Ice Shear

by M. P. Cooley

  “I think we’re done here,” I said. “Jason was a great help.” I moved toward the pharmacy door, but Denise stepped sideways and blocked me.

  “Oh, no, you can’t go in this way, you have to go around to the front door.” She moved up the steps and had her hand on the doorknob, as if ready to slam it in our face. “Authorized personnel only, because of the controlled substances. You know how regulators are.”

  “As a police officer and an FBI agent, we’re pretty trustworthy,” Hale said. “And it’d be better if we could have the conversation in private.”

  “Oh, I can definitely understand. Do you want to find a time later?” I shook my head no.

  “Jason,” Denise said, “when you’re done with the trash, you need to clear the walk again. Then don’t forget to come in and sweep and mop. People have been tracking snow in all morning.”

  Once we were around front, out of earshot of Jason, Hale spoke. “I think we aren’t going to get her full attention here. Bring her in after work?”

  “No.” I had an aide named Juliana who came every day when Kevin was in his last few months. Juliana would have stayed around the clock if I’d asked, and I would have been happy to have her if my budget had allowed it. Juliana cheerfully wiped bile off her smock, all the while chatting with Kevin about her childhood in one of the hill towns at the west end of the county, a life filled with an endless supply of summer days and chickens. No, I explained, Denise’s husband needed constant care, and we weren’t going to pull her in to prove who was boss.

  “Good point. That said,” Hale said, “I’m frozen through, and do wish we could’ve done the last interview inside.”

  “Me, too.” I caught Hale’s elbow as he slipped sideways against me. “Jason’s a blusher, and it would’ve been interesting to see when he turned red.”

  “You think he’s lying? Could he have been jealous enough to kill her?”

  I chose my words carefully. “It’s possible, but it’s not my first choice.” Jason had seemed infatuated, but infatuated with Marty rather than with Danielle.

  As we entered the store, Denise Byrne was waiting for us. Perched high on a stool behind the counter at the end of a long aisle lined with cold and flu remedies, she was very like a Roman emperor of the absolute rule rather than the bread and circuses variety. Her sweatshirt was gone, replaced by a pharmacist’s smock over a silky pale purple shirt, and her hair had been brushed and sprayed into a thick helmet of gold. Several file folders were lined up next to the register and the glasses repair kits, lip balm, and throat lozenges.

  She started speaking while we were several feet away. “I want to keep things friendly, but I feel like we’re being treated like suspects rather than witnesses. We want to help. We do! But you would tell me if I needed a lawyer, right?”

  “No need for any of that, Mrs. Byrne.” Hale seemed to have decided to go the southern charm route with Denise. He nodded at the files. “Are all of these for us?”

  I picked up one and scanned the W-2 statement, Danielle’s employment history, and her application.

  “I made you extra copies, so you don’t have to stay here to read them,” Denise said, reaching up to her neck and smoothing down the collar. Up close I could see that the shirt was polyester rather than silk.

  “Why’d you hire her?” I said as I read. “She lasted less than two months and doesn’t seem to have had any experience.”

  “My son remained fond of her, and that’s the sort of thing I do for neighbors. Plus, she had to make her own way after her parents cut her off. I knew what that was like. I put myself through school on a basketball scholarship.”

  “But she didn’t work out as an employee?” Hale said.

  “No.”

  She didn’t elaborate, so I prompted her: “Did she cost too much to pay?”

  “No!” Denise exclaimed. “Who’s saying things like that?”

  I didn’t tell her it was her son. Instead I asked, “Did she miss her shifts?”

  “Her husband always dropped her off right on time. Probably nothing better to do. Between you and me”—she dropped her voice—“I think he was a deadbeat. He just looks like that type, you know?”

  I went direct. “Did she steal from you?”

  Jason appeared at the doorway, holding his key chain in front of him. “Mom, I can’t find the key for the garbage.”

  “Jason, I’ve told you to keep your keys in a safe place, so you don’t forget where you put them.”

  “I did, Mom. I had them. It’s—”

  Denise sighed loudly, but she smiled at her son. “We’ll look at home later, okay, honey? Go back out and clear and salt the walk again.”

  Denise waited until he was out of earshot before continuing.

  “Yes.” She nodded, and her bangs fell over one eye. Using two fingers, she precisely slid the hair back in place. “Yes, she stole from me.”

  “Drugs?” I asked.

  “Drugs from up here. All the controlled substance inventories matched up, even the Oxycontin, which is the druggies’ first choice. She took cold medicine—three packets a week. And eye drops, although that might have been shoplifted. We always report the losses to the auditor, even the supplies Danielle stole. I made Danielle’s thefts anonymous, since I didn’t have one hundred percent proof and hadn’t wanted to embarrass the congresswoman or her husband. They say Amanda’s going to be president, or at least vice president, which I guess would be okay.”

  Denise straightened a display of earplugs. “We do take precautions against theft. We got a private security system put in. We have cameras out front, and I lock the Dumpsters. And of course I have a gun—and a permit, of course—for when I’m working late. Since my husband got sick, that happens . . . a lot.”

  Thankfully, this murder hadn’t involved a gun. The doorbell rang, and an elderly man walked up the aisle toward us, pushing forward on a walker.

  “Is there anything else?” Denise said in her pharmacist’s whisper.

  Hale collected the files. “No, ma’am, I think this is everything. You sure have been helpful.”

  “I have a question,” I said. “Do you know Ray Jelickson?”

  “Only in passing. He was at the wake yesterday, making a lot of noise.” Denise Byrne’s eye flicked nervously at the customer. “I didn’t like my son hanging out with him.” She smiled brightly at the man behind me. “You are a hearty one, Mr. Ashby, braving the snow! I’ll be with you in a second. Me and June”—she looked at me questioningly—“we’re done, right, June?”

  MARTY’S BLOCK HAD BEEN plowed. Piles of snow rose against the parked cars, almost burying some of the economy models. Not that they could get out. Right down the middle of the street was a line of black sedans: “Bucars” from the FBI. We pulled in and walked up the narrow shoveled path, no more than a foot wide, that wove between cars, past the gate, and up the walk and the steps. Midway to the door was a huge indentation where someone had fallen.

  Before we had the chance to knock, the door opened, an agent holding it wide. We made our way past two more men, who were opening DVD cases. A third was emptying the shelves, shaking books out and dropping them on the floor. Him I recognized: Potreo. When I first arrived in California he had constantly called me and the other female agents “Breast Fed.” None of us laughed and he took to pouting.

  I slipped on a pile of CD cases, found a helpful hand under my elbow that let go too soon, and flailed to regain my balance. I turned to my pseudohelper, a guy from my last assignment in Oakland. These weren’t people Hale had pulled in from the Albany office, they were agents from across the country, all of whom specialized in drug trafficking and gangs. I wondered if any of them would tell me what was really going on. Probably not.

  “Report,” Hale said.

  I looked up. The kitchen had fallen from disrepair into destruction. All the cabinet doors hung open and the contents were strewn across the floor: tea bags soaking in tomato sauce, macaroni fanned out, and dishes smashed ro
ughly, bowls broken in half and glasses splintered into tiny pieces.

  An agent picking up broken glass nodded to the back porch. “Not us. Him. Slammed the cabinet open when we told him he couldn’t leave for coffee, and a bunch of dishes came down. Accident, I think.” He dropped his voice. “The second cabinet he did intentionally.”

  I stepped over a broken teapot, the rosebud pattern dotting pink across the floor. On the back porch I saw Marty tipped back in a lawn chair, gazing out at his backyard. A three-by-three-foot patch of snow had been roughly cleared to make space. The sound of the door opening didn’t draw his eyes from the squirrels skittering across the surface of the snow. He wore a hat but no gloves, and I was alarmed to see his hands, red with cold, brush against the snow that walled in the chair. He was wearing his reclaimed leather vest over a quilted jacket. It looked painful, cutting tightly across his broad shoulders and puffy coat.

  Marty still seemed unaware of me. I had experienced that kind of grief, where hours or even months passed without notice. I didn’t want to alarm him, and I rested my hand on his shoulder to let him know I was there.

  “I only wanted a coffee,” he said. He tipped forward. His chair skidded, and I held tighter to steady him. “They wouldn’t let me leave. I couldn’t get away.”

  CHAPTER 12

  CAN WE LOSE THIS bitch?” Marty said.

  He was getting friendly. It took us a while to get him talking—forty-five minutes, two ham sandwiches (the first of which he tossed to the squirrels), and some warmth. He was full of a rage that appeared to be righteous. He was currently sitting on the floor opposite me, leaning against his bed’s box spring, which was flipped up against the only wall with a window, blocking out what little natural light there might be on this winter afternoon. The cheesecloth at the bottom of the mattress was torn, and a strip hung down, dusting Marty’s elbow. I was propped against his upside-down dresser, its contents dumped onto the floor.

  Marty hadn’t said anything of value during this conversation, answering half my questions with a shrug and spending the rest of his time picking up random objects from the pile next to us: a pair of socks, a well-worn blowfish sushi T-shirt, four or five hair elastics. Periodically he shot sidelong glances at Hale, who loomed above us, leaning against a wall. When Hale told Marty to stop fiddling with the stuff on the floor and answer the questions, Marty called him a bitch.

  I could understand the urge, as Hale annoyed me, too. Earlier, to coax him off the deck, I’d told Marty we could go to the station. It would be easier to talk, and he wouldn’t have to witness the FBI tossing his house. He was unsure, not trusting the federal agents, but I got him to the point of agreeing when Hale piped up.

  “Marty, we are going to need to go through everything here, in detail, even the yard. You are really getting in our way.”

  “You tar snake. I’m staying.”

  But Marty agreed to go inside. We wound through the house, stepping over the broken china, squeezing past the refrigerator that had been moved to the middle of the room, and dodging several Fuck you looks from agents. Most of them were directed at Marty, but a few were aimed at me. I did get a friendly nod from Jeff Scylla, out of Missouri, and from Sam Bailey. Sam was called “Silent Sam” because of the way he lived the phrase “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” A nod from Sam was a big wet kiss from anyone else. In a way, I had a harder time ignoring the friendly faces than the adversarial ones, and both Marty and I stared at the ceiling waiting for Hale to let us know the bedroom was clear.

  “Don’t want to contaminate evidence,” he said.

  “I pretty well contaminated things when I took a shower,” Marty said.

  I’d had enough of their bickering.

  “Just give us a time line for last night,” I said, sketching out a table in my pad, writing “Time” and “Location” at the top of its two columns. “If you saw your brother and when. I can’t promise to get the feds out of here any sooner—they’re too busy rechecking my work to listen to me—but at least we can make progress on finding your wife’s and brother’s killer.”

  Playing the “us against them” card seemed to be the best way to get Marty to cooperate. And I wasn’t lying, not really. I wanted as little to do with the other agents as possible.

  “I got home around sevenish. After the wake I went to an AA meeting.” He watched me, expecting me to flinch at the mention of AA, but I kept my face bland. He continued. “I was really tired last night—I don’t know why—and kind of crashed when I got home, calling my sponsor in L.A., watching TV, chilling. Ray got home around eight or so. Gotta say I was surprised. I mean, he never loses a chance to hang out with his one true love.”

  “Jackie?” I asked.

  “Craig,” Marty reached up, grabbed the hanging piece of cheesecloth from the mattress, and pulled down. Half the gauze came away and dust puffed out of the slash. Hale coughed. The fabric wrapped around Marty’s wrist, and he shook it, but it tangled. From underneath the pile to the left, a phone started ringing. He grabbed a pair of scissors off the floor, cut the fabric away, and began to hunt through the pile. The ringing stopped just as he pulled the phone free.

  He looked at the screen. “Jackie called.”

  “For you?” I asked. My back was getting cramped leaning against the dresser and I sat forward, sliding the scissors behind me.

  “This is Ray’s phone.” Marty laughed bitterly. “The dumb shit forgot it again.”

  As Marty flipped through the texts, I glanced at Hale, who raised an eyebrow at me. A second phone. That’s how Ray got around Marty’s phone monitoring.

  “Marty, can I see that?” Marty ignored me. Hale looked ready to grab it out of his hands.

  “Marty,” I repeated more loudly. “Marty, give me the phone.”

  He flung the phone on the floor between us. Before I could reach it, Hale had knelt down and grabbed it.

  “I want that back,” Marty said.

  “Craig?” I said to Marty. He didn’t answer, watching as Hale walked the phone to the door and handed it to an agent on the other side. I prompted him again. “Oh, yeah, Craig. Ray thought Craig was the shit with his plane and the man jewelry he wore.”

  “At the funeral, I got the sense you’re not impressed with Craig.”

  “You got that right. He was always panting after Danielle like a puppy. And Craig’s my age, but he hangs out with the teenagers ’cause they’re impressed by his bullshit. Back in L.A., when Phil and I were tussling, Craig just stood there with his thumbs up his ass, watching the whole thing go down. Craig’s all talk.”

  “And your brother. All talk, too?” Hale asked.

  Marty clenched his jaw once, twice, before he answered.

  “Yeah. Yeah, he was,” daring Hale to make a comment.

  Hale hadn’t informed me he was going to be playing bad cop here. It wasn’t needed. Marty thought all cops were bad cops. The locals were less bad than the feds—or maybe less competent and less of a threat—and he trusted me marginally more than he trusted Hale. I needed to keep him talking and asked him to tell us the rest of the details from the night before.

  “Ray got home around eight. Settled down. Jason dropped off some submarine sandwiches. He didn’t stay. So me and Ray, we ate those.”

  Jason hadn’t mentioned stopping at Marty’s last night. I looked at Hale, but he was still in the staring contest with Marty.

  “Around nine my brother announces that he needs to go to the grocery store before the storm. Should have known that little shithead was lying.”

  “Why?”

  I heard a crash from the direction of the living room. Marty cringed, and Hale didn’t look happy, either. “He didn’t know what groceries were. We had plenty of cheese curls. He was set.”

  I thought of Ray calling out for grape soda in his too-big biker vest, the vest that now strained across Marty’s shoulders.

  Marty saw me smile. “What? You like one of those social workers?” His voice got high and shri
ll: “‘Just stopping to make sure the boys are eating right.’ ” He rolled his eyes and his voice dropped back to its bass rumble. “Like you give a fuck.”

  “No, it’s like my daughter,” and I explained how I’d gotten soda for Ray a few days ago, and my seven-year-old would have chosen the same kind.

  Marty sat forward. “What’s her name?”

  “Officer Lyons’s personal life is off limits,” interjected Hale.

  Marty rolled his eyes at me. “We really need this clyde here?”

  I laughed, confusing Hale. I explained. “A clyde is someone who cuts you off in their cage.” My explanation needed an explanation. “Their car.”

  I had Marty’s attention. “You ride?”

  I was ready to describe the interesting “neighbors” I had in California, leaving out the part where I was instrumental in arresting said neighbors, when Hale butted in again.

  “Officer Lyons here is one of us,” Hale said. “FBI, in California. Probably saw your jacket. And your mom’s got a sheet, right?”

  Marty shook his head. “Fuckin’ fibbies. Entrapment—”

  “I was,” I said, as furious as Marty was. “I was in the FBI. I’m out.”

  Marty paused. “They kick you out?”

  “I left.” I spun it in my favor. “Couldn’t take these assholes anymore.”

  “Yeah.” He rolled one shoulder in a friendly shrug. He pushed the second shoulder back and looked pinned to the wooden slats of the box spring. He rolled his head back and squinted at me. “But once an asshole, always an asshole, right?”

  I protested, but he cut me off.

  “Thought maybe you wanted to hear the real story. I know why you’re here. You don’t give a fuck.”

  “I do.”

  “You don’t. You don’t care who killed my brother. You probably think he deserved it. Because me and Ray are the sons . . . no, I’m the son”—a fierce pride seemed to ride through him—“the heir apparent, to the Abominations’ chief enforcer.”

  Hale rolled his eyes. “Well, that and your little California meth lab.”