A Taste of Blood and Ashes

by Jaden Terrell

  He gave Carlin a stiff nod as we passed her, gave another to Gerardo as he stepped out of the elevator with three cups of coffee in his hands. No sign of Doc. I supposed that, having delivered me to Zane’s room, the lucky bastard had headed back to catch a few hours of sleep before sunrise.

  “Good thing you went by Zane’s trailer when you did,” the sheriff said, as we plodded through a warren of antiseptic corridors. He’d lowered his voice, but it sounded loud in the nighttime quiet, a quiet underscored by the soft hum of machinery and the occasional beep of a monitor. “What were you doing there anyway?”

  “I don’t know exactly. I wasn’t getting anywhere with the investigation. Too many suspects, which isn’t much easier than not enough.”

  “So you . . . what, went there to hash out possibilities? With Zane?”

  “His body’s broken, not his mind.”

  His shoulders slumped. “Point taken.”

  “But I didn’t go there to see Zane. Not specifically. I just needed to do something. I walked a grid, and I ended up there. And the door was standing open.”

  We passed a sitting area, two cushioned chairs and a matching love seat, but neither of us suggested stopping there.

  “Where were Carlin and Gerardo?”

  “The arena, I presume. Or maybe at the stables.”

  He said, “Run through it with me.”

  I did, leaving out the argument I’d witnessed between Carlin and Gerardo, and when I’d finished, he said, “You never saw this guy’s face? Never heard him speak?”

  “No.”

  “Big guy, little guy?”

  “He felt big when he landed on my chest, but I’d say average overall.”

  “Not a big guy.”

  “No, and I get where you’re going with that. It wasn’t Junior, but that doesn’t mean he or his father didn’t pay to have it done. I found this on the ground outside the trailer. You might be able to get some DNA from it.”

  I pulled the bandana from my pocket and handed it to him. To his credit, he didn’t bust my chops for picking it up. He must have known as well as I did that, if I’d left it there, it would have been long gone before he or his crew arrived to work the scene.

  I said, “Mace Ewing’s tight with Junior, isn’t he? At least, he runs with the same thugs.”

  His eyelids twitched. “You already made up your mind Junior’s behind all this?”

  “No. Have you already made up your mind he isn’t?”

  He paused, midstride, back stiffening. “This is the second time tonight you’ve implied I’m a dirty cop.”

  “You made it pretty clear you look after your own.”

  “The people of this county are my own. And you’re damn right I look after them.”

  “Does that include Dan Bitmore and Sylvia Whitehead?”

  His voice was chilly. “You’ve been talking to Eli Barringer.”

  “He says both of them were antisoring activists.”

  “Last time I heard, that didn’t make you immortal.”

  “He says there were bruises on Sylvia Whitehead’s shoulders.”

  “He says a lot of things. He’s so damn hot to prove his dear old granddaddy was murdered—”

  “Wait a minute. His grandfather?”

  “Didn’t tell you that part, did he?” His grin was vicious. “Tommy Cole was Barringer’s grandpa. The kid never even met Cole, but to hear him tell it, his grandfather was the next best thing to Jesus. Did everything but walk on water.”

  “You disagree?”

  “I was fifteen when he died. I didn’t know him much, except to know he was a threat to us. But he was just a man, and men have feet of clay.”

  “Eli thinks Doc and your brother killed him and then alibied each other.”

  “Don’t forget Dalt Underwood and Jim Lister. Takes more than two for a good conspiracy. But let me tell you something, Mr. Private Dick.” He poked me in the chest with his index finger, and a wave of pain surged through my body.

  I gasped through gritted teeth.

  He poked me again and said, “My brother didn’t murder Tommy Cole. And when they pulled Sylvia Whitehead from that bathtub, her shoulders were as white as buttermilk.”

  19.

  He stopped at the elevator just as Eleanor Underwood and Trudy Valentine stepped out of it. Billy Mean came out behind them, and the two women exchanged anxious glances. I guessed sharing an elevator with him was one thing, being followed out of it another. The sheriff didn’t seem surprised to see the women, but he hadn’t been prepared for Billy.

  Billy was a big man but not a tall one, an inch or two below my six feet. His beard and mustache were clean but not trimmed, and in his camo pants and a Shrine of the Silver Monkey T-shirt, he looked like a fugitive from Duck Dynasty. A web of thin scars etched his face, neck, and hands, where he’d once been shoved face-first into broken glass.

  “Billy,” I said.

  The women, looking relieved that he wasn’t some random stranger, stepped aside to let him pass.

  “You look like shit,” Billy said. His big paw hovered over my shoulder as if it had started to give me a pat and then thought better of it.

  I said, “You look like a lifeboat to a drowning man.”

  The sheriff lifted his eyebrows and said to me, “You know this guy?”

  I laughed. “He’s practically my father.”

  “I’m too young and too good lookin’ to be your father,” Billy said. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

  “I hate to bail out on old home week,” the sheriff said, “but that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. Try not to get yourself killed tonight, Mr. McKean.” With this reassuring advice, he tipped an imaginary hat toward the women. “Ladies.”

  When the elevator doors had closed behind him, Trudy glanced at her companion. Trudy was a strong woman, but there was no doubting who was alpha in their friendship. Eleanor didn’t look alpha now though. She looked lost.

  After a moment, Trudy looked at me and said, “How is he?”

  “Better than somebody planned for him to be. But he’s pretty wrung out. They’re keeping him overnight for observation.”

  A sad, strangled sound burst from her throat. It cut through Eleanor’s fog and snapped her head around. “Oh, for God’s sake, girl, don’t make a fool of yourself.”

  Trudy’s cheeks flushed. “I’m sorry. I just—”

  “You just might want to focus on your young man and let go of this torch you’re carrying for my son. Fat lot of good he’d be to you now, even if he wanted you.”

  Trudy shot her a look that could have scorched earth. “Just because I care what happens to him doesn’t mean I’m carrying a torch.”

  I said, “This young man she’s talking about . . .”

  “Is none of your business,” Trudy said.

  “Is Mace Ewing.” Eleanor smiled, but there was no kindness in it. I sensed this argument had been going on between them for years and that their relationship was something both more and less than friendship. Something familial, with all the warts and baggage that went along with that.

  Trudy glared at me. “What are you? Sodium pentothol? You just say the word and people spill their guts to you?”

  Billy bobbed his head affably. “That he does. It’s sort of his super power.”

  “One of many,” I said. “Hold tight, all of you. I’ll go get Carlin.”

  Zane’s room was dim when I pushed open the door. Carlin slumped in the chair beside Zane’s bed. Gerardo stood behind her, a cup of coffee in one hand, the other resting on Carlin’s shoulder. Her palm rested on the back of his hand. A sweet tableau. When she saw me at the door, she moved her hand away.

  “My buddy’s here to guard the room,” I said. “But he’s not alone.”

  “That’s good, right? He brought somebody to trade off shifts with?” I gave my head a small shake, and she put her head in her hands and said, “Oh no.”

  By the time she came out, she was composed.


  Eleanor looked at Carlin’s frayed shirt and smirked. Carlin gave her a frozen smile and said, “He’s sleeping now. You can’t go in.”

  “I’m his mother,” Eleanor said.

  Carlin laughed. “First sign I’ve seen of that.”

  The words hung in the air and charged it. For a moment, no one breathed. Then Eleanor’s hand shot out.

  The slap echoed in the corridor.

  Carlin put a hand to the reddened palm print on her cheek. Softly, she said, “I’ll let that go, for Zane’s sake.”

  As if invoked by the sound of his name, Zane’s voice called from inside, “Ah-weh! Ah-weh!”

  A brief hesitation, then Carlin slipped inside. Her muffled voice spoke, low and brittle, answered by Zane’s mechanical proxy. After a while, she came out, red-eyed, and said, “He wants to see you both. Eleanor, you first. Ten minutes. If you’re not out by then, I’m coming in after you.”

  Billy looked at me. I shrugged. “I don’t think she’ll smother him herself. Not with all these witnesses.”

  Eleanor’s spine stiffened. With a brittle glance over her shoulder, she shoved the door open and stalked inside. Gerardo, on his way out, stepped out of her path, and she plowed through the space where he’d been as if his deference were assured, or as if, had he stayed where he was, she could have walked right through him.

  “Piece of work,” Billy said.

  Carlin rubbed her temples. “You have no idea.”

  While we waited, I made introductions. Billy stationed himself by Zane’s door, and Carlin sent Gerardo in search of a vending machine. “Please?” she wheedled, and the look in his eyes said he was as susceptible to that word, in that tone of voice, as I had proven to be. “I’m dying for something chocolate.”

  I looked at Trudy. “Mind if we go talk?”

  “I want to be here when Eleanor comes out.”

  “It won’t take long. We can go to the end of the hall so you can keep an eye on the door.”

  She hesitated, then said, “You saved his life tonight. I guess that’s worth a conversation. But make it quick.”

  She matched her pace to mine without comment. Neither of us spoke until we were out of Carlin’s earshot. Then I said, “Tell me about Mace.”

  She cocked her head. “About Mace, or about me and Mace.”

  “Both. Either.”

  “You can’t think he did this.” She nodded toward Zane’s door.

  “He could have. I didn’t see him beforehand, and whoever did it was smaller than Junior.” And then there was the bandana.

  “Mace is a big guy,” she said.

  “I’d put him on the larger end of average,” I said. “I wouldn’t say he’s at the top of the list, but size doesn’t rule him out.”

  “You don’t know him.”

  “I know he has cronies. One of them hit me with a shovel.”

  “Cronies. You’re making him out to be some kind of super villain. He’s not like that.”

  “So humor me. Tell me what he is like.”

  “There isn’t much to tell. I like him. He likes me. He’s into horses, and he doesn’t sore.” She gave a small, humorless laugh. “He also doesn’t win, but then, I guess you can’t have everything.”

  “No surprise there, since he doesn’t know jack about training.”

  “He knows jack,” she said, “just not much more than jack. But that I can help him with.”

  “Do you know where he was when Zane was attacked?”

  “It would be convenient if I could say he was with me,” she said. “But he wasn’t. Probably in his trailer, probably drinking. He does that a lot since Dan died.”

  Dan Bitmore, the man Mace had shot. “What a catch.”

  She lifted her chin. “So he’s going through a rough patch. So what? He’s not an angel, but he’s not a killer either. You want to know about that arson at Zane’s place, you might start looking closer to home.”

  “You still think Carlin set it?”

  “Maybe not. Your new girlfriend has a reasonable theory about the soring chemicals, that Carlin had nothing to gain and everything to lose by using them, so now I think maybe fifty/fifty.”

  “My new girlfriend?”

  “Word spreads fast, and no one has to be a mind reader to see her making goo-goo eyes at you.” She batted her lashes as if to make a point.

  “Nothing’s going on with me and Rhonda. She just walked me to the clinic, for God’s sake.”

  She ignored that. “Rhonda likes her men, and history would indicate that you’re her type. But you know what she likes even more than men?”

  “No, what?”

  Her lips twitched with amusement, a smile without goodwill. “You seem like a smart guy. I thought you would have figured it out by now. The girl likes fire.”

  20.

  The door to Zane’s room opened, and Eleanor came out. Her back was rigid, her jaw tight. She walked like something hurt inside.

  “You’re up,” I said to Trudy.

  She took a deep breath. Said, “It isn’t true, you know.”

  “What isn’t true?”

  “What Eleanor said. About me carrying a torch for Zane. He did what he did, and he chose who he chose, and I’m not fool enough to think things have changed just because he’s in that chair and she’s humping the help.”

  “She’s not humping the help.” The heat in my voice caught me by surprise. She wasn’t saying anything I hadn’t suspected—how Carlin had asked Gerardo for help with the lemonade, the look of resignation in Zane’s eyes, the tableau by Zane’s hospital bed. But I’d heard them at the stables, and whatever was between them, I didn’t think they’d acted on it yet.

  “Little Miss Perfect,” Trudy said, spinning away from me. And over her shoulder, “Maybe she’s not as perfect as you think.”

  Little Miss Perfect had propped herself against the wall across from Billy. She yawned and slapped at her cheeks with her palms as Trudy pushed into Zane’s room. Her eyelids drooped, the adrenaline that had carried her this far running low.

  Eleanor walked stiffly to the window at the other end of the hall, fumbled with a cigarette, then looked around as if realizing where she was and put it back into the pack. I went to stand beside her and said, “What did he say to you?”

  “Nothing relevant.”

  “It’s hard to say what is and isn’t relevant.”

  “He told me he loved me,” she said, “but that I was dead to him until I learned to love his wife.”

  “And what did you say?”

  “I told him it would be a cold day in hell.” She turned back to the window, lips trembling, staring silently into blackness.

  I went to stand by Billy for a while, making small talk, then finally gave in and peeked inside Zane’s room. Trudy perched at the edge of the bedside chair, her hand over Zane’s. The look on her face said her feelings for him were more complicated than she wanted me to believe.

  Voyeurism was a part of my profession. Still, something turned me from their private moment, and I stepped back, pulling the door closed quietly.

  “Childhood sweethearts,” Carlin said without emotion. “They were engaged when I met Zane. Does that make me a home wrecker?”

  “You’ve been married for eight years. It might be time to let that particular piece of baggage go.”

  “Hard to do,” she said, “when people keep throwing it back at me.” She scrubbed at her face with her hands. “Oh, God. I hope he’s going to be okay.”

  Gerardo came back with the chocolate, spoke quietly with Carlin, then walked over to me and jerked his head toward the elevators. “You have no vehicle here. I will take you to fill your prescription and drive you back to your camp.”

  I thought suddenly of Khanh, and a sense of shame washed over me. Not because I hadn’t called to tell her where I was, but because, in the excitement of the attack and its aftermath, I’d forgotten her completely.

  She was waiting for me when I got back to the trailer. She sat
on the little pull-out step, knees tucked up, her good arm wrapped around them like a little girl at story time. Her eyes looked tired and hurt and angry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have called you. I have no excuse.”

  She rested her chin on her knees. It should have made her look relaxed, but it didn’t. She said, “I hear somebody try to kill Mr. Underwood.”

  The Big Lick crowd had a hell of a grapevine. And why not? Doc had told the sheriff, and the sheriff had told God knows who. There was no way to keep a lid on a thing like that.

  I said, “Someone tried. It didn’t work.”

  “Because you catch.”

  “I didn’t catch. He got away.”

  She rocked a little on the step. “I have something to say.”

  “Okay.”

  “I come here, you, me, not like each other much. You help me find my daughter. Bring mother here, buy medicine, give us place to live.”

  I knew all this, and wondered where she was going with it.

  “You give me work, say you big PI, need help in office.”

  “So?”

  “So? I go to work, think you, me, good team. You say you work alone, big joke. Everybody laugh. But now I think maybe not so big joke.” She pushed herself off the step and came to cup my chin in her hand. Ran her thumb lightly across the bruise beneath my eye. “I wait here long time, worry about you. Maybe someone kill you. Hurt you bad. And I not know because you work alone.”

  “Khanh—”

  “I know you not really need me. Only say you do so I feel . . . useful. Give you reason to give us everything.”

  “That’s not true. I mean, it was at first. But now . . .” I smiled, thinking of the chatter from the back room of the office, of the spicy Vietnamese meals Phen made for me, Khanh’s coffee so thick and sweet. They’d helped me heal and banished at least a few of my ghosts. But I didn’t tell her any of that. It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. Instead, I said, “Khanh, you’re the best thing that ever happened to Maverick Investigations. You think I’d have tripled my income without you?”

  I don’t know what she saw in my eyes, but she stared into them for a long time, then gave me a small smile and said, “Okay, boss man. Next time, you call.”