Blue Avenue

by Michael Wiley

‘That’s why I’m calling,’ he said. ‘I’m hoping that around nine o’clock you were surrounded by friends and neighbors who can testify that you weren’t at University Hospital.’

  ‘I was home with Susan and Thomas.’

  ‘That might not be enough,’ he said. ‘If I were you I’d get out of your house fast.’

  ‘I was leaving when the phone rang.’

  ‘Yeah? Where were you heading?’

  ‘I was going to find Daniel Turner to see what was happening.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that. He thought you were the man before. He probably thinks it again.’

  I closed my eyes and breathed deep.

  ‘You still there?’ he asked.

  ‘Can I hide out for a while at your place?’

  ‘Any time,’ he said.

  I said, ‘I’ll be there in a few hours.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  ‘I need to check on a couple things.’

  ‘You need help?’ he asked.

  ‘I need a hell of a lot of help. But I’ll see you in a few hours.’

  I hung up, turned and saw Thomas in the doorway.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘It’s all right now.’

  ‘Are you in trouble again?’

  I started to lie but instead said, ‘Yeah,’ and tried a smile. ‘It seems to follow me.’

  ‘What can I do?’ he asked.

  ‘You can lend me your cell phone.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  The moon hung in a wispy veil of clouds over Don Melchiori’s house. The windows were dark, the building heavy in shadow. Only the leaves of an orange tree growing against the front wall glimmered vaguely, like fish in shallow water. Someone had boarded up the door that Charles and I had kicked in on our last visit. The police would arrive soon, as they investigated Melchiori’s death.

  I pried a sheet of plywood from the door and stepped inside.

  I felt my way up the dark stairs, went into Melchiori’s bedroom and flipped on a bedside lamp. The box of party photos was in the third dresser drawer where I’d left it. I thumbed through the pictures, trying to remember which of the men had been in the party photos I’d destroyed. Belinda, Tralena and the two other women from the photos were dead, buried in Jamaica or lying in the morgue. Two of the men – David Fowler and now Melchiori – were also dead.

  In the photos that remained now I saw two other men who might have been in the pictures I’d destroyed. I knew neither of them, though one – a middle-aged white man with a paunch and a stoned grin – looked familiar enough to make me think he was a city politician whose face appeared occasionally in the paper or on the news. I slipped a couple of pictures into my pocket.

  The photos in the box had been a select collection from Melchiori’s parties, and Melchiori usually starred in them. But there had to be more. He would want others within easy reach for nights when the greatest-hits photos weren’t enough to get him off. But he would also want them well enough hidden that a cleaning woman or visitor wouldn’t find them. I fanned my fingers through the suits and shirts on the closet bars. I opened three shoeboxes that were stacked on a shelf. I removed two clear plastic sweater bins from the next shelf. One of the bins was heavier than it should have been, and when I dug through it, I found two albums that Melchiori had wrapped in cotton sweaters.

  On the bed, I paged through the first of them. It covered early parties which looked innocent in comparison to what they would become. Melchiori started with girls who appeared in various poses and positions with or without him. He moved on to groups that included other men. One early party had six girls and just one other man.

  The second album was hardcore. The girls got younger, the sex more violent, the drugs more plentiful. I recognized a city councilman who was licking the asshole of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old. I recognized an Asian television anchorwoman. I recognized but couldn’t name three other faces.

  The last pages contained pictures from the party with Belinda and Tralena. The first covered party preparations. Melchiori and David Fowler appeared again, as did the two men whose photos I’d taken from the dresser box. Fowler was shown cutting lines of cocaine. Tralena was shown sitting on a couch in panties and a bra, her head thrown back laughing. Tonya Richmond was shown with her tongue between her lips and her fingers plunged inside her skirt. Belinda was shown taking Melchiori’s penis into her mouth.

  I turned the page and the photos wrenched my stomach. They showed the next stages of the party, after the first hits of coke, after the undressing, but before the binding and suffocating. They showed Melchiori, David Fowler and the other two men switching partners. But they also showed a fifth man.

  In the first, Tralena mounted Lieutenant Daniel Turner as he sat on a dining-room chair.

  In the second, Daniel took Tonya Richmond from behind on a living-room sofa.

  In the last, he sat on the same sofa alone watching David Fowler screw Ashley Littleton on a rug.

  I yanked the final pictures out of the albums and stuffed them in my pockets with the others. My breath felt thin and insufficient and the darkness outside the bedroom windows seemed to press against the house as though it meant to crush it. How was Daniel involved in the killings? Could he be the killer? His presence in the pictures made no sense. He’d pushed the investigation hard, as though his own life depended on it. Maybe it did. He was at the party and everyone at the party was dying. I needed to talk with him. He might shoot me. He might put me in jail. But we needed to talk.

  I wanted Charles by my side when we met. I dialed his home number on Thomas’s cell phone. It rang a half-dozen times and I hung up. I dialed his cell. It rang four times and kicked to voicemail. I said, ‘Hey, Charles – call me,’ and hung up. Day or night, the only times I’d known him not to answer his phone had been when he was on one of his mystery trips. He’d told me he was preparing to leave town but less than an hour ago he’d given no sign that he was ready to go.

  I put the albums in the sweater bin, returned the bin to the closet shelf and turned off the bedroom light. But as I stepped out of the room I heard footsteps downstairs. I went back into the closet but realized as the footsteps came up the stairs that I had nowhere to go, so I slid out and stood against the wall.

  The footsteps moved past the door, stopped and returned. A hand touched the wall beside me and found a switch. The room filled with light and a tall black man stepped in and spun to face me with a black pistol in his hand. He was the manager of Little Vegas, the man who’d led me at gunpoint to Melchiori’s and then accidentally shot his boss. I knew him as Darrin.

  He looked almost relieved to see me. ‘Man! I almost shot you.’

  ‘You’re not going to?’ I said.

  He smiled disdainfully. ‘Hell, no. Why would I do that?’

  I moved cautiously from the wall. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Same reason you are, probably.’

  I considered his possible motives. ‘You going to rob the place?’

  ‘No, you stupid fuck. I’m not going to rob the place. I’m trying to figure out who’s killing these folks.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To save my ass, why else?’ he said. ‘Everyone from the party’s dead, just about. I made the travel arrangements for Tonya and Ashley. I booked most of the tickets. I figure this crazy bastard’s coming after me too.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not the crazy bastard?’ I asked.

  ‘I heard they cleared you this morning.’

  ‘Tonight they’re saying I did it again,’ I said.

  ‘In that case …’ He pointed the pistol at my chest.

  ‘I didn’t,’ I said. I went to the bed and laid out the photos that I’d taken. ‘As you say, most of them are dead.’ I named each of them. ‘D’you recognize the others?’

  He pointed at one of the two men whose names I didn’t know and said, ‘He’s Phil Lingren. He does computers at the mayor’s office. I booked his t
icket.’ He pointed at the other man. ‘Him I’ve seen around but I don’t know his name.’ Then he pointed at Daniel Turner. ‘And him I’ve never seen.’

  ‘He’s a police officer,’ I said. ‘Homicide squad. He’s leading the investigation into the killings.’

  He whistled and said, ‘That sucks.’

  ‘He used to be a good man. I don’t know what he is now.’

  He gestured at the picture in which Tralena had mounted Daniel. ‘Looks like she thinks he’s good.’

  ‘What were you looking for when you broke in?’ I asked.

  ‘Anything,’ he said. ‘These pictures ain’t a bad start. I came in once before and searched downstairs. When I heard about Melchiori getting killed, I figured the cops would beat me to the search if I didn’t move fast.’

  I pointed at the picture of the man whose name Darrin didn’t know. ‘D’you think you could find out who he is and go watch him?’

  Darrin narrowed his eyes at me. ‘What’re you thinking?’

  I gestured at the picture. ‘You find the man with no name and I find Phil Lingren. We stay on them until the killer arrives.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘You’ve got the gun. Use it. Or bring him to me. I don’t care which.’

  ‘What about you? You got a gun?’ he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He smiled disdainfully again. ‘You’ve got rocks in your head. What happens if the killer doesn’t come?’

  ‘You think that’s a possibility?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘What about your cop friend?’

  ‘If he’s the problem, we’ll see him when he comes after Lingren or the other guy. If he’s not the problem and the killer goes after him, he’s got a gun too.’

  We went downstairs together in the dark. I gave him the number to Thomas’s cell phone and he gave me the number to his. He gazed at the ceiling of the big front hall and said, ‘Mr Melchiori had funny habits but he was all right. Overall.’

  When he stepped through the broken doorway on to the darkened front porch, I noticed that the night sounds that I’d heard when entering the house – the high singing of tree frogs, the rustle of birds and insects in the branches – were gone. Then a gunshot cracked not far away and Darrin stumbled back into my arms.

  I held him, the warmth of his body heavy against me, then let him slide to the floor and pulled him from the door. His chest was wet and spongy.

  ‘Darrin,’ I whispered.

  He was already dead.

  I huddled in the dark, afraid to move, and waited for the killer to come for me. Five minutes passed. Ten. A single frog trilled in the bushes outside the door. The air smelled of the closed-up house and the sweat and blood of death. Darrin’s pistol, lying in the doorway, gleamed in the moonlight.

  Another five minutes passed. I listened for footsteps. The frog trilled.

  I stretched my leg into the doorway and scooted the pistol toward me, then huddled against a wall, waiting, clutching the grip of a gun I doubted I would use. Darrin’s dark body lay beside me more silent than any object I’d ever known. I pulled out Thomas’s cell phone and dialed Charles again. Voicemail picked up.

  Another five minutes passed. A warm spot spread under my leg. I touched it and my fingers came away wet and slippery. A pool of blood was expanding across the tile from Darrin. I wiped my hand dry on my shirt, tucked Darrin’s pistol into my belt and crept along the wall away from his body, staying in the shadows, moving into the hall and then the living room. Two sets of glass doors with metal lattices looked out toward a backyard garden. The shooter might be covering the back of the house, or he might not.

  I unlatched a door and stepped on to a stone path. When no one shot, I stepped again. A moonlit garden surrounded me. The air smelled like roses and damp earth. I waited for a gunshot.

  Then I ran.

  The grass was slick with dew. A short stone garden wall loomed in front of me and I jumped over it, cut around the side of the house and sprinted toward my car. It stood on the driveway next to Darrin’s blue pickup. A deep shadow fell between the truck and the driver side door of my car, and I ran into the gap as though it were a chasm that could drop me into either life or death.

  No one was waiting to kill me.

  I climbed in and jammed the key into the ignition, whipped the car down the driveway and pulled on to the street. A half mile from Melchiori’s house, I rolled down the window and chucked Darrin’s pistol into a hedge of holly bushes.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Phil Lingren lived in a lowland rural area on the northwest side. A limestone gravel driveway stretched into the trees from the road. I parked on the shoulder and turned off the car. Moonlight filtered through live oak branches. Insects hummed and a raccoon shuffled through the scrub and fallen branches. After a hundred yards the driveway opened into a clearing with several brightly lit sheds and outbuildings and a brightly lit house. It was one-thirty a.m. and the place looked as though Lingren were getting ready for a party.

  The first outbuilding was a wooden work shed with an open front wall. On a grimy workbench there were darkly oiled table vices, a metal mallet, a hacksaw, metal tongs and a propane blowtorch – heavy tools that could bend or fashion metal. On the back of the bench stood plastic gallon milk jugs of gasoline, engine coolant and oil. The metal shavings on the floor were caked with grease.

  Next was a storage shed, its door open, a fluorescent light buzzing brightly over rakes, a lawn mower, a leaf blower, an edger, shovels and a pail of garden gloves. An outside lamp threw a cone of light on the driveway. I called into the yard, ‘Mr Lingren?’

  A detached two-car garage stood next to the storage shed. The doors were up, the lights on. An old Plymouth Fury was parked on one side. On the other, there was a Yamaha motorcycle and beyond it a dozen stacks of boxes that reached to the ceiling. I stepped inside, glanced under the car and moved toward the boxes. Lingren had arranged the stacks a couple of feet apart from each other as if the boxes needed breathing room. I stepped into a gap between them and eased myself through the maze.

  No one was there.

  A gravel path led from the garage to a brown ranch-style house. The front door was open, though a screen door was shut. Every light seemed to be on inside.

  I rang the doorbell and called again, ‘Mr Lingren?’

  When no one answered, I stepped into the house.

  The lights suddenly went out over the yard, from the sheds and garage to the house, dumping me into blackness. The night birds and insects quieted and all was silent.

  Slowly the sounds started again, first a cricket, then a rustling in the leaves near the house, and my eyes adjusted to the moonlight. I knew I should back away and go to my car. I should call Charles and we could search the place together. If Charles still wasn’t answering his phone I should drive away.

  I went deeper into the house. Moonlight through the living-room windows cast shadows over worktables that were stacked with old radios, televisions and stereo components. The family room had a couch, an easy chair, a wall-mounted large-screen television and a long table strewn with computer parts. I didn’t want to know the man who lived this way.

  The kitchen had only a small window, which faced away from the moonlight. I stumbled over a chair, then felt my way along counters until I reached a pantry. When I tried the door it resisted as if someone were holding the knob.

  I pulled harder.

  The door pulled back.

  I should walk away. I should run. I should call Charles. I should stand aside and let the earth turn until it ground its old axis to dust.

  I yanked the knob.

  The door blew open and knocked me to the floor. A man stepped past me. I reached for him but missed, then scrambled to my feet and went after him. He ran through the house as if it were on fire. By the time I reached the living room he was out the front door. When I reached the door I glimpsed him disappearing into the trees alongside the driveway.

  ‘Lin
gren!’ I yelled.

  The man didn’t slow or answer.

  I went to the kitchen, groped along the wall until I found the pantry and ran my hands past the shelves until I found a circuit breaker box. The main breaker had been thrown. I flipped it and the house and yard lit up.

  The house looked thirty or forty years old and had touches of the rustic. A coarse-grained chair rail lined the kitchen walls and hand-hewn beams crossed the ceiling. Electronic components littered the counters, tables and chairs. In the bedroom, clothes lay on the floor. The bathroom smelled like stale urine.

  I went out the back door into the yard. Floodlights, planted in the ground, illuminated the branches of three huge live oaks. At the rear of the property, backing against a wooden fence, there was another shed. Unlike the rest of the buildings, it was dark.

  I crossed the yard and tried the door. It swung open freely. A sickeningly sweet smell swelled out and I stepped away and caught my breath.

  I reached inside, found a switch and flipped it.

  A man was hanging by his neck from a steel support bar, a plastic bag over his head. He was a small man and wore only underwear and a white T-shirt, as if he’d awakened from sleep for this. The noose was made of clothesline. Except for the dead man the shed was empty.

  I hoisted him into the air, loosened the line, got him down, laid him on the floor and pulled the bag off his face.

  Phil Lingren’s dead eyes stared at me.

  The man in the kitchen pantry must have killed him. I’d arrived at the house too late. A half hour. Five minutes. Thirty seconds. I didn’t know when Lingren had taken his last breath but now there was nothing left of him.

  Everything was moving too fast. The killer was getting rid of the last of the partiers before anyone could focus. With Lingren dead, there were only two left – Daniel Turner and a man whose name I didn’t know and who might already be dead.

  I pulled out Thomas’s phone and dialed Charles but hung up after two rings. Even if he answered he could do no good. I dialed another number and after four rings Daniel’s wife said, ‘Hello.’

  I’d awakened her. ‘Hey, Patty, this is BB. Can I talk to Daniel?’