Out of the Blue: A Pengram Mystery

by Scarlett Castrilli

“But that’s your problem, not hers,” I said. “She’s expressed what she wants, and that should be respected.”

  “Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “I’ll leave her alone. Hey, do you want me to wash your car since you’re here? You really need a car wash. My treat. Just pull into that spot over there and I’ll have it done real fast.”

  Glancing over to my little fuel-efficient green four-door, I saw that he was right. It was coated in dirt and offerings from birds. I hadn’t noticed how bad it was until now. Usually I took it through the automatic car wash at the gas station near my house, but the last few times the line had been far longer than my patience would last. “You got a deal, Tyler.”

  Once my car was in a stall, I got out and went over to the tables outside the minimart. Brendan set down his phone and moved out a chair for me. “Detective Pengram,” he said in greeting.

  “Try again, Brendan,” I said.

  “Blue,” he corrected. Then he blinked. “You have really vibrant blue eyes.”

  “That’s why my mother named me Bluebonnet,” I said, sitting down. This day had drained me dry, but it was still nice to get a compliment from such an attractive man. He was just as toned now as he had been in that picture on the website from years ago.

  “It had better have been a heartfelt apology,” Brendan said, loudly enough for his son to hear.

  “She accepted it!” Tyler shouted, pulling over a hose.

  Brendan checked to see if I agreed, and then he smiled. “Would you like some fries?”

  There were a few left in the basket. The good smell of them made my hunger suddenly spike. “Thank you.” Dipping one in catsup, I ate it. A yawn overcame me.

  “Long day?”

  “Started at three-thirty and haven’t eaten since yesterday,” I admitted.

  Brendan looked startled. “I didn’t even think . . . you’re working that case, aren’t you? That one we just heard about on the radio, the murdered man at the farm, and that poor girl from the other day . . . the news update mentioned the killer makes mazes . . . Just wait here and I’ll get you something to eat. You can finish those fries.”

  “You don’t have to,” I said, but he was already up and going into the mini-mart.

  I ate the fries like a pig and watched Tyler labor over my car. Traffic flowed by on the road and teens rattled down the sidewalk on skateboards. Everything seemed right with the world, but just a mile away, Rosario was crying for a husband who would never come home.

  Brendan came back out with a laden tray. Setting it down on the table, he unloaded nachos, fries, a chilidog, two sodas and a bottle of water, and three individual bags of chips. “It’s a junk food feast,” he said apologetically.

  “It’s the most delicious junk food feast I’ve ever seen,” I said. “Thank you. How much do I owe you?”

  “Nothing.”

  Too hungry to argue, I attacked the chilidog. Chunks of meat and beans fell everywhere. He reached over to another table and snagged the napkin dispenser.

  “I eat out of a trough at home,” I joked weakly, swallowing hard.

  He didn’t joke back. “It’s okay. I can’t imagine the kind of things you have to see. They aren’t giving out much information, but I have to ask . . . should I be worried?”

  Chances were slim in a city this large that the murderer would happen upon Brendan and Tyler Cavil. “For now, I would stay in at night,” I said. “And don’t accept drinks from strangers.” That Chloe was slipped a roofie in her drink had been released to the press; that it was Quell specifically was held back.

  “Darby has always seemed fairly safe to me,” Brendan said. “Some areas more than others. I don’t usually stay up-to-date with the news, but it seems like this is very unusual.”

  “Most of the murders I deal with here are pretty routine,” I agreed. “Two drunk guys in a knife fight outside a bar, or drive-by killings that are drug related. Domestic conflicts that end badly, too, jilted lovers, that sort of thing. Stranger on stranger, those aren’t nearly as frequent.”

  “I read about the Calderon family.”

  That had been five years ago, a family of four found shot to death in a car parked behind a strip mall. Halloran and I had gotten gray hair from an investigation that went nowhere for months, and never was solved. “That was an ugly case,” I said.

  “You sounded furious in your quotes.”

  I had despised that journalist, who insinuated the murders were drug-related even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence to back up the claim. “I thought it was racist, deplorable, shoddy fluff reporting,” I said. “The journalist saw the surname of the victims and built up a tower of cards around that. He went so far as to say they were in the country illegally when a five-minute investigation on his part would have shown that wasn’t true. My partner and I dug up everything we could find on their lives. Whatever happened to them, I don’t believe it had to do with drugs.”

  And, frustratingly, once the public got it into their heads that drugs and illegal immigrants were involved, they’d stopped caring. The newspaper had had to issue an apology and a retraction for that article, which failed to clean up the damage already done, and I’d gotten reprimanded for speaking to the press without clearing it first. Anger had gotten the better of me at how that dead husband, wife, and teenage children were dragged through the mud for no reason. That same journalist later went on to write a fawning article about a local doctor facing charges in court for child molestation, and trashed the preteen girls’ reputations in the process. One was an eleven-year-old foster child who wore provocative clothing and had a history of sexual abuse. Another was ten but had kissed two boys at school. So clearly this case had shades of gray.

  No. No, it didn’t. Their history was irrelevant, the smears on the girls’ characters disgusting. They were children. After the overwhelming outcry, the terrible article going viral and circling the globe, that journalist didn’t work for the Darby Star anymore. Good riddance.

  “How long have you lived in Darby?” I asked Brendan as Tyler popped open the driver-side door and climbed inside with a vacuum. I’d assumed he was just going to clean the outside, but there was an inch of dust squatting on the dashboard so I did nothing to stop him.

  “Ten years since the divorce. We were living in San Francisco before that,” Brendan said. He waved away my apology for bringing up something painful. “It was amicable. We got married right out of high school. It was a very bad decision on both of our parts.”

  “We all make a few of those.”

  “I don’t know what we were thinking. Everyone tried to talk us out of it, but Abby and I were so pigheaded about making it work that we just ignored the advice. But the divorce was the best thing we ever did. It let us become a little older and wiser versions of the friends we were in junior high. Anyway, you probably didn’t need to hear all of that.”

  “Does Tyler live primarily with you?”

  “Yeah. Abby lives close by in Harris Park, but Darby’s got better schools so we agreed to have him stay with me once he hit seventh grade. I drive him over to Harris Park most weekends. She’s giving him hell over his rude little dating site spree, too.”

  I glanced over to the head bobbing about in my car. “He seems like a good kid.”

  “He is, ninety-seven percent of the time. And then there’s that last three percent when I wonder what species of alien is inhabiting him.”

  Three, I thought, reminded of the mazes. Brendan inspected the remaining food in concern. “Would you like me to get more for you?”

  “No. This is plenty.” I couldn’t help but smile. It was amazing how much a meal made me feel better. The chilidog and nachos long gone, I began to enjoy the fries at a slower pace.

  Tyler whizzed through the car in record time and popped back out. “I hope you weren’t saving that dust for anything because it’s gone now,” he said in good cheer.

  “I write my grocery list in that every week. How dare you,” I said flatly.
<
br />   Brendan laughed. “Do you have kids?”

  “No.”

  He nodded. “I don’t think I could do what you do and have kids.”

  “The hours would make it really difficult, especially being single.”

  “Not just that. If I saw what you saw day in and day out, I’d be too paranoid to let him leave the house. There really is something to the saying that ignorance is bliss.” He caught a napkin as the breeze threatened to sweep it off the table.

  Tyler gave one last rub to my hood with a rag. “All done.”

  Halloran sent a text asking where I was. Groaning, I stood up. “Duty calls. Are you sure you won’t let me pay for any of this?”

  “I am very sure of that,” Brendan said.

  “Then thank you for everything, both of you. I need to get back to work.”

  “Do you have cats?” Tyler asked as he chucked the rag in a can.

  “No, I don’t,” I said.

  “Do you like them?”

  “I love cats. Why?”

  “Dad found three abandoned kittens in the dumpster at his work two weeks ago. Someone threw them away so he brought them home. We’ve had to feed them from bottles and everything because they’re so young. You could come over and see them. They’re really funny when they play. My mom might take one when they’re bigger and we’re keeping the other two.”

  “I think Blue is pretty busy right now,” Brendan said. A twinkle in his eye, he added to me, “But you have to eat. You’re welcome for dinner with Tyler and me any day that fits into your schedule. Something better than junk food.”

  “I’d like that,” I said, feeling my heart skip a beat.

  Halloran sent another text. Dammit, Jake, I thought. Why did it have to be right this second? I wanted to enjoy this a little bit longer.

  “It was good to meet you,” Brendan said. We walked to the car and he opened the door for me. I got in and he closed it. Taking the bags of chips I hadn’t eaten, he tucked them into the pocket behind my seat. Then I waved to them and drove out of the stall.

  Three.

  I called Halloran. “I’m heading for the station, Jake. I want to watch the crime scene videos. There’s something about those mazes that’s bugging me.”

  “Meet you there,” he said, and I took one last glance at Brendan in the mirror before turning onto the road.

  Chapter Ten

  “Horrible, isn’t it?”

  He stared at the woman on the other side of the counter. Dyed red hair caught in butterfly clips, seven tan and one charcoal. Eyes so disturbingly yellowish-brown they had to be colored contacts. Fake breasts strained proudly at the buttons of her skimpy pink blouse. Her lips and cheeks were plumped with fillers; her forehead was as smooth as a statue’s; and her teeth were blindingly white and even. In the mirror behind her, he could see a reflection of clinging, low-cut jeans and platform sandals.

  Disgust filled him. She was fifty trying to be twenty, and plain despite all of her efforts to be beautiful. Chewing a bulbous purple wad of gum, she rang up his copies of the newspapers and stared at the headline articles on each one. “Just horrible.”

  The key still hadn’t come, and infection was setting in. His dick was on fire, the pain making it hard to concentrate on keeping up his end of a conversation he had no interest in having.

  “Just horrible,” he echoed at last, pulling down his lips in a grimace. Her unbalanced clips in their haphazard positions irritated him beyond belief. It was like she’d done her hair in the dark, or in the light but gathered it unevenly on purpose to look young and cutesy.

  If it’s good enough to do, it’s good enough to do well!

  The phone on the counter rang. Holding up a red-nailed finger to excuse herself, she answered it and stopped ringing him up. He let the grimace fade, although his irritation with her was only growing. He shouldn’t have to stand here waiting around.

  It had taken him time as a child to learn how to approximate facial expressions. Standing at the mirror in the bathroom, he practiced for long hours with cutout pictures of faces from his mother’s magazines.

  This was happy. Lips up.

  This was angry. Lips set.

  This was sad. Lips down.

  This was excited. Lips parted.

  This was nervous. Lips pursed.

  This was sexy. Lips pushed out.

  His face was normally blank, and the blankness made his father angry. What are you, a robot? A robot kid? Then Dad mimicked his face, nothing in the eyes, nothing in the lips, a canvas untouched on his forehead and cheeks.

  But he wasn’t a robot. When his father pulled his pants down and mocked his tiny manhood, he kept his face blank. When he was being beaten, he kept his face blank. That was his power, even at three years old. His father wanted lips pulled down, tears in the eyes, a wail from the throat. Concession. Contrition. For crimes that occurred only in the realm of Dad’s mind. It made Dad crazier and crazier how he could not prize a reaction from his son with slaps and spanks and insults and fists.

  He stayed blank. And silent. Then his mother would rush in to save him and press his face to her chest, screaming at Dad about how he was making her baby cry.

  He wasn’t crying.

  As his father saw a robot before him, his mother saw superimposed expressions over his blank face, so he laughed and angered and wailed in her head. He breathed in her perfume and memorized the pattern on her shirt as he thought about jamming a pencil in her eyes that did not work. She didn’t need them. She could get around with touch and scent and sound, just like the animals did once he was through with them.

  Things that didn’t work belonged in the trash.

  His father went away one day and did not return. His mother pulled her hair and cried over her broken heart, because just as she did not see the blankness on her son’s face, she had mistranslated her husband’s rage as love.

  Fascinating.

  She was fascinating for how she did not work. She changed her name a few times a year, demanding that he call her Peggy or Sunshine or Lana or Suzette or Jaguar now, and getting angry that he did not know this in advance. She changed his name too. He could wake up as Alvin and go to sleep as Zeke, blow out the candles of a cake with happy birthday, Connor written in blue icing and unwrap a Christmas present addressed in pink ink to Vanessa. One time she called him by his real name and then slapped him when he responded, shouting don’t you know you’re Wolfe now? That had been when she was on her Jaguar kick.

  She promised to always take care of him and then vanished for days at a time. Sometimes she announced they were homeless and they would live in a car or with a friend of his mother’s for a week or two. And then she’d say they got the house back and they would go home. She tripped on the stairs yet would not move the books or heaps of clothes; she got ill from bad food yet refused to throw out what was expired in the cabinets. She bemoaned how the house was full to the rafters but went shopping daily for more shit.

  She loved shopping. Discount stores and garage sales and going out of business sales . . . The night before the trash was picked up, she hung canvas bags from her arms and shopped even more in their neighbors’ cans on the curb. Or she would outright steal from yards and open garages. Sometimes she roved as much as two to four miles away from the house, testing doors of businesses to see if they were locked, raiding the donation piles left outside the library. If something happened to be too big for her to carry away, she’d come back for the pick-up and drag him out of bed to help.

  See this? Look what they were throwing away! Oh, you like it, I can tell.

  He didn’t like the little baby dolls, naked and stained with their hair chopped off. He didn’t like the broken computer equipment or TVs with shattered screens, or yet another huge entertainment center with splintered sides. He wasn’t going to read the torn and tattered books reeking of cigarette smoke and cat piss. At Christmas she went shopping in the house and backyard, collecting crap and wrapping it up and pretending it was
brand new from the store bought just for him. Look what Santa brought!

  Just once she found an unlocked back door to some tiny antique shop and returned with dolls and vases and knick-knacks she’d swiped from the storeroom. A loaded handgun too, which had been hidden on a high shelf until her wandering hand passed over it. She was spitting mad that someone had called the police after she turned on the lights in the front of the store, sirens interrupting her midnight shopping spree.

  All of it was good for nothing shit. Even the handgun was practically an antique. Sometimes he sneaked outside with some of her shit and returned it to a neighbor’s can to let his mother find it all over again. She never caught on that it was the same old shit. She just crowed in delight and sent him off into the house to bring out the other so she could admire her new matching set. He came back empty-handed, of course, and then she’d get mad at him for not organizing shit he wasn’t allowed to touch. Once she got so upset about it that she smacked him over the head with the ancient cast-iron skillet she had rediscovered, and he woke up on the floor of the kitchen with her asking if he had fallen.

  A did not equal A.

  If A equaled B, it did not necessarily mean that B equaled A.

  That was her brain, a constantly shaking sieve where the grains of logic sifted through.

  He had done well in school, the scant times he’d gone in his elementary and junior high years. But she always pulled him out since public schools were institutions of brainwashing. They would make him a homosexual. They would turn him away from God. They would teach him to be ashamed of his country instead of its proud patriot son. His homeschooling curriculum basically consisted of workbooks and television. Then she would forget about how evil public schools were and send him back for a month or two, telling him to find a pretty little girlfriend like other boys did.

  He didn’t want to find a girlfriend. He was above that. The poems and roses and sighs and angst . . . he watched people turn themselves inside out over love on television and at school, and he felt superior for how he did not crave these things.