The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs

by Richard Yancey

  “Do you believe in God, Felicia?”

  “This is important?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. That’s the bigger question. Is it really important anymore?”

  “It’s about that bum, isn’t it?”

  “Jack. His name was Jack Minor. They called him Cadillac.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t found out yet.”

  “You haven’t … Ruzak, what have you been up to?”

  “Just asking around, really.”

  “Asking who?”

  “This professor of religion at UT. Guy who runs the mission on Broadway. And Thanksgiving I worked the line for a few hours.”

  “What line?”

  “The food line at the mission.”

  “And you’re doing this because? …”

  I shrugged. Our food arrived. Tommy had the pancakes from the kids’ menu. They were in the shape of a mouse’s head, vaguely Disneyesque. A huge glob of butter perched precariously on top of the heap. Felicia spread it over the pancakes using her butter knife, eyes darting from my face to Tommy’s plate.

  “Let the cops handle it, Ruzak.”

  “I called them,” I said. “Or her, actually. Detective Black. You know what she said? She asked if I knew how many homicides occur in the greater Knoxville area in a single month.”

  “How many?”

  “I don’t know. But the implication was they weren’t going to bust their ass tracking down the killer of some anonymous transient.”

  “So that means you have to?”

  “It’s no big deal,” I said. “And I’m not violating the court order or anything. I mean, nobody’s paying me.”

  “And nobody’s paying you to study for your exam, either. Time, like money, should be invested in something that has some kind of return, Ruzak.”

  My omelet was a little runny. I wiped up the yellow slop with the edge of my toast. I hated it when she lectured me, as if I were Tommy’s big brother.

  “And somebody is paying, Ruzak,” she went on. “You look terrible. And you smell stale.”

  “Stale?”

  “Stale, like you haven’t changed your clothes in a week.”

  “Just my jeans. It doesn’t make sense to wash denim after just one—”

  “When’s the last time you had a haircut?”

  “I always let it grow in the winter,” I said. “To conserve heat. Eighty percent of our body heat is lost—”

  “Don’t go over the edge on me, Ruzak.”

  “No. No, I’m at least fifty feet from the edge. Fifty to forty feet …”

  “Seriously, why don’t you pack up your study guides and hit the beach for a couple of weeks?”

  “I was never a big fan of beaches. When you think about it, jumping in the open water is like running through the woods in your underwear. Plus I’m self-conscious about my body.”

  “Look around this restaurant, Ruzak. How many skinny people do you see?”

  “Not as many as I saw on Thanksgiving.”

  “Oh, Ruzak. I’m gonna call 911: Your heart is bleeding.”

  “Families, Felicia, whole families …”

  “Right; that’s right, Teddy, and if you don’t pass that exam, maybe next Thanksgiving you can join them on the other side of the steam table—you, me, and Tommy.”

  He looked at her at the sound of his name. Syrup hung from his bottom lip and dotted his chin. I pulled the napkin from my lap and ran it over the lower half of his wide face. He grinned at me. “Ruzak!” he shouted, and Felicia shushed him.

  “I burned my thumb,” I said, showing her the reddened pad. Half my print was gone. “On the steam. Made me think a determined killer could erase his prints that way.”

  “He’d be determined but not too bright.”

  “You read about them cutting off the fingers of their victims to hamper identification. They could just burn the prints off.”

  “I think they usually torch the whole body. Why are we talking about this over breakfast?” She glanced at Tommy, who was tracing designs in the puddle of syrup on his plate.

  “So you do believe in God?” I asked again.

  “I was raised to.”

  “But you don’t now?”

  “Frankly, Ruzak, I don’t give it much thought.”

  “Whoever killed Cadillac did. I think he thought about it a lot.” I told her about the tetragrammaton. “I thought it was just drawn on his forehead, Felicia, maybe with a piece of charcoal or even a Sharpie. But Detective Black told me it was carved. Somebody took some kind of sharp implement and cut it into his forehead. It looked dark to me that morning because of the frozen blood.”

  She glanced at Tommy, then leaned over the table and hissed sharply, “Ruzak, I’m not going to warn you again.”

  “Sorry. My point is, whoever did this thought it was very important to leave the secret name of God on his victim’s forehead.”

  “Maybe Cadillac was a human sacrifice.”

  “And the killer puts God’s name on him like a claim ticket?”

  “Or like a parent writes their kid’s name in their jacket.”

  “Right: ‘Here, Yahweh, you left this down here; better pick it up.’”

  “And that’s where Teddy Ruzak, pseudo PI, comes in. Keeper of God’s lost-and-found.”

  “You’re saying I should drop this.”

  “Oh, yeah. Now you understand.”

  I picked up the check, since Felicia and Tommy came on my invitation. Felicia insisted on leaving the tip (as a former waitress, she never thought I tipped enough), and popped Tommy’s hand when he tried to snatch the bills from the table.

  On the sidewalk, she zipped his coat. The wind had picked up, and the clouds now looked like a sheet of corrugated steel above us. We walked south, away from the main square where the city sponsored free concerts in the summers. After we had walked about a block, Felicia leaned toward me, lowering her head slightly, and I could smell peaches.

  “Don’t turn around, but there’s some old woman following us.”

  “Okay.”

  “She was in the restaurant, too.”

  “It’s Eunice.”

  “Eunice who?”

  “Shriver. No relation to the Yankee Shrivers. You remember her, the chronic confessor.”

  “Oh. Right. Why’s she following you, Ruzak?”

  “She’s taken up a different kind of confessing.”

  Felicia gave me a look. I said, “She’s writing a book about me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I can’t figure out why, but she’s been following me for a couple of weeks now. I’ve decided not to confront her. She’s really old and working through some issues. They’re issues I’d rather she work through alone.”

  Tommy ripped free from Felicia’s grip and bulled his way between us, slipping his gloved paw into my right hand, taking Felicia’s left with the other. A stranger might mistake us for a family.

  “I wonder why you feel more kinship with the corpse in the alley than a living person who might need your help,” Felicia said.

  “What’s wrong with Eunice Shriver I don’t think I’m qualified to help.”

  “So what do you thinks qualifies you to help Cadillac Jack?”

  “Sorry, I forgot. Teddy Ruzak, pseudo PI.”

  “You’re sore.”

  “I haven’t been getting much sleep,” I admitted. “I can’t get it out of my head, Felicia. I looked out that window and he’s staring up at me, and from that height you can’t tell … you can’t tell if he’s looking back or looking at nothing, and that’s what’s getting to me—the possibility that that’s exactly what he’s looking at: nothing; nothing at all.”

  TWELVE

  I was taken aback at her car when, after she strapped Tommy into his car seat, Felicia turned and asked me if I wanted to come over for dinner.

  “Now whose heart is bleeding?” I asked her. The wind drew a thick strand of her blond hair across the bridge of her small nose
, and she pulled it away, tucking it behind her right ear. Suddenly I felt like bursting into tears.

  “No way,” she answered. “This is purely selfish. I’ve got to keep you healthy or it’s back to the unemployment line.”

  “Actually, I guess you could say I sort of have this kind of date tonight.”

  “Really?” She reacted as if I had told her I had just crapped my pants, her nose crinkling the same way it did when she laughed. But she wasn’t laughing.

  “I’m having coffee with my pet consultant.”

  “You don’t have a pet.”

  “That’s what I’m consulting about.”

  “Seriously, who are you dating, Ruzak?”

  “Nobody you’d know. She works at the pound.”

  “Oh. The philosopher.”

  She ducked her head a little, fumbling with the door handle of her Corolla. I was no mechanic, but the front tires looked a little bald to me, and I wondered how Bob, being a fireman and supposedly very up on safety issues, could let her drive around like that.

  “She’s prelaw,” I said. “Which makes me suspect the philosophy thing is just a cover.”

  “A cover for what?”

  “Rapacious greed.”

  She laughed. “Doesn’t sound like your type, Ruzak.”

  I held the door for her as she slid in behind the wheel. She pulled down the visor and flipped open the mirror to check something in her reflection. I didn’t know what she was checking. Tommy was yelling my name and Felicia told him to be quiet. I opened his door to say good-bye. He tugged on my wrist and ordered me to get in. Felicia told him to let go of Ruzak. As the car pulled away from the curb, the kid flattened his nose against the window. I raised my hand, then dropped it into my overcoat pocket before turning away.

  I stopped at a vending machine to buy a paper. I doubted there’d be anything about Cadillac, but I had been checking every day, and why break the habit now? I tucked the newspaper under my arm, crossed the street into the little park, and sat on a bench beside Eunice Shriver. She was hiding behind her own copy of the Sentinel.

  “So how’s it going?” I asked.

  She lowered the newspaper and said, “I have reached a crossroads.”

  “Best to take the one less traveled.”

  “That could be my life’s epithet,” she said.

  “Epitaph,” I corrected her. “Big difference.”

  “I have not wished to bother you, Theodore,” she said. “Some battles we are doomed to fight alone.”

  “Right,” I said. “Eunice, I saw you outside the mission. You shouldn’t be hanging around down there. It’s a terrific place to get mugged.”

  “You were there,” she pointed out.

  “But I’ve got about fifty pounds on you and I can affect a menacing air.”

  “Menacing, Theodore? You?”

  “I’ve got facets you’ve never seen, Eunice.”

  “Yes! Facets! That’s exactly what I’m after.”

  “What you’re after,” I echoed. “Eunice, I’ve been thinking about this little project, and the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced you’ve chosen the wrong subject. You’re like a blind person trying to describe the color blue. Why don’t you write your story? I’m sure it’s much more interesting than mine.”

  “But Theodore, I can’t drop it now; I’m nearly halfway done!”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Look at my hands.”

  I looked at her hands. She said, “I’ve been having to wrap them at night in warm towels. The pain from typing all day becomes quite intense by eleven or twelve.”

  “Maybe you should dictate it.”

  “I thought of that, but I loathe the sound of my own voice.”

  “Most people do,” I said. “Because the bones in our head distort the sound.”

  “Oh, my,” she said. “My.” She dug into her canvas tote and retrieved a pad and a pen. “‘The bones in our head,’” she mumbled as she scribbled.

  “So what’s this crossroads you’re talking about?” I asked.

  “Theodore, I’m going to need much more involvement from your end.”

  “Eunice, from the beginning I think I’ve made it pretty clear I don’t want any involvement, from any end.”

  “I need to get inside your head.”

  “That would make it about one person too crowded for me.”

  I had hurt her feelings. She lowered her head and studied her scuffed orthopedic shoes.

  “Vernon tells me I’m foolish, too,” she said softly. Vernon was her oldest child. I’d never met Vernon or any of her children, but I had the impression he was the one she was closest to. Maybe I should talk to Vernon, I decided, if you can make a decision that begins with the word maybe.

  “Well,” I sighed. “I guess if they had tied Michelangelo’s hands behind his back, he would have painted the Sistine Chapel with his right foot. Tell me what you need, Eunice.”

  THIRTEEN

  Amanda and I were sitting on the second floor of a coffee house in the southernmost building of the complex that fronted Kingston Pike, called Hamburg Place. The buildings next to the Pike had that sort of German, sort of Swedish look, with the fancy gables and dark trim, very Alpine-ish, though I wasn’t sure if the Alps were even in Germany. Our table overlooked the parking lot. Railroad tracks lay on the other side of the lot, and on the opposite side of the tracks was the golf course. In warmer months, you parked by the tracks at your own risk.

  She had clipped back her short, black hair using these wide, silver pins, the same kind my mother used to wear. Black parachute pants, a tight black T-shirt that revealed her pale torso and the silver pin in her belly button. She ordered a double espresso. I got something called the Turtle, a coffee concoction made with steamed milk and hot chocolate.

  “So did you talk to your landlord?” she asked.

  “How much time do I have?”

  “Depends on how many we get in.”

  “I was wondering,” I said. “About his name.”

  “I named him Archie.”

  “After the comic?”

  “What comic?”

  Despite being about ten miles from campus, the shop was crowded with students. Textbooks, laptops, highlighters, overflowing ashtrays, chess sets. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases marched along the walls, with stacks of beat-up boxes of board games—Monopoly and Sorry and Risk—jammed between them.

  “Maybe an old boyfriend?”

  “He just looked like an Archie to me.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “I prefer human names for animals. Not like Fido or Stinky.”

  “Stinky?”

  “My first—and only—dog was named Lady.”

  “Let me guess. Bulldog.”

  “Collie.”

  “At least you didn’t name it Lassie.”

  “Lassie was a male.”

  “Not on the show.”

  “My dad named her. She died one summer when we were on vacation. I had a total meltdown. He told me I couldn’t have another dog until I could demonstrate some self-control.”

  “And you couldn’t?”

  “Not to his satisfaction.”

  “You didn’t get along?”

  “I never saw him much. He was a salesman.”

  “The traveling kind?”

  “The mediocre kind. He had to work very hard for the very little we had.”

  “I haven’t spoken to my father in six years.”

  “Divorce?”

  She nodded. She finished her espresso like a Russian sailor knocking back a shot of vodka.

  “Parents,” she said, and shuddered.

  The guy sitting alone at the table behind her was typing on his computer, the white wires from his iPod dangling from his ears. He was smirking, maybe at something he was listening to or reading, an e-mail or MySpace comment, and I said, “Did you hear about that study that found Americans have only about two close friends?”

  “No.”

&nbs
p; “It struck me how disconnected everything is, though we’re more connected now than in any time in human history.”

  “Do you really think about things like that?”

  “Three hundred million of us and growing, yet we’re lonelier than ever.”

  “Maybe you’re projecting.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t want to get a dog simply because I’m lonely.”

  “Isn’t that the best reason to get one?”

  “I think it has more to do with my savior complex.”

  “Oh, God. Not one of those.”

  “I was a kid,” I said. “I thought that damn dog died because I wasn’t there to save her. I thought if only I had been there …” Something caught in my throat. You never really stop grieving. It just goes into hiding, like a filovirus into the dark recesses of the rain forest.

  She reached across the table and placed her hand over mine. Her fingers were ice-cold.

  “I like you, Ruzak,” she said. “You got heart.”

  “A hemophilic one.”

  “There are worse kinds.”

  I walked with her across the parking lot. I watched our breath congeal into mist and mingle.

  “Sit in the car with me a minute,” she said.

  Her car was a late-model Monte Carlo. She cranked the engine to get the heat going, then threw herself over the seat at me, wrapping those pale, thin arms around my neck and smashing her lips into mine. Her tongue was insistent against my front teeth. I could taste the acidity of her espresso. Her cold fingers dug into the hair on the back of my head.

  When she came up for air, she said, “You know what I think your problem is, Ruzak? You’re a little in love with death.”

  She grabbed my right wrist and lifted my arm, pushing my hand under her black T-shirt. I was struck by the contrast between the warmth of her chest and the coldness of her fingers.

  “Don’t tell me you’re gay,” she whispered.

  “I’m not,” I said.

  “Kiss me again, Ruzak. Hard.”

  I kissed her again, my arm twisted awkwardly between us. I worried about my two-day-old beard, if it was irritating her soft skin. It seemed strange to me, her accusing me of being in love with death when she was the one in black; I’d never seen her wear a different color.