Skin the Cat

by R Sean McGuirk

  “Sorry?” she smirked, and knuckle-nudged my shoulder, faintly swaying side to side a bit, seeming to enjoy this. “We don’t use sorry in AA.” She teased. “Everybody’s sorry.” Her smile coming on like sunshine now, our eyes catching for an instant. “We make amends.” I’d only made it halfway through the steps at this point, so Melanie lost me here. “The difference being?” I asked.

  “You say, what can I do to make this right, and wait for the answer.”

  “Okay,” I said it slowly like a question. “What can I do to make this right. For being rude?”

  She didn’t answer right away, so I hooked my thumbs in my pockets, and I waited. She bit her lip, squinting at the idea, smiling as it lifted into her mind. “Join me for pie and coffee.”

  Melanie was the kind of woman prized not just by men, but by all men. She was entirely attractive, bright, slender, thoughtful, graceful, smart, witty, animated and engaged when she spoke. And the idea of having pie with her made me want to vomit. No kidding. It shook me to the core. But the request was innocent. I couldn’t ding her because of her beauty. Nor could I blame her for not having x-ray vision to see the Emily-sized hole inside my chest, where my heart used to be. Eating pie with a strange, attractive woman was well outside my comfort zone. I wanted to say just kidding, wave her off, and leave. But I’d been a dick once to this woman already once today. I wouldn’t do it twice. Besides, I still wore my wedding band every day. I never took it off. I never mentioned to my sobriety group that my wife was dead. I know she saw my ring but she still asked me to go anyway. A friend-thing. Pie. It was innocent enough and so we went.

  Moments later crossing the block we found ourselves at Mojo’s. The dessert shop was hidden on the back-alley side of Exodus Avenue and nestled on the upper floor of a two-story Victorian Brick building with a huge second-story porch overlooking a canopy of red maples which encircled the outer limestone slabs of a small Civil War Cemetery. As obscure as a treehouse nestled on the second floor, no one would know Mojo’s even existed up there if not guided by hand. We jogged up the wooden stairs and reached the open porch area above, finding the space meticulously decorated with tidy tables and fresh cut flowers.

  Two apple pies and black coffee in hand, we took a seat under a column of English Ivy, the vines draping from planters that hung overhead, the smooth tendrils and dark leaves glowing chlorophyll-green in the sunlight. The syrupy aroma of molasses and cured tobacco drifted in the air from a boutique-cigar shop located just below. The heat of late summer had been gathering up again, and a bead of sweat trickled out from my temple and down the side of my cheek. Mojo’s treehouse-like feel appealed to younger patrons, early-twenties guys with longer hair and thick beards hung with barefooted young women, with a couple of dogs. It felt good to just to sit, and not have to worry about anything. To just… be.

  “I didn’t think I could do this,” I said under my breath, taking a bite of pie and nipping at my coffee.

  “What’s that?”

  “Forget it,” I laughed wiping my face with a paper napkin.

  “Hold it right there,” she smiled, voice teasing, the glowing amber flecks inside her eyes catching the sunlight. “You can’t say something and take it back. That’s not fair.”

  “There’s really nothing to tell,” I rolled my eyes like I was tired of myself and my story. Because I was. Melanie inserted the silver fork into her mouth and slid the apple pie off with her lips, letting out a subtle moan of pleasure, eyes closed. Then opened them. “A man of mystery.”

  “Mystery?”

  “Nobody warned you about small-town dynamics?” She gave me a light laugh. “I get the best gossip at the florist.”

  “You work at the florist?” I tilted my head. “The one on the corner?”

  “I own the floral shop. Yes, the one down on the corner.”

  “What’s it called?” I held my fork down. Her lips went into a wide smile, polished teeth glistening.

  “Melanie’s.” She smiled. I think she may have looked perfectly beautiful right in that moment, but I would have to go ask somebody else for verification. Because I couldn’t tell anymore. I was desensitized when it came to any other woman besides Emily. My eyes stared mostly inward these days. I grinned at her. “Ah, your personal name, both intimate and personal. That seems to be a trend here in Story Mount.”

  She worked her fork with determination. “We all know each other, so we name our businesses after ourselves.”

  I studied her, trying to detect bullshit. “You’re kidding me. Right?”

  “That way you know who you’re dealing with,” she winked.

  “You’re being serious?”

  A vague exasperation appeared on her face, eyebrows slightly raised. “Everything here works by reputation.” She finger-swiped whipped cream from the corner of her mouth. “Basically, it’s the small-town dynamic I’m talking about. The countryside beneath the mountains makes fertile fields for people talking shit behind each other’s backs.”

  “So,” I leaned back, smirking. “What’s the gossip on me?”

  “Oh, a handsome charmer like you?” she said, fluttering her eye lashes teasingly. “The women see your wedding ring. Some believe you might be married. Some say it’s a cover up because you might be into guys. Some even say they’ve seen you out in public not wearing it. Me, I think you’re married. But I’m stumped because I can’t figure out why you won’t bring her around.”

  “Stories abound,” I said and studied the white-stone gravestones of dead soldiers in the cemetery just beyond. My attention floated away, digging into the soil out there, the trance covering me with the idea of cold dirt.

  “Hey,” she said. I bounced my thoughts back to the table, to this woman, and found her eyes taking on some new kind of weight. Concern maybe? I straightened in my seat.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “So, is this a fact-finding mission?” I smiled. “The pie is a set-up?”

  “No, no, no,” Melanie shook her head, palms up, giggling. “I swear no. You’re new around here. And the recovery world is not that big here.”

  “I get it,” I smiled. “I’ll play. But you have to go first. You came back two years ago, and?”

  “Well,” her smile faded off a bit as she sat up. “I moved away. Met my husband. We rented a third-floor apartment together, you know just starting out. My husband thought I was the hottest woman in the world. Couldn’t get enough of me. When the sun set every evening, he made good on steamy romance. But evidently he felt the same way about the girl downstairs.”

  I winced. “Oh.”

  “Yeah, that,” Melanie forced a grin but her eyes showed the pain.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, and almost shared what Emily did to me, changed my mind and went quiet.

  “It happens,” Melanie shrugged, picking at a pie crumb on her plate. A barefoot teen hopped down the steps, her dog following by her side. Melanie shifted in her seat and set her gaze on me. “Your turn.”

  “Listen,” I paused. “What you just told me, I won’t tell anybody. Alright?”

  She nodded. “I trust you.”

  “Do the same for me? Mum’s the word?”

  “Yes,” she nodded solemnly. “Absolutely. You have my word.”

  I took a deep breath. “Emily died.”

  She recoiled, then came back, fingers touching her lips. “What?”

  “My wife died.”

  19

  A Fresh Kill

  Blue cop lights flashed inside the dark kitchen, making the new murder scene jump like some kind of bad disco. An officer in the front yard mumbled to me as I approached, “Looks like the killer caught up with him before we did.” Inside, Fast Eddie lay crumpled in a pile on the linoleum floor in front of an open refrigerator whose shelves were painted in blood spatter. The kitchen stank of gunpowder, blood and shit. People
outside of law enforcement or healthcare were seldom aware of this unfortunate aspect of the human body. That when a person was hit hard enough, if death came on strong enough, people lost their bowels. My stomach churned inside the stench, the nausea not caused so much by the smell of murder, but more by the fact we were now officially fucking this investigation up. Royally. I popped on disposable shoe covers, rubber gloves, and entered the kitchen. Fast Eddie had been executed standing in front of the refrigerator, drinking from a carton of orange juice. I took a step backward into the doorway, turned my head to the side, sucked in some clean air, and reentered.

  Debbie squatted alongside a corner cabinet, scribbling on a clipboard, balancing on her heels, thick thighs tensed. She shot me a hopeless expression, complete with glassy eyes rubbed red-raw around the lids. I felt the same way. The killer was a step ahead. I wondered how this latest development might affect my job security or Debbie’s quest for promotion to full detective when our theory of the killer’s identity turned out to be correct but we couldn’t catch the guy in time to prevent another murder. “Well I guess we found out where Fast Eddie lives,” her voice cracked, the exasperation taking on a new weight in her jaws. She stared at the blood and guts. “You think we should warn him that his life is in danger now?”

  “Hey Eddie,” I nodded at the corpse, taking in the blood puddle spilled like black motor oil around his body. “Maybe you should make a break for it, dude.” Debbie didn’t laugh, and I found myself drinking my own emotional cocktail of anger and defeat.

  “You look like shit, boss.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Sleep much?”

  “The woman next door to me at the Extend-A-Stay likes to raise the topic of infidelity with her biker boyfriend every evening starting at midnight. I don’t have a clue what they eat or drink from. They’ve smashed every dish in the place. Adorable couple.” I squatted beside the corpse.

  “You’re a cop,” her eyebrows crinkled. “Go badge their asses.”

  “Of fight or flight,” I said. “Flight is the larger plan for Lilly and Brant. I just found a cabin on Iron Mountain, a rental on a private farm overlooking the foothills to the south. I’m just waiting for the landlord to approve me.”

  “Nice,” she grunted.

  “How about this horror show?” I grunted, sweeping my flashlight over the slaughtered corpse, the puddle around it taking on lava lamp tones of blood and orange juice melting into each other. Over my shoulder, the food items inside the open fridge sat drenched in blood. “A gut shot- from behind.”

  “Looks like our man was hit with a bazooka,” Debbie’s voice wavered, her nerves catching up to her. The exit wound in looked like a torn cantaloupe with silvery-blue entrails like springs uncoiling from a broken clock. I looked closely, careful to touch nothing. With the latest advances in forensic technology, a lipstick smudge, a paint chip, even a solitary fiber of clothing, the slightest evidence could alter the entire outcome of a criminal proceeding. Crime scenes were more sensitive than ever. I studied Eddie’s face, blue eyes fixed open, mouth stretched wide in eternal agony. “He was standing here,” I said coming up to my feet, swiveling my head side to side. “Drinking that plastic jug of orange juice over there. The shot came from behind, blowing through his spine, disemboweling him on the exit, then he sank right here. He didn’t see it coming. I peered into the blood-soaked shelves. “Judging from the hole in the back of the fridge, the techs will end up digging 12-gauge slug shrapnel out of the wall behind it. Or maybe even the neighbor’s back shed.”

  “12-gauge slug?” Debbie whistled. “That’ll blow a car door off its hinges.”

  “Yeah,” I massaged my temples. “The guess the killer didn’t want him just kind of dead.”

  Stan Gadford waddled in like a penguin, throwing me a suspicious glance. “You two don’t fucking touch anything. If I find even a microscopic part of you in here, I’ll cut off your hands.” He was feeling the heat too. Our unsolved just became much, much worse. The bad guy was winning. That didn’t help mayors or council members get reelected. It didn’t help anyone hang onto a paycheck. Especially for people at the bottom of the food chain. Like us. “Out,” Gadford said snapping on surgical gloves. “And also, on your way out bag your footies and gloves, sign and date.”

  Debbie and I ducked from the kitchen into the living room, flashlights sweeping across the walls until I found the light-switch, and tried it. Nothing. Out the front window, my brother-in-law Luke and Officer Chad White worked a small-cluster of neighbors gathering on the front walk, pulling quick interviews, searching for any potential witness. We cased the entire house and discovered that every drawer, cabinet and container on the premises had been rifled through. In Fast Eddie’s bedroom, a tray of weed, chunks of what I guessed to be crystal meth and a small wad of cash sat out in the open untouched. Whoever was here expressed no interest in stealing anything. We processed our gloves and booties at the door to the chronically cranky uniformed cop named Darrel Biggs, then cut across the front yard, and climbed into Debbie’s truck. In the flashing blues, Luke walked up and leaned into the window. “Long night?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. “Vanessa holding the fort down tonight with the kiddos, huh?”

  “I’m heading back there now.”

  Luke turned, but I caught him, the question popping into my head before he could leave. “Hey, we didn’t have this address listed to Eddie Mullins. And it looks like he’s been living here for a while. What gives?”

  Luke sighed, arms hanging limp at his sides. “We got in his phone. Found it in the living room, skimmed his contacts, turns out he’s been subleasing for a couple years from a well-known local slumlord he does business on a month to month cash basis only. No contract. And all the utilities are all under the slum lord’s name. Eddie was completely hidden, off the radar.”

  “Except for the people the mattered most.” I made a shooting gun gesture with my hand.

  “Right,” Luke said and walked off. I turned back to Debbie sitting in the driver’s seat. Her face was drawn with some despair, the tension in her chest making her voice break. “I can’t afford to lose this investigation boss. I’ve worked my whole life for detective. It’s all I ever wanted. You know, to prove myself.” She swiped a tear off her cheek. “I want some fucking validation here in Story Mount that I matter.” I didn’t ask what she meant- because I already had a hunch. But not feeling so good about the case anymore myself, I was too beat to go there. At least right now.

  “Hey,” I grasped her shoulder. “We’re going to catch this little bastard. Don’t worry.” I pulled my hand back and she turned in her seat to face me.

  “Why didn’t our killer pinch the drugs and money?”

  “He was looking for something specific.” I said. “Something…small, I think.”

  “Small?”

  “Yeah, digging in jewelry boxes, coffee tins, rifling through drawers, hunting the minuscule spaces, tearing open envelopes. You know, searching the nooks and crannies.”

  Debbie closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “Small like receipts, paperwork, legal documents.” She paused. “Or maybe credit cards and bank codes?”

  “Yeah,” I took a deep breath. “Hunting for something specific that Fast Eddie refused to fork over. Something that made Fast Eddie a threat. Something that got his guts blown into the refrigerator.”

  Debbie leaned forward into the steering wheel, gazing sideways toward the crime scene. “I wonder if the killer found whatever they were looking for.”

  “Me too.” I shrugged. “I just don’t know. But what I do know is that this case now demands we get our fucking hands on Tadpole. Or his daddy. Or anybody linked to this cluster-fuck of an investigation.”

  Debbie looked at me. “Eddie Mullin’s mother’s last known address is a mile from here. She won’t budge though. Refuses our calls. Won’t answer the door.”

 
; I thought it over then put on my seatbelt. “Well maybe she will now that her son’s been put down.”

  The house was a leftover factory worker dwelling from the 1950’s. The rickety single-story clapboard sagged so severely to the side it seemed to want to topple over. Paint blistered up off rotten timber and all the windows were covered in spare bedsheets. We scraped the front gate open where the grass grew waist-high, scaled the front three steps and banged on the door. “Bonnie Braywood,” I called out. “This is the police. We need to have a word with you.”

  I adjusted the neck cord on my laminated I.D. to make sure it was visible. Debbie bent over, reached inside her cowboy boot and pulled a white tube sock up around her calf, while she cursed about loose elastic. Just when I almost shouted again, the door burst open and an obese woman with missing teeth and one eye put a shotgun to my throat. I tilted my head at the ceiling and waited for the flash. Debbie drew her 9mm and stuck it right in the old woman’s face, shrieking, “Put down the motherfucking gun!”

  I swallowed, feeling my adam’s apple trace the nose of the barrel, and slowly raised my hands, the words coming out one at a time. “Everybody-just-take-it-easy.” The old woman’s shotgun was cocked, hammer back, her finger giving the trigger light nervous taps. I wondered if this was how it was all going to end, me getting blown off a front porch, buried in the deep grass by the gate, discovering my dead wife Emily stroking the hair over my ear like she always did, welcoming me home. Vanessa and Luke left to raise our kids.

  “If you don’t lower your weapon right now lady,” Debbie cried out with fear dancing all over her face. “I swear to God I’m going to dash your brains out.”

  “Mrs. Braywood,” I said as calmly as one can with a loaded rifle pressed into my throat. “We’re law enforcement. We have news about your son.”

  “That don’t look like no badge around your neck,” the old woman growled.

  “Ma’am,” Debbie tightened her grip on her pistol. “I swear to fucking God.”