Arcanum (Tales from the Tarot)

5. Chris

Chapter five

Chris

T hrowing another log onto the fire, I used the poker to get it in place before leaning back in my chair with a sigh. It was a perfect night. Cold enough that the fire felt good, but not too cold that I had to put on more than a hoodie and jeans. The stars were shining and you could smell autumn in the air. It was my favorite time in Mapleton, the slow switch between summer and fall, when life started slowing down in preparation for winter.

“Is Stacey coming?” Luke asked, popping the tab on another can of Coke and adding it to his whiskey-filled tumbler.

“No. She’s in Chicago for a concert or something.”

“With?”

I slid him a look out of the corner of my eye. “I didn’t ask.”

He frowned and fished his phone out of his pocket, hurriedly thumbing across the screen.

“Dude, stay off her socials. It’s creepy,” I sighed, taking a long drink of my rum and Coke. Says the guy who routinely Googles his neighbor…

“I’m just looking!” Luke made a face and shoved his phone back in his jeans. “She didn’t post anything anyway.”

“And she’s not going to! She knows better than to post in real-time.”

“You’re only saying that because of that stupid internet crimes class we had to do.”

“That and the fact she’s not an idiot? It’s like social media 101, especially for chicks. Don’t post your actual location while you’re still there. Duh.”

“Who’s not an idiot?” Tom’s booming voice asked as he appeared at the gate, a case of beer in one hand and a camping chair in the other.

“Stacey,” I answered, sipping my drink.

Luke smacked my bicep with the back of his hand. “Bro!”

“What?” It was my turn to make a face.

Tom sighed and shook his head, setting up his chair near the fire. “Don’t do it, kid.”

“Do what?” Luke asked with a faux obliviousness I knew all too well. He took a sip of Jack and Coke, blinking his big brown eyes innocently at our sergeant. Alcohol was one of the few areas where Luke and I weren’t virtual twins. Otherwise, from our looks to our obsession with wings and celebrating the American religion known as football, we could have easily passed for family.

“Shit where you eat.” Tom twisted a cap off his beer and tossed it into the case, settling into his chair and stretching his legs out with the contented sigh/groan combination that all guys over the age of forty-five seemed to adopt.

“Fuck a coworker,” I translated, smacking Luke’s shoulder in retaliation.

“How can you say that?” Luke glared at me before turning his full attention to Tom. “ You’re the one who married a dispatcher! Isn’t that the epitome of fucking a coworker?”

“Why do you think I’m telling you not to do it?” Tom burst out laughing, probably much harder than his wife would have appreciated. As if he needed to illustrate his point, he held up a finger for each argument. “She’ll run your ass ragged at work. She’ll run your ass ragged at home. You won’t get a moment of peace. All you’re going to talk about is fucking work until you pop out kids, then all you’re going to do is fight about your schedules and who gets to work dayshift and who has to work the holidays. Yadda yadda yadda. The only reason I’m here now is because she’s at an away game with the kids.”

“How did you get out of it?” I asked.

“Sergeants’ meeting,” he replied, rolling his eyes.

“Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. What did we do this time?”

“Wasn’t us, thank God. The State’s Attorney’s Office went around to all the departments and chewed out admin for not taking domestic violence cases ‘seriously’ enough. The family of the victim over in Ridgewood is suing, so now the brass are covering their asses by passing the buck onto us.”

“It wasn’t even our call!” I exclaimed.

“What the fuck do they want us to do?” Luke said, leaning forward in his chair and bracing his elbows on his knees so he could see Tom better. “Just last week we arrested that piece of shit down on Mulberry and the next morning his wife was calling, leaving me voicemails, begging me to drop the charges. I told her I wouldn’t and she said she wouldn’t cooperate at trial. I said I didn’t give a shit and I was still pressing charges, but why bother? The fucker’s already out on bond and back living with her again. With the way those two are going, she’ll probably be dead before it even goes to trial and that’s if the goddamn prosecutors don’t plead it down first.”

“People hate us for not doing enough but we can only do what the law allows—or what the State’s Attorney will actually pursue. Our hands are fucking tied, but somehow we’re the bad guys.” I shook my head and drained the rest of my rum and Coke. We were all preaching to the choir and we knew it, but bonfires were one of the few places we could vent our frustrations. Some days, it was the only thing that made gearing up for another shift bearable.

“Twenty years ago we would have dragged guys like that into the backyard and beat the shit out of them. Problem solved. Now?” Tom shook his head, glancing between us sadly. “Times are changing, boys. God only knows what policing is going to look like by the end of your careers. All I can say is, ‘Good luck.’”

“Should have been a fireman,” Luke huffed into his drink, taking a long pull.

“Should have been a teacher,” I muttered, getting to my feet. “Anyone need anything from the house?”

“You got any of that dill dip stuff?” Luke asked, suddenly in a better mood at the prospect of food.

“Sure thing.” I headed in the backdoor, scratching Nitro behind the ear on my way to the fridge. While I was refilling my tumbler with a higher rum-to-Coke ratio, my gaze drifted out the kitchen window to the house next door. As usual, it was dark and quiet. It didn’t look like Greyson was even home, but I hadn’t heard his car leave, either. Although, it was probably a good thing he wasn’t there to witness Mapleton’s finest bitching about the institutions we were supposed to be upholding. I mean, we cared about our jobs, about the people we tried to help. It was just the politics and bureaucratic bullshit that we all hated. Sadly, though, that was everywhere. My parents had dealt with their fair share of headaches in the school system too.

Was that why Greyson was in Mapleton? A new teaching job? I hadn’t heard anyone retired, but then again, I wasn’t totally in the loop anymore. Plus, teachers usually didn’t have the residency requirement that cops did, so Greyson could have still been teaching in Chicago for all I knew.

I hoped he was ok, though. He looked so damn sad when I left earlier. I wondered if I should go get him… No, that would be weird. And pushy. When my mom died, I wanted to be left the fuck alone. But I still had my dad and we were there for each other, even if neither of us really talked about it. Greyson had no one. Well, that wasn’t necessarily true. Who knew how many other relatives and friends he had. But he’d left them all, more or less, by moving out to Mapleton. So… maybe he didn’t have anyone.

Nitro barked, making me jump. I swore under my breath and turned to see what his problem was. He whined and scratched the door pointedly before facing me again, tilting his head.

“Ok. I’m coming.” Grabbing the tub of dill dip and pretzels in one hand, I tucked my tumbler in the crook of my arm and hurried over to the door, letting the dog out.

He bounded across the yard, disappearing into the shadows to do a perimeter check before he could go pee.

“Dog’s out,” I said, in case Luke and Tom didn’t hear his heavy chain collar jingling. Off-duty, Nitro was usually chill, but if he could score snacks from visitors, he definitely would. Plus he had a habit of knocking over any drinks left on the ground and helping himself to that too. Pretty sure the chief would be more than a little pissed if he found out I let the dog get drunk.

Handing the pretzels and dip to Luke, I resumed my seat and stretched my legs out closer to the fire, soaking up the heat like a lizard.

“So what’s the scoop?” Tom asked, tossing his head toward Greyson’s house.

I shrugged. “No idea. He keeps to himself.”

“Didn’t say anything about whacking his parents, did he?”

“The fuck?” Luke asked with a mouthful of pretzels. He stared at Tom for a moment, looked at me when Tom didn’t answer, then ping-ponged between us until I spoke.

“What?” I leaned closer to Tom, casting a wary glance at the house next door. “Where did you hear that?”

“You know I grew up out that way?” Tom asked, his voice noticeably lower than before. Luke and I both nodded. “Well, a buddy of mine works for CPD. Calls me up the other day and asks if we’d had any run-ins with this Greyson Darkholme guy. I say, no, not to my knowledge. Then he tells me he’s their number one suspect in his family’s murder and if we deal with him, he wants to know.”

Gulping down more of my drink, I stole a glance at the weathered picket fence that ran between our properties, wishing this conversation wasn’t happening out in the open. With our luck, Greyson would take me up on my stupid invitation and waltz out his backdoor any second, overhearing everything we were saying.

“How’d he do it?” Luke asked, not the least bit concerned about being heard.

“CO poisoning. All three of them died in their sleep.”

Luke made an unimpressed noise and swiped another pretzel in the dill dip, already losing interest by the looks of it. “I mean… could have been an accident. Shit happens. It’s not like he shot them. Or used a baseball bat. Or an axe. Or put them in those fifty-gallon—”

“Why would he call you? Your friend?” I asked over the top of Luke’s true-crime recap, forcing my gaze back to Tom and trying like hell to ignore the lump hardening in my throat. “The guy just moved here. The house and the utilities are in Dad’s name. It’s all part of the rent. He’s not even driving his own car. So how would CPD know he’s living out this way?”

Tom held my gaze for a minute, long enough to let me know I was fucked, before finally answering. “ Someone must have run the plate through the MCT in their car and it tagged our agency, so when my friend found out what car he was driving, he saw Mapleton ran it and wanted to know why and if we had a local address.”

Slinking down in my chair, I chugged about a third of my drink, grimacing against the burn of rum and carbonation. Just what I needed—to get my ass dragged into another agency’s goddamn murder investigation all because I was doing my job.

“Wait.” Luke turned to me, his brow furrowed. “How do you know his car doesn’t register to him?”

Fuck!

“I didn’t know it was his when I ran the plate,” I said in my defense, flinging a hand toward Greyson’s dark window. “I saw it the other night down at Dogwood Park. It was after midnight. Unoccupied. So I ran it, like we do a hundred times a night! I mean, I know he drives a silver Camry, but this one came back to a Beatrice Masters out of Naperville. Then a few days after that, I saw it again at his house as he was leaving and remembered the Pet-Friendly plate. I’ve talked to the dude twice in the time he’s lived here. I know nothing about any of this.”

“Regardless,” Tom continued, “the dicks out there know he’s driving this Beatrice broad’s car for whatever reason. The fact they’re trying to keep tabs on him doesn’t look good. So you might want to tell your dad. Chances are he’s going to have to find a new tenant by the end of the year.”

Nitro plodded over to me and flipped my hand up with his nose. I sighed and scratched his head, deciding it was best to bite my tongue when it came to Greyson’s defense, especially since I didn’t have all the facts. After all, my first thought had been that he was a con man trying to swindle my dad out of the house or something. Maybe I should have stuck with that instead of thinking Greyson might be an innocent person. Even if he didn’t hack his family into little pieces like one of Luke’s true-crime shows, it didn’t mean his hands were clean. I’d seen more than one criminal regret their actions in the light of day, so his display of sadness while talking about his dead parents didn’t mean anything either.

I snuck another glance at Greyson’s house, trying to picture him inside. After a moment, I realized I couldn’t because I didn’t know him at all, even on the superficial level that governed most neighborly interactions.

Normally it didn’t take me long to get a read on people, but when it came to Greyson Darkholme I was at a loss. That chasm I felt earlier widened a little bit more. All of the things I didn’t know tumbled over the edge like pebbles, falling into the void.

The smart thing to do would be to leave those pebbles alone, stay on my side of the proverbial canyon, and mind my own damn business.

Then again, no one had ever accused me of being smart.