421311

by Eric Dalen

I watched her as she got out of bed. It was dark, and I laid quietly, pretending to be asleep, not opening my eyes until she was going through the bathroom doorway. She was only a vague, shadowed naked shape. Then the light came on, piercing and intensifying my hangover, and she disappeared behind the closing door.

When she climbed back into bed, she whispered in my ear, but I only mumbled incoherently as if I were dreaming. She snuggled up to me, and I drifted off.

* * *

Later, with the sun intolerably bright and unforgiving, I stared at her naked body again, the coroner’s assistant standing ten feet away, impatiently waiting for us to finish.

“What do you think?” Phil asked, clicking away on his pen, which had a small drawing of a duck on it. “A thirty-eight?”

I avoided my partner’s eyes. “Yeah.” I nodded for no apparent reason, which made my hangover hurt.

After the woman and I had left Marl’s Bar (which is difficult enough to say sober; impossible after spending some time there), we went to her place. I remember her being flawless -- not a wrinkle, not a mole, not a mark, not even a scar (unless you count her bellybutton). She had those eyes that were smart and sexy and could say a whole sentence with just a flick -- you know, make you feel like a fool or a saint depending on whether she was smiling or not.

But now the eyes were closed, and there was a big, fat scar on the side of her head, courtesy of a bullet.

“You okay?”

I blinked and glanced up at Phil. “Yeah. Why?”

“You look pale.” He paused. “Did you fall off the wagon, or did you jump?”

There are three things in this world I consider pointless: The lottery, lying to your wife, and lying to your partner.

Without actually answering, I nodded, and that quickly reminded me of my hangover. My head swooshed.

He, in turn, shook his head, then looked back at the dead woman I had slept with just hours earlier. He clicked his duck-pen relentlessly.

She had told me her name, but I promptly forgot it. Terri, Jerri, Mary, Shari, Carrie . . . something like that.

“You seen enough?”

I nodded my head again, immediately telling myself that I had to stop doing that.

“Okay,” Detective Phil Merganser said, waving at Joey, the coroner’s assistant. “Take her away.”

The sheet had already been laid out, and now Joey rolled her onto it while Phil, a couple of uniforms and me watched Mary-Carrie-Jerri’s backside lift off the ground. Twigs, dirt and pebbles stuck to her skin.

Phil and I saw it at the same time, just as Joey rested her face-down on the plastic sheet. We knelt together, our heads trying to occupy the same space. Fortunately, we avoided a collision.

“What does it say?”

I shook my head, this time not noticing if there was any pain, squinting at the tattoo. “They’re numbers.”

Joey, who has the nose the size of an elbow, knelt and squinted along with us as I reached into my pocket and got out my plastic gloves, trying to snap them on in a hurry. If you’ve ever tried to do this quickly, you know how uncooperative they are. Once on, I brushed away some of the dirt and made the skin flat so it would be easier to read.

We were all quiet as we stared at the marking on her upper right hip.

“What the hell does that mean?” Phil finally asked.

“I have no idea,” I said, meaning it. It hadn’t been there the night before. I know because I would have seen it.

“Four two one three one one,” Phil Merganser said as if I were illiterate. He wrote it down in his notebook, then stared at what he wrote, repeating it out loud again. “Four two one three one one. Six numbers.” He paused. “Not a phone number. Not an address. Not a zip code.” He said this with a lot of authority, as if he were the only one who could think of these things.

I tried to focus on him for a few seconds, the hangover reacquainting itself with my nervous system. Phil Merganser -- whose last name was the breed of a duck, who had his duck-pen, wore his duck-tie and probably duck-boxers as well -- was a snotty little blow hard. I didn’t really like him very much, and I knew he didn’t like me. It didn’t really matter. We solved cases, and our captain appreciated that.

“Have you ever heard of anybody wanting a tattoo of a zip code on their butt?” I asked.

He ignored the comment, pen clicking. “Then what is it?”

I shrugged, which didn’t hurt my head. I was learning.

I didn’t know what the numbers meant. But I know who put it there.

“Looks fresh,” Phil said.

And with that, I knew he knew too.

* * *

Phil accompanied the body to the morgue while I begged off, citing my hangover. He offered a smile that said he didn’t feel sorry for me. I don’t blame him.

I had given up on drinking once -- not because I wasn’t any good at it, but because it was getting dangerous. My wife had asked me to quit so many times, she would need a calculator to figure out a relatively close number. Finally, she left, which made me drink more. She came back -- scared for me, I guess -- and I cut down. For a while.

I know, I know. You’d think I’d get the hint, but it takes the truly stubborn longer to learn. And then there was the accident and . . . well, I finally did quit after that.

Until last night.

Go to a bar, meet someone, get drunk, commit adultery, wake up with a hangover that could hospitalize the average person, and then be called to the scene where my anonymous lover’s murdered body had been found.

If there isn’t a moral in there somewhere, I don’t know where one would be.

I parked in front of the dry cleaner’s three doors down (who hate me for doing that, but put up with it since I’m a cop) and walked into One-Eyed Jack’s. Jeff changed the name of the place ten years ago when one of his clients didn’t like the completed work, grabbed the electric needle out of Jeff’s hand and jabbed it into his left eye. I’m the only one who still calls him Jeff.

“Hold the phone and hide the beer,” he said, grinning widely, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, threatening to set his long hair on fire. “Is it Friday already?”

If he knew why I was there, which he probably did, he didn’t act like it.

I smiled warily, looking about to see if anyone was around. “Not yet, though you can come over tonight if you want. I’m sure Cyn won’t mind.”

This, I thought, was funny. My wife wouldn’t mind Jeff coming over at all . . . though she’d have second thoughts about me being there.

“Then what? Business?” He rocked back-and-forth in the chair, his one eye twinkling at me. The black patch and long hair made him look like a pirate. He hadn’t always been this way.

“Yeah. You alone?”

“Not counting you I am. Marie went to the Shop N Rob.” His rocking slowed. “You still off the juice?”

“Today I am.” It was the same thing I always said. At least it may have been true. I’m pretty sure I had my last drink before midnight.

“You look like hell.”

“Love you too.” I took a seat in one of the cheap folding chairs. “We got a case. A victim with some artwork.”

He nodded as if to say Okay. “You want me to look at it?”

“Not necessary. I know your work when I see it.”

Jeff smiled slowly, unsure if it was a compliment. “It’s almost like free advertising.”

“A red heart with a banner across it -- you know, standard issue stuff. You’ve done a thousand of them. But this one had some numbers in the banner.”

His rocking had completely ceased, though his face still did not give him away. “Yeah. Okay.”

“You remember it?”

“She came in a few days ago. Maybe a week.” He shrugged. “Something like that.”

He was lying. We both knew it. The tattoo was too fresh to be a week old.

I decided to ignore the lie for now. “What do the numbers mean?”

A snort came out of him like it was funny. “How should I know? She says put the numbers on, I put them on. If she wanted me to stitch the Gettysburg address on there, what say do I have? It’s her ass.”

I nodded. His argument was that she comes in, pays him some money, and pulls down her pants. He gets paid for writing on a beautiful woman’s butt. He does not ask questions. He just does his work. Slowly, I would guess.

“A few days ago?”

His gaze didn’t meet mine. “Yeah. Like Saturday, maybe.”

“And I suppose she paid cash.”

“You’re good at this,” Jeff said. “Now I know why they hired you.” His voice was playful, and his eye was twinkling again.

I had to smile. “Anyone with her?”

The snort again. “Yeah. Her grandma.”

I shook my head. “Come on, man. She’s dead.”

His one eye did not blink or waver, staring at me blankly. The smile on his face was pasted on. Hard to believe this was my brother.

“Good thing she paid cash then, right?” he said, getting up from the chair just as Marie arrived back from the store, ending our conversation.

* * *

I sat on the couch and watched the news while Cyn stood over the stove and cussed at the gravy. Channel 4 had a brief mention of the discovery of a nude female body. They showed parked police cars, people standing around, a coroner’s van, yellow crime scene tape, nothing else. They were doing what they did best: A body was found on L.A.’s Westside today. The unidentified woman was nude, dead, and we don’t know why she was killed, or who killed her, but we thought you’d like to hear about it. Here’s what the street looked like after the coroner left.

Cyn set dishes on the dining room table, then sat down, serving herself. She wasn’t talking to me, and was doing a darn good job of it. I had already apologized (which she ignored) about not coming home the night before . . . though I didn’t say why I didn’t make it home. After all, I’m not completely stupid. I thought a few days of the silent treatment would be better than a divorce.

I got up and walked into the kitchen, my tie loosened and my shirt collar open, fixing myself a fresh glass of water. Cyn had started eating -- chicken and rice with gravy by the smell of it -- and showed no acknowledgment of my presence as I sat down across from her.

Why would Jeff lie? I wondered. I don’t get it. I’d understand if it were something significant . . . like the woman had been his lover. But why lie about which day she came in for the tattoo? Why would that matter? And what did the numbers 421311 mean? Did he know?

I recalled Phil’s words: “Looks fresh.”

I looked down and noticed there was no setting for me -- no plate, no silverware. I got up again and fetched my dinnerware.

As I returned, a strange, stray thought crossed my mind from seemingly out of nowhere:

Maybe someone is trying to frame me.

That didn’t really make sense because no one would know I had even been with the woman. The tattoo was meaningless, at least to me, but it sure made Jeff look bad. And he had a past. So if this was a frame-up, then it would be Jeff getting the honors -- not me.

Maybe that’s why Jeff lied. A record of abuse looks exceptionally interesting when a murder occurs. In fact, Phil Merganser was the one who arrested Jeff, long before we were paired as partners. Jeff and Phil did not get along, making it a family trait to dislike Merganser, and giving Jeff a reason to not tell me the truth. He was scared. Tattooing the woman would make him a suspect. If I wasn’t Merganser’s partner, Jeff might have said something.

That bugged me, the lack of trust. Did he think I was going to tell? I was his brother long before I became a cop, and that mattered to me. I thought it mattered to him.

No, it was something else.

421311.

I dished myself up some food.

“Are you going to stop, or do I have to threaten to leave again?”

There was so much disgust in her tone that the word snide doesn’t quite express its depth.

“I’ll do my best, Cyn.” I took a mouthful of rice with gravy. It was delicious. I don’t know why she had been cussing.

“I’ve heard that before.”

I chewed, taking my time, remaining expressionless, keeping my eyes on my plate, knowing there was probably more venting in the pipeline. The silent treatment hadn’t lasted as long as I expected.

“Can you promise me it won’t happen again?”

I swallowed my food and finally met her gaze. I was surprised to see tears.

There’s something called hitting bottom. Drunks, alcoholics, lushes, whatever you’d like to call us, usually hit bottom at some point, completely ruining our lives and harming -- if not devastating -- the lives of those around us. We end up with nothing left to lose. At the bottom, there’s literally nowhere else to go but up.

Oh, there’s death. Some might see that as a better choice than trying to claw one’s way out of the hole they had dug for themselves. The way I look at it, though, is that hell is lower than the darkest depths of the human soul, and not a place I’d like to visit, much less stay. There are some things worse than fear, and dread, and shame.

When I saw those tears brimming in my wife’s eyes, I knew hitting bottom was -- once again -- dangerously close.

Not for me, but for Cynthia.

“Would you believe me if I made that promise?” I said this in the same tone I might say I think I’ll mow the lawn after dinner.

A single tear escaped, scrambling to her upper lip, then running for her jawline. She blinked, trying to prevent others from making a break for it. She had set her fork down on the table, her hands moving to her lap as if she were the one asking for forgiveness. How quickly everything had changed.

“I don’t know. You’ve never promised before.”

I opened my mouth to contradict her, but stopped. I wondered if I ever had promised. Nothing came to mind. I know in my heart I had promised. I know for ten-and-a-half months I lived my life as if I had promised. But had I ever said the words?

I guess I didn’t think it would be necessary.

What held me back now was thinking how I had made another promise -- out loud in front of a pastor and seventy-eight other people almost nine years ago -- and I had broken that vow again last night as easily as I had broken the one I kept to myself.

Would it matter if I promised Cyn I would never drink? That’s what frightened me. I couldn’t trust myself.

I set my fork down and bowed my head, trying to clear my thoughts. If I could promise myself, I could promise her. Then I would work at making it stick.

I looked up at her to answer. Instead, I started to cry.

* * *

It came to me later, and everything changed. Perhaps my life had begun to fall apart when the woman was found dead, or maybe when I had first seen her in Marl’s Bar, or even when I had my first beer at age 13. I don’t know. Regardless of when it had started to dissolve, I first realized it at 2:13 AM according to the VCR.

I was lying on the couch, not sleeping, trying to think of all the possibilities. Phil, while being impertinently obvious, was right: 421311 was not a phone number, address, zip code, social security number, date, or time. There were a lot of things it couldn’t be.

So what could it be? That was what started me on the right track.

The combination to a lock. 42 - 13 - 11.

A personal identification number, like for an ATM. Except my PIN only had four digits, not six. Another bank’s might be different, I suppose.

It could be a bank account number, though again, our checking account number had ten digits, not six.

A license plate? It would have to be a vanity plate since the California standard issue was four digits and three letters for a passenger car.

It could not, however, be a driver’s license or credit card number.

Then I started thinking that no matter what it was, it was a code. That’s all numbers are, right? Codes. They hold information.

They hold a secret.

So what type of secret would 421311 hold? And why put it in tattoo form?

Then I thought: Well, what kind of tattoos do people put on their bodies?

Besides butterflies or flowers or daggers or skulls, they put names, or messages. Like Rosa. Or Mom. Or Marines. Or Forever.

Or 421311.

I could ask Jeff, but I would guess women tended to go for pictures without words for their tattoos. Some small, tasteful piece of artwork -- like a heart. That’s what Mary-Carrie-Jerri did: A heart, but with a banner. And in the banner, instead of letters -- a code. Instead of a word, numbers.

So maybe the numbers were a name.

Dag Nabbit, our cat, had made her bed on my blanket, so I maneuvered carefully away to not disturb her, though she would never have returned the courtesy. I got up and went to the kitchen, getting a glass of water, then a pen and a slip of paper. I sat at the table wondering if Cyn was asleep.

My crying had apparently baffled her as much as it had surprised me. I can’t explain it. I haven’t cried since my mother died ten years ago, and it took me several hours to understand why I broke down like that. The best I could figure, I was feeling the pain Cyn might have been experiencing. And she didn’t even know all I had done.

I had never earned her love -- she just blindly gave it to me, and I spent half my time testing her boundaries. Or so it seemed. I had put her through so much and she had come out the other side, still trying to find a way to keep us together.

And for what? I thought. Why she tried so hard to save this marriage was beyond me. I ain’t no great shakes. I’m not even worth half a shiver.

I’ve lied to her, ignored her, hit her, cheated on her, said things that made her run into the back room, crying, humiliated and confused. I could blame it on the drinking, and maybe some people would understand. But it doesn’t change what I did. Because I can’t recall most of the events doesn’t mean they didn’t happen -- or that I shouldn’t be responsible. Like when those people died.

Technically, it wasn’t my fault. But I was there and I was drunk, so that was enough to pin it on me. To this day, I don’t know what happened.

I was heading east on Colorado Boulevard after the bar had closed, and the next thing I knew my car was upside down, wrapped around a light pole. The other car was on fire.

According to the investigators, I was doing maybe 45 -- five miles over the speed limit, but not exactly going hog wild. The attendant at the 24-hour gas station on the corner pulled me from my car. No one tried to rescue the kids. Nobody could until the fire department arrived, and by then there was nothing to rescue.

When Cyn saw me in the hospital -- before the police had put everything together -- she had a look on her face . . .

It doesn’t matter. It told me what I had to know. I couldn’t tell her what happened, and she had jumped to the same conclusion everyone else had: I killed those kids. She never said it, but she never had to. Everyone knew I had been drunk, and I had the blood alcohol level to prove it.

A few days later, the investigators came to let me know the results: The attendant at the gas station told the police the light had been in my favor when the other car full of teenagers ran the red and slammed into me. Cyn heard this, crying. After they left the hospital room, she began apologizing non-stop, as if I would never forgive her for her mistake.

Her mistake.

The accident may not have been my fault, but I was there, and I was drunk. And in the end, Cyn tried to take the blame.

It is very ironic.

I will never be able to explain why I hurt the woman who loves me that much. Psychologists and therapists would all have theories, but it would still make no sense. The fact is she loves me, and believe it or not, I love her. She shows it, and I don’t. While I know she loves me, she probably has no idea how I feel about her.

I can’t use my drinking as an excuse. Not anymore. It has hurt and killed too many people. Like Mary-Terri-Sheri.

I hoped Cyn would not be asleep, that she heard me rustling around, would see the light was on, and would come out to talk.

She didn’t.

On the left-hand side of the paper, I wrote the alphabet, one letter on each line. Then, next to each letter, I wrote a number. A was next to 1, B next to 2, C next to 3, and so on.

The letters immediately next to the numbers 421311 were DBACAA. Gibberish. I would have to break it down into combinations.

4, or 42. Since there was no 42nd letter of the alphabet, 4 would equal D.

The next number was either 2 or 21. I wrote down the corresponding letters for each next to the letter D -- a B and a U.

The next number combination was either 1, 13 or 31. Since, again, there was no 31st letter, that was scrapped, and I wrote down the possibilities next to the previous sequences.

The next would either be eleven, or the first letter twice. I wrote down these as well. The choices I ended up with were:

DBMAA

DBMK

DUCAA

DUCK

* * *

“We’ve got some results,” Phil said, walking up to my desk.

I looked up from cleaning my gun. “Shoot,” I said, not meaning to be funny. I needn’t worry. He didn’t get it anyway.

There were several moments before he said anything.

“You been to the firing range recently?” he asked.

“No. Why?”

Phil Merganser blinked at me, trying to come up with a response. I noticed he wasn’t wearing his duck tie, though he had a duck tie clip. And the duck pen, of course.

“They confirm she was killed by a .38,” he said.

His eyes lowered to my gun.

She, he had said. Not the victim, but she. As if he knew her.

I continued my cleaning, nodding.

“Her name was Shari Van Mueller, 24, single, address in Westwood.”

I looked down the barrel of my gun, seeing the smooth, shiny interior.

“And the coroner says two things: One, she’d had intercourse shortly before death. And two, the tattoo was placed on her body after death.”

I looked up, knowing this changed everything.

They had my semen.

I came up with a sentence. “That accounts for the lack of blood at the scene.”

It was a stupid thing to say since we had already decided she had been killed somewhere else and dumped where we found her. Fortunately, Phil was too transfixed on my gun to notice how dumb I sounded. Instead, he took the next leap, which surprised me for its tardiness.

“Doesn’t your brother own that tattoo shop?”

I realized another of Phil’s statements was slightly odd -- The tattoo was placed on her body after death.

On her body. Not the body.

As if he knew her.

All of these things were not coincidences. I slept with the murdered woman. My brother put a tattoo on her butt. The numbers 421311 was a simple code for duck. Phil Merganser -- his surname a species of duck, like mallard -- arrested Jeff eight years ago. My semen had been recovered. Merganser appears to have known the victim. I’m sure Phil would like to have me take a paraffin test to see if I’d fired my weapon recently, although now it might be too late.

What was going on?

“Yeah,” I said to answer his question about Jeff’s business.

“He might recognize the style, maybe he knows who did the art.” There was no shortage of accusation in his tone. “Let’s go.”

“He won’t talk to you, Phil.”

My partner looked at me, pretending to be confused. He was a bad actor. “Why? ‘Cause I arrested him?” He snorted in disbelief. “He beat up a woman.”

“He said he didn’t.”

Something happened to Phil’s eyes, as if he understood something for the first time. “Is that what this is all about?”

I frowned. “What is what all about?”

He shook his head and stormed off.

I finished cleaning my gun, wondering how I could get Jeff off the hook. Or if I should.

* * *

I know my brother pretty well. We’re like Coke and Pepsi -- the same, but different. I looked at him, feeling sorry for the position he was in.

“They’ll find out,” I said. “You shouldn’t have done it.”

He stared at me as if he were going to deny he knew what I was talking about. Then his face softened. He picked up his beer and took a big swig. “I know. Too late now.”

The restaurant’s intercom crackled to life: "Number 121, your order’s ready. Number 121.”

“You didn’t think they could tell the tattoo was put on after?”

Jeff’s mouth opened, closed -- then he blinked. “I didn’t think about it. I just thought they’d never check.”

I looked away watching Number 121 walk up to claim his pizza. I was trying not to laugh at Jeff. He thought they wouldn’t check a clue. Evidence. The idea would never enter their mind. Sure.

“What . . . what happens next?”

I shrugged. “Merganser wants to talk to you. It was a tattoo, Jeff. He’s not totally moronic.”

“What should I have done, huh?” His tone was somewhere between pleading and anger. “What would Mr. Expert have done in my shoes?”

“I wouldn’t have put a tattoo on her, that’s for sure.”

“Then what?”

“I would have just left her.”

He blinked again, puzzled. “In the room?”

My eyes narrowed. “No, in the bushes. There was no blood there, no bullet, nothing to trace.” I picked up my glass and drank, thinking of beer and tasting flat, bitter ice tea.

“Why did you do it in the first place?” he asked as I swallowed.

He thinks I killed her, I thought, terror slowly creeping into me. My partner, now my brother.

Two people who hate each other came to the same conclusion. That I killed her.

Something clicked.

Phil and Jeff had been in the same high school class. Phil had been dating a girl named Tracy, who broke up with him. Several days later, Tracy started dating Jeff.

Funny how some people never get over things like that.

Years later, Phil was a cop and arrested Jeff for physically attacking his girlfriend, Donna. But Jeff never hit her. There might have been an argument, there might have been yelling. Maybe stuff was thrown at the walls. But he never touched her. And Donna, pissed at Jeff for whatever they had been arguing about, wasn’t going to let him off the hook. She even testified against Jeff at the trial.

That Donna is now Mrs. Phillip Merganser is, in Phil’s opinion, beside the point.

So who was framing who?

Phil had certainly been an active visitor to Marl’s bar. I know because back when I had been drinking on a regular basis, I would see Phil’s SUV parked there and I’d keep on going.

Shari had been a regular at Marl’s. She told me so. She called the booth we sat in her “apartment.”

Maybe Phil and Shari had known each other. Maybe in the Biblical sense.

Maybe Phil had seen my car in the lot, and waited. Maybe he saw me come out with Shari, and followed. Maybe he killed Shari, and tried to frame me.

But why?

The only thing I could think of was jealousy. Revenge. Jeff, in Phil’s eyes, had “stolen” his girlfriend Tracy. Maybe I had “stolen” his mistress Shari.

But how did Jeff get involved? And why?

Why was probably easy -- he was getting back at Merganser. Phil and Donna had lied, and Jeff wanted to frame Phil. Unfortunately, Jeff didn’t think it all the way through. He thought the tattoo pointing to Duck Man would be enough, never considering that anyone would question why someone would have a bunch of odd numbers painted on their butt. Jeff had all kinds of customers wanting all kinds of strange things indelibly etched on various parts of their bodies. He had long stopped questioning why.

I wasn’t sure which scenario to believe: That Jeff had killed Shari, then tried to frame Merganser; or that Phil had killed Shari, and Jeff then tried to point the finger at Phil.

I realized that when Jeff asked “Why did you do it in the first place?” he meant “Why did you sleep with her?” -- not “Why did you kill her?” He was trying to protect me.

He had probably gotten a call from Cyn when I didn’t come home, and he went out looking. Finding my car, he waited and followed me to Shari’s home.

Then he killed her? Why? It didn’t make sense. If he didn’t hit his girlfriend, then he wouldn’t have killed a stranger.

“Was it my gun?” I asked, needing to know.

Phil had asked if I had been to the firing range recently, and I told him the truth -- no. But I didn’t say that my gun had recently been fired.

I just didn’t know where it had been recently fired.

Maybe Phil did.

Jeff nodded. “You were passed out on the bed.” He looked at his watch.

We sat in silence for a moment. It was time. We both knew it.

“Does Marie know?” I asked.

He nodded, embarrassed. “I’ve got to get going. I have to pick her up.” He slid out of the booth.

He was right. Merganser would be making his move before the day was out.

I walked him to his car.

We had all lost, thinking we could get away with something. And for what? Love? Family? Honor?

No, for something else. For something worse.

We stood next to his beat-up 1972 Chevy Impala and looked at each other awkwardly. I stepped up and put my arms around him.

I still find it hard to believe Jeff took the fall. But I know how easy it would be for him to reverse it. And I think Phil could sense that too. If Jeff chose, it could make Phil’s life a living hell, and his marriage a memory.

The house of cards was shaky, but might hold, especially if I let Merganser know how easily it could come down.

Jeff and I let go of each other, the hugging over.

Then Jeff got in his car, backed out, and drove away.

* * *

Merganser was easier to handle than I anticipated. All I had to say was “Don’t you think you should excuse yourself from the case?”

He put on his bad-actor face. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you had a vested interest in Shari Van Mueller, didn’t you? The type of interest that wouldn’t look very good to those intimately close to you.”

His eyes narrowed at me.

“I just asked a few questions here and there,” I said, shrugging, leaving it at that.

A couple weeks later, he told the captain he would be moving the Van Mueller murder case to the back burner. Not enough clues, Merganser explained.

Once in a while, Cyn and I would get a postcard signed “Bill and Hillary” or “Fred and Ethel,” but that’s all. No phone calls, and certainly no visits. Maybe some day, Jeff and Marie could come back. If they would want to.

Cyn understood the sacrifice that Jeff and Marie had made, and she initially reacted with a strange combination of surprise -- as one who received an expensive gift they didn’t deserve -- and enormous guilt.

It took me a few days to figure it out. And it made sense.

Jeff hadn’t found me at Marl’s Bar. He hadn’t gotten involved until after Shari had been shot, showing up only after Cyn made a panicky phone call asking for his help.

I probably should have figured it out the morning I woke up in Shari’s bed and she wasn’t home. Women generally don’t leave home with some stranger sleeping in their bed. It had crossed my fuzzy, hurting mind that Cyn had found out where I was and what I had done, but I didn’t get much beyond that.

Cyn killed Shari. Jeff got rid of the body -- but only after a well-intentioned but silly attempt at framing Phil Merganser. We were all guilty.

Cyn had reacted out of anger, but it was also a warning.

We became each other’s crutch. I had a real good incentive to stay on the straight and narrow, and she needed me on the straight and narrow to not get caught for what she had done to scare me onto the straight and narrow.

You can bet I’ve kept my promise. I don’t drink, and I don’t screw around. Period. No one has to lecture me on the difference between right and wrong.

Threaten me, maybe. But not lecture.

"421311"

Copyright Eric Dalen / Sinister Duck Music. All rights reserved.