by Ben Rehder
“Well, I’m glad you’re doing better,” I said.
“Kind of weird to be home,” he said. “The scene of the crime. Don’t tell anybody, but I’m buying a gun.”
“Don’t blame you,” I said, “but be careful with it, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Are you prepared to shoot someone if you have to?” I asked.
Harvey, to his credit, appeared to have already considered that question. “Not for stealing my wallet, no,” he said. “But if someone tries to take my head off again, yeah. Fuck that shit. I’ll do what I gotta do.”
I waited. He’d tell me in his own time.
“What should I get?” he asked.
“You mean what kind of gun?”
“Yeah. Something cheap, though.”
“For use at home, and that’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“Done much shooting?”
“Not much. A twenty-two when I was a kid.”
“Are you prepared to practice a lot, so you’re a good shot?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Which meant no.
“You should probably get a shotgun,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“Or maybe a security system instead,” I said.
“How much do shotguns cost?”
“Couple hundred bucks for a basic one,” I said.
“Hmm. Hey, I was just wondering—you made any progress on your case?”
He was still hoping to find out who had decked him. Understandable.
“Not much,” I said. “Still working on it.”
“Will you keep me posted?” he asked.
“You bet,” I said, and it could very well be true, depending on what I learned.
“I appreciate it,” he said, just as I heard a call-waiting tone. I checked it and saw another number I didn’t recognize.
“Hey, I have another call coming in,” I said.
“No problem. I’ll catch you later.”
I answered the other line and heard a female voice say, “Is this the infamous Roy Ballard?”
“It is. Who’s this?”
“Jayci, silly. Have you forgotten me already?”
Her tone was a mock pout intended to be flirtatious—but I would guess that she sounded flirty when calling for a pizza delivery. That was her way.
“What’s going on, Jayci?” I said.
“Well,” she said, “I think I might have something for you.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“I’m not giving it up that easily,” she said. “Why don’t we meet for happy hour?”
17
“I was trying to take some pictures earlier today at lunch,” she said, “and I got one of those warnings that my phone was running out of storage space. Ever get one of those?”
“Sure,” I said. “Usually when I’m shooting selfies of my pecs.”
We were on the front patio of Star Bar on West Sixth Street. I hadn’t been there in several years, but I’d been relieved to see several people about my age. It was still a popular place with the type of customer who is always looking past his or her date to scope out the action at the next table over.
“Okay, so, you know you usually have to delete some stuff, right?” Jayci said.
“Right,” I said.
She was wearing a red V-neck halter top that was showing off a lot of cleavage. Occasionally, through no fault of my own, I could catch a glimpse of her bra, which was also red. She wasn’t in the same league as Mia, of course, but she was pretty cute.
She said, “What I do sometimes—I’m like so totally scattered—is I forget to empty the trash folder in my photos app. Like, for weeks. So I end up with all of these old pictures and videos in there. Sometimes hundreds of them. And so, today at lunch, I started to do that—to ditch all that junk—and then I realized I had some pictures in there from the party barge last weekend.”
“I like where this is going,” I said.
“You can thank me later,” she said, and she took a sip of her drink—something called a Jalisco Sally. It was almost gone. I was drinking Jameson on the rocks. Slowly.
I waited patiently for Jayci to say more. She was obviously enjoying the process of stringing it out. She liked having an audience—even just me—hanging on her every word.
She finally set her glass down and said, “Okay, so most of the pictures are a lot like the ones I already showed you, but there’s one in particular...” She reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.
Please let this blow the case open, I was thinking. I was ready to be done with it and move on. I was suffering from a combination of impatience and a bad mood.
While Jayci scrolled through her photos, I took a discreet look at my phone, because I had felt it vibrate earlier with a text.
Coming over tonight? Mia had asked seven minutes earlier.
We had sent a few texts back and forth earlier in the afternoon. She had made no further progress on the Dennis Babcock case, because he hadn’t gone anywhere that day, and Roscoe hadn’t called Mia back about meeting with her fictional brother’s attorney. She hadn’t said a word about Garlen. I hadn’t asked. Yet. I decided I wasn’t going to answer this text right away. Make her wait. Passive aggression—ain’t it lovely?
“Here it is,” Jayci said.
She passed her phone across the table to me. I studied the photo on the screen, which had been taken sometime after sundown on the night of the cruise.
“That’s me and my friend Cady,” Jayci said.
And indeed it was—both of them in bikinis. Cady was a little taller, but equally cute and nubile.
“My eyes were glowing from the flash,” Jayci said. “I guess that’s why I deleted it. I don’t remember.”
I made a show of raising my gaze to a point higher on the photo. “Oh, right. Your eyes. I see them now.”
“You’re bad!” Jayci said, and she took another drink.
It was a selfie—the camera in Jayci’s right hand—and as with a lot of selfies, Jayci had held the camera up high, slightly above her head, to provide a more flattering angle of their faces. As a result, you could see the area behind them well—and that was the most intriguing portion of the photo. Three people were visible behind Jayci and Cady.
In the upper-left portion of the photo, Jeremy Sawyer was in the process of going backward over the hip-high railing, flipping into the darkness. You couldn’t actually see the railing itself, or Jeremy’s lower body, for that matter, because Cady’s pretty head was in the way. But it was obvious from the tension in Jeremy’s arms and the angle of his back that was he hoisting himself up and over. He was also making a funny face. Hard to describe, exactly, but it was the type of expression a guy makes on a basketball court or soccer field when he does something sudden and unexpected—a look of mock surprise that says, You weren’t ready for that, were you? I totally suckered you. That was the only way I could explain it.
Approaching Jeremy, in the upper-center portion of the photo, was Starlyn Kurtis’s boyfriend, Anson Byrd—or rather, his shoulders and the back of his head. Obviously, I couldn’t see his face, but I spotted the shark tattoo on his left shoulder blade that I’d seen earlier in another photo. Byrd had the kind of muscular, athletic physique that would intimidate a smaller guy like Jeremy Sawyer—enough to make him jump from the moving boat and make a joke out of it as he went.
To the right of Byrd, in the upper-right quadrant of the photo, was Starlyn Kurtis. She was facing forward, but her head was turned to her right, watching Jeremy go over the railing. It appeared she was behind the small bar that occupied one corner of the upper deck.
I realized that I had been studying the photo so intensely that I missed something Jayci had just said.
“Sorry?” I said.
“So that’s it, right?” Jayci said. “That is the last time anyone saw him? Don’t you think?”
“It could very well be,” I said. “Probably.”
“Is it h
elpful?”
“It might be. Can you email it to me?”
“Sure, but it’ll cost you.” Her tone suggested she wasn’t talking about money.
I would be able to check the metadata to see what time the photo was taken. The cops could too, and because they probably had every photo taken by every person on board that night, they could determine if any other photo with Jeremy in it had been shot after this one. If this photo did turn out to capture Jeremy Sawyer’s last moment aboard, well... so what? Frankly, I wasn’t sure it would help much.
“Dude,” Jayci said.
“What?”
“I thought you’d be more excited by this.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “No, this is really great. Thanks for sharing it with me.” I tried to sound as enthusiastic as possible.
“I guess I need to send it to the cops, too, huh?” Jayci asked.
“Yeah, you do.”
“You want me to wait?”
“No, go ahead and send it.”
I looked at the photo again. If there was an answer in there somewhere, I didn’t see it.
Something funny and then something bad. That’s what Harvey had said.
What was funny? Jeremy flipping over the rail? The way he did it? Did he say something silly as he did it?
I was getting frustrated with this investigation, and when that happened, it wouldn’t be long before I’d want to do one of two things: either do something rash to spur the investigation along, or give up completely.
I passed the phone back to Jayci just as our waitress swung past our table.
“Another one?” she asked, pointing at Jayci’s drink.
“Yes, please.”
The waitress looked at me.
“I’m good.”
After she left, Jayci quickly emailed the photo to me, then leaned down to put her phone in her purse, providing the best view yet down her halter top. I felt like a creep for looking, even though I was confident the display was intentional. Didn’t really make me any less of a creep, though, did it?
Jayci said, “You know, I’m still not sure exactly what it is you do for a living.”
“I haven’t figured that out myself,” I said.
“But you’re not a private detective, I know that.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You catch people who try to cheat insurance companies.”
“That pretty much sums it up.”
The waitress whizzed past our table and dropped off Jayci’s drink.
“Is it fun?” Jayci asked.
“It can be.”
“Tell me about a fun case,” she said.
So I did, sharing the story of a slip-and-fall artist who tried to fake a slip in a grocery store and accidentally tipped a pyramid of beer cases, which all crashed down on him, knocking him unconscious.
By the time I was done—no more than five minutes—she had already sucked down her second drink. The loopy grin told me she was feeling a strong buzz.
“You’re, uh, not driving anytime soon, are you?”
“Nope,” she said. She pointed to the north. “I live about three blocks in that direction.”
“Oh, yeah? In a condo, or...”
“A house,” she said. “It used to be my dad’s office—he’s an attorney—but he retired last year, so I moved in to it.”
Any house in the area she indicated had to be valued at a million dollars or more.
“That’s handy,” I said.
“Yep.” She arched an eyebrow playfully at me. “Wanna walk me home and see how handy it is?”
I’ve read some interesting articles about self-destructive behavior.
Why do people abuse alcohol? Do drugs? Overeat? Why do we sabotage relationships that make us happy?
I noticed that the experts often seemed to reach varying conclusions as to the root causes of self-destructive behavior, but they generally agreed that it was a coping device. For instance, a person might be afraid of screwing up a stable, thriving relationship, and the ongoing anxiety from that fear is so great, he intentionally engages in conduct that will cause a crisis and possibly end the relationship, thereby relieving the stress.
Or something like that. Didn’t make a lot of sense to me.
But the point is, a person prone to self-destructive behavior would’ve jumped all over Jayci’s kind offer.
I’m happy to report that I did not. Didn’t consider it for a second. Oh, I might’ve daydreamed about it later, and been flattered by the attention at the time, but I did not consider it.
I did walk her home—but just to her front porch, to see her safely inside—and then, as I was returning to the Toyota, I sent Mia a text.
Gonna stay home tonight. Case going nowhere. Sucks.
18
The reason I hadn’t yet contacted Starlyn Kurtis—or her boyfriend, Anson Byrd, for that matter—was simple. I hadn’t wanted her to know I was investigating Jeremy’s death. I didn’t even want her to know I existed. Sometimes you wanted to know everything you could possibly know about a person and the situation they were involved in before you made a move. Sometimes that could yield an advantage. Most of the time, however, it led nowhere. I was realistic enough to understand that.
That’s why my impatience finally got the best of me the next morning and I called Starlyn Kurtis. Got voicemail, which was not a surprise. A woman like Starlyn Kurtis wouldn’t answer a call from a number she didn’t recognize.
“Hey, Starlyn,” I said, “my name is Roy Ballard and I’m—well, it’s kind of complicated, but I’m looking into Jeremy Sawyer’s death. I have a couple of quick questions for you, if you don’t mind. Could you call me back? I would really appreciate it. Won’t take long. Thanks!”
I hung up, expecting to receive a return call from her about the same time we colonized Mars.
Then I sent a text to Heidi: Nothing new to report, but still working on it.
Then I texted Mia.
“So... where to?” she asked.
It was an hour later, and I was standing in her living room as she did all the little things she normally did when she was getting ready. Currently she was in the bathroom, applying the final touches to her makeup.
We were planning to grab a late breakfast and spend an hour or two brainstorming on both cases. Fresh perspectives and all that. In fact, I’d been entertaining the idea that we should swap cases for a few days and see if that got us anywhere. Better than giving up.
“Kerbey Lane?” I said.
“Works for me,” she said.
But first, I needed to get the Garlen issue out of the way.
“Hey, I need to ask you about something,” I said.
“Yeah?”
She came out of the bathroom.
I said, “Yesterday morning, I brought a bag of breakfast tacos over to your place. I saw a BMW parked in your driveway...”
Her expression changed, but it wasn’t one of guilt or shame. More like the look of someone who just realized her morning wasn’t going to be as pleasant as she had hoped.
“And then I saw Garlen walk out,” I said.
I was conveniently omitting the part where I parked down the street and staked out her place for more than half an hour. And the part where I’d checked the BMW’s hood to see if it had been there overnight.
“I was planning to have this conversation with you soon,” she said. “But I didn’t know it would be right now.”
“No time like the present,” I said.
“Yeah, okay,” she said. She grabbed me by the hand and we sat down on the couch, facing each other. “I need you to be patient and understanding. Can you do that?”
“I don’t have a history of that kind of behavior,” I said.
“You can start now,” she said cheerfully. “It will be fun!”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” I said.
“Well, the bottom line is, Garlen joined AA.”
“The auto club?” I said. “Guess I can’t blame h
im, with a nice car like that.”
She smiled, but she was just placating me. I could tell she was nervous.
“He hasn’t had a drink since the accident,” she said.
“Not to be petty,” I said, “but it wasn’t an accident, it was a wreck. He wrecked because he was trying to run me off the road. Fortunately he really sucked at it.”
“Fair enough,” Mia said. “But he hasn’t had a drink since then. And he’s been doing the AA steps. I don’t really know what they all are, but one of them involves apologizing to people.”
“Making amends is what they call it,” I said. I’d heard that phrase plenty of times on TV shows.
“Right. Anyway, he wanted to apologize to me. So I let him.”
“Even though it violated the protective order?”
“It was a one-time thing.”
I took a breath.
“Doesn’t it seem ironic that a guy wanting to make amends would start by violating an active protective order? Now he owes you an amend for that, doesn’t he?”
Mia didn’t reply.
“How did he contact you?” I asked.
“His sponsor—who probably doesn’t know about the protective order—sent me an email. It went from there. Roy, listen. Garlen is trying to turn his life around. Surely you can respect that.”
She was alluding to some troubles I’d had of my own not so many years earlier. I’d gotten a second chance from some key people in my life, and shouldn’t Garlen be granted that same opportunity? Sounded reasonable, but Garlen had had plenty of chances, in my opinion. Too many.
“Can’t he turn his life around without pestering you?” I said, grinning.
She knew it was a rhetorical question.
Here’s the thing. Deep down, I knew she wasn’t opening the door to a renewed relationship with Garlen. She was willing to let him make amends solely because she had the most forgiving heart of anyone I knew. There was nothing more to it than that, and I should’ve admired her for it—but I simply couldn’t tamp down the anger I was feeling. The jealousy. Even when I knew it was all ridiculous.
Then she made the situation worse.
