The Starr Sting Scale

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  “The label’s on the wrong side,” I say aloud, even though I don’t usually talk to myself. Normally, you stick the label for a VHS tape on the side with the window or you block the little grooved circles that fit into the player and turn the tape around. I pick up the tape and look through the window to the inside where the spools with the black tape are wound around. When you look close like this, it is obvious. But if you were just sorting through the tapes, you’d never notice. It’s just a picture of spools and black tape pushed up against the see-through plastic window, a Photoshopped internal decoy meant to hide what is really inside.

  I can’t be bothered to remove the five screws that hold the tape together. Instead, I lift the tape above my head and crack it on the edge of the coffee table. My ID spills out wrapped in a wad of cotton batting that was used to keep the contents from rattling around. When I pull that out, I find my cash hidden at the bottom. He’s a crafty old bugger, my uncle Rod. Jesus, how I admire him.

  Then I remember the Diamondback pistol Rod was holding for the guy who blew up the pumpkin patch. It was small enough to fit in one of the tapes. I could use a gun to replace the one the Daybreak Boys took off me. I search through the pile of tapes and find another one with the label on the wrong side. When I crack it against the coffee table the Diamondback doesn’t fall out, but a phone does.

  I pick it up and press the power button. It takes a little while to boot up, but at least it’s not dead. When the screensaver comes on, the battery icon reads 59 percent. The screensaver is a picture of a girl with Tyler Brent. I run my thumb against the glass, and all the icons come up. The kid didn’t have a password, the cocky bastard. I scroll through his recent emails and texts to see if I can find anything incriminating, but there’s nothing in the email but spam. And the texts are mostly graphic photos sent between him and Alice. Sexting. Don’t they know that’s how Andrew Weiner got caught?

  I scroll through all the pictures stored on the phone. Just like Rory said, there are selfies of Tyler and Lachlan posing with the naked girls who sort and bag the Daybreak Boys’ drugs. They even took pictures next to the cash-counting machine and the precision digital scales with little mountains of snow on them. These two kids were too stupid to live.

  The last photo isn’t a selfie. It’s a shot Tyler has taken of Lachlan with one of the girls in his lap. I guess they wanted to get the full frame on that one. Standing behind her are Chuck and the biker with the I HATE YOU shirt. And one other person, not patched or dressed in the colours of the gang. He doesn’t even have a leather jacket on. Just a sensible navy-blue windbreaker.

  I drop the phone onto the coffee table like it’s burnt me. This is more than I bargained for. I pick up the broken VHS tape and look inside. More cotton batting. I pluck it out with my fingers and something rattles at the bottom. I’m hoping for more bills tucked into Rod’s brass money clip. I’m going to need to get farther away from here than I thought. But when I dump the final contents of the tape out on the coffee table, no cash falls out. Something else does. Something else entirely.

  I grab the phone and start calling Charlotte’s number, but before I can get in all the numbers a voice calls to me from the direction of the kitchen.

  “Put the phone down, Candace.” He’s still wearing the navy-blue windbreaker he was wearing in the photo Tyler had taken. He must have come in through the back door. His red wavy hair is the colour of my beer with drops of blood mixed in.

  I put the phone down on the coffee table.

  “Now push it across the floor to me,” he says, his Glock held casually in front of him. “No sudden moves.”

  I push the phone across the worn carpet toward him. He picks it up, never taking his eyes or the gun off me.

  “So, you’re the bent cop Malone was looking for,” I say.

  “I take offence at the word bent, Candace,” Danny says. “I’m just a guy trying to make a living. And it’s not like you’re without your secrets. Carrie Fisher, for God’s sake. How stupid does Malone think I am?”

  “You sent my uncle Rod after the boys to get the phone.” I pick up the beer bottle and take a delicate sip.

  “Yes, and I have to thank you for finding it, Candace. I thought Rod was holding out on me. Guess I was right.” He looks around at the trashed room, the broken VHS cases on the floor, the VCR with its guts hanging out. “Looks like you’ve saved me a lot of hassle.”

  “How did you know Tyler had the picture of you?” I ask, still holding the bottle in my hand. I plan to whack it on the coffee table like I did the tapes and use it as a weapon. All he needs to do is give me an opportunity.

  “Can you believe it?” Danny says, running a hand through his curly locks. His hair remains unchanged afterward, still sticking up in wonderful waves. The guy must use a hell of a lot of product. “The little bastard was trying to blackmail me. Selena and I did a talk at his high school during Drug Awareness Week. He recognized me and tried to get me to cough up fifty K for the picture.”

  “So, the drugs and the money the kids took wasn’t the reason you sent in Rod. You wanted the phone.” I take another sip of the beer to camouflage my true intent. Also, I need it.

  “Oh, I would have loved to recover the money and the heroin, Candace, believe me. But unless Rod was lying to me about recovering that, as well, I have to assume Alice Corrigan has it stashed somewhere. You didn’t find a big bag of horse and a wad of cash in one of those tapes, did you?”

  I just stare at him. Like I would tell him if I did.

  “Now stand up slowly and step away from the couch,” he says. “Oh, and roll that beer bottle over to me first, very slowly, or I’ll make sure your next drink will drain out through the holes in your abdomen.” I do as I’m told. I don’t have much choice. Like back in the furnace room. Although if Danny knew how that ended, he might decide to take his chances and put those holes in my abdomen now.

  He throws the bottle down the hallway. I hear it crash against the lithograph Charlotte had framed of the spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp. Then Danny comes in behind me and motions with the gun. “Out through the kitchen, Candace.” We step over the pots and pans on the floor, and he opens the back door.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, still looking around for anything I can use as a weapon. The only thing I can reach is a kitchen witch doll hung next to the door, also compliments of Charlotte. I don’t think I could do much damage with it. Maybe if Rod hadn’t put her wooden-spoon broom in a drawer.

  “We’re going for a drive, Candace. Just for a little drive.”

  I walk out into the failing light with him, and he shuts the back door. The something else is left gleaming on the coffee table. I had to leave it behind.

  CHAPTER 23

  DANNY HAS ME IN THE BACK of the unmarked, but there’s a metal mesh barrier between us so I can’t get at him. I sit in the middle and look at his face in the rear-view mirror.

  “I’m sorry about this, Candace, really I am. I think if you and I had had a chance to get to know each other we could have really had some fun times.”

  “This isn’t my idea of a fun time.”

  “Agreed, but didn’t we have a great time on trivia night? You were pretty good with the questions. Even I didn’t remember what was written on the walls of the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.”

  “Redrum,” I say, looking out the window of the car. There’s no point in trying to bring attention to myself in the back seat of the car, to scream or bash on the glass. The other motorists will take one look at the thinly painted-over police force insignia on the door, the mesh running between the back and front seats, and assume I’m some jacked-up hooker being taken to the station for processing.

  “That’s right. It’s murder spelled backward, isn’t it?” He chuckles a bit, his hands held firmly at ten and two o’clock. “But you had a bit of an unfair advantage there. What with you having committed so many.”

  “Do you even own a stamp collection?” I ask.

&nbs
p; “Yes, I do. It’s a shame you won’t get to see it. I have a 1930 Graf Zeppelin in mint condition. I’ll sell it someday when I retire. Which I’ll be able to do a whole lot earlier than I planned, due to the generosity of the Daybreak Boys and others like them.”

  We pull into a familiar parking lot. The floodlights make long shadows on the pavement. It is full-on dark now. Danny parks then opens up the door to the back seat. I don’t get out.

  “I’ll shoot you right here in the car if I have to, Candace. You’re an escaped prisoner after all. I’d only be doing my duty.” He’s probably right about that. The cops won’t care if I’m found dead in the back of the unmarked. The daughter of Mike Starr, a notorious killer. Good riddance to hardened criminal rubbish, they’ll say, and pat themselves on the back. I get out of the car.

  Danny motions at me with the gun again, and I walk in front of him, going where he tells me. He’s too smart to stick the gun in my back, where I could possibly reach behind and disarm him before he has a chance to pull the trigger. I’m my father’s daughter after all.

  He takes me past the fenced-in playground, through the forest of birch trees, then finally down the slippery stone steps to the lookout, Lover’s Leap, the highest point facing out on the gorge. The river is still running high, and he has to speak up when he tells me to turn around at the ledge to be heard over the rushing water.

  “I really am sorry about this, Candace. But you’re just too much of a liability now.”

  “Just like Tyler and Lachlan,” I say.

  “Well, those two were just way more trouble than the money they brought in selling Molly for prom after-parties, weren’t they? Just imagine the two of them thinking they could blackmail me. Me, Danny Anderson, the wonder boy of vice.” He starts laughing again. “Like anyone would have believed them. If it weren’t for that picture they took of me and the boys.” The moon’s out tonight, the cloudy weather replaced by clear skies. The first of the stars are beginning to show themselves, despite the urban glow. I can see Danny’s teeth. Unlike the rest of him, they’re not pristine. He hasn’t seen a dentist in a while.

  “Now, come on, sweetheart. Be a good girl and jump. There’s so much damn paperwork in a police shooting. I’d really rather be at the gym.”

  I don’t move. This time he’ll have to shoot me. At least it’ll be quicker than lying for hours in broken pieces on the sharp rocks before I die.

  He looks around, getting impatient. “I don’t have all night, Candace.”

  “I’m not jumping,” I say. “Go ahead and shoot me.” His mouth forms a tight line. A guy who looks like him isn’t used to women saying no. But he wasn’t joking when he said he really didn’t want to have to shoot me. I can tell from his delay. Too much to explain to Malone and the others when they find out I was helping her find a mole in the force. Even if I didn’t know I had been.

  “I’m not jumping,” I tell him. I stuff my hands in the pockets of my leather jacket, partly for warmth, partly for the stance.

  He exhales impatiently and then takes out Tyler Brent’s phone from his pocket to make a call. Probably trying to raise one of the Daybreak Boys who hasn’t been arrested to come help toss me off the cliff. He wouldn’t risk taking me on by himself. He squints at the virtual keyboard like he’s trying to remember the number of someone as dirty as him who owes him a favour. It’ll probably be my only opportunity. I lunge at him.

  I’m quick but not quick enough. He drops the phone when I grab him, but the gun goes off. It’s so close and so loud the vibration of the impact moves through both our bodies as one. We hold on to each other in a tight bear hug like the fighting hockey players holding each other up on the ice. I hear the shot echo off the dripping limestone of the gorge, and wonder if that will be the last sound I ever hear.

  But it’s Danny who slumps in my arms and then to the ground when I release him to run my hands all over my own body. I move along my jeans, and my leather jacket zipped up tight against the cold, checking for blood, for a gaping wound. It isn’t until Malone starts down the steps that I realize the shot didn’t come from Danny’s gun; it came from hers.

  “Are you okay?” she says, rushing toward me.

  “I am,” I say, trying to regain my composure now that I know I don’t have a hole in me for the beer to run out. “But only due to a hell of a lot of luck. I’m surprised you didn’t shoot me instead of him with your fucking hands shaking like that.” Malone looks down at her still-quaking hands holding her service revolver.

  “It was Danny all along,” she says, looking down at the dead vice cop. She got him right in the back of the head. His ginger hair is stained now with a different kind of red.

  “How did you know we were here?”

  “I was tailing you all the way from the station,” she says, holstering her weapon. She hadn’t believed I’d come back after all. “When I saw Danny come out with you, I thought he was arresting you. But when he brought you here, I knew something was wrong.”

  “He killed both boys,” I tell her. “They had a picture on Tyler’s phone of him with the Daybreak Boys.” I want to make sure she has the correct series of events. Or at least the version I want her to have. After all, it wasn’t Danny who actually killed them. Regardless, the lie makes me walk over to the ledge and look out over the swirling water, to take a deep breath. I’ve never had problems facing a person when I was dishonest before.

  That’s why I don’t see him come up from behind and smash her in the back of the head with the Diamondback pistol. I just hear the impact and the muffled gasp before I turn around and see Malone fall to the ground.

  “My, my, young lady. You sure know how to look for trouble. That’s for sure.”

  “Well, I am my father’s daughter,” I say to Uncle Rod, smiling my best winning smile, despite the chipped teeth. Rod keeps the pumpkin terrorist’s Diamondback pointed in my direction as he walks toward me.

  “What’s with the gun, Uncle Rod?”

  “Oh, I think you know what, Candace.” He reaches down to Malone’s inert body and pulls her service revolver from its holster. Then he pockets his gun and holds hers up in his gloved hands.

  “I’ve been keeping tabs on you. You and your little cop friend here. I was watching from my yard when you came out of the back door with the red-haired fella. I went back in the house once you’d gone ’round the side. Then I followed you and her that was tailing ya.” He edges down one step. “I saw what you found, Candace.”

  We both know what he means. What I had found at the bottom of the last VHS tape in the coffee table was so much more damning than Tyler Brent’s phone. With Danny Anderson’s gun at my back, I had to leave it behind even though it broke my heart in three places. The brilliant blue face of my father’s Rolex, the silver stars still shining with the moon.

  “You know, I don’t rightly know why I kept it all this time,” Rod says, scratching his head with the gun. “Such a right pretty thing, it was. I guess I just couldn’t bring myself to throw it away.”

  “It was you who shot at me. Outside the Daybreak Boys’ clubhouse.” I’m putting it all together now.

  “Well, things were getting a little too close for comfort there. I figured the boys would talk. Those kind always do. Tell you about your dad and what he was going to do to get you off of that murder charge.”

  “The Daybreak Boys didn’t tell me. Charlotte did.”

  He shakes his head. “That woman wasn’t born with a lick of sense that a skeeter could tell of.” I’m amazed he can still come up with this colourful crap, given the circumstances.

  Malone starts to groan on the ground. He backtracks up the stairs a bit to keep us both in his sights.

  “Why did you do it?” I ask him, although I think I already know. “Why did you kill your best friend?”

  “Best friend?” he says, spitting on the ground close to where Malone lies, just barely lifting her head up. “Now tell me, what kind of best friend is going to turn himself in and blab to
the coppers about all and sundry? Your father and I worked for the Daybreak Boys together and even before that. It was only a matter of time when it would all come back on me. I told him that. But he wouldn’t listen. I used the knife on him, figuring he wouldn’t expect that from me. Nor would you.”

  “But I called Agnes. She said you were in St. John’s.”

  He smiles and puts his free hand up to his ear to mimic a phone. “I’m sorry, ma, but I won’t be coming in till the morning, eh. A nor’easter blew in and my plane’s after being delayed.” The goddamn weather again. I should have known.

  “Now I see why you didn’t want me working with Malone.”

  “Well, I couldn’t have her telling you, now, could I? But you wouldn’t keep away, would you, Candace? Even though your uncle Rod told you to steer clear. And I had enough on my hands trying to find that boy’s phone.”

  “Where was it? Alice Corrigan’s house?” I need to keep him talking.

  “Ah, that was just smoke and mirrors, dear. I got the phone from that Lachlan boy before I took him for a walk on the pier. He showed me where they’d hidden it, in a knothole of one of the birches.” He gestures toward the forest behind him. “I didn’t want Danny here figuring out what I had.” He gestures with the gun at Danny’s body on the ground. “I was going to blackmail him using the email, so he wouldn’t know it was me. Get the crooked son of a bitch to transfer some money to my bitcoin account.” Rod doesn’t own a remote garage door opener, let alone a computer. I didn’t even think he knew what bitcoin was. He’s probably been hanging out at the Gigabytes Internet Café with the furry.

  “And you made the anonymous phone call to the cops about me and Kristina Corrigan.” Malone is fully awake now, although still on the ground. I want her to hear all the facts straight.

  “Yes, I figured that might slow you down a tad.” He winks at me, like we’ve just shared an in-joke, then sighs. “Oh, Candace, how do we find ourselves here, child?” He shakes his head. “You know I have to kill you now, darling. I can’t be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. And you never were one to let things slide.”