Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel)

by J. R. Rain

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he asked.

  Richard Peterson turned to his wife, who flinched unconsciously. Or perhaps consciously. Maybe he preferred the women in his life to flinch in his presence. He next turned to his daughter. She was looking down, pressed against the glass of the sliding door.

  I said I was here to investigate the murder of his daughter.

  “Who hired you?”

  I told him.

  “Get out,” he said. “Get the fuck out.”

  I didn’t move at first. He then turned and looked at the little girl.

  “Go to your room,” he said. “Now.”

  Alyssa jumped and ran away, leaving her Barbie’s where they lay, with Ken on top of Barbie. I saw that there was a small puddle of urine where she had been sitting. A door in the back of the house slammed shut.

  I turned and looked at Mrs. Peterson. Only then did I notice the purplish welts inside her legs.

  “I’m sorry for intruding,” I said calmly.

  “Don’t you people have any decency?” He said to me, then turned on his wife. “And you, Cat. You let him in. How could you? He’s representing the boy who murdered our Amanda. He’s trying to set him free.”

  “But Richard—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Cat. You.” He turned to me. “Get the fuck out or I’ll call the police.”

  I looked at Cat and she nodded to me. That’s when I saw a picture of another girl on the mantle above the fireplace. This one older. She had her arm around her mother and was wearing a blue and white UCI sweatshirt. A third daughter.

  I left the way I had come, and he slammed the door shut behind me. I paused a few minutes on the porch but could hear nothing. I had the feeling he was standing behind me, waiting for me to leave.

  There was nothing to do but leave.

  So I did.

  21.

  “We should probably call the police,” said Cindy, after I told her about my encounter with Richard Peterson. Whom I now referred to as Dick.

  “A few bruises and a terrified child does not a case make,” I said. “Someone would need to come forward.”

  She sighed. “And most victims of domestic violence are hesitant to report the abuse, for fear of repercussions.”

  It was just past 10 p.m. Cindy’s evening class had just ended. We were sitting at a small cafe in the UCI student union. I was eating a chocolate chocolate muffin—yes, chocolate chips in a chocolate muffin—the way it should be eaten: big bites that encompassed the stump and the top. Cindy was sipping hot cider. The cafe was surrounded by a lot of glass and metal. Couches and chairs lined the walls and filled the many adjoining rooms, filled with students studying and working and not making out or sleeping, as I would have done in my day.

  “We are surrounded by over-achievers,” I said.

  “UCI is a tough school to get into,” she said. “Same with UCLA. Were you not once an over-achiever?”

  “On the football field, yes. In the classroom, my mind wandered.”

  “Where did it wander?”

  “To the next game. The next girl. I was a big man on campus.”

  She looked at me over her cider. “You still are,” she said.

  “Are you flirting with me?” I asked.

  “If there wasn’t a chocolate chip on your chin, the answer would be yes.”

  She reached over and scooped it off and ate it.

  “Does that count against your diet?” I asked.

  “I’ll jog an extra lap tomorrow morning.”

  She sat her cider down carefully in front of her. She adjusted the mug so that the handle was facing at a forty-five degree angle. Precision and exactness was her life. And I loved her for it.

  I reached over and moved the handle a little to the left.

  “Hey,” she said, slapping my hand. She adjusted it back. “So what are you going to do about the brute?”

  “About Dick? First, I need to speak with the eldest daughter, and confirm my suspicions.”

  “Your suspicions are generally pretty accurate.”

  “In this case, I want confirmation. I need to speak to the eldest daughter.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have a chance to ask.”

  “And how am I supposed to find her here at UCI if you don’t know her name?”

  “I know her last name is Peterson. Or at least I assume it to be. The other two daughters’ names both started with an A. So I would begin there. Perhaps an Alicia Peterson, or an Antoinette Peterson.”

  “You realize this isn’t part of your job description, at least not on this case, resolving domestic violence.”

  “I know.”

  “And what if she confirms your suspicions of abuse?”

  “Then Dick Peterson and I are going to have a talk.”

  22.

  “So why is God dressed like a bum?” I asked. “Isn’t that a little cliché?”

  “I invented cliché,” said Jack.

  I rolled my eyes. He continued.

  “But to answer your question: This is how you perceive me.”

  “As a bum?”

  “Not exactly. You figure that if God came to earth, he would do so in a nondescript way.”

  “So as not to attract attention.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So you appeared in just such a way.”

  “Yes.”

  “Or maybe you are just a bum, after all.”

  “Maybe. Either way, you are getting something out of this, am I right?”

  I looked at the man. We were sitting opposite each other at the back of the restaurant. At the moment, we were the only two people in McDonald’s.

  “Yeah, I’m getting something out of it, although I’m not sure what, and I still don’t know why you’ve come into my life.”

  “You asked me into your life.”

  “When?”

  “The day I first arrived.”

  I was shaking my head, but then I remembered that day: The twentieth anniversary of my mother’s murder. I had spent a good deal of that day cursing God.

  “You asked me to come down and face you,” said Jack. “I believe you wanted to fight me.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I was very angry.”

  “And so I came down not to fight you, but to love you, Jim Knighthorse.”

  “You do this for everybody?”

  “Not so dramatically, but often, yes.”

  “Why me?” I asked.

  “Why not?”

  I was drinking a Coke. Big, bubbly Coke that was the perfect combination of carbonation, ice and cola. Damn. I love Coke.

  “I miss my mother,” I said.

  “I know, but she has been with you every day of your life.”

  I suspected that, but didn’t say anything about it now.

  “You know who killed her?” I asked.

  The man in front of me—the bum in front of me—nodded once.

  “Her case is unsolved,” I said.

  He watched me carefully.

  “And I’m going to solve it,” I said. “Someday.”

  “Yes,” he said, “you will.”

  “And when I do, I’m going to kill whoever killed her.”

  Jack said nothing, although he did look away.

  23.

  I was sitting with my hands behind my head and feet up on one corner of my desk. This is a classic detective pose, and I struck it as often as I could. Mostly because it was a good way to take a nap without appearing to do so. I did my best to keep my shoes off the desktop’s gold tooled leather.

  There was a knock on my office door. Thanks to Fuck Nut, I kept the door locked these days. I took out my Browning, held it at my hip and opened the door.

  The man I found standing before me was perhaps the last person I expected to see. Hell, I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in two years. It was my father. His name was Cooper Knighthorse.

  * * *

  He studied me for a few seconds, then looke
d coolly at the gun in my hand. “You could scare off clients with that thing.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re not a client, and someone’s sicced a hitman on my ass.”

  He stood easily six inches shorter than me, which put him around five ten. His shoulders were wider than mine, and he had freakishly large hands, hands which had pummeled my backside more than once. But it was his eyes that drew one’s attention. Ice cold and blue. Calculating and fearless. Devoid of anything living. Eyes of a corpse.

  He smiled slowly, the lips curling up languidly. When most people smile their eyes crinkle, giving them crow’s feet over time. My father would never have to worry about crow’s feet. His eyes didn’t crinkle. Hell, they didn’t know how to crinkle. When he smiled, as he did now, it was only with the corners of his mouth. Needless to say, the smile radiated little warmth.

  “Well,” he said. “Are you going to invite me in?”

  I stepped aside and he moved past me smoothly, carrying himself easily and lightly. He stepped into my four hundred square foot office which paled in comparison to the monster he oversaw in L.A. He stood in the middle of the room, surveying it slowly, taking in the pint-sized refrigerator on one wall, the well-stocked trophy case adjacent to it, my sofa, the sink, and finally the desk.

  His assessment was over embarrassingly quick. He turned to face me with no emotion on his face. Did he approve of the place? Or not? Was he proud of his only son, or disappointed? Impossible to tell. Did I need his approval? Impossible to tell. But probably, and it galled me to admit it.

  He was wearing a western-style denim shirt and khaki carpenter pants with a hammer loop. There was no hammer in the loop. His evenly-distributed silver hair was perfectly parted to one side. He was the picture of fitness and vitality, health and ruggedness. Just don’t look at the eyes.

  “So,” he said, “who wants you dead?”

  I stepped around him, slipped into my leather seat and motioned toward the Mr. Coffee. He shook his head and eased himself down carefully into one of the three client chairs. The chair, which usually creaked, didn’t creak this time.

  “Someone wants me to back off a case.”

  “Any idea who that someone is?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Would be good to know that. Better for your health. Who’s the hitman?”

  “Older guy, wears a hoop earring. Hell of a shooter. Eyes like a shark.” I neglected to say: eyes like yours.

  My father leaned back a little and allowed his cold eyes to spill across my face. They settled on my damaged ear. “He do your ear?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s one sick motherfucker.”

  “You know him?”

  “Runs a kiddie porn magazine. Would be good for society if he disappeared.” He paused. “I can take care of him.”

  “No.”

  He studied me for a moment. I refused to turn away from his gaze. “Is he a better shooter than you?” he asked.

  “We’ll find out.”

  “Or you can just drop the case,” said my father. “And he’ll leave you alone.”

  “Or not.”

  He smiled. “Or not.”

  We sat together in silence. Muted street sounds came through the closed window. My refrigerator kicked on and hummed away. My father lifted his gaze without moving his head and scanned the wall behind me. He was looking at the pictures, the articles, the bullet holes in the wall. I could kiss my security deposit goodbye.

  “I watched every game,” he said.

  This was news to me, but I remained silent.

  “I was there for every game. At least every home game. I always sat in the back rows. How did you get so goddamn good?”

  “Must have been all those special moments we spent playing catch in the park on Sunday afternoons.”

  “There are some things I regret in this life,” he said. “Not being a father to you is one of them.” He reached inside his pocket and removed a pouch of photographs. “These were taken on the last day your mother was alive.”

  Something froze within me, as if my stomach had suddenly been dropped into a bucket of ice. My father, the great Cooper Knighthorse, detective extraordinaire, set the packet on the table.

  “I loved her the best way I could, Jim.”

  “Why are you giving me these pictures?” I asked.

  “Because I want you to see her happy. I want you to see us happy. We were trying, Jim. I was trying.”

  “You were trying to fuck anything you could get your hands on.”

  If I shook him, he didn’t show it, although the corners of his lips quivered slightly. His pale eyes stared at me.

  “We’ve all made mistakes, Jim. There’s something else in the pictures.”

  “What?”

  But he didn’t answer me. Didn’t even acknowledge my simple question. He simply looked at me a moment longer, stood, then walked out of my office. He shut the door carefully behind him.

  I stared at the closed door for a long, long time.

  24.

  I didn’t worry about locking the office door after my father left. I could give a shit about the hitman. I had my Browning on the desk in front of me. Woe to anyone who walked unannounced into my office at that moment.

  The packet of photographs was yellowing, the flap torn. On it was a little boy blowing soap bubbles with the word KODAK inside a particularly large bubble. The packet wasn’t very thick, containing perhaps twenty-four pictures in all. I had never seen these pictures, and, in fact, did not know of their existence.

  I poured myself a cup of coffee with extra cream and sugar.

  Heat seeped through the porcelain cup and scalded my palms, but I kept them there, feeling the heat, ignoring the heat, unaware of the heat.

  Lifting both hands, I took a sip. Tasted the coffee, but didn’t really taste it. Same fucking routine.

  I was ten years old when I found her dead. She had bled to death all over her new bedroom set. My father and I had gone to pick up a pizza and rent a movie. I was the first through the front door, carrying the pizza box, excited because my father was in a particularly good mood.

  Once inside I called her name, told her the pizza was here and to get it while it was hot. The light was on in her bedroom, but there was no movement, no sound. I set the pizza box down on our dining room table, was about to open it when my father told me to get my mother first.

  I headed down the hallway separating the dining room from the master bedroom, calling her name. There was no response. I slowed my pace when I saw her hand lying on the floor. Her hand was completely covered in something red. At first I thought it was a red glove. A wet, gleaming glove, although it wasn’t entirely wet. Only parts of it were. It was blood, and it was drying rapidly, congealing over her hand.

  I stepped through the doorway and into a nightmare. Blood was everywhere, sprayed across the entire room. It reached everything, touched everything, infused everything. She was lying on the wooden floor in a great puddle of it. Her pink nightgown was soaked. Face-down, her head turned away, looking beneath the bed. The last thing she had seen in the world was a box of my childhood clothing. She kept the box because she always wanted another baby. The box read: Jimmy’s Stuff.

  There was a bloodied hand print on the box where she had reached for it.

  25.

  I opened the packet and removed the small pile of pictures. A quick count gave me twenty-two in all.

  On the last day of my mother’s life, I had been at Pop Warner football practice, and then later at a friend’s house for a pool party. I know now my parents had used the opportunity to renew their marriage and spend some quality time together. My mother wanted us to be a happy family. She wanted my father to take an interest in me, rather than viewing me as an obligation. She had gotten pregnant at a young age, and they had married in their late teens. They were not in love.

  Early in the marriage, my father joined the military and spent much of that time fighting in secret wars. I would learn la
ter that he was an expert sniper. Expert and deadly. Apparently, my own marksman skills with a gun had been inherited from him. When he came home from his various assignments, flush from his recent kills, he was never really home. He was restless and horny as hell. I had caught him in various parts of town with different women, once in the backseat of our car parked around the corner of our house. I had thrown a brick through the window and scared the hell out of them. I stood there defiantly as he looked up at me through the window. He never said a word about it, never apologized, and had the window replaced the next day.

  At first glance, you would never believe that the smiling couple in the picture were unhappy, or that the man with the pale blue eyes was a trained killer or that the woman would only have hours more to live. They were both happy and carefree, hugging and waving. They could have been on a honeymoon.

  The majority of the pictures were at the Huntington Beach pier, just a hop skip and jump from my condo. In one picture my mother was sticking her slender backside out seductively toward the camera. My father zoomed in on it tightly. I found myself smiling. They were flirting with each other, and it was nice to see. It was perhaps the most fun I had ever seen them have with each other. For that alone, I was thankful my father had given me the pictures.

  He was wearing jeans, carpenter’s boots and a yellow T-shirt that said JEEP across it. My mother had on a red blouse, jean shorts and leather sandals. Her legs were slender and naturally tan. Her hair was dark brown and cut short. Her features were slender and sharp. Full red lips and deep brown eyes. She looked like Audrey Hepburn, only prettier.

  There were pictures of them along the pier, next to a statue I didn’t recognize, standing next to two young men, one of whom was holding a freshly caught sand shark. In that picture, my mother secretly giving my father rabbit ears behind his back.

  I went through all of the pictures, my heart heavy and sad. I never recovered from her loss. Mother’s Day is hell on me, and I often go into seclusion. How does one replace a mother’s love? I lived briefly with an aunt and uncle and they did their best to give me love and attention, but it wasn’t the same.