by Z. Rider
The engines gunned.
His back tensed. He didn’t even have the gun anymore, lost on the fucking bus. Would a gun even work, anyway?
Not that it mattered—he didn’t fucking have it. Or the stakes. Not that they’d be much help either.
The bike lights swerved, shifting the shadows inside the car.
The hair on his nape stiffened as the bikes pulled alongside.
He wouldn’t look.
He’d be just some guy on the highway, New Mexico plates, on his way home from work maybe.
He eased off the gas. The Cougar started to drop back.
The bikes roared again, shaking Carl’s seat.
They surged ahead, and kept on going down the road.
The Cougar slowed—fifty, forty. Their taillights grew smaller. Cars pulled around him. A guy in a Cadillac laid on the horn. Carl let the Cougar ease to the shoulder, staring ahead, his heart pounding. His mouth dry.
He came to a stop, muscles like loose rubber bands.
When the road was clear—no one behind him, no one in front of him—he let out his breath.
Sweat slicked his brow. He swiped it with the edge of a shaking hand. He was losing his mind, seeing vampire bikers everywhere. A breath of a laugh eased out, brittle, wanting to be something close to relief but not quite making it.
He pulled back onto the road, keeping it to the speed limit, maybe a little under. Eyes darting toward the shadows at the edges of the road.
He rolled into Los Campos with a wave of relief. The familiarity of his own neighborhood washed against him like a tide. He’d been gone, what, six days? It felt like a year. He’d imagined things would be different back here, after everything he’d gone through, but not a thing had changed. The buildings—homes, apartments, stores—were beige like the landscape, like they’d grown right up out of the ground. He passed the car wash, its sign lit against the evening, and the vacant lot littered with shadows and trash. A blue bucket, cracked and tipped sideways in the dirt—it had been there for months now. He pulled up at the apartment building, two stories of beige fronted by wrought-iron railings. He nosed the car up to a curb. Shut off the engine.
The place was quiet, not a bike in sight—that was something. Not that it didn’t mean they weren’t hiding around the corner.
You’re being paranoid.
He was. Why wouldn’t he be, after what he’d seen? He let himself out of the car, ears pricking at the neighborhood sounds—a kid’s shout from down the street, the tap of a horn. He grabbed his bag, climbed the dark stairwell. His footfalls echoed along the catwalk. The windows he passed were blank, their curtains pulled tight. He unlocked his door and let himself in. Clicked on the light. He didn’t need to call out for Tim; the place just felt empty. He tossed his keys on the end table and headed for the bathroom, where he pissed, stripped, then scrubbed himself under a miserable trickle of water from the shower head.
By the time he was dried off, he felt both refreshed and heavy with the toll of a week spent in a car. He stepped over his trail of clothes and dropped on his bed face first, falling asleep with his arms spread, the warm apartment air skimming his bare legs. The ghost of the old Carl’s scent, embedded in the sheets, mingled in his nostrils—the Carl who was over and done with now. New Carl was home, ready to move on with life. If he could find his fucking roommate.
3.
* * *
Dean slipped off his sunglasses at the bottom of the bus steps, the dark of evening upon them. Fans waiting outside the bus pushed albums toward him, scraps of paper for him to sign. They wanted photos taken with him. He dashed his name out a few times before apologizing for having to get inside.
Anything to avoid coming into contact with them.
The delicate pulses in the girls’ throats whispered dirty things to him.
He was full of teeth.
He was nothing but teeth.
The door closed behind him, and he walked the cool, fluorescent hallways to find his bandmates, show them he was okay, that he’d be fine for the show. He’d need to figure out his food situation at some point, but for tonight, his mission was to be fine—because there was no other choice if he wanted to keep doing this.
It wasn’t just for himself. Shawn, Jessie, Nick—this band was their life too. It was everything they’d worked for. The guys on their crew; they needed to put food on the table. Teddy, Janx, and Mike had families. The bus driver probably had a family. The band was bigger than him.
It was also everything for him. Without it, he was no one.
One way or another, he was going to make it work.
The blood of the others pounded him as soon as he opened the door at the end of t
October 17, 1978
1.
* * *
Sun peeked through the blinds when Carl pulled his eyes open.
The noise that had woken him came again, a banging at the door.
He pushed up, rubbing his tongue on the roof of his mouth, trying to get rid of the worst of the taste of sleep. He itched for a cigarette before remembering he’d quit. The banging came again. Tim wasn’t answering it. Had Tim even been home? He fished a pair of shorts off the floor and buttoned them as he headed through the apartment. The banging stopped, but he had the sense that whoever was there was just waiting for him to get to the door.
He scrubbed a hand through his hair. Probably had sheet creases on his face. He’d have liked a cup of coffee before dealing with this—“this” being the landlord probably, looking for overdue rent.
He flipped the lock and was already saying, “Yeah, listen, I’ve gotta get to the—” as he swung open the door.
Two men in suits stood on the catwalk.
One held up a badge in a black wallet. “Carlos Delacroix?”
“Yeah, what—?”
“Detective Bays.” Bays didn’t bother with a comb-over, just let the bald top of his head shine the way God had intended. His wide blue tie rode the wave of his belly as he turned, lifting his hand. “This is my partner Detective Lewis. May we come in?”
“Um.” He gripped the doorjamb. “What’s this about?” How had they found him? Had he left something at the scene? Had he left some clue at one of the motels?
“We just need to ask a few questions. Do you mind?” Bays held out an arm.
Carl moved aside.
“Sorry to disturb you first thing.” Bays came to a stop in the middle of the living room.
Lewis, a good ten years younger and four inches taller, fit his suit better than Bays did. He wandered the edge of the room, sweeping it with his gaze—Soph’s photos on the walls, a loose stack of mail on a rickety bookshelf.
“Um. So, what can I help you with?” As Carl closed the door, the room darkened. He walked to the window and opened the blind.
“Can you tell us where you were the night of October eleventh?” Bays said.
The question shot through his groin. The dates were confused in his head; he needed time to work out just where he had been. He wasn’t even sure what date today was.
Lewis lifted a ceramic piggy bank from the bookshelf and turned it over. Coins clunked against its insides. Soph’s coins.
“Um. October eleventh?” He hadn’t even seen the biker yet, had he? Think. Think. No—he hadn’t. He’d left here that morning. “I was on a trip. I just got back last night. Why? What’s going on?”
Lewis set the pig down, stopped in front of another Soph photo, the eight by ten that matched the smaller one Carl had hung in his car.
“Who’s the girl?”
“My sister.”
Bays said, “What kind of trip?”
Carl tried to keep his attention on Bays, but it kept getting pulled over to Lewis. “I was…I went out east to kind of follow around a band for a little bit. Man Made Murder, have you heard of them?”
“My nephew listens to that,” Lewis said.
Bays said, “Were you with anyone?”
Carl pushed his hand into his bac
k pocket, pulled it back out. No idea what to do with his fucking hand. This was so not good. Maybe he had his dates wrong. This was so not good. “No,” he said. “No, I went alone. My roommate had to work.”
“Got some ticket stubs? Something to show where you were?”
“Um, I didn’t keep them, no.”
“Do you have anything that can put you out of town?”
“Umm…” The whole time he’d been gone, he’d maybe talked to, what, a handful of people? He’d bought coffee, he’d bought breakfast. There was that guy in the bar, but he couldn’t say anything about him. If Bays and Lewis were here about the biker, that put him right there in their territory. If they weren’t but they talked to that guy to verify his story, it told the bikers where he was. He’d almost rather Bays put him in jail than have the bikers know where he was, in case they put two and two together.
“Where’d you stay?” Bays asked.
“A couple motels on the way back. I slept in the car on the way there.”
Bays had a little black notebook in hand. He flipped the cover and a few pages. “Which ones?”
His mind was blank. He hadn’t paid any attention. Zero fucking attention at all. His throat locked as he looked around the living room, gears spinning out.
“When’d you leave on this trip?” Bay said.
“The eleventh, about six in the morning? What’s going on?”
“You were gone a week, you’ve got nothing to show for it?”
“I might have a couple receipts in the car.” He hoped. “Let me get my shoes.”
In the bedroom, sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, he pulled tennis shoes on, no socks, his hands shaking. He dragged a shirt over his head. Stuffed his wallet in his back pocket, just in case. Who the fuck knew where they were going with this.
“Can you tell me what this is about?” he asked as he grabbed his keys from the end table.
“Just part of an investigation. How long have you known Timothy Randolph?”
Lewis was pulling the door shut behind them, and Carl stopped, right in the middle of the catwalk. Turned around. “Tim?”
“Let’s go see the receipts,” Bays said.
Bays stood close while Carl unlocked the passenger side. Lewis wandered around the car, peering in the windows. Carl crouched in the open door to fish through the heap of fast food containers and empty cups on the floor, his heart beating like a bird trying to get out a window. The gun—thank God he’d lost the fucking gun. It was registered to his dad. He had no idea how legal that was, carrying around a dead person’s gun.
Crumpled cigarette packs on the floor made him yearn for a smoke. His fingers trembled as he shifted dirty napkins aside. Morning shadows clung under the dashboard, trying to hold against the rising sun.
“Here.” He spun on a heel, thrusting two slips of paper out. One was from the hardware store, for the goddamned stakes. Heat swept his face as he realized, but it was too late now. He could say he’d made signs for the show.
Bays studied them. “Twinsburg, Ohio.”
He’d bought a carton of cigarettes at a grocery store on his way east. October twelfth. It put him a good seventeen hundred miles away from whatever had happened here that day. It put him a good bit of miles from New Hampshire too. Even from the body, if anyone had found that yet.
I didn’t kill anyone. That was his story—that was the truth, and he was going to stick to it.
Bays tucked the receipts in his notebook.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“You don’t read the news?” Lewis asked from the other side of the car.
“I haven’t been home. What’s this got to do with Tim?”
“Why don’t we take a ride to the station,” Bays said. “You can answer our questions, we’ll see if we can answer some of yours.” He tucked the notebook into his shirt pocket.
“Can I follow you?” Carl asked.
“Why don’t you ride with us?”
“Am I under arrest? Am I a suspect?”
“Nope, and not at the moment. Car’s right over there. We’ll get this cleared up, you’ll be back home in no time. Probably have a lot of unpacking to do, right?”
He got in the back seat, the metal belt buckle already so warm its heat bled through his shorts. He fidgeted as the detectives got in up front, Lewis behind the wheel.
Whatever this was, it didn’t seem to be about the biker.
What’d Tim have to do with anything? Where the fuck was he?
And what if all this eventually led to the biker?
He crossed his arms, hugging himself. Fuck ’em. Just fuck them. He’d done the job they hadn’t managed to do. He’d made sure that asshole was taken out. Whatever this was about, this was nothing. He’d done the job they couldn’t fucking manage to do.
And he hadn’t killed anyone.
He hadn’t done anything except sit back and watch the other guy take care of it.
He pressed his palms to the warm seat and sat up straighter, looking from the back of one head to the other. Whatever this was about, it wasn’t anything he couldn’t get out of.
They rounded a corner, and there was the station. He pulled back. His last memory of the place was of yelling at a detective—not Bays. Wanting to know why the fuck they couldn’t do anything. Why the fuck couldn’t they find the asshole? He’d given them the description. The sketch artist had gotten the biker almost spot on. He’d had a fucking patch on his jacket, that had to mean something, trace back to some kind of motorcycle gang.
Why weren’t they getting more press coverage for the sketch, the patch? Why wasn’t it everywhere?
Why weren’t they following up on leads, he’d wanted to know.
The detective had withstood it quietly, holding a hand up when another officer stepped into the doorway to see if he needed help. The detective had said, “We’re not closing her case. We’ll keep working on it. We just can’t afford to keep every man on it.” Then: “Can I get someone to drive you home?”
After that, Carl had just gotten phone calls, every other week, keeping him up to date. They’d dropped to once a month, then once a quarter. Last time he’d heard from the Los Campos police had been nine months ago, letting him know Soph was moved to the cold case pile, though not in so many words. But no leads, nothing to go on—what could they do?
He’d given them the fucking lead.
He leaned forward. “Did you guys find anything on my sister yet?”
“Who’s your sister?” Bays said without looking back.
“Sophia Delacroix. She was killed two years ago.”
That got him to turn around, take a second look at him. Carl couldn’t read what was going on in his eyes.
“Fuck it,” Carl said, pushing off the back of the seats, dropping back in his own. Looking out the passenger window.
“That was the girl in the dumpster, wasn’t it?” Lewis said.
Carl’s throat went tight with frustration.
They took him to an interview room. It was his first time in one, and it was just like the movies—table, couple of metal chairs, big two-way mirror in the wall. Bays asked him if he wanted coffee, maybe water—sent Lewis off to get that water. “Pull the files too.”
He dragged out the chair on the other side of the table as the door closed behind Lewis. “Tell me about your sister.”
“Why? You guys know everything I know about my sister. It’s in the file.”
“Yeah, but save me the time. I read slow.” He sat back, his tie still surfing his belly.
Carl sped through it: the dance, the biker he’d seen, then she was gone. And they found her in a dumpster. The girl in the dumpster, that’s who his sister was. That’s how everyone would remember her forever, the pretty little girl in the flared-sleeve dress—in the fucking dumpster.
Lewis dropped off the water, two thick files. He stood back, hands on his hips.
“Tell me about Tim Randolph,” Bays said. “How long have you been sha
ring a place?”
Carl looked from Lewis to Bays. “I don’t know. A year, fourteen months.”
“How long have you known him?”
“We went to the same school. It’s a small town.”
“Grew up around each other, decided to move in together?”
“We’re friends, why not? Do you know where he is? He wasn’t answering when I called from the road.”
“So you knew him before your sister was killed. Did he know your sister?”
Carl gave him grudging credit for putting it that way, being straight about it. He hated when people fluffed around it with died or passed. Or When it happened. His aunt and uncle used When we lost Sophia. She wasn’t fucking lost. She hadn’t fucking passed away. Someone had slit her fucking throat. His eyes flooded with heat. He tried to push it back, tried to blink them dry.
“I didn’t hang around with him before Soph was murdered,” he said around a thick ache in his throat. “I don’t think they knew each other, outside of everyone knowing who everyone else is.”
Fuck—why did they keep asking about Tim?
“Any idea where Randolph might have been the night your sister was killed?”
The jolt dropped his jaw. He stared at Bays. His throat worked. Finally he pushed it out: “What?”
2.
* * *
Backstage, the club was full of smells. Dean’s fingertips vibrated against a pint bottle of gin. Thank God for runners willing to run out to the liquor store.
He couldn’t put together two words of what anyone was saying. His head kept turning, following the beat of life around him. He tipped the gin to his mouth, thinking it probably wasn’t the best idea, but he needed to roll the edges back. Needed to dampen the restlessness.
At least he hadn’t had to worry about explaining his lack of sheets. His second “migraine” in as many days had put his bunk off limits when the driver had come around stripping bedding from mattresses. At one point, the guy had started talking to himself, saying, “What the?” Dean had clamped the pillow over his head. He didn’t want to know shit about what the guy had found in his cleaning up.
