R.S. Guthrie - Detective Bobby Mac 03 - Reckoning (7 page)

“You a movie buff?”

“Aw, you never asked me such a personal question before, boss.”

“Fuck you.”

“Love ‘em,” Manny said. “Can’t get enough.”

“You should read more,” I told him, as I probably told my son too many times. The overbearing father.

“Why buy a cow when you get the milk for free?”

“What?
That’s
why you should read more. Not only is the proverb misquoted, it is a terrible metaphor.”

“I could never tell the difference,” Manny said.

“Between—”

“Metaphors, similes, proverbs, etcetera.”

“Ah, me either,” I laughed. “Pretty sure you were shooting for a metaphor, though. I got it. Movies are like Cliff Notes.”

“Fucking nice metaphor, boss.”

“I think that was a simile. Let’s go for a drive.”

“Bingo,” Manny said.

I grabbed my jacket and Manny, his too. “The answer is no, by the way.”

“To what?”

“I would
not
like my perp to deliver himself up as in
Se7en
, a movie I
love
, mi amigo. One, too fucking easy. I love the job.”

“Two?”

“Gruesome fucking ending, wouldn’t you say?”

“Amen to that.”

We thought we’d have to sit in a cramped, cigarette-smelling office watching low-grade video on a three-inch screen. Turns out the manager was just using a euphemism. “Tape.” Like calling CD’s “records” kind of deal. This man was a techie and had convinced the owner to buy state-of-the-art digital surveillance. And he meant he duped off each twenty-four hour day from the system hard drive to an online service that secured and backed up the data. Another cost he’d talked the boss into.

As we walked into the store the manager popped up out of his office and greeted us with a nice USB drive with twenty-four hours of surveillance, in case we wanted all of it.

“It’s all time-stamped, high def, and I clipped off a segment two hours before and two hours after. A little less for my men in blue to have to sift. Used a sweet little program I downloaded.”

I accepted the small drive, still amazed at the constant collusion between Big Software and Big Storage.
I’ll make my software bigger, you sell more space.
Chicken and the egg but you could buy a shitload of storage for a buck and put it on a piece of plastic no bigger than your thumb (although I had monster thumbs).

“Thanks, uh, Chuck, right?” I said. He nodded, eyes dancing a tad, clearly enthusiastic to be part of an honest-to-Pete homicide investigation; biggest the city had ever known, though we hadn’t told him that much. “Your boss pay for the video clipping software, too,” I joked with him.

“Ah, free download. Twenty-nine ninety-five if I want to ‘appreciate’ the private developer’s work. It’s great software and fuck if I don’t appreciate an honest person trying to make an honest living.”

“So you’re saying the boss paid, he just doesn’t know it.”

“Chicken scratch, my main man.”

“I got it,” I told him. “Seriously, though, we really appreciate your cooperation, Chuck.”

“Go get the bad guy, Detectives.”

As we were leaving the store, my cell rang. Blocked number.

“Hello?” I said. Never give out anything until you know who you’re talking to.

“Bobeeeee.”

I froze. Whatever was in my stomach dropped straight into my bowels. I felt the urge to vomit. I couldn’t speak. I mean
I literally couldn’t speak
.

A voice from the past.

The killer delivering himself up on a silver platter.

“A little like the movie
Se7en
, wouldn’t ya say, old buddy? You remember the scene: the detectives stumble upon the killer’s apartment and he comes up the stairs carrying groceries at the far end of the hall while they’re knocking on
his
door.
Great scene.
Perfect cinematography. The distance down the hall, the silhouette, the killer’s hat and
him holding a sack of groceries
. Ah, gives me chills. Don’t worry, though, I don’t plan to open fire on you. Although I could.”

I started spinning, looking around, eyeing every street person, every shopper, teen, hippie, homeless guy—
anyone
.

Just like the fucking movies.

“What’s up?” Manny said, still finishing a Coney dog he bought inside while I was chatting with the manager.

“You don’t have to say anything, Mac. And stop spinning around like a cliché. We’re cool. You won’t find me. You think I’d stand behind you? It’s not going to work out that way.”

“Fuck you, Spence. Where the hell have you been all these years?”

Manny dropped his hotdog, chili and cheese splattering on the scorching asphalt at our feet.

Spencer Grant and his daughter Melissa dropped off the edge of the planet ten years ago. That was just after him informing me he was in Denver then, not the panhandle of Idaho where he murdered his wife and other daughter, saving Melissa for God knew what.

Ten years we’d not heard a thing; ten years no one resembling Melissa had ever been credibly reported. APBs, BOLOs, the works. Spence was even on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List,
in every post office
. Plenty of crank reports but not one legitimate sighting of either of them.

I swore to God above I never even
thought
of him as a suspect. Bad detective work, yes, but no surprise, I was sure, to a psychologist. As every year passed with no sightings, no more hauntings, demons—no Father Rule. My brain was just pleased as shit-cake to bury all that had happened in the distant past so fucking deep I’d need an oil derrick to bring it to the surface.

“I’ve been here in Denver, Mac. You know that. I told you myself when you were tossing the ball to your cute pups. How are the mutts?”

 Tina and Sketch. My beloved Jack Russells. Sketch grew a tumor when he was just ten. I had to put him down. Tina was never the same and developed a sympathetic tumor just a few months later. Without warning, I lost both my dogs within three months of each other.

“It’s been you,” I said softly.

“I can’t believe you didn’t do the math on that one, my long lost friend,” Spence said. The tone in my voice had given my lack of suspicions away. What was this, Bad Detective Day?

“I considered it,” I lied. “Figured since we’d not heard from you that you had a change of heart and took Melissa somewhere nice.”

“Denver’s nice.”

“Not with bodies piling up it’s not. Terrible thing for a child to hear about.”

“Or live through.”

“What?” I said.

“You were probably thinking,
or to live through
. The thing up in Idaho.”

The thing. What a psycho douchebag.

“Let’s grab a coffee,
old friend
,” I said.

“Ha, good one, Mac. I’ll be in touch. Oh, almost forgot, buddy: Jax says ‘hey’.”

The call went dead. So did my soul.

“Was that who I think it was?” Manny said, breaking the stony silence, his Puerto Rican skin almost as pale as mine.

“Yeah.”

“You never thought—”

“No. It was
ten years
ago he called me and said he was here, in Denver.”

“I know.”

“I haven’t heard a thing since then.”

“Sure, I got it.”

“Ten years.”

“I know, Bobby. I’m sorry. That hurt never goes away.”

The things people say. I stopped saying them a long time ago. They don’t help the bereaved; they don’t console the lost. I missed my brother
every single minute of every day
. His absence from the world left a void in my heart that could not
accept
any other substance, much less be filled. It was of no consequence that we hardly spoke when he lived in Idaho; hadn’t spoken until—

It mattered not. He was my de facto best friend. In good and bad times. In laughter and silence. Even years of silence and a thousand miles. It went
unspoken
. Not only my blood. My
brother
. The only one I’d ever had. He knew things from the time he could remember at five or six through our high school and college years (and even some adult) that no one else in the world knew.

And now he was not of this earth. I wasn’t convinced he was dead; that was from the part of me that remembered all the crazy shit that went down on that mountain ledge, the part of me that couldn’t let go of it.

Ten years.

A lot of denial builds up over ten years.

“No,” I said to Manny. Acknowledging his useless words. Politely. It’s what we do.

“I-I just thought. Shit, I had no idea what I thought.”

“You thought
why the fuck didn’t the senior detective on this case even SUSPECT a mass murderer capable of killing his own wife and child
?”

“Shit, brother, I never made the connection either. I never brought him up. With the APBs, BOLOs—how does a guy stay in the city with a growing daughter and not get nabbed?”

“I should’ve known this had his greasy, evil hands all over it.”