Chapter 6: You Get the Horns
November 4, 2018
"It's already closed," Trevor said over the phone.
Chloe leaned back in her recliner, the morning light from the far window warming everything on her face except her expression.
"What do you mean it's already closed?" she asked.
Chloe could hear Trevor shuffling the papers and folders on his desk on the other end of the line. "You ever hear of a guy named Arnold Trainor?"
"No."
"Well, you have now. A black-and-white found his car in a Best Buy parking lot last night, with him slumped over the steering wheel. One in the back of the head. He's the guy that killed Justin."
Chloe rubbed the bridge of her nose under her glasses. "How do you know this for sure?"
"There were two things on the passenger seat. One is a nine millimeter automatic with a bullet missing from the clip. We haven't run an official analysis on it yet, but Justin's autopsy shows the bullet wound could be one from a nine."
"And what's the second thing?"
"A disposable phone with only two calls placed. One's a private number we haven't been able to place yet. The other was to 911 the other night. Turns out, Trainor was the one who called the cops on you, saying someone entered Justin's house on Friday night. He called us to pin it on you."
Chloe rolled the information around in her head and leaned forward in the recliner. "It's bullshit and you know it."
A pause.
"What do you mean?" Trevor asked.
"I've seen enough movies to know it's the oldest trick in the book," Chloe said. "Say I don't like a guy named Peter. I want Peter dead. But I can't kill Peter myself, because I have motive, and a bunch of evidence is gonna point to me. But I can hire a guy named Paul to do it. Paul kills Peter, Paul comes to me to get paid, I kill Paul. There's nothing linking me to Peter, and Paul is easier to worry about because he's some asshole who kills people for a living that no one would miss."
"And to think that when I woke up this morning, I thought I had better things to do than listen to Chloe Price yank a conspiracy theory out of her narrow ass."
Chloe sighed her displeasure. "Justin's found murdered one night, and the next night the guy who did it turns up dead with the evidence linking him to Justin gift-wrapped in the front seat of his car? I say again, it's bullshit and you know it."
"Look," Trevor said. "The day a cop passes an open-and-shut case is the day the sun starts spinning around the earth. I can't help you. Nice try, though."
"Justin was our friend."
Another pause. "And we found the guy who killed him," Trevor said, and Chloe could tell from his voice that she had taken his goodwill past its limit. "Don't come to the funeral, Chloe. I don't want you scaring his family with this shit."
Trevor hung up, and Chloe leaned back again.
She had been told by multiple people in her life that that once she had gotten an idea in her head, she would follow it to the bitterest of bitter ends, even if that idea was wrong, and the results wound up hurting her.
That was bullshit, too. She wouldn't have gotten this far in life by accepting every easy answer that just anyone deigned to serve to her.
Chloe then stopped, and wondered just how far "this far in life" actually was. Single and isolated with a job that she couldn't be honest with her mother or ex-girlfriend about, using a diner as an office because she couldn't afford one herself. A shitload of acquaintances and no friends.
"Fuck it," Chloe said, and went to get her jacket.
More than half of a decade ago, when Rachel was alive, Max was un-shot and un-disappointed in her in Seattle, and the world held a glimmer of promise, a man named Frank Bowers, under the influence of tequila, pot, and a dare, decided to teach a girl named Chloe Price how to pick locks.
As years and experience on the subject would later show, Frank Bowers did not know shit about picking locks.
When it became obvious to Chloe that, in her line of work, getting through a door that she (maybe, legally) wasn't supposed to get through might be a necessity, she turned to internet tutorials, and even bought a lockpicking kit from a guy who knew a guy who knew a guy around town.
And that's how she got into Justin's house.
She entered the hallway hoping to find… well, she didn't really know. Something? Anything? Chloe was new at the whole detective thing, and she figured she'd know what she was looking for when she found it.
There wasn't much in the house that wasn't picked over by Justin's family yesterday, or taken by the police as evidence the day before. She saw the tangle of cords and cables in his bedroom where his PC used to be in his bedroom, next to the monitor. She found a stack of paycheck stubs from Leonard International in his dresser next to his socks (which was one theory she had that turned out to be correct, and gave her the confidence in whatever theory she might come up with next).
But other than the stubs, she came up with nothing. No stash of weed from his dealing enterprise, no phone she could look into, no incriminating letters or pictures, nothing to explain why he might have been murdered, or what could have connected him to Arnold Trainor. Chloe felt like a hyena, picking through a lion's sloppy seconds in the form of a gazelle that didn't have a lot of meat on its bones to begin with.
Chloe was on her way out when she stopped and looked at the pictures on the wall in the hallway.
They were all of Justin with a brunette girl his age, very pretty, with green eyes and a slender frame. Judging from how the two were posed together, it was clear they were seeing each other.
Chloe wondered if Justin had a Facebook or Twitter account, and assumed he must have. Social media accounts meant more pictures, and more pictures meant a name for the girl depicted therein. Trevor didn't want Chloe scaring the family with her theories (and in hindsight, away from the heat of the conversation, Chloe had to agree), but the girlfriend might be a different story. She might know something.
But she wasn't going to whip out her phone right here and now to start snooping around on the internet for Justin's accounts. No, she'd wait until she got home to do that.
She didn't know who might be watching.
Chloe stopped at the Two Whales to see if she had any mail delivered. She had certain things sent there, because she didn't have confidence that some of the skeezier residents of the Blue Cove apartments wouldn't steal her shit. Vivian rolled her eyes and said that nothing came.
When she got back to the Blue Cove, Chloe found an envelope taped to her door. She yanked it off, opened it, and read the letter inside...
Dear, Chloe
I'm staying in town for Justin's funeral. I'll be around, so if you see me, don't be afraid to say Hi.
-Max
Accompanying her signature was the smiley-face Max liked to make, with the eyes too far apart and the smile a flat line.
"Don't be afraid to say Hi," wrote the girl too afraid to say Hi. Max didn't call, didn't wait, just posted a note. It wasn't like she waited by the door for Chloe, and then left the note when she had somewhere else to be. Unless she carried envelopes and tape with her everywhere she went, and who the hell did that?
Chloe did her best to banish these thoughts. It's not like she deserved anything better from her after bailing out three years ago. Any feelings of slight or regret were accurate mirrors of her behavior.
She entered her apartment, hung her jacket over the back of the sofa, lit a Parliament Light, and got her phone out. She was going to start with Twitter, to check on Justin's account and find the name of the Mystery Brunette, before going to Instagram, and finally, the dreaded Facebook.
Chloe hadn't even logged in when a knock came at the apartment door. Chloe stubbed the cigarette out in the ashtray on the end table and made for the hallway a little too fast, hoping (a bit more than she liked) that Max had come back.
It wasn't Max.
It was two white men in their forties. The First Guy was balding and had his hair slicked back, showing pockets of skull through reedy installations of black follicles. The Second Guy was thin, in a gray sweatshirt, black bags under brown eyes that looked like they hadn't seen sleep in the better part of a week. The Second Guy was holding a black cloth bag with nothing in it.
"You Chloe Price?" the First Guy asked.
"Who's asking?"
"A guy who wants to meet you."
"I gave at the office," Chloe said, trying to inch her way back into the apartment. "But you United Way guys, you do the Lord's work."
The First Guy opened his red leather jacket to show off the pistol holstered under his armpit.
"Lady," he said. "You mistake us for patient men."
Chloe had the black bag over her head for the entire fifteen minute car ride. The car came to a stop and she was walked by her captors through two sets of doors.
She was sat down in a chair, and the bag came off. She knew she was in an abandoned office building the second she saw the ceiling, its rows of fluorescent lights powered off. The windows were boarded up.
The only illumination was provided by a small lamp on the room's only desk, at which sat a man in his thirties with a salt-and-pepper goatee and black hair. He wore a dark pink button-up with a black tie and suspenders. The First Guy and the Second Guy were standing sentry behind her.
"You're Chloe Price," the man in the pink shirt said.
"And you are?" she asked.
He smiled. "They call me The Bull."
Chloe raised her eyebrows. "Do they call you The Bull? Or do you call you The Bull?"
The Bull smiled. "That's cute. Friends of friends say you have a reputation for… shall we say… hardihood."
Chloe grinned. "You have one of those Word of the Day calendars, don't you?"
The Bull smiled some more, but there was a sourness to it.
"It's cool," Chloe said. "I have the one with the Jeopardy questions, myself."
The Bull opened the drawer of the desk and pulled out a snub-nose revolver that looked like it could stop an angry gorilla. This was done, Chloe guessed, in an attempt to rob her of her bravado.
If so, it was successful.
The Bull looked up at the Second Guy. "Bring him in, please."
The Second Guy departed and the room was left in silence for the minute or so until he returned...
With Detective Finch, her would-be interrogator from the previous morning, in tow.
"What're you doing here?" Chloe asked.
Detective Finch swaggered to the desk and leaned on it, looking like one of Satan's lesser imps modeling menswear for the JC Penney catalogue.
"You've run afoul of my employer," Finch said. "Ain't that right, sir?"
The Bull nodded.
"So he's asked me here today to outline the number of ways I can make your life a living hell. You see…"
Finch didn't get to finish. The Bull picked up the revolver from the desk and fired it into the back of Finch's head. His skull did a red Jackson Pollock of blood, bone, and brain in the air in front of him as the rest of his body dropped to the floor, twitching once before it stilled.
Chloe jumped and yelled.
"FUCK!"
Breathing heavily, she saw The Bull put the gun back down on the desk, and scratch the side of his nose.
"That man," The Bull said, "was valuable to me. He had a wife and daughter. He was a respected member of the community. He was one of Arcadia Bay's finest… You know I'm saying this because if can do that to him, I can do that to you, right?"
"Yeah," Chloe said, her heart jackhammering in her chest. "Yeah, I got that."
"Good. Now a normal man, a lesser man, would tell you not to say anything about what I just did. Me? I don't give a fuck. Tell your mom, your dad, your priest, people on the street. Doesn't make a shit's worth of difference to me. Time was, a guy did what I just did to a cop, all the little piggies would get in a line with their pitchforks and torches and wouldn't stop oinking until I was dead. But not today. Not in Arcadia Bay. I put a lot of money into this town, and that includes the Police Department. What I know, and what they know, and what you're about to find out, is that any old bitch-dog, no matter how angry, will roll over if you feed her and scratch her belly. They're not gonna miss one of their own if they're being paid well enough."
The Bull sat back.
"Drugs are my trade," The Bull said, "and believe it or not, you've done work for me in the past, even though you didn't know it at the time. Where drugs are involved, favors are involved, and you're the one who does those favors. A lot of little wheels have to spin to keep my operation afloat, and I respect my little wheels, like a good entrepreneur should. In fact, the service you provide is more valuable to me than the service someone like our dearly departed friend Detective Finch would provide, which is why I'm letting you walk out of here today. Under one condition…"
The Bull picked up the gun and pointed it at Chloe. Her eyes went wide.
"My guys saw you going into Justin Williams' house today. I assume you got it into your head that you want to play detective? Try and find out who did what to whom?"
Chloe nodded.
"Not anymore," The Bull said. "I'm not gonna explain myself to you because I don't have to. But your curiosity will not end well. You see what happens when you mess with The Bull. You're valuable, little girl, but you're not irreplaceable."
The Bull put the gun back down on the desk and pointed to the First Guy.
"You. Take Chloe here home."
He pointed to the Second Guy.
"You," The Bull said before pointing at the dead body of Detective Finch. "Pick that shit up."
Another fifteen minute car ride, and The First Guy yanked the bag off of Chloe's head again, and she found herself in front of her apartment building. She left the First Guy's shitty mid-size without saying a word to him.
After the car pulled away, Chloe stood in front of the apartment building for a few moments in the golden glow of the pre-evening hours. Her heart was still racing, and her hands shook like leaves.
My life has become a steady procession of people getting shot in the head, she thought.
As she made her way up the stairs to the third floor, she told herself she was going to let this sleeping dog lie. That Justin was a friend, but not good enough of a friend to die for. That Max's disappointment hurt, but she'd live. That she'd go back to doing favors, finding lost shit and lost people, making sure the underground of Arcadia Bay didn't spill out onto the street in the only way she knew how.
She told herself these things, but she didn't believe them.
She got to the third floor to find yet another pair of men at her apartment door, these better dressed and better groomed than the First Guy and the Second Guy. They had matching blue suits, and matching crisp ties. One saw Chloe coming and elbowed the other.
"Miss Price?" one of them asked. "Good afternoon. Our employer would like a few minutes of your time."
Chloe couldn't keep it in.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me!"
