Butcher's Knife_a Hewitt Fairfax Mystery_A brief retirement

by R. E. Ellis

  She looked back and forth between Fairfax and Mike Jones as if trying to figure out what had happened between them. She shook her head.

  "You didn't try to sell him anything, did you, Mike?"

  "That is exactly what I did do, Katy. Thanks for telling me a cop was dropping by."

  "Ex-cop," said Fairfax, helpfully.

  They both turned and stared at him.

  "Look, this has nothing to do with me. I don't care what you do in your spare time. I came to ask you what you know about Julio's murder."

  Katy took off her fleece jacket and tossed it on the kitchen table, then turned to the sink. She snapped on a pair of rubber gloves and began scrubbing dishes. "I don't know anything about it, sorry," she said, over the sound of rushing water and clattering plates.

  "When did you see him last?"

  "That last night. I went home early, remember? We were slow, and I didn't feel good."

  "I don't remember. What time?"

  "Like nine?"

  "You came back here?"

  Mike Jones coughed. "You sure don't sound like an ex-cop."

  "He was my employee. He helped support a large family. I need to know what happened."

  "You know he and Chantal were a thing, right?" said Katy.

  Fairfax nodded. "I heard that. I also heard–"

  "That me and her are having an 'affair'?" said Mike.

  "That's what she said. That she and Julio broke up because of you."

  "She's crazy," said Mike.

  "She's nuts," agreed Katy.

  "There was no affair. A one night thing. She's built it up in her head," said Mike.

  Fairfax sat back down on the sofa. Mike handed him a bottle of beer, and he took it.

  It was cold and good.

  By the time Fairfax left the trailer, it was late afternoon. The sky had an odd yellow cast. He was happy to get back into his car, which smelled like fig and rosemary.

  He hadn't managed to get much more out of Mike or Katy. Katy claimed to know nothing: nothing about the murder, the fire, the knife, the missing quarters. Mike denied that he was having an affair with Chantal or that Julio had caught them together. It was just some crazy fantasy of Chantal's, who had a crush on him.

  Well, someone was lying.

  Fairfax didn't ask about the apparent fact that Mike was selling drugs—and that Katy probably was, too. He didn't want to tempt Mike into goofing around with the gun some more. Fairfax knew he'd eventually have to pass a tip on to the police department, but that could wait a few days.

  He was tired—the beer didn't help with that—and hungry. He pulled a scone out of the bag and quickly chomped it down as he drove. Then another one. He had one other person he wanted to see today: Pete Kroll. A call confirmed that Pete would be at the Red Rooster Tavern for the next couple hours. Apparently, he spent a lot of his days off there.

  The Rooster was a popular place in Finley City, but it was not for the faint of heart. About once a week a fight broke out there. The bouncers were quick to toss the perps into the street, where they tended to continue rolling about and trying to strangle each other. It always seemed there was someone at the bar with a loud voice and a grievance: politics, sports, who the hell other people thought they were. It had a smell that could choke you, even if you didn't even poke your head in, just walked past the open door: ancient, terrible beer and, somehow, urine. Even Fairfax, who didn't mind a gritty atmosphere, usually avoided the Rooster.

  Pete was sitting on a bar stool, hunched over a mostly empty bottle of Yeungling, when Fairfax got there. Judging by the unfocused glance he gave Fairfax when Fairfax sat down next to him, it wasn't his first bottle, either.

  "What can I get you?" said the bored-looking bartender.

  "Bourbon."

  Fairfax took a careful sip and felt the heat of it move from his throat outward. Then he spoke. "Drinking away your troubles?"

  Pete took the final swig of his beer, tilting his head back. "I guess you could say that."

  "Were you close to Julio?"

  Pete gave him a surprised look. "Naw, I hated the guy. I just, I dunno. It sucks that he's dead."

  "Yeah. It's a hell of thing," said Fairfax.

  "I never knew anyone who was murdered. No one deserves that."

  "Nope. No they don't."

  "I was a shit to him."

  Pete ordered another drink, which made Fairfax vaguely nervous. He thought he should ask his questions and get out of there before things got too out of kilter. On a hunch, he asked first about the pot of quarters.

  "Oh, shit, man." Pete laughed, but it was a dry, humorless laugh. "Yeah, that was me."

  "What?"

  "I took the quarters."

  Fairfax stared, puzzled, into the deep amber of his drink. "I got the impression that the Game was kind of your deal."

  "Yeah, it was, but hell, Julio was so fucking good at it. He never messed up, always remembered who went last and what they said. We were all losing quarters all the time, except for him."

  "And he liked the free pizza," said Fairfax.

  "Fuck yeah, he did," said Pete. "It just got, I dunno, one-sided. I mean, it was still fun. But I decided to raid the pot." He chuckled. "Pissed the fuck out of Julio."

  "So... you don't think the Game had anything to do with the murder."

  Pete paused a moment and thought. He belched hugely and moistly, then said, "I can't see how."

  "I don't know if I can, either," said Fairfax. "But what else is there?"

  This was the question he asked MaryLee, sitting on a sky-blue love seat in her tiny, cluttered living room, holding a glass of wine and a plate with a slice of torte on it in the other. Then he added, as if to no one, "I've had far too many drinks and snacks today."

  "No meals, then, I guess?" said MaryLee. "The whole Game thing seems pretty innocuous. Are you sure there was nothing else going on in Julio's life?"

  "Well, there's the whole theoretical breakup with Chantal." He gave MaryLee the rundown, including the bizarre fact that Mike Jones, local bigwig, was a drug dealer and seemed to be dating both of Fairfax's waitresses.

  MaryLee, wearing capri pants and an extremely fluffy sweater– "angora," she had said—sat down on the loveseat next to Fairfax. Even through his pants and hers, he could feel the warmth of her thigh, which was mere millimeters from his. He thought about moving his leg a little bit, so it would be resting against hers, but then decided to enjoy the small, barely extant, distance.

  "Oh, well, then it's totally that guy. Mike Jones? A drug dealer? No brainer."

  "I don't know," said Fairfax. "What's his motivation? He seems like someone who's just fooling around." He leaned back, putting his head on the back of the loveseat. "And how would he get my knife?"

  "All very good questions," said MaryLee. She put her hand on his knee. She licked her lips. "Do you... want to go to bed?" she asked.

  But all she got in response was a single, small snore. Fairfax was out cold.

  Chapter Eleven

  Fairfax awoke with a start. He was stretched awkwardly over MaryLee's loveseat, an afghan partially draped over him. More or less every joint hurt, but he barely noticed. Something had occurred to him.

  He grabbed his coat. His head was still swimming as he made his way through the darkened apartment, down the narrow staircase, and out the front door. He was warming his car up before he realized that he should have left MaryLee a note or something. Oh, well. So much for gentlemanliness.

  The clock on his dashboard said it was 2:30 am. He shifted into gear and drove out into the sleeping city.

  He didn't notice the other car, the one parked half a block away, as it pulled away from the curb and began to follow him.

  The restaurant still smelled a bit like smoke, but not in a bad way. The odor could pass for that of a well-done steak. Fairfax navigated the pitch-black dining room like a ghost who'd haunted the place for years. He wafted himself into his office and flicked on the lights, blinding himself f
or a moment.

  His hunch was correct. After rifling through the cash box and the drawers of his desk, he confirmed that the credit card receipts for the last week, including Julio's last night and the next, were missing. But why? They weren't of value in and of themselves, but only as records of all the customer transactions. Why would someone take them?

  Well, they might take them if there was something wrong, something incriminating, about them. Perhaps the fire was meant to destroy all the paperwork in the office, so that the missing receipts wouldn't be noticed. It wasn't too much of a stretch to think that someone might resort to arson to cover up some sort of scam.

  He didn't have much time to think about it before the sound of someone clearing his throat startled Fairfax from his reverie. He whirled around to see, once again, an ugly Springfield 1911 grasped in a fat, hairy hand. This time, thank God, Mike Jones was wearing a shirt.

  "Jesus Christ," said Fairfax.

  "Nope, just me," said Jones.

  Once, when Fairfax was a young, rookie cop, just married, he stumbled upon one of the most devastating crime scenes he would ever witness. It was the kind of thing that shocked him awake every now and then, even years later. His mind couldn't have prepared itself for what he saw—and smelled, and, dismayingly, even tasted somehow, as if the blood and gore had made its way into his mouth. He and his partner, Donna Jackson, were responding to a welfare check request one hot, lazy afternoon in August. It was a small house with an untended yard and, ominously, a pile of newspapers on the front stoop. No one answered the door, which was locked. The shades were down. He and Jackson tried a side door, and this one was unlocked. They looked at each other; should they go in, or just report back to the chief that there was no one home? They went in.

  Jackson, the senior cop, went first, shouting "Police! Anyone home?" The kitchen was shabby but clean, except for what appeared to be a smashed blender in a dried but sticky-looking pool of a whitish substance, right in the middle of the floor. Not good, not good, not good, Fairfax thought to himself, following Jackson into the living room.

  Because the shades were drawn, the lighting here was dim, but even when their eyes adjusted it took several moments before they could register what they saw. The walls were stained with dark, muddy spatters. Blood. The pink shag carpeting was drenched with it, and furniture was knocked over, lamps shattered, their shades smeared and dented. Flies buzzed in drunken circles. Worst of all, a single leg lay on the sofa, still wearing its bloodied sock.

  Jackson called for back up. She and Fairfax carefully stepped out of the room. He didn't get sick until later, when he was trying to explain to Angela what he had seen. He was relieved he hadn't thrown up in front of Jackson, or spoiled the crime scene with his rookie puking.

  When the investigators finally pieced together what happened—so to speak—it turned out to be nothing more than an argument gone bad and some panicked attempts to hide the body by cutting it into pieces, although the killer eventually gave up on this task and fled the scene. He confessed immediately.

  What got Fairfax was the godawful brutality of the murder. The victim wasn't just shot or stabbed, but battered dozens of times about the head with a golf club, and when that broke, a wrought-iron fireplace poker. He'd bled pretty much out. Overkill, short and simple. Until that time, the murderer hadn't been a murderer—he was a regular guy, a manager at an appliance store—but something in him, something monstrous, took over. Monstrous was the only word for it.

  It could happen to anyone, Fairfax thought. Which is why, when he saw Mike Jones pointing a gun at him, he had no doubt the man was capable of firing it. If he let the monster get the better of him, anything could happen.

  "Easy. Put that down. I'm not going anywhere," said Fairfax.

  "That's right, you're not," said Jones.

  The gun aimed at Fairfax was shaking a little bit. This was a good sign: Jones was scared. "Let's talk about this. Let's sit in the dining room and talk this out."

  Jones nodded, but didn't stop pointing his gun at Fairfax. When Fairfax went to turn on the dining room lights—hoping someone might notice the oddness of lights blaring at two in the morning and call the cops—Jones said, "Don't. We can talk in the dark."

  "Okay," said Fairfax calmly. He pulled out a chair and sat at a table and Jones did the same. The man's profile was black against the dark yellow of the street-lit window. Fairfax couldn't see his face.

  Jones began to ramble. "See, I have this thing going on. This thing makes me a lot of money and I don't want it to be interfered with, if you see my meaning. I can't have you blabbing to all your cop friends or whoever. Because you know what? It's not just me. This thing is a network and it's huge and if you talk I'll get in trouble, and not just with the cops. The network will have me killed. They'll kill you, too. They have ways. So you see where I'm at." He was nervous; Fairfax imagined sweat pouring down his face.

  "I already told you. I'm not going to talk," Fairfax lied.

  "But how do I know that? For sure? I don't. I'm in a position, is what I'm saying."

  "A difficult position."

  "That's right," said Jones.

  Fairfax had the distinct impression that the man was trying, in a roundabout way, to explain to himself why he was going kill Fairfax. Or perhaps just scare him to death.

  "Look," said Fairfax, "can you explain a few things to me?"

  "I don't have to explain anything."

  "Why did you kill Julio?"

  The gunman's silhouette froze. "What? That kid? I didn't kill him. Were you going to tell the cops that, too? Holy fuck."

  "Who did then?"

  "Hell if I know," said Jones. "Listen, maybe you should get down on the floor."

  Fairfax was not going to get down on the floor. "Tell me this, then. What does Katy have to do with any of this?"

  Jones swore colorfully and impatiently. "You know! You were at her trailer! She sells for me. I'm her supplier. Your little Mexican kid was not involved."

  Fairfax was beginning to believe this was true.

  "Why did you hit me on the head the other night?"

  "I never hit you. I never even saw you until this afternoon." Jones suddenly stood up and whacked Fairfax in the temple with the pistol. "There, so I hit you. Satisfied? Now, get on the floor."

  Strange thing about a bump on the head: if it doesn't knock you out, it can enrage you. How many times had Fairfax smacked his forehead against the door frame of his Volvo and cursed the air blue? That familiar, blind fury coursed through Fairfax and before he knew it, he was out of his chair and flying toward the dark shape of Mike Jones. The table fell over with a crack, and then Jones fell over too. Then the two men were grappling with each other, rolling against chairs and table legs, and Fairfax had the sudden thought that he would probably not be opening the restaurant the next night after all. In the dark he grabbed uselessly for the gun. Instead his hand came into contact with Jones's slippery, hot face. Fairfax shoved his thumb into the hollow of the man's eye. Jones let out an oddly girlish shriek, which was quickly followed by the deafening report of the semi-automatic. Then a clatter as the gun fell to the floor. Jones went limp.

  Uh-oh, thought Fairfax.

  After a quick inventory of his own body revealed that he was unharmed, Fairfax scrambled to his feet and rushed to the light switch. Light flooded the room. Now he could see Mike Jones there on the floor, curled in a fetal position. His arms were wrapped around his middle and blood poured from his back.

  Exit wound, thought Fairfax.

  He dialed 911.

  Chapter Twelve

  The next morning he was talking to MaryLee on the phone. He was sitting in his comfy chair in the cabin, holding an ice pack to his temple. At the emergency room they'd put two stitches in the cut the gun made when Mike Jones hit him. Other than that he was fine. Not so much with Jones.

  "He was alive when I left last night," said Fairfax. "But barely. Lost a lot of blood—which is largely on the floor of
my restaurant. Do you know anyone who cleans up that sort of thing? I'd look in the Yellow Pages but I don't seem to get one anymore."

  "No one gets one," said MaryLee. "They're obsolete. You said he got shot through the stomach, and out the back? How can anyone survive that?"

  "Oh, people survive being gut shot all the time, as long as you don't hit an organ. Apparently, it hurts like hell, though. I guess we're basically just a lot of filler. Like a jelly donut."

  MaryLee ignored the pastry metaphor. "So, is your investigation over? You think Mike Jones killed Julio? You said he denied it, but still."

  "Well, I believe him. If he's dating Chantal as she claims, he doesn't seem all that stuck on her. I just don't see Jones stabbing Julio in a jealous rage."

  MaryLee sniffed. "I don't see how you can be so sure."

  "I'm not entirely sure," said Fairfax. "But I plan on being so this afternoon. You want to grab dinner tonight? Obviously, I have to get the restaurant cleaned before I open it back up, so I'm free."

  "As long as you promise not to talk about people being gut shot and organs and jelly donuts, I'm game," said MaryLee.

  "There's a new place on State Street where The Appletree used to be. I want to try it, check out the competition."

  "Sounds great."

  "I'll make us a reservation. If I'm not there by six, call the cops."

  "What?" said MaryLee. "And what do I tell them?"

  But it was too late. Fairfax had hung up.

  Twenty minutes later, Fairfax parked his Volvo outside the entrance to the mobile home park and walked to Katy White's trailer. A cold wind off the lake smelled of wet mud, which made Fairfax think spring might actually come. However, his skull throbbed with every step he took. He probably should be spending the day lying on his couch, he thought, watching the cooking channel or something equally non-taxing. But no. There was something he couldn't get out of his head.