Neely Tucker - Murder, D.C.

“Sorry,” Todd said.

“That’s okay,” Elliot said. “Thanks so much.”

Todd nodded to them both and was gone.

“What’s with him?” Sully said.

“He’s just a boy I know. He was keeping this for me. After those goons came by, I didn’t want to keep it at my apartment any longer.”

“So this is it? What they were after?” It didn’t look like much. Papers and, at the bottom of the bag, a square wooden box.

“I’m pretty sure. Billy brought it over to me the night before he was killed. He’d just had a huge fight with Delores, with Shellie. He’d been over at her house, he said, and he was very upset. Said he wanted me to keep it for him for a while.”

“Like, bipolar upset?”

“Billy had stopped taking his medication a few months earlier. He had done it before. He didn’t like taking it. I guess a lot of people who need that stuff don’t want it.”

“It dampens the highs, knocks them down,” Sully said.

“Yeah. He said it made him feel dull. Like bread without yeast, that’s how he said it. So he stopped taking the stuff and, no surprise, started getting weird. The racing thoughts, the rapid-fire talking? You know? It was something you had to learn to live with if you wanted to be his friend.”

“So, him showing up at your house, a little wound up, wasn’t that unusual.”

“It wasn’t an everyday thing, no, but it just seemed like another episode, another round with his mom. I thought he was just being a little paranoid.”

Sully picked up one of the envelopes, pulled out a sheet. It was a copy of a property record over on Logan Circle.

“So what is all this?”

“His thesis.”

“His thesis? He was hiding his thesis ?”

“It was interesting for me to see all of the research, because he’d been very vague about what he was going to do it on, you know? He’d never tell me. But it turns out he was really focused. Look at all this.”

Sully considered the heft of the envelopes. Why did people do this, after death? Pass along the writings or poems or letters of the dead, like it meant something to somebody else? And god, this stuff looked like it went a good five pounds.

“It’s something about his family history,” Elliot said. “Billy was terribly interested in all that. I think it was in some sort of order. But after he gave it to me at my apartment, I just put it in the bookcase. I didn’t even think about it until after those creeps came looking for it. When I pulled it out, it all spilled on-”

He stopped dead still, looking toward the front of the bar, then slid to the back side of the booth. “Get the bag! Get over!”

Sully started to turn in the booth-his back was to the door-and Elliot kicked his leg under the table.

“It’s those morons! Shaved head!”

Sully leaned over, pulling the bag with the envelopes on the seat beside him. The half wall of exposed brick behind them gave them shelter from the door, but they’d be in plain view if the men walked farther back.

“They followed us from the church,” Elliot said. “The fuckers .”

“What are you-”

“They had to be sitting out front, waiting on us to come back out, then saw Todd come in with the bag.”

“Todd? They know Todd?”

“He’s-he’s-he was over at my apartment when they came over.”

Sully started to say, This is ridiculous, they’re not going to rob us in broad daylight, we call 911-and then got a mental flash of the investigators calling the police, charging them with theft. The cops would come, everybody would get hauled downtown, the bag would go into evidence and eventually be returned to the family-hell, it was Billy’s property-and he’d get fired, harassing the poor Ellisons even when he was suspended.

His eyes locked on the narrow hallway a few feet behind them, leading to the toilets. EMERGENCY EXIT, read the sign above the hall. Well.

He looked at Elliot-they both had their heads about six inches above the tabletop, leaning as far down as possible-and said, “Get up. Take your drink to the bar. They’ll look at you, rag you some, but they can’t do anything. That’s going to give me a screen to run out the back with the bag.”

“You don’t look like you can run that fast.”

“Fine. You take the bag and run and I’ll-”

“No, no!”

“Do it then, before they come back here.”

Elliot rubbed his hand across his face. “Call me,” he said. He sat up, got his drink, and pushed out of the booth, walking bold as fuck up to the front. Sully, counting to three, decided he liked the kid after all.

“Hey! You, Carter! ”

The voice bellowed when he was halfway down the hall, passing the restrooms. He hit the back door at full throttle, banging it open with his shoulder. He came out on a small deck with steps down to an alley. Covering that with an awkward leap, skittering on the loose gravel, he looked up to see garbage dumpsters, ten or twelve cars, the backs of stores. The alley narrowed and led to a street to his left.

Five seconds, ten, and they’d come out the door.

A Ford Explorer, a Cadillac, Nissan Sentra-maybe get under one of them or-another store door opened, thirty feet down. A guy carrying two trash bags emerged, heading to the dumpster. The bookstore. It was the back of that big-ass bookstore on the corner. Sully ran ten steps, getting to the door, the guy at the dumpster half-turning, Sully holding out his bag, saying, “Left my wallet upstairs,” and ducked inside.

He found himself in a back storage room, books on pallets halfway to the ceiling. There was only one turn, though, and it led to a set of double doors into the store proper. Banging it open, he found himself in Cookbooks and Home Entertaining. Moving, moving. Past Psychology and Science and Discounted. At the front of Bestsellers, he stopped and picked up one of store’s cloth tote bags from a stand. He took it to the Magazine section and dumped the envelopes and the wooden box into the new bag. The tote from the Strand he stuffed behind the porn mags in their sealed plastic wrappings.

He picked up two motorcycle magazines, went to the checkout, and told the clerk he was in from out of town and was there a hotel nearby?

“Sure,” she said, ringing him up. “If you’re not looking for a lot of frills, the Monticello is just right there on the first street, once you get outside the door. That’s Thomas Jefferson Way. Take a right and go down the hill.”

“How far?”

“Maybe fifty or sixty yards? It’s on the left. You’ll see it, a green awning.”

He started to go, then stopped. “What if I’m looking for frills?”

“Oh, that’d be the Four Seasons,” she said with a smile. “A few blocks down, on M.”

“Whoa, the Seasons? That’s beyond my billfold. Look, do me a favor? A couple of buddies were supposed to leave work early and meet me here, like, twenty minutes ago. I guess they got held up. I’m going to go ahead and check in over at the Monticello there and then come back. If they stop by, looking for me, could you tell them where I am?”

“Sure, but what’s your name?”

He gave her his best smile. “Just tell ’em that guy with the limp. They’ll know.”

By the front door, he waited until a taxi stopped at the light. He looked both ways, then quick-stepped through the revolving door and into the cab.

“The Four Seasons,” he said, slouching down in the seat, the bag with the files tumbling to the floor at his feet.

BY MIDNIGHT, WHENDelores Ellison was beneath six feet of well-tended dirt, the files her son had left behind were a mass of disheveled paperwork spread over the floor of room 426.