I hoped his wife was awesome.
I had a feeling he deserved awesome.
Really, freaking awesome.
“We live in Denver, not Alaska,” I noted.
“We just stock toilet paper. Trust me. It’s better than rubbing up against Trish,” Hank replied.
Chavez settled back down on Hank’s desk and I looked to him before I said, “We probably should keep going. There are, um . . . things to do that need to get done.”
“You’re right,” Chavez said. “You good to go on?”
I nodded.
“Just the routine questions left, Rebel. Like do you know anyone that would want to hurt Diane?” Chavez asked.
I shook my head. “Not that I know of, but I wasn’t a part of her world anymore. I don’t know what she was into, outside of what I told you. But she was so deep into what she was into, who knows what else she got herself into.”
“This voice on the phone,” Hank put in. “You think you might remember who it is?”
I shook my head again but said, “I hope so. If I do, I’ll tell you. But it isn’t coming to me now.”
“It might,” Chavez said. “Things are extreme now, Rebel. Your head clears out, it might happen. My advice, don’t try too hard. Just take care of you, Diane’s parents, and let it come if it comes. No pressure.”
“Right,” I replied.
“You see anyone come, go, anything around Diane’s house when you pulled up, walked to the door, sat in the car waiting for the police?” Hank asked. “Anything, Rebel. A car, someone walking by, movement in any of the other houses?”
I had to shake my head again. “No, and I was looking. I was freaked. I was freaked sitting in my car in her ’hood and waiting for the cops. I was freaked about what might be happening with Diane. So I was hyper-alert. I still didn’t see a thing.”
Hank and Chavez glanced at each other before they looked back to me.
“That’s all we have now, Rebel,” Hank said. “Drink your water. Freshen up in the bathroom. Eddie and me need to have a chat. Then we’ll head out to see Diane’s parents.”
I looked between them both and stood up.
But I ended my look on Chavez.
“I’ll tell you what I told Hank. That wasn’t her, what was in her house tonight. She was good. Diane Ragowski was a good person. A good woman. A good friend. A good daughter. Until she wasn’t. But that part was always with her. It was just who she was. It was the drugs that made her something she wasn’t.”
“She doesn’t have to be good for me to work my ass off to find out what happened to her, Rebel,” Chavez replied. “But I’m glad to know she had people who loved her and at one point in her life, earned that.”
She had that.
People who loved her.
Okay, time to deep breathe again.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
And having said my piece, I decided to let them have their chat so we could move on to the next bodacious part of this fabulous late-night party.
“Bathroom?” I asked.
“I’ll show you,” Chavez said, pushing off the desk again.
He showed me. I drank my water, threw the cup in the trash in the bathroom, freshened up as best I could, went out and met them again at Hank’s desk.
Then I led them to Paul and Amy’s house and we moved on to the next bodacious part of this fabulous late-night party.
It was seven million times worse than what had come before.
It was also a time I’d never forget.
And then there’d come a time I was glad for that.
Because I would need to remember just how hideous it was in order to make sure I got the job done.
Hank had been right.
I surprised myself with the stuff I could do.
The good.
And the bad.
You Got Balls After All
Chew
Seven months later . . .
He stood with his shoulders against the back gate. She’d come out. He’d watched. She always came out, pissed off and grumbling to herself because her man did not keep things the way she wanted them kept, and that was somehow her man’s fault.
Chew did not get that shit.
If a bitch wanted something her way, she should just fucking do it. Don’t ride your man’s ass about it. He doesn’t want it that way. He doesn’t give a shit the trash was taken out every night so you wouldn’t smell it. Who gives a fuck?
You don’t like the smell, haul the trash out your own self, bitch.
Well, she did. And there she was, looking ticked as shit and grumbling about what a loser her man was.
Sure, it was the middle of the night after a long shift at a roadhouse. She was probably tired. And her man hadn’t shown for work, as usual. Chew had staked it out and he’d seen. So she was probably seriously tired since she had to do her shift and his.
But it was her that wanted the trash out, for fuck’s sake.
She’d run a bar for decades.
It didn’t take her but a couple of steps down her walk to sense him in the shadows.
Her outside light had a motion sensor, but it didn’t kick in because the bulb had blown. Something else Chew had noted when he’d scoped out where this was going to go down.
She was probably ticked at her man because he hadn’t changed that too, when the woman had two working legs, two working arms, and all ten fingers were functioning, and she could change the damned bulb.
She stopped and looked through the dark, right at him.
“Well fuck me,” she said snidely. “You got balls after all.”
Okay.
He was done.
He lifted the gun in his hand, aimed and pulled the trigger.
She fell flat on what was left of her face. Dead before she hit the ground, the barely filled white plastic bag of garbage drifting to the ground at her side like a big, sad, deflated balloon.
Chew pulled out his little Maglite, searched the ground, found the casing, picked it up with his gloved hand and palmed it. The metal was too hot for him to pocket just yet.
He’d dump it somewhere nowhere near there.
He saw a light go on next door, doused his Mag, shoved the flashlight in his back pocket, turned and slipped through the gate.
He stayed close to the shadows cast by the back fences in the alley until he hit the street where Harrietta’s car was parked.
He got in, started it up and drove off like he had nowhere to be.
And he did all of this not thinking of the body he’d just left behind.
Not that first thought.
Harrietta
Harrietta Turnbull listened to the phone ring.
Then she listened to what she’d heard a fucking million times over the last coupla months.
“You got Rush. I know you, leave a message. You’re tryin’ to sell me something, fuck off.”
Beep.
“You want to talk to me, asshole,” she bit into the phone. “Call me back.”
Then she took it from her ear, hit the button to disconnect and threw it across the room.
The phone slammed into the wall and dropped to the floor.
Tarantulas all over the place scattered.
She shivered at the sight despite having seen it a fucking gazillion times over the last too many fucking years.
“Where is that asshole? It’s fucking four in the morning,” she snapped at her phone on the floor.
Goddamn it, it had to be Chaos that took Chew down.
If Chaos was behind it, the years he’d rot in prison would eat him alive.
He’d hate it, motherfucking hate it, if she gave him to that girl. That Tallulah. It’d drive him crazy if some pussy turned him over to the cops.
And it was getting tough to string that bitch along.
She wanted done with porn, Valenzuela, the whole gig.
Harrietta didn’t blame her.
She wanted done with all that shit too.
But it had to be Chaos.
Harrietta didn’t think on the fact she took it in stride that not only had Chew been stepping out on her, stepping out with a girl that was only slightly older than Harrietta’s own daughter, a daughter Chew helped raise (if you could call it that) then got murdered, but also, he’d ended up getting rough with her (his norm, the sick fuck) and killed the snatch.
No, she didn’t think about what it meant, taking that in stride.