The Dragon at The Edge of The Map: A Crime Thriller Novel

by P. A. Wilson

  She didn’t feel like eating, but he was right. She couldn’t remember her last meal and she didn’t need to pass out when she gave her statement.

  Show no sign of weakness. She’d learned that lesson years ago.

  She finished the cereal, tipped the bowl to drink the sweetened milk. Then, with a nod at Watson, she picked up her purse. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Detective Watson showed Monique into a small windowless room. There was a smell that she couldn’t quite identify, stale, sour, and unpleasant. It brought unwanted memories to her mind. She sat on a metal chair opposite Watson facing a large mirror that she knew was a one-way window. “Should I have taken Tess up on her offer of a lawyer?”

  He shook his head. “This is all we have for privacy. Sorry it’s not that comfortable.”

  “Why couldn’t we do this at my place?” The food and shower had helped drive away the shock of hearing Snake’s murder, and seeing his life drain out with the flow of blood. Monique was realizing that perhaps Watson had been playing good cop up to now, but this time she’d fallen for it. Letting her get clean, and feeding her could just have been a technique to disarm her. She tried to ignore the twinge of disappointment, because she’d fallen for it, and because it wasn’t real.

  Watson took out his notebook and placed it on the table next to him. “You’ve been at the scene of two brutal murders in two days. I think a bit of formality is called for.”

  Monique waited for him to continue, unwilling to share information without specific questions.

  “Tell me what you saw tonight?” He flipped open the notebook and held his pen ready.

  Monique rubbed her face to try to remove the pain from the memory. There had been so much blood. She took a breath and then laid out the facts of what happened. “Then I called you,” she finished.

  “How do you know this Snake?”

  “A friend of my brother.”

  “Your brother’s name?”

  “Why?”

  “We need to gather all the details.”

  Monique didn’t think it would do any good to argue. She gave Didi’s name.

  “How did he become a friend of Snake?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve been at the scene of a crime.”

  Her stomach tightened. This was what she’d been dreading. “No, but that doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

  “It might. I did some digging after yesterday. You seem to have overcome your past, your brother not so much.”

  Monique clenched her hands. Why did he ask about Didi if he already knew? He had no right to dig into her past. She was a witness not a suspect. Then there was that sympathetic look that everyone got. “Didi was young. I had to deal with it for his sake. We did okay.”

  “It couldn’t have been easy. Getting through what you saw. Your mother stabbed. Your father shot through the head.”

  “Do you think I had a choice?”

  Monique remembered that day as if it were happening in front of her. She’d come home three days after her eighteenth birthday. Her first paycheck in her hands. Proud to show her father she was self-sufficient. When she opened the door, Monique knew something was wrong from the sickly, bloody stench. Even before she saw the source, she felt the pain of loss.

  She just hadn’t anticipated the betrayal. She stopped at the kitchen door, seeing pools of blood, and pieces of what she learned later were brain and bone. Her mother was sprawled in front of the refrigerator a carving knife sticking out of her belly, moving up and down as she gasped her last breaths through a hole in her throat. Monique had run to her mother, praying that she could help. Her last breath had rasped out through bloody bubbles as Monique reached for her.

  Her father was unrecognizable, half of his head blown away. She ran out of the house screaming. A neighbor called the police. Monique told them someone must have broken in. Some stranger must have killed her parents. The whole time she protested, the sight of the gun just outside her father’s grasp told her what had really happened.

  Her father had killed her mother and then himself.

  There had been no warning, no apparent reason. Even after a deep investigation, no one understood what had turned her loving father into a killer.

  Detective Watson’s voice brought her back to the present. “No. I guess you didn’t. You got help, right?”

  Monique nodded. “Victims services made sure I had counseling. I had to make sure Didi was taken care of. He was in care. I…” She realized he had gotten her talking when she meant to keep silent. “Do you need anything else from me?”

  He looked like he wanted to say something more, but he just finished making notes on a pad of paper. “Let me confirm some of these details. You didn’t know what was going to happen, but you listened to the threats being made?”

  Monique nodded.

  “You didn’t think to call us based on what you heard?”

  “I did, but I didn’t think it would go that far. And I didn’t have my phone with me. I thought I would hear something that would help you find that Alexi guy’s killer?”

  “You heard this Snake call the killer Vincent. Did you hear a last name?”

  Monique shook her head.

  “You didn’t hear what this mystery man’s name was?”

  “No. I told you what I heard. They were both afraid of him whoever he is.”

  “Do you know what was in the bag?”

  “I would have told you if I did. It was something heavy, but it didn’t make any noise, just like I told you when I called about the break-in.”

  Watson made more notes.

  “Do you need anything else from me?” Monique was going to ask for a lawyer if they made her stay any longer. The questions didn’t make any sense. She’d been clear with her answers, and Watson seemed to be making more out of it than a witness statement.

  Watson looked up from his notebook and then tucked the pen inside. “No, we’ll get you a ride home. If we need to talk to you again, we know how to find you. Unless you’re planning to go on vacation?”

  “You can find me at work or at home. You have my number.” She gathered her things. She couldn’t help feeling he suspected her. Like she was so damaged by what her father had done, she was suddenly murdering strangers. Or perhaps there was some genetic drive to murder that she’d inherited. Maybe something that got triggered at the age of thirty-six. “I can get a cab. You don’t need to send me home in a cruiser.”

  Even at one in the morning, it would raise some eyebrows if she were dropped off at home by a police cruiser. She didn’t want to have to deal with the suspicious looks. And the unasked questions of her neighbors would haunt her every time they passed in the lobby. They usually left her alone, and that’s how she liked it.

  CHAPTER 7

  Monique lay flat on her back diagonally across her bed. The room was dark. She had blackout blinds because it was usual for her to be sleeping during the day.

  She should be asleep. She should be exhausted, but instead she was wide-awake. The events of the last two days had drained her of anything like normal feelings. She didn’t know how to turn it off, the energy, or the adrenalin. The reminder of her father’s crime wasn’t new. It ran through her dreams at least three times a month. The rerun of that day keeping her stuck in this empty half-healed place. Part of her wanted to remember, and a bigger part wanted to forget completely.

  The cops seemed more interested in her history than in the current crimes. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Watson was going to try to prove she’d committed them. That she’d had a psychotic break because of her history. It didn’t surprise her. After all, she worried that she’d do something like that. That she could have inherited whatever had caused her father to do what he’d done. And that got added to the guilty feeling that Didi might have turned out differently if he hadn’t lost his parents. That she might have turned out differently…That she could have done something…
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  If Didi was involved in this mess, she didn’t know what she would do. He wouldn’t have a chance in jail. He’d be back on drugs and turning tricks before the first week was out.

  A car door slammed across the street. Monique jumped to peek through her blinds.

  What if it was Black Eyes – Vincent? What if he was coming to finish the job, get rid of the witnesses. She slid the blinds back an inch and glanced at the road.

  She focused on the man standing beside a black SUV, tall and thin, he could be Vincent. Then he stepped into the circle of light from the street lamp. Black, he was black, and young – not a danger. Monique swallowed her fear and slid back onto the bed.

  This was crazy.

  This would make her crazy if she didn’t do something. The most useful something would be sleep so she could get perspective. Monique lay on her back and closed her eyes, even though the room was dark, closing her eyes helped her focus. She tried to tell her body to relax, but as she started the normal exercise, she realized her muscles weren’t tense. She was just awake, not keyed up. She switched to convincing herself that she was asleep. Breathing slowly, running a dream of walking in a forest through her mind.

  She recognized the symptoms of sleep creeping in and tried not to acknowledge them. She slipped into a shallow doze, trying to ignore the knowledge that she was sleeping.

  The stairwell door slammed. Her heart stopped beating. A woman’s voice giggled drunkenly. Mac was home.

  She blew out a breath to dispel the shock. Telling herself it wasn’t a threat, or rather not a physical one. It meant she wasn’t going to get any sleep by lying on the bed. Monique decided it was time to do the one thing that was not supposed to be good for her sleep problems, lying on the couch with a boring TV show.

  Twenty minutes later, Monique gave up. It was getting too close to morning to waste time trying to force her body to sleep when it didn’t want to. She didn’t have to sing tonight, so it wouldn’t matter all that much if she didn’t get a good night’s sleep.

  If she called Rafe, there would just be a new fight, one that might be enough to drive them apart permanently. And she wasn’t ready for that. She was too raw from the police station to try to solve any other problems. And even thinking about it gave her the feeling that Rafe was right, she didn’t let anyone in unless she needed something. No. She had to deal with this herself.

  Monique paced, desperately wanting to find something to pass the lonely hours. At the door, she looked through the peephole, something that was getting to be a familiar action.

  Alexi’s apartment looked normal. Except for the police tape, there was no evidence of what had happened. No bloody hand marks, no broken locks. She wondered if the landlord had cleaned the mess. Was there going to be a new tenant?

  She dragged herself away from the door and started to tidy the apartment. Returning the pillows to her bed, straightening the throw on the couch, and sorting the DVDs into alphabetical order took five minutes. Monique glanced at Didi’s bags, fingers itching to sort the contents, conscience bothered at the thought she really just wanted to snoop.

  Returning to the peephole, she studied the door. If the apartment was like hers, there was only a simple lock, no deadbolt. There was still no seal on the door other than the drape of police tape, and no extra lock from the police. Maybe she could get the door open somehow and look around. Maybe they forgot to set the lock when the cops finished. Maybe there was some clue to the identity of the guy Snake was talking about.

  Maybe she could find something to get the police off her back and onto a real trail.

  She turned the handle on her door and pulled it open a crack. No sound from Mac’s place. At least tonight he was getting some sleep. Would it help if she was more like him? Loose and ready to take on any opportunity. The three apartments at the other end of the hall were occupied by people who went to work, watched TV, and went out on the weekend. In other words, normal people.

  Slipping across the hall, she turned the doorknob. No luck. There was still no sound of activity in any of the apartments, so Monique took a chance, twisting the knob and then jiggling it. Still no luck. It gave her some sense of security that her apartment was harder to get into than she worried it was. It didn’t make up for the frustration of not getting into Alexi’s place.

  Voices came from one of the apartments at the other end. They were getting ready to leave for work. She remembered the guy, Ethan, boring her with talk about arbitrage and world markets, blah blah blah. If they were leaving this early, there must be a stock exchange open somewhere in the world.

  Monique ran for her apartment and shut the door, leaning her back against it while her heart slowed to a normal pace. She was not going to let a simple lock get between her and finding out some information on this murder. She knew that it made no sense that she would be able to find a clue. That she could do what the police – the professionals – couldn’t, but this felt purposeful. It was something that she could do and not just worry about. She would just check it out. She only needed to get through the door.

  If Didi were available, she would call him. He knew how to break into places. He’d learned how so he could support his habit. She didn’t know if he ever actually stole anything, and she didn’t ask. But Didi wasn’t available, and she was not going to ask him for help and give him an excuse to avoid detox. Her glance took in the bags again. If he really had packed all his belongings, there would be lock picks in there. She could figure out how to use them, all she needed was time.

  Placing the bags on the table, she started removing the contents. There were clothes, all needing a good cleaning. She dragged her hamper out of the bedroom and started filling it with his clothes after carefully checking the pockets for anything that wouldn’t survive a wash, or he wouldn’t need after detox.

  At the bottom of the first bag, she found a bundle of Moleskine notebooks wrapped in a plain elastic band. She placed it to the side without snooping. A package of condoms, and the business card for an acupuncturist were the last things she took from there. The second bag contained more clothes. In the pocket of one pair of jeans, Monique found the leather wallet containing his picks.

  The only thing she knew about using them was one went into the lock first and the other wiggled stuff around. She was going to need some time to practice.

  The hall was clear again. Monique figured she had at least an hour until someone else got up, or came home. She tried to remember when the other neighbors made noise in the morning. She flushed with embarrassment when she realized she didn’t know. Was that normal? Maybe it was for someone who worked nights and slept days.

  It didn’t matter now. If she was going to start being normal, she’d do it as soon as she solved this.

  It felt like it was much later, but it was only getting on for 3 am and the clubs closed at four. If anyone was out, they were out for a while.

  She fingered the picks and tried to remember anything she knew about locks. They were made up of tumblers and disks… that sounded right. The idea was to align the pins, that’s what a key did, moved the pins up in the right pattern.

  Monique took the picks and her keys and stepped across the hall. Juggling the tools in her fingers, Monique eyed the lock. The one that looked like an Allen key probably was like a lever, she put the short end in the bottom of the keyhole, and tried to turn. It moved a little. She took a thin rod that actually looked like a pick and slid it into the lock. It went all the way through. She tried to turn the lock but it didn’t move.

  “Okay, I guess it shouldn’t be that simple.”

  She cocked an ear to make sure she wasn’t about to be interrupted, and then looked at the lock again. She used the thin pick to feel around inside. Things shifted upward as she did. Hope brought a smile to her lips. She slid the pick to the back of the lock and pushed upward on everything she felt until she pulled out the pick. The Allen key fell out of the lock.

  “Fuck!” Monique slid the Allen key back into the
lock and then turned. It didn’t go anywhere.

  She took in a deep breath and removed the two metal probes. Looking at her key, she realized that the problem was too much space between the piece she used to push the pins and the bottom of the channel.

  She started again, this time inserting the long end of the Allen key piece, and using it to hold the pick against the pins as she pushed them up. This time it felt different, pushing up on the pick she felt the pins lock. When she felt the last pin rise up, she kept the pressure on the pick as she turned it. The two metal probes moved together like a key. She kept twisting, suddenly the door unlocked and opened a few inches.

  Monique slipped inside Alexi’s apartment before anyone could notice.

  The apartment was dark, but she knew there was a light switch near her hand. She hesitated. The smell was foul, and she knew that no one had cleaned up after the crime. Bob, her landlord, would have a fit. This place was not getting rented out for a long time. Steeling herself, Monique flicked on the lights, keeping her gaze on the floor.

  She knew she had to look, there was no point in being there if she didn’t. She just needed to take a second before going forward. Telling herself that she wasn't going to freak out, she raised her eyes. The living room carpet was stained brownish red. She could hear the buzz of flies, but tried not to see them, or the stain.

  Vincent had come through this mess to find the bag. She could do it. She needed to do it. Monique took a path near the wall to avoid stepping in the sticky mess. Looking at the walls didn’t help much because blood had splashed across the paint, but it was enough to help her stay on the sane side of crazy.

  She stepped into the kitchen and opened cupboards and drawers finding nothing helpful, just a lot of grime. The bathroom was no better. In fact, it looked like Alexi had never cleaned. The medicine cabinet held prescription bottles made out to different patients. He was obviously well diversified in his crimes, stealing from other criminals, and selling prescription drugs.