Death Grip

by Elaine Viets

  ‘So you did the kid’s autopsy?’ I took a big bite of muffin. Yum. It had lots of blueberries. Just the way I liked it. The black coffee was hot and strong and the crass mug didn’t affect its flavor.

  ‘I started the post at four o’clock this morning,’ she said.

  Ah, no wonder she looked tired.

  ‘Why so early?’

  ‘Evarts’s orders. After Evarts got Dunning’s phone call, he knew he’d be tied up for weeks on that case, including depositions and court prep and testifying. It would make a serious dent in his golfing and lunching, so he passed the buck – and the body – to me. He had the nerve to tell me to be ultra-careful.’

  ‘Did you find anything unusual?’

  ‘Besides the fact that a healthy, talented athlete was smashed to shit?’

  Katie sounded angry. I knew the wasted life upset her, but she didn’t usually let that get to her.

  ‘Was Jared drinking or using drugs?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Katie said. ‘But the tox tests won’t be back for a few days. Usually, I can smell if they’ve been drinking when I open them up. I think the kid was clean and sober. He took his training seriously.’

  Katie’s news only made the football star’s death sadder. She’d finished a bran muffin and was busy spreading cream cheese on a raisin bagel.

  ‘Any idea why Jace wants us here so early?’

  ‘No. He called me at home last night and said he had an idea how to break the Bellerive case wide open, but he’d need both of us for what he called “night work.” And before you ask, I haven’t the foggiest idea what he means by that. He said he’d get here about eight o’clock and he thought there should be a half hour between the two of you arriving or leaving this building. He’ll have to leave first.’

  ‘He’s really taking this cloak-and-dagger stuff seriously,’ I said.

  ‘He has a wife, a child and a mortgage, Angela. He has a lot more to lose if he gets fired. You can pick up and go anywhere, any time, but he has obligations.

  ‘And while we’re talking about you having nothing to tie you down …’

  Here it comes, I thought. The love life lecture.

  With that, there was a knock on Katie’s door, and Jace walked in. He looked tired and worried. The Bellerive case was taking its toll on him.

  ‘How nice to see you, Jace,’ I gushed, as if we’d been parted for years.

  ‘Good to see you, too, Angela.’ Jace greeted Katie, poured hot coffee into the Sherlock skeleton mug, piled cream cheese on an onion bagel and sat on the edge of the desk.

  ‘I really want to nail that sneaky bastard Briggs,’ Jace said between bites. ‘One key is those young women he picked up in bars and sent home by Uber. I can’t check his Uber records without drawing attention to myself. But we can look for the women.’

  ‘We? As in me?’ Katie said.

  ‘Yep,’ he said with a big smile. ‘I need you two to go to dive bars. That’s where Briggs hung out. I have his photos.’ He showed us a sampling of Briggs’s photos from magazine and newspaper sites. ‘You can show these around.’

  ‘Whoa,’ Katie said. ‘There are a lot of dive bars in the far-flung burbs. How are we going to find the right ones?’

  ‘I worked out a system last night,’ Jace said, and produced a stack of papers from a folder. ‘Rosanna the missing housekeeper said in her diary that Briggs was usually gone about two and a half hours when he was hunting those young women. She thought some of them were sex workers and hung out in dive bars. Judging by his time frame, I figure these bars were within an hour or so of St. Louis. I looked for dives that had histories of arrests for prostitution, soliciting and similar crimes. Now, that doesn’t get them all – some of these small-town sheriffs can be paid to look the other way – but I narrowed it down to twenty-four dive bars that we can visit.’

  ‘Twenty-four!’ Katie said.

  Jace held up two sheets of paper. ‘I’ve divided the list in two. If you and Angela take twelve and I take twelve, we should get through them pretty quick. I’ve isolated six bars as the top choices and divvied them up. They’re the top three on your list.’

  ‘Have you ever been to these bars?’ Katie said.

  ‘Some. I consulted colleagues on others. There are no fake dives on that last.’

  ‘What’s a fake dive?’ I asked.

  ‘A dive bar that doesn’t have any duct tape on the seats is a fake,’ he said. ‘So is a bar that serves twelve-dollar “hand-crafted” cocktails or a bunch of craft beer. Any bar that has “Dive” as part of its name is not a real dive. There’s more, but this list of dive bars has been carefully curated.’

  ‘I do believe that’s the first time I’ve heard “dive bar” and “curated” in the same sentence,’ Katie said.

  ‘So what are we looking for?’ I asked.

  ‘One of the women he picked up. Find out if Briggs hurt her, what he did, what happened that night. Did she feel threatened? I’ve been shut down. I need a reason to investigate him again. What do you say? Will you do it?’

  Katie looked at me. ‘Angela, wanna go on a dive bar crawl?’

  ‘How could I turn down that invitation?’ I said.

  THIRTY

  ‘Angela and I will start the dive bar crawl tonight,’ Katie announced.

  ‘Good,’ Jace said. ‘I will, too.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Time for me to leave. Report if you find anything.’ He grabbed a muffin and waved goodbye. I refilled my coffee cup and sat on Katie’s desk.

  ‘Have you ever been to a dive bar?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure. I did the death investigation of that bartender’s shotgun murder at the Dew Drop Inn. The rundown bar way out by the highway. It was a mess.’

  ‘Shotgun blasts usually are,’ Katie said.

  ‘I mean the bar. It was dirty – all the bar stools had duct-taped seats and stuffing was coming out of the booths. Over the bar was a framed photo of a fat guy on a toilet that read, The Only One Here Who Knows What He’s Doing.’

  Katie laughed. ‘Yep, that’s an authentic dive bar,’ she said. ‘I meant have you ever been to one for a drink?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘OK, I’ll give you a short course in how to go on a dive bar crawl. I grew up in the country, so I’m in my element at these bars. First, eat dinner before we go. You’ll lay down a base for the night’s drinking. Plus, you don’t ever want to eat anything at a dive bar. Mostly they sell beef jerky, pickled eggs from a jar – definitely stay away from those little bacteria bombs – and the occasional microwaved Hot Pocket or ham-and-cheese.’

  ‘None of those tempt me,’ I said.

  ‘The only safe things are packets of peanuts (those are usually stale) and bags of chips or pretzels.’

  ‘I can do without them all.’

  ‘Don’t sit at the bar unless I tell you. Take a table. If the dive doesn’t have table service, you’ll have to order your drink at the bar. For gawd’s sake, don’t order club soda or wine. The wine usually has a screw cap and tastes like paint thinner. Order a beer.’

  ‘I don’t like beer,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t care. You don’t have to drink it. Just set it in front of you. If you’re looking for a craft beer, say with wheat berries and lemon zest, forget it. In a dive bar around here, you get two choices: Bud and Bud Light. Don’t get a draft, either. Take a bottle and tell the bartender you don’t want a glass – glasses in dive bars are dirtier than the toilets.’

  ‘Thanks for that stomach-turning detail,’ I said, and took a big gulp of coffee to wash that thought away.

  ‘What are you going to wear tonight?’

  Katie saw my blank look and said, ‘Ditch the nun suit. You’re not wearing that black pantsuit. Got any old jeans?’

  ‘Sure. My riding clothes – jeans and a chambray shirt – but they’re one step above Goodwill rejects.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Katie said. ‘Do you have any cowboy boots?’

  ‘Just my riding
boots.’

  ‘Too upscale.’ She checked out my sensible lace-up flats and nixed them. ‘You are not wearing those. Any cheap-looking high heels?’

  ‘I’ve got some red open-toed spikes.’

  ‘Perfect,’ Katie said. ‘Wear a red belt and dangly earrings and you’ll be good to go.

  ‘I’m driving my pick-up. We’ll fit in better. We’ll start at the top of the list. I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock for Claude’s Hideaway in Crawford. In the meantime, get some sleep. It’s going to be a long night.’

  I took some time to pat her golden-haired pup, Cutter. The furball looked angelic. I scratched one velvety ear and he rolled over and made a contented little sound. I left Cutter sleeping in his basket, and headed home to take my own nap.

  I awoke at six, fixed a quick dinner and extra-strong coffee to wake me up, and dressed according to plan. I felt silly teetering along in high heels and old jeans, my long gold earrings tinkling, my waist cinched by a red belt. But anything to help get Bellerive locked up.

  At seven o’clock, Katie was in my driveway. I climbed into her red pick-up and we drove to Crawford, a small town about forty minutes west that was slowly becoming a St. Louis suburb. Right now, it had the small-town essentials – a Walmart, a gun shop, a diner and two churches. The fruit and vegetable stand was closed, but the new library was open and offering Free Computer Classes. New houses advertised as Four Bedrooms – Only $250,000! were springing up along the highway exit like weeds.

  On the way there, Katie and I were silent, both lost in our thoughts and a little tired. I was grateful for the quiet.

  Claude’s Hideaway was on a back road, hidden away like an embarrassing relative. A sign with a blinking yellow arrow said, Turn Here to Party Hearty! Good Times at Claude’s Just A Country Mile Away!

  Katie bumped down the rutted road, gravel pinging off the sides of her pick-up. It was indeed a country mile away, which meant it was more like two miles, before we saw Claude’s, surrounded by dark woods.

  The gravel parking lot was packed with pick-ups, and we could hear loud country music. ‘That’s Hank Williams Junior singing “All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight,”’ Katie said. I liked the music.

  Claude’s Hideaway was a long, low-slung cinder block building that had once been painted white. A sign proclaimed Jell-O Wrestling Every Weekend.

  ‘What’s Jell-O wrestling?’ I asked, as we crunched across the lot. I had visions of someone eating a giant bowl of Jell-O with a fork.

  ‘Women in bikinis wrestle each another in a pit of Jell-O,’ Katie explained. ‘Yes, I’m talking about the gelatin dessert. The wrestling match takes place in some sort of blowup kiddie pool for the entertainment of a bunch of drunken dickheads. If you’re a supreme ass wipe, you can pay ten bucks extra to spray the wrestlers with a can of whipped cream.’

  ‘Sounds horrible.’

  ‘It is,’ Katie said. ‘Some hair-bags get off on making women feel bad.’

  ‘What kind of woman would put up with that?’

  ‘A desperate one,’ Katie said. ‘Don’t you go thinking the wrestlers are skanks.’

  I didn’t think that, but there was no point stopping Katie when she got on her sociology soapbox. ‘Let me tell you about Donna, a girl I went to school with,’ Katie said. ‘She was desperate enough to Jell-O wrestle. She’d lost her job at the packing plant and had to wrestle in blueberry Jell-O. Hated herself for it, but she was a single mom with a little girl to support. She told me, “Nobody ever died of shame.” She finally got a waitress job and was able to make enough to feed her kid and keep her clothes on.’

  We were at the door. ‘Let’s hope we’re at the right place and can find one of Briggs’s pick-ups,’ Katie said. ‘I’ll go first.’

  Katie walked into the dimly lit bar and I followed. The place smelled of mold, Pine-Sol disinfectant and cigarette smoke. I saw maybe thirty men – the heavy drinkers pounding it down at the bar and the rest at about ten tables with mismatched chairs. The men were mostly shaggy-haired, many wearing straw cowboy hats with curved brims and cowboy boots. The fat bartender wiped the bar top with a dirty rag. The few women customers were chubby, cute and flirtatious, dressed in sparkly tops and tight jeans, with heavy make-up. They were sitting at the tables with the men.

  We walked past the Official Jell-O Wrestling Ring, a roped-off alcove. Next match Saturday night at 9, the sign said. Sexy Sally v. Foxy Fran! Next to it were two photos of underfed blondes with big breasts, little bikinis, and Farrah Fawcett hair. Tickets: $10 Admission, $10 for a 12-second whip cream squirt.

  I started reading the Official Rules: No kicking, punching, biting, hair pulling, gouging, head butting, choking, etc. All participants must remain on their knees. And finally, to my horror, the last rule said, If your opponent yells ‘stop,’ passes out, or is injured in any way then the round ends immediately.

  Katie tugged at my arm. ‘Hey, Angela, where did you go? Sit down!’

  We took a table near the restrooms, which were labeled ‘Pointers’ and ‘Setters.’

  ‘Yep,’ she said, and I heard the satisfaction in her voice. ‘Definitely a dive. That sign over the bar confirms it.’ Over the bar was a plastic sign that said, Our credit manager is Helen Waite. If you want credit, go to Helen Waite!

  A thin, hawk-faced, long-haired blonde wearing short-shorts, a T-shirt and tennis shoes showed up at our table. Her name tag read Jolene.

  ‘Can I get you ladies a drink?’ she asked.

  ‘Beer,’ I said. ‘Bud, in a bottle. No glass.’

  ‘Same for me,’ Katie said.

  ‘Anything else?’ Jolene asked.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Reba McEntire was singing ‘The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia’ when Jolene returned with our drinks. Katie put a twenty down on the table for our drinks.

  ‘Can I ask you a question, Jolene?’ Katie asked.

  ‘Sure, hon. I may not answer, but go ahead and ask.’

  Katie brought out a headshot of Briggs Bellerive. It had been cropped so he wasn’t wearing a tux. ‘Have you ever seen this man in here?’

  Jolene laughed. ‘Look around you, hon. You see any men like that in here?’

  ‘Not right now,’ Katie said. She put another ten on the table.

  ‘I’ll gladly take your money till the cows come home,’ Jolene said, picking up the bills and giving us a friendly smile. ‘But I’ve never seen that man in here. Thank you for asking, though.’

  ‘Jolene!’ the bartender said, and she went back to haul beer to another table.

  Katie finished her beer. I took a couple of sips of mine. It was thin and bitter, and confirmed why I didn’t like beer. Kenny Rogers was singing ‘The Gambler’ as we left. Like the wise old Gambler, we knew when to fold.

  It took forty minutes to get to the next dive, the Crowbar in Crow Creek. This little town could have been Crawford’s clone. The Crowbar was located a little closer to town, but it was in a similar cinder block building. The neon sign read THE CRO BAR.

  ‘Aha!’ Katie said. ‘Burnt-out neon. Another sign of a dive.’

  The lot was just as crowded with pick-ups. The bar’s interior was about the same: long, narrow, smoky, with lots of working men in straw cowboy hats and boots. The bartender waved to us and Katie and I took the only empty table in a corner. Our server was named Scarlett and she was just as friendly as Jolene. This time I asked the questions and shelled out the money. Scarlett brought us our bottles of Bud, and when she was ten dollars richer, said she’d never seen Briggs. ‘He don’t look like our kinda customer, hon,’ she said.

  The restrooms were next to us. These doors had the generic stick people signs for men and women, except both icons were crossing their legs.

  ‘I feel like that sign,’ I told Katie. ‘I’ve gotta go.’

  ‘You’re in for a treat,’ Katie said.

  The women’s restroom had two stalls, one with a homemade Out of Order sign taped to the door. A slender brunet
te in cowboy hat, jeans, and a flowered shirt tied under her rib cage was pacing restlessly. ‘Wish that lady in there would hurry up. Mother Nature didn’t do us any favors in the plumbing department, did she? There’s never a line in the men’s room. When my boyfriend has to go and it’s crowded, he just uses the tree by the Dumpster. I’d get poison ivy if I did that.’

  A large woman with short curly hair came out of the stall and looked apologetic. ‘It’s not my fault there’s only one stall,’ she said.

  The cowgirl ignored her. ‘I’ll be quick, hon,’ she promised. ‘It’s just number one.’

  The large woman washed her hands and left.

  Admonitory signs were all over. If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat.

  And, Ladies, please stay seated for the entire performance.

  Last but not least was a big homemade sign proclaiming:

  Do Not Flush

  Tampons

  Maxipads

  Paper towels

  Used diapers

  Kittens and puppies

  Hopes and dreams.

  The sign was prophetic. So far tonight, our hopes and dreams had been flushed.

  THIRTY-ONE

  ‘So what’s going on with you and Chris?’ Katie asked.

  I’d been dreading this question all day. Now I was trapped in Katie’s pick-up for another half hour before we got to our last stop of the night, a dive bar in a country town called Harland.

  ‘Chris and I had fun at dinner at Gringo Daze,’ I said.

  ‘That’s progress,’ Katie said. ‘This is the first time you’ve mentioned “fun” and a man’s name in the same sentence. What about after dinner?’

  ‘We went to my house and sat on the porch for a bit.’

  ‘And?’ Katie said.

  ‘And that was fun, too.’

  ‘So have you slept with him yet?’

  ‘Katie!’

  ‘Don’t give me that outraged virgin routine, Angela. I’ve known you too long. You never talked about it, but I knew you and your husband made the bedsprings rock. You had a glow when he was alive. I saw you turn into a dried-up old maid after he died. You’ve mourned Donegan long enough.’