by Dan Taylor
I wait for bubbles to rise from it, and then go back to where CFP can see me. I get down on my haunches in front of him and hold it up for him to look at. “Did you put this there?”
He frowns. “I’ve never seen that before in my life.”
Detective Lucy has recovered a little. He’s also looking at it, squinting. He turns to CFP and says, “Tell him what it is, shit bag.”
“I—I don’t know,” CFP says.
“Tell him. Now!”
“I believe him,” I say to Detective Lucy. “Someone else put this here, so they could listen to me tonight.”
“Why do you think that?” Detective Lucy asks, the investigator in him taking over.
I tell him how I came to be here tonight. Reminding him of the guy who posed as him. The conversation we had. And that I checked if he’s on the force too, and that he isn’t.
“And he believed that shit you said about not knowing Tracy and that you’re a delusion?” Detective Lucy asks after hearing the whole thing.
I say, “I believed he believed it at the time.” I hold up the beaker for him to look at. “But I sure as shit don’t now.”
Detective Lucy looks at CFP and then back at me. “Then that’s the guy who killed Tracy, and the guy who put that on top of the refrigerator.”
“I’m inclined to believe you, Michael.” I look at CFP. “And I’m sure as shit you know who it is.”
40.
“I don’t. I swear!” CFP says.
“You don’t have a relative in your life who looks like a six-foot-three marathon runner with a short, goofy mustache?”
“No.”
I don’t believe him. Maybe the giveaway’s in his piggy eyes. Maybe it’s in his jowls, which are vibrating as his head shakes. Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Captain Frozen Pizza’s lying to me.
“What’s your name, chief?” I ask him.
Without giving him a reasonable length of time to respond, Detective Lucy shouts at him, “Answer him, shit stain. Before I shove my boot so far up your ass you’ll know what you’re going to eat for breakfast tomorrow.”
I show Detective Lucy my palm, indicating for him to cool it with the bad-cop routine.
And then I ask CFP again, who has a look on his face like he’s been caught looking at his mom’s panties collection.
“Derek,” he says.
“Derek what?”
He thinks a second. “How…l.”
Beside himself, Detective Lucy says, “Derek Howl? Your name’s Derek Howl?”
“That sounds like a fake name to me, Captain. You’re going to have to start playing ball. I’m pretty sure I could let Detective Fox off the leash and the first thing he’d do wouldn’t be to phone for backup.”
“Do it,” Detective Lucy says. “I’ll beat the truth out of him.”
CFP looks at me, pleading. “Please don’t untie that animal.”
“I’m the animal?” the detective says. “That’s coming from the guy who watches ladies go potty?”
“Relax, Captain. Detective Fox is going to sit tight, for now. But you need to start being honest with me.”
“Fine,” CFP says. “My name’s Eric Holloway.”
“Piece of shit lied about his first name, too,” Detective Lucy says. “This shit bird’s lying for a good reason.”
I ignore the detective and think about if I’ve heard that name before. Holloway. It doesn’t ring a bell.
I say, “Why’d you lie about your name just now? This guy Stretch Armstrong, he related to you?”
Eric shakes his head no. Then adds, “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“This is your last chance to admit it, Eric.”
“There’s nothing to admit.”
“That’s a pretty good poker face. But you’re lying.”
I stand up. Then say, “You two play nice. I’m going for a little walk.”
“Where are you going?” Eric asks, eyes wide with panic.
“I’m going next door, to see what I can find.”
“Don’t leave me alone with this guy. I beg of you.”
“You’ll be fine. His hands are tied pretty well. As long as he doesn’t wiggle too much, he probably won’t get out.”
Eric leans back on his chair and looks at the knot I’ve used to tie Detective Lucy’s hands to each other and the chair. What he sees is an unconvincing spaghetti of robe belt. He says, “At least tie a proper knot before you leave me alone with this psycho.”
Frowning, I look at him. “Are you an expert in knot tying, Eric?”
He looks at me. Poker face, again. “No, but that thing’s a mess.”
“You tied someone up before?”
“No.”
I believe him about not having tied someone up, and that the most malicious thing he’s done is watch and film Tracy Lucy during intimate moments. But for some reason he’s lying about his knot-tying know-how.
“Okay, you guys. I’ll be back in around ten minutes.”
Detective Lucy says, “Do me a favor and trash the place, will ya?”
I ignore him and leave Tracy’s side of the duplex. When I go to Eric’s side, I find it locked. He must’ve locked it before he came over with the mud cake. So I go back. Tell him to give me the keys. Eric says they’re in his pant pocket.
“That piece of shit locked his duplex before he came over here?” Detective Lucy asks. He turns to Eric. “Why’d you do that, shit bird? You were just going next door.”
“For security,” Eric says.
“What? Someone was going to rob you while you were checking I wasn’t in any trouble?”
Eric keeps his mouth shut. I stand there, not yet going to take out the key from his pocket. Detective Lucy makes a good a point. He’s at least raised some questions, the most pertinent of which is why Eric would lock the door behind him if he were just on the way to check out the screams coming from next door, under the guise of wanting to give Detective Lucy a cake?
I think a second, then say, “You weren’t planning on going somewhere after you’d been here, Eric? Like, I don’t know, going to see someone?”
“Jesus,” Eric says, “I just locked the door behind me.”
“When you find yourself in an interrogation room at the end of this night, douchebag, you’re going to be low-hanging fruit,” Detective Lucy says.
“I agree with the detective here, Eric. That’s a weird thing to do.”
Eric doesn’t say anything. I get the keys out of his pocket. His pants are really right up against his thighs, and I have to force my hand in there.
When I’ve got them, I tell them to sit tight again, and I go back to Eric’s side of the duplex.
I unlock the door, go in, for some reason wiping my shoes on the welcome mat, and then go through to the living room. What I see makes me say, “Well fuck me sideways.”
41.
It isn’t anything incriminating that I see. His place is a mess. Half-eaten bowls of cereal lying around, bags of potato chips, and various other processed food stuffs. I guess he didn’t get the memo that processed shit will kill him.
The state of the place is going to make searching it more difficult. I told them I’d be back in ten, but I could stay here a half hour and have barely searched the place.
I go upstairs, deciding to start with his bedroom. By the smell of the room, he hasn’t changed his bed sheets since Obama’s first term, and I’m reluctant to go anywhere near his bed.
I start searching his drawers. I find clothes and a collection of sticker books. The ones kids have, but instead of containing soccer or baseball players, they contain stickers of characters from some sci-fi show I don’t recognize.
After searching his dresser drawers, I realize I’m going about this all wrong. There’s no reason for him to have hidden his relationship to the guy who turned up at my office today.
I leave the bedroom and go downstairs. I think a second about what it is I’m looking for. This will go a lot better w
hen I have an idea what it is.
Think, Hancock.
The guy doesn’t live here. That would be weird, and too easy. So what would he have?
Maybe a photo of them together?
I scan each room for framed photographs, and don’t find any. Guys living alone don’t tend to have shit like that anyway, and that’s before you add in an iPhone and lifestyle of just sitting around watching grown men and women pretend to be aliens.
His iPhone? Why haven’t I thought about that? Chances are, it’s in his pocket, back at Tracy’s.
I go back there, and when I go into the kitchen, Eric’s watching me intently. He glances at my hands, which are empty. Detective Lucy is sitting with a bored look on his face.
“Where’s your phone, Eric?” I ask.
He plays dumb: “I don’t own an iPhone.”
Detective Lucy laughs cynically. “Nice bluff there, shit stain. You trying to tell me a guy who bugs someone’s house doesn’t own a cell phone?”
“I had one, but I lost it.”
I pat down his pockets. Damn.
“Where is it?” I ask.
Eric doesn’t say anything. So I go around behind Detective Lucy, like I’m going to untie the knot.
“I’m telling the truth. I haven’t seen it in a couple of days,” Eric says.
“Have you tried phoning it?” Detective Lucy says, skeptical.
Eric looks at him and says, “It’s on silent.”
I don’t believe he doesn’t own one, obviously. But there’s a good chance he has lost it in that shithole. Even if he hasn’t, it’s probably between his sofa cushions or whatever. I ask him, “What’s the number?”
He tells me. I type it into my phone and press the SEND CALL button. Two seconds later, I say, “It’s ringing.”
Detective Lucy looks at Eric with a shit-eating grin on his face.
After not hearing it in the kitchen, I leave them alone and go back to Eric’s side of the duplex.
I check in the living room first and don’t hear a ringtone. Then I check his bedroom, the second-most-likely place. Nothing.
I then go into the bathroom. It’s silent there too. I press the END CALL button and take a pee, as I haven’t been to the bathroom since all this mess started.
Over the course of the next five minutes, I make three calls to Eric’s cell phone and check every single room in his duplex, including the attic, and don’t hear a ringtone.
Damn.
Then I catch a break. As I walk past Eric’s extensive DVD and Blu-ray collection, something catches my eye. A leather-bound item on the shelf. My first thought is it could be a leather-bound Easter-egg-laden, director’s-cut version of The Lord of the Rings, or the book, but when I go up to it to take a closer look, it’s too big to be that. I pull it out, open it up, and say in a hushed tone, “Double bingo!”
42.
What I’m looking at is Eric’s photograph album.
I open up it up at the first page to see photographs of a chubby child, looking serious in each photo. I flick through, and find the photos are arranged chronologically, Eric getting older as I progress through the album. Most of the photos are of him on vacation. One where he’s being held up by what looks to be his dad or uncle in front of the Grand Canyon. Another where he’s riding a carousel horse, sitting on the lap of a woman who looks too old to be his mom. His grandma, maybe.
I skip a bunch of pages and get to his teenage years. Eric posing with a light saber. Eric dressed up as Darth Vader on Halloween, standing next to a kid about his age dressed up as a either a pumpkin or a vampire or both. He’s not smiling in any of them, taking this shit really serious. I start skipping through again, but I notice a photo flick past my eyes. I turn back a couple pages and find the one I’m looking for.
Then I realize why Eric lied about being able to tie knots.
43.
Posing in front of a river, holding a salmon that could feed a small family for a week, looking real proud of themselves, is Eric and a dude who looks like he skips breakfast and has a closely-trimmed mustache. It’s an old photo—Eric has the wispy mustache and chin beard of an eighteen-year-old—but the man posing next to Eric is definitely the guy who visited my office today.
I take the photo out of the album, put it in my pocket, and then make my way over to Tracy’s side of the duplex, where I rejoin my guests in the kitchen.
Detective Lucy’s boredom has grown to impatience, as he asks, “Did you find shit beak’s cell phone yet?”
Eric looks at me nervously. I tell the detective no, and Eric’s sigh is all but audible.
I reach into my pocket, taking it slow, making Eric sweat, and then I say, “But I did find this,” and hold it up for them to look at.
Detective Lucy squints a second, examining it, and then says, “What am I looking at, a fishing trip?”
“Why don’t you tell him, Eric?”
Dude just shakes his head, putting a stoic expression on his otherwise worried face.
“I’ll let Detective Fox work it out,” I say, and move closer to him.
As he looks at it, Detective Lucy starts to say, “You’re going to have to drop that ‘Detective Fox’ shit…” and then his voice trails off. “Oh shit! That’s the guy you were talking about, right? The spaghetti bean marathon runner with the pedophile mustache!”
Angrily, Eric says to Detective Lucy, “Your insults are getting ridiculous! What the hell’s a spaghetti bean?”
Detective Lucy looks at him. “I tell you what it is, shit beak. It’s something long and skinny, like that dude you’re posing next to.” He thinks a second, looking off into the distance, which is as far as the kitchen wall. I can almost see the rusty cogs in his head turning as he comes to a realization slower than it would take Eric Holloway to do a set of ten burpees. Then Detective Lucy says, “That’s a fish he’s posing next to, right?”
I nod yes, helping him along. The cogs start turning again.
Detective Lucy experiences his eureka moment, and then blurts out, “And that’s why he lied about being a knot expert, because that’s the connection he has to this guy. They went on fishing trips.”
Eric rolls his eyes.
Detective Lucy doesn’t notice him, as he looks at me, and says, “Are we done here? Are you going to untie me?”
“I’d love to, Detective. With your creative insults, I’ve really grown to like you. But I’m going to need you to sit tight a little longer.” I nod at Eric, and then say, “We’ve connected him to this guy, but we don’t know how they’re connected to Tracy’s murder, or even if they are.”
“Were you born ass first?” Detective Lucy asks me. “This guy comes to your office today, posing as me, tells you he knows about you and Tracy, motivating you to get back in contact with her and visit her. You do, and then she turns up dead. Shit stain sitting next to me here has been perving on her, and it just so happens he’s related to the very guy who we all but know for sure framed you for her murder.”
“I guess that was pretty dumb,” I admit. “But it doesn’t change the fact that as we stand, there’s only one guy going down for Tracy’s murder if we call it in now.”
“Let me go. I’ll vouch for you.”
“This isn’t the Minnesota crime syndicate we’re talking about here, but the LAPD.”
“What’s your point?” Detective Lucy asks.
“I’ve seen enough true crime documentaries to know that cops can’t resist a slam dunk when they’re offered one. And no offense, Detective, but I’m a little skeptical that’s the tune you’d be singing if I let you go, that I’m the innocent party in all this.”
Detective Lucy thinks a second. “You think I’d let this piece of shit get away with it? Is that the sort of cop you think I am?” He acts butt-hurt, or is. It doesn’t matter. I’m not letting him go until I have Eric Holloway’s uncle or whoever tied up in this house with the smoking gun in his hand.
I glance at my watch. It’s getting late. So I dec
ide to take drastic measures. I walk over to Tracy’s living room, in search of the gun. I bend over and pick it up off the coffee table, and I notice something lying next to the foot of her sofa. “Holy shit,” I say. “Are you okay, Buddy?”
44.
Buddy doesn’t respond. Not because she’s a cat, but because she’s dead. I poke her with the gun, just to make sure, but the action doesn’t arouse any life.
From the kitchen, Detective Lucy calls over, “What’s going on in there?”
I ignore him and get down on my haunches. Poor Buddy. She’s lying there, tongue sticking out of her mouth, a look on her face like a cat version of that chick from the start of The Ring—the Japanese version.
Without turning around to look at him, I reply to Detective Lucy, “I think Buddy’s dead.”
“Who’s Buddy?”
“The cat.”
“Buster?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus! What the hell happened?”
I stand up and walk over to them. “I’m wondering the same thing myself.”
“Does it look like natural causes?” Detective Lucy asks, a dumb look on his face. Then he glances at Eric Holloway, who’s pensive. “Did you have something to do with this, shit beak?”
“How could I?” Eric says, half-pleading. “I’ve been tied up. You’d know: I’ve been sitting next to you the whole time.”
Eric’s right. There are no signs either one of them got free while I was in Eric’s side of the duplex. My shitty knots? They’re just as shitty as when I left them here. Anyway, I’m sure if either one of them had gotten free there’d be a more obvious sign of it. In Eric’s case, he’d have high-tailed it out of here. And in Detective Lucy’s case, Eric would be sitting in a puddle of his own blood.