Poison Shy (13 page)

The cops were waiting for me, just like I knew they'd be — two mustachioed bruisers who looked like they'd tasted blood before and liked it.

They were too busy imagining who had the bigger dick to notice me coming.

“Officers,” I called as I hustled toward them.

One of them hit the other on the shoulder and nodded at me.

I put my hands in the air. “I need to talk to Detective Darvish.”

“Stop,” said the thicker of the two. “Don't fuckin' move another step.”

I stopped. “Where's Darvish? I need to —”

They threw me against the window of the laundromat. There was an old lady inside who went on folding her clothes despite the commotion.

“Spread 'em!”

The side of my face was pressed so hard against the glass it was hard to speak. I tried to say, “I know where the girl is,” but it came out like slurred German. They frisked me, cuffed me, read me my rights. Threw me head first into the back of their squad car. I said, “I'm telling you, I need to talk to Darvish
now
!” They slammed the door in my face.

One of them pulled out a walkie-talkie and spoke into it. I tried to read his lips but couldn't. Who else would they be calling but Darvish?

I knocked on the window with my forehead. “Hey! Tell him I know where Melanie is!”

The idiot without the walkie-talkie pointed at me. I read his lips: “Shut. Up.”

What did I expect from a couple of Frayne cops? I tried to calm down. I could explain everything to Darvish when he showed up. I sat and wondered how Melanie could have ended up at Bill's. Did a pair of pink pumps even mean anything? Maybe Bill liked to cross-dress. But no, they were way too small for him.

I started second-guessing myself. I couldn't help but wonder if this was all an elaborate prank. Was everyone conspiring against me, even the cops? My mother always said that law enforcement was blasphemous, a rebellion against Divine Law. My father just said cops were nothing but crooked criminals. Maybe I should have listened.

The two officers sat down on the bench. I made eye contact with one of them and gave him a pleading look. He spat and turned away.

Where the fuck was Darvish?

Ten minutes later, he pulled up in a busted old Chrysler. He shook his thugs' hands, got into the squad car's passenger seat, and looked at me through the rear-view mirror.

“Nice work at the bar,” he said. “You could have been a pro ballplayer.”

“I know where Melanie is,” I said. “She's at a man named Bill Barber's place on Falk, just off Dormant. I don't know if she's being held against her will. You have to go there.”

“I don't have to do anything but take you to the station.”

“What? What about Melanie? I thought she was your priority. Let those guys take me in, I don't care. Just go to Bill Barber's, I'm telling you.”

“And what makes you think that, Mr. Galloway?”

“I saw her shoes. I saw her pink pumps in his doorway.”

“When was this?”

“I don't know. About half an hour ago.”

“And who is Bill Barber?”

“I work with him. He's my supervisor.”

He wrote something down on a little notepad and stuck it in his pocket. “Mr. Lozowsky told me a different story. He says Miss Blaxley's on her way to see her parents in Stittsville. Said he drove her to the bus depot this morning.”

“What?”

“How do you know the shoes you saw were Miss Blaxley's?”

“Well, I don't know for sure.”

He pulled a napkin out of his pocket and blew his nose. “I'm going to have my men bring you to the station. I'm sure you'll cooperate. I apologize if they were a little rough.”

I said, “Wait!” but he got out of the car and slammed the door. Said something to his apes, got back into his own car, and drove off.

As I was being escorted to the station, one of the bruisers farted. I held my breath and looked out the window. The sky was grey as smoke, and my stomach was starting to turn.

I managed to swallow down the first rush of bile, but the taste was too much. The second retch was a projectile, aimed straight at the back of Tweedle Dee's fat neck.

“What the
fuck
?” he said, my puke dripping down his collar.

Tweedle Dum, the driver, craned to look at me. “Fuck,” he said. “He's white as a goddamn sheet.”

My groan was drowned out by the horn of another car. Tweedle Dum, still looking back at me, had veered onto the wrong side of the road. He was headed straight for a parked car. I ducked, the only one prepared for impact.

I didn't see what happened up front, but I definitely heard it. Metal on metal, shattered glass, ribcages thumping against dashboard, the bang and hiss of airbags and exhaust. The two cops groaning as they struggled to suck in air. And then, the miracle: the back door popped open with the quietest of clicks. A real life
deus ex machina
.

I peeked up front. The driver was out behind the steering wheel, facing away from me. His partner was slumped awkwardly toward the passenger-side floor, dazed, wincing, and holding his chest. Neither of them had been wearing a seatbelt.

Without a second thought, I pushed my door open with my foot, crawled out, and took off down the street with my hands cuffed behind me. I stumbled, fell. Got up and continued running, quickly but carefully. I ran like an ostrich, on my toes, with long bounding strides.

I headed to Bill's a fugitive.

People on the streets saw the handcuffed lunatic sprinting by in a puke-stained shirt with blood-crusted hair, but they didn't say a word. They ignored me. For all they knew, I was homicidal — and I might have been. The truth was that I didn't know myself anymore, but it was a good feeling, like I'd been suffocating in a shell my whole life and had only now chipped my way out into a realm that was familiar but unpredictable.

For the first time in my life I knew I was capable of surprising myself.

I turned onto Bill's block and stopped to catch my breath. Darvish's Chrysler was parked across from the apartment building. I walked over and touched my knuckles to the hood. It was still hot.

The bald guy with the handkerchief and red goatee was still hanging around outside. “Ooh, I love the handcuffs,” he said. “Very kinky. If you're looking for your boyfriend, he went inside.”

I was tired as hell of prostitutes. I shot him a fuck-you glare and made for the front door. Turned around and tried to open it with my cuffed hands. No go. Through the glass I could see Darvish walking down the hall to the elevator.

Mr. Goatee Man approached me. “Need some help there, trooper?”

He put his bony hand on my shoulder, and as he did so, a scream, hoarse and desperate and female, stabbed through the air like a knife from the rooms upstairs. I looked into Goatee Man's eyes and saw my fear reflected in them. He opened the door and I ran inside. The elevator doors had just closed with Darvish inside. I took the stairs. When I reached the second floor I stumbled and fell. Someone grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me up. It was Darvish. His finger was pressed against his lips. I nodded, terrified.

There was a gun in his hand, a cold black piece of steel. He'd become the Grim Reaper in a sweater vest and chalky slacks. He dug his free hand into his pocket, pulled something out, and yanked me by the collar. For a second I thought he was going to stick me with a sedative; instead he reached down and unlocked my cuffs. Then he turned around and walked slowly in the direction of 210, the apartment from which the scream had come. Bill's apartment.

I started to follow, but he stuck his arm out to stop me. Shook his head no without turning around.

I leaned against the wall and slid into a sitting position. There wasn't anything to do but wait for death — mine or someone else's. There was no escaping it. It hung in the air, hot, poisonous, unavoidable. The scary thing was that I wanted to see it happen. I wanted to watch life disappear from someone's eyes. Did that make me a psychopath?

Darvish stood flat against the wall outside Bill's door with his gun in the air. “This is the police,” he said, loudly. “Open the door and put your hands in the air.”

“Help me!”
someone screamed. A girl.
“Oh God, please help me!”

“I'm coming in,” Darvish called.

He took a step backward and kicked open the door. He ducked right away, aiming his gun where someone's throat would have been, had anyone been standing there.

“Oh fuck, help me. He's hiding somewhere. Help me, please
.
”

It was Melanie's voice. I stood up. Darvish swooped into the room and disappeared. I followed him.

The place smelled horrible, like rotten onions. It slapped you in the face. I put my hand to my mouth and nose.

“In here! Help me
.
”

I followed Darvish toward Melanie's voice. He turned on his heels and pointed the gun at my face. “Get the fuck out of here!” he said in a loud whisper.

I ran past him. He tried to grab my shirt and missed. I stumbled and fell to my knees as I burst through the door at the end of the hall.

Melanie was strapped to a dirty mattress on the floor, spread-eagle and fully naked, with bear traps clamped to both her ankles, the metal teeth biting deep into her skin. One of her feet was bent to the side. Exposed bone jutted out the side of her ankle like a lamb chop. The other foot was purple with bruises. She was the palest I'd ever seen her; even her freckles had lost their colour.

She whispered, “Brandon.” It was a foreign word. Everything changes in the face of human viciousness, a close-up view of pure evil. Nothing is ever the same again.

Darvish rushed into the room behind me. “Oh my God.” He didn't sound like a cop then. Whatever he'd seen in his years on the beat — and something told me he'd seen a lot — the sight of Melanie shook him. His mouth was open; his gun hung loosely from his hand like a toy.

“He's still
here
,” Melanie said softly, her voice half-dead.

The words seemed to jolt Darvish back into action. He raised his gun and surveyed the room while I crouched at Melanie's side and attempted to untie the ropes from her wrists. My hands were shaking. I sobbed and gagged. I thought, for some reason, of my mother in the hospital, and then of Melanie's parents, whoever they were. The body on the mattress was their little girl.

From somewhere in the hall came the sound of slow footsteps. We all stopped — moving, breathing, everything. Darvish held his gun in both hands and aimed it at the doorway.

The steps got closer. Whoever was out there was moaning like a bereaved sea monster. It was the sound of surrender. Of accepting, even embracing, a violent fate.

Bill walked through the door, naked and shivering, his huge gut eclipsing his penis. There was a corkscrew in his hand. He pointed it feebly at Darvish. The gesture was enough: the cop's bullet hit him in the chest. Bill Barber took it willingly, almost proudly, before he crumpled to the floor and muttered, “I never did it before.”

Prison was never an option. Bill Barber had to die.

I think he wanted to.

Another day, another
hour
, and Melanie could have bled out in that room, the walls of which were plastered with pornographic Polaroids that Bill had taken before strapping her to the mattress. The photographs were incredible, artistic in a way that only someone who doesn't know what they're doing can achieve, perfectly capturing Melanie's gruff sensuality. It even looked like she was enjoying herself. I guess she didn't know what was coming.

The pictures were spread around in a crude overlapping collage reminiscent of the way Melanie's own bedroom was decorated. Had Bill been stalking her since day one, as I had? The thought made me feel like an accomplice.

Still does.

Melanie was rushed directly to Saint Aiden's. I was put into the back of Darvish's Chrysler and left to watch as almost every cop, paramedic, and journalist in Frayne arrived on the scene. Yellow caution tape was unfurled. Photographs were taken. Mr. Goatee was being interviewed by two uniformed officers. It looked like he was crying.

I was still in the car when Bill's body was carried out of the building on a stretcher. He was wrapped in a body bag, his gut so big that his corpse might've been mistaken for that of a pregnant woman.

His last words echoed in my brain.
I never did it before
. Did what, Bill? Kidnapped a young girl, tied her to a filthy mattress, raped her and tortured her? Maybe it was simpler, more pathetic than that. Maybe Bill had been a virgin. There was no way of knowing.

A few minutes later, Darvish joined me in the back seat of the squad car.

“You're a crafty bastard, you know that?” he said. “I could charge you with a whole slew of things if I wanted to. Resisting arrest. Assaulting an officer. Escaping police custody. You'd get years. But you know what? I'm going to forget all that.”

I stared out the window and didn't say a word.

He put his massive hand on my shoulder. “If I were you I'd get out of here. This town, I mean, when this is all over. There's nothing good here. Trust me, I know.”

“My mother's in the hospital,” I said. “I'd like to go see her.”

He laughed. “You want me to let you go?”

I didn't say anything.

“All right,” he said, reaching for his keys. “I'll drive you there.”

We never got to Saint Aiden's. It seems inevitable when I think back on it. Somebody else was bound to die.

We were the only car stopped at the traffic light. The town was eerily deserted. Stores were closed. Lights were off. It was 3:13 p.m.

Darvish stuck a fingernail between his teeth to dislodge a piece of food. I watched him struggle with it, trying different fingers as he attempted to dig out whatever it was. When I looked out the window, I realized we were just down the street from The Bloody Paw. I looked at the bar and thought of the pictures I'd smashed. I hadn't been able to hear anything that night. All sound had sunken into the vacuous hum of blood and adrenaline inside my head.