A DARKNESS PALE

BLUE

…Irie began the investigation of Clay’s demise and found out Roddy Tot is on the drift…

Blue

Once he’d been called out, Roddy Tot didn’t deny it. “What do I do? What do I do?” He asked her.

“You go home and you hug the people you love. I’m so sorry Roddy Tot. You hug them for as long as you can.”

Irie put him in a taxi carriage and told him he was officially drawing sick time.

Next, she got on the truck’s radio and instructed dispatch to contact Todd and Zoe. One of them was to canvass the block to see if any of the neighbors had seen anything last night, and the other needed to hit Whole Foods and interview them about Reba Nathan, and interview Reba if she came in. “Tell them this is all hands on deck and I will fucking write them up if they slack.”

She made dispatch patch her through to her captain and explained the situation.

“This is a hundred percent a murder.”

 She could hear the stress in his voice. “Yes. A hundred percent. It’s messy.”

 “And the public already knows.”

 Irie said, “Yes.”

 “Oh man. Not good. This is not. This is not going to look good for LIFE NOW.”

 “No, it’s not.”

 “No, it’s – wait, are you agreeing with me?”

 “A hundred percent. I’m agreeing with you.”

 “Did you know this is the third murder in the state since December?”

 “I didn’t know that.”

“Uh huh. That’s because we were able to spin the other two. One absolute public murder we can deal with, but this might be part of a trend. If people think they’re not safe then forget about them buying into community building. They’ll go back to scapegoating, they’ll go back to blaming the Other.”

Irie said without thinking, “You think instead of dumping bodies in nature they’re going back to just straight up killing, like they used to?”

“Whoa, wait, wait. We don’t know what’s going on in the woods. There’s no effective way to track the data. All we have is what we have, and perception. Irie, this is critical. You’ve got to bring this person in and we’ll throw the store at them. With your reputation we’ll turn it around into the biggest community wellness builder we’ve ever done. That way we can control the spin if this is a trend.”

“Got it.”

“If you can’t find the killer, you find someone involved who we can tag with responsibility and need. This has to be completely by the book. I’m going call in to Eugene and Salem and have them send in some of their S.A. mediators so the press will know we’re all over this.”

“Got it.”

“Do what you do. Get it done.” He disconnected.

Irie pondered. Hopefully someone on the block saw something. Hopefully they tracked down the wife. The co-worker needed to be interviewed again, focusing more on the wife. And there was that lead, the fairy. Now that she knew Roddy Tot was drifting she had little confidence it would go anywhere. But better to rule it out now while they were still doing the initial canvasing, then she’d have the manpower to really jump into whatever started to develop.

Using a Thomas Guide, she chugged across town in the truck. The citizens of Portland were outside celebrating. The snow had stopped. People were frolicking, waving to each other, smiling and ecstatic and very noticeably not wearing hats. Blue snow glistened in the sharp winter sun, mimicking sweaty cake frosting. Irie observed multiple people looking at their shadows or pointing at other people’s shadows. It took her a second but then she got it. February second, Groundhog’s Day. The media would probably make a big deal about that, tie it into the storm stopping. Mythology, that was what everything always seemed to come down to. Was the shadow good or bad?

She entered the death quake zone in no time. Nice properties, many of them boarded up. Lots of roofs and walls caved in. If anyone was celebrating they were doing it inside or in their backyards. The truck’s radio went dead. She wasn’t surprised. Now it wasn’t about hope or anything else. Now it was just her.

There was an extra sense of stillness, which made the rumbling of her truck ominous. The address was a three story mansion. Like its neighbors, the structure was set back from the road on a windy driveway, to the side of which was both a walking and ski trail. By the front door she discovered a lady crumpled in the snow. No coat or snow protection. There were bruised blobs all over her face and neck and hands. One of her legs was bent the wrong way. Irie knew the blobs were frostbite, serious frostbite. Who knew what else the snow had done to her.

Even drifting, Roddy Tot had once again been on the fucking money.

She took a closer look and saw that the lady’s knuckles were ruptured, the skin around them burst apart. She’d fought back.

“Respect,” Iried murmured. She yanked off a glove and pressed her middle and index fingers into the lady’s icy neck.

“Oh shit. You got a pulse.” Irie looked around. There was only the aching silence of nothing, the stir of the wind. “Listen, I got to get you out of the cold.”

The front door was unlocked and opened easily. She yelled into the house, “Hey! I’m with SA! I’m here to mediate!”

A mudroom then a living room. A stove with a fire in it, making it easily sixty degrees warmer than the outside. Irie felt her skin expand and flush. She saw blood tracks across the dirty carpet. She went back outside and carefully scooped up the lady and carried her into the living room. She placed her on the carpet and covered her with her jacket.

“You,” the lady said, her eyes broken slits, her voice was a stick scratching concrete.

“Don’t worry, honey, anyone who comes in here’ll have to come through me. Do you know if there’s a phone?”

“I know you.”

“Sure.” People who were this fucked up were liable to say all sorts of kooky things. Maybe she’d seen one of the posters. “You feel like talking? You wanna tell me who did this to you?”

But the woman was slack. Irie checked her pulse again.

“Uh huh,” Irie told her. “You just hang tight. You’re strong. You’re going to make it.”

She scanned the room for a phone. There was trash and junk everywhere, piled like stalagmites. That’s right, Roddy Tot had said this was a hoarder house. Even if there was a working phone, good luck trying to differentiate it from the rest of refuse.

A man sauntered in, rubbing his hands.

“Oh, hi.” He said brightly. He was middle-aged, big with a tummy. A bear with curly hair. His bathrobe was open and showed off frayed boxers and a bloody t-shirt. His nose was recently broken. He had a black eye and his lips were swollen and split. A goofy grin told her either he didn’t notice the punishment he’d recently endured, or he didn’t care.

Irie could plainly see his knuckles were swollen and purple.

“Was that you calling?” he said good naturedly. “SA, huh? And you want to do a mediation, or something? Well, this should be fun.”

…Irie mediates Husker and surprises them both…