Murder, D.C.

by Neely Tucker

  “He said that to me, too. But Mrs. Ellison, unless you have been declared incompetent by the court? Someone else can’t obtain a restraining order on your behalf. Mr. Stevens did not assert to me that he was acting as your attorney. He said Billy was his godson, and he’s your employer. I took his interest to be personal, not professional. Plus, in no way is there a restraining order currently in effect. If you tell me to get off your porch, I’ll wish you the best and leave right now. There’s no need for paperwork to get that done.”

  “Why—why do you care so much about what happened to Billy?”

  He nodded. People, they either wanted you to do more or to get the fuck out of their lives. You were wrong either way. “Because his death happened to come into my scope of work, and it seemed wrong to dismiss it. I could pay attention to it, or I could lump it in with every other killing in the city. I chose to pay attention to it, because something went wrong. Billy, I can’t see a reason for him being in the Bend, but you know and I know he was there that night. And because the police, well, you can’t entirely trust the police.”

  “You are persistent.”

  “It’s why I get paid.”

  She opened the door a few inches wider and stepped back.

  The house was dark, quiet. The bustle of the staff that had been so prominent the other day was gone. As they passed through the front room into a hallway, he realized she was leading him back to the kitchen.

  “They’re handling the funeral preparations at the office,” she said, reading his mind. “It’s at the National Cathedral and there’s just so much involved to place an event there. A production. Shellie is taking care of everything.”

  “That’s good. It’s a relief—a small one, at least—not to have that burden.”

  “I don’t think you two got along, from what he relayed to me. A shame. Under other circumstances, I think you would like him.”

  “I really sort of doubt that.”

  “Water? Coffee?”

  “No ma’am, I’m fine.”

  She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a slim green bottle, and pulled down a wineglass from the cabinet. She held the bottle out as a question. He smiled but shook his head no and took a seat at the kitchen table. She poured herself a glass, filling it well beyond halfway, and sat at the kitchen table. “So what have you discovered about Billy’s death, Mr. Carter?”

  “That’s sort of what I wanted to ask you. I can tell you what I imagine the police already have—that he almost certainly was killed in the Bend. That he was a regular at the gay clubs on O Street, which are only a few blocks away, and that probably had some connection to how he came to be in Frenchman’s Bend.”

  Her face tightened, but she only nodded. “And . . . and . . . anything else?”

  “Well. I know that gay business doesn’t make you happy. But I’m asking about three things. One, Billy’s school friends say he did not show up for that last day or so of classes, and apparently there had been some sort of family argument that last weekend. I was wondering if . . . if that was about his narcotics, ah, problem. Perhaps you were trying to get him back in treatment, something like that? Could you tell me what happened that last weekend?”

  “You said three things.”

  “Ah, yes. Three. The other two were names. Did Billy ever mention the Hall brothers to you? Or perhaps a man named Sly Hastings?”

  “I may have heard them. I don’t know. Billy had a lot of friends. Many of them I did not approve of. Are they—they the type of people who go to those O Street clubs?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Oh.”

  “They’d be more in the narcotics line.”

  “Well then I certainly wouldn’t know them. But, ah, Billy, he . . . he thought drugs were glamorous. I don’t know why. He was a wealthy, privileged young man. He was quite proud of that, of our family name. Every class project he wrote in school was about some aspect of our name, our heritage in this city, how my family had become wealthy so early on, the hard work and sacrifice. But—and this is all between you and I, yes? You’ll not print any of this?”

  “Not if you tell me I can’t.”

  “Well. You can’t. You . . . you agree?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Okay. Then okay.” A long breath.

  “Billy was unstable,” she said. “He was an unstable young man to begin with. You should know that. You absolutely must keep that in mind. He lost his father at six. I think he never quite found his footing again. He was different, lesser, after that. It broke my heart.

  “There were meetings with counselors, with headmasters, to be sure they understood. His grades were good, if not excellent, but something underneath had cracked. There was . . . was a birthday party at the ice rink at Cabin John. He was ten? Eleven? It was a great success. Nearly his entire class came. I was speaking with one of the other parents when Shellie—he was his godfather, and was there for everything—came to get me.

  “Billy was alone on the ice, skating. Everyone else had come to get refreshments. And yet, there was the guest of honor, alone out on the ice, going in smaller and smaller circles, some sort of concentric rotation. With the most absentminded, blank expression that I have ever seen. Like, I don’t know. Like what you picture when you think of someone who has been lobotomized. Just skating, barely moving his feet anymore, these circles, just coasting . . .

  “So I went over to the gate onto the ice and called him. He did not hear. Then one of the attendants realized something was wrong. He skated out there. There was a commotion. The other children knew something was happening.

  “The man finally reached him. It could not have taken more than ten seconds once he was on the ice. Possibly less. But it seemed an eternity. He was saying, ‘Son? Son? You all right?’ He was right beside him and Billy said nothing. Did not stir, did not blink, did not react in any way. And then the man reached out to take Billy’s hand. Just reached out and touched it. And Billy just . . . reanimated. He came back to life. He did not blink or startle or jump. It was like a mannequin taking on life, going from plastic to flesh. Billy was suddenly there, the light back behind the pupils.

  “He skated right over to the plexiglass, waving at his friends, sliding to a stop by the gate, stepping over it into absolute silence. They all just looked at him. And he noticed it. You could see that he noticed it. It went over his face like a shadow. And then it went away and he was giggling, laughing, a ten-year-old boy at his birthday, and he said something about video games and there was a burst of activity and laughter and shouting; all of a sudden it was just ten-year-olds at a birthday party again.

  “Then it started happening when he was fifteen or sixteen. Episodes like that. Depressive spells. Outbursts. Days when he could not or would not get out of bed. Would not look at, or speak, or acknowledge that anyone was speaking to him.

  “It was eventually diagnosed as bipolar disorder. They tried lots of medications. Elavil, early on, when he was down, and then they stopped that. Lithium. Others. They mixed, matched. Therapy twice a week. But on the whole, we were able to keep this quiet. I would imagine some of his classmates wondered, but I don’t think he really told any of his peers. He got into Georgetown. We did not think we were out of the woods, but we were beginning to think his future would be bright to very bright.”

  She paused, looking at him. He waited.

  “And then he started playing with cocaine,” she said, letting out her breath in a rush. “Apparently it made him feel just fabulous, at least for a little while. And with that, he started having relationships that—that were not healthy, that—”

  “You mean to say he was gay.”

  “No. I would not say that. I would say he was experimenting.”

  “Elliot, his, ah, friend at Georgetown, says they were having sex for two years, and that Billy was experienced when they started dating.”
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  “Elliot is a depraved sort and is not, in any sense of the term, reliable.”

  “Okay.”

  “It just got all confused in Billy’s head. He wanted to be like, I don’t know, rap stars or some such.”

  “So you argued about that last weekend.”

  She eyeballed him, turning her head slightly to the side, sipping her wine, which was, he noticed, already half-gone.

  “Yes,” she said, pausing again. “He was dealing drugs out of his apartment. I—I told him that had to stop. He was getting in, ah, deep. A lot of drugs. A lot.”

  He nodded sympathetically. “It doesn’t sound like you were happy about the gay aspect, either.”

  “What parent would be? We are churchgoing people, Mr. Carter. The Scriptures are clear.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Does that make sense with what else you’re finding? Are these Hall people, are they helping you? Are the police telling you that they have suspects?”

  “Yes, no, and no. The Hall brothers don’t help anybody. The police have a very difficult case because there is very little evidence to go on, and, at least so far, no witnesses. People don’t go wandering into the Bend by accident, particularly late at night, so there probably aren’t more than thirty or forty people who could plausibly have been in the Bend at that hour, virtually all of them already known to police. But which one of them might have pulled the trigger? Very little way to tell. Even if three witnesses identified someone, those three people are going to be drug users, sellers, prostitutes, or all of the above.”

  “In other words, nobody that any juror would trust.”

  He offered her a wan smile. “That’s about it.”

  She was fighting to hold it together now, the jaw trembling, the chin coming up the smallest of fractions. The hands again, fluttering. Jesus, he hated this, putting a mother through this kind of pain.

  “I . . . I . . . that place,” she said. “That place where he was killed.”

  “Frenchman’s Bend.”

  “What—what a terrible place. For Billy. For everyone.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And what is it you’re going to print?”

  “Only what’s relevant. I don’t have any interest in embarrassing your son or your family, Ms. Ellison. But somebody out there knows who killed Billy, and I’ll give eight to five that at least two other people know who that person is. I’m not, by any means, giving up. I think I can find them. I may, I think, have even talked to them already.”

  FOURTEEN

  “DETECTIVE WEAVER. TELL me something good.”

  “Who is this—Carter?”

  “Your new best friend, yeah.”

  “Hunh.”

  “So, Billy Ellison.”

  “What about him?”

  “Who you liking for this?”

  “Look, Carter, I just can’t—”

  “Parker’ll tell you it’s okay,” Sully said, back home now, just for a minute. He was pulling his racing leathers out of the hallway closet, the one in his narrow front hallway, right before the kitchen. “I don’t burn people, least of all cops who are playing straight with me.”

  A sigh down the line. Jeff Weaver was at his desk, Sully could tell from the background clatter, probably with this case and a couple of others on the table, rounding up witnesses for a few shootings last year, this one, that one, the meat grinder aspect of it all.

  “The coroner gave us almost nothing from the cut,” Weaver said. “The wound was through and through. No fragments, nothing to trace. Ellison, the kid’s phones were clean, no calls to anybody who looks to be in the life. His classmates at Georgetown, all they know is he got into a spat with his mother the weekend before he got popped. We’ve pulled in, or been by to see, everybody who’s anybody in the Bend and hey, what do you know, nobody saw anything.”

  “What about the report of the gunshot from that night? Who called that in?”

  “Little old lady in the Carolina, that apartment building fronting Water Street, right by the Bend. Where the Hall brothers tend to hole up. Now she says she’s really not sure.”

  “Somebody told her to shut up.”

  “You think?”

  “What did Mom tell you about the argument?” Sully asked.

  “That it was about him using drugs, selling them out of his apartment. She says she told him she was going to stop paying the rent if he didn’t straighten out. Says he told her he could pay it his damn self.”

  “Did he have a sheet?”

  “Nah. Totally clean.”

  “Not even juvie?”

  “Nada.”

  “It strike you as odd, all that dealing and not even a traffic stop?”

  “We can’t catch ’em all.”

  “So, you got nothing.”

  “Nothing is two steps up from what we got.”

  Sully sat there, looking at the phone after he clicked off, the silence of the house descending.

  “Bullshit,” he said softly.

  FIFTEEN

  ALEXIS PULLED ONTO Sully’s block half an hour later, finding a spot on the street, a small miracle at this late hour of the day. She got out, two cameras and a small bag of equipment slung over her shoulder, walking fast.

  “Racing?” she said, coming up on him hard, looking at the full leathers he had on now. “You called me over here to go racing with you? The Ellison funeral is tomorrow, or did you forget? I’m still developing—”

  “It’s Grudge Night at Leonard’s Cove,” he said.

  “—film from—what? What are you talking about?”

  “Leonard’s Cove. Race track, about twenty-five miles south. Way out in the Maryland boonies. Grudge Night is when they let anybody—you don’t even have to have a racing license—drag the quarter, a straight shot. You get a few hundred gearheads and greaseballs out there, mainly motorcycles. Guys bet like crazy.”

  “You’re not drunk, are you? Because, look, I got some really good stuff today, despite you killing our interview with Dee Dee’s family. I was in the office developing. But if you’re just going to go dicking around after dark, cutting it off after an eight-hour day to run around on your go-cart, then—”

  “Pipe down,” he said. “I’m digging on Billy. Finding guys who don’t want to be found.”

  “At the race track?”

  “As previously stated.”

  “Who?”

  “You remember those enforcers in the Bend, the ones who said they’d cap my ass if I came back?”

  “The ones who politely asked me if I wanted to buy something?”

  “The tall one, with the dreads? I’m betting he’ll be at the Cove tonight. He said if I brought my Duc down there he’d run me for pinks.”

  “You’re going to tell me this means something.”

  “Pinks. Registration papers. The title. It means you race and the winner gets the loser’s bike.”

  “And you’re going to do this?” her voice rising. “This is why you’re wearing leathers? Are you fucking daft?”

  “Whyn’t you come with me and find out?” he said, smiling, already knowing she wouldn’t—couldn’t—say no. “You can hold the papers, you want. Be my good luck charm. Hey, the leathers don’t make me look fat, do they?” Turning to the side, letting her look at the black outfit, the gold piping, the flashes of white, striking a pose.

  “You are—”

  “They told me not to come back to the Bend, but they invited me down to the Cove. You want to talk to people, talk to them where they’re comfortable.”

  “I haven’t even eaten. I don’t know where it is.”

  “They got barbecue at the track. And cold beer. I got an extra helmet and a jacket. Come on. See this here? It’s a custom seat, sort of jerry-riggged, but it’ll work. Just for you. Now. You going t
o go back to the office like a good girl or come out and play with the bad boys after dark?”

  • • •

  Sully kept the bike at an even sixty tooling down Indian Head Highway, keeping it in the slow lane because the cops knew it was Grudge Night, too, this one patrol car easing up alongside the bike for a good half mile, the cop eye-fucking him before pulling ahead. Alex tapped him on the right hip when the cop was past, and he tilted his head back a quarter turn to hear over the onrushing wind.

  “Prick,” she shouted.

  He smiled and reached his left hand back and patted her upper thigh in response.

  The land unfurled in a series of low hills and easy curves, farmland and houses with mailboxes on the road, the occasional roadside motel, the gas stations, a country market. Alex rode easy behind him, two cameras in her backpack. She sat upright with a hand of each of his hips, not leaning up against him except in the turns, when she pulled tight and leaned as he did. The natural rhythm to her riding gave Sully a contented feeling, one that he’d not had in too long, feeling her body against his back. Her dad, an Italian national who’d moved to the U.S. as a child, had been a lifelong biker, a Moto Guzzi devotee. Alexis had been riding since she was six. She could probably handle the bike better than him.

  After a while, he took a left turn in a small depression of the road—the track wasn’t marked, you just had to know—and went east for about two miles, then turned onto the road leading to the track, the noise a vibration as much as a sound.

  The parking lot was filled with trailers, trucks, sports cars, guys on scooters going from their trailers, parked at the back of the lot, up to the stands, up to the concessions. Women walked in pairs, tight jeans and low blouses. Fires glowed in grills farther down, the smell of smoke and beef rising. Music blared from speakers, the announcer on the PA system calling the sprint races.

  “These bikes are quick tonight people quick bikes quick bikes my goodness,” and, in reference to something going on in the bleachers, “I don’t care who you are, that’s funny right there.”