by Michael Pool
"A pic of the body," I tell him. "Or no deal."
The phone goes quiet.
"Alright," says the Jerk. "That's a go, but any more demands and your client will be hocking his story to Identification Discovery just to make bail. Give me a bit to get her out of the tarp. Where do I send it?"
I give him Trixie's number.
"Cheers," he says. The call goes dead.
Twenty minutes later, Trixie receives two pics. The first is a close up of Mrs. Brennan, a striking woman with blond hair and classic good looks, making reasonable allowances for the crescent-shaped gash across her forehead. The second is a wide-angle shot of her stretched out on the ground amid a cluster of trees.
"Okay…" Trixie cracks her knuckles, then pecks furiously at the screen on her cell.
"What are you doing?"
"Photo enhancement. Sharpening the image. Adjusting the contrast and…cash money! You owe me, baby."
"For what?"
"Solving the case." She slings the scarf around her neck and heads for the door. "Come on, Joe! I'll explain on the way."
Brennan has a dweeb-fit when Trixie hustles him out of the office and into his Lincoln Town Car, the three of us cramming in front with Trixie taking center seat to do what she does best.
"Hit it, Arthur. Burn some gas!"
"I don't understand why I have to drive." He squeals into traffic on Ridge Avenue. "Where are we going?"
"Straight. Then take Kelly Drive through Fairmount Park." Trixie elbows me, pointing to the close-up of Mrs. Brennan. "That gash on her forehead. Pretty clean, wouldn't you say?"
"So?"
"So where's the splatter? The blood that would have seeped from the wound? It's as if her face was wiped clean afterward."
"Is that my wife?" The Lincoln drifts into opposing traffic then jerks back in a blast of horns.
"Eyes on the road, Arthur! Turn here!"
The Lincoln cuts a wide arc on North Ferry through the clustered intersection under the bridge, scattering bikers in the Green Lane and sending the line at the hot dog cart lunging for cover before careening in a screech of rubber southbound onto Kelly Drive.
I clutch the door handle when the Lincoln hits seventy-five, switching lanes wildly as the road S-curves along the river through the park.
"But this is the real kicker." She zooms in on Mrs. Brennan's forehead, glistening with sweat.
"Alright," I say, both hands on the door handle with Kung Fu grip. "So she's sweating. Big deal. Got to be ninety degrees out here. Probably even hotter in Jersey. Can you ease up a bit, Artie?"
"Arthur," scolds Trixie, "you keep your tiny-little munchkin feet on the fuckin' gas!" She shoots me a quizzical look. "I'm surprised at you, Joe. Dead bodies don't sweat."
Hugging the curb on the straightaways, the Lincoln swings wide into opposing traffic at every curve. Horns blasting us on the left. The blur of oak trees on the right.
"By the way, Arthur?" says Trixie.
"Huh?" Brennan is white-knuckling the steering wheel. Riding on fear.
"By any chance did you make that lovely bride of yours sign a pre-nuptial agreement?"
"Had to. My first wife really took me to the cleaners."
"Cash money," Trixie laughs, giving me one of her looks. "Explains why the divorce plan wouldn't work. And check this out." She flips to the wide-angle of Mrs. Brennan lying on the ground and zooms in on the background. Barely visible through the trees is the outline of a familiar figure. "You see that?"
It's fuzzy at that magnification, but I can make out the shape of a man in a billowing cape with a walking stick and pilgrim's hat. Seen it before, but the threat of impending death has me unable to recall where.
"I'll be damned!" Brennan swerves the Lincoln across the center line, through a split-second window of opportunity between a Chevy Tahoe and what has to be the last running Suzuki Samurai on the planet. We hit the breakdown lane on the other side doing sixty and skid thirty yards through the gravel before coming to a cockeyed, dust-cloud stop behind a '90s-era Crown Vic. "That's the car! The clunker that was in my driveway when I went back to the house!"
In a clearing in the woods on the other side of the Vic stands a bronze statue of a pilgrim with a billowing cape and a walking stick. Must've passed it a million times.
I pry my hands off the door handle. "Nice work, Trix!"
The Jerk emerges from the woods with Brennan's very-much-alive wife. Brennan is out of the Lincoln and on top of them before they see him coming. He executes an uncoordinated right hook and the Jerk goes down without protest, spread-eagled in the dirt.
"You go, Arthur!" Trixie cackles.
"Artie!" Mrs. Brennan screams.
"Conniving little wench!"
"What about you? Leaving me for dead!"
"You're not dead!"
"Jackass!"
"Slut!"
She launches at Brennan and makes quick work of wrestling him into a headlock, the two of them spinning in circles as she knees him in the skull.
Trixie and I step out of the Lincoln and take a moment to assess our options.
"So what I'm thinkin' is," I point to a hiking trail leading back the way we came, "probably a good idea we hoof it from here. Messy domestic scene like this? Don't wanna be around when the heat shows up."
"Too late."
A police cruiser skids to a stop in the gravel behind us. The doors fly open and both cops laser in on the happy couple.
"Break it up you two!"
Strolling down the trail, I glance over my shoulder to where Brennan is taking a few final licks as they pry the little missus away. "So, whadaya think? We owe the guy a partial refund? I mean, that was pretty quick work."
"I dunno," Trixie chuckles. "Let's see if he asks."
"You know, Trix, it's a tough grind. The long hours. The demanding clients. But when a case like this comes along and everything works out in the end? Makes me feel like we're doing… I dunno, like we're doing—"
"God's work, Joe." She unloosens her scarf and slings an arm over my shoulder. "Like we're doing God's work."
Canary
by Matthew J. Hockey
Booster cleared the mist off his respirator goggles and pressed his face to the mail slot of 222 Foxglove Avenue.
Even through the mask, the air tasted of rotten fish and garlic that had fallen way down in a trash compactor. The living room was dark; the blinds drawn, sprayed-black bubble wrap taped over the glass. He had to wait until the television cut to an overlit game show before he could see what he was looking at.
A big pair of feet planked rigor mortis-stiff off the end of the sofa, twisted at an angle that was just wrong. The socks were too small and had individual rainbow-colored toes. Cute. God, he hoped it was a man wearing his girlfriend's socks. The women were always the worst.
The second vic had collapsed in the corner, toppling his chair as he did and spilling marshmallow cereal all over the floor. The milk and bloody vomit were still beaded on the carpet. He was a small Latino guy, wiry and shirtless to show off his ink and the tangle of chains around his neck. The St. Christopher winked in the dark.
The coffee table had a set of heavy-duty digital scales and there were empty glass containers all over the room—jugs, bottles, dishes, glasses, tumblers and even a tipped-out flower vase.
He slapped the slot down and turned back to the rest of the fire crew. They hung back by the truck, decked in full turnout gear and helmets, masks hanging down by their chests, axes and flatheads in hand ready to take the door. Police had closed off the cul-de-sac with sawhorses and cruisers parked side-on. Twice they'd had to call for additional reinforcements to contain the crowds—ghouls, local media types, looky-loos and honest-to-goodness residents who'd been evacuated from their homes and wanted nothing more than to see their neighbor's house go up with a bang.
"Don't leave me in suspense here," Delroy, the incident commander, said. His mutton chops were already slicked with sweat. Small Nevada towns weren
't supposed to get this exciting.
"Two down."
Delroy waved the site runner over.
"Get dispatch to send another bus. The John Q that called it in missed one," he said before turning back to Booster. "What do you think? Carb Mox?"
"No. Whatever it is, it took them fast. They were dead before they had a chance to get sleepy."
"The boiler vents are taped off and there's extra thick insulation on the roof. We think cook lab."
"That gels with what I saw. This could be really bad. If they were using hypo acid instead of red phosphorus and they got it too hot…well, then we've got ourselves a house full of phosphine. Not only will it turn your lungs to cat food, it self-ignites in air. If we try and vertical vent it, it'll oxidize."
"Shit. Could anybody still be alive in that?"
"I don't know."
"You're the one with the chemistry degree."
"Maybe."
"I'll get the boys to draw straws. See who gets to be the canary."
"Screw that," Booster said, "I'll do it. And forget your two-in two-out. If it goes, it goes. It won't matter how many are in there if it does."
Delroy gave him an 'attaboy' pat on the ass. They'd both known he was going to say that. The rest of the crew wolf-whistled.
Booster pre-planned his moves with the site safety officer while Delroy spread the word that all firemen hate: HAZMAT call. Four more engines and a decontamination unit headed in from the next county over. The police pushed the hot zone perimeter out to three hundred and fifty feet. A local church group shuttled the neighbors to City Hall to sleep on mats and bitch about not being allowed back into their homes.
Ungrateful assholes, Booster thought as he stepped up to the door. He saves them from a choking death in their beds and they complain they didn't have time to pack an overnight bag.
He ran a last check on his gear, cinched his sleeve and ankle cuffs, and made sure there was no exposed skin. He fitted the pry into the door. His blood boiled in his face, his visor misted over again. His lungs pinched and his breath Darth Vadered in his ears. His ass was tight enough to snap pencils. If it was going to go off, it would go off when he opened the door—that first rush of air like the house inhaling and then… crump. He slammed his weight on the pry and the door popped.
One. Two. No explosion. So far so very, very good.
"I'm in," he said into the helmet radio.
"Keep it coming," Delroy said.
He marked the quickest route between exit and entry in case he had to exfil in a hurry. He checked upstairs first. If there were survivors that's where they'd be, Phosphine being heavier than air.
Upstairs was empty. No furniture except for a couple sleeping bags and a camping bed. Small plastic barrels of stuff with NFPA hazard diamonds on them. He checked them all close. If something was going to detonate, he wanted to know about it before it did. Just as he suspected—hypophosphorous acid. He was amazed it had taken them this long to kill themselves, they'd been so sloppy with the empties.
"Second floor clear, no casualties."
He went back downstairs to the living room, forced himself to look at victim one on the sofa. It was a man. A large white guy in his late twenties with dirty-looking dreadlocks and blood all around his nose. His neck cords had popped out when he'd been fighting for air. His eyes were open, covered in a thin layer of dust. He must have been pretty out of it on something not to try and escape.
Same for victim two by the radiator. No lividity. No discoloration. Bloody milk all over his chest. Gang tats and girls' names over his collarbone, Portuguese words instead of eyebrows. He had the teeth of a three-year meth user, lips pulled up in a snarl.
Booster pushed through a bead curtain into the boxy kitchen. Victims three, four and five lay at his feet. Three cats bunched together by the taped-up cat flap, tufts of fur lay all around them where they'd torn at each other in their panic.
He opened the door at the end of the room and found victim six collapsed halfway down the stairs to the basement. He had long bleached hair pulled into a ponytail that had flicked forward over his face, the sort of strands he would have blown away if his lungs still worked. He was half into a white chemical suit like crime scene techs wear. He'd been pulling it on as he went up the stairs, except it tangled it around his feet and he fell. It wouldn't have done him any good, the ratty old thing was full of cigarette holes.
It was a cook lab alright, a big one too. They'd set up two rows of tables covered with equipment; plastic and glass tubing ran between three liter milk bottles, the liquid inside had split into two distinct layers. A camp stove was set beneath a paint can—it was blackened from where the powder had burned. Good thing the flame had died before the phosphine got any denser. It would have taken the whole building with it when it went.
Booster was having to work too hard to drag in air. The fog on his Perspex wouldn't wipe away. His shins brushed against something as he made for the stairs back up. Don't look, he thought, keep going, get outside.
Instead he stopped. He bent down. He looked.
"Holy fucking shit," he said.
Delroy chirped in his ear. "What's going on? Are you ok? Say something?"
"It's mo…it's nothing. I fell off a step."
It wasn't nothing. It was a long way from nothing. It was a canvas gym bag stuffed with brown dust-covered money. Fat stacks of it wrapped around with hair scrunchies and jammed into pairs of ladies' tights. Too much to count.
"Boost. We're getting antsy. How's it going?"
"There's a third casualty in the basement."
He didn't know why he did it. He was on a good wage. His wife Cassie earned the same as him and then a third as much again. Plus her dad was loaded and she was his favorite, smack dab at the top of the inheritance tree. The mortgage was paid off. He didn't have children to take care of and no chance of any coming along. He didn't have any credit cards or overdrafts to worry about, student debts were all paid off. He didn't have…
He zipped the bag closed, wrapped it five times around with trash bags and dumped it in the open top of the water tank. He went back up to the kitchen. He was about to step through into the living room when…
…slap…
Sounded like a landed fish flopping on deck.
Victim Two. The gangbanger. He jerked from the waist and tried to sit up, fell back with another slap. He gagged and spat up red froth at the corner of his mouth, both hands to his throat and his eyes rolling in fright. Very much awake. Very much afraid. He held out his hands as best he could.
Booster bent down to him. He was about to pull him into a lift and get him out to the ambo when he stopped.
He didn't think about doing it, he just did it. It wasn't until later on that he tried to rationalize it. He lifted the cushion from under Victim One's rainbow socks. He pressed it over the gangbanger's face and jammed a knee into his chest. He didn't have to apply much pressure, just enough to feel the shape of the nose pressing into the fabric. The gangbanger didn't struggle much, he was ninety percent checked-out anyway.
He timed a minute and a half on his watch and then put the cushion back under the first guy's head. He went outside to the decontamination truck and let the chemical boys do their work.
By the time he got home, his dinner was in the microwave; a heart-stopper slab of Cassie's homemade lasagna squeezed into a Perry's ice-cream tub. She'd even put a freshly cut sprig of rosemary on the top to show him there were no hard feelings. She was a rare find that way, a fireman's wife that said 'I understand we won't get to see much of each other,' and actually still meant it ten years after the fact.
He heated it and slapped the pasta on two slices of floury white bread; a big carb crash was the only way he was going to sleep. He pulled a seat up to the kitchen island and ate the loose ground beef with a spoon.
Arms wrapped around his neck.
His skin went cold, his hairs stood on end, the chunk of burning onion stuck in his throat.
&nbs
p; They've found me.
The hands moved on down to his chest and pinched. Cassie. He carried on chewing, and she pulled up another stool. She told him all about her day at the flower show; the flash of inspiration she'd had, the awesome rockery she'd seen. She told him how her work diary was looking for the next month—two landscaping consultations next week, another two the week after. When she'd first set up shop, she'd barely been making two consultations a quarter.
"I tell you I don't know how I'm going to fit it all in. Remember we didn't know how it was going to work out when I first quit Teller's? Now me, Cassiopeia Brewster nee Du Grange, a little girl from Caliente, is in a position to actually turn work down. Paying work. Can you imagine? Baby we might be able to get that pool after all…one with bubble jets!"
Her mouth kept moving. He knew he should be listening, should probably be responding. As it was, he couldn't even summon a uh-huh or a solitary oh yeah with any conviction. He felt that nose poking into the palm of his hand.
"I can get rid of the Ford if Mr. Shellacky comes through, get the Lexus I've had my eye on. Every day I go past Egan's, I check if it's still in the lot. I know I shouldn't, somebody's bound to have bought it by then but…anyway, Shellacky's a shoe-in. The man has koi carp. They don't come cheap. If he bites, that's sixty thousand dollars plus materials. I'd need to get in some laborers out of that, but still… Three months work! Where should we go on vacation? I was thinking South America. It should be coming up to Carnival time. Mardis Gras. Get some of the Latino spice… "
He slapped his hand palm-down on the countertop.
Cassie's mouth snapped shut. She tucked her chair in neatly and went to bed. He ate one, two, three more spoons of lasagna. The bedroom door slammed. The bed springs groaned. He threw the bowl at the wall—it bounced off and sprayed orange sauce all over the room. He spent half an hour mopping it up and went to bed himself. The carbs didn't help him sleep, they just gave him indigestion.
Two weeks later, the county fire examiner had finished his report, the chief medical examiner had released the bodies to whatever family the three bastards had, and even the Narco-squad boys had finished picking over the bones. Not a one of them had reported finding any money, but then why would they? Booster knew he should feel like he was in the clear, but he didn't. He felt like he had a lump in his lungs that he couldn't cough up.