6. Knox #2
What rotten fucking luck. Honestly, is the world screwing with us?
We were a quarter of a mile from our secondary getaway vehicle that Jax had parked behind the dirt hill in the abandoned lot.
If shit hadn’t gone down the way it had, we would have had time, and we certainly wouldn’t have had to leave behind a vehicle with potential DNA presence in it.
None of us walked away without some degree of bleeding, and we’re all in CODIS, the unfortunate byproduct of having criminal records.
Sure, we already planned to use the gallons of bleach stored inside the other car, but with Blondie getting away, our time frame to clean up had been cut significantly shorter.
We had to rush; and the more you rush, the sloppier your work.
It doesn’t matter that we have an alibi already set up.
It doesn’t matter how much bleach we poured into the SUV.
All it takes is the police finding one small area with one droplet of blood we overlooked for us to be fucked six ways to Sunday.
“And where the fuck is Michael?” Dominic asks for the hundredth time. “The guy leaves us high and dry and then can’t be bothered to check in? If that fucker shows his face here again—”
Jax and I all but jump out of our skin at the sound of a key jamming into the back door lock. Speak of the devil…
At least that’s one loose end tied up.
The resemblance between Jax and his cousin is more than familial. At first glance, you could mistake them for twins, save for one difference. Both have brown hair, but while Jax’s comes down to below his shoulders, Michael’s is a crew cut that he’s let grow out over the past few months.
The latter waltzes inside, looking far less worse for wear than the rest of us. The asshole is in fresh clothes, his hair is damp, and unlike us, he’s not sporting a set of raccoon eyes.
“Well, if it isn’t Steve McQueen,” Dominic drawls. “What happened, Tex-Mex? Get lost on your way back from the fuckin’ rodeo?”
Before any more accusations can be thrown around, Michael lobs his phone at him, a video already loaded.
Since his hands are full of suds, the device almost slips out of Dominic’s hold, but whatever he sees on the screen has him finally shutting up.
Michael wipes off the device and hands it to his cousin next so that we can both see that social media has a leg up on the news coverage.
I have the TV on mute so I don’t have to keep hearing them repeat the same commentary they’ve been spouting for the past hour, and they just keep replaying the same footage of the initial getaway.
On social media, however, someone inside a clothing store across the street from Westfall Jewelers managed to film the police arriving in front of the shop, where one of the officers trips stepping off the curb, causing an accidental discharge that pierces the back window of our getaway car.
The second it shatters, a masked Michael has the reaction of what anyone would do in that situation. He floors it, ramming into the cruiser that tries to pin him. As soon as he gets enough space, he maneuvers the car around and tears out of there.
Yeah, I can’t say I blame him. I’d do the same if I thought someone was trying to blow my head off.
“How the hell did you get this shit off ?” I ask, noting Michael doesn’t have any remnants of the face paint around his eyes.
He shrugs. “My girl gave me some makeup remover.”
Only once Dominic starts cussing about getting soap in his eye does Jax finally peel his gaze off the wall.
He pulls up a website about “at-home hacks” on one of the burner phones before heading into the kitchen.
He fetches a bottle of olive oil from the cabinet and places it on the counter next to the sink. “Here.”
Unsurprisingly, Dominic just looks up at him with the eye currently not lathered in soap like Jax has grown a second head. “You want me to marinate you a fuckin’ chicken or something? What the hell is this for?”
Jax doesn’t necessarily push Dominic out of the way, but between the four-inch height difference and the fact that Dominic’s beaten up far worse than the rest of us, it doesn’t take more than a nudge to get him away from the sink.
Unscrewing the cap, Jax pours some of the olive oil onto a paper towel and begins rubbing the liquid over one of his eyes.
After rinsing it off, he lifts his head to reveal that most of the camouflage paint is gone.
Well, shit.
The last thing my body wants is for me to move any more than necessary, but I know I need to get this stuff off my face.
Removing everything takes a couple of rounds, and I finish up just in time. As soon as I exit the bathroom, the doorbell rings, sending Dominic into his own special brand of fight-or-fuck mode when he peers through the side curtain.
There’s a goddamn squad car parked at the end of the driveway.
Jax and Michael have to grab hold of Dominic and haul him into the back room before he can get a chance to answer the door, because the asshole is still a little trigger-happy, pulling out his gun and apparently ready to go all Dog Day Afternoon.
If the fuzz really were here to arrest us, I doubt they’d be doing it so politely, not to mention with only one unit.
Since everybody else is in the bedroom, I have no choice but to answer when the officer begins knocking.
To my surprise, I don’t find a member of the boys in blue waiting out on the porch. At least not the typical kind. He isn’t in uniform, meaning he’s much higher up on the food chain, which likely doesn’t bode well for me.
Sure enough, he introduces himself as Detective Nash.
The guy looks to be in his mid-to-late forties, with hair that can’t decide whether it wants to be brown or gray and a face that eighteen-year-old me would have mistaken for being sympathetic.
He has that aww-shucks demeanor that makes him look like he’d be more at home as a guidance counselor at a high school.
He also can’t be taller than five-nine and isn’t particularly muscular, only adding to the facade.
He’s only spoken two sentences, and I already don’t like him.
He looks like the kind of guy who would “give it to you straight,” which means I should assume he is full of even more shit than the rest of them.
The detective looks between me and his open notepad. “Damon Knox, I presume?”
“If this is about the pack of bubble gum I stole when I was eight, I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations has run out,” I say lazily, leaning against the door jamb. I try to make the stance appear casual, but it’s just to take the pain off my right foot.
He doesn’t appear to be amused, his lips tipping up in an expression that looks more like annoyance than anything else. I also don’t like the way he keeps eyeing me up and down, as if cataloging every stiff movement.
“I take it you’ve seen the news today?” He gestures over my shoulder at the TV that’s still on mute.
I shake my head. “I just woke up.”
The lie is an easy sell. I answer with a yawn, and I’m tired as hell, so it doesn’t take much in the acting department to look groggy.
Still, the detective glances between me and his watch, not appearing terribly convinced. “At three in the afternoon?”
“What can I say? I’m the opposite of a lumberjack. I’m not okay, and I work all night and I sleep all day.” I try to say it in a sing-songy way, but either Nash isn’t a Monty Python fan or just has no sense of humor, because he blinks back at me, not remotely amused.
“As far as our records show, Mr. Knox, you don ’ t work.” Yeah, he does nothing to hide his judgment when he points this out.
Damn.
It’s not like I’m a bum. At least not willingly.
You want to know who’s eager to hire a convicted felon?
No one.
Employers especially don’t want that felon working for them when they were sentenced to prison for grand larceny.
My applications would be just as effective being sent into a paper shredder as they are through the mail. And it’s not like I’ve been picky about my job prospects. I’ve never had any qualms about getting my hands dirty, as long as there’s a paycheck at the end of it.
But six weeks out on the job hunt, I haven’t gotten so much as an email expressing further interest.
It says something when society doesn’t even find you to be worthy of earning minimum wage by scrubbing toilets or mopping floors.
The only money I make now comes courtesy of the River Queen’s Revenge Casino, but I have a system. Low stakes, low rewards. I can’t risk all the money I have in my pocket on one big game, so I always play it safe and walk away once I have enough to get me by for the week.
The detective flips to a blank page in his notebook, pen poised above the paper. “Where were you at around nine o’clock this morning?”
“Mott’s.”
Nash looks up at me, questioningly. “Is that a friend of yours?”
“It’s an old dive bar not far from the river, about a half mile from the trailer park near the forest preserve.”
“What time did you get there?”
“About a quarter to eight.”
Another judgmental look. “Do you normally visit bars first thing in the morning?”
“I was unwinding from my night at the casino, and it sounded slightly less depressing than sitting outside the strip club waiting for the doors to reopen,” I admit.
“Were there any witnesses who could corroborate this?”
“I was hanging out with my housemate,” I say, gesturing over my shoulder to the closed bedroom door, “as well as a couple of friends.”
The detective eyes the living room behind me, no doubt noticing the abundance of beer cans on the coffee table. “Our records show that a Mr. Dominic Graves owns this residence. Is he here?”
“He’s asleep.”
“Might I ask how you’re allowed to live with a convicted felon?”
Jesus. So we’re not dancing around things, I see.