Footsteps in the Dark

by Josh Lanyon

  “Andrew, where is Samantha?” I glanced up to see Troy frowning down at me. “They’re saying there’s a dead body in her basement. Dorian Gamble.”

  “I don’t know if I can talk about it,” I replied. “You’ll have to ask Big Mac.”

  Troy gave me a quizzical once-over.

  “You look terrible,” he said.

  “Well, I’m having kind of a challenging day, Troy.”

  He didn’t seem to know what to say to that and so made a little show of adjusting his jacket. At last he said, “I don’t know who’s going to eat there now.”

  Like I didn’t have enough to worry about.

  “You’ll probably have to sell up,” he continued.

  I felt sure Troy would have gone on to give me some lowball offer, but thankfully the doughy Deputy Mackenzie called Troy over. Muttering his disbelief that any of this terrible mess could have anything to do with him, Troy left me.

  Time to get provocative.

  I texted Sam: I found Dorian’s dead body in the cellar about an hour ago.

  Within ten minutes the woman herself sat down on the bench next to me.

  She smelled like men’s soap, wore an oversize blue hoodie that didn’t belong to her, and sported dark sunglasses despite the autumn day’s gloom. Behind her stood a burly, handsome surfer-looking guy. Maybe Sam’s pickup from the night before? He looked kind of young for her, but I had enough to worry about at this moment without also bothering to card Sam’s one-night stand.

  Leaning close to me, Sam whispered, “Is this for real?”

  “Yes,” I said. “For extra real.”

  Sam stared at me in total shock, mouth agape, color draining from her already pasty cheeks. Her lip quivered as she whispered, “What happened? Did he OD?”

  Sam’s date shrugged like he thought the question was addressed to him.

  I shook my head, and seeing tears forming in her eyes, the icy grip of shock receded. My throat tightened. Dorian hadn’t always been the best person, but we’d all worked together for nearly two years. It hadn’t all been bad times.

  “He was stabbed.” I could barely voice my response.

  “Oh Jesus.” Sam threw her arms around me in a tight hug.

  Out of reflex, I returned her embrace. This attracted the attention of Evelyn, who leaned in through the door of Eelgrass and called something to Big Mac.

  Sam’s date just stood there with his hands in his pockets, looking bored. Then he asked, “Are you guys all right?”

  “Look, we’re obviously not all right,” I snapped. “Who are you anyway?”

  “That’s Freddy.” Sam dragged the back of her hand across her nose.

  “I prefer Alfred,” the date said.

  Sam rolled her eyes. “He’s Danielle’s brother.”

  I took a moment to process this, recollecting Danielle’s jokes about her dorky kid brother and his recent high-school graduation. “You hooked up with Danielle’s little brother?”

  “Don’t judge me,” Sam mumbled.

  “Never mind. Listen,” I said. “The cops want to speak with you.”

  As if on cue, Big Mac emerged from the front door of the Eelgrass Bistro and jogged across the street calling, “Ms. Eider?”

  “That’s me.” Sam pushed herself up to her feet and went to meet him.

  I found myself sitting awkwardly alone with Alfred.

  “It’s crazy that Dorian is dead,” Alfred finally said. “We were just partying together last night. I mean, we could have been still drinking when he was lying down there.” Alfred’s expression turned bleak and sick.

  It occurred to me then that I didn’t have to sit waiting for the cops to tell me what happened at the party. I could ask this guy and know. Or at least know his version.

  “Why do you think he was down there bleeding when you were all still drinking?” I asked.

  “Because me and Sam were the last people to leave. I mean, except for Lionel, but he was already passed out on the floor. I asked Sam if we should move him or bring him back with us, but she seemed to think he’d be okay.” Alfred shrugged. “I didn’t fight too hard because she was already touching me a lot, you know, so…”

  “Gotcha. When was the last time you saw Dorian?”

  Alfred paused, head and shoulders drawn back in suspicion. “Why are you asking this?”

  “Because that’s my restaurant too, and I want to know what happened in it,” I said, flushing, unable now to keep the anger out of my voice.

  “Oh, right.” Alfred relaxed again and sat down next to me. “Well, I’ll tell you what I can, but I was pretty drunk the whole time.”

  “That’s okay; just do your best.”

  “I just came into town on the eight o’clock ferry. Danielle came to pick me up, and then we went to meet Sam and Dorian at the Anchor for drinks. At first it was just the four of us. Then some other girls joined us—about six of them, I can’t remember all their names, but Dorian knew them. After that some guys from the kayak shop showed up.”

  “Naturally.”

  “And then there were maybe twenty of us, and the girls all decided they wanted to go dancing, except there was nowhere to dance ’cause it was Thursday.”

  “So the Eelgrass dining room was the next logical step,” I said. “How did Lionel end up with you guys?”

  “Sam saw him walking home alone and invited him.” Alfred trailed off, staring into space.

  “Anyway, after you got to the Eelgrass?”

  “Right, right. Dorian went behind the bar to line up the drinks, and a couple of the girls from the fish-and-chips place went back to the kitchen to make something to eat. The girls came back to get Sam because they couldn’t find any knives, and Sam went to the office and brought a couple out for them. Nice ones.”

  The surge of anger that burst red behind my eyes was only partially mitigated by the tiny pleasure of solving the mystery of how my knife got out of the office.

  I must have flushed because Alfred again asked, “Are you all right, man? Your neck veins just popped up.”

  “I’m fine. I just don’t like it when other people lend out my things.”

  “Oh, I hear that.” Alfred gave a nod. “Sam loaned my lighter to Dorian, and that’s the last I saw of it. It’s a Zippo too, monogrammed. Did you see it there? When you found him?”

  “It’s not like I went through his pockets.”

  “Right. And there were a lot of people going in and out the back door to smoke, so I guess he could have loaned it to anybody.”

  “Why didn’t you just smoke out front by the ashtray?”

  “We couldn’t. That big cop was sitting in his patrol car down the way. Speaking of smoking, though”—Alfred pulled a joint out of his pocket—“do you have a lighter I can borrow?”

  Chapter Three

  Orca’s Slough’s lone diner, the Prospector, sat about four blocks from the Eelgrass physically but resided in another dimension temporally.

  It wasn’t old-fashioned so much as old. The late-seventies decor did not qualify as retro, as it had genuinely been installed forty years prior. Duct-tape repairs striped the vinyl booth seats silver and blue.

  It served breakfast all day and hard liquor well into the night, and it was where Big Mac went after leaving the Eelgrass.

  When I walked through the door, the waitress gave me a nervous, shifty look, which told me she knew who I was and what had happened.

  “Excuse me, Deputy.” I rushed up behind him before he sat down at the bar. “Can I speak with you?”

  “Sure thing. But please, call me Mac.” He turned from the bar with clear reluctance and gestured to a booth. He took off his mirror shades and his hat and raked his fingers through his hair, which improved his visual aesthetic. If I could somehow have removed the cop badge from my field of vision, he might have even been attractive.

  The waitress automatically brought Mac coffee with cream and gave me an even shiftier look than before. I ordered two fried eggs and a Blood
y Mary.

  “Come here a lot?” I asked.

  “Closest thing to a donut shop in town.” He shrugged out of his jacket before taking a seat opposite me. Once again he’d defaulted to that deceptively quiet manner of talking. He took a drink of his coffee, stirred in a spoon of sugar, then tasted it again, all with agonizing slowness.

  “Don’t you want to know what I have to say?” I asked, unable to wait any longer.

  Mac turned his full attention to me. A hint of a smile creased his cheek.

  “I’m sorry. I was just getting comfortable. I’ve been on duty since six this morning. Please go ahead and tell me whatever it is.” He retrieved his notebook from the pocket of his jacket. His pen looked small in his hand and somewhat awkward. The face of his watch also seemed like it had been owned by a smaller guy—his grandfather maybe?—and I could just see the tip of a thick scar protruding from his right shirtsleeve just above his elbow.

  I related my conversation with Alfred. Mac listened, nodding occasionally and jotting down notes.

  “Alfred Tomkins,” Big Mac clarified.

  “Yeah, Danielle Tomkins’ brother.”

  “He specifically told you that Dorian had taken his monogrammed Zippo lighter?”

  “He didn’t go out of his way to tell me. Just mentioned it in passing.” Mac must have found the lighter. Maybe he’d hoped it would be the clue that busted the case open. “When I found out he had been at the party, I asked him if he knew what had happened to Dorian.”

  “What time did this conversation take place?”

  “Right after I finished talking to you. Two o’clock maybe.”

  “I’m curious why you waited until five p.m. to contact me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You had my number, you could have easily texted me right then, and I could have spoken to Alfred myself.” Mac sat back to allow the waitress to set a plate containing a pretty good-looking Rueben sandwich down in front of him. She delivered my food without making eye contact.

  “You seemed busy with the investigation, and I didn’t want to interrupt you. Plus I didn’t want to seem weird.” I slurped my Bloody Mary.

  “Weird in what way?”

  “Because I was asking people about the murder. Isn’t that one of the giveaways of a guilty person—inserting yourself into the investigation?”

  “That does sometimes occur, yes,” Mac said. “If I were you, I would be more worried about my personal safety in questioning potential murderers than relating information to a member of law enforcement.”

  “Alfred is a suspect?”

  “Everyone is a suspect,” Mac intoned.

  “And that includes you then, right? Because you were there too, sitting in a patrol car down the block.”

  Mac went quite still. “Did Alfred tell you that?”

  “I’m not saying you killed Dorian.” I put myself into full backpedal mode. “I mean, why would you?”

  “Why would anybody?”

  “Are you serious?” I leaned forward, lowering my voice to a whisper. “Who knows what he might have done to you? He’s slept with practically every woman in this town. I mean, if you have a girlfriend, Dorian probably tried to bird-dog her at some point or other.”

  Mac also leaned forward, close enough for me to smell his aftershave.

  “I don’t have a girlfriend.” He took his time having another drink of coffee before saying, “Drew, I’m going to ask you straight out: did you kill Dorian?”

  “No,” I spluttered, then childishly countered with, “Did you kill Dorian?”

  Mac laughed then, a full, unexpectedly melodious laugh. “You really are quite a comedian.”

  “I’m not trying to be funny.”

  “That’s what makes it perfect.” Mac flipped his pocket notebook to an empty page. “I’d like you to do me a favor. Write down the names of all the women you know Mr. Gamble had intimate relations with in the last year.”

  “It’s going to be more than one page,” I said.

  “Take as many as you need.”

  Mac engaged his sandwich while I tried to put Dorian’s conquests into a timeline. But as I mentally scrolled through the women I’d seen sitting at the bar talking to him, I kept getting distracted by the fact that Big Mac hadn’t actually ordered a sandwich but one arrived anyway. He must be such a regular here that the staff started making his food when they saw him walk in.

  Normally, when a person is a regular like that, their order never changes. Those kind of customers like their food to be just so, resist variation, and complain bitterly when their plates are even the slightest bit different. But when he dined at the Eelgrass, Big Mac ordered the daily special, which was always different.

  I set down the pen and asked, “How’s the sandwich?”

  “Good,” he replied. “Slaw’s a little soggy today, but still good.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Mac glanced back to the kitchen. “Juan must have the day off. He’s usually here on Friday.”

  “You keep track of who’s cooking at the places you eat?”

  “Don’t you?” He seemed genuinely surprised.

  “Not unless I know them,” I replied.

  “Well, I eat out a lot,” Mac said. “Actually, I don’t cook at all. Except spaghetti.”

  “So what’s best in this town?” I asked. “Is it the sandwich you’re having now?” It did look quite well made, and it smelled great.

  “It’s the best thing they serve here. But I’d say the best food in town is whatever you’re cooking Wednesday night.”

  I am not immune to flattery. Also fishing for compliments is a persistent vice. “Just Wednesday?”

  “Your Friday and Saturday night specials are good, but not as unique as Wednesday.” Mac took another bite of his Reuben. “Actually, I have no idea where I’m going to eat my Wednesday supper now…”

  “Fish-and-chips place?”

  “I’d rather get a burrito from the gas station hot case.”

  “Ouch.” For a split second I almost offered to make him dinner, just for being a valued customer. Then I came to my senses. I did not want him to think I was coming on to him, get scared, question his sexuality, and beat me up to prove he was straight. I went back to eating my eggs.

  Mac finished his sandwich, then folded his hands in front of him.

  “Okay, so what you’re saying is that there is a witness who saw both Sam and the fish-shop girls handling your knives on Thursday evening.”

  “Right.”

  “And you think that puts me closer to finding the killer because…”

  “Because now we know how the knives got out of the office?” I felt lame even uttering that sentence. He was right. Just knowing how the knives got out of the office didn’t prove any single person’s guilt or innocence.

  “Ms. Eider mentioned that you and Dorian had fought earlier in the week. Can you tell me what the argument was about?”

  “Business.”

  “Ms. Eider said the argument was about cocaine.”

  I felt my eyes go wide. How could she put our personal business out there like that? I clenched my jaw and nodded.

  “What exactly were you angry about?” Mac asked.

  I hesitated, feeling like a snitch. But Dorian was dead and Sam had already exposed herself, so it hardly mattered now.

  “I didn’t want him using our place to make drug deals, and I didn’t want him selling to Sam.”

  “You weren’t one of his customers?”

  “No. I came here to get away from that scene, and I’ve stayed away from it. So I can’t tell you much about Dorian’s sideline business. I’m more of a hard-liquor guy.” I rattled my ice cubes at him. This finally attracted the attention of the waitress, who asked me if I’d like the same again.

  I decided to go for coffee.

  “Was there a reason why you didn’t want him to procure drugs for Ms. Eider in particular?”

  “Would you? You saw how she
partied. Would you want a bunch of random moochers coming into your business after-hours to drink for free, disrespect your belongings, and fuck up your kitchen?” I felt my cheeks flushing.

  He nodded, then said, “I couldn’t help but notice when I looked up your particulars that you have a criminal record. Malicious mischief and obstructing a law-enforcement officer.”

  “I was drunk and fell into the window of a bar and broke it. It wasn’t malicious or even mischief, just clumsiness. I spent the night in the drunk tank and paid a fine.”

  “What about the other charge?”

  “I tried to keep the cops from coming into a house where we were having a drag party. There was some swearing, and I was perhaps somewhat rude.”

  “You’ve got a temper, in other words.”

  “People have said that, yes.” I didn’t cross my arms in front of my chest, but it took all my willpower not to.

  “Did your argument with Mr. Gamble turn violent?”

  “Not even a little bit. He never even stopped smiling. He was that kind of guy. He never took other people’s feelings very seriously.”

  “You know, Drew, my problem is that I want to believe you—that you had nothing to do with this—because I want to have my Wednesday night dinner back. But you are currently the only person who is known to have had a significant conflict with Mr. Gamble. So I want you to think hard whether anybody could have seen you after you left work last night.”

  “I don’t remember seeing anyone.”

  “Did you text or…or log in to any websites from your home computer or pass by any ATMs or places likely to have security cameras?”

  “I don’t think so. I went home and went to bed by myself.”

  Mac sighed. “In that case I’m afraid you can’t be ruled out right away so…best not to leave the island for the time being.”

  “For how long?”

  Mac shrugged. “I guess until we find out whether or not you did it.” He stood and started to pull on his jacket. “Thank you for contacting me. I’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter Four

  Saturday morning started off well. Still half in my dreams, I fantasized about creating a scallop special for Wednesday. Something classic like angels on horseback but paired with avocado and heirloom tomato… Could it be a sandwich? Or should it be more of a main-course salad with bruschetta? Mac would be there for sure.