"I'm sorry Dan," she said, pulling the remaining photo of Sedgwick down off the wall, crumpling it up and throwing it to the ground, "but I can't look at you anymore." Cathy Chegoffgan walked back over to the futon and turned on the TV. If she was feeling sad, she was also feeling paranoid. The cover of the Winterborn Daily Post had featured a horrifying story about a "homeless on homeless murder," made worse by the fact that it had taken place three blocks from her apartment. She knew most of the local homeless men. None of them seemed capable of setting another man on fire. Who could it have been? The body had been burned beyond recognition, but the dead man was still described as a "Caucasian male," which meant, at least, that it wasn't Charles. She wanted to go outside and find him, but, for the first time, she was genuinely afraid of living in "River Gardens."
It made her want to leave town more than ever. She checked the time on her cell phone. Avellanos was coming over at 6. That hour was starting to feel like an eternity. She walked over to her desk and picked up the Corsican Vendetta Knife she had "confiscated" from him over the weekend, when he had been foolish enough to pick a fight with a man carrying an automatic rifle, and tied it back around her neck. She looked at the inscription on the blade, "Vengeance Is Mine," before she tucked it under her shirt, then she went over to the futon just to make sure the 38-caliber revolver was still there, and loaded. She checked the front door to make sure it was still locked, lay down on the futon, and drifted off to sleep. In three days, she would be in San Francisco, or Los Angeles, or wherever they decided to stop. Quinn, Muffley, Lenny, her probation, her mother, her entire unhappy childhood would be a thing of the past, something she would joke about to her friends. Maybe she would even try to write about it.
Poison Springs: The Nightmare I Awoke From.
When she heard the knocking at the door, she stood up and turned on the lights. She had told John Avellanos to come over at 6 o'clock. It was still a bit early, but he had a set of keys. Was it Muffley again? She walked over to the door, and opened it, still half asleep, staggering back when someone punched her in the face. She looked up to see Steve Quinn. He grabbed her, dragged her across the room, and threw her down onto the futon. He reached forward and roughly grabbed her chin with his hand. Then he took out the photo of Avellanos and Martin Ruiz that he had stolen from Andy Jackson out of his pocket and held it up in front of her.
"So you little bitch," he said, pushing the photo into her face. "What do you think of this?"
Her eyes registered the shock she felt.
"Where did you get that?" she blurted out involuntarily.
"Surprised aren't you, you little cunt?" he said, releasing her.
He stood up and brushed himself off.
"I guess you thought I was just a stupid cop, didn't you?"
Just saying it seemed to make him angry.
"You little cunt. I guess you thought I was just a stupid cop, didn't you?"
As terrified as she was, Cathy Chegoffgan almost laughed.
"Did you get Muffley to figure it out for you?" she said, her hands still shaking but a note of contempt coming into her voice. "How did he do it?"
"Don't worry about him. He didn't do anything."
"Muffley's a smart guy. I was going to tell you about it, but I didn't think I could prove it."
Quinn laughed contemptuously.
"You lying little cunt, how stupid do you think I am?"
"OK. I lied. I knew about it, but I had no idea Muffley would find something like that photograph."
Quinn stepped forward and slapped her across the face. She winced but held her ground.
"How many times do I have to tell you, you little whore? Muffley had nothing to do with it. He doesn't even know."
"Well whoever figured it out had to have been a pretty smart guy."
Quinn slapped her again.
"Listen," he said, raising his finger. "I'm the only one who knows."
"Don't fucking slap me again," she yelled.
"I'm going to keep slapping you until you stop bullshitting me, and there's nothing you can do about it. Stop looking at the door. "
He raised his cell phone in the air.
“Your boyfriend's still at Reagan Plaza. I'll get a text message when he leaves. If I wanted to I could strangle you and boil you in acid in your own bathtub and nobody would ever find out what happened to you. But I'm going to do that. I'm going to let you be the hero. We're going to drive down to the station and you're going to turn your boyfriend in yourself. Then we can go to the media."
"Give me a break. You've probably already arrested him."
Quinn looked for a moment as if he was going to slap her again but he held his hand.
"Unlike you I've got a family," he said. "I've got kids. In the outside chance that Catalinelli loses, do you think I want to be the one who turned that vindictive bitch's cousin in?"
She laughed in spite of herself.
"You're afraid of Elizabeth Felton?"
"I'm afraid of her money. Get your coat."
"Do you mind if I get my socks first?" she said, pointing over to her socks on the futon.
"Go ahead," he said. "Wait a minute," he added. "Let's see your hands."
She raised her hands.
"Take your cell phone out of your pocket and toss it to me."
She reached into the pocket of her sweatpants and tossed him her smart phone. He pawed it in his red, meaty hand. She walked over to the futon to get her socks.
"So it's OK? I can put my socks on?"
"Just hurry up."
Steven Quinn walked over to the door and waited while Cathy Chegoffgan sat down on the futon. She put on her jeans then her socks. When Quinn glanced quickly to the side, she reached under the futon, put the 38-caliber pistol into her waistband, and quickly pulled down her shirt. She stood up, stretched out her legs, put on her heavy, steel toed work boots, tied the laces, and then walked towards the door. A sickly, terrified expression came to her face, but one still laced with anger and contempt, and, even more importantly, something Quinn did not see, determination.
“Oh don't let it get you down," he said, laughing, taking pleasure in her misery. "He's only looking at identity theft. He'll probably just spend a few years in prison then get deported. Then again, he did murder his cousin, didn't he?"
"His cousin committed suicide," she said, pulling her coat down off the hook near the door and draping it over her shoulder, almost as if it were a cape.
"Is that what he told you? Oh look at her crying," he added, still savoring her discomfort, "poor little girl."
Cathy Chegoffgan took a deep breath. She was shaking so violently that Quinn's pleasure in her suffering seemed to be momentarily transformed into concern that she would be unable to walk down stairs. She buttoned the top button on her coat.
"Are you going to make it? You collapse on the way to the car, I'll just leave you there and let the rats eat your body. I'm parked in a dark, dark, deserted place. Anything could happen there and nobody would hear it."
"So you're parked over on Gibbon? Where the homeless guy got killed?"
"Where I'm parked sweetheart. I could snap your little neck in two and nobody would find you for a week. Put that on right."
He lunged forward and threw up the flap of her long wool coat, which she quickly grabbed and pressed tightly to her body.
"What's that? What's that?"
"Nothing," she said, backing up.
"What the hell is that," he shouted, grabbing her coat again with his right hand and her hair with his left.
He ripped the coat off her body and grabbed the pistol. He threw it across the floor, dragged her over to the futon by her hair, and shoved her down.
"What was that?" he shouted.
"A gun," she said, "the same thing everybody else in this town has."
"You little cunt," he said, slapping her face, "you little cunt."
She tried to shake her head but he grabbed her around the neck and started choking her.
"I've changed my mind," he said, tightening his grip. "You cold, evil little bitch. You were really going to do it."
"Let me go," she choked out.
"I've changed my mind. Your boyfriend's going to kill you just like he killed his cousin."
Quinn's eyes appeared to be bugging out of his head. His skin had turned into a bright scarlet as he continued to apply pressure.
"Stop struggling. You're only going to make it worse. Stop struggling. Just die. Make it easy on yourself, just die."
But Cathy Chegoffgan, who still had one free hand, managed to rip the Corsican vendetta knife off from around her neck. She reached up, and thrust it into Steve Quinn's throat, splattering herself with blood. A massive burst of adrenaline temporarily made her strong enough to push him off her onto the floor. She stood up. Quinn lay back, trying to scream but not able because his windpipe had been severed. His hands clutched at his neck, unable to find the knife as his legs flailed wildly. Cathy Chegoffgan bent over to pull it out, but then walked over to the table and picked up her smart phone. She seemed to move in a trance, her motions like jelly. Suddenly, she put down the smart phone and walked back over to Quinn. She kicked him in the head with her heavy, steel-toed boot. It seemed to release a primal flood of rage.
"Fuck you pig," she screamed as she kicked him over and over again. "You're going to kill me? No fucking way. Fuck you."
When the gurgling in Quinn's throat stopped, she staggered over to the other side of the loft, where she found the 38-caliber pistol. She put it up to her temple and pulled the trigger, but she had left the safety on.
"Stupid gun doesn't work," she said, putting it down on the table.
She walked into the kitchen, reached up, and took down a jar of Vicodin she had forgotten to put in the bag with the rest of the pills she had planted on Dan Sedgwick. She took one pill and popped it into her mouth, then another. She poured the remainder into her hand, apparently meaning to take those too, but she tripped, spilled them into the sink. She put the jar in her pocket. Then she walked over to the table and picked up a pen and a notepad.
"Dear John," she wrote. "Forget about me, just leave town."
Chapter 32 - Deceptively Edited
John Avellanos found Cathy Chegoffgan sitting in the hallway, babbling incoherently to herself with half-finished drafts of notes piled around her. He laughed. The blood on the tips of her steel toed boots looked so much like paint he thought it was a joke. His amusement turned into dread, however, as he read the notes, and, after that, into out and out horror. When he put his hand on the doorknob, she rose to her feet and blocked his way.
"Don't go inside. There's a dead cop inside."
Avellanos pushed her out of the way, went inside the apartment. He bent over the cadaver, now lying in the shadow of the harp that had been thrown over the floor by the illuminated street lights. Quinn was a macabre sight. The left side of the face had been thoroughly pulped, but the right side was still intact, and Avellanos recognized the big, red headed man who had ordered him stopped and frisked the evening before. He found the photo of himself and Martin Ruiz.
"The homeless guy, Andy, it was you."
He spit on Quinn's body.
"Murderer."
"He's dead," Cathy Chegoffgan said, following him into the apartment. "I killed him with my bare hands. I was going to use my gun, but he found it," she added, picking her 38 caliber revolver up off the table and putting it back in her waistband. "I wasn't even going to kill him in here. I was going to wait until we got out into the street and gun him down there, but I got caught. Just turn me in. Better yet. Leave town. Let me turn myself in. My life is over."
John Avellanos moved with the preternatural calm of someone who did not yet understand the reality in front of him because it had so completely overloaded his senses, but who had already figured out what to do, the entire scheme having come into his head in a sudden flash of inspiration.
"You're not going to turn yourself in because you didn't kill this man," he said.
“Yes I did, and with my bare hands."
"But how could an innocent little girl like you have killed this big, hulking thug with your bare hands," he said, bringing her over to a chair by the table and sitting her down. "Obviously I did it. That pig killed my friend Andy Jackson, and I did it to get even."
"Andy Jackson?"
"The homeless man."
Avellanos walked over to Quinn's body and searched through his pockets, finding his badge, handcuffs, and his smart phone. He walked over and set them down on the floor next to the futon.
"I killed Steven Quinn," he said. "He killed my friend Andy Jackson and threw him into a garbage can so I beat him to death with my bare hands."
"Who's Andy Jackson?"
"A poor mentally ill man I abandoned."
Avellanos took Quinn's 9mm pistol out of the holster, and set it down next to the futon alongside the smart phone, badge and handcuffs. He walked back into the kitchen, found a heavy plastic garbage bag under the sink, went back out into the hallway, gathered up the piles of notebook paper, and put them inside. He dragged Quinn's body over to the futon, and pulled the Corsican vendetta knife out of his neck. He put it inside the plastic bag under Cathy Chegoffgan's notes. Then he put both pillows over Quinn's face, picked Quinn's 9mm up off the floor, clicked off the safety, pressed the barrel to the pillows, and fired off a shot into Quinn's head.
"Who's setting off fireworks?"
"They're not fireworks. I just shot Deputy Inspector Steven Quinn in the face."
"Good. He's a total fucking douchebag."
Avellanos went over and took the empty Vicodin bottle out of Cathy Chegoffgan's top pocket.
"How many Vicodin did you take?"
"Only two. I spilled the rest in the sink."
He walked back into the kitchen, looked at the pills in the sink, washed them down into the garbage disposal, came back out and pointed to the plastic bag on the floor.
"Put your clothes in here. Then take a shower."
"OK."
Cathy Chegoffgan stripped off her clothes, and kicked off her boots before walking into the shower. Avellanos put the blood drenched clothes and the boots in the plastic bag along with the piles of notes and the Corsican vendetta knife. He went over to the futon, ripped off one of the pillowcases, took a deep breath, held it up, and dabbed it in Quinn's blood, making sure to sop up enough gore to write the world "PIG" on the wall over the futon in capital letters. He picked up Quinn's smart phone, and sat down on the futon next to Quinn's body.
"Hello Poison Springs," he said after turning on the video, and holding the smart phone at arm's length. "Hello America."
He looked into the camera.
"My name is John Avellanos, and I am the son of Laura Felton. In case you don't recognize the name, check your history books. Laura Felton was the sister of our late Senator Nicholas Felton, a woman many of you think died in the 1970s, but who did not. She lived on through the 1990s as an expatriate in northwestern Mexico. You may also remember her as a terrorist. She was not. She was my mother. I have lived in the United States for most of my life, but I am not an American citizen. Over the past 10 months, I have been using the identity of my cousin, the late Martin Ruiz, the son of Nicholas Felton, the man you've recently heard so much about on the news. Look at this photograph."
Avellanos held up the photo of himself and Martin Ruiz in the yellow hat, and filmed it with Quinn's smart phone.
"Do you see our resemblance? Do you see how easy it was for me to pass myself off as my cousin?"
Avellanos held Quinn's badge up next to the dead man's pulped head.
"This is Deputy Inspector Steven Quinn. He is one of Mayor Michael Catalinelli's enforcers, cheap dumb muscle for a corrupt government. He's also a murderer. The homeless on homeless murder the rotten press in this town is reporting on was actually a cop on homeless murder. I'm not sure why Deputy Inspector Steven Quinn killed my friend Andy Jackson, who was
a mentally ill homeless man living on the streets of Poison Springs, but I am certain that he did."
Avellanos filmed Steven Quinn in detail, starting at his feet, than panning up to his pulped face, moving the cell phone camera closer, then back and forth, almost as if he wanted to give his macabre confession the "Ken Burns effect." He sat back as close as possible to the cadaver and held the camera back at arm's length in order to get himself in the shot.
"I John Felton Avellanos have avenged the death of Private Andrew Steven Jackson, veteran of Operation Desert Storm, victim of a botched inoculation for anthrax, a good friend of my cousin Martin James Ruiz. Andrew Steven Jackson, you may have despised me as a foreigner who never served in the United States military. But I have avenged your death. I pinned your murderer Deputy Inspector Steve Quinn down to this bed, stuck his own gun in his mouth, and blew his fucking head off while he begged for his life."
Avellanos took the battery out of Quinn's smart phone and threw them both down next to his cadaver. Cathy Chegoffgan finished showering, came back outside, and dressed in a clean pair of sweats and a T-shirt. He led her back over to the chair near the table, careful to make sure she didn't look at Quinn's cadaver, and sat her down. He then stripped off his own dirty clothes, put them in the plastic bag along with hers, cleaned himself off in the bathroom, and put on a new, clean set of clothes he kept over her apartment. He walked over to the windowsill, scooped up her car keys, put Steven Quinn's gun, keys, and handcuffs in his messenger bag, threw the plastic bag over his shoulder, grabbed Cathy Chegoffgan's hand, and led her to the door.
"Where are we going?" she said, taking her coat down off the hook along with her scarf.
"You bumped your head and I want to take you to the emergency room," he said as she buttoned her coat.
"OK," she said, throwing the scarf around her neck. "Let's go."
Chapter 33 - The safe house
John Avellanos led Cathy Chegoffgan out of her apartment, down the stairs, and onto the sidewalk. He looked up at the aluminum harp bolted to the side of the building, realizing it was probably the last time he would ever see it, and clicked her key chain to get the location of her car. It was on Gibbon Street. He walked her over, put her in the front seat, and the garbage bag in the trunk, started up the 15 year old Ford Taurus, and pulled out onto Gibbon Street then Jackson Avenue.
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