A Well-Timed Death (Booker Shield Book 1)

by Karl Bourdiec

  ‘Rob.’ The lad stuttered. Rob was short, not that short, just shorter than Booker. Rob was also short for Robert if that wasn’t clear already. He stuttered a lot and hadn’t grown into his limbs yet, they seemed to fall loose like banana skins by his side.

  Rob’s hair was a mess but seemed elected to be in such a way. He looked useless, which is to say he looked like he would be of no use in his surrounding area. With a haircut like that he might find use as a mop or hair donor for a wig. Wig donors are in short supply.

  ‘Right Rob I said Rob, didn’t I? Did you do that to my car?’ There was an anger in Booker's voice which shut down Rob from the inside out. Blowing out the little candle which kept Rob’s brain ticking over.

  ‘I, I, I.’ Rob's brain shut down first, his mouth kept functioning.

  ‘I, I, I.’ He continued. There was a screech like a bird being hit by a very small plane. It came from Booker.

  ‘Obviously, if you did, this wasn’t your idea. So yous two.’ His head locked onto the two others, one girl whose jaw seemed to be run by a perpetual motion machine, it gated up and down without stopping, popping came between her hollowed teeth as she did.

  ‘So tweedle prick and tweedle pecker, who’s idea was it to put a potato in my exhaust.’ Booker had shut Rob’s jaw now. This had stopped the repeating I’s. His lips trembled a little as if they may start up again at any second, Rob held them closed which puffed them up like deflated balloons.

  The other two just sat there in silence, other than the chewing noise the girl made. Her hair thick with grease, it held her fringe down over her right eye. The boy, who wasn’t repeating a single letter over and over in a muffled fog, said nothing. His hair fighting gravity, spikes of blond jutting out from the top of his forehead.

  ‘One of these things is not like the other.’ Booker commented, which was met with confused looks from the two kids who obviously liked hair product.

  ‘Which of you lot drives.’ Booker said, dropping his arm to allow Rob to speak. He didn’t, nobody did.

  ‘Chanttell. Is that how you spell it?’ Booker read on the girl’s name badge.

  ‘Is that really your name? Chanttell, do you drive?’ He spoke slowly to allow her to understand, he wasn’t sure she was even listening.

  ‘Nor.’ She replied Booker worked out that meant no.

  ‘He duz though.’ She chewed like a cow.

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘Rob Duz.’

  ‘Okay, that’s all I needed to know.’

  ‘Right, Rob.’ Booker repeated, leaving Rob with more questions to ask then were answered, which wasn’t hard being Booker rarely really answered questions.

  Booker stumbled away, repeating Rob's name over and over again, he had a short memory and found repeating things kept them fresh in his mind.

  Rob just stood there in silence, his mouth wide open. The young girl he’d been standing next to pushed it closed for him using a finger. It fell open again.

  There was a pregnant pause. One which felt nine months long for Rob. He hated having to wear a badge, people found out your name if you wore a badge, it was just nicer to tell people your name.

  ‘Hi, I’m Rob.’ Rob said allowed.

  ‘I think that guy broke Rob.’ Chanttell with the stripper name said.

  Seconds later Booker returned, with a storm in his eyes and thrust in his legs he bounded over to the three. Rob’s life flashed before his eyes, this is actually something which does happen to people. It is a way for your mind to find some helpful information it can use before you die. Rob’s mind found something, a memory of the last time somebody came at him at this sort of speed. It was in school, there was a lot of yelling and another person who shared the same name as Rob power walked his way at him, then kicked him in the crown jewels. Great, I’m going to be kicked in the plums again. He thought to himself.

  ‘Rob,’ Booker pointed. Here comes the kick.

  ‘I’m Rob.’ Rob spoke up.

  ‘Rob you’ve been fired.’ There was no kick, no real kick anyway. Being told you’ve been fired is a sort of kick, just a very different one. Booker turned to face him, still pointing. Something took over Rob’s face.

  ‘I’ve been.’ Rob trailed off. The something which tried to take over his face obviously tried to escape out of his eye, it was all wet and made his eyes red.

  ‘Yes, you’ve been fired. Rather a shame your boss said, he liked you, well not liked you, but he didn’t dislike you. To be honest, I had to explain who you were, but after that, he got right on with the firing.’ Booker grinned a soft grin which showed no teeth.

  ‘Why’d he fire me?’ Rob stuttered, he normally stuttered but this was a stutter which cemented what Booker already thought. This kid is a mess.

  ‘You bring root vegetables from home, do you?’ Booker asked.

  ‘No.’ A stutter replied a stutter which seemed to in-body Rob. His foundations shaking, crumbling like an old forgotten building.

  ‘I didn’t think so. I told your boss what had happened with my car. How you stole a potato to pull such a prank, he asked how I knew, I said you were the third wheel, trying to impress this girl. If she’s even human, when these two are obviously doing it over the bins, or whichever unsanitary place they have sex, the manager patted me on the head said how good a detective I was and give me an advance. He also fired you.’ Booker gulped at breaths, he enjoyed detective work when it didn’t include dead people. Unlucky that.

  ‘Makes sense.’ Rob replied he didn’t follow all of it, but what he did follow made sense.

  ‘Good, it’s nice to see we’re on the same page.’ Bookers good became an elongated collection of os.

  ‘Now you’re free you can drive. It’s all worked out well hasn’t it?’ Booker continued. Rob wasn’t sure the best way to answer that so just had to stand there and allow it to happen around him.

  Rob just stood there, waiting, there was an odd silence nobody could fill.

  ‘If you’d go first. I don’t know which car is yours.’ Spoke Booker.

  A small blue blob of a car sat in a space reserved for staff, it was in pretty decent shape and only had rusted around the edges of the metal. The little blue bug bleeped, flashing its lights. Rob seemed to hurry, looking back over and over, watching the store he worked, did work and no longer did work in, it seems to shrink. A soft sigh was barely audible, but Rob knew something was going to go wrong.

  In this time, the two had walked the ten or so feet to Rob's little blue car. Rob got in.

  ‘I’ll let myself in shall I.’ Booker burst, expecting the door to be opened, he was paying this man after all.

  ‘Yeah sorry.’ Rob replied as Booker sat down in the car. Shifting the seat back and forward, comfort wasn’t a thing Booker found with ease. Something clicked as he did so, it sounded like his back.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Proudly asked Booker.

  Rob just nodded and started the car.

  ‘Why me?’ There was a silence which Rob broke over his knee, Rob didn’t look like the kind of guy to actually be able to break anything at all. This included silences.

  ‘Why you what?’ Booker replied with more questioning, he’d shuffled himself around a little until his knees perched on the door mouldings. This looked uncomfortable as his kneecaps pressed onto the little handle on the inside of the door.

  ‘Why did you get me fired, and pull me into this?’ Rob said, not looking at Booker as he was too focused on the road. Rob didn’t know what he was pulled into, to be honest, he knew there was a dead woman in a shop he recently worked in, well she wasn’t there now, he’d saw an ambulance cart her away.

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘I didn’t see that lady die.’ Rob explained, only looking away to change gears.

  ‘No, that’s not what I meant, I meant you were, in that shop. You stood out like you weren’t meant to be there.’ Told Booker, he had his eyes closed, but normally when they were open, Booker was able to spot when things were ev
en slightly out of place, this wasn’t just about coffee cups and curtain, but people as well. Some people are just not where they were supposed to me. A more obsessive man would go around trying to fix that, Booker didn’t care enough.

  ‘Lots of people have jobs they hate, nobody else wanted to be there.’

  ‘Not want, want had nothing to do with it. You looked like you weren’t meant to be there like the world was telling you to leave.’ Booker moved around in his chair a little.

  ‘I don’t...’ Rob started, Booker broke into the conversation, like he broke into anywhere else, with force.

  ‘How many people have died in that shop while you worked there?’

  ‘A few. Maybe. You think I killed that young woman?’ Rob nearly crashed, his car swerved hitting the cat’s eyes and thudding as it did so. He reclaimed control and pulled the car back into the centre line.

  ‘No course not. Just something didn’t like you being there. All the plants in the front were dead, they died around you. Not an insult just a fact.’ Booker gave up on sitting with his legs so high and moved back his legs back down to the floor

  ‘They were dead before I got there.’ Corrected Rob, trying to lie to himself.

  ‘Wrong again, they died because you were going there, very different.’ Booker shuffled again, closing his eyes, he lay his cheek on the raised bit of the car's seat.

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Rob drove on, gently shaking his head. Rob was normally pretty good at grasping ideas pretty early on, this was just one he couldn’t

  ‘And you never will. It’s a left here.’ Booker suggested, he rarely told.

  ‘So, this heart attack?’ Rob struggled to change the subject.

  ‘Not a heart attack.’ Booker corrected. His eyes still closed, his mind still lost inside itself. This is how he thought, removing all distractions from himself, as many as he could control at least. That and he closed his eyes because he got very car sick, and closing his eyes seemed to help, or made it worse. There was no real science to it.

  ‘People don’t just die, there’s always something, I’ve never been given a case where the person just simply died.’ Explained Booker.

  ‘Why would they call you in if they had, surely they only need you when the person died for some unknown reason.’ Rob suggested.

  ‘That makes sense, but I like mine better, it’s catchier.’ Booker had realised it had taken a lot longer to drive to his office than it should have.

  ‘What’s taking so long to get to my office?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know where we were going, I was just driving.’ Rob replied, he had done what he was told, which was to drive Booker places, Booker had never said which places.

  ‘Right, then drive me to my office.’ Directed Booker, sitting back up and opening his eyes to make sure he was going the right way now. This made him feel sick, he wasn’t good with fast moving cars unless he was the one driving them. He claimed it was the confined spaces. An ex-girlfriend of Booker’s said it was because he had control issues and had to be in control of everything. They broke up after that, Booker didn’t know why.

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Over the road from the old town hall.’

  ‘Right.’ Rob turned at the first roundabout he could and headed back into the main part of town.

  ‘When people have heart attacks the blood stays on the inside. Normally.’ Booker had to start correcting himself in case he was wrong about that blood stays on the inside bit.

  ‘She didn’t struggle, there was no violence, but all I can tell you is, it was a murder, plain as day, murder.’ Explaining this very simple idea seemed to fly over people’s heads. It was odd, why would people be okay with somebody dying and not finding out who killed them.

  ‘I guess people just want to pretend nobody would ever be able to kill somebody and not get eaten up by guilt.’ Rob shambled in.

  ‘Huh?’ Booker was taken aback, did this kid have magic mind powers.

  ‘I know when people have heart attacks the blood stays in, so do you, so does everyone I’d guess, but let's face it, people would sometimes just like to pretend nobody could kill someone.’

  ‘You’re onto something there, I think I chose a good sidekick.’ Booker sniffed.

  ‘I’m not your sidekick.’ Rob said, leaving it a few seconds before speaking up. He hated the idea of being a sidekick, sidekicks weren’t their own people, they were owned in a way. Or cheap knockoffs of the original. Nobody talked about superhero sidekicks like they were proper people, they always got hand me down names. Like “something” boy or the kid wonder, they were never another man or this person has their own plot developments. They were always just adopted orphans, looked after by a wealthy bachelor. if that happened in real life that bachelor would have a lot of court cases on his hands.

  ‘Are we lost?’ Ignored Booker, he adjusted his seatbelt to lean forward. Rob lost his train of thought, he’d already lost his train of thought on the train of thought, but now the whole train line was lost.

  ‘Are you listening? I’m not your sidekick.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, not a sidekick, have you gotten us lost.’

  ‘We’re not lost, it’s just a left up here.’ Rob pushed forward in his seat, craning his head to see the road in front of him.

  Being Rob wasn’t looking Booker had taken this as a great time to start searching through the glove compartment on his side of the car.

  Shuffling papers, a pair of sunglasses which had gathered dust, it was never sunny when Rob got into his car, a large can of something, the can was tall and thick and mainly black, small bolts of lightning were etched into the black paint. Booker collapsed back into the seat, as much as he could, and cracked open the can, it hissed a little and spat out a little foam.

  Rob did nothing, there was nothing he could do, he was driving, the seal had been broken, now all he could do was watch Booker Shield sip at his drink. Which Booker did with huge sipping sounds.

  ‘Ew, oh my god what is this?’ Booker was taken aback by the taste he could only describe as battery acid.

  ‘It’s a Shocker, it’s like an energy drink.’ By like Rob meant is, Shocker is an energy drink, like all energy drinks it tasted foul and left the second skin on your tongue you could never scrape off.

  ‘This is fucking gross; how could you drink this?’ Booker spat like a cartoon, his lips cupping his tongue as it made farting noises.

  ‘It perks me up.’

  ‘Do you know what these things are even made of?’ Booker’s voice had become a boom, the little car meant sound didn’t have to travel far, Booker simply ignored this and pretended it did.

  ‘You’re going to say bull semen, aren’t you?’ Rob said, knowingly.

  ‘Bulls semen! Exactly, bull’s semen, how gross.’

  ‘Why did you drink it then?’ Rob pulled at his hand break, he’d made it finally to Booker's office.

  ‘I thought it was a beer.’ Said Booker, unclasping himself from the car seatbelt.

  ‘You coming in?’ he turned to say.

  ‘Who keeps a beer in their car?’

  ‘I’ll be the one asking the questions, thank you very much.’ Without thought Booker held the can in his left hand and tossed it out of the window, sadly the window at this time was closed.

  There was a cascade of off-yellow liquid, it poured down the window and fizzed in Booker's lap.

  ‘What the fuck man.’ Rob shook his hands like all people do when even an ounce of water lands on them, this wasn’t water though, it was thick and sticky and clung to anything it touched. Stinking of piss and sugar. The old car smell was quickly taken over by the sweetness of the drink. Booker rolled around it, he was unsure what to do, rolling towards the car door which was covered in this veil concoction and then rolling away from it in case it touched him. It tasted like acid, Booker couldn’t be sure it wasn’t actually made from it.

  ‘Who keeps whatever that in their car?’

  ‘People who work do
, we drink because we have to not because we want to.’ Rob opened his door and got out, running around the front of his car he popped open the door which Booker quickly fell from, landing on his face, within seconds he’d made it back to his feet and dusted himself off.

  ‘Can we go?’ Booker asked, pointing his way with a flat hand, showing Rob the entrance.

  4

  Booker had a history of being that guy, the guy who is always in the wrong place, always at the wrong time, and two wrongs can only make a right on a handful of occasions. Those are the occasions Booker lived off, they paid his rent and allowed him to eat. Not great meals of course but eating was eating, and more importantly was drinking, in fact, drinking was ten times more important to Booker.

  The few and far between events were what made Booker an incredible detective, if not a stupidly lucky one. You’d be surprised how many scrapes he’d fallen into just by being near a bus stop or being in a queue. More surprising was how many scrapes he’d gotten out of the same way. The man was either the luckiest idiot or the unluckiest genius and no amount of testing was able to separate the fact from the false.

  This is what he explained to Rob as they headed up the stairs to his office. Rob just nodded and listened. It was full of insightful stories and tales of the unexpected. A history of odd happenings and funny one-liners. None of which was recalled by Rob at a later date.

  Booker explained his theory on the sliding scale of luck, and which side of the scale he was on the bottom end. Rob continued to nod and listen, taking all the odd things Booker read as fact in.

  The hallway was a thin vein leading up the middle of the building, how anybody could build something like this baffled Rob, it felt like a fun house. A fun house with terrible decor and in desperate need of updating.

  Then Rob stopped listening, how steep are these stairs, he thought to himself. They either went on forever or Booker stopping didn’t help things.

  Each step had been painted a deep wooden brown, a thin varnish which made the wood stand out, in the centre of each step a pale white patch sat where the varnish had been rubbed away, where the step dipped in. Obviously, these steps had been overused and under cared for, a lick of paint would have fixed them a few years ago, but now they needed to be torn out and replaced. Each ladder dipped in the middle under Rob’s weight, he wasn’t heavyset, nor was he tall. The steps were simply weak, nobody had cared for them for a very long time, Booker didn’t really care if the building fell down around him. As long as it was around him and not on him Booker was completely fine with the damage to his property, maybe even relieved.