County Line (4 page)

“What do you know, guys?”

Moose Davisson doesn’t like me much and I guess the feeling is mutual, though the tension has never broken out into open hostilities. He glances at me from atop his mountainous frame then turns his attention to the girders and ductwork overhead. Frannie Stein, his partner, is less familiar, an up-and-comer as I was downward-spiraling. She regards me expressionlessly. Susan stops beside me. For a moment, no one answers her question, then Moose clears his throat.

“Not much to know, Loo.”

“What are your thoughts? Any reason to think homicide?”

“Not yet, no. Probably not at all. The M.E. is leaning toward a natural manner of death, but we’ll know more in a couple of days. He’s not too backed up.”

“Okay. Good.” Susan turns to me. “Skin, what brought you here tonight?” There’s a slight edge to her voice, and I wonder what the subtext is. If any. We haven’t been on the best of terms for some time now. I could be detecting nothing more than generalized Skin antipathy.

“I was checking on the place for Ruby Jane.”

“Bet the stiff was a surprise.”

“I’d rather find a hundred dollar bill in my sock drawer.”

“And you used your own key.”

“We traded keys a while back.”

“Where’s Ruby Jane now?”

“She’s away.”

“How long has she been gone?”

A bolus of heat gathers in my belly. “What’s the story here, Susan? Do you know who this guy is or what?”

She sniffs, then tilts her head toward Moose. He looks from Susan to Frannie, at last to me. I’m sure he’s wondering what he’s doing out in the middle of the night for this ticky-tack bullshit, and I can’t say as I blame him. He fishes his notebook out of his jacket pocket.

“He had an expired Washington State driver’s license in his wallet. Name, Chase Fairweather. Picture matches, but we’ll confirm.” He eyes me. “Name mean anything to you?”

I shake my head.

“There were a couple of bucks in his wallet, no credit cards. Sixty-two years old. No evidence of trauma. We found a bottle of baby aspirin and some insulin in his cargo pants pocket, no needles. Homeless, from the looks of him.”

“You thinking he knew the place was empty and broke in to get out of the weather?”

“We’ll check at St. Francis tomorrow, see if any one remembers him. But, yeah, I’d guess he broke in, fixed himself a warm bath, and died of shock at being clean for the first time since he grew pubes.”

I blink, trying to shake the sudden image of the body in the water. “How’d he get in?”

“No obvious sign of forced entry, but you saw the security panel.”

“Slick work, don’t you think?”

“Not bad, no. Not like the system is state-of-the-art or anything, but he knew what he was about. There are scratches on the dead bolt too, though I can’t tell if they’re fresh or not.”

“That old wreck was a lock-pick
and
an electronics wiz?”

“This ain’t Fort Knox, Skin.”

I chew on that for a moment, but I don’t know what to make of it. Susan lifts her chin. “Do we have an estimated time-of-death, Moose?”

“The bath water confuses matters, but based on lividity and onset of rigor, the M.E. guessed between six and eight this evening.”

I almost came over about then. I wonder if I could have done anything for the old bastard if I’d stopped by. Or how I’d have reacted if I found him in Ruby Jane’s place still breathing. Not with warmth and hospitality, I don’t imagine.

“In the end, nothing to see here.”

“Old homeless guys die all the time. Not usually in someone’s bath tub, but shit happens.”

“How long do you think he was in here?”

“Hard to say. Not long enough to make off with the TV. Do you know if anything has been stolen?”

“Besides a half dozen cans of Progresso?” I suppose if she had a secret envelope stuffed with used, non-sequential hundreds, I wouldn’t know if it was missing. “I didn’t see her laptop.”

“Wouldn’t she have taken it with her?”

“Probably. Or, hell, it might be at one of the shops.”

Susan studies me, her gaze pensive. “The cell phone charger in her office is empty. But she’d have that with her too.” I can feel the pressure of the phone in my pocket. “You never did say where she is.”

“It’s a personal matter. She’ll be back soon.” I wonder if I manage to sound even remotely convincing.

“Do you know how to reach her? We’d like to talk to her.”

Most likely the M.E. will come back in a day or two with a final report—natural death, no suspicious circs—and the file will close. No need to pursue the break-in, since they have the perpetrator dead to rights.

I look Susan in the eye. “Try her cell.”

- 4 -

Cartopia

Moose and Frannie are gone before Susan and I finish talking. She stands at the foot of the tub with her hands in her pockets, casual and oblivious to the scent memory of Chase Fairweather’s passing. I lean against the butcher block. Ten foot buffer of dead air between us, we exchange the kind of congenial chatter you share with someone you’ve long since lost any significant link to. She asks how I’m doing in a way which makes clear she expects bad news. In the last two years, I’ve been brained with a flower pot, fought cancer to a standstill, and survived a bullet in my belly. Susan can’t be the only one who wonders how I manage to remain vertical. I assure her I’m as good as you might expect. She offers that her husband Eric is a law partner now, her daughter Leah anxious to finish middle school. About the time she’s ready to call it a night, I clear my throat.

“I’ll be seeing what I can find out about this guy.”

The year before, she’d offered me a job reviewing open case files. Not a sworn position, a stipend deal intended to take some pressure off her cold case squad. I hadn’t taken her up on it, but I knew she was still short of man hours.

“I figured you would.”

Tomorrow or the next day, she’ll glance over a memo, but far as Susan is concerned, the file on Ruby Jane’s trespasser is already closed. She leaves me to lock up.

It’s past midnight. I’m not tired. What I am is restless and dissatisfied. Anxiety has taken root in my chest. I’m not a night owl; my evenings may run late, but they tend to run close to home. Marcy, in contrast, is someone I’ve seen close Uncommon Cup one day, go clubbing, hit the bars and after hours joints, then skip sleep to open shop again the next morning. Work a long day and do it all over again. She’ll be up.

I take a seat behind the wheel of my car and roll down the window, listen to the crackling hiss of tires on wet pavement as cars pass. Then I pull out Ruby Jane’s cell phone. Unlike most every other electronic gizmo she owns, it isn’t hanging by a thread over the pit of obsolescence. But it’s nothing fancy either. I hit the power button.

Enter Phone Pass Code: _ _ _ _

The tiny screen is painfully bright in the dark car. I try four digits. Ruby Jane is too smart for my juvenile attempt: 7-3-8-3, the digits corresponding to P-E-T-E. She and Peter fizzled out over a year ago. I suppose I’m reassured his name doesn’t work, but I’m left with ten thousand possibilities. Knowing her, the code is random, a sequence of numbers she chose for their lack of personal meaning. It won’t be a play on Uncommon Cup, U-C-U-P, U-N-C-M, something like that. It won’t be the last four of her social, her childhood street address—not that I know either one—or her birth year. It won’t be S-K-I-N. As if to prove the point, I punch in 7-5-4-6.

The screen clears.

“Well. Hell.”

A trill of pleasure runs through me, but I tell myself not to read too much into it. Probably thought she was being funny.

I pull up the Contacts list, scroll through to the entry for Marcy. She picks up after three rings. “RJ! Oh my god! You’re back!”

“Sorry, Marcy. Not nearly so pretty.”

“Skin? Is that you?”

“In the flesh.” In the background I can hear voices and music, laughter.

“What are you doing with Ruby Jane’s phone?”

“It’s complicated. Listen, I need to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“Something’s happened at Ruby Jane’s apartment.”

“Something happened to Ruby Jane’s apartment?”

“No.” I hesitate, thinking. “Where are you? I could join you.”

“I have an idea. Why don’t you come down?”

From the sound of her, the smart choice might be to wait until morning. Except I’m in no mood for waiting. “Sure. Where are you?”

“Cartopia, man.”

“The food carts?”

“You know, the food carts. Come get a pie, man.”

Cartopia is at the corner of Hawthorne and Twelfth, a circle of trailers and panel trucks serving everything from authentic Mexican to crepes to southern barbecue and more. Before I got hurt last fall, Ruby Jane and I would grab dinner there after closing every week or two. RJ can’t get her fill of poutine. I prefer fish tacos or a fried pie.

“I’ll be right there.”

“Careful where you park. The tow truck has been prowling all goddamn night.”

She’s at least half-drunk. I wonder if this will be a wasted trip. Still, I’m awake. Not like I have anything better to do.

I’ve never been to the carts this late. The after-midnight scene is nothing like I’m used to. A manic energy pervades the crowd gathered in the open space between the carts. Clouds roll overhead in long strips, the lingering threat of rain doing little to dampen spirits. There are a pair of large canopies, one twice the size of the other, with picnic tables underneath, but as many stand under sky as under cover. Competing scents of hickory, deep fryer fat, and cigarette smoke hang on the air.

As I weave through the crowd, the Whiffies girl recognizes me and beckons. My bagel is a fading memory, so I wander over and check the board.

“Hi, Summer. Busy night?”

“Picking up now that the weather’s getting warmer. We ran out of brisket.”

“I’ll be throwing a tantrum now.”

Gregg looks around from the back of the cart. “If we knew you were coming, we’d have saved you one.”

“I keep forgetting to post my schedule online. Okay, start me a chicken pot pie, but don’t rush. I’m looking for someone.”

“You got it.” Summer smiles and I hand her a five, then throw myself into the crowd.

Under the small canopy, someone has set up a portable karaoke machine. A tall lanky fellow belts out a striking rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Folks are clumped, not so dense I can’t wend my way through. I see hoodies everywhere and for a moment I think about the fellow outside Ruby Jane’s apartment. Portland is a city of layers, especially in the spring when we can go from rain to sun to wind storm over the course of a short walk to the coffee shop. Hoodies over flannel over long-sleeve T’s abound, many capped off with knit caps. For all I know, my wallet thief is right in front of me. I try to remember the sound of his voice as I scan for Marcy. “
Quitting time, man
.” Not much to go on.

I find her at a picnic table under the big canopy, a funnel of pomme frites in front of her. She’s got a big red cup in her left hand, and a Marlboro sticks out from between two knuckles of her right. She uses it to point across the table at an Egyptian-eyed woman with teased and Dayglo’d hair. “If your idea of social media is to spam Twitter and Facebook with announcements of your skanky gallery openings, you’re
doin’ it wrong!”
Marcy’s arms are a tracery of tattoos, green-leaved vines and orange trumpet flowers.

The other woman slaps the table top. “I only spam my skanky gallery openings on MySpace.”

“MySpace is for douche bags.”

“That’s where I found you, bitch.”

I assume they’re friends. I drape an arm over Marcy’s shoulder. She looks up at me and grins. “You’re up late for an old puke.” Her eyes are a little wild. I glance at the cigarette in her hand. “Don’t tell Ruby Jane I’m smoking.”