When the snipe aren't in season
By
Chanlin
Marr
No matter how hard you try to bury the past, it always rests in a shallow grave. Woden had handed me the shovel, and I had exhumed the darkness.
Driving downtown at sunset was an exit from quiet opulence and back to more familiar battlegrounds. Concrete and wrought iron replaced oak trees and polished brass. It felt like I had woken from some kind of brief, disturbing dream.
The Senator's "sweet indiscretions" was a clue as thinly veiled as Candy's underwear had been. Somewhere in safety deposit box, I had a VHS witness to the Senator's recreational activities. I had kept it as a last ditch shield against the unseen sword of Woden's power and influence. Now it was just an X-rated trinket of a dark life, gathering dust.
The Finito Brother's Hotel was right where I had left it, and had remained just as pretty: a broken-down shell; a former drug den and brothel where hookers like Candy had plied their wares to the low, the desperate, and the corrupt.
Getting into the place was ten minutes of pulling hastily hammered slats of wood from a side entrance, the doorframe moaning with each extracted nail; steel bullets meant to kill an unwanted urban monster. I clicked on a flashlight, and then it was memories again.
Chalk outline white and old blood brown still stained the carpet in the places where I had cleaned out the roaches from this hotel. Everywhere my circle of light touched brought back flashes of gunfire and death screams. But it was all very old news; yesterday's headlines on time-worn paper, reading as quaint compared to everything that had happened since.
Mona…
It took the better part of an hour to fight through the rubble and rotting staircases. My shoulder had said hello to more than one old door, and I could feel the bruises blossoming. But I finally found it. Candy's room.
Her diary was still there on the desk, which was odd. If the thing hadn't made it into evidence, then some cop would have at least grabbed it for some late night one-handed reading. But from the weak light I could give the room, it didn't look like the place had been touched since that night.
Had Woden put his invisible shield around this place all these years?
On the chance it had something useful, I slid the diary between my belt and my spine. Then I flipped my Detective switch to "on" and searched the place, wary of any surprises, like Muerte's shotgun had been. The desk was empty, save some bone-dry makeup and boxes of expired condoms. And the room wasn't much for other furnishings.
I sighed.
I turned.
Had to be the bed.
Nothing lay between the crusty mattress and the boxspring except dead roaches and stains I didn't want to think about too deeply. I took out a utility knife, and made like a slasher movie. I tried not to think about how many Johns the thing had played cushion to as I cut up the old whore.
I ended up with a sore arm from the cutting and ripping, a pile of dusty bed fluff, and my prize: an unmarked cassette tape. At least it wasn't an 8-Track.
"Goosechase."
The words had barely left my lips when something that sounded a lot like a footstep trying really hard not to sound like a footstep hit my ears. My hand went for a gun that I didn't have, so instead I gripped the knife a little tighter and stepped quietly, putting myself between the closet and the doorway, waiting.
The crack to the back of my head punched the memory home that the was no closet, just a hidden door to the camera room. My face hit the floor, and from that angle I was oddly impressed with the rug's topography.
A voice warbled its way through my darkening consciousness.
"Thanks for doing the legwork, Max…"
Then I was out cold.
I had been here before.
(Yeah…it's been a long time. More…eventually… - CM)
