Murder in the Irish Channel (Chanse MacLeod Mysteries) (2 page)

Every board I stepped on while crossing to the door groaned and gave a little under my weight. The front door was weathered and warped-looking behind the gate. The lock and the knob both showed signs of rust. I debated with myself as I raised my hand to knock whether I should actually go through with it.

I hesitated.

It would be so easy to just turn around, walk back to the car, get in, and drive away from this derelict place and whatever problem the people who lived here needed help resolving.

The whole place reeked of decay.

Every instinct in my body was telling me to get the hell out of there.

But I’d promised Rory, so I ignored the little voice in my head and rapped my knuckles against the door frame.

And hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

The girl who opened the door looked like she couldn’t be much older than seventeen. Her light brown hair was greasy and pulled back into a severe ponytail. Her face was bare and pale. She was wearing a white cotton dress that exposed her bony, freckled shoulders. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and there was a coffee stain on the front of her housedress between her heavy breasts. Dark smudges formed half-moons under her swollen, bloodshot eyes. Her face was bare of makeup, and her lips were dry and cracked. Her eyebrows had been drawn on with a pencil, and a cluster of pimples had formed in the center of her forehead. She was barefoot, and her feet were dirty.

She also looked to be about seven or eight months pregnant.

I couldn’t believe how much boredom she managed to squeeze into the word “Yeah?”

“Hi, I’m Chanse MacLeod—”

“The detective guy, right.” She let out a long-suffering sigh, her shoulders slumping. Her entire body seemed to shrink an inch or two. She rolled her eyes and stepped away from the door so I could go inside. “Come on in. Jonny’s in the shower. Sorry about that—just have a seat and he’ll be right out.” She forced what was probably supposed to be a gracious smile onto her face. “He’ll be late to his own damned funeral.” She closed the door behind me and screamed,
“Hurry the fuck up, asshole! He’s here!”
She slipped around me. “Wait here, okay?”

It was dark inside the house—all the shutters were closed on both sides of the house. It smelled musty and slightly sour. She didn’t turn on any lights as she disappeared into the next room, leaving me in the dark. I took a deep breath and looked around, squinting through the gloom. I couldn’t see if there was a place to sit down, which was just as well.

From the looks of things, I wouldn’t be staying long.

“Sorry!” a young male voice said from the other side of the room, and the room suddenly filled with light, temporarily blinding me.

I was almost sorry I could see.

The overhead light came from a dusty chandelier with cobwebs hanging between the grimy globes. Three of the five lightbulbs were burned out. The room was sparsely furnished. There was a sagging sofa covered with piles of clothes and magazines. One leg was missing and several magazines had been shoved underneath that corner to prop it up. One of the cushions was significantly lower than the others, which meant the springs were ruined on that end. I could see footprints in the thick dust on the hardwood floor. A tired chair sat at about a seventy-five-degree angle to the couch, and there were damp-looking workout clothes piled on it: shorts, a tank top, a yellowed jockstrap. An open black and gold Saints duffel bag was perched on one of its arms, exposing more workout clothes. A coffee table was buried in food wrappers, empty plastic soda bottles, and crumpled chip bags. In the far corner, a new-looking flat screen television perched on top of several plastic boxes with
12:00
flashing in green numbers in the center.

The young man shoved the clothes in the chair onto the floor, exposing several more sour-looking jockstraps. He didn’t look at me as he used his foot to push them behind the chair. He made a grand gesture at the now-empty chair. “Sit, please!” His eyes met mine, and he gave me a smile so dazzling I almost had to take a step back.

He was short—maybe about five-six, if he stretched a bit and stood up on tiptoe. His hair was wet and clinging to his head, but given how fair his skin was, I assumed it would dry to some shade of blond. He had a long nose and a bit of an overbite. He had blue eyes, but the right one was blackened and swollen half-shut. His bottom lip was cut and bruised. Another bruise extended from his chin about halfway down his throat. He was wearing a pair of navy blue nylon shorts with a white stripe down the legs, and a gray tank top with
Everlast
written across the front in black. His pale arms were scraped in places, red in others—but his biceps looked strong and well-defined. Blue veins crisscrossed his forearms. His shoulders were broad, his stomach appeared to be flat, and his exposed legs were dusted with blond hairs and also looked strong. There was a tattoo on his right bicep—a bleeding heart with several swords thrust through it. He was barefoot.

He wasn’t handsome, or even cute—but there was something appealing about him—something fresh, wholesome, and likable. His grin was infectious and good-natured, lighting up his entire face. I couldn’t help but smile back at him.

“Your face—” I started to say, but he cut me off.

“Oh.” He laughed, clearing a space on the sofa. He smiled at me again as he sat down. “Yeah. That’s right, Rory said he couldn’t say anything about me to you. Confidentiality and all that kind of stuff.” He bobbed his head back and forth, blushing a little.

Rory worked at the NO / AIDS Task Force, doing counseling and HIV testing. I nodded. “You went in yesterday to get tested.” I’d assumed that was where Rory had met him, but it never hurts to get the facts.

He nodded. “I had a fight last night, and I gotta get cleared for HIV before they’ll let me in the cage. It’s not because I fuck around on my wife or nothing.” He smiled again. “I won my fight, if you’re wondering.” His smile widened. “Still undefeated, you know.” He bobbed his head up and down. “Eighteen and oh.”

“In the cage?” I wasn’t following him, and for a moment wondered if it was some weird kind of fight club.

“I’m an MMA fighter—mixed martial arts. We fight in a cage. You know—the octagon?” He punched the air with both fists and grinned again. “It’s awesome, man. I love it. Such an adrenaline rush—nothing quite like it. I wrestled in high school and it was nothing like getting in the cage.” The grin slowly faded as he remembered why I was there. He took a deep breath and changed the subject. “Dude, my mom’s missing. Rory said you might be able to find her. Can you do that? I’m really worried, man.”

I cursed Rory in my head. A missing person case was often a money pit for the client, and if the house was any indication, this kid didn’t seem to have the cash flow necessary for even a day’s worth of expenses. “Have you talked to the police, filed a missing persons report?”

“Yeah, I talked to those worthless motherfuckers.” He spat the words out. “I haven’t seen her since Wednesday, and ain’t heard anything, either. That ain’t like my ma, you know? I used to talk to her every day. The last time I talked to her was Thursday, you know? I didn’t hear from her on Friday and I figured, you know, she got busy or whatever, and then I went over there, and she wasn’t home, didn’t look like she’d been home, and her car ain’t there, and she ain’t answering her cell phone, either—and that ain’t like Ma, I’m telling you. And she didn’t show up for my fight last night, either, and Ma ain’t never missed one of my fights.” He started rocking back and forth. “I told the cops that yesterday and I called the asshole who took my report about her not showing up to the fight last night, but I don’t think he gives a damn, you know? He tells me she’ll probably just turn up, and it don’t mean nothing.” His face twisted. “What the hell does he know? He don’t know my ma.”

“She ain’t missing,” the pregnant girl yelled from the next room. “She’s off with some man, you just don’t want to admit it, is all. You’re wasting the guy’s time, Jonny. You might as well just get the hell out of here, mister.”

He gave me a look, shaking his head, and shouted back at her, “Heather, you know damned well Ma wouldn’t do that—”

“She’s a woman, ain’t she?” Heather cut him off angrily. “She ain’t so goddamned pure, ya know—just ’cause she’s your ma doesn’t mean she don’t have needs like any other woman. You think you were a virgin birth? Where you think you came from?”

“I never said that! Why don’t you get us some coffee, will ya, honey?” He gave me a forced and embarrassed “everything’s cool” smile.

“Yeah, ’cuz I ain’t got nothing better to do, right?” I heard her shuffling to the back of the house. “I’m just pregnant, you asshole.”

“Sorry about that, Mr. MacLeod.” He held up both hands and gave me a sheepish grin. “It’s her hormones—I never know whether she’s gonna start crying or screaming or both. She’s due next month.”

I nodded, fighting my instinct to get the hell out of the dirty little house.

“My mom wouldn’t do that, Mr. MacLeod,” he added quickly in a low voice. “I mean, I know she’s a woman, and she’s had plenty of boyfriends over the years, ya know, I ain’t stupid no matter what some people think”—he glanced at the doorway—“but she’s never just gone away without telling no one. That ain’t like her. Like I said, she ain’t answering her cell phone. She didn’t come to the casino last night to see my fight.” He shook his head. “That ain’t like Ma. She ain’t never missed one of my fights, Mr. MacLeod, never.” He swallowed. “I’m worried. Something happened to her, I know it. My brother Robby and my sister Lorelle—they haven’t heard from her either.” He frowned. “Well, I haven’t really talked to Robby since Thursday, I can’t get a hold of him, but I talked to his wife yesterday, and she ain’t heard from Ma, either.” He folded his arms.

“Jonny, even if I take the case, I can’t guarantee I’ll find her,” I heard myself saying before I could stop myself. “And it could get expensive—really expensive.”

“I got money,” he replied stubbornly, his lower lip sticking out.

“That money’s supposed to be for the baby!” Heather screamed from the back of the house. I couldn’t believe she heard him—I’d barely been able to hear him and I was only a few feet away.

I wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. “Look, I don’t—”

“I got money,” he insisted. “Not the baby money. Don’t listen to her, man, you gotta find my ma. Please.” He reached into the pocket of his shorts and passed a crumpled hundred-dollar bill over to me.

I held the bill in my hand.

I thought about telling him what my day rate was, and how that didn’t include expenses—and it was usually the expenses that stabbed the client in the bank account. I thought about telling him one hundred dollars wasn’t even close to the retainer I usually asked for.

I thought about explaining to him that when the majority of people disappeared, there were usually only two possibilities.

The majority of missing persons just walked away from their life. One day, they just woke up and took a long, hard look at their lives and didn’t like what they saw. It could be a long process—with a sense of dissatisfaction and disappointment with life that just kept growing and growing until it finally reached the point where they couldn’t go on anymore. Some people slit their wrists or took pills when they got there. Others said “fuck this” and ran away without a backward glance, just ran and kept running. They changed their names and started over again somewhere else. People who fell into this grouping did not, as a rule, want to be found. Some of them never came back, settling happily into their new lives. Some came back when they realized the change of scenery didn’t solve the problem, or when they started missing and appreciating their old life.

But the ones who do come back don’t until they are good and ready—and do not appreciate being found.

The other possibility was that something had happened to her—something bad. She might have been murdered in some random crime—a mugging or a carjacking or something—and the body just hadn’t been found yet. Or some psychotic grabbed her off the street.

If someone had grabbed her, the odds were she wouldn’t be found alive. She might not
ever
be found.

The right thing to do would be to say, “If she’s alive, she probably doesn’t want to be found. If she’s dead, we may never find her body. In either case, letting the police handle it is your best option.”

Sitting there, I knew I should be honest, give him his hundred-dollar bill back, and walk out the front door, forget that I’d ever been there.

But looking into his earnest, desperate young face, I just couldn’t bring myself to say the words.

“You say she’s been missing for about three days now?” I asked, getting my notepad out of my pants pocket and uncapping a pen.

The relief on his face embarrassed me, so I looked away. “I went over to her house on Friday morning and she wasn’t there. I always have breakfast with Ma on Friday mornings.” He swallowed. “Her car wasn’t there, so I figured she’d run to the store or something. I sat down and waited, and after about an hour I called her. She didn’t pick up—and Ma always picks up, no matter what, unless she’s at Mass. That’s when I started wondering if something was, you know, wrong. After about another hour, I went looking for her. I didn’t see her nowhere, and I kept calling. Nothing. Heather had a doctor’s appointment that afternoon and Ma didn’t show up for that—and Ma don’t never miss any of Heather’s appointments.”