by Matthew Iden
I glanced at my watch, wincing at the zing that went through my neck. After nine. I yawned and fell back against the pillows, looking over the carnage of paper strewn across my bed. The only thing that stood out this time was the bank envelope that I had originally thought held sample checks and deposit slips. Mixed in with them were three deposit slip receipts. They’d been for deposits made in February, April, and May, each for five hundred dollars. Nothing on the slips gave even a hint where the cash had come from.
A deep growl from my stomach surprised me. I hadn’t been truly hungry for a long time and it had been even longer since my body had independently let me know it. I found myself inordinately pleased at the thought. When cancer takes such simple pleasures as eating away from you, it’s a treat to be reminded of even the most basic needs. I tossed the bank statements on the bed without a second thought and went to find some grub.
The streets were quiet and clean and dark. Traffic was nonexistent and the two or three forlorn stoplights I could see went through their green-yellow-red loop, unneeded. A dog barked a few blocks away and I listened in wonder when I heard actual crickets. It was after dark in the middle of the week and people were already long at home. They’d eaten a meal with their family, watched and laughed at their favorite sitcom, and gone to bed.
I wasn’t envious. I’d spent most of my life in isolation of one kind or another and it’d been thirty years since I would’ve considered going to sleep at nine and rising at six a normal routine. But I could still feel melancholy without wanting to trade places and so I did, sauntering down the dusky street, finding my way by sodium streetlights, past Lula Belle’s—closed for the evening—until I came across a late-night eatery. America’s Best Chili – Easy as ABC! Glaring white light spilled onto the sidewalk from the diner’s windows and, combined with an aqua-and-white-tile décor, it had all the charm of an operating room, but it was either chili or a cold glass of water back at the hotel.
I went in, ordered from a silent man in a stained apron, and had a steaming bowl in my hands seconds later. Tucked in a back corner booth with my chili and corn bread, I let my mind wander a bit on what I’d learned so far. And quickly decided that I was more at sea now than I’d been when I’d stopped at the foot of the highway billboard.
Take the money, for instance. Three months of the same amount in deposits over two quarters implied a routine payment, like a salary or a disbursement or a payoff. No one had mentioned J.D. having a job and ex-cons serving time for manslaughter normally didn’t find employment that easily. He wasn’t being paid disability or have a government check coming in the mail—surely Mary Beth or Ginny would’ve told me. He’d been working for the Browers, of course, so payoffs seemed the most likely source, but even in Cain’s Crossing, five hundred dollars a month was chicken feed. And how many meth dealers pay their flunkies exact, consistent amounts on a regular schedule? Dealers didn’t run payroll.
I drummed my fingers on the table. Maybe the amount wasn’t so small. I was used to the obscene mounds of cash I’d seen when we’d busted DC crack dealers, stacked on kitchen tables like paperback books. Maybe crime didn’t pay out here in the boondocks. And J.D. was, despite being a native, the new kid on the block. Maybe the Browers had paid him in dribs and drabs until they felt he’d proven himself.
Maybe, maybe, maybe. The problem with the money thing was that I didn’t have enough data. I needed more deposit slips or access to his account if I wanted to get any kind of traction on the issue. I sighed and pushed away the unfinished chili, full on food, if not answers. It was probably more than I’d eaten in one sitting in a year’s time. Hopefully, I wouldn’t pay for it later. I left two bucks on the table and left, distracted and thinking hard.
The streets were still dark and serene. The dog had ceased barking, but no one had told the crickets to stop. I walked along, enjoying the silence until the peace was interrupted by the far off, ripsaw sound of a hemi cutting through the air. Someone letting loose on a backcountry road, trying to set a land-speed record. The sound held on for about ten seconds, then faded in a burble of downshifting gears. Night noises covered by the industrial ruckus came back: the crickets, the buzz of a neon sign, footsteps in the distance.
Footsteps?
My pulse bumped up a notch, but I kept my pace measured and steady for a minute, trying to pick up the sound again. The idiots with the hemi had turned around, however, and were trying to beat their previous record, coming in my direction. Even from half a mile away, all sounds around me were obliterated by the scream of 400 horsepower. I allowed myself a quick glance over the shoulder and, when I didn’t see anyone, slipped into the doorway of an old-timey drugstore, fronted in glass with wide, swirling gold letters on the door. I backed into a wedge of shadow and slipped my SIG out, waiting.
The roar of the hemi disappeared, hopefully for good. I cupped a hand around one ear and tilted my head this way and that, trying to pick up any stray sounds. Crickets. And neon signs. And the dog, again.
I stayed that way for ten minutes, trying to outwait my tail. If there had been one. The sounds had been so innocuous and I’d been so distracted that now I doubted myself. I tensed as an approaching car was preceded by the hum of tires on asphalt. An old man driving a brown Chevy Impala—hands at ten and two, head barely clearing the steering wheel—cruised down the street at a stately twenty miles per hour. He passed my doorway without so much as blinking. Then, looking neither left nor right, neither slowing nor speeding up, he sailed through the red light at the intersection.
I counted to five hundred for good measure. No sounds, no cars, no bodies to match the footsteps. Finally, I slipped the SIG back in its holster, shook my hands and feet which had gone numb, and continued back to the hotel. The night clerk was awake and I gave her a courteous nod as I headed up the stairs to my room. I was tired and cranky and a little on edge. My stamina wasn’t the best it had ever been, I was getting so paranoid that I was hearing sounds, and I wasn’t sure I had any business stirring up trouble in this little town anymore. I unlocked the door, threw the keys on the desk—then fumbled for my gun as the bathroom door opened. A figure sauntered into the shaft of street light coming through the window and my finger squeezed down on the trigger…then I relaxed, easing out of my shooter’s stance and dropping the bead. But I didn’t put my gun away.
“That ain’t no way to greet the dead,” Ginny Decker said, walking towards me with a sad smile on her face.
Chapter Twenty
“Surprised, Mr. Detective?” she asked, pushing papers out of the way and sitting on the corner of my bed. Her voice was uneven and her movements overly precise. She was trying very hard to maintain a thin, coy look over top a deep pocket of fear. And failing.
I stared at her as my mind raced to put things together. A tickle I’d felt at the trailer park blossomed into a full-fledged deduction; things clicked into place. “The propane tank.”
She nodded but looked worried. “You figured it out?”
“I saw that the tank was missing from your trailer, but I didn’t think through why.” I slid my gun back in its holster. “You didn’t want an explosion that would hurt your neighbors.”
“Didn’t look like an accident, huh?”
“Your trailer had burnt to the ground evenly. That only happens if it’s lit in more than one place—not just one end where, say, someone might’ve chucked a gallon of gas on it. It wasn’t the Browers. You set that fire.”
She bit her lip. “If it was that easy to piece together, then I don’t got much time.”
“You can probably relax. I imagine I’m the only one in this county that’s gone through FEMA arson training. The locals might figure it out in a week when they go through the scene and don’t find your body, but not before.”
She shook her head. “I can’t take the chance.”
“So…you didn’t torch your trailer for the insurance money, I guess?”
She put a hand to her mouth and shook her head aga
in, looking lost. I walked over to the desk and turned on the table lamp, then pulled out the chair from the desk and settled in. “Was I right? You didn’t want to hurt anyone else, so you…what? Drained the lines and unhooked the propane tank?”
She nodded.
“You did it to beat the Browers to the punch and maybe hamstring them with an arson investigation. To give you time to run?”
“All I did was get to it before they did,” she said in a whisper. “Couple hours after you and I talked, Tank and Buck came by the trailer park. I heard that damn huge truck of theirs on the road and hid in a neighbor’s house while they pounded on my door.”
“So what are you doing in my hotel room? Why aren’t you hauling ass out of the county?”
She plucked at the strings of her fraying cutoff jeans. “I am. Everything I own is in the trunk of a hatchback down on the corner. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be in the west end of Kentucky.”
“But?”
She looked at me, her eyes meeting mine. “You said you owed it to J.D. to find who killed him. What happened to him.”
I nodded.
“No one else gives a shit, which means you’re the only one who can hurt whoever killed him. I want to tell you everything I know before I get the hell out of Cain’s Crossing.”
“Okay,” I said.
“There was things going on, reasons for J.D. to come back. And something important about him I want you to know.”
“His ALS?”
“How the hell…?” she said, stunned, then glanced at the papers on the bed. “Oh.”
“I found a prescription in a box of stuff from the hotel room he was staying in. Ran it down, found his doctor, and got the news,” I said.
She gave a little moan and started to cry. I gave her time. I’m lousy at comforting people. I know it helps to pat a shoulder or make the right noises, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it. I suffer in silence and assume others want to, too.
When her sobs died down, I said, “It must’ve been hard.”
She got up and went into the bathroom, where I heard her clean herself up. When she came back, she sat down and took a deep breath that caught in her throat. “He didn’t tell me at first. Didn’t want to scare me, he said. But the truth is, he’s the one didn’t want to be scared. Alone. Sick. Fresh out of jail. Disowned by his own mother. His sister a million miles away.”
I didn’t say anything.
“When we talked the other day, I told you he rolled in, all cocky and full of himself. And he was. Same old charmer, saying things like ‘My, you look good enough to eat, Ginny Decker,’” she said, eyes unfocused, remembering. “A week later, he was crying in my arms, telling me he didn’t want to die.”
The chair popped and squeaked as I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable. Her eyes gained their focus and nailed me. “J.D. was dying. But he told me he didn’t want to go having done nothing with his life. He wanted to do some good in the world.”
“He said that?”
She nodded. “He broke down once or twice, when things got to be too much. The rest of the time, he was driven by something. He asked special for that medicine from the doctor so he could hang on. Said he had a mission.”
“But you don’t know what he was doing? What the mission was?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me. But if it wasn’t something to do with the Brower boys, what else is there?”
“Do you know what he did for them?”
“No. I don’t know. He never wanted me to know too much, as if that would protect me. I know they was impressed with him doing jail time and all. They must’ve figured he’d made some powerful connections they could use him for.”
“Browers are cooking meth? For sure?”
She nodded. “Everyone knows. They used to be happy growing pot, but then meth’s all you heard about starting a couple years back.”
“And they wanted J.D. to help them make it in the big city?”
She shrugged, palms up. “Only thing that makes sense.”
I chewed on that for a second. “This mission of his. Was he getting close, do you think?”
Wiping a tear away, she said, “I don’t know. Every time I asked him, he would just shake his head and crack a joke. But if he wasn’t close to doing them some damage, why’d they kill him?”
I nodded, paused, then said, “Ginny, one of the things I found in the paperwork was a steady payment of five hundred bucks a month. Was that coming from the Browers?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what they paid him. He gave me what he could to help with the trailer and I know that motel room he kept cost him, but he never told me where his money came from.”
“Did he ever say he thought the Browers were on to him?”
“No. But something he said stuck with me, something he let slip once or twice.”
“What’s that?”
“A few weeks after he came home and got in tight with those crooks, he said those boys couldn’t find their way out of a paper bag.”
“I think I would agree.”
She shook her head, frustrated. “No, it was more than that. There’s someone else involved, he said. Someone in charge.”
“Who?”
“I don’t think he knew. And he never told me who he thought it might be. But he told me he was getting closer to finding out. J.D. wasn’t no rocket scientist, but even he could think circles around those boys. He was due to move up. But whoever this boss was, he was scared of him. So I am, too.”
Ginny stood and walked over to me, swaying as she moved. She leaned over, kissed my forehead, then put her face next to mine and whispered in my ear, “Whoever it was, he took my J.D. away, mister. He took my heart away. When you find him, pay him back for me, won’t you?”
Chapter Twenty-One
Ten minutes after Ginny slipped out, I cleaned myself up and packed both my modest travel bag and the box of J.D.’s papers. I tidied up the room, put everything on the bed ready to go, and checked my watch. It was just shy of eleven when I left my room and padded down to the second floor.
I took my time in the corridor, checking for lights under doors and other signs of life. But I’d already glanced at the registry at the front desk and was pretty sure what I’d find: a whole lot of nothing. I went to what I deemed to be the least likely room to choose—not near the stairs, end of the hall, or a corner room—pulled a few tools from a back pocket and was inside in twenty seconds.
The room was a twin to mine, except that the window was pointed towards the back of the Mosby, with a view of a brick wall across the alley. Harsh sodium lamps somewhere in the alley lit the wall a sterile yellow. A queen bed, a decrepit desk, and a rickety chair comprised the extent of the furniture. Stale smells of old cigarette smoke and aging linen hung in the air. I padded over to the window and peered out. A fire escape was just outside the window, but it was only a ten- or twelve-foot drop in any case. Just what I wanted for either a quick escape or a back entrance.
Snooping turned up a complimentary copy of The Sentinel with Chick’s stories all over it, lying on the desk. I skimmed it by the light coming through the window. It was a July issue, indicating exactly what I’d hoped, that the place hadn’t been rented or even cleaned in weeks. Perfect.
When people were willing to torch their own homes and leave town to escape the notice of a gang of crooks, things were getting dicey. And, whether she’d known somebody at the front desk or had found some other way in, it had been child’s play for Ginny to get into my room. Which meant, next time, it might be Will Brower with a pool cue sitting in the shadows.
So it was time to relocate, albeit not far away. Switching to a different room in the same hotel wasn’t much of a ruse, but it would let me sleep tonight. And if I planned to keep plugging away at J.D.’s murder, I was going to need plenty of rest—and not wonder if someone was going to cave my skull in while I slept.
One quick trip was all it took to move my stuff into the room. I didn’
t plan to turn on any lights, but I jammed a towel under the door just to be sure, then put the desk chair under the knob. Not much in the way of security, but at least it would make noise if anyone tried to break in. I took two more Advil, turned the sound on my cell phone off, and crawled into bed. If the bad guys could find me after all those precautions, they deserved to get me.
. . .
On the way to breakfast the next morning, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I snatched at the phone, then glanced at the screen. It was Sam.
“Hey, Sam. Got something for me?”
“Yes and no,” he said. His pencil tapped a staccato beat in the background. “You got some time?”
“Nothing but,” I said. “Lay it on me.”
“Okay, first thing. Neither of the DEA boys in Warrenton or Richmond want to talk to me.”
“What, they’re not picking up the phone?”
“No, they answer. But when I ask for a favor or some info, I usually get it. This time, I gave them a ring, asked some questions, and got a promise for a conference call that never happened. When I tried to follow up on that, I got dropped like I was trying to sell them real estate. Voice mail, phone tag, silence.”
“That old interdepartmental cooperation thing isn’t going very far, then?”
“It’s going nowhere. So, I decided to do an end run and start doing some digging myself.”
“Here comes the good news, I hope?”
“Yeah,” he said. Tap, tap, tap. “Let’s back up. What do you know about meth production?”
“Some,” I said, casting my mind back. “I took some crossover training in Vice. High points, mostly. Not all of it stuck. The drug-motivated murders I saw were from crack, not meth.”
“Want a crash course?”
“Couldn’t hurt.”
“Okay, you want to make meth, you need three ingredients. Pseudoephedrine, anhydrous ammonia, and lithium. I’m not going to bore you with how it all works together, but if you’re missing one of those three, you don’t have meth, you’ve got junk.”
