I had fallen about two days behind at this point in terms of wordcount, but I had the whole day off and no concrete plans so I figured I’d be able to catch up. It took most of the day to really get started, but once I did I managed to pound out over 4000 words, meeting my goal for the day and putting myself right back on track.
I’ll apologize right now for the gratuitous padding, in the form of a childhood memory, that happens right in the middle of this installment. I think that in editing I can pare it down to three or four lines while still keeping the important part, but for now it stays, if only to help out my word count a little. By the way, that memory is a true story, it happened to a friend and me years ago pretty much exactly as told here.
Now, as for the way things end. Well, it just seemed to fit, and I think in this particular genre it’s something of a requirement. I tried to handle it in a way that would get the point across, so you could see the progression and the slow breakdown of resolve, but without getting graphic or exploitative at all. It needs a little tweaking in editing, but I think it works pretty well.
For Idle Hands (working title) - Part 20
Bertha was parked at the back corner of the parking lot. Her back hatch was situated directly in front of me, though there were at least twenty feet between us. I knew that I could cover twenty feet in a matter of seconds, but that was more than enough time for someone to spot me. And even if I made it, then what? Was I going to just drive away and hope no one spotted me? Not likely. I couldn’t quite see it from here, without leaning out into the open further than I’d prefer to right now, but I imagined that the cops had blocked off the parking lot just in case I decided to try something like that. The gashes in the front lawn bore testament to the fact that there were other ways to get a car onto the street, but that was a bit showy, and I wasn’t sure that with her far heavier body and rear wheel drive Bertha wouldn’t just sink into the lawn and refuse to move.
Whatever, for now I just needed to get away from the building, maybe into the woods, and Bertha would make a decent stop over on the way there. Besides, my backup gun was in there and since I only had the one clip for the pistol strapped under my arm, I might need the five rounds it held. I hoped not, but I wasn’t planning to chance it. Also, I thought while wrinkling my nose, the dumpster reeked, and I sure as heck really didn’t want to be caught hiding behind it.
I tightened the bag to my back so it wouldn’t flop much, then got up into a crouch. I took a deep breath and immediately regretted it as I choked on the rancid fumes from the dumpster. I would have to call the company that took care of that and have a little talk with them. I closed my eyes and took a few more calming breaths, then went for it.
I dashed out in a crouching run like we did in the Army when under fire. I ran up Bertha’s driver’s side, fumbled the key into the lock and unlocked the door. I threw the door open, jumped in, and slammed it shut. I slumped down in the seat, hoping I couldn’t be seen from behind, the direction of the building, and tried to catch my breath.
“Not bad, Shamus.”
I started at the voice and had one hand on the door handle and the other cocked and ready with a back handed strike instantly. It was a cop, he was in the passenger seat slumped down like I was. I didn’t know him, but he threw his hands up in a surrendering gesture, so I decided not to hit him. At least, not right now.
“Who are you?”
“My name is Ralph Brandt, I was Yadira Cheevers’ partner.”
I lowered my right hand to my lap, but kept my left on the door handle. I glanced around, then in the rear view mirror. I could see a light on in the basement that hadn’t been on when I was there a few minutes ago, but there were no cops anywhere outside that I could see.
“What are you doing here? Are you going to arrest me?”
“No, I don’t think so. You’re trying to figure out who killed Yadira, right?”
“Yeah, that’s the idea.”
“Personally, I think you have as good a chance as we do now, maybe better. I want whoever did it found, and arresting you would keep you from doing that.”
“What do you mean I have a better chance ‘now’?”
“Now that Gunn’s in the hospital and Detective Cyr is heading up the investigation. He’s a good cop, but he’s no Gunn, and I don’t think his heart is really in it.”
“How is Gunn doing?”
He smiled at me, as genuine a smile as i’d ever seen, “he should make it, from what the docs at the hospital said. He’s still in the ICU, but he’s stable.”
“He’s a tough old goat,” I said, smiling back a bit, “he’s probably too stubborn to die by being shot in the back.”
“The docs also said you probably saved his life by stopping his blood loss right away like that. As it is they used five pints on the way to the hospital to keep him going.”
I nodded. I’d never liked Gunn much on a personal level, but I’d always respected him as a professional, and the idea of dealing with anyone else at the Idle PD was unappetizing.
“You said Cyr’s not really into the investigation? Why not, I thought cop killers took top priority with you guys.”
“They usually do. I don’t know, he’s following up on what Gunn had going, and he was sure interested in hauling you back in as soon as we got the search permits, but other than that he doesn’t seem to think we can do anything more until the lab results are back. I suppose there’s some truth to that.”
“Bullshit. You’ve got Wally’s car to look for, for one thing. You’ve also got physical evidence from whoever shot Gunn, if he was dumb or inexperienced enough to leave two spent shells behind, he probably left a lot more. Then there’s the bullet that missed me, it should be stuck in a wall at the station and with luck it’ll be relatively intact. You should have people right there that can tell you what to look for. I’ve got a few things to check out myself, so don’t tell me there’s nothing left to look at without those lab reports.”
“I’m not, I’m just telling you what Cyr is saying. You’re not the only one who thinks that’s bull.”
“So why is he doing it?”
“I don’t know. Personally, I think he’s way out of his depth here but he loves being in charge too much to jeopardize it. I don’t think he’s detective material at all, actually. He only got the promotion because he’s a kiss ass.”
“They picked him over you, didn’t they?”
“Yeah, but it’s not the first mistake they’ve made, it won’t be the last.”
There was a moment of silence.
“So,” I said, “you’re not going to arrest me?”
“No. Like I said, I want to know who killed Yadira so I can see him nailed to the wall. You seem more up to it than Cyr is at the moment. Most of the cops on duty right now agree, so we’re going to let you do your thing and see what you can find. For now.”
“How long?”
“We’ll look the other way until midnight tonight. Or until you do something that we can’t ignore. We’ll do what we can to keep Cyr and his crew distracted until then.”
Midnight. That gave me roughly another ten hours to figure a bit more of this out. It wasn’t much time, but I couldn’t ask too much after everything that had happened.
“Fair enough,” I said, “but can you answer a question for me?”
“Sure, if I can.”
“Did you know that Yadira and Wally McCollin were… involved?”
He laughed, a bit too loud for my tastes.
“Wally? No way, not a chance.”
I fished one of the photos out of Derrick’s bag and handed it to him. His eyes went wide when he saw and he cursed under his breath.
“Is this legit?”
“As far as I can tell it is. I got a series of those from a contact of mine who says he got it from a PI firm that occasionally does less than ethical work. Most of them are from three years ago, and it’s obvious he was following Wally. But this one is from earlier this year, and I’d wager the focus is on Yadira. Do you know any reason someone would be having her followed?”
“No,” he said, a bit flapped, “no reason I can think of. I… Wally? I had no idea, none. I spent at least nine hours a day, five days a week with Yadira and I had no clue.”
“Apparently,” I said, taking the photo out of his trembling hand, “she was very good at keeping certain parts of her life hidden, even from the people she was closest to.”
He looked at me, studying me for a moment.
“You two had a history, didn’t you? She didn’t talk about her past much, but I know that someone got her out of trouble in Boston and brought her up here, helped her clean herself up. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“You’re right, choosing Cyr over you was a mistake.” I glanced in the rear view mirror again, I could see a hand resting on top of the dumpster. Someone was crouching behind it. They’d probably crawled out the window I had, and now they were preparing to lift themselves up. “I have to go.”
I opened the car door and bailed out, making a dash for the woods, half running and half sliding down the embankment at the edge of the parking lot, dodging trees and roots as I went.
I burst into the neighbor’s yard at a run, then dashed across and plunged into the forest on the other side. I didn’t have my normal resources, I didn’t have a car, I only had one clip for my gun, there was at least one shooter out there who didn’t have any qualms with shooting at me, a handful of the police in Idle were still out to drag me in and lock me up, and I only had ten hours until the rest of them joined in the witch hunt.
Besides all of that, I desperately needed a good night’s sleep and a bath. I was right, this was going to be a long day.
I wasn’t going to make it far on foot, I knew that. Idle was a small town, but it was spread out over forty plus square miles, most of it rural and heavily forested. Sticking to roads was the only way to get anywhere in any sort of hurry around here, but on foot eve the roads were a slow way to get around, not to mention that a walker outside of Idle Village was an odd sight. Even though I had the better part of the Idle PD off my back, I still needed to lay low and not draw much attention to myself if I could help it. And, of course, I’d been shot at twice today already, and whoever had done it was still out there.
That brought me to my first order of business, securing alternate transportation. If anyone would have something I could use, it would be Harvey. Harvey’s Garage was located about a mile down Main Street from the office, near the middle of the village, and on the other side. From where I was now, I could cut around behind the village, sicking to the woods, until I came to Church Street. Then I could cut through the UMI campus and cross Main Street there, where I was less likely to run into anyone who knew me. Then I could cut behind the office building there, behind the Town Library, and come at Harvey’s the back way.
I’d just turned a ten minute walk into at least a forty minute hike. Great. Best to just get moving and not dwell on it, time is suddenly short.
The forest close to town is generally a mess. Parts of it are natural, which means that there’s not a lot of underbrush and obstructions, since the canopy above blocks the sunlight from hitting the forest floor. The biggest problems in this type of forest are mud holes maintained by small creeks or ground water close to the surface, and the occasional clump of thick ferns or thorny bushes. The biggest problem with thick fern stands is that they’re favorite hiding places of all kinds of woodland creatures. Outside of the very rare black bear or pissed off moose, there aren’t many animals in the forests of southern Maine that can hurt you, but they can sure scare the hell out of you if you’re not paying attention.
When I was a kid, a friend and I were traipsing through the forest out behind his house. We were in the bottom of what looked to be an old river bed that dried up after the last ice age. The flat land we were exploring was about half a mile wide and went for several miles in each direction at least, the land on either side rising at an angle of around fifteen degrees. This bottom area was very flat and the trees there were tall and bare up at least thirty feet. What was left was a forested valley that looked very open but which was perpetually in shadow from the canopy above.
We were wandering around with our new BB guns we’d gotten for our birthdays, which were only a few days apart. We weren’t really using them for much beyond making ourselves feel tough and grown up. We came to a large expanse of three foot tall ferns where the tree tops let in some sunlight. Since we were in the exploring mood we plunged right in, trudging through like we were exploring the deepest darkest jungle.
Suddenly something was moving under the ferns, causing them to thrash this way and that. My friend jumped to one side d it went past him and came towards me. I backpedaled furiously and tripped over a fallen tree branch, falling and tumbling backwards. Together we watched as whatever it was zig zagged through the fern stand. Finally it reached the other side and out popped a small fawn which bounded off into the woods.
After we finished laughing at ourselves for nearing crapping our pants, it occurred to us to wonder where the fawn’s mother was. We fled from the forest then, hearing things behind and around us for the whole way up the slope out of there. Any animal protecting its young is not something you want to deal with.
So some of the way was easy going, so long as I watched out for marauding animals and patches of mud. Unfortunately, where the village protruded into the forest, things became messy. Added sunlight penetrating the canopy lead to new tangles of undergrowth, and clearing to build new houses or sub-developments always seemed to leave downed trees and other debris scattered about. I skirted these areas as best I could, but still I spattered myself with mud and muck, and my coat and pants caught on broken branches and thorny bushes and tore. The effort caused me to sweat and wheeze in the extreme. Once I stepped nearly up to my knee in a patch of wet mud. Eventually I took my coat off and stuffed it into Derrick’s bag as best I could.
By the time I reached Church street - clawing my way up the steep embankment just beyond the last houses before West Idle, with its forests and fields - I was an absolute mess. I could go around looking like this or I’d be arrested simply on suspicion of being a vagrant. My blue jeans were several shades of brown from the knees down and streaks and splatters of the muddy color decorated the rest of the pants as well as the black t-shirt Gunn had given me. Both my shirt and jeans were torn in several places, and I had a pretty good set of scratches across my chest. I hadn’t examined them closely yet, my hands were so caked with mud and pitch that I would probably do more harm than good if I tried to clean them out, but they stung like a son of a bitch.
I wiped my face and hands as best I could on my poor coat then used it to pat off my clothes some. I draped it over the bag and decided to drop it into the first waste bin I came across. It had been a good coat, but after the hole in the shoulder, the blood from my wound, and now this it’d had it. I knew well enough that it would never come completely clean.
I headed down Church street towards town, towards the UMI campus, wary of any traffic.
I hadn’t imagined that there would be so many people out and about on campus when I got there. My plan had been to walk right through unnoticed, but in my head I hadn’t looked like Grizzly Adams on a bad day, and there hadn’t been students and faculty swarming all over the place. People stopped and stared at me as I passed, some openly pointing and making comments to their friends or whoever happened to be standing nearby.
This wouldn’t do, sooner or later someone was going to get the wrong idea and call in campus security. If they called in the police on me, even if Brandt himself answered the call he’d have to take me or give up the game completely. I had just decided to try cutting further around the campus when a voice off to my side stopped me.
“Nick Shamus?”
It was a young female voice, somewhat familiar. I turned to find Lili Tsao, the Sienna Club’s bar tender and likely one of the maniacs who’d almost run me down with a four wheeler this morning. She still had the long coat on, and the short leather skirt, but she’d covered the halter with a light blue sweater. She smiled at me, her dark almond eyes sparkling.
“Yeah,” I said, not sure how to react, “after a fashion.”
She walked up to me, looking me up and down appraisingly.
“What on earth have you been doing?”
I sighed. “It’s a long story. A really long story. Aren’t you working tonight?”
“Yeah, but the club doesn’t open for another hour and a half, I was just helping get things ready for the weekend earlier. I just came back for a little lunch.” She smiled at me again, that radiant too red smile. “Well, I’m just heading to my dorm room at the moment. You want to come up? You could grab a quick shower, and I’ll bet I could score you some clean clothes. Unless you like looking like a Survivor castaway, of course.”
A bell went off inside my head, but I tried my best to ignore it. This girl was just that, a girl, and there was no way I could justify going up to her room, no matter how tempting that sounded. Of course, said a small voice in my head, a shower and clean clothes would help a lot, and she probably didn’t mean what you’re thinking, you dirty old man. Then, of course, there’s the fact that she was likely one of the four wheelers I saw this morning, and they’d had dealings of some sort with Wally. She might know something of use, so it would be foolish not to take advantage of any offer of this sort from a potential source of information. The more people feel they know you, the more they have invested in some sort of relationship with you, the more likely they are to tell you things.
“Won’t bringing a guy who’s old enough to be your father up to your room cause some raised eyebrows?”
“Maybe, but if anyone asks I’ll just tell them you’re my uncle.” We both had a good laugh at that one. “Besides, I’m a big girl, they can say whatever they want about me. I don’t care.”
“I suppose that’s OK then, as long as it won’t cause any trouble for you. I could use a shower and some clothes, but that’s all, I don’t have much time to spare.”
“OK,” she said, nodding, smiling mischievously. “Come on.”
I followed her into a large building that had the depressing, institutional look of a public building built in the 1970s. He room was on the third floor. On the second she stopped and knocked on a door. A burly kid, probably a football player, answered the door and Lili talked a pair of black jeans and a hooded sweatshirt out of him in exchange for forgiving some outstanding debt he owed her. After that we continued up to her room.
She had a single that was supposed to be a double. She explained that her room mate had gone home after the third week due to emotional problems, leaving the room to her alone. The room was decorated with a combination of posters for bands and movies I’d never heard of, and decidedly asian flavored items. A large chinese fan was pinned above the door and a set of boken - wooden replicas of the katanas samurai carried which ere used for practice - sat in a display rack on the wall as if they were real swords on display.
“Are these just for show,” I asked, gesturing to the boken, “or do you know how to use them?”
She smiled broadly, “I use them on occasion, though the school frowns on it.”
I dropped my bag and took one of the boken off the rack. It had been a long time since I’d handled anything like this, I’d forgotten how good it felt in your hand. It felt solid and the weight of it fairly begged to be swung and arced through the air. The leading edge, what would have been the blade had this been a real sword, was pocked and dented, it had indeed seen extensive use.
I grasped the handle with both hands and swung the boken around myself, careful not to hit anything. There was just enough space in the center of the room for one conservative swing, though the low ceiling made it a bit more difficult. Lili took the other boken off the rack and assumed a fighting stance, her eyes glittered on either side of the implement’s point.
I took a playful and leisurely swing at her. She parried it easily and slapped my shoulder with her weapon. I took another swing, a bit faster this time, and again she knocked it away, this time knocking the tip of her boken against my temple.
I tightened by grip and lunged, still faster than before. She deflected my attack and angled her sword so that I ran my chest into the tip of it. The cuts on my chest burst to painful life. I yelped and quickly stepped back.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
I swung again. Too hard I realized too late. She brought her boken up instantly, encircling my blade with hers then whipping the tip in a tight arc, tearing mine from my hands and sending it skittering under her bed. She flowed from that motion into a cutting strike.
Her blade ended up resting diagonally across my torso, her body mere inches from mine. I looked down into her porcelain featured, her eyes flashing, breathing heavily from the exertion and excitement of it. For a long moment, neither of us moved.
“I’d better go take that shower now,” I said, gently directing her boken away and down. She replaced her boken on the rack, then traced the gash on my chest with the tips of her fingers.
“We should probably take a look at this first, see if it needs to be cleaned out or bandaged at all.”
I nodded, I was starting to breath deeply myself.
“Take your shirt off,” she said. It didn’t sound like a request so I complied. I felt self conscious in a way I hadn’t since high school, standing in this your woman’s room with my shirt off, my graying chest hair and slight middle pudge on display. She ran her finger tips over my chest again, tracing the gashes and making my whole body shiver. She looked up at my face then ran her fingers over the cut on my forehead and down the side of my face. Her skin was so smooth I imagine my second day stubble probably felt like sandpaper, though she didn’t let on if it did.
“You’ve had a hard day. While you were talking to Charlie Derrick told me you’re looking into Yadira Cheevers’ murder. Did you love her?”
“Once upon a time,” I said, my voice cracking slightly, “though I suppose I never stopped completely. But I don’t know.”
She smiled, “to be going through all of this, I think you still loved her. Probably more than even you were aware.”
She was nearly pressed against me now, the proximity was making me dizzy, I was having trouble breathing.
“I think you deserve a break,” her breath was hot on my neck, “if you keep pushing like this you’re going to get yourself hurt for real.”
She wrapped her arms around me, running her hands up my back. She kissed my neck lightly, sending electric shocks through my entire body. I brought my arms up and cradled the small of her back in my hands. Oh god, I’d forgotten how good it felt to hold a woman like this, to feel her lithe form and smooth body against me, such a contrast to my own hard and craggy exterior. She withdrew her arms from around me and pulled her sweater and the leather halter underneath off over her head in one motion.
She was naked from the waist up, her small, perfect breasts pressing into me, her golden skin nearly glowing in the low light of the room. She wrapped her arms around my neck and drew my head down, her eyes looking deeply into mine, reassuring me that this was OK. She kissed me lightly on the cheek first, her shuttering breath playing against my ear, pushing me over the cliff I’d been teetering at the edge of. I caught her up in my arms and lifted her into a kiss.
She clung tightly to me, reflecting my own longing and urgency back to me in every motion, every breath, every gasp and shudder. She continued to do so as I laid her down on her bed with the intertwining yin and yang bed spread. As I laid with her all of creation fell away. For a short time there were only two people in all the world, and we were the only thing that mattered for all eternity.
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