by Jason Deas
“I’ll be back in a few minutes. Don’t get used to this kind of service.”
Cam picked up the glass, which he thought was tea, and brought it to his lips. Halfway to his mouth he smelled the alcohol and realized it was a glass of whiskey on the rocks, mixed with enough water to make it look like ice tea. He drank deeply and felt his insides unfold and relax. Cam set the glass down for two seconds and picked it back up again. He drank deeply again and breathed a huge sigh of release. He knew he needed to stop drinking, but he also knew that it wasn’t going to be today.
“What do you think of my brother?” Daphne said, reappearing again.
“Interesting for sure. Thanks for the drink.”
“Like I said, don’t get used to it. It’s not on the menu.”
“Is your brother…”
“Gay?”
“Yeah. Is he?”
“No. He is flamboyantly himself. Whatever that means. He’s hard to describe.”
“I’ll say.”
“I would love to sit around and chat, but I’m busy as hell.” Daphne grabbed the menu out of his hand. “I’ll bring you another crowd favorite. You won’t be disappointed.”
“And I’m still thirsty,” Cam said, finding his happy voice.
With a drink in his belly that also swam around his brain, Cam was able to look around the room without the fear of uncovering wicked deeds. He saw all types. White collar men and women, blue collar men, retired couples, and a scattering of young people and moms with kids. He even saw a biker sitting alone making goo-goo eyes with his pastrami sandwich.
Daphne dropped his sandwich a few minutes later and a new drink without saying a word. She also left the check. On it she wrote, “Price = Honesty at four o’clock.”
What the hell does that mean?
Cam put the thought out of his mind and bit into his sandwich. He wanted to scream it was so good. He turned to see if he could find Daphne. She stood behind the counter listening to a customer, but watching him. When their eyes met he smiled and gave her a thumbs up. She nodded, winked, and turned her attention back to the customer in front of her.
He finished the entire sandwich and drink before reading his check again. “Price = Honesty at four o’clock.” Cam put a hefty tip on the table, pocketed the check, and shuffled out.
Chapter Three
Cam sat at his desk and watched the clock for an entire hour. His brain tried to rewind and play back some earlier memories but he wouldn’t let it. It knocked softly at first asking to come into the vault of images and sounds. Cam pushed it away. As the hour wore on the tapping evolved to pounding and Cam popped up. He had seen a gas station less than a mile down the road. He started walking.
The gas station looked like a residence aside from the four gas pumps. A brown, one-story building stretched across a wide paved area. The color changed at one point and the building stretched on. Railing also stretched the distance hiding rocking chairs and small tables for dining. A ratty screened door marked the entrance.
The inside took Cam back in time. Glass jars lined the counter with stick candy in at least fifty different flavors. The walls held antique Coca-Cola signs and other odd relics. The shelves were lined with unusual offerings nestled alongside household brands.
“First time?”
Cam turned and realized he had been standing and staring.
“Yeah. Nice place.”
“Thanks.”
An older man walked around the counter toward him. He was a little under six feet with white balding hair and a heavy build. His warm smile made Cam feel immediately comfortable.
“Hank,” the man said, extending his hand.
“Cam.”
“Oh! The new private eye in town. Nice to make your acquaintance.”
“How did you hear about that?”
“The Pizza Chalet rents out the space next door. Sign blew off in a storm last week so you wouldn’t know that. Turner told me about you.”
“Oh, God.” Cam dropped his head.
“Head up, son. Turner ain’t the gossipy type. He just told me you were in town.”
“All right.”
“Now,” Hank said, slapping Cam on the back, “If I hear of any work for you, I’ll send it your way as well.”
“He’s already beating the bushes for me, huh?”
“I told you, he’s a good kid. Now I gotta get back to work. Beer’s in the cooler over there,” Hank said, pointing toward the back. “And get yourself a pack of gum or mints over there,” Hank said, pointing to a different part of the store.
Cam grabbed a twelve-pack from the cooler and a pack of cinnamon gum.
Two beers later, at four o’clock, Daphne walked through the door.
“Is this an early casual Friday?” she asked, pointing to the beer.
“Where I’m from we do casual Tuesday,” Cam joked. “Can I get you a beer?” he asked, pointing to his cooler.
“I see you have invested in some office furniture. That’s a very nice ice chest. It complements your desk. And yes, I’ll have a beer.”
Cam dug into the cooler and pulled out a nearly frozen can.
“Your office sucks.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that today. Turner actually used the term blows, but close enough.”
“Get your cooler and let’s grab a booth at my place. Claude can take both of us home.”
“Fine.”
Daphne finished her first beer and picked a dollar’s worth of songs on the jukebox.
Settling into a booth, Cam asked, “So, what do I owe you for lunch?”
“The ticket said honesty.” Daphne paused and took a long drink of her second beer. “I’ve always been a very perceptive person. I know things about people that they don’t even want me to know. It’s just the way that I am. Maybe it’s because I’ve been working in a diner forever and around different people all day, but somehow I just know.”
“What do you know about me?”
“I know you want to tell me something. Let me rephrase that. I know you want to tell somebody, something. You need to get something off your chest. You need a release of some sort. And I think you need to let somebody else into your mind.”
Cam didn’t say a word. He reached under him, pulled the top off the cooler, and retrieved a beer. With a fluid motion he pulled the beer into his line of sight, popped the tab, and touched the can to his mouth as he tilted his head. When the can was empty, he set it down, wiped his mouth, and said, “Here goes.”
Before speaking he reached into the cooler again and pulled out two more cans of beer. He set one in front of Daphne and opened one for himself.
“This is going to be the craziest story you’ve ever heard.”
“OK,” Daphne said.
“It’s not a long story. Just unbelievable.”
“OK.” Daphne opened her third beer. Her face showed gentle concern.
“When I was growing up, my mother’s side of the family had a reunion every year. It was always somewhere different. When I was thirteen it was held at one of my uncle’s houses. He had a swimming pool with a diving board. The deep end was only six feet deep. I didn’t realize that and did a one-and-a-half off the board. I made a perfect entrance into the water. My face met the bottom of the pool and I instantly blacked out. It was the worst millisecond of pain I’ve ever felt.”
“Ouch,” Daphne said, taking a sip of her beer.
“I regained consciousness in the hospital. When I opened my eyes, a doctor was hovering above me and the first thing I saw was his eyes. I looked into them and it happened for the first time. I saw his darkness. I saw him hitting a cyclist with a blue BMW. He was making a phone call. I saw it from different angles like a movie. It was strange. I thought I was under the effects of medicine or something and closed my eyes again.”
Cam took a long drink.
“I wasn’t so lucky. When I reopened my eyes, my mother was there. I looked into her eyes and saw her in bed with a man who
wasn’t my father. My father looked at me next and I saw him changing numbers on papers from his work. Every person that came to my bedside and looked into my eyes had a different story to tell—and they were all terrible. Some were worse than others, but they all seemed to stop time and take me away on some sort of visual trip. I thought it was the pain meds at first, but soon realized that it wasn’t. Somehow, the collision my brain had with the bottom of the pool had given me the unwanted gift of being able to see a person’s darkness.”
Cam looked at Daphne. “Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
Cam took a drink.
“And let me guess,” Daphne said. “Alcohol impairs your ability to do it.”
“It does.”
Daphne took swig from her beer. The jukebox shuffled songs.
“I can still do it after drinking, but I have to concentrate and look deeply. It doesn’t happen from casual eye contact.”
“Do me,” Daphne said, without thinking.
“You don’t believe me?”
“I do believe you,” Daphne said. “I want to know if what you come up with is what I have in mind.”
“Write it down and we’ll do it.”
Daphne popped up and ran behind the counter. She grabbed a pen and an order pad. She jotted down one sentence and folded the paper twice. She walked back to the booth and dropped the folded piece of paper on the center of the table. She sat back down.
“I think I want to change my mind,” Cam said. “I like you and I’m hopefully going to be working next to you for years to come. I don’t want to know.”
“So, I can count on you being drunk every day for the next few years?”
“No. I just won’t look you in the eyes.”
“Sounds like a wonderful friendship,” Daphne said, raising her voice.
“I don’t have friends for this reason,” Cam answered, raising his own.
Daphne grabbed his hands. “Look at me. You need at least one.”
Cam froze with her touch. He raised his eyes and looked into hers. It didn’t happen immediately because of the alcohol. He looked deeply. He stared. And finally, it flashed. His head jerked to the side and back again. In her eyes he saw her darkness. In the vision Daphne was ten years old. He saw Claude as well. Claude was with a dog and images flashed that showed the dog chewing on things in Daphne’s room and peeing on a rug beside her bed. The images flashed again and Daphne was letting the dog out of the house in the middle of the night. The visual faded as the dog wandered off into a shadow.
“I got it,” Cam said.
Daphne picked up the paper from the center of the table.
“Do you think it’s the same as this?” she asked holding the paper up.
“Probably. It’s not bad.” Cam drank. “You let Claude’s dog go. It chewed on your stuff and peed in your room. I don’t blame you.”
Although Daphne said she believed him, the power of the situation hit her at the same time as the words. She began to cry.
“You really didn’t believe me?”
“I thought I did. I guess I didn’t. I don’t know.”
“Do you think I’m a freak?”
“No. I think it’s really cool. I can see why you’re a private investigator. You should be a cop.”
“I was, for fifteen years. The Chief in my old town was sort of like a father figure to me. I had a hard time dealing with my parents after I could see into them. The Chief was a good man and gave me hope for humanity. Unfortunately, he changed. Corrupted by power, I guess. Every time I looked at him it was something new. I couldn’t take it. I started drinking vodka on the job thinking nobody could smell it. I’m pretty sure people knew, but they put up with it because I could solve just about any case. I was known as a master interrogator. If they did it, I knew. I provided details and got confessions. If I saw something worse in their eyes that they’d done, I made them believe we had evidence. I told them if they fessed up to the crime at hand, I would forget about the other more serious crimes. They almost always did.”
Cam paused.
“And let me guess the ending.”
Cam nodded.
“You reached your breaking point and flipped.”
“I did. One day I was too hung over to drink and came to work sober. I looked at the Chief and saw a murder cover up in his eyes. As I looked around I saw it in his brother’s eyes as well. We had a dirty station.”
“So what’d you do?”
“What I always do when trouble strikes. I got drunk. Piss drunk in my patrol car. I’m probably on a very short list of people who have gotten a DUI while driving a police car. When I got out, or fell out of the car, one of the dirty officers was there. I punched him in the face and when he dropped to the ground I ripped my shirt off and pounded my chest. It was pretty ugly.”
Daphne laughed. “I’m sorry,” she said covering her mouth as if she could take it back. “It’s quite a visual.”
“Long story short, they told me if I disappeared they would drop all the charges. If I stayed, they promised to collaborate and pin the murder charges on me. The murder they were responsible for!”
“So you told them what you knew?”
“Yeah. It didn’t work.”
“Damn.”
“Damn is right. I packed up my stuff and left town.”
“Do you plan on ever going back to make things right?”
“Yeah, one day, but right now I gotta disappear and make them think I’ve forgotten about it. If I go back right now, it’s not going to bring anybody back from the dead.”
“But, they’re corrupt.”
“Daphne, half the world is corrupt. It’s sad but true.”
“I don’t want to believe that.”
“Then don’t. I don’t want to believe it either.”
Chapter Four
The following morning, Cam sat at his office desk nursing a screwdriver. He watched a black Crown Vic park in front of his building. The door opened and a striking Latina woman emerged from the vehicle wearing black slacks and a white blouse. Her jet black hair was tied back in a tight ponytail and Cam scooted forward in his chair to get a better glimpse. Her face looked dead serious, hard as nails and angelic all at once. Cam flushed with her beauty and the alcohol running through his veins.
She pushed open the door like she owned the place and asked, “Cameron Caldwell?”
“You found him,” Cam smiled.
“Don’t feel special. I hear you’re a drunk. But I also hear you’re pretty talented at investigating and especially interrogating, and I’m at my wits’ end.”
She walked over to the desk and Cam got a good look at her face. He swallowed hard as she was even more intriguing up close. Her eyes blazed with an almost golden tint. Her lips almost sent him to his knees. The buzz in his brain told his hand to reach out and touch her skin, but somehow he resisted.
“Blanca Gomez,” she said, introducing herself and reaching her hand across the desk.
Cam stood. “Cameron Caldwell.” She squeezed his hand tightly and he liked it. Cam didn’t want her to let go.
“Turner said you had a crappy office, but this is even worse than I imagined.”
“I’m working on it.”
“Mind if I sit?”
“If you don’t mind sitting on an old crappy folding chair.” Cam grinned but Blanca ignored his attempt to be charming.
“I do, but I’m tired and it’ll have to do. I was up all night. It’s a long story, but I’ve got a lady in lock-up who I know is hiding her daughter from her ex-husband. It’s a nasty custody battle.”
“What are you holding her on?”
“Terroristic threats against the ex.”
“And you’re sure she knows where the kid is?”
“Positive.”
“How can I help?”
“Turner delivered some pizzas and subs to the station yesterday and was talking you up. Asking if we needed your help with any cases. This morning I decided to
do a web search with your name.”
Cam dipped his head and blushed.
Blanca smiled for the first time. “Yeah, I saw the DUI arrest video. Do you know it has over 120,000 hits on YouTube?”
“That’s 120,000 more than I’d like.”
“After I watched it a couple times I read all the stories I could find about you solving cold cases. Seems like you have a gift.”
With the word gift, Cam reached for his beverage and shrunk into his chair. Blanca noticed.
“Let me rephrase that—you have a knack for it. I didn’t mean that you’re a psychic or anything. I don’t believe in that stuff.” Blanca shifted in the chair and it creaked and moaned under her. “All the articles point out how you’re able to make major jumps in cases. Good detectives can do that.”
Again Cam asked, “So how can I help?”
“I want you to interrogate her.”
“Did Turner tell you how much I charge?”
“Yeah,” Blanca said, reaching into her pocket. She tossed three, one hundred dollar bills onto his desk.
“We seem to be missing a couple of things here,” Cam picked up the cash.
“I’ll throw in all the coffee you can drink.”
“Deal,” Cam said, cracking a smile.
This time Blanca smiled back.
The Miner’s Bluff police station blended in with the town. From a distance, it looked like any other vacation cottage with its pitched roof, brown paint, and seemingly endless amount of windows. Up close one could tell the building was fortified with its brown brick sides and cameras. Everywhere he looked, Cam saw cameras.
Finishing his first cup of coffee, Cam said, “Oh, I forgot one thing.”
“Why do I feel like I’m not going to like this?”
“That would be because you’re not.”
“What is it?”
“No cameras, no audio recordings, no looking through two way glass, no listening or watching of any kind.”
