A Killing Night

by Jonathon King

  “So tell me about the photo.”

  “Oh, yeah. OK,” he said, wiping relish off his chin. “Sorry, had other things on my mind.” He finished chewing, took a gulp of coffee, exhaled and looked across the street like he was seeing it.

  “I took the third seat from the end of the bar, figuring, like you said, he liked the last seat and I didn’t want to crowd him if he showed. I was a couple of beers into it when some woman sat down on my left. Not my type and besides she was taking up the trap so I belched once, trying to dissuade her.

  “She asked a question about the game that was up on the tube, trying to be friendly, so I asked her if she ever heard the joke that goes: ‘What did one tampon say to the other when they met on the street?’”

  “Did she wait for the answer?” I said.

  “No. She got up and left,” O’Shea said. “Then about eleven the guy in the picture comes in and sits at the end. I can tell there’s something up between him and the blonde bartender. She ignores him at first and he just sits there, same look on his face, passive, not a bit bothered. I’m checking him in the mirror and he’s playing the same game, watching me. Guy’s got cop all over him. Tight haircut, like old Sergeant Rixson used to push on us.

  “He’s got that smell of talcum like we all did in the days after we had to wear the Kevlar every night. Get so goddamn sweaty you had to powder up even after you showered at the end of the shift.”

  “What about him and the bartender? Did they talk?” I asked, maybe a little too suddenly.

  “You didn’t say you were looking for a cop, Max,” O’Shea said, putting both elbows on the table and bringing his coffee cup up with both hands.

  “No, I didn’t,” I said. I wasn’t going to offer that I hadn’t known I was looking for a cop until Richards ID’ed the photo two hours ago. “Did they talk?”

  He sipped and made me wait.

  “She finally came down and put a Rolling Rock in front of him without being asked and they looked at each other for a couple of seconds longer than a barmaid and just a regular would. Now mind you, she’d been pretty friendly before he got there, worked the bar nice.”

  “Thanks, O’Shea. I know you’re an expert in that area, but did they talk?”

  “Not a word with me sittin’ there but there was a hell of a lot being said, if that’s what you’re asking. They knew each other. She might be dealing for him from the bar. Might be something else. My take was he’s trying to be contrite about pissing her off about something and she’s making a plan that he ain’t got a clue about.”

  O’Shea had been a good cop. He knew something about reading people. But he’d yet to prove himself a psychic.

  “You picked all this up through their body language, Colin?”

  “Some of it, yeah,” he said. “The girl walks down to the other end and I say to the guy ‘Nice ass on that one, eh?’ and he looks at me like I just insulted his mother.”

  “And of course you let it go.”

  “Sure. I say: ‘Well excuse me, pal, but if your name ain’t on it, every paying customer in the place has the right to at least look.’”

  “And?”

  “Guy’s got an eye, Max. Kind you see on the street that makes you want to take the baton out of your belt loop just for safety sake.”

  “He say anything?”

  “No. But it was in his throat, twitchin’. I could see it there so I backed off, bought him a beer and made like I was calling someone on the picture phone. When the girl brought him the Rock, I snapped that shot of him,” O’Shea said, obviously proud of himself. “That’s when he got up and walked out through the back hallway. Left the beer and his money untouched.”

  O’Shea said he stayed in the bar and hadn’t tried to tail the guy. I started to react but held myself; he was right, if the guy was a cop and made him as a tail it might have scared him off completely. O’Shea said he stayed put and waited for the bartender to close up and watched her get into her own car, just like I had the other night. When he got home to his apartment, two Broward sheriff’s officers were waiting for him. He called Billy, sent the photo over the phone and went to jail.

  When we got back into the car I asked where I could drop him and he asked me to go east. We got over the intracoastal bridge and he motioned me to pull over next to the Holiday Inn.

  “You got a room?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said, getting out at the curb. “I’ll keep in touch.”

  I watched his back while he walked away. I knew the Parrot Lounge was just around the corner and I would have bet a paycheck that’s where he was headed. Irish whiskey, straight up, and I’m not sure I could blame him after the night he’d had.

  CHAPTER 23

  He’d pushed the patrol car up to eighty on the freeway and blown through the toll plaza to Alligator Alley, and hadn’t said a word since he’d slapped her.

  She didn’t know where the hell he was going, but she did know that if she pushed it the wrong way it was only going to make it worse. They’d done this dark stretch of straight road before at night. She remembered the turnoff that he’d taken, up a hard-scrabbled path that was barely a road at all and ended up in some kind of woods he called a hammock.

  They’d done some necking and then screwed in the backseat of the squad car. She’d thought it was actually pretty cool at the time. When they were getting dressed she clicked on the switch for the swirling blue lights and it made him yell at her at first and then he’d smiled that goddamn smile.

  “You are a pistol, girl.”

  He wasn’t smiling now and she knew she didn’t have a choice.

  “Come on, Kyle. What’re we doing?”

  Nothing.

  She was using a soft voice and brushed the hair off her face.

  “Look, I’m sorry. Really. I just get tired sometimes and, you know, I say stuff I don’t really mean.”

  He was still quiet, but in the dim light from the dash she could see that his jaw was loosening, the marbles of muscle settling. At this point she didn’t trust what the hell he might do. She’d witnessed that anger and speed when he’d done it to others and now it was on her and she didn’t know how far he might take it. And Jesus, look where they were now, way the hell out here where nobody was going to hear her scream and no way was she going to jump out and run if he ever slowed the hell down or stopped.

  She’d been out here during the daytime when they’d taken a drive to Naples on the west coast of the state. The sawgrass and open land went on like a damn meadow for miles and miles and she knew enough about the Everglades to know that most of it was hip deep in water.

  But she’d also had plenty of practice getting pissed-off men to calm down. When you’re in the bar you use what you’ve got. Sometimes it’s a free drink. Sometimes a smile. Sometimes a promise of something to come later. It was a small price to pay.

  “Come on, baby. I wasn’t trying to order you around,” she said. “I was just thinking about going home and relaxing and being with you instead of driving.”

  Christ, she thought. Just like her father when he’d start crying about mom and saying how it wasn’t worth carrying on and where was the Lord when you were the one in need, and she’d sit down on the floor in front of his chair and take his big thick hands in hers and tell him how strong he’d always been and how much she loved him and as long as they were together they’d be a family and everything would be all right.

  She hadn’t believed any of those words, either. But it got both of them through. It was the same thing, she told herself now while she forced back the bile that came up while she was apologizing for nothing. But this time she was scared and only trying to get herself through.

  “Kyle. Come on, baby. I can’t stand it when you ignore me. It makes me feel alone and you know I need you to talk with me.”

  She straightened up in her seat and squared her shoulders against the seat back, still watching his face, watching that right hand on the wheel, waiting for him to slap her a
gain.

  He cocked his head and tightened his lips and she reached out, slowly, thinking she’d try to touch him.

  “You don’t know how close you come, Marci,” he said.

  Yes, she did, she thought.

  “You know I try to give you everything I can. And then you turn on me like that and how the fuck do you think that makes me feel?”

  You’re insane, she thought.

  “I know, baby. I know and I’m sorry,” she said.

  He was easing off the speed and she thought that was good. They’d already passed the few cars and a tractor-trailer that had probably gone through the toll before them and now there weren’t any taillights out ahead of them. Across the divided highway she saw some headlights going east, but only a couple of pairs. She reached out farther and touched his thigh and forced herself not to flinch when she felt the muscle in his leg quiver.

  “I really am sorry, Kyle.”

  This time he turned his head and looked at her. The expression on his face said “you poor pitiful little girl” and she absorbed it and bit the side of her lip and swallowed it and let him repeat himself: “You don’t know how close you come sometimes.”

  He slowed nearly to a stop and then pulled onto what felt like that same dirt road and now they were moving into the trees and into the dark. When they came to a stop, she let him kiss her. She got out of the car with him and looked up at a smear of stars and thought “Where’s my goddamn fairy godmother when I need her?” and then she let him undress her and said she was sorry again, but this time she was apologizing to herself.

  She heard the leather of the gun belt creak and then drop to the ground. He pushed himself against her and she let him take her on the back bumper. She picked a spot out in the darkness and focused on it, watched it, wished she was in it. Was this her fault? she thought. Did I do this to myself again?

  When he was finished he backed off and she started to relax. She could take this. She could get through this, she thought.

  But then he held her by the shoulders and turned her and pushed her chest down on the trunk of the car and she let him take her again. She closed her eyes and silently vowed: Last Time.

  On the ride back home he sipped at the flask and actually asked her if she had liked the movie. She forced herself to say yes, especially the part when the SWAT team came in and cleared out the room of foreign terrorists without firing a shot. He’d just nodded. She tried to concentrate on the moon and remembered a storybook from when she was a child about a boy with a purple crayon and how the moon walked with him.

  When they got a block from her apartment he parked and got out and opened the door for her. She stepped out and then stood facing him, looking into his face, her eyes as dry as parchment.

  “I gotta go. I’ll call you,” he said, and she nodded and he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

  She watched him get back into the car and pull out onto the street and she stayed still until the red glow of the taillights disappeared around the corner. And then she turned and threw up into the gutter over and over and over until her throat was raw.

  CHAPTER 24

  I walked into the bar late afternoon and the darkness and the odor of stale beer and a subtle hint of mildew stopped me. I took two steps in and waited until my eyes adjusted, pupils spiraling down from the brilliance of the sun outside.

  There were three humped backs at the bar, men with their shoulders turned in as though the light that came through the door was a cold wind. There was a blonde head moving beyond them. Her hair was pulled back tight. Marci, working the day shift just as Laurie had told me over the phone. The manager had offered quickly that the girl had just asked to switch her shifts and get off the eight-to- two for a few weeks. Laurie became even more suspicious when I said I needed to talk with the girl and would rather do it in private.

  “She came in with the strangest look. Said there was nothing wrong but I knew there was. Is she in some kind of trouble with the police?”

  I told her again that I wasn’t a cop and that I was only a consultant when detective Richards and I had met with her.

  “But you didn’t say that then, did you?” she reminded me.

  I apologized for leading her on.

  “It’s OK,” she said, brightly, like she meant it. “You get used to liars in this business.”

  I let the dig sit.

  “So can I talk with Marci?” I asked.

  “You don’t need my permission. She’s on four-to-eight all this week.”

  I made my way down the bar and took the end seat on purpose. I had called Richards the same day I’d given her the picture. I knew she would look up his name. Pissed as she was, she was too good a cop to turn away from it. What I was surprised at was that she gave me the rundown. Maybe it was in the form of an apology, maybe she was intrigued. It was hard to read her over the phone.

  Kyle Morrison. Three years on the Fort Lauderdale Department. Came in from a small department in North Florida. Since he’d been here there were a handful of complaints in his file. Most of them gripes from arrestees about use of force, but not one that had stuck. Like most metropolitan departments, Fort Lauderdale had a strong union. They dealt with most complaints internally and even if they did think Morrison was heavy-handed, there wasn’t much they would do unless he knocked around someone prominent and it went public. He was assigned to a night prowl car shift in the Victoria Park area. The only odd thing Richards said she noticed was that despite his experience Morrison had never taken the sergeant’s exam. He seemed to be satisfied with what he had, which does not always endear you to the powers that be. Supervisors are wary of those who don’t aspire to management like they did. It makes them second-guess themselves.

  I complimented Richards on her thoroughness and her sources.

  “I’m sorry for this morning, Freeman,” she’d said and hung up.

  Marci looked twice at me when I sat down and then she reached into the cooler. She brought out a Rolling Rock and pried the cap off.

  “Hi,” she said when she put the bottle in front of me and then stood back, waiting.

  “How you doing?” I said, my tone conversational.

  She stared at my face a couple of moments too long. Her eyes had a color like rainwater on a concrete slab and had about the same amount of emotion in them. She looked older than the last time, and not just by days.

  “You on the job?” she said, like an accusation.

  I took a sip of beer and couldn’t hold her look.

  “Used to be. Now I’m working as a private investigator,” I said.

  The other men at the bar were too far down the rail to hear me. I had the feeling it was as intimate a setting as I was going to get with her.

  “But you were with that cop the other day, the woman with the hair?”

  “Yeah. She’s looking into a case that I was trying to help her with.”

  “What kind of case?” she said, all subtlety gone from her voice. I had the feeling she’d given up on subtlety.

  “The disappearance of some women,” I said. “Women who were all bartenders.”

  She actually stepped back, though I was sure she was aware of it.

  “From here?”

  “One from here,” I said. “The others from a couple of places in the area that are pretty much like this. Small bars. Relatively quiet. Regular customers.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “No one has been able to find out,” I said. “They never turned up. They just vanished. No notes. No argument with family. No damage to their apartments. It was almost like they went out on a date and never came back.”

  When I said it I watched her face. I thought she was looking at the mirror on the wall behind me but I could see a paleness spread down her face like the blood was sliding down out of her cheeks, leaking somewhere below her throat. She stumbled like she’d suddenly fallen off a pair of high heels and I came off the stool and reached out for her.

  She put u
p her palm.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, regained her balance and then turned and poured herself a shot of brandy from the back of the bar. When she tossed it back one of the boys down the way picked up on the movement and raised his tumbler of dark liquid.

  “Cheers,” he croaked in a raspy voice, downed the drink and went back to studying the wood grain on the bar top.

  I waited for a hint of color to come back into her skin but I wasn’t going to waste my advantage.

  “You know a guy named Morrison, Marci? A Kyle Morrison?”

  “Yeah,” she said and I could see a flicker of fear in her eyes. “Why? Does he have anything to do with this?”

  “It’s possible,” I said, using the fear. “How well do you know him?”

  Now she was looking down into her empty shot glass.

  “Maybe not as well as I should, huh?”

  She motioned for me to take a stool down around the corner of the bar, behind the electronic poker machine, and we talked for an hour, breaking on occasion so she could tend to the others when they tapped their glasses on the African mahogany. At first she just listened while I described the cases that Richards thought were more than just disappearances. I gave her the details about the girls, all from places far away with no local family connections and not a lot of close friends outside the bar business. They had all lived alone. They were all single. She waited until I’d given as much detail as I was going to give and then she poured herself another brandy.

  She hadn’t known any of the women. She had heard some of the other bartenders gossiping, but hadn’t given it much thought. Trading in rumor was all part of the business.

  “So, you don’t know if any of them was raped?” she asked, the question coming far too quickly.