The Starr Sting Scale

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  “I thought Dad and you said to never use a gun. That they tell stories.” I’m buying precious time. I can see the rustle in the bushes behind Rod, but his well-trained ears can’t hear it on account of the rushing water below us.

  “The only story this gun is going to tell,” Rod says, holding up Malone’s service revolver, “is that a poor lass of an officer died in the line of duty struggling with a known felon to retrieve her gun, which the assailant had just used to kill her comrade in arms.” He spreads his arms out dramatically. “And with her last breath, she manages to get back the gun and squeeze out one last shot.” He trains the gun back on me. “That shot will be for you, Candace.”

  “You always were good at making things up, Uncle Rod.”

  He narrows his eyes, not pleased with my sarcasm. “I loved your father like a brother and I loved you, particularly as a little mite.” He smiles briefly at the memory. “But a man’s got to take care of his own self. That’s the first rule of the game.” He begins crossing himself, using the hand with the gun in it, a plea for forgiveness before the fact.

  I’m thinking that I didn’t even know he was Catholic when the baseball bat strikes him strong and true on the side of the head. He falls hard, joining Danny on the ground. I run up and take the gun from his limp hand, plus the little Diamondback in his pocket.

  Malone lifts her head, slowly bringing herself up to a seated position. She must have one monster of a headache. The figure with the baseball bat has already retreated into the trees.

  “Who the hell was that?” she asks me.

  I walk over and offer her my hand, pulling her up to standing. Then I hand her back her service revolver. She manages to put it in her holster even though she’s still unsteady on her feet.

  “That,” I tell Malone, “was a purebred fucking scorpion.”

  EPILOGUE

  IN THE END, they can’t even pin the doctored security tapes on me. Majd showed them his circa-1980s system and told them the time stamp’s been busted for some time. He also confirmed that I’d been working the cash register that day for him. There was an emergency with his mother. One of her three locks had come loose. He’d left me in charge of the store and stayed with her for a better part of the night. When he came back to the E-Zee Market at three in the morning, I was still manning my station. The E-Zee Market closes late on Saturday nights. None of the meth heads and bums who come into the store at that time of night could confirm or disavow his story, rarely knowing what day it is at the best of times.

  Majd really is the most awesome of Syrian refugees.

  Lovely Linda got called in to the cop shop. But she swore up and down that she’d never seen me with Kristina Corrigan at the bar. And she works there from open to close, she told them with a wink. Ask anyone.

  Kristina’s alibi held up for the night Tyler was killed, even if mine was a little sketchy. Her husband confirmed they were having family game night, though when pressed he couldn’t remember what game. He mistakenly believes his wife and daughter are the ones providing him with an alibi. The truth is that he was at work, trying to get into the business-casual pants of a young intern. When Tyler was being killed, he was sending racy emails to her on the company server as she sat outside his office at her desk typing coy replies. Proving he’s a guy who didn’t learn much from either of the Clintons.

  And it doesn’t really matter about my alibi, does it? Danny Anderson admitted to taking a contract out for both Tyler and Lachlan, and Uncle Rod admitted to being the guy Danny hired. I mean, Malone heard it all that night at Lover’s Leap, didn’t she?

  After a safe amount of time has passed, Kristina and I meet in a secluded place to split the fifty K. She’d found it with the jacked-up heroin in Alice’s jewellery box long before Rod got there. A mother knows her daughter’s hiding places.

  I count out the cash, making sure the extra is in there for Tyler. Then I shove it deep in the front pocket of my boyfriend jeans. “What are you going to do with the heroin?” I ask Kristina.

  “I’m going to plant it on my best friend,” she says. “She’s screwing my husband.”

  I have no doubt that she will. It does not pay to get on this woman’s bad side, as I learned that day in The Goon when she first approached me about killing Tyler Brent. He did deserve taking out when you think about it. For what he did to Lachlan, Alice, and especially Jessica Mendler, who never did press charges. She and her mom are still too afraid, but at least they’re safely back home now after spending some time at the shelter. Mr. Mendler has entered an in-patient program for people who have messed-up heads from the war. Malone is trying to get Jessica into a similar program for civilian survivors. The battle is just the same.

  In any case, these things were only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Tyler’s twisted crimes. I checked him out after Kristina came asking for the hit. I could see how a mother wouldn’t want her daughter mixed up with him. Why she would want such a boy to be taken care of. But I’m retired, like I said. In any case, there is not much chance of Alice Corrigan getting mixed up in anything these days. Her parents made her trade sunny Spain for an all-girls boarding school in Alaska.

  “How did you get the kid to drink the beer?” I ask. I’d told Kristina to spike a couple of brews with Valium to make Tyler more pliant for what was to come. “I thought he’d smell a rat when you offered him free booze, what with you hating him and all.”

  Kristina smiles with perfectly veneered teeth. They seem to glow under the full moon that’s come up over the gorge, peeking out between the balloon lips she’s sporting from a recent collagen injection.

  “I went to his house that night,” she says. “The parents had taken their little girl along with them to a town hall meeting for Concerned Citizens for Feral Cats or something equally preposterous. I met Cynthia Brent at the grocery store that morning, and she couldn’t stop going on about it.”

  Cynthia Winogrodzski-Brent — I almost correct her, but I stop myself. Good thing they took the little sister with them to the cat meeting. I guess they were afraid to leave her with Tyler after he shoved her head into the oven.

  “I told him the drinks were a peace offering. That I wanted to bury the hatchet and find a way for us to all get along.” She makes a quick brittle cough that I think might be a laugh.

  “And he bought that?”

  “People will buy anything when there is free alcohol involved,” Kristina says. She’s probably right about that.

  “When he got dozy enough, I poured him into the passenger seat of my car and drove him there,” she says, indicating the other side of the gorge where the zip line shack sits dark and tightly shut up for the night. “He was still able to walk, but I had to hold him up. I told him Alice was waiting for us inside.”

  I nod my head. This was all part of the plan. Kristina had doctored the harness and stored it in the shack that morning. I’d shown her how to take the webby material from the chest restraint and fashion it into a noose using a video from YouTube. Well, YouTube showed how to make a noose, not how to make one out of a zip line chest harness. Like I said, you can learn to do anything on the internet, but some creativity still comes from the offline world.

  Kristina was supposed to throw the noose around Tyler’s neck when he was blotto from the Valium and then push him off the landing deck. He’d be dead in the fifteen seconds it would take to get to the other side.

  That night I’d watched from the top of the embankment on the other side of the river. That was the agreement. I wouldn’t do the hit myself. But I’d show Kristina how to do it then stick around long enough to make sure she didn’t run into any trouble. I also helped her with the locks at the zip line shack. I have some experience letting myself into places I have no business being.

  “I’ll be honest, I didn’t think you’d have the stomach for it,” I tell her.

  Kristina considers me for a moment, her balloon lips held tightly together, before she speaks. “Tyler Brent was a menace,”
she says, saying his name like she’s spitting out a rotten peach pit. “To my daughter. To society. That’s the part I couldn’t stomach.”

  “But he was still just a kid,” I say, feeling the weight of the cash in my pocket. I must be developing a conscience or something.

  “Teenage boys are men, Candace. Stupid with freshly minted testosterone and inexperienced, but still men. I don’t subscribe to the ‘boys will be boys’ mentality. I don’t think you do either.”

  She’s right, I don’t. But still I’m surprised at her venom, the deadliness of this society maven’s sting. I had watched from the shadows that night on the other side of the gorge, thinking she’d never have what it took to actually murder the boy. After all, even I couldn’t bring myself to do it — a kid that young, no matter what he’d done, or might do once he had a few years on him.

  But then I saw the silhouette of Tyler’s twitching body coming across attached to the pulleys of the static line, Kristina hanging on to him tightly from behind. She was making sure. Riding to the other side of the river like a mad dog into hell with the boy who was ruining her daughter. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand that part. How she clutched on to him while he died. Although I guess I can understand a parent’s love for a daughter, and maybe that’s enough to try to comprehend.

  “You really screwed things up when you forgot to push him into the gorge afterward,” I say, not a fan of a messy job. It was supposed to look like an accident. Just another wasted teenager who had broken into the zip line shack, gone for a joy ride, and ended up smashed on the rocks below. I had warned Kristina not to push him in while he was still alive. People were often lucky enough to survive such falls. When they found him halfway down the rapids with a broken neck and the harness on, they’d just decide he wasn’t one of the lucky ones.

  “I saw some lights down below in the gorge,” she says. “By the river. People using their phones as flashlights. It spooked me.”

  “There’s a trail down to the water’s edge,” I say. “The junkies go down there to shoot up. Wash the syringes in the rapids.”

  Kristina curls up her overblown upper lip in disgust. “How would junkies have phones?” she says with disdain.

  “Everyone has a fucking phone these days.” Except me, I suppose. Maybe I should do something about that.

  “Anyway, I was concerned someone would see me push him off the edge,” she says. “So I unhooked both our lanyards from the zip line pulley and dragged him just out of sight.” I had missed all this, having hightailed it out of there as soon as I saw Tyler’s head lolling to the side like a broken ragdoll once they reached my side of the gorge.

  “Did you get rid of the evidence, like I told you?”

  “I burned the harnesses at home in the outdoor fireplace.” I remember now noticing the freshly swept stone hearth in the backyard when Malone and I went over to search Alice’s room.

  “What about the carabiners?” I ask, thinking she might have forgotten the metal coupling links that fasten the harness.

  “I melted them down in my wire and metal jewellery class and made a necklace.” Kristina reaches a hand toward her highly chiselled clavicle and pulls out a lumpy blue pendant shaped roughly like a heart. Guilt hidden in plain sight. Always the best plan. She could have been a pro. Maybe she will be after this. The woman continues to impress me.

  Even Rod hadn’t noticed her tailing him the night he followed Danny and me from his place. He really is losing his touch in middle age. I’d called Kristina from a pay phone near the cop shop after Malone let me go. She’d gotten a burner phone after we set up our little deal, so no one ever saw anything in the phone records. I told her the cops were onto us and to meet me at Rod’s to get our stories straight. Kristina had come once she got the message. But when she saw Danny pull up in the unmarked, she had the sense to stay in her Ford Explorer. When he marched me out with the gun and drove me away, she had seen Malone follow behind. And then Rod came out of the house and took off after her. I can just see Kristina’s black SUV following all the others like a train’s caboose.

  “You always keep a baseball bat in your car?” I ask as she’s getting ready to leave.

  “My son is an all-star,” she says proudly. I didn’t even know she had another kid. “I’m late for his game now.” She turns to me one last time before she walks away. I think I can see a faint movement in her cheek. She must be due for her next Botox shot. “I trust this is the end of our little arrangement,” she says. “I don’t want to hear from you again, Candace.” She’s thinking I might try to blackmail her, but I won’t.

  “I think we’re square now,” I tell her. And we are.

  Uncle Rod is resting uncomfortably upstate, having survived Kristina’s baseball bat. He’s got the better part of the Daybreak Boys with him. The ones left in town don’t trouble me. Rory put out the word that Malone had tricked me into bringing her to the clubhouse. A favour to me along with the cops that allowed him to remain in his squat with Bubba unmolested. And the new leader of the gang, the one who replaced Pauly, is glad the bastard is gone. He’s ordered all the others to stand down.

  Of course, while Rod has admitted to Lachlan’s murder, as well as my dad’s, he still insists to anyone who’ll listen that he didn’t rub out Tyler Brent. But no one believes him. Malone remembers everything he said as she lay on the ground at Lover’s Leap, despite her concussion. And he had told Danny and the Daybreak Boys that he’d done it to collect the fee for both hits. Danny, being dead, can’t confirm or deny this. But the gang members were happy to give up whoever they could to strike deals. So, all told, Uncle Rod is now serving three consecutive life sentences.

  I think I’ll leave him there, safe in his cell, for old time’s sake. Not take advantage of my connections on the inside who could slice his throat open in the shower. Like I said, I have people who owe me. He’ll probably suffer more serving the rest of his life locked away. Newfies weren’t made for enclosed spaces; that’s why they made the province so fucking big.

  The old don of the Scarpello family has rallied. His cancer is in remission for now. But it’s only a matter of time. There will be bloodshed when he does finally pop off. These things are rarely settled peacefully. I don’t know if my mother is alive or dead, but she’s the type of opportunistic termite who might come out of the woodwork when he does. In any case, I’ll keep my distance, at least for the time being. A female don is out of the question right now. But things are changing in the world of women. The future is female, I’m told.

  As for Saunders, he’s been relegated to the ranks of those collecting police tape, that job being recently vacated by Doug Wolfe, who retired with a full pension. He’s got a little trailer in Florida now. I saw a postcard from him tacked up on the squad room bulletin board. I think Shelley stayed behind with her book club.

  Malone takes me to get my eyebrows done before I get on the plane. She goes to an experienced Indian girl who uses a taut thread to pull out the hairs. I lie back in the chair and enjoy the little tugs of the razor-sharp thread on my skin. Malone says it lasts even longer than waxing.

  Selena drives us both to the airport to see me off, the behaviour of a friend — or maybe she just wanted to see me out of town. I walk up the ramp carrying my dad’s army duffle, his Rolex tucked safely in an inner zippered pocket. The two detectives stand side by side and wave to me. They are partners now, Selena finding herself in need of one, with Danny the bent ginger in the morgue. Selena has told me she’s getting tired of playing goalie. Maybe I’ll join their hockey team after all.

  Agnes is waiting for me at the St. John’s airport. She still drives, she informs me, though not at night. I tell her I got Rod a job working on a Disney cruise ship, playing the Little Mermaid’s dad. He’ll have to get lost at sea eventually, but I spare her that for now. She’s old.

  When we get to her little blue house on Franklyn Avenue, the Céilí is in full swing. Charlotte is dancing in the living room, having come on an earl
ier flight. She’s forgiven me for Rod after she found out what he did to my father. And besides, a lady of her age can’t wait around for three consecutive life sentences to run out. Right now, she’s bumping hips with the fiddle player. He has a full head of hair and kind sea-blue eyes. Agnes’ pet hedgehog, Boris, is running loose and nabbing cheese doodles that fall on the floor when people dig into the bowl.

  I’m introduced around. Everyone toasts my welcome with some Screech in plastic tumblers. Janet, the accordion player, starts up a song in honour of my arrival. The familiar notes make me smile as I sit down on the couch and sip at my rum.

  Charlotte starts to sing loudly and mercilessly off-key with the accordion music. It’s the Spice Girls’ “Wannabe.”

  I guess I still have family after all, I think, as Agnes brings me some fried bologna on a plate. I dip the processed meat in the ketchup and bring it to my mouth. It tastes at once both sweet and sour, like all good things do.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  SO MANY WONDERFUL PEOPLE have contributed to bringing this book and Candace Starr to life. Please know that I would like to take all of you out to The Goon and buy you a beer. Failing that, there are these acknowledgements.

  I’d like to thank my husband for being my beta reader and for giving encouragement and feedback within the minefield of a long-term relationship. Marcus, you are a trooper and, as always, my main muse.

  Thanks also to my family and friends for listening, often repeatedly, to my ideas, my fears, and to my fears about my ideas. I couldn’t have gotten here without you. And to Stacey Madden, who read my short story about a hitwoman hired to rub out a rotten boyfriend and said, “This would make a great novel.”