Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery)

by G. M. Ford

  I popped the car door and stepped out onto the shoulder. Faded signs on either side of the driveway said it all. Posted. No Trespassing. No Soliciting.

  The house was forty yards away at the top of a little rise. Big decaying two-story from the late fifties, with a ramshackle, brokeback roof that had needed replacing a decade ago, and a pair of dormers looking out over the yard like raised eyebrows. Down below, a wide front porch ran the length of the house. Here and there a post or two was missing from the railing. Half-a-dozen hanging baskets, complete with dead plants, decorated the underside of the porch roof.

  I looked over at my car.

  Patty had crawled over into the driver’s seat. She rolled down the window. “You even look like you’re going to lose and I’m out of here,” she said. “I’ll call 911 as soon as I’m back in cell phone range, but I’ve spent all the time with Teddy Healy I’m gonna.”

  We’d run out of cell phone bars three or four miles back, just as we turned off the last of the paved roads. She’d been right. I’d never have found the place on my own. She put the window up, adjusted the seat, and started the car. The doors locked by themselves.

  I walked up the incline toward the house. The sound of my crunching feet played counterpoint to the gurgling sounds of the surrounding forest. It had rained earlier in the day and the woods were alive with the sound of water dripping and sinking and otherwise moving downhill.

  Overhead, the ancient Douglas firs creaked and groaned as the intermittent wind swirled their heavy branches.

  I was within twenty yards of the porch when the light to the left of the door blinked on, and there he was. Barechested, fastening the last couple of buttons on a pair of 501 jeans, he strutted onto the porch in his bare feet.

  The laird of the manor threw an angry hand my way. “Didn’t you see the sign, asshole? No trespassing. Get the fuck outta here ’fore I hurt your sorry ass.”

  He’d once been buff, but time and excess had taken their toll. The last bulky remnants of years in the weight room had migrated south. The upper portion of what had once been a broad muscular chest was morphing into a passable pair of breasts, while the bottom half of his torso had begun a permanent pilgrimage toward his waist.

  “You best walk your big ass back to the car,” he said with a malignant grin.

  I kept moving his way. His face and torso were covered with a light sheen of sweat; the roots of his curly black hair sparkled in the dim light.

  “I’ll need to have a few words with the lady,” I said.

  He smirked at me. “Who the fuck are you? Comin’ out here tellin’ me what you need. Don’t nobody give a rat’s ass what you need, asshole.”

  “I need to speak with the lady.”

  He slipped his right hand into his pants pocket.

  Behind him, the drapes covering the big bay window quivered. I watched as a woman’s silhouette peeked out between the curtains. Teddy caught the shift in my focus and looked back over his shoulder. The head immediately disappeared.

  He gave me a big smile. “Oh, you neeeed to,” he sneered and stepped off the flagstone walkway. “Well, why in hell didn’t you just say so, pilgrim? If I’d known you neeeeded to…well, hell.” He bowed at the waist like a cavalier and swept a hand elegantly across his body, gallantly inviting me to pass.

  I took him up on it, but not like he’d planned. I stepped even farther onto the lawn and passed him on the opposite side, too close to his right side for him to be pulling anything out of his pocket. His shithouse grin got bigger and bigger right up to the point where I gave him enough space.

  Patty was right. Teddy boy was real quick with the skullbuster. I was looking for it, but it damn near didn’t save my bacon. The business end of the cudgel whistled so close to my face I could feel the breeze in my nostrils as it went zipping by.

  I pushed his upper arm hard, using his own momentum to send him staggering several steps before he was able regain his balance.

  Teddy looked surprised. I was guessing he hadn’t missed in a while. He was so accustomed to his victims immediately going down in a drooling heap that he had to take a moment to regroup before attempting anything more strenuous.

  That’s when his bloodshot, baby blues got mean. I looked into those eyes and saw the nasty little bug-squashing, fire-starting, pet-torturing kid he used to be. A chill went coursing down my spine.

  He sensed my discomfort and dispensed with the grin. No fooling around anymore. He crouched and began to shuffle my way, left foot forward, twirling the sap in a tight circle as he sidestepped in my direction.

  “You pretty quick for a big boy,” he said.

  I kept my distance, mirroring his movements, moving to my right into the middle of the overgrown lawn. As far as I was concerned, the more space the better. I had to be careful. Anything that sap hit was immediately going to cease functioning, so the sooner this tussle was over the better it was going to bode for me.

  He feinted with the sap—once, twice—and then tried to kick the legs out from under me. I jumped backward, avoiding the sweeping leg, but turned an ankle on something lying hidden in the grass and went to one knee.

  That’s all the advantage Teddy was looking for. Had me right where he wanted me. He raised the leather-covered lead above his head, took three quick steps and gave it his all, trying to cave in the top of my skull with a single downward stroke.

  Instead of trying to skip out of range, which was what he was expecting, I stepped closer. Nose-to-nose. Up close and personal. On the way in, I raised my right shoe and brought it down hard on his bare foot.

  The sap nearly amputated my left ear in the nanosecond before it plowed into the top of my shoulder. The whole left side of my body went numb. I stifled a groan, reached up with my right hand and grabbed the wet hair at the back of his neck. He raised the sap again, looking for the killing stroke. Launching myself forward and up, I head-butted him full in the face, with everything I had behind it.

  I heard the cellophane crackle of his nose breaking and then his anguished cry of pain. Before he could recover, I pulled him even closer, holding him in a bear hug as I pistoned my knee into his groin several times.

  The air left his lungs in a single locomotive whoosh. His face was painted with gut-ache and disbelief. He stared at me, as if looking for an explanation.

  I dug my right foot into the ground and put my shoulder behind a straight right. Drove it smack into his already broken and bloodied nose. He yowled like a dog, staggered backward, and plopped down in the sitting position on the wet grass.

  I know what they say about not kicking a guy when he’s down, but I wasn’t taking any chances with this jerk. I reared back and gave it everything I had. Teddy’s teeth snapped together with a sickening crack; his eyes rolled out of sight. He went over backward with his legs still pinned under him and his arms spread wide like he was making snow angels. I stood over him, breathing heavy, fists balled and ready, but Teddy Healy was in the arms of Morpheus.

  I walked over, pulled the leather thong up over his hand, and pocketed the sap. His breathing was wheezy and wet. I turned toward the house. The simple motion nearly tore off the top of my head. I tried to roll my shoulders but nearly fainted from the pain.

  Mercifully, I didn’t have to kick in the door. The front parlor was awash in overstuffed furniture and overflowing ashtrays. A moth-eaten deer head stared down into the room, looking as if he didn’t think much of the place either. A big set of keys and red leather purse sat on the battered and burned coffee table.

  I heard someone moving around in the next room. The sound of a squeaking bed. Up squeak, down squeak. I grabbed the keys and bellied my way through the doorway.

  She was standing on the bed hopping up and down trying to get into a pair of jeans. Apparently she’d been unable to locate her underpants and, due to the extreme circumstances, was now preparing to venture forth au naturel. I moved my gaze up to her tearstained face.

  She had a serious mouse under one ey
e and a full-scale shiner brewing in the other. Finally, she pulled the jeans over her hips and zipped up.

  I underhanded her the key ring. She trapped it against her chest and gawked at me like I was a man from Mars.

  “If I were you,” I said, “I’d take his truck and get yourself out of here while you’ve still got the chance.”

  I didn’t have to say it twice. Without another word, she bounced down off the bed and made for the door, tucking her shirt in as she hurried over the littered floor, slowing only long enough to find her jacket and snatch her purse from the table.

  I followed her outside. I was walking at an angle now, one shoulder lower than the other. I felt like I was limping on both legs. I could feel blood dripping down my collar and made the mistake of reaching up and touching my ear. My hand came away wet. A low groan escaped from my chest.

  Out on the lawn, Teddy Healy was crawling toward the house on his hands and knees. I sighed and headed his way. Teddy was just the type to be a gun nut. Since I didn’t want to have to worry about getting shot in the back of the head on my way out of here, I walked over, drew my foot back, and gave him another shot to his face. He rolled over on his back and spit blood on his bare chest.

  I quickened my pace as much as it would quicken. A sudden gust of wind waved the ancient trees like ghostly dancers. All around me bits of airborne debris swirled in the angry night air, like I was being blended into a giant forest milkshake.

  The gray Dodge Ram came out of the garage like a bottle rocket, engine roaring, tires spewing gravel into the air, as she fed the pickup way too much gas for the conditions. I managed one brief peek at her face as she came by and was left with the image of her teeth, locked in a skull-like grimace as she white-knuckled the steering wheel with both hands.

  I held my breath as she roared down the hill out of control, toward Patty and the Tahoe. She crimped the wheel hard left and locked up the brakes. I tried to wave at Patty, to warn her, but moving my shoulder nearly made me pass out.

  The Tahoe began to slide, its tires chattering sideways over the ruts. I saw Patty cringe in the driver’s seat and waited for the sound of the impact, but, somewhere in the middle of the slide, defying all laws of physics, the big Dodge found purchase and yanked hard left as if it was on trolley tracks, missing Patty and the Tahoe by inches, then fishtailing twice before righting itself and screaming off into the darkness.

  I stood and listened until the sound of the engine melted into the wind. When I pulled my eyes back to the Tahoe, the driver’s door was hanging open and Patty was standing on the road, her eyes the size of saucers, pressing one hand on her chest, as if to keep her heart from escaping. As I walked her way, her face told me everything I needed to know about how I looked.

  “You drive,” I said as I limped around the front of the car and, with great difficulty, pulled myself into the passenger seat.

  She reached over and helped me fasten the seat belt. “Jesus,” she huffed. “You ought to see your ear.”

  Out in the middle of the lawn, Teddy Healy had struggled to his feet. The thick blood basting his chest shone pure black in the moonlight.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Didn’t have to tell her twice either.

  I remember the early parts of what was to follow. How I went loose in the passenger seat and allowed the safety restraints to keep me in place as Patty steered us back to civilization. I remember Patty driving around to the back of the hotel and taking me in through the kitchen, and up the service elevator to my room.

  Next thing I recall, she was helping me sit up in bed, trying to get my shirt off, before finally giving up because I was being no help. I remembered taking some pills of some kind. Somehow or other she got me into the bathroom, although I don’t remember a damn thing about the trip.

  The twenty minutes it took to clean up my ear will forever be etched in my memory, however. Filed under P for pain. I must have passed out at some point because the next thing I knew she’d somehow commandeered a professionally equipped emergency medical kit and was in the process of putting my ear back together.

  “You’re gonna need to have somebody look at this,” she kept saying.

  Nothing made sense. I felt like I’d walked in on the last five minutes of a foreign film and just couldn’t for the life of me make heads or tails of it, so I closed my eyes and dreamed.

  When I opened them again, it was dark in the room. The digital clock read 3:09 and my left ear felt as if it was about to burst into flame. Patty was asleep on the other bed. She’d pulled half of the bedcover over herself and looked like a great big taco. I blamed the drugs for making me silly and went back to sleep.

  The door to my room banged against the wall with a sound-barrier boom. Reflexively, I jolted straight up in bed, and then immediately wished I hadn’t. I groaned in pain and hugged myself. I felt like the Tin Man after a rainstorm.

  Seven forty-one in little red numbers. No Patty.

  “Washington State Patrol,” a rough voice shouted.

  They came through the door in single file, screaming over and over for me to keep my hands in sight, crouching behind ballistic shields and moving fast. They had me handcuffed and facedown on the floor before I’d fully come to my senses.

  “Somebody want to tell me what’s going on here?” I asked as they jerked me to my feet. I asked again and was met by the same stony silence. Apparently, telling me why I was being cuffed and stuffed wasn’t part of their job description.

  As also might be expected, the tactical squad proved remarkably unsympathetic regarding the condition of my ear and pain in my upper extremities as they marched me downstairs to a small conference room in which a single folding table and six chairs had been set up immediately to the left of the door.

  A plastic pitcher of ice water and the obligatory six glasses sat on a red plastic tray in the center of the table. Somebody’d drawn the Kool-Aid face in the condensation on the outside of the pitcher. Very festive indeed.

  One of the black-visored storm troopers stayed behind to make sure I didn’t go dashing off into the sunrise. He stood directly behind me, cracking his knuckles on the MAC-10 hanging from a lanyard around his neck. They left me to cool my heels for the better part of half an hour before the door opened and three men came strolling into the conference room. Two square-headed Washington State Patrol troopers and a guy in civilian clothes.

  Cop Handbook 101: Crowd the suspect, get inside his personal bubble where other people generally don’t tread. The uniformed cops pulled chairs close enough to study the contents of my ear canals. One of them dropped a brown file folder on the table, while the other produced a handheld voice recorder.

  The civilian took his time carrying a metal folding chair from the opposite side of the table and setting it down in front of me. Our knees touched once he finally got around to sitting down. I didn’t much like playing kneesies with this guy, but bitching about it didn’t seem like it was going to get me anywhere I wanted to go, so I resolved to keep my mouth shut and get through this as quickly as possible.

  He was a lean fifty-something with those narrow little cop eyes that look like they’ve spent a lifetime scanning the horizon. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Bradley. By the time he’d removed his hat, hung his coat on the back of the chair, and folded his scarf into eight precise little squares, my resolve to shut up was all but gone.

  “You want to give me a hint here?” I asked.

  He gave me the smarmy half smile you generally reserve for hearing bad news about somebody you don’t like, and leaned in even closer.

  “Looks like you had a tough night,” he commented as he reached behind himself and wiggled his hand into one of his jacket pockets. I watched as he eased something out. A second later, Teddy’s skull-buster bounced once on the table and then came to rest.

  The cop was looking at me like it was Christmas morning and I was that shiny, red fire truck he’d been asking for. “You ever seen this before?” he
asked.

  “Yep,” I said. “I took it off a guy named Teddy Healy last night.”

  His horizon eyes flickered. I’d put myself at Teddy’s house, right where he wanted me.

  “Took it off him?”

  “We had a tussle.”

  The uniformed cops chuckled in two-part harmony.

  “A tussle?”

  “Is there an echo in here?” I asked.

  The uniformed cop on my left smacked me in the back of the head and slid a photograph on the table in front of me.

  Teddy Healy, lying on his back in the grass. Pretty much like I’d seen him last night, squashed nosed and bloody-faced, except in this photo, Teddy was sort of a teal color and had a neat little bullet hole decorating the right side of his forehead.

  “He was standing up when I left him,” I said.

  He smiled that smarmy smile again. That was the second time I’d put myself at the crime scene. As far as he was concerned, things were going swimmingly.

  Normally, I would have played with this guy for a while, but this morning I was in way too much pain to avail myself of the pleasure. “I wasn’t alone,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Somebody was with me.”

  “And who might that be?” he inquired evenly.

  I told him.

  He sat back in the chair and frowned. “The piano player?”

  “That’s her,” I said.

  The cop on my left got to his feet and marched out of the room.

  Detective Sergeant Bradley kept hammering at me for another twenty minutes. How come I’d registered under an alias? Was I aware of the fact that the real Tom Van Dyne was not only a serial murderer, but also a cannibal? Did I know that identity theft was a felony, punishable by a fine of this much and jail term of such and such? Was I aware that my private investigator’s license had lapsed and was no longer valid and so on and so forth, it went on and on like a bad dream. We both knew he was just wasting time, waiting to hear whether my alibi checked out, so I humored him and coughed up a judiciously edited version of what I was doing there and why.