Skin the Cat

by R Sean McGuirk

  “Now you’re charging him with murder, huh?”

  “C’mon Luke. What are the odds a sex offender who attempted to rape Emily a month earlier coincidentally stepped out in front of Shade’s car? Please.”

  “You know what?” Luke stiffened. “You’re digging up the past. And I’m not going there with you. We both know none of that shit was admissible in court. The guy was a drunk. A sexual predator. A felon. Personally, if Shade intentionally punched the guy’s ticket, well to me that’s between him and God. But in reality? It’s actually crazy that you could believe such nonsense.”

  Luke rolled away from me. Outside, I saw a shooting star streak across the sky. The clearest night spreading endlessly into the universe. Like I’d been cast out into the middle of it all, a tiny speck lost within an infinite glittering chamber, the endless space unfolding forever. I took reassurance in this. The sensation of eternity gave scale to my life. I was not that big. My worries were not that big. Emily’s face flashed in my eyes and my heart skipped a beat. In the dark, Luke felt my movement and rolled back. “Look,” he said. “I was going to wait for Shade to tell you but you’re so upset.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Shade just accepted a contract with our Police Department.”

  “What?”

  “Yep.”

  “When does he start?”

  “In about a week or so he’ll be drawing a paycheck. And if you told him what you said you did, he’s not going to hang around here any longer than he has to. So, lucky you. The problem more or less took care of itself.”

  My eyes welled with tears, and I wiped them fast.

  “Are you okay?” Luke laid his arm over me and pulled me in.

  “I’m okay. I just have a hole inside my heart where my sister used to be.” I took a deep shuddering breath and softly sobbed. Luke pulled me closer and stroked my hair. My husband could never know the truth. My buried secret. Laying here crying, leading him to believe I was grieving over my dead sister. What a liar. I had no choice but to make Shade the enemy. I didn’t hate Shade at all. I wanted him to stay. I wanted him forever. But I could no longer bear the pain. The first couple of days after he arrived, Shade and I went upstairs to go through Emily’s things. I came across the brush with her hair caught in the tines. It drove it home right there. Emily was truly gone. And Shade was right here. With all obstacles gone, I lunged for him and almost kissed him deeply. Somehow, I averted disaster and buried my head into his chest instead. How many more nights could I hold out? Until the light beneath his door pulled me into his room with twenty years of pent up passion? Having him here with me, under the same roof, it turned out to be so dangerous. I stood to lose everything. So I prayed he’d leave right away. I’d fallen in love with Shade twenty years ago. And now it was worse than ever.

  14

  Things that Sting

  I sat on the floor naked in the darkness with my legs crossed, spine erect, in a position that suggested meditation. Flicking the lighter with my thumb, the flame bobbed and danced until the candlewick caught. I became completely still. The candle light calmed down, the shadows no longer jumping on the walls, as the air in the room settled into place. Stretching my arm outside the luminescent sphere and grappling beneath the bed in the shadows, the handle of the old ammunition box materialized my grasp and I pulled it against my knees.

  Spinning the combination lock with my fingers, forward and reverse in the about-face sequence, I stopped the dial in that undefined space between thirty-nine and zero. The space between the dashes had become a jumping off point in my mind. A place that separated everything that mattered from nothing at all. A deep breath, and my stomach squirmed with anticipation, like the feeling after jumping off something tall when gravity takes over. The latch unfastened with a click. I swung the lid open slowly to soften the note of the hinges squeaking. Fear never came to me in the form of insects. Except when I opened this box. Where in my mind I watched spider spinnerets unfurling their silky threads, making this place feel forbidden and wrong. Like I shouldn’t be here. Doing this. Again. But oh, how could I not? Emily’s face rising up before me, her lips almost touching mine. A thunderous explosion sent me to my feet, heart racing. The door banging again, like it might be knocked down.

  “Shade, you in there?” a female voice shouted. “I know you’re in there. Get your ass up. The Chief told me it’s time to get to work. Hello?” I rubbed my face with my palms, the mental fog not lifting.

  “I see your car,” the voice argued. “And the guy at the front desk said he didn’t see you leave yet. So- I deduce you’re not gone. How’s that for a rookie? Hello? Hello?”

  With my head shuffled like a deck of bad cards, I reeled around on my feet, snuffed out the candle, and kicked the box back under the bed. More knocking. I pushed my forehead against the cold steel door, peering into the peephole, seeing Assistant Detective Debbie Nichol’s standing there, the fish eye lens making her square head three-sizes too large for her body. She balanced two cups of coffee on top of a white bakery box.

  “I see you in there looking at me,” she leaned into the peephole. “It’s a very tiny you- turned upside down. But just your head. Remember me?” She raised the goodies. “Brought you some breakfast.” I pulled the deadbolt, and threw open the door. She stared at me head to toe. “Oh my.” I was still bare-ass naked.

  “Shit.” I snatched a towel off the bed, twisted it over my waist, waved her in and slapped the door shut behind her. Debbie put down the food and drinks, gave the roller-shade a small jerk, and raised it all the way open. The sunlight pouring in caught the slow swirl of a dust moat, while I held one hand over my eyes and the other over my towel. “What time is it?” I said groggily.

  Debbie wiggled her eyebrows. “Time to get dressed, boss.”

  In the bathroom and out, dressed in jeans, loafers and a polo, with a lathery toothbrush poked in my mouth, I studied my colleague. She ambled in toward the table by the window, wearing big khakis and a gun belt with her badge clipped to the side. The pants were so tight in the thighs the material shined reflectively. Debbie wasn’t fat. She was rotund, a stout column of muscle, dense like cinder blocks. A real ox. I pictured her easily taking down a calf and roping it with bare hands. She scanned the room with a wary eye. “Man, it’s dark in here.”

  I went into the bathroom, spit and rinsed. “Yes it is.”

  “It smells like burning candles.”

  “Yes it does.”

  “I went to Luke’s this morning.” She paused a beat, glancing around, and continued.

  “Saw your kids there.”

  “This situation,” I grunted as I took a seat at the table. “It’s just temporary.” I’d secured a lease on a cottage house that was part of a larger, privately owned farm property. It sat on top of a mountain with stunning views of the Cumberland Mountains, where they rippled out like ocean waves. But the contract couldn’t be secured without a good faith deposit, pushing the move date out about ten days, or whenever I got the cash in hand from my first paycheck. Brant and Lilly stayed behind at Vanessa’s while I lived here in the hotel, dangling on the last strands of my debit card. I believed the kids were better off sleeping in familiar surroundings at the Bodwells’ place. They’d had enough chaos to last a lifetime. Plus, Vanessa was all too pleased to have me gone. I’d come up with a new theory about why she was treating me this way: I believed that she somehow held me responsible for Emily’s death. For my own sanity, I just stayed away. Debbie pulled a chair out from the table and fell into it.

  “Just temporary, huh?” she nodded, took a cup of coffee, peeled off the lid and nosed at the steam. “I was surprised when Luke said you were here, what’s the name of this dive again, Extend-a-Stay?”

  “Sounds like a pill for old guys who can’t get it up, right?” I smirked when she laughed out load.

  “So why are you here?” Debbie as
ked. “Hanging out. Like literally, naked.

  “Hilarious,” I said.

  “No, really.”

  I shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

  “Ohhhh,” Debbie smiled, tore open the bakery box lid and jammed a chocolate covered donut into her mouth, chewing wildly. “I love complicated. By all means. Please continue.”

  I broke into a broad smile. This woman reminding me once again of my sister Molly. “Actually for now,” I grabbed a glazed bear-claw out of the box and sunk my teeth in, talking muffled, chewing. “I’m trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing here.”

  She pointed, putting on a staged, super-twangy country accent. “I come,” then she pointed at the floor, “To remove you from here,” then pointing out the window “And take you out there.”

  Windows rolled down in her Chevy Truck, we took on deafening wind-roar as we swerved at speed into the twisty turns of U.S. 169. The route never settled into a straight shot, always spiraling forward like a child’s ribbon flung across the mountain range. With her arm sticking out the window, and chewing a toothpick, Debbie steered with one hand, the speed ruffling her closely-cropped hair. Before we left, she told me motorcyclists nicknamed this portion of the highway the Serpent’s Spine thanks to the seven miles of unbroken, rollercoaster roadway. That it was worshipped by adrenaline junkies and speed demons. That every Autumn the department made several trips out here with County Coroner “No Nonsense” Larry Fink to send flattened riders on a final ride home in body bags. A motorcyclist from my college years, I caught myself grabbing at the dash and leaning into the curves behind the truck’s windshield like a kid.

  “So the Chief made you come pick me up?” I shouted over the windblast.

  “What?” she yelled in my face. “I can’t hear you.”

  I shouted over the noise once more. “So the Chief. This morning?” I jabbed my finger at the floorboard to emphasize the point in all the windblast. “He made you come get me?”

  She shot me a crazy look, shaking her head no, shrugging her shoulders, yelling, “I still can’t hear you!”

  I cupped my hands over my mouth for a third try and her face broke out into a big grin, like… Got you. She playfully punched me in the arm, and hollered. “He said you were going to teach me how to become a big, fancy detective just like you. That you were working free of charge.”

  “What?” I yelled cupping my ear. Playing the I-can’t-hear-you game back at her. But she didn’t take the bait.

  “How about that,” I said.

  The road suddenly banked left and Debbie gassed the truck into it, tires crying like they might let go of the pavement. I threw my palms flat on the dashboard. “The physics trick to getting over the curves,” she shouted. “Is to power through them. Keeps the vehicle on the road. You let off the gas, or worse, hit the brake, and over the hill we go.”

  “What about the physics of just slowing the fuck down?” I yelled, fingernails digging into the dash. She turned her head slowly at me, eyes wide and we both broke into laughter. Just like being with my sister Molly again. Debbie didn’t miss a lick. For a split second, I realized I didn’t have a care in the world. It was enough just to be alive. Right now. Then I tried to remember if this is what happy felt like.

  Debbie leaned over, “Hey Shade, you want me to turn on the a/c?”

  “No thanks, I’m great.”

  “Good,” she said grinning. “Cause I ain’t got one.”

  Just like Molly. Maybe Debbie also had a glitch somewhere in there, just like Molly. Her personality overcompensating for something missing. I backed the thought off. I didn’t want to ruin this. “Hey Debbie.”

  She tongue-twisted the toothpick in her mouth. “Yeah?”

  “Have you wondered yet how the hell did somebody made a clean kill-shot on this rollercoaster ride? On a motorcycle? Defies the laws of physics. There’s just no way.”

  She nudged her head forward. “Up ahead, wait for it.” She paused and sang it a little like a song. “Wait for it.” Sure enough with the snap of a finger, we crested a hill, banked right, and busted out of the mountains. No more Serpent’s Spine. The road transformed into an arrow, as flat and perfectly straight as an airplane strip shooting to the horizon, no end in sight. Debbie let the truck coast to a slow roll.

  “What do you think of that high prairie grass?” Debbie scanned her eyes to either side, still working the toothpick. “There are historical accounts of pioneer children wondering off, getting lost in that stuff, never to be found again. Apparently that sort of thing happened far more often than people realize.”

  In the distance, I could make out strewn police tape blowing limply in the breeze. The Chevy rolled to a stop at the start of the crime scene, which was longer than I realized. Like the length of a couple football fields. At untold speeds. They were boogying. I opened the door and hopped onto the pavement, noting the complete absence of any traffic. Either way. Not a single car in sight. Debbie looped a black backpack over her shoulder and joined me in the broiling sun, the heat soon reducing us to a bubbling sweat. Fifty yards out, orange pylons pulsed liquidly in the heat bank rising off the pavement, hot-yellow and neon blue arrows marking the trajectory of a high-speed homicide. The site made perfect sense for murder. No curves. No rolling turns. Even at 120 miles per hour, any target would be essentially stationary in the lateral plane, with little elbow room to dodge left or right. Ideal for a pistol shot. Given the speeds involved, it was the best scenario for the hunter, and thinking of Ricky Stopher’s head, not so hot for the prey.

  We ambled alongside the road, just outside the perimeter of the crime scene. Crossing into the stench of a roadkill skunk, I pulled my t-shirt over my nose, following the crime scene markings, and pondered the neon hatch marks pointing the way. I imagined a corpse rolling and tumbling along, his brains blown out, struggling to visualize what actually went down here. A ghostly wind moaned in the direction where mountain peaks sat resting in the higher elevations, this followed by the jarring outburst of ravens in the distance, barking at each other in the molten heat, wings slapping. “Debbie,” I said shielding my eyes from the sun. “Where are all the cars?”

  She turned from the mountains and squinted into the flatter distance, her face going ruddy with the heat. “This route only connects Exodus and Lincoln Counties. And boy, let me tell you. There ain’t nothing in Lincoln County. The biggest town there is called Mundy. It has one-traffic light. So this road serves little purpose. Beyond connecting the two counties for municipal services. Like the occasional fire truck, or ambulance. Sometimes itinerant workers, you know, the Mexicans, sometimes they use it. It’s the official turn-around spot for the bikers.”

  “Unless of course, someone is shooting at you,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Debbie paused, staring down, watching sweat drip off her nose and splat on the road between her feet. “Under those circumstances, getting to Lincoln County actually sounds preferable.”

  I glanced left and then right, inspecting the incoming and outgoing path of the crash lengthwise. “Looks like the poor bastard rag-dolled a quarter mile before resting here.” Debbie pulled her phone from her bag, and confirmed my thoughts with photos taken on the first trip out. Then she began to snap more. Close, then far away, based on the details I pointed out. I paced, crouched down, felt the pavement with the palm of my hand. Toward the southwest, purple clouds were inflating and intensifying on the rim of the horizon. A storm coming. “This was nothing more than a cold hit.”

  “A strategic hit?” Debbie, perspiration mushrooming at the armpits of her shirt.

  “I don’t know if there was much strategy to it,” I grunted, still on my knees. “But if anything, it was convenient. I mean, look at it. Clean straight line, quiet, empty fields of grass on both sides, the right side falling off quickly into a steep ravine in the near distance. No visible barns, no farm houses, no human structur
es to be found anywhere. And no other motorists. If I was going to kill somebody?” I stood to my feet brushing off my pants. “This is exactly where I’d do it.”

  Debbie huffed in the heat, face shiny and wet. Cheeks looking red and hot to the touch. I cocked my head at her, thinking. “Answer me a question, Debbie.”

  “Yeah boss?”

  “You guys have any killer ghosts out here in Kentucky?”

  The first faint rumble of thunder, and she looked over her shoulder at the gathering storm nearing the far edge of Lincoln County as it made a slow march toward us. Her face came back to mine, throwing me a light smile. “If you’re talking about the invisible kind, we questioned them all at the scene.”

  “Any lost prairie children?”

  Debbie looked uneasy and didn’t speak. “Tell me,” I shifted the weight off my hip. “Did Ricky’s ghost have anything to say? That would really speed up this investigation.”

  “You proposing a phantom swooped in and killed our boy?” Her cheeks almost purple with sweat now, she hooked her thumbs into her pants, face down, kicking at some broken shards that was likely motorcycle headlight glass. “That shit ain’t funny boss.”

  “Exactly,” I nodded slowly. “So investigator, what are we looking for? We know a homicidal maniac didn’t materialize from the sky, blow out our vic’s brains and fly away. Our unsub is real. There’s no denying the crater in Ricky’s head.”

  Beneath the hot sun, the Prairie Grass lifted in a great wave as a solitary wind chased the tops across the field, the dark storm ballooning in the west. “Unsub.” She grunted. “Unknown subject?”

  “Unknown or Unidentified.” I windshield-wipered the sweat off my forehead with my index finger. “Either. Take your pick.”

  She refocused, rubbed the corner of her square jaw, eyes narrowing, studying the long path of the crash. “We know the killer was here. That he’s a decent shot. The hunter and hunted had to both be mounted on bikes.”