Matters of Doubt

by Warren C Easley

  I pushed the door open enough to insert my voice. “Hello in there. Anybody home? Milo?” Nothing. I would have left it there if the narrow opening in the door hadn’t afforded me a clear view through the living room and down a short hallway to the bathroom. The door was ajar, too, and something lay on the floor across the opening.

  It was a thin, pale human leg.

  Chapter Eleven

  The apartment felt unheated when I stepped in, and Milo’s body was as cool to the touch as the room. Clad only in a pair of navy blue boxers, he was slumped to the right side of the commode, face up. His skin was the color of wet plaster, and with closed eyes, he looked like he’d just fallen into a peaceful sleep. A greasy syringe dangled from his arm where the vein, now collapsed, had apparently carried a lethal fix to his heart and brain. A Bic lighter, a soup spoon, and a small red party balloon with its stem cut off sat on the rim of the sink. The bottom of the spoon was blackened with carbon and the inside stained with a dark brown residue. There didn’t appear to be any dope left in the balloon.

  The residue in the spoon smelled faintly of vinegar, a dead giveaway for black tar heroin. I knew the drug when I smelled it. I knelt down next to him and gently nudged his arm. It was rigid. I saw no needle marks on either arm. His right leg was twisted awkwardly under his body, affording a view of the back of his leg. A trail of red dots, some fainter than others, ran up his calf, tracing his saphenous vein. Anna was right—he was using, and he was going to great pains to hide it from her.

  I stood up and shook my head, struck by the senseless waste of it all. His young face was a mask of serenity now, almost innocence, but the silver discs piercing his earlobes reflected in the harsh light like garish mirrors. There’d be no growing back of the holes now, that’s for sure.

  As the radio blasted away in the living room, I took a quick look around. On a small plastic end table next to a thread-bare sofa bed, I found a baggie with a half dozen white pills spilling out of it. I had no idea what they were. I put one in my shirt pocket. I saw nothing else out of the ordinary except a half-dozen long necks in an otherwise clean trash can. Either Milo was a beer drinker as well, or he could’ve had a visitor the night before.

  I wiped my prints clean and as far as I knew, got out of the building without being seen. After clearing the neighborhood, I called Nando. “What are you doing?” I asked when he picked up.

  “Slaving in my office.”

  “Which one?”

  “My detective agency.”

  “I’ll be right over.”

  The office was in Lents, a diverse, blue collar stronghold in Southeast Portland. It was in a storefront just off the Max Green Line next to a used book store. A sign in the window said, Se Habla Espanol. Nando’s long-time secretary, Espinoza, waved me through to his office, which reflected his belief in low overhead. It was small and sparsely furnished and the walls unadorned except for a framed copy of his license, and a large photo of Barack Obama hanging next to one of Fidel Castro. Nando saw absolutely nothing incongruous about that. The only exception to his frugality in the room was the top of the line MacBook he was frowning at when I entered.

  “Como fastidian estas computadoras!” he muttered as he snapped the lid down, turned to me and forced a smile. “So, what is up, my friend?”

  I slumped down on a straight back chair and sighed. “I went to talk to the kid who gave Picasso the message to see Conyers. He works the desk at the clinic. I found him dead in his apartment with a heroin needle in his arm.”

  “Hmm. Another coincidence?”

  “Right. Looked like an overdose. Trouble is, he’d been shooting up in his leg to conceal his habit. So, why the needle in his arm?”

  “I see. Any idea when he died?”

  “The body was cold, so he’d lost maybe twenty, twenty-five degrees. That’d make the time of death around, let’s see, fourteen hours ago, give or take. And that fits with the fact that he was in full rigor mortis.”

  “Excellent. You and the young artist were guests of the police last night, so you have an alibi.”

  “We were due a break.”

  “Do you have any idea how this Milo could be connected to the murder of the boyfriend?”

  “Like I said, he was the one who gave Picasso the message from Conyers, which was probably a forgery. Other than that, I’ve got nothing. I saw some pills in the apartment and grabbed one.” I pulled it out of my pocket and slid it across the metal desk between us. “Looks like a prescription med. Any idea what it is?”

  Nando looked the pill over, which had the number 512 imprinted on it. “Definitely a pain pill of some kind. They are very popular these days. It seems our young people are in a lot of pain. I will check it out. Have you reported the death?”

  “No. That’s why I’m here. Can you do that for me? I really don’t need Portland homicide to know I was snooping around there.”

  “Of course. I always keep a prepaid cell phone handy.”

  I gave him Milo’s address. “Just tell them you’re a concerned neighbor and his radio’s been blasting for hours.”

  “What about his story about the bike messenger? It would be easy for me to check it out with the messenger services.”

  I hesitated as Gertrude Johnson’s warning about my finances rang in my head. But Nando could get the answer much quicker than me. “Yeah, I guess you should go ahead with that.”

  As I was leaving, I said, “Anything on Larry Vincent yet?”

  “I have feelers out but have heard nothing back yet. Have you ever listened to his rantings on the radio? The man is a case of nuts.”

  I chuckled and shook my head. “I only know him by reputation. Talk radio’s not my thing. I’d rather listen to mating cats.”

  “This Larry Vincent lives in constant fear—people of color, the homeless, illegals, Muslims. He thinks they are all plotting against him and America. My father had a saying for men like him, ‘Al espantado, la sombra le espanta’—he finds his own shadow frightening.”

  I got back to the clinic around nine thirty. Scott and Jones’ unmarked sedan was parked in the loading zone directly in front of the building. On the mural side of the building, Picasso was up on his scaffolding surrounded by a tight knot of people. I saw a jumble of cameras and microphones. He looked like he’d been treed by a pack of dogs.

  As I approached the group, someone at the front said, “Hey, Baxter, do you still think Mitchell Conyers killed your mother?” I was surprised by the aggressive tone. The Portland press, like the city itself, was known for its civility. Picasso looked at the man from his perch on the scaffolding, but to his credit and my relief, didn’t say anything.

  I worked my way to the front of the crowd and put up my arms. “Okay, folks, we’re through here. The circus is over.” Then I turned to Picasso and said, “Come on, let’s go inside.”

  As we rounded the corner of the building, the reporter who’d called out the question fell in step with us, as the others followed. There was some jostling, and I got separated from Picasso. The reporter, who was doubling as his own photographer, took some video clips of Picasso with a small, expensive looking digital camera. Then he got up in Picasso’s face and said, “That’s a poisonous snake on your neck. Does it signify anything?”

  Picasso stopped and looked at the man, as if seeing him for the first time. His face tightened and lost what little color it had. The reporter moved in even closer. “Did you attack Conyers again yesterday?” He snapped. “He deserved it, right?”

  I shoved my way past someone to step between them, but it was too late. Picasso’s long leg shot out and his foot caught the man’s hand holding the camera with pin-point accuracy and bone jarring impact. Whack. The camera flew in two different directions, and the man clutched his hand, screaming, “You broke my camera. You broke my goddamn camera.” I was pretty sure his hand was broken, too.

 
I grabbed Picasso’s arms and hustled him into the building, only to run smack into Lieutenant Scott and Detective Jones, who had just finished up inside. Anna was in the process of showing them out. She sucked a breath. Scott and Jones assumed a ready stance. “What happened?” she asked.

  “Oh, just a little dustup out there,” I said. “Some jerk reporter got a little too aggressive.”

  Scott and Jones ducked out the door to see for themselves. I grasped Picasso by the shoulders like I had at Conyers’ place. “Why the hell did you do that? All you had to do was ignore the idiot.”

  He turned his head to avoid my eyes. “That prick had it coming.”

  “That’s not good enough. You’re under a microscope right now, and you’ve just demonstrated to the whole world that you can’t control your temper.” As I said that, all my confidence in Picasso’s innocence threatened to bleed away. Had I made a mistake?

  “I, um—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. Now stay here with Doc while I see how much damage you’ve done.” To Anna, I said, “Take him into your office and shut the door. Please.”

  The media crowd was now knotted around the injured reporter, who held his kicked hand against his chest while clutching the pieces of his shattered camera in his other hand. He was talking to Jones and Scott, who both had their notebooks out. I worked my way through the crowd and introduced myself to the reporter.

  “Mr. Baxter would like to apologize for his actions. He’s understandably upset by recent events and sensitive to the memory of his mother.” The reporter looked down at the remains of his camera, and I found myself adding, “He’ll be glad to replace your camera.” I fished a card from my wallet and handed it to him. “Call me, and I’ll arrange it.” I spun on my heels and went back into the clinic, wondering what I’d just committed to.

  It was quiet when I entered Anna’s office, but the look on Picasso’s face told me she’d been at him, too. I said, “Well, you just bought yourself a broken digital camera.” He started to protest, but I shushed him with a raised hand. “I don’t know whether he’s going to press charges or not. You’d better hope his hand’s not broken.” Anna glanced at her watch and excused herself.

  Picasso said, “If I’d wanted to hurt him, I would have kicked him in the face. I went for his camera. I could tell he had a hard on for it.”

  The fluid, graceful move he’d made replayed in my head, and I realized he was telling the truth. “Well, that may be so, but nobody out there knows that. They probably think you tried to kill him and missed. Where’d you learn to kick like that, anyway?”

  “I did a series of paintings for a kickbox studio over in Southeast, on the inside walls. They gave me free lessons in exchange. I was a fast learner. They asked me to stay on and teach.”

  “Did you?”

  “And become a working stiff? No way. I wanted the skill for self-protection. Comes in handy on the streets, you know. Two skin heads jumped me under the I-5 bridge one night.” He smiled and shook his head. “Boy, were they surprised.”

  “Well, you need to keep your kickboxing prowess to yourself. Like I said, you’re under a microscope, and the last thing you need is for information like that to get out. Understood?”

  The smile dissolved, and he nodded.

  Scott and Jones didn’t return, which was good news. Anna told me they’d interviewed her and the staff, then taken a brief look around the clinic. The question of Picasso’s computer didn’t come up. It probably didn’t occur to them that a homeless youth would actually own a computer.

  The media finally cleared out, and Picasso went back outside to work on his mural. I was sitting in Anna’s office checking my phone messages when she came in to jot some notes about a patient she’d just seen. I flipped my cell shut and said, “I’ll get out of your way. Thanks for the use of your office.”

  “You’re welcome to stay. You can work the front desk,” she said with an impish smile before adding, “Just kidding. Milo still hasn’t shown up, but we’ll manage.”

  Milo’s gray visage flashed across my mind as I groped for something to say. He was probably in a body bag by now. “Well, I’m flattered by the job offer, but I’ve got this other job in Dundee that I’ve been neglecting.”

  She laughed, then her look turned serious. “How’s he going to pay for that camera, Cal? He doesn’t have any money.”

  Apparently, Anna didn’t know about his savings. I shrugged. “We’ll worry about that if and when I get a bill. I just hope that’s as far as it goes.”

  “You’ve been through the wringer. I hope you’re not sorry you’re standing up for him.”

  I chewed my lip for a few moments. “Nah, I’m not sorry. But I’m concerned about that stunt he pulled. It’s not going to help his cause a bit. Does he always go off like that?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t honestly know, but people on the street have hair triggers. It’s a survival mechanism. And honestly, I’d say he did what a lot of us would want to do in that situation. We just lack the courage.”

  I nodded and smiled. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. We’ve all got a little paparazzi rage.”

  She reached out with both hands and took mine. Her skin was soft and warm, her eyes burning like a flame that’s gone from blue to white. “I hope you’ll continue to have faith in him, Cal. He did not kill that man. You’ve got to believe that.”

  The little voice in my head had gone quiet again, and I left the clinic feeling pretty good. I would need an ally in this fight—someone to remind me why the hell I’d gone all in—and I knew I could count on Anna for that. There was that soft, pale skin and those haunting blue eyes, too. I found myself wondering if there was room in her world for anyone besides the homeless and needy. The jury was out on that question.

  Chapter Twelve

  By the time I got to the Aerie that Friday, the sun was low, and dirty white clouds were churning up the valley, threatening rain. I’d stopped first at my office to meet with a prospective client and pick up my mail, which had accumulated in a pile below the slot in the front door—an overdue check from a client, three fliers, two catalogs, and four bills. The ratio of bills to checks was not encouraging.

  However, when I saw Archie at the gate, my spirits rose. You’d think I’d been gone a month the way he carried on. Then he calmed down, bolted off, and returned with a slobbery tennis ball in his mouth and a manic gleam in his eye. I threw the ball long and high and he caught it on the first bounce. We kept this up until rain thrummed over the ridge from the valley and chased us into the house.

  I fed Arch, and after pouring a glass of wine, began looking for something to eat. My search was cut short when I found a covered bowl of meaty beef stew in the refrigerator. I raised my glass and said, “Bless you, Gertie.” Gertrude Johnson had not only fed my dog, but left a meal for me. A phone call of thanks was in order, but I ate the stew first.

  I was exhausted by the events of the last two days and turned in early. It had cleared off and a waning moon hung between the Doug firs like a bruised lemon. I stood at the open window in my bedroom and watched it for a while in the company of my friend the owl, whom I could hear but not see. I envied that damn moon, moving around up there in a predictable path, no matter what. I’d come to Oregon to find some kind of order, some peace in my life. And now, for reasons I couldn’t quite explain, I felt that what little stability I’d cobbled together was threatened.

  I pushed the dark thoughts down and took several lungs full of cool air and exhaled them slowly. I thought of Picasso and all the other kids out there trying to make it on the cold streets. How the hell did it come to this? They all have a story, Picasso told me—don’t judge. But I would judge—not the kids, but the adults who’d let them down. I closed the window and climbed into bed. Archie settled onto his mat with his muzzle between his paws, and I fell asleep thinking about Anna. Anna,—a female Holden Caulf
ield—trying to catch all those kids before they slipped into the abyss.

  I awoke the next morning determined to get some exercise. As I laced up my jogging shoes, Archie went out in the hall and stood by the staircase, whimpering and wagging his tail. A run with me would prove things were completely back to normal. But our run was delayed when I stopped at the mailbox for a quick look at the morning paper. I’d already seen the initial coverage of Conyers’ murder in yesterday’s paper—a factual account containing no surprises or new information. Picasso and I were described as witnesses and not persons of interest in the article.

  Today’s paper was a different story. The headline read “Murder witness and journalist clash.” It was accompanied by a photograph of me grappling with Picasso right after he’d drop-kicked the camera. I took one look at it and shook my head. I had his arms clamped in my hands, and his head was thrown back, affording a view of the coral snake decorating his throat and showcasing his eyebrow and lip jewelry. The reporter was bent over next to us holding his hand. The caption below the picture mentioned that the reporter worked for a small, online newspaper.

  The article described the altercation and what provoked it and went on to give the backstory surrounding Nicole Baxter’s disappearance and the discovery of her remains on the Deschutes River. In other words, it put Picasso and to a lesser extent, me, squarely in the crosshairs of public as well as police scrutiny for Conyers’ murder. I suppose I knew it was bound to happen, but I was taken aback at the speed of it. It didn’t help that the article gave Picasso’s address as Dignity Village. I figured there were more than a few readers who would associate the address with drug use and violence, although both were expressly forbidden at the village.

  I quickly scanned the rest of the paper. Milo Hartung’s death hadn’t made that news cycle.