by C G Cooper
Chance set down his mug. “If you’re holding back—”
“It’s okay,” said Mac. “What do you want?”
She thought a while then put on a smile Mac had seen once, on a cat. “I haven’t finished my workout for the day. I’ll make you a deal. Spar with me. Stay on your feet for two minutes. Give me a good sweat and I’ll tell you what you need to know.”
“You ain’t serious,” said Chance.
“Why not?” she asked. She leaned back, sizing Mac up. “It’s been years since I had a challenge. So yes, I’m serious. Are you?”
“We get access to the records?” asked Mac. His ribs thrummed at the thought of going toe-to-toe with the lithe warrior on the other side of the table.
“Show me the photo.”
Mac glanced at Chance. “Borrow your keys?” To Yael, he said, “My phone’s in the detective’s SUV.”
Yael raised an eyebrow.
Chance shoved back from the table. “I’ll go!” he said a little too eagerly and went.
“I believe he’s afraid of me,” said Yael.
“Can’t imagine why.”
“Where— Forgive me. I’ve never met somebody with quite your look. Do you mind telling me where you come from?”
“Kauai. Mom’s a native Hawaiian.”
“And your father?”
“A Chamorro, from Guam.”
“You’ve come a long way for this weather. There’s a blizzard coming, you know.”
“Isn’t there always?”
Chance returned, breathless, holding out Mac’s phone. Mac unlocked it and pulled up the watcher’s picture.
“I know him,” said Yael. “Name, address. I can tell you his blood type.” She yawned. “I want a good stretch first. We got a deal?”
The breath Mac sucked in to answer was one of the most painful of his life. His chest felt like an old whiskey barrel the had been left to the elements, dry and splitting at the seams.
“Yeah. Deal,” said Chance. “I’ll do it.” He stood, slapping the table. “I’ll fight. You want a challenge? My old man was Semper Fi, do or die. Bring whatcha got.”
Yael gawked at him, then narrowed her eyes. When he didn’t flinch, she laughed. “Okay, big boy.” She flexed. Her shoulders, head, and biceps formed the silhouette of four grapefruits flanking a melon. “I’ll bring it, but you have to make it last.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Mats covered an elevated portion of the floor at the back of the studio, but that wasn’t where Yael led them. She bounced up and down on the creaking hardwood in front of the practice stage, keeping her head down and her fists up. The mirror behind her showed off her footwork and bobbing ponytail. As the motion of her body brought her head above her hands, she grinned at Mac, who was watching her warm up over Chance’s shoulder. He didn’t grin back.
“Keep your distance,” Mac said. Aside from training gloves, Chance was wearing the slacks he had walked in with and a plain white tee. He looked more like an old-time encyclopedia salesman taking a break down by the river than a catch-as-catch-can brawler. “If she works it like a real fight, she’ll open with hit and run. You can tell by her posture she’s a grappler. When she’s got you worn down, she’ll shoot in. Get out of the way. Don’t try to out-muscle her.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry,” Chance said, stretching his quads.
Mac met his eyes. “You can bail on this. I can take a hit.”
“From the way you winced when you said that, you’ve taken enough. Time I earned my keep.”
“You’ve earned it already. Two or three times over.”
“It’s okay. I wasn’t kidding about my old man. In my house, if you flinched at a knuckle punch, no dessert for a week.”
Mac didn’t find that comforting. He turned to face Yael, who was swinging her arms across her chest. She lifted her chin.
“Let’s set some rules up front,” said Mac.
Yael knocked her fists together. “The rules are, if your boy stays on his feet two minutes, then I’ll help you. What else do you need to know?”
“No strikes to the face or below the belt,” said Mac. “No strikes or torsion to the spine or neck. No joint locks. Keep away from the kidneys, too.”
“Wow,” said Yael. “Bet you’re fun at parties.” She shrugged the boulders where her arms met her neck. “That’s fine, so long as you know the difference between a strike—” she said, demonstrating with a jab-hook combo, “—and a sweep.” Ducking, she swung at the air with a crooked elbow, a move that would have trapped Chance’s knee.
“I know the difference,” said Mac. “We good?”
“I said I wanted a challenge. Detective?”
“Huh?” said Chance.
“I promise not to cripple you.”
“Good to know.”
“On your side, don’t worry so much. Any way you can hit me, hit me. I like a good kidney punch now and then.”
Chance looked at Mac, who took a step back and held up his hands. “Eye of the tiger, brother.” He held his phone, hovered his finger over the Start button of its stopwatch app. “Last chance to back out.”
“Don’t tempt me,” said Chance. “We need this.”
“In that case,” said Mac, raising his free hand, “I want a good, clean fight. Go!”
Chance waded in. He knew enough to keep his center of gravity low and his fists in front of his face, but his movements were unguarded, without guile. Yael threw a jab at his midriff, deliberately coming up short. Chance jerked back, moving his body instead of his feet. He threw a haymaker a full second too late.
Already out of his range, Yael laughed. She stepped in again and landed a blow to his side, another to his chest, and drove in for the clutch. Mac saw his hopes of an upset crumbling and wondered if Yael would really refuse to help if Chance went down early.
Then the minor miracle happened.
Instead of thudding to the ground under Yael’s assault, Chance slipped to one side and connected with a jab to the chin. Yael spun off balance. There was a split second where she appeared to be looking out of the frosted windows of the gym, then Chance was raining blows as she pivoted to recover. He caught her twice in the ribs before she made it all the way around. In answer, she threw a backhand that would have split his lip had it connected.
Mac was still struggling to find his voice after Chance’s rope-a-dope or he would have called foul, but Chance mooted the point with a quick back step, followed by a right cross that grazed Yael’s nose. Her rising knee doubled him over.
Mac was confused by what happened next until he saw that Chance had wrapped his arms around Yael’s columnar leg, forcing her to skip backwards on one foot. Holding the scruff of his neck with one hand, she lifted an elbow.
This time Mac was fast enough to say, “Watch it!”
Yael bent forward to bring the elbow down like a club across Chance’s ribs. Chance grunted. Mac grunted in sympathy. But Chance didn’t release his hold. Yael skidded backwards on the hardwood until her back was against the mirrored wall.
If she had been free to attack Chance’s face, she might have ended the fight by spinning away, smashing him into his own reflection. Obeying the rules, she instead tried another high elbow. Chance surprised her by bending his knees and lifting, tossing her away with enough force to get her out of range.
Yael gave a whoop. Chance aimed a jab at her chin then yelled out as her fist drove into his bicep. The punch was vicious, enough to vibrate bone. But it didn’t stop him. Folding into his swing, he redirected his fist and delivered an elbow to her sternum.
Dropping back, she spat out, “That it?” and went for the shot again. This time it was Chance’s turn to get slammed against the glass. He grunted, then grabbed her around the middle. She was too lively for him to lift off the floor, but he managed to open enough space to scoot away. She loped after him, swinging a hook that intercepted his jab. Her fist caught his arm just above the elbow. The nerve tap caused his palm to spring open and
the upward trajectory of her blow changed the punch he’d been trying to deliver to her shoulder into a whip-smack across her face.
“God, yes!” said Yael, and grappled him.
Not since his first Fourth of July had Mac beheld a spectacle that so mixed anxiety with joy. He chewed a knuckle and glanced down at the stopwatch. It read 00:01:44:07.
It looked like the fight would be over in a second more, but before Yael could drop Chance, he jammed an uppercut into her abdomen. She lost her grip, flapping her arms like a puppet, her breath coming out in a huff.
“Yeah!” said Mac. “Ten seconds!”
Moving in on Yael, Chance feinted a knee, then dropped an elbow instead, aiming for her scapula. Yael dodged and put her own knee into Chance’s middle. He gasped and threw up his hands. She shoved into him like a rhino flipping a jeep, lifted him up off his feet, and pivoted to slam him down. He tried to save himself pain by wrapping his legs around her midriff.
“Whoa!” said Mac. “That’s it. Time! Time!”
It was too late. They fell together, Chance’s back meeting the floor while Yael crashed to one knee.
Mac ran to the pair, thinking he’d have to pull them apart.
Yael sat up, raising her hands. She was flushed with a bruise on her left cheek. “He’s fine. I said I wouldn’t cripple him.”
To Chance, Mac said, “Dude, you okay?”
Chance blinked up at him. He started to cough and pushed himself halfway into a sitting position. Mac braced him with an arm behind his back as Yael rose, shaking out her arms. At last, Chance got his coughing under control and said, “’kay. I’m okay. Fahgetaboudit.”
Mac shot Yael an angry look. “Satisfied?”
She smoothed back her hair. “Very.” She held out a hand to Chance. “You’re quite a scrapper, Detective Gardner.”
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
“All right,” said Mac. “You’ve had your fun.”
“Okay,” said Yael. “Don’t sweat it. Your boy gave Mama what she wanted. Come on. Records are in the back.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
A store-printed photobook sat on the only shelf in Yael’s office, between a book titled “The Ultimate Detox Diet” and a black marble bookend of Atlas holding up the world. Yael sat cross-legged on the throw rug that covered the oversized closet floor and rifled through the photobook.
With the slow deliberation of a senior citizen, Chance sat down as well. Mac scouted his surroundings.
When they had twiddled their thumbs for half a minute, Yael stopped flipping pages and spun the book around. The photo was a group shot: fifteen kids, college age and younger, posed in two lines. The front line was kneeling. Yael was standing next to a male trainer in the back line, smiling as she cinched him in a headlock. Her finger traced down the line of standing students to point out a thin-faced man in his twenties on the opposite end. Mac recognized him immediately. The skin-wrapped skull was unmistakably that of the watcher.
“That’s him, yes?” said Yael. “The boyfriend. Jordan Ross.”
“Boyfriend?” said Mac. “Whose boyfriend?”
“The girl. Tiffany. They came in together, first time. She signed him up for classes. Even after she quit, he mentioned her a couple times. I think they were still together.”
Mac exchanged a look with Chance. None of Tiffany’s friends or family had said anything about a boyfriend. Not even her roommate.
Chance took the book, examined the photo. “Yikes. I mean, I’m no James Dean, but this guy— Did Tiffany have a thing for vampire flicks?”
There was something to the comparison. Not that Jordan Ross resembled the heartthrob bloodsuckers of the past decade. But shave his hair and give him a pair of costume teeth and he could have passed for Nosferatu.
Chance handed the book to Mac. To Yael, he said, “You have a home address?”
“Of course. Most of my students pay by direct deposit, but I insist on knowing where they live, in case I have to enforce my rates.” She pounded a fist into her hand. Winking at Chance, she said, “You’re not going to arrest me for the way I do business, are you?”
“I’ll leave simple battery to the locals.”
“Address,” said Mac.
“Patience, friend.”
She got up and took two steps to the back of the office where three banker’s boxes sat in a stack. As she set one aside and bent over another, Chance cocked his head. Mac flipped through the pages of the photobook, looking for candidates that fit what he knew about the dirt bike assassin.
Yael straightened up. “Here we go.” As she sat back down, she removed a piece of paper from the file folder in her hands. She passed it over to Mac.
On the front was a tightly-spaced printed form filled in by a careful hand. “Ross, Jordan” was in the name blank. There was an address in the county, up a rural road. The phone number was a landline; Mac could tell from the exchange. Yael’s form asked if students had any previous experience in the martial arts. Ross had checked “No,” but next to “What disciplines?” he’d written “Punching.” Something had been scrawled on the lines that called for “Parent or Legal Guardian Name (PRINT),” but this had been scratched out then erased, leaving an indentation in the paper.
The only signature was Ross’s own. The looped characters that formed it were squat and narrow but perfectly legible on close examination. Mac could picture Jordan bending over the document, using his left hand to guide the right as he sketched the letters meticulously. No, sketched was the wrong word. He had scribed the letters.
There was something in the unsmiling face from the class photo that suggested concentrated effort.
What’s your story, kid? Mac thought.
Chance read the address over his shoulder, speaking aloud to his phone. The voice of his mapping software said, “Okay. Let’s go.” Chance said, “Looks like a forty-minute drive from here. Past the school.”
“We need to check it out,” said Mac.
He remembered the watcher - Jordan - standing in the archway of the church as the woman in black and the red-eyed fighter attacked. In the early going, when it had been only Mac and the woman in the fight, he had figured the watcher was either a coward or somehow elevated, excused from brawling by his rank and station. When the truncheon had fallen into the tall man’s hands and its blows fell on Mac, a different theory had taken root in his brain. The watcher didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to fight, or maybe it was just Mac’s wishful thinking.
“You said Ross is a student, right? Is he any good?”
“As a fighter?” said Yael. “No. He’s no fighter. Been coming since last spring and still, any of my first-months could beat him. He listened, but he didn’t learn. Body strong, a farmer’s son. But up here,” She tapped her forehead. “Not so much.”
Mac continued to flip through the photo book. “Does he attend regularly?”
“Pretty regularly, yeah. Obvious he didn’t practice.”
“Anybody aside from Tiffany a special friend?”
“Special like—”
“Like anything. Friends outside of class. With or without benefits.”
With a motion that reminded Mac of Samson toppling the pillars in the Cecil DeMille epic, Yael spread her hands. “I don’t know. Not really. He came alone after Tiffany moved on. Sometimes in a carpool, but not always the same people. To be honest, I don’t think he liked it here. I think she asked him to come and he was too slow to give it up, even after she left.”
“You keep using the past tense,” said Chance.
“Of course,” she said. “Tiffany’s dead.”
“But he’s not. You said, you don’t think he liked it here. Liked. In the past.”
“Yes. He’s still on the books, but I haven’t seen him since before Christmas. A week before. That was the last class. I know the students from SU were on break, but I’ve kept a regular schedule since January 1st. No Jordan. I wouldn’t be surprised to find he’s quit for good. I�
��m shocked he stayed so long.”
“That’s useful, thanks,” said Mac. He borrowed Chance’s phone to snap a photo of Jordan’s info form, then two more of the pages in the photo book he’d marked with his fingers. Both showed faces and names that might be a match for the dirt bike woman. There were no good candidates for the face under the red-eyed mask. Having surrendered the book, he stood up. “We better get going.”
Following him to her feet, Yael said, “You’re going to check on Jordan? He’s a suspect?”
Chance said, “Anything we find out, you can read about in the papers.”
“Ha!” said Yael. “Would that be the Wilburville Post-Gazette? It went bankrupt in Obama’s first term. Don’t worry. I’m not the curious type. It’s just, I can’t see it. A man, a boy, like Jordan wouldn’t kill somebody.”
“Why not?” said Mac.
“He’s too, I don’t know. Not gentle exactly. He hunts. Once, he showed off pictures of an eight-point buck he’d shot. It’s just that… well, he doesn’t have the killer instinct. He split a kid’s cheek open, sparring. Knuckle went past the faceguard. Here, on the bone. He had to step out while I did first aid. I think he got sick in the men’s room.”
Mac stayed quiet, picturing the scene. Uncomfortable in the silence, Chance said, “Well, like he said, we’ll keep it in mind.”
“What about me, detective?” said Yael. “Will you keep me in mind?”
“Uh,” said Chance.
Mac said, “He’s got a girl. In Albany.”
Yael stuck her hands on her hips. “Albany? That’s a long way from here.” She shrugged again, that boulder-rolling motion. “You know where I’ll be.”
“We do,” said Mac. He gave Yael a firm, military handshake. “Thanks again. You’ve been a bigger help than you know.”
“Good. I hope you catch him. Whoever did it, I mean. I don’t think it was Jordan, but whoever it was, I hope you make them pay.”
Mac nodded and left the office. After a few steps, he realized Chance wasn’t following and looked back. The detective was standing in the doorway.