by Mike Knowles
Running from the Dead
A Crime Novel
Mike Knowles
Contents
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
About the Author
Copyright
Dedication
For Andrea.
It could be for no one else.
1
Jones noticed the blood on his sleeve when he reached for his wallet. For a second, he thought the barista had noticed it too, but the look she gave him was too brief for shock. She sidestepped the length of the counter and pierced a Danish with a cheap pair of tongs while Jones turned his body to conceal the evidence he had missed. The young woman left the bagged pastry in front of the well-dressed man who had been standing ahead of Jones in line and reused the same parting words Jones had heard her use with the previous two customers.
Jones had initially pegged the barista’s age at twenty, but up close he was less sure. The toque and pigtails had influenced his initial hunch, but the tattoos climbing her right arm changed his mind. A winding branch populated with colourful birds started at the wrist and continued under the sleeve of her t-shirt. The quality of the work varied, and Jones could tell there was a degree of trial and error until one final artist completed the bulk of the work. There was something tough and not at all twenty about her.
“What can I get you?”
Jones had already looked at the menu board while he waited out of the range of the well-dressed man’s cologne. His regular was listed and so was his backup; the presence of both meant the coffee shop was good. Jones had never set foot in Brew before. He had only found the place after a minor fender-bender caused a massive traffic jam on Queen Street East. The red taillights stared Jones in the eye and refused to blink first. When Jones did, his mind was waiting. The split-second of empty thought was all the opening his brain needed to start rolling. His thoughts picked up faster than the cars on the road around him and Jones knew where they were headed. He searched hard for a distraction, any distraction, that would put the brakes on his mind. Jones found what he was looking for buried back from the road on a quiet looking side street. A U-turn and few right turns got him a closer look at the busy café, and at the vacant parking space far from the crawling traffic on the main road.
“Cortado.”
The barista nodded and turned her back to Jones. She stepped to the espresso machine and let her hands simultaneously reach for a container of beans and a cup. When she spoke, it was over her shoulder.
“You want it for here, or to go?”
He should have asked for it to go, but to go implied a destination and Jones was not ready to go anywhere.
The barista tamped the coffee and started the drip before she turned to ring Jones up. When his change was in his palm, he dropped the coins in the coffee mug that had been stationed next to the register and heard the money clink against the other tips. The sound produced a nod of appreciation from the barista and she said, “Thanks,” just loud enough to be heard over the noise of the espresso machine.
It was just after six, and there was a steady choral hum in the busy coffee shop fueled by the conversations taking place at most of the tables. Jones stepped left and glanced around the room; people were either focused on their companions or their phones—no one was looking at him.
The slap of metal against granite pulled Jones’ eyes toward the barista, who began adding steamed milk to his coffee. The waitress turned faster than anyone with a hot drink in their hands should have and set his order in front of him. Jones paused and stared at the coffee. The drink had all the qualities that he had expected; it was the cup that threw him. The barista had made the cortado in a cheap juice glass instead of a mug. Jones glanced toward the woman to see if she was going to offer an explanation, but she had already side-stepped toward the register and the next customer.
The glass was uncomfortably hot and it made the journey to the corner table feel longer than the few seconds it took to cross the floor. The table had just been vacated and Jones had noticed a few people debating a seat change as he approached it. Jones put the drink down and gave his fingers a small shake as he shrugged off his coat and took his seat against the exposed brick wall. The coffee shop had been filled with eclectic pieces of furniture and antique bric-a-brac to give it a sense of history. The décor felt forced; the wall was the real deal. The bricks lacked uniformity and the mortar in-between displayed long fractures. Jones was sure that he could have picked chunks of the aged concrete away with his fingernails if he tried.
The table afforded Jones with a view of the entire room and the door. There was only one table separating him from the entrance and it was occupied by a woman waiting for her companion to return to the jacket left draped over the backrest of her chair. The short window of solitude left her unable to resist the impulse to pick at the cement. Jones watched a shiny blue fingernail probe the cracks the way a bird uses its beak to probe the dirt for worms. She eased the sliver of mortar free and spent a few moments looking at it before she suddenly dropped it so that she could inspect her nails. She suddenly had no further interest in the wall or the piece of concrete next to her cup.
Jones braved a tentative sip of the coffee and found the heat of the misappropriated juice glass manageable, but the coffee still too hot to drink. He let his fingers loosely linger on the glass and felt the warmth diffuse into his palm. He liked the feeling almost as much as he liked the taste of coffee. He swung his focus from one physical sensation to the next, as though they were monkey bars that allowed him to stay above the feelings lurking beneath. He had no emotions for what he had done—this was not the first time he had killed a man, but it was the first time he had done it at home. There were different rules about murder on the other side of the world: there, it earned you a medal; here, it was more complicated. The dead were victims even when they weren’t.
Jones felt his focus turning inward and he began searching for another diversion. Jones watched the woman at the next table take another sip from her glass. Her sips were frequent and she paired the wine with glances around the room. The last look caught the eye of the barista. There was a nod from behind the counter and Jones pegged the woman as a regular. A mane of dyed blonde hair resisted the impulse to move as the woman tilted her head to drain the last of the wine in her glass. Jones glanced at the counter and saw the barista rise from a crouch with a bottle in her hand. She removed a stainless steel stopper a fraction of a second before a dull tone announced the bottle had made contact with the counter. The blonde rose from her seat to get the bottle, as though beckoned by the sound, and slipped past a man waiting in line. Judging from the am
ount of contact and the dirty look from the guy in line, the blonde had either misjudged the space or the width of her hips; either way, she didn’t apologize.
“Thanks, hon.”
“No problem, Diane.”
Diane’s status as a regular allowed her the perk of refilling her own drink, and when she turned to make her way back to the table, Jones saw that the wine was flirting with the lip of the glass. She paused before taking her seat to again look around the room, and Jones noticed that Diane was a pleasant looking woman made less attractive by her efforts to emphasize her sexuality. Her clothes were just a bit too tight and her make-up just a bit too loud. The overall effect held Jones’ gaze longer than he had planned, and he realized too late that the cosmetic decisions had been a trap. Diane sensed his attention and she turned her head in his direction. Jones shifted his glancing eyes back to his drink and lifted the glass to his lips. He heard the tinkle of the wine glass touching the tabletop, but he didn’t hear the chair move. He glanced toward the other table and found eyes looking back at his. Jones met Diane’s stare, and she responded with a tiny smile and a slow shift of her shoulders that lifted her chest and elongated her torso. Jones didn’t respond to the subtle carnal introduction; instead, he took another sip of his cortado and then fished out his phone.
Jones heard Diane’s chair scrape over the uneven pre-war floorboard before making a final bark as she jerked it toward the table. Even though the coast was clear, Jones didn’t lift his head again; his eyes drifted from his phone to his sleeve and again the spot of blood he had missed. The blood that had been red inside the veins of Kevin McGregor was now black on his sleeve. Jones lifted his arm and rotated it back and forth. There were no other stains, but he could pick up the faint scent of gunpowder from his hand. He rolled up his sleeve and then sat back in the chair to give his shirt and pants another look. He didn’t see any other signs of missed evidence, but the light at the table wasn’t much better than the light in the basement.
Jones slid his phone back into his pocket and then lifted the glass. The thin material that had radiated with such ferocity a few minutes ago had given away most of its heat. The coffee inside was colder than he liked, but Jones drank it quickly. He let the glass linger at his lips until the last of the coffee lost its fight with gravity and then he stood up. He draped his jacket over his arm as his right hand lifted the chair and quietly brought it back to the edge of the table. Jones scanned the room for anyone who might be looking his way and found that only Diane was interested in what he was doing.
She was staring at him, and Jones didn’t need to guess what she was looking at. Diane caught herself and lifted her eyes away from the jacket over the forearm that ended so abruptly. Jones had never been comfortable with an empty sleeve. He had always thought that the cuff made his arm look like an elephant’s trunk, so Jones made it a habit to roll up his sleeve. His forearm was capped with a synthetic fabric sock that a physical therapist had once described as space age. Jones had wanted nothing to do with a prosthetic. An artificial limb had always been more artificial than limb for him, so he scrapped it in favour of the sock. He still got looks like the one Diane had given him, but it was better than looking at a hand that wasn’t his.
Jones had expected Diane to be embarrassed for staring, but she surprised him. She looked at him and slowly raised an eyebrow as though she was waiting for the answer to a question she had just whispered in his ear. Jones held her eye for a moment and then reached for the juice glass and stepped away from the table. He walked along the counter and placed the glass next to a collection of other empty mugs and glasses before turning to walk through an archway in the brick wall that bisected the coffee house. The other side of the wall offered bigger tables, a few more comfortable chairs, and a sofa for customers interested in a bit of distance from the din of the coffee machines and stream of customers coming in off of the street.
There were several people alone at tables for four, each working on a silver laptop bearing the single white Apple. Each of the people working on a computer had attempted to assert their independence with decals and stickers. The attempts at individuality were so uniform that they made the laptops even more similar.
Jones found the bathroom door open and the light off. The flea market décor in the room was done no favours by the aggressive hundred-watt fluorescent bulb in the ceiling that exposed every flaw and imperfection left by age or carelessness. Jones hung his coat on a thin metal hook that had once been a yellow brass, but now was mostly black, and looked at himself in the mirror. He checked his clothes for blood but found only flecks of mortar and concrete on his shoulders and in his hair. Jones tousled his hair clean and slapped at his shirt until it stopped giving off plumes of dust. He used the washroom and took his time washing up. Jones pulled the sock off his wrist so that he could use his arm to rub at the soap. He worked the lather all over his hand and up his wrist. The fancy all-natural soap wouldn’t erase the gunshot residue or eliminate the DNA evidence—Jones knew he would need a stiff brush and something that wasn’t natural for that, but the soap would at least do something about the smell. The cordite had been a gift at first. The scent exploded into existence and completely overpowered the dense odour that had crept out from inside the wall and invaded Jones’ nose. Even now, in a bathroom reeking of lilac, he could smell the cellar as though he was still standing there. Jones squeezed his eyes shut; the thought of the bodies was pulling on him, but he knew better than to give in. He would have to go back to the memories soon enough, but not yet.
When he had rinsed as best he could, he used his forearm to release a tiny glob of soap on the bloodstain on his sleeve. The white bubbles went pink as he scrubbed and he rinsed them away. Jones figured the absence of a hand dryer was because it would have clashed with the old fixtures. The same logic must have applied to a paper towel dispenser, but the line of function over form was drawn at paper towels. A pile was lazily stacked in the indentation meant for a bar of soap. The proximity to the faucet had left the flimsy brown sheet on top brittle in the places where someone else’s water had dried. Jones pulled up four sheets and dried his hand and arm, but the thin material had no chance against his wet sleeve. He pushed the shirt past his forearm and tossed the ball of wadded paper at the garbage can. The uneven lump bounced off the summit of piled trash and rolled toward the corner of the room. Jones sighed as he pulled the sock out of his mouth and fit it back onto his arm. Lifting the jacket off the hook, he realized that he had been in such a rush to wash his hands, that he missed the graffiti.
Jones took a step closer to the door as he shrugged the coat over his shoulders. This was not the colourful kind of graffiti that could pass for art; this was the ball-point kind of graffiti that could sometimes pass for wit. According to the door, Becky gave the best head in the world. Someone had left Becky’s number and someone else had crossed it out and written a new number underneath. Someone else had taken the time to draw a crude drawing of Donald Trump on the door. The only thing that really resembled him was the hair, but it was enough. Trump’s head was oversized and someone had drawn small swastikas instead of pupils, and underneath the caricature someone had written Make America grate again. Jones bent down to examine the words written around the doorknob. It was clear that someone had taken their time with that one because each of the letters was a close match for Times New Roman font. Jones followed the words, I know you are, but what am I?
Jones bent down the rest of the way to get the wad of paper towel off the floor. As he stood up, he noticed some writing on the door that hadn’t stood out before. The script wasn’t ostentatious or illustrated like some of the other graffiti. The black letters were small and written with a calligrapher’s skill. The message had been placed next to the hinges, and Jones would have missed them had he not been inches away. He took a small step back and tilted his head so that his shadow was no longer obscuring the tiny words. Someone had taken their time writing the
message. They had rested a shoulder on the wall, committing to getting it right.
Jones put his body against the wall and slowly bent his knees until he was eye-level with the words. He had descended about a foot and a half, which put the girl at around five feet. Jones felt like the height confirmed the gender. Jones knew that his personal experience didn’t make the idea of a man with beautiful penmanship impossible, but he had never come across a guy with beautiful handwriting.
Jones read the message another time before giving the bathroom another look. There was no reason a person would choose to hang around in the corner of a public washroom—except to kill time. Jones inched a bit closer to the writing. It was faded and a few of the letters had drifted to the right, likely after knuckles brushed against them. There was no period at the end of the sentence; he could forgive the sin—it was a door after all. Instead of punctuation, there was a small round smudge. Jones licked his thumb and gently put it on the edge of the dark cloud at the end of the sentence. Part of the mark came off without a fight. Lifting his thumb toward the light revealed a grey smear. Jones tried the same thing with a wet index finger on Trump’s hair. When he lifted his finger, there wasn’t a hair out of place.
Jones pulled his phone from his pocket and took shots of the message. He checked his work and repeated the task with the flash on. Satisfied, he took shots of every other thing that had been written or sketched onto the door before stepping back to get a final shot of the entire unintentional canvas.
Jones opened the bathroom door and almost collided with the woman waiting on the other side.
Jones nodded and moved past the woman as she made an obvious show of taking a deep breath in anticipation of the smell she thought was waiting for her inside.
Jones walked back to the counter and took up a spot behind a guy in coveralls who had just ordered.
While the barista was making change, she flashed a look at Jones and said, “We don’t do free refills.”
