Rob Cornell - Ridley Brone 02 - The Hustle

by Rob Cornell

  I backed out of the bathroom and returned to the living room. I took a deep and shaky breath while my thoughts chased in circles like a terrier after a rabbit. It was the smell of marijuana in the air that brought those thought back into focus. Somehow I had smelled the blood through its haze first. Now that instinct had given way to conscious thought, I could note the woodsy smoke stink, much thicker than when I had first noticed last Friday when I had agreed to take his case. This wasn’t the stale leftovers of an earlier toking. This smelled fresh. Recent.

  I didn’t know how that mattered, but I knew that it did.

  My hands tucked in my armpits to make sure I didn’t accidentally leave a print anywhere, I moved through the apartment looking for any signs of foul play. Because, despite what it looked like, I knew Eddie hadn’t slipped in the tub and cracked his crown. This wasn’t Eddie’s curse.

  This was murder.

  Chapter 23

  I didn’t find anything, not that I could do much of a search without using my hands. When I’d finished, I pulled my sleeve over my hand so I could let myself out the door. I left the door unlocked. In the hall I called Palmer. I explained to him what I found, tweaking the story just a bit by saying I had found the door unlocked.

  “So he slipped in the shower? I appreciate your…is it faith in me? But that’s the kind of thing you dial nine-one-one for.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” I said.

  “That’s not how you made it sound.”

  “Because I only explained what I had found. But what I found and what I know don’t jive.”

  “There will be an investigation. We don’t just toss bodies into the morgue and say ‘Too bad he fell in the shower.’”

  “They’re not going to find anything. Not with the kind of look they’ll give it. Whoever this guy is, he’s been killing off Arndts for years and making it look like an accident every time.”

  I could hear the grumpy in his voice. “Is this how it’s going to be with you? Because I’m looking into early retirement if you keep bringing this crazy shit to my door.”

  “It’s not my crazy shit. I’m just the one most likely to step in it. If Hawthorne had another PI, we could spread the shit between us.”

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “It’s a crime scene. It needs to be processed like one. I even let the water running so your guys would find it exactly as the killer left it.”

  He grunted. “And how does this tie in with your con man?”

  My gut folded into itself. “It doesn’t.”

  But I had assumed that it did. The big, neon gilded fuck up at the center of all this. I had assumed Eddie was getting conned because I was getting conned. Even though I had that brief moment where I thought it could be more than a con, I went back to the default position. I had projected my own problem onto Eddie’s.

  You couldn’t have known, I tried telling myself. The idea of someone stalking and killing all the members of one side of person’s family sounded too ridiculous to be true.

  But it was true. And despite all of Eddie’s warnings and pleas, I had let the killer get his last victim. From what Eddie told me about his family tree, he was the last of the Arndts.

  I paced in the hall while I waited for the cops and techs to show up. Palmer had said he would get them to treat it like a crime scene and we could worry about making it fly with the lieutenant later. This is why, despite his agitated manner, I kept in touch with Palmer. Though I hadn’t exactly earned it, he trusted me—no matter how much I annoyed him.

  When they showed up, a uniformed officer kept me in the hall, taking a statement that I would have to repeat ad nauseam before the night was through. While Palmer had helped mobilize this effort, he was not the detective assigned.

  She introduced herself as Detective Shanks. I had never met her before, which was a serious loss on my part. Her cocoa skin shined. Her full lips looked like they could send me into a warm coma with a single kiss. Beautiful, large brown eyes. She wore a pinstriped pantsuit, usually not one of my favorite looks for a woman, but the tailoring on hers complimented every inch of her body. Not that I ogled her or anything. Not for very long anyway.

  She had her hand out to me and raised an eyebrow when my gaze came back up to her face.

  Flushing around my neck and up my cheeks, I shook her hand and introduced myself. “I’m surprised we haven’t met before.”

  “I’m new to the department. I came up from Detroit vice.”

  “From Detroit to Hawthorne? That’s an odd switch.” Not the least of which was that Hawthorne, even on the south side, did not have many people of color. Not much could claim to be as white bread as Hawthorne, except for Wonder Bread.

  She must have seen in my eyes what was going through my head. She smiled—and it was an amazing smile. “A little bit of culture shock, but everyone’s been very welcoming.”

  It occurred to me that Detective Shanks had filled the gap on the force left by Tom Fortier. Her pleasant manner also suggested she hadn’t been with the department long enough for the others to paint their ugly picture of me for her.

  Enjoy it while it lasts. She’s going to hate you soon enough.

  “Have you been standing this whole time?” she asked with—unbelievable—honest concern. Not even Tom, my friend, had been this nice to me. If the circumstances were different, if I didn’t have a murdered client and an old partner out to wreck my life, I would have asked for her number. Granted, dating witnesses on a case spoke to a conflict of interest, but I was willing to wait until she’d closed this one.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I have strong legs.”

  “We need to find a place to sit.”

  I have strong legs? Did I really just say that?

  She glanced around then tilted her head toward the stairwell. “Thought I saw a couple chairs in the downstairs lobby.” She led the way.

  She went through the regular motions with me, getting my initial story, then peppering me with questions. The whole while, she remained polite, never once treating me like a suspect. I could tell, though, that she didn’t believe there was any foul play. Even as I explained the details of the case, the calls from the killer, the pattern of unnatural deaths on the Arndt side, culminating in the extinction of that side of Eddie’s family.

  She didn’t, however, laugh in my face, which was a nice change from the usual treatment.

  “I know you’re upset about your client,” she said. “But we have to go by the evidence. At least with Eddie, we’ll take the closer look his other relatives didn’t get. But there won’t be much will in the department behind what looks clearly like an accident.”

  “There’ll be even less will when it gets around I’m involved.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I heard about you. You don’t seem at all like the ass-dipped prick they say you are.”

  I laughed. “Ass-dipped prick?”

  “It’s a good one.”

  “I might have to borrow that.”

  Her lips kept their smile as she flipped through her notes on the moleskin pad in her hand. Then she nodded. “I’m going to let you go home now. I have your number, I’ll keep in touch to let you know if we find anything.”

  After we stood, I turned to her. “Thank you, for looking into this. Even if you don’t find anything, I appreciate it.”

  The way she looked at me turned my stomach into a Ferris wheel. I felt like a freshman at his first school dance who had finally worked up the nerve to talk to a girl, right down to the clammy hands.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but hesitated, changing her mind about whatever she meant to say. Instead, she held out her hand again and as we shook, she said, “It goes both ways. You find anything, let me know.”

  Well, shoot. Not even the usual Stay out of this while the real detectives investigate routine. If I didn’t know any better—I suppose I didn’t know any better—I would have thought she had wanted me to continue investigating.

 
; Since I never expected payment from Eddie anyway, I saw no reason to stop.

  The cops will do this.

  I sat in my car outside Shawn’s squat, ranch style copy of every other house on the street. My eyes felt sticky and wanted to glue themselves shut whenever I blinked. My lungs took air, but without any enthusiasm. All I wanted to do was crawl into bed.

  I stared out my window at Shawn’s shadowy porch. Inside he and his wife—maybe kids; Eddie hadn’t said anything about having nephews—sat in there, maybe watching the nightly news, or curled up with a bowl of popcorn and a movie without too many explosions for her; easy on the weepy scenes for him. A happy family. And here I’d come to stomp on it with bad news.

  The cops will do this.

  But did I really want to leave this to the cops? I felt I owed Eddie at least this much for letting my drawn conclusions leave him open to a killer. Besides, I wasn’t only here to notify next of kin.

  I grabbed the sketch of Bobby off the passenger seat and forced myself out of the car. Momentum eventually took over, and I made it to the front porch without falling asleep on my feet.

  The porch light came on, momentarily blinding me as my eyes had grown used to the dark. A woman in her mid-twenties at most answered the door. She wore a Metallica t-shirt and not much else from what I could see. Nice legs. I did some quick calculations in my head and figured Shawn would have to have fathered a child at ten or eleven years old in order for this to be his daughter. Based on the dress code, I ruled out babysitter. Which meant Shawn had robbed a cradle to get hold of his wife.

  “Mrs. Wagner?”

  She looked me up and down as if I were a piece of furniture that might fit well in her living room. “That’s me.”

  “Is your husband home?”

  She shouted over her shoulder, “Shawny.”

  Shawn shuffled into view wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. Guess it was a pajama party. Unlike his scrawny cousin, Shawn could get away with the stripped down look. While he wasn’t a big guy, he spent regular time in a gym based on the hard muscle in his arms and the six-pack abs. He probably ate pizza all the time, too. Guys like that always ate whatever they wanted and stayed buff because of their mega metabolisms. Bastards.

  He stepped up behind his wife looking sleepy and scratching an armpit. “What’s up?”

  “Mr. Wagner, I’m Ridley Brone. I—”

  “The private investigator Eddie hired. He told me about you.”

  Now was the time to ease him into the bad news. But I held off because I also had a chance to get some answers before his cousin’s death made it hard for him to hear the questions. “Did you speak to him today?”

  “He wanted me to come over. Said it had something to do with a con man?” His eyes narrowed and he scratched at the scruff under his chin. “He didn’t give me details, but from the sound of it, you’re a real piece of work.”

  Based on the bored disgust in his voice, I couldn’t in any way interpret his words as a compliment. But I could pretend. “Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  “I told him to stay away from you, but he wouldn’t listen. He said you’re the only one who believed him.”

  Only I hadn’t believed him enough. I shivered, stomped my feet to stay warm. “Can we talk inside?”

  “I don’t have anything to say to you.”

  I glanced at the Mrs. Her head swiveled back and forth between me and Shawn as if watching a tennis match. The spark of amusement in her eyes gave her a hungry look. I found it a bit unnerving.

  Another hard shiver rattled through me. “Please,” I said. “I have something important to show you…and tell you.”

  He curled his arm around his wife’s shoulders. “If you think you can rope me into whatever game you’re playing with Eddie, you can forget it.”

  “He didn’t mention I was working his case pro bono?”

  Shawn scrunched his face. “Pro what?”

  “It means I wasn’t charging him. I have no reason to con him. I don’t need money, and if I did, wouldn’t I have at least asked Eddie for an advance?”

  He shrugged his bare shoulder. “Don’t know what you’re after. Doesn’t mean I care.”

  “But you care about Eddie, right?”

  His eyes looked as though they sank deeper into their sockets. His lips formed a straight line. “Eddie doesn’t always see clearly. What happened to his family messed him up. I stepped in. We became more than friends, more than cousins.”

  His wife nodded gently, a parishioner approving every word of a sermon.

  “Won’t you even lis—”

  “Fuck off. And stay away from my cousin.”

  He slammed the door in my face. I staggered back, stirring snow with my feet. I hadn’t even had the chance to show him the picture…or tell him what had happened to Eddie.

  I knocked again. Upgraded to pounding. Then resorted to a steady and quick rapping with my bare knuckles, the sound like a pissed off woodpecker.

  Shawn finally threw open the door. Behind him, his wife stood on her tiptoes, neck stretched to peer over his shoulder.

  “I’ll call the cops if you don’t get off my porch. Got it?”

  I whipped out the sketch and held it out to him. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Shawn didn’t even glance. “To hell with the cops.” He turned around to his wife. “Get my coat and boots.”

  I’d had enough. I crossed the threshold into their home and put a cold, gloved hand on his shoulder. Shawn spun, fast, and clocked me in the side of the head. I stumbled sideways and bumped into the wall. A dull ache awoke inside my skull. Lucky for me, I dodged the second time he went to hit me. His knuckles put dimples in the dry wall behind where my head used to be.

  “Would you relax a second?”

  His wife bounced on her feet and clapped her hands together at her breast, giggling. Nothing better than reality TV than reality itself. Glad I could entertain her.

  When Shawn swung again, I saw it coming. I sidestepped and deflected the blow with my forearm, then I threw a jab at his face.

  He dodged and came back at me with haymaker to the chest, right at the solar plexus.

  All the air whuffed out of me. I shuffled toward the open door, the wind moaning as it pushed through the entrance. I raised an arm against another strike. He was too fast. He hit too fucking hard. He reminded me of…well…of one of those guys from the fighting championship Eddie had said his cousin came over to watch. I got the impression Shawn was more than a casual spectator to the sport.

  “Hold it,” I shouted. “Would you just listen?”

  Shawn squeezed his fists until the knuckles cracked. “I’d rather fuck you up.”

  “It’s Eddie,” I said. “Eddie’s gone.”

  He drew up short, none of the malice out of his posture and expression, but enough question to temper it for a second. “What do you mean, ‘gone?’”

  “He was…” I didn’t know how much to tell him. Not yet. “It looks like he had an accident. Slipped in the shower.”

  Shawn grabbed my arm, pulled me away from the door, then shut the door before facing off with me again. “Why did you say ‘looks like?’”

  Oops. “I don’t know.”

  Shawn pulled me further into the house and around a short wall that separated the entry way from the living room. Still gripping my arm with terminator fingers, he pointed at the wall with his free hand. A shiny placard about the size of a hardcover book hung where he pointed. I could just make out the engraving on the silvery surface: Regional Champion, Michigan Chapter of Freestyle Fighting.

  “You know what that means?” he asked.

  I tried to pull my arm free. His grasp tightened enough to spark pain from shoulder to elbow. “You’re a tough guy. Noted. Now let go of my fucking arm.”

  He did. The sudden rush of blood re-circulating made my arm tingle.

  “What happened to Eddie?” he asked. “Tell me everything you know.”

  “Fine,” I sa
id. “But you better not touch me again.”

  “Or what?”

  Feeling a little bad ass—which helped the bumps and bruises Shawn had delivered to my ego—I unzipped my coat and pulled away the left side, showing him a glimpse of my holstered gun. “You can say hello to my little friend.”

  “Never seen him.”

  Shawn and I sat at his kitchen table. He stared down at the sketch I had slid across the table to him.

  The potential for bloodletting now passed, the Mrs. had retired to her bedroom.

  “You’re sure?” I asked, though not entirely surprised.

  Shawn leaned closer to the sketch like an archeologist trying to figure the best way to dig up an artifact without breaking it. His gaze scanned up and down the sheet of paper. “I’m sure. I don’t recognize him at all.”

  Which left me back at square one with Bobby and, worse yet, in a whole new ugly world when it came to Eddie. I knew the fact that the Arndts were the ones targeted had some significance, but I couldn’t yet think of what. I had the best surviving source sitting with me, though. “Can you think of anyone who might want to do this to Eddie?”

  “Someone who had stalked him, killing off relatives almost his whole life? No idea.”

  “What about someone you met recently, someone you didn’t know?”

  He gestured toward the sketch. “I already said I’ve never seen him before.”

  “Not him. Someone else, though?”

  He shook his head. Then a light dawned in his eyes. The corners of his mouth turned down. “If this guy is killing Eddie’s family, doesn’t that put me at risk?”

  “So far it looks like the killer has only targeted family on the Arndt side.”

  “So far. But I’m the last relative close to Eddie. Why stop now?”

  Because, I thought, with Eddie dead, the killer had reached his end. Anyone killed now would not contribute to Eddie’s suffering. And it was clear, this guy had wanted to mentally torture Eddie until it was time for Eddie himself to go.

  I drew another piece of paper from my inside coat pocket. I unfolded the paper and put it on top of the sketch. “This is a list Eddie put together of people he thought might have it in for him. Do you know any of them?”