I lifted his toupee and felt the back of his head. A small knot was forming at the base of his skull. Nice work. I’d seen it before. On Peyton Tillman.
“You got sapped from behind, Bobby,” I told him. “You couldn’t have fought back.”
He slumped back down in the chair and waited quietly while I freed his hands and legs. “It’s true,” he finally said in an ashamed voice. “I never heard the guy, never saw him. All of a sudden, the lights just went out. Figuratively speaking. When I came to, there I was, all trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Jesus, do you know what it’s like to not be able to breathe? I felt helpless.”
“No one could have done anything under those circumstances,” I assured him. “I promise not to tell a soul. Did he take anything?” And what, I wondered, was he looking for?
“Hell if I know. Take a look at this mess.”
It was true. Our office would never qualify for the cover of Good Housekeeping on the best of days, but it didn’t usually look like a twister had just passed through. That night it did. File cabinets were turned over. Bobby’s paperwork was scattered across the rug. His trash can full of beer had been emptied onto the floor. Manila folders covered the carpet. I followed the mess down the hall and discovered that my own small office had been equally destroyed. All the drawers of my desk had been jimmied open, the contents emptied onto the floor. That son of a bitch.
I dropped to my hands and knees and searched. My revolver was gone. I pawed through what was left of my top drawer. So was my fake permit and copy of the registration. Damn it. It had taken a long time to get that gun and clean papers. Now I was back to square one. My file cabinet had also been trashed, but that gave me less concern. I only keep old files in the cabinet. I carry the current files with me wherever I go. Which reminded me of offinded msomething. I bolted out the front door and checked the Valiant. It gleamed undisturbed beneath a streetlight. But when I went back inside, I was in for a nasty surprise: Bobby lay on the floor like a small mountain of flesh rising from a paperwork plain. And he wasn’t moving.
I knelt beside him and felt for a pulse. None. Oh, god. No CPR class could have prepared me for such an emergency. I would need every ounce of my considerable weight to reach his heart through all that flesh. And if the phones had been disconnected, we were screwed. I grabbed the receiver and found a dial tone. Taking a deep breath, I called 911 even as I searched for the tip of Bobby’s breastbone. I probably sounded like an hysterical female, but who cared? At that moment, that’s exactly what I was. At least help was on the way.
Meanwhile, I found the proper spot, took a deep breath and began to pump. Or, rather, began to jump. I knelt beside him on the balls of my feet, pressing with all my strength, hopping up and down like a crazed troll as I forced my entire weight down on Bobby’s chest. It worked. His body began to jump slightly in rhythm with mine. That meant I was getting through. I paused after twelve repetitions and steeled myself for what came next.
I had never touched Bobby’s lips in my life and had fervently hoped I might go to my grave without doing so. But these were dire circumstances. I tilted his head back and zeroed in on my mark, closed my eyes and began mouth-to- mouth. “Pretend you’re smooching Marlon Brando,” I thought and locked lips. It wasn’t so bad, I told myself. After all, I was the one who had been puking earlier—not him. Besides, while Bobby D. could be a disgusting pig, he was my disgusting pig.
God bless quiet weekday nights: the ambulance was there within five minutes. I could hear the sirens screaming down the street. The sound drove me to new heights of pumping frenzy. By the time the paramedics burst through the door, I probably looked like I was trampolining.
“We’ve got him,” one of them said, grabbing my shoulders and pulling me away. I tumbled across the rug and lay still, gasping for breath. Talk about your calorie burners.
“Paddles,” I heard one of the men say. I rolled out of the way as another man rushed past with a portable cardiac unit. This part I would skip. I turned away and held my breath until I heard a voice say, “He’s breathing. Let’s go.”
I was nearly trampled in the rush, but at the very last minute, a pair of hands pulled me to my feet and helped me toward the door.
“Where are you taking him?” I asked. “I’ll meet you there.”
“Wake Med.” The doors slammed and they were gone.
I could have ridden in the ambulance if I had been quick enough, but I had nlac but I o desire to leave my car with my files in it behind. In fact, given the current state of my office, I was hiding those files, and pronto. I locked up the office—calling the cops to report my gun stolen was out of the question since I wasn’t supposed to have one in the first place— climbed inside the Valiant and headed for Krispy Kreme.
Once safe in the anonymity of their parking lot, I transferred my current case files to a small depression in the trunk beneath the spare tire and covered them with an oil-encrusted pillowcase I used as a cleaning cloth. Then I refueled on coffee and doughnuts and headed for Wake Med.
They wouldn’t let me see him. My makeshift attire and bloody arm didn’t help. I looked like an escapee from a softball game for the criminally insane. In the polite way of southerners, the emergency-room receptionist let me know I was wasting my time and ought to come back tomorrow. Bobby was hooked up to monitors and booked for a bed in the cardiac-tracking unit. “He’ll be all right,” she promised me, her drawl making the words sound even more soothing. “You’d be amazed at what they can do these days. If he’s breathing, they’ll keep him alive. Just you wait and see. He’ll be back to normal by next week.”
I wanted to request a few improvements while they were at it, perhaps some liposuction and a personality transplant or two. But I was too relieved to joke about him and left, exhausted, to head home.
Just on the other side of Raleigh, I realized that I was one of only two cars on Wade Avenue. The other car followed at a distance, but matched my speed consistently. Paranoia set in. Visions of being run off the road by Peyton Tillman’s murderer started playing out in my mind. I spent so much time looking in the mirror, it was a miracle that I didn’t crash into one of Raleigh’s famous oaks.
When the other car turned off on the Beltline, I was so relieved I pushed the pedal to the metal and zoomed down 1-40 as fast as my souped-up Valiant could take me. I made a beeline for MacLaine’s where my friend Jack held court and occasionally actually worked during one of his shifts as a bartender. There was no way I was going home tonight. If my apartment had been tossed like my office and Peyton Tillman’s house, I didn’t want to know about it. I was too tired to face it. Let him rob me. I owned little of value and my case files were snug in my trunk. The only thing confidential in my apartment required batteries and was stored in a bedside table. If my home had been trashed, I’d deal with it in the morning. What I was most worried about was my safety, which meant bunking elsewhere.
Thanks to a flagrant disregard of the law, I made it to the bar before it closed. The entire place was dark and nearly deserted. Just a few drunks lurching toward love in the back room. Jack was wiping down the bar and looking bored. The cook sat at the far end of the counter, nursing a beer and a shot.
“Casey baby, dangerous lady.” Jack stopped and looked a little closer. “Christ, you look like you’ve been through a blender. The blood smeared on your arm is very fetching. And that outfit. Well…“ow it. Wel He paused. “I’m left speechless.”
“Thanks. Occupational hazard.” I told him about my night. He had a different idea about who the office burglar might be.
“I hope it wasn’t Tony,” he said.
“Who the hell is Tony?” I asked.
“Remember that bartender you caught double dipping last weekend?”
“It seems like a hundred years ago, but, yeah, I remember his dishonest ass.”
“He got fired and he found out who you are. He’s real pissed.”
“How did he find out who I was?” I asked.
Jack shrugged. “I gotta tell you, Casey, you’re not exactly low key. A lot of people know who you are and what you do. You ought to start wearing a disguise when you work as a spotter.”
“It would be tough to disguise these babies,” I said, poking my chest out.
“True. A connoisseur like me would always be able to tell.”
I didn’t have the energy to sustain the joke. Being stalked by a crazed ex-bartender was not exactly what I needed at the moment. “How seriously pissed is he?” I asked.
“Hard to say, but I think he’s a little nutty. And word is, he owns a gun.”
“Oh, great. That makes one of us.”
“Where’s yours?”
“Gone with the wind.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” Jack said. “I don’t usually pull this paternal crap on you, but I think you better spend the night at my place. If you can take the mess.”
“I have a shovel in the car,” I offered.
“How about handcuffs?” he said hopefully.
“I have those, too. But what I don’t have is the energy.”
He nodded agreement. “No problem. We’ll just snore the night away together.”
“I don’t snore,” I said indignantly.
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“I don’t snore, do I?” I asked, less assured.
“I’ll let you know in the morning.”
If either one of us snored that night, neither one of us was in a position to remember. We both fell asleep within seconds of hitting the pillows.
Jack lived in one of those anonymous brick apartment complexes that had infiltrated the Triangle over the past decade to attract young professionals struggling along on their first salaries after college. There were days I envied his access to the swimming pool—but never his neighbors. Both they and their apartments tended to look alike. In fact, when I woke the next morning, I couldn’t even remember if I was in a motel room or someone’s home. A glance at the floor told me I was at Jack’s: his unique laundry system calls for him to drop his clothes in a big pile wherever he happens to take them off, which is usually next to his bed. I’d probably find half of my own long-lost wardrobe in the mess, but I was too achy to mount a search.
“I can’t move,” I mumbled. “My left side hurts like a son of a bitch from where I fell on Tillman’s deck.”
Jack stirred sympathetically and promptly fell back asleep. An elbow near his kidneys did the trick.
“Ouch, Casey. Geeze! Whatever happened to ‘good morning, darling’?” He opened his eyes and glared, a bear reluctant to leave hibernation.
“I said I can’t move. That spill last night was a nasty one. I’m so stiff I can’t think of anything else.”
“What a coincidence. So am I.” He took my hand and wrapped it around the evidence.
“Forget about it, Romeo. I have work to do. Last night I was scared. This morning I’m pissed. Pissed and sore.”
“What you need is a long soak in a hot tub.”
I thoughtahoi of Peyton Tillman’s body draining to a pale luster in his. “I don’t think so,” I said. “Not for another ten years, at least.”
“Okay,” Jack agreed. “A brief massage. But only because you had such a lousy night.”
I lay on my stomach and Jack expertly worked the kinks from my muscles while I groaned in contentment. As my body relaxed, my mind began to sharpen. I was sad, but mostly I was determined to find Peyton’s killer. And what I didn’t need was an angry ex-bartender on my heels.
“You really think that guy is going to stalk me?” I asked Jack. “Can’t he just find a new boss to rip off and leave me alone?”
“That was a good job he got bounced from,” Jack explained. “Lots and lots of money. Lots and lots of women.”
I felt better after hearing that. I had just saved the women of the Research Triangle an awful lot of infections.
“Can you help me out with something?” I asked him, thinking over my options on the Gail Honeycutt case.
“I live to serve,” he lied.
“I keep hearing that there are rumors about Roy Taylor having been dirty, but I never hear them from anyone who actually believes it. It’s weird. Can you ask around and find out if there was anything going on?” Jack knew a lot of people in the Triangle, including the ones who never even thought about getting out of bed until midafternoon. “It would have been awhile ago,” I added. “And maybe it had something to do with drug arrests. That’s what he was working on when he died.”
“I’ll ask,” he agreed. “Anything else I can do for you while you’re giving marching orders?”
“I’m gonna need a new gun,” I said, thinking out loud. “Know where I can get one?”
Jack put both thumbs at the base of my spine and began to work them up and down the column. It was better than sex, if you took into account the fact that I was allowed to simply lay there. “Can’t help you with that one,” he said after thinking things over. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
“Yeah?” Thanks to the back rub, my spirit was now willing, though my flesh was weak. “It’s time to prove it.”
By the time I got home, most of Durham was hard at work behind their desks or in the corridors of the many schools and medical facilities anchoring the city’s economy. I entered my building almost cheerfully, gathering my strength for what I had to do that morning. If my apartment was tr “Atment washed, so be it. The contrast wouldn’t be all that great.