Graffiti Creek

by Matt Coleman

  Marlowe shook his head. “What other one?”

  Yancy went back to scrolling through keys. “Downstairs. Your brother had the apartment upstairs and the studio downstairs.”

  Marlowe and Shelley looked at each other and said simultaneously, “Studio?”

  Yancy found the key he was hunting and handed it out to Marlowe. “Yep. Spent damn near all his time down there. Messing with his movies.” Marlowe took the key and stared at it. Yancy added, weakly, “Sorry to hear about your brother.”

  Marlowe waved, equally weakly, and drove off.

  Shelley grabbed the key out of his hand. “I take it you didn’t know about this either?”

  Marlowe shook his head. “No clue.”

  “So if you and I had no clue…”

  He nodded. “Odds are those assholes didn’t.”

  “Yep. Screw the sock drawer. We need in that studio.”

  Chapter 38

  Trust is a funny thing. Mark Thompson always had trouble trusting people. When he was a kid he had two dogs. They both loved to bury things in the yard. But typically, only one would dig them back up. He would bury his whole head under the ground and unearth some bone or treat. And almost every time he would let the other dog—a girl—lick dirt off of his head when he came up for air. They would sit together, with the bone laid out in front of them, one dog giving the other a gentle cleansing. But every single time, the girl dog would end bath time by snapping at him and stealing the bone. As far as Mark was concerned, he never saw a better analogy of the human condition.

  In fact, Mark could never think of a time when he let anyone get close enough to snap at him. Other than a handful of partners and even fewer women. The partners mostly held true. The women fared a little worse, but, to be fair, Mark didn’t always bury his bone in his own yard either. He was sure of one thing, though. Doyle and her brother were not about to be added to his trust list. There was no doubt in Mark’s mind they would screw him five minutes after they found what they were looking for. So Mark planned to be there in four.

  He had no choice but to let them out of his sight. They were both getting antsy, and he couldn’t imagine Doyle tipping her hand. But Jolly taught him the best way to follow someone was to stay in front of them. Didn’t always work, but if you had a general idea of where a suspect was headed and were well enough acquainted with the streets, you could pull it off. In this case, there were only a few possibilities. He had Reynard sitting on one. So Mark made his way to the other.

  Thompson knew where Dante lived. He and Jolly tossed his apartment right after they got rid of Do Right, himself. They combed it pretty thoroughly, but family might know something they didn’t. Dante’s place was a sublet—top floor of a two story building behind the rented house of a cranky old man. Thompson and Jolly braced the old man, but he was one tough bastard. He valued his privacy and the privacy of his tenants. So they only learned what they had already learned: Dante Holliverse rented the upstairs apartment. They let themselves in and wrecked the place. If the copy was in Dante’s apartment, it was next to the Holy Grail and Bigfoot. But Mark had no doubt this would be their first stop. It was his and Jolly’s. Doyle would think the same way. So he parked up the road a bit to spy them coming and going through the old man’s carport.

  The cover of being in a beat-up Celica lulled him into relaxing, and Mark couldn’t help but nod off a bit. He dozed on and off for almost an hour before slapping himself around. He searched the car until he found an unopened bag of trail mix to keep himself awake. Stakeouts were a young man’s game. He used to be able to red eye it for hours on end. But now, he could fall asleep standing in a car wash.

  He was up and alert for maybe a couple of minutes when he saw a detective’s car roll by. The woman driving didn’t appear to have made him. She completed a circle of the place and then appeared to move on to her next stop. So they had pieced Dante together with all this, then. Mark snapped a peanut into his mouth and gnawed at it. This changed things. If somebody was working this, and they had put Dante into it? Then his timeline got a whole lot shorter.

  If the video Dante shot got out, Mark would be worrying about more than his pension. Sure, the pension would be gone. He and Jolly were on camera beating the shit out of a handcuffed man. Jolly’s reputation would be tarnished. Thompson and Reynard would get shit canned. But Reynard would carry on with his dickless life. Thompson? He would swing. Because it wouldn’t take Columbo to track down who they had in those cuffs. And once they figured out, it wouldn’t be long before they started connecting dots. Thompson and Jolly, and Reynard, for that matter, got paid handsomely to protect those dots. And plenty of other assholes like Thompson and Jolly patrolled this town. If Dante’s video leaked, Thompson had no doubt he would be getting a visit from one of them.

  Before he made it through all the possible, and equally horrible, scenarios in his head, Mark spotted Marlowe pull up in an SUV behind the house. Dante had a make-shift parking spot in a dirt road alleyway behind his apartment. Marlowe pulled into it and he and Doyle hopped out. They both trotted toward the apartment, which meant Mark lost sight of them for a moment. He kept the stairs to the top level in his line of sight, though, so he waited for them to emerge on their way to Dante’s apartment. But they never did.

  They disappeared somewhere at the base of the stairs. Almost, Mark thought, like they went into… “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled to himself.

  Mark checked his gun, creaked open the old door of the Celica, and climbed up and out. He scurried to the side of the street shared by the old man’s house, keeping close to the line of bushes next to the sidewalk. At the carport, he pulled his gun, holding it at his hip. Positioning himself to peer into the downstairs apartment, he noticed a light come on through the window in the door. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled again.

  He and Jolly searched every fiber of Dante’s apartment, but they didn’t know about the one downstairs. The old man never mentioned it, and nothing showed up in any official records. Mark kicked himself at the thought, but the inhabitant of the downstairs apartment never crossed his mind. He assumed it was empty—maybe the old man used the extra space for storage or something.

  The only memory Mark had of even thinking about the bottom apartment was when they first approached. Jolly checked a window, but it was too dark to reveal anything. He said the place looked empty. Mark stayed low and worked his way around to the back where he remembered the window being. Light glowed from the bottom floor now, so he eased up to catch a peek through the back window. He reared up and took hold of one of the bars on the outside, craning his neck to glance in. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled one more time. He didn’t see Marlowe or Doyle, but he could immediately tell why Dante wanted both apartments.

  The place was set up like an obvious studio. Computers and recording equipment lined the room. Thompson and Jolly wondered where the budding filmmaker did his editing. They never found the kid’s computer. And this was why. He had a whole goddamn studio.

  Mark gripped his gun tighter and started toward the door. This was it. This had to be it. The copy was in there. And so were two of the only three people who knew what any of this was about. He paused at the thought, his hand hovering at the door knob. Jolly had been right. His partner said from day one this required a “scorched earth” campaign. Thompson tried a lighter hand. Clean everything up with a broom and a dust mop. Jolly called for the blow torch. And he would prove right in the end.

  Mark backed away from the door and moved around to the carport. The old man was not home. Mark found a storage room attached to the house and planted his foot next to the doorjamb three good times until the door popped open with a splintering crack. He rummaged around until he found a gas can next to a lawn mower. It was at least half full. Mark holstered his gun and picked up the gas can along with a long metal pipe from a clutter of trash in the corner. He hurried back around to the apartment door and slid the pipe under the bars of the storm door, blocking it from being opened
from the inside.

  He huffed up the stairs with the gas can while fishing around in his pocket for Dante’s key Jolly had lifted from the kid’s body. Mark opened the door and started spreading gasoline all over the scattered papers and clothes. After he emptied the gas can, he fished out his cigarette lighter and groaned over to pick up a handful of loose papers. In a frenzy, Mark lit the papers and waved them over curtains and furniture and clothes until the blaze was licking at his arms.

  Mark backed out, slapping at the embers leaping onto his sports coat. He scrambled down the stairs and almost fell back into the carport. In a sprint, he started back for his car when he heard, “Freeze!”

  The voice rang out and echoed across the roof of the carport. If it had been coupled with anything other than the distinctive sound of a round being loaded into the chamber of a Glock 22, he would have kept right on running. But he stopped, raised his hands above his head, and turned around.

  The female detective who cruised by him earlier eyed him down from about fifteen feet away. He didn’t doubt her ability to put a couple in his fat ass from the distance. Mark nodded. “Detective,” he raised his eyebrows to finish the question.

  The woman panted, whipping her head back and forth from Thompson to the flames licking out of the upstairs apartment. “Hudson,” she gasped.

  Mark watched her. He grinned at her concern. His only hope of getting back to his car might be her big ass hero heart.

  Hudson stuttered. “I—I—I need you to lie down and place your hands behind your back.”

  Mark started to say something, but Hudson cut him off with a bellowed “Now!”

  Mark nodded. “I hear you detective. I do. But here’s the thing. I don’t think you’re going to shoot me. And I don’t think you’re going to let those two young people burn up either. So here’s how this is going to go. I am about to turn around and walk to my car. And you—well, you have a choice to make. You can shoot me in the back. You can chase me, wrestle me to the ground, and arrest me. Or, you can save a couple of people from a burning building.”

  Hudson listened, swiveling her head back and forth in a panic. She blurted out a few meaningless phrases: “Down on the ground!” and “Don’t you move!” Things of the sort. But she knew he was right. And so did Mark.

  He turned. Slowly. And he walked with his hands in his pockets toward his car. He visualized Hudson freezing in a moment of indecision behind him before she resigned herself to holster her gun and run for the door.

  Mark smiled and picked up the pace for the car. He felt pretty certain Detective Hudson wouldn’t be able to pull those two dip shits out of the inferno the clapboard apartments were about to become. So on the plus side, he had taken care of the siblings and, quite assuredly, the copy of the video. But there was still Cary to take care of. And, now, Detective Hudson.

  Chapter 39

  Marlowe and Shelley pulled up and parked in Dante’s old spot in the alley behind his apartment. They had both visited Dante there multiple times, only ever going to the upstairs apartment. They both assumed the bottom floor was available for rent, or maybe the landlord used it to store junk. Neither of them ever gave any real thought to it. This time, instead of turning to head up the exterior stairs, they used the key to let themselves into Dante’s secret studio.

  Marlowe laughed and shut the door behind them. He looked around at the computers and sound equipment. “Sneaky little bastard.”

  Shelley sighed. “I hate to admit it, but I’m less impressed now. I always thought he was editing those films on his phone or some shit. He had a damn studio?”

  Marlowe nodded. “I know, right? I wish I’d known. I would’ve given his lazy ass hell for not making more movies.”

  Shelley pointed at a row of three computers. “You check those. See if you can get them turned on and log in. I’m going to check the other rooms for any kind of library of footage or anything. He’s got to have some sort of organization system.”

  Marlowe wrinkled his brow. “This is Dante we’re talking about.” But he still did as directed, working his way down and punching the power buttons on each computer. They were password protected, but, as he expected, “MarsBlackmon” worked on all three. He called out to Shelley in the other room, “You gotta love how consistent our brother was.”

  Shelley combed through drawers and cabinets, checking labels on any DVD or flash drive she came across. She called back, “Everything in here seems old. They have dates and nothing is recent.”

  Marlowe answered, “Same on this first computer. Every file is dated and nothing is in the last few months.”

  Shelley stepped back in. “It has to be new, right? Whatever set them off was triggered very recently.”

  Marlowe started to reply, but froze. He cocked his head and pointed toward the ceiling. He mouthed, “Footsteps.”

  Shelley cocked her head and listened. He was right. Heavy footsteps plodding around in Dante’s apartment. She motioned for Marlowe to follow her and backed into a sound room Dante had set up in a pantry—the only room without a window. They listened as the noises continued. Heavy footsteps and items being dropped or kicked over. Then, running on the stairs. Shelley pulled her gun and worked around until she could watch the door.

  After a moment or two of frozen silence, with Shelley gripping her gun and staring intently at the door, Marlowe glanced into the next room. He slid around Shelley and walked toward the vent in the ceiling. He pointed up. “Hey, Shelley. Is that smoke?”

  Chapter 40

  Bright watched Mark Thompson walk away. He had the smug confidence of a man who knew no one would stop him. And he was right. For now. Bright holstered her gun and ran for the door to the apartment. Smoke billowed down from the top floor in cascades of silvery gray. The smell of gas fumes stung her nose before they were swallowed up by the smoldering burn of wood. She yelled out to Marlowe and Shelley, using their full names, but got nothing in return. The bar Thompson jammed into the door stuck at both sides. Bright grabbed one end with both hands and put a foot against the doorjamb to pull.

  She fell back onto her ass, coughing and spitting and rubbing at her eyes. Whatever Thompson did to wedge the bar in the door, it worked. She looked up to the second floor. Smoke crept out of crevices in the wood siding, pooling at the windows of the first floor. Bright took out her gun and shot out windows upstairs and put one through the upper corner of a downstairs window to release some smoke and pressure.

  She put her gun back in its holster and reached for her phone. She dialed 911 and rattled off her name and badge number to get the dispatcher’s attention. She gave Dante’s address and reported the fire with civilians trapped inside. Ignoring further questions, she hung up and returned to the door.

  Chapter 41

  Shelley whipped around and ran toward Marlowe. “Shit. We gotta leave. Now.” She led the way for the door. Three shots rang out, one rattling through a window in front of them and punching a hole in the ceiling. Smoke snaked through the hole like a ribbon, with glowing embers drifting in behind the silvery flumes. Shelley and Marlowe dropped to a crouch, covering their heads and waiting for more gunfire.

  Bright pulled on the bar again, but it was still wedged in tight. She took out her gun and used the butt to bang on the metal bars of the door, calling out, “Shelley Doyle! Marlowe Holliverse!” over and over again.

  Marlowe grabbed Shelley’s gun hand and lowered it to the ground. “You hear that? It’s a woman.” Shelley shook her head, but Marlowe stood up anyway. He approached the door, starting to hack and cough. “Here! We’re here!”

  Bright leaned into the door and stuttered. “Y—yes! Yes, I hear you! The door is blocked! Is there another way out?”

  Marlowe looked back at Shelley, who shook her head. He turned back to the door and hung his head. “No!”

  Bright closed her eyes and swallowed the taste of smoke. She looked at the edges of the door. “I’m going to shoot the hinges! Stand back!”

  Marlowe did as
asked and heard five loud cracks and could see damage breaking through the storm door and into the house.

  Bright put her gun away and shielded her eyes from smoke with the crook of her arm. She shouted, “Okay! Try it!”

  Marlowe jerked open the interior door and looked at the splintered wood of the door frame where the heavy storm door attached. He gave it three hard kicks about midway up before the connected edge of the door separated from the wall and leaned over enough for them to fit. He waved Shelley over first, and Bright helped pull her out. He followed, falling into a roll and coughing. They all ran blindly toward the alley. Smoke was beginning to spread out toward Marlowe’s borrowed car. Bright tugged at his arm and pointed to the house backed up to the edge of the alley. A car was parked pointed toward them. Bright motioned to it and tried to yell through coughing fits, “My car! Go to my car!”

  Chapter 42

  Sameer assumed if Do Right went missing around the same time as Seamus, going to his apartment was pointless. An ex-girlfriend, however, might be willing to offer some insight into where he could have gone. Although Booker seemed pessimistic about the situation, he did make it sound like Seamus and Do Right could be on the run from someone. After a reverse search of the address Booker had given him and a little online research, Sameer discovered Do Right had stopped at the home of a Brenda Langley. She was single, in her late sixties, and had no work affiliations online. She had a minimalistic Facebook profile, which included one photo of her with a young blonde girl, tagged in as Johnna Kitteridge. Sameer found the Kitteridge girl connected to Do Right’s address, but also listed as a possible relative of Brenda Langley. Sameer guessed he was parking in the driveway of a grandmother, whose granddaughter had dated Do Right some time back.