by Nick Thacker
I wasn’t done yet, though. I kneed him in the face, feeling more than seeing the blood spatter out everywhere, and laid in again with my fists. He groaned, but turned his head at the right moment and sent my left fist through a picket.
This hurt, and it severely pissed me off. But in that moment I realized I had underestimated my mark. Dawson rolled over and came up swinging, hitting me in the groin and stomach in two quick shots, then finishing with an uppercut that nearly connected. I stepped back just at the right time to dodge the punch, then fell forward onto him with a punch to his gut, simultaneously wrapping my leg around his.
This time I was able to get him falling backwards, so I pulled up on my leg, then jumped, aiming the point of my elbow at his sternum. I heard a pretty satisfying crack sound when we landed and felt something inside him give way, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.
I’d already underestimated him once, but I’m not one to enjoy making the same mistake twice. This was the mark, and this man would die. I wouldn’t get the luxury of deciding how it’d be done, but that didn’t matter now.
I wrestled the pistol from his hand and saw his eyes bulge out, either from the surprise of it all or the pain that was no doubt sending scores of signals through his body. I lifted the tiny thing up the side of his head and didn’t hesitate.
Like I said, a .38 at close range — or no range, like in this case — will do some damage. He was lucky he died immediately, as I was still pissed he’d gotten the jump on me, and almost on the girl.
I shuffled through his pockets as quickly as I dared, trying to feel for anything that might identify him. Trying to find the token…
5
I TURNED AROUND, STILL KNEELING on top of him, still hoping the token had simply fallen out and rolled somewhere close by. I searched around a bit, but I eventually caught her eye. She was there, watching. She’d seen everything.
The white towel I’d accidentally dropped lay nearby, right where I’d started my run. In my haste, I hadn’t even been able to come up with a plan to use it.
“You… you okay?” I asked.
I wasn’t exactly sure what to do — there was rarely anyone else around, and in the cases that there were, I just cleaned up the mess of the second person the same way I cleaned up the mess of the first. The boss never tried to send two marks at once, but sometimes things weren’t as simple as they seemed.
Like right now.
This girl had seen me kill a man, in cold blood and right in front of her. Was she going to be in shock?
“I’m…” she didn’t get out more than the single word, a useless contraction that told me nothing.
I waited.
She still didn’t speak, but I did notice that she’d already hung up the phone and put it away, into a pocket on her dress or something. Hopefully the person on the other end of the call hadn’t heard anything strange.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, trying to make the best of it. Make the best of what? I thought. There’s a dead guy on my back porch, and this woman saw me do it.
She was shaking, but she let me approach her. “He was running at you with a gun,” I said. “I just… wanted —“
“I know,” she whispered. “I know, I saw it. I — I hung up the phone, but you had already started —“
I didn’t know what else to do, so I grabbed her and hugged her. It felt weird, since I was still riding high on the adrenaline rush, but still oddly comforting. For me. And she let me, even sinking in a little bit as I held her.
“Who was on the phone?” I asked, remembering her scared expression when she’d noticed me coming out to her.
“It was just… sorry, I’ve been on edge lately. It was a lawyer — nothing to worry about. You just startled me.”
I nodded. “Where’s your husband?” I asked softly.
She looked up at me, those amazing eyes just sitting there, trying to piece things together. “Oh, you mean —“ she actually smiled. “That’s my brother. He’s — he went to the restroom, I think, and —“
At that exact moment a man’s voice cut through the night air. “Hey! What do you think you’re —“
She whirled around, ripping free of my hold, and turned to her brother. “No, Daniel, he was helping me…” She had her phone in her hand, waving it around as she ran up to him. I followed along, hoping we could stop Daniel before he got to the corner of the building and saw around it.
“You were… you guys were —“
“Daniel,” she said, cutting him off once again. “Look at him in the light.” She yanked me to the side and toward some invisible light she thought she could see, and pushed my chin up. “He’s from our high school, back home. Don’t you remember? He was a few years ahead of us, when we were in school, but — Daniel, you have to remember him!”
She seemed almost frantic now, perhaps realizing like I did that Daniel was mere steps away from stumbling onto a murder scene that involved his younger sister and a disgruntled bartender that was far more than ‘a few years ahead’ of them. She started walking forward, toward the front door of the bar, and Daniel and I followed along.
“Oh,” Daniel said, “yeah, okay, now I see it, I think.” He studied me from his perch a head shorter than me, looking me up and down as if he did in fact see something in me he recognized. He reached out a hand for me to shake, and I returned with my own hand. His sister kept walking, even picking up her pace as she headed around the front corner of the building.
Daniel was obviously distraught, barely able to comprehend what was going on, but I wasn’t about to complain about that. He’d come in that way and he’d come out to us that way, so I just went with it.
We returned to the bar, the same regulars curled up in their tables with fresh beers in hand, the smell of Joey’s catfish mingling with the hoppy aroma of freshly poured ale. I guided the sister — still didn’t know her name — to her chair at the bar, and shook Daniel’s hand again before walking around.
“I need to take care of a few things in the back,” I muttered. “You guys sticking around for another? On me.”
She nodded, a slight smile on her face, but not enough of one to cover the fear in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “Same thing, please.”
Daniel looked at his sister, seeming to notice for the first time that she wasn’t okay, then looked back at me. “Just a beer, please. Something light.”
I poured his beer and mixed her drink, then placed them on the bar and turned to the kitchen. I could see Joey’s small frame standing at the grill. I announced my presence before walking in, then brought my voice down a bit. “You see anyone come through here?” I asked.
He frowned, then shook his head. “No, I don’t think — shit, boss, you got another one tonight?”
Joey is one of the few people on the planet who knows what I really do, aside from my stint as a bar owner. He did a run in the Navy, but I found him cooking down at a street cart on the beach in the summertime months. One taste of his shrimp tacos and I offered him a permanent nightly gig.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s behind the bar. In the alley.”
“In the alley? Damn, man, you usually get them out in the woods at least, maybe —“
“I know, Joey,” I snapped. “But I didn’t. Almost got the jump on me and the lady in there. Think you can trust me with the flipper enough to head out and start cleaning up?”
He shrugged, but sniffed loudly. “Yeah, of course. And it’s called a spatula. When you ever going to learn? What we doing, anyway? Fishbait?”
I nodded. “Yeah, might as well. Nothing to salvage.” Fishbait meant he would be taking the body, after it was bleached, through the woods to a small skiff and out into the bay. He’d go as far as he trusted the old motor, then wrap the guy tightly and hang weights on him that would keep him down long enough to, well, become fish bait.
He grabbed the bucket of bleach by the back door, a few heavy-duty contractor bags, and a spool of rope, then kicked the back door o
pen and walked out.
6
BACK AT THE BAR, THE brother and sister were whispering softly to each other when I returned. I raised my eyebrows, asking a silent question, and she gave me a quick nod.
Everything okay?
Yeah.
It was all I needed, but I knew she’d need more. She would want closure, or an explanation, or just someone to process it with. I knew she wouldn’t be telling her brother. Whatever that man was dealing with, he didn’t need this dumped on him, too.
I figured I’d have to wait around for them to finish, get tired, and leave, then another hour or so for her to figure out how to ditch him and come back here, so I got comfy. I poured a finger of an old standby bourbon, local to the area, over an ice cube and added a bit of simple syrup and a couple dashes of homemade bitters. I was a bitters addict, and had about two-hundred varieties between the bar and my apartment. This one was a standard-issue herbal, tasting similar to Angostura’s main issue with a little more spice, and it went perfectly in an old fashioned.
I gave it a stir and brought it to my lips, then noticed that the brother, Daniel, was gone.
“Went to get a hotel,” she said. “We were just driving through, but someone at the airport mentioned we should check this place out if we had time.”
I frowned. Both because there weren’t many outsiders who actually recommended stopping in Edisto, but also because we were at the end of the map. No one is ‘just driving through.’ Edisto Beach is a town of about 400 situated at the end of highway 174, which itself is a meandering small highway stretching twenty miles down from 17 that bends out of Charleston. I told her as much.
“We flew into Charleston and were going to try to make it all the way to Hunting Island, but the rental car company at the airport was about as competent as TSA at the airport. But we saw a sign for a bed and breakfast, and we didn’t know how far it was to town.”
I nodded. I’d seen that sign off the side of 17, just before the exit onto 174. “Yeah, that place is old Marley’s and his wife’s. Decent stay, I hear.”
We let the pleasantries die and suddenly I felt the weight from her gaze.
“Are we… are we going to talk about that?” she asked.
“I just want to know if you knew that guy.”
She shook her head, looking down. “No, I’ve never seen him. I thought — I thought he just came out to smoke or something, but then…”
“Hey,” I said, “it’s okay now. I’m going to take care of it.”
“You called the police?”
I scoffed. “Hell no.” Realizing I’d picked my voice up a few too many notches, I glanced around to make sure the oldies were still satisfied with their brews and looked back at her. “Sorry. No, I didn’t. And I won’t. Something like that happens around here, in a town this size, it’d be the end of this place.”
“But —“
“But nothing. I’m not asking for your input on this one. I said we’re taking care of it, and —“
“You said you’re taking care of it.”
I sighed. Dammit. “Yeah, Joey’s helping. He’s… good with this stuff.”
“He’s done this before?”
“No, I — I meant…” Shit, this girl’s going to break me. “I meant he was in the Navy, and had a rough background. I don’t know, I guess he’s just not as uncomfortable with stuff like this.”
“And you?” she asked.
“And me what?”
“Are you ‘comfortable?’ with stuff like this?”
I squeezed one eye closed just a bit as I stared at her. I didn’t want to give her anything, but it seemed like she’d already pulled it out of me.
“No. You’re never comfortable with shit like this. You just do it, because, well, that’s what you do.”
“That’s what you do.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
She studied me for a few more seconds, then smiled. “You were good out there.”
“Well, good thing, or we’d both be dead.”
“No, I mean, did you see the way he fought? It was calculated, like he was… like he was a professional.”
I stopped, putting the drink back down.
“Yeah, I picked up on that. Wasn’t as easy to put down as some of the stray dogs we get.”
“You do this a lot?” she asked.
She was in now, and she knew it.
“I do. More than I’d like, but I’m good at it.”
She nodded slowly, processing. She brought the cosmopolitan up to her lips and took a deep, long sip. “Okay.”
“Okay what?”
“Okay,” she said again. “You’re hired.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, confused. “I’m what?”
“You’re hired. This is what you do, right?”
“I don’t think you really know anything about what I do.”
“That guy was going to kill me. You stopped it. Then you said you’d take care of it, and you won’t get the cops involved.”
“Yeah…” I said.
“So,” she replied quickly, “I’m looking for someone like you. Someone who can help me. And I’ve got money.”
I took in another swig of the cocktail, enjoying the perfect balance between the ingredients. Even the ice tasted great, releasing the water into the drink at just the right tempo. Man, what I wouldn’t give to just sit here and drink these for the rest of my life.
I sighed again, then looked longingly into the top of the glass. “I’m not for sale.”
“I have a lot of money.”
This time I looked at her, trying to figure her out. She winked at me.
“Not interested. I don’t even know your —“
“Hannah,” she said, interrupting. “Hannah Rayburn, and you already met my brother Daniel.”
I smiled. “I like that. Always have liked that name. We used to think… maybe if we’d —“ I stopped. I didn’t know her too well, so I didn’t want to get into it now. Hannah had been the top of our list of girls’ names, but we’d never had a chance to settle down and procreate.
She smiled back, seemingly knowing what I was trying to say. “Thanks. My father, Bradley Rayburn, apparently loved that name. He liked word games, puzzles, things like that, so he wanted me to have a name that reminded him of that. ‘Hannah.’ It’s a palindrome. Spelled the same backward and forward.” She choked up a bit, but kept plowing ahead. “That’s actually why we’re passing through. To get to his funeral.”
“Sorry to hear about your old man,” I said.
“It’s okay. I mean, we weren’t too close. He and Daniel were closer, and they worked together. He — my dad, I mean — he wasn’t the best role model, I guess.”
“Yeah, seems like that’s one thing we got in common.”
“Yours is still alive?” she asked.
“Yeah, for now.”
I stood there, across from this gorgeous woman, drinking together and just sitting in the… whatever it was we were feeling, for another five minutes. There were questions I had, like why they’d really stopped here on a whim, coming all the way down from 17 instead of plowing on another hour and getting to Hunting Island. Or, for that matter, why there was a funeral on Hunting Island. Last I’d checked, the island was nothing but a state park, no houses or private property anywhere on it. I kept silent, trying to maintain a bit of distance. It was an old habit I had, and it had worked out for the best more often than not.
She almost dropped her glass, as if realizing that her brother might return at any moment and catch us in the act of catching up.
“Listen,” she started again, “you can’t say anything about this to him. To Daniel. It’ll crush him.”
“I don’t make a habit of sharing the details of my moonlighting gig.”
“Good. Thing is, and this is what I want to hire you for, I think… I think my father was murdered.”
I cocked my head to the side a bit.
“He was in with some people I don’
t think he trusted. It was kind of the nature of his work, but I always just thought no one at that level trusted anyone else. It was sort of the cost of entry.”
“And what was his line of work?”
“Importing.”
I waited, expecting her to continue. She didn’t.
“So will you do it?”
“What exactly do you want me to do? I’m not a private investigator, Hannah. I can’t just — just start looking around and hope to find some guy that killed your dad.”
“I know,” she said. “I know that’s not what you do. But if we could find them, if we could just figure out who did do it, then you could…” She looked at me those damn eyes again.
“Yeah,” I said. “If we find them, then I could.”
7
DANIEL CAME BACK IN FIFTEEN minutes later, ready to collect his kid sister for their trip to Marley’s B&B for the night, but she met him at the door. They exchanged animated whispers for a minute, then she came traipsing back over to the bar while he departed.
I raised an eyebrow.
“He wasn’t terribly enthused about my staying out late,” she said. “But I told him you and I wanted to catch up a bit.”
“How’d he take it?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how much she told him, or how she pitched it. I didn’t want to push it, but I also wanted to play the part.
“He thinks something’s up,” she said.
I raised the eyebrow even farther, adding a little head cock to underscore my confusion.
“He think’s something’s up with us,” she said. “I didn’t tell him anything about that body in the back.”
I knew Joey would have cleaned up the body by now and would be just about to the center of the bay, ready to fishbait the sucker, but something else she’d said caught my ear. “Something’s up with us?”
“Stop. I let him believe that. You know, old high school flame or something. Younger gal takes an interest in a much older guy. Never was okay back then, but now? It can pass.”
