Body on the Backlot

by Eva Monteleagre

  “Seems like I heard that name before.”

  “I bet.”

  “Why you worried about her?”

  “Well, you see, Dewey, these two morons did something bad to her. What exactly, I don’t know yet.”

  “You got it all wrong. I don’t tink I can hep you.”

  I got it wrong, huh? I’d like to hear his correction. We booked The Barb and Dewey and they lawyered up immediately. Funny thing was, for a couple guys who didn’t seem to have much money, their representation was top-notch.

  I ran both Dewey and The Barb through Interpol. Gus brought me the printout.

  “I didn’t know you were Native American,” he said.

  “Yep, about one quarter.”

  “That must be why you’re so good at tracking people down.”

  I just looked at him. I knew he meant it as a compliment. He didn’t know how my mother had suffered with snide remarks and insults regarding her heritage.

  “Well, you do sort of have that thing,” he had to add.

  “What thing?” I was starting to get pissed but I didn’t let on, just acted like I was mildly interested in his stabbing around in my psyche and my ethnicity.

  “That thing where you can catch a trail off the wind. I thought you told me you were English. Joan Lambert is an English name.”

  “My dad was English. My mom was French, Spanish, and Native American.”

  “And where was she from?”

  “Her family traveled up the mighty Mississippi from New Orleans on a steamboat called The River Queen.”

  “Oh, so you’re Native American on your mother’s side.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Never knew that.”

  “And now you do. Where I’m from, people don’t brag about being Native American. You might as well write ‘shoot me’ across your forehead.”

  “The Ozarks? Thought there were plenty Injuns back there.”

  “Used to be.”

  “What happened?”

  “They’re mostly dead, Gus.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “You know, for a smart guy, you sure are dumb sometimes.”

  “So, you’re like an English, Creole-Cajun, right?”

  “I guess so. You could say I’m multiracial. They got a label for everything these days. Seems to me we all come from one source, Mother Eve. Which means we’re all black under the skin.”

  Gus guffawed on that. “Right, Mother Africa.”

  “I figure I speak English, I’m an American, end of story.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think I’m American?”

  “I don’t think that’s the end of the story.”

  “Gus, if I want to be pigeonholed, categorized, and psychoanalyzed, I’ll go see my shrink, okay? What’s the report say?”

  “We got a hit.”

  It was a permit violation on The Barb for an S&M band performance he had produced in Australia. He was also arrested for assault with a tire iron. The Barb had claimed it was self-defense, as the man he had assaulted was twice his size. When they picked him up, The Barb was blue and holding. They had to rush him to the hospital for a drug overdose and when they searched him he had heroin, speed, and coke on him. The man he assaulted with the tire iron eventually regained consciousness, but he refused to press charges. Maybe it had something to do with the drugs. There was nothing else on Dewey as far as a criminal record and he wasn’t even listed with DMV. It was like he didn’t exist. I asked for a more in-depth search, for any report in Haiti that mentioned his name, but that could take as long as a week. We had to let them go. We couldn’t hold them on the red fibers alone. It hurt to see them sprung so easy.

  “I’ll have Rose Torres do the check on the hairs I got off The Barb and see if there’s a match to the Riley crime scene.”

  “That’d be good,” said Gus. “Think The Barb wanted to produce Autumn Riley as an act?”

  “Bartender at De Sade’s Cage said Autumn didn’t go for the S&M scene.”

  “Maybe he had to convince her,” said Gus. “The Barb’s not really a player, too rough around the edges. More of a bottom feeder,” I said. “Nobody likes him.”

  “Nobody liked Bill Gates, either. Okay, so they’re wannabes. But with that lawyer? I’m telling you, somewhere they’re packing some power,” said Gus.

  “You wouldn’t think it to look at ‘em,” I said.

  “Who’d front the cash for those two losers?”

  “Maybe they’re blackmailing somebody.”

  “Or someone owes them a favor.”

  “They could even be working, doing the gritty stuff, like grave robbers, drugging young women, confiscating bodies from the morgue, doing whatever’s necessary for a guy with the cash,” said Gus as he pulled out a cigarette.

  “For Dr. Frankenstein, you mean?”

  Gus lit his cigarette and drew in the smoke.

  “Yeah, something like that.” He blew several oval-shaped smoke rings, then added, “Or for Dr. Moreau.”

  “The one with Val Kilmer and the big fat guy…what’s his name…”

  “Brando. No, not that one, the original, Island of Lost Souls with Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi.”

  “Okay, whatever.”

  “By the way, Brando was not always fat.”

  “Neither was my cousin, Jenny.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MY BEDSHEETS WERE SWEAT-SOAKED. In my dream I had done something wrong, I couldn’t remember what exactly. Whatever it was, I had misjudged someone and made a terrible mistake. Because of my poor judgment, Carl had been shot and his blood had spurted, like a geyser, covering me in red. I was swimming, then drowning in his blood. A hand reached for me. I grabbed on for dear life.

  The hand was creamy white with green-painted fingernails. The face of Autumn Riley loomed before me, serene in death. Then it was as if she had awakened just as I had hoped she would that day at the crime scene. She danced away from me like a spirit. I followed but couldn’t keep up with her. She was fleeing me. The faster I ran after her, the more elusive she became and finally she disappeared into blackness and I was too frightened to follow. Everything became dark around me. When I awoke, my bedroom was as black as the dream.

  I heard a click as the numbers changed on the clock, loud as a door slam in the quiet night. I glanced over to see the time. A green digital glow told me 2:03 a.m. I pressed my eyes closed in an effort to will myself back to sleep. I thought of my mother. The demons were upon me. It was no good.

  I felt I was suffocating and opened the bedroom window, risky in Los Angeles. I recalled investigations where the murderer had climbed in through an open window. Eight of them. I laughed at my morbid mind. Most people count sheep.

  A slight breeze afforded me a gentle caress, a small relief.

  The Autumn Riley case pulled at me as if I had no boundary of protection. The beauty of her was so vivid. Was that it? Her beauty? My own mother, long dead now, had been exceptionally beautiful like that. It wasn’t just that, though. I recognized the girl. I went through the massive inventory in my brain. All the people I had ever interrogated, all the commercials I had seen on television, all the gala affairs I had ever attended, but my memory failed me. Where had I seen that face, that hair before?

  I’m a person who likes to be in the moment. I don’t live in the past and good thing, too. But when I can’t sleep, old memories, like ghosts, come to visit me.

  I entered the kitchen, grabbed a glass, and reached for the filtered water at my sink. I thought of how I used to drink fresh spring water from an old hand pump and in that instant I was in the backwoods of Missouri. It was because of Gramma that we kept the hand pump fountain for water. She refused to give in to the new contraptions. She taught me to sew on an old sewing machine with the foot pump. Gramma could cut and measure out her own patterns and she instructed me to do the same. She could design and construct a fine high-collared Victorian dress or fashion a suit right off
the front page of Vogue. I often think that was the beginnings of my evaluating and piecing things together so they fit. Gramma was especially enamored with the washing machine with the hand wringer. We could well afford the best and latest devices, but Gramma begged us to wait to acquire “those devices” until after she died. Since Mama considered it absurd, which it was, we hired a woman who came and cleaned the house and did the laundry. Mama kept busy with her painting and ladies groups and she entered a few of the artist contests. I was ten when Gramma and I received the news that Mama had won the Ozark Artiste contest.

  When Daddy got the news, he snatched me out of my breakfast chair and threatened to cut off my hair. Somehow my grandmother had prevailed and he didn’t cut it. He took his seat at the kitchen table in angry resignation and began drinking Johnny Walker Red straight from the bottle.

  When Mama returned from Springfield, where she had to go to receive her Ozark Artiste award, she entered the kitchen where Daddy had sat waiting for hours. His fierce blue eyes inspected Mama for infidelity. He complained bitterly that the cleaning woman hadn’t come, the laundry was undone. He said that it smelled, stank up the house. It seemed a senseless argument between my parents and I remember how badly I wanted to explain to them the solution. Their combined fury began in the kitchen and ended in the basement when my mother went down to do the laundry herself and my father followed.

  I don’t know where Gramma was. Maybe she felt somehow responsible for the argument and made herself scarce. My parents screamed at each other, their voices ringing up the basement stairs and I hid under the kitchen table crying to myself in fear. I became completely filled with dread when the hollering stopped. So quiet, it was. I strained to hear.

  What I heard caused my heart to twist in my chest. My mother was whimpering. I went down the basement stairs, one step at a time; they were steep, carved out of the beautiful Ozark stone. My legs were stiff as sticks.

  Mama was slumped over the old washing machine. Her mascara ran in black rivers across her face. I watched in horror as my father yanked her hair through the hand wringer. The silken hair that so many had admired was stringy wet with soap and dirty water. He cursed her and jerked her hair, then cranked the handle until her head was tight against the rollers. My mother’s eyes caught mine in new alarm. I sensed that she was afraid for me so I stepped back into the shadows. Daddy’s face loomed before me, distorted with rage. He had a shovel in his hand. I heard my mother whispering The Lord’s Prayer. Then Daddy’s body burst into an explosion of hatred. Mama’s face smashed in when he struck her with the shovel and the blood spurted across my own face and body.

  Red, everywhere, warm red all over my body. I fell backwards onto the laundry basket of dirty clothes as if my mother’s blood had knocked me back, and I was there when my father stomped by and back up the stairs. He never saw me, never even knew I was there. I heard his steps as he crossed the kitchen floor upstairs and called my name. I didn’t answer.

  Mama’s bloody arm stretched out from the side of the tub reaching to me. I crawled across the floor to her limp body, took her hand and held it, still warm, in my own. I don’t know how much time passed but I remember my Gramma callin’ me, her steps coming down the stairs, and the look on her face as she rushed toward me. She wanted me to let go of Mama’s hand, but I refused.

  The next thing I remember, Gramma was running water to give me a bath. There were bubbles, a huge cloud of bubbles. When I got in, Mama’s blood turned the water and the bubbles pink. The water was too hot but I didn’t cry and I didn’t complain.

  Gramma sang a hymn: “Abide with me: fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide: When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, help of the helpless, Oh a-bide with me!”

  Gramma explained it all to me. She said it was all a bad dream and that Mama wasn’t in the basement, she was with God. She assured me that all those things that had happened in the basement were only a bad nightmare and not true. I shouldn’t speak of them nor should I even think of them. If I did, the devil would rise from the river and grab me from my bed. She promised me that God had Mama in his arms just like a baby and God was singing a lullaby to her.

  •••

  THE WATER WAS STILL running in the sink when I came back to real time. I was a homicide detective now and I had seen horrific scenes but nothing worse than the deaths of my most loved family members. Memories. I didn’t want to recall so many memories. I drank my glass of water and searched my mother’s paintings in the living room. Did they hold some unknown truth? Why had Trish sent them? Was it a guilt thing? My father had never been prosecuted.

  My mother’s murder was categorized as an accident. My uncle, Sheriff Robert Lambert, was in charge. Aunt Trish must have known better. Had everyone known? Was that why I got off so easily for the murder of my father? Was that why they called it justifiable? Was that why Uncle Robert and Aunt Trish wouldn’t take me in? Were they advisers to Donna, my parole officer? Get lil’ Joanie out of the state, put her on a plane to California, and everything will be forgotten. Was there anything I could have done differently to change the way it had all played out?

  These questions have haunted me for many years. It wasn’t the first time I had stayed awake pondering the meaning of my past. I knew all too well that I wasn’t going to just lay my head back and fall asleep. It would be useless to lie in bed. I put on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and slipped on my running shoes.

  I ran down my alley and through small crooked streets to the beach. The night was purple-blue and there was no moon, only stars. When I got to the water, I continued south until I arrived at Autumn Riley’s bungalow. It was about three and a half miles from my house. I checked on her street and found surveillance in a van.

  I walked closer toward Autumn’s house and went around on the beach side. There was the black dog, the one that had been slinking around the first day of the investigation. It was asleep on Autumn’s porch steps. I recalled that Autumn had no dog food in her house, nor were there any bowls for food or water anywhere on the porch. Why was this dog sleeping on her steps? As I approached, the animal came to attention and the hairs raised on his back. I’m not afraid of dogs, though sometimes they are afraid of me. He came toward me in a suspicious crouch.

  “What’s your name? Huh, what’s your name?”

  I put my hand out for him to sniff and he rubbed his wet nose on my palm. I patted him a long time and that he enjoyed. I was surprised how long and soft his hair was. He was like a Labrador, but larger, thicker, and silkier. He became animated, loping away from and toward me, all big and friendly. I started walking down the beach and the dog came with me. He picked up a stick and brought it to me to throw, which I did, and he retrieved it, his big onyx eyes wanting more.

  “Hey, are you the guy Autumn went for a walk with? Hmmm, handsome?”

  I threw the stick. It slipped out of my hand and went out over the ocean and into the sea. The dog went in after it, as if he were saving the stick’s life, and brought it back to me.

  I laughed and praised him lavishly for his heroism. After much running and fetching, I had my fill. Where did the dog come from, anyway? Did it belong to a neighbor? I’d call surveillance tomorrow and ask about the dog. If they hadn’t noticed me, I was going to be pissed.

  When I got home, I went straight back to my bed where I keep my old Raggedy Ann on a pillow. I clutched it to my chest like I did when I was a girl. I sat in the front room on my leather couch with my doll. My father had given it to me. I had held onto it over the years, just as I’d held onto the many memories of love and tenderness my family shared before our world was shattered by jealousy and rage. Looking at my mother’s paint things and holding onto my Raggedy Ann doll, I tried to reclaim the essence of that time before.

  When I was quite young, before my mother’s death, it had been my father who taught me to swim across treacherous waters. The Current River, in Missouri, was legendary as a killer. Its underwater currents ha
d pulled down even the strongest of swimmers. Many a person had dove in to save somebody else only to add yet another to the number of drownings. Some folks said the devil was in that river and that he dragged innocent folks to their watery deaths. My father could read the ripples on the top of the water, and he taught me to avoid the devil that waited underneath. It had always been my father’s way to teach me the secrets of the caliginous undercurrents of life. He took pride in tutoring me on these important things. I learned under his instruction to glide right into and yet still escape the devil’s clasp. Somehow, I had taken that skill and turned it into a career. Would I ever fall prey to the devil as my father had? Could I lose my way on a dark street or in a public restroom? Would an unseen evil sneak up and take the negligible life I had created for myself?

  Would I be able to read the waters?

  I held the Raggedy Ann close to my chest. My thoughts returned to Carl and the bloody dream that had brought on this terrible meandering through my past. I was plagued with a terrible restlessness. I wondered what the hell darkness in my dream meant. Why was I drowning in Carl’s blood? What was the darkness, the unknown? Death? Something inside of me? My shrink would say that I already knew the answer. That my subconscious was talking to me. You think? I had long ago decided that the blackness was rage to which there was no end. But since that gave me no relief, I was open to the idea that it might be something else. There would be no sleep tonight. My eyes fell upon the wooden liquor cabinet in the kitchen. I had a half bottle of gin left in there. As I reached for it, I said a little prayer that it would relieve some small part of my torment.

  •••

  NOT SOON ENOUGH CAME thin morning light, bringing with it a fierce headache. Though it was a cloudy morning, a pale blue sky peeked through white puffs, a sweet promise of hope. My blues hung on the bedroom door, newly arrived from the cleaners. I wanted the uniform to be ready to go if I needed to wear it. For a brief instant, a sliver of light illuminated my nameplate. It was as if I had been blessed or something. I sure as hell needed some blessings. I hung the uniform back in my closet and noticed that my every heartbeat throbbed in my right temple. The phone rang, blasted into my head and joined the fierce lava flow of blood. I turned to the digital clock. Who was calling at five thirty in the morning? Gus, I hoped. I wanted to get to the phone before it rang again but failed. The sound of it bounced around inside my skull.