Skin the Cat

by R Sean McGuirk

  He leaned to the side trying to catch my eye. “What’s your name?”

  I threw my hand out, gave him a firm handshake. “Shade.”

  He cocked his head in wonder. “Shade, as in shadows? Like something in the darkness?”

  I grabbed a deep breath, trying to hide the sound. “The very one.”

  “Do you ride?”

  “Yes,” I glanced up, massaging the ache from my throat. “I do. I mean, did. Back in college.”

  “What’s that accent?” He grinned. “It’s kinda’ sharp at the edges. You a Yankee?”

  “By way of career only. I’m an Arkansas boy.”

  “Oh good, I would never help anyone whose ancestors fired at mine,” he joked, taking a playful shot at my shoulder and folding his arms again.

  “You new around here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Living here now?”

  “Yes.” I said it too cold, too guarded, without meaning to. The interpersonal country way of things wasn’t jiving with me yet. And he sensed it.

  “Sorry,” he raised palm. “All I meant is, if you are living here now, the Cumberland Mountains? The Serpent’s Spine? It won’t take long for the magic to grab ahold of you. To get back into your blood. You spend any appreciable time out here and you’ll break back out into two wheels soon enough.”

  I wasn’t blinking. “Did you say Serpent’s Spine?”

  “Yep.”

  I dug into the evidence bag and came up with it. “Tell me, what do you make of this?”

  “What do you have?” His eyebrows arched with curiosity, taking it like a toy, fumbling it in his palms. “This job needs cheaters.” He fished reading glasses from front pocket of his service shirt and slipped them on, the lenses foggy with motor oil, reexamining the part. “If there was a motorcycle attached to this mirror, I’d hate to see the rider.”

  “I’d love to see him,” I mumbled, pushing my thumb into my hip to catch a release.

  He stopped, and tilted his head. “What’d you say?”

  I smiled, waving him off. “Sometimes I talk to myself.”

  “Brother,” he broke into a grin. “As long as you don’t answer yourself back. So what do you want to know about this?”

  “Anything you can tell me. Make, model, anything at all.” Gary went to pulling and prying at the mirror, and finally snapped the face from the housing, and lifted it to my nose. “You see that part number printed in purple microscopic ink dots right there? Those first three letters? It’s off a Yamaha. Follow me.” Over the next several minutes at the parts counter, he Googled anything and everything, clicking at the keyboard, throwing dissatisfied glances at the screen in certain intervals. With an Ohh, he pulled a mammoth reference binder off a nearby shelf stacked with service manuals, squinted into the haze of his readers, jotted some notes and slid the mirror assembly back at me, a green and red wire hanging out, clicking his pen with his thumb like a nervous habit.

  “Sir, what you have there,” he paused for effect, like waiting for the drumroll. “Is the right-side mounted mirror off a 2006 Yamaha YZF-R6, only available in blue or black.”

  “But this is white,” I said.

  “Not always,” Gary nodded, folding his cheaters back into his front pocket. “More specifically some version of pearl-white. Definitely aftermarket work.”

  “Aftermarket?”

  “Yep, a custom paint job. Pretty shitty, I might add.”

  “How many were produced that year?”

  “Thousands upon thousands,” Gary tugged on his beard and clicked the pen, like he was catching a rhythm. “But now for some good news. You see that scratch there? No, not there. Underneath? Yeah. There. The deep one?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you see a thin layer of color, the line right here?” He stopped clicking and pointed with the pen. “What color is that there?”

  “Blue.”

  “Yamaha Blue,” Gary nodded.

  Before I rolled over, I broke up the bills Wadsworth gave me. The money. I was delighted. I felt human once again. “Hey Gary,” I said, slipping him a ten for his troubles.

  “Yeah?”

  “Take this and go buy a pair of readers without all the grease.”

  He smiled. “My whole life’s covered in grease, man.” He tucked the bill away, eyes grinning. “And, I love it.”

  I went out front, called the Chief and gave him the latest and hung up. Then I texted Debbie. “Who’s your contact- County Clerk’s Office?”

  “Monique Kirkenwood, across from courthouse. Here’s the number but wait before you call so I can clear you.”

  “Thanks.” The number blinked in. I waited a few minutes, scanning the quick-mart for a restroom. I placed the call, and Monique Kirkenwood at the County Clerk’s Office announced herself. I almost hung up at first thinking I’d misdialed, her voice coming over like a child’s. She apparently really liked my name, asking me about it.

  “Can you do a county search for motorcycle registrations. I also have a model and a year and a name if you need it.”

  “Just the name,” she squeaked, her voice putting helium back into the balloon.

  “Okay here,” I glanced at my notes. “Eddie or Edward Mullins.”

  After a beat, she came back. “The guy has a 2012 Suzuki...”

  “No wrong guy,” I interrupted.

  “Okay, try the same with Billy or maybe even William Harmony.” I paced over to the quick-mart, went in and poured a coffee, eyes scanning for the restroom. Monique’s voice returned.

  “Nope,” she said. “But I did get a hit on Harmony. Are you sure the first name is Billy?”

  I paused. “Why?”

  “Because I have a Barry Harmony.”

  “A motorcycle registration?”

  “It’s an expired registration, from a few years back.”

  “Which bike?”

  “Let’s see,” The fairy voice dropped a pitch. “Looks like we have a 2006 Yamaha YZF-R6.”

  “Is there an updated address with that?”

  “Yes, well, at the last one he had just before the registration expired. You want it?”

  I scrawled the information on the inside of my arms with a blue ink pen, thanked Monique, hung up, and hit the urinal right when Debbie buzzed in. “Hey Debbie, just got off the phone with county. Where are you?”

  “I’m halfway to Trayfort Hospital” She huffed. Looking for injured homicidal motorcyclists.”

  “Very good,” I said only half-listening, trying to balance the coffee, hold the phone and pee all at the same time, my left hip trying to spasm for the acrobatics of it all. I shook off and flushed, refocusing. “What you got?”

  “Luke called me from the precinct. He came up with a number for Fast Eddie’s mother, Bonnie. Her last name is Braywood now, but we were able to back-track it through a sister named Connie. Aunt Connie has a thing for breaking the law and getting caught. But then again maybe steel bars bring out the color of her eyes. Anyway, Bonnie was listed her sister on legal records. So we now have a phone number and address for Eddie Mullins mother.”

  “That’s good because his life may be in danger.”

  “What?”

  “Possibly in danger,” I said. “Bogey’s Bikes came up with a make and model number of our shooter’s bike. The county search shows the machine was technically last owned by the Tadpole’s father Barry harmony. Then a few years ago, he let everything lapse, basically taking the bike off the radar. Maybe to dodge taxes, registration fees, who knows.” I finished at the urinal and flushed.

  Debbie’s voice lifted with excitement, paper shuffling in the background. “This points to Billy Harmony, as our shooter?”

  “Correct,” I half-assed washed my hands at the sink and headed out. “Which leaves us in the dark with Fast Eddie. Let’s
say Tadpole is our triggerman. There are only two plausible scenarios. Fast Eddie and Tadpole did this together. Or Eddie is the next target and now finds himself running blind after he learned his buddy Ricky Stopher is dead.”

  “So Fast Eddie’s life could be at hazard either way.”

  “Yep,” I climbed back into my car. “As a killer flipping on his friend to reduce his own prison sentence or as a target who’s not ready to die yet. Either way, I’d be convinced to help law enforcement.”

  Debbie went silent on the phone mulling it all over. “This is good. We can create a sense of urgency if we can get to Eddie, knowing that Tadpole is likely the killer.”

  “Call Fast Eddie’s mother. Tell her he may be in very real danger. That we need to talk to him, so we can help him.”

  “Got it boss,” She chewed on the phone and then spit. I’ll call when I come up with something.”

  “Anything on the hospital yet?”

  “Uh, yeah.” She said it like duh.

  “Update me.”

  “Already did.”

  “When?”

  “When you flushed.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and smiled. “Okay.”

  “I still got some geography to cover boss.”

  “Where are you?”

  “About thirty minutes until I pull into Trayfort Memorial. Maybe longer if these farm tractors keep pulling out in front of me on this broken state road.” She took a drink of something. “How about you? What are you doing next?”

  I hesitated, thought it over and finally answered. “Possibly something very stupid.”

  17

  Off the Record

  Hard left and I veered into the entrance of the trailer slum called Pitch Pine Acres. A sense of urgency brimming over, and I took the Ford Taurus over the speed bump too fast, colliding into it instead of going over. The suspension heaved and rocked like the wheels might fly off. The car was getting really old. Outdated. The transmission slipped between second and third gear. But I’d grown attached to it. Like a pet. Or an old friend. Emily’s hair was in the seat cracks, near the stain on the floormat that day she spilled her coffee years ago, and the indented impression of the kid’s original baby-seats could still be seen in the upholstery. Tasting ashes in my mouth, I refocused and shook off the past, slowly counting trailer lots since half were missing numbers, and the other half was missing trailers. Total apocalyptic shit hole. If this place ever had a heyday, it packed its bags a few decades and a thousand busted dreams ago. As it was now, the development sat in the belly of a murky mud-skim nudged lengthwise against Cumberland riverbank, so close and at a sloping angle it looked as if the entire thing could slip into the river and sink to the bottom- which from the looks of it might not be a bad thing. Front yards were reduced to clay-slicks overgrown with weed trees, sparse patches of tall grass, discarded children’s toys, broken glass, busted furniture including the charred carcasses of couches flipped over with coiled springs exposed. But most offensive to the eye was the discarded electric greens, blues and hot pinks of Chinese plastic trash including shampoo bottles, toothbrushes, a shredded laundry baskets, torn plastic buckets, and scattered plastic forks. The colors stood glaring out from the muddy landscape, refusing to blend in, seeming to flip a middle finger at the trees, the rocks, making anything natural look ugly and dead. The legacy of man. This. A permanent outdoor ghetto.

  Crawling along, the odd numbered lots were on the left side, and with only a few of the trailers inhabited, I stopped at what I guessed to be 3307 Pitch Pines Way. The entire front wall was delaminated and curling off where a Confederate flag hung in the window behind fractured glass. An awning hung diagonally above the front door, the full assembly suspended by a single screw. One hard push on any side and the whole thing might fall in. Even compared to the hardest southside Chicago ghettos, I was startled people still lived here. In gear, I reversed slowly, pulling into some weeds and backtracked on foot. A quick head-check and no one around, no one watching me that I could tell. I snuck up the steel-grated front steps that wobbled side to side under foot. Completely unlocked, the front door opened and shut limply in the breeze offering quick glimpses of the shadows inside.

  Acutely aware the murderer might be lurking in there somewhere, and that I wasn’t technically on this case just yet, I felt for my gun that I technically wasn’t supposed to be carrying at the moment. It was an old, spare service weapon from Chicago that I kept in my rear waistband time to time, for special occasions like this. I palmed the 9mm and stepped forward announcing a title I didn’t have back yet. Not until the paperwork was finished anyway. “This is Detective Shade Bardane, anyone home?” I paused and counted two deep breaths, checking over my shoulder, the coast still clear and called out again. “Just a concerned citizen in the area, saw your door was open. Hello? Thought I heard someone call for help. Want to make sure you’re okay.” Nothing. Open-handed, I smacked the wall hard, the entire trailer resonating like a bass drum. Still nothing. If Barry Harmony was home, he was in a drug-induced coma. Or waiting with a loaded gun just praying I’d come in. Something crashed inside, followed by muted shriek. Both hands, gun up and out, I kicked the door open and moved forward into the darkness.

  My eyes adjusting, trying to make out the shapes, a floor cluttered with greasy fast-food containers, empty two-liter soda bottles and lumpy twists of strewn laundry. Low on my feet, swinging the gun in fast arcs both sides, the low shriek came again, this time definitely from the back. I fumbled my way deeper into the darkness, clearing each room as I went, coming to the last doorway, easing in, snapping the door shut behind me. Another shriek, up close and personal this time, sent my hair standing on end, heart chugging. The cry again. So clear. So human. An infant. Left alone. Right before me. I scanned all around for the source. The wood-paneled walls of the ransacked bedroom were plastered with posters of motorcycles, metal rock bands and naked female pornstars spread wide open. Twisted sheets lay over a bare mattress impregnated with the greasy outline where a dirty human slept. Another step and the infant’s cry came from my feet, beneath a bookcase toppled across the floor. The noise I’d heard outside. A toddler trapped beneath? What kind of inbred monster deserts a baby?

  A flash of anger, holstering the gun, I fell to my knees, carefully lifting the fallen bookshelf with both hands, saying no, no, no under my breath, swearing if a child was hurt, I’d strangle the son-of-a-bitch with my bare hands. I grunted, pulling harder, lifting the wooden shelf in my grip and… it exploded in my face. A cat sprang out, clawed the top of my head, and bolted out of the room as I fell backward, hands splayed on the carpet, knees up, mouth open. Rolling to my knees and placing my hands on a bedside table I came nose to nose with a framed photograph. A faded photo of the motorcycle trio wearing mullets, baby fat still in their faces. Tadpole, Ricky Stopher and Fast Eddie, arms over shoulders, all joined by a young attractive woman and a slick-back haired man in a pinstripe suit with menacing, crystalline eyes. So this was Tadpole’s bedroom. Creases in the sheets. A slice of uneaten pizza on the dresser. Signs of life. Living here with his father. But obviously no trace of Tadpole. No doubt receiving hospital care or possibly dead himself after blowing his best buddies brains out. The front door suddenly slammed shut and I went rigid. A man yawned exaggeratedly, his feet clopping about in heavy work boots and glass jars jingling in a refrigerator door yanked open and slapped shut. I snatched my phone from my pocket, brought it close to the photo and snapped a crisp shot, and tucked it back away. Footsteps banged and reverberated. A toilet flushed.

  “Hello?” a voice shouted and waited. No movement. “Is someone in here?” More silence. Then a beer bottle cap popping off, feet shuffling in the front room, a television coming on. Barry Harmony. I scrambled to a tiny rear window over the head of Tadpole’s bed, the frame no larger than the diameter of a milk crate. But no other way out. I would only be able to slip through arms fully ext
ended, going headfirst. I trampoline-walked across the bedsheets, twisted a hand lever, eased the window out of its frame inch by inch when the entire bottom half of the glass pane suddenly broke free, dropped into the air and smashed to pieces against the floor. The instant pounding of footsteps banging my way, and I clawed at the wall for the window. Not enough time. And now Barry just on the other side of the doorway, about to burst in. Suddenly finding myself on the wrong side of the law with a breaking and entering, I scanned the room and saw it: A blue bandana. I hopped off the bed, snapped it off the dresser, and tied it around my face like a stick-up man. The bedroom door burst open.

  Barry Harmony stood there huffing and puffing, holding a long aluminum baseball bat at his side, face red and full of fear. “Who the living fuck are you?” he shrieked as he got his footing and circled me, double-fisting the bat, rearing it back, looking for a shot. Long arms and limbs, braided together with cords of muscle like electrical cables, lanky, moving left and right, eyes set so close together they came on like a genetic mutation, a long thin wisp of beard trying to catch up with his face. I wanted to tell him about the cat. Or make some excuse. I wanted to start over in time, and do all this properly, conduct an interview that was admissible in court. Because I knew his son was our killer. So I broke the rules. I broke in. And now I was fucked.

  “You robbed the wrong house today,” he hissed.

  We made a slow circle, like loose dancing partners. He cranked the bat, the wild swing rushing by my face, missing by more than a foot where it blew a hole in the wood paneling. Spinning on his feet, a lightning twist, he let off a second shot as I sprang backward. The impact caught my shoulder, a glancing blow that sent me into a light rotational swirl where I careened onto the bed, head smacking the wall, landing flat on my spine like I might be going to sleep here.

  “Don’t look like it’s your day masked man,” Barry sneered. In a flash he was on the mattress like a wolf, standing over me, slowly raising the bat, and me not being able to get to my gun where it was wedged behind my back. “When this is over,” he flashed me a crazy grin, a front tooth missing. “I’m coming after your family next.”