Part 5 - Wolfe: First the Bad News

I sighed when I saw the mess.

Another bad night. I barely remembered it. Hell, I barely remembered the fucking cab ride home, only that I’d gotten out a few blocks short and walked, trying to clear my head. Now, looking at the tragedy that was my apartment, apparently a victim of a big bad tornado the night before, I could only sit on the step just inside the front door and sigh. I pulled on the Ultra, noting how short it was growing, how close the blaze glowing at its tip was getting. It was my last one, but I had another pack somewhere in the disaster zone that dared me to get up and go find it. At the moment, all I could do was hang my head so that I couldn’t see it.

Instead, all I could see was her.

Red. The alley was dripping with it. Her and her life’s water, like rain from a few evenings before when we’d stood there under that pitiful lamp and I’d almost gone hoarse from screaming at her. Red in front of me. Red on the street, crawling across the pavement until it dripped into the storm drain at the foot of Smiley’s door. I’d found it on my hands, on my face, on my shoes. The red water, thick and sticky and sweet. Had I been that close to her? And how could I not have been that close? I asked myself too many questions on the walk home. They were coming hard and fast now — questions that I’d shut out the night before. Enough whiskey and a painkiller or two will do that.

I stared at my shoes, felt the chill of the black concrete flooring leeching through the soles of those shoes, shoes I’d found next to the door, shoes that I was sure had been red with blood the night before. Brown wingtips. Redder in places, but I couldn’t tell. My world was little more than black and white. And Red.

She was leaving. She was leaving Smiley’s. She was leaving La La Land. She was leaving me. Again. She’d left before, and I knew it was my fault. Had admitted to it. Had apologized for it. Had sought help for it. Knew it was coming then, but now? Did I know? Or was I fooling myself into thinking everything was fine? The bruising on her face told me. It didn’t lie. Neither did she. Instead she just withheld whatever she wouldn’t lie about.

What did she mean she was leaving? She was leaving. Why? She had to go. Had anything happened? Supposedly I knew why, and I could guess well enough, but there seemed to be more, something more that she was leaving out. Was she crying? Was she sad or happy to being going? Where was she going? Could I come with? Vague flashes of memory, like blurs of colors that I couldn’t see. My voice rising to match the steady beat of the DJ’s tunes. My hands hitting the table like I’d hit her face once before. She’d stood; I’d stood. She’d walked away, shaking her head, then turned on me when I followed, her finger poised in front of my face like a dagger ready to pierce my heart. And her voice. I could barely hear it, but it trembled. With what? Fear? Rage? Didn’t matter. I knew what it said: No. No more.

I looked up, wondering where the other pack of cigarettes was as I crushed out the stub of this last one on my heel. Whatever happened here had happened sometime after I left to go to Smiley’s last night and before I woke up on the floor this morning. I’d have some work ahead of me as soon as I had some food in me. My stomach and my wristwatch conspired to inform me it was lunchtime, so I shook my head, turned and let myself back out.

Archie’s was a Chinese takeout place with a single small one-leg table and two plastic chairs to wait on an order. Or, as always, it was where I ate my lunch. It was safe here, quiet — the world encased in glass for just a few moments while I slurped my noodles and washed it down with water and a little whiskey from my flask. As always, the silence gave me a moment to think.

The door chime binged, and I watched a pair of hipsters come in and pay for a paper bag full of containers. Their eyes swept over me as they left, and I played my usual game: “Who’s the Perp?” The shorter one with fake highlights barely looked my way, his head down, only a sly glance from his blue eyes. They knew I was a cop — suspended or not, it wasn’t hard to tell when you preferred not to meet a cop’s eyes. Pot head, I decided. College student. Twenty-three. Too many pimples to have a girlfriend. He jerked off to cosplay and dreamed of how his collection of pristine vinyl records would get him into the panties of a little hipster girl with a naturally groomed pussy and underarm hair.

When they were gone, I turned back to my chow mein and what had happened earlier in the morning — the trip down to the precinct and the talk with the fucking Pigs. Or pig. Luckily I’d only had to deal with Pie. The other two imbeciles off to talk to another witness.

“What’ve you got for me, Pie?” I closed the glass door behind me with a little too much force.

The porker sat behind his metal desk, a paper bag from the pastry shop around the corner within reach of his stubby little arms. He was munching on a fritter — apple, based on the smell, and his mouth was rimmed in sugar. The only thing that moved was a bushy eyebrow and his snout. “Pie. I’ve got pie, like always.” He snorted at his own joke. Hell of a time for a joke when a man is standing in front of you asking about his dead girlfriend. I wondered how many of those fritters he could get into his mouth before he choked to death. I wondered if I could make it look like an accident.

“Red. The murder victim from last night. I wanna know.”

I looked around me, around the clutter that would confuse anyone new to the place that they were in a police precinct and not the city dump. I found a chair in the corner and dumped its contents on the floor, then drug it around in front of the fat fuck’s desk. He eyed me over his ham hock, still clutching the fritter like it was the last one on Earth.

Pie grunted and chewed, then sat up, dusting himself off. Sugar crumbs dropped off of his wrinkled button-down onto the papers in front of him. “I don’t have a lot yet. You know what we found; you called it in. We have a butcher knife with loads of prints. It looks like a kitchen knife, so how many people could have access to it?” He rolled his eyes. “Single thrust to the gut; lots of internal damage, and the wound was aggravated. Not a single stab wound; looks more like up close and personal, if you know what I mean. The perp stuck around and made it hurt.”

He looked away when he said it, and I was glad he did. I knew what my face looked like at that moment, and I wouldn’t have wanted to see it either. “What else?”

“I…” He hesitated.

“What?”

“I need you to make a statement.” He shifted in his seat when he said it, his eyes focusing on the bag of fritters again.

“No problem.”

“No. I mean, I need you to…” He glanced at me and then back to the bag again. I knew he was a nervous eater, and that’s when I realized there was bad news coming. “I need you to step down to Interrogation Room #3. We need a statement. We need to question you.”

“What the fuck!” I barely heard the chair hit the floor when I stood up, barely felt the cheap metal of his desk as my palms slammed down around his bag of goodies, which I half-expected to see flying across the room from the minor earthquake. Instead, I towered over them, my face burning and the words flying out of my mouth with a healthy dose of spittle that had Pie clutching at his bag and pulling away. I blew his fucking house down, but he stuck to his guns.

There was nothing for it. And I understood, no matter how pissed I was. Procedure. They made it quick and painless, but it had to happen. A few questions, a little cross-examination. She was my girlfriend, after all, and hadn’t we had a massive fight in front of the whole fucking bar earlier that night? And didn’t I have access to Smiley’s like few patrons did? And what if my prints were on that knife? On her shirt? They were surely on her face, on her neck where I checked for a pulse, on her skirt where I pulled it down out of a sudden sense of decency to a beautiful woman I didn’t deserve and who was now a corpse. And where had I been before the bar or at the time of the murder? And where had I gone afterward? And even if it wasn’t me, full disclosure was warranted because whoever did kill her might try and manipulate the details of the crime and implicate me. It would be a few days before they got all the labs back. I should stick around and not leave town, and all that fucking bullshit. Bullshit. Bull-fucking-shit!

And I stormed out of the precinct, barely registering anything, even the sympathy that I knew in hindsight was coming my way from long-time friends, even Pie.

I hit the door like a tornado, sweeping the double doors open and coming face-to-face with a woman — almost barreling her over. I blinked, trying to bring the world back into focus, and she stood there, unsure what to do. Blonde hair that looked well-taken-care-of, glasses, jeans and a leather jacket that smelled new. I mumbled something that might have been an apology and then I blew past her like the storm that was still brewing inside me to the bottom of the broad stairs just as the other two Pigs were climbing out of their unmarked with a little blonde that I recognized: Goldi.