Another One Bites the Dust

by Chris Marie Green

  Amanda Lee added, “Being looked down on is a button he doesn’t like pushed.”

  “His chessboard, his rules . . . his world,” I said. “Nobody disobeys, and if they do . . .”

  Amanda Lee put a hand to her neck. “Off with their heads.”

  All of us let that soak in. Nichelle’s throat had almost suffered similar consequences.

  “What it boils down to,” I said, “is domination. He needs to be successful at it.”

  “His board,” Twyla repeated, softer now, “his rules.”

  “And he came to play.” I floated over to Twyla. “When I escaped from him, he was upset that I didn’t want to play anymore. Just like a boy who didn’t understand why I was taking my ball and going home.”

  “He’s no boy,” Twyla said.

  When we heard a car turn into Amanda Lee’s driveway, Twyla sprang into the air and rushed forward with me right behind her.

  It couldn’t be Tim, but we weren’t about to take that risk.

  A mint Dodge Aspen—the kind of ride my dad would’ve dweebed out over back in the day—cruised past the bank of oleanders where Heidi’s car was hidden. It continued toward Amanda Lee’s door. In the window, an older man wearing a Padres cap brought the car to a stop, then cut the engine.

  “Ruben,” I said to Twyla.

  As he climbed out, he stifled a cough. He was a walking billboard for San Diego, wearing a rumpled blue Chargers shirt and jeans with black sports sneakers. Also, he was shorter than I remembered as he limped toward Amanda Lee, who’d stood from the swing to greet him.

  I hadn’t seen him walk before, so I hadn’t noticed the limp. Had he gotten it during the car accident Amanda Lee had mentioned?

  “Morning,” he said to Amanda Lee when he got to the porch. He’d tucked a clasped folder beneath a muscled yet loose-skinned arm, and he carried a computer pad in his other hand. “Sorry to seem so eager for breakfast.”

  “I’m flattered you rushed over here,” she said, still so chilled out that she was like Amanda Lee on Opposite Day. Seriously, if you put Buddha in her body, this was what you might get.

  But, as laid-back as she was because of the hallucination, Ruben wasn’t even close. He was stone-faced and high-strung as he climbed the steps.

  Amanda Lee caught on quick, and she moved aside, making room for him on the swing as they sat down.

  Twyla hovered next to me. “Bad, bad vibes here.”

  A slight electric rattle in the air hadn’t escaped my notice, either. I think it was coming from the tension that Ruben was putting out.

  He placed the folder in Amanda Lee’s lap. “Copies of my notes. I’m sure there’s more to come.”

  Oh, what I’d give to have hands so I could simply comb through those papers myself.

  The best me and Twyla could do was slide into the slim space behind the porch swing, looking over Amanda Lee’s shoulder.

  But it was like Ruben couldn’t wait for her to read, and in his hurry to talk, he coughed, coning his hand over his mouth and turning aside his head. Then he started up. “We’ve got a real winner here. I talked to a friend in the department downtown to get this information. I was his training officer, and he owed me one because I saved his ass—pardon me—rear end after we cornered a perp while we were on patrol. Armed convenience store robbery. I had a good shot and took the bastard down before he could blow away my boot.”

  When Amanda Lee gave him a curious look, he said, “I mean to say ‘blow away my trainee.’”

  “I see.”

  He tapped the folder. “My buddy came through for me late last night after checking around with other professionals, mainly those in Buffalo Falls, Montana, where Tim grew up.”

  Amanda Lee couldn’t restrain herself anymore, and she shuffled through the papers so fast that they were unreadable to me.

  “Hey,” Twyla said, but I nudged her, my elbow going right through her essence. Still, she got the hint.

  “My God,” Amanda Lee said, dwelling on one particular legal paper with Ruben’s scrawls on it.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Tim Knudson has a sealed juvie record, and it ain’t exactly for stealing candy from the corner shop. He’s been a sociopath ready to make his debut at the bastard ball for years.”

  19

  At Ruben’s pronouncement, I felt like I usually did in Tim’s dreams—nauseated, with the world tilting on its axis and swaying back and forth.

  When the wound on my arm started to pound harder, I pressed my hand against it. Red glowed between my fingers. Was my essence reacting to Ruben’s news? Or was my injury worse than I’d realized?

  Amanda Lee noticed my discomfort and, without attracting Ruben’s attention, she took her phone out of a skirt pocket, placing the device on the arm of the swing. I connected with it, feeding off the charge.

  Unruffled, she said, “Why don’t you give me the short version, Ruben? Why was Tim in juvenile hall?”

  “He set a fire at a neighbor’s house when he was nine, back in Montana. A man a few houses down noticed Tim loitering near a girl’s window on the same block. She was in Tim’s class—a good kid with good grades, one of those angels in braids.” Ruben pushed up the brim of his cap, revealing a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. “She’d made it clear that she didn’t care much for Tim, and he repaid her by setting the trellis outside her room on fire. Her father and some neighbors were able to douse the flames before it did much harm, but Tim was hauled in for it. He told his counselor that the girl was stuck up and she deserved a scare.”

  Amanda Lee hadn’t looked any farther through the folder. “All that because he perceived that she’d jilted him?”

  “Talk about an angry kid, huh? But before you start thinking that he ran around like el diablo all the time, Tim did have male friends he got along with. And some of the girls reportedly thought he was cute. He was caught several times by the jungle gym teaching some of them how to, uh . . .”

  “French kiss?”

  Ruben cleared his throat. “I was going to say ‘get to second base.’ That’s what we called it back in the day.”

  I thought about the red queen in his dream and how she’d given in to Tim’s seduction. Had he always fancied himself a ladies’ man?

  Ruben was talking again. “A few times, Tim was sent to the principal’s office for harassing other girls. He even switched schools, moving from one town to another—three different campuses in two years. His mom, who was single, would pull him out whenever the staff ‘got on his case’ too much.”

  “Enabler,” I said. Based on all the bitching Mama Knudson had been doing in Tim’s dreams, I wasn’t terribly disposed to liking her, anyway.

  Twyla had been drifting to Ruben’s other side this whole time, extremely curious about him. She might’ve even been digging his Padres cap, dying to flip it off his head because it’d be funny.

  I attempted to snap my fingers at her, failing, but she was back into the conversation, anyway.

  Ruben fired up his computer pad, and me and Twyla quickly backed away from him. We didn’t want to accidently suck battery energy from it and tip him off to our presence.

  “I know you’ve seen Tim’s Facebook page,” Ruben said, navigating the device. After a minute, he said, “But here’s a picture from the page of one of his sister’s childhood friends. It took a little digging.” He handed the pad to Amanda Lee.

  Me and Twyla rose to the eaves, pasting ourselves there, twisting and peering down at a photo that Amanda Lee had enlarged.

  The image was old, with Tim as a kid, probably when he was about nine. He wasn’t bad looking, with the same buzz cut, wearing a mini sheriff’s uniform, holding a wide-brimmed hat with a silver star shining on his chest. A gun belt hung from his waist, a holster with a fake revolver at the side of his skinny body, his face freckled, his eyes wide, like he was waiting for the flash to go off. Even back then, I didn’t see much in that gaze of his.

  It had to have been Halloween, because the
little girl next to him was garbed in a fairy princess gown with a crown, diaphanous wings, and a wand. She was way shorter than Tim and, like him, she had light eyes with golden lashes and blond hair, but her smile barely existed, like she didn’t want to be there. Another fairy princess stood next to her, a redhead.

  A woman stood in back of both blond children, her hands on their shoulders, almost like she was keeping the kids firmly in place. She wasn’t wearing a costume, just a cream jacket with a pink silk top underneath, her dark brown hair in a side braid over her shoulder. She was probably in her early thirties and fashionable in a way that told me she was a couple of years behind the curve, but still decently put together.

  Amanda Lee pointed a shapely nail at her. “Mother Knudson. Francesca, right?”

  Ruben nodded.

  Amanda Lee allowed her finger to linger over the woman’s brunette hair, emphasizing the detail to me and Twyla. Then she moved her finger to the young blond fairy princess. “Is this Tim’s sister? I haven’t seen her in his pictures.”

  “Yeah, Francine,” he said. “She’s four years younger. The other princess was her best friend.”

  “What about a father? Tim never mentions him on his social media.”

  Ruben chuffed, and it was partly a cough, which he covered with his hand again. Then he said, “The father, Edvard, was literally out of the picture for years. The mom kicked him out of the house when she was pregnant with Francine.”

  Me and Twyla asked, “Why?” in stereo.

  After Amanda Lee asked the same to Ruben, he said, “He was a well-known ne’er-do-well. Everyone in the neighborhood was aware of how he drank too much at the bars, picking up on women who passed through town. He was a laborer, a handyman, so there were a few house calls involved, too. As you can imagine, there was lots of fighting at home.”

  “So Tim grew up in a household fraught with ugliness.”

  Another nod from Ruben. All I could keep thinking was, “Just like your father!” from Tim’s dreams. And what Ruben said next only hammered that home.

  “Reportedly, Mom would get on Tim’s ass . . . I mean, case all the time because she didn’t want him to follow in his father’s footsteps. But he did. He was caught drinking once by a well-meaning deputy in Buffalo Falls who tried to take Tim under his wing after the dad left home. My local friend had a good chat with him. He said Tim was half drunk when he was brought into juvie, although he started getting real good at hiding it after that.”

  “He was nine at the time?”

  “Yup, but I’ve seen worse, Amanda Lee, and we’re not even close to the end of this story.”

  I chimed in. “Don’t tell me—Tim completed the violent offender triad. Fire starting, and also bedwetting and cruelty to animals.”

  “Ew,” Twyla said.

  Amanda Lee lackadaisically followed through on my comment. “Are there any violently deceased house pets involved with Tim’s background?”

  “Not quite, but in the juvie records, his mother did mention that Tim had a fascination with hunting down squirrels and dissecting them to see what they were made of. She thought his curiosity was normal for a kid, that he might be a burgeoning scientist or something.”

  “Talk about willfully blind.”

  “Loco, I know.”

  “Did he . . .” Amanda Lee fluidly motioned with one of her hands. “This is so indelicate, but we did just mention slain squirrels, so . . . Did he wet the bed at an inappropriate age?”

  Ruben gave her an appraising glance. “You got it. And no wonder he did. His mother was a piece of work, and anyone would probably piss their sheets with her around—” He held up a hand. “Forgive me. I can be blunt.”

  “You go right ahead, Ruben.” Mellow as a sundown—that was our Amanda Lee.

  Ruben seemed to get more comfortable in the swing. “Well, as you saw,” he said, gesturing toward the computer Amanda Lee was still holding, “Tim was an older brother, and when the mother had Francine, she began getting paranoid about her boy.”

  “Because she feared he would become like his dad.”

  “You could say that. You see, the family lived in a small house with only two rooms—one for the mother, one for Tim. And when it came time to move the baby out of Mom’s room, she didn’t want Francine and Tim in the same space, so she figured out a solution. She put him in the only available place with privacy.”

  Me and Twyla looked at each other.

  “The basement,” I said, images of Tim’s first dream hitting me. A furnace. A window. A TV for his entertainment.

  He’d literally been kept in a damned basement.

  Amanda Lee had heard me, and when Ruben started telling her more about Tim’s living conditions—which were no surprise to us—I felt ill again.

  Why had I left Amanda Lee’s phone on that swing? It might’ve helped me feel better. Also, my arm was thudding red again. I really needed juice.

  As we continued hanging upside down from the eaves, Twyla leaned over to whisper, “Have a snack.” She pointed to an outlet in the stucco wall, and even though it was on the other side of the porch, I didn’t have much of a choice but to relocate.

  Yet I could still hear the discussion as clear as day over here, as Ruben continued.

  “The mother was afraid Tim would be inappropriate with Francine in a room of their own, so she kept them separated in what I suppose she thought was a better way. After Tim was taken into juvie and counseled, everyone could tell how bitter he was about being banished to the basement. There was a lot of anger toward his mom because of that and also because he blamed her for throwing out his father. Overall, Francesca Knudson is a control freak, and Tim resented having to obey her. He got away from her as soon as he could.”

  “How?” Amanda Lee asked.

  “I did a little research of my own to find out that, on the day he graduated from high school, he drove down to San Diego, kept his nose clean, and even tried to go to community college. He dropped out, which is understandable since he can’t hold down jobs, either.”

  Hey, I’d been on and off with my own college career, too. What of it? Then again, I wasn’t exactly a raging-temper freakazoid like Tim, so I let it go.

  “You research quickly, Ruben,” Amanda Lee said with a smile.

  “Social media is a gold mine for a PI.” He grinned. “Tim likes to share, and I filled in the blanks he left with information you already told me and with public records.”

  “You’d think a person like him would want to be more private.”

  “He doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with him. And, I hate to say it, but we live in a world where people share what they just had for lunch. Who holds back anymore?”

  Amanda Lee accepted that. “And what about Tim’s mother?”

  “She’s living with Francine and her family in Buffalo Falls.”

  “Francine sounds like a mother’s girl.”

  “By all accounts she is, and Tim’s the bad egg.” Ruben pointed to the folder that was still on Amanda Lee’s lap. “But it seems he’s made an effort to be good in some respects. It could be to win his mom’s approval.”

  Oh, how Tim probably hated his need to do that, I thought. And, unfortunately, he took out his frustrations because of it on the female symbols in his dreams . . . and Nichelle this morning.

  Ruben said, “I found out that Tim has applied for the sheriff’s office over the years, as well as the SDPD.”

  “An attempt to shine up his reputation? Or is he merely a police junkie?” Amanda Lee asked.

  “Could be either. He had no shot, though, so he ended up in jobs that he probably considers below his aptitude. This isn’t for you to broadcast, Amanda Lee, but I made a call to his supervisor at work, pretending to be a landlord doing a reference check. His boss isn’t allowed to give out detailed information, but reading between the lines, I got the feeling Tim’s on shaky ground at the warehouse, and it might not be long until he doesn’t have a job anymore. Again.”

/>   “A stressor,” I said to myself from the other side of the porch.

  Both Twyla and Amanda Lee gave me quizzical looks but didn’t pursue it. I’d have to explain later, because I’d already gone on to my next thought—Ruben had mentioned something I should’ve been looking for in Tim’s dreams: a grandiose attitude, which was a marker of an inadequate personality. I wondered if Tim did wield one at work, if he showed everyone he was too good for his menial job. Hell, I already knew he had a seed of the grandiose in him—not everyone sees themselves as a chess king.

  Ruben retrieved his computer pad from Amanda Lee and shut it down. “He’s had short, tempestuous relationships in the past, according to a couple friends I was able to contact off Facebook. It seems Nichelle was the lucky one who got him just at the right point, while he neared the end of his fuse.”

  “It’s a good thing she’s getting out while she can.”

  “Relationships like this never turn out well. And if she is tempted to go back to him, just have her read about Dominique Dunne. She was an actress from the eighties who had this type of boyfriend, and he ended up strangling her in front of her own home.”

  That’s right, I remembered that. She was in Poltergeist, and she’d seemed too together to be in this type of relationship. Even Twyla must’ve recalled her, because both her Robert Smith side and Cyndi Lauper side were slit-eyed and serious. She looked at me, clenching her jaw.

  But, at that moment, the door opened, and we ghosts shifted at the sight of Heidi sticking her head out.

  A long brown ponytail flapped over her sweatshirted shoulder as she checked out Ruben. “I thought I heard a man out here, but I knew it wouldn’t be Tim.”

  “No, dear,” Amanda Lee said. “This is Ruben Diaz, the PI I was telling you about.”

  Heidi came outside. She wasn’t a big girl—in fact, her baggy gray sweatshirt swallowed her up—but she walked with the confidence of a giant this morning. I would’ve, too, if someone had gone after Suze like Tim had with Nichelle. I would’ve been ready to beat anyone down.

  She shook hands with Ruben, who’d stood up, proving to be not much taller than she was.