past, head tracking as she sashayed past him. “Ah. So Scot, he’s the world record holder.”
“I know you’re dying to tell me. What’s his record? A thousand?”
“Not even close. You need to think much, much lower.”
“Eight hundred? We can play this game all day. You should just tell me, since I made you famous on YouTube today.”
“We should probably get you a beer first. Make sure you’re sitting down.” John patted the wad of cash in his pocket again. “You’re going to need to be lubricated for this one.”
“Now you’re scaring me. What’s his fucking record?”
“Seven hundred.” John paused, every so slightly — damn drama queen. “And one. Seven oh one pounds. Dude’s been powerlifting his whole life, he’s a real significant piece of machinery, and he benches just fifty pounds more than you.”
The Night's Champion Collection: A supernatural werewolf thriller trilogy Page 4
