“That wound looks like a breeding ground for bacteria.”
“W-w-what wound?”
Carver lashes him across the top of skull with a cosh. Simon’s head cracks audibly and he starts to sob.
In the middle of the cement floor there is a metal drain. I have never noticed it before, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to guess what it is for.
Simon crawls across the floor towards the door. He is cut, bruised and covered in sweat. Dark blood seeps into the concrete and oozes towards the drain. A cigarette that is half-ash dangles from Carver’s mouth and he pummels Simon again, harder this time.
I step back from the Plexiglas and slump against the wall. Carver grinds out his cigarette and lets himself out of the chamber of shrieks.
“You call that an interrogation?”
Carver shrugs.
“Where is his lawyer?”
“Not my problem. Milo Purvis is a surprisingly hard man to get hold of.”
Carver lights another cigarette and hoists his feet onto the desk.
“You wanted to talk?”
He looks at his watch.
“I have five minutes.”
Carver has a weird masochistic streak. Every Thursday morning he pays for a hand-job in Cantonese jack-shack, just to torture himself. He knows that I know, he just doesn’t care.
I show him the picture and he grunts.
“The daughter is the one on the left.”
“Obviously.”
He sighs.
“The girl got snatched on Winner Street after a photo shoot. Any ideas?”
He clears his throat.
“I heard some chatter, but nothing concrete.”
“What kind of chatter?”
“Rumours about a posse of rogue cops from out of town. Plymouth, maybe further afield. Working with some bad men. People trafficking and worse. They seem to have a penchant for pretty white girls. We raided the Intercontinental Hotel after an anonymous tip off, but didn’t find any girls. Barely found any criminals.”
“Doesn’t Milo Purvis own that hotel?”
“A minority stake.”
“How do you like that for a coincidence?”
He offers me a crooked grin, and swings his police-issue shoes off the desk.
“Coincidences are never a good thing in my line of work.”
“They are in mine.”
I walk out into the sun-blurred afternoon. I feel disorientated after spending so long in the basement. This summer has been so hot it sometimes feels like my blood is boiling, and today is no exception. I cut down Well Street, past the boarded-up funeral parlour. It still amazes me that a funeral parlour can go bust in a town like this. I’m gasping for a drink, but there are no shops left in this part of town. Instead I cut down Crown & Anchor Way and head across Palace Avenue. This street has a weird fucking smell that even I’m not used to yet.
The barmaid at the Dirty Lemon is new. She has bad tattoos and eyes the colour of spilled coffee. She offers me a pint of Stella and a sickly-sweet smile. It’s a potent combination, and I decide to loiter at the bar and make small-talk.
“Is Terry around?”
“It’s his day off. He’s upstairs. Watching his videos.”
I nod and take a long drink of my beer.
Videos? Who the fuck watches videos anymore?
The North Atlantic Video Lounge is the kind of place where bad people go in search of a good time. When I enter the shop it’s quieter than a tomb – completely empty except for the emaciated desk-jockey behind the counter. He is sprawled across a swivel chair, holding a dog-eared copy of ‘Tailgunner’ up to his face, as if scrutinizing the images for minor deformities. He shifts in his seat when I walk in, but doesn’t lower the magazine
“If you’re after a copy of ‘Anal Annihilation 4’ they won’t be back until 6 o’clock.”
I step forward and punch him in the face, through the magazine. He yelps in pain, and lowers the porno, grimacing through bloody teeth.
“What the fuck was that for?”
“Didn’t your boss ever tell you that it’s rude to ignore potential customers?”
“Mr. Balthazar doesn’t give a shit how I treat customers.”
Barry Balthazar. Someone needs to flush that man away like the greasy shit he is.
I’m picturing Balthazar’s fat, sweaty face when I punch the desk-jockey for a second time. Carver’s little floorshow at the cop-shop has left me feeling agitated. Excited, almost.
“What are you, a fucking cop?”
“No. I’m much worse than that.”
He scrambles backwards towards the rusty filing cabinet, presumably in search of a bat or a blade. I wait until his hand is in the drawer and vault over the desk, slamming the cabinet closed on his wrist. He screams.
“Wrong move, dick-rash.”
He slumps to the floor, rubbing at his arm. He’s sweating like a bus station rent-boy between fixes.
“Fuck off, man. I haven’t done anything wrong. Ask my fucking parole officer.”
“You know what – I don’t want to talk to your parole officer. I want to talk to you.”
“Aw, man. Please fuck off. I’m just the hired help. You know that.”
I withdraw the crumpled photo of Priscilla from my jacket pocket and hold it in front of his face. He shudders involuntarily and closes his eyes.
“I didn’t do nothing to her. You gotta believe me.”
I snap another punch into his jaw and this time his greasy head makes a dent in the plasterboard behind him.
“Where is she, shit-stain?”
“I don’t fucking know, I swear! Milo only paid me to hold the fucking camcorder!”
I stomp him so hard I leave a footprint on his face.
Milo Purvis offers me a flabby chuckle and a cigarillo – in that order. He has an office on Palace Avenue, above a cheque cashing joint. It has been a long time since he was a practicing lawyer. He perjured himself a few too many times for comfort and got disbarred two years ago.
Up close and personal his skin looks like grey putty. I’ve heard rumours that he is suffering from a slow putrefaction of the kidneys, and it is clear that he is not well. He is sweating so hard that his suit looks like it has been dipped in Paignton harbour and put on wet.
Thanks to the cigarillos, the air in his room is barely breathable.
“How’s your little brother, Milo?”
He chuckles again.
“Housebound. He hasn’t got out much since that bullet burst his lung. But of course, you already knew that, didn’t you?”
He smiles at me with diseased gums. I think that he’s getting me confused with someone else, but I decide to play along. I beat his brother once, a long time ago, but I never shot him. I’ve never shot anyone – I prefer using knives and hammers to do my dirty work.
“Why are you here, Mr. Rey?”
“I’m looking for a girl.”
“Aren’t we all…”
I start to take the photo out of my pocket, when Meat-Rack drifts out of the gloom, limply clutching a pearl-handled revolver. We have history, and it isn’t good. He smiles, weakly, and I see he has four teeth missing from his lower jaw. That is definitely down to me.
He smells of booze, piss and failure, and when he tries to pistol-whip me he almost misses.
“Is that the worst you got?”
Milo chuckles for a third time.
I sink to the floor and reach down into my boot for the hidden pig-knife. As I am about to grab the handle, Gilligan emerges from the corridor and whips me across my left cheekbone with a rat-tail sap. Shit. That’s going to leave a mark.
I hear Milo Purvis start to chuckle again. That joke definitely isn’t funny anymore…
I can feel warm blood trickling down my face. It runs into my mouth and I cough myself awake. I’ve been shot six times in my life. Sliced, but never stabbed. Whatever Gilligan and Meat-Rack did to me hurt far fucking worse, that’s for sure. I finger a shal
low bullet-groove in my thigh. Jesus. I don’t even remember either of them shooting me. It doesn’t hurt too badly, but my shoe is already full of blood. I try to stretch my legs but the crate is too small. What a fucking mess.
I hear the screams before I hear the gunshots. I try to kick my way out of the crate and it sends a sharp pain up my leg.
Carver has a sawn-off shotgun looped over his shoulder with a length of electrical cable. Gilligan is lying in a mangled heap, a coil of his intestines pulsing onto the carpet. His wet lips are contorted into a hideous dead smile.
Carver grins at me.
“I thought I might find you here, sunshine.”
He looks drunk. Very drunk. His next shot takes Meat-Rack’s his head almost clean off. I swear I hear Carver laugh.
“Did you find the girl?”
I shake my head and he looks visibly deflated.
“Can you walk?”
I try to respond, but my shattered teeth and busted mouth mangle the reply.
Carver hoists me off the floor, and my leg gives way immediately.
“Stay with me, kid. Stay with me.”
My heart is pounding so loud that I don’t hear the rest of the gunshots.
6
A MYTH WE CALL EMPTINESS by Jeremy Thompson
That morning, a marker-scrawled message shrieked ANNIVERSARY from the dry erase board on Gail’s refrigerator—red traced over with black, perhaps to obfuscate evidence of a trembling hand. Thirteen years to the day, it was.
Escaping the cityscape—and its twice-baked, putrefying garbage miasma, thick enough to chew—Gail journeyed to a miles-distant streambed, long-dried, whose malevolent ambiance had survived time’s passage undiminished.
* * *
Rustling in gelid wind, weeping willows hem her in near-entirely, encompassing all but the pitted dirt road she’d arrived by. Jagged-leafed Sambucus cerulea specimens discard summer berries. Splitting in tomorrow’s sunlight, they’ll discharge blue-black pus. No insect songs sound. Perhaps the night has digested them.
Seated upon polished stones, listening for echoes of the liquid susurrus that had been, Gail exists—spotlit by headlights, oblivious to the fact that her station wagon’s battery shall soon perish. Maliciously ebon is the night, an oily cloud penumbra shrouding the moon and stars.
Sucking Zippo flame into her cigarette, Gail wonders, where is she? This was her stupid idea. What the fuck? Wishing to be anywhere else but unable to budge, she listens for an approaching car engine, an erstwhile partner’s arrival. Why did I return to this loathsome site? She thinks, nervously scratching her sagging countenance. Why have I been dreaming of it? Why does phantom water make me shiver? Have I always been here…since that night? Am I finally to reclaim my lost pieces?
Eventually, the distinctive sound of an unforgotten hatchback arrives. Her 1980 Chevy Citation, still running after all these years, Gail realizes, attempting to grin. There’s only one woman on Earth indifferent enough to retain such a vehicle. And look, here comes Valetta. Fuckin’ wonderful.
Claiming a seat beside Gail, the woman forgoes a greeting to remark, “You put on weight.”
“Perhaps I claimed what you lost,” Gail responds, nodding toward a nigh emaciated frame, upon which a university-branded sweat suit withers. Look at the poor bitch; she seems hardly there.
Beneath her lined forehead, Valetta’s eyes bulge gummy crimson. Sniffing back errant mucus, she pulls thinning hairs from her cranium, to roll between thumb and forefinger before discarding.
Should I hug her? Shake her hand? Gail ponders, uneasy. She knows me better than anyone else ever will. That case made us soul sisters. Make that soulless. God, it hurts to see her pallid face again, her shattered intensity. I tried to forget it, along with everything, even myself. Did I come here to die, or to relearn how to live?
Valetta pulls an item from her pocket, unfolds it, hands it over. “Remember us in those days,” she asks, “so serious in our matching outfits, our shared delusion that justice existed?”
Finger-tracing the creased photograph, squinting sense from the gloaming, Gail confirms, “I remember.” Look at us, she marvels, in our black pantsuits and heels, our white blouses, crisp and neat. Even our figures had been comparable…somewhere between the two extremes we’ve become.
We wore wedding rings then, installed by long-divorced husbands whose faces are featureless on the rare occasions that I remember ’em.
After Gail returns the photograph to Valetta, the woman tears it into confetti that she tosses overhead.
“We considered ourselves innocents, when our births made us complicit in history’s worst atrocity: humanity’s proliferation,” Valetta declares, sniffling. “If our race ever develops morality, we’ll enter extinction that very day.”
“Fuck you,” Gail spits. “Why did you come here? Why did I?”
A moment implodes, then: “You know why. Idiotically, we thought they’d return.”
Swallowing a stillborn gasp, Gail whispers, “The tepees.”
“Thirteen years for thirteen of ’em. Numerology suggests significance in that number, you know…a karmic upheaval. Thirteen consumed the Last Supper. Thirteen colonies shat this country into existence. I began menstruating at age thirteen. Thirteen disappearances drew us here in the first place. Thirteen—”
“Yeah, I get it. You like numbers.” Almost wistful, Gail hisses, “Do you remember them? The way they looked, lit from within as they were.” Human hair and tendons threading different flesh shades together, she avoids saying. The bones that kept the things upright: tibia, fibula, ulna and femur. Eyes, teeth, fingernails and toenails—thousands of ’em—artfully embedded in the flesh. Bizarrely silhouetted smoke flaps. The scent of…please, get it out of my head.
“Always,” Val answers, somehow grinning. “So terrifying, so…beautiful. The level of craftsmanship that went into each…a network of madmen and artists must have been working for years, symbiotically.”
They’ve biologically ascended beyond their human components, Gail thought on that execrable evening, approaching the closest tepee. Her mentality was fevered, permeated with the unearthly. Is it my imagination, or do they breathe as living organisms? Have such incongruities always existed? Did Homo sapiens devolve from them, long ago?
* * *
In the festering city—where philandering husbands got their cocks sucked at “business lunches,” and didn’t even have the decency to wipe the lipstick from their zipper afterwards—exotic dancers of both genders had disappeared, too many to ignore. “Let the dykes have it,” had been the chuckled decision, casting Gail and Valetta into an abyss of neon-veined desperation, where the living mourned themselves, being groped by the slovenly.
Their peers loved to crack wise. Being the only female detectives in the city, Gail and Valetta had heard ’em all. They’d partnered up to escape the crude jokes, awkward flirting, and unvoiced desperation of their male colleagues. For years, the two had pooled their intuitions to locate corpses young and old, along with the scumfucks who’d created then disposed of them. Occasionally, they’d returned broken survivors to society, as if those withdrawn wretches hadn’t suffered enough already.
When Gail and Valetta began donning matching pantsuits, out of some vague sense of sisterhood that seems pathetic in retrospect, their peers had pointed out their wedding rings and labelled them spouses. They’d met Gail and Valetta’s husbands. They said it anyway.
With doleful prestidigitation, Valetta conjures a second folded photograph and hands it over. Before unfolding it, Gail predicts, “Bernard Mullins.”
“Who else could it be?” Valetta agrees.
Granting herself confirmation, Gail glimpses the self-satisfied corpulence of a strip club proprietor, able to fuck whomever he wished through intimidation. His sister was married to good ol’ Governor Ken, after all, whose drug cartel connections weren’t as clandestine as he believed them to be. Bernard’s friends were well-dressed killers. His dancers barely
spoke English. Even his bouncers had records.
From Bernard’s four family-unfriendly establishments, thirteen dancers had disappeared over five weeks. Glitter sales went down. Everyone was worried. Enduring the man’s reptilian gaze as it burrowed breastward, Gail and Valetta questioned him: “Any suspicious patrons lately?” Et cetera, et cetera.
As if spitting lines from a script, the man feigned cooperation and concern. “Well, nobody immediately comes to mind…but you’re welcome to our surveillance footage. Anything I can do…anything.”
“Fuck that guy,” Gail declared, starting the car, minutes later.
“Let’s surveil the pervert,” Valetta suggested.
* * *
Days later, their unmarked vehicle trailed Bernard to a well-to-do neighbourhood. And whose rustic Craftsman luxury house did he enter, swinging a bottle of Il Poggione 2001 Brunello di Montalcino at his side? Good ol’ Governor Ken’s, of course.
The front door swung open, and Gail and Valetta glimpsed Bernard’s younger sister, Agatha. With a smile so strained that her lips threatened to split, wearing an evening dress cut low to expose drooping cleavage, she hugged her brother as if he was sculpted of slug ooze. One back pat, two back pat, get offa me, you pathetic monster, Agatha seemed to think.
When he stumbled back outside hours later, Bernard’s tie was looser. Sauce stained his shirt, a brown Rorschach blot. A clouded expression continuously crumpled his face, as if he’d reached a grim decision, or was working his way toward one. Returning to his Porsche Panamera, he sat slumped for some minutes, head in hands, and then returned the way he’d arrived.
Walk Hand IN Hand Into Extinction : Stories Inspired By True Detective Page 5
