The Starr Sting Scale

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  The figure moves closer, and I clench and unclench my fists. I’m wound tight and ready to spring.

  A flashlight comes on. “Candace?” Malone says, blinding me with its beam.

  “What?” I say, slowly relaxing my fists, unwinding the coil.

  “We need to go over to the other side of the river.”

  “Why?”

  “I saw a light come on in the zip line shack.”

  Malone replaces the batteries in my flashlight when we get back to the unmarked. There were extras in the glove compartment. A well-prepared Girl Scout no matter what she says otherwise.We drive rather than walk to the other side of the river. The bridge is about half a mile down and whoever is in the shack might be gone if we took the time to walk there, even if we hoofed it.

  We park in the lot that services that side of the park and the zip line crowd. Malone douses the headlights as we creep in. Even though we can’t see the shack from here and from that perspective they shouldn’t be able to see us. There is one other car in the parking lot. A blue Hyundai Sonata with a nasty scrape on the front left fender. Looks like the damage has been there for a while. As I pass by, I run my gloved finger over the dents and feel the rust come away on my fingers.

  “Cover your flashlight,” Malone says. But I already have my hand cupped over the beam. The skin showing through my thin latex gloves tinges the light red, like when you’re a kid hiding under the bedsheets with a friend telling ghost stories. Something I’ve seen in the movies but never actually done. Although I once woke up under a pile of sheets so disoriented I had to light a match to figure out where I was. I burned a hole in a guy’s Ralph Lauren duvet cover that way. Man, was he pissed.

  A wide gravel trail leads down from the parking lot with a sign posted for Daisy Chain Adventures.

  “Why does it have such a candy-ass name?” I ask.

  “Shh,” Malone says, turning back to whisper to me. “They do rock climbing as well. A daisy chain is a type of strap used for securing yourself on a cliff.” I wonder if Malone learned this from the zip line folk or if she rock climbs as well as plays hockey and runs. Which, quite frankly, is just way too much activity.

  We have to watch ourselves, as the path turns rocky. Shale steps lead down a hill to the shack. Just like Malone said, a light glows from inside.

  “Okay, we’ll have to be quiet,” Malone says in my ear, then thinks about it. “You’re probably already good at that.”

  I nod.

  “When we get down there, I’ll cover you.” She points to her holster. “I’ll count to three, and you kick the door down.” There’s a loud thump from below inside the shack. A moan.

  “How about I cover you, and you break the fucking door down,” I shout-whisper into her ear.

  “Non-negotiable.”

  We turn off our flashlights and move down the steps like we’re the same person, keeping our bodies pressed together for support in case one of us falls. A more elegant form of what Uncle Rod used to call “the tepee,” when two drunks coming home from the bar would lean into one another’s shoulders in an inverted V to stay upright.

  We reach the door. The window is high up in the apex of the roof, so we can’t see inside. And whoever is inside can’t see us.

  “One,” Malone mouths. “Two.” She gets her gun ready. Another thump sounds from inside, and I’m not waiting for three. I put the full force of my right shit-kicker boot into the door. It flies open and one of the hinges falls off.

  Just before I dive away from the entranceway I see on the floor a tangle of limbs, exposed skin, and long hair. Malone steps into the vacuum I’ve left, her gun held up with both hands.

  “What the fuck?” A boy screams so loud I think he’s going to wet himself.

  “Goddamn it,” Malone says, dropping her gun. “Come on out, Candace, it’s just a couple of kids.”

  I take a quick look around the corner. So much for the Daisy Chain zip line’s sophisticated locks. The boy is hiding behind a girl with her discarded shirt held up to cover her nipples. When I go to stand beside Malone in the doorway, I see yet another girl with her leggings peeled off hiding behind him.

  “A couple?” I say.

  “Okay, a thrupple,” she says, shoving her weapon back into its holster. Her green eyes reflect the light of the camp lantern the kids brought as she turns to me, and we both start laughing. We laugh for a long while. It feels good. Like giggling under a bedsheet telling ghost stories with a friend.

  CHAPTER 17

  IT’S SUNDAY, AND I’M WORKING in the E-Zee Market again for Majd. This is the day he visits his mother, who lives on her own in a stronghold of an apartment on the other side of town. She speaks English, even majored in it at university in Homs, the modern city in Syria where they had lived. But Majd has to do her weekly shopping and pick up her meds. She hasn’t left the apartment since he moved her there. After which she had three heavy-duty locks put on the door and bars installed on the windows. PTSD. Back in Syria, soldiers broke into her home and shot her husband and all of her sons one fine morning. All except Majd, who was out lining up for water. The city had been under siege for a while and all the infrastructure had broken down. Even now, Majd seems to breathe a sign of relief every time water flows out of the tap.

  The little bell on the door jingles and Charlotte walks in, shaking out a polka-dot umbrella on the mat. I’m reading the paper. It’s been a slow morning because of the heavy rain. Some woman has killed her husband with the heel of her Jimmy Choo stiletto, according to the headline. A messy but somewhat original form of murder. I wonder if she’ll ever wear them again. Those puppies are expensive.

  “Hi, Candace,” Charlotte says, reaching into her tote bag purse. “I brought you some leftover meatloaf.” She hands me a tinfoil-wrapped block in a Ziploc bag. It’s got a few raindrops on it that run down the plastic.

  “Thanks,” I say, slipping the bag into the fridge behind the Beaver Buzz, an energy drink with twice as much caffeine as Jolt cola.

  “How are things?” she says.

  “Same old, same old,” I say, returning to my stool. Honestly, the woman only saw me on Friday night. How much does she think a life like mine changes in less than two days? But then again, the last week hasn’t been that typical for me.

  She picks up one of the candy bars that line the front of the cash. Then looks through the glass at an elaborate hookah that’s on display with various hash pipes and other drug paraphernalia. You’re not allowed to display cigarettes where the kids can see them, but it’s okay to put a bong front and centre above the freezer where they’re picking out popsicles.

  “Rod’s really worried about you,” she says. “This whole business with the police.” So that’s why she’s here. She’s my uncle’s envoy. He’s hoping the woman who took care of me for two months after I got out of the hospital might have more sway than he does.

  “I want to find out about my dad, Charlotte.”

  “Your dad loved you, Candace.”

  “That’s why I want to find out.”

  “He wouldn’t have wanted anything to happen to you.”

  “I’m being careful, Charlotte.”

  “It’s just that I don’t know if this is what he would have wanted.” She puts the candy bar down. “You don’t know how broken up that man was when you got arrested. He was beside himself. The idea that you might do time. That you might end up, you know, exposed in jail.” We both know what she means by exposed. There are inmates who would love to take down someone like me in jail, add it as a significant notch on their bolted-steel bunk bed post. You never knew when someone might shove a shiv in you at breakfast lineup or throw acid on you in the shower. It’s not as bad as the male prisons, but it’s bad enough.

  “I took care of myself,” I say. The rain is coming in on a slant, hitting the glass door and making the bell shake faintly.

  “He would have done anything to keep you out of danger. Anything, Candace. And I just think …”

>   The phone on the wall rings. I pick it up.

  “E-Zee Market,” I say, like Majd has taught me, instead of a perturbed “What?” like I used to do.

  “Candace?” I recognize the voice by now.

  “For Christ’s sake, Malone, it’s Sunday.”

  “What, like you’re off to mass or something?”

  “Or something,” I say.

  “Well, I need you to come down to the morgue again.” Shit.

  “I hate that place. That pathologist, Layton, she creeps me out.”

  “It’s Peyton.”

  “Whatever.” Charlotte has moved over to the chip aisle, probably looking for something that pairs well with Girls’ Night Out wine. I cup my hand over the receiver and turn away. “Besides, haven’t we already learned everything we have to know about Tyler Brent?”

  “It’s not Tyler Brent. It’s about Lachlan Reid.”

  I stretch the phone cord to stand behind the display with the hookah and the bongs. “You found him?” Then I remember that she’s calling from the morgue. “Is he dead?”

  “Well, sort of,” she says.

  “Sort of?” Being a little bit dead is like being a little bit pregnant. Either you’re breathing or you’re not.

  “Just meet me at the morgue right away.” She hangs up the phone.

  I put down the receiver just as Charlotte is coming to the counter with a bag of popcorn covered in cheese dust. I’m interested in how Lachlan can be only sort of dead. So interested that I grab my leather jacket from the hook, slipping the shiny flask I had behind the counter into the pocket.

  “Anyway, like I was saying, about your dad …” Charlotte says, trying once again to complete the task that my uncle Rod has assigned her — to get me to drop everything and let it slide.

  “What are you doing today, Charlotte?” I ask, using my winning smile. I really do have impressive teeth. I grab the keys for the cash register and put them in her hand. Then I pull my hoodie up and ready myself for the rain.

  After leaving Charlotte in charge of the E-Zee Market, I head out to the morgue. The Nazi receptionist doesn’t work on Sundays; Malone lets me in when I bang on the door. We walk down the hall and into the formaldehyde stink of the mortuary. There’s a small lump sitting under the white sheet of the autopsy table that’s about the size of a dead cat. Peyton, the undernourished pathologist, pulls back the sheet as we stand in front of it.

  I turn to Malone, pissed off. “A fucking foot, Malone?” I look back at the roughly severed foot with the sneaker still attached. A beat up, used-to-be-white high-top Jordan. “You brought me all the way down here for a goddamn mystery appendage?”

  “Not a total mystery,” Malone says, nodding to Peyton, the pathologist. She turns down the top corner of the shoe, and written inside in blue pen is a name. Lachlan Reid. Really, the kid is seventeen years old and his parents still label his clothes. Kids today can’t even wipe their own noses anymore. I’m surprised they don’t make teenagers wear those idiot mittens on a string.

  “That doesn’t prove anything,” I say. “Someone could have stolen his shoes.”

  Malone nods to the pathologist again, who turns the foot over and pulls the other side of the high-top down. There’s a stick-and-poke tattoo on the outer ankle with a small blob of a heart and a first name. Jessica. Above that you can see the remnants of the professional tat that went up the leg, a thumb and finger of one of the hands that encircled the wolf.

  “I asked for a rush on the DNA,” Malone says. “Lachlan’s dad provided us with a sample from the boy’s hairbrush.”

  “Where’s the rest of him?” I ask.

  “Probably still at the bottom of the harbour,” the pathologist says. “Feet wash up from time to time. The ankle is a weak spot, and it often breaks off as the body decomposes. The air in the sneaker provides buoyancy. Feet will float when the rest of the body doesn’t.”

  “The kid wouldn’t have had much time to decompose,” I point out.

  “I’m thinking perhaps there was a chain wrapped around the ankle with something heavy to weigh him down. Might have been wrenched off when he got dumped in the water. I have to examine the striations on the bone more.” Maybe that’s what happened to my dad’s watch. Maybe the bastard chained him down by one hand and it pulled it off when he broke free, its moon face falling to the bottom of the lake to be buried in silt.

  “You find his phone in the vicinity?” Malone asks.

  The pathologist consults a clipboard. “No,” she says. “But those aren’t very buoyant.” Tell me about it. I dropped a burner off a dock once and that thing sunk like a circuit-boarded stone.

  “How long you think he might have been down there?” Malone asks.

  “Hard to tell. Like I said, I have to examine it more.”

  “If you had to guess,” Malone presses.

  “Given the temperature of the water and the number of bacteria present, maybe late Thursday, early Friday morning?” She replaces the sheet. “Now, I have two suicides and a retirement home death to go over.” This is our cue to leave, I guess. Dr. Peyton Kolberg snaps off a glove and walks us out, keeping her hawk eyes on me and my sticky fingers. I notice her own fingers as she holds open the door for us. They’re so skeletal they rival those of a partially disintegrated hand dangling from beneath one of the white sheets. Someone needs to do an intervention with this woman.

  “Well, I guess that rules Alice Corrigan out. She was in Spain by the time Lachlan hit the water. Although I’d still like to talk to her about the night of Tyler’s death.”

  “You’re assuming they’re related,” I say, interested.

  “Of course I’m assuming they’re related,” she says. “Two best friends with gang tattoos end up dead in the same week.”

  “You know what they say about assuming, Malone.”

  “And what’s that?” she says all sarcastic-like, expecting me to give the usual breakdown of the word with “u” and “me.”

  “It’s just a fucking excuse for a wild-ass guess.”

  Once we’re in the hallway, I ask about Mendler.

  “A couple of detectives interviewed him earlier today,” she says. “Apparently, he was at a strip club with a bunch of army buddies on Saturday night. We woke them up calling at six this morning to confirm. It checked out. Although I’d like to talk to some of the girls themselves. They’d remember a guy that size.”

  I’ve seen some pretty big apes in peeler bars. Even in the nice ones. If there is such a thing. Just because you have to wear a suit to get in doesn’t mean you might not lose your shit when Miss Behavin’ comes on and starts up her remote control car with the dildo attached.

  “Do you think he knows anything about Lachlan?” I’m starting to really get into this detective crap. It’s like hassling people for a living. I could get my head around that.

  “He doesn’t seem to have had him on his radar. Although he knew he was a friend of Tyler’s. He was picked up on a domestic Thursday night but was let out in the early morning.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “Jessica and her mother are staying at a halfway house. I talked to Jessica on the phone. I’m trying to get her some counselling for now. Maybe someday down the road she’ll press charges.”

  I’m impressed that between dealing with Tyler’s foot, Mendler, and a pain in the ass like me that Malone has had time to follow up with the girl. But I guess a cop like Malone probably makes the time for things like that. I bet she’s a natural with the emotionally vulnerable.

  “We’re not booking him with anything to do with the boys, but I haven’t dropped the assault on a police officer yet.”

  “Will you drop it?” I ask.

  “Probably,” she says, checking her watch so she can write the exit time down next to our names in the log book at the empty receptionist’s desk. “But for now, I want him where I can see him. I’m not fully convinced he didn’t have anything to do with either Tyler or Lachlan.” She finishes wr
iting in the log and puts the pen down. “Or maybe knows someone who does.”

  When we turn around from the desk, Selena is tapping the entry code into the keypad outside the front door. She and Danny Anderson walk out of the rain and through the glass double doors. Malone gets antsy the moment she sees them.

  “We heard about the foot,” Selena says.

  “And the connection to the Daybreak Boys,” Danny says. “Why didn’t you tell us about this before, Malone?” I guess Selena doesn’t share everything with her partner.

  “Yes, well …” Malone says, trying to look all business, but still messing with her hair. “We’re still in the preliminary part of our investigation. We weren’t sure what their involvement was with the gang.”

  “And when you found the foot?” he asks.

  “Well, yes, then we thought maybe there might be a gang connection.”

  Danny runs a hand through his wavy ginger hair. “I thought you would at least put it together,” he says, looking at me. “You’re a PI. Don’t you all keep up with what’s going on out there on the street?”

  “It’s nice to see you again, too, Danny,” I say, raising one eyebrow at him. He clears his throat and looks away.

  “In any case, we’re here now,” says Selena. “The pathologist ready to brief us?”

  “Yes,” Malone says, looking like she’s just been told off, which she has.

  “Listen, Malone, just keep us in the loop, okay?” Danny puts a hand on her shoulder and smiles. “You know you’re our favourite girl in homicide. Don’t hold out on us if you think you’ve caught a dirty one.” Malone looks up at him and lets out a nervous titter. The sound of it makes me cringe.

  “No, Danny,” she says. “I mean, I won’t.”

  “Hey,” Selena says, as they start down the hall. “And don’t miss practice tonight at the Lakeshore Arena. We missed you the other night at the game.”