The Guilty Dead

by P. J. Tracy

  Zeller seemed genuinely bewildered. “No. Gregory never said anything to me.”

  Betty’s eyes locked onto Magozzi’s. “What does this have to do with your murder investigation?”

  “We’re trying to find out if it does. A man named August Riskin had been in contact with your husband recently …” Magozzi paused when all three of them froze, their mouths simultaneously forming stunned Os.

  “Gus Riskin?” Betty finally asked. “The son of our caretakers?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He told him he had information that Trey had been murdered, and we believe your husband was paying him to try to get that information.”

  Betty covered her mouth and sank to a chair. Rosalie’s big eyes got even bigger, and Zeller’s face turned a dark shade of crimson. “That’s sick … twisted. Cruel. And after everything Gregory did for the family.”

  Gino lifted a questioning brow. “What did he do?”

  “Gregory paid for the Riskin family’s relocation after Gus’s sister was murdered. They couldn’t bear to stay in Aspen after what happened to Clara, but they had no property of their own to sell to cover the expenses.”

  Rosalie shook her head. “This doesn’t make any sense. The last time any of us saw Gus Riskin he was ten years old. Why would Father believe him?”

  Betty pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from the pocket of her dress. She wasn’t crying yet, but it seemed like a preemptory move in case the faucet turned on unexpectedly. “Because he wanted to, Rosalie. He needed to. If Trey was murdered, there would be a chance of justice for him and exoneration for us.”

  Magozzi saw Rosalie’s jaw set stubbornly. She wasn’t going to let this go, and that was a good thing, if for nothing else than to give her something to focus on that would help deflect her grief. “Or maybe he had a reason to believe him. What if Gus and Trey reconnected at some point after Aspen and he really does have some information ‒”

  Zeller interrupted her with a tender pat on the arm. “Rosalie, what happened to your brother, it was a terrible tragedy, but it wasn’t murder. We need to focus on who killed your father, and the detectives are doing that.”

  “Is he a suspect in my father’s murder, Detective Magozzi?”

  “He’s definitely a person of interest. If any of you think of something that might be helpful, please let us know as soon as possible.” He looked at Rosalie. “As you mentioned earlier, every piece of information can be crucial, no matter how insignificant it may seem.”

  She nodded in resolve. “Trey and I used to be very close. I’ll look through all his old emails tonight. Maybe I can find some kind of a clue in them.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  “THEY WERE ALL totally clueless about Riskin,” Gino commented, as they hiked it back to the parking garage.

  “Yeah. But Rosalie said something interesting about Trey and Riskin hooking up at some point after Aspen. Riskin was in So-Cal running with a gang that distributed drugs and Trey did them. He could have been his dealer.”

  “Maybe. But I don’t see how that gets us any closer to Norwood’s killer.”

  “Norwood gets killed on the one-year anniversary of his son’s death, a couple months after Riskin got in contact with him. The guy has a criminal history and he was conning him. Maybe things went sour and Riskin is our guy.” Magozzi buckled himself into the passenger seat and opened Dubnik’s folder. “Head north. We’re looking for Flamingo Terrace Trailer Court in Rush City.”

  Gino shook his head. “Bad things happen in trailer courts, Leo.”

  “Hopefully not tonight.”

  Gino leaned over and peered at the folder. “Are you kidding me? Is that Parr’s mugshot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Dubnik wasn’t fooling. The guy’s a monster. I mean, he doesn’t even look human. He could probably pinch our heads right off our necks.”

  “Not much else to do in prison except throw iron.”

  “Christ. Call the locals and make sure there’s back-up available.”

  * * *

  The brutal heat and humidity had already peaked for the day by the time Magozzi and Gino arrived at Flamingo Terrace Trailer Court, but it was still in the nineties and the air was so heavy with moisture that Magozzi felt like he was drowning each time he took a breath. Gino’s face turned instantly red the minute he stepped out of the air-conditioned sedan and he rattled off a litany of complaints.

  “You complain more in the summer than you do in the winter. You should be enjoying this. It won’t last long.”

  Gino snorted. “I won’t last long either if this weather doesn’t break. And I don’t complain more in the summer—I loathe extreme temperatures whatever side of zero they’re on.”

  Magozzi looked at the decrepit trailer that was supposedly the humble abode of Milo Parr and pointed to a gasping window air-conditioner. “You’re in luck—our felon friend’s got AC.”

  “That thing couldn’t cool down a shoebox on a good day.”

  “We’ll see.”

  If Milo Parr’s trailer had seen maintenance in the past century, that was news to Magozzi. What little was left of the siding was shredded, pockmarked with hail dents from storms over the years, sagging and ready to take the plunge into the uncut crabgrass lawn to join the rest of its brethren that had already made the fall. Nobody had bothered to clean up, and he wondered why the neighbors, who had relatively tidy domiciles on either side, didn’t complain. Maybe Milo Parr wasn’t somebody you complained to. His history and mug shot supported the theory.

  They mounted crooked, pulpy wooden stairs that led to the front door. It was nothing short of a miracle that the rotting structure didn’t collapse beneath their combined weight.

  “Jesus!” Gino barked, when a malnourished pitbull exploded around the corner and got yanked just short of his ankle by the thick chain around its neck.

  The dog’s incessant barking was part snarl, part desperation. Gino backed away from the snapping jaws, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a granola bar. The dog went instantly silent, settled onto its haunches, and whined. “Poor thing,” Gino mumbled, unwrapping the bar and tossing it to the dog.

  The dog gobbled it down in a single bite, then whined again, looking up at Gino expectantly with sad brown eyes.

  “Let’s go kill this fucker and take his dog.”

  They had their hands firmly on their weapons when they rapped on the bent, flimsy aluminum door of the trailer and announced themselves. They were waiting for the beefy thug whose mug shot had shown a hungry, sneering grimace, like he was ready to eat the person behind the camera. And maybe he had. But the hollow-eyed, physically wasted man who appeared at the door in boxers and a sweat-stained tank wasn’t that guy.

  Once a meth head, always a meth head, Dubnik had said, but aside from his wretched physical appearance, he wasn’t showing any of the tell-tale tweaks or tics of an active user.

  “Milo Parr?”

  He gummed the cigarette sticking out of the side of his mouth. “Who’s asking?” he rasped, then expelled a sickening, liquid-sounding cough along with the lit cigarette. He stooped to pick it up, then stuck it back in his mouth.

  “Minneapolis Police.”

  His watery eyes narrowed as he looked them up and down through a screen patched with duct tape. The smell of marijuana was drifting out of the trailer in a massive, putrid wave, which explained his mellowness. “Don’t look like cops to me.”

  “That’s because we’re homicide detectives,” Gino snapped back. “You know a little something about homicide detectives, don’t you, Milo?”

  “Fuck,” he muttered, pushing open the door to let them in and more marijuana miasma to escape. “Whoever’s dead, I ain’t got nothing to do with it.”

  “We’ll see about that. So you are Milo Parr?”

  “Affirmative, Chief. The one and only. I’d ask you to make yourselves comfortable, but I don’t really give a shit if you’re comfortable or not.” He kicked a teetering stack of mail,
old newspapers, and bags of empty beer cans out of their path, a grandiose gesture of hospitality if Magozzi ever saw one. Milo really did give a shit, beneficent soul that he was.

  He sank into a ratty corduroy sofa and dropped his spent cigarette into a beer can that was tucked between the cushions. It sizzled for a moment, then died. “Whatever you got to say, make it quick ’cause I got radiation in an hour. A fucking year of that shit and they keep telling me it still might work. I don’t see it working, do you?”

  Magozzi didn’t, and it wasn’t breaking his heart, seeing an unrepentant, violent felon a wispy shadow of his former bad-ass biker self. His body was shrunken; his hair and beard were lank and gray. His tattooed arms looked like deflated balloons, distorting the images in ink that had been etched into his skin while he’d still had hams on the bones that showed now. But there was still something sinister about what was left of Milo Parr ‒ his empty eyes, his indolent demeanor. “Our murder victim had cancer, too, but he didn’t get a chance to try radiation or chemo because somebody shot him in the head.”

  “Lucky fucker. If I had any brains, I’d shoot myself in the head.” His eyes skittered to a cluttered Formica table that listed in the corner of the trailer, like a drunk. “Just so you know, there’s a loaded gun on that table. If I went for it right now, would you shoot me?”

  Gino pulled his gun. “You want to find out, asshole?”

  Magozzi’s heart was slamming in his chest as he retrieved a nice Smith & Wesson 629 and emptied the chamber. “You are one stupid son of a bitch, aren’t you?” he seethed. “Maybe you forgot felons can’t possess firearms.”

  “It’s not my gun.”

  “I know it’s not your gun. Where’d you steal it? It’s a little too nice for a street piece, so I’m thinking burglary.”

  “Hey, it’s not stolen, it’s my old lady’s. She likes big guns.” He let out a crackling chuckle.

  Gino re-holstered his weapon. “It’s in your house. That’s good enough to throw you back in.” He sniffed the air. “Cancer’s a bitch. That’s why you smoke pot, huh?”

  “Doctor’s orders. I got a slip.”

  “Bullshit. Medical marijuana in Minnesota is limited to pills and tea. Looks like your day is getting worse by the minute.”

  “Uh-huh. So two homicide detectives are here to bust my dying ass over a gun and a joint?”

  “Your dog dying of cancer too?”

  “Not my gun, not my dog.”

  “Let me guess: it belongs to your old lady. You might want to tell her to feed it once in a while.”

  “We’re here to ask you some questions about Gus Riskin,” Magozzi interjected.

  “Don’t know any Gus Riskin.” He looked back at Gino. “She’s not feeding the dog?”

  “The dog’s skinnier than you and tied up on a chain. I didn’t see any water, either, and it’s really fucking hot and humid outside. In addition to the gun and the pot, we could cite you for cruelty to animals, but we might want to cite you for something else, like murder, so let’s say we let the little things slide for the time being.”

  “That stupid bitch.” Milo eased himself from the sofa with evident pain, then hobbled to the kitchen. Magozzi kept a sharp eye on him, kept his hand on his gun, but there was nothing more nefarious going on than Milo filling a plate with store-bought rotisserie chicken and filling a bowl with water. “I didn’t kill anybody.”

  “You sure?” Gino asked.

  “I gotta take care of the dog,” he muttered, juggling the two items as he headed for the front door unsteadily.

  “Sit your ass back down. I’ll handle the dog.” Gino took the dishes from him.

  While Milo and Gino had an animal-welfare moment, Magozzi looked around the hot, sad, foul-smelling room. Gino was right—the window air-conditioner couldn’t cool a shoebox on a good day, and they were essentially in a shoebox fitted poorly for human habitation. The humidity had seeped into every crevice, warping cheap paneled walls, and the odors of marijuana and deep-fry oil were heavy in the wet air, penetrating everything.

  There were cheap, lighted beer signs tacked up on the trailer’s walls, several faded, curling posters of biker babes suggestively straddling Harleys in bikinis, and a single framed and matted piece that looked wildly incongruent in a decaying dump like this, even though it was a simple rendering of a tattoo: the word “angel” in classic tat-Goth lettering, with nice shading on a flesh-colored background. The former artist in him noted the refinement of the work, the high-quality paper, the mahogany frame, the precisely cut matting. It was definitely as hot as the gun.

  “That’s a fine-looking piece,” Magozzi said, when Milo sat down on the sofa and lit another cigarette.

  His hazy eyes drifted up to the print and he smiled, displaying his misgivings about dentistry. “I like it.”

  “Looks like it’s worth something.”

  “I paid a hundred bucks for it.”

  “Where’d you buy it?”

  “From a friend of mine.”

  “Gus Riskin?”

  “I told you already, I don’t know any Gus Riskin.”

  Magozzi got up and examined the print more closely, saw a signature and date in the bottom right corner and no print number. It was an original. “You got the frame and everything for a hundred bucks?”

  “Told you, the guy was my friend.” He stretched out the flaccid skin on his biceps to reveal a tattoo that read “Angel” in the same Gothic lettering. “Got this when I was fifteen. He gave me a deal because the picture matched my tat.”

  “Thoughtful friend. So what brought you back to Minnesota after you did time in California?”

  “Wanted to get as far the fuck away from California when I got cut loose from the Q. I grew up here, figured it was as good a place as any. Don’t know why I stuck around, though ‒ the weather sucks.”

  “Are you still using, Milo? Besides the pot.”

  “Shit, no. I’m clean. Got a lot of chemicals in my body, courtesy of the doctors who are fucking me up worse than the cancer.”

  Magozzi almost believed him. “So you don’t know Gus Riskin?”

  “Christ. No. Doesn’t matter how many times you ask me, the answer’s gonna be the same.” He squinted through a fog of cigarette smoke as Gino walked into the trailer with a satisfied look on his face.

  “Milo here says he doesn’t know Gus Riskin.”

  Gino rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Huh. We heard different.”

  Milo gave him an ugly sneer. “Well, whoever told you that is full of shit.”

  “Yeah? Let’s talk about what happens to you if you’re withholding information and obstructing a homicide investigation. On top of parole violations.”

  While Gino led Milo down a different path, keeping his paranoid, shriveled brain busy, Magozzi took the opportunity to wander around the trailer in small, innocuous circles, soaking up every detail he could. He expanded his perimeter to the back while the cockroach tried to stumble his way through the increasingly combative questions Gino was asking him.

  Sounds and a movement outside caught his eye through an open window with threadbare, dusty bedsheets tacked up with nails as curtains. A straggly, bleached-blond, black roots halfway down to her ears, was stumbling through the yard, barely able to keep upright. The tank top she was wearing didn’t cover her loose, wobbly breasts or stomach; likewise, her ragged cut-off jean shorts didn’t cover her loose, wobbly behind. At least, not enough of it. Milo’s “old lady.”

  As he watched, the sad, skinny pitbull on the chain started going nuts, thrashing against its chain tether, barking. The woman dropped to her knees beside the dog and tried to find its head to pat it. Her motor skills were lacking and so was her speech, but he could make out some of her mostly incoherent words.

  “Gussy, buddy, how’s my boy? How’s my Gus Riskin?”

  Son of a bitch. “Hey, Milo, your dog’s got an interesting name,” Magozzi called, then moved to the next window near the very back of the traile
r to get a better look at the action outside. He stopped dead when his nose started to burn. It didn’t take him long to figure out why. “Shit,” he muttered, quickly retreating to the front, where Gino was increasingly in Milo’s face.

  “You got your own chemo suite in the back?”

  Milo jerked his head away from Gino and gave Magozzi a startled look. “What kind of shit talk is that? You making fun of me?”

  “I wouldn’t make fun of a dying man, just giving you the benefit of the doubt, because you’ve got some kind of chemicals cooking back there.”

  His bony shoulders slumped and he shook his head in defeat. “Stupid bitch.”

  CHAPTER

  31

  “MILO, WE DON’T care about the meth, that’s not our problem. What we care about is Gus Riskin. You named your dog after him.”

  “Get it off your chest, Milo,” Gino snapped. “We’re the least of your problems right now. We can make things better for you or we can make them a lot worse, your choice.”

  Magozzi couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Milo was actually getting a little emotional. “Knew him in California. He was part of the brotherhood.”

  “The Hessians.”

  “Yeah. He was a righteous dude. Took care of things for me when I went in. Visited me a few times, then disappeared. Never saw or heard from him again. I’m pretty sure he’s dead. He’s gotta be dead or he would have come back to visit me.” Milo pinched his nose and blew snot onto the floor in the absence of any tissues.

  Gino looked at Magozzi. “This guy’s a real charmer, isn’t he?”

  “In a Cro-Magnon kind of way.”

  “Well, that wasn’t so hard, was it, Milo?” Gino cooed. “If you’d been upfront with us, we wouldn’t have found your chem lab and you wouldn’t be looking at dying in prison. Not a smart move, Milo.”

  He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “I got a target on my back, Detective. People still want me dead. I didn’t come back to this shit-hole town because I grew up here. I came back because it’s a good place to hide. And when you’re a walking bullseye, you don’t talk about your past. To anybody.”