by Payge Galvin
He only watched enough of that footage to confirm the woman in the video was the same long-haired short-skirted girl he’d seen drunk and tottering in her heels in the Cave, because the truth was, both the video and the comments made him feel more than a little queasy. Besides, he wasn’t some pervy stalker, not like the video’s core audience seemed to be.
He was an unpervy stalker with a serious, unpervy mission: to get his story and to get Claire back. Max googled Allison Daniels’ username, and followed that trail to her Foursquare and Twitter feeds. Yup. She let her phone log her locations when she tweeted. It took a few days, but the next weekend he managed to catch her at a frat party. Max dressed down in jeans and a ratty old Rio Verde Rattlers tee, and he headed for the frat house.
Once there, he grabbed a beer and worked his way through the crowded room. At 10 p.m. the place already reeked of alcohol and puke, with head-banging music turned up loud enough to make it hard to think even without the stronger-than-alcohol intoxicants that were also circulating around the room. God, just being here made Max feel old. When had he become too grown-up to enjoy your basic uncomplicated frat party?
He knew when. It’d been the night he’d met Claire, at a party like this one, when right after that wicked smile her first words had been, “Let’s get out of here.” They’d both felt it that night, that this just wasn’t their scene anymore.
But now Max needed his story. He kept working his way through the room. He heard a giggle, and that led him to a corner where the brunette from the Cave and a thick-jawed frat boy were taking turns at lime Jello shots.
Max met Allie’s eyes and gave her his best smile, like doing Jello shots really was the most fun he could imagine on a Saturday night. She smiled back, tapped the guy on the arm before he noticed, and held up a half-empty plastic cup. “Tyler, my Mountain Dew is out of vodka,” she said with a playful pout.
Tyler didn’t seem to realize this made no sense. He just took the cup from her. “Be right back,” he said, stroking her thigh with his free hand, and he headed for the booze.
Max didn’t waste any time. He walked up to Allie the moment Tyler was gone. “Hey,” he said, turning his smile up to full wattage. “You look familiar.”
The girl giggled again, but the laugh cut off abruptly and was replaced by something more wary. “Have we met?” she asked, and something quieter and more shy slid behind her eyes.
“I think ... maybe?” Max said with an innocent smile. “It’s ... Abby, right?” He deliberately got her name wrong.
“Allie,” she said firmly as she took another cup—Tyler’s—in hand, as if for support.
“Oh, right.” He leaned on the wall beside her.
“Where have we met?” Allie asked, still quiet, but a little defensive, too.
Max frowned, like he was trying to remember. “Oh!” He smiled again. “I know. Place called The Coffee Cave. You hang out there, right?”
“Not anymore.” Something troubled crossed her face, like a bad memory. She looked down into Tyler’s cup, then abruptly looked up, right at him. “You’re not the asshole who had sex in the bathroom, are you?”
“Umm, no,” Max said. “I’m a different asshole. I mean ... that didn’t come out right, did it?”
His deliberate self-deprecation seemed to put her a little more at ease. “I’m glad it wasn’t you,” she said solemnly. “Because you’d have to be pretty pathetic to have sex in the bathroom, you know?”
“Yeah,” Max agreed with a laugh. Not-pathetic, that was him. “Crazy night, wasn’t it? Hard to remember everything that went down then.”
“I remember,” Allie said defensively. “I remember the asshole and the hippie in the bathroom, and I remember thinking that Violet was going to spew all over me, too. I remember promising Vi that I was done drinking, which is pretty funny since she was the one who lost it that night.” Her gaze followed Max’s to the empty Jello cups. “Jello shots don’t count. They have more sugar than alcohol.” She glanced the way Tyler had gone. “Mountain Dew is mostly sugar too, in case you were wondering.”
“Right,” Max said, nodding soberly in agreement.
Allie scowled and looked right at him. “I also remember,” she said, slowly and distinctly, “that we’re not supposed to be talking to each other.”
“I know.” Max lowered his voice. “But I need to know. Did you see anyone doing anything ... suspicious that night?”
“You mean besides shooting that guy dead?” Allie asked, at perfectly normal volume.
Max looked nervously around, but the music was turned up, and no one seemed to hear. “Yeah, besides that.”
“Is something wrong with you?” Allie asked him. “What could possibly be more suspicious than that? Well, except for those tall dark strangers talking out back, but they’re there every night. Oh, and the chicken of course.”
“Chicken.” Max gave her a long look. “Now you’re just fucking with me, aren’t you?”
“Don’t you think rude questions deserve to be fucked with?” Allie asked him.
She had a point.
As if on cue, Tyler returned with a full plastic cup. “Hey, this guy bothering you?” Tyler asked. He put a possessive hand on her arm.
Allie tilted her head, as if she were thinking about that. “I don’t know,” she asked, looking at Max. “Is he?”
“Maybe you’d better leave,” Tyler growled. His hand tightened on Allie’s arm.
“Yeah,” Allie agreed. “Maybe you’d better.” She took a gulp from the cup Tyler offered her, set it down, and wrapped her arms around him.
It was clearly a dismissal. Max shrugged good-naturedly, accepting it, though he was no closer to knowing if Allie had seen—or done—anything that night now than when he’d started talking to her. Creating a scene wouldn’t help with his investigation, though. “Well, you two have a good night.” He ambled across the room before Tyler could decide the best comeback to that involved a frat-house brawl. Max was too old for random drunken brawls, too. When he glanced back, Allie and Tyler were much more thoroughly wrapped around each other.
Max biked home by the way of The Coffee Cave, but of course there were no tall dark strangers, inside or outside, and no one who looked familiar from the night the shooting had happened, either. Max just saw a frazzled-looking barista who hadn’t been there that night waiting way too many tables on her own.
He texted Claire again, just for good measure – Miss you babe. Can’t we talk? – then headed for home.
She didn’t answer his text. Of course she didn’t.
Max flashed back to the one text she had sent him, the day she’d left. I’m sorry Max. I—we—I just can’t.
Something had seemed wrong about that text at the time, but Max had told himself that it was just part of everything about Claire’s leaving being wrong. Yet the instinct that he was missing something had only grown stronger over time. Maybe he was just obsessing over Claire. Maybe he was overthinking things, looking for clues that weren’t there.
I can’t. Not I don’t want to – I can’t. As if there were more to the story of their breakup than Max knew.
Maybe he just wanted there to be more, some explanation beyond his having fucked things up. But Max thought of the secrets he’d been keeping since that night at The Coffee Cave, and for the first time, he wondered whether Claire might not be keeping some secrets of her own.
‡
Megan texted him to come by her office a week later.
When he entered the room, her ice princess mask was firmly back in place. “I don’t know where the hell you got that sample,” she said with a cold glare. “And I don’t want to know.” She handed him an envelope. “Get out of here. Whatever you’re messed up with, you can keep me out of it from now on.”
Her stony words told Max something of what he would find, but he waited to get home to open the envelope.
Inside were several pages of computer printout, listing the various tests she’d done to separate out
the chemicals, and, at the end, a list of just what she’d found.
There were, it turned out, a remarkable number of chemicals in an ordinary cup of coffee, not only the expected caffeine but also a bunch of acids, along with some sugars from whatever the drink had been flavored with. But it was one of the chemical “salts” that had been dissolved into the coffee that was the important part.
Potassium cyanide. Everyone knew cyanide could kill a man. But Max knew from both his chemistry and forensics classes that the amount of cyanide in that cup would kill a man fast. As fast as the man in the coffee shop had died.
Poison. Max hadn’t realized he’d doubted it until he’d opened that envelope. But now there was no doubt: the man at The Coffee Cave had been poisoned before he was shot. He fought off a final round of the shakes at the thought. This thing was real. It was one hundred percent fucking real. What he and the other eleven people in that coffee shop had seen wasn’t an act of self-defense in the heat of the moment. It was cold-blooded, pre-meditated murder.
And the only person who knew it was Max. He just might have a moral obligation here and not only a career-making, Claire-impressing story to break. Well, no reason this story couldn’t be all those things, right?
Max thought of the photo of Joe and Whitney—Whitney who’d agreed to get rid of that car as readily as Allie had volunteered her friend, Violet, to burn the body. The photo was still safely on Max’s cell phone, his laptop, and the thumb drive he’d stashed in his safe deposit box alongside most of his share of the cash. Max had spent hours getting that damn photo, but it seemed a small thing now, part of a story that paled beside this one. Death trumped sex, after all.
Max sat down and ran through the suspects in his head again. He ruled out the actual shooter, who hadn’t given her name, immediately. Why would she draw attention to herself by shooting the guy if she’d already poisoned him? She hadn’t looked stupid.
The baristas were both definite possibilities, especially Sugar, the chick who’d offered to dispose of the coke. Even if she was innocent, Max wondered how much of it she’d just snorted instead. She might still be snorting it. There’d been an awful lot of it. Yet again, why draw attention to herself by taking it?
Not that anyone who planned a murder was likely to be operating on all cylinders anyway. But it was just as likely to be Hope, hiding behind her bible and talking about calling the police—what better way to cover up one’s motives? The truth was, anyone but the woman with the gun could have done it. That meant Max needed real proof, because whatever he was willing to do to jump-start his career and get Claire back—scale tall buildings in a single bound, risk his life circling the site of a murder in broad daylight—he drew the line at helping to convict someone who wasn’t actually guilty. Right now he had nothing more conclusive than a list of suspects. Unbalanced suspects, whether they’d done it or not, because no one operating on all cylinders watched a man die without calling the police, either.
Of course, that put Max thoroughly in the unbalanced column himself.
He tried not to think too hard about that the next morning as he biked the long way around to his unpaid internship at the Rio Verde View, the closest thing to a real newspaper in this town. The long way around meant he got to swing by The Coffee Cave again.
He saw nothing more illuminating than he’d seen the night he’d biked home from the frat party. The same harried-looking barista as the first time was cleaning tables sticky with coffee cups and pastry crumbs. Clearly the place was short-staffed. Max wondered whether the baristas who saw the shooting had skipped town or just quit without giving their two-week-notice. Not like you had any reason to stick around in hopes of getting a boss’s recommendation for your next job when you had a hundred grand in your pocket, even if you hadn’t killed anyone.
Of course, Max was willing to work without being paid at all in hopes of that recommendation, so what did he know? He tried not to think about that, either, as he sat through that morning’s obligatory weekly what-we’re-working-on-now meeting, which usually ended with Max being sent off to organize files and write obituaries like a good little intern. He almost didn’t hear when his own boss, Jackie, said, “It looks like Dave’s still out with that nasty flu. Anyone up for covering his interview with Rio Verde’s quarterback today?”
Max nearly choked on his cup of overcaffeinated, underflavored Starbucks—he’d thought of getting coffee at the Cave, but apparently the thought of actually buying anything in the same place a man had died a week ago still did turn his stomach, after all. But Rio Verde’s quarterback was Blake Malone—one of Max’s suspects.
Could Blake actually have done it? That would be one hell of a story. Max thought of the drugs in the car. Football players got messed up with drugs and money all the time, just like politicians got messed up with sex and money.
“I can do that story,” Max said, a little too quickly.
Jackie, gave him a considering look. “You ready to take this on?” she asked.
Max shrugged and gave her the same good-natured smile that had gotten him through his internship interview in half the usual time. “Sure. Should be good experience for me.” In more ways than one. “This is mostly a feel-good piece anyway, right?”
“Right,” Jackie said. She didn’t add what they both already knew, which was that the Rio Verde View had never exactly been known for hard-hitting investigative journalism.
Not until now. After the meeting, Max did fifteen minutes of quick internet research on Blake Malone, and then headed out on his bicycle into the Arizona summer heat. He locked the bike up at a strip mall a couple blocks from Malone’s apartment. No point letting the guy know that the reporter the paper had sent was too broke to even afford his own car.
Had been too broke. Max could pay cash for a car now if he wanted, but his instincts all told him to hang on to the bulk of that money for now, rather than drawing attention to himself while the killer—who had no doubt been after all the cash in Boots’ car and not just one twelfth of it—was still at large.
Was Max even willing to spend all that dirty cash? How far was he willing to go, to get what he wanted?
He shelved that uncomfortable question for another day, climbed the stairs to Blake’s apartment, and rang the doorbell.
No answer. Max followed up with a polite text. He waited, and the door finally opened.
The quarterback standing on the other side looked awful, far worse than he had that night in the coffee shop. He wore a rumpled tee and more rumpled jeans. His face was unshaven, his auburn hair rumpled, and his eyes had the sunken look of someone who hadn’t slept much. Was that because he knew something, or because this whole murder-and-drug-money business was hard on any sane person? Any sane person not distracting himself by trying to break a story, Max amended, and winced at that thought.
Malone cursed under his breath as his eyes focused on Max. He clearly recognized Max, and just as clearly wasn’t at all pleased to see him.
Max looked past him, through the small living room to a firmly shut bedroom door. Malone smelled of sweat, but also, more faintly, of sex. Maybe he’d just interrupted the dude when he was getting it on with his girlfriend. Anyone would be in a crappy mood after that.
Max held out his hand and plastered on a harmless neighborhood-reporter smile. “The name’s Max.”
“Blake Malone,” the quarterback replied through gritted teeth. Apparently Max’s smile wasn’t disarming enough to have any effect on him. Football players had pretty much been immune to liking Max on the basis of his smile in high school, too. The fact that the only thing Max had played—not well—was schoolyard soccer hadn’t helped any.
Blake took Max’s hand in a bone-crushing athlete’s handshake, not letting go until a heartbeat after Max tried to pull away. A warning. It struck Max then that this bruiser just might have really killed a man.
“I thought some guy named Dave was doing this interview,” Blake said.
“Yeah, Dave has
the flu,” Max said. “My boss asked me to cover for him.”
Malone glared daggers at Max as he spoke. “Please. Come on in.” If Malone was the killer, waltzing on in to his apartment would be stupid.
How far Max was willing to go wasn’t the only question he needed to ask himself. How much was he willing to risk?
For this story? A hell of a lot.
For Claire? Everything. Max knew it was true as he thought it. He’d known it from the moment she’d walked out.
“Hang on a sec.” Max pulled out his phone. “Just texting my boss to let her know I’m here.” Max tapped out a quick text, hoping it’d serve as a reminder to Malone that there were people who knew where Max was. He didn’t actually text Jackie, who’d neither expect nor want a cheery here-I-am message, so he texted Claire instead, telling her he was about to interview Rio Verde’s star quarterback. Who knew, maybe she’d even be impressed enough to realize this journalism thing was for real and actually answer him. Claire actually was a football fan, unlike Max. Either way, if Max disappeared without a trace today, at least someone would notice. Max shoved the phone into his pocket and warily followed Malone inside.
Malone firmly shut the door behind him. “I know how to get rid of dead bodies,” he growled, adding, “What the fuck are you doing here?” for good measure. “I thought we were all staying out of each other’s lives from now until eternity.” That had been part of the deal, when they took the cash—that they’d never see each other again.
But you couldn’t become a kickass investigative journalist by doing as you were told. Max gave Blake a sheepish smile, doing his best to seem a little embarrassed. “I know, I know. But I didn’t have a good excuse to back out when my boss sprung this on me. I’m not supposed to even know you. Going through with it seemed less likely to raise suspicions than not going through with it.”
Malone stared at Max, as if trying to gauge his honesty. Max shrugged and kept smiling. Claire complained his smile could make a wolf chest-deep in dead sheep seem innocent. Except Max was no wolf. “I swear I’m not here about … the incident,” Max said. “I’d as soon not say another word about it, okay? I’m just looking for a harmless, feel-good interview. A tame little human interest piece, not some big exposé.”
