Shattered Glass

by Dani Alexander

  Peter stares out the window as Little Moscow turns into swamps, then rivers, then forests. “I’ve got forty bucks,” Darryl says after a few hours. “We’ll need gas soon. How’re we going to get money after that?”

  They discuss robbing some place with the gun, but decide against that kind of attention. By day three on the road, they have a system of stealing wallets from guys whose pants are around their ankles in rest stop and gas station restrooms. Driving nights is all they can manage, since Darryl isn’t legal to drive and they can’t afford to be pulled over. The journey is long.

  It’s not until the fourth week that Peter gives his first blow job to a trucker outside a roadside diner. No risk, no fuss, no screaming asshole scrambling after them with his pants down. Though that did happen once when Peter used his teeth because the guy shoved his head down and made him choke.

  Easy sailing after that. Between Darryl and him they can pull a hundred bucks a night if they stop at busier spots.

  Jealousy, Thy Name is Austin

  “The original plan was to go to California,” Peter told me, either ignoring my dismay or too busy visualizing his past to pay attention to me. “We were passing through Denver when Darryl said he was done driving for a while. So we settled here. Was only supposed to be for a month or two. We just never left.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said, my voice hovering between horror-struck and disbelief. “You were okay with him killing your father because your father killed his?”

  “No. Cai…Cai is super smart, Austin, but he’s not street smart. He didn’t kill my father for revenge. He did it because he thought it was right. He was eight. And angry and scared. Intellectually he was off the charts smart, but emotionally he was just eight years old.”

  I thought back to the show I’d watched about this killing. Some news magazine show aired it about a year after I was graduated from the Police Academy. Cai’s voice on the 911 call was so small, but eerily cool.

  “Hello? I just killed my Uncle Nikki.”

  This whole story didn’t mesh with the Cai I had met. “They’ll have his fingerprints in the system. They’ll get a match eventually,” I said, still in a state of shock.

  “How long will that take?”

  “A week, probably less. They’ll run it in AFIS, but then someone will have to visually identify the prints. It’ll depend on how many partial matches AFIS spits out and the quality of the old crime scene prints. And all they’ll have are the prints at the scene, not a name to match. Unless he’s been arrested before?”

  “No, never arrested.”

  “They’ll have his prints from back then. That’s all.”

  “They find out who he is, and all they’ll see is the boy who drugged and killed Nikki the Nail. They won’t understand. And they won’t believe he didn’t kill Iss.”

  “I don’t believe he didn’t kill Iss. A neighbor saw him leaving the premises. And with what you’ve shared tonight, his being capable is no longer a question for me.”

  “I’m telling you he didn’t do it!” Peter jumped off the counter, fists clenched at his side.

  “How do you know? You obviously think he’s capable of it, too. You keep saying ‘didn’t’. ‘He didn’t’. Not he couldn’t,” I said, repeating myself.

  “Cai doesn’t lie to me, Austin. He’d never lie to me.” I made a scoffing sound. “You don’t even understand. He had a break down after what he did to my father.” Peter folded his hands in front of his face as if in prayer and took a deep breath. “For a year afterward he’d start crying hysterically just out of the blue. Then he’d go silent for days on end. We had to drag this rocking chair through ten states because he wouldn’t sleep without me or Darryl rocking him.”

  “He’s bipolar,” I argued.

  “The cycles don’t last that long in kids. Trust me, I know all about his condition, Austin. It’s asking a lot, but just trust me. Please. He didn’t do it.”

  “Because you know who did?”

  “No. I’d fucking turn them in if I did.”

  “Even if it was Darryl?” I asked quietly, remembering the ‘emaciated’ blond that Millicent had described.

  “Darryl was with me,” he reminded me.

  “The whole night?”

  Peter had the grace to blush, though I didn’t read it as embarrassment as much as shame. “We…did a show.”

  Oh, Christ. I downed the rest of my beer and went in search of something stronger.

  Johnny Walker and Austin Glass: A Love Story

  “I don’t want to know,” I said, pointing my bottle of whiskey at him from the coffee table.

  “I needed a mortgage payment.” He followed me, trying to take the bottle.

  I moved it out of reach and countered with, “What you need is a fucking leash and some goddamn morals!”

  “Morals are for rich trust fund babies whose worst problem is their daddy doesn’t love them,” he spat.

  Whiskey, glass, pour, toss back, glare. Repeat. “Cop out,” I slurred in retaliation, pointing the empty glass at Peter.

  “Don’t get drunk. Fuck. I need you sober,” he yelled, snatching the glass out of my hand.

  “There’s the problem right there. You need me sober. You need my help. You need something from me.” I laughed, tossing the bottle on the sofa, ignoring the glug glug glug as it emptied over my cushions. “And I just need you.”

  “Need me to what?” He asked with a huff, tipping the bottle right-side up.

  “Nothing. I just need you,” I whispered and flopped into a nearby recliner.

  I heard his swallow over the drumbeat of blood in my ears. “You don’t even know me.”

  “Which makes it really weird to be falling for you, don’t you think?” A pleasant numbness spread throughout my body. I didn’t care about what I just said to Peter. Didn’t notice the awkward silence or care that I was giggling and suspended from my job and being used by a whore to help a sociopath. I just closed my eyes to it all and let Johnny Walker lead me back to our honeymoon suite.

  Chapter Eleven

  I Will Never Drink Again. I Need a Drink.

  Sometime during the night I began dreaming about Feudal Japan. It was a specific interest of mine, developed accidentally due to a combined lack of elective choices during my second year of college and an open class in Asian History. The dream, in hindsight, was surely my mind’s way of desperately searching for common ground with Peter. It found a miniscule thread of commonality in the fact that Peter spoke Japanese, and I had a fascination with samurai warriors. A less-than-slim thread. A fucking gossamer strand of spit. But my brain latched on, and thus began my nightly fantasies of swords colliding. Which, in turn, birthed my hangover.

  Mid-battlefield my samurai dream-warriors began stabbing into the grass while a team of gong ringers marched behind them. “Sweet Jesus, make it stop,” I whispered, grabbing my head as I woke. A supernova of light hit my eyes before I fell off the bed, shutting my lids tight. The gongs continued in the form of my doorbell, as the teeny samurai began work on the sides of my skull.

  “I’m coming,” I moaned, stumbling to my feet and nearly falling into the hallway. I staggered downstairs, head held tightly between two curled fists. Peter’s shirt tangled around my feet on the last step. While I tried to lose its hold on me, my shoulder hit the wall, my leg the sofa. And after stubbing my toe on the umbrella stand, I answered the door hopping on one foot, green cotton still dangling off my ankle.

  Between my cries of “Ow, fuck, shit, ow”, I wasn’t sure whether to soothe my broken toe or block the sunlight lasering into my pupils. I did manage to kick off the shirt, soccer-style, past my partner and onto my front stoop.

  “Morning, Sunshine,” Luis said, shoving a Styrofoam cup of coffee in my hand. At least I thought it was coffee. There was a vague aroma of espresso, but the cup surely held the contents of Satan’s stomach.

  I mumbled a gruff, “Hey”, and raised my eyes from the cup to thank him when my gaze caught so
mething as the door clicked shut. I blinked twice and canted my head to see around Luis, hoping I was only imagining one of my steak knives buried through a piece of paper and driven into my four-thousand-dollar, custom-made door.

  Fucker.

  “Nice outfit,” Luis motioned at my boxers and then frowned, turning to follow my line of sight. He pulled the note off the door, reading it aloud—with way too much volume, in my opinion. “I borrowed the Jag. I didn’t steal anything. Unless you count your…anal virginity,” Luis choked out the last words pretending to cough into the fist holding a laptop bag.

  “Changing,” I growled, wincing at my headache and snatching the note from Luis’s fingers. I was fucking blushing as I stalked upstairs to change. I wanted to stomp up them, but I had a thimbleful of dignity left. I wasn’t wasting it on a tantrum.

  Upstairs, standing under the shower spray, I actually checked my ass—like I wouldn’t have already known if someone had been up in there. Jesus. I needed my head examined. My hangover chose that moment to remind me of the samurai battalion still digging their way out of my skull. Mother of God, I needed a drink.

  No need for a suit today. I felt a pang of loss in my gut. Dressed in chinos and a light cotton shirt, I returned downstairs, headed past Luis who sat poring over files on my table, and grabbed good old Johnny off the corner table for another round of oral pleasure.

  “I need a drink.”

  Luis checked his watch and gave me a bemused frown. “It’s ten in the morning.”

  “I’m aspiring to maximum cop cliché.” He just gawped at me. I pulled a glass out and started to pour, then paused mid-stream as Peter came in. He took one glance at me, grabbed the bottle from my hand and just kept walking past Luis and into the kitchen. My hand was left clutching…air.

  Only about four drops had made it to my glass. Luis had the same number of wrinkles in his brow as he tried to understand what he just saw. And Peter had ten times that volume of recrimination in his glare.

  “I was drinking that,” I said mildly.

  “And now you’re un-drinking it,” he mimicked.

  “I have a hangover.”

  “I don’t care,” he replied, tilting the bottle high over the sink and challenging me via maintained eye contact while he dumped the liquid down the drain. I hoped it was the drain, at least, and not my floor.

  When did my life become a series of lectures and scoldings from a twenty-year-old whore?

  I childishly wanted to grab the bottle of Jaeger in the liquor cabinet. And then drag Peter upstairs and rip off those suspenders he was wearing, tie him up with them and—

  “You took my car,” I accused.

  “I wanted to go see Cai at the jail. And change.”

  Luis cleared his throat, and we both turned to glower at his intrusion into our exchange. I rubbed the bridge of my nose and stalked into the kitchen. Much as I wanted to slam cabinets, the sharp thud of swords in my brain reminded me to close them softly. After pouring a glass of water and taking a few aspirin—or was it ten?—I joined Luis in the living room, trying to forget that when I had walked by Peter I could smell cinnamon.

  I was going to be mature about this. And ignore him.

  “Shouldn’t you be at work?” I said to Luis.

  “You didn’t finish telling me about the accounts yesterday,” Luis replied, turning a laptop screen to me. I leaned over to glance at it.

  Immediately the idea of working buoyed me, then I remembered Peter could hear us. With a scowl, I looked up at him standing a few paces behind us. The way Peter was staring at the screen nagged me. “You recognize some of this?”

  Peter eyed me sideways and nodded. “I recognize the vendor names from when I took over the accounts after Joe died.”

  “Glass.”

  “Which?” I asked, ignoring Luis’s abbreviated warning about sharing case information with Peter. What the hell. I was suspended and off the case anyway.

  “Cai,” was all Peter said.

  I rubbed a hand over my face and sighed. “I said I can’t do anything. One, I’m suspended. Two, he’s probably guilty, and three—”

  “I don’t need you involved. I need you to pay your father’s fees.”

  There wasn’t a juror on earth who would convict me of murder right now. “You’re going to barter information about Iss’s death for money?” Why the fuck was Luis smiling?

  “I’ll do whatever I have to.”

  “Christ.” I huffed. “My father?”

  “Is the best defense attorney in the state.”

  “Ay, Dios mio.” Luis exhaled noisily. “This can only end well.”

  “I’m not on the case.” I pointed out to Luis. “I don’t have to follow the rules.” Shit. Was I really going to do this? How much information did Peter have? More importantly, how much could I trust him? If at all?

  “I have records,” Peter said, as if reading my mind.

  “Not my father,” I insisted. “I’m not paying my father.”

  “He’s the best criminal attorney in town. I know. I looked it up.”

  “No, he’s not,” I sighed. “Angelica is.” To Peter’s non-vocalized query, I responded, “My ex-fiancée.”

  Peter nodded at me. “You get her there today. I want him out before the fucking P.D. gets Cai held without bail. I’ll give you more information than you can handle.”

  Devious, conniving, scheming, deceitful, manipulative… I ran out of synonyms on my way upstairs.

  I AM My Own Worst Enemy

  Angelica and I had parted on amicable terms, though she had asked me to give her time. I was breaking the promise to stay away by calling her, and not for completely altruistic purposes. Part of it was that Peter was going to supply information. The other part, the largest part, was Peter’s voice echoing in my head, “Please.” That entreaty was so earnest and plaintive, I couldn’t help but be moved. Peter had me so twisted up in him that I wanted to believe the faith in his brother was justified. For both those reasons, I phoned Angelica from the privacy of my bedroom.

  “Are you really moving in with a male prostitute?” she asked when Pauline, her secretary, patched me through. There was anger and hurt lurking in her question, but amusement puddled around there as well. Ten years of friendship seemed only warped, not irrevocably broken, by our breakup.

  “I would, if I thought it might give my dad an aneurism. Did he seem close to one when he told you?” I asked hopefully.

  Her breath was loud in my ear. “Three days is not giving me time, Austin.” All amusement evaporated from her voice.

  “I know. But I have a case for you.”

  “The last time you gave me a case, it ended up costing the firm twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Pro bono cases are good for the image.” I threw in, “Besides, I’m paying for this one,” before she could argue.

  “Austin, abuse cases belong with family court attorneys. You can’t keep sending me these types of—”

  “It’s Baby Capone,” I interrupted with the press’s nickname for Cai. The receiver was silent, then there was a flutter of papers, and what sounded like the TV in her office. She was probably checking for a frenzy of reporters surrounding the courthouse and flashing pictures of Cai.

  Almost everyone knew the Baby Capone case—if they were alive at the time and in any way involved in law enforcement. An eight-year-old boy taking out a mob boss was headline news. His age made it interesting; his disappearance made it legend. Rumors were that Nikki’s son—Peter, a kid himself—killed the boy and then also vanished.

  Anticipating Angelica’s disbelief I added, “They don’t know they have him. Fingerprints will take time, then they’ll have to put two and two together.” Considering it was Del and Marco on the case, two and two might take longer than the fingerprints.

  “Then how do you know?” she asked astutely.

  “I may or may not be involved with Nikki’s son.”

  “The male prostitute?”

  Déjà vu. �
��That would be Peter.”

  I imagined Angelica was salivating at the thought of representing this kid. Yet she would still be upset about doing so would be a favor for the man who screwed up our relationship. Namely, me. Regardless, the importance of the case wouldn’t be her chief reason for helping. My asking would be, despite all that went on between us. “What else do I need to know?” she asked me. “…Pauline,” she called excitedly to her secretary.

  “Bond is decided at three p.m. today,” I answered. “Kid’s processed under the alias Nicholas Cotton. According to the brother, he’s got an IQ out of the stratosphere and is bipolar. There might be some argument about your being hired by a non-legal guardian, since Peter’s not actually his brother.”

  “And?” Before I could answer with my brilliance, she began talking to someone else. “…wipe my schedule for today, and get me guardian ad litem papers. Also I need…”

  I waited until she was done instructing Pauline, and then asked, “And what?”

  Her huff made me grin. “What’s he being charged with, Austin?”

  “Oh.” My brilliance could be measured in milligrams. “Murder.”

  “Whose?”

  “Prisc Alvarado. Brother’s ex-lover, human trafficker on a case Luis and I were working.”

  “He do it?” Angelica, when down to business, was short and to the point.

  “I thought the kid was half angel when I met him. Story the brother told makes me think he’s got black wings. Still, Peter’s convinced he didn’t do it.”

  “Detectives on the case?” More paper shuffling around her muffled voice. She switched me to speaker phone.

  “Delmonico and Marco,” I informed her.

  “Can you hustle me through to Nicholas?”

  “He goes by Cai. And, no. I’m suspended.”

  “Because of the prostitute?” I heard disappointment in her sigh.

  “Because I threatened to shove my foot up a fellow detective’s ass in front of half the station.”