by Alex P. Berg
My hunch paid off. We intercepted the Cobras as they reached the side door, where Quinto and a bluecoat had stopped the bunch as a precautionary measure. Shay and I blocked their escape from behind, as did the pair of bluecoats who’d come with us, and Phillips came from up the hall to catch them in a pincer move.
I caught the beginnings of an argument as we arrived.
“What do you mean we need to come back with you to the police station?” said B. B., his cheeks red and sweat dripping down his brow. “We were already there this morning. I told you, we don’t know what the hell happened to Chaz. Besides, we just finished a show. This is sooooo not the time.”
“Look,” said Quinto. “I know that, but unfortunately you’re all needed for additional questioning. I’d think you’d be willing to help us find the man who murdered your friend and band mate even if it inconvenienced you. You would, wouldn’t you?”
B. B. complained but in a way that professed his innocence. Sammy shook his head. Diamond looked around dumbly, though to be fair, it was roughly the same look he’d given us earlier in the day. Big D clapped him on the shoulder and said something in his ear. I didn’t like his posture.
“Don’t even think about it, big guy,” I said, calling out to him.
Dennis looked up.
“Yeah, you,” I said, pointing at him. “Whatever it is, drop it.”
I scanned the crowd one more time. Damn…
“Guys?” I said. “Where’s Ritchie?”
My question spurred a number of glances in all directions.
“Seriously? Somebody? Where is he?”
Sammy took up the call. “Man, I don’t know. I think he exited to the other side of the stage or something.”
I locked eyes with Quinto. “Handle this, okay? Steele. With me.”
I took off back the way we’d come, Shay hot on my heels. I crossed the stage and exited to the right this time, back into the maze of curtains and pulleys and dark corners in which we’d earlier found Diamond hard at work groping Crystal. This time, however, the corners seemed darker and much less full of roadie hands caressing fairy breasts.
“Ritchie?” I called out. No answer. Damn.
“He couldn’t have gotten out, could he?” said Shay. “We’ve got the exits covered, unless he somehow managed to sneak back around to the front or out a window—not that I’m sure there are any of those.”
I refused to believe it. “How did he know we’d come after him? Did he see us in the crowd?”
“You want to split up?” asked Shay.
I shook my head. “Stick with me. Keep looking.”
I plunged onward into more hallways filled with crates of empty beer bottles, stacks of old flyers, and assorted rigging elements. The halls only darkened I progressed. I nearly tripped over a length of coiled rope, and I knee-capped myself on an old discarded bass drum.
The more I searched, the more my despair grew. We couldn’t have lost him. We simply couldn’t have. There was no way he could’ve escaped our net. Not unless…
We turned a corner. There, at the end of a hall, I spotted motion. My eyes had adjusted, but only enough to get a general gist of what was going on.
I noticed a dark figure. A man, with dark hair. Ritchie.
More motion. A pained moan. Ritchie leaned over. He had someone at the wall, his face at their neck.
Cold dread filled my veins. I leapt forward, ripping Daisy from my jacket but knowing it wouldn’t be enough to fend him off. I cried out.
“Nooooo!!!”
Ritchie pulled back, his teeth flashing in the darkness, but normal, neither elongated nor dripping with blood.
The figure behind him moved, one with wavy blond hair and a denim jacket over a black crop top. She blinked and looked at me.
I blinked back. “Heather?”
“Uh…detective?” she said. “What are you doing here?
The answer to that was simple. What she was doing there, on the other hand, was a much more interesting question—but one I had a good feeling I knew the answer to. And as I ran through the possibilities in my head, one thing was clear.
The case suddenly made a whole lot more sense.
40
I gripped the door handle and twisted, pushing into the interrogation room. We’d placed Ritchie in the nice-by-comparison upstairs unit, though by the looks of things, the sterile, empty room, bright lights, and shiny metal table at which he’d been seated hadn’t buoyed his spirits. Sweat dripped from his brow, leaving a trail of nervous energy that disappeared into his puffy black mane before eventually reappearing as stains underneath his armpits.
He looked up as Shay and I crossed through the door and joined him at the metal table. For a moment, a glimmer of hope shone in his eyes. The glimmer wavered, however, as he laid eyes on a brown paper bag I held in my right hand.
“Hey, detectives,” he said. “When am I going to be able to leave? I already came here with you guys this morning. I’ve told you everything I know.”
I took a seat in one of the metal folding chairs that faced the table, placing the bag on the table’s edge. Its top sagged slightly to one side, neatly creased.
Shay took the seat next to me. “About that, Ritchie. Detective Daggers and I were hoping to go over the events of last night with you one more time.”
“Again?” said Ritchie. “Come on. Seriously. I told you. After last night’s concert, I went with Chaz, B. B., and Sammy to Billy Charles’ place. We partied, drank, and took some drugs. I’m not sure what, but they hit me like a ton of bricks. Knocked me out cold, or at least I thought they did. Next thing I remember was waking up at the Banks with you two, your friend, and that hotel lady standing over me. That’s it. That’s all I’ve got.”
Shay eyed him coolly. “So you wouldn’t remember anything that might help us understand how Chaz ended up dead with his throat torn open in the middle of Rucker Park then, would you?”
“I’m telling you, no,” said Ritchie. “Trust me, I’m devastated over it. Crushed. I’ve been on an emotional rollercoaster all day. First, I feel like it’s a joke, then I get depressed, then angry. I’m all over the place. I don’t know what to think.”
“You seemed to have your thoughts pretty well in place as you fondled Chaz’s ex-wife in the back of the Moxy,” I said.
“Heather?” Ritchie stammered. “No. I mean…we were both upset. You know. Over Chaz. Things happen when you get emotional like that.”
“You can drop the act,” said Shay. “We talked to B. B. and Billy Charles.”
Ritchie blinked in the bright lantern light. Another bead of sweat dripped down a previously established trail. “Excuse me?”
“We spoke to both of them,” Steele said. “Billy admitted he hadn’t told us the full story about what happened last night. He said he and Chaz got into an argument that ultimately resulted in you guys leaving the party. Remember that?”
Ritchie didn’t say anything.
“Right,” said Shay. “Anyway, according to Billy, Chaz went on a bit of a tirade. Insulted him to his face. Called him a quote ‘two-bit hack’ and ‘former has-been with more wrinkles than a pair of elephant testicles.’ Sammy took Chaz’s side and, apparently, you and B. B. sided with Billy. That alone isn’t a big deal. Chaz went off the rails often, we now understand, but Billy wasn’t in much of a mood for it last night, especially after he’d gone out of his way to throw a party for you guys on your one year anniversary at the Moxy. So before you all split, he made sure to slip some extra powerful drugs into Chaz and Sammy’s stash, drugs which you happened to be holding.”
“I…don’t remember that,” said Ritchie.
“We think maybe you do,” I said. “As we mentioned, we talked to B. B. again, too. We know you were smashed. You were all ingesting an assortment of drugs and alcohol from the moment you left the Moxy until the wee hours of the morning, or so we assume. But only Chaz and Sammy got the toxic cocktail of tranqu
ilizers and anxiety meds. You and B. B. didn’t. As a result, you might remember some of what happened. B. B. did. He admitted he recalled getting locked up on Flatley, and he remembered the lion and that you went back to the zoo afterwards.”
Ritchie’s eyes widened. More sweat beaded at his brow. His gaze quickly shifted between Steele and me. “Guys, I’m telling you. I’m being honest. I don’t know what happened last night! I swear!”
“Don’t lie to us, Ritchie. We found the lion transport cart. I tracked you to the Go Go Grocery, and the owner identified you.” I reached for the bag, opened it, and produced the mostly empty jar within. “We found the peanut butter.”
Ritchie’s eyes widened even more. He froze, but the effect only lasted a second. Without warning, he covered his face and burst into tears.
I glanced at Shay, my eyebrows raised. I’d broken men, made them cry before in interrogations—but never with a mostly empty jar of nut butter.
“It…it was an accident,” sobbed Ritchie. “Gods, I didn’t mean to kill him. He was just being such an asshole, and I thought I’d teach him a lesson. Make him crap his pants. Served him right for being such a prick. But then I opened the door, and…gods, there was so much blood! Damn it…”
“So you do remember what happened last night,” said Steele.
Ritchie nodded. “Not everything. Some of it. Enough.”
“Then tell us what you do remember,” I said. “You can skip the very beginning. Billy’s place, Leopard Jane’s, the Raccoon Ranch. What happened after B. B. got arrested by the Green Jackets, when you, Chaz, and Sammy split?”
Ritchie rubbed his eyes, trying to stem the tide of tears. “We, ah…went to Heather’s. Chaz insisted. I think he was upset about being kicked out of the Ranch. Maybe he really needed to get off. The drugs can do that to you sometimes. Anyway, at Heather’s, he got aggressive. Handsy. Tried to force himself on Heather, and seeing that? Man, it just… I…”
Ritchie clenched his jaw and curled his hand into a tight fist. His nostrils flared, and he squeezed out another tear.
Shay leaned forward, picking up on the same cues I had. “How long have you had feelings for Heather, Ritchie?”
The first unclenched, as did his jaw. “A long time. We dated, once or twice. Years ago, before she and Chaz hooked up. We were never a thing, but I always hoped, especially once she and Chaz split. But…she still had feelings for him, you know?”
I nodded. I’d guessed something along those lines, though I hadn’t suspected they’d ever dated. “So you pulled Chaz off Heather. What then?”
Ritchie shook his head and held it in his hands. “We went to that goth joint, Club Midnight. Chaz was in a hell of a mood. Depressed because of Heather, angry about B. B. and the Ranch, out of his mind and hallucinating from the drugs. Then that friend of his comes by, some guy with a bunch of tattoos.”
“Jefferson Torment,” said Shay.
“Yeah, him,” said Ritchie. “They start talking about vampires because supernatural creatures are Chaz’s favorite thing in the world, I guess. Chaz was admiring the guy’s new ink when suddenly he says screw it, I want one. So we followed the guy to a tattoo shop and Chaz gets a vampire symbol on his chest, because of course he does.”
“An ankh,” I said. “Right. And that’s where we lose you guys. So what exactly happened after that?”
Ritchie took a deep breath, his voice firming. “The whole time he was getting a tattoo, Sammy and I were trying to figure out how we could bust B. B. out. Sammy thought we needed to recruit an army and charge the place, but he was high as a kite. Then Chaz finished with his tat and since he’s on this vampire high, he says all we need is a single vampire to help us—his ‘brethren’ he called them—because they have superhuman strength or psychic powers or something. And he says he knows where to find them.”
“The zoo,” said Steele.
Ritchie nodded. “Yeah. He drags us there and over to a cage full of bats. He busts in and starts asking them for help. Pleading his case. And they get really agitated. Start flying and whipping around him like crazy. Spooky stuff. And then, suddenly, Chaz just passed out. Collapsed on the floor of the bat enclosure. That’s when the bats quieted back down.”
“And how Chaz undoubtedly got covered in bat crap,” I told Shay.
“Anyway,” continued Ritchie, “while we’re there, Sammy has this idea. We can steal some bloodthirsty animal and unleash it on the lockup to scare everyone away, then we can bust B. B. out. So he finds the lion pen, and he’s about to break in there when I stop him. I mean, the lion would’ve eaten him whole! So I convince him to head back out, and we break into a nearby store and steal some leather armor and stuff. We buy some sausages for the lion and snacks for us, too. And then, back at the zoo, we find this cart and manage to get the lion inside by piling all the sausages in there. But then we need a way to move the cart, so we steal this really cool camel and have him drag the cart over to the jail for us.”
“And we know what happened there,” I said. “But how did you get the lion in the lockup without getting hurt?”
“Dude, I don’t know,” said Ritchie. “I blacked out during that part. I just remember helping B. B. out of there, and he’s been mauled by the lion, and there was blood. It was scary. But we made it out alive, and then we had to take the camel and the cart back to the zoo. Plus we had to get Chaz out of there. So we head back to the zoo, but when we arrive, Chaz isn’t in the bat cage anymore. That’s when we find him wandering out of one of the other animal enclosures, and all hell breaks loose!”
“What happened?” asked Shay.
“I don’t know,” said Ritchie. “I guess Chaz let a bunch of the animals loose. But they all started attacking us. There were these little deer with tiny horns and these huge hairy hamster things with big buck teeth.”
“Capybaras,” I said.
“Yeah, whatever,” said Ritchie. “It was a scene out of a nightmare. And then the damn baboons showed up, barking and shouting and going after whatever snacks we had left. And of course I was the one holding everything!”
“So what did you do?” asked Shay.
“I got rid of everything,” said Ritchie. “Threw it wherever I could. I think I tossed the beef jerky and bread into the cart and the other stuff out in the open. Probably three baboons dove into the cart after the food, and I locked them in there as quick as I could to keep them from coming back out. The others were fighting over the peanut butter and chips. Sammy and B. B. had already bolted, and I was about to too, but then here comes dumbass Chaz, whooping and hollering like the baboons. He jumps on the camel, freaking it out, and it takes off. I only just managed to hop onto the back of the cart before it tore out of there. The poor animal was so freaked out he ran for a good fifteen minutes, all while Chaz rode him like a bull and I clung onto the back of the cart for dear life.”
“And that’s how you found yourself in that alley?” I asked.
Ritchie nodded again. “Chaz finally got him under control and reined him in. I tried to calm the poor beast, but Chaz was all jacked from the experience. Got his blood pumping, I guess. Kept talking about how it made him feel alive, like a man. And then…he mentioned Heather again. He had this wild look on his face. And…I knew what he was planning. I knew it. I couldn’t let that sick asshole do anything to hurt her. So I turned to him, and I… I said…”
Ritchie hesitated.
“Go on,” I said. “If you want us to put a positive spin on your case to the DA, you’d better tell us the truth.”
Ritchie swallowed hard. “I told him…if he ever touched Heather again, I’d kill him. But I swear to the gods I didn’t mean it. I just couldn’t have him hurt her. Not like that. Not that it mattered. Chaz turned red as a beet. Told me it was none of my damned business and that he’d do whatever the hell he pleased. And I…well, I took a swing at him. I missed, though. He didn’t. Nailed me right in the cheek.” Ritchie pointed to his black eye.
“And he knocked you into the mud,” said Shay.
“That’s right,” said Ritchie. “Didn’t last long after that, though. He screamed at me, telling me I was done, out of the band, right before he passed out again and fell into a pile of trash at the end of the alley.”
“So how does the peanut butter fit into all this?” I asked.
Ritchie held his head and started to cry again. I blinked. The peanut butter was two for two this interrogation.
“I don’t know, man,” he said, sobbing. “I wasn’t thinking straight. All I know is I was angry. No. Furious. How dare that asshole throw me out of the band? And to think he could take advantage of Heather? Are you kidding me? What a self-absorbed prick. So I sat there in the mud, just staring at Chaz in the trash, listening to those damn baboons going at it in the cart, and I got this crazy idea.”
“To slather your band mate in peanut butter and feed him to the baboons,” said Shay.
“No, not feed him,” said Ritchie. “It was a prank to teach that bastard a lesson. See how he liked it to wake up and find some stranger on top of him, terrifying him. Except instead of a person it would be a trio of baboons. But I swear, I had no idea the animals would kill him! I thought they’d lick the peanut butter off him and maybe scratch him up a bit if he fought back.”
“But they did kill him,” I said.
The sobbing continued. “I got scared when I didn’t hear anything from Chaz for fifteen minutes. I opened up the cart, and the baboons bolted. That’s when I saw all the blood. Gods, there was so much of it…”
“And let me guess,” said Steele. “You saw the neck wound. Chaz had been on a vampire high all night, and you figured, maybe I can frame this as a vampire murder? So you threw Chaz on the camel’s back, took him to the park, and tied him up to a tree using the whip you’d stolen from Tommy Llama’s leather shop.”
Ritchie nodded. He didn’t make eye contact, and he spoke in a low voice. “I swear, I didn’t mean to kill him. It was supposed to be a joke…”
