by J. R. Rain
I drank some Diet Pepsi. I’m not even really convinced that I like Diet Pepsi. I took another sip; nope, still not convinced.
“Jones seems to think there was foul play,” I said. “And gave me a hefty retainer fee to prove it.”
“Jones wants business. Twenty bucks says he turns this thing into an even bigger circus. He’s the ring leader, and you’re the....” He paused, thinking.
“World’s Strongest Man?” I offered.
“Sure, whatever. Look, I think he’s using you, Knighthorse. Especially you, since you have some name recognition.”
“Did you want my autograph for your kid?” I asked.
“You kidding? Kid doesn’t know a fullback from a backpack.” Sherbet shook his head some more, sipped his coffee. “All this over a fucking mummy.”
“Hard to believe.”
Chapter Four
It was a warm Saturday afternoon and Cindy and I were jogging along the beach with, perhaps, two billion other people. We used the bike path that ran parallel to the ocean, expertly dodging dog walkers, roller bladers, baby strollers, various shapes and sizes of humans and, of course, bikes.
Cindy was dressed in black Spandex running pants and a long-sleeved shirt that said O’Neil on the back in blue script. She was the only human being within five square miles wearing a long-sleeved shirt. She had also smeared blue gunk over the bridge of her nose and along her cheekbones, which made her look like a wide receiver, minus the helmet and cup. I was dressed only in knee length shorts and running shoes. No shirt, no sunscreen, no blue gunk. No problem.
“That blue gunk is scaring the kids,” I said.
“That blue gunk, as you call it, is sunscreen, and it helps to keep me looking young.”
“You’re thirty-one. That’s young enough.”
“But I want to look twenty-one.”
As we jogged, we spoke easily, casually. Cindy huffed or puffed once or twice. I don’t huff or puff, although I was very conscious of a dull ache in my right leg, a leg held together by stainless steel pins and will power. Superman has his kryptonite; I have my stainless steel pins.
“So if you can stay ten years ahead of the aging curve you would be happy?” I said.
“Ecstatic.”
“There are women who would kill to look thirty-one.”
“You think I look thirty-one?”
Oops. So what was the old formula? Add two inches, subtract four years? “You easily look twenty-seven.”
“Twenty-seven? How the hell did you come up with that number?”
“It’s a formula.”
“Formula?”
“Never mind.”
“So how old do I really look to you?” she asked.
“Definitely not thirty-one,” I said. “How about early twenties?”
“Then why did you say twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-seven on a bad day.”
“I have bad days?”
“Not as bad as I’m having.”
She looked at me, and I think she was smiling somewhere under the blue gunk. She patted my backside. “Sorry I’m being hard on you. I’m just finding aging and wrinkles hard to deal with.”
We passed a row of sunbathers who had ventured maybe five feet from the bike path out onto the sand. They were still a good fifty yards from the water. Maybe they were afraid of sharks.
“I say wear your age like a badge of honor,” I said.
“I would prefer not to wear a badge of wrinkles, thank you very much. Look at all these women, Jim. They’re all so young, and beautiful and smooth-skinned. And most of them are looking at you. Could you please put your shirt back on.”
“I’m working on my tan.”
“Work on it somewhere else. Besides, you’re burning.”
“Part of the process. I happen to be Caucasian.”
“Women are ogling you.”
“Ogling is bad?”
“Only when I’m feeling old.”
I slipped my tank top back on, which had been tucked in the waistband of my shorts. Cindy looked me over, shook her head. “Somehow you look even better.”
“Maybe I should quit lifting weights.”
“Would you do that for me?”
“Don’t push it.”
We stopped at Balboa Pier. I bought two bottles of water from a street vendor and briefly eyeballed a dehydrated hot dog until Cindy pulled me away. We found an empty bench and seized it. Our knees touched, which sent a thrill of pleasure coursing through me, all over again.
“You thrill me,” I said.
She looked at me from over her water bottle. “Even after eight years?”
“I’ve spent eight years being fascinated. Not too many people can say that.”
She smiled and took hold of my sweaty hand. My sweat never bothered her, the surest sign of true love. Cindy’s nails were painted red. I love red nails, and she knew it. The brighter the better, since I’m certifiably color blind.
“Explain to me again why you agreed to look into the historian’s death.”
I found her blue nose heavily distracting. I wanted to taste it.
“Because it’s what I do,” I said. “Sometimes I go days without work; hell, and sometimes even weeks. So when someone walks in through my door and hands me a check to investigate something, I would be foolish not to.”
“Even if this someone is using you for his own self-promotion?”
I shook my head. “Jones and I have an agreement: no self-promotion while I’m on the case. Besides, if I were to disapprove of the motives of every client prior to taking a case, I would be homeless and hungry.”
“But the police have ruled the historian’s death an accident.”
“The police are often overworked.”
“And you are not?”
“Not often enough,” I said. “A private investigator can spend more time on a case, work it more thoroughly, perhaps bend a few laws here and there to find answers in places the police are not willing or able to look. Not a bad way to go if you are unsatisfied with the answers you are given.”
“And Jones is unsatisfied.”
“Yes.”
“I think he’s feeling guilty,” she said.
“I agree.”
“But you don’t care about his motives.”
“Not enough to turn down honest work.”
“Honest?”
“Honest enough.”
“You think there might be something to this case?” she asked.
“Jones seems to think so, and that’s enough for me.”
“You’ll take the money and job, of course, because that’s what you do,” she said, looking at me. “But on another level you can’t wait to dig into this case, see what you turn up.”
“One never knows.”
“So what’s your first step?”
“Cash Jones’s check and pay my rent.”
“And then what?”
“Buy some food, maybe even a foot massager for you. Wink, wink.”
She slapped my hand. “Focus.”
“I’ll probably give the mummy a visit. You know, immerse myself in the case and all that. Want to come?”
She shuddered. “I’ve always hated that thing.”
“That ‘thing’ is a murdered man,” I said.
She suddenly turned to me.
“I knew it!” she said excitedly.
“Knew what?”
“This isn’t just about the historian.”
I crossed my arms and grinned. “It’s not?”
“No.”
“So tell me what it’s about.”
She was facing me, excited. “You’re going to figure out who this mummy was.”
“Go on.”
“Even more, you’re going to find his killer, or die trying, because that’s the way you are. You help those in need, even if they’re hundred-year-old mummies.”
“Mummies need justice too,” I said.
She looked at me for perhaps twenty second
s, and, although I could have been wrong, there seemed to be real love in her eyes. Who could blame her.
“Yes,” she said finally, laying her head on my shoulder. “They certainly do.”
We sat like that for ten minutes, enjoying each other’s silence, enjoying the parade of humanity, enjoying the sights and sounds and smells of the ocean. I noticed men looking at Cindy’s pretty face, somehow seeing beyond the blue gunk to the real beauty beneath. But then they got a look at me and moved on.
* * *
We were walking back to my place along the boardwalk, hand-in-hand. The sun was hot on my neck and a nearby seagull, balancing precariously on a low brick wall, was working on a tightly crumpled Subway wrapper. Maybe it was on the Jared diet.
“Someone vandalized my office,” Cindy suddenly said.
The words had the same effect as a punch to the solar plexus. I stopped walking and faced her.
“Vandalized how?”
“Trashed my lecture hall. Turned over anything they could get their hands on. Graffitied everything.”
“Are the campus police on it?”
“Yeah.”
“Any leads?”
“Creationists.”
“Creationists?”
“Or anti-Darwinists,” she said. To her students, Cindy was known as Professor Darwin. And, yes, she was the great great granddaughter of the infamous Charles, his bloodline living to this day, which says a little something about surviving and fitness and all that. She continued, “They spray-painted crosses and fishes on the walls and chalk boards. Even left me a message on my computer screen.”
“What Would Jesus Do?”
“No,” she said. “‘Darwin is burning in hell, and so will you.’”
“Not if he has his great great granddaughter’s penchant for sunscreen.”
“Not funny. I’m scared. This wasn’t your typical prank. I’ve dealt with those my entire life.” She took in some air, looked down at her half-filled water bottle. “There was a lot of anger involved in this attack. A lot. You could see it, feel it.”
“You want me to look into it?”
We started walking again. She slipped her hands around my right bicep, her fingertips not quite able to touch. She was beautiful and petite and I wanted to hug her but I was afraid of getting blue stuff on my white tank top.
“Yeah,” she said. “They scared me.”
They scared her. I involuntarily tightened my hand into a fist. My bicep swelled before her thunderstruck eyes. I could feel the hair on my neck standing up. Hackles.
“Yeah,” I said, “I’ll look into it.”
Chapter Five
It was late and I was drinking alone on my balcony, feet up on the railing, gazing out across the empty black expanse that was the Pacific Ocean. The night air was cold, laced heavily with salt brine. The moon tonight was hidden behind a heavy layer of stratus clouds. A 12-pack of Bud Light was sitting on the balcony between my feet like an obedient dog.
Good doggy.
It was the first beer I had bought in six months. Hell, the first I had tasted in six months.
And it tasted heavenly.
Too heavenly.
I was in trouble.
Twenty-one years ago my mother had been murdered. As a ten-year-old boy, I had found her dead in her bedroom in a pool of her own blood. Her throat had been slashed and she had been raped. Her murderer was never found. A cold case, if ever there was one.
Six months ago my father handed over a packet of forgotten photographs of my mother, taken on the last day that she was alive on this earth. Other than being of obvious sentimental interest to me, the photos contained the one and only clue to her murder. At least, I hoped.
The clue: a random young man in the background of three of the twenty-four photographs. In the three photographs, he appears to be stalking her—at least that’s what my gut tells me. And I’ve learned to listen to my gut.
I drank some more beer. I prefer bottles, but cans leave less evidence—no bottles caps showing up in seat cushions, for instance—and less evidence is what I preferred, at least for now.
From the glass patio table, I picked up one of the three pictures of the young man in question; the young man who may or may not have been stalking my parents; the young man who may or may not have murdered my mother.
That’s a big leap, I thought.
True, but a big leap was all I had.
I angled the picture until it caught some of the ambient light from the street below. There he was, holding a freshly caught sandshark, standing behind my parents, themselves standing on the Huntington Beach pier. His hair was ragged and longish, bleached blond from hours in the sun and salt. He was wearing a red tank top and longish shorts, although not as long as the shorts kids wear today. His right leg was tanned and well muscled, although I could only see a fraction of it. My father obscured the rest of his body. Thanks, dad. Asshole. The young man was laughing at the rabbit ears my mother was not-so-secretly giving my father.
I set the picture down again. Inhaled deeply, looked up at the swirling mass of clouds above.
He had taken an interest in my mother, that much was evident. Probably because my mother made him laugh. Probably because she was a striking woman. Perhaps she had fascinated him. Perhaps he had always fantasized about being with an older woman. She was a striking woman. He himself was good-looking and muscular in that surfer sort of way. Whereas I was muscular in that strong-looking way.
The beer I was holding was miraculously empty. Wasn’t sure how that happened, barely even remembered drinking it. I opened another.
My mother’s case had been thoroughly investigated and was later shelved due to lack of evidence. Hell, lack of anything. I remembered the homicide detective. A good man who was deeply troubled by my mother’s murder. During his investigation, he had spoken to me often, once or twice even taking me out to get ice cream. I think he knew my father was an asshole.
But now I had these....
Pictures. Evidence.
Something.
I finished the beer, placed the empty tin carcass on the glass table and popped open another one.
I had grown up in a tough part of Inglewood. We had been poor in those days, my father was fresh out the military and not very family-oriented, if his nightly liaisons with the neighborhood whores were any indication. By the age of ten, I had witnessed a half dozen murders and more robberies than I cared to count. Growing up, I thought bullet-riddled bodies lying on street corners were sights that all school kids saw on their way home from school. Probably not the best neighborhood to raise a kid and my mother knew this. To escape, she took me to the beach any chance she had. She loved Huntington Beach, especially the pier. We would sit for hours overlooking the ocean. Sometimes I would fish, but mostly we ate ice creams and I told her about my day.
The same pier she was at in these pictures. The same pier I could see from my balcony.
Another empty can of beer. How the hell did that happen? I opened another and pondered this mystery.
Later, when the 12-pack was finally gone, I gathered up the empty cans in a trash bag and deposited the whole thing down the trash chute, and unwrapped a candy mint and lay down on my bed. My bladder was full. The ceiling spun. I awoke the next morning with the mint stuck to my forehead. Nice. My bladder was even fuller.
Between my thumb and forefinger, held in a sort of vice-like deathgrip, was the picture of the young man standing behind my mother.
Chapter Six
Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, with its extra e’s and p’s, was located just a half mile from my apartment. I could have walked there, but decided to drive, because nobody walks in Orange County, either.
The building itself was made of cinder block, painted in a red and white checkerboard pattern. White stars were painted within the red squares. It looked like a nightclub or an ice rink.
The time was noon, and the store had just opened. Inside, the curiosity shop was filled with, well, curios
ities. Most of it was junk, and most of it was designed to lure away the tourist’s buck. I passed rows of shrunken heads, tribal spears, bobble heads and postcards. California license plate key chains with names like Dwayne, LaToya and Javier.
The store itself was smallish, made smaller by the overwhelming amount of junk. Inventory must have been hell. I was the only customer in the store. No surprise there, as it had just opened.
I headed to the rear of the store, side-stepping a curtain of crystal talismans, and there was the old boy. Sealed within a polyurethane case, Sylvester stood guard next to a door marked Employees Only. I wondered if he was on the clock.
I stepped up to the case.
Sylvester was not a handsome man. His skin was blackened and shriveled. His lips had disappeared in the mummification process, and so had most of his eyes. His hair was there, but short and scraggly. You would think, after all these years, someone would have thought to brush it. He was naked, although his genitalia had shriveled and disappeared. My heart went out to him. His hands were crossed under his stomach, the same position he was found in a hundred years ago.
I had aged twenty-five years since the first time I had seen Sylvester; he didn’t appear a day older. Mummification has that effect.
According to the legend at the base of the pedestal, Sylvester stood six feet one inches and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. His identity was unknown. His killer unknown. The hole was there, above his right wrist, clear as day. No bullet had been found, as it had exited out his back, shot clean through. A shot that had torn up his insides and caused him to bleed to death in the desert.
The storeroom door opened, startling me slightly. Sylvester ignored the door, and ignored me for the most part. A kid came out, smiled at me, looked casually at the dead man in the case, and then headed toward the cash registers.
