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“Excuse me?”
“You had started to say something when I asked you about it earlier. Who is it?”
“Oh, Mr. Buckner...I guess I thought she told her mom and she told you.”
“No.”
“Well, this is gross but...her dad.”
57
Ben Boothe’s ramshackle shitbox sits on a small lot in a bad neighborhood and faces a major street.
The tree in the front lawn looks like it was struck and killed by lightning twenty years ago and now the weight of decades of decay are taking their toll. The thing looks mummified: withered and feeble.
I pull up alongside the street. I can’t get in the driveway; the police cruisers, the ambulance and the crime scene tape are in my way.
The trifecta: Riggens fingers the Shitski flamer, Volksman fingers the conveniently dead mob flamer, now this. Whatever it is, I know two things: arson investigator Rudd is here and the EMTs are carting out a body bag.
I get out. Approach Rudd. She waves me through the police line, albeit with a sour look on her face.
“He dead?” I ask.
“Yes, he is.”
“You do it?”
“No, I did not.”
“His daughter? You seen her?”
“No, she did not do it either.”
“Did Volksman kill your suspect for you also? Make it an easy case to close?”
“Volksman did not kill the mob goon he pinned his fire on. Please be reasonable, Mr. Buckner—”
“What happened then?”
“Why do you care?”
“I was here an hour ago. Looking for his kid.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“I was here a few days ago as you are well aware. You come by today, barking about more crimes. I stop by today with his Intensive Supervision Officer while he made a home visit. The ISO requested I come inside with him. Ben knew me from the arson investigation and probably put two and two together. He left the door open, walked into the other room and ate a 9mm. End of story.”
“So you are going to pin your arson on him?”
“Parolee gets out, immediately commits another felon—which will be his third strike, mind you—and we come sniffing around from a few different angles. You and me and the ISO. He knows the gig is up, doesn’t want to go back inside, doesn’t want to run, so he cowards his way out. Signed, sealed, delivered.”
I know the look consuming her eyes. Confident. Swimming the deep seas of arrogance. Unwavering. A believer. I cannot tell her anything about her case. It’s solved.
I think about saying that his daughter is running around telling people he knocked her up. But I don’t. I don’t even ask who the homicide investigator is. Doesn’t matter anymore.
Rudd adjusts her coat and begins to say something but her face becomes an angry red smear. Her words twist and distort in my ears and melt down into a buzzing sound that goes well with the swirl of color dripping across my vision. I feel my brain go numb and my eyes swell as the pleasant tan of Rudd’s face darkens to a brown and to a black. The whites of her eyes spill down her face like popped eggs and runners of cream fall like rain. I hear her voice crawling up from some void towards me, and as it approaches the Big Fry smear slowly inches back to where it hides in my brain.
