Susie was gone by the time he looked at the display, flipped it open and put it to his ear.
“Morrie.”
“Dude, get over here, right now.”
Colt’s blood turned to ice. Morrie sounded freaked.
“What?”
“I just opened the mail. Dude, just,” Morrie blew out a breath, “Colt, man, just get over here.”
“You at the bar?”
“Yep.”
“Feb there?”
“Yep.”
“She okay?”
“Far’s I know.”
“She see whatever you’re talkin’ about?”
“Nope.”
“I’ll be there in five.”
* * * * *
Colt walked into J&J’s.
It was late, it was a weeknight, but the place was packed.
Murder had a way of drawing people, Colt knew. Most everyone had that sick place in their head that was fascinated by violence. But he also knew this was more a show of support for Morrie and Feb and, in small part, Angie.
A town could get ripped apart by tragedy, people turning on each other.
But not his town.
Or, at least, he’d do what he could to stop it.
When he came in, Feb, behind the bar, slid her eyes to him and tilted her head in that delicate way she had before she looked away. The movement was tiny, just her jaw jutting out to the side, but the way she did it made a huge impact.
That’s what she’d do for last two years every time he’d come into the bar. It was the only thing she did anymore that reminded him of the way it used to be. When they were at high school and he’d walk by her class or she’d walk by his locker, her eyes would meet his, she always sought his gaze, and she’d tilt her head, lifting her jaw to the side, the movement spare, fluid, graceful.
There was nothing to it and everything to it. The other guys at school saw it and wanted it, but she only gave it to Colt.
Outside of Morrie, Jack and Jackie, back then February was the only good thing in his life.
And those jaw tilts, back then, were the best thing in it.
He used to smile at her and he’d barely catch it when she’d smile back because she always looked away while she smiled.
She was the best flirt he’d ever met, just with that fucking jaw tilt, and he’d never met better.
Now she didn’t wait for his smile. Before he could do it, not that he would, she’d long since looked away.
Like she was doing now, nodding her head at a customer, again the movement was slight and appealing and he felt his jaw grow hard at the sight.
He looked away but he couldn’t stop himself from wishing she wouldn’t dress like that. She didn’t dress like Angie, not by a long shot, but Feb always had a way with clothes. Tonight she was in a light pink, Harley Davidson tee; a three-tiered Indian, choker wrapped around her throat made of long, oblong, black beads with a silver medallion at the front, a signature piece she wore and she had several in different colors; more silver necklaces tangling under the choker; long, silver hoops at her ears; her smoothed out hair had enough time that night to grow a bit wild; and even though he couldn’t see them he knew she wore faded jeans that weren’t tight but they fit her too well and, probably, black motorcycle boots.
Since she’d been home, to his knowledge, she hadn’t had a man. Not for lack of offers. J&J’s was the only bar within the city limits, right on Main Street. There were a few bars outside the limits, mostly hunters’, fishers’ or golfers’ havens. There were restaurants that had bars. And there were several bars closer to the raceway, their clientele transient, mostly rough folk, drag, NASCAR and midget race groupies, going to those places because they were close and convenient to the campgrounds. Over the years others bars had opened in the city limits and failed because everyone went to J&J’s. The men went there more now that Feb was back. He knew the boys at work jacked off regularly thinking about her even (and especially) the married ones. He’d unfortunately heard all about it.
The chokers were the problem and the silver dangling around her neck. You could almost hear those necklaces jingling while you imagined fucking her or as she rolled in her sleep in your bed.
But mostly, it was the chokers. Something about them said something he suspected Feb didn’t want them to say, maybe didn’t even know they were saying, but they spoke to men all the same.
It was good she was home. No one would mess with Morrie and, if they were stupid enough, most had heard what Colt had done for her and absolutely no one would go there. Colt couldn’t imagine, since he knew while she was away she’d lived the nomad’s life tending bars in small towns all over the place, how she lived her life those fifteen years, beat the men back without Morrie and Colt having her back. Maybe she didn’t and she just wasn’t going to shit where she lived. Then again, maybe she’d learned her lesson.
It was no longer his business or his problem, never would be again.
That was, unless someone made it his problem. He was still Colt and no matter what had happened, she was still February.
He saw Darryl tending the other end of the bar and he wanted a drink but he went directly to the small office in the back.
Morrie was sitting at the cluttered desk, his body hunched, his elbow on the desk, forehead in his hand.
This pose did not give Colt a good feeling.
Colt closed the door behind him and Morrie jumped.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuckin’ hell, I’m glad you’re here,” Morrie said, getting up and moving swiftly.
For a big man he was surprisingly fast and agile. This probably had something to do with the fact that they played one-on-one basketball together every Saturday or, when the weather was shit, they’d play racquetball. They’d both been athletes all their lives even though, when they were young, they’d intermittently get drunk, high and smoke, still they’d both always stayed obsessively fit.
For Colt, this was because he spent most of his youth watching his mother popping pills, chain-smoking cigarettes and sucking on a bottle of vodka. She didn’t even bother pouring it, drank it straight out of the bottle, uncut. He never remembered a time when she wasn’t zoned out or hammered, mostly both. She was thin as a rail, rarely ate and, even when she was young, her skin hung on her like old-lady flesh.
His father wasn’t much better. He didn’t pop pills but he smoked weed and snorted coke when he had the money to buy it. He remained sober during the day when he had a job but at night he’d get hammered right along with Colt’s Mom. Most of the time he didn’t have a job so Colt’s memories of his Dad were pretty much filled with him less than sober.
For Morrie, he stayed fit because he’d been around Colt’s Mom and Dad not to mention grew up in a bar.
Morrie picked up a Ziploc bag with a piece of lined paper in it and handed it to Colt.
“This came in the mail today, addressed to Feb,” Morrie waved his hand at the paper. “I put it in that thing, the bag. I didn’t want it to get tainted. Once I figured out what it was, I barely touched it,” he jerked his head to the desk, another bag containing an envelope was lying there. “Did the same with the envelope, it’s here too.”
It was good Morrie watched cop shows.
Colt looked at the paper. He hadn’t seen paper like that in a long time. It was something you’d have at school. It seemed old, the writing faded. On the top in pencil, Feb’s name was written.
He read the note, not understanding it. It sounded like teenage girl bullshit, a handwritten pissy fit. It even mentioned Kevin Kercher who’d gone to IU after high school and never came back, not even for reunions. Colt got to the bottom where the sender signed her name.
Angie.
“What the fuck?”
“What the fuck is right!” Morrie exploded. “Look at the back!”
Colt flipped the paper over and saw, again in pencil, this darker, newer, in different handwriting, the words, For you.
Something heavy and disturbing settled
in his gut. Something he didn’t want there. It felt like it felt when he was a kid in his room, listening to his Mom and Dad fight, knowing exactly when it would escalate by the change in their voices, being able to count it off to within seconds before he heard her head hit the wall or her cry of pain before her body hit the floor. He hadn’t had that feeling in years, not in years. Not since he sat on that toilet seat with Feb wiping away the blood his father caused to flow from his face while Morrie got the ice and Jack and Jackie left their kids to take care of him, knowing they’d raised good kids who’d know what to do while they went about the business of rocking his world.
He wanted to open his own flesh and tear the heavy thing out. It didn’t belong there. He’d worked for years making himself into a man who didn’t carry that kind of weight around. Jack and Jackie had helped him get rid of it, and Morrie and Feb. He didn’t want it back, not ever, but particularly not when it being there had to do with Feb.
He looked at Morrie. “Bring Feb in here.”
“I don’t want her seein’ that.”
“Bring her in here.”
“Colt –”
“Morrie, this has to do with a homicide, bring her, the fuck, in here.”
Morrie held his eyes for too long. So long, Colt thought the situation would deteriorate. He’d fought with Morrie, too many times, but the bad blood never lasted long.
But this was about February.
Finally, Morrie muttered, “Shit,” and he walked out the door.
In his head Colt went over the crime scene.
Angie’d been done by the dumpster, murdered, not dumped, right behind Jack and Jackie’s bar.
Lab results weren’t back, autopsy not finalized, but there’d been no apparent struggle. Her eyes were closed naturally which meant she was probably out but not bludgeoned. There were no head wounds, she had maybe been drugged when she’d been slaughtered which was good, at least it was for Angie.
Bloody footprints leading away from the body, that much blood, what he did to her, the killer had to get messy. Footprints ended abruptly five feet away. He’d gotten into a car, his clothes and hands likely covered in Angie’s blood, and drove away.
The hatchet was found not far from where the footprints ended, he’d tossed it aside. No prints on the hatchet, no DNA left at the scene that they could find, though, considering it was an often used alley, they were still sifting through all the shit they found.
But it appeared it was just the footprints and the hatchet and Angie’s body. That’s all he left.
And it had to be a “he”. No woman had the strength to hack those wounds, clean, precise, like he chopped wood for a living and knew what he was doing.
Unless she was a German shot-putter, it had to be a “he”.
Colt’s thoughts shifted to Feb and Angie.
It hadn’t escaped him as he went through his day they’d once been good friends.
Hell, even as recently as a few nights ago he’d watched Feb wander over to Angie’s table and stand beside it, looking down at Angie, saying shit he couldn’t hear but it made Angie laugh.
Angie didn’t laugh much, never did unless she was flirting or unless Feb wandered over to her to shoot the shit with her to draw Angie out, to make her melancholy face alive again, even if for a few minutes.
But a long time ago, it used to be more.
When Angie and Feb were in junior high, Angie was at Jack and Jackie’s nearly as much as Colt was. Jack and Jackie, and Morrie and Feb for that matter, collected strays. Jack and Jackie’s house was always filled with kids and people for as long as Colt could remember. Angie’s home wasn’t much better than Colt’s so, like Colt, but unfortunately for Angie only for awhile, she’d been adopted.
Something had happened though, in their freshman year. Something that made Angie quit coming over.
Colt looked at the note.
Kevin Kercher happened.
Feb appeared in the doorframe and leaned a shoulder against it. She took him in but her eyes didn’t meet his.
He had a sudden impulse to wrap his fist in her hair and make her look at him like she had that morning, like she used to do when they were partners in euchre or sitting across the dining room table one of the thousand times he’d been over at her house having dinner or when she was underneath him in the backseat of his car, her deep, brown eyes looking direct into his, nothing to hide, nothing to escape, nothing to fear.
Before this impulse could take hold, she lifted a hand and swiped back the hair from her face, pulling it away, holding it at the back of her head, exposing her ear and that silver hoop dangling from it.
There was something about that earring in her ear, the same something that said what the choker said. And Colt understood it then.
It highlighted the vulnerability of her body, enticed you to curl your hand around it, get your teeth near it, at a place where you could do your worst or you could do something altogether different.
Her voice came at him. “Morrie said you wanted to talk to me?”
Colt looked from her ear to her.
She’d changed clothes since that morning. Colt knew Morrie took her to her place to pack and move to Morrie’s, Colt had checked in. She was now in her bartender clothes. Tips were probably better in those clothes rather than the light, shapeless cardigan she had on that morning. Though Feb could likely wring a good tip out of you with a glance if she had a mind to do it, no matter what she was wearing.
Still, she looked beat, drawn, her shoulders drooped, her eyes listless.
“Sit down, Feb.”
She didn’t argue, just dropped her hand, pushed away from the door and headed to the chair.
Colt walked to the door, closed it and moved back to her.
She tipped her head back to look at him, shoulders still sagging, her arms straight, her hands loosely clasped together resting between her slightly parted thighs. Angie’s death had cut her deep, as it would anyone, particularly if you found her hacked up, bloody body, but it would especially cut up someone like Feb.
“I gotta show you something.”
She nodded.
He handed her the Ziploc bag and she unclasped her hands and took it. He watched vertical lines form on the insides of each of her eyebrows as she scanned it. Her eyes moved down the paper then back up then down again.
“I don’t get…” the lines by her brows disappeared and her lips parted right before her head jerked back. “What –?”
“Do you know what that is?” Colt asked.
“Yes,” she whispered then suddenly surged to her feet.
Her hand came out and grasped his shirt, her fist curling into it so tight he saw her knuckles were white, the skin mottled red all around. Her head was tipped down, looking at the note and her hand at his shirt was moving back and forth with force, taking his shirt with it as she beat his chest, not knowing she was doing it.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” she chanted, the hand holding the note was now shaking.
“Give me the note, Feb.”
“Oh God.”
“Hand me the note.”
“Oh my God.”
He took the note from her at the same time his hand covered hers at his chest, stopping the movement, holding it tight against his body.
Her eyes were glued to the note in his other hand.
“Look at me, February,” she did as she was told, he saw her face was pale and he ordered carefully, “tell me about the note.”
“That note doesn’t exist.”
He lifted it and gave it a shake and didn’t want to say what he had to say but he had to say it. “It’s right here, Feb.”
“I mean, I threw it away, like, twenty-five years ago.”
Fucking shit, goddamn it all to hell.
That was what he was afraid she’d say.
“Tell me about the note,” Colt repeated.
She shook her head sharply side to side – in denial, trying to focus – he didn’t know. Her hand tightened f
urther into his shirt, he felt it under his own hand and she leaned some of her weight against it, pressing her fist deeper into his flesh.
He waited, giving her time. She took it.
Then she told him, “We used to be good friends, you know that.”
“I do.”
“Angie used to come over, all the time.”
“I know.”
“She liked Kevin.”
He didn’t know that but he wasn’t surprised. Kevin was a good-looking guy; a lot of girls liked him. He was a year ahead of Colt, a senior when Feb and Angie were freshman, in their school, at that time, an impossible catch for Angie.
“He asked me out.”
Colt felt that weight shift heavily in his gut.
“She was furious, she liked him, as in really liked him,” Feb continued.
“You didn’t go out with him,” Colt stated this as fact, because he knew it was.
“Of course I didn’t,” Feb replied quickly.
And there it was. The web shot out and snared them both.
Of course she didn’t because, at that time, Feb was his. Colt knew it. Feb knew it. Fucking Kevin fucking Kercher knew it, the fuck. Everyone knew it.
Her words kept strumming in his skull.
Of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.
Quick. Fierce. A statement of fact, just like his. If they were anything else but what they were now, if they were what they should have been, it would have been terse, dismissive, and that was what it sounded like. The faithful partner stating her commitment when she shouldn’t have to. It was a given, fundamental, their relationship formed on bedrock which would never budge, no matter what the temptation. It wasn’t worth it if it threatened what they had, which was the world.
Colt fought against the web, he had to; it was his job and with Feb gone and after Melanie left him that was now his world.
“Do you remember this note?” he asked.
“Yes, but barely.”
“You threw it away?”
“I guess so,” she shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably. It was twenty-five years ago.”
“Think, Feb.”
“I am Alec!” she snapped. “But it was twenty-five years ago!”