by Jim Pascoe
“Sissy . . . I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.” Desperation clogged his voice. “I love you, Sissy.”
Rex’s cruel laughter returned. “Love? That’s why you killed Mathers?” His giggles became more mirthful and more malevolent as he pieced things together. “Out of love for that tramp? Oh my, that’s rich!”
The lonely whistle of the speeding train cut through the night, and the light from the engine poked out from behind its final turn.
“You son of a bitch!” Jasper snarled, desperation turning to wrath, and lunged animallike at Rex.
The sharp report of Rex’s gun broke through the night. Jasper halted in mid-attack and howled with pain as his body fell, thudding to the platform. He lay there, gulping air, holding his shoulder. Blood oozed from between his fingers, trickling out onto the porous concrete.
At the sight of Jasper’s blood, Rex began screaming: “No one double-crosses Rex Mayer! No one!”
He turned his gun toward me.
“That includes, you, Drake.”
A bright flash chased away the darkness as the train approached. Rex had given me a big hand by shooting Jasper. All I had to do now was get Rex under control, which I didn’t think would be too hard. Sure he held a gun on me, but I’d never had a problem taking care of a pansy.
I took a step forward, aiming my Smith & Wesson at him. “All right, Mayer, drop your gun. This little party is over.”
Another blast from the whistle, this time almost deafening, ripped down the rails.
Just then Rex’s eyes grew large, filled with fear. I spun around in time to see Jasper pulling himself to his feet, hand still clamped over his bloody shoulder. I could see the hatred burning off him as he began a slow lumber toward Rex.
“Jasper,” I cautioned, “just hold it. We’ll take care of things . . .”
My words had no effect. Jasper glowed with conviction.
The train thundered down the tracks, almost on top of us. Time for drastic action.
I twisted back around and took aim at the big man, putting his hip dead in my sights. I squeezed the trigger just as he launched his body at Rex.
My single shot went wide, flying off into the darkness.
Rex stood there, paralyzed with fear. His bravado gone, a loud scream—the sort of scream you expect to hear from a woman—leaked out of his throat.
Jasper crunched into him.
A mass of tangled limbs hit the cement and rolled back and forth, teetering on the edge of the platform.
The thunder of the train consumed all other sounds.
I hastily holstered my gun and ran forward, reaching the brawlers just as their momentum carried them over the edge.
Right into the path of the oncoming train.
The train’s whistle spat out a loud warning wail. I reached over and got a fistful of Jasper’s coat. As I tugged, trying to pull his weight out of the shallow trench where the rails ran, he backhanded me across the face.
I didn’t expect the blow and lost my balance, dropping headfirst into the trench. My feet still held onto the platform, but I could feel my heels start to kick up, ready to begin their tumble over my head—not quite how I thought I’d die.
I managed to get a hand in front of me to break my fall, slapping it down on one of the rails. My whole body vibrated with the power of the oncoming train. I foolishly looked down the track.
The train rolled close. Too close.
I heaved, pushing myself backward out of the trench. I fell back on my haunches, and as I struggled to regain my balance, I saw Jasper slamming Rex’s head, over and over again, against a metal rail.
I scrambled to my feet. Jasper’s hands, covered in blood, continued to pound Rex’s skull into a bloody, pulpy mess.
I bolted over to Jasper.
Not much time.
Only one more chance.
Again, I grabbed Jasper’s jacket.
The train whistled; roaring thickly in my ears—or maybe it was the blood hammering through my veins.
Jasper raised both bloody fists over his head and bayed like a wolf at the oncoming train.
I yanked his jacket. He didn’t budge.
The train’s brakes locked; metal on metal squealed. My ears sent spasms of pain down my spine.
I yanked again, as hard as I could. The muscles of my arms and back complained; something ripped, then the air of a speeding train kissed my face just before my body spilled uncontrollably across the platform.
I watched the braking train screech by, imagining the crunching of bone and the pulping of flesh that couldn’t be heard over the cacophony.
The night suddenly seemed bright as high noon. I felt every bump of the ground through the rough fabric of my suit. Thunder, blindingly loud, pounded my eardrums. The taste of salt and iron trickled across my tongue. Diesel and steel filled my nostrils and choked my breath.
I lay there, feeling every muscle in my body quiver until, at long last, the train finally stopped. The screech of grinding metal still echoed in my head.
I pulled myself up to a sitting position as an engineer rushed over to me, grabbing his head.
“He didn’t move!” he whined, throwing a pointed finger back at the train. “Oh my God! Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay!”
I spat blood out of my mouth and looked down at the scrap of Jasper’s jacket I still clutched in my fist. I stared at it, turned it over in my hand, felt its rough texture between my fingers. I let it drop to the ground.
“Please! Please, tell me you’re all right!” the engineer wailed. “We couldn’t stop . . . He just didn’t move . . . I think we hit him . . .” He bent down to get a better look at me. “You gotta be all right! Please! Oh God!”
I brushed the grit from my suit and felt my head, hoping my hat would be there, knowing it wouldn’t.
“Yeah, I’m all right,” I muttered.
“I tried to stop . . . Jesus, you gotta know that! Oh, I can’t believe I killed the guy . . .”
“He was already dead,” I grunted.
“What? Really? You know that?”
“Yeah.”
“What about the guy over here?” The engineer pointed across the platform at the still body of Jasper Hathaway. “Is he . . . ?”
I pushed my aching body over to where Jasper lay. His legs below the knees twisted in impossible directions, so much mangled hamburger. I bent down close to him. Ragged breath slipped in and out between his lips.
“Well?”
“Looks like he’ll live.”
The engineer pulled off his cap and mopped his brow, then collapsed against one of the canopy’s pillars. He cried without making a sound.
I simply laid back against the hard, cold concrete and closed my eyes. In that moment I tried to concentrate on the one thing that made sense.
Silence.
Case Five
Raspberry Jack
I
I gained consciousness in total darkness. Stars danced in front of my eyes to the tune of the throbbing in my head. A bright strobe of pain at the base of my skull assaulted my body with waves of acidic agony. My back ached. I had no idea how long I’d been slumped in this stiff wooden chair. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the gloom. I could barely make out the four corners and single door of a small cell.
I struggled for breath, fighting the moist heat of the claustrophobic space. Sweltering, stagnant air kissed my skin, sending sweat to dampen my clothes and plaster my hair against my skull.
The sweat slid down my face, flowing through my eyebrows and into my eyes, stinging. I blinked furiously, wanting to wipe my brow, but rough ropes bound my hands behind the chair and cut deep into my wrists.
I’d been tied up by real pros; not only had they done a job with my hands, but they’d laced my ankles to the chair’s legs, then knotted the whole mess together.
What the hell was going on?
I forced panic from my mind, attempting to make some kind of sense of the situation.
&
nbsp; What case had I been working on?
Who had I been following?
What blunder did I make to fall into this trap?
Thoughts like that wasted my energy; I pushed them aside. I needed to figure out how to get out of this mess. Then I’d worry about how I got into it.
Experimenting, I found I could sort of hop along the cement floor, moving myself and the chair with a little effort and a lot of pain.
I scraped my way toward the door, inch by inch, chair leg by chair leg.
Nearly there, victory turned to defeat: a crack in the floor caught the chair leg and sent me toppling.
I cursed. I couldn’t move. The cold floor sucked the heat out of my body. I cursed again. I wiggled my hands helplessly, the only movement I could make. Embarrassing.
I struggled in vain to right my perch when I heard the click of the door’s lock echo hollowly through the prison. A bone-chilling creak filled the space.
A sliver of light slipped into the room, revealing a tall, thin figure in the doorway, its features shrouded in shadow.
I’d been in tough spots before, but I’d always managed to think or bust my way out. This time, I couldn’t imagine anything that would save me.
Icy fingers of fear clawed into my guts.
“Who are you?” I asked.
The dark figure cut a deep silence in the doorway. Was it grinning? Was it scowling? I couldn’t tell; it remained blank, empty, faceless.
“What do you want from me?”
Again, the figure uttered no words. Instead, the black shadow slowly raised an arm, pointing a long, thick finger right at my face.
“Come on!” I bellowed with all my anger, hoping it would mask the fear in my voice. “Say something!” Then a cold sweat broke across my forehead.
That wasn’t a finger pointing at me. It was the barrel of a gun.
My eyes followed the length of the barrel, finding a trigger and a bony finger wrapped around it.
I struggled, vainly. The sharp rope cut deeper into my wrists, and sticky blood flowed down my fingers.
Helpless, unable to move, I watched the finger squeeze the trigger.
The bright flash blinded me, and the gun exploded into my face with a shower of fire.
* * *
Startled awake, I bolted up in bed. Torrents of sweat covered my body, and my chest heaved as I gasped for breath. My heart pounded against my breastbone like it wanted to break free of its cage. I’d kicked the sheet off my bed, no doubt trying to stay cool in the swelter of the night and escape the horrors in my mind.
The summer heat that wrapped Testacy City usually dissipated when the sun sank below the horizon, but for the last few weeks the city had been drowned in a dismal heat wave that kept temperatures hovering around one hundred degrees day and night. Miserable weather for both detecting and sleeping.
Seldom did dreams invade my sleep—at least not that I remembered—but lately strange hallucinations had been waking me more and more frequently. My friend Rebecca Hortzbach, Testacy City’s tenacious medical examiner, told me she knew a few people who could interpret my dreams for me. Rebecca collected conspiracies and peculiar instances of occult happenstance, so she knew plenty of people who dabbled in the realms of pseudo-science and magic. I told her I preferred to resist interpretation; I could get through the day easier without it.
The glow-in-the-dark hands of the Big Ben clock ticking away on my nightstand told me that six a.m. had just arrived. Way too early for me to be up, but after that nightmare, I knew I wouldn’t be returning to slumber until evening.
I stumbled to the kitchen only to find that my MJB can barely yielded half a teaspoon of coffee. So instead of my typical morning caffeine jolt, I lit one of the small cigars I like to smoke. I sat at the card table where I ate my meals when I actually took the time to eat at home and enjoyed the flavor and surge of tobacco while watching the morning sun begin to stream into my spartan living room.
Normally I preferred to shower in the afternoon, a habit left over from my days as a fireman. I found it made for a nice break in the day’s monotony. However, with these temperatures not letting up at night, my philosophy gave way to the comfort of a rush of cool morning water.
After I had cleaned up and dressed—choosing a gray suit, white shirt, and light blue tie, topped off with a nice gray Borsalino hat—the time had come for my day to begin. Since hunger gnawed at my belly, I got in my Galaxie 500 and steered toward Lepke’s Diner, for some of Costas Papademos’s pastries—the best in Testacy City.
Hopefully a full breakfast would get me ready to face the tedium of another day spying on an allegedly unfaithful husband—the most miserable task any detective could ever have. I sighed as I pulled into the parking lot.
Entering Lepke’s, I saw a typical gang of transients sitting at the counter. For some reason Costas, as belligerent as he could be, put up with all sorts of bums sitting in his joint. I guess everyone’s got a soft side.
It made me wish my boss would lighten up on me. Ever since my last big case ended rather unpleasantly, Hal had been dropping all the cheating-spouse cases on my desk. I hated them, but Hal said he wanted to keep me off the hard stuff for a while.
One of the weirdoes at the counter belched. He wore a thick sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head, drawstrings yanked tight enough to barely allow him to shovel a plate of eggs into his mouth. He cocked his head my way, and I averted my eyes; I didn’t want a confrontation this early. He went back to his shoveling.
I rubbed my wrinkled forehead. I’d much rather have gotten right back into some serious cases than being awash in adultery. I didn’t become a detective to sit in a car for days at a time and go peeping around in cheap hotels on the lookout for hanky-panky. These cases were driving me nuts. No wonder I was having all sorts of crazy dreams.
A nice booth in the back corner beckoned me, so I made a slow march through the place. I passed another of Lepke’s regular bums sitting by himself at a small booth by the door. He stared wide-eyed into a paperback copy of Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. For the first time that morning, I smiled. I’d seen this beggar before; I recognized his green army-surplus outfit and the shell-shocked stare that came from near-black eyes. I think I’d even given him some change a few times.
In the booth next to him sat Duke Wellington engrossed in the early edition of the Testacy City Herald-Tribune. This hothead loudmouth from Atlanta had made it his mission to wipe the streets of Testacy City clean of crime. Good luck, I thought.
This morning he dressed true to form, decked out in a bright forest-green suit and yellow shirt with a purple-and-blue patterned tie. A matching green Panama-style hat hung on the hook next to the booth.
Duke Wellington didn’t take kindly to private detectives; he saw them as obstacles in his bid to clean up the city. Naturally, because he pit himself needlessly against me, I enjoyed doing my best to aggravate him. His fuse burned short and hot—and, man, was it ever easy to light.
As I walked by his table, his big head snapped around to look my way. When he recognized me, he grumbled, burying his head deeper into the morning news.
I thought about throwing him a jibe about his sense of fashion but decided to pass; my mood was all off.
My tired body fell into the booth, and I couldn’t wait to have a cup of hot coffee. Finally, a waitress named Donna Dust plodded over to me.
“Morning, Donna,” I said.
“Yeah, mornin’,” she grunted in return. “What’ll you have?”
“Three eggs, scrambled, with a slab of steak, well-done, and a bear claw to finish it off.”
“Uh-huh. Anything else?”
“Yeah.” I pointed at the pauper with the paperback. “Get that guy a bear claw too. It’s on me.”
“You wanna buy Spuds a bear claw?”
Something about hearing his name made me more content in my decision. I nodded a silent confirmation.
Donna pulled a set of silverware, wrapped neatly
in a flimsy napkin, out of her apron and tossed it on the table. Everyone had their bad days, but Donna had never been this grumpy before.
“Say, you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah, I guess. It’s just this weather. Brings out the nut cases, and they all come here. And they all take it out on me,” she muttered, before wandering back behind the counter to retrieve a fresh pot of coffee.
Another small smile danced across my face when Donna took the pastry over to Spuds and filled his coffee cup. He looked up at her with questioning eyes, and she pointed at me. He raised his cup in a toast; I returned his salute, and we sipped together. I savored the hot sting as it slid down my throat and nestled in my belly.
Sometimes the smallest things make you feel good.
I watched Donna as she ambled over to Duke Wellington, refilling his cup as well, and reached down for his plate.
“You still workin’ on this?”
“No, it’s all yours. Go ahead and take it away.” The police detective didn’t bother looking up; he just waved her off.
“But . . . you didn’t finish your danish,” Donna said.
Spuds swung around and, with his mouth stuffed full of the last bits of his bear claw, spat out: “If he don’t want that danish, Miss Dust, I’ll be glad to take it.”
“You already got your free meal today,” Donna scolded.
Duke Wellington pulled his bearlike head out of his paper and trained his glowering eyes on Spuds’s slight frame. “You don’t really want that danish,” he rumbled.
“Sure I do!”
“No, you don’t,” Duke Wellington countered. “It’s filled with berries that’re way too tart. You don’t want nothin’ to do with that danish.”
“I don’t?”
Donna scurried out of the way of Duke Wellington’s tirade and disappeared behind the double swinging doors that led to the kitchen. Smart girl.
“Let me just ask you why in good God’s holy heaven you’d want another one of these here danishes.”
“Well . . . ’cause . . . well,” my friend stammered, wiping his balding head with a thin napkin, “these pastries are the best!”