Graffiti Creek

by Matt Coleman

  Doyle cocked her head at Cary. “Cary, what the hell are you doing here?”

  Cary shot a look at Doyle. “I’m getting answers.” She looked at Marlowe. “Starting with how you know this asshole.”

  Marlowe looked affronted. “Hey!”

  Cary leaned forward. “Don’t hey me! You set me up! There is no ‘other Cary Trubody,’ is there?”

  Marlowe hung his head. Thompson grinned like a damn Bond villain. “What do you girls say we keep our voices down so we don’t get kicked out? I doubt anyone but me wants to continue this conversation somewhere more private.”

  Cary turned to Thompson. “Shut up. You tried to kill me.” She thought. “Three times, I think. You don’t get to talk.”

  He shrugged. “Four.” He waved a hand between Cary and Marlowe. “But continue.”

  Cary looked back at Doyle and pointed at Marlowe. “Who is he to you?”

  Doyle nodded. “My brother.” She frowned at Marlowe. “And all this asshole has been doing is trying to protect me.” She looked back at Cary and sucked in at her lips. “I’m sorry, Cary. Nobody ever wanted you to get hurt.”

  Thompson raised his hand. “Um, I did.”

  Doyle and Cary both said in unison, “Shut up.”

  Cary shook her head at Marlowe. “Why me?”

  Marlowe grimaced and looked to Thompson. “They think you have something.”

  Cary squinted at Thompson. “What?”

  Doyle said, “The text you got—the one you thought was meaningless. It was from mine and Marlowe’s brother.”

  Cary shook her head. “Dante?”

  Marlowe nodded. “Yeah. Do Right—Dante—he had something they wanted. They think he made a copy, but we don’t know where it is. They think he may have sent it to you.”

  Cary laughed. “It was a blank text. Dante was Johnna’s ex-boyfriend. I doubt he would trust me with much of anything after his girlfriend left him for me. It was a mistake. This is all one big mistake.”

  Thompson raised his eyebrows. “She left him for you? Oh, this just got a fuck ton more interesting.”

  Doyle leaned across the coffee table toward Thompson. “Shut up, fat man. You hear her? She doesn’t have it. Now, you tell me where my brother is and let this shit go.”

  Thompson smiled. “Oh, I’ll tell you where he is. All the different places he is. Give me the copy he made first.”

  Doyle reached around for a gun and froze.

  Thompson jerked to life and made a similar motion. “Go ahead, Doyle. Let’s hash it out right here, right now. In front of all these people. That’ll fix this right up, won’t it?”

  Marlowe put a hand on Doyle’s leg. “Shelley. It’s okay.” He looked to Thompson. “So let’s say we find it? This copy. Me and my sister—” Shelley and Cary shot him looks. “And Cary. We all go on with our lives?”

  Thompson cocked his head. “You two? Yeah. You’re good. Cary here? She’s got shit to atone for, don’t you, Cary?”

  Cary swallowed and looked at her lap. “He was going to kill me. You were both going to kill me.”

  Thompson leaned forward until Cary was able to catch a whiff of the cigarettes on his breath. “Listen, bitch. You’re going to burn for this. I’m going to walk you in myself.” He smiled. “Or drag you in.” He looked around. “Hell. You gotta walk out of here sometime.”

  Doyle kept her hand on her gun. “No. She walks out now. We’ll look for this copy you think exists. But Cary goes. Now. let her walk.”

  Thompson scrunched his face up like he’d sucked on a lemon. “Fuck you, Doyle. You aren’t writing the script on this one. I’m telling you how it goes. Don’t worry about her. You worry about you and what’s left of your family.”

  Cary blurred out into a swirl of voices. Thompson and Doyle argued and postured and threatened. Marlowe tried to make peace, but even he ruffled at the mention of Dante and what Thompson might have done to him. They started to catch a few stares from the patrons of Spring Valley Bank and Trust. And Thompson was right. What had she been thinking? She’d be lucky to make it out of this bank alive. The only way he wouldn’t put her down in the parking lot was if she walked out…in handcuffs.

  Cary looked up at all three of them. “No. Fuck all of you. Let me tell you ‘how this goes’ for once.” She stood up and pulled the shotgun out of her dress. The distinctive and frightening chick-chuck of cocking it echoed throughout the lobby. Cary stood on the coffee table and screamed out. “All right, everybody be cool, this is a robbery! Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of you!”

  Chapter 30

  Cops had mobbed the Parker Building by the time Bright arrived. She parked a little ways up the road and walked the last bit with both hands in the pockets of her obey-me-red quarter-length trench coat. She weaved in and out of swarming CSIs and uniforms. Bright kept her eyes trained up, studying the upper floors of the building and the higher levels of the garage.

  She had made it all the way to the back of the parking garage when a sharp cry of “Detective Hudson!” broke her concentration. Glancing right, she spotted Carlos Moya with his hands cupped around his mouth. He hung at the far corner of the parking structure and waved her around before disappearing out of sight.

  She followed Carlos until she rounded the corner and got the full sight of the actual crime scene. Blood had sprayed out in a fan around the front of the car. Dick Jolly’s body was sprawled out with limbs jutting out of a dent in the hood and windshield. His head was buried inside the car, but his hands were both visible, flopped up backwards at odd angles and hanging there frozen in some sort of mangled gesture.

  Something about the hands was more jarring to Bright than seeing dead eyes. The hands always seemed to be mid-grasp, like they were still trying to reach for someone. With his oddly angled legs and dangling shoes slipped half-off and shattered glass sprinkled into the blood splatter like glitter. The whole scene looked like some sort of avant garde art piece.

  Carlos stood between Bright and Jolly’s body, rubbing his head with a shaking hand. “Yeah,” he nodded at Bright’s wide eyes, “it’s a regular Gallagher show. I’m sorry, Bright. I was watching. But I couldn’t do anything.”

  Bright stepped over and put a hand on Carlos’ shoulder. “It’s okay, Detective Moya. Walk me through what happened.”

  Carlos nodded again and sighed. “Yeah. Well, I followed them—”

  Bright held a hand up. “Them?”

  Carlos closed his eyes and cocked his head in apology. “Sorry. Shit. I followed Detectives Jolly and Thompson from the station, but while at the station I had checked their trunk for a missing Phillip’s head.” He looked at Bright and shrugged. “It was there, by the way. So, they made me. Or, well, almost made me. I shrugged it off as me being as asshole.”

  Bright laughed, “Easy enough to do.”

  Carlos shook of some of his visible nerves with a chuckle. “Yeah, well, they bought it at least. But I had to keep a distance after that.” He pointed back to the dumpster and pallets. “I hid out back there to watch the building when they entered.”

  Bright stopped him again. “Entered which building?”

  Carlos shook his head at his own carelessness. “They walked into the Parker, but then drove into the garage. I waited, watched. Nothing. No Cary Trubody, no sign of the two detectives, nothing.” He pointed to the roof of the parking garage, which stood about two thirds as tall as the Parker Building itself. “Finally, I heard a car—like, tires squealing. I caught sight of figures on the roof of the garage. It looked like—could’ve been a woman. Hard to tell. Next thing I knew,” he held his hands out toward Jolly’s body.

  Bright shook her head. “Was he pushed? Did he jump?”

  Carlos shrugged. “No clue. There was a shout, but it was him. Sort of as he fell. It was awful, Bright.”

  Bright looked back at the buildings. “Did we sweep the buildings?”

  Carlos nodded. “Yeah. No sign of Thompson or h
is car. No sign of Cary Trubody, if it was even her.” He pointed. “They found a homeless guy stabbed with a board. Caught him in the stomach. He was bleeding out in a second-floor office. We bused him to Harper General.”

  Bright raised her eyebrows. “Conscious?”

  Carlos shook his head. “He will be, but you know these guys, Bright. He won’t give us shit.”

  Bright hung her head. “Yeah. May not be connected.”

  Carlos cut his eyes toward her and reached in his pocket. “Oh, he’s connected.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to Bright. “EMTs found this on him.”

  Bright frowned from the photo in her hands to Carlos. “This is Cary Trubody’s DMV photo.”

  Carlos nodded. “Yeah. We found them on seven or eight homeless in the Parker.”

  Bright looked back at the Parker Building. “So Thompson and Jolly come looking for her here? What made them think she’d be here? The whole department is looking for this girl. I haven’t heard any tips put her here.”

  Carlos cocked his head. “I didn’t think so, either. And I watched these guys go in. It wasn’t like they were looking for anybody. It was more like,” he trailed off into a shrugging shake of his head.

  Bright nodded at the photo. “Like they were lying in wait for somebody.”

  Carlos grimaced. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”

  A uniformed officer approached them and pointed over his shoulder with a thumb. “Detectives? We found one who’ll talk.”

  Bright handed Carlos the photo and pointed past the cop with her head. “Lead the way.”

  The entire Parker Building had been cordoned off with yellow police tape. All the way to the road, which included an old bus stop at the far corner of the front of the Parker. The bench was enclosed with plexiglass on all sides and over the top to shield waiting bus riders from the elements. Old advertisements for a local news station were fading and peeling from the sides.

  The uniformed officer led Bright and Carlos around to the front of the bus stop. There they found a small bespectacled man clutching a cup of coffee with both hands. The cop leaned toward Bright and Carlos and spoke into his own shoulder. “We had to put a little bourbon in his coffee, but he’s willing to talk.”

  Bright scrunched her face up. “Where’d you get the bourbon, officer?”

  The cop smiled. “Let’s all agree you’d be better off not knowing.”

  Carlos scoffed and moved around them to approach the man on the bench. Bright hung back, dismissing the officer with a condescending wave of her hand. Carlos smiled and nodded in greeting to the man. “Sir. I’m Detective Moya.” He turned and motioned to Bright. “This is Detective Hudson. You mind if we ask you a few questions?”

  The man studied them both in a practiced way. It was the look of someone who didn’t forget faces. He pulled the lapels of his jacket—a worn, brown tweed sport coat—closer together with one hand, while taking a sip of Irish coffee with the other. “I’ll help if I’m able. Don’t want you blaming the girl for this.”

  Carlos frowned. “What girl, sir?”

  The man motioned back to the building. “White girl. Running from those cops.”

  Bright moved past Carlos and sat next to the man. “What’s your name?”

  The man grinned. “Now, Detective Hudson. You and I both know I ain’t giving you my real name. And you got nothing to get it with. I’m a ghost.” He glanced back at the Parker Building. “We all are.”

  Bright smiled and nodded. “Fair enough. What do I call you?”

  He sucked at his teeth and took a sip. “People have taken to calling me Booker. It’ll do.”

  Carlos wrote the nickname down in a notepad, fruitlessly. Bright said, “Okay, Booker. Tell me about this girl. What did she look like?”

  Booker squinted. “She was about five-three. A little hippy, if I can say so without offending anyone. Dark headed. She was a bit of a mess, but pretty enough. She had nice eyes. Like some kind of sad wolf. Looked the color of swimming pools.”

  Bright smiled. “You said she looked a mess. How?”

  Booker shrugged. “Just a mess. Hair was roughed up. Makeup smeared. Looked to have a little blood on her in places. She had on a ripped up dress. Black cocktail dress of some kind. She even had on heels before somebody came along and knocked her out of ‘em.”

  Bright shook her head. “Who knocked her out of her shoes?”

  Booker took a sip of coffee and shook off the mention of the man. “Ah. Don’t worry about him. This big fella they call Tex. But your girl’s no daisy. She put him down. I think he’s dead.”

  Bright grinned. “He’s close.” She held a hand out to Carlos and he handed her Cary’s picture. “Is this her?”

  Booker nodded. “Yep. Those two cops were handing her picture all over the place. Promising cash to anyone who could put her down.”

  Bright frowned. “Put her down?”

  Booker nodded and pulled a finger across his throat. “Wanted dead or alive. They holed up in the garage and told us the first bum to bring her to them could walk away with a cool grand. Said it like that. Called us bums. Screaming it out and tossing those photos into tents.”

  Bright put the photo in her pocket. “What did these cops look like?”

  Booker shrugged. “Fat white guys. Cops.”

  Carlos snickered under his breath and Bright shot him a look. She turned back to Booker. “And someone did? Take her to them?”

  Booker shook his head. “I don’t think so. I helped her all I could. Until the lady showed up with the gun.”

  Bright shook her head. “What lady?”

  Booker shrugged again. “Not sure. She looked a little like a cop, too. Young black girl. Real pretty, but a hard ass. You know what I mean. Looked like the type of girl who’d be a whole lot of fun until you looked over in bed one night and realized you hadn’t been fucking her. She’s been fucking you.” He looked Bright up and down. “You kinda look like one of them women yourself, Detective.”

  Carlos snickered again and Bright cleared her throat. “And what did this woman do?”

  Booker shook his head. “Chased us all off, that’s for sure. I was keeping the crazies at bay, but they were closing in around us. This girl showed up and fired a few shots off. We all scattered. The two ladies had a little yelling match. The black girl with the gun called your girl Cary. They recognized each other. But Cary, she took off up the stairs. Other girl tried to follow, but she got blocked out. Took off looking for another way up. Last I saw of either one.”

  Bright patted Booker’s shoulder. “Thank you, Booker. This has all been very helpful. I’ll send the officer over to refill your,” she smirked at his cup, “coffee.”

  Booker grinned. “Thank you, Detective.”

  As they walked away from the bus stop, Carlos flipped through his notepad. He found a page and tapped at a note with his pen. He held the page up toward Bright. “I knew that rang a bell. I asked everyone at Roosevelt High if they noticed anyone else at the event who seemed out of place. And Joey Young gave me this. You know him, right? He’s over the evidence locker. Been around forever.”

  Bright rolled her eyes. “What did he say, Moya? Either spit it out or stop moving your notepad so I can read.”

  Carlos pointed to a line on the page. “He said he witnessed a young black female enter the event. He took notice because she was dressed all wrong—had on jeans and a sweatshirt and ballcap. But the ballcap? It was a PD cap. He said she looked like a cop. I sent him home to study his department directory and see if he recognized her.”

  Bright frowned at him. “Call him up. Find out if he did.”

  Carlos nodded and pulled out his phone. Bright walked on ahead of him back toward the scene. This was growing. Thompson and Jolly didn’t have the best reputation, but if Booker was right, they had definitely crossed a line. And if they crossed, when? With Johnna Kitteridge? Karen Webster? Had Cary Trubody actually done anything? Bright was beginning to wonder if maybe Cary was an
innocent wrapped up in the wrong shit. But even so, she had to find her.

  Bright’s phone startled her with a steady chirp. She pulled it from a jacket pocket and answered with a curt “Hudson.” There was a faint, audible breath at the other end. Bright repeated, “This is Detective Hudson. Who is this?”

  No answer.

  She listened to the silence and started to turn and look around her, but she was distracted by a uniformed captain on the scene waving her down. She hung up her phone and waited for him to come near before greeting him. He cut off her small talk abruptly with, “The name of this girl you’ve been looking for? Cary Trubody, right?”

  Bright paused and nodded. “Yes. Why?”

  The captain laughed and held out his radio. “Because she tried to rob a bank a few minutes ago.”

  Chapter 31

  Sameer was beginning to feel some pressure at the seams of sleep deprivation. For the second night in a row, he slept in a chair. This time it had been his office chair. He dozed off after spending hours Googling one name or location after another. Several times he found himself getting lost on a Topix discussion board before concluding it was filled with Internet trolls and crackpots. But anything was better than trying to sleep in his own bed. The first night Seamus didn’t come home he had been worried, but not panicked. The nature of a journalist’s job, he knew, meant sometimes chasing a lead into the night. And, to be fair, he had spent a late night or two trying to finish one last line of code. He and Seamus both enjoyed the freedoms of not having kids or pets and the comfort of trusting one another absolutely. So on the second night, he was still able to fall asleep. The next morning was when concern inevitably turned to fright. Seamus would have called, or at least answered a text.