The Dead Detective

by J. R. Rain

  But in the meantime, at least in the short term, it means I’m not wanted for a double murder. Or likely to be arrested at any minute. I hadn’t realized until just this moment how much I was dreading the cuffs; how heavy the prospect of arrest was hanging over my head, like a sword or guillotine blade. Now I feel like screaming with relief.

  Finally, I pull myself together enough to nod and say, “Yeah, I was at the CS in Rosedale myself. I was driving by and heard the TAC chatter.” He would be learning this from the sign-in sheet, if he hadn’t already. “Thing is, I thought it might have something to do with the Gypsy gang I’m investigating.”

  “You think that’s who..?” His gaze involuntarily strays to over my left boob.

  “Makes sense, right? Why else am I still walking and talking? A Gypsy curse is all I’ve got.”

  He shakes his head and all but covers his ears with his hands. “I don’t wanna know. Now get the fuck out of here, Richelle. Wrap this up as fast as you can―and try to keep out of everybody’s way, mine especially. Actually, you don’t look so bad; in fact, you look better than you did the other night. Think you’ll ever be, you know…back to normal again?”

  Now it’s my turn. To shake my head, I mean. Normal’s never going to be an option, I’m guessing.

  “Oh, one more thing, Cappy,” I say casually on my way out. “I need to report my own sidearm missing.”

  “Huh?” he says incredulously. To lose your piece is one of the more shameful things that can happen to an officer, and it will permanently go in my jacket, but I need it on record as soon as possible that mine’s gone AWOL. Somehow it got switched at Center Plaza. “How the fuck did that happen?”

  “I left it in the car. I know, I know, it was dumb. I haven’t been thinking straight. Devon and I are splitting up, on top of everything else. To be honest, I’m a little scared of having it around when we’re fighting.” Now that’s a statement any police can relate to, and the Cap calms down.

  “Okay, Okay, file a report―and don’t forget you’re seeing that police shrink next Tuesday. Christ, Dadd, are you screwed up, no offense.”

  Before I do anything else, I retrieve Mendoza’s gun from inside my desk, wipe it clean, and put it in a Rite-Aid bag. I leave my cell phone in its place. Then I drive three miles or so into Harbor Beach, which is no beach at all, just an endless slum, and dump it down a storm drain on a deserted street. It’s a weight off my mind, though now I feel pretty naked. Especially in that neighborhood, where gangbangers patrol the street corners in booming black Escalades with the snouts of their sub-machine guns glinting from the back seat.

  I return to the stationhouse somehow miraculously unmolested, log in, file my missing weapon report, and then check my voice messages. Why did I leave my cell phone behind? Because IAD can track your movements now from the chip inside it―and despite popular myth, removing the battery doesn’t always work. Best to just jettison it whenever you’re doing something really geography-sensitive. Like dumping a murder weapon. Or a dead body.

  I’m suddenly very popular.

  From Detective Tabori: “Are you busy tonight? I’d like to meet for drinks, maybe dinner. And discuss the Rosedale case.”

  From Malena Ayon: “Girl, we gotta talk. Like now. But tonight works for me, too. Call me!”

  From Harper: “Are we still on for tonight? Let me know, please.”

  From Devon: “Is it too much to expect you might actually be home tonight? We need to talk, Rich.”

  Along with a few follow-up texts from Ayon. Guilty conscience? About Devon, maybe―certainly not about popping me in the heart with Mendoza’s Glock. If she’s the one who did it, I mean; I’m still having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around that.

  Before I do anything else, I log into Tabori’s database through CENTEX and run searches on the Nichols and Horvath families. There’s nothing on them under the Horvath name but plenty on the Nichols, who are all under Federal indictment in Florida for fraud and larceny grand theft in connection with a fortune-telling scam they ran on retirees. There are even a few mug shots of Donna Nichols, and a photograph, where she looks slimmer, younger, and almost human, from a Ft. Lauderdale newspaper showing her emerging from a courthouse bail hearing. Problem is, this isn’t Ft. Lauderdale. And there are no other known addresses for her―or her father, Eli.

  Another problem: I can’t even put out an APB on her, because I have no warrant or even probable cause. All I can do is list her as a person of interest on the national police and FBI databases, along with a request for notification if she’s apprehended. A BOLO, this is called—a Be On the Look Out. But I’ve got no tag numbers to go with that; a search of the state MVA registrations tuned up nothing.

  “During conversations recorded by or at the direction of federal investigators, Donna Nichols frequently spoke about religion, God, ‘guides,’ the reading of numbers, ‘the Trinity’ and spirits,” says the newspaper article linked to her police file; “Donna Nichols was a kind of shaman, her victims believed, who could communicate with good and evil spirits.

  “In the Romani language, a fortuneteller is called a drabarni, which several experts have said translates as a ‘healer’ and only women are believed to have the power to combat negative energy. Members of the Romani sect, including Nichols, believe in good and bad energy, which originates from God (Del), the Devil (Beng), curses (amria), bad omens (prikaza), and the spirits of the dead (mule). According to the Gypsy belief, if a person dies with feelings of resentment or hostility toward the living, then he or she will return from the ‘other side’ to haunt them with bad energy.”

  Well, one thing’s for sure: however much of a swindler Gana Kali is in defrauding little old ladies of their money or making false predictions, she certainly knows how to raise the dead. I can testify to that.

  call Harper back and get his voicemail. “No, not tonight,” I say. “Sorry. Thanks for the thought, but I don’t think the placental pacemaker thingy’s really gonna cut it. You know, because of the blood pressure problem. Anyway, I can swing by this afternoon to discuss it with you. And please let me pay you back for it, okay?” Because, you know, I’m grateful to him. And it occurs to me that since he knows my secret, I’d better keep him kind of sweet. Or at the very least, not seriously piss him off.

  I call Devon back, and we have a very strained and brittle conversation. “Look, I don’t know what we have left to talk about, really,” I finally tell him. “At least, nothing we haven’t said already in front of Dr. Susan. I accept that it’s all my fault, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna give you the house out of guilt. Hell, I’ve made eighty per cent of the payments on the place, and we both know it. And there’s no way you’re getting Kitty.”

  “We’ll talk tonight,” he keeps saying over and over in his stubborn passive-aggressive voice. I really don’t see the point, I think as I hang up. Not after he’s just spent the night at Ayon’s. Why is he even pretending―other than because he wants more than I’m willing to give? Which is exactly half. I’ll buy out his share of the house and we’ll call it even. It occurs to me that I really should be doing my talking through a lawyer. Unfortunately, the only one I know personally is currently haunting his family home.

  Besides. Fighting over custody of shit in a marriage is like dividing up the Seven Dwarves between you. I mean, obviously I’m Doc, Grumpy, and Sleepy. Devon is Dopey, Sneezy, and Bashful. Happy, I guess we’ll just have to saw in half. Although Devon should definitely be feeling lucky after last night.

  So Ayon can go fuck herself, I decide, and call the Gypsy King instead.

  “How about dinner tonight?” he asks.

  “How about lunch? I gotta go home tonight and deal with an irate soon-to-be ex-husband.” You notice the bravado in my tone there, like I’m a swinging single lady again. But be fair; here are two hot guys who know my guilty secret―one wants to take me out to dinner, the other wants to take me to the cleaners. Seriously, which one would you choose? Besides, maybe Va
l Tabori knows more about the Nichols/Horvaths than he’s put up online.

  “I can do that. But this time let’s go to a real restaurant. Bertoni’s?”

  “Is it really dark there?” Because my eyes are hurting again in the daylight.

  “That can be arranged wherever we go.” Hmmmm…wherever we go, huh? Suddenly the guy seems very flirty and into me―maybe all Gypsies are like that. You know, hot-blooded.

  All us Gypsies, I guess I should say. Although my blood is running pretty cold these days. “Okay, Bertoni’s it is. Say noonish?” I’ll be the one with no gun. Which reminds me―I have an errand to run on my way out. To my locker downstairs.

  Every cop is allowed a second weapon, not supplied by but registered with the department. I’m not talking about ‘throw-down’ or ‘drop’ guns here, which are common though strictly illegal, but a legal back-up. A lot of the older guys wear theirs in ankle-holsters. In my case, it’s a Smith & Wesson .38 round wheel, which is a black, snub-nosed .357 magnum. It stretches my shoulder holster sideways but fits; this time I check the chamber to make sure the bullets are the usual hollow-points I keep loaded in it. Then I go to meet my Gypsy King. He’s total man-candy, and if I had a pulse, I bet it would really be racing right now. Problem is, I’m not in the mood to trust anybody these days.

  Not blindly, anyway.

  I get back home late. Very late. Well, about ten o’clock; after supper, at any rate, which I figure is still plenty of time for me and Devon to have our little “talk”. Okay, I see you doing the math―and it adds up to two meals with the Gypsy King, lunch and supper. Which is what it turned into, yeah. And, to be honest, I got pretty tipsy from too much wine and so maybe misbehaved. A little. Well, I had good reason to, didn’t I? I felt so freakin’ relieved about not being tied to the Rosedale murders that I guess I just relaxed and let myself go a little. Okay, fine. A lot.

  Did I let myself go to bed with Val? Um, no. Not quite. Almost, though. And that wasn’t for lack of his trying―or me being tempted. Because he almost had me the first time we kissed, back at his place. I mean, he’s a hell of an attractive guy―not as good-looking as Devon, maybe, though who is? But sharper, more dangerous-looking with that black hair and those big sad eyes. And he’s careless and edgy in his movements, almost scaring you one minute, then smiling his crooked, apologetic smile at you the next. When he does that, you see the little boy under the hard-bitten exterior, and your heart kind of melts. I mean, if you still have one in working order, unlike me. I guess I never see the little boy in Devon, chiefly because I’m always trying to find the man, if you know what I mean.

  Anyway, here are my excuses for not letting Tabori get my clothes off like I secretly wanted him to. At least not my shirt or panties, not completely, though he did manage to get my slacks around my ankles, if that’s not TMI. First and foremost, I don’t do it with other cops in the department. Ever. Under any circumstances.

  Okay, I admit that actually didn’t matter much at the time. In fact, I was ready to throw that rule right under the bus pretty much from the first moment I set eyes on Val.

  Secondly, I’m still a married woman, and I didn’t want to cheat on Devon, however much he’s been cheating on me with Ayon, without talking things through with him first. It’s only fair.

  You’re not buying that one, huh? Okay, me neither. But there’s another reason to go a little slow: Val Tabor is a major player, as the party in the background when I called him last night sort of hinted at. And his apartment, when we got there, pretty much fit the description of a playboy bachelor pad. I mean, no beds or bars shooting out of the walls or anything, but everything looked…showroom new and clean. Just a little too clean, like he’s never there much and only uses the place to bring his conquests home to. And that soft gypsy-jazz Django Rheinhardt music more or less turned itself on―and all the soft candlelight was way suspicious, though I didn’t actually see any red rose petals.

  But actually, I didn’t really mind. That he’s a Casanova, I mean. I was actually really curious to find out if that might make him a better lover. Because Harper was sweetly hopeless in that department, and Devon…well, he expects you to do all the work, pretty much. So that wasn’t what stopped me, either.

  Okay, so how about: I was feeling really shy about my body-image, you know, being a walking corpse and all? I mean, I know that Val knows I’m dead; however, it’s one thing to know it, but a whole other thing to kiss me and touch me and feel just how cold it is in here. Inside me. He did that when he first kissed me and, you know, forced his tongue in―I could really sense the shock that went through him when he felt the refrigerator inside my mouth. Though it at least was warmed by all the hot food and the alcohol. So you can imagine how freezing my lady parts would feel.

  And, you know, I am really self-conscious about the bullet wound, too. I mean, Harper did a great job gluing it together, and I’ve been experimenting a little with make-up to cover the edges, but nothing on earth is actually going to make it heal. Even a real scar would be a big improvement. And I didn’t want Val seeing it and getting grossed out.

  But that’s not the reason either, because he already had my shirt undone at that point and was actually staring at it sort of like he was hypnotized by its beauty.

  “It looks just like a little vagina…see? It’s even got pink lips.” And he leaned down and kissed it, very gently. I closed my eyes; the warmth of his mouth felt really good.

  “But no tongue, okay?” Because that would just be way too creepy.

  “Not here, anyway,” he said, his dark eyes glinting wolfishly―and I felt a little thrill between my thighs, and at that point, I melted. Which was when the real reason for my unintentional chastity showed up.

  When you’re alive, you never really worry much about who else is in your bedroom with you―not when it’s just the two of you all alone with no cameras or whatever and the door closed. But it turned out we weren’t alone. The Gimp was in the room with us.

  The Gimp is his nickname, I later learned, because he’s missing a foot and several fingers. The first I saw of him was when he suddenly loomed up over Val’s naked shoulder just when things started to get really steamy; the greyest, scariest, most blank-faced shade I’d yet seen, staring at me out of lidless dead-fish eyes while coughing apologetically.

  When I say blank-faced, that’s exactly what I mean, like his features had all been sort of sandpapered away or he was wearing panty-hose over his head or something. Indistinct. Rubbed out, like with a pencil eraser. He was wearing a pork-pie hat and a dark tattered rain-coat and seemed to be miming some bunch of elaborate set of hand signals at me, like he was trying to show me how to eat a bicycle. I wasn’t exactly past the point of no return with the Gypsy King, you understand―but I was totally at the point of not wanting to return. Understandably, I was a bit pissed off at our being interrupted at such a delicate moment. So I made some shooing motions at this hideous, mood-killing apparition as unobtrusively as possible.

  Unfortunately, not unobtrusively enough. “‘S up?” Val asked, pulling his lips from what they were now doing to my navel. “You having some kind of weird circulation problems?”

  “I, uh, thought I saw a bug flying around in here.”

  So believe it or not, he pulls away and gets up and leaves the bedroom in order to start rooting around a utility closet looking for Raid or something. I saw for the first time he had a number of ugly scars on his back; I guess you’ve already figured out he wasn’t wearing his shirt.

  “Go away!” I hiss at the Gimp when Val is gone. “Bug off!”

  “Bull sent me!” he hisses back. “I’m the Gimp. He sez to tell you we found those two Gyps you were looking for.”

  “Oh, shit,” I groan.

  “You better hurry, he sez. He can’t hang onto ‘em forever. Sons a bitches are just as slippery on this side as they were on the other.”

  So by the time the Gypsy King returned with his magic bug-spraying wand, I was already dres
sed again and putting my shoes back on. “Sorry about this, Val,” I told him, looking contrite. I had a sinking feeling I might be screwing up things between us bigtime. “I just got a text―couple of important wits turned up, and it’s now or never if I want to interview them.”

  You’ll notice that even though I was about to do the dirty with Detective Tabori, I was still not leveling with him about my own business. It’s not that I didn’t trust him―it’s just that, honestly, I can’t trust anybody anymore. Ayon’s treachery had taught me that. Not to mention the bullet she may or may not have planted in my heart. But I tried to show him just how much our fun half-daylong date had meant to me by parting with a few especially tender, and yes, clinging kisses.

  Because have I mentioned that he is far and away the best kisser I’ve ever met―of either sex? And the bulge in his pants is very becoming, too. Sincere, Ayon would call it. Unless it’s just his gun.

  Meanwhile, Gimp the ghost was having a shit-fit, all but jumping up and down on his single foot―the other seems to be a carved wood shoe-tree―in his impatience to get going. So in the end, I had to cut things short and go. But maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, I decided on the way to Billards, where we were supposed to meet Bull and the two Gypsies. After I’d had time to cool off. Maybe making Val wait for it just a little is kind of a good idea to test his true interest level. You know, if we’re going to have a real relationship. Because, let’s face it, not too many guys who know my secret are going to be interested. And I really don’t want to let too many more other people in on it. Like any. At all. Ever.

  Which means my romantic options are looking really, really limited right now. But, thanks to the Gypsy King, definitely way brighter than they were before.

  hat do you say to two people you’ve recently murdered in cold blood, execution-style? When you meet socially, I mean? Somehow I doubt there’s a “Miss Manners” column anywhere with advice on the subject.