American Static

by Tom Pitts

  Tom, despite his juvenile criminal record - strictly misdemeanors - and his near religiously adherent punk rock ethos, had, probably with the help of his old man, passed all the requisite physicals and psychological exams to successfully pursued a career in law enforcement. For two years, he’d been working plain clothes with the KSP. Any armed robbery or murder case that fell within the jurisdiction of a county that couldn’t handle an investigation’s magnitude, or involved multiple homicides related and spanning across the state, Scott helped handle. For all I knew, he’d been one of the Staties assigned to make sense of Dog Hill.

  “I’m surprised you’re calling me,” I said. “I texted you my number in case you needed an alibi for some police shooting, you know, if you blew away an unarmed black kid or something and needed me to bring you some crack to sprinkle on the poor little bastard before IAD arrived. Should I purloin you some grade A freebase and a decent drop gun to lay at the feet of some unsuspecting and underprivileged housing project resident?”

  “Thanks anyway,” he said, “but the worst projects are out of my jurisdiction. You might want to consult the LMPD, if you think you have a knack for those kind of services.”

  If only he knew, I thought.

  “What can I do for you, then, corporal?” I asked.

  “I’ll be in town next week. We need to talk.”

  Shit. I wondered if he knew. I mean, he knew I was a junkie. That was why he’d cut me out of his life years ago. Even when I called and told him I’d quit - a lie, I had just snorted a ridiculously fat line of China White when I dialed his number - he simply said, “That’s nice” and found an excuse to get off the line. Kentucky State Police detectives couldn’t afford to be associated with drug addicts.

  “Last time I talked to you, you couldn’t be seen with a dope fiend. It’d be bad for a statie’s career,” I said to Tom.

  “You said you’d cleaned up.”

  I doubted he suspected my involvement in the Dog Hill killings. He was probably in the middle of a divorce or an alcoholic nervous breakdown, a third-life crisis. Scott could drink on duty and pop prescription painkillers with abject impunity, but introduce the subject of needles and his repressed scruples suddenly reared their, smug, self-righteous heads.

  “I am clean.” It was the truth. I hadn’t used in months. I’d just killed a whole lot of people. “Now that I’m not a liability, what can I do for you?”

  “I’m at work right now,” Scott said. “I don’t have a lot of time to talk.”

  “Then why are we talking?”

  “I’m just making sure I can come to you. That you’re straight.”

  “I’m straight, Tom. I swear. Haven’t had anything in months. I know that’s not exactly long-term sobriety, but it’s the truth. Do with it what you like.”

  “Then expect a call mid-week.” He hung up.

  The sun winked above the Appalachians and spread a ruddy glow over the mountaintops and again, for a K-9 audience of one, I recited the version of events I would confess to the two irksome Louisville detectives that had ordered Paul to find me and reign me into a rather encompassing investigation that involved multiple homicides and a suspected heroin ring that spanned from Tennessee to Cincinnati, at least, as far the authorities believed.

  I had an answer for every inquiry regarding all the missing and murdered people with whom I’d been publicly associated. Amara had been found in the county, Irina at the northeastern edge of Louisville, in Portland, on the banks of the Ohio.

  The detectives’ first round of questioning had been held in a tiny interrogation bowl on the third floor of LMPD headquarters on Jefferson Street, across from the courthouse and the city jail. The police were now investigating each of my alibis. I’d told them that Jimmy, whose execution was authorized to assuage Luther Longmire’s paranoia, was a friend, but a shameless drug-addict from whom I’d distanced myself. I said I’d heard he was involved with some undesirable sorts and that - it was just my opinion - he may have been the one to drag my ex-girlfriend Irina back into the dope life. I played the victim well, always have. After the initial inquisition, the detectives, a dipshit pair by the names of Longbow and Hertz, had ordered me not to leave town until I heard from them again. Longbow, the old one, grizzled, bald with a clown helmet of white hair at the sides of his temple, cussed a lot, unnecessarily, and often awkwardly, mixing expletives in nonsensical couplets -“cockfag,” “shitfuck,” and my personal favorite, the painfully redundant, “pussy cunt”- and verbally flailed random accusations, most absolutely unrelated to the matter at hand.

  “Tell me you’ve never sunk so low you turned to eating Chinese food for breakfast you little dickfag.” While Longbow asked me if my taxes were in order and how many grams of cocaine I ingested daily, his younger partner sat across the short, narrow steel table, attempting to incite a staring contest. I couldn’t get a read on detective Hertz. He resembled a young Robert Redford, a handsome ginger stoic in manner, more collected than most boys of his generation.

  I refused to make eye contact with either of them unless asked a direct, pertinent question, keeping my gaze affixed to the two-way mirror, wondering who was watching. A DA? A Fed? Probably just a menial higher-up, some sort of city police Sergeant or Lieutenant making sure these idiots didn’t molest me or beat me stupid with a phone book.

  Finally, I was allowed to leave. The afterbirth brothers seemed to find feasible my ignorance.

  They had more questions and declared that they may, in their background check on me, discover cause for at least one more line of inquiry. My mandate to remain in Louisville for any prolonged period left me crushed and sobered. One Lesson I’d learned from all my recent and tragic misadventures: the longer you’re in one place, the harder it is to leave.

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