Fire and Rain

by Katy Munger

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Except that we are getting the hell out of here.” I’d figure it out once we hit the streets.

  The front door opened onto a sidewalk half a block up from the patio. I could see a churning mob of alcohol-fueled men throwing punches. They took turns tumbling over a low brick wall and landing in the front garden border before jumping up to dive back into the fray in a spectacular display of adrenaline-fueled testosterone.

  “Let’s not go that way,” Vincent suggested, pointing toward the brawl.

  “Agreed,” I said and turned toward the other corner.

  The beefy biker wearing the black leather vest was waiting for us about twenty feet ahead, his huge biceps bulging beneath a tight white tee shirt. “Remember me?” he asked with a satisfied smile.

  “Oh, shit,” Vincent and I said simultaneously.

  “What do we do now?” Vincent asked me. His voice sounded like he’d been sucking helium and I knew he was about ten seconds away from a full-blown panic attack.

  “I have no effing idea, but—” The rest of my words were drowned out by deep honking. A white panel van squealed to a halt in front of the Blue Note Grill and the doors slid open. “Get in,” an angry voice shouted.

  Could it be? I knew that van. A handicapped parking permit dangled from the front mirror.

  “Get your stubborn ass in this van now,” the unseen driver screamed at me.

  Yup. It was my ex-boyfriend, Burly.

  “Get in the van,” I shouted at Vincent, pushing him through the doors and jumping on top of him just as the van tore away from the curb. Burly took the next corner hard and barely missed hitting a mound of gravel blocking a side street. Vincent slid out from under me and started rolling toward the open doors. I grabbed him by the collar of his windbreaker and pulled him back in, then scrambled toward the side door on all fours and activated the closing mechanism. The last thing I saw before the van door slid shut was the beefy biker running furiously after us, his face contorted with rage as he realized he was in a losing race.

  We bumped and careened down a side street, hitting potholes, tearing through construction debris, and barely missing parked equipment sturdy enough to smash us as flat as IHOP all-you-can-eat pancakes.

  “Hang on,” Burly yelled as he swung left on Foster Street and tore through a red light.

  “What’s happening?” Vincent called out, terrified, from a spot on the floor near the back doors.

  “Shut up!” Burly and I roared back at him in unison.

  Vincent began to whimper in fear as Burly lit into me with a fury I had never, but never, seen him display. “What the hell is the matter with you?” he started his tirade off with. “Is it always going to be this way? I tell you to do something and you do the exact opposite?” Without waiting for my reply, he kept piling it on. “I told you Cody Sherrill was bad news. I warned you he was dangerous. But, no. You’ve got to be in as much contact as possible with him, come hell or high water, because you’re stubborn as a mule and twice as stupid and you just can’t help dropping those drawers of yours at the first bad idea who comes along.”

  “That’s not fair,” I protested, trying to interrupt his furious lecture. It was starting to sting.

  “I think he might have a point,” Vincent offered from behind me.

  “Shut up!” Burly and I yelled at him again. I scrambled forward and took a seat on the passenger side. I could not meet Burly’s eyes. We rode in uncomfortable silence, none of us knowing or caring where we might be headed so long as we were moving away from the Blue Note. I could practically feel the steam radiating off Burly. I had never seen him so angry before.

  We were all the way to Duke Street before Burly broke the silence. “You are going to get yourself killed one day. Seriously. Why do you insist on being so damn pigheaded?”

  I opened my mouth to speak but Vincent interrupted, desperate but determined. “Look, whatever the two of you want to work out is just fine with me. But I want out of this van now. I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Where do you live?” I demanded.

  “Why? Are you going to rob me?” Vincent asked, a look of terror crossing his face. “Because I don’t have much. Maybe a couple of cats and a—”

  “Oh, shut up,” I said, irritated. “We’re going to give you a ride home to save your ass from retribution by a bunch of angry bikers. Is that okay by you?” I glared at him and he shrank back against the wall of the van.

  “My car is at the Blue Note,” he explained in a tiny voice. “How am I going to get it back?”

  “Uber it tomorrow,” I suggested abruptly and turned back to Burly. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I thought I’d be safe in a public place. I just wanted information.”

  “And he just wanted to make sure you didn’t get any closer to the truth.”

  “What is the truth?” I asked.

  “If I knew that, I’d go to the cops,” Burly shouted at me. “I damn sure wouldn’t let you know. I’m done helping you because you will not listen. If I didn’t have a buddy left in the Panthers willing to tell me what Cody had planned for tonight, you’d be at the bottom of Sugar Lake by morning. Don’t ever think these guys are amateurs. There’s a reason they’ve never been caught.”

  “What did he have planned?” I asked, angry at myself now.

  “I don’t know. Use your brain. If you still have one. He either wanted to scare you off the case or feed you some line to send you in the wrong direction. Or kill you. My money’s on the killing.”

  “Y'all are scaring me now,” Vincent chimed in from the back of the van. “I live just off the corner of Duke Street and Stadium Drive, by the way.”

  Without a word, Burley swerved into the fast lane and began speeding down Duke Street. I sat fuming in the front seat until we reached Vincent’s corner. The van slid to a halt by the side of the road.

  “For a moment there, I thought you were just going to slow down and I’d have to jump,” Vincent said, attempting to joke.

  “Just get out of my van,” Burly ordered him.

  He didn’t wait to be asked twice. Vincent tumbled out the side door, hopped up from the dusty road, brushed himself off with as much dignity as possible, and began to walk with the exaggerated posture of a drunk into the darkness. If he had any dignity left after the last half hour, by god he was going to claim it. “Remind me to never buy you a drink,” he shot back over his shoulder at me.

  Before I could reply, Burly had pulled away from the curb and we were roaring across Duke Street again.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, shrinking back into my seat. He was really, truly, deeply, madly, and absolutely furious with me. And I had no idea what to do about it.

  “I’m taking you home and then you’re on your own,” he said. “And that’s the last time I ever save your sorry ass.”

  We rode in silence until we reached the entrance to my apartment complex. It felt so wrong. Like we were strangers. And that just about broke my heart. “I left my car on Geer Street,” I said meekly. “Can you give me a—”

  “Uber it tomorrow,” he suggested curtly and drove away, leaving me standing by the side of the road, watching the wheelchair bolted to the back of his van bounce out of sight. I wasn’t sure I’d ever see Burly again and I knew I had no one to blame but myself.

  ●

  Still stinging from Burly’s rebukes of the night before, I’d had a restless night, tossing and turning while scenarios of what could be happening to Candy Tinajero at the hands of Mafia hitman and coked-out bikers played through my mind in an endless loop. I finally gave up and, with only a few hours sleep, rose at 5:30 AM to drink coffee while sitting on a bench in the courtyard outside my apartment. I had once lived a life that started at dawn every day, usually in a soybean field, and I still loved the sense of calm and the chance of starting fresh that came with the early morning hours. It was a very hopeful time to be up and alone with my thoughts. I needed that hope, too. Badly. I’d lost
one of my best friends and this case was kicking my ass. I still had little to go on. I went through everything that had happened so far, trying to find something I had missed. I had been so certain that Rodney Salem had nothing to do with Candy’s kidnapping, but now I wasn’t so sure—and I also wasn’t sure how to find out if what Cody Sherrill had told me was true, either. Was Rodney Salem really a narc? Worse, the whole episode at the Blue Note now seemed like little more than my own paranoia. What had really happened? So a couple bikers had followed me into the bar. Maybe I had let my imagination get the best of me and panicked? Maybe Burly had treated me like a child and we’d made a big deal out of nothing?

  But I could not muster any outrage at being rescued by Burly. I should have known better and I should have followed my better instincts about Cody Sherrill.

  By the end of my latte, I felt better, thanks to the magic of the coffee shop that opened at the crack of dawn across the street—and the owner’s willingness to view my morning forays there, while dressed in a ratty bathrobe and bedroom slippers, as eccentric rather than signs of mental illness. I pulled out my cell phone and called my friend Marcus.

  He was not amused.

  “Are you out of your mind?” he said by way of a greeting. “It’s not even 7:00. You know I need my beauty sleep. Well, I don’t need it, per se, but I like it.”

  “Sorry,” I lied. “But I’ve taken your advice and embraced the whole early to bed and early to rise thing and I lost track of time.”

  He wasn’t sure what to make of that absurd claim but at least he didn’t laugh. “What do you want now?” he asked.

  “I heard something last night about Rodney Salem, the biker who disappeared at the same time Candy Tinajero was taken. I need to know if what I heard is true. But it’s kind of sensitive. I don’t know if you’ll be able to find out for me or not.”

  That got him, as it always did. You’d think he’d catch on after a while. “There is nothing I cannot find out,” he said in a clipped voice. “What is it?”

  I repeated what Cody Sherrill had said about Rodney being a narc.

  “You mean informant, right?” Marcus interrupted. “You’re not implying he was an actual undercover narcotics officer?”

  “I am not,” I said, annoyed at his constant demands for preciseness and his inability to read my mind, even though I knew it was unreasonable of me to expect it.

  “Informant for whom?” he asked. “Raleigh? Durham? Chapel Hill? The FBI? Interpol?”

  I stopped him before he went intergalactic. “I don’t know. But I suspect Raleigh or maybe Greensboro. His current club rides out of there.”

  Marcus was silent, running through his mental Rolodex of contacts. “I can try,” he finally promised.

  “Thank you,” I said and meant it. “If he was working for the cops, that’s one big ass rabbit hole. It could take me into parts unknown for months and I could end up getting nowhere.”

  “Perhaps that was the point of telling you he was an informant?” Marcus suggested drily.

  “Exactly.”

  “Since you’re clearly out of suspects and looking for a culprit, you might try looking closer to home,” he suggested. As he spoke, I could hear background sounds of coffee being made and pans clattering. I thought briefly about inviting myself over. Marcus made amazing homemade croissants. But I didn’t want to press my luck.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, staring forlornly into the bottom of my empty coffee cup. Why was it that I never had a doughnut when I really needed one?

  “I know you don’t think that hotheaded little stripper client of yours could have pulled off a murder and kidnapping, but yesterday she called Judge Morey something very naughty and was denied bail. Although, frankly, she’s lucky she did not get life without parole. She used the nuclear option.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Yes. The one word you should not call a female judge. Ironically, it rhymes with ‘runt.’”

  I groaned. “Roxy is her own worst enemy.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Marcus said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “At least she’s safe in jail. In case the same people who took her sister come after her. But the other inmates? I pity them.”

  I was silent, thinking through his words. Maybe Roxy’s aggression was a way to mask her fear? “I better go see her,” I said reluctantly.

  “Be sure to get your rabies booster first.”

  He hung up before I could ask what he was making for breakfast. Damnit. It would be ramen noodles for me again. The breakfast of down-and-out champions.

  ●

  I was waiting at the jail door when visiting hours opened, sustained by a quick run to Krispy Kreme. The head guard came out to calm me after I pitched a fit over not being able to see my client. He explained that Roxy was not there and had been taken to the station for more questioning. I was lucky to get even that out of him, but I had once followed his wife and discovered she was having an affair with their pastor, giving him leverage during the extremely unfriendly divorce that had followed. He owed me.

  "What else can you tell me?" I asked him.

  He shrugged. "A couple of uniforms came to get her. When Roxy lit into them, they kept their cool. One of them told your client to save it for Detective Butler.“

  “Bill Butler?" I asked.

  The guard shrugged again. "How would I know? I was rejected by the Academy, remember? You think I like working in this hellhole?"

  It wasn't really a hellhole. The Raleigh jail cells were more spacious than a lot of the high-priced apartments surrounding it. Plus, the guard jobs there paid more than a lot of other gigs around the Triangle, at least for people who lacked a college degree. But I guess that complaining is one of the few perks of being a prison guard.

  I thanked him and left, heading for downtown police headquarters a few blocks away, wondering why Bill Butler had decided to grill Roxy again.

  I knew a lot of the Raleigh cops well, and more than a few did not like to be reminded of that fact. Especially the married ones who had failed to tell me they were married when we first met. But everything has a silver lining. Their desire to avoid me worked to my advantage. No one stopped me when I entered the building until I reached the third floor, where a lot of the interview rooms were located. My luck ran out there. My way down the hall was suddenly blocked by a police officer who looked about fourteen years old, in a wholesome quarterback way.

  “Stop right there,” he ordered me.

  “Why? You going to frisk me?” I said.

  He looked horrified at the thought and I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t getting a bit old for the whole flirting with a man in uniform thing.

  Bill Butler emerged from the Men's Room behind him and acted overly surprised to see me. I should have known then that something was up. I just knew the head guard at the jail had ratted me out and called to tell Bill I was on my way over.

  "I'll take it from here, Buddy," he told the young officer. He grabbed me by my elbow and guided me down the hallway, his grip like a vise.

  "Police brutality," I said loudly.

  "Shut up," he said. "I am about to do you a very big favor."

  "But only because you need my help," I guessed.

  I was right. "I'm going to put you in the observation room next to this one and I’m putting Roxy Tinajero in there with you," he told me. “But I don't want you say a word to her other than hello. Got it?"

  "What's going on?" I demanded, refusing to go further until he explained.

  He leaned in closer and I could smell his aftershave. It smelled faintly of cedar and long afternoons in a cabin bedroom, boffing away the hours, while the world disappeared in the distance. At least it smelled that way to me. I tried to get my mind back on the case.

  "We've had an anonymous tip that bikers are behind this," Bill told me quietly.

  Marcus had already told me about the call, but of course I could not give him away. I acted s
urprised. “Which bikers?” I asked. “Are we talking your favorite usual suspect?”

  “I don’t know. But we can’t find Cody Sherrill. So we’re bringing in as many of the others as we can to question them.”

  “That’s a lot of bikers. Have you booked Guantanamo?”

  Bill stared at me, unamused. “Let me clarify. We’re bringing in the ones who have been associated with either Candy or Roxy Tinajero.”

  “That’s a lot of bikers,” I repeated. “Have you booked Guantanamo?”

  “Look,” Bill complained. “If you think this is funny…”

  “Okay. I’m sorry,” I apologized. “But what are you doing questioning them at this time of day? They’ll all still be asleep.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “It’s like shooting hungover fish in a barrel.”

  “What do you think you’re going to learn from them?” I asked.

  “Probably nothing. But we might learn something from her. We want Roxy looking on from the adjoining room, through the one-way glass. She’s going to let us know if anyone we talk to seems out of character to her.”

  I laughed. He ignored it.

  “Hear me out. I want you in there with her. And there will be two other officers in that room with you, so you better behave. I want you to watch Roxy's reactions while I question each of these guys one-by-one. You know her better than the rest of us. I need you to keep track of anyone she reacts more strongly to than others."

  "Seriously?" I asked. "You're going to bring in a string of ex-boyfriends and you expect that hothead to do anything but start throwing her shoes at the glass?"

  "She'll behave. I’m going to tell her that if she cooperates, we’ll talk to the judge about getting her bail. She's had enough of jail. And all she has to do is sit there, watch, and let me know if she thinks any of them are lying."

  "Depending on what you ask, I'd wager that all of them will be lying," I pointed out.

  "Put a cork in it," Bill told me bluntly. “Your job is to watch her, not second guess me.” He led me down to the end of the hallway and opened the door to one of the interview rooms. "Remember," he whispered in my ear. "I don't want you to say a word to her beyond hello."