Roadrunner

by Michael Lilly

  As I come up on thirty hours of being awake, the door at my back squeaks open. Naturally, I dislike having unfamiliar entities anywhere from my three o’clock to my nine o’clock, but in a colossal effort to seem at ease, I only move slightly to look toward him.

  He looks normal—or, at least, much more so than I had expected. My mind had concocted an absolute mess of a person, twitchy as a rat on PCP. I pictured a mane of unattended hair, matted and smelly, an equally pungent robe, and slippers chewing at yellowing socks.

  Instead, Melvin Towning is well put together, neatly groomed, shaven, and, as far as I can tell, does not smell like stale asscrack. He’s wearing dark blue jeans, red sneakers, and a tee shirt bearing what I assume is a pop culture allusion, but it goes over my head. His copper-brown hair has an almost attractive sheen, even in the shade of his porch. He hands me a bottle of water.

  Seven

  Melvin kicks aside the condom (“Who the fuck?”) and sits on the top step of his porch, like me.

  “I know what they say about me,” he says. “Crazy Town and all of that.

  I don’t pretend not to notice. “Does it bother you?”

  “No. I can understand why they would think that way. It just takes a lot for me to be comfortable going outside is all.”

  “Would you rather do this inside?”

  “This is fine for now. It’s my agoraphobia. I haven’t been able to get outside in like a month.”

  “Outside is a lot to process,” I say. Do relatable.

  “It is. There’s so much to think about. Cars going back and forth, noises in every direction, neighbors and strangers watching, an incalculable number of possibilities. Pick up any one of those newspapers, the front page has some kind of tragedy, every single day.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” I say. That certainly makes for an uncomfortable transition into the purpose of my visit. But Melvin keeps talking. Hopefully he’ll provide a gentler bridge with more time.

  “I know it’s irrational. And I even moved to the little, quiet neighborhood in the middle of nowhere in an effort to ease myself back into a normal lifestyle. But that hasn’t helped. I work from home and have my groceries delivered.”

  “And what gave you the nerve to be out here right now?”

  “I don’t know, man. I kind of just wanted you to leave.”

  We both laugh, and I see a small amount of anxiety leave him.

  “Well, I’ll try to be brief then, so you can get back inside. First off, have you heard about what happened last night?”

  “Last night? No, but I did hear about last week. What happened last night?”

  “Pretty much the exact same thing,” I say. “Just with a new victim.”

  “Oh shit,” says Melvin.

  “Right. That’s what I said. Anyway, on that front, were you able to speak with police on either accounts?”

  “Just you,” he says. His anxiety is mounting again. I feel a bead of sweat forming at the nape of my neck.

  “Do you remember much about either last night or the night of the fourth? I guess you were probably here”—Melvin nods—“but maybe you had something else you were doing, a Friday ritual or tradition?”

  “Yeah, I usually order pizza on Fridays. There’s only one delivery driver from Pizza Palace who … gets my situation, and he only works weekends.”

  “Do you order a pizza from there every weekend, then?”

  “Sure do. Got sick and didn’t call one week, and they called to make sure I hadn’t gone missing.”

  “Reliable, friendly folk, then?” I smile.

  “Yeah, definitely.”

  “Who’s the delivery driver on those nights?”

  “His name is Preston. I don’t know what his last name is, but it’s not a big store, so he should be easy to find, anyway.”

  “Noted. When you order your pizza, are you the type to watch for the delivery car?”

  “Not really, no. Most of the time, the open space of the outside is overwhelming for me to look at, even from inside. Preston texts me when he gets here, and I slide fifteen dollars through the mail slot.”

  “Do you remember what time he came around the past two Fridays?’

  “Hold on—I’ll check.” Melvin pulls out a phone and unlocks it. “Last night, he arrived at eight-oh-seven. Last week it was ten o’clock on the dot.” He shows me the texts with their time stamps for me to verify.

  “Seems like quite the difference for something so routine,” I say.

  “I got caught up playing World of Warcraft last week,” he says.

  “Understood,” I say. I throw in a small chuckle, for empathy or something. See? I’m just one of the guys. Open up, keep talking …

  “Do you play?” he asks. Whoa, buddy. I’m not that level of One of the Guys.

  “Nah,” I say. The disappointed look that flits across his face shakes me to my core. I suppose that, in addition to the overwhelming anxiety associated with agoraphobia, the loneliness must the next worst part about it; you don’t see anybody unless they come to visit, and that must become increasingly strenuous on both the agoraphobe’s and their visitors’ mental and emotional fortitude. With how few friends I have, surely they would become frustrated and drained with me before long, at which point my anxiety would grow an appendage that would take form as my own burden upon others.

  My wave of insight and understanding has imbued me with an abrupt sense of pity for the man.

  “You said Preston works weekends. Do you mean all weekend?”

  “Most of the time, yeah.”

  “Do you know whether he’s working tonight?”

  “I don’t know for sure, but if I were to bet one way or the other, I’d go with yes.”

  “What kind of person is he?”

  “Polite. Well-mannered. He’s respectful of my limitations and boundaries without judgment. I know that probably doesn’t sound like much to you, but trust me: it’s rare.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. Is there anything else you wanted to tell me about either of those nights? Anything you remember being out of place or just plain odd?”

  “Not that I can think of. But do you have a card, in case I do see something?”

  I give him my card and we say goodbye to each other.

  “Oh yeah, and Pizza Palace isn’t far. Just out to the main road then north about a mile. It’s on the right.”

  With these directions in mind, I hurry back to the car, parked at the cemetery, and take off.

  Pizza Palace is anything but a palace; its shoddy walls, decaying and cracked, manage to uphold an equally weathered roof. The linoleum inside is sticky in several places, and of their few tables, none is clean enough to call accommodating for a patron.

  But dear god, the smell. If ever a single sense were to transcend the boundary between heaven and earth, it is not by sight in the form of the Swiss Alps, nor is it by sound in the form of the most seasoned symphonies, nor by feeling in the form of the most intense of orgasms. Indeed, it is surely by taste, in the form of whatever pizzas grace the ovens of this fine establishment. Garlic, oregano, tomato, basil, mozzarella, and various spicy and savory meats, dough that has not succumbed to the American tradition of too-sweet breads. They coalesce in a harmony so perfect to be unattainable by the veterans of any chorus. I approach the cashier and place an order, then ask whether Preston is in.

  “Umm, I think he’s on a delivery.” My margherita pizza joins the onslaught of aromatic bliss while I wait. I realize that I just ate, but these smells are too enticing to pass up. I’m even willing to bear the intense heat emanating from the brick oven in order to immerse myself in the odors.

  Preston arrives around when my pizza gets done. When he walks in, the cashier from whom I ordered my pizza mutters something inaudible in his direction with an expression that says scandal! She flicks her head in my direction and her ponytail whips around violently.

  Preston approaches. “Hey, uh … I have a few more deliveries going out in ju
st a few minutes. Can this waaait, or …?”

  “Take me with you. You can have some of my pizza.”

  Just then, a woman walks in from the back room, a middle-aged woman with hips and hands that mean business.

  Preston tosses her a pleading look, praying that she does not allow such a divergence from protocol. But, she permits it with a shrug and a nod, as if a waiter suggested an alteration to her usual order and it actually sounded promising.

  Preston is maybe nineteen years old. He has curly brown hair and a build that was probably lanky before free pizza happened to it. He’s currently enrolled in online classes and on track to become a nurse. He plays a lot of video games, including playing online with Melvin.

  He confirms having delivered a pie around eight o’clock last night, and much later the week before. He explains why, but I’m unable to sift through the game’s slang and jargon enough to understand it.

  “Is there much traffic on these runs?” I ask.

  “No, not usually. Depends on how late it is, though. I mean, it is Friday night, so people are out later, but it’s still the butthole of Albuquerque, so there aren’t many people around to begin with.”

  “How many cars would you see on the road—the one where Melvin lives—on an average ten o’clock run on a Friday night?”

  “Honestly? Zero. One or two, tops.”

  “Do you remember whether there were any that night, a week ago?”

  “There might have been one. Actually, yeah, now that I think about it, there was. I pulled onto Santa Maria Boulevard immediately after it did. They musta been worried or sketched out, because they pulled over and let me pass. Maybe thought I was following ’em or something, or maybe they thought I was a cop.”

  “They? Were there multiple people?”

  “Nah. I just didn’t see the driver so I don’t know the gender. Neutral ‘they.’ But I guess maybe there could have been more than one.”

  “Did you happen to notice the car’s make or model? Rough size, color, anything?”

  “It was a red van. Well, not red. More maroon? It was huge, like an eleven-seater. Kinda old, too. I mean, do they even make vans like that anymore?”

  “No idea. Anything else you noticed? In-state or out-of-state plates? Any decals or bumper stickers, dings or scuffs, dents, peeled paint?”

  “They were New Mexico plates. I can’t really remember anything else. Sorry.”

  “No problem. You’ve done great.”

  Preston makes his deliveries and drives us back to Pizza Palace, munching on pizza whenever he has a spare hand and a spare second at the same time. When we arrive, his supervisor gives him permission to sit and finish the pizza with me (aside from the bit I set aside for Todd). I thank Preston and his supervisor and walk out. I check my phone when I get out and have three missed calls and a text, all within the past twenty minutes, and all from Husk. I read the text first, but all it says is, “CALL ME NOW.” I don’t know whether it’s really urgent or he’s just one of those old people who doesn’t know how to turn off caps. I tap the little phone icon next to the message. It doesn’t get through a full ring before Husk answers.

  “Thorn! Where the fuck have you been?! Ah, never mind. The prints came back from the lab. You’ll never guess what happened. The fingerprints from this morning have no matches. None. Including last week’s. They’re different prints. They’re different prints. But that’s not even the craziest part. A match came up for last week’s prints. They belong to none other than Anthony Koster, whose prints we took just today. Fuckin’ mess of an investigation, right? Everyone is runnin’ around like a bunch of headless chickens tryin’ to make heads or tails of it, so to speak. What say you?”

  His abrupt stop with a question attached catches me off guard. “It wasn’t Anthony,” I say more from my gut than from any intelligently drawn conclusions. “The one who killed Firenze definitely wasn’t Anthony.”

  “Yeah, that’s the general consensus. Got anything else?”

  “Well, I think it’s safe to assume that any prints we pull from here on out are worthless, at least to this case.”

  “Agreed.”

  “But the photos of the prints from the Firenze scene, those definitely looked to be adult-sized,” I say. The fact bores a hole into my head.

  “Definitely. What do you make of that?”

  “Fuck if I know. I’ll just pursue other leads until a flash of inspiration hits.

  “What else you got?”

  “A vehicle description. Going to be asking around about that.”

  “Good luck, Thorn,” he says.

  “Thanks, you too.”

  “Wait, Thorn. One more thing: any idea why they’re calling me with this shit instead of you?”

  “I think I pissed off their lab tech.”

  “Uh-oh. Broke the cardinal rule.”

  “I did. I’ll see if I can un-break it soon.”

  “Good boy. Get on it.”

  A thought occurs to me: perhaps the killer is using the fingerprints to mark his next target. If that’s the case, it’s imperative to identify the prints on Koster’s scene, and assure that their owner is safe. If the pattern persists, the killer will strike again next Friday, the eighteenth. However, there’s also a strong possibility that he’s smart enough not to follow the pattern a third time. It comes down to whether or not he intends that strongly to follow his ritual. He’ll change the time or the place, maybe both. Throw us some kind of curve ball. Plus, given that we’re on the second of these cases, it’s difficult to discern what is pattern and what is coincidence, particularly when, for all intents and purposes, the two murders are identical.

  I sit in Todd’s car and engage the air conditioning. The air on my face feels nice, even though it’s not cool yet. I decide to return to the crime scene to see if any new discoveries have been made.

  Officers Lund and Tipp nod me through the tape and once again I’m a part of a bustling community of detectives and cops pretending we have a clue what’s going on or in what direction to take the investigation.

  If school were in, it would be relatively easy to mandate fingerprints as an emergency procedure, but as it isn’t, the best we could do is pull fingerprints from all of the pre-adolescents and hope that a match turns up. Even then, it’s impractical and time-consuming.

  There is one child I want fingerprinted regardless, though: Stan Romero. If these murders are centric around a group of people, Stanley is almost certainly next on the list.

  “Kent, Simpson. You guys about done here?”

  “Yep, looks like it,” says Simpson in an “All in a day’s work,” voice. He completes it by planting his hands on his hips once more, trying and failing to adopt the authority that usually accompanies that pose.

  “If you’re not too busy, I need some eyes on a local back home. Stan Romero. Respectful kid but with a mouth, you know him?”

  Kent nods.

  I continue, “If victims one and two were Firenze and Anthony, why shouldn’t the third be the last one in the posse? Keep an eye on him, grab some fingerprints if he’s up for it. And take care. I’m sure that, with the context, I don’t have to tell you, but be careful and don’t fuck with anyone I wouldn’t fuck with.”

  “That definitely narrows it down,” says Kent. She’s fluent in sarcasm and I’m more grateful than she knows.

  “Will you be heading back to town, as well?”

  “After a couple of errands.” Indeed, I plan to find out whether any traffic cameras managed to pick anything up on either of the relevant nights. Fulfilling the request will take some time, but that’s unavoidable.

  The whole process goes fairly smoothly, whisked along by a helpful city employee who knows the geography of the traffic cams better than most people know the geography of their hometown. He looks through the files and uses them to determine the relevant locations and time frames. Of course, depending on what footage appears in the first batch, more may be necessary, if a route is visible.<
br />
  There’s only one traffic cam on Santa Maria Boulevard, the street leading to Totem Hill Cemetery, and we cover the intersection of that and State Street, as well as cameras from half a mile in every direction from that point.

  The tech cuts the video clips and saves them on a sixty-four gigabyte flash drive, then sends me on my way, assuring me that if I require any more footage, I can ask.

  As my last errand in Albuquerque, I drive around the area; I never realized it in Riverdell, but being familiar with the surrounding terrain, buildings, etc. when working a given area can provide an immense advantage. I had always taken for granted how well I know Riverdell, and now, plunged into unfamiliar territory, I need to dedicate some time to the development of my mental map of these streets.

  The wind kicks up to an almost aggressive level just as I close the door on Todd’s Honda. Without trees or mountains to tame it, the biting desert wind can be fierce indeed, especially when flecks of dirt or withered herbs hitch a ride. It howls at the seams of the car and even rocks it slightly.

  Santa Maria Boulevard is mostly dirt and gravel. I picture a hearse rolling up this bumpy road, but it seems out of place, like a penguin waddling up and down the sidewalks of New York.

  The crossroad of State and Santa Maria features a convenience store and a gas station, but nothing else. To amplify the sense of barren desolation, the two structures both occupy the northeast corner, leaving fully three corners empty and uninviting. The cameras are only oriented for north-to-south traffic and vice versa, so depending on the vehicle’s angle, it may be difficult to identify at night.

  I make a mental note to stop and ask the convenience store if they might have any surveillance footage recorded, should the traffic cams prove insufficient.

  This area, aside from the cemetery, convenience store, and gas station, is entirely residential. It almost reminds me of Wometzia, but it lacks the small town charm and unbreakable communal feel. This is a Wometzia that has been wronged and stripped of its innocence. I wonder whether Wometzia will devolve into something resembling this when the scarring from these murders takes hold. I feel an imaginary, sharp pang hot in my own scars: five shiny, white lines, perfectly parallel and of equal length, on the inner knuckle of my right index finger. They’re hardly visible anymore, but as a subconscious reminder of my past, they occasionally scream in pain. These scars are the remnants of wounds I inflicted on myself, whilst being coerced into lying to a psychotherapist by my sexually, emotionally, and physically abusive father. For each lie I told, without thinking, I dug a fingernail into my knuckle, as though my body itself had been protesting the injustice.