Page 32 of Brother's Keeper

“You can’t leave me here forever!” Maximus called out. The ankle chain clinked as he leaped to his feet. “You aren’t that cruel.”

My nostrils flared through a sharp inhale. This imprisonment was more palatable than storing the political nobodies at Lock n’ Roll. Why? A dank cellar was no homier than a cramped storage unit. What changed?

The captive, of course.

Maximus Lyle left me to suffer at the hands of the Bloody Hex for almost half my life. He abandoned me and, in doing so, damned me to a far darker place than this hole in the ground. He deserved this fate, at least for a while. But, like the apology I would never get, I knew already that punishing him wouldn’t change the past, and I would feel no better for doing it. In fact, I felt worse before I even made it to the top of the cellar stairs.

After leaving Maximus, Iwent to the bar, conveniently nearby and open just for me. Donovan called to tell us he’d heard nothing from Ripley, then proceeded to complain about his extended term as zombie caregiver. I put my phone on mute and let him bitch while I got started on what I hoped would be a hell of a bender.

Heavy drinking meant another sleepover with Nash, though he and I had conflicting plans for the evening. I wanted to drown myself in the first bottle I laid hands on, and he wanted to remind me I had work in the morning and warn how sick I would be if I did, in fact, guzzle an entire liter of booze.

Around 4AM, he roused me from where I’d blacked out on the floor behind the bar counter. I made it as far as the nearest sink and draped over it, retching while Nash stood aside with his arms crossed and offered no sympathy at all.

I made it to work the next day with an aching head and a renewed desire to avoid Holland. Dodging her proved impossible as I entered the bullpen of the Investigative Department and found her waiting.

The investigator wore an all-white outfit so glaringly bright I had to squint as I stared at her.

“Fitch, I need you to join me in interrogation.” She leaned close and gave me a sniff. “Have you been drinking?”

Considering I’d skipped a shower and had spent the wee hours scrubbing vomit out of my hair with a bar towel, residual booze was far from the worst thing she could have smelled.

My mouth felt cottony, and I smacked noisily before asking, “Drinking ever or just this morning? You’ll need to be more specific.”

She sighed. “Let’s get you some coffee.”

I followed her to the kitchenette where a Bunn-O-Matic machine warmed a carafe of brew so black and viscous it might have been motor oil.

Holland grabbed a Styrofoam cup and filled it before thrusting it at me. “Drink up.”

My tastebuds had yet to wake for the day, so the coffee went down hot and flavorless. I grabbed a sugar shaker and poured from it long enough to earn a reproachful look from Holland.

“Did you say interrogation?” I realized belatedly.

She nodded.

Worries about the missing guestbook pages had been pushed aside by other events of the past twelve hours, but Holland’s summons brought them to the front of mymind. As I followed her to the room where we’d questioned Jax a few days prior, I revisited my index of excuses. My brain was liquor-logged but, by the time we reached the interrogation room, I was ready for a confrontation which made it a pleasant surprise when we came instead to a one-way observation window overlooking a civilian waiting on the other side.

The man at the table had dark, crew-cut hair and bulging eyes that looked glassy as they roamed around the room. His expression was drab, doubtless bored by the blank space around him.

Holland hurried through an explanation. “That’s Calvin Morgan, a regular of the Blooming Orchid. He was there on the night Frederick Sumner was last seen.”

Her statement registered slowly. The night Frederick Sumner was last seen. Had they narrowed it down? Missing adults were often reported days late, making finding the actual date of disappearance a bit of a guessing game. Last I knew, the investigators were struggling with that piece of the puzzle.

“What night was that, exactly?” I asked.

Holland reached to the table behind us where one of the manila case folders lay open. “September tenth. Almost a month ago.” She verified against a scrawl of text on the paper inside.

That date would have meant nothing to me if I hadn’t seen it written on the guestbook pages before I stuffed them into my suit coat pocket. I really needed to find those… unless someone else already had.

“Where’d you find this guy?” I gestured to the man beyond the mirror. “Did he call in a tip or something?”

Did his name, perchance, turn up on a list you found? Some illegally obtained evidence?

The thought of Felix’s scout’s honor attitude about the whole thing made me snort.

“We pulled traffic camera footage from downtown,” Holland replied. “Mister Morgan was parked in front of the Blooming Orchid on the night in question. We were able to get a clean read on his license plate, so we asked him to come in.”

Ice flooded my veins.

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