by Martha Carr
He shook his head vigorously and rubbed his mouth to curb his instinctive outburst. “Why didn’t anyone tell me?” he asked after a moment.
The woman’s eyes widened. “We couldn’t.”
“Y’all knew how to reach me.”
“No, I mean we couldn’t legally. The agents working with my dad—if that what’s it called when someone has become an informant for the FBI—came to him a few days after that and told him not to tell anyone about that night or what he was involved in and the gang or whatever he’d gotten tangled up in. I guess they wanted to catch the top people running the whole thing.”
“They were usin’ him as a CI to feed them information about that gang, if we’re callin’ it that.” Johnny grimaced and held back the outburst that still threatened to break through and ruin this relatively peaceful chat. It ain’t her fault her daddy got all caught up in this shit. “Do you remember when you moved to Wisconsin? When Ben said he wanted to get y’all away from the danger?”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “Yes, I do. It was right after Easter—impossible to forget, honestly. Mom was pissed that we had to cancel all our holiday plans and trying to move from the south to Wisconsin is one of the worst memories I have from that time. Not the worst but that time was brutal on all three of us.”
“I reckon it was.” Right after Easter. The feds cut Ben Hamilton loose after fuckin’ up the sting they never mentioned to the one magical who could have secured them a huge win.
“It was right after the FBI released him as an informant,” Lucy added, “so I guess Dad was free to do whatever he wanted after that. I think they might have even helped with the move, but I don’t honestly know. All that is probably in whatever file you have, right?”
Johnny’s hands clenched into tight fists. “The file was missin’ a few key pieces, darlin’,” he muttered through clenched teeth. “You handed me most of ʼem.”
She shrugged and picked her tea up again for a slow sip. “At least some of it was useful. I haven’t gone back through it in a very long time.”
“You did fine.”
The makeshift lounge fell into an expectant silence. Lucy tried to give the dwarf a sympathetic smile. “So are they reopening the case, then?”
“No. I’m reopenin’ it.” He pressed his lips together and they all but disappeared beneath his thick mustache. “I appreciate your time, Lucy. It ain’t easy to dig all that up, especially when you got a business to run and…customers to tend to.”
“The perks of owning a business, right? And having employees.”
“Sure.” He glanced at Lisa, who looked expectantly at him. “Sorry to hear ʼbout your old man too. All this aside, he was a good man.”
“Thanks, Johnny. So are you.”
The dwarf’s breath caught in his throat and he cleared it forcefully. “We’ll see. I reckon I still got a ways to go before I can claim anythin’ like that.”
“Don’t even.” Lisa frowned playfully, then turned to Lucy. “Johnny’s taken on a fair amount recently. I think some of his best cases are in the future. You know, the ones that’ll bring him the most.”
He grunted. “Like a kid.”
“A what?” Lucy grinned at him. “You have another kid?”
“A ward.” He sniffed and shifted on the ottoman again. And there I go openin’ my big mouth. Dammit. “I just sent her off to school.”
“Johnny and I rescued Amanda from a situation no one should ever have to go through,” the agent added. “He did so much good for that little girl—and vice versa.”
Lucy’s eyes shimmered with tears but she grinned at her best friend’s dad. “I stand by what I said, Johnny. You’ve always been someone to look up to. For me, anyway. And for Dawn.”
“Aw, hell…” He stood and stared at the brightly colored rug with overlapping geometric shapes beneath them. “I reckon we’re done here.”
“Oh, before you go. Can you wait for one more minute?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Great.” Lucy stood, glanced at his untouched cup of tea, and hurried toward the counter again with a chuckle.
Lisa folded her arms. “You could’ve told me why we were stopping here first. I get it.”
“And listen to you ask me the whole way if I thought it was a good idea?” He shook his head. “I already knew it was.”
“Did you get what you wanted?”
“For the most part, although I still ain’t done with this search.”
“Okay.”
Lucy returned to them with two strips of paper and a pen. “Here, Johnny. This is my number—my cell. I want you to have it, just in case.”
“Uh…all right.” He took the small paper, folded it in half, and slid it into his pocket. “Thanks.”
She held the blank strip and the pen toward him. “Would you like to give me yours?”
“Not really…” He glanced at Lisa, who gave him a disapproving frown, and he sighed. “But I’ll do it for you, darlin’. I ain’t partial to handin’ my info out.”
“I know. So thank you.”
Johnny scribbled his number down and handed her the paper and pen brusquely. “You take care, now.”
“You too, Johnny.” Lucy grinned at him as he and Lisa hurried across the shop to the front door. “And give me a call the next time you’re Portland.”
“Not fuckin’ likely,” he muttered under his breath and raised a hand in farewell.
Rex and Luther sniffed around Lucy’s feet, bumped into each other, and wagged their tails furiously. “Got any more of those treats, lady?”
“Yeah. If you hurry, Johnny will never know.”
The dwarf snapped his fingers. “We’re leavin’, boys. Get on.”
“Fine…”
“She give you anything? I saw you put something in your pockets.”
Johnny pulled the door open and held it for Lisa as the hounds trotted out with her. Only a number I’ll forget is there and probably shouldn’t.
Chapter Eleven
They stepped out of Divine Seed to a blaze of red and blue lights from a police car pulled over on the opposite side of the road. Pedestrians on that side stepped into the street to avoid the officer’s confrontation with a Portland local and simply continued to walk.
“Aw, come on, man.” The guy in his twenties with messy hair, who wore faded skinny jeans and a black t-shirt that hugged his torso as tightly, spread his arms and scowled at the officer. “It’s a bike. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Except for the way you’re riding that fixed-gear,” the officer muttered as he ripped off the top sheet of his citation pad and handed it over. “That’s an illegal bicycle.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my—”
“The law says differently, doesn’t it? ‘A bicycle must be equipped with a brake that enables the operator of the bicycle to stop it within fifteen feet from a speed of ten miles per hour on dry, level, clean surface.’ That’s a direct quote from the law.”
“That was fifteen years ago!” The cyclist rolled his eyes and snatched the ticket from the officer’s hand. “All that craziness died a natural death, and you’re the only cop still running around trying to ticket people for this. Don’t you have anything better to do? Like stop actual crimes.”
“I’m doing my job. Unless you want another ticket or an arrest, I suggest you close your mouth right now so I can keep doing my job. Have a nice day.” The officer turned and stormed to his car, scanned the street, and stared at Johnny and the hounds a little longer than the bounty hunter liked.
As soon as the car door shut, the civilian in skin-tight everything scowled at his ticket. “Fuck! This is bullshit. No one gives a shit about this anymore except for this yahoo.”
Johnny turned toward Lisa. “Folks can’t bike in the city?”
“No, they can…I think.” She frowned a little as she watched the cyclist clamber onto his bike. “I have no idea what that was about.”
The dwarf sniffed and stepped off the side
walk toward the trunk of their rental SUV. “It’s time to go.”
The hounds leapt into the back. “What’s wrong with that guy, Johnny?”
“It looks like he’s wearin’ lady clothes.”
“It’s weird.”
“That’s a hipster.” He shut the trunk, and when he climbed behind the wheel again, Lisa was already in the passenger seat and buckling up.
“Now can we go check into the hotel?”
“Uh-huh.” He started the engine and struggled to disengage the emergency brake before he made a sharp U-turn on the street.
A glint of steel flashed in the brief moment that sunlight cut through the clouds, followed by a screech of skidding tires and a thump on the hood of the SUV.
“What the—” Lisa braced herself against the doorframe as the cyclist they had almost hit turned sharply on his bike and skidded to a stop.
He removed his hand from the hood of the SUV and glared at Johnny. “Come on, man. Look where you’re going! I don’t need my day to get any worse.” He hopped the bike to face it down the steep hill again and raced away.
Johnny stared at the guy’s receding shape and shook his head. “It’s a hell of a way to stop with no brakes. I don’t get the draw.”
Lisa shrugged and shot him a sheepish smile. “Portland?”
“Sure. The city can take the blame.” He accelerated down the hill again and scrutinized every street they passed to make sure there weren’t any other weird bikes and weirder cyclists headed toward them out of nowhere.
The farther they drove through the city toward their hotel—with Lisa acting as the navigator—the more he knew he hated it.
“This was a big mistake,” he muttered and ducked a little to peer as high as he could through the windshield at the tall buildings in front of them. “What the hell is that, anyway?”
“That would be a mural, Johnny.” She gazed at the colorful public art that covered the brick walls the artists had made their canvas. “I think they’re great.”
“Are you kiddin’ me? Look at that one. It’s a fuckin’ giant banana. Ain’t no one in their right mind gonna call that great. Hell, I could throw a banana at a wall and do better than that.”
“And then you’d let us eat it, right, Johnny?” Luther panted in the back of the SUV and sniffed the window despite it being tightly closed.
“We’ll make wall art too,” Rex added and crossed the width of the trunk to look out the opposite window as his brother. “Sniff around a little. Lift a leg. Bam. Instant success.”
The dwarf snorted. “That’s about right.”
“What?” Lisa frowned at him.
He cleared his throat and stopped behind the tiny electric-powered car in front of them at the red light. “Are you still surprised to hear me talkin’ to myself?”
“When I only get one side of the conversation? A little, yeah.”
“Tell her, Johnny,” Luther said.
“Yeah, you have to now. Tell her you can hear your hounds talking to you. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Luther sniggered. “She’ll either stay and think you’re super-cool, or she’ll jump out of the car and run away screaming. Win-win, Johnny.”
Rex’s ears flopped against his head when he turned quickly to look at his brother. “No, it’s not.”
“All right. We’re here.” Johnny stopped in front of the hotel called The Portland Spot and parked the SUV. The engine idled as they sat there and he leaned forward to get a better look at the front of the hotel. “Where’s the valet?”
Lisa tapped at her phone. “Huh.”
“Huh what?”
“They don’t have one.”
“Are you tellin’ me Nelson booked us a hotel with no damn valet?”
“It looks like it. The website says they’re going for an ‘immersive community experience.’”
He scowled at her. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, right now, it means we park our own car.”
“Fuck this city.” He smacked a hand on the steering wheel, shifted into drive, and lurched toward the entrance to the parking garage behind the hotel.
After they’d checked in and he had a thing or two more to say about the hotel looking like a run-down shoe factory with art on the walls, he and Lisa parted ways to settle into their separate rooms. The bounty hunter thumped his duffel bag on the floor inside the closet—which had a curtain instead of a door—and pulled out the first thing on top of his packed belongings. Dawn’s case file still made his stomach clench when he looked at it.
Or the Red Boar’s file with hers shoved somewhere in the middle like a damn afterthought.
As he moved toward the bed, a brisk knock sounded at the door. “It’s Lisa.”
Grumbling, he strode across the room and opened it. “What?”
“Yes, I’d love to come in so we can go over our next steps for the case. Thanks for the invitation.”
“Right.” He sniffed and stepped aside to let her in.
“Great rooms, right?” She walked past him and gazed into every nook and cranny before she tapped her tablet. “I was reading up on this place. They use a number of recycled materials and grow all their produce in-house.”
“Good for them.” After he’d shut the door briskly, Johnny marched to the bed and sat.
She took a seat in the bright-green armchair—which looked more like a massive circular ottoman with an adolescent attempt at a back and armrests—and flipped through her tablet.
“So I think we should focus on—” The rustling of paper and a quick whump when Johnny pulled stacks out of his file and dropped them onto the bed interrupted her. “What’s that?”
“Dawn’s file.”
“Oh, so you brought that with you but you didn’t bother to read the actual file for the case we came here to work?”
“What’s the big deal, darlin’? You have the whole thing in your fancy laptop.”
Lisa stared at him, her expression unamused. “It’s a tablet.”
“Same thing.” He sniffed and flipped through Prentiss Avalon’s arrest records and the report of the shifter’s sentence hearing. There’s gotta be somethin’ in here I ain’t lookin’ at the right way. That Vilguard asshole almost let his lips fly too much. There had to be someone else in the shop that night.
She cleared her throat. “Johnny.”
He didn’t hear her as he pored over the reports for at least the fourth time. He’d lost count of how many.
“Hello? Johnny Walker?”
Rex barked. “Hey, Johnny!”
“Anyone in there?” Luther leapt up and thumped his front paws on the bedspread. “Johnny, if you can hear us, bark once. I mean…”
The bounty hunter slapped the files on his lap and shouted, “What?”
Luther immediately hopped off the bed and panted. “See? That worked.”
Lisa gazed patiently at him until he finally met her gaze. “I’m tryin’ to think.”
“I can tell.” She nodded and lowered her tablet into her lap. “Will you tell me why you took this case?”
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
“I have a hunch but I think it’s better for both of us if I hear your version.”
He sighed heavily and pushed himself farther back onto the mattress. “Lucy.”
She scoffed with a small, knowing smile. “A one-word answer’s not gonna cut it.”
“I’m workin’ on it.” He scowled at the bedspread with its clashing stripes of deep purple and a puke-like brown-green. “That girl—woman, now—was Dawn’s best friend when they were growin’ up. Back then, I had the cabin in the Glades and a place in Atlanta. That’s where we spent most of our time and where I took the cases. I got to know Lucy Hamilton and her folks real well as the girls went to school together. They were in New York when she was murdered.”
“On the school trip. I know.”
“That ain’t the half of it, though.” He rubbed his mouth and frown
ed. “If I had a mind to, I could put a helluva lotta blame on Lucy’s old man for what happened.”
“What?” Lisa drew her legs onto the armchair and crossed them beneath her. “He cooperated with the officers who took his statement. It wasn’t hard to glean that from your conversation with Lucy. He was obviously way more involved than we thought. I had no idea he was a CI but it makes sense.”
“No, it don’t.” The dwarf looked slowly at her. “He wasn’t the night Dawn was murdered but he was there—with her. I might even go so far as to say the man’s mistakes are what got her killed.” And me. Raisin’ a kid on my own and lettin’ her know as much as she did ʼbout what I do.
Agent Breyer slowly shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“Here.” Johnny tossed her the transcript of RedHero Comics’s security footage and nodded. “Real illuminatin’ shit right there.”
“Johnny, I don’t need to go through this—”
“Sure you do. Go on.”
She looked at the stapled pages, and as she read through the transcripts, he glared at the painting of four hands sprouting from the same wrist that hung above the dresser. After five minutes of complete silence broken only by the hounds’ panting and the rustle of paper as she flipped the pages, she stopped and exhaled slowly. “This is what they kept from you.”
“That’s only the start. The bastard who pulled the trigger was cuffed and brought in a couple of days later.”
Her eyes widened. “And they let you—”
“Believe for the last fifteen damn years that he was still out there? Yeah.”
“Jesus.” Lisa ran a hand through her hair and stared at the transcript. “Then why are you still pursuing this? The guy’s been in prison the whole time.”
“It ain’t the shifter I aim to bring down.”
“The Red Boar.” She shook her head. “Johnny, simply because Lemonhead or whatever he calls himself is still out there doesn’t mean he’s responsible for what happened to your daughter.”
