Beer Money (A Burr Ashland Mystery)

by Dani Amore

Some fuzzy gray footage popped onto the main monitor and Fred froze it, then swiveled in his chair to face me.

  "This is the film Tim sent to me. Do you have any idea how old it is?" Fred asked.

  "None."

  "It was probably from one of the first cameras of its kind. Probably around the very early 1900s."

  "Do you have any idea where it might have come from?"

  Fred shook his head. "I didn't see any labels or anything. Just a plain metal canister and the film inside."

  “No note from Tim?” I asked.

  Fred shook his head.

  “Have you watched it?” I asked.

  “I got a sneak preview. I wish I hadn’t.”

  "Let's see what we've got," I said. I could feel the adrenaline, after a night of tossing and turning, of feeling nothing but sadness and fatigue, it felt great to be able to do something. To be able to start somewhere.

  Fred turned, hit a button, and an image popped onto the screen.

  Five

  It was in grainy black-and-white, of course, being close to a hundred years old, but I was surprised at the quality of the resolution. It looked a little bit worse than the average old home movies, before videocameras.

  There was a big bed with elegantly patterned sheets. An elaborate brass headboard and footboard. A nest of large pillows with elegant lace pillowcases was piled at the head. Crisp white sheets and a lightly patterned blanket covered the bed's length. There was a window that was mostly out of frame, but looked to be extremely tall, with molding that was carved and highly elaborate.

  The image was jumpy and sporadic, the film's light inconsistent.

  A young woman, very young to my eye, appeared from offscreen. She walked slowly, automatically. As if she were nervous about an upcoming audition.

  She sat on the bed. She was completely naked and very thin. Her pelvic bones jutted from pale skin. The harsh light seemed to make her glow like an apparition. Her ribs showed even though she was sitting down. Her long legs extended all the way to the floor, and her elegant hands were clasped oddly in her lap.

  She looked at the screen, as if she was listening. Her eyes slid over, to the left of the camera. Listening. Taking direction.

  The camera moved slightly. Bumped. And then a man appeared. My first reaction was that he looked like an ape. Short, thick and wide. A human roadblock. He moved slowly, with purpose.

  Thick, dark hair covered his broad back, wide shoulders, powerful arms and legs. There was even hair on his ass.

  He walked to the bed, stood next to it, stared at the girl. He held out his hand. She took it. He pulled her to her feet.

  The man ran a hairy hand down the young girl's hair. He brushed the back of his hand against her cheek, trailed it down to her breasts where he cupped each one gently. He continued downward, ran a hand over her flat stomach.

  He turned her slightly and slapped her buttock.

  "Inspection completed," I said. "It's like he's judging livestock." Fred was slouched in his chair, his hands covering his face. I couldn't tell if he was watching or if he was shielding his vision.

  The man on the screen then turned to the camera, displaying a large erection that bobbed gently to the left and to the right, with his movement.

  "Dear God," Fred said. I guessed he was watching after all.

  The man's face was round, probably florid although on the black-and-white film it was hard to tell. He had a pug nose, heavy jowls and thick eyebrows. His profile did nothing to dissuade me from the ape comparison.

  He climbed onto the bed.

  The man on the screen said something to the girl who eased back onto the bed. The man climbed on top of her, gave her an obligatory kiss, a quick squeeze of her breasts, then spread her legs. He grabbed each of her legs just beneath the knee. Lifted them up onto his shoulders.

  With his right hand, the man guided himself inside the young girl, then leaned over her and started thrusting. His hairy ass moved with a slow, emotionless precision.

  The girl looked over at the camera. Her eyes revealed nothing as the back of her head was repeatedly pushed into the pillow. Her feet waved uncontrolled with each of the man's thrust.

  "This is disgusting," Fred said, shaking his head.

  I tried to get a closer look at the girl.

  "How old do you think she is?" I asked.

  "Too young for this, that's for sure," Fred said. He pondered for a moment, then said, "My guess would be sixteen. Somewhere around there."

  That would have been my guess, too.

  "What the fuck was Tim doing with this?" I wondered.

  "Do you think..." Fred's question trailed off.

  "That Tim was into this kind of stuff? " I finished the thought for him. "Not unless he had multiple personalities."

  On screen, the man's thrusting increased speed.

  "Where did he get this?" Fred asked.

  "That's a good question," I answered. "He was hell on wheels when it came to research. Remember the way you could ask him about a book and he'd give you a call number off the top of his head? Half the time, the librarians asked Tim for help."

  Fred nodded and I asked, "Did he say where the film came from?"

  Fred shook his head. "No, he mailed them to me. The only message was that I should hold onto it."

  We both focused again on the screen where the man was jackhammering, a highly lubricated piston, firing over and over again. His body was shiny beneath the hair as he worked up a sweat.

  A few minutes later, he began to climax, and the girl's entire body was like a trampoline, bouncing with every thrust, her feet flopping, her head pinned against the headboard.

  At last, the man finished and he lay on top of her. Her hands dropped to the side of the bed.

  And then the screen went black.

  Fred wheeled his chair over to the monitor's control panels and he hit a button to make the film pause.

  "There were four reels, each one about ten minutes,” Fred said. “I put them all on one tape, a few seconds gap between them."

  He hit another button and the film began again.

  For the next forty minutes, we watched the screen with growing revulsion. The young girl was placed in every position, on her hands and knees, her small white ass raised into the air, the man standing behind her, looking like a savage, nothing on his face but a dark intensity. Had the camera come equipped for sound, I would have been able to hear the girl’s teeth rattle.

  The last reel was a close-up of the young girl clearly being coached how to give oral pleasure. The man grabbed her hair and pulled her head up and down, as if to demonstrate. Her head moved woodenly, the man's hand clenched her hair. A hands-on manager, apparently.

  At last, his body convulsed and the girl looked directly at the camera.

  It was the final shot of the last scene.

  The film ended and went to black. Fred clicked a couple of buttons and swiveled in his chair to face me. He let out a long breath and took a drink of water. I rubbed my face, some unconscious effort to wipe away the filth of what I'd just seen.

  "The world's oldest porno video?" Fred asked. "That's what Tim was working on?"

  "Nuh-uh,” I said.

  "Then what was he doing with this?" he asked, waving his hand at the now blank monitors.

  "He's a historian Fred, what do you think he was doing with it?"

  Fred pondered that briefly.

  "Back up to that last shot of her," I said. "Sans the dick.”

  Fred punched some buttons until the close-up of the girl filled the screen.

  "Can you rip me a still photo of this frame?" I asked. A plan was forming in my head and the nausea was replaced with hope. There was a chance I could help Gabby. Whether she liked it or not.

  "Sure," Fred said. He punched a couple of buttons while the final shot stayed on screen. In the tape room, I heard a machine start up.

  We went back through the rest of the film. Looked for a good shot of the Hairy Man. We found one, whe
re he briefly looked at the camera. Fred made a still photo of that frame, too.

  Fred went into the tape room and a few minutes later came back with the photos.

  "What are we going to do now?" Fred asked me.

  "You've got a safe in the office, right?" I asked.

  Fred nodded yes.

  "You're going to put the film in there for safe keeping. Don't tell anyone about this, okay?"

  "But the cops-"

  "We’ll give it to them soon enough," I said. "I just want to nose around a little bit first, okay? It’s my job, right?”

  Fred shook his head. “We have to give it to them right away, Burr. We’re just going to create more trouble. Isn't that withholding evidence or something?”

  “Soon enough, Fred. In the end, they’ll thank us for helping.” I stood to go.

  "Where are you going?" Fred asked.

  "I'm going to break into an apartment," I said.

  Six

  Greenfield was the heart and soul of the Milwaukee cliché: a tavern on every corner and Packer paraphernalia in every window. The area was home to pick-up trucks, rusted out Pontiac Bonnevilles and small houses with cramped yards featuring rusted swingsets.

  After his divorce, Tim had taken an apartment here for simple economics; it was the best of the places he could afford. Which clearly meant that he'd been able to afford next to nothing.

  Tim's apartment was in a red brick four-plex with small windows and cheap doors. The lobby smelled musty and dank, like a wet basement. I went to Tim's mailbox slot. Glanced over my shoulder, then pulled the narrow jimmy strip from my wallet. It only took me a few seconds to pop the lock. Inside were grocery store fliers and bills. I thumbed through the entire stack, found nothing out of the ordinary. I put it all back and closed the mailbox door.

  I climbed the steps. Even through the decades old carpet, they creaked loudly. From one of the downstairs apartments I heard the unmistakable sound of disco. Blondie.

  Crime scene tape was criss-crossed over Tim’s door.

  I used the key Tim had given me in case of an emergency and heard the lock click open. I pushed the door open, crouched down and sneaked between the ribbons of tape. I stepped inside the apartment and closed the door quickly behind me.

  From previous visits, I knew what to expect. A living room, a bedroom off to the left, a kitchen at the other end. A bathroom just off the kitchen.

  But the apartment had been tossed. Thoroughly trashed. What few things Tim had managed to retain possession of after the divorce were now strewn around the room.

  In the living room the cheap couch and recliner had been gutted. The upholstery was slashed, the stuffing strewn around like confetti. The cheap plywood frames had been literally pulled apart and smashed to pieces.

  Down the short hallway to the kitchen, the carpet had been torn up. Beneath it the old stained wood floor had chunks missing. Holes had been knocked in the thin walls.

  The kitchen wasn't much better. The refrigerator was tipped over on its side, a flood of water seeped into the floor. Food was flung everywhere and it was starting to rot. The cupboards had been all but ripped from the walls. Plates and glasses were smashed upon the floor. Drawers had been emptied and tossed on top of the mess.

  I looked down the hallway, into the first bedroom. Everything was on the floor, heaped in a pile. Pillows. Sheets. The mattress and box spring. Someone must have had a sledgehammer because the dresser was smashed into long planks of splintered wood. Clothes from the closet were tossed everywhere, the cheap white plastic organizer lay in a jumbled heap on the floor.

  To the left was the spare bedroom Tim had used as an office. The door was ajar. I peeked in.

  The entire room looked as if someone had picked it up and shaken it. Papers were everywhere, covering a pile of computer equipment that lay in a heap on the floor. The desk chair was upside down, its upholstery slashed. His file cabinets had been pushed over and laid on top of one another. Their drawers were out, their contents apparently read then tossed to the floor. Tim had kept a neat stack of open files on the main part of his desk. These were gone as well.

  Tim's computer, an older desktop Mac, was in the middle of the pile. The screen had been bashed in, the keyboard bludgeoned and the hard drive flattened.

  It seemed that whoever had done this hadn't found what they were looking for and decided that if they couldn't find it, neither would anyone else.

  I walked back through the apartment, anger building inside me. They must have killed him first. Tried to get him to give them what they were looking for. When he didn't, they tossed him through a window then came here. It was like they took what little remained of the man after his death and trounced all over it. Spat on his grave.

  My hands were shaking by the time I'd made my way back to the front door. My jaws were clenched so tightly it was a miracle my teeth didn't crack. I wanted to find the people responsible. I wanted their blood on my hands.

  I realized that Gabby must have known about this when she came to talk to me. I wondered why she hadn’t mentioned it. Probably playing head games with me instead of trying to find the killer. Well, she could fuck around but I was going to find the person responsible.

  I took a last look around. This had been Tim’s life away from the office. Where he’d begun to put his personal life back together again after the divorce. The images came to me. Football games I'd watched with him. Tons of beers, some card games, cigars and bullshit talk. It was all gone now.

  I slammed the door shut behind me.

  Seven

  Darkness had fallen. A half-moon hung behind the cloud, its brightness ricocheted off the snow until an eerie blue light electrified the air. The temperature had plunged once again. When I turned off the stereo in the Audi, I could hear the wheels crunching on the brittle snow.

  It had been at least two years since I'd seen Emily Lyons. Her house was in Elm Grove, a small pocket of snobbishness sandwiched between Milwaukee's eastern suburbs and Western sprawl. The house was a ranch with an attached two-car garage. The yard was big, the house relatively small. A gable dominated the roofline, extended it enough so it didn’t look like a shoebox. The house had a picture window framed by shutters, a front porch with a simple white handrail.

  I parked the Audi in the driveway, went to the door and rang the bell. I waited in the silence of a cold night. It was strange to be here, to see Emily, without Tim around. I didn't like it.

  When she opened the door, it all came back to me. She’d changed a little bit, but was still a head shorter than I was. She was a little thicker around the middle, her face a little more full. Her blonde hair was straight, and cut simply. Her eyes were a pale blue.

  "Burr, come in." She hugged me, then used a Kleenex to wipe her nose, either from crying or a cold. I couldn't tell which. "Beer?" she asked.

  "Of course."

  She gestured for me to sit in the living room and I looked around. There was an entertainment center on one end, surrounded by a long sectional couch and a glass coffee table.

  I didn't see a single picture of Tim anywhere.

  Emily brought in a bottle Bud.

  "So you heard." I said.

  She nodded. "The police told me yesterday afternoon."

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "I still don't understand...,” she said.

  There was a brief silence as she looked at her feet.

  Emily had been Tim's first and only steady girlfriend. They'd met just after Tim finished grad school and took a job at Marquette. She was a secretary in the Dean of Education's office. They met at a faculty party, dated for six months and then Tim proposed. They had a good, solid marriage for four years. Then Tim started showing up at my door from time to time, saying that he and Emily had fought. He never went into what the fights were about and I never asked. He occasionally made comments about Emily's desire to join a country club, to drive better cars, to eat at the best restaurants. On Tim's salary, those desires were by and large o
ut of the question.

  "What happened?" she asked me. "Do you have any idea if Tim was doing anything...wrong?"

  I shook my head, kept my face straight. But it was a stupid question. I drained half of my beer. "Of course he wasn't doing anything wrong. This is Tim we're talking about."

  She reacted to the tone in my voice by going to her purse and pulling out a pack of cigarettes. She lit one up, took a deep drag. The smoke lazily circled around her head.

  "Look," she said. "I hadn't spoken with him much recently, and planned to keep it that way. Even though I loved him at one point in my life, I don't...didn't anymore. When I met Tim I was a girl, I didn't know what I was doing. I changed. I wanted someone outgoing, someone who when he walked into a room, everyone looked and wondered who he was."

  "So that's why you divorced him?" I asked.

  "No, Burr," she said, irritation in her voice. "That's just one example of how we'd grown apart. Don't get supercilious on me, he didn't love me anymore, either."

  There wasn't much I could say to that one.

  "Why are you here?" she asked.

  "I wanted to find out if you knew anything about Tim's recent work, what he may have been up to."

  "Sorry."

  She smoked in silence for a moment. Then she said, "That was another thing. All Tim thought about was the past. I heard endlessly about his projects, about some incredible discovery he'd made that excited him to no end. He'd tell me, and it would be something like he discovered that Wisconsin's population spiked .03% in 1878 thereby nullifying some other obscure professor's theory that fertility rates had been in decline for the last two hundred years. See what I mean?"

  "Jesus, Em, he was a history professor." I said. "What did you want him to do when he got home from work, turn into James Bond?"

  Emily crossed the room and crushed her cigarette out in an ashtray on the dining room table. I finished my beer, took the empty out to the kitchen and grabbed another.

  "You're here to find out if I know anything about Tim?" she finally asked.

  "And then I'll be on my way. Anything you can think of might help."