The Starr Sting Scale

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  “Look,” Majd says, smiling, as he teases a red wire out with a pair of pliers from among the black ones sprouting from the speaker. “It’s a bomb.”

  “Jesus, I wouldn’t say that too loud.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Majd says, going back to his work. “Misunderstanding people will think it just the same.”

  I would have said ignorant instead, but Majd is a class act. He knows not just what it is like to have nothing, but also what it is to be afraid. If I had his understanding and compassion I wouldn’t have killed half so many people.

  When I get to the front reception desk at the address on Baker Street, I’m an hour late. The woman at the semicircular desk takes one look at me and asks for identification. She has ultra-Aryan blond hair that’s poofed up and lacquered like a batch of hard cotton candy. I want to touch the surface and see if it is actually a bulletproof helmet issued to all police support staff.

  “I don’t have any,” I tell her. Which at the moment is true, but in the larger sense is a load of horseshit, as I have about twelve different IDs at home stashed away in a large douche bag I ordered off the internet. People will search many things, but a women’s douche is where most folks draw the line. Always hide your contraband in plain sight, my dad used to say, because that’s where nobody looks.

  “No ID, no entry,” she says fiercely, standing at attention and snapping her high heels together like an underling of the Gestapo.

  “I’m expected,” I tell her.

  “I doubt that.”

  “I doubt you’ve ever had a decent lay, but I’m still fucking expected.”

  The receptionist makes so much noise in reply that a bunch of people come around the corner, including Malone.

  “You’re late,” she says.

  I just shrug in my black leather jacket. Underneath it I’m wearing a T-shirt that says GIVE ME HEAD UNTIL I’M DEAD.

  “C’mon,” she says.

  I walk past the front desk, but not before I give the pissed off receptionist the finger.

  “So, what do I call you when we’re in the cop shop? Ma’am? Detective? Sir?” I ask as Malone leads me down a tiled hallway that smells. Before this she made me go to the restroom and put my shirt on inside out so no one can read the sentiment. It doesn’t even make sense, she said.

  “You can call me Malone.”

  “If we’re going to be working together I should know your first name, don’t you think?” I try to sound coquettish. A word I would not be caught dead using in a sentence, but one I learned during my brief brush with university. “So, what is it? Your first name?”

  “Chien-Shiung,” she says.

  “Chien-Shiung Malone?”

  “Yes,” she says, as she opens heavy double doors to a brightly lit room. She motions for me to go ahead of her.

  “That’s quite the handle,” I say, as I step inside, and then I realize why the hallway smelled so bad. There are stiffs everywhere. We’re in the fucking morgue.

  “But you can call me Malone.”

  The morgue isn’t the worst place I’ve been, but I don’t like it. I have no problem with dead bodies, as you might expect, but the order freaks me out. The corpses filed like tax returns in metal drawers. The clean white sheets and ridiculous toe tags identifying the owner like a bag of candy corn from the bulk store. I think I have the opposite of OCD. I can’t stand the idea of “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Particularly when it comes to death, which is messy and undignified no matter how you slice it. The only place in my life where I demand perfection is my work. Which I suppose, to be fair, is the case with the forensic pathologist Malone is currently introducing me to.

  “This is Dr. Peyton Kolberg,” she tells me, motioning to the stupidly thin chick in a white coat. She looks like she hasn’t seen a good meal in weeks. I guess working here could turn a person’s stomach, or she’s just one of those high-functioning anorexics. They’re often high achievers. Nothing like puking up your breakfast in the morning to get you in the mood for taking on the world.

  “Hi,” I say. I don’t put out my hand to shake hers. She might have been elbow deep in some skag hag’s colon before this.

  “Hello,” she says. And then gets right to business. She walks over to a stainless-steel table and pulls back the white sheet. There lies Tyler Brent, face down, like he’s just passed out from a three-day drunk. She didn’t have to go to a drawer for him. He’d already had his file pulled.

  “Young kid,” I say. And he is. Although not an innocent, as I found out with a little digging. But I’ll play those cards when and if I need them.

  “As you can see the damage is to the C2 vertebra where it transected the cord.” She runs one gloved finger along the back of the kid’s misshapen neck. “Making the cause of death spinal shock.” She continues with her bony finger down the middle of Tyler’s back. “A break lower than that, at the C3 or C4, and he still would have died, but it would have been from asphyxiation.”

  “Why?” Malone asks. But I know. You break a guy’s neck too far down and you paralyze just about everything, including his lungs. Then it takes about two minutes of gasping like a beached orca before he finally bites it. Way too far down and you only make him a quadriplegic, which at least makes it easier to overpower the target and get the job done, but is way too much work for the money. Dr. Kolberg explains all this to Malone, who obviously never needed to kill a guy in the men’s toilet so quietly and efficiently that the district attorney taking a crap three stalls down doesn’t notice.

  “So, the person knew what they were doing?” Malone says, and while she doesn’t look at me, I know she’s thinking about it.

  “Not necessarily,” says Kolberg. “Come over here and I’ll show you.” She moves to the head of the table and pulls back some of the kid’s long hair to show us the fleshy side of his neck. Malone moves closer. I stay where I am. I can see already what she’s talking about. “See these ligature marks here and here,” she says, pointing to the angry red lines that criss-cross at the side of his windpipe. “There is another term people use for a clean break of a C2 vertebra. The Hangman’s Break.”

  “More like the Hangee’s Break,” I say. The doctor cracks an eerie smile. It freaks me out worse than the toe tags.

  “But there was no evidence to support a suicide at the scene,” Malone says. “No rope or anything he could stand on. Just the river down in the gorge below him and a grassy field where he was laying.”

  “That may be,” says Kolberg, as she snaps off one of her latex gloves with a vengeance only a woman who will be eating celery sticks with salt for dinner can muster. “But make no mistake, this boy’s been hanged.”

  “Shit,” says Malone. “Anything else?”

  “Two things,” she says, using her still-gloved hand to pull the sheet farther down to display the boy’s full body. His ass is white with bright angry pimples on it. Like I said, there is no dignity in death. On the back of one of his hairless calves is a tat that stretches from his ankle to his knee. Four disembodied white arms encircle the dark face of a wolf. It makes me a little queasy to see it, and I wish I had a shot of bourbon to wash the sight down with.

  “You ever seen a tattoo like that before, Candace?” asks Malone.

  “Nope, can’t say that I have,” I say, even though if she read my file, she’d know that I probably have. “We done here?”

  Malone turns to the doctor. “You said there were two more things. What’s the other one?”

  “Oh yes,” she says, replacing the sheet and taking off the other glove. Dr. Peyton Kolberg picks up a clipboard and scans the front of it until she finds what she’s looking for. “He had about three beers in him, traces of THC, 50 mg of Valium, and a half a pound of gummy bears.”

  “Now that’s my idea of a Saturday night,” I say to no one in particular. No one in particular laughs. Especially not the dead boy on the table, tagged like a jumbo-sized bag of candy.

  We’re working t
hrough the contents of a clear plastic bag in an alcove off the evidence room when a petite Middle Eastern honey peers around the corner. “Hey, girl, I heard you were in the building.” Malone stands up and gives the woman a hug. Female bonding. Never understood it.

  “And who do we have here?” she says.

  “Uh,” Malone says, a bit uncomfortable. “This is Candace. The one I told you about. This is Detective Selena Patel.”

  “Hi,” she says, taking me in, as I sit at the table with the last personal effects of Tyler Brent: a dime bag of weed and an almost-empty wallet that reeks of boy sweat. “So, you’re the hitwoman,” she says with just a touch of awe.

  Malone shushes her.

  “I prefer personal assassin,” I say, not standing to greet her.

  Selena smiles with her whole face. She’s got those smoky good looks some Indian women have, where deep brown eyes appear outlined in kohl even when they’re not. Her long, sleek, ebony hair is pulled back tightly in a functional ponytail.

  “Like I said, Candace is helping me out with a case,” Malone says and sits back down next to me again, as if I need a handler close by, which I probably do. She straddles the chair backward so she’s still facing Selena.

  “Don’t know how much help I can be if the kid offed himself,” I say, leafing through the wallet with latex gloves on. I pull out an expired student card, two rubbers, and, surprisingly, a pink dry-cleaning slip.

  “We don’t know that,” Malone says, more for her friend’s benefit than mine.

  Just then, a blue-eyed Adonis with thick, wavy red hair walks up and stands beside Selena. His beard is angled in at the sides and fuller at the chin. Not one of those Duck Dynasty abominations that make a man’s face look like a poorly kept pussy. He is serious GQ material and the red hair is a pleasant surprise on a guy pushing thirty. Many men lose that colour around the time their wisdom teeth come in. I’m not usually in favour of gingers, but I’d make an exception for this guy. When he enters the cramped alcove, Malone stands up abruptly and whacks her head on a shelving unit. Several stuffed three-ring binders fall to the floor at his feet like a sacrificial offering.

  “Hi, Malone.”

  “Hi, Danny.” Malone doesn’t bend down to pick up the binders. Just stands there looking like an idiot. Someone has to give this girl a few pointers. Nobody says anything. I think about handing her one of the condoms, but something tells me she wouldn’t appreciate the joke.

  “Hi, I’m Danny Anderson,” he says, breaking the awkward silence and extending his hand. I stand up to shake it and realize he’s the exact same height as me, six foot three. I’m about to give him my own name and perhaps my phone number when Malone cuts in.

  “This is Carrie,” she says. “She’s a private investigator I’ve brought in on a case.”

  “Does Carrie have a last name?” he says, still holding on to my hand.

  “Fisher,” Malone blurts out. We both look at her. Danny finally takes away his hand and gives Malone a questioning look.

  “Listen, I hate to interrupt the little party you ladies have going on in here,” he says then turns to his partner. “Selena, we better get going.”

  “Duty calls,” Selena says, shrugging her slender shoulders. Next to Danny she looks even more petite. “You still on for tonight?” she asks Malone.

  Malone nods. She starts to pick up the binders off the floor, returning them to the shelf.

  “Okay, I’ll see you at the rink at eight.” Selena and Danny disappear around the corner. Malone finishes cleaning up the binders.

  “Carrie Fisher? That’s the best you could come up with?”

  “I was afraid he’d recognize your real name.”

  “So you went with fucking Princess Leia?”

  “It’s all I could think of on the spot.” She sits beside me at the evidence table.

  “What’s this about a rink?” I say as I hand her the rubbers to put back in the evidence bag, latex on latex in our slick powdered gloves.

  “Selena and I play hockey together.”

  “No shit? Women’s hockey?”

  “Yeah.” I think about what Uncle Rod would think of that. He’s always said women play a better strategic game than men. Every time the Olympics roll around he enjoys watching the Canadian women’s team beat the hockey pants off all the other countries’ teams.

  “Looks like you’d like that Danny for a bit of stickhandling,” I say.

  “Shut up, Starr.”

  “Okay, Malloy.”

  “It’s Malone,” she says.

  “Whatever.”

  I could continue teasing her. It would be good sport. But instead I decide to make an observation to appear eager and smart instead of lazy and mouthy. Not too smart, just enough to look like I’m earning my keep, while I wait and watch and see what this ice hockey–playing detective is really shooting for by involving me in this case.

  “Do you see anything out of the ordinary here, Malone?” I say.

  “Yeah, the dry cleaning ticket. We’ll have to go down and claim whatever he had there. See if it leads anywhere,” Malone says.

  “That’s what you see, Malone. Now tell me what you don’t see.”

  She feels around in the bag then stands up and grabs the evidence log. Standing in the entryway, she scans the information on the clipboard that came with Tyler Brent’s meagre belongings.

  “What seventeen-year-old kid hasn’t got a phone practically stapled to him twenty-four hours a day?” I ask. Just like my dad didn’t have his Rolex when they fished him out of the harbour, Tyler was missing what should have been his most prized possession.

  “I can’t believe I missed that,” Malone says. “I thought they just had it held over with tech services, but you’re right, he didn’t have one on him.” She scratches her bobbed head while thinking it over.

  “I’m always right,” I say, leaning back in the chair and taking off the gloves. My long legs stretch out so far they reach clear across the alcove to the opposite wall. “And now it’s time to buy this girl a drink for it.”

  CHAPTER 6

  MALONE DOESN’T BUY ME A DRINK, but she does throw me a burger in the back seat of the unmarked cop car after I bitch enough. There aren’t any interior door handles, but I didn’t want to ride in the front in case someone saw me. Besides, this way Malone has to keep opening the door to let me out like she’s my chauffeur.

  “I don’t see why we couldn’t have stopped for lunch,” I say. I had been hoping for the famed liquid lunch of working professionals. Or maybe that’s just an urban legend, like people stealing your kidneys at business conventions. Although I have seen it on Mad Men, the liquid lunch, not the kidney stealing. But the women on that show never do get to participate in the booze; they’re mostly treated like pond scum around the office since it’s the sixties. I suppose the show is a bit outdated for assessing the current corporate culture. Although when you look at the gender wage gap, you’ve got to wonder how fucking much.

  “I told the parents we were coming,” she says, pulling into the driveway of the tired looking but massive red-brick century home. “And I want to get over to the crime scene before it gets dark.”

  I want a Scotch served neat with a beer chaser, but I keep that to myself. There’ll be time enough for some premium liquor this evening when I spend some of the cash I lifted from the skinny pathologist’s purse. I found it in a desk drawer when she and Malone were reviewing the last of the autopsy report. At least her wallet wasn’t anorexic.

  There hadn’t been much left to review. Nothing under Tyler’s fingernails. No DNA to lift, or fibres to match, except the most minuscule threads of orange nylon they found embedded in his neck. No signs of a struggle either. But I could have told them all that.

  Malone consults the rear-view mirror, brushing some of her long bangs out of her eyes. I’d thought her hair was almost black, but in this light I can see it’s actually a rich dark brown with a tinge of red in it, the Irish ginger gene trying t
o punch its way out. Maybe that’s why she’s so hot for Danny Anderson: the sharing of their common Celtic DNA. Although he probably got his from the Scots instead of the Irish. She looks at her reflection and adopts a serious but approachable look, getting her compassionate cop face on. Then she gets out of the car and lets me out of the back seat. As I stand next to her, I see she comes up to my chin instead of my armpit. She wore her boots with a heel today.

  “And you,” she says. “Behave yourself.”

  “Malone, their kid just died. I may be a first-class bitch, but I think I can handle this.” When she steps away, I pull a mickey of vodka out of the inner pocket of my leather jacket and take a good long swig, before wiping my mouth with a sleeve. I don’t pretend to be anything I’m not, unless it suits me. There was a time I didn’t need to drink, but things change. I embrace my alcoholism. Hell, I’d wrap my long legs around it and French kiss it if I could. Malone just looks at me and shakes her head.

  We walk together up the scuffed wooden steps and ring the doorbell. I steady myself for meeting Tyler’s parents, absentmindedly fingering the bottle in my pocket.

  “He was a sensitive boy. A creative boy,” Cynthia Winogrodzski-Brent says after explaining that they’ll have to make it quick. They are expected at a march on City Hall to protest the sale of non–Fair Trade coffee from sandwich trucks. A person has to keep on going after all, for the important things, she told them.

  She dresses like one of those Stevie Nicks wannabes, all batwings and fringe. Doesn’t look that bad on her, but it’s not my style. The place is crammed with antiques that have been in her family for years, along with far too many spider plants. If I were her, I would have dumped half this junk, along with the Polack surname, as soon as I got married. My great-grandfather was a Pole, but he had the sense to change Starekczyk to Starr as soon as he hit Ellis Island.

  The father, Greg, wears red-framed owl glasses and stovepipe black jeans. A hipster. Both of them come from money and have never had to really work, it seems, although technically they run a small online business selling organic hemp clothing that makes people look like they’re dressed in burlap bags. The rest of the time they busy themselves with causes of one kind or another, mostly environmental — which I can sort of admire, since the planet’s on its way to hell in a fossil-fuelled handcart. The mother shows us a framed picture of her hugging a huge sequoia out west with her husband while chained and holding hands. I notice there are more pictures like these around the room than of their two kids, Tyler included.