by Gregg Bell
He ran up the stairs to his apartment. He didn’t know where to start looking for the handcuffs. He went through the drawer in the kitchen where he kept appliance owner’s manuals. Nothing. He looked in his bedroom drawers. Not there. Even though it was unlikely, he searched the shelves in the hall closet and the cabinets over the kitchen sink. Still no luck. He was dripping sweat. His heart was pounding. Could he have given the handcuffs away? He bit his lip. Nobody gave handcuffs to anybody. Maybe he lost them? That was possible. But oh, he didn’t lose them. The cold hard fact of the matter was he owned a pair of handcuffs and now he couldn’t account for them.
Still he had to believe that their being missing was a coincidence. No matter how angry he might’ve been at Rashida, he never would’ve killed her.
But he also couldn’t deny that he still didn’t know what he’d done the night she was murdered.
He was back at the starting line.
It was getting late. He called Orson again. He didn’t pick up. Yes, Orson had lied but even so, with the anti-Muslim message on Rashida’s wall, it was hard to dismiss his accusation of Brig being the killer. Brig with his rage against ISIS, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. He was a wild man. He’d killed Muslims in Afghanistan and it wasn’t an impossible stretch envisioning him continuing the killing here.
But Brig wouldn’t have killed Rashida. Not a woman. Not a non-combatant. Not an innocent Muslim. No, there was no way he killed her. But if Brig didn’t have enough of a motive, who the hell did? Denny remembered him talking of his blind rage when his Marine team members were killed. But no, it made no sense—if Brig killed her, why would he be feeding Denny the inside information from the forensic report? No, Brig didn’t kill her. But handcuffs...handcuffs. Denny could hardly be sure of anything anymore, but how when it came to handcuffs could he not help but think of Frank Powell and his kinky sex?
Denny frowned. So how could he get the truth out of Powell? He’d frowned because he was thinking more and more like Detective Washington, and he didn’t like that he was. Still he strategized. It came to him. He hadn’t thanked Powell for saving him from Rufus Tucker and his thug friends at The Wild Bull. So Denny called and asked to meet—told him it was important. Powell was reluctant at first but eventually gave in, saying he’d meet him at the bar in The Red Barn, a restaurant in Elmhurst. Of course it had to be a bar, Denny thought, rolling his eyes, but he agreed. He drove there.
He parked by a dumpster and walked into the bar, plush carpeting under his feet. The bar was dark, almost like they’d forgotten to turn on the lights. A general hum of the heater and subdued conversations. This was the kind of place mobsters met. As Denny’s eyes adjusted he made out the tables and Powell sitting at one near a window. He headed there.
Powell still had a bruise on his cheek where Brig had slugged him but other than that he looked okay. He didn’t get up when Denny arrived. Denny sat. “Thanks for this, Frank.”
Denny felt nervous calling Powell by his first name. (It was always ‘Powell’ at the firehouse.) But he was hanging with the things Detective Washington had used on him. In other words—make the interviewee feel comfortable.
“Yeah.”
A waitress came by. A little older but with a kindly face. “What can I get you?”
Denny nodded toward Powell’s glass. “Another of whatever he’s drinking and a coke for me.”
The waitress left. Powell didn’t say anything about Denny not drinking, which was the way he was—live and let live.
“There’s been some crazy stuff going down lately, Frank.”
“No doubt.”
The coke and Powell’s drink arrived.
“I was just hoping...” Denny sipped the coke. He was trembling inside and thinking next time he was ordering a rum and coke. “...to see if we could come up with something to find Rashida’s killer.”
“We?” The skepticism in Powell’s voice was unmistakable.
“Look, Powell.” Denny gritted his teeth. “I was a jerk to you, all right? I realize that. There’s not much I can do to change that now but I am sorry. You saved me from Tucker and his thugs when you should’ve let me twist in the wind. I owe you big-time.”
Powell took in a long breath and blew it out. He unhurriedly sipped his drink, all the while eyeing Denny. “All right,” he said. “So what do you want to know?”
“Well, anything, everything. I’m lost, Powell. I don’t know what to make of the little I do know.”
Powell shrugged.
Denny figured, what the hell. It was too late for caution. From now on he was flat-out going for it. “Did you love Rashida, Powell? I mean, you hooked up with the blonde so fast after she was murdered.”
Powell held up a palm. “Whoa. Whoa. You got it all wrong.”
“Help me out then. Tell me the way it was.”
“Rashida and I broke up over a month ago.”
“So you dumped her for the blonde?”
“No!” Powell looked around the bar, like he was embarrassed for raising his voice. “No, that wasn’t the case at all.” He seemed to settle down. “You just don’t get it. In fact, you never did. I loved her—”
“You mean you loved having sex with her?”
“Will you shut up and let me finish?” He sat up tall in his chair and leaned forward.
Denny nodded.
“I loved her. I even proposed to her. But she turned me down. And do you know why she turned me down?”
Denny shook his head.
“She turned me down because she said deep down she thought she still loved you.”
Tears welled in Denny’s eyes.
“So don’t tell me I used her, okay?”
“Powell...” Denny didn’t know what to say.
The waitress came by. “You two all right?”
Denny was on the verge of saying ‘I’ll have a rum and coke this time’ when Powell said, “Let’s do it again. His too.”
Denny let it go. He was still in shock at Powell’s revelation. So Rashida felt the same way Denny did after all. Maybe like he couldn’t shake feeling she was his wife, she couldn’t shake feeling he was her husband. Denny sighed and said, “It’s a lot to take in.”
“Yeah, no doubt.”
Denny was coming to himself. Still he needed to know more. “So who do you think killed her?”
Powell shrugged a shoulder. “I don’t know, man. Some twisted dude.”
“You heard Orson accuse Brig at the firehouse.”
The waitress returned with their drinks.
“Yeah,” Powell said, after she left. “For sure Brig’s a hothead.” He touched his cheek. “But he’s also risked his life for us in Afghanistan. And he’s risked his life for me in a fire. Twice. A guy like that isn’t going to be murdering someone in cold blood.”
“But Orson said—”
“Orson.” Powell scowled and spoke softly. “Let me tell you about Orson. No, let me tell you about myself first. Yes, it’s true, I like to play rough with women, but here’s the thing—only if the woman likes to play rough too. I never once played rough with someone who didn’t want to.”
Denny was wondering if he’d played rough with Rashida but he bit his tongue.
“But with Orson.” Powell sipped his drink. “He kept bugging me to take him out with me. Somehow he found out I liked to play rough and he said he wanted to experience it himself. I told him it didn’t work that way, but he kept bugging me so finally I let him tag along with me and my girlfriend and one of her girlfriends.
“Well, Orson was decent when he was with me and Carol and her girlfriend, but when me and Carol went our separate way from Orson and Carol’s friend, well, I could hardly believe what Carol told me after she talked to her friend the next day. She said her friend said Orson got really strange after we split. He wanted her to take a pill he said was a Quaalude but she didn’t care what it was she wasn’t taking it. Then Orson asked if she wanted him to hurt her. If that would turn her on. Carol’s friend said sh
e ended up feeling scared for her life.”
“God.”
“Yeah. So there. That’s Orson for you.”
Chapter Seventeen
Denny breathed a huge sigh of relief when he walked out of the bar at The Red Barn. Powell had set him straight about Orson. That took the pressure off Denny with his handcuffs missing. Not a hundred percent but a whole hell of a lot anyway. He walked to his car. There was a flier under the windshield wiper. Discount haircuts. He stuffed the flier in his back pocket and got in. He sat there staring at the green dumpster in front of his car. Then his chin fell to his chest. He was ashamed. He was ashamed because he was always so concerned about protecting himself. Would he get tricked into self-incrimination? How did the evidence make him look? How about this discovery or that? And through it all he’d lost sight of finding the scumbag who killed his wife. His wife who’d still loved him, as he loved her. But no more fear, no more caution, he told himself. Not from now on. He nodded and looked at his watch. It was too late to really do anything so he started the car and headed home.
He was thinking about what Powell had said regarding Orson. Seems Orson had everybody fooled. His bogus reason for leaving medical school. His interest in S&M, bondage, or whatever they call it. No, there could be no doubt the needle was definitely pointing in his direction again. Powder-blue Streets & Sanitation snowplow trucks, mountains of salt piled high in their beds, idled on the shoulder, which could only mean one thing—another snowstorm was on the way. Well, at least he didn’t have to go in to work in the morning. He turned left into his complex’s lot, and a red and white Zip Cab went by, and it made him remember the cabbie dropping him off in front of his building the night Rashida was murdered.
He parked the car and walked to his apartment, but he kept thinking. The cab driver had been only a glimpse of a memory, and yeah, he vaguely remembered the driver’s face but besides that, he had no idea what time it was or where the guy had dropped him off from. Straining his mind wasn’t helping things. No, there was no way to force it out. Maybe, he figured, he ought to just go to sleep and let his subconscious work on remembering.
In his apartment he thought about watching a movie—nothing violent—or listening to music to unwind, but the memory of the taxi cab driver kept playing at the edge of his consciousness. The guy was a foreigner of some sort. He spoke with an accent, had a heavy growth of facial hair but not quite a beard. And that was it. Except...except that it had been a Zip cab. It had definitely been a Zip cab—he remembered the red and white as he slammed the door—and he wondered if just maybe...
He took out his phone and Googled zip cab company chicago il. He dialed the number. A woman, sounding permanently impatient, answered.
Denny said, “Uh, I was wondering if you have the record of a taxi ride I took a couple days ago?”
“Date of service?”
He told her. Then he added the next day’s date, realizing the ride might’ve occurred past midnight.
“Method of payment?”
Denny had to think. It was insane maybe but he couldn’t remember paying at all. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Well, no.”
“Then I can’t help you.”
He could sense she was about to hang up. He winged it. “Please, wait. Actually I didn’t pay at all. I’d...well...I’d had too much to drink, and I think a good Samaritan put me in the cab and paid my fare in advance. That’s why I’m calling. To get the departure address so I can thank them.” He heard a fitful exhalation.
“What’s your address?”
He told her.
“Hang on.”
Denny’s breathing quickened. This could mean so much. It would fill in the critical portion of the night after he left Jammer’s. Maybe, he thought, with what Powell had told him about Orson and with this new information, he’d have a real shot of finding the killer.
The woman came back on. “4917 West Eagleton.”
Denny couldn’t think. He couldn’t speak. Impossible. It was just impossible. But the woman wouldn’t be lying. 4917 West Eagleton was Rashida’s address.
“Are you there?” the woman asked.
“Yeah,” Denny sputtered.
“Well, that’s it. Goodbye.”
“Wait! Does it say when?”
Another harried exhalation. Then, “Says here eleven forty-eight p.m.” She hung up.
Denny sat on the sofa and stared at the cocktail table. Its wood was old, had tiny scratches and pinprick holes he’d never really noticed before. There were little chips on the edge and a few irregular black dots, as if someone had made them with a ballpoint pen. Finally, he noticed he inhaled. Proof he was still alive. There was nothing to do. Nothing to think of. Life was suddenly a timeless void. 4917 Eagleton. He shook his head. Oh my God.
* * *
Denny set himself one goal—not to drink for the rest of the night. With his handcuffs missing and finding out from the cab company he’d left Rashida’s shortly after the time of her murder, he simply couldn’t afford to abandon conscious control of his mind. Whatever the right thing to do would be, it would only come to him if he was sober.
So he went straight to bed but very soon realized sleep was out of the question. He got up every hour to urinate, his body shaking. He needed something. He needed help. He needed support. But to get it he had to wait till morning. Why was it the worst things always happened when there was no help available? That was definitely the case as he lay there in bed, forced to think about everything, as he could no longer deny that—God help him—he might’ve killed Rashida.
He had only one thing going for him—he wasn’t absolutely sure he killed her. Ironically, the same uncertainty that had traumatized him in the past now gave him at least a sliver of hope. Hope, he realized, is what was keeping him going. Before he’d found the sliver of hope, he’d thought about ending it all. Forget about the scorn of Rashida’s family and friends. Forget about life in prison and all the suffering that entailed. Forget about everything—because if he killed her, he didn’t want to go on living.
The sun finally began to lighten the shade of his bedroom window. It wouldn’t be long now till his fate played out. He showered and dressed. His stomach in knots, there was no point in trying to eat. He sat at the kitchen table, lit a cigarette and pondered what to do first, who to call. The remaining couple of hours till a decent time to call passed like years. Denny felt himself aging, the stress pounding him down like a jackhammer.
Finally, it was late enough to call. But call who? The smart choice would be Aunt Elizabeth. Yeah, that would be the smart thing but Aunt Elizabeth already half felt he killed Rashida. He couldn’t handle the weight of her condemnation again. His parents? Impossible. Summer? No. She’d been good to him, but she was hard. Which could be helpful at times but not now. No, there was only one person he wanted to talk to, only one person he could entirely trust.
George, his AA sponsor. George who had calming magic just in the sound of his voice. George, a veritable stranger, who for whatever reason cared about him like no one else. “Thank God for George S.,” Denny said softly as he sat at his kitchen table and dialed. And maybe, who knew, maybe George needed help again too, like the other day. The phone was ringing. And then as it kept ringing, it finally dawned on Denny—today was the day of George’s back surgery. Right as he was about to hang up, someone answered.
“Who is it?”
It was George’s crotchety old aunt. Denny had gotten her before and talking to her had always been a major challenge. “Oh, hi, my name is Denny O’Callaghan and George is my AA sponsor. Is he there?”
“No. He passed.”
He passed? He passed what? Denny knew George’s aunt talked in clipped bursts, but this time he really didn’t know what she meant. It might be best to call back and get George later. “Thanks. Can you tell me when George will be back?”
“Weren’t you listening? I said he passed.”
“Pa
ssed?”
“Passed away. Died. Oh, for God’s sake.” She hung up.
* * *
No way, Denny thought. Absolutely no way. He saw George just yesterday. True, he hadn’t looked so good, but really he never looked that healthy. But dead! A sorrow welled deep inside him. George was a good man. He helped all kinds of people in the program. He was all give and now he was all gone.
Alcohol. Denny could go to the liquor store. This nonsense of trying to stay sober was just that—nonsense. He didn’t have to get smashed but he needed relief. Then he thought of George. He felt the AA chip in his pocket. No, screw it. He wasn’t drinking, for George’s sake. But he still needed relief. Who did he trust? Nobody like he did George. He could call his parents. No, never his dad. But maybe his mother. No, he thought. She would get so emotional—he couldn’t handle that. Summer. Maybe at least Summer. He could tell her some things anyway, get comfort from her. But he’d have to hurry to get to her place before she left for work.
Driving over he remembered her accosting the poor woman who didn’t buy a condo from her. Summer was one of those people who were scary in that they treated people so differently. To Summer, people were ‘either or.’ Either good or bad. Trustworthy or traitors. Saints or sinners. There was no in between. She’d rip on some people so brutally and Denny would think, If she can do that to them, she could do that to me. But right now Summer was just about all he had.
He called. She was still home but hustling to get ready for work. She had to meet a mortgage broker or someone or other, but she said if he had to, he could come up but only for a few minutes.
She was such a good-looking woman, he thought as she opened the door. She wore a sleeveless purple silk blouse that offset her blonde hair, all rich and shiny and perfectly cut. “Thanks, Summer.”
“What’s up? Little early for you to be out and about.” She kissed him daintily, wiped the lipstick from his cheek and closed the door behind him. “You sounded so serious on the phone. Like somebody died.”
