by Mike Allen
He marveled at how evenly he’d distributed the cards, how by wondrous accident they formed something akin to a dotted line demarcating the curb, staking out this entire godforsaken block as his. Fine, then—no one else wanted to admit what goes on here. He’d lay claim and shout its truth so it couldn’t be ignored.
A cops reporter knows a city in a way few others do. Whenever Kyle drove through the slums, he marked his progress not by landmarks but by crime scenes. Here’s where the city worker, bent over with his torso half inside the freestanding electric box, got crushed by a drunk driver in the middle of the day. Here’s the duplex where a gang tortured and strangled two middle-aged sisters for their payout in a disability settlement. Here’s the vacant lot where once stood a three-story home, that burned to the ground with the wheelchair-bound family matriarch trapped inside.
And now Kyle stood before the spot where the city prosecutor insisted that sixteen-year-old Jeremy Sellars had bled to death.
Kyle called to the shadows behind the broken glass. “I’m back! Where are you?”
He’d imagined this moment over and over, what he might do when an answer came, and his scrambled brain replayed options, unable to decide between them. In one scenario, he ran. In others he dashed to the truck for the pipe wrench hanging in the gun rack, or the three full cans of gasoline waiting on the passenger side floorboards. In another he stayed put and tried to talk the boy into coming out into the light.
No sound. No shapes emerged. Nothing moved.
Spikes of pain pricked behind his eyes. A bad thing he’d done to himself, mixing booze and blow to screw up the courage to come here. Booze was an ex-lover he’d begun to court again as his marriage went south, but the cocaine—he’d stayed clean so long, but after everything that happened this day…it had been so easy for him to find a street corner dealer, as if the city itself wanted him to backslide.
For a blink, a hallucination assailed him: as if he spied on himself from one of those high windows, a shaggy string bean with wild eyes, staring up from a bruised face at the derelict floors. Another blink, the vision vanished.
Sober thoughts trickled in. Suppose one of the cops he knew pulled up right now? Made him walk heel-to-toe, smelled the whiskey sours on his breath, noticed his bloodshot eyes, the way he couldn’t stop fidgeting. Worse, what if it was Detective Roache? He couldn’t trust Roache anymore. Kyle’s face still bore the marks of their encounter at the diner.
And once Penny got wind of the police report…well, what the hell else could she do to him? She already had full custody of Aaron.
When Kyle was a kid, a brash bespectacled geek daring enough to push the big swing to the highest it would reach and let go, whether the ground below was turf or asphalt, he had thought a newspaper reporter would be a damn cool thing to be. Dammit, it was a cool thing to be. Whatever Kyle’s other problems were, he always had his job. What he did mattered. It bewildered him that doing his job the way it had to be done could set him at odds with so many people who should have been on his side.
He took a couple more steps, winced at the vise clamping his temples. “Jeremy?”
The soft thump came from his left, around the corner of the cross street. Had there been any other sound, a distant car engine or even a slight wind, he would have missed it.
He started for the corner, following the trail of his own discarded identity. In the morning, he could imagine some angry busybody, a scowling city elder with face elongated to Puritan dimensions, scooping one of the stray cards from the walk and glaring at the name and number there.
Let the bastard try to call—he’d find no Kyle D. Friedrich answering at that extension, not anymore.
The buildings loomed closer along the side street, weaving shadows into one darkness. About fifty yards down that street lurked the alley that led to that graffiti-defiled inner courtyard, known in the history books as Century Plaza, known to the cops who had to clean up after every crime that splattered there as the Boneyard. They said it with a laugh: “Got another one in the Boneyard.” A stadium audience of birds usually congregated there, pigeons and crows, their noise deafening. Yet silent now.
Past a broken telephone pole, Kyle spotted it, what Roache would call “the bait.” A black buckle-strap high-top, Jeremy Sellars’ missing left shoe, waiting beside a storm drain. Kyle’s brain screened an unpleasant short film of an arm reaching out from the black pit of the drain, setting down the shoe.
They never found Jeremy’s body. Only the mate to that shoe, so drenched in blood it dripped when the evidence technician scooped it up.
He took another step and his headache surged, to the point he actually clutched his temples and doubled over, collapsed onto the asphalt and curled in on himself.
Hallucinations flickered: his own memories squeezed to the surface, as if fingers made of unbearable pressure sifted through them. He’d been through bad trips before, but never entwined with this level of agony, like worms of fire squirming through his skull. A freak smell of oil filled his sinuses. A voice in his brain: I can’t talk to you anymore. I shouldn’t even be here.
* * *
He and Roache sat in their customary booth in the back corner of R.W. Brews. Gary Roache had become his best source for goings-on at the police department, gave him the edge that meant he wasn’t stuck writing stories from the official press releases. A bunch of guys from a construction crew played pool near the front door while Roache’s pint of Bud went untouched.
[Shuddering in the road, Kyle rode shotgun within the memory, a time-travelling ghost.] “Demetrius Penn. Face down in the door of the old Holmes Clothiers building, bullet in the back of his head.” Kyle used his fingers to mark off each death on his list. “Dorothy Hodges. Breaks a utility pole in half with her Toyota. Everybody thinks she’s drunk, then the M.E. finds the stab wound in her ribs.” Another finger. “Her drug addict boyfriend goes to the Boneyard not five hours later and slits his own wrists with the same knife. All in that same block.That same block. In just two days.”
Roache ran a hand through nonexistent hair. “You don’t have to go into all these details. I know ’em better than you ever will.”
“But that’s just a scratch. Only a year since I moved here, Gary, and I could swear nine out of ten crimes I cover happen in that one block in Old Southeast. The Boneyard block.”
Roache chuckled, shook his head. “Ain’t so.”
“Yes it is. You know, it’s weird how you boys are never there when it happens, only after. If you guys kept a patrol there every hour of the day, you’d cut the murder rate down to one or two a year.”
“I’m not over patrol. I don’t make those calls.”
“I asked the Chief.”
The detective’s eyebrows rose. “And?”
“He just laughed at me. Wouldn’t give me an answer.”
Roache picked up his beer, took a long sip. “How’s Penny doing?”
Kyle blinked. What did Penny have to do with it? “I think she’s starting to like it here. Aaron’s doing well now that we have him paired with that remedial teacher. That’s helping out her mood. Why?”
[Outside this so-real flashback, Kyle whimpered, the fire worm writhing in his brain as the setting changed.] Roache’s next words came from a conversation that took place two years later. He now sat facing the front door, watching it warily, hunched forward so his meaty shoulders strained against his polo shirt. “Tell me you didn’t just say that.”
“I did. Audie Long is innocent.”
Roache’s face reddened. “Like hell. He had the blood of that Sellars kid all over him. Damn it, you know we found him curled up in the Boneyard, not ten seconds away at a good run from where they found the shoe. What’s wrong with you?”
“He’s a diagnosed schizophrenic, Gary. Doesn’t mean he’s homicidal.”
“There’s plenty of violence in his history—”
“It does mean he can’t stick to one notion of reality. And that makes him easy to set up.”
R
oache glared at Kyle from under lowered brows, his jaw flexing at the corners. “I think you and I are done talking.”
Kyle swallowed. He had nothing to lose. “I know Jeremy Sellars isn’t dead.”
Gary sat upright. “What?”
“He’s not dead. I’ve seen him.”
He expected his bull-necked sometimes-ally to call him a liar. Or punch him. Instead, Roache fixed his gaze on his half-eaten burger. “Where?”
“I went back to the Boneyard yesterday.”
Roache paled and clenched his fists. “You shouldn’t be going there by yourself.”
“I had no choice. There’s too many things that don’t make sense. And I know Audie Long’s no killer.” Roache tried to interrupt. Kyle didn’t let him. “When I stood outside the alley to the Boneyard, I saw somebody move, up on the third floor of that building that used to be a PR office.”
“Bond’s?”
“Yeah. And Jeremy Sellars was staring down at me from the window.”
“How much did you have to drink before you drove down there?”
“Nothing,” Kyle lied.
“Did you get into anything else before you went?”
At that moment Kyle regretted more than ever that he had opened up to Roache about the problems that cost him his previous newspaper job. “It was him, Gary. I yelled his name. He put his hands around the bars in the window frame. Then he drew back and wouldn’t come out again.”
“So where is he now? You go in and get him?”
Kyle had stared for many minutes at the black maw of that building’s front entrance, but he hadn’t dared to set foot inside.
“I thought not,” Roache said.
Kyle felt his temper slip. “You sound just like Tom.”
“That your editor there at the Herald?”
“Yeah. I told him about this, and he just stands there by my desk like a scarecrow, and he acts all grandfatherly and puts a hand on my shoulder and tells, me, ‘Son, I know things are bad at home, but you have to get a grip. You start talking all crazy, it’ll get around. Our city’s too small for secrets.’ And I tell him they’re holding a innocent man in jail, charged with a crime that never happened. And then he says I need some time off…and damn, he sounded just like Penny. I try talking to her about this, and she keeps telling me I shouldn’t rock the boat. She’s never talked to me like that before.”
“Your editor’s a wise man. And your wife is right.”
[Pain jabbed behind his temples. Fingers made from agony, searching.] They weren’t in the bar anymore, but in its back lot, behind the dumpster, out of sight of the main road. “What are you doing?” Kyle said, tongue clumsy with liquor. “You gonna break my kneecaps?”
Roache grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him once, hard, then set him on his feet. “You need to snap out of it. The whole damn department’s talking about you. They think the divorce broke your mind. You keep it up, they’ll search your house.”
“They won’t find anything.”
“That so? Then why are you so jittery?”
Kyle wasn’t about to give his law enforcement friend the complete answer to that question. “What I need to know is, what are you on? What kind of psycho trip is this whole goddamn city on?” He spoke rapid-fire, words tumbling over one another. “This morning, there’s Tom at my desk. And he gives me a speech. ‘Kyle, I’m getting calls. City Hall’s calling me. The Chief’s office is calling me. The judge’s office is calling me. One of our biggest advertisers called me at home. At home, Kyle. They all said you’re asking too many questions about the Boneyard. Talking crazy, like that Sellars kid is still alive. Yelling in their faces that Long is innocent. They’re all telling me you’re wrong.’
“And I tell Tom it’s our job to print the truth. And then he says, ‘Penny’s called me too. I hear it’s not just whiskey anymore. That prosecutor over there, he likes you, likes the way you write about the job he’s doing. He doesn’t know how long he can keep looking the other way.’ And I said, ‘You want me to take part in a cover-up. You all do.’ And he said, ‘I want you to clean out your desk.’ Is that a good enough reason for me to be agitated, Gary?”
Still and silent, Roache could have been a megalith.
“So what are you gonna do to me?”
“Jeremy Sellars is dead, Kyle. Let it go.”
“Fuck you.” And Kyle took a swing. He missed. Roache swung back, and didn’t.
[He wanted to break his skull open on the asphalt, just to make the pain stop. He heard gasps, his own.]
Roache held down a hand, and with misgivings Kyle took it. His lips were shredded from the inside. His right eye socket throbbed. Blood trickled down his face. More of his blood stained Gary’s shirt. They stood now behind the warehouse next to the bar, where their fight had taken them.
“Goddamn you,” Roache said. “I never wanted it to come to this. This is my fault.”
“Then fix it,” Kyle said. “Help me go public.”
Roache’s huge hands covered his face, then balled into fists. “You still don’t get it. Kyle, Jeremy Sellars is dead. That face you keep seeing. That’s not him.” He went on as if muttering to himself. “It’s because you keep asking questions. It’s bait. Laid out for you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re messing with the deal. This city, it’s just like any other city, there’s arrangements made. The men at the top stay at the top because they have a pact with the ones who really run the show. They leave ’em alone, let ’em have what they want, who they want, and in return their own stay safe. You don’t fuck with that. Ever.”
“Even if someone’s going to die?”
“Especially if someone’s supposed to die.”
Outrage flooded Kyle’s jacked-up system. “You know, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat outside that courtroom waiting for a verdict, and some rich asshole who got subpoenaed because he happened to witness something leans over and says, ‘You know, they ought just let these drug dealers kill each other off.’ Except he doesn’t mean drug dealers. Not really. He means the poor people. The people who don’t share his skin color. And you’re just like them, aren’t you? And I thought you were different.”
Roache turned and walked away. “I can’t talk to you anymore. I shouldn’t even be here.”
* * *
The pain physically withdrew from behind his eyes, between his temples. He’d never felt anything like that in his life before, ever. Like something outside his mind had forced its way in, started rifling through. Had that dealer sold him insecticide instead of powder? He knew snow lights from experience; this was nothing like that.
Maybe when Roache decked him that meaty fist had left more than just a couple bruises.
Kyle regained his feet somehow, lurched toward the shoe. The so-called bait.
It was in pristine condition, could’ve been swiped off the shelf rather than a body. Good, thick soles that resisted when he squeezed. Size 11. He’d heard that square-jawed jarhead of a prosecutor cite that number a triple-dozen times during the summary of evidence at Audie Long’s plea hearing. The same size that Kyle’s own son Aaron wore. Big feet for such a short, stocky kid.
When he stood up he faced the mouth of the alley that led to the Boneyard, with its insane graffiti, its madhouse of birdsong, a place where the homeless froze to death in the winter and drug kingpins carried out grim executions where no cops would ever stop them. Kyle’s internal crime reporter diary ran through name after name after name.
The way the buildings blocked out the moon, he might as well have stared into a cave. Yet as his eyes adjusted, he noticed a column of deeper darkness at the alley’s far end. A person, standing unsteady, swaying.
“Jeremy!” Kyle shouted. “I know that’s you.”
Kyle’s ears rang, and his vision doubled. The figure split in two as it strode forward. He heard laughter. It sounded like the cops, the way they joked as they cleaned up after yet another small slaugh
ter, chortling despite the reek, whether blood or body fluids or rotted meat. Shotgun blew her jaw clean off. That’s one hell of a blowjob!
Kyle groaned, temples throbbing again, as more slides shoved unnaturally into his mind, detailing scenes that hadn’t happened yet. He saw himself swipe the cards in the gutter aside with his foot, make a gap in his own name, walk through it. He saw himself standing in the alley, placing the shoe in the figure’s proffered hand.
He wanted to run back to the truck, to grab a weapon, any weapon, but he was in fact walking forward. He tried directing his feet to back up, to turn around, but forming those thoughts hurt like hell and instead he took another step closer. And another.
The figure paused, waiting. Kyle couldn’t make out a face.