Every once in a while, I’d get a glimpse of some things that I told myself couldn’t be real: a hooker who managed to sweet talk a jane into giving her twice the price of her sisters for a finger-bang, a guy with hoofs no one but me seemed to notice carefully stepping around people so that he wouldn’t bump into them, a big leather brute who literally tore a guy in half for spilling a drink on his boots. But I told myself that had to be the liquor I was downing. No way any of that actually happened…right? That little bit of doubt nestled in the corner of my head like a mouse evading a housecat, daring me to say that it was more than just the booze.
*
It was a cold-as-hell winter night. In a port town like Cold City, those nights can be literal murder if you live on the street. The fog that rolled in may as well have been an ice blanket. I wore about four layers of clothes and I was still shivering. I’d tried sleeping at the dinghy for the last two nights, but I’d done nothing but freeze in the cold until dawn finally broke. From the local chatter, I knew better than to risk the shelter. Too many stories of assault, robbery and even homicide made me leery of taking my chances for a little warmth. But there was a regular burn barrel a couple of blocks from the docks. Maybe if I spent an hour or two warming myself by the fire, I’d be able to get some sleep somewhere.
I was trying to puzzle out where it was when I heard a strangled cry from the alley to my right. I flattened myself against the corner and peeked around. Some poor guy, who was either wearing as many layers as me or was just really stout, was being held up in the air. It looked like he was getting the life choked out of him by…something. The shadows around his attacker seemed to keep shimmering and swirling. I blinked, brushed a hand up my face and jammed a couple of fingers into my eyes to clear them, but still… I couldn’t make out the shape.
The attacker hissed as he turned his head my way. It was a sound like nothing I’d heard before, and a part of me knew that no human throat could have made it. I ducked my head back around, praying to anybody listening that he wouldn’t come for me next.
When I heard another hiss, I thought I was screwed. But several long minutes passed and nothing happened. Defying slasher movie logic, I peeked back around the corner again. Whoever or whatever the attacker was, he was gone now. Couldn’t say the same for the guy he was choking.
Cautiously, I crept over to the guy, keeping an eye open for his attacker, just in case. Once I was sure that he really was gone, I knelt in front of the body. I was right the second time about the guy’s bulk. He was a heavyset man somewhere in his forties, with a thinning hairline and extra size that looked like he’d played football at one point. His clothes were standard citizen issue: brown trench coat, black sweater, dark blue dress slacks and a pair of penny loafers on his feet. Choking hadn’t been the worst his attacker had done. There were plenty of rips in his clothes and a pool of blood forming underneath his body.
I patted down his pockets, finding his wallet and cell phone in the inside jacket of his coat. According to his driver’s license, his name was Daniel Cohen, a name that meant absolutely nothing to me. But why should it have? We’d just met, and he’d never again be in any condition for us to get properly acquainted. Still, if he were alive, I’d have called out his choice of shoes. There’s too much junk in any Cold City alley to ever call wearing those glorified house slippers a serious choice.
I thought I saw something on his neck, which I took for a trick of the light at first. But when I turned his head to get a better look, I realized that I was actually looking at a tattoo. I pulled the trench coat collar down to get a better view. Being ex-Navy, I’d seen more than my share of strange ink, but nothing like this. At the base of his neck rested a semi-circle. Just above that hovered a plus sign and just above that was a full circle that was smaller than the first two things. If I’d seen it spray-painted on the walls, I’d have called it a cult or a gang sign. As I looked on, it faded away until it disappeared completely.
I took a step back in surprise. “The hell?” I muttered, to no-one. I was sober—mostly—and that was—
I took another look. The ink was gone, the skin of his neck as smooth as if there had never been anything there. “No way.”
I looked at his face, then his cell. I could have just left him there until somebody happened along to find him. But I had enough of a niggling conscience left to grab the phone and dial 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the female operator on the other end answered.
“I need to report a dead body,” I explained. “It and me are in an alley just off Florentine.”
“Which alley, sir?”
I did my best to remember the street sign ahead of me before I heard the struggle. “Third or fourth just before…Lisbon, I think.”
“Can I have your contact information?”
“All I’ve got’s this phone,” I explained. “It belongs to the dead guy.”
“Sir, I really need your—”
“And you really need to send somebody,” I snapped, my patience growing thin. “I’ll be here until they get here.”
“Sir, there’s no cause for—”
I hung up on her. Maybe not smart, but damn it all, I didn’t have time for their games. I just wanted to get to that burn barrel, warm up my bones and call it a night. I rubbed my arms to get out some of the chill. Who knows how long they were going to leave me to freeze out here?
That’s when I spotted something in Mr. Cohen’s other inside coat pocket. I was a little surprised to feel thick glass as I pulled the bottle out. I could see that it had three-quarters of it left to drink. My face lit up when I saw the label: Bacardi rum. After weeks of Jack and the occasional boilermaker, this seemed heaven-sent. At least I had something to keep me toasty now. I unscrewed the cap and took a long swig.
By the time the cops finally did show, I was completely plastered. I’d forgotten how much of a kick this stuff had if you didn’t pace yourself. I tried putting the bottle back in his pocket after I was done, but I couldn’t seem to find it. I finally just set it next to the cell and wallet I left on his chest. All the same to me…I was having a good drink. I cheerfully talked to all the uniformed guys and the CSIs as they steered me away from the corpse.
In fact, I was so happy that I broke into a big grin when I recognized one of the detectives coming towards me. “Hey, Morgul…Morgo? Morgat?”
“Morgan,” the detective sergeant growled, his nose registering his displeasure at my inebriated state.
“Yeah, that’s it, Morgan,” I said, sloppily getting to my feet by using the wall to help me up. “How’s tricks?”
“You know this man, Sergeant?” the other man in a suit with him asked. He looked like he had about twenty years on Morgan, a salt-and-pepper crewcut with serious emphasis on the salt, and a trench coat that looked a bit more upscale than Cohen’s. It complimented the three-piece suit that made him look like a lawyer.
“Yes, sir,” Morgan said with reluctance. “I was assigned his family’s case.”
I stumbled over to the other man, the Bacardi playing havoc with my balance. I wound up slipping on some loose paper that swept me off my feet. The well-dressed man caught me by the shoulders, keeping me from falling. If the alcohol on my breath or clothes bothered him, he didn’t show it.
“Bellamy Vale, Your Honor,” I said, trying to shake his hand despite my shoulders being caught by him. “Good to—hic!—to know you.”
“Lieutenant Radford,” the man answered, shaking my offered hand without missing a beat. “Can you tell me what happened here?”
One thing drinking never does is improve your memory, which is why they made me tell my story over and over and over again. It wasn’t that I was lying, it’s that I had a hard time remembering this or that detail with the liquor fogging up my brain. Usually, that wasn’t a problem for me. Given what I was trying to forget, it was actually a plus most nig
hts.
This wasn’t most nights. After a while, I grew angry. I directed them to the body. I told them everything I knew—mostly—more times than I could count. Why were they still hassling me? When they wanted me to go over the story yet again, I finally had enough.
“Christ, how many times I got to tell you the same damn thing?”
“Until the story starts to make sense,” Morgan answered. “By my count, you’ve told it six different ways in the last twenty minutes.”
“So?” I snapped. “I’m tired, I’m sick, I’m cold. I just want to finish this and go home.”
“And where is home for you, sir?” Radford asked, smoothly cutting in with his question.
I was about to tell him out on the docks when an image floated unbidden into my head…the house. I tried shaking my head but no matter how loose I felt my brain get, the image of that front porch wouldn’t leave me alone. I swallowed hard and beat my fists against the bricks. Goddamn it, leave me be! I thought.
“Ah, hell,” Morgan said, stepping up to grab me.
“Get away from me!” I yelled at him, shoving him aside.
“I’m afraid the only way we can do that is if you can tell us all the details,” Radford said, his eyes uneasily darting between me and Morgan.
“I’ve told you all the details!” I yelled at him. “What else do you want from me?”
“The truth,” Morgan said, narrowing his eyes at my outburst. “What really happened?”
The lieutenant pushed his sergeant in the chest with the back of his hand, making him take a step away from me. “Not helping, Morgan.”
As if to underscore Radford’s point, I said, “I mean, look at this…all this fuss over one lousy corpse. My wife and daughter didn’t get this much of your attention, did they?”
My voice grew loud enough to echo off the alley walls, making the rest of the cops turn to stare.
“I’m sure that Sergeant Morgan did everything he could,” Radford said, still hoping to smooth the waters.
Too bad I caught the critical word in his sentence. “Did?”
“Yeah, did,” Morgan snapped. “As of a week ago, it’s officially a cold case, which I’d have told you all about if you’d bothered maintaining your damn phone.”
The words made me feel a chill that had nothing to do with the fog.
“But then why should I have expected that?” Morgan jabbered on while Radford kept him back. “I mean, Christ, look at you. You couldn’t maintain a straight line after…”
A clacking in my head drowned out the rest of the words he said. I felt stone cold sober as I focused on his moving mouth. Then I pushed myself off the wall, marched over to Morgan and decked him in the jaw.
The Navy taught me how to throw a good punch. That loudmouth cop went down like a sack of potatoes, getting all sorts of trash on his clothes. Morgan shook his head as he picked himself back up. His eyes blazing with anger, he charged at me while I did the same to him. Radford yelled at the both of us while uniformed officers on either side pulled us back with all their might.
“I want that man charged!” Morgan sputtered, still straining against the officers’ grip. “Assaulting a police officer…you saw it!”
Radford got in his face. “I saw a grieving man get some of the worst news of his life and take it out on the messenger. Because the messenger was really being a prick about it, I can’t say I blame him.”
By then, I wasn’t nearly as animated as Morgan. Between the booze, the shock of the news and the punch, I was as good as spent for the night. It suddenly became everything I could do to keep my feet under me.
Radford walked over to me and gestured for his officers to let me go. “Mr. Vale, I think it’d be best for everyone involved if you go home now. You never did tell me where it was.”
“Docks,” I answered in a near-grunt. “I got a boat there.”
He patted my shoulder. “Okay…if we need to talk, we’ll know where to look. Thanks for your cooperation.”
“Yeah,” I said, not really hearing him. Morgan glared at me as I walked past, but the cops held him against the wall. Nobody else stopped me as I walked out of the alley. I thought I heard Radford reading Morgan the riot act for being insensitive. I couldn’t care less. My good drunk feeling was gone, and so were my hopes.
Chapter four
Tears on a River
It took me another two weeks to finally give up. I told myself that I hadn’t really counted on that prick Morgan, given all the time he’d blown me off. He didn’t care like I did. So I was going to have to make up for that.
Still, despite my alleged lack of faith in the detective, every day after that cold case revelation left me feeling a little more defeated. Even my pickled excuse for a brain could do the basic math of how long it was since the accident. By now, the car I was looking for would have long since been fixed. It could pass me by on the street and I’d never know it. I had no other clues, no other leads…and now no one else was even bothering to look.
Normally, I’d have been walking the streets until well into the small hours, but that last day, I decided to wrap it up at dusk. The smell of the ocean was strong in the air. I sighed as I looked down at the dinghy in the water. Another funny thing…All this time I was living on that boat, I’d never once taken it out to sea. Part of that was because it wasn’t a good idea when the weather was nasty, like it was for the last two weeks. But the sea was calm that night, almost like glass. A cool breeze blew in on my face, soothing me with its soft touch. I closed my eyes to soak it in. It was way too long since I was out there.
When I opened my eyes again, I realized that I hadn’t taken a drink the entire day. It wasn’t like me to forget; the daily pain of being alone was enough to drive me towards it well before noon. I shrugged it off, deciding that maybe I was just tired of it.
I climbed into my little boat and untied the rope holding it in place. The outboard motor had a gas tank nearly as empty as the one in my car. It took more than a few tries to get it going. Once it sputtered to life, I aimed the boat out to the ocean proper.
I found myself humming the classic rock hit “Brandy” as the old engine took me to see my first love.
I went from humming to singing the tune the further out I went. The breeze felt even better now that I was moving across the water. The sunset in front of me was a glorious spray of oranges and reds across the sea and sky.
Then the lyrics of the song gradually caught in my throat. The hurt I’d normally keep at bay with Jack pounded on me. I was forced to stop singing because the sobs choked me off. The sea may have been my first love, but my true love was buried in the ground on shore, never to be seen again in this life.
The engine finally came to a sputtering stop a few miles offshore. I was impressed it made it that far. I was drifting even further out to sea, but I didn’t mind much. The sun had truly set by then, revealing a thick canopy of stars overhead. Looking up at them was something else I hadn’t done in a long time, well before Marissa and Line died. Seeing them now was like visiting old friends I’d gotten out of touch with.
I casually hung my legs over the side of the boat, the tips of my shoes dipping in and out of the water. I was careful about not leaning too far forward. Too much weight in that direction, and I’d capsize the boat in no time. But I didn’t care. I just looked up at the stars and searched the skies until I found the Big Dipper.
“See that, Line?” I asked my dead daughter, pointing straight at the most prominent star in the constellation. “Most people call that the North Star, but what do we say about it?”
I paused before recounting the phrase I told her so many times: “Polaris places people properly.”
Having got myself oriented, I moved my finger over to Arcturus. “And that one…Arcturus always awes all.”
I did the same routine with all the other stars I could see: Bet
elgeuse, Vega, so many others. It was a game for Line, teaching her about the stars through alliteration so she’d know where they were. Marissa was always amazed that I could keep them straight. I just pointed out to her that long before GPS was a thing, sailors had to know the stars to navigate. Being in the Navy gave me plenty of opportunities to learn all about them.
When I got tired of the game and the sound of my own voice, I said, “You know, Line…that game we just played? I was planning on doing another round of this when you…”
I felt my voice catch, making me look from the stars to the waters below. If it weren’t for the ripples my feet were causing, I’d have thought I was still looking at the stars.
“I missed you so much when I was at sea, honey,” I finally said. “I missed watching you grow up. Of course, your mom, she’d tell me that I missed the not-so-fun part about changing diapers, car seats, doctor’s appointments and all that.”
I chuckled a little before my face collapsed into a grief-stricken frown. “But you know…I never stopped wondering what else I missed, too.”
I looked around me. The distant lights of Cold City hazily shone from the shoreline behind me. Ahead of me, I could make out one or two ships in the distance by their lights. But I was miles from anything and anyone. I couldn’t have been more isolated if I was dropped into the middle of the Sahara.
“I know my being away was never easy, Marissa,” I said, my thoughts changing their focus. “I could hear it in your voice every time we talked on the phone or Skyped. Plus, a lot of the guys and girls had people waiting for them too. Some of them could spin some real horror stories about the toll being a Navy spouse takes.” I rubbed my tear-stained face. “There was this one time…It was night. We were in the middle of the Med—you know, the Mediterranean—and it was a night a lot like this. There was this gorgeous sunset that I wish I snapped a photo of. I haven’t seen one like it since. I was off-duty and just soaking up the atmosphere.”
Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book One) Page 4