Jackknifed

"No one ever worked the shoe prints or the tire marks," said Sky. "I wonder why."

"Resources probably," I said. "So maybe the tire marks tell you it's a tire commonly found on a Toyota Camry and that the shoe size is a men's 12. What good does that do you when you have no ID on the body? Looks like the investigation petered out when they couldn't ID the body."

"Makes sense," she said. Then being a good detective, she asked me the question she needed to ask.

"So why your interest in this case?"

That was a tough one to answer. I had to come up with a plausible reason that didn't drag Alessandra into it, at least not yet.

"I got a lead. I think I know who this Jane Doe might be."

"You do? How?"

"Confidential source. I don't think you need to know who."

She accepted my explanation.

"OK. So who do you think it is?"

"I want to do a bit more digging before I say."

"OK. Let me know how I can help."

We went to the copy machine. I had most of the file copied. As we made our way back to the main part of the station Sky surprised me with her forwardness.

"So Max, I hope you don't feel like I'm a stalker, but I've been sort of following your career since I came here."

"You have?"

"Well, you're becoming kind of a legend here."

"I hope that's good," I said, surprised to hear her characterization of my career. I thought I was a failure, especially after being spanked by Lily and DaVanna.

"For the most part. That thing about Adine Williams's china..."

"There is that," I said.

"But what you did with Trong, DaVanna, Jumbo, that's all the kind of gangster shit you see in the movies."

"I've never thought of it that way."

She stopped. I did as well.

"Would you consider having a drink with me sometime?" she asked.

"Are you asking me out on a date?" I asked back.

"Well, sort of... I know I'm nobody."

This was a decision point for me. I knew I always made the wrong decision, so why not be consistent?

"I'd love to," I said. "What about Bailey's?"

"This Wednesday?" she asked. She was obviously familiar that Wednesday night was "Ladies Night" at Bailey's. God, now she was looking sexy to me in those glasses. I chided myself for being such a pussy hound.

"So you know about Wednesday?" I asked.

"Uh huh. I've seen you there before. Usually with this cute young girl, dark spikey hair..."

"That's Courtney," I said.

"Is she your girlfriend?"

She didn't know that was a loaded question. I didn't want to get into our on again off again relationship and how she flaked out on me yet again.

"Not really. Let's just say she's a good friend."

Sky look relieved. "Oh, I see. So maybe I'll see you at Bailey's? Say nine o'clock this Wednesday?"

"Sure."

What harm could come of having a drink with her?

* * *

Now that I knew a bit more about the murder it was time to find Lenny. I was doing it on my own time as investigating cold cases wasn't part of my job description in Vice. I was going to drag along Lesley, who also took personal day. True sacrifice. Instead of a leisurely day with Alessandra, she was going to be exploring the underbelly of the West End with me. We of course dressed in our civvies so as not to alarm the locals, including Lenny.

I thought I'd start with Star, a CI I cultivated to give me more of the inside view on the West End drug trade. Star was a meth head, probably once an attractive housewife, but now downtrodden and living on the streets. She had stars tattooed around her nipples, hence her nickname. I knew she hung out near a woman's shelter on Pine Street, the same street Alessandra lived on when she was a heroin addict.

It was truly one of the worst parts of Skid Row. Garbage strewn in the street. Broken glass vials on the sidewalk. I spotted Star sleeping it off on a flattened cardboard box in an alley. I parked my Honda around the corner from her and got out of the car first. Lesley gave me a quizzical expression from inside the car. I motioned for her to get out.

"What are we up to Max? she asked me. She followed me around the corner. Star was sleeping next to a dumpster. It reeked of spoiled vegetables from the produce store it adjoined.

"I'm taking you to the Ritz," I told her.

"Closest thing to the Ritz here is a cracker," she said, kicking aside a crumpled fast food wrapper. "So who have we here?"

"It's Star, a CI I've used in the past. I rescued her from her pimp. He was beating the shit out of her so I returned the favor. I feel sorry for her but she's the one who has to decide to quit drugs, as you well know."

"Hey Star!" I shouted down at her as I nudged her dirty tennis shoe with my boot.

Her head jerked up and her eyelids fluttered until they opened.

"Max?" she croaked. Her blouse was missing most of its buttons and opened when she sat up. Lesley could plainly see the "star" tattooed around each of the nipples on her saggy tits. Her dusty brown hair was sticking out in every direction.

"I see why she's named Star," Lesley said, suppressing a smile.

"Great detective work," I said sarcastically.

"You got twenty for me?" Star asked me. She gave me a toothy grin. I gave her ten for a minor tip and twenty for a major one. Find Lenny was definitely a twenty.

"I'm looking for Lenny Davis. He'd be about thirty, thirty-five, I think heavyset. Small time drug dealer."

I got a vacant stare from her.

"He whores out his wife," I added. That was hard to forget, even for Star.

A light shone in her bloodshot eyes. "You mean Fat Lenny."

"Right, right, Fat Lenny."

"Yeah, I know him. Sometimes if I don't have any money I'll fuck him for a rock. Sometimes he has me fuck his wife and he watches. Is that him?"

"Sounds like him," I said to her. I gave her a hand as she struggled to her feet.

"Can you take me to him?" I asked.

"Cost you an extra twenty," she fired back.

"It's all right here," I said, pointing to my wallet. "You'll get it when we find Lenny."

We came up on my Honda. I used a key to unlock the driver's side door. The clicker stopped working long ago. I unlocked the doors from the inside. Lesley slid into the front passenger seat. Star fumbled with the door handle before opening the rear passenger door. She practically fell into the back seat. Thank God she bathed recently.

"Where we going?" I asked her. I started the car and pulled out into traffic.

"You know the vacants on Baker Street?"

"The ones near the old foundry?"

"That's it."

I drove us deeper into the West End. The bottom of the bottom. There were abandoned cars in the street and tall weeds growing between the cracks in the sidewalk. Star pointed to a two story brick building. The doors and windows were nailed shut with graffiti covered plywood. I pulled over to the curb. All three of us got out. Star wasn't quite as wobbly as she was before, and approached a boarded up door where the plywood was pried loose. I held it open and she went in first.

It was an abandoned house, but someone had run an extension cord into it. It was dimly lit with bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling. The drywall in the house was bashed in and garbage was strewn all over the floor. Star went up the staircase to the second floor. There were used needles on the stair treads that we had to avoid.

The second floor had a series of bedrooms. The doors to most of them were closed. I could smell a charcoal grill. It was a fire trap. Star knocked on the first door on the left. I heard heavy footfalls and then the door opened. A man in a stained white tank top t-shirt that barely covered his gut answered the door.

"It's me," she said. "I brought a couple friends. They're cool."

"Whaddya want?" he asked, eyeing the three of us.

"I want to buy some ice." Star motioned to me to show the cash. I pulled out one of the twenties I was going to give her.

He opened the door and stepped aside.

We went into a dingy room. The window was taped over with yellowed newspapers. There was a bare mattress on the floor and small squares of aluminum foil scattered about, no doubt used to cook the crystal meth before it was inhaled. I could hear a squeaking mattress and groans from people having sex in the next room. The door to it was open.

Lenny parked his fat ass in a cheap molded plastic lawn chair. "Don't mind Doreen. She's got company right now. Give me the money."

I handed a twenty to Lenny. He reached over to a gym bag and pulled out a small plastic bag. There was a shard of blue tinged meth in it. He handed it to Star.

Without any shame or self-consciousness, Star put the small rock on a piece of tinfoil and used a disposable lighter to heat underneath it. She used a glass tube she kept in her pocket to inhale the fumes. The shaking in her hand stopped as she took a hit. After three hits her eyes rolled back in her head and she slumped onto a stained mattress.

"Are the two of you buying or what?" Lenny asked us.

"We want to ask you about Andrea Hillman."

His face reddened. "You cops?"

"Off duty," I said. "Unofficial. We've got no interest in arresting you or your wife."

He stood up. He was imposing in size, though grossly overweight. Lesley and I were already standing. I was already deciding where I was going to hit him if he came at us.

"I don't know nothing about that bitch and I think it's time you get the fuck out of here."

He took one step towards Lesley and roughly grabbed her shoulder. I delivered a crunching blow to his testicles with my knee. He instantly dropped to the floor and was writhing on the ground with both his hands on his crotch. His balls were going to be sore for at least a week.

"Ah shit," he moaned in a high pitched voice. "Why the fuck did you have to do that?"

"Because I enjoy it. Especially with scumbags like you."

A naked woman came out of the bedroom. She didn't bother to cover up. She was no doubt Doreen, a bottle blonde with big, heavy tits. There was cum leaking out of her hairy pussy.

"What the fuck's going on here?" she shouted. I heard a man dressing quickly. He pushed past us with his pants unzipped and unbuttoned. He was holding his shoes in his hand as he snuck out the door.

"Lenny here met my knee. My knee won."

"You cops?"

"Uh huh. But we're off duty. Just here to ask some questions."

"Fuck you." She spit on my shoe.

I pushed her into Lenny's lawn chair. "Sit the fuck down. We're talking whether you like it or not." Lesley tossed her a top so she could at least cover up her tits. Lenny was still on the ground. I didn't think he'd be getting up for a while. Star was stoned. She was in happy land.

"Tell me what happened," I said to Doreen. "Andrea Hillman."

"Why should I?"

"Because we're going back to the station, getting into our uniforms and arresting his sorry ass," I said, pointing to her supine husband.

"For what?"

"For being an asshole for one. For assaulting a police office for another. And that's after I kick his ass, and then yours," I said, and meaning it.

She looked down at Lenny. He'd barfed on the floor. He didn't look so good.

"Lenny didn't do it," she said.

"I gathered that. Otherwise he wouldn't have kept the knife. Who did?"

"I don't know."

"God damn it, Doreen, do we have to do this the hard way?" I asked.

"Look. I'm not sure. Some guy. I think Andrea ripped him off. He came by and used somebody's jackknife and stabbed Andrea. He was pretty pissed 'cause he kept stabbing her even after she was dead. There was blood all over the place."

"What happened to the jackknife?" I asked.

"I dunno. Ask fucking Lenny. How should I know?"

"I'll do that."

Doreen got out of her chair and went back into the bedroom. She cussed at me and then shut the door.

I pulled up Lenny by his scraggly hair so he was in a sitting position on the floor.

"Oww! Motherfucker! That hurt!" he shouted.

"Takes your mind off your sore balls, doesn't it?" I asked.

"Fuck you."

"Now my friend here has learned some creative ways to pacify an unruly prisoner," I said, pointing to Lesley. "She could snap your arm like a twig. Would you like a demonstration?"

Lesley laughed. "Would love the practice."

He shook his head.

"All right then shitbird, sing. Tell me if what Doreen said is true."

"Uh huh."

"Did you know the guy who did the killing?"

"Never saw him before. I think Andrea called him Chuck or something like that."

"Any last name?"

"Fuck no."

"Anything else you remember?"

"Had a birthmark on his face. A pretty big one. You know here." He pointed to the area between his left cheek and his chin.

"Anything else?" Lesley got behind him and started twisting his arm. She read my mind.

"Fuck! No... no...I don't remember nothing else. Now tell that bitch to let go of me!"

I nodded to Lesley. She let go.

He shook his arm and rubbed it. "Fucking bitches," he muttered under his breath.

"So what about the jackknife? Why'd you keep it?"

"Cause I knew it had Chuck's prints on it. I knew if the cops found out she was killed here they'd blame me. It was my insurance policy."

"Where's the jackknife now?"

"In a safe place."

I nodded to Lesley again. She took hold of his arm and pulled it behind his back. She twisted his wrist. He screamed.

"All right, all right... I lent it to somebody."

"Would that somebody be DaVanna Caruso?"

He looked at me funny. "How'd you know that?"

"Lucky guess," I said. "So how do you know DaVanna?"

"I was busted for possession with intent to distribute, and uhh, because I had two priors, I was looking at ten to twenty. DaVanna was prosecuting me. She told me that she knew the story about Andrea Hillman."

"How did DaVanna tell you that?"

If Lenny was represented by an attorney, that kind of communication violated one the cardinal rules of ethics.

"She visited me in the county jail."

"Without your lawyer?"

"She said she had a deal for me, but for my ears only. Why wouldn't I listen to that?"

There wasn't an ethical wall that DaVanna wasn't willing to breach.

"She traded your freedom for the jackknife," I said.

"Uh huh."

Lesley let go of his arm. He was rubbing his forearm as I tossed a twenty on the mattress next to Star.

"This is for Star. See you later shitbird," I said to him on the way out.

* * *

"Looks like Alessandra's off the hook," Lesley said to me. She shut the passenger door and buckled her seat belt. We'd left Star at Lenny's to sleep it off.

"We're close, but not to the finish line," I said.

"Why's that?"

"Because DaVanna has the jackknife. And Alessandra's prints are undoubtedly on it."

"So are this Chuck's," Lesley argued back.

"But how are you going to prove that he was holding the knife when Andrea got stabbed?"

"Good point," she conceded to me.

"The way to end this is to find this Chuck guy. We've got two witnesses."

I could see out of the corner of my eye that Lesley was frowning at me. "Yeah, real reliable."

"I'll take my chances with them."

"One of them moved the body. That's not helpful."

"Well, let's see if we can find Chuck and then cross that bridge."

"So what's next?" she asked me.

"Let's search the database. A guy with a prominent birthmark on his face should make him easier to find. And I've got a volunteer."

"Who's that?"

"Skylar Hobson in Homicide."

"Don't know her."

"Just met her. She a junior detective. Wants some more experience working a murder."

"Sounds good. As long as I don't have to do it."

"Lesley, I've got bigger things in mind for you."

"Like what?"

"Like helping me nail DaVanna to the wall, once and for all."

"I thought Odette told you to lay off her."

"Since when have I listened to her?" I asked.

"You've got me there."

"It's always better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission."

Chapter Four

The Moon and the Stars

Wednesday night was Bailey's night. Alessandra and Lesley were spending a quiet evening at home. I was going to meet Skylar for a drink. She was cute, and I was trying to decide if she was too young for me. Courtney was about the same age, and I couldn't get her to emotionally commit. Bea told me she was too young and Bea was always right. In the end, I had a "fuck it" mentality. Go with your gut, and my gut told me that I was going to have a drink with Sky and see where it took us.

It was a breezy night, unseasonably cold, with a full moon ducking in and out of scattered clouds. It felt like rain. The Royal Palms was quiet. It was only 8:30, and the night creatures had yet to come out of hiding. It was only a five minute drive to Bailey's, and I was able to park on the same block just down the street.

My bestie Maddy was tending bar. I actually got there early, and decided to go behind the bar to help her. The place was hopping, two deep at the bar and a Tom Petty cover band was playing "Mary Jane's Last Dance," one of my favorites.

"How's the band working out?" I shouted over the music.

"We're packed, aren't we?" she answered. "Why don't you grab me two Hudepohl longnecks please," she said to me, mixing two drinks at the same time. Her eyes went to the fridge under the bar.

I pulled the last two beers out and scanned the all-woman crowd. "Either there's lots of lesbians in Cincinnati or a lot of posers," I said to her.

"Lesbians," she said. "Most of them I recognize. So why are you here early? You usually don't get here till after nine. Meeting someone?"

"Someone I met at work. It's just a drink."

"That's always the way it starts Max." Maddy knew me well. Half of my hookups were with people I met at work. The other half I met at her bar.

"How old?" she asked. She was going to get into my shit the moment I answered. I braced myself.

"Twenty-five, I think."

"Fuck Max, she's practically jail bait. Can't you date women your own age?"

"It's not a date," I pointed out again.

"Don't bullshit me."

"OK, but it's just a drink."

"That's how it starts... and it's not how it ends," Maddy said, knowing me better than I knew myself.

"What else do you need?" I asked, desperate to change the subject.

"More beer. Grab a case downstairs."

I knew Maddy had a bum shoulder. The storeroom in the basement had a large walk-in cooler. I went down the stairs to retrieve a fresh case.

It was a few minutes later when I got back to the bar. In that short period of time, Sky had arrived and staked out a few feet of space at the crowded bar. She saw me behind it, crouched down putting bottles of beer into the refrigerator.

"I didn't know you worked here," she shouted over the bar.

"I don't. I'm just helping Maddy." I pointed downstream to my longtime friend. Sky must have recognized Maddy.

"I like her," she said.

"So do I. Can I get you something? I'll join you in a sec."

"One of those?" she asked, pointing to the fridge.

I unloaded the rest of the beer, grabbing a cold one for the two of us. I told myself I was having just one beer. I circled around to the front of the bar and stood next to her. She was sitting on a barstool but the ones on either side of her were occupied.

"Busy night," she said.

"Uh huh."

"So how do you know Maddy?"

"She's my best friend from high school."

"I see. So that's why I see you here all the time?" she asked, then taking a healthy swig from the bottle. Sky looked so different. She had make-up on and a cute outfit, a short skirt and a lowcut blouse. Sexy comes to mind. Her light toned Eurasian skin made her look exotic as well. Her legs were crossed at the ankles, and I admired the tight, toned muscles of her thighs and calves.

"Every Wednesday."

I took a draw from the longneck. It was my first drink in the month. I realized it wasn't going to be my last that night.

"So Courtney's not coming tonight?" she asked.