Night's Favour (6 page)

It was hard to interrupt Baitan’s stream of words, but Carlisle managed it.
 
“Have you been working for Mr. Everard long?”

“Oh yees, a few yeers.
 
Meestar Balentine beery good to me, always leabes money on table.”
 
She gestured to the small kitchen table, a vase in the centre of it amongst some cut flowers.
 
“He know I been, I take money and leabe him flowers.
 
Since accident, he needs more habby thoughts.”

“Do you ever see Mr. Everard?”

“Yees, yees, a few times a yeer.
 
And he write note to me, I write back.”
 
Again, a gesture to the table.

Piece by piece, they got a picture of Everard.
 
A man who ate nothing but take-out, whose fridge was full of beer.
 
He’d hadn’t actually hired Baitan himself — a ‘Meestar John’ had arranged for her to start, Baitan’s daughter one of his clients at some gym downtown.
 
She was proud of her daughter, beaming with stories of her living in everyday happiness.

Everard spent almost no time here, or at least Baitan never saw much of him.
 
He paid well, always leaving twice their agreed rate on the table.
 
“I tried to leebe him money on table, next week he leebe me four times money!”
 
And because of this Baitan went a little further for him than for her other clients, tidying rather than just cleaning, washing clothes, doing a little ironing, leaving him the flowers.
 
She was full of the tiny details — she knew he drank, not just by the beer but by how many empty boxes of pain meds were in the trash.
 
She knew he wore the same five shirts to work each week — and had thrown one out this week, the sleeve torn.

“Ma’am?
 
The left sleeve?”

“How you know?
 
Yees.
 
Left sleeve.
 
Here.”
 
She fished a super-sized plain white shirt out of the trash bag from somewhere near the bottom, offering it to Carlisle.
 
The shirt itself was unremarkable, a simple cut available at any menswear store.
 
The left sleeve was torn, irregular lengths of cotton hanging from it.
 
All of the left side of the shirt was tinged a gentle pink, as if Everard had spent some time lying in a pool of his own blood.

 
It was dry.
 
Curious.
 
Carlisle balled it up, ramming it into a plastic bag before tucking it under her jacket.

Baitan continued, as if the shirt was of no consequence.
 
By her reckoning Everard spent time in just three rooms in the house — a home office with a computer, the bedroom, and here in the lounge drinking beer and eating frozen foods.
 
She knew this because there were beer bottles by the computer and the bed had always been used — same side every time, the other untouched — and the trash pile here in the lounge.
 
The lounge was where the worst of the drinking happened — she tidied up red wine and whiskey bottles here, a few each week.

Her description pegged Everard as a lonely man, perhaps even a recluse.
 
Everard came back here each night, worked a little from home, and then probably drank himself to unconsciousness.
 
What she didn’t paint the picture of was a psychopath.
 
Psychopaths could be lonely recluses, but they didn’t have cleaning ladies.
 
If they did, they didn’t pay them extra to poke about their affairs and go the extra mile — killers needed places to hide the bodies.
 
She lacked hard evidence either way but her gut told her that Everard wasn’t the guy.

Psychopaths didn’t really go in for cut flowers, you know?

They made their exit from the house — Baitan’s chatter following them out to the gate — and walked down the drive back to their car.
 
Elliot was tapping his pen on the cover of his notebook, deep in thought. Back in the car, they both stared ahead, rows of parked cars and the clean lines of prefab housing stretching out ahead of them.

“He’s guilty as sin.”
 
Elliot punctuated this with another tap on his notebook.

“Are you cracked?
 
He’s as innocent as a schoolyard virgin.”

“He’s got all the signs.
 
Lonely recluse.
 
Drug problem.
 
Woods to stash the bodies in.”

Carlisle snorted.
 
“What, with the cleaning lady to wipe up the blood stains?
 
And it’s not drugs, it’s Jack Daniels.
 
C’mon.
 
We’re getting out of here.”
 
She put the keys in the ignition, firing the big six to life.
 
A satisfying grumble came from the car, deep as the growl of a wild beast.
 
“You might have forgotten, but we’ve got his arm on ice at the station.
 
It’s hard for a guy to unzip his fly with only one arm, let alone disassemble a bar full of people.”

“She’s in on it.”

Carlisle turned to face Elliot in the seat.
 
“You can’t be serious.
 
She’s like four feet tall.
 
She’s not the best assistant for a killer.
 
Where’s her motive?
 
Hell, where are the bodies?
 
The thing is, Everard is likely to be one of our vics.
 
We’ve got his hand, that’s pretty much it.
 
We haven’t got his body, a weapon, or a motive.
 
Poor bastard is probably dead in a ditch somewhere.
 
The best we’ve got,”
 
she said as she pulled the plastic bag from under her jacket, “Is his shirt, with DNA all over it.”

“It’s probably wine, not DNA.”
 
Elliot was silent for a moment.
 
“Nah, girl.
 
Remember I said it.
 
There’s something funny about Valentine Everard.”

“Ok Matlock.
 
How you figure it?”

“My gut says he’s guilty.”

“Your gut needs some work.”
 
Carlisle looked at Elliot’s growing paunch.
 
“Get the shirt down to the boys in the lab.
 
Then we’ll talk.
 
Your gut and me, I mean.”

CHAPTER SIX

“I’m still sweating.”
 
Val pulled his wet shirt away from his skin.
 
Much as he had to admit that transparent shirts on a fat guy looked bad, he’d carried his jacket rather than putting it on.
 
A light breeze was nudging against the fabric.
 
“I thought a cold shower after the gym would help.
 
This isn’t selling it for me.”

“That’s a mark of pride, buddy.
 
Just don’t get too close to me.”
 
John grimaced.
 
“Did you use deodorant?”

“Wait.
 
I can’t remember.”
 
Val sniffed under his arms.
 
“Yeah.
 
Smells like Axe.
 
I’ll probably sweat it off, but my intentions were pure.”

“No doubt.
 
You did good today.
 
Really good.”
 
John seemed distracted — he wasn’t checking out the women on the street, and he wasn’t really paying attention to where he was walking.
 
His phone had rung a couple of times, and he’d just ignored it.
 
John, the man whose digits were in more single women’s phones than anyone else alive, was ignoring his phone.

It was uncanny.

“You don’t sound like I did good.
 
You sound like we’re discussing my funeral.”
 
When he’d been a kid, Val had come off his bike.
 
He’d fallen a long way down a bank, rolling a couple times before the bike had caught up with him.
 
The tumbled images of earth and sky along with the taste of green grass and dirt in his mouth stayed with him.
 
He remembered the clank of the bike following him down, banging its way through the brush.
 
He’d wrenched his shoulder pretty badly.
 
Nothing serious, the doctor had said.
 
Rest it, it’ll be fine.
 
They say you don’t remember pain, but he swore this felt the same.
 
Wincing, he rubbed his shoulder.
 
“Damn.”

“Well, shit.
 
Ok.
 
Give me a minute.
 
I think I need to break this down for you.”
 
John continued on a few more paces, then stopped.
 
A couple of women almost walked into him, veering at the last minute.
 
One gave him a look over her shoulder as she passed.
 
He didn’t even notice.
 
“Look.
 
So you benched a lot today.”

“Dude, you just got a hair flick.”

“What?”
 
John looked around, but she was long gone.
 
“Was she hot?”

“I dunno.
 
I guess.
 
It felt like a lot.
 
Man, I’ve never hurt this bad.”
 
A memory came, stark against the mundane street around him.
 
She’d been bleeding so bad.
 
He could remember that damn headlight shining in his face through her shattered passenger window.
 
“Except maybe after the accident.”

John didn’t seem to notice the reference, focused on something different.
 
“Do you know how much is, ‘A lot?’”

“I dunno.
 
You said it was more than you could bench, but I figured that for a sort of motivational speech.
 
So I guess maybe less than you, sure, but a lot, right?”

John just stared at him.

“What?
 
Man, say something.”
 
Val looked around the street.
 
“What!”

“Ok, stupid, we’ll play it your way.
 
Today, you benched around six hundred and fifty pounds.
 
Maybe a bit more, a bit less.”
 
John slapped the mixed roll of cash his back pocket.
 
“It’s what’s buying the beers tonight.
 
That six fifty press.”

“I guess that sounds like a lot.
 
But it’s all Smurfberries to me.”
 
Something else was hurting in his back.
 
Val arched, trying to work the kink out.
 
This is why exercise isn’t more popular — it hurts too damn much.
 
You could read it in the papers: man killed riding a bike.
 
You never read about a man killed sitting on a couch.

“Smurfberries?
 
Are you on coke?”
 
John looked him in the eye.
 
“You can tell me.”

Val snorted.
 
“I’ve only got a thirst for Jack.
 
There’s this iPhone app, Smurf Village.”

“I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

“Give me a sec.
 
I’m trying to play your six fifty pounds game.
 
Trying to get it in my head, ok?
 
So in this app —”

“Smurf Village.”

“You got it.
 
In Smurf Village, you can build houses, go fishing, whatever.
 
I don’t know, bang Smurfette, whatever you want.”
 
Val frowned.
 
“Ok maybe not that, it’s for kids.
 
But the game’s free, except it’s not.”

“Smurfette’s a hooker, right?”

“You’re on the right track John, but it’s a kid’s game for fuck’s sake.
 
You need to work that out somehow, it’s creepy.
 
You can play the game, but you can sort of... I don’t know, incentivise your Smurfs.
 
Buy them Smurfberries.
 
And Smurfberries come right off your Mastercard.”

“So what’s a Smurfberry get me?”

Val clapped his hands together.
 
“Exactly.
 
We know how much a Smurfberry costs, because those thieving bastards charge your Mastercard for them.
 
But before you go in, before little Johnny —”

John winced.
 
“Jemima, please.”

“Sure.”
 
Val nodded.
 
“Before little Jemima gets hooked on the game crack that Smurf Village is, you’ve no clue as a consenting parent what a Smurfberry costs.
 
So when Jemima comes in and bothers you in front of the big game, asking for twenty bucks for some more Smurfberries, what do you do?”

“I dunno.”
 
John rubbed his chin.
 
“The big game.
 
Is it half time?
 
Does she leave me alone for another half hour?
 
I might pay twenty bucks for that.”

“Sure you might.
 
But that’s the thing.
 
You just don’t know.
 
It’s like any other arbitrary measurement, like —”
 
Val waved his hands in the air.
 
“Like, I guess, a megawatt hour, or a megabyte maybe.”

“I know what a megabyte is.
 
I work in a gym, but I’m not prehistoric.”