Jack: Grime and Punishment: The Brothers Grime, book 1

by Maxfield, Z. A.

  “I told you—”

  “I understand, Ryan. I really do. If you know how to clean and disinfect and dispose of waste materials, then you’ll be able to save money if you do it yourself. But you might find it’s more emotional than you imagined and change your mind. Even if you don’t use Brothers Grime, my bid will give you a ballpark idea of what any reputable firm would charge you for the job.”

  Karen smiled. “All right. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it, Ryan?”

  “Yes.” Ryan didn’t look Jack’s way.

  “Excellent.” Karen pulled Jack into a hug before he had a chance to make that impossible. She did the same for Ryan, and he welcomed her. “I’m so sorry I have to leave. Expect me to stop by later with food.”

  “You don’t need to go to any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble.” Karen practically shook him. “I’ll worry about you.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ryan smiled.

  “Jack, it was a pleasure meeting you,” she said.

  “You too, ma’am.”

  She closed the door behind them, presumably because she had to go through the house to get to the garage. A minute later, the heavy steel door rolled up, and Karen’s import sedan backed down the driveway. Still awkward around Ryan, Jack waved from the porch as she sped away.

  Then they headed toward Ryan’s place, the final stop on Nick Foasberg’s short and troubled journey through life.

  Chapter 4

  “Here. Let’s go this way.” Ryan led Jack down the path toward the sidewalk, even though it looked like it would be easy to get from the Huntleys’ house to Ryan’s place over the grass. “The grass is pretty spongy there, and the ground’s uneven. We get gophers. Tough with a cane.”

  Jack didn’t acknowledge the kindness, if that was what it was, but he posted a chalk mark on an imaginary scoreboard. One point for grace under pressure. Ryan seemed gracious, even in these awful circumstances. People could take lessons from him and Dave’s mother. Maybe that was the kind of thing you could expect from the moneyed class.

  That led Jack to wonder how Nick’s cousin Ryan had come to be among them.

  “This your place?”

  “Yeah.” Ryan unlocked the door but hesitated before pushing it open. “I—”

  “We could talk out here, if you feel more comfortable. It might be good for you to find somewhere else to crash for a while.”

  Ryan gave the door a hard push. “After you.”

  Jack crossed the immaculate marble-tiled entry and waited. Ryan followed, locking the door behind them. When he slipped off his shoes, Jack started to toe his shoes off as well. Probably that was how Ryan kept the floors so nice.

  “You don’t have to take yours off. I do that for comfort more than cleanliness.” He raked a hand through his short, wavy hair. “I know it’s early, and you’re here to see the—” His mouth snapped shut.

  “Bathroom,” Jack supplied.

  “Bathroom, yes.” Ryan watched him with those pale, cool eyes. “You’re here to see where my cousin killed himself, but I need a drink first. Would you like one?”

  “No, thank you. I’ll be driving.”

  “Mind if I have one?” Ryan headed toward the back of the house. “I’m pretty sure I don’t care what your answer is.”

  “You go right ahead.” Jack followed. “If you like, you can just point me in the right direction, and I’ll leave you to it.”

  “It’s this way.” Ryan led him into the kitchen and pointed down a narrow hallway. “That used to be the maid’s quarters and what my grandmother called the service porch.”

  Ryan turned his back and began rummaging through the cupboards.

  Jack left him. He didn’t bother asking why Ryan put his cousin up in the maid’s quarters. He was probably going to see Ryan differently now, knowing his house once had a live-in maid.

  The wood trim, cabinetry, and crown molding were likely all original, but the floor tiles looked relatively new. On one side of the hallway there was a washer, a dryer, and a deep sink. Farther down, there was a tall, thin cupboard Jack figured contained a built-in ironing board.

  Overall, the place seemed torn from a different era entirely, where the maids lived off the service porch and anyone who actually counted lived upstairs.

  The last door on the left was ajar. Dirty footprints traced where the coroner had removed the body. The tracks led to the end of the hall and out the back door. Jack took disposable boot covers from his bag and slipped them over his shoes, then pulled on thick latex gloves and a simple mask. He used his cane to push the door the rest of the way open, leaving his bag behind.

  Careful where he placed his feet, he walked inside. There wasn’t much there. An unmade twin-size bed with a wrought-iron frame. A trunk, open at the foot of the bed, half-full of blankets and bedding. Clothes had been piled on a chair in the corner—mostly jeans and T-shirts. A worn sweatshirt hung from a hook on the door.

  Nothing adorned the walls except a simple wooden crucifix. When Jack toggled the light switch, a ceiling fan stirred the air in lazy circles. The only light came from the window, which looked out onto a block wall and some garbage cans.

  Flagrant nosiness compelled Jack to open the closet door. Inside there were several suits and long-sleeved tailored shirts, white and French blue, neatly pressed, still wrapped in dry cleaner’s plastic. A pair of worn dress shoes lined up with trainers and flip-flops on the floor.

  A quick perusal of the bedside table—Nick’s bedside table, Jack reminded himself—turned up the Alcoholic’s Anonymous Big Book, a Hazelden series meditation book, and a tattered paperback copy of Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon.

  Jack turned a full circle where he stood, taking it all in. This was so…desolate. So much worse than he’d expected, and he hadn’t even crossed the threshold of the bath yet. He hadn’t even seen where Nick had died.

  He steeled his heart and stepped to the bathroom door. Remnants of crime scene tape hung limply from the door frame. A biohazard warning was prominently posted on the door. A peculiar combination of curiosity and dread made Jack’s heart race. His eyes burned, and his throat seemed clogged by a thousand things he wished he could say now that it was impossible.

  The old-fashioned knob turned easily in Jack’s hand, and he stepped into the bathroom and switched on the light.

  The room was larger than he’d expected. It contained a pedestal sink, a claw-foot tub with its plastic shower curtain shoved aside, and a brand-new dual-flush toilet. Louvered windows let in daylight and a soft breeze that did nothing to help dissipate the choking smell of death.

  A newer, one-piece shower-and-tub enclosure would have contained the mess better. As it was, gore spattered the wall behind the tub. Blood flecked stretches of white plaster. Red lines drawn by gravity ended in dark pools of congealed blood inside the tub and on the black-and-white floor tiles.

  If it hadn’t been Nick’s blood, Jack would have written it off as fairly commonplace stuff. It would take a two-man team half a day, if that.

  Jack knew he should turn around and leave. He should write a proposal, get into his truck, and go home.

  What made him stand there mesmerized by the impersonal aftermath of Nick’s gruesome death when he’d seen it so many times before?

  What made him ask useless, stupid questions like how had Nick come to this awful end? What could Jack have done differently? How could he have helped?

  How did the world keep on spinning without Nick Foasberg in it?

  Jack closed his eyes.

  Every breath he took stung, chilled to icy finality by the death of his first love. Jack thought he’d come for closure when the reality was he was opening a wound that had never healed and would never close now, ever.

  God, Dave was so right to warn me off.

  “Seen what you need to see?” Ryan’s voice came from directly behind Jack. Warm, whiskey-scented breath puffed over the skin on the back of his neck.

  Jack turned. “Yeah.”
/>   “’Cause you’ve been standing here for over an hour.”

  “I—” Over an hour? Really?

  “Did you come here so you could get the last laugh?”

  “Laugh?” Jack pulled his mask down. “Why would I laugh?”

  “I figure you wanted a chance to look down on your childhood tormentor”—he gestured drunkenly toward the old tub—“or what was left of him to prove you finally won. Right?”

  “You think this is about winning?”

  “What else?” Ryan crossed the room, picking his way with more care than he probably would if he’d been sober.

  Jack followed just as carefully, because he was stiff from standing in one place for so long. He tore off his gloves and bootees, leaving them on Nick’s bedroom floor. “God, I can’t… Slow down. Ryan!”

  Ryan waited at the end of the hall, his face a mask of pale fury.

  Jack asked, “What about you?”

  Ryan frowned at that. “What do you mean, what about me?”

  “Why was your cousin living in the maid’s quarters, in a room no bigger than—”

  Ryan’s blue eyes turned to ice. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”

  “Did you look down on him?” Jack asked, meaning to chide him gently.

  Ryan sucked in a sharp breath. “You bastard.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jack was sorry for everything. Everything. God, he was so tired.

  Ryan’s Adam’s apple bobbed in the long column of his pale throat. “I couldn’t let him live upstairs anymore. He stole my wallet, my credit cards. Anything he could get his hands on.”

  “Christ.” Jack glanced at the door to Nick’s small, tidy room. Had to be drugs. The place didn’t have the disorganized-rat’s-nest look of a meth user’s room. “Prescription drugs? Vicodin, Oxy?”

  Ryan bobbed a brief nod.

  “Christ.”

  “He was working on things.” Ryan looked back toward the room. “He was going to counseling.”

  “Let me just…” Jack tried to salvage things by going back to his original purpose for being there. “The average hourly rate for a job like this is four hundred dollars. I send a truck and two men. If you go with another service, you shouldn’t be charged for more than four hours. If you’re interested in outside help, show me all your bids, and I’ll do it for ten percent less than the lowest of them. I’ll go even lower if that’s what it takes.”

  “Maybe I don’t want you in there with the evidence of Nick’s darkest, most hopeless hour.” Ryan’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe I’m angry because people like you cross the street to get away from someone in Nick’s kind of trouble, yet you’re happy to take our money to clean up the mess.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Ryan,” Jack whispered. Anger was simply one of the stages of grief. He’d bungled this so badly he couldn’t think anymore. “I’ve handled this all wrong. I normally don’t spend time out in the field. My cousin Gabe usually talks to survivors. He has a gift for making people feel safe, but I”—he hesitated before telling the awful truth—“I couldn’t stay away.”

  “Where were you when he was losing his business?” Ryan asked. “When his wife divorced him and took the kids. Where were you when he lost his identity and turned to oblivion for comfort?”

  “That’s not fair. I’m where I always was.” Jack pounded the rubber tip of his cane on the tile. “In the same goddamn house I grew up in. I have the same goddamn phone number.”

  Ryan’s energy seemed to evaporate, and he heaved a deep sigh. “Nick wouldn’t have called you anyway.”

  God. “I know that. I don’t know what I’d have done if he did.”

  “So how is cleaning up the mess he left behind going to help you?”

  “I have no idea,” Jack admitted woodenly. “I only know I need to do it.”

  Ryan’s eyes were suspiciously moist. “Maybe I do too.”

  “You were here for him until he made it impossible. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “I did everything I knew to do, and it wasn’t enough.” Ryan shook his head. “It’s never enough. I need you to go.”

  Ryan walked past Jack, face expressionless. He opened the front door, leaving no room for further discussion.

  Jack fished out his wallet. “I’ve got the number of a local bereavement group, Survivors of Suicide, here. They’ve all been through trauma like this, and they volunteer to help survivors cope with loss. Please call them. Please.”

  “I can cope with loss.” Ryan took the card from him and glanced at it briefly. “It’s failure I despise.”

  Jack swallowed his pride. “I’m so sorry, Ryan. I’ve really fucked this all up. This is about you, and what you need. Let me help you.”

  “I’ll let you know what I decide.” Ryan closed the door between them.

  Chapter 5

  Jack had been sitting in the booth at Steamers for an hour already, listening to live jazz and trying to decompress when Gabe came in and sat down opposite him. Gabe’s curly brown hair looked freshly washed, and he’d dressed in his normal off-duty wear: a lightweight Henley and jeans. Jack looked him over. They were first cousins, and they shared hair color, skin tone, height, and build. Except now Gabe looked like the before picture, and Jack felt like…the aftermath. Thin and broken and light-years older.

  Their coolly efficient waitress had already supplied Jack with three 151 and Cokes, and she was ready to whisk the last empty drink away and get him another, but Gabe ordered himself a beer and waved her off.

  Gabe’s expression gave Jack chills.

  “I know. I shouldn’t have gone.” Jack tried a preemptive apology. “I’m sorry.”

  “Dave’s on his way. I told him he should never have called you.”

  Jack rubbed his face with both hands. “Gabe, I—”

  “Do I need to point out that going to see the scene where Nick killed himself was probably a bad idea?”

  “Don’t start.” Aware of Gabe’s unspoken objection, Jack nevertheless signaled the waitress for another 151 and Coke when she brought Gabe’s beer.

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.” Gabe’s softly controlled voice grated on Jack’s nerves. “This could break you for good.”

  In theory, Jack agreed. Control was Gabe’s thing. Nothing—neither violence nor gore nor emotions—got the better of Gabe. Sometimes Jack lost his shit. They all knew that.

  Gabe probably figured Jack was mostly broken already—that the accident and the loss of his identity as a firefighter had blown him apart, and Nick’s death crushed what was left. The truth was far simpler. He had never been whole to begin with.

  “It won’t. Besides,” Jack admitted what was really bothering him, “Nick’s asshole cousin thinks he’s going to clean it up himself.”

  Gabe snorted. “No way.”

  “He’s some kind of doctor. Says he knows what he’s looking at, and how to disinfect and dispose of the waste materials.”

  “That shit’s going to get personal fast.” Gabe looked up and motioned to someone. “That’s why you should never have gone over there in the first place, Jack.”

  Jack followed Gabe’s gaze and saw Dave standing by the bar, wearing a charcoal suit that fit his broad-shouldered frame perfectly. White shirt, striped blue tie. Detective Dave must be coming from work; he still had his cop face on. He acknowledged them, his expression none too happy, before ordering a drink from the bartender.

  Jack waved. “Why’d you have to invite him?”

  “He invited himself. What have you got against Dave all of a sudden?”

  “I met his mother this morning. Did you know he comes from that neighborhood in Sunny Hills with the old glam houses? Why the hell did he go to our high school?”

  “He grew up around here. His mom remarried and moved to Sunny Hills later.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Gabe flushed. “I just know.”

  Together, they watched Dave make his way over, beer in hand. He slid into
the booth next to Jack. “And the award for most stubborn motherfucker goes to…”

  Gabe drummed on the table with both hands. Jack could barely hear him over the music.

  “Jaaaaaaaaaack Masterson, for My Dead Lover’s Crime Scene, directed by—”

  “All right, all right.” Jack accepted his rum and Coke from the waitress without interacting.

  Dave’s brows drew together. “You okay?”

  “I am feeling no pain. But I’ll need a ride home.” Their gazes met, and Dave’s lip curved up into a half smile.

  “I’ll take you,” Gabe said, too loud. “I’m going that way anyway.”

  Jack glanced back at him. “If you’re planning on lecturing me some more tonight, I think it only fair to warn you it will fall on deaf, drunk ears.”

  Dave eyed Jack speculatively. “My mom said you talked to her neighbor, Ryan?”

  “Yeah. He seems like a good guy.” Jack picked up his drink and took a deep swallow. “Tried to help Nick when he was pissing his life down the toilet. Gave him a roof over his head. Nick stole drug money from him.”

  “Addicts,” Dave muttered cheerfully. “Can’t live with them, but on the bright side, eventually they kill themselves.”

  “Don’t’ be a douche, Dave.” Gabe kicked him under the table.

  “Sorry.” Dave looked away.

  Jack turned his drink like a combination lock. “He’s making up his mind if he’ll use us. He’ll call when he decides what he’s going to do.”

  “He thinks he can do it by himself,” Gabe informed Dave.

  “To be fair,” Jack murmured, “he knows what he’s up against.”

  Dave took a sip of his beer. “So why not let him? Why not simply give him the opportunity to lay his dead to rest?”

  Because I need that same opportunity. “He’s family. He shouldn’t be the one to do it.”

  “Neither should you.” Dave looked irritated with him. “You’re locked in a death spiral with Nick Foasberg. He was a loser.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Dave leaned over, bumping Jack’s shoulder. “You’re better than that.”