A Smudge of Gray: A Novel

by Jonathan Sturak

  Max kept still, but then the being began creeping toward him. Max didn’t know what to do, where to go. He felt alone on the street, removed from the world around him, caught in the vacuum of a void.

  The creature kept his ghostlike saunter toward Max. The sound of footsteps echoed off the cold, dense concrete. Even though Max didn’t know what to do, he knew he had to escape the stalker before he came any closer.

  Max turned. His eyes widened and his breathing escalated. He felt a tingle behind his ears, the tingle of adrenaline flowing through his amplified veins. The street seemed even emptier now than it had been. Max wished the four lanes flowed with traffic as they did every day, but they didn’t. The path home, ingrained inside of him as instinct, suddenly vanished from his brain, now clouded by chaos. A cross street up ahead offered a choice, a choice that baffled the young attorney. He wanted to try a different street, one that had life. Max detoured to his right and picked up his steps.

  A smaller road greeted him, a passageway that he wished he had not taken, but it was too late to turn back. Max glanced behind him as the figure in black turned as well. Dumpsters and trash barrels filled the path. Max realized he was in the intestines of the city, lost in some alley he had never seen before. He focused on the corridor in front of him, trying to discern the distant cross street, but he saw the last thing his terrified body wanted to see—bricks stacked twelve feet in the air. Max tried to climb by grabbing the inch gaps between the bricks. He stepped up six inches, but one of his fingernails ripped off, sending him back down. The adrenaline pumping from his heart trumped the pain as he attempted a different angle, but it was useless. Max had reached a brick wall, a pathless path, and now his only option was to turn to face his shadow.

  The figure reveled himself. It was Trevor Malloy, spiffed up with his black suit, trench coat, and dapper charcoal gray shoes. He had transformed into an image of death, and his focus was on the man trembling in front of him.

  “What do you want? Who are you?” Max asked.

  “Someone wants you dead. And I’m here to carry that out,” Trevor coolly replied.

  The businessman’s words horrified Max. The young attorney searched for a way out. He peered at his aggressor’s side and saw a window of opportunity to escape. He bolted to the gap, but then his Rockports slipped on the smooth pavement and sent the yuppie plummeting to the ground. His glasses smashed. Max lay on the concrete clawing at Trevor’s shoes.

  “Come on. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  Trevor looked at his shoes and saw a scuff mark. He shook his head and exhaled as he flicked Max away like a bug.

  “Wait, wait. I can give you money. What do you want?” Max cried.

  Trevor chuckled as he propped his briefcase on a shiny metal container. He flipped the locks open with his gloved hands. The sound made Max weep. Trevor pulled out a 9mm pistol and screwed on a silencer.

  “You see. I’m a businessman. And a good businessman doesn’t renege on a contract. So, if I don’t kill you, I’m going back on my word,” Trevor explained as the weapon conformed to his hand.

  “Wait! Please no! Please! Please! Please!”

  “Sorry. It’s just business.”

  Trevor channeled all of his rage, all of his tension, all of his wickedness, to his finger. Two quick, muffled blasts thrust toward the sobbing man on the ground, stealing his life. Trevor flared his lip and gave the dying man a devilish glare.

  At that exact moment, a few blocks away in one of the city’s apartment buildings, two gunshots filled the master bedroom of a tenth-floor apartment. These gunshots, however, were not produced by a pistol, but by the 10-watt speaker of a Panasonic television. The noise was enough to wake the lady of the house. She looked over and saw only the sheets of her bed. Anne Marie was too tired to look for her husband and only had enough strength to grab the remote control. The black & white images from a corny “Cops & Robbers” television show flicked off leaving only the moon to fill the room.

  Chapter 8

  Eggs fried on the stove. Anne Marie stood behind the range wearing an apron. She wielded a spatula as she cooked breakfast. Jonathan was behind her at the kitchen table eating a bowl of sugary cereal. This was the scene every morning during the week. Although some days included the father of the house, most did not.

  Just as Anne Marie flipped the eggs, a warm breeze flowed through the kitchen. It was Brian, clean-shaven and sporting a snazzy blue dress shirt and solid color tie. He looked collected, like the first day making detective some ten years ago. The new morning brought a fresh start for the detective, a fresh start to a normal day at the office with the thought of a vacation with his family at the front of his mind.

  “Good morning, everyone,” Brian said as he adjusted his tie.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Someone’s getting big,” Brian exclaimed as he rubbed his son’s hair.

  “I’m making eggs and bacon,” Anne Marie said as she smiled at her two favorite boys.

  “Wow, the royal treatment,” Brian replied with a grin.

  He took a seat at the table and watched his wife grab the orange juice from the refrigerator. Brian saw the picture on the refrigerator that had aroused him last night, and then he looked at his wife right in front of him. She had the same smile on her face, the same energy, the same glimmer that she had in that picture. Brian felt blessed for this family and wanted never again to forget the feeling of being next to them.

  “Chocolate Puffs, huh? What kind of generic cereal is that?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what Mom bought me.” Jonathan stared at the nutrition label on the brown cardboard box.

  “My son deserves to eat the name brand. No more generic food in this house,” Brian joked as he looked at the back of the box. “See, there’s no maze on there, no games. When I was a kid my mom always bought the kind with the prize inside.”

  “It was on sale,” Anne Marie clarified.

  “When I get my raise, only name brand in this kitchen.”

  “When you get your raise, how about you cook the breakfast?”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Brian chuckled as he fixed his collar. “So how’s school going, tiger?”

  “Good. Mom says we’re going on vacation.”

  Brian peered at Anne Marie. She held her lips together in a smirk and batted her eyes as she poured two glasses of orange juice.

  “Hey! I said maybe,” Brian clarified as he took a sip of the juice. “We’ll see, things are slowing down at work and I may be able to get a week off.”

  “What’s hydro—poly—chlara—mide?” Jonathan asked.

  “Tell Dad about your game yesterday,” Anne Marie said as she brought over the pan and scooped eggs onto their plates.

  Jonathan lifted his head from the box. “Yeah, coach put me in for the whole last quarter, and I scored seven points.”

  “That’s great!” Brian roared as he tickled Jonathan sending his son into laughter. “I definitely have to come see my boy. The next Shaq.”

  “Well you better eat up, or you’ll never grow,” Anne Marie said as she gave Jonathan and Brian some crisped bacon.

  Anne Marie put the pan back on the stove and walked to her husband and son who were devouring her hard work. She put her arms around both of them and smiled. “It’s nice to have breakfast as a family for a change.” But before she finished uttering the last word, a cell phone buzzed, souring her smile. “I spoke too soon.” She turned toward the stove.

  Brian removed the phone from his pocket. He took a sip from his orange juice, and then answered the phone. “Detective Boise speaking.”

  A few blocks away in the alley that led to a dead end, the other side of Brian’s cell phone signal rested. Just six hours prior, darkness filled the isolated alley. But now, the concrete that supported the showdown between the sheriff and the outlaw was the opposite of isolated. An army of police with the letters “CSI” covering their backs flurried around the remote location. Brian’s immediate super
visor, Lt. Foster, stood in the middle of the action. He was a slightly overweight man, victim to administrative duties, and had a keen sense of character. He was past his prime, now pushing fifty-seven-years-old—the cutoff for mandatory retirement. Lt. Foster supported Brian, because he knew the detective wasn’t corrupt, wasn’t influenced by the greed that had plagued so many police departments. He believed in Brian like a professor who believed in his brightest student.

  “Boise. This is Lieutenant Foster. We’re going to need you to get down to Fourth and Main. We’re in an alley behind the Roads Tavern.”

  “What happened?”

  “Murder. Get here ASAP.”

  “I’m on my way,” Brian replied instinctively.

  He flipped the phone closed and returned to his kitchen surrounded by his family. Brian realized the energy level had dropped as his son returned to the cereal box and the kitchen sink consumed his wife. Brian wished that the phone had not rung and that Lt. Foster had called another detective. He wished he were going back to the office to finish paperwork, and to request his vacation time. However, that was not to be.

  “I gotta run, hopefully be home before dark,” Brian said as he stood up and kissed his son’s forehead. He shifted to his wife who stared through the kitchen window at the morning rush below. Brian gave her a peck on the cheek and scurried out of the kitchen. He didn’t stop to look at her face, to look at her expression, because if he had, he would have seen disappointment in her eyes.

  Exactly twenty-two minutes later, a rookie officer fresh out of the academy attempted to show his might by holding back prying reporters at the crime scene. He stood behind the yellow police tape with a look of arrogance, a look he employed when he had to deal with the public.

  “Keep it back. Keep it back, everyone,” he commanded as the heat of his breath misted in the brisk morning air.

  Brian snaked his way among the horde, which held cameras and microphones from their paws. He reached the yellow tape as the rookie officer held his arm out stopping Brian in his tracks. The detective slid his hand inside his jacket ready to remove his badge, but a voice beat him to it. “He’s okay. He’s with me,” Lt. Foster exclaimed, waving Brian back.

  Brian ducked under the tape and transformed from civilian to detective. He took a deep breath as the chill of the morning cooled his core. Brian studied the trash barrels lining the sides of the alley, the lack of windows on the buildings above, and the tone of his Payless dress shoes stomping on the cement. He moved slowly as his brain processed information like a supercomputer. Lt. Foster held a manila folder with the details thus far from the incident, which was still being written. The lieutenant led him toward the site that Brian had anticipated over his twenty-two minute journey through the downtown with his police siren screaming. As Lt. Foster neared the end of the alley, the dead end, Brian saw the center of attention. All of the professionals were interested in the object on the ground, the object that had been once a man. Brian saw the victim. A look of horror was still painted on Max’s lifeless face. His glasses were shattered, and his hair was messy as if a rat had tried to burrow itself for warmth. But the most shocking image was the color red, the color of blood saturating Max’s once white dress shirt, now spilled on the ground.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” Brian muttered.

  “Murder. Gun shots,” Lt. Foster mouthed.

  “Did we get the bullets?” Brian asked.

  “One to the chest, the other to the forehead. Our guys confirmed a nine millimeter.”

  They both moved to the body. Brian crouched and removed his pen from inside his jacket. He took a whiff—a whiff of death, a smell that was all too familiar to him. It was worse than the stench of bleach, worse than the stink of an overflowing landfill, worse than the reek of a caged animal. Brian studied the blood fragments surrounding the point of entry of the bullet that had punctured the yuppie’s brain and had stolen the life from him. Brian then used his pen to lift the suit jacket delicately to analyze the second shot, the one that had punctured half of Max’s heart.

  “Atypical entrance wound. Silencer was most likely used,” Brian conjectured.

  “He was Max Cleaver, thirty two, attorney. Last seen with some friends at the pub around the corner. They were interviewed, looks like he left on foot just after one a.m., and was found at five this morning by a trash collector,” Lt. Foster explained as he looked in his folder.

  “Even with a silencer, the force suggests close range,” Brian added as he glanced back toward several metal barrels. “That would put the shooter…right there.”

  “It took the beat cops a half hour to pinpoint that,” Lt. Foster said. Then he lowered his voice. “Normally, I would’ve just let the junior detectives take care of this, but he still had a thousand bucks in his wallet. It doesn’t look like a robbery. Plus, we found something strange.”

  Lt. Foster lifted his pants legs and crouched next to Brian. He used his Filofax Classic Black Pen to point to Max’s fingers. The nail on his right hand was ripped off, the result from his bout with the wall. A fly landed and feasted on the blood. Lt. Foster shifted toward Max’s intact nails. Brian positioned his head.

  “Right here, his fingers are smudged with some sort of gray grease. We have the lab analyzing it,” Lt. Foster said.

  The wall in front of them blocked the morning sun, which prevented Brian’s view. He glanced behind him and saw two crime scene investigators photographing the area. “Hey, can I get some gloves?”

  One of the investigators offered him a pair. “They’re latex. Is that kosher?”

  “He’s not putting it on his dick,” Lt. Foster said.

  “It’s fine,” Brian said.

  Brian donned the gloves and grabbed his flashlight from his keychain. He looked at the blue tint of the skin of Max’s hand, which was drained of the blood that had once pumped through its veins. Brian flipped the hand over and checked its groomed nails. He saw the subtle grease embedded between the keratin and the skin.

  “Hmm, interesting.”

  Lt. Foster removed some photographs from his folder and showed them to Brian. While Brian loved perusing pictures of his family, these printed pages of pigments were far from picturesque. They were pictures of a man, not Max, even though the same look of death covered him. A small, delicate hole was carved between the man’s eyes as blood seeped from the orifice.

  “These pictures were from a murder two weeks ago on the north side, a Dante Lopez. This matches the perp’s M.O.” Lt. Foster showed another picture with a one-inch smudge of gray on the side of a metal container. “Also, we found this same substance on the ground near Lopez’s body. But there wasn’t enough of it for the lab to analyze accurately.”

  Lt. Foster took a moment and shook his head. “Looks like we have a fuckin’ serial killer. Excuse my fuckin’ French. That’s why I called you, Detective Boise.”

  Brian suddenly felt uncomfortable as his eyes shifted to a stone on the ground. He thought he would be glad the lieutenant had thought of him, but a knot tightened deep within his gut, a knot on a rope made from the hair of his family.

  “I’ll need all the details from the last murder,” Brian uttered as his wife and son filled his mind.

  Lt. Foster patted him on his back. The lieutenant’s hand felt overpowering to the detective. It felt as if it were made of concrete that had cured for a hundred years. The jolt rattled Brian’s body as Lt. Foster’s words overwhelmed his mind. “It’s already on your desk.”

  Chapter 9

  Bees carrying bags consumed a hive made of stores. Many men meandered through the magnificent mall as their wives window-shopped. A couple walked from Bath & Body Works carrying a sack full of watermelon lotions; a group of old veterans swallowed stale coffee and watched; a cute Asian woman at a purse kiosk gave her sales pitch to a passing shopper. Chaos filled the mall, yet everyone seemed to know exactly where he or she wanted to go.

  A large indoor play area was in the middle of the east wing. Kids glide
d down the slide and jumped into a ball pit. In the crowd, Katie chased Kevin around the monkey bars.

  “You can’t catch me!” Kevin yelled.

  “Yes, I can!” Katie shouted back.

  Kevin ran behind Trevor and giggled as Katie tried to reach around and tag him. Trevor smiled as he watched his kids play. He wore a casual Chaps long sleeve shirt tucked into a pair of navy Dockers. Trevor spun around as Katie reached between his legs. Kevin jumped back. The happy father burst out laughing and tried to hold Kevin in order to help Katie win her tag.

  “She’s gonna get you!” Trevor teased.

  “Those kids are just filled with energy today,” Laura said as they all turned to her.

  A low-cut tunic and a fitting pair of jeans, the kind that most mothers shouldn’t wear, covered her figure as she carried a shopping bag. “Who wants ice cream?” she asked.

  “I do! I do!” Katie and Kevin shouted as they darted toward their mom.

  Laura’s eyes widened as she shook her head with a smirk. Trevor shrugged as he looked at his spoiled kids.

  “Do you need to do any more shopping, honey?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I need to get some new bedding for the kids. They always seem to stain the comforters from jumping with their soiled feet.” Laura looked at the culprits peering inside her bag. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Ice cream! Ice cream!” they ignorantly replied.

  “I’ll take them for ice cream. Did you need anything?” Laura asked.

  “I’d like to browse some of the new fall fashions in Saks,” Trevor replied.

  “Okay. We’ll meet up with you.” Laura put her arms around the twins and walked them to the food court.

  Trevor turned toward the department store behind him—Saks Fifth Avenue. He strolled with his hands behind his back as he passed through the bustle of shoppers. He sauntered by a bookstore where a bookstand displaying a narrative about a psychopath made him chuckle. The chatter swirling under the hundred-foot ceiling quickly faded to a muffled hum as he entered the store. Gone were the parents with the word “GAP” scribbled on the tag of their shirts; the single crowd wearing Gucci and D&G roamed the store.