Page 10 of Making His Bones

“It’s all right, Janet. I know what you mean. I’ll reach out to the FBI guy who let me participate in today’s arrest. He knows all about Delilah. Maybe he can authorize a new DNA sweep, and I might get a hit with the updated CODIS.”

“Ooo. You’ve got a sweetheart in the Bureau?”

I chewed my last forkful of pasta, leaving quite a bit on my plate. “Definitely not, Janet. If anything, I’m hot for the archery guy.”

Now her face really lit up. “Ooo!” she repeated, but with more oomph. “About time! Jeez, you’ve been a hermit for so damned long!”

“I was only kidding, Janet! Just trying to yank your chain. He’s in a fucking motorcycle club. Why would I want a thug like that? That’s kind of opposite from what I do for a living, what my quest in life is. We take down those people. Even though I’m living with him now.”

“What?” screamed Janet so loud that even in the casino, several people twisted their heads to look at her.

This was a good note to leave on. I stood and threw two twenties on the table. “I’ll be here a week or two, Janet. Let’s do dinner again. Even if it is three in the morning for you.”

“Wait,” said Janet, hurriedly stubbing out her smoke. “What the fuck, Elektra? Explain more, please!”

I liked to leave people with a bit of suspense, and Janet’s co-worker was calling her back from her break. We wound up waving at each other from a distance as I walked away. To be honest, I didn’t want Janet knowing my plan.

To be honest, I was attracted to “the archery guy.” He stirred something deep in my core. Big deal if he was ten years younger than me. Maybe that’s what I needed. Maybe it was time for me to have a hot but brief fling.

“Hm,” I said as I started up my rental car. Really, what was I proud of? I helped bust murderers. The victims were already dead. Wouldn’t it be better to live in a world where that shit didn’t happen in the first place? Classmates of mass shooting victims were committing suicide. Parents of mass shooting victims were killing themselves!

It had crossed my mind before. I’d gone as far as looking to find one of those assisted suicide people. Losing Delilah hurt at the time and hurt ten years later. I’d never found words to describe the emptiness, how I spent—or wasted—my days in a haze of loneliness, re-reading her poem until I finally broke down and just framed it for my condo wall in Illinois. No one could sit in the living room chair with Pfft, her first stuffed animal. One friend told me it was “weird, like living with a mummy all propped up and watching us.”

I didn’t put the stuffed dog away.

It only took five minutes to drive to the Vinyl Resting Place. At this time of day, most of the downtown shops were closed, so it was easy to get a parking spot on the street. There were no kids and no sign of Bud Pitchfork, but there was a guy standing with hands folded across his crotch right outside the back door.

The closer I got to the guy, the more menacing he became. It didn’t occur to me until it was too late that he was a bodyguard, protecting whatever sleazy thing was going on in the back of the LP shop.

“Excuse me,” I said, perfectly polite. “By any chance is Bud Pitchfork still here?”

“Estúpido puta,” he snarled. We weren’t big on Spanish in Illinois, but I knew a tiny bit from my Seeker days. He called me stupid. “Go away.”

I pressed on, as was my wont. “That doesn’t tell me if Mr. Pitchfork is still here. I’d like to talk to him.”

The back door opened then, and the guard’s face did a 180. “Ai, amigos! How’s it going?”

Two young Latino boys, maybe twelve or thirteen, were leaving the LP shop, without LPs, I might add. They seemed to know the guard well, as though they often left the shop at eleven o’clock at night. They lifted their hands in greeting.

“Ay, Rafael. See you tomorrow.”

It was like they were punching a time clock, as if they carried lunch boxes. I reached for the door, but it had locked itself behind the boys. I became a little sterner with the stern guard. “Why can’t you tell me? Is Mr. Pitchfork here or not?”

Rafael had a look of supreme irritation with my simple question. He took an actual bully stick, or just a stick of some kind, from the back waistband of his trousers. He brandished it between both fists, and his triangular beard and do-rag made him look evil. I realized maybe I should come back in the daytime, but what did Pitchfork have to hide? “Go away, young lady, and I will not have to use this.”

His upper lip was inked with the numbers 15813, and too late I realized that may have been his prisoner number. One of his forearms was tattooed as if to show the tendons and bones underneath. Handprints, cobwebs, and a bat adorned his face. But still I pressed on.

“I used to know him ten years ago, and I just wanted to talk—“

Whack! The pain didn’t hit my brain for a few seconds, but I was on the ground, sprawled, undignified. Three more boys must’ve come out the door, but they didn’t pay me much attention, beyond one of them saying,

“Dude, is that your mom?”

Apparently I wasn’t, because they simply moved on while I held my hand to my head. My hand was bloody when I drew it away. Damn, Pitchfork sure did have something to hide, and regardless of how much pain I was in, I was going to find out what it was.

Only, not today.

The guard had vanished back inside the locked door. Was it my imagination that in the brief door gap I’d seen Pitchfork’s round, bald head?