Butcher's Knife ~ a Hewitt Fairfax Mystery_a brief retirement

by R. E. Ellis

  Sage. Where was Sage?

  Walking through the trailer park, he noticed many more things than when he drove through it. He saw cats curled up on rickety stoops, tipped over plastic chairs, laundry hanging on a chain-link fence to dry. A couple trailers were boarded up, plywood nailed over the windows and doors. A kid in decades-old, rust-colored Oldsmobile drove slowly by, staring at Fairfax. A thumping bass line trailed after him.

  Before knocking on Katy's door, Fairfax stood on the stoop and looked around at the small fenced area that passed for the trailer's yard. Metal trash can, snow shovel lying flat, a couple of buckets, and, in the corner, a small, two-wheeled bicycle with training wheels. The bike was half-covered in last fall's dead, wet leaves and the tires looked flat. No one had ridden the bike in a while, but it seemed like proof that he hadn't imagined Katy had once having a child. It gave him a chill and a sick feeling deep in his stomach. He didn't know if he had the guts to ask Katy about him. Or possibly her.

  He had to knock several times before Katy finally came to the door. She looked as if she'd been crying.

  "Sorry to bother you," said Fairfax, "but–"

  She gave Fairfax a suspicious look, but then gestured for him to come in. Fairfax did.

  The place seemed colder, sadder and even more squalid than it had the day before. The tiny dog wasn't around, though Fairfax didn't know if he'd spot it even if it was. Katy sank into the room's single easy chair, seeming not to notice the magazines and laundry already in it. Fairfax found his usual place on the couch.

  "Sorry about what happened to Mike," he said. "Have you heard how he's doing?"

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. "His wife's there. Not my place, you know?"

  "Ah, that's right. A married man."

  They were quiet a minute or two. Then Fairfax said, "He gave me a hell of a scare."

  "I guess that was the point." She sighed and rubbed her eyes with her long, manicured fingers. "I didn't mean to have you meet him. You know, collision of worlds. I'm usually more careful. Now he might die and..." Her voice trailed off.

  "Oh, I brought you these." Fairfax handed her a bag of fig scones he'd picked up at Gotcha.

  She took them and poked her nose in, inhaling deeply. "Ah. I love these. Thanks."

  "Aaaand... I have a couple more questions."

  "You never give up, do you?"

  "Depends. I gave up being a cop."

  She gave him a sharp look. "Did you really? Seems like it might be a hard habit to shake."

  "Well, you got me there." He took a deep breath and looked around, looking for any sign of the missing child. Nothing. "I'm sorry if this is hurtful, or too nosy, or whatever, but I can't help but notice your kid's not here. You did have a kid, right?"

  To Fairfax's horror, Katy's face contorted into something terrible to see. Her teeth clenched, her mouth stretched wide, her skin darkened. She made a small animal moan before bursting into sobs.

  Fairfax didn't know where to look. He thought for a minute he should stand up and console her, give her a hug, but he decided against it. He let her cry.

  Between sobs she said, "I still have a kid! I still have Sage!"

  It took a while before she got herself together. She went into the kitchen, washed her face, and came back to Fairfax, where she began to explain.

  It started with the sciatica, she told Fairfax. Such a ridiculous thing for a young woman to get—isn't it an old person's ailment? I can't make it to bingo on account of my sciatica! But she was pregnant. The baby was lodged in such a way that it put pressure on the sciatic nerve, causing awful pain to shoot through her back and down her legs. She could barely walk and was crabby as hell. That's when her husband had the affair. Then he left.

  They had only been married six months, got hitched because of the pregnancy, so it wasn't a huge surprise that it didn't work out. It was a disappointment, for sure, but the baby was a consolation prize. Whatever she went through with Jamie, the fights and betrayals, was worth it because they made Sage.

  Things were fine for a while. Her mother baby-sat while Katy waitressed in a steakhouse. Jamie took Sage every other weekend or so, which Katy was glad of at the time. Then her mother died suddenly of a stroke—she collapsed in a Dunkin Donuts.

  "Can you believe it?" she asked Fairfax.

  He shook his head. "Oh, I've seen some worse places."

  "That's what I mean. It's like the best place. She ate a donut and died, right there, happy."

  In any event, things have a way disintegrating, she told Fairfax. Shit tends to hit the fan, sooner or later. This was just a year or two ago. Because her mom was gone, Katy had to pay a baby-sitter to watch Sage while she was at work. She had to work longer hours to pay for it. Her sciatica came back with a vengeance. Jamie remarried and suddenly wanted joint custody of Sage. She got hooked on pills.

  "Oxy was the only thing that helped my back pain. The only thing! It was a godsend, no joke."

  More shit hit the fan. She got a DUI ("don't even remember it") and now Jamie wanted full custody. Then she got caught doctor shopping—just a few months ago—and while the judge threw the case out, Jamie got full custody with no visitation for Katy.

  Katy began to bawl again.

  "I need to get him back! I'll do anything to get him back! I can't live—I can't live–"

  This time, Fairfax stood up and went to her, letting Katy soak his shoulder with her tears. After a while, she pulled away, wiping her nose with a tissue she pulled from her pocket. When she was done, she shoved it back in.

  "I'm sorry," said Katy. "I think you should go. I don't know why you care about Sage, but it's none of your business."

  "Well, I still have some more–"

  "You know what?" Katy looked at Fairfax, becoming more furious by the second. "If you paid a half-way decent wage I wouldn't have to sell fucking drugs to pay my fucking lawyer to get my kid back. So why don't you get the fuck out of here."

  Fairfax backed away. Then he reached into his coat pocket and took something out. He held it out to Katy. "I think this belongs to you."

  It was the empty bottle of nail polish remover.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Actually, it wasn't the same bottle he'd found in his wastebasket the night of his office fire; Officer Thompson had taken that one away in an evidence bag. Fairfax had to look all through the shelves of the Rite Aid to find the same kind. Luckily, there were only a couple of brands. He'd poured the contents into his kitchen sink before heading for Katy's house. She didn't have to know that, though.

  "So what? So I do my own manicures. I'm saving money." But there was a look in her eye that told Fairfax she knew very well the significance of that empty bottle.

  "You burned the credit card stubs. You were altering the customer checks and adding to the tips they wrote in. Doesn't take much to turn a three into an eight, to slip a zero in somewhere, then you get to pocket this new, bigger tip. People almost never check their receipts against their credit card statements, especially if you choose the right customers. It adds up."

  "You're full of shit," said Katy.

  "I understand why you needed the money. But you were going to get caught sooner or later. In fact, Julio figured it out. Chantal probably told him, right? She would see you messing with the receipts. And that young lady isn't good at keeping a secret."

  "She's a little bitch," said Katy. There was a frantic tone in her voice now.

  "Julio wasn't about to let it go. He was honest to a fault. Is that why Chantal dumped him—because he was going to turn you in? It doesn't really matter. Julio must have confronted you about it instead. He probably wanted to give you a chance to turn yourself in. But—you got angry."

  Katy went into the kitchen and came back with an amber medicine container. She twisted the lid off and poured the contents right into her mouth. Then, before Fairfax could stop her, she reached for a bottle amongst the trash on the table and took a long swig. According to the label, it was vodka.<
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  "Jesus Christ, what are you doing?" shouted Fairfax. He yanked the bottle away from her and threw it behind him.

  "I didn't mean for it to turn out the way it did." She had become strangely calm, almost icy. "I grabbed the knife just to scare him. How was I to know what he was going to do? I needed to protect myself. He said if I didn't make amends he was going to turn me in. Little prick."

  Fairfax took out his phone and began to call 911, for the second time in twenty hours, but Katy lunged at him and knocked it out of his hands. It bounced off a table leg, hard, before falling to the floor. When Fairfax picked it up he saw that the screen was smashed.

  Without stopping to explain, Fairfax ran out the door to get help.

  "I had to knock on six different doors before someone answered," Fairfax told MaryLee. They were at the new place, Daniel's, sitting at a table for two next to the window. Their appetizers had just arrived. "The calamari's kind of soggy, don't you think?"

  MaryLee touched her napkin to her lips. "Mm-hm."

  Fairfax shoveled a load of the soggy calamari into his mouth. When he finished chewing, he said, "When someone finally let me in, it was an old man who thought I was the Schwann's guy with a load of frozen steaks. I ended up dialing 911 from his rotary phone."

  MaryLee's eyebrows shot up. "Those still work?"

  "Apparently. He even had a Yellow Pages, though I think it was pretty old."

  "Wow. Well, getting to the point, is Katy all right?"

  "Let me try some of these greens. Yeah, she's fine. She was unconscious when the ambulance got there, but they pumped her stomach at the hospital."

  "Okay, I didn't need to hear that," said MaryLee. "And Mike Jones?"

  "Still touch and go with him. They transferred him to Syracuse. Ugh, way too garlicky."

  While they waited for their entrees, they watched people walk past the restaurant, some of them stopping to read the menu posted on the door. It was turning out to be a pleasant evening; the air was mild and the light from the setting sun was golden. Beneath the table, Fairfax's ankle found MaryLee's. He let it linger there.

  "Are you seriously playing footsie with me?" she asked.

  "Very seriously."

  She smiled. Fairfax thought it was a very, very pretty smile.

  The waiter arrived and smoothly placed their entrees in front of them. Fairfax had a steak. MaryLee had some sort of vegetarian thing. They began to eat. After a minute or two, Fairfax sighed.

  "Okay, I have to admit. This restaurant is pretty good. Actual competition. I'm going to have to revamp my menu."

  "Once you get the place clean. Tell me," said MaryLee. "Do you ever miss being a cop? Do you miss the excitement—the drama? Would you ever go back?"

  Fairfax took a sip of wine and looked around him. The waitresses were bustling skillfully between the tables, the bus boys were filling their gray tubs with dishes, a muffled, busy clatter came from behind the kitchen doors. The air smelled of fried fish and garlic. It wasn't his restaurant, but he felt at home here.

  "No," said Fairfax. "Not in a million years."

  About the Author

  R. M. Ellis lives and writes in Ithaca, New York.

  She has a passion for crime, both true and fictional, as well as for the occult, animals, solo piano music, and the work of Shirley Jackson.

  She collects Ouija boards and old postcards from insane asylums.