Kill Smartie Breedlove (a mystery) (31 page)

“Hewitt?”

There was a bony prod to the back of Penn’s shoulder, and his heart sank a little when he turned to face Denny McCoy. She hooked her thumbs on her belt, behind her radio on one hip, under the butt of her gun on the other.

“Top o’ the morning, Constable,” Penn said amiably.

“Where are you supposed to be, Hewitt?”

“Here. Bidding this decomp. Is there a problem with that?”

“There’s a problem with you looking in people’s windows. Go sit in your truck until you’re properly authorized to get involved.”

“Somebody’s been cooking meth in that garage,” said Penn. “Take a whiff, Officer McCoy.”

She sniffed, and the stench of putrefaction hanging in the moist heat caught hold of her throat. She doubled over coughing.

“God dang it,” she hacked. “Go—go wait in your truck.”

“You’re welcome,” said Penn. “I’ll add the meth lab to my bid.”

She pointed toward the curb and barked, “I said get over there.”

Whistling an aimless, circular tune, Penn headed down the drive. At the curb, he hoisted the rear door on his panel truck, cracked open a water bottle from a built-in cooler and handed it to Hector, who rinsed and spat and daubed at his swampy eyes.

“Man, that was rank,” said Hector.

“When I first started, my dad told me to do like this.” Penn tucked his bottom lip behind his front teeth, pushed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and inhaled with a
fffffft
. “Eventually your brain basically decides not to process it as reality. Puts a lid on that part of your olfactory senses.”

“Really?” Hector inhaled with a skeptical
ffffffft
.

“The mind is equipped with powerful coping mechanisms.” Penn sagely tapped his temple. “I haven’t yarked at a job site in thirteen years,” said Penn, “and I’ve seen some messed up stuff. Decomps are fairly rare. More homicides in the summer. Holidays are good for suicides, of course. Doing a lot of meth labs the last couple years.”

“That’s a hard way to make a living.”

“Gotta disable the electric, so you got no AC. Fumes are explosive and toxic as heck, so you have to stay completely geared up.”

“I hear the money’s good, though.”

“Oh, heck yeah,” said Penn. “Ridonkulous.”

Maddie came down the driveway and handed Penn a spare set of keys from Mrs. Aceveda’s purse. She pulled the paper cover off her head, and her hair fell around her face in a kicky, bright blue razor cut. She brought the back of her hand to her nose and said, “Dang. This does not bode well for the weekend.”

“What…” Hector said warily.

“The smell penetrates your pores on a molecular level,” said Penn. “Difficult to get laid for a few days after a decomp. Get on my website and click ‘Tricks of the Trade’. There’s a recipe for a peroxide scrub.”

“Too abrasive,” said Maddie. “I rub myself with a lemon.”

“Lucky lemon,” said Penn.

“Ah, Hewitt.” Maddie gave him an up-down appraisal thinly disguised as a slow blink. “The body of a Spartan awkwardly piloted by the brain of Bart Simpson.”

This was the kind of thing Maddie always said. Ah, Hewitt, what you lack in politesse, you make up for in girth. Ah, Hewitt, the conscience of Wally Cleaver shackled to the humping compulsion of an otterhound. Penn knew he was being insulted, but it always left him baffled and strangely warm.

Maddie punched Hector’s arm and said, “Let’s go, sweet cheeks.”

As the meat wagon pulled away, lights mutely turning in a rack on the roof, Penn fished his cell phone from his pocket.

“Whadjuhneed?” It always came out like one word when Kibe Hewitt answered, a single hasp-stroke of whiskey dregs and cigarette abuse.

“Dad. Word of advice. I’m thinking about hiring some part-time help.”

“What for? So you can sit on your dead lazy ass?”

“So I can sleep once in a while,” said Penn. “I’ve been putting in almost a hundred hours a week since I got back. It sucks doing this by myself.”

“Hundred hours a week,” Kibe scoffed. “What’s that average per day?”

Penn closed his eyes. “14.285714.”

“Which leaves how many hours a day to sit on your dead lazy ass?”

“9.714286.”

“Well, hell! What do you want? You want to float around on a swimming pool all day? Why don’t you just do that, assbone? Invite a couple hookers over for a barbecue.”

“Dad, there was a guy at this decomp today. A CSI intern, so he’s cool with blood-born pathogen protocol, OSHA regs, all that.”

“Well, I’m out of it. It’s your business now. Do what you want.”

“I saw that girl,” said Penn. “From the coroner’s office.”

“Nail her.”

“Dad. Geezes.”

“What, you need a map? Turn left at the right kneecap and head north.”

“Why do I even try to talk to you about this stuff?”

“Because you’re a dumbass.”

“What’s Mom up to?”

“Bunko night.”

“Tell her I love her.” Penn pushed the heel of his hand against his eye. “I miss you, Dad. Geez, this is hard.”

“I know, Penn. You just pay attention to where you’re supposed to be,” said Kibe. “Keep your nose clean, and remember that Mom and me love you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get back to work.”

Penn pocketed the cell, whistling again, taking in the blue sky and songbirds.

Elsewhere in the world, it was still winter, but in the separate reality of the high-dollar Houston suburbs, the morning had warmed to eighty-eight heavily perfumed degrees. Away from the tainted house, the air smelled like cut grass with a sticky dressing of fermenting flowers and flowering fruit. The magnolia trees were beaded with decadent sweat. Sego palms and yuccas fanned, live and spiky, beside the verdant bromeliads.

This was the brief moment in March when the knock-kneed azalea bushes miraculously came out with colors so bountiful, so embarrassingly tender, that homeowners were willing to overlook the shrub’s snaggle-ass lack of beauty the rest of the year.

In that fleeting, spell-broken moment, Penn Hewitt found a small, sweet stab of hope for himself.

D
enny McCoy scuffed through the pea gravel that carpeted the city-block-sized playground that separated the moderately upscale street where Felice Aceveda had lived and died from the mouth of the swanky cul de sacs of Marchwood subdivision. She untangled the climbing ropes that dangled from the tall swing set, ducked under the jungle gym and stood at the bottom of the steep metal staircase that spiraled up into the giddy heights of the rocket slide.

Denny didn’t want to climb up in there. She had a thing about heights. But she also had a thing about not being ruled by fear, so she headed up, fingering the safety on her gun to make sure she wouldn’t shoot herself in the ass if she fell.

The first level wasn’t bad. This was the tier where the plastic lip of the little kids’ slide sloped gently down to a soft landing just three or four inches above the pea gravel. Nothing remarkable going on in there usually. The second tier invited the more adventurous middle schoolers. From here, there were two ways to get down: a shiny steel fireman’s pole or a twirling tube slide.

Or, if they were brave enough, they could climb a narrow red ladder up into the top tier, a breezy cage of steel bars topped by the conical nose of the rocket. From there, the climber again had two choices: a long, straight slide that was slicker than spit and got searing hot under the blazing sun or the certain broken neck that would result if one of the cage bars were to give way.

Swallowing hard, Denny pushed her damp palms against the back of her pants and started up the ladder. Coming eye-level with the steel floor, she recoiled from the smell of spilled beer. Broken glass glinted at the perimeter of the round cage.

Denny paused to pull on a pair of latex gloves from her pocket before she gingerly picked up a used condom and dropped it into an empty cigarette pack. A mostly-eaten bag of Doritos lay near the grommeted lip of the steel slide. She reached out and nudged it with her foot to make sure there were no roaches on board, then picked it up and sprinkled the chips through the bars. Sparrows were on them before they flittered to the ground, and Denny stood for moment, listening to them squabble, contemplating the large white house at the end of the cul de sac across the street.

Kenneth Aceveda would be able to see the place from here—see the girl’s bedroom window—plain as anything. If the girl had binoculars or even a digital camera with a good zoom on it, she’d be able to see him, too.

Denny wasn’t fond of this girl, Hope Halloran. She was a spoiled, rich brat. Boo hoo, I’m from a broken home with seven bathrooms. That type. Hope’s parents refused to believe she was tweeking until she was caught doing it with a bunch of other meth heads under the boat dock at the pricey rehab facility. Once a guy like Kenneth Aceveda had his hooks in a stupid, spoiled girl like Hope Halloran, you could pretty much forget it.

“You’re wasting your time,” Maddie had told her.

But Denny also had a thing about lost causes. She got Hope into a program that paired recovering junkies with rescue dogs. Big ones. Not pursy little kick dogs. Dogs that took a significant degree of respect and caring.

Hope’s dog was an elderly mastiff-elkhound cross named Solomon, and she was pretty good with it, even though it was old and farted like Satan’s fry baby and drooled like a whale. The thing drove Hope’s mother crazy, and both Hope and Denny took a lot of delight in that, because Hope’s mother—Dr. Grace Bovey, a contentiously divorced psychiatrist—well, she was a case unto herself.

“Recipe for crazy,” Maddie had said. “Flat out no one in this world is zooier than a shrink.”

Denny did her best to steer clear of the mom and still keep an eye on the girl. And the dog. For a while, it was hard to say which one was in more trouble. Things were going all right, though. Had been for a good while. Hope was taking classes to get her GED, volunteering with Habitat For Humanity on Saturdays, talking about college. The last thing she needed was Kenneth Aceveda cooking meth on the other side of the playground and slithering around the neighborhood after dark.

Denny took her iPhone from her pocket and took a few photos, then she scraped the broken glass into the Dorito bag, wondering whose job it was to clean this playground equipment. Not hers, that was for dang sure, but she didn’t have it in her to leave that kind of thing where some little kid might touch the condom or cut herself.

A brave little kid. Because not many little kids would climb all the way up here.

That kid shouldn’t get punished for being fearless. Denny wasn’t excited about touching the condom herself, but she was proud to stand between that little kid and the kind of people who crap things up in this world.

~ . ~

Something Awful (a love story)

www.StellaLinkBooks.com

Visit Joni Rodgers online:
www.JoniRodgers.com

Like the League of Extraordinary Authors on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/LeagueXA

Thank you!

jr