by Hawk, Maya
I feel as if I’ve just found the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
This is exactly what I need.
I double click and a Word document opens across Kent’s screen. My heart leaps into my chest as I minimize it. No need to draw even more attention to the fact that I’m snooping and violating all kinds of policies.
NAME: Titan Lewis Blackstone
AGE: 21 years, 2 months, 7 days
MARITAL STATUS: Single
EDUCATION STATUS: In progress. Junior at Grace State University
EXAMINER: Dr. Redmond Snyder, Psy D
Titan presents today after being charged with willful assault and booked at the Cox County jail on New Year’s Eve. He presents with a mild manner but chooses to speak only when spoken to. We spoke briefly about his family and the recent death of his sister and mother, though the patient appeared to grow agitated when discussing those matters in depth.
I glance out the door once again before returning to the document, absolutely certain I’m going to get caught at any moment.
Titan is well-groomed, with a higher-than-average vocabulary and a generally mild affect. Before his arrest, he was studying structural engineering. He describes his childhood as typical, with no claims of abuse, neglect, or trauma.
I skim the page, looking for something, anything that might help me understand him better.
When asked how he was feeling the night of the alleged crime, Titan says he doesn’t recall. He “blacked out.” When he “came to,” he realized his victim was within an inch of his life, and a passer-by had already called the police.
I scroll to the bottom of the document, hoping for another tidbit of information in the summary.
It is my professional opinion that Titan Blackstone’s crime was not planned and was carried out in the heat of the moment. He is of sound mind and judgment at this time, however, there is concern of an underlying anger issue if this patient is not treated for his grief and anguish.
I can confidently assert that Titan Blackstone is not a threat to those around him at this time, and that his crime seems to have been an isolated incident.
I click out of the document and log out of Kent’s NCIC, slipping back into the spare desk chair before he waltzes in with a cup of coffee, whistling some out-of-pitch tune. Our day has just begun, and Kent has spent the first fifteen minutes preparing his coffee.
“What’s on the itinerary for today?” I ask. My heart still pounds in my chest as I watch him stare at his computer screen. It’s as if he knows something was moved.
He pulls in a careful sip of his coffee, lifting up his mustached lip and showing his front teeth. He winces and then smacks his lips as he gulps the drink. “Oh, let me check my schedule here. We’ll have some appointments. Make some phone calls.”
His mouth widens to a huge grin followed by a belly laugh. I glance at the screen. He’s reading his email and apparently someone forwarded him a comic.
Whew.
Thank God.
I should be in the clear…
I slink back in my seat and grab my notebook and pen off the edge of his desk, trying to hide the rampant disappointment on my face. Looking up Titan in the system was a bold move. I could’ve lost my internship.
And yet I’m still no closer to knowing what makes him tick.
Well then.
Guess I’ll have to go straight to the source.
CHAPTER EIGHT – TITAN
“You hear someone got beat up leaving Hammerhead last night?” The whirring of a power drill nearly drowns out KJ’s voice as he works beneath a hoisted Buick in the bay next to me.
“Oh, yeah?” A zing of heat sears down my back as my heart damn near stops cold. The last thing I need is someone noticing the bruised and battered assholes that climb out of the basement of that joint.
Kyle assures me he’s got spotters, and he claims he’s never had any problems, but it’d be my fucking luck that someone would see something and call the cops.
“What’d he look like?” I ask, doing my best impression of a guy who doesn’t give two fucks.
“Shit, man. I don’t know. It’s on the news.” KJ nods toward a flat screen T.V. hanging in the waiting area. I squint through the clear glass pane to try to read the scroll at the bottom of the screen.
They’re saying the victim was beat beyond recognition, but they believe him to be a Hispanic male, upper twenties, heavy build.
The guy I fought last night had sandy brown hair. Just like Kyle’s. I distinctly remember that because I was imagining Kyle’s face with each jab and strike.
“Hey, assholes.” Kyle struts in like he owns the place. I suppose in a way he kind of does. It’s thirty minutes past the hour. KJ and I have been here forty minutes already. He shoves a jelly donut into his mouth and uncaps a bottle of Mountain Dew. A streak of neon yellow drips from the corner of his mouth as he takes a lazy slurp.
Everything about Kyle rubs me the wrong way, and it has since the moment I met the douche. I can’t boil it down to the way he looks at me like his shit doesn’t stink or the way he peacocks around the shop doing half-assed oil changes making double my wages.
No.
There’s something far more sinister about him.
I watch as he motions for a car to pull in and points the driver toward the waiting area. A second later, he pops the hood and pulls out their air filter. It’s clean, white really. Looks almost brand new.
He pops it back in and heads out to the lobby, reaching behind a desk and pulling out a dirty filter. I watch through the window as he convinces the middle aged gentleman that his car is in desperate need of a new air filter.
The man seems to eat up Kyle’s every argument. I can imagine him spewing off fuel mileage statistics and allergy claims. Any one of us guys knows that a man who takes his car in for an oil change probably isn’t the handiest under the hood. You can pretty much tell them anything and they’ll throw money at it until it goes away.
So that’s why Kyle gets paid the big bucks. He knows how to sell them shit they don’t need and increases the shop’s profits exponentially.
Fucking dick wad.
“That filter was clean and you know it.” My words stop him in his tracks and wipe the smug smile off his face at the same time.
He shrugs and then straightens his shoulders, like he’s bracing himself for a duel. His stance widens, and his eyes challenge me. “You want to go tell him I lied? Go right on ahead.”
Goddamn prick.
It’s not that I don’t want to.
I can’t.
I need this job, and I can’t be stirring shit up with the boss’ son in the middle of my first week.
“That’s on you.” I say. “You lied. You’re the one who has to sleep at night.”
“Always sleep like a baby.” He brushes past me, his shoulder grazing mine. I’m easily six inches taller than the twerp with an extra thirty pounds of muscle, and he’s got some big balls strutting around like he’s fucking untouchable. I could twist and mangle him in two seconds flat.
“Just…don’t.” KJ warns me after Kyle heads back to the supply room.
“Don’t what?”
“Try to talk him into doing the right thing. It doesn’t work. Believe me.” KJ grabs a wrench and steps under the lifted Buick. “He’s dangerous.”
I glance at KJ. His face blank, ashen almost. Like he’s terrified of his brother.
Before I get a chance to ask him to elaborate, Kyle returns.
“So what was your nickname in prison?” Kyle swaggers slowly, taking his time as he tosses an air filter high into the dead space of the ceiling and catching it. “Everyone gets a nickname, right? What was yours?”
“JJ,” I respond without pause.
“JJ? That’s fucking lame.” Kyle shakes his head. “The fuck is JJ supposed to mean?”
“Judge and Jury,” I say.
Another car honks and another technician opens the door to his bay, guiding the car in.
<
br /> “Judge and Jury.” Kyle laughs, his eyes rolling into the back of his head. “We need to get you something better than that.”
“They wanted to call me the Executioner,” I say, pressing the trigger on my drill. “But I don’t kill people. Only cowards and pussies kill people.”
Kyle’s smile fades for a half second until he turns away and returns to his engine. He finishes ten minutes later and disappears for a bit. I’ve only known him a few days but that seems to be his M.O. He does one oil change for every three that I do.
The early morning rush subsides a bit later, and KJ and I shoot the shit in the lobby, eating handfuls of broken cashews from a twenty-five cent machine as we watch the T.V.
A news brief flashes across the screen. The local news is still talking about the man from last night. KJ’s lips tighten and he clears his throat, slapping a hand across his forehead as if he’s stressed about the whole thing.
For whatever reason, this really seems to bother him.
I mean. I get it. It’s wrong.
But KJ acts like it’s a personal thing. It really bothers him.
His eyes dart around the room, left then right. His mouth parts like he wants to say something but he’s afraid.
“What?” I scratch my brow. “What’s wrong?”
“I think it was Kyle.”
“Kyle what?”
“I think Kyle kicked that guy’s ass?”
A laugh bursts through my lips, and I try not to spew chewed cashews all over his shirt. “No fucking way. Kyle’s a string bean. Thinks he’s big. He doesn’t have shit.”
KJ doesn’t laugh. His eyes hold mine, refusing to let go as if he’s silently pleading for me to take him seriously. “Nah. I’m not joking. He likes to pick off random drunk people stumbling outside the bar after closing time. When no one’s looking, he beats the shit out of them for sport. Thinks it’s hilarious.”
“How many times has he done this?” I’m not sure why that’s my first question. It seems like the least important one to ask, but there’s plenty more where that came from. My blood heats beneath my skin, flushing my face as I drag in a slow breath. “How has he never been caught? And how do you know for sure?”
“I know,” KJ says, his eyes shifting to either sides of me. “Trust me. Anyway, he doesn’t get caught because no one’s around, and the victims are too drunk to remember who the hell beat ‘em up. They’ve got no recollection the next morning. Usually wake up in a hospital. This is the sixth or seventh one in the last few years. He’s like a fucking serial killer. Every six months. Boom. Like fucking clockwork.”
I’m not a man who’s afraid of much, but damn if KJ didn’t just give me the chills.
“Drunks are idiots,” I say, shaking my head. “Always starting fights. Running their mouths. Bar fights are as common as mosquitos in the summer, especially in small towns.”
“I’ve seen him do it.” KJ leans forward, scanning the space in search of his brother.
“Why haven’t you gone to the police?”
“I mean, I didn’t see it, see it,” he corrects himself. “I’ve seen the evidence. The locations. The timelines. Everything adds up. One night he came home, his fists covered in blood. And I found a bloody rag behind the bench in his truck a couple months ago. It was the night after some young kid got beat up outside a bar in Campus Town.”
I spy Kyle over in the second bay, standing under a hoisted car and checking his phone.
“If he’s such an experienced fighter, why doesn’t he do these basement brawls?” I ask.
“He’s not stupid enough to,” KJ says. “No offense.”
“I’m not stupid, KJ. Just trying to make a little money so I can get my own place. Not everyone can work for Daddy for twenty bucks an hour.”
The bells on the door jingle, ushering in a new customer. KJ scrambles for the cash register to greet them, and I stride out to the garage to pull their car in.
Kyle tucks his phone into his back pocket the second I pass him.
“Don’t work too hard there,” I mutter.
He scoffs, a smug smirk on his blockheaded face. “What would you know about working? You’ve been back in the real world a hot minute now.”
I could punch him.
But I don’t.
“Where’d you go last night?” I ask.
“The fuck do you mean where’d I go? What are you? My bitch girlfriend or something?”
“After the fights. Where’d you go?”
“Bars close, Titan. You know that. I counted the money and went home.”
I lay a paper mat inside the driver’s floorboard of a shiny white BMW and pull it into my bay, and by the time I hoist it on the lift, I see Titan watching a video on his phone.
“You hear about that?” he says to me.
“What?”
“That guy last night, just outside Hammerhead.”
“Yeah.” I head to the stock room to grab a couple quarts of oil and return. “What about him?”
“I’d kill to know who that som’ bitch was,” he says. “I’d like to recruit him. Buy him a drink. Make him a rich bastard.”
***
The lights are off when I get home. The sun’s gone down. The faint drone of the family room TV and the hint of lamplight fills the backside of the house.
“Hello?” A voice calls out.
I ignore it.
I’d much rather be a ghost here. This whole house is filled with ‘em anyway. The ghost of better times. The ghost of good memories and a time when life was simple.
“Hello?” It calls out again, louder. It’s Jordana. It’s much too young-sounding to be Laticia, and I’m sure she and my father are out painting the town red.
“Just me.” I kick my dirty boots off by the back door and hang my oil-stained shop jacket, a too-tight hand-me-down that had once belonged to Kyle.
I trek upstairs, peeling my clothes off and tossing them on the floor of the guest room before strutting down the hall buck naked and hitting the shower. I don’t fucking care anymore. I have no shame. You lose any ounce of decency when you’re locked up like that, sharing a shower with a handful of other men. In the last five years, I’ve seen more cocks than a man should see in his lifetime.
And I sure as fuck don’t care if Jordana sees me. She’s a grown woman. She should know what a dick looks like.
Twenty minutes later, I shower off. Wrapping a towel around my waist, I strut down the hall to my room, catching Jordana leaving hers.
“Why were those keys on my pillow last night?” I ask.
She shrugs like she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know better. “Where were you last night?”
“I don’t want to drive your brother’s car. Not if your mom’s going to get upset like that again.”
“She’s fine,” Jordana says, her gaze falling to my mouth and then to the bare skin below. The soap-scented heat from my damp body permeates into the air around us, and I watch her breathe me in. “We had a talk. You’re going to fix up his Mustang so she can sell it. She needs the closure. It’s fine. It’s good that this is happening.”
“Why are you being nice to me?”
“I’m a nice person,” she says.
“Give me a fucking break.”
Her dark brows furrow.
“You want something,” I say. “You want something from me. That’s why you’re being nice.”
“I don’t want anything from you.” Her arms fold. “I mean, I guess I just want you to be nice and respectful. But that’s not why I talked my mom into letting you drive the Mustang.”
“Hate to break it to you, princess,” I scoff, “but I abandoned nice and respectful the second I set foot inside the pen.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You’re a good person, Titan. Your family…your father…you were raised to be a good person. You were going to college. You were-”
“The hell, Jordana? You think
you know me?” My nostrils flare as my hand flies up, slapping the wall behind her and forcing her back into a corner. “What, you been researching me?”
“I-I’m a criminology major,” she stammers. “My life’s mission is to help rehabilitate the prison population. Reform them. Help them acclimate to the real world after a long stretch on the inside. There’s a real problem with institutionalism in this country. It’s an epidemic, Titan, and if there’s anything I can do to help anyone, I’m going to do it.”
“Aw, isn’t that fucking cute?” I laugh. “Look at you. Going out into the world and making a difference. Let me guess, you spend your Thanksgivings at soup kitchens too?”
Her bottom lip trembles. A carnal stirring inside me wants to bite it, kiss it, and crush it all at once. My gaze falls to Jordana’s heaving chest. The top of her cleavage offers an invitation that forces my fists to clench.
“Do I scare you?” I ask.
“No.” She’s lying through her teeth. “You fascinate me.”
No one’s ever called me that before. Nothing about me could possibly be fascinating.
I smirk. “Why’s that?”
Her head sways from side to side, slow and unsure. “I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.”
Her eyelids flutter as her tongue rakes across her lips. With tightened shoulders, she says, “I want to figure you out.”
“Not much about me to figure out,” I say. “Everything I am, everything I’ve become, you’re looking right at him. I’m a simple man with simple needs.”
“W-what kind of needs?”
My lips spread into a mischievous grin. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
I step into her space, claiming it as mine, testing her and waiting for a reaction that tells me she’s entertaining the same dirty thoughts I am.
“You know damn well where this conversation is headed,” I say. “You can stand there, looking all coy and I can stand here pretending like I haven’t noticed how your hard nipples are poking clear through your shirt.”
Her hands cover her breasts.
