Christopher Rice - The Vines

“But what?”

“You need to talk to Caitlin.”

“About what?” he asks, suddenly wary.

“There was a party here last night…” He fights the urge to tell her he knows full well Caitlin’s birthday party is always held on the Saturday closest to her actual birthday, that he picked up a double shift last night to distract himself from the pain of not attending for the first time since they were kids. “And Troy…”

They aren’t the best of friends, but Blake knows Nova Thomas well enough to know that she is strong-willed and intelligent and not prone to this kind of stammering and disjointed thinking. “Troy went into the gardening shed with some woman from the catering company”—Blake feels a surge of triumph at this terrible news, and then a wave of guilt—“but he didn’t come out. Just the girl did. And she was bloody and had an axe—”

That’s when Blake sees the two men walking casually toward the automatic doors he just stepped through moments before. About the same height, one sporting a hairpiece, the other balding with pride. Their plain, mid-priced dress shirts are tucked so tightly into their khakis he wonders if they’ve laced the shirttails through the insides of their briefs. All the telltale signs are there, but it’s the forced-casual gait combined with the slow and steady pivoting of their necks that tells Blake who they are. There was a time in his life when he became intimately familiar with the look of homicide detectives, and he fears that another one is about to begin.

“Are the police involved?”

“ Involved? You mean, like… with the axe?”

“No, I mean, did you talk to them.”

“Yeah. Baldy and Hairpiece. They were a real treat.”

“They’re about to be mine.”

“All right, well. Feel free to use my nicknames.”

“Is he dead, Nova?” Blake asks. Just then, he sees one of the cops turn. He’s spotted Blake’s reflection in the automatic doors. “Troy, I mean. Did Caitlin…”

“I don’t know,” Nova answers. “I don’t know what she did or what she didn’t do. But there’s something… He just…”

“Gone…,” Blake says, distracted by the two detectives who are now walking straight toward him, plastic half smiles on their deeply lined faces.

“Just please… come see me when you can. There’s something else I gotta talk to you about.”

“I’ll call you back,” he says to her, but she has already hung up on him, and the first detective has already mounted the curb and is extending his hand in greeting.

The detectives suggest Coulis, a little restaurant a block from the hospital that looks like a hole-in-the-wall but hosts long lines of customers every weekend who are willing to wait outside patiently for a plate of eggs Benedict with roast beef debris. And Blake knows it is well worth it. He also knows, though, that the place won’t be open for half an hour, so they settle on the drab hospital cafeteria.

“I haven’t seen or spoken to Caitlin or Troy in six months,” Blake begins. And before they can ask him why, he says, “I had reason to believe Troy was screw—cheating. I made the mistake of telling her. Since then… radio silence.”

Blake isn’t trying to impress the detectives exactly, but he would like them to know that he’s got experience with homicide interrogations, that they don’t need to bother with pleasantries. Or manipulative ploys. But they probably know this already. For a few months during his senior year of high school, Blake’s face was recognizable to most residents of southern Louisiana, including the detectives’ own Montrose Parish. The headlines didn’t mention him, of course. That distinction had gone to his early-morning visitor, Vernon Fuller: SON OF HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL COACH SLAIN IN APPARENT HATE CRIME. But Blake had been a featured player in the drama—the survivor.

“So neither one’s been in touch since last night?” the bald detective asks.

“What happened last night?”

“This evidence you had,” Hairpiece diverts. “How exactly did you… uh… bring it to Miss Chaisson?”

“I didn’t say I had evidence. I said I had reason to believe.”

“That he was cheating on her?” Baldy asks.

Blake nods. Nova’s nicknames for the men have proven so effective, Blake realizes he can’t remember the actual name of either detective.

“Right. But… what was it that tipped you off?” Hairpiece continues. “I mean, was it e-mails? Some kind of Internet thing?”

“I’ve got friends who work the casinos in Biloxi. A few of them came to me and said they saw Troy come in with different women and that it looked… more than friendly.”

“So it was hearsay.”

“The camera footage wasn’t.” The detectives both give him a blank stare, until he adds, “One of my friends works security at Belle Fleur.”

“I see…”

What? You thought a guy like me would only have friends who dressed the showgirls?

“And so you showed her the footage?” Baldy continues.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

“She didn’t ask to see it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because she didn’t believe me.”

“But there was footage…”

“I didn’t tell her about it.”

“I’m getting confused,” Hairpiece interjects, and his “confused” expression is so forced Blake has to work not to roll his eyes.

“I told her what I had been told. She didn’t want to believe it, though, so I left it at that.”

“And then you guys went radio silent for six months until last night…”

“No. Not until last night. I still haven’t heard from her. Or Troy.”

“Sorry. Just seemed like you were having a pretty important phone call when we walked up. Thought maybe she’d given you a—”

“That was one of her employees. Calling to tell me what happened. They’re concerned for Caitlin, obviously.”

“So what did she say happened?” Baldy asks, palms open, eyes wide. The guy must have a community theater background, Blake thinks. “We’d like to know as much as everyone else.”

“Apparently Troy went into the gardening shed with some woman. Only the woman came out. She was covered in blood, carrying an axe. And there was no body in the shed.” He gave them a mirthless smile. “Sounds like y’all might have the world’s first axe-wielding illusionist on your hands.”

He knows better than to ask them directly what the axe-wielding woman’s story is, but he doubts they would tell him under any circumstances. His suspicions are confirmed when Hairpiece says, “Wow. Someone doesn’t miss Troy Mangier.”

“He’s only been gone… what? A few hours? He’ll probably turn up next to the river as soon as the sun’s all the way up. Hungover. Again.”

“Or bled out from an axe wound.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Troy always manages to land on his feet. Or Caitlin’s back.”

“So these friends of yours, the ones who work the casinos in Biloxi. They friends of Troy’s too?”

“Not really. No.”

“How’d they recognize him when he turned up?”

Blake curls his fingers around his Styrofoam coffee cup.

“Maybe you told them to be on the lookout ’cause you had some suspicions?” the detective presses.

Blake shrugs. “He was a gambler. With her money. She’d warned him about it. The women… those were a surprise to me.”

“And Caitlin took his word over yours?”

“ No. No, she… she didn’t even bother to get his word first. She just dismissed me right on the spot and made all sorts of accusations.”

“What kind of accusations?”

“The desperate kind.” And she used John’s murder against me. And that was a rule between us—never use John’s murder against me. And yet she broke it because she couldn’t face the truth; she used it to hurt me to keep herself from being hurt.