Chapter 13 James
James
Behind the sheriff’s department building, I stand between the back door and a dead vending machine, waiting.
I time my entrance to one officer’s vape, and soon enough, the door opens, and a stream of fruit-sweet smoke slithers out with Ritchie. He’s got a haircut done by a grudge, from the looks of it. He stands under the camera that cannae see him, or me, and blows clouds like a train.
He’s on his phone again, speaker barely up.
“C’mon, Chiefs,” he mutters. “Don’t do me like this. I need two more. Two, man. Just two. Don’t you fumble—don’t you—aw, come on!”
Aye, fantasy football…I think? I dinnae ken American football.
He’s too distracted to see me slipping behind him.
One breath. Two. Then I’m past the threshold before the door clicks shut and into the cool guts of the place, no keypad that sticks on the number four required. That institutional hum crawls along the walls, and after a minute, I’m down into the basement with the dust.
Property and Evidence is a concrete mouth full of wire cages and steel shelves. I glove up, the snap of nitrile a wee drumbeat in my own ear, and spy the camera above. Aye, there you are, darling. I duck its lazy gaze since it has a blind spot under the duct.
Ye ask me how I ken this, and I willnae tell ye. I’ve been here before. That’s all, and that’s enough.
There’s a book on a chain and a computer terminal that doesnae look like it’s from this century.
The book’s the one that matters. With a wee torch shining bright, I flip pages to the newest dates, case numbers, and locations.
Luckily there are short descriptions too.
Farley. I find him…or a part of him. Box 4H-12, shelf G, locker 3.
I walk the aisle slow and easily find the locker. The deadbolt’s there, old-school, bless it. I bend close, and with a wee twist with the right amount of force, it shivers open.
Inside are bags and boxes, and I take out the bits I brought. A wee bottle of forget, a heat pack that clouds glass into nonsense. Nothing that screams tamper. Everything that whispers, “Someone’s day shift cocked this right up.”
A sample of the adhesive I used on Farley’s hand is in a separate wee container, all labeled up.
The wee bottle of forget I brought gets a breath near the container’s seam, nae touching, just a hint.
I do the same for Farley’s hand in the evidence bag.
Then I leave the heat pack on a shelf; ten minutes and the locker will sweat like a sinner in church.
Before I go, I’ll take the heat pack with me.
I change nothing…and everything.
Enough to give the lab lads a headache the size of the book of Leviticus and leave them there to argue about who did and dinnae do shite.
Chain without breaking chain. Nobody sees the hand on the rope, only the rope fraying.
The monster in me wants a trophy, if not Farley’s hand, then one of his digits to put in my pocket and roll like a prayer bead. But I let my monster want for now. I took a vow to my Prayer. Ye point, I hit. I do this her way so I don’t get anyone else she cares about in trouble.
After ten minutes, I reach for the heat pack, and when I lift it, it kisses the locker lip. Shite. That’s nothing to a sane man, but it’s a sermon to a lab lad with a magnifier and time and his arse on the line.
A quick look, and there it is, the tiniest hair of fiber from the heat pack clinging to the inside lip. I pluck it with a breath and a curse and tuck it into my pocket so it leaves with me.
Then I hear footsteps, boots on stairs, heavy and coming down.
Och, ye bastard.
I slip sideways into the blind between cages, my shoulder kissing chain link. It rattles, a whisper, and I freeze.
The stairwell door opens, and Ritchie’s voice bounces, too loud for the room. “Yeah, yeah… Property and Evidence. I’m in the basement. What do you want?”
A click. His radio, not his phone.
“Man, y’all always want something when I’m tryin’ to watch the game. You couldn’t call Records? No? Okay. Okay…” His boots start down my aisle.
I slide lower, tucking into the shadow of a rolling ladder.
He’s humming now. “Chiefs’ D better get one damn sack. One. Carr can’t do… Hey, who left this open?”
He’s stopped at a locker two down from mine—4H-10—with the latch not quite kissing home. Some day-shift roaster did a bad, bad thing, bless him.
Ritchie clucks his tongue.
“You wanna get me wrote up? ‘Cause this is how,” he says to nobody and shuts the locker with a pop.
He takes three more steps until he’s at my row, his torch up. The beam skates over shelves and pauses on the locker I left open, now very sweaty.
“Ugh.” He rubs it with his sleeve and sniffs. “Smells like…rain.”
Aye, because the heat pack did its job and then minded its business like a good girl.
From right above me, one fat bead of water lets go from the duct and hits the concrete with an impolite plink. Ritchie’s light snaps left—right where I am.
I suck in, shrivel my dick and balls, and think really skinny thoughts while I try to become one with the wall.
Prayer said no killing. For that, I may need a miracle.
I palm a wee hex nut from my pocket I got from my van and flick it low, underhanded. It jumps and skitters two aisles over.
Ritchie jolts. “Hey!”
He swings the torch after the sound, his breath held like it’ll help him see. He takes two big-boy steps that way, then stops and laughs at himself. “Man, this place is creepy as hell at night.”
His radio crackles.
He jumps, swears, then answers. “Yeah, I’m gettin’ it now. Chill. And hey—if you see Mike up there? Tell him to bench the Chiefs’ D already. They’re trash tonight.”
When his back’s to me, I’m up and away in the other direction, a smudge that has had enough of basements for one night.
Outside, the night gulps me down.
Once I’m in my van again, I sit a minute, palms flat to the wheel, let the adrenaline climb down my bones one rung at a time. There’s a sweetness in doing a thing right that violence cannae touch. Keeping a man out of a noose is a different kind of kill.
Gas N’ Go sits quiet and dark, and my Prayer has gone home, where she waits for both dawn and me.
When she wakes, we’ll come for Farley and Michael Devlin’s face.