Skin the Cat

by R Sean McGuirk

  Debbie glanced at the prescription in my hand again. “You going to get that filled now?”

  “I can’t take this shit.” I crumbled it into a ball and tossed it in the trash. “I’m a depraved alcoholic.”

  26

  Into the Night

  I weaved the tiny Chevy S-10 pickup truck across vast parking lot of Jenny’s Truck Plaza, the smell of spilled diesel fuel, cooking grease and leaking transmission fluid drifted up from the hole punched in the floorboard between my feet. The economy-sized, ramshackle pick-up truck was not registered and had an expired plate. I bought it with cash from a band of itinerant field workers who literally danced with glee when they took five-grand for a clunker with no title, held together with twist ties and duct tape. I’d been hiding for nearly a week now. I was dirty, half-starved and exhausted. When that detective and his partner came sniffing around my clinic, it was too close for comfort. My wife Carlina was trouble, bringing unwanted attention to me as her own substance abuse troubles were catching up. I wanted no part of it. Besides, I had my own plans. As soon as the cops left my clinic that day, I got in my Mercedes, hit the gas and laid low.

  Then I watched Adrianna Silk’s death hit the news. And I wasn’t going down like that. So I skipped town. I knew it would be a matter of time before they’d be closing in. But I’d underestimated how quickly. Extreme times call for extreme measures. It made me cringe. Putting the Mercedes in neutral, pushing it over the cliff overlooking Cumberland Falls. Watching the car plunge down, rolling, flipping, crashing into a fireball below. The rag-tag truck scraped and wobbled on its axles at speed until I stomped on the brakes, sliding alongside a fuel tanker, hidden entirely from view.

  “Hey buddy?”

  I jumped with alarm at the stranger swaying on his feet just outside the driver’s window. Busted purple blood vessels knotted his nose and an unlit cigarette stuck out backwards from his mouth. My hand slapped the butt of my snub-nose revolver by my thigh but then I thought about my scalpel on the other side. I pulled the brim of my Chevy hat low, everyone hating foreigners in rural shit-hole Kentucky. I cracked the window. “What?”

  “You got a light?” he slurred.

  “Get lost.”

  “Fuck you then,” he growled leaning forward, staggering. “What good are you?” I’m pretty good with this blade, take another step and find out for yourself. The man sensed danger and stumbled away. I stuffed the gun in my pocket, looped the black duffle bag over my shoulder, pulled my hat even lower, and hopped out of the truck. On the way in, I skirted the outer periphery of the security camera’s visual field and approached the doors at an oblique angle, hiding my face. Chin tucked down, when I reached the door where lottery signs flashed, an obese woman in tight pants holding back distended folds of fat stopped to scan me from my head to my feet. “You wanna’ date tonight honey?”

  Inside, I paid the attendant cash to reserve my place in line for the shower stalls. A large, flat screen television bolted to the wall flashed and squawked, talking heads yelling at each other about politicians and investigations. I caught a whiff of greasy food. I was starving. In the dining area I sat in a swiveling stool at a long counter top and ordered a sack of cheeseburgers and fries to go. Food in hand, I went to the travel section, bought a lighter, batteries and a plastic jug of water, all while keeping my head low and making little eye contact the entire time. When my number was called, I hustled into a shower stall, sat naked on the bench, eating cheeseburgers as steam filled in from all sides. It was only then that I realized how truly exhausted, how hungry and worn out I had become. In the privacy of this place, shower off and towel dried, I pulled a pocket mirror from my belongings, took scissors to my facial hair, leaving a mustache in place and retrieved my silver-rimmed glasses out. The effect made me look Hispanic, or at least anything different than an Indian physician on the run. I looked in the mirror. There is still much work to be done.

  Hustling my way out the corner exit, I heard her name and froze in my tracks. The wall-mounted flatscreen had been switched to local news. “Police are requesting the public’s help with any tips or information regarding the murder of Adrianna Silk, another incident in a long line of tragedies that have rocked the tiny mountain community of Story Mount, Kentucky in the last few weeks.” Adrianna looked so enthusiastic in the photo on the screen, the eyes twinkling, vivid, and caught mid-laughter. I frowned. Say how she died. I know you know. The program cut to a commercial. Disappointed, I pushed the door open, and fled into the night.

  27

  Liar

  Beneath a vanishing canopy of stars giving way to a chilly morning, I walk-limped into the rear entrance of the precinct, knuckling my hip the entire way. I scanned my I.D. and caught the greenlight in. On the elevator ride up, I dug at the sleep-crust in my eyes, wondering how it got there because I hadn’t slept. I’d tossed and turned all night. This case was cooking us alive. It was as if Debbie and I were impaled on a rotisserie turning slowly over a hot flame, the days turning into weeks without a real lead, finding us skewered in our own juices. All our potential suspects vanished or were dead. With the exception of one guy. The threaded edges of the investigation always led to that silver-haired bastard hanging dead center in the web. With two sharp fangs and a thousand eyes, Greymore was somehow connected to everything. If only by name only. And insulated by a raft of attorneys. Getting to him would require unorthodox measures. As the elevator doors lurched open, I wondered if Debbie would up for an unsolicited visit.

  The stench of last night’s discount Mexican dinner, habanero sauce, greasy paper sacks and body odor hung in the air all around intake. A few cops lurked about, moving slowly into another bleary-eyed morning. I made my way through a row of cubicles and spotted the glow of Debbie’s desk light, and found her hunched over a file, scribbling a note. I thumbed at the air. “The graveyard shift pulling a double?”

  Debbie glanced up from a file, her face cast with the yellow shadow of sleep deprivation. “Chief put a flame under their ass last night,” she rubbed her face. “Said if people keep getting whacked, he wouldn’t have a job by next week. And neither would they. Said Mayor Marty Breznik threatened to personally sign the pink slip himself.”

  “The pep talk seems to have worked,” I said. “So what in the hell are they doing?”

  “We put a new anonymous tip line out last night, the department bought space on three local affiliates, so mostly they’re working the phones in-house.”

  “Out of curiosity,” I huffed for lack of consideration. “Why wasn’t I informed?”

  “No one was,” she leaned back and groaned, stretching her arms overhead. “Not even the Chief. Until he saw it on television himself around midnight. Politics.”

  “Mayor Breznik?”

  “Bingo. The elections are coming up in November and homicidal maniacs roaming the street don’t do much for poll numbers.”

  “Anonymous tip lines,” I repeated. “That’s hopeless.”

  “No shit?” she smiled slapping a file shut in her hands. “You got any better ideas?”

  I pulled the photo from my blazer and tossed it on the desk. Carlina, Greymore, Fast Eddie, Ricky and Tadpole all grinning at us. “The answer has to be right here, right in front of us. But we’re not seeing it.”

  “Okay,” Debbie sighed, putting her nose low to scan it. “Obviously these three are dead. Of the two people still alive, Carlina is missing. And the last people to see her husband Dr. Svidi Malhotra was us. It’s almost been a week, right? Since he peeled off from the parking garage. And this guy? Greymore is so lawyered up he might as well be hidden in the Himalayas.”

  I pushed my finger into the photo. “What is the deal with these two? What? Is she his girlfriend?”

  “Maybe,” Debbie shrugged. “If so, maybe he’s pissed about something regarding her and the dead guys. A love triangle gone wrong. A jilted lover.”

&nbs
p; “Or she robbed him,” I said.

  “It doesn’t fit,” her voice went low. “She’s a rich physician with a wealthy plastic surgeon husband. What would she want with Greymore’s money?”

  “A physician who’s had her clinic shut down—bankrupted—a husband who believes she might be strung out on drugs, and hasn’t seen her in days. He might have cut her off. She might have enough financial problems that Greymore will float her when her husband won’t.”

  “In my book,” Debbie took out a pen and clicked her teeth with it. “That would make them close. Even intimate.”

  “In that case, the currency exchanged could be money, drugs, sex or all three.” I hummed to myself, thinking. “If Carlina Malhotra is attached to Greymore in any way, and he is behind these murders in any way shape or form, her life is likely in grave danger.”

  Debbie stopped clicking the pen and tilted her head at me. “In those circumstances, we might be looking for Carlina’s corpse.”

  “What about Cynthia Greymore?” I asked.

  “Let’s see,” Debbie pulled a file out from her drawer and cracked it open. “We generated this file on her through social media. Not hard to do since all her posts and all her community involvement is public. Since her husband essentially owns this town, she basks in the local fame of it all.” Debbie followed her fingertips over a photocopy. “Okay, she is a philanthropist rockstar. Her personal organization, We Care Kentucky, delivers healthcare and dentistry to the poor in surrounding counties. She sits on the board of Chumley’s. She also breeds horses with concentration in dressage and dabbles in racing. They had a horse compete in the Kentucky Oaks about five or six years ago.”

  “Okay,” I nodded. “So let’s step back. What do we know about Carlina Malhotra besides the fact she is a physician?”

  Debbie sat back. “The courthouse public records showed she grew up in a trailer park halfway between Peabody’s Coal Mine and here. That as a ward of the state, she was bounced around in foster care for several years, spent some time up near Lexington. Carlina also was picked up on a solicitation for prostitution charge when she was nineteen, it got thrown out. The fruit might not fall far from the tree. Her mother was a career prostitute with a serious drug problem which took her in and out of prison her entire life. I couldn’t find any death records on the woman. Which ain’t saying much.”

  “Wait,” I held up my palm. “So Carlina comes from humble means, has a sketchy past, may or may not have been involved with prostitution herself. But she redeemed herself and became a physician. Her husband said she has a substance abuse problem. And to top it off, she just lost her clinic for bills unpaid.”

  “And we just discovered her license to practice is under review.”

  “Okay,” I sat down and closed my eyes. “Now outside of her husband, she doesn’t have a pot to piss in. And she knows Greymore personally.”

  “Right.”

  “So let’s say she starts getting high, fucking everything up, and is blabbing her mouth around town, Greymore this and Greymore that.” My face turned red.

  “What Shade?”

  “Well, if wants to wipe the slate clean, she has practically provided him an alibi if she winds up overdosed somewhere. If Greymore wants her gone, Carlina has basically signed her own death certificate.”

  “That fits,” Debbie mused. “If she died, everyone would look the other way, denouncing her as a failed physician drug-addict, her life crumbling away just before her death.”

  “And,” I added. “It seems like Greymore isn’t the kind of man who’s satisfied cleaning up just one corner of the room.”

  “Her life isn’t worth one hot damn.” Debbie mumbled stuffing the file back in the drawer.

  “She’d be better off if we found her first,” I nodded. “Whatever the hell is going on.”

  We walked out into the administration area before shift change where I spotted a small huddle of cops. “Have we still been checking in on the Malahotra’s place?”

  A skinny cop in a baggy uniform with unflossed teeth named Rodney chirped up. “The Chief has had us driving by a few times per shift for welfare checks. He snatched a binder off a desk. “But still not a peep, no one answering. As of 4:30 a.m. this morning.”

  “Debbie, let’s put a BOLO out on Carlina right now,” I said, unwrapping a square of nicotine gum. “We need to hit the streets. Druggies are always on the move, always looking to score. Maybe we can find this woman.”

  “But Chief Wadsworth,” her eyes shined a bit, looking overwhelmed. “He wants us to conduct interviews of every woman that knew Adrianna Silk.”

  “Why?” I scowled. “Are we writing her biography? Put out the BOLO on Carlina.”

  “Okay boss,” Debbie shrugged, huge shoulders rolling up and down.”

  We spent the entire day not interviewing Adrianna’s buddies about her tennis game and recent travels. Instead we canvassed the defunct neighborhoods in the seedy pockets of town on the wrong side of the tracks, where the prone-to-flooding part of Story Mount crowded its poverty in the lower valley. Gold chains, tattooed, sleeveless small-time dealers hung out on front porches, scowling at anyone that they didn’t recognize as a customer. We weren’t but a few blocks where the Harmony’s were blown to Kingdom Come, checking gas station bathrooms and strolling through the remains of shuttered factory parking lots in the overgrowth when Debbie said, “Enough.” Bent over on her knees, hot, face reddened, her shirt blooming in sweat stains. “She’s not out here, boss.”

  Tired, sweaty, digging my knuckles into my hip, I looked at my phone at the time. “You’re right.” I’d have to grab dinner for the kids before I picked them up at Vanessa’s to take them back home, the place we now referred to as the cottage. “Let’s wrap this up.” My words came heavy, each one weighted down with discouragement.

  “You thirsty?” I said. “I am.”

  “I could use an iced tea,” Debbie pushed off her knees. “Right now.”

  We stopped inside a convenience store on Cumberland Way, two blocks from the river and placed a couple wax-papered donuts on the counter, each of us swigging icy drinks lids off, no straws. “I wonder,” I wiped my mouth. “What the statistics are nationally for the numbers of police fatalities brought on by doughnuts versus bullets.”

  “There can’t be data for that,” Debbie rolled her eyes. “In this line of work isn’t dying of donuts listed as a natural cause?”

  I stopped breathing and put my drink on the counter, wildly tapping Debbie on the shoulder, pointing. “Look, look, look,” my voice going all hot whispers. “Isn’t that her?

  Carlina stumbled in, held up arm in arm by an underweight street zombie wearing a ski hat and a wiry goatee. Debbie pushed me to the side and stepped forward, the guy’s eyes flashing like pinball lights when he saw the badge on her belt. He turned and ran. Without his support, Carlina’s legs went rubbery for two steps and she nearly tripped headfirst into a rack of magazines. In a split second, Debbie was on her, holding her up as I got my hands on her free elbow as she stared vacantly ahead with the kind of bloodshot-chemical eyes that screamed cheap street drugs.

  “Carlina, we are officers Nichols and Bardane with the Exodus police department. Would you be willing to come with us?” I asked. “We believe your life might be in danger.”

  She cracked her eyes open, two watery red slits. “I know,” she slurred with her head bouncing loosely around her neck like it might be mounted to a loose spring. “He’s gonna’ kill me.”

  Debbie and I looked at each other. “Who is going to kill you?” I asked.

  “My husband,” Carlina teetered on her feet, hips sagging while I caught her by the waist. “He said he was going to kill everyone.”

  “Why?” I shook her. “Why?” Her head rocked forward, then back and right on her feet, she went out cold. We rolled the unconscious Carlina into the back and called
the precinct on the way in, requesting Wadsworth on speakerphone. He clicked in.

  “Chief,” Debbie said. “We have Carlina Malhotra in custody for questioning.”

  Wadsworth’s voice danced with cautious enthusiasm. “What charges detective?”

  “She’s totally blitzed. We can hold her on a public intoxication. She presents a danger to the community and to herself in her present state of mind.”

  “Fine,” the Chief grunted. “Just get her ass back here. We’ll take anything we can get.”

  “Hey Chief,” I cut in. “Carlina might evolve into a material witness in the center of this investigation. She said her husband Svidi Malhotra said he was going to kill everyone, including her. We want to see what she knows. Her life may be in imminent danger. Is there anyway we could get a protective custody just for a couple of nights until we see what shakes out?”

  A long pause on the phone and he spoke. “If she gives us something pertinent and valuable, and we determine she is genuinely threatened, I’ll see what I can do.”

  Officer Chad White met us downstairs in booking and held Carlina’s elbow as she smiled at him lazily, almost longingly, as she holding him in her gaze, her druggy eyes going steamy with sexual interest. Paperwork filed, we traveled upstairs to a tiny interrogation room adjacent to a janitor’s closet roughly the same size. After ice compresses, and cold splashes of water, we roused her from the drug stupor long enough to attempt some loose conversation.

  “Carlina, what were you saying again?” She hadn’t said anything, of course. I just wanted to see how she would fill in the gaps. Debbie gave me a confused look, not getting my strategy at first.

  “What?” she wiped drool off her lips.

  “About, you know, it?”

  “About what?”

  “What you just said,” I lied. “Just repeat it.”

  “Said about?” Her head listed to the side and came back. “Who?”