The Reign of the Kingfisher

by T. J. Martinson

  “I’ve played Minesweeper a time or two,” Fester said.

  “Cool. It’s a fun game.”

  “Yeah.”

  She hadn’t gotten a moment of rest last night. Each time she had tried—curling closer to Parker’s sleeping body, closing her eyes—faces emerged from beneath a dark veil. An endless procession of faces. The women from the missing persons directory. The first hostage, with a bleeding hole in his head. The second hostage, staring into the camera, eyes rolling and lips fluttering like the wings of some dead or dying bird. But he would be safe, she told herself. They had given the gunman what he wanted. It was over.

  “Actually, I hate Minesweeper, myself,” Fester said. “Seems like pure luck, dumb chance. Click and boom.” She smelled liquor on his breath, sour and shaped into a slur. “Just click and boom. Click and die. Chaos, girlie. That’s why I prefer Spider Solitaire.”

  “I’m not very good at Minesweeper either.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  “There’s a strategy,” she said. “I’m not sure what it is, but I think there’s a strategy.” She regarded his impassive expression. “But maybe you’re right—it’s just dumb luck.”

  “Then maybe there are better ways to spend your time.” He smiled, revealing egg-yolk teeth. “Maybe you could get the Windex and scrub down the seats out here. Saw some kids doing unspeakable things there last night around closing. Had to chase them out with a broom, I shit you not.”

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll clean them.”

  Fester thumbed his belt loops, pulled his blue jeans up an inch, and surveyed his minuscule and ill-lit domain with a long, tired sigh. “All right, then, girlie.” He rapped his knuckles on the counter and walked briskly away without a sound.

  She closed her laptop and rooted around for the Windex beneath the counter. A mindless and needless chore sounded appealing. She could do with the distraction.

  Sitting in front of the cash register was the business card the prostitute had accidentally left behind yesterday: MISS MAY PIECEWORK. She had fully expected either for someone to throw it away or for it to dissolve back into the fever dream that was yesterday.

  She wiped the length of the counter three times over. Every square inch was polished meticulously, yet it somehow retained the same dull and dirty appearance.

  She saw Fester approaching once more from the corner of her eye. She closed her laptop, reached for the Windex beneath the cash register, and frantically began spraying the counter again.

  “You got the TV remote?” Fester asked. He pointed at the television hanging above them.

  She handed the remote to him. It was dwarfed in his massive hands.

  He changed the channel to the channel six morning news. “My buddy just posted something on Facebook,” Fester said to her without taking his eyes away from the screen. “I guess something else is happening with all that Kingfisher shit-show.”

  “What happened?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to find out.” His enormous fingers fumbled with the remote as he turned the volume up.

  But Wren didn’t need to hear what was happening to understand. She knew the moment she saw the masked man—still wearing the same Liber-teen mask—standing in that cold, dark room while a hostage writhed against the ropes that bound him in an office chair. The hostage was the same man from the last video, beaten and dazed, head rolling from shoulder to shoulder, lips moving without sound or reason. The gunman stepped forward to pick up the camera, panning to the far corner of the room where the other hostage remained, and Wren recognized the ring on her left hand.

  The bulletin at the bottom of the screen read: NEW VIDEO FROM CHICAGO GUNMAN.

  He’s going to release them, Wren thought. He’s going to turn them loose.

  The gunman said in his digitally modulated voice, “We asked for Police Chief Gregory Stetson to release the ME report, but he did not. Instead, we had to take it ourselves.”

  Wren’s stomach sank at the use of we.

  “So now it is time for the police chief to admit the truth we have seen with our own eyes in the medical examiner’s report and apologize to this city on behalf of the entire Chicago Police Department. Apologize for the corruption and the lies. Tell us the Kingfisher is alive and tell us that you lied. Beg for the forgiveness that you do not deserve. And then resign at once. Until then, lives will be lost.” He pressed the pistol against the hostage’s head. “And because you, Police Chief Stetson, failed to comply, this blood is on your hands. Don’t make the same mistake twice. Tell us the truth.” He pulled back the hammer, stalled for a moment.

  The news station cut the video short. But it didn’t matter. The phantom gunshot found its way into the ensuing silence.

  Wren’s heart rose to her throat and then crashed into her stomach, dissolving in the acid. She was left with a numbness that was nowhere near numb enough.

  Hadn’t you known this would happen? she reminded herself. You knew what you were doing, but you did it anyway. You knew he wouldn’t stop. You knew you would only make it worse. You knew what you were doing, and here you are. Exactly where you belong. You may as well have been the one to pull the goddamned trigger. And for what? What was it for? To prove that you could do it? What’s wrong with you?

  “What’s wrong with you?” Fester asked, his voice far away and muted, as though she were hearing it from deep underwater. “You look like shit on a shingle. You hungover? Jesus, girlie. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times. I swear to God. Stop coming in here hungover. I don’t need you puking on customers. They’ll write their stupid reviews on the interwebs and complain about being puked on.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I’m fine. I just—it’s just—it’s hard to watch that.”

  “That?” he laughed. “It’s a shame, but this shit happens every day. People killing people for no good reason. No use in letting it fuck with your day. Just be glad it isn’t you in that chair, am I right?” he laughed.

  She groaned, her vision going black.

  He inspected her closely, the stale tobacco on his muddy breath sending her stomach into another tailspin. “I’ve got some TUMS in my office. Let me know if you want any.” After he pulled away from the counter and ambled back to his office, she allowed herself to panic. She withdrew her phone from her pocket, fumbling it. Out of reflex, she called Parker.

  It rang four times before going to Parker’s voicemail. “This is Parker Dillinger. If you’re hearing this, that means you tried to call me. Don’t call me.”

  “Parker,” Wren said to her voicemail, wishing she had thought out an explanation for the hollow ringing in her head that she assumed was also audible through the phone.

  She swallowed. Her lips felt dry. When she finally spoke, it sounded like someone else’s voice altogether. A stranger, crying softly. “He made another video. Parker, he made another video. The gunman. He killed the hostage. We released the file, and he still killed the hostage. It didn’t matter, Parker. We didn’t help. We only made it worse.” Her voice rarefied as she said this, the words surreal yet immediately true. “I need you to call me back, Parker. I need you. Please, Parker. I need you.”

  She winced when she heard herself say this, because she knew it to be true.

  20 PWOBLÉM PAP FINI

  IN THE EARLY MORNING, the total quiet and absolute dark, Tillman emerged from her bedroom—her running shoes in hand—to find her father asleep in his chair and Jeremiah curled on the couch, both of them in the exact position they had been when she arrived home last night from Bedford’s. Jeremiah slept bare-chested. He clutched a ratty fleece blanket to his hip like a boy and his blanky, and she thought if she looked at him long enough, she might just wake him up and ask him to stay like this every night so she could see him like this every morning.

  So she left quickly, shut the door quietly. She left it all behind her where it belonged.

  Still, she half hoped, after returning from her run an hour later,
to find them both in the same stilled postures of sleep. But when she opened her door, sweat dripping down her chin, she saw her father sitting in his recliner, rocking gently back and forth. Jeremiah sat pin-straight on the couch. The television broadcasted into the room.

  They took no notice of her entrance, both them glued to the television’s glow.

  “We have a saying for this in Creole,” her father said to Jeremiah, finger pointed at the television. “We say, ‘Pwoblém pap fini.’ Do you know this?”

  Jeremiah didn’t answer.

  “It means that when problems come, they come like this.” Her father snapped his fingers in a steady rhythm, unchanging. “You think that these things will not end, because they come and they come like this.” He snapped his fingers again. “But they always end. This is how it always works. This is how it always will work. This will end soon enough.”

  Jeremiah scratched his neck furiously, which Tillman recognized as his mounting anxiety. Once upon a time, he used to come over to her place after bad days down at the station with claw marks up and down his throat, as if he’d been mauled by a bear. She’d touched them with her fingertips, and he’d let her. It seemed impossible to her now, but so did most things from that past life.

  “What’s going on?” Tillman asked.

  “You can see, can’t you?” Jeremiah snapped, nodding at the television.

  A news channel banner suspended beneath a moving image of a dim room. She recognized it at once and slowly lowered herself to the ground. The man in the mask, pushing a man in an office chair, his mouth bound by rope, his body constricted. She felt as if she were watching a silent movie, all exaggerated bodily movements. The gunman spoke, but she didn’t hear this. All of her focus was on the hostage’s face. A hundred-yard stare into oblivion.

  The news station cut away from the video before the final gunshot.

  “That was Penny,” she mouthed.

  “How do you know?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Bedford confirmed. I showed him the second video.”

  Jeremiah pointed at the television, which displayed a still image of the gunman’s face, the oddly inhuman mask. “The asshole got what he wanted. That fucking ME report. It wasn’t enough. He won’t ever stop. He’ll kill the other hostage. And then he’ll just find more. He won’t ever stop. This is insane.”

  She felt panic rising to her skin like sweat. She took out her cell phone and called Paulina’s fiancé. It went directly to an automated voicemail. She tried again and then again. But then, as she watched the television, she knew why he wasn’t answering.

  “We just have received information confirming the hostage’s identity in this latest video,” the newscaster said. “The hostage’s name is Jeffrey Jenkins, a fifty-eight-year-old Chicago resident. We are joined via phone by Ibrahim Rodriguez, the victim’s son-in-law, who provided this information. Ibrahim, are you there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ibrahim, I know you are going through a lot right now, and our thoughts and prayers are with you. Can you tell us about your father-in-law? Had he been missing for some time?”

  “He’s not my father-in-law yet. I’m engaged to his daughter. And I want to say right now that the other hostage in that video is my fiancée. She’s Penny’s daughter.”

  “Penny? Excuse me, Ibrahim—”

  “And I got no fucking clue why the cops aren’t trying to find her. I got no fucking clue why they didn’t try to find Penny. I’ve been trying to call them, but they’re not doing fucking anything.”

  “Mr. Rodriguez—”

  “They should be out there looking for these people. I tried calling them all day yesterday, and the most I got was some fucking secretary taking down my information, but no one fucking came around. People are dying out there and what are they doing about it? They’re watching these people fucking die like they don’t—”

  The line went dead.

  “I apologize to our viewers for Mr. Rodriguez’s use of language,” the newscaster said. “He is clearly and appropriately upset. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family in this very difficult time. However, I should note that Mr. Rodriguez’s opinions are entirely his own, and we do not endorse—”

  She reached for the remote and turned off the television. Her father immediately protested in Creole—his language of choice for anger—but she wasn’t listening. She went into the kitchen. Jeremiah called after her, but she drowned out his voice by opening cupboards mindlessly, searching for nothing. Occupying her body with the motions of a day in progress.

  She hadn’t had time to look for Penny. That was the simple truth. No, make coffee. There was nothing she could have done. No, start the dishwasher. A day in progress. It was morning, and she could make coffee, start the dishwasher, make a protein shake, take a shower and disappear in the jungle steam. There was nothing to linger on. Ibrahim said the woman in the video was Paulina. No, clean out the refrigerator. But how could he know that was Paulina? The woman in the video was wearing a sack over her head. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe she’s safe and on her way home with apologies. And does she look like her father? And if she does, has anyone ever told her this? It’s the sort of thing that doesn’t mean anything until it means everything. And maybe that is what Paulina is thinking at this moment. Strapped to a chair with the world reduced to a burlap sack, thinking that she does look an awful lot like the father she could not save, and what does it mean anyway except that every morning when she looks in the mirror it will no longer be her own face she sees but the face of a ghost who stares back at her with drooping eyes, the face of a ghost who slept on her couch after he lost his job, the face a ghost she loved beyond comprehension, the face of a ghost she may soon join.

  Tillman closed a cupboard and saw Jeremiah right in front of her, leaning against the refrigerator. She dropped a ceramic mug and it bounced across the floor.

  “Jesus Christ.” She held a hand to her heart. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  “Listen, Tilly,” Jeremiah said.

  “No. Just don’t. I’m fine.”

  “You need to understand that this situation isn’t your fault.”

  “Situation,” she scoffed, bending down to pick up the mug. “You mean that psychopath executing Penny? That same psychopath who has Penny’s daughter? You mean that situation?”

  “There wasn’t anything you could have—”

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”

  He crossed his arms. “I’m headed out soon. Got a call just before you came. They want me down at the station soon.”

  “Then you should probably just leave now.”

  “I’m trying to tell you something. I’m trying to talk to you.”

  “I know this wasn’t my fault,” she said, pulling her protein powder from a cupboard. “You don’t need to tell me.”

  “You’re saying this. I hear you saying this.”

  “I mean it.”

  “OK,” he said warily, as though trying to convince himself that he believed her. “I’m glad to hear it. Because you know what? You probably saved Baxter Bedford’s life last night. And that’s worth a hell of a lot. I hope you know that.”

  She found a glass in a cupboard and slammed it shut. She ran the faucet and mixed in protein powder. “Whatever this is that you’re doing, just save it. I’m fine.”

  He nodded. “That’s what you said.”

  “What time are you headed to the station?” she asked before taking a heaping drink of the concrete-like mixture that calcified as it passed through her throat.

  “I should probably head out in the next half hour. I can leave sooner if you want, though.”

  “Can you make it an hour?” She wiped her upper lip of the froth, flicked it into the sink.

  “You wanted to get rid of me as soon as possible a minute ago.” He smiled. “What changed?”

  “I’ve got some things I remembered. Errands. I’d appreciate it if you could look after my father for a bit. Make sure he
eats breakfast with his meds. He’ll get sick if he doesn’t.”

  Jeremiah stepped closer to her, lowering his voice even though her father couldn’t possibly hear them at this distance. “Don’t lie to me like that. What are you actually going to do, Tilly?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Where are you planning on going?”

  She washed her empty glass in the sink, running the water over its surface until it resembled something clean. “I just have somewhere to be. Errands. That’s all.”

  “Cut the bullshit,” he whispered, the harsh words somehow taking on the dimensions of affection. “Tell me where you’re going.”

  “I think it’s best you stay out of this one,” she said, matching his stare. “For your sake, Detective Combs.” She pronounced his title as though passing a razor blade from her stomach through her throat. That was what it felt like, at least.

  “I know I brought you into all this,” he said, “and I’m sorry for that. But don’t do this. Please. Whatever the hell it is. You’ve done all you could possibly do. There’s nothing else to be done.”

  “You know where the spare key is,” she said. “Lock the door when you leave. You’ll need to make my dad some breakfast. Eggs are a safe bet. He can have one cup of coffee, but don’t give him any more no matter how much he begs. Caffeine doesn’t mix well with his meds.” She pushed off the counter. “I’m taking a quick shower and then I’m out.”

  “Tilly, just listen.” Jeremiah reached for her elbow as she walked out of the kitchen. She spun around and broke out of his loose hold. He held up his empty hands in faux surrender, stumbling over a plea for her to allow him a chance to talk. “You don’t owe Penny anything. There’s nothing you can do for his daughter. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. You’ve done what you could do.”