by H. P. Bayne
Sully didn’t like Lowell and he didn’t trust him. He might never be able to say those words out loud to anyone who mattered, but he knew.
Even if no one else ever did.
3
It was a rare day when Betty Schuster was late for work.
She might have been up half the night dealing with a break-in, but that wasn’t enough to set her off her usual course.
When Sully arrived for work early that afternoon, Betty’s car was already there. He found her in her office, trying to reorganize her scattered papers. It felt dark in there now with the window temporarily boarded up, the single sixty-watt lightbulb within a dusty fixture not up to the task.
She spared him a glance before returning to her task.
“Darker than a banker’s heart in here,” she said, squinting at one of numerous tax receipts she passed under the desk lamp’s dim glow. He knew Betty needed reading glasses, but she refused to admit it, just like she refused to admit to any other weakness the rest of the world could see she was subject to. “Thanks for boarding up the window last night. I went to check if you were still here, but I guess you left after I did.”
Sully smiled. “You know Dez. He wasn’t going to let me stay last night.”
“He knows you’re a grown man, right?”
“He knows, but conveniently forgets. There’s no point arguing with him. I tried after the last break-in and almost ended up cuffed in the backseat of his cruiser.”
Betty snorted, which might have been a sign of amusement or an indication of derision. Often with her, the two went hand in hand.
She plodded away at her task a few more minutes while Sully lent what help he could, relying on younger eyes to look for dates on papers, until a glance at her watch had her changing tacks.
“Right,” she said. “Business. Would you mind changing out a couple kegs for me while I get the till ready to go?”
In the bar, Sully busied himself with his task as he listened to Betty counting out the day’s float, something she always did in an audible murmur.
There was plenty Sully appreciated about her: he enjoyed her black humour; the way she was able to settle most rowdies with little more than a glare and, failing that, her booming yell; and the stories she told about the characters she’d known over her many years of running the bar for its variety of owners.
Betty was a fixture at the Fox, like the dark oak panelling, tin ceiling and wide mirror behind the bar that provided patrons with a view of the offerings on display and, as the night wore on, a glimpse of their own drunken reflections. Betty was one of few bar workers Sully knew who had bemoaned the recent bylaw outlawing smoking in businesses, as she’d been commonly recognized for the lit cigarette she used to dangle from the corner of her mouth. She’d taken to tucking a cigarette behind her ear for future, and still-frequent, use. While she would have enjoyed taking her outdoor smoke breaks more often than she did, she’d say the bar wouldn’t run itself in the meantime. And, with her, her job came first.
As much as Sully liked Betty, he appreciated her competence the most—in no small part because it kept Lowell from coming in on a regular basis to check on things. His presence here last night had been down to the break-in and nothing more, his visits usually reserved for special events or catastrophes.
Sully set down a keg of Guinness—nothing but the best for Lowell Braddock—making sure to connect it to the proper stout line. Betty had finished counting and was now working on a stain on the polished bar. She’d been scrubbing at it since he’d started working here and had not budged it an inch as far as Sully could tell.
“We’re still good for Stella,” he said. “But I’ll probably have to change out the keg after a few.”
Betty didn’t respond in words, just nodded what Sully assumed was her acknowledgment. Sometimes it was hard to tell if Betty really heard him at all. The woman tended to live in her head and, once in a while, would get lost there, disappearing into her office for as long as an hour at a time and leaving the running of the bar to her assistant manager. Once she’d been in there a solid two hours before Sully finally got worried enough to check. She had done her best to hide it that night, but the redness in her eyes told him what she would not. Betty was what one of the regulars called a “tough broad.” Crying was not one of those “human frailties” she willingly allowed in herself. She’d laughed it off, said she was allergic to the smell of Edgar Maberly, an elderly guy who came in every day for the cheapest scotch on the shelf and who likely hadn’t taken a proper bath in close to three months. Then she went back to work as if nothing had happened, and Sully made sure to never bring it up.
But there were days like today when Betty got quiet, days Sully knew would eventually include a lengthy visit to the office by his boss under the guise of “paperwork.”
It didn’t mean he couldn’t try.
“Everything okay?”
She responded as he’d expected, glancing up with a “Hmm?” as if just noticing he was there. He repeated his question, and she returned to scrubbing at that spot. “Goddamn stain. Stupid, goddamn stain.”
Sully left her to it, half-thinking she’d put it there herself just to have a distraction when she was in one of her moods. Sully had enough distraction of his own for now, having found two other beers on tap were spitting out the last of their kegs’ contents. He pulled out the first of the empty kegs and carried it to the back.
The alley door was propped open as usual, allowing fresh air in and, on those occasions when she had the chance, Betty out.
Given last night’s shenanigans, Sully made an executive decision, setting the empty keg next to the others by the wall and approaching the door with the intention of pulling it shut.
He saw the barrel of the shotgun first. Sully barely had time to step back before a body followed, the form of a large man dressed in oversized dark jeans, a baggy overcoat, gloves and a Halloween mask with mesh eye sockets that revealed nothing. The ghoul’s mouth was open in a wide, startled “O” shape.
Despite the mask’s expression, the surprise was all on Sully, who tried to keep his eyes on the mask’s eyeholes rather than the gun’s barrel, levelled at his chest with just feet separating them.
“We haven’t opened yet,” Sully said, keeping his voice loud enough for Betty to hear in the bar. She was smart and steady, and he figured she’d get on the phone to 9-1-1. “We don’t have any money here but the float. I’ll get it for you, but I’m going to need you to put the gun down first.”
There was no response, which didn’t come as a shock. Sully raised his hands in a show of submission and was thinking through options when he heard Betty’s shouted command.
“Drop the gun and get out! Now!”
The barrel shifted at the first word and Sully, aware the aim had moved to his colleague, rushed forward, grabbing hold of the shotgun and trying to force it upward where any blast would be felt by nothing more than the ceiling. But the man proved stronger than Sully had anticipated, and they were still fighting for the weapon when a deafening boom filled the room, loud enough to drown out any other sound. Wrenching away from Sully, the man spun and ran out the back door, any thoughts he might have had of cash having passing as quickly as the muzzle flash from the gun he’d dropped on the floor.
Sully followed close behind, sticking out his head in time to see the man headed north, in the direction of the river. The foolhardy part of his brain was thinking about following when he suddenly—inexplicably—saw Betty in front of him.
The way she was standing held Sully back. Her face was ashen except for the blood she’d coughed up onto her nose, cheeks and chin, eyes holding a combination of shock and horror as they drifted from Sully down to her chest. He looked too, but only for a second, long enough to see the bloody, torn front of her blue and white button-down.
And he knew. Knew without having to check any further.
He found her body where he knew it would be, lying on the barroom floor, shirt torn
by the shotgun blast, blood spattering her front and pooled beneath her. Her right arm was splayed out to the side and a nickel-plated snub-nosed revolver lay about a foot from her limp hand.
Sully ignored the gun as he knelt next to her and called 9-1-1.
“There’s been a shooting,” he said. “The Black Fox on Second Avenue.”
The operator talked him through the usual procedures for checking on a victim and starting CPR. He tried, but there was no point. He didn’t need a paramedic or a doctor to tell him she was already dead. She was still standing there, after all, next to her body, the ghostly legs solidly visible to him even as he pumped at the broken chest over her heart. The sound of bone grating on bone turned his stomach but he continued anyway, if for no other reason than so she could see he was trying his best to save her. As he pushed, he noticed the pool of blood below her was widening, covering the floor and touching his knees. The thought came out of nowhere, uttered inside his brain in his brother’s voice rather than his own: Betty, the bane of stains, is leaving a doozy of one herself.
Given the shooting had taken place at the back door, the operator asked him to unlock the front once police arrived. Four police officers trooped in, one of whom took over CPR as two others headed into the back for a look around. The fourth was asking Sully questions, presumably about what had happened and for the shooter’s description, but Sully had already given all that to the operator. With the physical situation in hand, Sully’s attention now went fully to the woman standing next to her body, mouth open and eyes no less panicked as she regarded her mirror image on the floor. He was seeing her as if looking through a tunnel, the officer’s repeated use of his name muffled as if spoken through a wall.
Then came a sense of the familiar, and Sully released a fractured exhale as he heard his name being spoken again, this time by a voice he knew as well as his own. He finally pulled his eyes from Betty’s ghost, finding Dez in front of him, dressed in his police uniform.
Dez grasped Sully’s face gently, tilting it to look up to his own.
“Look at me. Look at me, Sull. Are you okay?”
The other officer spoke for him. “He’s in shock, but he wouldn’t let me move him. I didn’t want to force him.”
Dez wouldn’t have any similar hang-ups. “Let’s get you sitting down somewhere. Come on.”
Dez got one long, solid arm around Sully’s shoulders and, in a combination of pulling and guiding, moved him from the bar area, trying to place himself as a visual barrier to the body. As if Sully hadn’t already gotten an eyeful.
Sully’s eyes drifted to his hands, finding them covered in blood. “Can I wash up?” His words sounded garbled, even to his own ears, but Dez understood without the need for further explanation.
“Sorry, kiddo,” he said, and his tone suggested he meant it. “Ident’s going to want to grab some swabs, test for gunpowder residue and all that. Just hang tight, okay? They won’t be long.”
They were headed toward the back of the pub where they usually sat during Sully’s breaks or when there was a lull in business. Sully didn’t make it that far before he lost the battle, slamming into the men’s room and vomiting into the closest sink.
A large hand was on his back by the time he finished and spat, staying there while he rinsed the mess down the drain. Sully didn’t move, just went on gripping the rim of the sink as he stared down, focused on nothing, pale brown hair flopping around his face.
“Sull?”
“It’s my fault.”
“What’s your fault?”
“She’d still be alive if I hadn’t been so stupid.”
“Explain that to me.” Dez’s tone had moved from gentle to slightly dangerous, and Sully could sense his brother was waiting for the explanation only so he could beat Sully over the head with it.
Knowing he was fighting a losing battle, Sully forged on anyway. He knew the truth, even if Dez would never acknowledge it. “The guy shifted his aim from me to Betty. I was so close to him, I thought I could get the gun away or at least get it to discharge in another direction. But he was stronger than I expected, and he fired. Or maybe I fired. I don’t know. It happened so fast, and I know my hands were around his. I could have fired the shot that hit her. I could have killed her.”
The hand on his back moved to his arm, gripped and pulled until Dez had turned Sully to face him. Dez held him there, in both gaze and grasp. “Listen to me, Sully. You did nothing wrong, all right? Nothing. You were trying to save her and yourself. There's no way to know right now exactly what went down in those few seconds, but I’ll tell you what I do know. If that guy hadn’t burst in here with a loaded gun, none of this would have happened. You did what you could with a shitty situation. And, so help me, if you fight me on that point, I will bounce your skinny ass off every wall in this room, you hear me?”
Sully nodded slowly. There was no sense arguing when Dez took that tone, no way his brother would allow it. Instead, he blew out another shaky breath and heard Dez respond with one of his own.
“There wasn’t a lot of info on the call,” Dez said. “When I heard it, I thought it was you. I thought I was going to get in here and find you ….”
He didn’t finish the statement. And he didn’t need to. Sully hadn’t had a whole lot of people in his life who really gave a damn about him, but he sure as hell had this guy. Dez wasn’t his brother by blood, but they were brothers all the same, and he knew he could count on Dez to have his back and to freak out about it on those rare occasions when he couldn’t.
Dez’s grip tightened, and he pulled Sully forward into a hug, his voice cracking around his words. “Damn glad you’re all right, bro. I’ll get you through this, okay?”
There was no sense trying to provide a verbal answer, Sully’s face snugged between Dez’s shoulder and one tree trunk of an arm, so he nodded instead.
As usual, where Dez was concerned, there was no need for words anyway.
4
By the time Dez and Sully left the bathroom, a paramedic crew had arrived to confirm what everyone already knew.
Betty Schuster was dead.
Dez explained that, as a witness to a homicide, Sully would have to go to the police station to provide a statement to one of the Major Crimes investigators. The brothers were barely back in the main bar when one of the other officers on scene, a particularly likeable guy named Constable Jeff Whitebear, said he’d been given orders to drive Sully over.
Dez dropped Sully into a chair and pulled Jeff to the side for a quiet conversation.
“I can take him over myself,” Dez said. “I’d like to keep an eye on him. He’s really shaken up.”
Jeff smiled apologetically. “I get what you’re saying, man, and I wish I could help you out. But you know the rules. Major Crimes isn’t going to want him talking to anyone except them until they’ve got his statement. It’s probably bad enough you were alone in the bathroom with him a minute ago.”
“We weren’t exactly having a long conversation,” Dez said. “He was too busy puking.”
“You know what I’m saying.”
Dez knew. And he knew Jeff was right. He wouldn’t be doing Sully any favours by giving the homicide investigators something else to question. Despite what he’d told Sully, he knew every detail was dissected in murder inquiries, and that would include Sully’s handling of the situation. All Dez could do was be there to pick up the pieces.
With Jeff beside him, Dez returned to his brother. “Jeff’s going to drive you to the police station, okay? They’re going to want to take some pictures and swabs first. And they’re probably going to seize your clothes as evidence, so I’ll get a few things for you from upstairs and bring them over. After that, you’ll have to give a statement, so just tell them exactly what happened and everything you know. All right?”
Sully hadn’t looked at him, prompting Dez to try again. “You hear me, Sull?”
“Yeah. I hear you.”
Dez stood and helped Sully up bef
ore passing him reluctantly to Jeff, who met Dez’s eye with an encouraging smile before guiding Sully out the front door of the bar.
Dez suspected he got to headquarters roughly five minutes after Sully and Jeff, but they were nowhere to be found by then. Dez expected an Ident officer was processing his brother already, checking for evidence on his body or clothing.
There was nothing Dez could do at this point, and he knew hovering wasn’t going to help his brother. Sully was twenty-two and, while he’d always be three years younger than Dez, he was an adult. Not that Sully didn’t come to him with problems anymore, but he’d been able to stand on his own two feet for a while now. And Dez knew his hanging around playing guard dog changed the dynamics of their adult relationship, held the possibility Sully would revert back to the shy, uncertain, scared kid he’d once been.
And so, after dropping off the bag containing Sully’s change of clothes with one of the members on hand, Dez gave the interview area a wide berth.
Apparently his father, Deputy Chief Flynn Braddock, didn’t subscribe to the same view. Dez was headed to see him when he ran into him on the stairs.
“I was just told they brought Sully in for questioning on his boss’s murder,” Flynn said. “Where is he?”
“I think Ident’s processing him.”
“How’s he doing?”
“In shock. A bit of a space cadet right now, honestly.”
“Was he hurt?”
“Not physically, no, but he’s pretty messed up. He’ll be okay, though. It’s Sully. He’s always been tougher than he looks.”
“You were with him?”
“Afterwards, yeah. I got there a few minutes after the call came in.”
“And you think he’s got his head screwed on straight? For the interview, I mean.”
“As straight as it’s going to be in the circumstances. Don’t worry, Dad. He’s on the quiet side, but he’s not going to let himself get railroaded or anything.”