Kzine Issue 4 Read online

  She ran her fingers through her hair in a frantic motion. It contrasted strangely with her perfect appearance. Her voice shook. ‘Fifteen years ago, my best friend Olive and I went out to celebrate the end of finals. I was a little drunk, but Olive was plastered. It was only nine, but Olive thought she was going to throw up, so we called it a night. I drove us home. The road from campus is not well lit, and a little girl darted out. I can still remember the way it felt when my car hit her. I knew my life would never be the same. She lived, but she was badly crippled, and I went to jail for six months. The girl’s mother screamed at me in the courtroom and swore she’d kill me.

  ‘For years afterward, someone would call and threaten me - a man’s voice. The calls stopped after we moved. Now they’ve started again. Someone calls and hangs up when I answer - sometimes there’s a lot of heavy breathing. My tires have been slashed twice. Before that, it was a rock through our window. Someone wants me dead.’

  I loved women, and she was beautiful. I was broke, and she was loaded. I took the case.

  The letters kept coming. ‘YOU HAVE 13 DAYS TO LIVE. JUSTICE WILL BE DONE.’, ‘12 DAYS LEFT. GOD WILL NOT BE MOCKED.’ No fingerprints. Nothing to go on except that the ink was such an odd shade of rusty red, like dried blood. I consulted an office supply house. Only one manufacturer - Pencraft - made ink that color, but the stuff was sold in a half dozen stationery and office supply stores. This was going to be tough one.

  Marty Bordon is my researcher and fact checker. Sitting around reading trial transcripts and digging through newspaper archives isn’t my idea of a good time; I leave those jobs to Marty. He’s a some-time researcher, full-time surfer boy with ratty dreadlocks. He works when he feels like it, but he’s smart and thorough, and he comes cheap.

  He’s a squatter, living rent–free in an old boathouse on the Wilson property. Occasionally, the police make a half-hearted attempt to get rid of him. They come by and dump his possessions and change the lock. Marty flops somewhere else for a week. Then he breaks off the new lock and moves back in. The arrangement seems to suit everyone.

  I walked over the sand past patches of switch grass and dollar weed to Marty’s front door. His old Buick was parked nearby, the frame around the windshield held together with duct tape. He answered my knock after several minutes. He was barefoot and naked from the waist up, wearing a pair of long trunks in a gaudy hibiscus pattern. His brown hair was streaked blonde by the sun, and his eyes were such a pale shade it seemed like they’d been bleached too. He looked as though he’d been asleep, but Marty always looked like that. I gave him a file with both of Lisa’s names and the dates and particulars she’d given me, as well as a list of things to look for.

  ‘Sure thing, Mr. A.,’ he said. I knew it would be weeks before he got back to me; he only worked when the surf was no good. I didn’t expect his research to tell me anything I didn’t already know, but if there was anything odd about the accident or the trial, I knew he’d find it.

  Olive Stefano, Lisa’s passenger on the night of the accident, lived in the historic section of old Jacksonville, in a Spanish style house that looked like it had been there since the conquistadors. A high wrought iron fence heightened the drama and gave it a forbidding look. The woman who answered my knock suited the house. Dark and brooding - a female Heathcliff, with eyes that could drill a hole through your skull. Too tall and angular for my taste, but she definitely caught your attention. Lisa and Olive must have turned a lot of heads on campus.

  When I forced my gaze away from that startling face, I saw she was wearing a frayed man’s shirt covered in paint spatters. ‘I’m painting,’ she said. ‘But come on in.’

  I entered the living room, which doubled as her studio. The ceilings were high, the moldings and wood floors original, the arched doorways intriguing, but it was falling to ruin. Another starving artist.

  I looked at her work. It was more a sketch than a painting, done in bold, sure strokes—a scene of two women having a meal in an outdoor courtyard. A fountain anchored the center and fan palms and live oaks framed the edges. It was impressive how much detail she’d suggested with just a few strokes.

  ‘You’re good.’ I said. She nodded. No false modesty.

  ‘Can I get you a drink?’ she asked. She brought us scotch, and I noticed she drank hers straight.

  I asked her about the night of the accident. ‘We’d both had one too many, but Lisa was only going 20. That kid - Jennifer Heffron - dashed out with no warning. Lisa couldn’t have avoided her if she’d been sober. But the State Attorney wanted to make an example. Poor thing went to jail for six months. It nearly killed her.’

  ‘Did you hear the girl’s mother threaten Lisa?’

  ‘We all heard it. The woman was completely hysterical. They had to remove her from the courtroom.’

  ‘What did she look like?’

  ‘Like the wrath of God. She had a huge halo of hair - half black, half grey. She must have been over six feet tall and she was either sick or anorexic. The bones in her shoulders protruded and you could count her ribs. When she pointed her bony finger at Lisa, we all gasped.’

  ‘What about the father?’

  ‘He was as quiet as she was loud. Didn’t say a word, but I could see him clenching and unclenching his fist through the whole trial.’

  ‘Anyone else might want to hurt Lisa? How’s the marriage?’

  ‘I don’t trust Larry. He’s a creep. I know he’s cheating on her, and I’ve never said a word. I’m afraid she’d hate me instead of him.’

  ‘That can happen,’ I said, thinking of Connie Nelson’s reaction when I’d shown her the incriminating photos.

  ‘What about Larry’s business connections, if you know what I mean? Anybody might want to get to Larry through Lisa?’

  She looked at me uncomprehendingly, and then it dawned on her. ‘You know, believe it or not, I don’t think he has those kinds of connections - maybe a second cousin or something but that’s about it. Larry made his money in memory foam mattresses. Had the first store in the region.’ Then, as though she regretted exonerating him, ‘But he’s a jerk just the same.’

  I took my leave. As I got into my car, I glanced up at her house. She was standing in the window watching me. She made no attempt to conceal herself - just stood there watching with those burning-coal eyes. My Ford’s interior was a sauna, but I shivered just the same.

  I had insisted on representing only Lisa in the investigation. Made up some crap about how it was cleaner that way, but the truth is I just didn’t like Larry. He went out of town a lot. He was expanding into a whole line of bedroom furniture and he spent a lot of time meeting with manufacturers. I tailed him on a business trip to Miami. The day was winding down as I arrived; the street was filled with shadows. Music was pouring from the storefronts of the business district. I drove past people dancing in the streets, a man riding a bicycle with a capuchin monkey clinging to his back, and a woman in a bright yellow bikini with a red and green parrot perched on her shoulder.

  I grabbed a Cuban while I waited for Larry to finish his dinner. I tailed him past the cotton-candy colored art deco buildings of Miami Beach to the skanky side of town and found him in a strip joint, partly obscured by a heavy blanket of smoke. He and his friends were guzzling drinks and ogling a nearly–nude woman as she gyrated around a metal pole. His friends resembled the cast from a bad gangster movie. To Larry’s left sat a bleached-blonde floozy with long hot pink nails. He would lean over occasionally and kiss her, and it made me nauseous. She didn’t look good enough to scrub Lisa’s floors.

  When I sidled out of the shadows to get a better look, Larry saw me. Our eyes locked, and I considered bluffing it out. But I lost my nerve and slunk back into the crowd.

  ‘Your husband is cheating on you,’ I told Lisa. I asked her about her husband’s connections, their marriage, his attitudes - anything that might shed some light. Her comments made me more suspicious than ever, but I couldn’t see how it all fit together.r />
  We fell into bed. I’m not proud of it, but I figured she needed comforting. It’s not as if her husband deserved a faithful wife. If Larry was mobbed up, I was living on borrowed time, but by that point my brain wasn’t doing the thinking. And if she seemed a little bored by my advances and a little repulsed by my shabby apartment, that only made her more challenging.

  If her husband knew what was going on, he hid it well. He’d give me a strange, speculative look every now and then, but he never said a word.

  I couldn’t find anything on Larry except for the cheating, and I turned over a lot of rocks trying. I wasn’t able to track down the Heffrons either. Their name didn’t show up in my search of state data bases. Anything could have happened in the 15 years since the accident. I went to the house Lisa had pointed out, but the neighborhood had changed. I went door-to-door hoping someone would remember them, but at every door was another squat Mexican woman whose only response to my queries was ‘Que?’

  The letters kept coming. ‘I feel like I’m losing my mind,’ Lisa said. She slumped into my office with big dark circles under her eyes and handed me the latest one. ‘THE MILLS OF GOD GRIND SLOWLY, BUT THEY GRIND EXCEEDINGLY SMALL’ it said. I wondered if the ancient Greek quote was a clue to the sophistication of the sender. Larry wouldn’t have known it, that’s for sure.

  I insisted Lisa spend the night. In the morning, I retrieved her mail. The new letter said “TODAY YOU DIE.”

  I was determined to distract her. In other circumstances, it would have been a wonderful day. We drove to Amelia Island in my old ragtop Firebird and followed Fletcher Road north along the Atlantic. I put the top down and let the sea breezes blow through our hair. The shore was decorated with every type of dwelling - big Victorians, sleek contemporaries, Spanish mansions, and little Cape Cods. In between them, we could catch glimpses of the ocean. When we got to the north end of the island I parked on the beach, and we ran down to the water. We splashed in the shallows and watched the surfers until dusk. When the oceanfront cafes began to light up, we got a table on the sand and sat drinking sweet tea and eating oyster po’ boys as the waves lapped the shore. I held her hand and tried to be reassuring.

  It was no good. That last letter cast its long shadow over everything. When the café closed, I took her to my apartment. Larry was out of town, so she spent the night again. I made us drinks, but the mood was grim and we were awkward and strange. Neither of us could carry a conversation, and we didn’t feel like doing anything else. I kept going to the window, nudging the curtain aside to peer into the dark street.

  Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Two weeks went by. The personal aspect of my relationship with Lisa began to eclipse the professional. She moved her things into my apartment and began to come and go with her own key. I had begun to think it just a prank when she came with a new one. Small typed black letters from a laser printer. ‘I know who wrote the notes. Meet me. Bracken Road bridge. Wednesday night. 11 p.m.’

  ‘It’s a setup. You’re not going; I am.’ She protested, but not very convincingly. No Lisa—no backup. I wanted to catch this person before he caught her, and I wanted to catch him off-guard. Of course, the him might be a her, but that was the plan.

  I staked out the bridge in the afternoon and saw what I needed. From behind one piling, I had a view of the road and the path leading down to the water. Weeds grew up around it and gave me camouflage. I got to the bridge at 9:00 that night and checked the area, my gun drawn. There was no one on or around the bridge. Only one car in 15 minutes. I went to my hiding place. No one could pass without my seeing them.

  The mercury had hit 98 degrees that day, and it didn’t feel any cooler at nine. The water was stagnant and smelled of sewer gas and rotting fish. I squatted in the muck, feeling the brackish liquid soak the seat of my pants. An hour went by. My legs were numb and my adrenaline rush had been supplanted by boredom. I would have killed for a cigarette. Another hour. Nothing. At 11:25, I’d had it. I’d stood up to leave when I heard a car.

  I was sure it would pass, but it stopped and parked. I darted behind the concrete support. I couldn’t see it, but I heard its door slam. A couple minutes later, I heard footsteps crunching the gravel on the path to the base of the bridge. All I could see was a menacing shape. From the height and size, I thought it was a man. The figure reached the bottom of the path and began to search behind the bridge pilings with a flashlight. My hiding place was about to be exposed. I stepped out, gun drawn, and said ‘Freeze’.

  The flashlight went flying. The figure hit the ground, rolled, and fired. Someone was a lousy shot. I fired back several times in rapid succession. I heard a grunt and a sound like air escaping a balloon. The dark shape lay still. My gun still drawn, I nudged it with my foot. When it didn’t move, I shined my penlight on the prone body. Larry’s dead eyes looked up. A small hole in his forehead was oozing blood.

  I spent the next week with the police, going over my story and answering questions. Randy McGrath had caught the case; he and I go way back.

  He took me into an interview room and shut the door.

  ‘Joe, I angled for this case, and you can be glad I did, because frankly, you’re not looking good.’

  I frowned and pretended ignorance. ‘I’m not following.’

  ‘I’ve been asking questions, Joe. Some people think Mrs. Angelo was more than just your client. Now, these notes you’ve shown me. Most of them are unique. Unusual paper, distinctive ink, fancy script. But this last one, about meeting under the bridge—anyone could have written it. A more cynical man might suspect you wrote it yourself as a cover for murder.’

  I slammed my cup on his desk, splattering coffee over his paperwork. ‘Look at me, Randy. How long have you known me?’

  ‘Ever since you gave me a bloody nose in third grade.’

  ‘Then listen to me. It happened just like I said.’

  He studied me a long time. ‘I believe you, and that’s how I’m going to write it up. But if you want the case to stay closed, here’s the deal: You don’t take the lonely widow to dinner. You don’t drop her off at the dentist. You don’t even say hello on the street. And if there are any dainties in your bedroom drawers, it better be because you’ve taken up cross-dressing. Are you hearing me?’

  ‘Loud and clear.’ Lisa and I were over anyway. In the days since Larry died, her attitude toward me had gone from cool to frigid. She didn’t need me. She could cuddle up with Larry’s money.

  I heard no more about the case. I was closing my office several weeks later when I glanced at the newspaper in my waste basket. A photograph in the society pages caught my eye. It was a picture of two smiling women, one blonde and delicate, the other dark and brooding. ‘Art Gallery Opening’ the headline read. The article described Lisa and Olive’s new business, which would feature Olive’s paintings.

  I couldn’t sleep. I followed my thoughts down the crooked streets of my mind, and every one led to a dead end. The picture bothered me; I didn’t know why.

  I started my next day bleary-eyed and spent the morning working a new case. At noon, I bought a burger and brought it back. I relaxed, looking at the photos on my desktop. My ex-wife with my little girl. My crazy Uncle Herman with his wife. My frat buddies in one corner and Marty in the other—scruffy dreadlocks, goofy grin, sleepy eyes. I’d never heard from him on the Angelo case, which didn’t seem important at the time. But it occurred to me that Marty was oddly reliable in his own erratic way. He always made a report - even to say he found nothing. I dialed a number.

  ‘Hey, Mr. A. Good to hear from you. Whazzup?’

  ‘Remember that accident I wanted you to run down? The Heffron case? What ever happened to that?’

  Marty was silent, and I sensed confusion. ‘I left a message, Mr. A. - couple months ago. Called on your home phone ‘cause the office was busy for like, an hour.’

  I knew what he was going to say, and I felt sick.

  ‘Accident never happened, man. Least not like you said. No conv
iction under either name. No Jennifer Heffron injured in an accident in Florida. Seriously, I went back 20 years. Looked under H-e-f-r-o-n too.’

  I hung up without saying goodbye. For a long time I just stared at the traffic through my fly-specked window. I looked at the photograph of Lisa and Olive, and I knew what bothered me. They weren’t looking at the camera. Olive had her hand on Lisa’s shoulder, and it was clear they were more than friends.

  It made sense. I could picture Olive’s sure hand doing the calligraphy. They must have made two copies of those meeting instructions and sent one to Larry. Lisa hoped it would be Larry who’d take the bullet, but I wondered if she’d have cared if it’d been me.

  I was in no position to rat her out, but I decided to talk to Randy anyway. He’d look at the case again and do his best to keep me out of it. At least I could cause Lisa a little trouble for all she’d caused me. And if she made a habit of killing off her husbands, my report would come back to haunt her. But when I went to my drawer to retrieve the file, it was gone.

  ‘The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.’ I don’t know if that’s true. I hope it is.

  As for Larry, the big ape must have loved her after all. I try not to think about that. I leave the house early and stay out late, but every time I close my eyes I see his face.

  Lisa and Olive sent me an invitation to the opening of their gallery. I thought that was a nice touch. The calligraphy invitations were done in an odd shade of dried-blood red.

  COYOTES

  by Jamie Mason

  We live in the desert behind the truck stop and raid the dumpster for food. The Vampires don’t like it but they mostly leave us alone. They come here to feed on something else and are a lot more interested in their nice clothes and fancy cars and each other than they are in us. But sometimes I’ll catch one staring and see him mouth the word vermin. Because we’re infernals too, but low class. Vamps all have money. Coyotl are street tribe.