First Kill: An Eli Quinn Mystery

by Robert Roy Britt

  The gap between us closed as Clive approached the rise. He crested just as I began the gradual climb. He started down the other side and slipped out of view. The rain was relentless. I had a quarter-mile to catch him before he’d reach the houses. I picked up the pace. At the top, I’d gained ground. No question I’d catch him—no more than fifty yards between us now. I slowed down to get my breathing under control.

  Clive looked over his shoulder, saw me and stopped. He turned around to face me, knife in his left hand, right pulling his baseball cap down low. I slowed to a jog. Wind drove the rain sideways, felt like small rocks pelting my bare torso. Thunder was instant, deafening.

  I walked the last twenty yards, fists at my sides, deep breaths.

  We were ten feet apart. Clive’s hat was pulled down, his eyes deep and dark in there somewhere. I shouted. “Where’s Joe Mack?”

  “Fuck you.” I could barely hear him above the storm.

  “Jimmy Mendoza?”

  Same answer. I took a step closer. A gust of wind pushed me forward a step and Clive back a step, blew his hat off, spilling hair across his face.

  “Bo Rollins make you kill them?”

  Clive laughed. A brief ha, loud and forced. “Bo Rollins…” He took a deep breath. “…isn’t smart enough… for any of this.”

  “Who then?”

  “You figure it out, wiseass.”

  And by then I had.

  “Anyway, don’t matter,” he said. “No dog to protect you. You’re a fuckin’ dead man.”

  “Then let’s get it over with,” I said.

  I moved in right away, knees bent, hands chest-high. Rule Number One in any fight to the death: Take whatever advantages you have. My breathing was under control. Clive was winded. I didn’t want to give him any more time to recover.

  But before we engaged fully, I also wanted to get a sense of Clive’s fighting skills and style, without giving away what I was capable of. He was about six-three, just taller than me. He was strong. I knew he’d killed men in hand-to-hand combat. And he had a knife.

  And so we danced a bit.

  He lunged with the knife and I hopped back. Rule Number One in a knife fight: Stay away from the knife. Every other consideration is a distant second.

  “Fuckin’ punk,” he said, wiping hair from his face.

  I focused on the fight. No words needed. The sky hollered with thunder and spat more rain at us. He wiped the long hair out of his eyes. Vision was another advantage for me.

  He began to circle to his right, the knife always belt-high and pointed my way. I feigned a boxer’s roundhouse punch with my right hand and he lunged at it with the knife. I faked a wrestler’s move on the other side, and he lunged at that.

  This is what I’d hoped for: He was putting too much stock in his knife. I’d be using every tactic I knew, and now I had a good bead on his limited approach. The trick now was to get the knife away from him. The fight would be over if I could do that.

  Sure, part of me wanted to kill Clive Walker now. But that wasn’t my style. I thought of Solo. I’d subdue Clive, and yeah, he deserved a little bit more. Then I’d get some information out of him, and that would hurt a little. Him, not me. Maybe I could figure this whole case out.

  I thought of Solo again. I needed to finish this now and get back to him.

  I faked a low move and got Clive to lunge again, then as he drew the knife back I grabbed his right wrist with my left hand and pulled him down as my knee came up into his stomach. I reached over his head with my right arm and grabbed his left wrist to neutralize the knife, his head locked under my arm. All in less than a second. I gave him another knee to the stomach then pulled myself around his right shoulder and got both hands on his right forearm, pinning it and the knife to his body.

  I’d underestimated Clive’s strength. He heaved up and lifted me off the ground. I still had his arm and the knife pinned against him. When my feet touched the ground I jerked him backward and smashed my right elbow into his temple, but I slipped in the mud and the impact wasn’t full. Clive swung up wildly with his free fist and caught my jaw, throwing me back. My phone and holster crunched on a rock, maybe saving me a badly bruised hip.

  But I lost hold of him. I’d just botched the key move I had for disarming a knife-wielding man. I was on my back. He was free. And I was out of tricks.

  Clive rolled over onto his knees, dove at me. I aimed for his nose and kicked, connected with an eye instead. It wasn’t enough to stop him but he’d be half blind for a moment. Yet he was atop me, his full weight pressing down. My left arm was trapped between us. He had my hair in his left hand. The rain punished my face and forced me to blink constantly. I’d lost my vision advantage. But I saw a shadow rise up—his left arm—and knew only that I couldn’t let it come down.

  With my right arm I reached not for the weapon but where his elbow should be. I caught it and pushed with everything I had to roll him over. We ended up face-to-face, grappling in the mud on our sides. He still had my hair, pulling. I still had his elbow, pushing. My left arm came free and I jabbed up with the shortest, most powerful punch I’d ever delivered, and heard his jaw crack. In the instant his left arm relaxed I shifted my grip to his wrist, shouted Solo, and pulled the knife down into Clive Walker’s chest.

  Chapter 24

  The tall man lay on his back. Blinked, saw his own knife. Eyes failed.

  Thunder, thunder, the thunder wouldn’t stop. Chest on fire. Rain cool and comforting on his face. Arms and legs sinking into the earth, falling, no feeling.

  Thoughts flitted by in an eternity that lasted a second. He’d failed. The one thing he was good at, and he failed. He hoped his father would be OK. His father had been tough, but always fair. Never hurt him, tried hard to raise him alone after his mother and sister died. He wished he’d done more for the old man. Lightning shattered the sky into a thousand pieces, seared his mind in a pain beyond anything. He tried to scream but nothing happened.

  The rain stopped and the sun shined bright for an instant, then the darkest cloud he’d ever imagined rolled over him and came down, down, surrounding and choking, until the thinking stopped.

  Chapter 25

  You could say Clive Walker died at his own hand. You could say I killed him. Both would be true. Neither was what I’d hoped for. But I didn’t enter the fight wanting to die, so I guess on some level I won. There’d be time later to worry about how that made me feel.

  With the howling wind and driving rain, there was no point trying to feel for a delicate pulse. And there was no need. The knife had plunged into his heart. Blood was everywhere, spilling into the mud. If he wasn’t dead yet, he would be soon, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  And anyway, I was more worried about saving Solo.

  I left the dying or dead Clive Walker in the mud, knife in his chest, and jogged back. Coming over the rise, I could see Solo where I’d left him, lying still. I sprinted. When I was just a few feet away he lifted his head and saw me. He made one slap in the muck with his tail. I got down on both knees and gave him an awkward hug, careful not to touch the wound. He licked my face and slapped his tail twice.

  “You’re gonna be OK boy,” I said. “Got to get you back to the Jeep.”

  Solo didn’t argue. I moved around to the other side of him, squeezed my hands and arms underneath him. He whined but let me slowly pick him up. This German shepherd weighed 110 pounds. That’s a lot to carry in a backpack. It’s a whole lot to carry in front of you. But in a way, it was nothing. We trudged back down to the gully. The stream was as wide as the length of the van now, up to the bottom of the hubcaps. The rain let up. In the distance, the sky brightened underneath the back edge of the swift-moving thunderstorm. I considered waiting for the flash flood to subside. Solo whined. The water lapped the hubcaps. I knew it would rise further, even as the rain stopped, as miles of desert upstream funneled the past half-hour’s rain into the arroyo.

  Upstream, a wider, shallower spot offered le
ss dangerous passage. I stepped into the brown, churning water with one foot. The water was halfway up my calf, the current tugging. I put my other foot in and we slogged through the growing flash flood, one careful step at a time.

  The Jeep was well above the flood. I laid Solo on the back seat, got in, engaged the four-wheel drive and climbed out of the wash. On the bumpy drive back to Thomas Walker’s house, the rain turned to sprinkles and the wind died down. Another hard shower gusted in and settled over the house just as we pulled up.

  ***

  Thomas Walker opened his front door, rifle pointed at my chest, eyes squinting and glaring over the reading glasses. The door opened to a small kitchen with Formica counter tops. Behind him was a small dining room table with two chairs, and behind that a dark living room.

  His eyes were untrusting slits. “The hell is going on?”

  There were two options. The first one was sketchy. The old man had two hands on the gun, the left holding the stock just behind the trigger guard. It’d take him a split-second to get his finger on the trigger. Odds were better than even, maybe sixty-forty, I could knock the gun away in that split-second. I wasn’t crazy about those odds. The other option was to disarm him with honesty.

  “Mr. Walker, your son’s a murderer,” I said, speaking loudly so he could hear me.

  “Says who,” he said, waving the gun so it pointed at my face, then my crotch, then settling it chest-level.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said. “Eli Quinn. I got a business card here.”

  “Show me.”

  I reached slowly and carefully into my jeans pocket with two fingers and pulled out a soggy, bent and frayed card, held it out. The old man snatched the card with his right hand, keeping the gun level by resting the stock on his thigh. I could have easily taken the gun in that instant, but we were making good progress, and he might prove useful if I could win him over.

  He glanced at the card. “Hmph. Don’t mean nothin’.”

  “What’s Clive been up to lately?”

  He glared at me. The gun barrel turned a circle. He pursed his lips. “Been around more than normal.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Dunno. Out there a couple times.” He pointed the gun out toward the driveway, swung it back at me. His eyes opened up, yellow, with a faraway look. “Then out back the other night. I don’t see so well, but I could tell he had someone with him. Thinks I don’t notice what’s going on. He says it was some old friend, just showing him around.” The old man blinked. He glanced at the gun, tilted it back up so it aimed squarely at my chest again. “What’re you sayin’?”

  “He killed a man,” I said. “I’m certain of that. Maybe two. I’m hoping you can help me.”

  “Where’s Clive?”

  “He tried to kill me.”

  I let that sit there. The old man’s eye twitched. He stared beyond me and his eyes glistened. The gun barrel inched downward.

  He mumbled softly, defeated. “Dumb sumbitch.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker.” There were a lot of things I could say, but I didn’t see any advantage in saying them right now. So I said, “Dog’s in the Jeep. He’s hurt bad. Can I bring him inside?”

  The old man lowered his head, gave a few short, tentative nods, and turned. He set the rifle on the kitchen table and walked back into the living room.

  Solo whimpered just once when I scooped him out of the Jeep. I laid him on the floor of the kitchen. We were both soaked, mostly clean now from all the rain. I went back to the Jeep and fished the first aid kit out from the center console.

  The wound was clean. The bleeding had stopped. I thought of trying to stitch it up but knew nothing about how. I wiped the wound with alcohol, put some antibiotic goo on it, placed a large sterile pad over it, made a few wraps with athletic tape, and then adhesive tape. It’d have to do for now.

  The old man sat in his chair, staring at the TV, which was off. I walked over and stood in front of him. “Mr. Walker, can you tell me what Clive’s been up to?”

  He dropped his head, took his reading glasses off and talked into his lap. “Clive was never the smartest bulb in the room. He could do what he was told, but wasn’t too good at figuring things out on his own. But he was a good kid, till his mama and sister died. After that, he started runnin’ around, doing drugs. Come home beat up. Wouldn’t listen to me. Boy needs his mama, you know?”

  He looked up. I nodded. Then he turned his head away, talked to the wall.

  “After high school, nobody would hire him, so he joined the Marines. I figured they might fix him. Made him worse. He grew up some, sure, but the anger didn’t go away, and Clive gots a short fuse.”

  I didn’t correct his use of the present tense. I understood it. I’d done the same for a while after Jess died.

  “Now he runs that half-ass bar, dug himself a mountain of debt. Wants me to sell this house, get some cash.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “This house, this land, it’s all I got. Told him no way. Didn’t see him for three months. Until this week.”

  “And what did you see this week?”

  He looked back at me. He swallowed hard. “Clive’s dead, ain’t he?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Walker. I had no choice.”

  The old man’s yellow eyes got cloudier and wet. No tears came. “Bound to happen.” He paused, bit his lip. “You keep pickin’ fights, sooner or later you lose one.”

  “Tell me what Clive was doing this week,” I said.

  “Shed out front,” he said. “Seen him come out of there a couple times. I don’t see so good, but I seen that. Ain’t been nothin’ in that shed for years. He knows that. Maybe he’s stashing stuff there. I dunno. Then I seen him walk out back with that man the other night. Didn’t get a good look. But I think maybe the other man wasn’t wantin’ to go.”

  “Can you show me where?”

  “Look out that window out back.” He pointed. “You’ll see a trail. Goes out a quarter mile or so, into a gulley. Clive used to play with those little green army men out there when he was a kid. He’d set up two teams, then throw rocks at them and blow ’em up with firecrackers. He loved that spot. Thick with mesquite trees. Thought nobody could see him down there.”

  “Is the shed locked?”

  “Key’s hanging in the kitchen, by the phone. Phone don’t work though. They disconnected it last year.”

  I reached reflexively to my hip. The holster was there, my iPhone gone.

  The key was hanging where he said. Solo swiveled his head to watch me go outside. The rain was light, the sky still gray, threatening yet more showers. But the thunder rumbled off to the south. I jogged to the shed and opened the lock, swung the door open.

  Jimmy Mendoza lay on his side, mouth duct taped, hands and feet bound. His eyes were wide with fear until he realized it was me, and his whole body relaxed.

  Chapter 26

  “This is gonna hurt,” I said, before ripping the duct tape off Jimmy’s mouth.

  “Ow. Goddamn, Quinn.”

  “Sorry. You OK?”

  “Except for my face, my legs, my wrists.” He held his hands out to me.

  “I’ll get something to cut the zip ties with,” I said, and started to go.

  “Wait!”

  “What.”

  “Guy in a baseball cap…”

  “He’s no longer with us,” I said.

  Jimmy let his whole body relax, slumped back down to the plywood floor. I went to the Jeep and got a pair of wire snips from a tool box I kept in a lock box behind the rear seat, went back to the shed and cut Jimmy free.

  He sat up, rubbed his wrists, felt the golf-ball-sized lump on the back of his head, one very much like mine.

  “Quinn?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know how the hell you found me. But thank you. He was gonna…”

  “I know,” I said.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “I’ll expl
ain in the Jeep. First tell me what happened to you.”

  “Not sure, really,” he said. “I was leaving my office. I remember going out the door. Then I woke up here.”

  “You saw the guy?”

  “I was coming to when he threw me in here. I barely got a look at him. He didn’t say anything. Just ran his finger across his throat, shut the door and locked it. But I saw him, yeah. Tall guy, strong. Long hair.”

  “You don’t know him?”

  “Never seen him before,” Jimmy said.

  “Any reason you can think he’d come after you?”

  Jimmy ran has hands through his short hair, laced them together behind his neck and looked up. “I talked to Bo.”

  “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Where?”

  “Met him out at Joe and Joanne’s house. They asked me what was going on.”

  “And you didn’t call me.”

  “We’re not exactly BFFs.”

  “Fair enough,” I said. “So Bo’s back.”

  “Looked like they were getting ready to leave. She was packing.”

  “What’d you say to Bo?”

  “I told them you suspected both of them,” he said. “I asked them what the hell was going on. So they asked me what I thought.”

  “And you said?”

  “I said I was starting to wonder the same thing. They denied it. Said you were making shit up, twisting the facts. Joanne can be pretty convincing. Bo, I’m not so sure. He was nervous, looked like he didn’t know what to do.”

  “You were too close to them,” I said. “They put a hit on you.”

  “I can’t believe…”

  “You talk to anyone else? Anything else I need to know?”

  Jimmy rubbed his golf ball again, then asked: “How’s Madison?”