The Easytown Box Set

by Brian Parker

  “Good luck with that, buddy.”

  “Thanks. Hey, I know you’re late for your date. I’ll stay on site until everything’s cleaned up.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Yeah, no problem. I’m probably going to get assigned this investigation anyways, so I might as well start now.”

  “You’re probably right. Cruz would fuck it up somehow and I’d end up chained to a bathroom stall on Sabatier.”

  “He tries hard, Detective.”

  “I know.” Lieutenant Alfonso Cruz was one of the other homicide detectives in Easytown. He was a nice man with a few annoying quirks, but I thought he was a total fuckup when it came to his job—and Chief Brubaker agreed with me, which is why Drake and I worked the bulk of the investigations. “Alright, I’m gonna go over to Dillard for dinner. I sent a recorded statement to the precinct already, but you can call me in a few hours for more details.”

  Sergeant Drake raised an eyebrow. “A few hours? If I was dating a woman like that—and I wasn’t happily married—I’d call out for the entire night, maybe the next day too.”

  I grinned at his statement. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  THREE: FRIDAY

  I looked at my watch again and then took a sip from the three fingers of bourbon the waitress had brought. How many is this? I wondered idly, relishing the warmth of the drink spreading from my belly and up my neck to burn my ears.

  Or was that the heat of embarrassment?

  I downed the drink and motioned for another, which appeared quickly, unlike my date. I’d been sitting by myself at a candlelit table set for two for almost an hour. Avery was a no-show and wasn’t answering her phone. A quick check of her car’s GPS data showed that it was still at her house over in Slidell, making my thoughts alternate between several scenarios.

  Was she standing me up and not answering her phone, or did she forget? Was she in trouble? Maybe her house had been broken into and she was being held hostage—or dead. Or was she screwing some other guy while I sat like a chump in a nice restaurant waiting to ask her an important question?

  We’d been seeing each other since I met her at the awards ceremony in November when the governor awarded me the Louisiana Medal of Valor. She was a State Police officer who worked a hundred-mile area to the east of New Orleans and was often brought in for local events as a public relations tactic. The message was that stunningly beautiful women could be cops too, visit your recruiter today.

  Sexism was alive and well in the south.

  Avery and I had a whirlwind relationship of sex, drinking and more sex over the last four months. She was insatiable, often wanting to go two or three times a night. I’d even considered picking up a prescription of Amplify just to keep it up, but hadn’t taken that step.

  For the twentieth time, I slid the ribbon off the rectangular box I’d placed on the empty dinner plate and opened it. Inside was a diamond tennis bracelet, something that she’d mentioned offhandedly once or twice that she would like. I’d planned to give it to her tonight and ask if she would consider an exclusive relationship with me, give what we were doing an official title.

  I was already exclusive—easy to do when you don’t have any other prospects—but I didn’t know if she was. We lived and worked in different cities, at least an hour apart with no traffic and only met up for dinner and sex about once a week. For all I knew, she could have a full-time boyfriend and I was the guy on the side. She could be with him right now.

  Am I the fool who thinks this is going somewhere?

  “That’s pretty,” the waitress interrupted my melancholy thoughts.

  “Thanks.” I snapped it shut and tapped my glass. “Can I get another one?”

  She tried to be discreet, but I noticed her glance at the vacant seat across from me. “Sir, are you sure you’d like another one? You’ve already had three. If your friend shows up, you might—”

  “Please just bring me another one,” I mumbled, my tongue feeling thick in my mouth.

  “My manager says you’re cut off. I’m sorry.”

  I pulled out my badge and slapped it angrily down on the table. “I’d like another one. Please.”

  The waitress looked over her shoulder out of my line of sight and a man walked up quickly. “Sir, I’m sorry. It’s time for you to leave. The city of New Orleans won’t allow me to serve more than twelve ounces of liquor to an individual.”

  “Dammit, I’m a cop. I know the fucking law.”

  He cleared his throat. “Then you’ll realize that you’re putting me in a very difficult position, sir.”

  The waitress retreated to another table and I ogled her tight behind in the modest skirt she wore as she bent over the guests. I was in the mood to take anyone home.

  If I can’t have Avery, that pretty little thing will work. I wonder what that blouse is hiding.

  “Sir, please.”

  I tore my eyes off the waitress’ ass and stared balefully at the manager. “What?” I shook my head. That last drink was hitting me hard.

  “All of these other customers came to have a nice, peaceful dinner. Please don’t make a scene.”

  I tried to push my chair away from the table, but my weight kept it in place and the table clattered away loudly. Every head in the restaurant turned toward me.

  “I’m going to be leaving now.” I snatched my badge and the box with the bracelet off the table, and then dropped a couple hundred bucks in cash on the plate. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the manager sighed.

  The roll of the waitress’ eyes as I approached told me that I didn’t have a shot with her. Shaved or not?

  “Thank you,” I managed to choke out, keeping my thoughts to myself.

  I accidentally stumbled into the hostess stand on my way out the door, knocking the collection of pens to the floor.

  “Detective Forrest. Nice to see you again.”

  That voice.

  I turned to see Tommy Voodoo standing beside the desk I’d bumped into. He had two stunning women on his arm, one of whom looked familiar.

  “Mr. Ladeaux,” I greeted him.

  He stuck out his hand and I shook it. “You’ll remember Anastasia, I’m sure,” he gestured toward the blonde.

  “Ana—? The clone?”

  “Yes, although we prefer to be a little more discreet in public, Detective,” Ladeaux replied in his weaselly voice. “And this beautiful redhead is Greta.”

  “Stop, Tommy!” Greta pleaded as she stuck out her own hand. “Nice to meet you.”

  “Are you a clone too?”

  Her smile faltered and she dropped her hand. “No. I’m one hundred percent real woman—and you’re drunk.”

  “Yes, I am.” I peered over my shoulder at the manager. “And I’m leaving. Nice to meet you.”

  “Detective, we need to talk,” Ladeaux called after me. “I’ve made a little business arrangement that will likely bring us back together.”

  I ignored him and stumbled to the parking lot.

  I had no clue where my Jeep was parked. It’d dropped me off at the door when I came in. “Dammit, Andi,” I cursed into my phone as I fumbled it from my pocket.

  “Yes, boss?” her voice came from the small speaker.

  “Where’s the goddamned Jeep?”

  “It’s forty-three feet from your current location. Turning the lights on now.”

  A pair of headlights came on to my left and I stumbled my way to the Jeep. When I got there, I sat heavily in the front seat.

  “Are you coming home, Zach?”

  I opened the box once more and stared at the bracelet. What the hell.

  “No. I’m going to Slidell,” I replied as I snapped the box closed and tossed it down on the passenger floorboard.

  “Zach, is that—”

  I disconnected Andi’s feed and punched in Avery’s address. The Jeep started to pull out of the parking lot and I typed in a nearby liquor store as a waypoint.

 
; My trusty Jeep dropped me off at the walkway to Avery’s townhouse in Slidell. The lights in the front room were on, but the rest of the house was dark. I tried to see through the heavy curtains, trying to see if anyone was home—or worse, if she wasn’t alone.

  I couldn’t see anything worthwhile. There was no movement of any kind to give me an indication of the situation. The snowflakes that made Easytown look almost civil had turned to sleet, making the roads treacherous and my spying job more difficult.

  I took a long, final pull straight from the bottle of cheap whiskey I’d bought and then set the empty container on the sidewalk.

  “I came all this way to get an answer,” I mumbled to myself. “By God, I’m gonna get one.”

  The walkway was much longer that I remembered it and I congratulated myself for remembering to step over the loose paving stone. I’d tripped on it the first time I came here.

  The applause hadn’t even ended in my head when my toe caught on the edge of the paver and I tumbled to the sidewalk. “Goddammit!” I hissed.

  Apparently, I hadn’t made it past the obstacle. I examined my palms. Both of them throbbed slightly, but the lighting was too shitty to see much of anything. I had an itch on my nose and too late, I remembered that my hands were bloody. I lay on the icy sidewalk, and rubbed at the blood with my jacket sleeve.

  “That’ll have to do,” I giggled, imagining Avery’s reaction.

  I pushed myself up and rubbed at my right knee, which had also hit the walkway. My finger disappeared in a hole in my pants. I’d ripped my damn suit in the fall. Great. Just great.

  I limped the last few feet to the front door and leaned drunkenly against the doorframe. Her home didn’t have an overhang of any type, so I was still getting wet—and smearing blood on her white doorframe like an ancient Jew at Passover.

  The sound of the door unlocking surprised me and I squinted at the sudden rectangle of light coming from inside the home.

  An angel materialized before me. A beautiful, blonde, buxom angel.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, what the fuck are you doing here, Zach?” Her hand flew to her mouth. “What happened to you? Did you get mugged?”

  “I missed you,” I slurred. “We had a date and I was going to ask you something really important and you didn’t show up. I called and called…and called,” I sighed. I knew I was drunk, but I couldn’t get my mouth to stop making sounds. “But you never answered, so I didn’t know if something happened and I wanted you to be okay and I also thought that maybe you were with another guy and I was worried that you’d moved on and that we were over and that—”

  “Zach, shut up. Jesus, how much did you drink?”

  “Yes,” I smirked.

  “Figures,” she said, crossing her arms under her breasts.

  “Can I come in?” I ventured.

  “No, you can’t come in.”

  I stood on my tiptoes and started to lose my balance as I tried to peer around her. I caught myself before I tumbled off the porch into the bushes.

  “I’m alone. You’re a mess; I’m not letting you inside.”

  I grinned mischievously. “You’re alone? Want me to make you not alone?”

  Her frown told me that what I said out loud wasn’t quite as eloquent as I’d thought it would be. “Why are you here?” she asked.

  “I was worried about you. You didn’t answer the phone when I called.”

  “Yeah, twelve times in two hours. Little excessive, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged, wincing at the stiffness between my shoulder blades. “Sorry?”

  “Zach, we’re through. I can’t do this.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look at you. You’re a mess. You’re a drunk. You’re rarely in a good mood. Most of the time, you’re a downright asshole—probably because you can’t disassociate yourself from your work. You eat like shit. Besides one guy and your partner, you don’t have any friends, which is unhealthy. Oh, and don’t even get me started on that Andi thing. It’s weird. What kind of grown man has a twenty-four-seven computer program that runs his life, watching everything he does? It creeps me out.”

  “I—”

  “I thought it was cute that you were inexperienced with women at first,” she continued. “But the more time I spent with you, I realized that it was by choice. You are so focused on your job all the time that it consumes you. I can’t do this anymore. I thought you’d be able to change once you realized how much fun life could be, but you just can’t do it. There’s more to life than being a cop, Zach. Goodbye.”

  She closed the door quietly and turned off the porch light. My angel had retreated back to the depths of hell from whence she came.

  I chuckled at my mind’s attempt to turn a witty phrase until I remembered why I was standing in the icy rain.

  My finger hovered over Avery’s doorbell and then I pulled it back. I may have been three sheets to the wind, but I was still a cop. I knew better than to keep harassing her. Maybe she’d be ready to talk about it rationally in a couple of days.

  I turned and made my way carefully down the walkway. All of her excuses about my failures were covering something up. She must be seeing someone else, I told myself.

  Why else would she make that stuff up about me? Of course I take my job seriously, I had to. Being a cop was all I knew.

  “The Jeep is on its way, Zach.”

  “Thanks, Andi,” I muttered glumly.

  As I stood on the curb, waiting for the car, I hoped Avery’s list of my shortcomings was her attempt to distance herself from me. If they weren’t, I had a whole lot of soul searching to do.

  FOUR: SATURDAY

  “Zach.”

  “Ungh.”

  “Zach, it’s time for you to wake up.”

  “Wha?” My face was stuck to my pillow.

  “It’s almost noon. You should wake up if you’re going to make your appointment.”

  I rubbed my palm across my face and regretted it immediately. Somehow, I’d cut my hand. “Good morning, Andi,” I yawned. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “Nine hours, thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds.”

  I tried to do some math in my head. It hurt too much. “What time did I get home?”

  “2:16 a.m.”

  No wonder I felt like crap. I’d been up all day yesterday, then half of the night after—

  “Wait!” I said, bolting upright in bed and then immediately regretting it. “I got stood up by Avery, and then I got very drunk.” I examined my hands, both of which had abrasions on the palms, meaning that I’d probably fallen. Come to think of it, my knee hurt too.

  “I think… Did I go to Slidell?”

  “Yes, you did, boss.”

  I didn’t remember much past buying a liter of whiskey from a random liquor store near the restaurant in Dillard. “What happened?”

  “Do you want the long or the short version?”

  I vaguely remembered Avery stomping on my heart and saying I was worthless, so I didn’t need the full recount of what she said.

  “Give me the short version.”

  “Avery doesn’t want to go on any more dates with you and says that you need to take better care of yourself.”

  “She didn’t say that second part, you’re just trying to trick me into eating healthier.”

  “Oh for Christ’s sake, what the fuck are you doing here Zach?” Avery’s muffled voice echoed around my bedroom. Andi must have recorded the conversation.

  When the short, one-way conversation was over, I sighed. “I wish I hadn’t heard that when I was sober.”

  “I tried to only give you the highlight reel,” Andi stated.

  I eased out of bed. “It’s highlights, Andi. A highlight reel would be video evidence.”

  Before my foot touched the bathroom floor, I turned and focused on Andi’s camera in the corner above the bed. “And she’s right; it’s weird that you’re always around.”

  “I’m not in the bathroom.”

&n
bsp; “The one place I can get away from you,” I said over my shoulder as I walked into the bathroom. I wasn’t safe in here either, though. The toilet computer was always telling me what was wrong with my urine.

  When I was finished, I walked gingerly to the kitchen for coffee. “Andi, can you order me breakfast, please?”

  “You don’t have time to wait for delivery, boss. You have a one o’clock appointment.”

  “What appointment?”

  “You agreed to a one o’clock meeting with Internal Affairs at 12:27 last night.”

  “Goddammit! Text or voice?”

  “It’s a face-to-face meeting downtown, Zach.”

  “No, I mean did I talk to IA or message them?” I had no recollection of a conversation with IA either.

  “It was an email message. I monitored your progress and cleaned up spelling errors based on your inebriated state.”

  Close one. If IA wanted to talk to me, sending a convoluted drunken message would add fuel to their fire. I grabbed my phone and tapped a few keys. The email message displayed brightly and I groaned at Andi’s corrections to my reply:

  Yes, I will gladly meet with investigators from the New Orleans Police Department Internal Affairs Division. Out of the proposed meeting times, the 1 p.m. time works best for my schedule since I typically work nights due to the astronomical homicide rate in the Easytown district.

  On a side note, I would like to thank the New Orleans Police Department Internal Affairs Division for their hard work and diligence to ensure that justice is upheld across our department. I look forward to assisting with the investigation as needed.

  Thank you,

  Detective Zachary Forrest, NOPD

  “Andi, this doesn’t sound anything like me.”

  “I did what I could. Your final paragraph originally read, ‘On a side note, the investigators at IA can go fuck themselves. Hardworking cops are just trying to do their jobs and you assholes are interfering.’ That was not an appropriate response from an officer who wants to remain employed by the police department.”