The Unfortunate Decisions of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  “Didn’t what?” asked Charice, with only the thinnest veneer of innocence. She wanted me to ask her what she had done. It was killing her not to shout it from the rooftops.

  “You put some kind of wire on me, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe?” said Charice, with the tone of voice of a charming trickster goddess. Or Woody Woodpecker.

  “Why would you do this?”

  But we both knew the answer. Because she was herself, and this sort of thing was fun.

  “How much did you hear?”

  “Are you going to call Silas? He sounded very handsome. Very stentorian.”

  “Where did you find a freaking wire, Charice?”

  “I picked it up at a novelty shop, and I put it in your purse this morning. As a private eye, you should really be looking out for that sort of thing.”

  Arguing with Charice was generally like trying to persuade a hurricane. Even so, I had to draw a line.

  “This is a gross violation of my privacy. This is not cool.”

  “I know, I know. But I needed to know when you were going to be finished.”

  It was the trash in the backseat that she was referring to, somehow. I didn’t immediately understand how it could be involved, but it was out of place and Charice wanted me to notice it, because she kept glancing at it and winking.

  The certainty that she had planted a bug had hit me all at once, but the business with the trash was so bizarre, so frankly stupid, that I could only slowly hazard a guess.

  “This trash is from Kurt’s car? You stole bags of trash from Kurt’s car?”

  “Well, it wasn’t bagged. It was all just loose.”

  “You broke into Kurt’s car and cleaned it?”

  Charice considered this. “Yes?”

  “Why?”

  “Because these are all clues! We are rich with clues, Dahlia!”

  I tried to imagine what Kurt Campbell must have thought after leaving the Bevo Mill and finding that his previously trash-filled car was now spotless. Did he now think that he had been very, very thoroughly robbed? Or would he imagine this as some sort of bizarre pay-it-forward scheme? Perhaps he would think that his mother had sent minions to smite an abomination she could no longer abide. Four bags was a lot of trash.

  “There were really four bags’ worth?” I asked Charice, momentarily forgetting to be angry.

  “The thing was filthy. I don’t know what girl Kurt was texting with, but I’m willing to bet that she’s never been in his ride.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  By the time we made it back to our apartment building, I noticed a rancid, egg-salady smell spreading through the Scion. Whatever else his shortcomings were, Kurt should have spent less time texting and more time monitoring decaying foodstuffs. I asked Charice to let me out at the door, both to escape from the smell and to register my disapproval with the whole trash-gate operation. I couldn’t imagine anything useful coming from Charice’s four bags of garbage, yet some part of me was curious. Mostly I was hoping for something that I could embarrass Kurt with, because I am occasionally petty, and this was one of those occasions.

  I walked up the stairs to my apartment and was surprised to see two black men in the hallway walking toward me.

  “Dahlia Moss?” The older of the two men looked at me quizzically, flashing a badge to show that he was a detective for the city of Saint Louis.

  “Yes,” I said, thinking, Ah, this is how you do it. Detectives don’t run in, guns blazing. They make sure their mark is the person they’re looking for before they start straddling chairs.

  “I’m Detective Maddocks. This is my partner, Detective Shuler. Could we talk to you a moment?”

  And at this point I was basically scared shitless.

  Whenever I got pulled over, I always ran through a mental checklist of what I might have been doing wrong—speeding, illegal turn, brake lights out—and I almost always came up with nothing, which steeled my spirit, because if I couldn’t think of anything, how illegal could it be? I ran through my checklist then: I hadn’t driven my car in weeks. Should I have filled out an I-9 for Jonah? Surely there was still time. Then it hit me. The bags of trash. Charice had broken into a car and stolen four bags of trash. This made me an accessory.

  “Um,” I said. This is a very charitable rendering of my response. Honestly it was something like, “Aa-a-rrro-ooo-uuu-um,” so it lasted about seven or eight seconds and involved several facial contortions.

  Bags of trash. I was going to jail for bags of trash. I was going to go to prison and become one of those sad people featured in News of the Weird. I heard a ding from the elevator and thought, Christ, it’ll be Charice. Once I finished fumbling with my keys, I all but yanked Detective Maddocks into my apartment.

  “In,” I told him.

  He did not seem to mind the yanking. Detective Maddocks glided into my apartment. Honestly, glided—like he owned the place. I was reminded of inviting a vampire into your home. Okay, he wasn’t a vampire, but the similarities were there. He was regal, demanded respect, dressed in black, and was extremely dangerous. He didn’t look much like a vampire, and in fact, he had kind of a classic detective’s face—great craggy features. He looked like he should be on the street, making grim deductions while it rained on him. But my nerves were rattled, so my impression of him was a bit vampiric.

  It was easy to overlook his partner. Detective Shuler did not look like a vampire. He had entirely the wrong sort of face for drama. He smiled too easily, I think. Even when he wasn’t smiling, it looked as though he might have been thinking about it. He had smooth light brown skin and a cute doughy face with overly expressive features. It was hard to imagine him nailing a perp, but easy to imagine him explaining the concept of sharing to children. Possibly while playing a ukulele.

  “So you’re Dahlia Moss.” This was Maddocks again. “Do you know you seem to have been ahead of us all day?”

  I am amazed I was able to correctly transcribe this, because I was scarcely listening to him. His lips were moving, and all I was thinking was Trash, trash, trash. I’m going to jail for trash.

  He looked at me, and I was now going with vampire again because I felt like he was trying to read my mind.

  “Would you like to sit down?” I asked. “Can I get you something to drink? Water? Gin and tonic? I’m kidding about the gin and tonic.”

  This was just verbal stuttering on my part. They sat down but were not interested in drinks. Because I am a terrible hostess, I made myself a drink—just tonic—while I tried to process what he had asked me.

  “What do you mean, I’ve been ahead of you? Have you been following me?”

  “We have not,” said Detective Maddocks. “It’s just that people I’ve spoken to seem to have all spoken to you first. Surprising.”

  And Maddocks said the word “surprising” as if it were a synonym for “disgusting.” I tried to lighten the mood.

  “Did you also interview for a secretarial position at WashU? Because I can tell you that you don’t need to worry. I am not getting that job.”

  This got a short guffaw from Detective Shuler, and Maddocks shot icicles at him for it. The room became silent again with his vampire magic.

  I tried to be appropriately solemn, but I was becoming giddy with the thought that if they had been following me all day, then this couldn’t be about the trash.

  “How do you know Jonah Long?” Maddocks asked me.

  “He hired me,” I said, relieved that I wasn’t going to jail on trash-theft charges. “He hired me to recover a stolen item for him.”

  “Why you?” asked Maddocks.

  “You’re the second person to ask me that today,” I said, laughing nervously. Neither of them said anything. I don’t know why I had thought this would have sufficed for an answer, but I was still surprised when the two men continued to look at me, patiently awaiting further elaboration.

  “I don’t know why he hired me,” I said. “I guess he just felt I was the right person for t
he task.”

  It didn’t feel like the time or place to go into the Hitchcock blond theory I had been formulating. Instead, I asked, “What’s this all about?”

  The two detectives shared a look as if they were privately deciding whether to let me in on a secret. As this happened, Charice entered the apartment carrying all four bags of trash. She glanced and saw the two detectives on my couch, technically her couch, and remained utterly unconcerned. Strange men in her apartment? No problem. She didn’t so much as wave or say hello as she carried on with her trash-moving efforts.

  “Do you need help with that?” asked Shuler, speaking for the first time since I had made his acquaintance.

  “How gentlemanly,” said Charice with typical nonchalance. “But I got it. Thanks, though.”

  Despite her saying that she had it, she was clearly carrying entirely too much trash for one trip. There was hardly any Charice visible, just a veritable Christmas tree of trash bags teetering dangerously down the hallway.

  The hitherto laconic Shuler seemed intrigued by all this, and I wanted to yell out in a tone of voice that would sound helpful, and not at all alarmist, “Charice, these are policemen, potentially theft-investigating policemen,” but it seemed hard to do this in a way that would not arouse suspicion.

  “Why are you bringing trash into the building?” asked Shuler.

  “Dumpster diving,” said Charice.

  “Isn’t that usually done outside?” he asked. “That can’t be your haul.”

  Charice stuck her head out from behind a bag and regarded Detective Shuler, who I imagine she did not realize was a detective but just another available guy. She gave him a look that seemed impossibly flirtatious coming from behind a bag of trash and said:

  “I do my sorting inside.”

  I didn’t want this exchange getting weirder than it already had, so I interrupted.

  “You guys aren’t here to discuss trash. What’s this about?”

  “Jonah Long is dead.”

  In retrospect, this was kind of a litmus test. They tell Dahlia that Jonah is dead and then study my face for some kind of reaction. I just looked at them, dumbfounded, and said the first thing that came to my mind.

  “He owed me one thousand dollars.”

  I said it as if I were in a trance, which I suppose I was. It’s a tacky way to respond to anyone’s death, but give me a break. My annual income had been halved and I was in a period of mourning.

  “We’d appreciate it if you could tell us about your interactions with Jonah.”

  The part of me that wasn’t worried about money—admittedly, now a very small part—was thinking.

  “Was he murdered?”

  “Why would you ask that?” asked Detective Maddocks, somehow marrying the question to both his detective and vampire aesthetics.

  “Well, when my aunt Pauline died, no one sent detectives around to ask me about my interactions with her. That’s not usually how it goes.”

  Maddocks was skeptical but mollified by this response.

  “There’s an investigation. We’d appreciate it if you can tell us what you’ve been doing for Jonah.”

  “If you’ve interviewed everyone I’ve spoken to today, you must already know.”

  And Maddocks actually smiled at this. “Even so.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I was hired to recover a spear that had been stolen from him. I’ve been going around today looking for him to ask him some follow-up questions, but he wasn’t at work.”

  “And Kurt Campbell?”

  “I was hired to intimidate him. Jonah thought his ex-roommate had stolen the spear, and I was supposed to shock and awe him into giving it up. Over dinner. Inside a windmill. Which is another thing I would have liked to speak to Jonah about.”

  Shuler, who had been keeping silent all this time, spoke again. “You seem like an unusual choice for a shock-and-awe mission.”

  “Are you saying that I’m not intimidating?” This was supposed to be a joke. It’s obvious I’m not intimidating. It’s like tapioca pudding asking if it’s intimidating. But Shuler did not recognize the rhetorical nature of my query.

  “I am gently suggesting it, yes.”

  “We know that you failed at your task,” Maddocks explained.

  This embarrassed me, but there wasn’t anything to do but be honest and explain. “Listen, it didn’t make any sense to me either, Detective. I don’t even think Kurt stole the spear in the first place.”

  “Why would you say that?” asked Detective Maddocks, with a certain proprietary tone in his voice that suggested any theorizing was the domain of the police department.

  “Aside from his outright denial, the tenor of our conversation, and his facial reactions, which were pretty conclusive from my point of view, there’s the fact that he can’t use the spear.”

  Maddocks scoffed. “He could use it as well as Jonah Long could have.”

  “No,” I said. “He couldn’t.”

  This prompted a staredown from Maddocks, who I suppose must have thought I was bluffing. When I didn’t back down, he furrowed his brow and made the only guess that made sense to him.

  “He doesn’t… have arms?”

  “No,” I said. “Of course he has arms. What kind of suggestion is that? Have you not met with Kurt yet?”

  “We spoke on the phone, and I’m meeting with him later. Tell me why he can’t use a spear.”

  “He’s a ninja. Ninjas can’t wield spears.” And for this I wheeled out the same tone that Sherlock Holmes would use to dazzle a room full of Victorians with his amazing deductive powers.

  It did not have the same effect here. Maddocks regarded me with a combination of pity and mortification. This is what happens when people realize that you’re not a casual geek but a full-blown professional.

  “You understand that he’s not a ninja in real life?” he asked with more uncertainty in his voice than I would have liked.

  “Of course I understand he’s not a ninja in real life. This is not feudal Japan. What does real life have to do with it?”

  Maddocks spoke slowly, as if he were talking to a small child. “Because we live in real life. And in real life, anyone can pick up a spear.”

  We seemed to be in an unspoken war of condescending to each other. But I suddenly got where he was coming from. He didn’t realize:

  “The spear is digital,” I told him. “You understand that, right? I’ve been asked to retrieve an item from a video game.”

  Maddocks was stunned for a moment and just said nothing. It was like he had had holy water thrown on him. He didn’t apologize, but when he came back, he was less patronizing and more thoughtful. Which was even more terrifying somehow.

  “Fine. Can you tell us more about this digital spear?”

  And there was something about the way he said “digital” that set my mind to reeling. Before he had finished the sentence, I had a theory, and I wanted to test it right then and there.

  I turned to Shuler, who looked blank but wary.

  “Why would you have thought the spear was analog?”

  Shuler gave me a poker face that could have broken banks in Vegas. But I had guessed the answer.

  “Jonah had a replica made, didn’t he? He used some service, some 3D-printing company, to have a replica made of the item. That’s why you seemed so confident that I had failed to recover it from Kurt. You found a copy of the spear in Jonah’s apartment and thought it was the real thing.”

  Then, a terrible thought hit me as soon as I was saying it.

  “Jonah was stabbed with the spear.”

  It wasn’t a question. I just said it to them. And neither of their faces seemed up to the challenge of contesting me.

  I always thought that when detectives, and specifically I’m thinking of William Powell, made great intuitive leaps, there was supposed to be cheering and perhaps the clinking of champagne glasses. Instead everyone just looked at me as if I had committed a grave faux pas.

  “Right,”
I said. “Sorry.”

  “We can’t share information about that at this time,” Maddocks said. And I felt bad. The next few minutes of the interview went on in that same flat way, with me filling in the police on what they didn’t know about the Kingdoms of Zoth, which was everything. And about Jonah’s hiring and Kurt and, well, the whole unlikely thing.

  As we were finishing up, Charice reentered the room, having inexplicably changed into a black cocktail dress. She ran toward me, arms outstretched, which made me wince. Hugs from Charice were the kind of thing that haunted my dreams. I’m not huggy at all, and she embraced you like a Russian weight lifter on his third glass of Stoli. It’s rib-crushing. And literally, you leave the ground. Charice majored in dance, and she’s stronger than you would expect her to be.

  “Dahlia!” she wailed. And there it was, the vise grip, and then I was airborne. I held my breath until it was over, but Charice took no notice and kept on talking. “I couldn’t help but eavesdrop, and I heard the terrible news.”

  “Couldn’t help but eavesdrop” was probably a euphemism for crouching at the door with her ear to a cup, but I wasn’t going to argue with her in front of the police.

  She looked especially somber, which should have set off alarms, but I was mesmerized by her extravagant dabbing at completely imaginary tears.

  “To think I saw him just yesterday,” she said.

  Then Charice shivered—how I could have possibly not realized something was up by this point is beyond me—and said, “Being gored to death, how horrible!”

  Maddocks asked simply but evenly, “Did you know Mr. Long?”

  “He was standing right here only twenty-four hours ago,” Charice said. Detective Maddocks correctly recognized this as a dramatic rendering of “No, I didn’t know him,” and reacted accordingly.

  “One last thing,” said Maddocks, turning back toward me as Charice continued to mime mourning at us. “You’re not a detective, Miss Moss.”

  “That’s what I told Jonah,” I said, noting that my voice sounded small and squeaky.

  Maddocks gave me the evil eye. This was the kind of thing that brought Lucy Harker to her doom. “So you say. But you’ve told at least two other people that you were a private detective.”