Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery

by R M Wild

  Weary sev’nnights, nine times nine,

  Shall he dwindle, peak, and pine.

  Though his bark cannot be lost,

  Yet it shall be tempest-tossed.

  Look what I have.

  Captain Herrick had been the one to deliver the message in the bottle, hadn’t he? Maybe instead of trying to find the bridge that the online trolls were living under, I was better off trying to track down the individual who had left me the original warning.

  Maybe Herrick had something to do with it. Or like the witch’s sailor, maybe he was just a pawn in a greater scheme.

  My phone buzzed.

  I had tossed my handbag on the couch. I forced myself to put the book down, get out of the chair, and answer it.

  The name on the screen read Ken Doll.

  “Lousy Mettle,” I mumbled. He must have changed the name in my contacts when he installed that tracking app.

  “Hi Kyle,” I said.

  “I’ve got bad news,” he said.

  I was halfway to sit down again, but froze in mid-air. “What?”

  “It’s about Matt Mettle.”

  “What about him? I just saw him about an hour ago.”

  “He called me a few minutes ago,” Kendall said. “For representation.”

  29

  My heart did a little guppy swim into my stomach. “Representation? Why?”

  “Matt’s been arrested.”

  My tongue went dry and stuck to the roof of my mouth. It tasted like I had licked sandpaper.

  “What for?”

  “Remember that deal I negotiated with James Herrick? Yeah, well, part of the stipulation of Mettle’s suspension was that he was not supposed to drive that cruiser around town. That’s state property. One of the cops saw him driving down the highway and pulled him over.”

  “Which cop?”

  “A sergeant by the name of Billy Ganz.”

  “Geez,” I said. Billygoat. The same cop that Mettle had called to get Caesar’s address. The lousy bum had double-crossed him.

  “It gets worse,” Kendall added. “Because Mettle’s keys had been surrendered, he drilled the ignition and used a screwdriver to start the car.”

  I turned red. “No. I don’t believe it. You’re kidding me.”

  “I am not. Destruction of state property.”

  The guilt congealed in my throat and made me nauseous. I knew Matt had been taking too many risks. I should have spoken my mind. Instead, I was complicit.

  “Why would Mettle do such a thing?”

  “I have no idea. You know him better than I do. As much as I disliked him, Matt never struck me as one of the dirtier pigs in the pen. I guess I was wrong.”

  I stared at the blackness of the fireplace. “Me neither,” I said quietly.

  “You mentioned being with him earlier today, right? You wouldn’t happen to know anything about any of this, would you?”

  “Are you asking as a lawyer? Or as a friend?”

  “I wouldn’t call that meathead a friend.”

  “I meant to me.”

  “As a friend, Rosie. Of course.”

  “Will you help him out? For me?”

  Kendall sighed. “I’ll do my best, but the facts are the facts. He stole state property and he destroyed it. They’ve got a police witness.”

  “How bad are the charges?”

  “Stealing the cruiser is a class B Felony.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He could get up to ten years and a fine of $20,000.”

  I bobbled the phone. “What?”

  “Destroying the ignition falls under the category of tampering with the property of law enforcement. That’s a class D crime, criminal mischief. So on top of the ten years, he could get another fine.”

  My heart tried to escape my chest, but got trapped between my ribs and sent dull reverberations through my sternum. If I admitted my role in damaging the cruiser, I might be able to reduce his sentence, maybe take the heat entirely. But what would happen to me? If I went to prison, I’d never find Chrissy, nor my father.

  “What would it take to reduce his sentence?”

  “If he pleads guilty and accepts some jail time for his actions, I can probably knock it down to less than a year.”

  “But if he pleads guilty, he’ll never work as a cop again.”

  “That is correct,” Kendall said.

  I closed my eyes and exhaled. My ragged breath caught in my throat and I coughed on the sudden staleness in the air.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” I mumbled. At any point in the carjacking I could have put down the phone and refused to go further. You’re not innocent if you sell the murderer a broken gun, are you? But still, I couldn’t admit culpability, not without speaking to Matt first. For all I knew, he’d take the noble road and despise me for throwing myself under the bus—even if I did bear some responsibility in the crime.

  I swallowed hard, the self-loathing thick as phlegm in my throat. “Where is Matt now?”

  “He’s being held at the prison until his preliminary hearing.”

  “He’s not in jail?”

  “No, straight to Thomaston. There was some kind of problem with the facility near the courthouse.”

  I winced. There was nothing more dangerous for a cop than living among the scum he had scraped off the pond and dumped on the banks of justice. Mettle was a big guy and fully capable of defending himself, but his skin wasn’t made of steal. In prison, there would be plenty of shanks looking for a good, warm home inside a cop. Phyllis Martin was one of the toughest women I knew, and yet her cellmate had turned her into a goat.

  And then I had another thought, this one infinitely worse.

  “Caesar,” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “Caesar works at the prison.”

  “I can’t hear you. The connection’s bad.”

  “I need to go see Matt, ASAP. Are visitations allowed?”

  “Not until he’s officially sentenced, but I can probably get you in early if you come as my legal aid,” Kendall said.

  “How about now? Can we go now? Like right now?”

  “I guess. I’ll come and pick you up.”

  “Thank you, Kyle,” I said. “You’re a good friend.”

  Every time Kendall pulled away from an intersection, the force of the acceleration sucked me into the hugging grasp of my leather seat. His Mercedes was much faster than the souped-up cruiser, giving the rich an unfair advantage in outrunning the law, and the comfort of the seat on my shoulders made me feel a little more secure, as if Kendall had the situation under control.

  “We’ll get this straightened out, right?” I stammered. “Mettle’s not actually going to prison, is he? Driving that car was a pretty silly thing, am I right? I mean, he needed a car. This is America. There’s no public transportation. He can’t afford an Uber every day.”

  “Calm down, Rosie. We will try to argue to get his sentence reduced. All is not lost. Have faith in me and the system.”

  “What if Mettle wasn’t the one who damaged the property? Would that change anything?”

  Kendall took his eyes off the road long enough to look at me. “You mean like a vagrant or something?”

  “Right. A vagrant. What if we could argue someone broke into his car?”

  “I suppose. If we could produce a witness. Why? Did you see something?”

  “Maybe?”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Woman.”

  “You’re telling me a woman knew how to drill that ignition?”

  I crossed my arms. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

  “It’s not whether or not I believe it. It’s whether or not the jury believes it. Have you seen your fellow townsfolk? Dark Haven is stuck in the 1950s. Plus, it’s going to be hard enough finding someone who Mettle didn’t bully in high school or offend on the side of the road, so we’re going to have to go outside the county to find an impartial jury.”

  “
Great,” I mumbled. That meant total backwoods Mainers, the kind of folks who, in the winter, left their trucks running in their garages all night instead of buying space heaters.

  Night had fallen by the time we pulled into the prison. God was sitting on his stool, reading something on his phone.

  Kendall pressed a button and the driver’s window went all the way down by itself.

  “I’m here to see Matt Mettle,” Kendall said.

  “You’re way past visiting hours.”

  “I’m his lawyer. He’s entitled to it.”

  God raised an eyebrow. He put down his phone, slid off his stool like a giant, syrupy pancake sliding off his plate, and punched a few keys on the keyboard.

  “You’re out of luck, counselor. I don’t see a Matt Mettle in the system.”

  “He was admitted this afternoon. There was a flu outbreak at the county jail, so they booked him here. He’s awaiting his prelim,” Kendall said. He held his bar license across the gap between the car and the booth.

  God glanced at the license, then glanced at me.

  “She’s my legal assistant,” Kendall said.

  God shook his head in disgust. “You sure get around, girl.”

  Wonderful. Not only was I a witch, but apparently a whore too.

  “I promise I’ll leave the matches here.”

  God cocked his head to the side and his left nostril drew the corner of his mouth into a lopsided snarl.

  “She’s joking.”

  “I ain’t laughin.”

  “Neither are we,” Kendall said. “Right, Rosie?”

  “Right.”

  God crossed his arms. His chest was so meaty, he could barely tuck his fingers under his biceps. “Make a left past the fence.”

  “Thank you,” Kendall said.

  “Nothing like a good judgment,” I mumbled as we pulled through the gate.

  The visitation room had become all too familiar.

  We sat in the far right booth and I tried not to look at the other two stations where the glass was streaked with soot, nor to inhale too deeply lest I prompt the urge to vomit.

  Kendall, always the gentleman, gave me the stool and asked one of the guards to bring him another one. The guard complied without complaint.

  “That was easy,” I said when he joined me.

  “Most of these guards know they’re only one bad decision away from being in here themselves. When they see a lawyer, they know they might need a favor one day.”

  I bounced my foot, the anxiety roiling my stomach like battery acid sloshing around in an old beater. I had trouble picturing Mettle in prison scrubs and could only imagine how humiliating it must have been for him.

  Kendall put a hand on my knee. “Relax. It’s going to be okay.”

  I looked at his hand. He removed it. I tried to stop bouncing my leg, but couldn’t. Maybe it was the trauma of past events, or maybe a fatal intuition, but ever since walking into the visitation room, I had been consumed by bad feelings.

  Something horrible was about to happen. I knew it.

  After a few minutes, the door on the side of the room opened and Matt Mettle stepped into view. I leaned into the glass trying to catch a glimpse of the guard who had escorted him. I thought for a moment I had seen Caesar’s awful haircut, but I couldn’t be sure.

  Mettle shuffled toward the booth. He was wearing deep blue scrubs, not the orange jumpsuit the inmates were issued when formally sentenced.

  “That blue uniform means he’s in a different wing,” Kendall explained. “Not gen-pop.”

  “Is that good?” I whispered.

  “It depends.”

  Mettle sat down, his biceps bulging out of his short sleeves, his hands cuffed. His face was slick with sweat.

  I grabbed the receiver. “How are you? Are you okay?”

  Mettle picked up his phone. The curly cord was shaking.

  “Thanks for coming, Casket.”

  “Are you surviving?”

  He bounced his biceps. “I told you, it’s not so bad. Lots of pushups. I’m so pumped right now, I can barely keep my hands steady,” he said and turned to Kendall. “Hey man, I appreciate you taking my call. I know you’ve got lots more important clients.”

  Kendall leaned into my receiver. “I’m glad to help an old friend.”

  “I’m sorry I made your life miserable in high school. I never meant anything by it. I was just being funny.”

  “It’s no problem, man. I’m glad to help.”

  “Who escorted you?” I asked. “Was it Caesar?”

  “Yes, it was he,” Mettle said. “Or him, or whatever the stupid grammar is. I gave that rat the stink eye, but he twitched his nose and ignored me.”

  “Are you okay? Has anybody gotten to you?”

  “What do you mean by gotten to you?”

  “You know.”

  “If you mean forced me to eat poisonous mushrooms, then no, nobody has gotten to me. I’m fine. They put me in solitary to keep me isolated from all the guys I put away. One of the guards shined a flashlight so far up my butt, it came out my mouth and turned me into a lighthouse, but other than that, my body remains a virgin temple. Virgin to dudes, I mean. If I get my badge back, I’m thinking I might think twice before I bust another guy for mere possession.”

  “What about the other stations?” I said. “Can you see anything out of place?”

  Mettle glanced to his right. “I dunno. They look perfectly normal to me. What do you think, Ken? What are my chances of beating this thing?”

  “It depends on what you’re willing to accept.”

  “You think I’ll ever get to be a cop again?”

  Kendall was quiet for a moment. “No.”

  “No, I won’t be a cop? Or no you don’t think I’ll be a cop?”

  He was in denial. One of my heart valves popped off the main unit in my chest and I wheezed. I couldn’t take it anymore.

  I turned to Kendall. “It was my fault, okay. I was the one who damaged the ignition. I drilled it. I stuck the screwdriver in there.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” Mettle said. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said breathlessly. “I’ll give you a dollar for attorney-client privilege until I can get some more.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Kendall said. “That’s a myth. You are already my client and you have my word that anything you say will stay safe with me.”

  “She’s lying,” Mettle said. “It was all me. Don’t listen to her.”

  Kendall turned away from the glass, covered the mouthpiece, and angled himself so Mettle couldn’t see his lips. “Is any of this true, Rosie? Did you drill the ignition? Or are you just trying to save him?”

  “Both.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I drilled the lock cylinder two-thirds of the way up the slot to destroy the lock pins and then I jammed the screwdriver into it.”

  Mettle stood and leaned into the glass. “Don’t listen to her. She’s trying to take the fall.”

  “Siddown!” the guard shouted.

  But Mettle banged both fists on the glass. “I told her to do it!”

  I turned to plead my case with Mettle and our eyes locked. In that brief moment, in the depth of his brown eyes, I saw us together. Working at the inn. Laughing. Cooking. Doing chores and being happy, even chasing the little children of our guests down to the dock so they didn’t fall in.

  I never wanted it to end.

  But then, right in front of me, Matt Mettle burst into flames.

  30

  My heart burst.

  The blood rushed to my face and burned my cheeks.

  I pushed back from the stool.

  “Matt!”

  All I could see was the orange ball of black and curling flames. It singed the booth and stung my skin, hotter than opening a five-hundred degree oven.

  On the other side of the glass, the guards rushed toward the thrashing fire and sprayed Mettle wi
th foam. The response was prompt. Prepared. Practiced.

  The glass filled with dripping, bubbling goo, and Mettle disappeared behind the lumpy whiteness.

  My eyes got heavy in their sockets, my entire face smarting and throbbing. I couldn’t swallow.

  No one could survive the intensity of that heat.

  Before the tears had a chance to come, the guard on my side of the glass ran to me and yanked my arms behind my back.

  “Get off her!” Kendall said. “She has rights!”

  The guard dragged me to the door. I was too weak to fight back.

  “This is third time she’s done this,” the guard said. “She is not remotely human.”

  “Unhand her immediately,” Kendall said. “And take us to the warden.”

  Kendall sat first. He occupied the same chair that Mettle had occupied on our first visit with the warden.

  I sat beside him, landing heavily enough to make the legs buckle. My head hurt, the pressure behind my eyes enough to make it feel as if they were bulging from their sockets.

  Mayweather’s hands were folded on the glassy desk in front of him. His eyes were closed, either in silent, respectful prayer or in begging God to rid him of all his paperwork.

  But I didn’t care about his troubles. All I cared about was Matt Mettle. Images of him chopping wood, of driving me mad, of making stupid jokes, all flashed before my eyes, only for each image to be consumed by an angry fireball like some cheesy Hollywood explosion. My eyes wanted to leak, but there were no tears, not yet, the pressure holding them back like a million frantic fish unable to swim through a tiny channel. I shivered with shock.

  He couldn’t be gone. He couldn’t be.

  Mayweather finally opened his eyes. “Third time, Casket.”

  The witches chanted in the back of my head.

  Thrice to thine and thrice to mine

  And thrice again, to make up nine.

  “Why would you want Matt Mettle dead?” Mayweather demanded. “Was it because he was helping me with the case? Did you think he was hot on your trail? You realized he figured you out, didn’t he?”

  “You don’t have to answer that,” Kendall said.