A Smudge of Gray (4 page)

Chapter 7

It was nearly one a.m. as the city
streets died out, but certain parts of the downtown flourished when darkness
was at its peak. Various bars and lounges were hopping. And one particular
Irish pub was excessively busy at this late hour packed with drunken laughs and
misguided clanks. Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” electrified the carefree
crowd as smoke and jokes swirled in the air. A man at the long mahogany bar grabbed
his buddy as both sang out-of-tune with the music.

Past the main commotion, a cramped
dining area gave the pub’s patrons some room to carry on a conversation. Four
thirty-something yuppies sat in the back at a table just large enough for them
and their half-empty beer glasses. Jason, an overconfident James Dean look-alike
wearing a turtleneck, sat with a fire in his eyes. To his right sat Jane, a
full-figured businesswoman with a simple dimple that toyed with the men in her
life, including those at her office. Susan, a slim yet naturally buxom woman in
a business suit, sat in front of Jason with her cleavage keeping him occupied.
Then there was Max. He wore a dapper black suit with his tie loosened after a
long day and night’s work. Stylish glasses reminiscent of Clark Kent rested on
his nose and kept him looking young even though he had crossed the thirty year
mark.

“Wait! Watch this! Clock it, now! Clock
it!” Jason yelled at his friends while holding a quarter. “Are you ready?”

“Yes!” Max replied.

Jason spun the quarter on the table. It rotated
for five seconds, and then plopped over.

“Five seconds. That’s weak! Let me try,”
Max joked.

“This really is entertaining both of
you, isn’t it?” Susan said as she sipped her beer.

Max flicked his fingers. The quarter
spun.

“Go! Go! Go!” Max yelled. “Just a little
longer!”

The quarter finally fell off the table
and rolled in circles.

“Seven seconds,” Jason replied.

“I won! I won! You’re buying the next
round!” Max said.

“Who said we were betting drinks?” Jason
tried to grab the rolling quarter, but he kicked it into the crowd.

“Throwing away money, huh, Jason?” Jane
chimed in.

“That’s what he’s good at,” Susan joked.

“Well. You did it again, Max. Another
case under your belt,” Jason roared through the energy.

“I couldn’t have done it without my old
college study group,” Max returned as he opened his arms.

As the whole bar now sang with Billy
Joel, the waitress sneaked through the crowd and delivered four shot glasses
filled with a potent potion. The four friends widened their eyes with Jason’s
showing the most white.

“Finally,” Susan expelled.

“Put this round on Jason’s tab,” Max
said.

“Ah… What the hell? I’ll buy this round.
Especially for this guy. He’s the next Matlock. He’s the best criminal
prosecutor in the city,” Jason boasted to the waitress as she sat the glasses
down.

“How long were you on the case?” Jane
asked.

“Eight months. Eight
looong
months.”

“That’s nothing compared to how long
Louie the Loudmouth will be spending behind bars,” Jason said.

The four yuppies raised their glasses
high. They looked at each other just as they did ten years ago as grad students.
Then, they clanked glasses and took their shots.

The four old college friends
finished their beers and prepared to call it a night. As Jason and Max argued
over who should put their wallet away, a cold breeze blew in from the outside.
The four working professionals did not feel it, but they did feel the need for
sleep. Susan looked at the overflowing crowd and tried to find a path through
the chaos to the front door. She grabbed Jane who held onto Jason, leading the
way through the mob. Max followed as he tried to dodge the crowd tottering to
Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing.” As they neared the bar, the hopping gang
provided the biggest obstacle. It seemed as if everyone were gyrating to the song
with one hand on his beer mug and the other on his neighbor. As Max saw Susan
near the door, a woman stepped in his path. The young attorney shifted his
steps and inadvertently bumped into a man in a trench coat at the bar.

“Sorry,” Max offered, but the man didn’t
respond.

The figure seemed to be the only one not
engaged in the collective stupor. He sat as if he were not even there, but Max
proved his presence. As the four yuppies reached the door, the man in the black
trench coat turned his head and watched them with his green eyes.

The street outside the bar contrasted
the movement with stillness. Only a few cabs waited near the curb, just as they
did every night. Jason poured from the door with Susan and Jane on his arms. The
night was brisk as the fresh air engulfed the four friends.

“I feel great! Thanks for meeting me for
drinks,” Max exclaimed as he took a deep breath.

“No problem, man,” Jason replied.

“You guys okay to drive?” Max asked.

“Hey, I got two hot bitches by my side.
I’ll be okay,” Jason boasted.

“You’re drunk,” Susan replied, tapping his
chest.

“Someone needs a cold shower,” his other
female companion offered. The four laughed.

“Well, I have a short walk home. I’ll
call you guys again to go out,” Max proposed.

“This time don’t wait until you’re
finished with your next case!” Jane said.

“Are you sure you’re okay by yourself?”
Susan, with a concerned look, asked Max.

“I’ll be fine, walking drunk isn’t a
crime.”

“Unless you have a cutthroat attorney!”
Jane added bringing more laughter to the group.

They said their goodbyes one more time
as the James Dean look-alike disarmed his awaiting Cadillac Escalade. He opened
the door for his two princesses. They stumbled, giving the comatose cabbies a
jolt. As Max set off down the sidewalk, his friend rolled into the driver’s
seat and took off. Luckily, for Jason, he was not driving a Porsche.

The moonlight glimmered off Max’s scratch-resistant
lenses as he embraced the night. He enjoyed the city—working, living, and
playing in the downtown. Although he normally strolled through the streets
during rush hour, his path home was still the same even if shadows had replaced
the suits. Max hummed to amuse himself. Without even realizing it, Billy Joel’s
“Only the Good Die Young” flowed from his mouth into the streets. He watched a
pair of headlights approaching on the distant cross street, but then the
vehicle turned leaving an empty road. The emptiness surprised Max as the
four-lane downtown looked as if it were a communist state past curfew. As his
whistle intensified, the sudden sound of an aluminum can skipping across the
concrete startled him. He stopped and analyzed the path behind him, but all he
saw was smoke billowing from a drain.

Max crossed the street, and then stepped
on a grate. His Rockport leather shoes clanked on the metal. Max continued his
stroll and bopped his head to his hums as a way to remove himself from the
blankness around him. He thought about his friends and their get-togethers. But
then, a noise filled the night air and removed his focus from his memories. It
was a clank, the same clank from the metal grate now a half block behind him.
Max stopped cold and turned. The silhouette of an inert figure holding a
briefcase stared at him. Both stood like the sheriff and the outlaw, the only
problem for Max was he hadn’t seen a western movie in years. Then he recognized
it was probably Jason, playing one of his twisted pranks.

“Very funny, guys!” Max yelled, but the figure
remained motionless.

Max kept still, but then the being began
creeping toward him. Max didn’t know what to do, where to go. He felt alone on
the street, removed from the world around him, caught in the vacuum of a void.

The creature kept his ghostlike saunter
toward Max. The sound of footsteps echoed off the cold, dense concrete. Even
though Max didn’t know what to do, he knew he had to escape the stalker before he
came any closer.

Max turned. His eyes widened and his
breathing escalated. He felt a tingle behind his ears, the tingle of adrenaline
flowing through his amplified veins. The street seemed even emptier now than it
had been. Max wished the four lanes flowed with traffic as they did every day,
but they didn’t. The path home, ingrained inside of him as instinct, suddenly vanished
from his brain, now clouded by chaos. A cross street up ahead offered a choice,
a choice that baffled the young attorney. He wanted to try a different street, one
that had life. Max detoured to his right and picked up his steps.

A smaller road greeted him, a
passageway that he wished he had not taken, but it was too late to turn back. Max
glanced behind him as the figure in black turned as well. Dumpsters and trash
barrels filled the path. Max realized he was in the intestines of the city,
lost in some alley he had never seen before. He focused on the corridor in
front of him, trying to discern the distant cross street, but he saw the last
thing his terrified body wanted to see—bricks stacked twelve feet in the air.
Max tried to climb by grabbing the inch gaps between the bricks. He stepped up
six inches, but one of his fingernails ripped off, sending him back down. The
adrenaline pumping from his heart trumped the pain as he attempted a different
angle, but it was useless. Max had reached a brick wall, a pathless path, and
now his only option was to turn to face his shadow.

The figure reveled himself. It was
Trevor Malloy, spiffed up with his black suit, trench coat, and dapper charcoal
gray shoes. He had transformed into an image of death, and his focus was on the
man trembling in front of him.

“What do you want? Who are you?” Max
asked.

“Someone wants you dead. And I’m here to
carry that out,” Trevor coolly replied.

The businessman’s words horrified Max.
The young attorney searched for a way out. He peered at his aggressor’s side
and saw a window of opportunity to escape. He bolted to the gap, but then his
Rockports slipped on the smooth pavement and sent the yuppie plummeting to the ground.
His glasses smashed. Max lay on the concrete clawing at Trevor’s shoes.

“Come on. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Trevor looked at his shoes and saw a
scuff mark. He shook his head and exhaled as he flicked Max away like a bug.

“Wait, wait. I can give you money. What
do you want?” Max cried.

Trevor chuckled as he propped his
briefcase on a shiny metal container. He flipped the locks open with his gloved
hands. The sound made Max weep. Trevor pulled out a 9mm pistol and screwed on a
silencer.

“You see. I’m a businessman. And a good
businessman doesn’t renege on a contract. So, if I don’t kill you, I’m going
back on my word,” Trevor explained as the weapon conformed to his hand.

“Wait! Please no! Please! Please!
Please!”

“Sorry. It’s just business.”

Trevor channeled all of his rage, all of
his tension, all of his wickedness, to his finger. Two quick, muffled blasts
thrust toward the sobbing man on the ground, stealing his life. Trevor flared
his lip and gave the dying man a devilish glare.

At that exact moment, a few blocks
away in one of the city’s apartment buildings, two gunshots filled the master bedroom
of a tenth-floor apartment. These gunshots, however, were not produced by a
pistol, but by the 10-watt speaker of a Panasonic television. The noise was
enough to wake the lady of the house. She looked over and saw only the sheets
of her bed. Anne Marie was too tired to look for her husband and only had
enough strength to grab the remote control. The black & white images from a
corny “Cops & Robbers” television show flicked off leaving only the moon to
fill the room.

Chapter 8

Eggs fried on the stove. Anne Marie
stood behind the range wearing an apron. She wielded a spatula as she cooked
breakfast. Jonathan was behind her at the kitchen table eating a bowl of sugary
cereal. This was the scene every morning during the week. Although some days
included the father of the house, most did not.

Just as Anne Marie flipped the eggs, a
warm breeze flowed through the kitchen. It was Brian, clean-shaven and sporting
a snazzy blue dress shirt and solid color tie. He looked collected, like the
first day making detective some ten years ago. The new morning brought a fresh
start for the detective, a fresh start to a normal day at the office with the
thought of a vacation with his family at the front of his mind.

“Good morning, everyone,” Brian said as
he adjusted his tie.

“Hey, Dad.”

“Someone’s getting big,” Brian exclaimed
as he rubbed his son’s hair.

“I’m making eggs and bacon,” Anne Marie said
as she smiled at her two favorite boys.

“Wow, the royal treatment,” Brian
replied with a grin.

He took a seat at the table and watched
his wife grab the orange juice from the refrigerator. Brian saw the picture on
the refrigerator that had aroused him last night, and then he looked at his
wife right in front of him. She had the same smile on her face, the same
energy, the same glimmer that she had in that picture. Brian felt blessed for
this family and wanted never again to forget the feeling of being next to them.

“Chocolate Puffs, huh? What kind of
generic cereal is that?”

“I don’t know. That’s what Mom bought
me.” Jonathan stared at the nutrition label on the brown cardboard box.

 “My son deserves to eat the name brand.
No more generic food in this house,” Brian joked as he looked at the back of
the box. “See, there’s no maze on there, no games. When I was a kid my mom
always bought the kind with the prize inside.”

“It was on sale,” Anne Marie clarified.

“When I get my raise, only name brand in
this kitchen.”

“When you get your raise, how about
you
cook the breakfast?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” Brian chuckled as
he fixed his collar. “So how’s school going, tiger?”

“Good. Mom says we’re going on vacation.”

Brian peered at Anne Marie. She held her
lips together in a smirk and batted her eyes as she poured two glasses of
orange juice.

“Hey! I said maybe,” Brian clarified as
he took a sip of the juice. “We’ll see, things are slowing down at work and I
may
be able to get a week off.”

“What’s hydro—poly—chlara—mide?”
Jonathan asked.

“Tell Dad about your game yesterday,”
Anne Marie said as she brought over the pan and scooped eggs onto their plates.

Jonathan lifted his head from the box.
“Yeah, coach put me in for the whole last quarter, and I scored seven points.”

“That’s great!” Brian roared as he
tickled Jonathan sending his son into laughter. “I definitely have to come see
my boy. The next Shaq.”

“Well you better eat up, or you’ll never
grow,” Anne Marie said as she gave Jonathan and Brian some crisped bacon.

Anne Marie put the pan back on the stove
and walked to her husband and son who were devouring her hard work. She put her
arms around both of them and smiled. “It’s nice to have breakfast as a family
for a change.” But before she finished uttering the last word, a cell phone
buzzed, souring her smile. “I spoke too soon.” She turned toward the stove.

Brian removed the phone from his pocket.
He took a sip from his orange juice, and then answered the phone. “Detective
Boise speaking.”

A few blocks away in the alley that led
to a dead end, the other side of Brian’s cell phone signal rested. Just six
hours prior, darkness filled the isolated alley. But now, the concrete that
supported the showdown between the sheriff and the outlaw was the opposite of
isolated. An army of police with the letters “CSI” covering their backs
flurried around the remote location. Brian’s immediate supervisor, Lt. Foster,
stood in the middle of the action. He was a slightly overweight man, victim to administrative
duties, and had a keen sense of character. He was past his prime, now pushing
fifty-seven-years-old—the cutoff for mandatory retirement. Lt. Foster supported
Brian, because he knew the detective wasn’t corrupt, wasn’t influenced by the
greed that had plagued so many police departments. He believed in Brian like a
professor who believed in his brightest student.

“Boise. This is Lieutenant Foster. We’re
going to need you to get down to Fourth and Main. We’re in an alley behind the
Roads Tavern.”

“What happened?”

“Murder. Get here ASAP.”

“I’m on my way,” Brian replied
instinctively.

He flipped the phone closed and returned
to his kitchen surrounded by his family. Brian realized the energy level had dropped
as his son returned to the cereal box and the kitchen sink consumed his wife.
Brian wished that the phone had not rung and that Lt. Foster had called another
detective. He wished he were going back to the office to finish paperwork, and
to request his vacation time. However, that was not to be.

“I gotta run, hopefully be home before
dark,” Brian said as he stood up and kissed his son’s forehead. He shifted to
his wife who stared through the kitchen window at the morning rush below. Brian
gave her a peck on the cheek and scurried out of the kitchen. He didn’t stop to
look at her face, to look at her expression, because if he had, he would have
seen disappointment in her eyes.

Exactly twenty-two minutes later, a
rookie officer fresh out of the academy attempted to show his might by holding
back prying reporters at the crime scene. He stood behind the yellow police
tape with a look of arrogance, a look he employed when he had to deal with the
public.

“Keep it back. Keep it back, everyone,”
he commanded as the heat of his breath misted in the brisk morning air.

Brian snaked his way among the horde,
which held cameras and microphones from their paws. He reached the yellow tape
as the rookie officer held his arm out stopping Brian in his tracks. The
detective slid his hand inside his jacket ready to remove his badge, but a
voice beat him to it. “He’s okay. He’s with me,” Lt. Foster exclaimed, waving
Brian back.

Brian ducked under the tape and transformed
from civilian to detective. He took a deep breath as the chill of the morning
cooled his core. Brian studied the trash barrels lining the sides of the alley,
the lack of windows on the buildings above, and the tone of his Payless dress
shoes stomping on the cement. He moved slowly as his brain processed
information like a supercomputer. Lt. Foster held a manila folder with the
details thus far from the incident, which was still being written. The
lieutenant led him toward the site that Brian had anticipated over his
twenty-two minute journey through the downtown with his police siren screaming.
As Lt. Foster neared the end of the alley, the dead end, Brian saw the center
of attention. All of the professionals were interested in the object on the
ground, the object that had been once a man. Brian saw the victim. A look of
horror was still painted on Max’s lifeless face. His glasses were shattered,
and his hair was messy as if a rat had tried to burrow itself for warmth. But
the most shocking image was the color red, the color of blood saturating Max’s
once white dress shirt, now spilled on the ground.

“I’m afraid to ask,” Brian muttered.

“Murder. Gun shots,” Lt. Foster mouthed.

“Did we get the bullets?” Brian asked.

“One to the chest, the other to the
forehead. Our guys confirmed a nine millimeter.”

They both moved to the body. Brian
crouched and removed his pen from inside his jacket. He took a whiff—a whiff of
death, a smell that was all too familiar to him. It was worse than the stench
of bleach, worse than the stink of an overflowing landfill, worse than the reek
of a caged animal. Brian studied the blood fragments surrounding the point of
entry of the bullet that had punctured the yuppie’s brain and had stolen the
life from him. Brian then used his pen to lift the suit jacket delicately to
analyze the second shot, the one that had punctured half of Max’s heart.

“Atypical entrance wound. Silencer was
most likely used,” Brian conjectured.

“He was Max Cleaver, thirty two,
attorney. Last seen with some friends at the pub around the corner. They were
interviewed, looks like he left on foot just after one a.m., and was found at
five this morning by a trash collector,” Lt. Foster explained as he looked in
his folder.

“Even with a silencer, the force
suggests close range,” Brian added as he glanced back toward several metal
barrels. “That would put the shooter…right there.”

“It took the beat cops a half hour to
pinpoint that,” Lt. Foster said. Then he lowered his voice. “Normally, I would’ve
just let the junior detectives take care of this, but he still had a thousand bucks
in his wallet. It doesn’t look like a robbery. Plus, we found something
strange.”

Lt. Foster lifted his pants legs and
crouched next to Brian. He used his Filofax Classic Black Pen to point to Max’s
fingers. The nail on his right hand was ripped off, the result from his bout
with the wall. A fly landed and feasted on the blood. Lt. Foster shifted toward
Max’s intact nails. Brian positioned his head.

“Right here, his fingers are smudged
with some sort of gray grease. We have the lab analyzing it,” Lt. Foster said.

The wall in front of them blocked the
morning sun, which prevented Brian’s view. He glanced behind him and saw two
crime scene investigators photographing the area. “Hey, can I get some gloves?”

One of the investigators offered him a
pair. “They’re latex. Is that kosher?”

“He’s not putting it on his dick,” Lt.
Foster said.

“It’s fine,” Brian said.

Brian donned the gloves and grabbed his
flashlight from his keychain. He looked at the blue tint of the skin of Max’s
hand, which was drained of the blood that had once pumped through its veins.
Brian flipped the hand over and checked its groomed nails. He saw the subtle grease
embedded between the keratin and the skin.

“Hmm, interesting.”

Lt. Foster removed some photographs from
his folder and showed them to Brian. While Brian loved perusing pictures of his
family, these printed pages of pigments were far from picturesque. They were
pictures of a man, not Max, even though the same look of death covered him. A
small, delicate hole was carved between the man’s eyes as blood seeped from the
orifice.

“These pictures were from a murder two
weeks ago on the north side, a Dante Lopez. This matches the perp’s M.O.” Lt.
Foster showed another picture with a one-inch smudge of gray on the side of a
metal container. “Also, we found this same substance on the ground near Lopez’s
body. But there wasn’t enough of it for the lab to analyze accurately.”

Lt. Foster took a moment and shook his
head. “Looks like we have a fuckin’ serial killer. Excuse my fuckin’ French.
That’s why I called you, Detective Boise.”

Brian suddenly felt uncomfortable as his
eyes shifted to a stone on the ground. He thought he would be glad the lieutenant
had thought of him, but a knot tightened deep within his gut, a knot on a rope
made from the hair of his family.

“I’ll need all the details from the last
murder,” Brian uttered as his wife and son filled his mind.

Lt. Foster patted him on his back. The lieutenant’s
hand felt overpowering to the detective. It felt as if it were made of concrete
that had cured for a hundred years. The jolt rattled Brian’s body as Lt.
Foster’s words overwhelmed his mind. “It’s already on your desk.”