CrimeSeen2014.06.09

by Michaelbrent Collings

  “What the hell?” Listings half-shouted.

  “Didn’t you… didn’t you see?” Evan could barely put three words together.

  Sounds came from the front of the shop, beyond the curtain.

  “Time to go,” said Listings. She grabbed his arm and began pulling him out of the office.

  Evan stared at the floor. Then he saw the computer – the lifeless, useless computer – turn on. The computer screen lit up with the same thing he had seen on the security monitor: the scene from his bedroom. Val, smiling at him. A nameless, faceless man burrowing into her.

  She smiled at him, smiled from beyond the grave, smiled from beyond death itself. Still beautiful, so beautiful that the mere sight of her – even like this – had a power he didn’t know how to combat.

  Listings dragged him away.

  She didn’t see it.

  She didn’t see.

  That sense of being led, of being taken in hand and guided through a predestined series of steps, was still very much present. But the peace it had imparted was gone. Evan was being guided someplace, and he didn’t know if it was a place of darkness or light.

  The dark arts in the back of the shop seemed much darker. The trio of creatures consuming one another – snake, monkey, jackal – stared with accusing eyes at him.

  Were their eyes open before? Weren’t they closed?

  The world slipped out from under him. The creatures each had one white eye, one black one. A dichotomy of darkness and light that some might interpret as harmony or balance, but that Evan sensed meant something more ominous.

  Were their eyes open before?

  The curtain parted. The fat proprietor passed into the back of the store. He was still holding his Bible, still letting loose with a non-stop torrent of Vietnamese, delivered in an intense monotone. It sounded like he hadn’t stopped since responding to Listings however many minutes –

  (hours? days? years?)

  – ago. But then he stopped abruptly as he spotted the broken closed circuit monitor, the pieces all over the floor.

  Listings dragged Evan past him. Right through the curtain. The fat man started screaming shrilly. Still in Vietnamese, but there was no mistaking the anger in his voice.

  “We’ll call you with a billing address for that,” shouted Listings.

  Then she dragged Evan past the shelves at the front of the shop, through the bamboo door-hanging. Outside.

  But his confusion and fear came with him. He thought they might have come to stay.

  Question

  Listings listened to the tinny voice in her ear repeat the message one more time, then ended the call.

  “It says the number is no longer in service,” she said. She looked at the paper they had taken from the Mystix office, the one that had this Tuyen girl’s phone number, along with the second, the “Alt. Phone” at the bottom. “You sure the other one belonged to your wife?”

  She immediately knew that was the wrong thing to say. Evan had been acting extra-wiggy since… whatever it was had caused him to flip in the back of the store. His face was sheet white except for two bright fever spots, one on each cheek. He looked like he’d not only seen a ghost, but perhaps been possessed by one.

  He laughed at her question, a laugh so utterly bereft of mirth that it stole the warmth from her body as quickly as any winter wind could have. “Pretty sure. I used to call it ten times a day. Before I found out she was banging her way through our marriage.”

  Listings’ mouth pulled itself into a firm line. She felt the part of herself that had blown away the junkie surfacing, the part of herself that was in charge of the thin line where justice and vengeance intersected. And she knew they did intersect. Some crimes were so evil, so heinous, that only by allowing the victims the opportunity to levy the execution could any justice be found.

  “I would’ve killed her,” she said. And again knew that it was the wrong thing to say. Not because Evan looked any worse for the statement – the only way he could possibly look worse would be to drop dead right in front of her – but because it just wasn’t morally cool to say something like that to a man whose wife had been murdered the way Evan’s had.

  Even if the death had allowed Listings her first chance at happiness, at real happiness, since her father died.

  But Evan didn’t seem to mind. That chilling laugh came again. “Well it looks like our guy beat me to it,” he said. Listings hated hearing that. He was closing down, and that wasn’t what she loved in him. He’d always been an open book, had always been the one who could share anything.

  Don’t shut me out, Evan. I’m here for you. I’ll understand, I’ll believe.

  But she didn’t say that. That wouldn’t have been her.

  Evan closed his eyes. They were standing only a few steps away from the entrance to Mystix, and Listings fully expected Tubby the Religious to come waddling after them at any moment. But he hadn’t. They were alone, and that was good because Evan looked like he was about to drop.

  “Maybe I should let this go,” he said.

  “I told you, Romeo,” she said. “I need your protection like you need a stiff kick in the balls.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Not for that. It’s just….” He took the paper from her hand. Stared at it for a long time, his eyes traveling from the phone number listed at the top – the primary number that was now “no longer in service” – to the one listed at the bottom. His wife’s cell number.

  “I’ve gone over it a million times, Listings,” he whispered. “I get a message telling me she called and needed me to come home. And when I get there….” His eyes were blank, almost non-reflective as he fell into the memory. Listings understood what that was like; knew better than to try to pull him out of it.

  “There she was. I fell over, Listings. I goddam fell over I was so surprised. And when I got up the guy was gone. Ran through the back door like a thief.” He gulped and looked at the ground. At the sky. Anywhere but at her. “I left like a thief, too. Then she’s dead a few hours later. And you know what the last thing she said to me was?”

  He looked at her now. His eyes boring into her soul. She could see pain in his eyes, but wondered if she was seeing his pain, or merely her own reflected in his gaze. “The last words I heard from my wife’s lips were, ‘You had to find out sooner or later. Close the door on the way out.’”

  “Bitch.” Listings spat the word. Not just a description, not just an empty term of vituperation, but a true curse. She had resented Val for a long time, because she had sensed what Evan seemed determined not to see. But when she saw what the woman had done to Evan, what she had turned him into, the resentment refined itself to rage.

  Evan passed a hand over his eyes, as though trying to wipe away the memories that must assail him. “I loved her, Listings,” he said.

  The words twisted in her heart. Not like a knife, nothing so merciful. More like a fist wrapped in barbed-wire, gouging its way painfully to her most secret parts, to the hidden Listings, the Angie that no one saw. She knew that Evan had loved his wife. It was the nature of good people to love others, even when the ones they loved were unworthy of that affection. And Evan had been good. So good.

  But she hoped that when Val died, he could have turned away from her. Could have turned away from the cold corpse of an unfaithful wife, and held tight to Listings instead. And she would never hurt him, because she was his partner, and partners looked out for each other. She would protect him, and he would protect her.

  “Do you still?” she said. “Do you still love Val?”

  She didn’t want to know. But she had to find out. Because the one thing she couldn’t do anymore was share Evan, especially not with a dead woman.

  Evan didn’t answer. They stood alone in the shadow of a nothing shop in a crap part of the city for far too long. Acting out what felt to Listings like a ridiculous scene in the kind of movie she avoided, but the kind of movie that could be seen playing over and over in theaters through the wor
ld.

  She wouldn’t share him. She wouldn’t. She had done so much for him, had busted her ass for him. She deserved better than half a heart.

  So how was it that she found herself reaching for him? About to touch his shoulder, maybe even pull him in for a hug right there in public.

  Evan was still staring at his feet, looking down like the secrets of the universe might be discovered in the cracked cement of the sidewalk.

  She pulled her hand back when he abruptly moved. She didn’t know if he saw her reaching for him. Didn’t know if he was rebuffing her attempt to reach out – not just to reach out to him, but to reach out beyond her own self, her own limits. Maybe he hadn’t seen her at all. Maybe he was simply trying to avoid the question she had asked about Val. Maybe he didn’t even know an answer.

  No matter what, he didn’t look at her. He just swung about and headed down the street. “Come on,” he said.

  Listings wanted to turn away. To go the opposite direction and never talk to him again. But she didn’t. She followed him.

  As she knew she would.

  As she had to do.

  Evidence

  Working as a cop, Evan had spent time in a lot of disturbing places. Crack houses, murder scenes, even Mystix were all sufficient to give him a case of the willies.

  Still, though he recognized a surplus of disturbing places in the world, he also knew that a few were not merely disturbing, but actually disturbed. Places that had seen so much evil that such had become a part of what held them together, as much a part of the structure as brick or mortar.

  The evidence locker was one of those places.

  It wasn’t really a locker, it was an entire room that took up half the basement. But it had the feel of a huge locker, something utilitarian and overused and grimy. A cage and a gate sat at the front to keep out the uninitiated. Beyond it, though, a person could freely walk among shelf after shelf, sheets of metal piled high. And on each cold piece of metal lay boxes, neatly labeled and sealed. Some were cardboard, some plastic. Each box cradled the wrecked remains of a life, pitiful testaments of death come too soon.

  Labels adorned the boxes, listing contents in neat columns as though order outside might hold back the chaos straining within. Evan tried not to look at them when he came in here. He tried to look only at what he absolutely needed to see. As if to look at more than what was necessary would lead inevitably to more boxes, more labels.

  A lot of cops were superstitious. They had their rituals designed to keep them safe: left sock on first, crucifix under the vest but over the undershirt, never take a dump in the first hour of your shift. The customs and rites would look ridiculous to an outsider, but to the police on whose lives the smallest details could mean the difference between life and death, and for whom so much was a matter of blind, random chance, such silly details were a moment of control. A last chance to assert themselves over the impartiality of fate.

  Evan had never participated in those rituals. Had never allowed himself to believe that by tying his shoes right over left instead of left over right he could somehow forestall death when it came for him. But he could not look at the boxes more than was necessary. Could not stay longer than he had to in this place where every word was a catalogue of violence and evil and death.

  Still, no matter how hard he tried he always saw. Sometimes you were blind when you tried to see, sometimes you tried to close your eyes and discovered your vision went on forever.

  He walked down the center aisle that bisected the evidence room, Listings close behind. She looked at everything, head swiveling left and right like she was in a museum.

  And even though Evan didn’t want to look, he couldn’t help but see.

  A gun in a plastic bag….

  A kilo of dope, wrapped in duct tape that had been torn by angry teeth….

  A translucent box that held a single bottle with what looked like a severed hand floating in formaldehyde….

  Evan looked at his feet. He didn’t want to see. Even though he was going to the worst place in the room, the one place that was more terrible than all the others combined.

  The echoes of his and Listings’ footsteps bounced around them, resounding into eternity. It sounded like they were in a crowd, but a crowd of invisible people who left only traces of themselves behind.

  A uniformed cop appeared from one of the side aisles. Evan didn’t know him, and didn’t want to risk chatting with someone he didn’t know. He turned aside before the cop saw him, and he and Listings busied themselves with the contents list of a box halfway down a different aisle.

  The cop shuffled papers. He sounded like he was logging new evidence. A moment later he appeared in the center aisle and walked past them. The gate clanked and clicked as he opened then closed it behind him. A few muffled words with the duty officer at the gate. They both laughed.

  Then silence.

  Evan and Listings moved back into the center of the room.

  “I hate this place,” said Listings.

  “Yeah, it could use a paint job.” The joke fell flat, delivered in a grim monotone.

  Listings didn’t notice. “It’s not that. Just… it goes on forever. All of these little boxes are bits of people’s hate, reminders of humanity’s inhumanity. And it seems like you could walk around in here for a lifetime and keep on being surprised at how low it goes.” She touched a box. One of the clear plastic bins, sheaves of papers and what looked like blood-spattered clothes inside. “All these crimes, repeated over and over, each one different. But at the same time so much the same.”

  Evan couldn’t help but smile a bit. He knew her past. Knew what she had done, what she had had to do. That she had survived made her someone to be respected. That she had avoided turning into a monster… it was the foundation of what he loved about her. Her resistance to evil. Her commitment to save other victims.

  “I didn’t know you were such a poet,” he said.

  She smiled back at him, that cynical smile of hers. “I’m amazing in the sack, too.”

  “I knew that.” Her smile turned genuine, and he liked it enough she was in danger of being kissed right then. He didn’t want to get derailed, so he added, “That many men’s room limericks can’t be wrong. ‘There was a cop named Listings with great luck, who really liked –“

  He shut up long enough to duck the punch she sent at his nose. She was smiling, she still looked lovely, but he couldn’t kiss her and bob and weave, so his concentration was back.

  Besides….

  “Here we are.”

  He turned down an aisle at the back of the room. It was darker here, as though even the light shunned this part of the room.

  Evan went immediately to the boxes he had come for. He had only seen them once, but they were burned on his mind. Each bore an identical case number, the names of the lead investigators on the case. Geist’s name was on the boxes. So was Listings’.

  Evan’s was not. At least, not as an investigator.

  He opened several of the boxes. They were cardboard bankers boxes with flip tops that came off easily, exposing the contents.

  “You know you’re screwing up the custody chain,” said Listings in a low voice. “When we find the guy who did it, it’s gonna be that much harder to keep him if anyone finds out about this. Even a court-appointed lawyer with a head injury and a drinking problem could get him off.”

  Evan ignored her. She was right, of course: part of any major case involved proving that the evidence was in pristine shape, that it hadn’t been tampered with in any way. That involved proving it was always in the control of someone responsible, that access to it was limited and logged, that no one ever had a chance to alter or manipulate it. Without proving chain of custody, important evidence became fodder for objections, often inadmissible.

  But Evan had to find out what was going on. He had to know.

  And no one was investigating this case anymore.

  The first box didn’t have anything useful. He opened anoth
er box. Inside: a mass of sheets. Tagged and bagged in clear plastic. The sheets were light blue. They had been a gift from Val.

  They were bloody.

  He touched them, and touching them remembered. Not just the entrance, not just the shock of seeing his wife and the man. Not just her smile and the matter-of-fact way she spoke to him.

  No, now he remembered her as she was when he came back later in the day: laying on the bed, covered in the same sheets that had tangled her and her lover. Still smiling that same cold smile, only now she smiled not at him but at the ceiling. And she wore an extra smile as well, a thin red smile that stretched from one ear to another, blood no longer pumping from her throat but already starting to congeal.

  A knife stood up, skewering her breast so deeply that Listings later told Evan it had punched all the way to the hilt, had nearly severed Val’s spine.

  Evan closed the box with the sheets. He hoped he found what he was looking for before he opened the box with the knife. He didn’t want to see that.

  He opened another box.

  Another.

  Listings was looking over his shoulder. He could sense tension coming off her. He didn’t know if it was that they were breaking regs by doing this, that she was worried about him, or just the situation in general.

  “I never saw a case move to the cold files so fast,” she said.

  Evan shrugged. He pasted as neutral a look on his face as he could. Emotions swirled hard and fast, and he didn’t trust himself to show any of them right now.

  “No prints, no evidence to speak of. No nothing.” He let loose a single breath, what passed for a laugh. “Not that they told me much.”

  Listings looked genuinely remorseful. “Geist and I tried. We tried our best to keep things moving the way you’d want –“

  Evan waved her to silence. “Even a cop’s wife can’t keep the department busy for too long.” He laughed again, this time a bit more under control. “We can’t buy working computers, we’re hardly going to spend forever on a dead-end case.”