Dying in Detroit (A Bright & Fletcher Mystery)

by Jonathan Watkins

  She swallowed any further protests and nodded her acquiescence.

  “Okay,” she said. “Okay, you’re right. Let’s go.”

  There was a boarded-over doorway at the end of the wall. One half of the thin sheet of wood had been torn away by earlier trespassers, leaving a large enough hole for both women to hunch and scoot through. Theresa held the shotgun out ahead of her while she squeezed through the opening. She paused to pull her shirt back down where it had ridden up, and both of them stared into the interior of the depository’s first floor.

  “Wow,” Issabella said in a hushed tone.

  “Yep.”

  The entire expanse of the first floor was filled with decaying books, pamphlets and reams of printer paper. Sometime between being abandoned and now, all of the rows of shelves that had once held the district’s supplies had been robbed of their contents and unceremoniously cast off to the sides of the room. The horde of paper was like a rolling tide, heaping here and there, thinning out in other places. Sunlight poured in through the shattered windows, as if attempting to pool over and highlight those texts that were more worthy of rescue than the rest that remained in shadow.

  “She said the fourth floor,” Isabella said. “How do we get up?”

  Theresa pointed the end of the shotgun down the length of the cavernous room.

  “Looks like stairs down at the end. You stay behind me, okay?”

  With that, the big woman was off. Issabella followed close behind as the two of them picked their way across the sea of paper. Something small and fur-covered yowled and leaped from in front of Theresa once they were halfway across the room. Issabella yelped in surprise as the thing shot across the floor and disappeared into another heap of literature farther away.

  “Rat or something,” Theresa explained with a grin. “Don’t go getting all princess-scared on me, Izzy.”

  “That was no rat. Rats aren’t orange.”

  “Maybe a cat, then. Let’s go.”

  They made it to the stairs set into the wall at the other end of the building, and both women paused to look up. The stairway was shrouded in darkness, but from what they could see the cement steps looked wholly stable. Forty ounce bottles and beer cans were stacked on alternating steps, along with little bits of aluminum foil that Issabella knew from representing the indigent were the packaging for small quantities of crack.

  “You ready?” Theresa said.

  “Yes. I have to be.”

  “Yup.”

  They ascended into the shadows.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Darren awoke to the soft press of Issabella’s lips on his cheek. He felt the warmth of her tears on his face and her arms holding him up in her lap like he was a cradled child. When he stirred and his eyes fluttered open he heard her let out a desperate sob. Then her lips were on his and everything in his world was right.

  They held the kiss for a long time. When at last she pulled away, it was only an inch and their faces were very close, her hair draped over him like a canopy.

  “How...” he croaked, swallowed, and started again. “How do you like the new digs? The roof needs work, but the rent is crazy low.”

  She smiled through her tears and kissed him again.

  “Old people say ‘digs,’” she whispered.

  “Izzy, I need—”

  She kissed him again.

  “Izzy, baby, I need you to get my hands untied before they fall off.”

  Theresa kneeled down on the other side of him, and he saw that she had found Solomon’s straight razor. She offered him a wink as she gestured at Issabella.

  “Lean him forward,” she said. “so I can get at the rope. How you doin’, Fletcher?”

  “Oh, you know. Hanging out.”

  Issabella propped him up, and soon Darren was free to move his arms. He brought them around in front of him, slowly. The pain in his shoulders and back was a series of waves, crashing and cramping with each tentative movement. As Theresa sawed at the zip ties around his ankles, Darren sat up and stared down at his hands. They were purple and swollen. A terrible fear swept into him, that they had been starved of a full blood supply long enough that he was going to lose them.

  But then his hands transformed from numb to on fire, and Darren forced back a groan. He didn’t dare try to move his fingers, much less make a fist, so he let them just hang there in front of him and throb painfully. Pain was good. It meant the nerves in his hands weren’t dead.

  Issabella continued to hold him around his back and stomach, her face pressed into his neck.

  “We gotta get out of here,” Theresa said. He looked up and saw that she was holding the shotgun he’d given her.

  “It’ll take me a little while,” he said.

  “We’ll help you. We gotta scram before the woman or whoever gets back.”

  “She’s not coming back,” he said, and his eyes came to rest on the corpse of Solomon, sprawled out on his face between Darren and Theresa. “Nobody is. It’s over, Theresa.”

  He stared at the Learning Tree, its limbs lit and shining in the late morning, while Issabella and Theresa both helped him to his feet. They each threw one of his arms over their shoulders so that he was between them. His legs buckled, and they both caught him. On the second attempt, he was able to take a tentative step forward with their help.

  “I never want to see that tree again,” he said.

  They made it two more steps when Darren looked away from the tree and saw the two FBI men standing in the doorway across the room. He recognized the one who had his gun out, held loose at his side. Both men were staring at him boggle-eyed.

  “Agent Schultz,” he greeted in a raspy bark, and the two women propping him up drew up short.

  Schultz looked from him to Issabella. His eyes hardened, and Darren could feel Issabella tense. Schultz let his judgmental stare linger on Issabella a moment, before his gaze finally came to rest on Theresa.

  “Winkle,” he said. “Let’s put down the shotgun. Just for safety’s sake.”

  “It feels plenty safe in my hand,” she replied.

  “I’m not asking. Set it on the ground.”

  Theresa craned her head to look at Darren and she cocked one eyebrow in a silent question.

  “I’m in no condition to shoot it out with the feds, Tex,” he whispered. “Kudos on the comeback, though. Very wild west of you.”

  Theresa snorted in amusement and crouched down enough to lay the shotgun on the floor. Schultz gave a satisfied nod and the two men walked toward them. Schultz holstered his sidearm and looked past the trio to the corpse on the floor.

  “Is that Solomon White?”

  Darren nodded. “It is.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Tired. Thirsty. Very stinky. But not hurt, no.”

  “That gash on your forehead looks nasty.”

  “Nothing that won’t heal.”

  “Even so,” Schultz said, and turned to the younger agent at his shoulder. “Call for an ambulance and a forensics team. Wait out on the road in case they need direction. Think you can do that?”

  The younger agent nodded readily enough, but Darren could see that he rankled under Schultz’s condescension. The fresh-faced agent turned on his heel and walked out of the room, his phone already out and in his hand.

  “I’m not going to the hospital,” Darren said. “I’m going home. We can talk later if it’s important to you.”

  “Darren, you’ve been through an ordeal—”

  “I’m going home.”

  “You need medical care,” Schultz snapped. “And I need answers to a great many questions. You’re getting in an ambulance and going to the hospital. End of discussion.”

  Issabella slid out from under Darren’s arm and took a step forward,
essentially placing herself between Darren and Schultz.

  “Isaac, let’s have a word,” she said. “Please.”

  Schultz looked at her with that same stern disapproval Darren had noticed when they’d first eyed each other from across the room. He looked the agent up and down, and saw a man at the end of his rope. Isaac Schultz was a disheveled, bleary-eyed and unshaven mess. As Darren looked on, the agent’s shoulders slumped in surrender and he nodded wearily at Issabella. The two of them walked several paces away and began speaking in hushed tones.

  “I remember him,” Darren whispered to Theresa. “He was on the Vernon Pullins case when Izzy and I met. Not a bad guy, really. I think he had a thing for her.”

  Theresa chuckled and shook her head.

  “I doubt he does anymore. Me and Izzy might have pissed him off a bit.”

  He watched the exchange between Issabella and Schultz, and noted how Issabella stood straight, her arms folded across her chest, one hand occasionally unfolding and pointing a finger at the agent’s chest, driving home a point. Schultz held his hands out, shook his head and frowned.

  “Grab up that peacemaker and let’s go, baby.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s over. She’s giving him the business about how he has no legal authority to hold us. I’ve seen her in court when she believes in something. We’re out of here.”

  As if on cue, Issabella turned away from Schultz and walked back over to them. As she slid back under Darren’s arm, he watched the deflated FBI man. Schultz stared off into space with a dyspeptic scowl plastered among his whiskers, his red-rimmed eyes looking lost. Though he couldn’t say why, he felt sympathetic for Schultz.

  “Let’s get you home,” Issabella whispered and pecked his cheek.

  Theresa scooped up the shotgun and the three of them made it to the doorway. Darren turned his head and looked back at Agent Schultz, still rooted in place among the rotting tomes and pamphlets.

  “Agent Schultz?” he called.

  Isaac turned his head.

  “Thank you for looking for me. I’ll come into your office soon. I want to make a public statement thanking the FBI for rescuing me.”

  That seemed to bring Schultz partly out of his funk, because he nodded and smoothed his tie with his hands.

  “Get better,” Schultz called after them. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Then the three of them were out of the room and descending the stairs, leaving the FBI agent alone in the Shrine of the Learning Tree with Solomon’s corpse and a thousand unanswered questions.

  * * *

  Theresa pulled into a corner gas station. She shot a gruff rebuke to a shaky vagrant who immediately set in with his plea for spare change, and jounced into the little store.

  Issabella leaned forward from the back of the van and wrapped an arm around Darren, who was poured into the passenger seat.

  “You really should go to the hospital,” she said. “Isaac was right about that.”

  Darren managed a crooked grin and patted her hand. He had been transfixed throughout their short drive by the outside world. Seeing the mostly shabby denizens of Detroit scuttling through their affairs, seeing the decaying skeleton of once-thriving avenues, the blight and disrepair...all of it was like a gift he hadn’t anticipated. Solomon was gone. The Learning Tree and the book mound where he imagined his body coming to rest were gone. Shoshanna Green was back in the recesses of his mind, and if she visited him in the future it would not be as a harbinger of his imminent death.

  “I’m good,” he croaked.

  “You’re hurt.”

  “I’m better right now than I can remember ever being,” he said, and squeezed her hand. “Let’s go home, kid.”

  Theresa reappeared with four bottles of water hugged against her chest. As they rumbled back downtown, Darren managed to drink three of them without letting go of Issabella’s hand.

  Once they were back in the parking garage under the Fort Shelton, Darren refused any offers of help. He relied on the side of the unicorn-van at first, edging along with one hand planted against it. And then he was walking on his own with a grimace etched across his jaw.

  “Him mighty,” he joked when they got in the elevator.

  “Him need medical care,” Issabella shot back, but the relief in her eyes was obvious.

  “Him need food and spirits. Though maybe not in that order.”

  “Definitely in that order.”

  Once they were inside his apartment, Darren walked straight to the bowl of apples that sat on the counter dividing the kitchen from the living room. He ran his hands over one’s skin, marveling both at how ripe it was and at how normal his hands looked. The pain had dimmed greatly, and his pink flesh was almost as delightful to him as the sharp, sweet flavor that flooded into his mouth as he bit the apple. His stomach gurgled as he swallowed and he wondered if he should go slowly.

  He took a second bite, then a third, and looked around the shiny steel expanse of the kitchen for the next victim.

  “I’ll go check on sleepyhead,” Theresa said after she’d propped the shotgun against the wall near the front door. “See if he needs some food or, you know, a smack to the face. I’ll see how it goes.”

  She bounded up the stairs, leaving Darren and Issabella looking at one another from across the counter. Issabella perched herself on a stool and took a deep breath, like she was steadying herself. Darren looked at her unkempt hair, lying in erratic waves that rolled from her scalp, down around her long elegant face, finally disappearing behind her narrow shoulders. He reached out and tucked a length of it behind her ear.

  “I want to drag you off to bed,” he said around a mouthful of apple. “But I have to shower first, because that would be cruel if I didn’t.”

  “Actually, your bed is occupied,” she began. “Which is what we need to talk about. My dad broke out of the hospital last night. Theresa and I found him and brought him here. I didn’t know what else to do. But we need to talk about it. If you say he goes back to jail, I’ll pick up the phone right now. Honestly, they can have him for all I care. But we should talk about it first.”

  Darren swallowed his mouthful of apple, and his crooked grin disappeared.

  “I’m sorry, Izzy.”

  “What? What on earth would you have to apologize for?”

  From upstairs, Theresa let out a startled yelp. They could hear her heavy footfalls coming down the upstairs hall, then thumping down the stairs.

  “None of this is your fault, kiddo,” Darren said. “Not one bit of it. I hope you remember that.”

  Theresa appeared, breathing heavy, her eyes wide with alarm. Issabella looked from Darren, to Theresa, then back to Darren, who took another bite from the apple and stared at her sympathetically.

  Finally, Issabella looked up the stairs, as if she could see through the ceiling and walls to the bedroom where she had left her father.

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  “He ain’t there,” Theresa announced. “He’s gone. And there’s a big hole in the closet. In the floor of the closet.”

  Both women stared at Darren, perplexed by his somber disposition as much as the fact that Howard Bright was gone. He tossed the apple core in the trash can.

  “Izzy, your dad was behind all of this,” he said. “There is no Red Mesa. If Gunther and Roland exist, they had nothing to do with any of this business. It was all your dad. Him and his nice-smelling girlfriend and that freakish bald guy. They were after my money the whole time. And, kiddo, they got it.”

  * * *

  After they’d taken several photographs, collected blood samples and made a chalk outline, the forensic techs rolled Solomon White onto his back. The maniac’s face was frozen in an expression of alarm, his bright-green eyes comically wide, his mouth hanging agape. A long, echoing
rush of air rustled up out of him as he was shifted. Two holes were visible on his blood-drenched shirt. One was low and left. The other was the kill shot, through the chest. The techs snapped more photos.

  So that’s a monster, Schultz thought when he’d stared at the face for a long moment. That’s what a monster looks like.

  Isaac Schultz was a storm of conflicting emotions—satisfaction that a psychopathic menace had been gunned down, abject frustration that he didn’t know who had done society that particular favor, and paranoid suspicion that his career was over.

  Probationary Agent Lorenz appeared at his shoulder, slipping his phone back into his pocket.

  “Sir, they want you back at the office.”

  “I’m sure they do. You should come along. We can be a living, breathing before-and-after picture of a bright future and a disastrous end.”

  “It’s the Arizona man you put on the builders down there,” Lorenz continued, as if he hadn’t heard Schultz. “It sounds like he managed to get something out of them once their lawyers showed up. It uh...it sounds like maybe that was all a wild goose chase.”

  Schultz squinted at him in the afternoon glare.

  “Try that again in a way that makes sense.”

  Lorenz paused, and Schultz could see the satisfaction in the young man’s eyes even though he was trying to hide it. Finally, Lorenz had his smile tamped down securely enough that he cleared his throat and continued.

  “Well, there is no Red Mesa building development,” he said. “The webpage is just a sham. The Special Agent in Maricopa County checked it out after he got suspicious, and the webpage was only built a week and a half ago. Those two builders have never heard of anyone named Howard Bright. And it looks like this Solomon White was locked up in the same prison as Howard Bright down there. They were there at the same time. Cell mates, actually. Crazy, right? The office needs you to come in.”

  When he said the last part, there was obvious relish in his voice. Schultz almost struck him, but kept himself in check. Instead he made certain his face was a dispassionate mask and stalked away.