by J. R. Rain
He looked at me. “I see. You don’t want to talk about it. Sorry I brought it up.” He crossed his legs. He didn’t seem sorry at all. He looked smugly down at his shoes, which had polish on the polish. “Because I believe Derrick’s story. I believe he loved his girlfriend and would never kill her.”
“People have been killed for love before. Nothing new.”
On my computer screen before me I had brought up an article from the Orange County Register. The article showed a black teen being led away into a police car. He was looking down, his head partially covered by his jacket. He was being led away from a local high school. A very upscale high school, if I recalled. The story was dated three weeks ago, and I recalled reading it back then.
I tapped the computer monitor. “The police say there’s some indication that his girlfriend was seeing someone else, and that jealousy might have been a factor.”
“Yes,” said the attorney. “And we think this someone else framed our client.”
“I take it you want me to find this man.”
“Or person.”
“Ah, equality,” I said.
“We want you to find evidence of our client’s innocence, whether or not you find the true murderer.”
“Anything else I should know?”
“We feel race might be a factor here. He was the only black student in school, and in the neighborhood.”
“I believe the preferred term is African-American.”
“I’m aware of public sentiment in this regards. I don’t need you to lecture me.”
“Just trying to live up to my difficult name.”
“Yeah, well, cool it,” he said. “Now, no one’s talking at the school. My client says he was working out late in the school gym, yet no one saw him, not even the janitors.”
“Then maybe he wasn’t there.”
“He was there,” said Charlie simply, as if his word was enough. “So do you want the job?”
“Sure.”
We discussed a retainer fee and then he wrote me a check. When he left, waddling out of the office, I could almost hear Schroeder playing on his little piano in the background.
2.
“He was found with the murder weapon,” said Detective Hanson. “It was in the backseat of his car. That’s damning evidence.”
“That,” I said, “and he’s black.”
“And he’s black,” said Hanson.
“In an all white school,” I said.
“Yep.”
“Were his prints on the knife?”
“No.”
We were sitting in an outdoor café facing the beach. It was spring, and in southern California that’s as good as summer. Many underdressed women were roller-blading, jogging or walking their dogs on the narrow beach path. There were also some men, all finely chiseled, but they were not as interesting.
Detective Hanson was a big man, but not as big as me. He had neat brown hair parted down the middle. His thick mustache screamed cop. He wore slacks and a white shirt. He was sweating through his shirt. I was dressed in khaki shorts, a surfing T-shirt and white Vans. Coupled with my amazing tan and disarming smile, I was surprised I wasn’t more often confused with Jimmy Buffet. If Jimmy Buffet stood six foot four and weighed two hundred and twenty.
“You guys have anything else on the kid?” I asked.
“You know I can’t divulge that. Trial hasn’t even started. The info about the knife made it to the press long ago, so that’s a freebie for you. I can tell you this: the body was found at one a.m., although the ME places the time of death around seven p.m. the previous night.”
“Who found the body?”
“A neighbor.”
“Where were the victim’s parents?”
“Dinner and dancing. It was a Friday night.”
“Of course,” I said. “Who doesn’t go out and dance on a Friday night?”
“I don’t,” said Hanson.
“Me neither,” I said. “Does Derrick have an alibi?”
“This will cost you a tunacoda.”
“You drive a hard bargain.”
I called the waitress over and put in our lunch orders.
“No alibi,” Hanson said when she had left, “but....” He let his voice trail off.
“But you believe the kid?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. He seems like a good kid. Says he was working out at the school gym at the time.”
“Schools have janitors, staff, students.”
“Yeah, well, it was late and no one saw him.”
“Or no one chose to see him.”
Hanson shrugged.
Our food arrived. A tunacoda for the detective. A half pound burger for me, with grilled onions and cheese, and a milkshake.
“You trying to commit suicide?” he asked.
“I’m bulking up,” I said.
“This is how you bulk up? Eating crap?”
“Only way I know how.”
“Why?”
“Thinking of trying out for San Diego,” I said.
“The Chargers?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your leg?”
“The leg’s going to be a problem.”
He thought about that, working his way through his tuna and avocado sandwich. He took a sip from his Coke.
“You wanna bash heads with other men and snap each other in the shower with jock straps, go right ahead.”
“It’s not as glamorous as that.”
“Suicide, I say. What’s your dad think?”
“He doesn’t know. You’re the first person I’ve told.”
“I’m honored.”
“You should be.”
“What’s Cindy going to say?”
I sipped my milkshake. “She won’t like it, but she will support me. She happens to think very highly of me and my decisions.”
He snorted and finished his sandwich, grabbed his Styrofoam cup.
“I can’t believe I was bribed with a shitty tuna sandwich and a Coke.”
“A simple man with simple needs.”
“I should resent that remark, if it wasn’t so true.” He stood. “I gotta run. Good luck with the kid, but I think it’s a lost cause. Kid even has a record.”
“What kind?”
“Vandalism, mostly. He’s a goner. Hear they’re gonna try him as an adult.”
Detective Hanson left with his Styrofoam cup. I noticed he wasn’t wearing socks. Even cops in Huntington Beach are cool.
3.
Cindy Darwin is an anthropology professor at UCI. Her expertise is in the anthropology of religion, which, she tells me, is an important aspect of anthropology. And, yes, she can trace her lineage back to Charles Darwin, which makes her a sort of icon in her field. She knows more things about anthropology than she probably should, and too few things about the real world. Maybe that’s why she keeps me around.
It was late and we were walking hand-in-hand along the Huntington Pier. From here we could see the lights of Catalina Island, where the reclusive sorts live and travel via ferry and plane. To the north, in the far distance, we could see Long Beach glittering away. The air was cool and windy and we were dressed in light jackets and jeans. Her jeans were much snugger and more form-fitting than mine. As they should be.
“I’m thinking of giving San Diego a call,” I said.
“Who’s in San Diego?” she asked. She had a slightly higher pitched voice than most women. I found it endlessly sexy. She said her voice made it easier to holler across an assembly hall. Gave it more range, or something.
I was silent. She put two and two together. She let go of my hand.
“They call you again?” she asked. “The Rams, right?”
“The Chargers. Christ, Cindy, your own brother plays on the team.”
“I think it’s all sort of silly. Football, I mean. And all those silly mascots, I just don’t get it.”
“The mascots help us boys tell the teams apart,” I said. “And, no, they didn’t call. But I
’m thinking about their last offer.”
“Honey, that was two years ago.”
She was right. I turned them down two years ago. My leg hadn’t felt strong enough.
“The leg’s better now,” I said.
“Bullshit. You still limp.”
“Not as much. And when I workout, I feel the strength again.”
“But you still have metal pins it.”
“Lots of players play with pins.”
“Have you told Rob yet?” she asked. Rob was her brother, the Chargers fourth wide receiver. Rob had introduced me to Cindy during college.
“Yes.”
“What does he think?”
“He thinks it’s a good idea.”
We stopped walking and leaned over the heavy wooden rail. The air was suffused with brine and salt. Waves crashed beneath us, whitecaps glowing in the moonlight. A lifeguard Jeep was parked next to us, a quarter into the ocean on the pier. All that extra weight on the pier made me nervous.
“Why now?” she asked finally.
“My window is rapidly closing,” I said.
“Not to mention you’ve always wondered if you could do it.”
“Not to mention.”
“And you’re frustrated out of your gourd that a fucking leg injury has prevented you from finding this out.”
“Such language from an anthropologist.”
She sighed and hugged me around my waist. She was exactly a foot shorter than me, which made hugging easy, and kissing difficult.
“So what do you think?” I asked.
“I think you’re frustrated and angry and that you need to do this.”
“Not to mention I might just make a hell of a fullback.”
“Is he the one who throws the ball?”
We had gone over this precisely one hundred and two times.
“No, but close.”
She snuggled closer, burying her sharp chin deep into my side. It tickled. If I wasn’t so tough I would have laughed.
“Just don’t get yourself hurt.”
“I don’t plan to, but these things have a way of taking you by surprise.”
“So are you really that good?” she asked, looking up at me.
“I’m going to find out.”
She looked away. “If you make the team, things will change.”
I hugged her tighter. “I know.”
Also available on Smashwords.com:
Elvis Has Not Left the Building
A Mystery Novel
by
J.R. Rain
(read on for a sample)
Chapter One
This is going to hurt.
My apartment was empty. I was standing in my bathroom, dressed in boxers and nothing else. I was about to look very foolish and I was glad there was no one else here to witness it.
Hell, I was almost embarrassed for myself.
With one of my own songs playing in the background, I slowly started gyrating my hips. Just a little. Nothing too wild. Nothing like I used to do. And already I could feel a tingle of pain going up my back.
Yeah, this is going to hurt.
But I wanted to do it. I had to do it. For quite some time now I had felt the itch.
And it was a hell of an itch.
I picked up the pace a little. I felt clumsy and out of sync. I stumbled once or twice as my bare feet slapped against the cold linoleum floor. One of my swaying hips nailed the bathroom door knob, sending the door itself slamming back into the bathroom wall. I think the drywall might have cracked.
But I continued doing my thing. My crazy thing.
Mercifully, the clumsiness quickly faded. Amazingly, wonderfully, flashes of my old self came back. I quickly worked up a sweat. My belly, round and full, pulled on my lower back. The strain was nearly unbearable.
God, I needed to lose weight. So easy to let yourself go when you don’t care.
But, lately, I had started caring. And slowly but surely I had started changing my diet. A salad here. A banana there. Venti mochas reluctantly switched to grande mochas.
I tried another move. A patented move. One that had driven the women of the world crazy―
I swung my leg and hip out, and screamed in pain. I lurched over the bathroom sink, gasping. Something pulled. I hunched there over the bathroom sink, gasping, sweating, staring at myself in the mirror. Gray hair. Custom-built face. Wrinkles.
God, the wrinkles....
It’s hell getting old.
A loud knock on my front door. I sucked in some air, willed myself to stand upright. On knees that were already stiffening, I made my way to the front door, limping slightly, knuckling my lower back.
I checked the peephole. It was my eighty-year-old downstairs neighbor, Mrs. Haynesworth. I opened the door.
“Sorry for the noise, Mrs. Haynesworth.”
“Well, my granddaughter’s asleep. And all that banging up here.” She squinted at me, peering through her remarkably thick glasses. Sometimes I thought she knew my super-secret identity. Then again, with her eyesight, I always shrugged off the feeling. “What are you doing up here, anyway?”
“Trying out my dance moves.”
“Dance moves? Mr. King, you’re far too old to be dancing. You might hurt yourself.”
I smiled. “I’ll keep the noise down, Mrs. Haynesworth. Have a good day.”
She continued peering at me as I closed the door. I hobbled into the kitchen―and popped a Vicodin or two.
Or three.
Chapter Two
The doorbell rang.
I was sitting in a comfortable loveseat I had scavenged for free from Craigslist.com, watching a TV that I had recently found on the side of the road, surrounded by tables and lamps and artwork that I had purchased for cheap from local garage sales.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
It was the middle of a bright winter day and I was watching Oprah, of course. What else was there to do? I liked Oprah. I think she and I would have gotten along just fine. Anyway, she was having a special tribute to the King, being that it was his birthday.
That it was my birthday.
Sitting beside her were two women: Elvis Presley’s ex-wife and his daughter. Both looking radiant. Both looking breath-takingly beautiful, especially his daughter. My daughter. Of course, my daughter also looked sad and lost and heartbroken. Always sad. Always lost. Always heart broken.
Damn.
The doorbell rang again.
I ignored it and, entranced, continued watching Oprah’s special tribute to the King, and when the show was finally over, when I had seen enough commercials for feminine hygiene products to last a life time, I was a total emotional wreck. Hell, the collar to my polo shirt was even wet with my tears. Oddly, my knuckles hurt as well―and not just from my arthritis. Apparently, while watching the show, I had been clawing the hell out of the armrest of my recently acquired love seat. In fact, I had torn the seam of it a little. Damn. Then again, perhaps it was already torn? Hard to tell with free furniture.
Oprah waved goodbye to the camera, and as she did so I watched my daughter look away and bite her lower lip, seemingly stifling a sob.
Damn.
As the show went to commercial, I heaved myself up from the sunken love seat, somehow straining my right knee in the process. The roadside TV didn’t come with a remote, so I manually clicked the thing off the old fashioned way. As I did so, high on a bookshelf next to the TV, I found myself staring at a picture of the very same girl who had just been sitting next to Oprah. Except the girl in the picture was a little girl and she was sitting high on her tiny pony, smiling the world’s biggest smile. A girl and her pony, it’s a beautiful thing. She had loved that pony and she had loved me. She looked so happy back then, so alive and happy.
So how could I break her heart?
Therein lies the rub.
She hasn’t looked happy in some time. Trust me, I know this. I study every picture I can get my hands on, minutely, agonizing over the detail
s. Was she healthy? (Yes, from all indications.) Was she happy? (No, not for a long time, but I’ve been wrong before.) And today she had looked utterly and completely miserable. The sadness in her distant, round eyes ran as deep as wells.
Outside, someone started a lawnmower. I sighed and stepped over to the living room window. Outside, a small Hispanic man was pushing a lawnmower across a swath of grass that ran in front of my apartment complex. Sweat streamed down his caramel-colored skin. The lawnmower was almost as big as he was.
Up the street, double-parked, was a UPS truck. A bum was currently urinating on its right rear tire. The bum had just managed to stumble away before a fit young man with hairy legs trotted out of a nearby apartment complex and hopped up into the truck and sped away.
And that’s when I remembered the doorbell.
Ah, yes, all that damn ringing.
I moved away from the window, past Kendra the Wonder Kat, who currently lay sleeping in a furry striped ball in the center of my reading chair―no doubt dreaming of mice and toys and things that go squeak in the night―and opened my front door.
Bright sunshine poured in. Painfully bright sunshine. I shielded my eyes, blinking hard, and there, sitting on the little-used welcome mat, was a thick envelope.
The package was addressed to E.P.
Chapter Three
I sat at my kitchen table with the package. The small hairs at the back of my neck were standing on end, as if a goose had walked across my grave.
Or perhaps across my brother’s grave.
Despite myself, I looked over my shoulder, peering down the short hallway to my bedroom. I was alone, of course. Still, I had a sense that I was being watched, and I hate that sense.
I turned back to the package, a package that was addressed to one E.P.
Hands shaking, heart hammering, I tore through the padded envelope with a thick and slightly broken fingernail, and removed a clear plastic box containing a watch. On the face of it was Elvis Presley dancing, doing that crazy thing he does with his legs. The watch even showed the correct time. Inside the padded envelope was also a tightly folded piece of paper. I took it out and, with increasingly unsteady fingers, unfolded it.