by J. R. Rain
The beer I was holding was miraculously empty. Wasn’t sure how that happened, barely even remembered drinking it. I opened another.
My mother’s case had been thoroughly investigated and was later shelved due to lack of evidence. Hell, lack of anything. I remembered the homicide detective. A good man who was deeply troubled by my mother’s murder. During his investigation, he had spoken to me often, once or twice even taking me out to get ice cream. I think he knew my father was an asshole.
But now I had these....
Pictures. Evidence.
Something.
I finished the beer, placed the empty tin carcass on the glass table and popped open another one.
I had grown up in a tough part of Inglewood. We had been poor in those days, my father was fresh out the military and not very family-oriented, if his nightly liaisons with the neighborhood whores were any indication. By the age of ten, I had witnessed a half dozen murders and more robberies than I cared to count. Growing up, I thought bullet-riddled bodies lying on street corners were sights that all school kids saw on their way home from school. Probably not the best neighborhood to raise a kid and my mother knew this. To escape, she took me to the beach any chance she had. She loved Huntington Beach, especially the pier. We would sit for hours overlooking the ocean. Sometimes I would fish, but mostly we ate ice creams and I told her about my day.
The same pier she was at in these pictures. The same pier I could see from my balcony.
Another empty can of beer. How the hell did that happen? I opened another and pondered this mystery.
Later, when the 12-pack was finally gone, I gathered up the empty cans in a trash bag and deposited the whole thing down the trash chute, and unwrapped a candy mint and lay down on my bed. My bladder was full. The ceiling spun. I awoke the next morning with the mint stuck to my forehead. Nice. My bladder was even fuller.
Between my thumb and forefinger, held in a sort of vice-like deathgrip, was the picture of the young man standing behind my mother.
Chapter Six
Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe, with its extra e’s and p’s, was located just a half mile from my apartment. I could have walked there, but decided to drive, because nobody walks in Orange County, either.
The building itself was made of cinder block, painted in a red and white checkerboard pattern. White stars were painted within the red squares. It looked like a nightclub or an ice rink.
The time was noon, and the store had just opened. Inside, the curiosity shop was filled with, well, curiosities. Most of it was junk, and most of it was designed to lure away the tourist’s buck. I passed rows of shrunken heads, tribal spears, bobble heads and postcards. California license plate key chains with names like Dwayne, LaToya and Javier.
The store itself was smallish, made smaller by the overwhelming amount of junk. Inventory must have been hell. I was the only customer in the store. No surprise there, as it had just opened.
I headed to the rear of the store, side-stepping a curtain of crystal talismans, and there was the old boy. Sealed within a polyurethane case, Sylvester stood guard next to a door marked Employees Only. I wondered if he was on the clock.
I stepped up to the case.
Sylvester was not a handsome man. His skin was blackened and shriveled. His lips had disappeared in the mummification process, and so had most of his eyes. His hair was there, but short and scraggly. You would think, after all these years, someone would have thought to brush it. He was naked, although his genitalia had shriveled and disappeared. My heart went out to him. His hands were crossed under his stomach, the same position he was found in a hundred years ago.
I had aged twenty-five years since the first time I had seen Sylvester; he didn’t appear a day older. Mummification has that effect.
According to the legend at the base of the pedestal, Sylvester stood six feet one inches and weighed nearly two hundred pounds. His identity was unknown. His killer unknown. The hole was there, above his right wrist, clear as day. No bullet had been found, as it had exited out his back, shot clean through. A shot that had torn up his insides and caused him to bleed to death in the desert.
The storeroom door opened, startling me slightly. Sylvester ignored the door, and ignored me for the most part. A kid came out, smiled at me, looked casually at the dead man in the case, and then headed toward the cash registers.
“Not very talkative.” I nodded toward Sly.
“He’s a mummy,” said the employee.
“Ah, would explain it.”
The kid didn’t seem to care much that the man in the case had been murdered.
But I cared. Hell, I was being paid to care. Sort of. And the more I thought of it, the more I cared.
I reread the legend for the dozenth time. Sylvester had been found in the California desert, near Rawhide, now known as the Rawhide Ghost Town. Historians had found no evidence as to who he was or why he was killed. After his discovery, Sylvester had been passed from museum to museum, paraded around until this day. The only justification as to why he was not given a proper burial was that he was a mummy, and therefore of interest to science and history.
Now he was just of interest to Jones’s pocketbook.
I stepped up next to the case, my face just inches from Sly’s own. I stared at him, soaking in the details of his dried-out face, his half-open eyes, and his shriveled remains of a nose. I stared at him, and we played the blinking game for a half a minute. He won, although he might have flinched.
I put my hand on the case.
Well, buddy, I think you are more than a freak show curiosity. I think you were once a person, a person who died a hell of a shitty death. I care that you suffered so much. I care that you bled to death. I care that you never got that last drink of water you so desperately craved. Of course, you didn’t leave me much to go on, but that’s never stopped me before. But first I have to look into the death of a young historian, who may or may not have died accidentally. Maybe you know him. I hear he was a good kid. His name is Willie Clarke.
“There’s no touching the display,” said the voice of the employee behind me. “Now that we serve ice cream here, I’m always cleaning off sticky fingerprints. It’s a pain in my ass. I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course,” I said, and left.
Chapter Seven
The University of Irvine police sub-station was a single story wooden structure located on the outskirts of campus. A female officer in her twenties was working the front desk. She had on a cop uniform from the waist up, and cop shorts from the waist down. Her legs were thick and well muscled. Nothing says sexy like cop shorts.
She asked if I was here to pay a parking ticket. I showed her my P.I. license and told her who I was and what I was doing here. Without looking at the license, she told me to wait. I snapped my wallet shut. Her loss; she missed a hell of a picture. She disappeared through a back door.
I struck a jaunty pose at the counter and waited, ankles crossed, weight on one elbow. Surveyed the room. Wasn’t much to survey. Typical campus sub-station was designed mostly to accept payments for parking tickets, which, I think, funded much of UCI’s scientific research. Behind the counter were a few empty desks, the occupants probably out giving more parking tickets.
Soon enough I was sitting at a small desk watching a small cop eating a bowl of Oriental noodles. Judging by the way that he recklessly slurped, he seemed irritated that I disturbed his meal. His name was Officer Baker.
“Caught me on a lunch break,” he said, wiping his mouth carefully with a folded napkin.
“I hadn’t realized.”
“Professor Darwin said you might come by, and if you did, to fill you in with what’s going on.”
“She knows I worry.”
“Quite frankly, I’m a little worried, too.”
In my lap, I realized I had balled my hands into fists. My knuckles were showing white, crisscrossed with puffy scars from too many fights everywhere. Grade school, high school, college. Just
last week. My fists were wide, a hell of a knuckle sandwich.
“Any leads?” I asked.
“None.”
“Any other professors targeted?”
He shook his head. “No. Just Professor Darwin.”
“Did the surveillance cameras catch anything?”
He briefly eyeballed his noodles. “No.”
“Any witnesses?”
“Again, no.”
I inhaled, wondering what, if anything, had been done about this.
“How about protection for Professor Darwin?”
“We offered to escort her across campus, but she declined. She said she has pepper spray and wasn’t afraid to use it. And that you had taught her self-defense.” He was a really small man, made smaller by the fact that he had yet to do anything for Cindy. He sat forward in his desk. “I know you are concerned. But I am personally looking into this. We patrol Professor Darwin’s office, her lecture hall, and her car regularly. I assure you, sooner rather than later, we will find this creep.”
“You have any objections if I come by a few nights a week and poke around?”
He looked at me. “You the same Knighthorse who played for UCLA?”
“One and only.”
“Then I have no objections,” he said.
I left his office. Sometimes it’s good to be me.
Chapter Eight
Cindy and I finished our Saturday morning jog at the beach, ending up at my place. To conserve water, we showered together. Zowie! Cindy scrubbed the blue gunk off her face, and then tried her best to scrub me off her. She succeeded with the former but not the latter. Now we were at the Huntington Beach Brew Pub, surrounded by a lot of beer in huge stainless steel vats. A lot of beer.
A waitress came by carrying three sloshing ice-encrusted mugs in one hand by their ice-encrusted handles to a nearby table. I watched her carefully. Or, more accurately, the beer carefully.
“I hope it’s okay that we’re here,” Cindy said.
“I’ll be fine.”
“But you’ve been doing so well lately. I hate to tempt you like this.”
“Actually, not as well as you think.” I looked her in the eye, took a deep breath. “And you probably shouldn’t feel very proud.”
She was in the act of raising her glass of water to her lips. It stopped about halfway. “You’ve been drinking again.”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Not as much.”
She set the glass back down. Perhaps a little too loudly. Our waitress picked that moment to come by, asked if we were ready to order. I shook my head and said no, keeping my eyes on Cindy.
When the waitress was gone, Cindy said, “Jim, you promised you would quit.”
“I quit for nearly three months. A record for me.”
“So what happened?”
“Turns out the more I look into my mother’s murder, the more I want to drink.”
Her mouth was tight. She kept her hands still on the table. She took a deep breath, looked down at her hands. She was thinking, coming to some sort of decision. “And you said you haven’t been drinking as much as before.”
“That’s true.”
“At least that’s something.”
“Yes.”
“And you have been able to control the drinking?”
“More so than before.”
“Do you need help?”
“Probably.”
“But you don’t want it.”
“Not yet.”
The waitress came by again. This time she saw us talking and didn’t bother to stop.
“You have a problem,” Cindy said.
“I know.”
“How long have you been drinking?”
“A few weeks now.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
I shrugged. “Should have told you sooner.”
“But you told me. I know it’s not easy. I don’t want you to hide it from me.”
“It’s not something I’m proud of.”
“I know. So what are you going to do about it?”
“For now, nothing.”
“So you’ll keep drinking?”
“Yes.”
“But not as much?” she asked.
“No, not as much.”
She thought about that for nearly a minute. “Maybe that’s all we can ask,” she finally said, then added, “at least while you are looking into your mother’s murder.”
“Yes,” I said.
The waitress came by again, and I waved her over. She looked relieved. She took our orders with a smile. I ordered a burger and a Diet Coke.
“Did you want to order a beer?” asked Cindy when the waitress left.
“Yes,” I said.
“But you didn’t.”
“No, not this time.”
Cindy took my hands and held them in hers. “I love you, you big oaf.”
“Yes, I know,” I said.
Chapter Nine
The morning sun was shining at an angle through the window behind me. My feet were up on the corner of my antique desk, careful of the gold-tooled leather top. I was reading from my football scrapbook, which dated back to my high school years. The binder was thick and battered, filled with hundreds of yellowed newspaper clippings. I read some of the articles, sometimes even blushing. People can say the nicest things. I was a different man back then. Of course, I had been nothing more than a kid, but I could see it in my eyes in some of the pictures. I was arrogant, smug, and cocky. Football came easy to me. Grades came easy. Girls came easy. Life was good, one long party in those days. No wonder I missed those days to some degree. Now I’ve come to realize that there is more to life than football, and it has been a hard lesson to learn. In fact, I’m still learning it, every day.
As usual, I closed the scrapbook just before I got to the last game of my senior season at UCLA. I knew all too well what happened in the last game. I had a grim reminder of it every time I stood.
Outside the sky was clear, a balmy sixty-four, according to my internet weather ticker. Southern California’s version of a crisp fall day. Brrr.
I put the scrapbook back in the desk’s bottom drawer, within easy reach for next time. I next brought up the internet and went immediately to eBay, and saw that my signature was now selling for two dollars and twenty-five cents. I put in a bid for two-fifty. Next I checked my email and saw one from Cindy. In it, she described in jaw-dropping detail what she was wearing beneath her pantsuit. I flagged the message for later reference.
Two hours later, when I was done goofing around on the internet, I was ready for real work. In the Yahoo search engine I typed “Sylvester the Mummy” and up popped a half dozen articles written mostly by historians.
I didn’t learn anything new. One forensic expert determined Sylvester had probably been twenty-seven at the time of his death. Officially, he had died from a single gunshot wound to the stomach. Not much there to go on.
Of the dozen or so articles, one name popped up more than once: Jarred Bloomer, official historian for the Rawhide Ghost Town Museum. He called himself the world’s greatest expert on Sylvester the Mummy.
It’s always nice to be good at something.
I knew from my interview with Detective Sherbet that Bloomer and his assistant were the last two people to see Willie Clarke alive. If I’ve learned one thing as a P.I., it’s to take note when a name appears more than once in a case.
I sat back in my chair, laced my fingers behind my head. Perhaps it was time to visit Rawhide and Jarred Bloomer.
But first a little nap. Detecting was hard work.
I was dozing in that very same position when I heard a deep voice say: “Get off your lazy ass, Knighthorse. It’s the middle of the day.”
I knew that rumbling baritone anywhere, for I hear it in my dreams and sometimes even in my nightmares.
Standing before me was Coach Samson, my old high school football coach.
Chapter Ten
From his oversized calves to his bright green nylon coach’s jacket he always wore, Coach Samson exuded coachness. He filled the client chair to its capacity, as he did all chairs unfortunate enough to cross paths with his profuse posterior. His skin was a black so deep it sometimes appeared purple. Then again I’m color blind, so what did I know?
Coach Samson looked around the office, breathing loudly through his wide nostrils. I could hear his neck scraping against the collar of his coach’s jacket.
“You think pretty highly of yourself, Knighthorse.” His voice was gritty and guttural. It came from deep within his barrel chest, able to reach across football fields and high into stadiums.
“No, sir. I mean, yes, sir. Those were good memories. If you look hard enough at the picture over my right shoulder, the one with two bullet holes in it—don’t ask—you can even see yourself.”
He leaned forward, squinting. “All I see is someone’s belly.”
“Yes, sir. Your belly.”
He shook his head, and continued his slow inspection of the office. “What happened with the offer from the San Diego Chargers?”
I knew that question was coming. I had spent last summer preparing for a return to football, strengthening my injured leg, only to realize the passion to play was gone.
“I decided football had passed me by.”
His gaze leveled on me. I shifted uncomfortably. “You could have made their squad, Knighthorse. They were desperate for a fullback. Hell, they still are.”
“I’m a good detective.”
“Any idea what the minimum salary is in the NFL?”
“Probably a little more than my fee.”
“What is your fee?”
I told him.
He grunted. “People actually pay you those fees?”
“Lots of people out there want answers. I give them answers.”
He shifted in the seat. The chair creaked. If the subject wasn’t football, Coach Samson grew uncomfortable. “So it wasn’t about the money.”