This is a difficult thing for me to do. I don't like boundaries, let alone boundaries set by another. However, I set up myself with this and decided to do it. The following -- as horrible as it will be -- is a story which will grow too big for me to handle. I will finish this story as well as I can make myself due to the three days of writing I give myself, then three days of editing with one day to worry about it. Since the universe of this story is getting so large, this will not be the only story that you encounter these characters. So, this is the first step I have into a crime noir, along with writing a sympathetic cat without mass genocide of characters that I'm becoming too attached to.
As promised, I want to thank everyone, so you can go ahead and skip this part to get to the first installment. DL, PM, KP, CH and BB, thank you all for the ideas and much love.
So, without much ado, enjoy.
The Reality of the Situation Is...
a Kevin Elrich Case
"Are we, in fact, more than the sum of our memories?"
-Dark City (1998)1.
I guess I should explain. The best
place to begin is probably the beginning. Not Bugs Bunny style with the Big
Bang, but from when she walked in and how it was that I got to this
point. The reason why I’m staring into the black abyss of this monster’s eyes,
at least that’s probably a good place to start. Explain why Sam is a horrible,
no good, naughty kitty.
It all started with a little white
lie. At least that’s how I started being in the situation I would get into soon
enough. It wasn’t a big lie, but it was enough to get the crime scene clear, it
was more along the lines of a “bent truth” rather than a straight out lie. It
was supposed to get me just get paid so I could feed Sam, but it got much
bigger than I was expecting. Especially when I started the whole lie with a
bush in my behind.
I heard the press from the back of
the house. I had been here all night, waiting for the cops to leave the scene.
The call was supposed to go through last night so I didn’t have to spend the
night on the mulch in the back of this girl’s house. Nothing ever happens the
way you plan it, I suppose. The police tape had mapped off the entire front of
the house, but the back of the house was open if you had just enough of a gap
in your moral conscious to jump through the backyards of the neighbour houses.
The cops had done a great job of
stopping the news about this from getting out. If I hadn’t had the tip, I
probably wouldn’t have been there. But, I guess I should have explained that
before I told you about the stick in my bottom.
2.
I sat there sharing a can of tuna
with Sam. He was on my lap, I was in a chair and all three of us were in the
office I pretended was only an office and not the only place with my name on it
that I could sleep in. I was behind on my apartment rent and I decided to just
live where I faked working.
The vomit green walls had
bookshelves littered with the paperbacks I had read and reread several times.
The spinny chair I was sitting in had peeling faux leather sat behind a desk
that had no real drawers and a stack of paper, letters and receipts that I
could barely cast my eyes on without feeling sick about them being there.
It was supposed to be a normal
Thursday. I was going to look at the paper, get sick and go for a walk before I
considered fleeing to a tropical island with the little left over in my bank
account. Go somewhere like Bora Bora or Kingston. Live out the rest of my
little, miserable existence on a beach without worries or problems. This is
where this damn cat gets in the way.
Sam was a rescue I had picked up on
a whim on the street so I didn’t get lonely. He was the only thing standing
between me being naked on a beach with a drink in hand and no worries.
Stupid cat.
I was thinking of how much I could
get for him by selling him to some random little girl on the street or to some
non-specific restaurant, after all “times is hard”. I was relaxing with my
shoeless feet on my desk and she walked in.
At the risk of becoming another
cliché in the books, she wasn’t exactly what I was expecting. I had no
meetings, so when I saw her come in I felt suddenly underdressed in my black
tee shirt and jeans. I didn't even have shoes on when she came in.
She had an athletic body wrapped in
a tight fitting business suit as her black-black eyes scoped out the office.
The grey suit came closer to me and she brushed a strand of auburn hair out of
her round, babied face. Big lips pouted her greeting.
“Cat.”
I sat up, shooing Sam away. “That’s
right, I’m glad I don’t need to go through a zoology lesson today.”
She must be the landlord’s lawyer.
The guy hated me; even if I did pay my rent with what little I made hunting
down little private eye jobs and then selling the stories to the papers. Don’t
judge me until you have a cat that barely eats tuna out of a can and enough
time on your hands that you become obsessed with random comic books.
“Cat.”
She spat the word out at Sam, full
of spite and hatred.
“I thought we went through that.
Yes, it’s a cat, he won’t harm you. His name is Samuel.”
She looked at me with those dark
eyes with unwavering intensity.
“Samuel, like Samuel Beckett. He’s
useless, doesn’t do anything but eat and try to steal my shoes. He won’t do
anything.” I smiled and she didn’t. Maybe I should have named him something
less obscure.
“And you’re Kevin Elrich?” She
dropped her harsh tone and the hidden husky voice suddenly came out.
“I am. And you are-”
“Not important,” she stepped forward
pulling out a small packet from her jacket pocket and placed it on the desk in
front of me.
“I assure you, I’m starting a full
confidentiality program where I don’t let any of my customers or their
stories,” I placed emphasis on the last part, “in my articles. Been losing
money you see.”
“Not really important now,” she
said. “In the packet is everything you need. No names and only a contact number
on a pay as you go phone. What I want is a thumb drive, it’s in the house. Cash
on delivery.”
With that she left my office for the
last time without trying to kill me.
3.
I tried to make only a little noise
in the bush as I waited. The call hadn’t happened yet. I’m going to wring
that little neck, I was thinking before I heard the sirens going off. Finally.
I waited as the cops on the scene
began to disperse for the bomb threat. Like I said, it wasn’t a lie. There was
a threat of a bomb in the library. It could happen.
My eyes looked over the window sill
at the body being taken away. The nude woman was being quickly taken down as
the press in the front were distracted by the squads leaving for the library.
The tattoo on her shoulder struck my attention and I drew it down in my
notebook as they placed her in the body bag, being careful with not moving the
marked neck where the rope had broken her fall. I looked down and drew the
small triangle inside of the circle as they removed the body.
I looked into the house. A cat that
matched Sam sat on the bed sphinx like. Head slowly turning back and forth
looking at the proceedings, hiding anything he may have seen. His head slowly
watched as the last of the CSI unit took the body out.
The waiting is the worst part. You
need to wait a few hours before it’s a good idea to break into a crime scene.
You need to wait till a last overview is done and a quick scan over the last
possessions of the person are checked. The detectives do a shoddy job at
looking at the few electrical objects as they’re taken away. Laptops, cameras,
phones.
I waited for the door to close
before I went to the back porch door. The sliding door displayed a modest
household. Nothing that would make one think that the person that died to be
anyone of important standing. I tried the sliding door and it wouldn’t open.
Shimmyshimmyshimmy.
No luck.
Shimmyshimmyshimmy.
Nothing budged on the door.
I looked around the back porch,
under rocks and the mat. There were no keys. There was however a rock.
There was surprise painted across my
face when no alarms went off as the rock broke the back porch glass door. In a
neighbourhood like this, one can never be too safe.
I moved through the living room,
which had a long hallway that connected the unwalled kitchen to the living
room, to the bedroom to look at the cat. The cat’s black fur shined as Sam’s
did after I give him a bath. The cat smelled like it had just bathed, also. Its
claws had dug into the comforter and the tags around its neck displayed that
she had been adopted only two weeks ago.
The cat watched me walk around the
apartment. I looked through all the little nooks and crannies and couldn’t find
anything. The cat came up to me and nuzzled my left leg as I walked around and
cleaning off my finger prints. I couldn’t find anything in the house, let alone
a thumb drive.
I looked at the cat as he walked
back to the bedroom. I followed his steps slowly. As I walked back into the
bedroom, he sat sphinx-like again with his left paw dug into the comforter
again. He picked up the paw and struck it back into the comforter as I stood
watching him.
I walked up and moved comforter away
from the paw and felt into the bed. A sewing stich had closed the bed under
where the comforter had been getting torn up by the cat. I removed the bedding
and looked at an “X” emblazed upon the bed.
It took only a few second as I tore
the bed back up and looked at the thumb drive peeking out from the cotton and
springs of the bed.
