Chapter One
I’ve lost my fucking mind.
It’s the only explanation that covers sitting on a cracked, black, faux-leather bar stool against a sticky lacquer bar top in this sensory hellscape, two trains and a bus ride from my shitty apartment. A sports bar, no less, in a neighborhood with at least ten reports of crimes against women. If there is one thing I hate more than deadbeats who don’t pay for my services in a timely manner, it is drunk sports fans who assault women and slur about how they “could have gone pro”.
Like how I could have been a professional model… if my genetics hadn’t said my five-ten frame needs to carry 250 pounds, crave cheese, and walk into parked cars.
My phone rumbles across the bar top and I flip it over.
M. Mooney: Running late, RK, be there soon.
Since our meeting time was an hour ago, the text is a day late and a dollar short. His use of my initials, RK, grates. I don’t exchange names in my work, don’t meet in person, and always get paid up front. Mooney, however, had made an offer I couldn’t pass on at a time I was feeling weak. The closest he got to my name was my initials, RK, and the closest he’d get to a reply is the read receipt at the bottom of the thread.
The only shining armor Riley Knight has is the glitter eyeshadow, and I’m not wearing any for a reason. He’s out of time, out of saves, and out of patience. If he fails to follow through tonight, I’m taking what’s owed to me out of his cold, dead hands.
Across the bar, a whoop erupts from a mass of black and grey jerseys. Their beer-softened bodies bounce off each other, slamming into the high-top tables and toppling glass booze bottles, the clinking shifts to clattering crashes, green and brown bottles smash to the floor, falling beneath a mass of heavy waterproof boots grinding the glass shards deeper into the already scarred wooden floors until the dust is as dangerous as the morons who made it.
My shoulders hunch around my ears, making myself smaller, less noticeable, while dampening the sounds of mediocre male madness, my hands clutching the fingerprint-smudged glass of Kraken in front of me. The liquor’s dark color swirls around the bottom, but I have little interest in drinking it, at least not in this bar. Like the shit-kicker boots and black lipstick, it’s a prop that says fuck around and find out.
I would kill half the men in here for ten seconds of quiet and a weighted blanket.
The other half I’d kill just to rid the world of their stench.
Another roar blooms over the costumed men, a mass delusion and show of support to a group of overpaid musclemen who could not care less that they exist. Meanwhile, they offer unsolicited advice to the half-dozen screens.
“How did he miss that shot? Who can’t get the puck over the blocker?”
“What a fucking loser! We should have traded him the last round.”
“I played better than that when I was in peewees! I could have gone pro, y’know? If I hadn’t blown out my knee.”
I’m quite certain he blew something, but it wasn’t his knee.
“Pretty Boy is off the bench! Now we’ll see some fucking blood on the ice!”
The last draws my eyes up to the screen. A vast expanse of white, cut through with painted circles and lines, fills the screen. Large men power-skate back and forth across the rink, sticks in front of them, chasing a tiny black dot, looking like larger masses of red and black splattering the surface. One player smacks the dot to another, the other smacks it back… Hockey was by far the most interesting sport I ever watched, but like most sports, the toxic masculinity surrounding the fandom was too much to stomach. Like sex and murder, it was best enjoyed in private without the option for feedback.
A player in red stole the puck from the Shadow Monsters, the Cardinal Sin gliding fast toward the goal as a defenseman closes in. The Sinner has half a second to shoot, the disc ringing off the post, before the man in black slams him into the plexiglass. The hit rattles in place while the fans beside it pound against the side, and the fans in the bar rattle the pedestal tables. The defenseman slams into him again, and the Cardinal Sin player slides down along the board like a corpse in the cadaver lab.
He doesn’t get back up.
“What a pussy! I took harder hits than that at the strip club last night!” The drunks cackle and high five but my eyes stay on the screen. Cameras follow the Shadow Monsters player, his all-black uniform broken up by the glowing red eyes of the team’s unblinking logo beneath the scratched white helmet and visor obscuring the top half of his face.
Black hair fans along his neck, stuck there by sweat and small splatters of blood from a cut on his sharp Roman nose. It’s been broken before, the break’s small bumps showing what proper medical care and letting things heal properly look like. Ink peeks out above his collar beside the left shoulder pad in a violent point that angles toward the back of his neck. I strain to see more, beneath the pads, beneath the helmet, beneath the indifferent sneer splattered across six TVs in a dirty bar.
The angle clears, and my gaze locks with the heavy-lidded green of his own. They pull me in, wrap me in a familiar blanket. A splash of color that’s haunted my dreams, lived in my nightmares, and blinked on the periphery of every fight I almost lost, silently taunting me to get up. For years, I would have sworn the color was an impossible shade of sea foam, conjured from a cartoon memory, but the color is as real as the face in which they sit.
Red danger signs flash in my mind’s eyes, but I can’t look away. He consumes me like fire, green gaze staring straight into my grey eyes through the screen. It’s like he’s sitting beside me, telling me twisted tales of watching me scream in my sleep, disappearing once I’m fully awake. The bar falls away, the obnoxious patrons, the cramp in my ass cheek from sitting here for forty minutes. All of it is white noise in a world zeroed to the penetrating stare of a man who doesn’t know I exist.
He turns suddenly, breaking our connection and flashing his name toward the screen.
Perril.
Ominous… fitting.
He joins the rest of his line on the bench, all of them staring unsmiling at the ice as another face-off starts in their offensive zone. Indifference and malice drip off each one, inmates in line for their own execution, but still the fans cheer, scream and try to entice them into something resembling life.
It’s a train wreck of human suffering and I can’t look away.
“You have a thing for the pretty boy, hot stuff?” Liquor and stale marijuana assault my personal space. From under the brim of my hat, I see the bartender loitering, eyes roving the figure under my oversized hoodie six inches too close for comfort.
“I have a thing for people who stay out of my personal space. Don’t call me hot stuff.” I throw back the contents of my glass against better judgement and swallow down the burn. A glance toward the door, still shut against the November chill, hasn’t opened in twenty minutes. “I’ll have another.”
There’s twelve minutes left in the game, if he doesn’t come by then…
“Someone stand you up, hot stuff?” The bartender moves closer, his breath now a heated force on my skin that I can taste. “I’ll be your date if you’re lonely.”
“Pass.” I tap the rim of my glass, still hiding the top of my face with the ball cap. There’s no need to be anonymous, not here where everyone’s brain cells are fried by chemicals and… I assume head butting brick walls for fun, but my face isn’t exactly forgettable at the moment.
The door opens and I flick my eyes over, a wave of relief quickly flattened when the person entering is a woman. Not Mooney, the weasel similar in size and shape to rhinoceros but half as smart. On the screen, the game ticks down, eight minutes and my stomach sinks further.
Maybe he’ll turn up dead. Save me some time and effort when the night ends and I don’t have my money. Won’t help with rent, but it will help my disposition.
“You are waiting for someone. Come on, I can give you a night you’ll never forget.” His breath is a heated weight, slithering up my cheek and biting the back of my throat. Fingernails digging into my palms, I eye the backpack under the counter. His wallet is half exposed, the ID peeking out. Gregory Medin, year of birth 1991.
“It’s a business meeting, Gregory. He owes me money for services rendered.” Knuckles bared, I nudge the glass closer to him.
Still, he stays near me. My use of his name either has no impact, or he’s too stoned to catch it. Weight on his forearms, the dirt under his fingernails stands out against the skin yellowed with nicotine, heavy callouses on his thumb and middle finger. Though he’s four years younger than me, his bony frame looks ten years older. Heavy lines crease his face, the anemic lighting drawing small scars along his lip and ear into sharp relief. Half his left lobe is missing, and a clump of limp brown hair from the right side of his man bun. Gregory either has secrets or stories, neither of which interest me at the moment.
“What if I pay you for services?” His lips brush my cheek.
Bile climbs up my throat, my heart hammering in my chest, and my nails press deeper into the meat of my palms while I struggle not to break his face. Casual murder is not my thing, but I hate to be touched without permission. “What if you perform the services I’m paying for? Considering you’re the one who works here?”
A long sigh slips out, his breath an unlicensed assault on my flesh. Gregory drags the heavy glass on the bar top, the scraping sound a hollow echo that counterpoints the even slap of the puck on the screen. My glass drops, a dull thunk in an unwashed grey bus tub while he moseys over to the woman sitting opposite me. She’s half falling off her stool, fried flat blond hair dragging through the beer foam collecting at the top of her glass. He touches her, his fingers trailing over her bare arm. Her repulsion is palpable, but whenever she moves away, her body pitches off the stool, forcing her back toward Gregory whose hand slides higher, until she gives up on escape.
A sudden wave of vomit in the back of my throat says the crimes against women are standing behind the bar and I know the story his face is telling.
I flip my phone back over, activating the VPN, private browsing, and launching the cloaking app that bounces the server request across two continents and a military submarine. Once the ghost icon displays in the corner, I get to work on Gregory Medin, starting with identifying his date of birth based on year and current location. Then move on to where he lives, where he banks, his complete financial history… the smell is back.
“Reconsider my offer, hot stuff? If it’s a matter of cost, I can pay…” His fingers brush my hoodie.
“I said don’t call me that. You can’t afford to call me anything, considering you have twenty-seven dollars and eighty-two cents in your bank account. Or were you hoping someone would give you an eleventh credit card to add to your seventy thousand dollars in debt?” I see him freeze in the mirror over the bar. “Not that you can apply, of course, because the IRS is garnishing your wages for tax fraud and evasion… or they would be if they knew you were employed. Are you paid under the table, or did you apply with a fake social?”
I chance a look his way and see him take a small step back, beads of sweat sparkling at his hairline. They aren’t dripping down yet… interesting. Must be more to uncover then and I grip the phone tighter. Across the bar, the blonde woman is helped off her stool by a man with a similar jaw line, matching eyes, and a look of murder for Gregory.
One less victim on six o’clock news.
“Both then. Easier to hide from the government that way. Along with the baby mama you’re eight months behind on child support for and the landlord looking for the rent you’re two months behind on. At least you have that 1995 Honda Civic you’ve been driving since high school. Not comfortable for sleeping in but you’re only… five eight, according to your license.” I eye him up in down. “Five six in person, I’m betting you tell everyone you’re six four online.”
“How… how did you…” A gentle drum roll beats on the bar top, Gregory’s hand shaking the knuckles across the surface. His tongue wets his lips, and the smell of fear joins the chemical party.
I eat it up like cold pasta on a sweltering August eve.
“Because, Gregory Medin, born April 11, 1991, in Foxhill Downtown Hospital, currently living at 2311 Poplar Dr Unit 6B, high school dropout, voted most likely to never amount to anything… wow, your school was mean… and this haircut? You’d have been better off just wearing the fucking bowl, man.” I twirl my phone on the bar top to face him, showing the old image of his high school yearbook from sophomore year. “And did all these people who signed it K.I.T. actually ‘keep in touch’ or was that as fake at your school as it was at mine? Missy seems the most enthusiastic… though this was three years before you paid her off to drop the date-rape charges.”
I spin the phone back in front of me and open another app, satisfied by the u-shaped sweat mark blossoming beneath his face. It’s possible he doesn’t remember photographing his own yearbook, but the internet remembers.
“I’ll… I’ll get you that drink…” He steps away, the sports fans groaning somewhere beyond my hyper-fixation. In this zone, the rest of the world falls away. Foxhill Police Department’s records management system is a joke, and I’m in before he can refill a fresh cup and set it down in front of me. It has the same fingerprints, the same cloudy calcium stains, and the same sad look of glassware resurrected for a fourth life after a failed Kevorkian attempt to end it all after two.
“Let’s see what other crimes you’ve committed besides trying to rape an ex, fraud, and tax evasion…”
He grabs my phone, but I’m faster. Plucking his hand from the air, I dig my middle finger into the pressure point at the apex of his index and thumb, twisting until his muffled cries caress my ears in the sweet song of human suffering.
“Three active warrants, two with narcotics… you are certainly… in character.” I open the first document, noting the date is three years ago, the statute of limitations on the misdemeanor is nearly expired. I save a copy of the PDF and attach it to the draft email I’ve drafted to a bounty hunter in the area. “Possession, that tracks.”
He whimpers and I twist just a little harder.
“Sales… of fentanyl. Well, you’re a fucker.” That carried a felony charge with an active bench warrant. I attach the warrant to the email, with the bond agreement in case she needed the payout promise.
The last one is with robbery homicide, and my throat dries out as soon as I open it. An image, a memory, of the last time I saw my twin flashes in front of my eyes, superimposed over the actual case images. His body on the ground, blue lips, cold, clammy skin… I shut it down and squeeze Gregory’s hand until I feel the bones buckle while I attach the last document and send off the email. Inch by inch, I raise my face to his, watching each section appear in the mirror. Black lipstick, laceration on my left cheek held together by two butterfly closures, small scab on my nose above two bumps from past breaks, and the puce green shiner on my right eye that burst the inner eye blood vessels to a deep crimson lake.
“Manslaughter, Gregory? You like giving drugs to kids and watching them die?”
A drunk slams his beer bottle down, the sound ricocheting through the man’s body like a gunshot.
“It was… an ac-accident.” Sweat slides down his cheeks, the pits of his grey shirt a near black as deep as the jerseys on the screen. “How was I-I s-s-supposed to kn-now?”
“How were you supposed to know not to give fucking drugs to children, Gregory?” I feel his wrist pop.
He crumbles, tears streaming down his cheeks, my grip on his limp arm the only thing keeping him off the floor. “It’s not my fault!”
“Oh, it is, Gregory.” I whisper. “Everything that led to this moment is your fault.”
Another drunk shoves his way in beside me, taking a handful of my ass as he goes, to lean against the counter. Too close, he’s breathing on me and he’s too close. My tolerance has snapped; the thin grasp I had on my normie demeanor ripped from my fingers, leaving only the reckless, deranged beast I fight to hide.
And she wants blood.
I pick up the goblet, down my drink and slam the glass down on the hand that touched my ass. Bones crunch, the glass shatters, and deep rivulets of blood sprout and slide along the back of his hand. The buzzer sounds while he screams; the pained cries drowned in the mournful wails of despair. The mirror shows the final score is three to two, and the shadow monsters have lost. A final scan for Mooney turns up nothing, and I dig in my pocket for a twenty, setting it down beside us, not bothering to keep it from the rapidly pooling blood beside me. My lips lower to Gregory’s ear, not wanting to shout to be heard. “Turn yourself in. I will see you behind bars by close of day Monday.”
My grip is weakening, everything is starting to feel heavy, and I let him go. The weak sack of shit falls to the black rubber mats behind the bar, his hand curled against his chest. I steal a towel from behind the counter and toss it at the bleeding bitch whose tears and blood are as obnoxious as the TV announcers re-capping the game we just watched.
“Clean yourself up. I’ve seen infants who cry less. Next time you touch a woman without permission, it’ll be more than your hand bleeding… because you won’t have a hand anymore.”
Gregory seems to rally, pulling himself off the ground to square off again, his hand still limp against his weak chest. “What’ll it take for you to forget you’ve seen me? What do you want? Everyone has a price, lady. Name it and it’s yours. I know people.”
“Death, Gregory. You go to jail, or you die. Fuck who you know.”