Carolina Crimes

by Karen Pullen

  His cool fingers fist my pant leg. “I already am.”

  I make a low choking sound, desperate for composure. I would gladly take his wound. Greer knows I’m lying about the being fine part, I can see it in his eyes. He coughs and the sticky blood under my fingers renews.

  How could I have done this? You’re supposed to listen to your handler—not get him killed!

  “Please, Greer. Watch the hurricane blow in with me.” I duck my head to his chest, tensing as a hotel lounge chair blows toward us. I cover Greer to protect him and the metal makes a thud on my shoulder as it passes by, taking a hunk of my hair with it. I am so wracked with guilt, I don’t care about the pain, or anything else about the hurricane ravaging the Outer Banks. Janus, a Cat Four storm, threatens massive destruction in the next twelve hours.

  His fingers grasp my leg as he blinks. “It’s a sand demon, Riles. See its face in the sky? Keep an eye on it for me. Can’t trust those sand demons.”

  I know this story, though I am not a believer in Greer’s sand demon. He’d once seen a water spout spawned by a hurricane, and being gutsy Greer, he watched it come right up the beach to him, whipping sand everywhere before it collapsed. He swore it had a face, bewitching him to the spot.

  As if to answer my disbelief, the awning over the hotel’s outdoor restaurant spirals off. Well, maybe Janus and I do feel the same emotion. Rage.

  I press harder on his wound, and hope it’s sirens I hear coming from the west above the roar of the wind, the pounding surf. That would mean the trauma hospital got the call and was braving it through the storm to us, thank God. The Level 1 trauma center, the one you wanted to answer the call, officer down. A GSW.

  Guh.

  “Don’t you dare die because the screw-up girl screwed up again. You’re the only one who believes in me.”

  His face scrunches, and I can’t tell if it’s agreement or dispute.

  Last night at check-in, he’d stood all gorgeous and dark Italian in his leather jacket, his mood even darker as he ordered me to back away from Vic. You’ve gone too deep. I don’t think you remember who you are, Riles. He smoothed my hair from one eye and winced at the bruise I thought I’d so carefully hid as I hid everything else. That’s beyond, he’d stuttered, something akin to outrage flickering in his grey eyes. He fingered the St. Christopher hanging around my neck, and for a tiny slice of a moment, I witnessed broody Greer, both rugged and tender with me.

  I had fallen slow and deep for him long ago, but I hid that nonsense. Until last night, when he kissed me for the first time, and I knew I’d never hidden anything from him.

  Afterwards, back in my dark room over Vic’s garage, I took that kiss with me for strength. Only hours later, Vic would call me to meet him at our usual beachside bar, but something—a tense note in his voice, a new harshness—made me wary my cover was blown. I feared it every day, but this time I texted Greer to back me up, just in case. Little did I know I was summoning him to this…to his death. Oh, I pray not.

  Greer tightens his grip on my wet leg as sirens scream onto the beach. They’re here! I am so relieved to see the red square box, the flashing lights, and the navy jumpsuit-clad trio that pop out and come our way. Quickly, before they arrive, I feel in his pocket for his keys and cell phone and then ease his gun out of his hand.

  “They’re here. You’re gonna be okay.” I kiss his forehead goodbye. Greer doesn’t move, his dark olive lids closed. “I promise, I will make this up to you,” I half sob, half whisper in his ear. The paramedics swoop in and I back away, watching the rescue scene play out through gusts of wind and slashing rain. Before I know it, they are gone. Red taillights dim, sirens fade, and I’m left alone on the beach, soaking wet, my body weaving as gusts of wind from Janus’s outer bands pummel me. One word is in my mind.

  Vic.

  I will bring him in or die trying. I swear it to the howling winds and spinning debris, to Greer’s red blood sticky on my fingertips. Vic has been the town’s most bastardly criminal for three years running, a criminal who traffics young girls for fun and profit, and runs drugs to buy fancy yachts and motorcycles. A criminal who killed the last undercover cop we sent inside his operation, yet always slimes his way out of charges.

  Until me. I’m his handy dandy mechanic. I wear oil smears and smack wrenches around, using every bit of ace knowledge I have from my days in my father’s garage. Vic trusts me, his concern for his precious machines spurring him to give poor-little-homeless-mechanic-girl a room above his garage. Now, Vic swears he loves me, as if someone that sick and twisted was capable of it. As I grew closer and closer to him, it was only a matter of time before I could provide the evidence we needed to arrest him, but no longer. Almost an hour ago, Vic shot Greer and watched me react in horror and tears. He’d left me alive, surprise-surprise, but he won’t next time. No one crosses Vic.

  I nod. I’ll take the chance. I am a superb liar. What lie could I spin to explain my reaction? Long lost brother? Cousin? First, I need to regroup and find Vic to explain. The fact he didn’t shoot me tells me I still have a chance.

  My next thought is of Greer’s car, and I run for the parking garage, anger powering every step. Part of me wants to follow the ambulance’s path through the knocked-out stoplights to the hospital, but my desire to nail Vic wins out, though the decision hurts.

  In desperate need to regroup before I go back into character, I end up at Greer’s house. His driveway sits partially underwater, hibiscus blooms and sand scattered over the seashell-speckled concrete. I am homeless, my belongings sparse, but in the dark room above Vic’s garage I pictured this ocean bungalow as home. Greer had inherited it and kept it in perfect shape, including the wood panels now covering the windows in case a hurricane turns this way—which Janus has.

  A mew greets me. I feed Greer’s cat, too sorrowful to look the grey tabby in the eyes. I shower for what feels like hours, but still feel dirty. I crawl into bed, soothed by Greer’s smell, and find the sleep that eluded me the last twenty-four hours. I wake with a purring cat on my chest, surprised that my captain is not pounding on the door for answers, and then I remember Janus. The captain has widespread disaster to contend with.

  Wait. I sit up. Vic would never hunker down—he would use the distraction of the storm to the fullest. He’s been expecting a huge shipment, planning the drop for next week, but as nervous as he’s been about it, I bet my left arm he’s moved it up to coincide with the storm. He’d know the police would be tied up with emergencies and rescues. I bounce up.

  With a parting pat to Greer’s cat, I leave his Glock at his bedside, rummage in his gun safe for something easier to conceal. When I head to the warehouse, I’m armed only with a compact Sig Sauer P232 in a tiny Fobus holster, more determined than I’ve ever been in my misguided life. Seven shots. I have only seven shots.

  Do this for Greer.

  Janus is battering the palmettos to shreds as I pull into the lot behind the warehouse and see Vic’s cars are parked outside. And so are the trucks. My heart pounds, and I catch my breath, jittery. I need to confirm the situation before I can call it in—if there’s anyone around to call it in to.

  I’m soaked by the time I reach the side door, but the noise of the storm has hidden my approach, and that’s all that matters. Without Greer to tape and wire me up, I have no choice but to push record on Greer’s phone and hope for the best.

  Voices. My fingertips grow ice cold. Vic, with the musculature of a Greek god, has this menacing stance and these soul-reading eyes that control any room he steps into. Add a gravelly voice with snake-charming warmth and you somehow feel powerless in his presence. His people would do anything for him, and I need to remember I am no longer one of them.

  I see Vic’s tattooed and bald head over the cargo barrels ahead, and I dodge behind one, listening to his rant. Two voices. Two? Vic would never be that careless to bring only one guy along. Panic bubbles. Maybe this wasn’t the drop.

  “I don’t need to justify why I
didn’t take care of her,” Vic was saying.

  “Because O’Rosie the Riveter is easy on the eyes?” Laughter.

  “Yes, there’s that. But this is an opportunity. She’s so lost, I bet she comes back to us, not them. I can turn her. Do you know how useful it will be to have a mole in the police department?”

  I bite my lip, tasting blood. No. It wasn’t true. It wasn’t! But here I stood, just like he said. I’d returned to him, not them.

  “Scene looked like Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Yeah, but with Romeo dead, Juliet will turn desperate.”

  The damning memory replays. The wet and windy beach, the soft light of a stormy dawn. Vic slapping me, then kissing me, then slapping me again. Greer charging from the side of the hotel’s beach deck, straight into Vic’s bullet. The blood. The sand. The swirling dark grey hurricane bands. Janus wasn’t the sand demon wooing Greer into danger on the beach. I was. I tighten my grip on the Sig.

  Laughter again. I begin to shake, As the winds strip a panel off the warehouse roof, the screaming metal silences Vic’s taunt. Rain pours in, footsteps scatter. Vic yells orders. I hear whimpers, cries, girls’ voices and banging coming from a metal shipping container. This wasn’t just a drug drop! I push buttons on Greer’s phone, a desperate text, misspelled and disjointed. I send it to every cop on Greer’s contact list, praying somebody will respond, despite this storm.

  Vic and his goons are hurrying. I run straight into the middle of the chaos, and take out goon number one before he can fire the gun he’s leveling at me. I see Vic’s muscled arms stacking cocaine bricks, then a flash of silver appears. A knife. Vic always was a knife man. He said killing someone with a knife was more personal, and then he would laugh in that deep, rolling laugh, the one that both soothed and disturbed your psyche.

  Vic smiles when he registers it’s me, surprise and relief mingled in his expression, yet he comes at me with the knife through the sheets of rain. I grab a block of his precious cocaine and throw it at his face before dodging behind a barrel. Hearing his steps, I roll to the other side of the barrel and pop up. Vic is not to my right where I expect him to be—he is at my left, slowly waving the knife as he snarls, “Pretty boy dead? He shouldn’t have snuck up on us lovebirds.”

  Bastard. “How many girls do you have in those moving metal coffins?” I ask, hearing their fists pounding the sides, dozens upon dozens of hands, and I want to forget Vic so I can free them. “You promised fancy waitressing jobs abroad? See the world? Earn good money? You make me sick. They’re daughters. Sisters.”

  Vic gives a roll of laughter. “They’re whores. But you—I’ll give you all the money you could ever want. No more poor little cop girl. The high life is yours. Clothes. Jewelry. My bed.”

  My fate would be no different from the girls in those containers. “So you can kill me like the last undercover.”

  “She fought a good fight.”

  Please let the recorder have caught that. I shudder. Too late, I hear footsteps. Vic’s men step from the shadows, and a warm and wet arm circles my throat from behind. I lunge to escape, but it crushes on my windpipe. Hands rip the gun from my grasp, and though I buck against my captor, he lifts me off my feet and swings me through the air, shaking me.

  Vic isn’t laughing. The wind and rain are pouring into the warehouse, soaking the bricks of coke strewn across his table. He looks up at the angry sky and bellows to his men. “Throw her in a barrel and clamp it shut, then get over here and help me get this high dollar stuff out. Girls later.”

  Death by suffocation inside a barrel is not my choice of a way to go. I kick, spit, and bite, and they laugh. My elbows bang the rim of the barrel, and I hear and feel the bones of my left arm crunch. As the metal lid bangs down on my head with a clanging echo, I cry out, pushing and bucking against it, but the lid doesn’t budge.

  My breaths shorten, and I can’t calm down. I am trapped, in the dark, in a foul metal barrel. I’m soaked with sweat, the air stale and already thinning. I try to kick, to flail, but there is no room to move. Pain paralyzes my left arm, so I use the right to push up on the lid. If I do not lift this lid, I will suffocate!

  A crash sounds against the building. Metal gives a slow, scream from above, and Vic begins yelling. Something slams against my barrel, toppling it and I begin to roll, a nauseating sensation until an abrupt impact pops off the barrel’s lid and cool air fills my lungs. Greer’s sand demon has saved me!

  I crawl out into a ruined warehouse. Vic and his goons have vanished. The girls are screaming. So many voices. I snap up a fallen gun and start to shoot off the lock on the metal container door, but sense movement, a bloodied Vic pounding toward me, knife raised. My breath catches, and I run, dodging waving sheets of twisted metal, toppled barrels, and strewn beams, the full force of Janus battering me with wind and rain.

  I lead Vic outside, straight toward the familiar unmarked police cars. My captain is there, snapping orders from behind his car door, and in seconds, Vic is surrounded by a dozen of officers bristling with guns, shouting at him to surrender his weapon. No stranger to police authority, Vic drops the knife and raises his arms in surrender. Quickly encircled and cuffed, he scans the faces, and pins me with his stare. I return the glare. Enjoy death row, Vic. Relief floods me as the reality of his capture sinks in, and I remember the girls. “There’s girls! Inside a shipping container. Free them!” Officers scatter.

  My captain looks me over, his eyes fixed on my dangling left arm. “Thought we lost you, Riley. Good work.”

  I shake my head. No. I hurt the man I thought of as home. “Greer?” I ask, dreading the answer.

  My captain shakes his head, and I try to read his expression—exasperation, sorrow, or finality? “When we got your texts, Greer left the hospital AMA to come with us. Would you straighten him out before he bleeds to death?” He moves to the side and I see a lone figure sitting in the passenger seat of his car.

  Greer. Alive. He holds half-hidden bandages under his leather jacket and nudges toward the door as I approach.

  My pain, regret, and rage leave me. Greer is looking at me with warm, full eyes. I do not think I can manage a single word, but I smile.

  Greer, with his stubbly jaw and his dark hair rumpled to the side, smiles back, and I know that for the first time in months, I am safe. I sigh, thankful. The hurricane blows a gust that rocks the car, a sandy palmetto frond hitting the glass. With a wince, Greer laughs and points to the grey bands of hurricane clouds. I see two dark eyes topped with waggling brows in that swirl, and a very definite face. I am now a believer.

  Greer’s sand demon.

  BAD HAIR DAY, by Meg Leader

  Hanging out with the dead is not your ordinary lifestyle choice, but, then again, in my case it’s not exactly a choice. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to see folks no one else could see. I was seven years old before I realized that my BFF, little Clara Marie, wasn’t among the living-and-breathing set. Until I figured that out, I thought she wouldn’t invite me to play at her house because my family was from the trailer park side of town instead of the five-columned ego-mansion district. Just goes to show how easy it is to assume prejudice where none exists.

  It took me a lot of years and a lot of experimenting before I figured out a way to make my predilection for the departed into a viable career option. So now I’m the country’s only spectral detective. See, dead folks—at least the ones who hang around and don’t pass into the light—they notice stuff. They wander around watching us living screw up our lives. They offer suggestions, snide commentary, and more than a few I-told-you-so’s from the sidelines. Of course, they don’t exactly make good witnesses in court because it’s hard to get them to place a palm on a Bible and swear to tell the truth when their hands pass right through the book. Not to mention that the judge, jury, and attorneys involved can’t see or hear them. Still, they do pay attention to what goes on, and many of them enjoy hanging out at crime scenes.

  Especially murder c
rime scenes.

  My big brother Charlie is a homicide detective. While Greensboro, North Carolina. isn’t exactly overrun with your high-profile murder cases, we do have our share of bad guys, jealous husbands, and disgruntled employees. When the case is tough, Charlie, who knows very well what I can do, brings me in as a “consultant” for the case. Consultant—doesn’t that sound just way cool? I get a laminated badge and everything. Sometimes they even pay me.

  So anyways, an hour ago Charlie called me to a murder scene, the foyer of one of the old-line Irving Park mansions. The corpse is an expensive-looking young woman wearing only the bottom half of the tiniest pink thong bikini I’ve ever seen—a mere triangle and a few strings—and a butt-length cover-up, open wide to reveal an impressive set of implants. Despite her casual lack of attire, she’s carefully groomed except for one thing—her hair. I suppose her blonde and copper highlights and lowlights and multi-strand weaves cost her a bundle of money. Unfortunately, a violent bash on her head has ruined the effect of all that pampering.

  Charlie hovers at my elbow, impatient.

  “Who is she?” I ask.

  “Juliette Irving. Third wife of Gomez Irving. The developer,” he says. I recognize the name. Irving’s full of civic pride, spending his time—and the public’s money—improving the scenery by planting shopping centers and housing developments all over the landscape.

  Off to one side, the late Mrs. Irving’s tantrum is worthy of a paparazzi-crazed rock star. No one else can hear her, of course, but she’s shrieking louder than a hyperactive three-year-old squalling for a candy bar. It hurts my ears. I edge away from the corpse, but no one notices. All the cops are too busy elbowing each other to get a better view of the lady’s attributes. I move down the main hallway toward the quieter back of the house to escape the confusion. To my surprise Juliette follows me.