Jump The Line (Toein' The Line Book 1)

by McFarland, Mary

  “Stoke Farrel. I need your help proving it, though”

  “Stoke Farrel?” Lowering his scalpel, he leans toward me and stares, like he’s having trouble seeing me, or breathing. I’m not sure which.

  “Brick, are you okay?”I ask, backing up. If I didn’t have to be here—alone—I wouldn’t stay. This is getting creepier by the second.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,”he says, recovering from whatever near seizure I’ve instigated with my remark about Stoke being the killer.

  “Tell me why you think . . . who did you say? Stoke Farrel? You think he’s the murderer? Isn’t he your little friend?”

  “My little f—?”

  I step back, feeling more agitated than I want to. I’ve never seen Brick like this. The scalpel waving increases. The look on his face is scaring me. I give myself a mental buck-up speech and hunker down. I’m not leaving until I get what I came for. “Maybe we should go sit down,”I say, shoving past him into the lab, feeling like someone’s rubbing my spine with ice cubes, grateful the door remains open behind me.

  Several minutes later, after I show Brick my Twizzler package and explain the shoulder in my fridge, plus tell him why I think Stoke’s our serial murderer, I make my big pitch. “I was hoping you’d use your HVO to check Stoke’s bite marks against those you’ve already analyzed on Meera and Angie Miller.”

  Bam! This is jolt number two to Brick’s system. He’s kept me in the loop with his progress on NPD’s case. He’s even shared how, by using HVO, he’s determined Megalo Don has killed Meera and Angie. I don’t think, however, he was expecting me to walk in with a piece of cardboard from a Twizzler package and ask him to test Stoke Farrel’s bite marks against those of Megalo Don’s.

  He recovers quickly. “It will take time,”he says.

  “I don’t have time, Brick. I need these teeth marks tested—like yesterday, you know?”

  Petulance is a feminine trait, one I associate with my whiney-head Hyde Park friends, not moi. But I hear it in my voice, and from Brick’s reaction, I don’t think he likes it. Yet the piercing gaze he turns on me—I’ve seen him look at Meera’s bones this same way a million times—tells me he’s reached a turning point. He’s made a decision.

  “What’s your rush?”he says, his tone confirming my guess Brick’s ready to help.

  Yet I can’t blurt out that I want the match before I go to Stoke’s apartment tonight. What if I’m wrong and Stoke isn’t Megalo Don? What if I confront my friend, my formerfriend, based on a few hunches and the fact only Stoke—never my sweet, innocent brother, Robin—could’ve put that garbage bag in my freezer? What if . . . the bite marks don’t match? Then I’ll have wrongly accused Stoke, a childhood friend, my Bubby, of murder, and that’s a felony for which I can be prosecuted, a potential blemish on my record.

  Brick lays the scalpel carefully on the stainless steel table. “An entire police department, several in fact, are searching for your killer, Alaina. The FBI is looking, too. But only youhave the evidence to prove who he is?”

  Brick is mocking me. Why? I want to run, get the hell out of here. I’ve felt weird since the moment I walked in, and the fact Aurelia’s not here just keeps creeping me out.

  “And,”Brick continues,“you and only you suddenly must prove the police and FBI wrong. And you’re going to do so with this?”

  Using his scalpel tip, he drags the Twizzler cardboard toward him across the expanse of stainless steel. Suddenly, I no longer care if Brick’s mocking me. I no longer care he’s my boss. I wouldn’t care if he’s freakin’ Megalo Don’s twin. All I want is to get what I came for, but Brick’s no longer behaving like my teacher, my geeky mentor. He’s instead hell bent on belittling me, and that’s one thing that pisses me off good.

  “Dammit, Brick, maybe I’m not Sherlock Holmes, but I’ve brought you honest-to-goodness forensic evidence, teeth marks from Megalo Don. I didn’t have to, but I thought you were on the side of law enforcement.” Seeing the anger rising in his gaze, I soften my approach. “Look, you’ve helped me so much in the past, so I thought. . . .”

  “A commitment to help you occasionally as your mentor doesn’t mean I’ve taken you to raise, Alaina. I’m your boss. What you’re asking is a lot, and you’re not qualified to make this call.”

  “Brick, what the fuck? I’m being straight up with you, and all you can do is mock me?” I grab my Twizzler pack and head for the lab door. “Never mind. I’ll find someone else to look at the evidence.”

  “Wait.”

  He doesn’t yell. It’s a quiet command. Wait. Desperate to nail my friend’s murderer and save my brother, I obey, but not without attacking Brick. “Why?”I say,“Why should I wait? So you can mock me some more?”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure how serious you were. I was . . . testing your commitment. Leave the evidence. I’ll check it against what I’ve already found using HVO. If it’s a match, I’ll call you.”

  Walking to the table, I slam the Twizzler package down. “I need the results before this evening.”

  “What’s so important about this evening?”

  “I’m taking it with me somewhere. I need it.”

  “Where will you be taking it that’s so secret you can’t tell me?” He smiles. “I’m on law enforcement’s side. Remember? I can help you.”

  What difference does it make if Brick knows why I want the HVO matchup, as long as he does what I ask? “I’m going to meet Stoke Farrel tonight,”I say, relenting. “I think he’s Megalo Don. I was hoping I could confirm these are his teeth marks,”I add, nodding toward the Twizzler package. “I want to confront him with the evidence, to make him confess.”

  “No! You can’t do that!”he shouts, and then when he sees my reaction,“Oh, dear, I’m sorry—”

  Quickly, Brick tries to hide a flush deepening his hairline, splotches forming on his neck. I’ve never seen him this alarmed, this—angry. “What I’m trying to say,”he says, forcing himself to a calm he clearly isn’t feeling,“is that you should let me go with you. It could be dangerous confronting him all alone. I can drive you,”he adds. “I know you don’t have a car.”

  Wishing everyone and his brother didn’t know about my impoverished lifestyle, vowing to one day educate Brick about how the other ninety-nine percent live, I shrug. “Brick, it’s not like I haven’t faced danger before. I mean, I am an exotic dancer.”

  Was that a snark before dying? To see if I can shock his LDS sensibility?

  Maybe.

  “I know all about your other job, you vicious little whore.”

  “What the—?”

  I feel the blow to the back of my head, like a tree punching through. Then the pain, like an aftershock, radiates outward from an area deep inside my skull. I feel my knees buckling, and hear someone cursing,“What the f—?”

  Oh, that’s me.

  Then time stops, and I’m thinking: I’ll be more polite to men like Brick Verbote in the future—if I live.

  Chapter 47

  I climb the rickety metal steps leading to the trailer door, praying they’ll hold my weight, and knock on the door. The handle has been knocked or torn off, and someone’s created a makeshift door handle by wiring a screw driver through the door frame. I pull it.

  “What the hell do you want?” Flinging open the door, she nods toward the crazed pit bull, his jowls covered with saliva, eyes bloodshot with rage. “Saw you watching Floyd,”she says. “Don’t get any ideas. I don’t want to have to turn him loose on you.”

  I smile. “Nice dog.”

  Berta Colby’s look is haunting, an older, wearier version of her daughter’s, yet I can see she once was stunning. Beautiful. Did I say“once”stunning? Her heart-shaped face and high cheekbones are now lifeless artifacts bespeaking a bad history, a few unhappy and futile lifetimes. She’s weathered more of life’s storms than any woman should. I’ve seen her darting gaze, her sullen mistrustful frown on the face of every hooker from New York to L.A.

  I’ve also
seen that look on Alaina’s face, which is why my reaction shocks me. I don’t want to empathize with a woman who’s most likely called trouble down on her own head. I don’t want to feel stunned by her faded beauty. But I can’t help it. She’s Alaina’s mother, and even if she wasn’t, my own mother’s taught me a lot about women who make bad choices: cheap one night stands for money, tricks for drugs, or for the hell of it. At times, I’ve felt guilty, knowing I was one of those bad choices.

  I stutter a hello, reeling. This is my come-to-Jesus moment.

  I was a one-night stand for Alaina. At least, that’s what she believes.

  Was I Alaina’s bad choice?

  “Detective Hawks, Ma’am,”I say, noting the portable oxygen tank on wheels, hooked to her and rolling around behind her. “I’m with Newport Police Department. I need to ask you some—”

  Her eyes narrow. “Well now . . . so you’re Detective Aidan Hawks.”

  “Yes, Ma’am. Can I come in?”

  “You got a badge?”

  I hand her my shield and wait while she examines it, comparing my face to the photo on my ID.

  “Driver’s license?”she demands, handing me back my shield.

  “Anyone can lift a badge, even one who smells like leather and gun metal,”she says, sniffing the air like I’m a piece of shit the cat drug in. What, exactly, might Alaina have told her? Shifting on the steps, I hand them to her. After several seconds of close scrutiny, making sure I match the description on my driver’s license, she waves me in. Pulling the door shut, she whacks at a haze of cigarette smoke.

  “Alrighty then. Come inside. It ain’t much, but it’s home.”

  Stooping to enter the tiny door, I take a mental walk through Alaina’s childhood. The trailer’s an older model, late Sixties. It’s spotless, but Febreeze masks the thick cloying cigarette odor, although it does nothing to hide the yellow brown film coating the paneled walls. Family pictures plaster the wall behind a worn plaid couch. Scanning it, I search for Alaina.

  In one of the pictures, she and a boy I’m guessing is Robin drape their arms across the shoulders of a gaunt man proudly holding a stringer of catfish. Her father, poor bastard, ate his own double barrel when Berta, claiming self defense, stuffed it down his throat. Wondering whether she got away with his murder, I stare at Alaina’s mother with a modicum of respect, and a healthy suspicion. She’s one tough cookie.

  “What do you want, Detective? Or have you come to socialize?”

  “No, Ma’am. I’m looking for a young man your daughter might have known in her early childhood or pre-teens.” I don’t expect her to open up right away. I know this will take time, but I think if she knows I’m here to help Alaina, maybe she’ll help me.

  I can tell she’s either a user or in rehab. She’s got the drawn gaunt face of an addict. Leaning against the tiny kitchen counter, she folds her arms across her chest. She’s closing up, shutting out the LEO. I’ve seen the gesture before.

  “Ma’am—”

  “You can call me Mrs. Colby. Ma’am ain’t my speed.”

  “Mrs. Colby, I need to know if Alaina knew a young boy called Stokely Farrel when she was a child, if they . . . if there was any trouble she, they, might have gotten into.”

  “Just what’re you sayin’ my daughter’s done? If she did something as a juvenile, her record’s sealed.”

  I don’t explain how fast I can unseal a juvie record in a case like this. Instead, I explain in detail why I’m here.

  She goes from zero to sixty faster than the Ferrari sitting in my garage, from being suspicious of me to being ready to kill Megalo Don. At least I’m not the target of her wrath, thank God. I’m certain there’s a double barrel standing guard close by, probably the same one she used on hubby.

  “You mean to tell me there’s a sumbitchin’ serial killer chasing my baby girl?”she asks, her deep brown eyes that look just like Alaina’s squinting.

  “Maybe—”I start to say.

  “Well, Christ on a crutch! Why’n hell didn’t you say so?” Putting out her cigarette in her palm, she jams the stub into a Big K cola can sitting on the sink’s sideboard. Propping both hands on her hips the way I’ve seen Alaina do, she glares up at me, one eye cocked. “What’re we doin’ standing around here? Are you a detective or ain’t ye? Let’s go get that sumbitch and crack open his sick head.”

  It should be funny, her vehemence, but who’s laughing? Her look says mama lioness. Ferocious and protective. Fearless. In the moment lingering suspended between us, I see her daughter’s face, the determination of Alaina’s jutted chin.

  “I intend to get him,”I explain politely,“but I don’t need any help, Ma’am, uh, Mrs. Colby.”

  “Now you came to me, Detective, did you not?”

  “Yes, and I didn’t mean you can’t help at all. I need you to give me information.” If she had her way, she’d already have Megalo’s nuts cut off and fed to him.

  “Like what?”

  “First, I need you to tell me what you know, everything you recall about the suspect and what he and Alaina might have done or gotten into. Then I’ve got to go talk to the man who was sheriff here that summer.”

  She gazes intently, her eyes narrowed to suspicious slits. I know what she’s thinking, what every person who’s ever been victimized by cops thinks—Why would I help you?

  “I believe the man who wants to kill Alaina lived here one summer as a kid, and that his path and Alaina’s crossed. He’s never forgotten about her. And now—”

  “Let me get this straight. I tell you what I know,”she says, interrupting,“and then you’re going back to Newport without me? When there’s a nut job out there after my baby girl? You’re just gonna sweat me and then leave?

  “Hell no, you’re not!”

  She’s shaking her head, defiance, which I’m beginning to believe is a family trait, screaming across her face. “Nuh-uh. Not without me, you’re not.”

  She grabs a Wal-Mart bag by the door. “I’m packed. Ready. I’ve promised my baby girl I’d come see her. I’ll just hitch a ride with you. Maybe I’ll tell you what I know on the way. Maybe I can help you hunt that sumbitch down—”

  I don’t think I could hold Berta Colby back if I wanted to, so I give in, but only on one point. “I’ll give you a ride back to Cincinnati, but you won’t be getting involved in helping me find and catch this . . . er . . . sumbitch.”

  “Dandy. Just dandy,”she says. “I’ll be waiting here as soon as you git done interrogatin’ your sheriff.” Her faded eyes twinkle mischievously. “What’s his name? I might know him. I have a long history with local law enforcement.”

  “Billy Lee Knowles?”I say, thinking what an understatement her remark was. “Do you know him enough to tell me where he lives?”

  “Hell, Billy Lee and I go way back. Let me give you directions.”

  Leaving, I realize I’ve gotten nothing from her. Zip. Zilch. Nada. But I think she likes me. Glad about that, I fight my way past Floyd and back to my car.

  Chapter 48

  When I was little, my mom lectured me all the time. “Aidan, kids don’t get to pick where their parents live,”Babbs Hawks said. “So don’t judge your less fortunate peers by their parents’ poor choices.”

  I got Mom’s message, but she insisted I needed hands-on experience, so I spent Christmas with Babbs, helping her serve dinner at the Salvation Army. She also dragged me to high-brow charity balls, but Babbs’ determination to pay it forward—to give back—started deep in the trenches, where she helped the poor in their homes, their communities. The charity balls? Those were for collecting money so she could work uninterrupted by petty concerns, like finances.

  I never felt deprived. There was always the added attraction of my mom’s friends’ daughters in the school gyms, where Mom, also a Red Cross volunteer, cared for the homeless during tornados, snow emergencies, or other disasters.

  Goshen makes me doubt my mother’s wisdom of helping the poor on their turf. I’m not ju
dging Berta Colby for choosing this place to raise Alaina and Robin, but hellfire, it’s bleak, a gray spot in the middle of nowhere, like a tumor on your spine in a spot you can’t reach and don’t want to. Located halfway between Blanchester and Cincinnati on a long stretch of highway, it’s got a few stores, a mom and pop greasy spoon, and a gas station that sells hot dogs so rubbery they could be used for Flex cuffs.

  The man I’m going to see retired a few years back. Sheriff Billy Lee Knowles served several terms. In his seventies now, I’m betting he’ll be showing the wear from his life in law enforcement. He’s at least had the good sense not to settle in Goshen, but that’s not good: I’ve had to take time to drive the ten miles from Goshen to Mount Repose to find him.

  I called before I came, asking if he’d talk about Stoke Farrel. He agreed.

  He greets me at the door of his home, a sedate brick ranch tucked away on a five acre lot.

  “I like my privacy,”he says, explaining the tall privacy fence enclosing the yard.

  “Sheriff Knowles. Pleased to meet you,”I say, accepting his vice-like hand shake.

  “Come in, boy!” He pulls me inside the front door, pounding me on the back.

  The old boy’s long suspicious glance around the yard’s perimeter makes me wonder if the conversation we had during my call might’ve awakened some sleeping ghost, or if like many he’s conditioned by his life in law enforcement to check for danger.

  He leads me to a large den off the house’s rear, an add-on with a wall of custom cherry cabinetry, guarded by a bank of security cameras.

  “Nice gun collection,”I say. “Impressive.”

  “Yuh. You want coffee?”

  I start to say no, but something about his lone beat-up Barcalounger, the den’s abject disarray, stops me. This old law dog needs company. I glance at my watch, making sure I can spare a few minutes before I return to Goshen to pick up Berta Colby and head back to Cincinnati. It’s a callous gesture born of my need to rush. I try to hide it, but from his shrewd glance, I’m sure I’ve failed.