The Prettiest One: A Thriller

by James Hankins

  “Not really,” Caitlin said.

  Josh said, “I’d like to say that I am, but . . .”

  Bix nodded. “I hear you. Let’s go.”

  They crossed the street, ignoring the cold stares from the denizens of Greendale Boulevard, and Caitlin turned a deaf ear to the low wolf whistle that she figured was more likely aimed at her than either Josh or Bix. When they reached the doors to the shop, they saw that the chain that had secured them earlier in the day was hanging loosely through one of the door handles, and the big padlock hung open from one of the chain’s links.

  “Looks like you nailed this one, Katie,” Bix said. Without hesitation, he pushed open the doors and stepped into what had been the King of Pawns shop. The shelves were empty, as were the display cases that held nothing but broken glass. Dust covered most of the surfaces in the place, except for a wide path across the floor that cut through the center of the store, around the end of a display case, and over to a closed door toward the back of the shop. Caitlin didn’t need a magnifying glass and deerstalker cap to deduce where to go. They started across the room and Caitlin noticed a thrumming in the floor and rhythmic vibrations from below, and as they neared the door she began to hear muffled calls and cries that sounded almost primal.

  They were at the door now. Bix grasped the knob. Caitlin took a deep breath. And the door suddenly swung open toward them, pushed from the other side, letting a blast of raised voices escape from the basement below. Through the door staggered a shirtless man with blood covering his mouth and running down his neck and bare chest. A raised purple knot above his right eye looked ready to burst like a huge tick. He headed for the exit to the street, stopped for a moment just short of them to vomit, then lumbered out through the glass doors.

  Caitlin, Josh, and Bix exchanged glances.

  “If you’re nervous, we can leave,” Bix said.

  Caitlin shook her head. “I have to keep going.”

  “I was talking to Josh,” Bix said, then winked at Caitlin before stepping through the door and starting down the basement stairs toward the bloodthirsty cheers below.

  “Stay close to me,” Josh said, then followed Bix.

  The first thing Caitlin noticed on the way down the steps was the smell of violence—men, stale sweat, stale beer, and the tangy scent of blood . . . though she might have been imagining the blood after seeing the bleeding man vomiting upstairs. They were in the basement of the old pawnshop, a large square-shaped space packed wall-to-wall with screaming people, nearly every one of them facing in toward the center of the room, forming a big circle several rows deep. Bix, who was taller than either Caitlin or Josh, craned his neck up and said loudly but still barely loud enough to be heard over the raucous cries of the crowd, “Looks like some kind of fight club.”

  A cheer went up, followed by another, then half the crowd was screaming things like “Finish him off” and “He’s done,” while the other half cried variations on “Get back up, you loser.” Another cheer erupted, making Caitlin think that the loser had probably gotten back up. Somehow, even over the cries of the throng watching the fight, Caitlin could hear the meat-slapping, fist-on-bone sounds of a bare-knuckles fight. She had never heard one before, not in person, and though the noises weren’t as dramatic as the sound effects in movie fight scenes, they were somehow far more nauseating.

  Caitlin stared at the backs of the people ringing the contest. A shifting of bodies allowed her a brief glimpse of one of the fighters . . . bare-chested, bloody, and exhausted. A fist came out of nowhere, dropping the guy to the concrete floor. The cheering reached a crescendo, and Caitlin heard a voice amplified through cheap speakers say, “It’s over. Winner . . . Dan Driscoll!” More cheers and more than a few jeers. “Next fight in twenty minutes. Place your bets.”

  The crowd dispersed. One of the men near Caitlin backed into her and turned aggressively. Both Bix and Josh stiffened, but the man just smiled and said, “Sorry, Katie. Didn’t see you there.”

  He waited, almost expectantly, so Caitlin flashed a smile and said, “Oh, come on now, you know you can bump into me anytime.”

  The guy smiled and turned away.

  Josh looked at Caitlin and shook his head. “Guess they know you here, too. Why am I not surprised?”

  Caitlin merely shrugged.

  Some of the people milled about, but most were lining up in front of three folding card tables. Behind each sat a sweaty guy with a metal strongbox on the table in front of him. Standing beside each sweaty guy was a bigger sweaty guy with his thick arms folded over his chest. Slips of paper were passed back and forth. Money changed hands. Caitlin followed Bix as he meandered through the room. Josh followed close behind. As they moved slowly through the place, every now and then someone nodded at Caitlin or said, “Hey, Katie,” as they passed. It was like being back in the Barrel O’ Beer, only with fewer women and more blood. Realizing that whenever she had come here, she was probably in her “Katie the Wild Thing” persona, she touched each man on the shoulder or arm and gave out winks and sly grins as though they were candy she was tossing from a parade float. From the men’s reactions, she was acting as expected. The ease with which she slipped into her “Wild Thing” persona still surprised her a little. It was almost like stepping into an unfamiliar costume only to find that it had been tailored specifically for her.

  “Okay,” Josh said, “so I think we established that you’ve been coming here a lot lately, too. Probably every night, after spending the early part of the night at Bob’s.”

  It looked that way to Caitlin, too.

  Bix shook his head. “You told me Martha asked you to work more closing shifts at Commando’s for a few weeks. I thought you were working late all those nights.”

  “Sorry,” Caitlin said.

  Josh said, “I can’t believe you came to these places by yourself, hon. Do you realize how dangerous that was? How incredibly lucky you were not to have been hurt or killed . . . or worse?”

  She did. She couldn’t believe she’d had the courage—or was it the stupidity?—to come here. Then again, she seemed to be fitting in just fine.

  “A little attitude goes a long way,” Bix said. “She acted like she belonged, so she did.”

  With his swagger, Bix did, too, Caitlin noticed. Josh . . . well, less so, but he was trying. As they passed near the money tables, Caitlin asked, “So what do we do? Start asking around to see if anyone knows One-Eyed Jack?”

  Before they could answer, someone called, “There you are, Katie.”

  Caitlin turned to see one of the sweaty guys behind a table beckoning her over. She glanced at Josh and then Bix, then walked over to the table. The guy behind it took paper slips from bettors and, after glancing at them, paid out money, or he took money and wrote on slips of paper, which he handed back. Without missing a beat in his work, he said to Caitlin, “I wasn’t sure you were coming in tonight.”

  Caitlin had heard this tune before. She’d been coming in lately, didn’t make it in last night, yadda yadda.

  “Yeah,” she said cautiously. She knew that she was probably talking with someone who was likely pretty dangerous, but she also knew what the guys around here expected from her. So she gave the guy a sexy grin and said, “I’ve been busy. Besides, who wants to be predictable?”

  The money guy chuckled, then glanced up and saw Bix and Josh hovering just inches behind her. His eyes narrowed. Still looking at Bix and Josh, he said, “You betting tonight, Katie?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it.”

  “Come on now. You’ve got me for more than a grand over the last week, I think. You gotta give me a chance to win it back. And you know what they say . . . you can’t win if you don’t play.”

  “Yeah,” Caitlin said with a wink, “but you can’t lose, either.”

  “What are you doing here, then?” he asked, eyeing Bix and Josh again.

  “Thought I’d just watch a bit.”

  Money Man frowned. “Come on,” he said again. “You
owe me.”

  “She does?” Josh asked. “Why?”

  The man slid his eyes over to Josh and chewed his lip for a moment. Caitlin didn’t like the look in his eyes, and she doubted Josh thought much of it, either.

  “They with you?” the guy asked Caitlin.

  “Yeah.”

  The man chewed his lip for another moment, then nodded, as if deciding something. The fact that no one came to drag Josh away told Caitlin that Money Man had decided not to have someone come and drag Josh away. Instead, the guy ignored him and looked back at Caitlin.

  “Like I was saying,” he said, “you owe me.”

  “Yeah? Why’s that?” Caitlin asked.

  The voice over the speakers said, “Five minutes.”

  Money Man kept handing money and paper slips back and forth with the fight-club patrons. He jerked his head to the side, signaling Caitlin to come closer. She leaned down and was overwhelmed by the smell of far too much cheap cologne.

  “I called you like you asked me to, didn’t I?” he asked her.

  Caitlin figured that if he said he called, he must have called, but she had no memory of it, so she said nothing.

  “You’re playing dumb? When that one-eyed dude you were looking for came back the other night with his ugly-ass buddy, I called you like I promised, didn’t I?”

  “What did the buddy look like?” Bix asked.

  Money Man looked over Caitlin’s shoulder and said, “I don’t know you. Never seen you here before. Never taken a bet from you. You’re here with Katie, and I trust her, so I’m willing to let you stand there while I talk to her, but don’t interrupt us. Got it?”

  Bix said nothing.

  Caitlin said, “Remind me . . . what did the buddy look like?”

  The money guy squinted at her. “For a week, maybe two, you’re looking for those guys, and suddenly you don’t remember what one of them looks like?”

  Caitlin gave the man her cockiest, sexiest grin. “Humor me, will you?”

  After a moment, Money Man said, “Tall, bald, and skinny. Pale and ugly. My age, maybe a bit younger. That’s about it.”

  Bogeyman Junior.

  The next customer in line started to complain about something, grabbed his little slip of paper back from Money Man, and pointed emphatically at it. Caitlin didn’t catch the bettor’s words, but the money guy said calmly, “That’s a four, not a nine, you idiot. So you’re all paid up. Now move aside.”

  While they disputed payment, Caitlin turned to Josh and said quietly, “You looked online for other Bookermans in the area?”

  “Yeah,” Josh said. “Checked everything I could access—phone records, public land and tax records, anything I could think of. Came up empty.”

  Money Man turned back to Caitlin. “Let’s go, Katie. Window’s closing. Last chance to make a bet.”

  Caitlin dug into her front pocket and pulled out the twelve hundred dollars. “You know where I can find the ugly-ass guy?”

  The guy glanced at the thick wad of bills in her hand, then regarded her coolly for a moment. “Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “It’s possible I might have had to ask around a bit a few months ago so I could send a couple of guys over there to get him to get his account up to date.”

  “You have an address?”

  “You gonna make a bet?”

  “Is there a good bet tonight? A sure thing?”

  Money Man consulted a list on a piece of paper beside his strongbox. “Long odds in the next fight. Between you and me, the underdog doesn’t have a chance.”

  Caitlin handed him the money. “Put twelve hundred on the underdog.” The man raised his eyebrows and nodded appreciatively as he began filling out a slip of paper. “Don’t bother,” Caitlin said. “It’s such a long shot, there’s no need for me to stick around to see how it comes out. After you give me that address, I won’t be back here.”

  The money guy turned to his right, and the bruiser beside him leaned down. They whispered back and forth, then the big guy pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and consulted it. A few seconds later, he whispered to Money Man, who wrote something on a slip of paper and slid it across the table to Caitlin. “Thanks for your bet. Guess I won’t be seeing you around anymore, Katie.”

  She looked at what was scrawled on the paper. “Nope. Thanks.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  TWENTY MINUTES AFTER LEAVING THE basement fight club, they were on the outskirts of North Smithfield. Bix told them that the warehouse where the murder had taken place, where Caitlin said she had come out of her seven-month fog, was only a mile or two up the road, which Josh knew—and the others must have known—could not have been a coincidence.

  Using the GPS feature on Josh’s tablet to guide them, they had nearly reached the address the money guy at the club had given them. Bix pulled the Explorer to a stop along the shoulder of a quiet, wooded road. If Money Man had been straight with Caitlin, the driveway they were looking for was just ahead. Bix backed up the vehicle a hundred yards or so, then pulled into a gap between two trees and eased to a stop twenty feet into the woods.

  “Let’s walk from here,” he said. “We might not want to announce our presence.”

  Bix reached over to the glove box, opened it, and withdrew a handgun.

  “Whoa,” Caitlin said. “We don’t need that.”

  “A gun?” Josh said. “That’s just asking for trouble, I think.”

  Bix checked the magazine, saw that it was full, and snapped it back into place. “Actually,” he said, “I think we could be asking for trouble if we don’t have this with us. Just in case.”

  “I’m not sure about this,” Josh said.

  “I’ve never had to fire this in my life. Ever. But if I need to, I’d rather have it with me. So stop arguing because I’m bringing it.”

  Josh shook his head and Caitlin sighed, but neither protested further.

  They left the truck and walked along the road, ready to dart into the trees the moment they saw headlights.

  “You really think One-Eyed Jack’s buddy is Bookerman’s son?” Josh asked.

  Caitlin replied, “The description the guy at the fight club gave us is so close to Darryl Bookerman’s, it can’t be a coincidence.”

  “It wasn’t the most detailed description, hon.”

  “It was close enough.”

  “There are no Bookermans in the area. I checked.”

  “He changed his name,” Bix said. “Wouldn’t you, if your dad was put away for abusing and possibly even murdering little girls?”

  That made sense to Josh. “Or maybe he was adopted after his father went to prison,” he said. “He must have been just a kid. He had to live somewhere, with someone.”

  Caitlin said, “It’s obvious that the guy I shot at the warehouse isn’t Bookerman, though, or whatever he calls himself now—”

  “Would you stop saying that, Caitlin?” Josh said. “You didn’t shoot anybody.”

  “Yeah, and that wasn’t really blood all over me the other night. And that gun was a toy.” Josh said nothing, so Caitlin forged ahead. “Anyway, the guy in the warehouse wasn’t bad-looking. And he had hair. So he’s not the guy I followed from the fight club. He’s not Darryl Bookerman’s son. So who is he, then, and why did I shoot him?”

  Josh sighed loudly and dramatically and Caitlin ignored him.

  “And what is young Bookerman’s connection, if it really is him?” Bix asked.

  Josh had been considering the facts they knew. It would actually fit if the house to which they were heading did belong to Darryl Bookerman’s son. Many questions had been answered so far. Things had become clearer. Seven months ago, something happened to send Caitlin into a fugue state, something probably traumatic. Josh had been forced to consider the possibility that it was their last argument that was the cause, but he truly didn’t believe that could be the case. Maybe it was a guilty mind rationalizing, but she hadn’t seemed on the verge of snapping whe
n she walked out. It had to have been something that occurred, something terrible, after she left their house. After all, when she apparently first suffered a fugue more than two decades ago—though it lasted only a few days—it was the result of having been abducted by Darryl Bookerman and possibly having witnessed abuse, maybe even murder. A truly traumatic experience if ever there was one.

  Josh continued to run the facts through his mind. When Caitlin fell into her more recent fugue, she somehow ended up with keys to a car almost certainly belonging to someone who lived in the Smithfield/North Smithfield area, because on the seat she’d found a menu for the Fish Place, where she must have driven that night. There, she met Bix and introduced herself as Katherine Southard, which was remarkably close to the name Kathryn Southern, who happened to be the little girl who went missing from Bookerman’s junkyard shack. Caitlin also later dyed her hair red, which had been the color of that poor missing girl. With the help of Bix and one of his apparent legion of shady friends, she’d established a new identity as Katherine Southard and began working at Commando’s, where, one night, this younger Bogeyman—Darryl Bookerman’s son?—walked in with his one-eyed friend. Caitlin must have recognized him—maybe not consciously, but at least subconsciously—and she felt compelled to find him. She had asked around, learned that the one-eyed guy spent time at the Barrel O’ Beer, where she subsequently learned that he sometimes went to the fight club in the basement of the closed-down pawnshop. She quit her job and spent her evenings, unbeknownst to Bix, at Bob’s and later at the fight club, too, until she received a call one night from the guy at the fight club telling her that this Bookerman double and One-Eyed Jack were there. Caitlin said she remembered none of this, of course. The first thing she said she remembered was walking through that warehouse parking lot, then driving home, where Josh had noticed that she was covered in blood.

  So what the hell happened between the fight club and the warehouse parking lot?

  “I think you probably followed Bookerman and Jack from the fight club to the warehouse,” Bix said as they walked along the dark road.