Elements of Kill

by Christopher Lane

Ray stuck his head in the kitchen. Billy Bob was perched on the cabinet, one leg outstretched awkwardly as he strained to look behind the refrigerator.

  “Find a body back there?”

  The deputy flinched, lost his balance and toppled to the floor. Swearing, he got up and glared at Ray. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry.”

  “This place is amazin’,” he announced, massaging a sore elbow. “You could eat off the floor, it’s so dang clean. Not even any fuzzies in the coils in back of the fridge. They musta spit polished the whole darn place.”

  “Looks that way. You do the dining room or the hall bath yet?”

  “Huh-uh. But what’s to do? Look for crumbs under the table? Try to find hairs in the shower?”

  “Good idea.” Ray smiled at him and started down the hall. Maybe having an understudy wouldn’t be all that bad. There was always the “gofer” factor. You could order a subordinate to do just about any job, no matter how pointless or demeaning.

  The remaining bedroom was larger than the first, decked out in Native patterns: stylized versions of Haida images forming a thin border along one wall, the bedspread featuring Tlingit drawings made to look even more primitive than they really were. The room was dressed in teak. More of a man’s decor. Ray decided that this was where Weinhart would have slept. With that in mind, he began a careful examination.

  Fifteen minutes later, he arrived at the same conclusion: the maids at the Bradbury were exemplary, able to remove all evidence of human occupation. The entertainment center in this room was hidden along the north wall, behind an Athabaskan mural of a dogsled team traversing an ice field. Ray discovered this by toggling the remote on the night stand. There was a hum, and an instant later the mural split in two—something he was certain the original artist would not appreciate. There was the big screen set, the stereo, the bar. The latter had been restocked, beer, undersized bottles of whiskey, gin, tequila … lined up in uniform rows. Even determining Weinhart’s taste in booze was impossible, thanks to the exacting cleaning staff.

  Ray punched the power button on the stereo, then ordered the CD player to open with his thumb. The device whirred and complied, offering four empty caddies and one disc. Ray rotated the caddie and removed it. Garth Brooks. So Weinhart liked country. Weinhart or some other previous guest. The maids obviously hadn’t been instructed to scrutinize the stereo for forgotten discs. Either way, it didn’t matter. That Weinhart, or any other oil exec from Houston or Dallas or Denver had a penchant for country music was less than a revelation.

  Replacing the disc, Ray closed the caddie and turned off the power. Picking up the cable guide, he paged through. It was the same guide, the same pay-per-view movies. He was already putting the guide down when he realized that something had caught his eye. Leafing through it again, he found a page of adult features. Color pictures displayed naked bodies of varying sexes engaged in heated wrestling matches. Next to the list of titles and times someone had stuck a small, yellow Post-it note. There were no words on it, just a telephone number.

  Ray lifted the note from the page. It was probably nothing. Most likely, some oil baron had jotted down a note while talking on the phone and left it behind. Besides, there was no area code. Who could tell what part of the country, what part of the world for that matter, the number corresponded to?

  Sinking to the bed, he picked up the phone.

  “Bradbury switchboard,” a friendly female voice said immediately. “How may I direct your call?”

  “I’d like an outside line, please.”

  “May I dial the number for you, sir?”

  “No. I can do it if you get me out.”

  “Yes, sir. When you hear the tone, the line will be ready for you. In the future, if you would like an outside line, merely press seven.”

  “Okay.” Two seconds later the tone sounded. Ray hesitated. What was the area code for Houston? He yanked open the drawer of the nightstand, pushed aside a copy of the Bible and removed the phone book. He was paging through the front when the spry operator asked, “Is there a problem, sir?”

  “No. I’m fine, thanks.” He found the code and punched it in, along with the number from the note. The line clicked and beeped. Then a mechanical voice announced, “Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please redial or wait for an operator to assist you.”

  Ray hung up, pressed seven, waited for the tone. He tried Anchorage. Dallas. Denver. Fairbanks. Tulsa. Los Angeles. Each time the computerized voice instructed him to try again. The public transit authority answered in New York City. The man had never heard of Weinhart or Davis oil. He was a clerk, underpaid, he claimed.

  More out of frustration than anything else, Ray dialed the number without any area code. Maybe it was for Barrow. Why, he couldn’t imagine.

  “Fanny’s,” a voice answered. It was a woman. She sounded tired, almost irritated at having to answer the phone.

  “Fanny’s?”

  “Is there an echo or are you deaf?” she asked sarcastically. The question was followed by a curse. “What do you want?”

  “Is this a business?”

  “The oldest.”

  “Where are you located?”

  “Who is this?”

  “I got the number from a friend and I just don’t …”

  Billy Bob appeared in the doorway. “I done checked ever-where and there’s nothin’ that …”

  Ray waved him off. “I don’t know where you’re located.”

  There was a cracking noise, gum smacking. “You know Deadhorse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know the old hotel, Harry’s roadhouse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m in the back.”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t take reservations. First come, first serve. You want a particular girl, you wait for her if she’s busy.”

  “Girl?”

  She swore at him. “I got blondes, brunettes, redheads, all shapes and sizes. I aim to please. But I ain’t got no men. If that’s your thing, go out to one of the camps. They got plenty of action.”

  “So you specialize in—in female companionship?”

  “That’s right, honey. Come on over. I got ladies just wai-tin’ to party with you.” She cackled like a witch before hanging up.

  “Who was that?” Billy Bob asked.

  “Fanny.”

  “Fanny? You mean from the …?”

  Ray nodded. “The madam herself.”

  Billy Bob looked at him suspiciously. “I tell ya, Ray, I’m as open-minded as the next feller, but, I gotta say, this ain’t the time to be foolin’ around, buddy. Not in the middle of a murder investigation. Besides, ya got ya a sweetie back home that …”

  Ray frowned, holding the Post-it up to him.

  “What is it?”

  “Fanny’s number. It was in the cable guide. Somebody left it in there.”

  “So?”

  “So maybe it was Weinhart.”

  “So?” The deputy was clearly confused.

  “So maybe Weinhart patronized Fanny’s establishment while he was here. I’ll show them the sketch. Maybe we can place Weinhart at the bordello. That would give us a time reference. We might even get lucky and turn up a witness to the murder.”

  The deputy squinted at the Post-it. “All that from that little thang?”

  “Come on.”

  Ten minutes later the Explorer rolled to a stop in front of Harry’s. Three lumps of snow were parked at odd angles near the door. Judging from the shapes, they were pickups, their specific colors and makes obscured by a layer of powder.

  “Storm’s almost over,” Ray noted as they got out. Crystallized pellets were still dancing in the air, but the wind had lost its fury. Above, stars could be seen in and through a misty veil of clouds.

  “‘Bout time,” the deputy lamented. He slammed the driver’s door and bent to plug the engine into an outlet. “Feels every bit as cold, though.”

  “I didn’t say it was spring.”
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  “Maybe them boys from Anchorage can get themselves up here before the next one sets in,” Billy Bob said wistfully. “Shore would make our lives a whole lot easier.”

  “Don’t count on it.” He opened the door and held it for the deputy. Warm air rushed out to greet them. After passing through a narrow mudroom, they entered the bar. It was surprisingly quiet: a long counter bearing dirty glasses, vacant stools, a trio of tables covered with empty beer pitchers and steins, four pool tables, balls akimbo, cues leaning against the walls, left on the floor, bare fluorescent bulbs humming …

  “Looks like it was some party,” Billy Bob noted. “Where is ever-body?”

  “Maybe the bar’s closed on Sunday morning.”

  There were no patrons in evidence. Just a short figure hunched behind the counter, its back to them. It was a man, from the looks of the build, possibly a Native: stooped shoulders, dark hair, small hands. His attention was focused on a sink stacked high with dishes, wiping, washing and rinsing in slow motion, as if the chore required a great effort. A radio offered static-laced accompaniment, turning his actions into a stilted ballet.

  Ray was about to call to the man when he noticed a door behind the pool tables. A handwritten sign above it read “Fanny’s—Full Service Bordello.” They crossed the room toward it, the dishwasher never taking his eyes from his work. Ray reached for the knob.

  “Where you think you’re goin’?” a deep voice asked.

  They turned and watched as something crawled out from under one of the pool tables—a thick, square of faded denim, long greasy hair, green tattoos, and bulging muscles. The man stood, wavered, braced himself on the table, then spit on the floor.

  “How’s it going?” Ray offered respectfully. This guy put the brutes back at Makintanz’s place to shame. Not quite as tall as Archie and Jughead, he carried as much weight as both of them put together, and looked twice as mean, a Hell’s Angel on steroids.

  “I asked you where you thought you was goin’?” he repeated, bloodshot eyes struggling to focus.

  “Fanny’s,” Ray replied, twisting the knob. “Want to come along?” He smiled innocently. Might as well humor this jerk.

  A thick finger thumped Ray’s chest. “Cain’t you read?” The biker spun Ray around, squeezing his chin as he aimed Ray’s head at another handwritten sign. This one declared: “NO KLOOCHES ALLOWED!”

  “You see that? You understand what it says?”

  “Yeah.” Ray tried to swallow but couldn’t. The man’s elbow was across his Adam’s apple.

  “Now is you or is you not, a klooch?”

  “Hey, buddy …” Billy Bob started to intervene. A forearm to the chest lifted the cowboy from his feet and sent him skidding across the floor.

  “Is you?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m an Inupiat.”

  The malodorous, puke-speckled beard jiggled as the man laughed. “Inupy-what?”

  “Inupiat. Those are my people.”

  “Muktuk kissing, blubber-breathed …” He kneed Ray in the gut. Ray staggered, fighting for breath. “Stinky, dumb, dog-ugly … Only thing you people is good for is to beat the daylights out of. I’m gonna air mail you back to yer igloo with a lumpy head.”

  “Wait,” Ray puffed. He fished out his badge.

  The man swore at it. “A klooch cop …” He grinned at Ray with smoke-stained teeth as if pummeling a Native law enforcement officer would be a special treat.

  “I was afraid of that.” Ray sank his boot into the man’s groin with as much force as he could muster. Goliath leaned, grunted, swore, but didn’t go down. A high kick to the head felled him. He sprawled to the floor, blood gushing from his nose.

  Ray helped Billy Bob up. “You okay?”

  “I thank so,” he answered, rubbing his chest. “Where’d ya learn to do that?”

  “Eskimo Olympics. I was champ of the high-kick competition, four years running. Never thought it would come in handy.”

  Ray opened the door and glanced back. The dishwasher was working on a platter, diligently scraping at dried food. If he was concerned about the incident with the bouncer, he certainly was hiding it well.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “CAN I HELP you?”

  The question came from a woman sitting at a rickety wooden desk, the only item in the tiny, dimly lit room at the top of the steps. A cigarette poised in her fingers, a tumbler of translucent copper-colored liquid at close reach, she was scrutinizing a newspaper with a deep scowl.

  Ray offered his badge. The woman glared up at it, obviously unimpressed, and sucked on her cigarette. “So?” she puffed. “You want to see one of my ladies or what?”

  “I talked to you on the phone, I think,” Ray said. “You’re Fanny, right?” He waited for some sort of recognition, but there was none. The woman turned the page of the paper, lifted her glass, took a swig. Her hair was disheveled, a brownish gray mat, thinning severely on the top of her skull. It was difficult to judge her age. Her face was sickly thin, cheek bones protruding through the wrinkled, parchmentlike skin. Ray decided that she could have been in her late seventies, enjoying moderately good health or in her early forties, weathered prematurely by a very difficult life. Either way, she looked bitter, hard.

  “We’d like to ask you and your ladies a few questions,” Ray tried. “If you don’t mind.”

  She sucked the cigarette down to a butt, pulled a pack out from the pocket of her shirt, and lit a fresh smoke. “Why should I mind? Long as you pay for the time.”

  “Pay?”

  She cackled loudly. “You can spend just as much time with my ladies as you wants to. Long as you pay. They don’t work for free.”

  “We don’t want to … to—you know …” Ray argued. “We just want to ask a few—”

  “Questions,” she said, nodding. She spit a piece of tobacco at their feet. “Fine. Whatever turns ya’ll on. Still be $50.”

  “$50?”

  “Per quarter hour. Per person.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I kid about a lot of things, honey, but money ain’t one of ‘em.”

  “We could get a warrant and shut this place down,” Ray threatened.

  Fanny found this hysterical, nearly spilling her booze. “You do that, honey. You do that. Closest white judge is Fairbanks. That’s four hundred miles. And I guarantee he won’t care none about what we’re doing up here in Deadhorse. So you just go on, try to get you that warrant. Have a nice trip.” She returned her attention to the paper.

  Ray glanced down at it: The Anchorage Daily News. According to the date in the corner, it was the Sunday paper, Sunday of last week. He turned to Billy Bob. “How much money do you have?”

  The deputy began digging in his pockets. A moment later he replied, “‘Bout twenty two dollars.”

  Ray inspected the contents of his wallet. “I’ve got … twenty eight.”

  The woman smiled up at them. There was a gap where her two top front teeth should have been. “‘Cordin’ to my math, that makes fifty dollars. Pay up and one a ya’ll can go back and ‘sperience fifteen minutes of heaven.”

  “This is robbery,” Ray lamented as he handed over the money. “You know that don’t you?”

  “Call a cop,” Fanny told him, giggling through her missing incisors.

  Ray displayed the sketch. “Ever see this man?”

  Fanny gave it a cursory glance. “Maybe … maybe not.”

  “He was probably wearing a suit.”

  “I don’t pay much notice to what our clients wear.” She was already engrossed in the newspaper again.

  “It would have been a couple of days ago,” Ray pressed. He pushed the sketch in front of her again.

  Fanny sighed at it, picked it up, frowned. “Maybe.”

  “Yes or no?”

  This drew a curse. “I told you, I don’t pay much notice. I don’t memorize faces or nothin’. It’s best not to. A man pays for his playtime, I don’t care if he’s the governor, a jock like Michae
l Jordan, pretty as Mel Gibson, or gosh awful ugly as sin.” After finishing off her drink, she belched, then said, “The clock’s runnin’. Ya’ll are wasting your time. Them ladies are waitin’.”

  Ray turned to Billy Bob. “You want to go? Or do you want me to go?”

  The deputy shrugged back, blushing.

  “Don’t be shy now,” Fanny encouraged without looking up. “Two and Four are occupado. But other ‘n that, you got your pick of the litter.”

  “I’ll go,” Ray groaned.

  Billy Bob punched him on the shoulder and shot him a crooked smile. “Now ‘member, you keep thinkin’ about your sweetie while you’re in there.”

  “Right.” He opened the door and left Billy Bob to the grumpy madam. It swung shut behind him and he found himself in a narrow hallway. Lit by a single, naked bulb, it offered a series of doors before dead-ending into a fire-hose box and humidifier unit. The first door on his left was marked with a large red 2. He had already rapped on it when he remembered Fanny’s admonition. Someone inside, a man, swore at him, encouraging him to go directly to a fiery eternal home. He performed a 180 and addressed door 3. When he knocked, the same deep voice cursed him from room 2. He knocked again, waited, then twisted the knob. The door creaked open.

  “Hello?” The room was dark and quiet. “Hello?” Ray took a tentative step forward, a hand feeling blindly for a light switch. When his fingers found it an overhead fluorescent light panel began to flicker, before blinking on. The room was the size of a small storage closet; no chairs, no sink or toilet, just a twin mattress and box springs sat on the tile floor. The mattress was covered in worn gray sheets twisted into knots. Next to the door was a boombox and a short stack of cassette tapes: The Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Bon Jovi … The music of love.

  Under the harsh glow of the fluorescent light, the scene reminded Ray of a prison cell. A man had to be pretty desperate to pay $50, per quarter hour, for this, he decided. Of course, if you were pulling a suicide shift, working seven twelve-hour days a week for half a year or so …

  Ray shut the door and continued down the hall. He eyed room 4. Fanny was right, he realized as he passed it, ears straining to make sense of the frantic shrieks and animalistic grunts. The room was in use. Either that or someone was watching a National Geographic documentary about the mating practices of baboons. Pausing at number 5, he tapped on the door. Nothing.