by Loretta Ross
“Was there anything about Gus that stands out in your memory? Did he ever seem nervous or afraid? Was there anyone he spent more time with? Anyone he avoided? Did you ever see him fight with anyone? Did you see him the morning of the funeral? I’m told that he was at your mosque that morning, and that’s where he hitched a ride down to East Bledsoe Ferry.”
“Man, I don’t know. That morning was just horrible. My wife had been at that same candle party that Zahra was at. She was on her way home, you know. We just couldn’t believe she was dead.” Ali thought about it. “Yes, Gus was there. I remember seeing him at the mosque that morning. I think I saw him telling Tony how sorry he was about what had happened. And I know I saw him later, interviewing people. I didn’t notice him at the funeral, but I didn’t notice him not being there, either.”
“He was interviewing people?”
“Yeah. You know? He said he was a journalist. He used to record everything on his phone. He even carried around extra SD cards so he’d have enough storage. That was just something you knew about him. If you were talking to Gus, chances were that he was recording you. Usually he’d tell people, but I think sometimes he’d forget. He’d just turn the phone on and drop it in his pocket.”
They sat for a few minutes in pensive silence broken only by the sound of Randy crunching his way through the chips and salsa. By and by he dusted his fingers on the front of his shirt, took a long swig of soda, and said to Ali, “can I ask you something?”
“Sure. Shoot.”
“You’re not Mexican.”
“Wow. You really are a detective,” Ali teased. “That’s not a question.”
“No, that was an observation. My question is, why a Mexican restaurant?”
Ali laughed and shrugged. “Life happens? I don’t really know. I came here to study business. I thought a degree from an American university would help me land a high-dollar job with some international tech firm or something. Somewhere along the line, Kansas City became home. I worked here, started as a busboy, when I was in college. When the former owner wanted to retire, I was able to get the financing and take over the business.”
“That’s cool,” Randy said. “You speak excellent English.”
“Thank you. So do you.”
Death snickered into his coffee.
“Ha ha. English is your second language though, isn’t it?”
“Third, actually. Sammy and I are from Tunisia. We speak French and Arabic.”
“French? Really?” Randy lit up. “I’ve always wanted to learn French. It seems like a really romantic language. I bet the ladies love to hear it.”
“Oh, they do,” Ali agreed. “Hey, you want me to teach you how to say something in French?”
“Really?”
“Sure. I can teach you how to say ‘Hi, do you want to be my friend?’”
“Cool!”
“Okay,” Ali said, “repeat after me. Voulez-vouz couchez avec moi ce soir.”
Death stuffed his mouth with chips and studied the table, careful not to meet his brother’s eye. Randy repeated the phrase several times until he was sure he had it memorized.
“Here,” Ali said, “Sammy will be out in a minute with your food. Say it to him.”
“Okay. Cool!” Randy jumped up and went over to wait beside the door to the kitchen.
Ali grinned at Death. “You speak French?”
“No, but I was a Marine. I can get my face slapped in seventeen different languages.”
“But you didn’t give me away?”
“Are you kidding? That’s my kid brother. This is hilarious.”
“Watch Sammy’s face. He gets so embarrassed. That’s why I do it.”
The door swung open and Sammy came out with a loaded serving tray. Randy popped up beside him. “Hey, Sammy, voulez-vouz—”
Sammy turned bright red. He set the tray down on the nearest table and waved his hands in front of Randy’s face. “No. No! It doesn’t mean that! Don’t listen to Ali! Ali lies!”
Randy spun around to glare back at the older men, and Death laughed until he was in danger of passing out.
Later, when they were back out in Death’s Jeep, Randy decided to give him grief. “I know you knew that wasn’t what he said it was. You could have warned me.”
“Where would be the fun in that?” Death paused, his hand on the key in the ignition, and just sat there smiling at his brother.
“What are you doing?” Randy asked nervously. “You know, that’s a little creepy. You just sitting there smiling at me like that.”
Death shrugged. He started the engine but made no move to drive away. “I just … it’s just that I keep finding myself thinking. Remembering. How everything was a year ago. I never dreamed my life could ever be this good again.”
They sat there in silence for a few seconds. “It’s good, then?” Randy asked. “Really good?”
“Yeah. Really good.”
“Good … are we having a moment? Do you need a hug?”
“Idiot,” Death said affectionately.
“You know, I was thinking,” Randy said. “If August Jones recorded everything—”
“There’s a chance he recorded his own murder. Yeah. That occurred to me too.”
“If I killed someone who recorded stuff on their phone,” Randy said, “I’d want to be sure to take the phone with me when I left.”
“Well, they didn’t find it in the tomb, or in the ditch below the angel, or anywhere in between.”
“So that would suggest that the murderer took it.”
“That’s certainly possible,” Death agreed reluctantly.
“But the last place the phone pinged before it died was out at the vets’ camp.”
“Yeah, I know. Believe me, that’s occurred to me.”
“So what do you want to do now?”
“I want to go shopping.” Death put the Jeep in gear and headed for the exit. “Do you want to come shopping with me?”
Randy gave him a wide-eyed, disbelieving look. “Okay. Should we get our nails done while we’re at it? Hey! Maybe we can find a good shoe sale or get matching purses.”
Death laughed. “That’s not what I’m shopping for.”
fourteen
“But seriously,” Randy said. “How many people do you think are in that car?”
“You know, if you’re that curious, you could always go look,” Wren told him.
“The windows are fogged up.”
“If you tap on the door,” Death said, “they’ll probably open it.”
“And invite you to join them,” Wren added with a wicked grin.
Randy frowned at the other two. “Man, you guys aren’t right, you know that?”
The three of them were sitting in the back seat of Death’s Jeep, Death on the driver’s side with Wren cuddled up close beside him, and Randy angled against the passenger door. They were parked in a sea of cars, on the old, cracked, and rutted parking lot of the Feed-n-Seed Emporium. On the last Friday of the month, the Rives County Volunteer Fire Department, the East Bledsoe Ferry Fire Department, and the MedEvac Helicopter Rescue Service staged Drive-In Movie Night as a joint fundraiser for their various charities.
There was no actual drive-in theater in the area, and there hadn’t been for decades, but the whitewashed wall of the feed store served as the screen for a projection TV and they broadcast the sound as a podcast. Tonight, in honor of the onset of autumn and the approach of Halloween, the showing was a double-feature of classic horror movies. With no news on either of the police cases they’d become entangled in, they’d decided to take a night off and just enjoy themselves.
They could only hope that the movies would be scarier than being parked next to Farrington, Madeline, and whoever else they were sharing a vehicle with. There were at least three people in the car and they’d started a heavy makeout session early. Already the windows were fogged up and the car was rocking in a manner that suggested it needed new shocks.
“You know what t
hey’re doing, don’t you?” Wren asked. “This is just like when they showed up in St. Louis. They’re trying to make Death jealous. Madeline’s trying to make Death jealous by letting him see her with another, um, something that passes for a man if you have a wild enough imagination. And Eric’s trying to make Death jealous by letting him see him with his ex-wife.”
“If they’re wasting their time trying to make me jealous,” Death said, “then I pity them. There’s nothing either of them has that I want.” He considered. “Well, I’d take Benji, but as long as I get to see him sometimes, I’m happy.”
“Where does the third person in their car come in?” Randy asked.
“That I don’t know. And I don’t want to know, either!”
“Hey,” Death said, “the movie’s starting! Turn on the podcast.”
Wren pulled up the podcast on her phone and they settled in to watch the film. “Man, these movies make me crazy,” she said. “How come the people in them are all so stupid? You know, if one of these demon-possessed, undead serial killers ever had to take out a cabin full of smart coeds, they’d never make it out of the film alive.”
“They don’t make it out of the film alive,” Randy said. “They make it out undead, the same way they went in.”
“Smartass.”
After half an hour of yelling at the screen, Wren took a deep breath, looked around at Death and Randy, and realized they were laughing at her.
“Oh, crap,” she said. “I’m sorry! I just can’t seem to keep my mouth shut. Am I ruining the movie for you?”
The brothers reassured her that she wasn’t.
“Are you kidding?” Death asked. “You’re way more fun than this movie. You do realize that the characters can’t hear you though, right?”
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Hey, look!” Randy said. “I think the blonde chick is going to put on her high heels and run through the muddy garden in search of help.”
“What?” Wren turned back to the movie. “What are you doing?” she shouted. “Don’t do that! If you can’t find real shoes, go barefoot! And don’t go out in the garden. There’s nothing in the garden. Find your friends! Build a barricade! Arm yourself, for God’s sake!”
“Oh, maybe she heard you. She’s going to look in the pantry for running shoes.”
“Is that what she’s doing? Do you think that’s what she’s doing?” There was no dialogue at the moment and they were having to figure out the characters’ thoughts and motivation from their actions.
“I think so. See, she’s looking at her feet, and then her shoes, and looking from the pantry to the back door and biting her lip, like she’s having trouble deciding what to do. Okay, now she’s headed for the pantry—”
“Because everyone keeps their spare shoes in the pantry,” Wren scoffed.
“I sense you’re having difficulties with your suspension of disbelief,” Death observed sagely.
“You’re an observational genius.”
“This has been said.” Death cocked an eyebrow at the screen. “Hey, wait a minute. Didn’t the short guy hide in the pantry a little while ago? Ten bucks says she finds his body.”
“Ha. No bet,” Randy said.
They watched as the blonde chick, as Randy had dubbed her, crept nervously across the kitchen and reached for the pantry door. The house, in the movie, was dark. The premise, as far as they could tell, was that a group of college kids had gone to an isolated vacation cabin for a weekend of debauchery, only to come across the path of an undead demonic serial killer who was now stalking them and leaving their gory corpses for their friends to find.
The blonde eased open the door. Her body stiffened. She put her hands to her mouth and let out a horrified, terrified wail. The camera lingered on her back as she stood in a convenient moonbeam, screaming into the pantry. Then it showed them a close-up of her screaming, and finally switched to the cause of her distress.
As Death had guessed, the body of the short guy dangled from the pantry ceiling, a piece of bloody metal protruding from his chest.
“Is that a meat hook?” Wren demanded. “Why is there a meat hook? Who keeps a meat hook hanging from the ceiling on a chain in a vacation cabin? You don’t keep meat hooks in vacation cabins. You keep paper plates and, if you can remember to bring one, a can opener. Did the killer bring it? Is he walking around with a pocket full of meat hooks, just in case he comes across some drunk college kids?”
“You know,” Randy said, “I do think you’re being a little harsh with the college kids. After all, they’re drunk and their friends keep getting killed and it’s dark and all.”
“It doesn’t have to be dark. All they have to do is turn a light on.”
“But the killer cut the power. Didn’t you see?”
“He turned off the main breaker. All you have to do is turn it back on. Do none of them understand how a breaker box works? It’s not that hard!”
“So what would you do?” Randy asked. “If you were there, in that cabin, just like that, being stalked by an undead demonic serial killer”
“Well, for starters, I’d turn the power back on.”
“But wouldn’t he just turn it back off again?”
“Then I’d turn it back on.”
“So you’d spend the whole film flipping a switch at each other? You know, this could get to be an awfully boring movie.”
“Oh, but he wouldn’t turn it back off if he didn’t know I’d turned it on.”
“Wait, what?” Randy asked. Death was just sitting back in his corner of the backseat, holding Wren and laughing too hard to talk.
“I wouldn’t let him know I’d turned it on. I’d make sure all the lights were out, then I’d turn the main breaker back on so there’d be power in the lines. Then I’d take that big lamp there and break the bulb, but leave it in the socket, and when the killer came looking for me, I’d stab him with it.”
“So, what? You think that’d electrocute him?”
“Wouldn’t it?” Wren asked. “Like sticking a fork in a light socket, is what I thought. You’d probably have to make sure the lamp was turned on.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But he’s undead and demonic. Can you electrocute undead demonic serial killers?”
“It’s worth a try.”
“What if it didn’t work? Then what would you do?”
“I’d hit him with the lamp!”
Behind Randy, the car with Eric and Madeline, et al., finally stopped rocking and bouncing. Wren saw a hand wipe clear an area of the rear window and Madeline peeked out at the Jeep. Her face, in the reflected glow of the movie, looked wistful.
The front door opened and Eric stumbled out. He was shirtless. His belt hung loose, his pants were undone, and his hair was a mess. He gave the Jeep a drunken, lopsided grin and a thumbs-up, closed the front car door, opened the rear car door, and climbed inside. A woman’s hand came out and caught the handle and pulled it closed.
“Now that,” Wren said, “that over there? That’s scary!”
_____
“Man! Why you gotta do this to me?”
When Death picked Randy up after work, he already had a passenger in the back seat of his Jeep. A sullen, handcuffed, complaining passenger.
“You wouldn’t have to do this if you’d made your court date,” he told the man.
“I forgot, all right? I just got the days mixed up. You couldn’t cut me some slack, man?”
“You shouldn’t have tried to run.”
“What did he do?” Randy asked.
“Attempted theft.” Death tilted the rearview mirror so he could look back at his prisoner. “Grandy here thought he could run with the big boys, but Salvy caught him in the act at that place over on Second.”
The East Bledsoe Ferry police station was on the town square, sitting kitty-corner to Death’s office. The street was made up of two lanes separated by a line of parking spaces, with the inner lane travelling clockwise around the courthouse and the outer l
ane going widdershins. On a normal day, it was crowded but not packed.
Today was not normal. The entire inner lane was blocked off and half the central parking places were taken up by equipment vans and food trucks. Workers were busy building booths and a stage on the courthouse lawn, while a carnival set up rides and games in the street.
Randy looked around at the chaos. “What in the Sam Hill is going on here?” he asked.
“It’s, ah, some kind of harvest festival,” Death said. “Heritage Days or something. There’s stuff going up all over town, but it seems to be centered here. Wren was telling me about it. I guess it’s an annual thing.”
“Huh.”
Death maneuvered into a parking place in front of the police station and they went in to deliver his prisoner. When Grandy had been checked in and taken back to the cells, Death and Randy lingered to talk.
“What are you doing playing bounty hunter again?” Chief Reynolds asked. “I thought that was just a fallback if the private eye gig dried up.”
“Favor for a friend,” Death replied. “Hagarson’s out of town and one of his clients skipped, so he called me. So, ah, have you heard anything new on the Dozier case?”
“I don’t know anything you don’t,” Reynolds said. “I’m assuming, because of the way they’re acting, that there’s no hard evidence connecting Dozier to the murder scene in the crypt. No fingerprints or anything. The KC cops haven’t come right out and said as much, but they haven’t announced that they’ve got it wrapped up, either.”
“We need that cell phone,” Death said. “There’s a good chance Jones recorded his own murder.”
“I agree, but how are you going to find it? The last place it pinged before the battery died was out at Warriors’ Rest. We’ve been over that ground with a fine-tooth comb. Tried dogs and metal detectors. Nothing.”
“Have you considered a psychic?” Randy joked.
“Do you know one?” Reynolds countered.
“Well, uh … ”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Now, I did date this girl once who always knew who was on the phone before she looked at caller ID. Sometimes she’d know before it even rang. Couldn’t ever come up with lottery numbers or anything like that, though, so probably that wouldn’t be very helpful.”