Big Sick Heart: A Detectives Seagate and Miner Mystery

by Mike Markel

  Was Ryan saying I was trying to jack up the charges by moving the dope, which is illegal, or planting it? No, that couldn’t be. Nothing he said made me think he doubted me at all. Still, I wasn’t sure what, if anything, Ryan was telling me.

  The chief came over to us and asked me if I wanted to go to Psych Services. Even if I’d wanted to, I would’ve said no. You’re female on the job, the last thing you want to get around is that shit gets to you. I shook my head.

  “Sure?” the chief said.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You two think you can handle that security for the debate tonight?”

  Ryan looked at me, and we both nodded. The chief turned and headed back toward his office. He didn’t spend any more time talking to detectives than he had to.

  He had briefed us yesterday about a routine security detail he wanted us to do: a debate tonight in an auditorium on campus. I picked up a sheet of paper off my desk. “Okay,” I said, skimming the page, “we got this Arlen Hagerty, president of Soul Savers, coming to town. And there’s this other guy comes with him, Jonathan Ahern. Hagerty’s talking about stem-cell research, right? I’m guessing he’s against it.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “It kills embryos.”

  “So it’s not that he wants people with bad spinal cords and MS to stay sick.”

  I saw a small smile on Ryan’s face. “I think he sees it as an ethical issue. If an embryo is a human life and you kill it, that’s murder.”

  I wasn’t taunting Ryan. I didn’t know—and didn’t really give a shit—what he thought about this. “But if you’re gonna throw out the embryo anyway, and it might do some good for someone?”

  “I think he’d say two wrongs don’t make a right.” The kid was cool. He could talk to you without telling you what he thought. With me, you pretty much know before I open my mouth.

  I said, “Did you get a chance to check with this guy’s organization to see if they’d received any threats?”

  “Yeah,” he said, reaching for the notebook on his desk. “They get threats all the time. But nothing out of the ordinary. How’d the lady put it at Soul Savers? Here it is: just the usual ‘hope you get paralyzed’ mail.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said. “Keeping it on a high level. And the chief authorized a metal detector and a sweep of the auditorium, right?”

  “That’s right,” Ryan said. “Plus us and two uniforms tonight.”

  We spent the rest of the morning out at the auditorium, checking in with the university’s technician working on the sound and light board for the debate. I talked to the K-9 Patrol officer, who said as long as chewing gum don’t explode, we’re good to go.

  * * *

  Ryan and I were at our desks, which were pushed head-to-head in the detectives’ bullpen. There were only three sets of detectives’ desks. Rawlings was a small town, with four or five murders per year, usually among friends. There were two small gangs that mostly shot at each other but sometimes missed and hit someone else on a drive-by. There were about a dozen sexual assaults. And three or four times a year, a well-dressed guy coming out of the Pink Rose Tavern would slip and fall for no apparent reason, busting his nose or cracking a couple ribs.

  At five, Ryan signed out to go home and eat dinner with his six-month pregnant wife and their two-year-old girl. He told me he wished he was able to make it home for lunch like he used to when he and Kali were newlyweds living in married-student housing at Brigham Young. He knew that wasn’t possible anymore, but they thought having dinner together at six every night was important. That was when they all got to talk about their day.

  I hadn’t yet decided whether this guy came from another century, another planet, or both. “See you at the auditorium,” I said. I grabbed a Mars bar from my desk drawer and surfed the Web for a while before heading out to the auditorium at 6:00.

  The speech was scheduled for 7:00. By 6:15, most of the security contingent had shown up: the tech Roberto, who was going to operate the metal detector, and two other uniforms—Bob Ortiz and Roger Harrison—dressed in plain clothes to blend in with the crowd. People began to drift in: a lot of professors, community-activist types, a couple dozen geeky-looking students, plus some nuns and priests. Ryan showed up a couple minutes later. I walked over to greet him, surprised at how glad I was to see him.

  “Hey, Karen,” he said, looking over the scene. “Looks like everything’s going smooth. Where do you want me?”

  “I’m gonna be walking around during the show. I’ve got one uniform backstage, one out front. I’d like you up near the stage, looking out at the crowd. Grab a folding chair. I want you to be able to stop anyone who tries to rush the stage. Put your radio on 2, okay?”

  “Sounds good,” he said.

  The auditorium was beginning to fill up. The night was cold and clear, and people were shaking off their coats as they settled into their seats. I could feel the temperature rise in the auditorium as the empty seats disappeared.

  A minute or two after 7:00, a guy in a sport jacket and slacks came up on stage. He introduced himself as a teacher in the philosophy department. He explained how the university was sponsoring this debate between these two guys who’d traveled a long way, how this was an important and controversial issue, and how everyone should give them a respectful hearing and not interrupt. In other words, act like adults.

  The hour and a half was shooting by. The audience was well behaved, the speakers well rehearsed. I cruised the auditorium silently, stopping by the projection booth and the backstage areas. Every few minutes I checked in with one of the detail by radio. All of them were in place, and there were no problems. It looked like it was going to be a successful event, with no trouble.

  After the emcee thanked the audience, Arlen Hagerty and Jonathan Ahern walked toward each other and shook hands warmly. Ahern gave the two-handed shake, with the left arm gripping Hagerty on his right bicep while Hagerty slapped Ahern affectionately on the back. The two speakers faced the audience and waved appreciatively. The audience stood, applauding.

  As the audience was filing out, I approached the two speakers. I introduced myself and complimented them on the excellent debate I hadn’t listened to. They thanked me for setting up the security. “Okay, gentlemen,” I said. “We’ve got to get you two back to the hotel.” Ryan came over as I was talking.

  Arlen Hagerty said, “Detective, we appreciate the gesture, but I don’t think we’ll need your services tonight.”

  “Arlen’s right, Detective,” Jonathan Ahern nodded. “This was a really nice group of people tonight. Why don’t you just call it a night?”

  The idea was tempting, but I said, “I’m sorry. We’re charged with getting you two back safe to the Courtyard. Detective Miner and I gotta stick with you.”

  “How about this?” Arlen Hagerty said. “Jon and I usually go out for a nightcap afterwards. Why don’t you two join us? It’s on me.”

  I couldn’t think of too many things that sounded less appealing than sitting with Ryan, drinking club sodas and watching two guys drink something that looked and smelled really good. But if that was what it took to get them back to the hotel, that was what I was going to do. “What do you say, Ryan?”

  “Fine with me,” he said, flashing a big smile.

  “All right, then,” I said to Hagerty and Ahern. “One drink, then we get you back to the Courtyard.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Arlen Hagerty said, “one drink, then straight into our jammies.” I tried to block out that image. “Can you suggest a place nearby?”

  “How about in your hotel?” I said. “They’ve got a nice little bar there.” With any luck, we could get him back there and they’d decide to skip the drinks.

  “No,” Hagerty said. “I’ve already spent too much time there,” he said, laughing alone.

  “Okay,” I said. “Ryan, how about the Cactus, on Fifth? I’ll take Mr. Hagerty. You take Mr. Ahern.”

  The Cactus was a semi-dive for students, working-class
guys, and a handful of bleary-eyed regulars who were already in position on the sidewalk when the owner threw open the heavy wooden door every morning around eleven.

  The windows were full of neon, the lights were low, the TVs old and small, the bar sticky. I chose the Cactus to speed things up, but Hagerty and Ahern walked up to the bar with big smiles on their faces. Arlen Hagerty turned to me and flashed a thumbs-up. “Excellent choice, Detective. Just my kind of place.”

  “That’s great,” I said, returning the thumbs-up, realizing that about half the time these days, I was saying the opposite of what I meant. Ryan and I settled in at a booth near the two men, close to the door.

  The server came over, a college-age girl in a tight white t-shirt over a red bra, a silver loop where her left eyebrow trailed off. She had barbed-wire tattoos on each bicep and some heavy black Chinese characters down the inside of her right arm. Ryan ordered a club soda. I wanted a Jack Daniel’s double but said, “Make it two.” I sat there, glum, waiting for the girl to come back with the drinks.

  When she placed the two club sodas down in front of us, the Chinese script on her arm swept six inches from Ryan’s face. Once she left, I said to Ryan, “What the hell was that girl thinking?”

  Ryan looked at me, puzzled. “Thinking about what?” he said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Never mind.” Fifteen years’ difference in our ages might as well be a hundred. I looked over at the bar, where Hagerty and Ahern seemed to be having a great old time, talking and laughing like best buds.

  I was counting on this to suck, just not so much. The cubes melted in my club soda as Ryan watched ESPN, his head bobbing to the Creedence Clearwater on the jukebox. I could tell he was straining to hear what the two guys were saying. “They’re talking football,” he said. “Mind if I join them?”

  “No, you run along and play,” I said, giving him an unconvincing smile.

  “Thanks,” he said, bolting out of the booth and joining them at the bar. For the better part of two hours, they talked football.

  They say men look more distinguished as they get older. I wasn’t seeing it. Ryan looked real good. He stood straight as a steel beam, his shoulders and biceps testing the fabric of his sport jacket. When he moved, you could see he was an athlete: graceful, comfortable in his body. His light-brown hair was cut like a soldier’s, just long enough to comb on the top, short on the sides, razored around the ears. His eyes were Caribbean blue, and they danced, as if there were just so many exciting things to take in, and he didn’t want to miss a single one. He smiled often, a big old grin that lit up his whole face.

  Jonathan Ahern was twenty years older than Ryan, and each one of those years was etched on his face. The neon from the Coors sign in the window cast an eerie blue glow through his thinning hair. His shoulders had begun to slump. When he wasn’t talking, his expression settled into a frown of disappointment. When he laughed, he was a decent-looking man, but the laughter didn’t come often, and it seemed to cost him considerable effort.

  Arlen Hagerty laughed all the time, usually right after he said something. It was a big, braying, spit-launching cackle. He was a toucher, always grabbing an arm, poking a chest, or slapping a back, like a salesman who was running out of month and hadn’t made his quota. Even with his expensive dark suit, there was no way he was ever going to look like anything other than what he was: a five-four, two-eighty troll with a sweaty scalp shining through a dyed combover.

  I was gazing absently at the TV, watching the sports guy interview some football coach, when SPECIAL REPORT flashed on the screen, and the local anchorwoman appeared, announcing that James Weston had been killed in a parasailing accident in Maui.

  “Weston, 61, Montana’s only billionaire, died tragically this afternoon,” she said, working hard to look somber, “at the vacation home on the Maui coast that he shared with his wife, Montana state senator Dolores Weston of Rawlings. Police believe Weston fell to his death from approximately two-hundred feet when a sudden wind gust snapped the harness that secured him to the parasail. The accident was recorded by an onlooker in this video, which might be too graphic for some viewers.”

  In the shaky video, the red-and-white sail jerks upward, then the body separates from the sail and falls, arms and legs flailing, out of the video frame, while a voice says, “Oh my God, Janet, look at—”

  I had never met my local representative, Senator Weston, and chances are I never would—unless, of course, a scammer in an unmarked pickup takes her for fourteen-hundred bucks on bogus replacement windows. Funny how all the money in the world can’t protect you from bad shit, even when you’re floating above the shoreline you own in Paradise, not a care in the world.

  One thing for certain: we were all going to see that poor bastard’s final thrill a couple dozen more times before moving on to the next tragedy. The anchorwoman promised us more details tomorrow morning. Back to the sports report showing cars go round and round.

  After another month or so, Ryan glanced over at me, looking guilty as he shook hands with his two new BFFs. The three came over to me.

  “We’re awfully sorry, Detective,” Arlen Hagerty said, the two others nodding their heads in agreement. “We were just getting into the details of the issue and we lost track of time.”

  “Stem-cell research?” I said.

  “Hell, no,” Hagerty said, braying his wet laugh. “We don’t talk about that stuff. We were talking about the BCS ranking system.”

  “Ah, the BCS ranking system,” I said, nodding my head wisely, not knowing what that was. “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” loped along in the background, punctuated by bursts of laughter from the four shitfaced college boys on the other side of the room.

  “Your partner here played four years at BYU, you know,” Hagerty said, putting an arm on Ryan’s shoulder.

  “Four years. How ’bout that,” I said. Earlier in the evening, I might have tried to figure out why that was important or interesting, but not now. “Well, boys, it’s been a long evening of stem cells and the BS ranking system,” I said. “What’d’ya say we call it a night?”

  They all shook hands. Ryan leaned over and said into my ear, “I’m sorry. I should have hurried them along better.”

  “That’s okay,” I told him. “I appreciate you helping me with them here.”

  We got our guys back to the Courtyard and safely up to their rooms.

  I drove the seven minutes back to my house and parked in the carport. My place was easy to spot: it was the house with no lights on. Inside, I stood there in the dark. After a few seconds I started to pick out the mechanical sounds: the ticking of the clock on the living-room wall, the hum of the refrigerator, the faint whoosh as the gas ignited beneath the water heater in the utility closet down the hall. Turning on the hall light, I threw my bag down on the narrow table, took off my coat, and hung it on the hook near the door.

  I walked into the living room. There was the bottle of Jack Daniel’s, its cap off, waiting for me. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” I said to the silence.

  Chapter 2

  I was on my hands and knees, on the ice, beating at it with my fists, crying out to him. The wind wailed, mocking me, drowning out my voice as I screamed at him to wait, I was coming. But I couldn’t find a hole in the ice, and I didn’t have anything to break through it. No stick, no pistol, no rifle butt. I beat at the invisible ice, but it wouldn’t yield. He was underneath the ice, floating in a waterless void. He began to recede, getting smaller and smaller. I could still see his eyes, open wide in panic, his mouth distended in a silent scream. He drifted farther and farther away, his eyes locked on me.

  The sound of my beeper drifted in, out of sync with my fast, heavy breathing. Climbing out of the nightmare, I felt the perspiration across my chest. The beeper grew louder, more insistent. Reaching for it, I knocked over a glass, spilling a half inch of melted ice. It rolled toward the edge of the night table and fell off, landing softly on the carpet.

  I couldn’t read
the beeper in the dark. I fumbled for the switch at the base of the lamp. The light was blinding, but after a second I could re-open my eyes. The beeper said Rawlings Police Department. Definitely not what I needed now. I turned it off and fell back onto the clammy sheets, my breathing heavy and labored. Placing my hand over my heart, I felt the thumping, wondering just how much a heart can take before it explodes.

  I resolved to get up at the count of three. First, I had to check where the glass had gone. I looked over the edge of the mattress, couldn’t see it. Good enough. On the count of three: one, two, three. I sat up, the back of my t-shirt peeling away from the soaked bottom sheet. Another three-count and I wrestled my legs out from under the sheets and placed them on the floor. My hand came up to cup my forehead, which really didn’t like that last three-count.

  I picked up the phone, pushed 1 on the speed dial. Two rings, then a voice said, “Hello, Rawlings Police Department.” I recognized it: it was one of the receptionists, Gladys or Glenda or something.

  I forgot to say hello.

  “Hello?” Gladys or Glenda said a second time.

  “This is Seagate,” I said, my voice small and distant. I cleared my throat.

  “Detective, come on in. Homicide.”

  My head lifted. “Where? Who?”

  “Arlen Hagerty. The stem-cell guy. At the Courtyard. Room 213.”

  “Twenty minutes,” I said. I looked at my clock radio: 6:07 am. I’d need ten minutes to shower and brush my teeth, ten minutes to drive to the hotel. I should eat something, but there was no need for coffee. When I learned I was with the croaker less than seven hours ago, I didn’t need the caffeine. I showered, towel dried my hair, combed it straight back. Physics would part it.

  I had worked about twenty murders, but this was the first time I knew the vic. Didn’t know him well, of course, but it was weird to think that, a few hours ago, he was laughing it up and getting real intense about college football, while at the same time, close by, someone was planning to kill him. Arlen was in his room, brushing his teeth, then a minute later he didn’t exist anymore.