William Lashner - Past Due

“Lonnie?”

No answer.

Beyond was a wide, closed door, which I assumed led to the alleyway in the back, through which the bikes were brought. He might be in the alley, I figured. I carefully made my way around the workshop and headed for the door. The foul stench grew stronger, thick and vile, overpowering, it burned my nose and throat, my eyes. I coughed and thought I heard another.

“Lonnie?”

I hurried my pace, tripped over something metal, headed for the alley and fresh air, and then, just as I reached for the door, I tripped over something else.

I stopped, turned to see what it was.

“My God.”

A body, faceup, lying half in-half out of a small office beside the doorway to the alley, a body lit softly by a flicker of blue fire. I reached into the office, felt around for a switch.

“Oh my God.”

It was Lonnie, of course it was Lonnie.

He was lying on the floor, between two workbenches. The benches were filled with beakers and burners and vials set up in the whole mad scientist configuration, flames shooting out here and there, and the smell in that room was murderous. Even as I fought to hold my breath, my skin itched and my eyes burned and the chemical reek was like a living thing fighting to keep me away.

I leaned over him. He was warm, still. His face was in a snarl, his hands were clenched, a wrench in one of them, and there was a small hole in his forehead. From the thick pool beneath his head I didn’t need to imagine what the back looked like. I turned to the side and threw up.

And over the brutal sound of my retching I heard something in the shop, a piece of metal spinning across the floor.

I leaped up, turned back to the shop, saw a shadow flit out of the doorway. I ran toward it. I ran toward it and something jabbed into my thigh and I flipped over. I fell hard onto my shoulder just as something heavy and metallic crashed beside me and a burning ran up my leg.

I tried to push myself up but I couldn’t, my leg was trapped by a fallen bike. I grabbed the edge of the seat, heaved, yanked my leg free, and started again toward the shadow, banging my hurt shoulder into the door. The pain spun me around and knocked me to my knees.

I grabbed hold of the doorjamb, pulled myself up, headed again through the dark passageway toward the front.

All I wanted was a glimpse, I didn’t want to stop him, I was willing to let him go, that fit my style, no heroics, let him go, absolutely, but I wanted a glimpse, I needed a glimpse.

I lunged for the door and pushed it open and as soon as I did the store behind me exploded.

THERE IS SOMETHINGperversely cheerful about a crime scene in the middle of the night, the pulsating red and blue lights, the great beams of white, the strobes of – aw, the hell with it.

There was nothing cheerful about what was happening outside the Chop Shop as it burned to the ground along with the two stores on either side of it. The fire trucks came with remarkable speed and the firefighters moved with the calm alacrity of men and women used to holding back the thin yet lethal edge of entropy, but there was not much they could do, what with all the accelerants, both legal and illegal, in Lonnie’s shop feeding the ferocity of the fire. It was Lonnie who had supplied meth to the gang twenty years ago, Lonnie with the wild burning eyes, and I supposed he had gotten back into the business.

Coughing all the while, I told a fire captain everything of what I had seen inside and he told me I should tell it to the fire investigators. I told the fire investigators everything of what I had seen inside and they told me to tell it again to the uniformed police. I told one of the uniformed police everything of what I had seen inside and she told me to wait for the police detectives to arrive.

“Get McDeiss,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Tell him Victor Carl is the witness. He’ll show.”

I stood off to the side, my arms tight around my chest, waiting for the detectives. And then at the edge of the crowd I saw her, staring at the scene with wet eyes, her pretty face drained of all emotion except pain. Chelsea. I walked over to her, lifted the yellow tape. When one of the uniforms started giving me a hassle I just stared at him for a moment and he backed off. I brought Chelsea away from the crowd, to a spot where the fire’s heat could still be felt.

“They said someone was dead,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Is it…”

“Yes,” I said, reaching out and pulling her toward me, holding her as she cried.

“Damn him,” she said, her tears hitting now the street. “Damn him.”

“Who?”

“I told him to stop. I told him it was crazy dangerous. But he missed it. All this talk about the old days. His time in the center of it was coming back to him and he couldn’t help himself. But it’s like Cooper says, the old road always ends in despair.”

“But it wasn’t just a fire, Chelsea.”

She pulled away, looked up at me.

“He was murdered,” I said.

“No. It can’t be.”

“I found his body. Before the fire. He was shot.”

“Stop.”

“Any idea who?”

“No.”

“Any enemies?”

“No. No.” She turned toward the burning building, watched as the fire succumbed to the torrents of water. “Everyone loved him. He was just a kid. An old kid. He never grew up. But there was something rich about him, as if the current of life moved raw through his body. People felt more alive just being near him.”

“And he loved you.”

“Yes.”

“Always and forever.”

She bowed her head. “Yes.”

“It was in his eyes every time he looked at you.”

“Victor, what am I going to do?”

“What does Cooper say? He seems to have the answer to everything.”

“You know what he says, Victor? He says the living go on dying, only the dead will rise unchanged.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but right now I hope it’s true.”

Chelsea and I were still standing together some twenty minutes later when Detective McDeiss, wearing his black porkpie hat, ducked beneath the yellow tape, accompanied by our good friend K. Lawrence Slocum. By then the blaze was under control, the crowd had lessened, the street was strewn with water and debris, the air foul with the burning.

“Everywhere you show up is a party, Carl,” said McDeiss, shaking his head as he scanned the desolation, acting as if I was the root cause of the current tragedy. “We ought to put a bell around your neck.”

I introduced the detective and Slocum to Chelsea, told them she was the dead man’s ex-wife. McDeiss asked a few questions and then led her to another officer.

“The detective will take her home after he gets a full statement,” said McDeiss after he returned.

“Thank you.”

“I suppose she’ll have to identify him.”

“I don’t think there’ll be much to identify.”

“Probably not,” said McDeiss.

“All right,” said Slocum. “What happened?”

“I’ve told it three times already.”

“Tell it again,” he said, and so I did, everything from the moment I stepped into the shop until it blew up behind me.

“You see who it was who was running?” said McDeiss.

“No. As soon as I opened the door the place exploded and I was kissing pavement. It was all I could do to get to the other side of the street and away from the flames. By the time I remembered to look around there was nothing.”

“Did you call nine-one-one?”

“With my cell.”

Slocum was shaking his head at the ruined buildings, the singed facades of brick, the devoured roofs with just parts of the skeletal structure still poking through.