Split Black /#Wattys 2021

Chapter Fifteen

After an hour and a half on I-64, John carried his pilfered garbage bags into the brightly lit tumult of a last-minute costume fitting. A sewing machine had taken over his dining room table, along with lengths of green cloth that seemed to have grown there like moss. An iridescent, black-bronze cape glistened on the couch, edged with black velvet.

John followed feminine voices to the bathroom, where Lizzie posed in a skin-tight green catsuit. Two blonde middle-aged ladies bent thoughtfully over her derriére, where the unfortunate rip ran from Lizzie's beltline halfway to the front, exposing her gaily polka-dotted bikini panties like a circus flag.

Lizzie wrinkled her nose. "Johnny, what're you bringing trash in here for? It stinks!"

"I've got to go through it. It's for a case," he said. "Can you ladies use the bedroom, maybe? I'm going to do this in the tub so I can scrub it after."

"You'd better!" said Lizzie. "You guys, this is my police-detective boyfriend, John. Johnny, these are our costumers, Cameron, and that's Patty in the glasses."

John hoisted the trash bags a foot higher in salute. "Ladies."

"Hi, Johnny!" both women chorused. Patty-with-the-glasses fixed Lizzie with a look. "Say, Lizzie, you weren't kidding—he is cute!"

Lizzie blushed, and, smiling, shook her head. "Let's get out of here before we get stunk out of here!" She flipped on the exhaust fan as the women piled out.

John dumped the bags into the tub and went to the kitchen for rubber gloves. Snatches of talk drifted from the hallway: "I think we're just gonna have to insert a gusset. It's the only way it's gonna work, and nobody's gonna be looking there anyway."

"Let's admit the facts," Patty's voice carried. "She's a model, nobody's gonna be looking anywhere else! Seriously, Lizzie, where've you been hiding him? He looks like he should be modeling!" John smiled. Lizzie had said that before, too.

John dumped a trash bag open and leaned over, practically on his head, picking his way through the pile, trying to ignore the sweet-rotten stench of mushy tomatoes and bananas gone long past their prime, looking for anything potentially incriminating: bank statements, credit card statements, phone bills, receipts. Ad circulars and junk mail had been thrown away whole, but the man threw no important paper away that wasn't shredded. John did find a small pile of shreds that appeared to be a nursing home bill and a mortgage statement. He put these aside to piece together later.

As he dumped the last bag into the tub, the reek of ammonia rose into the air, thick and choking. His eyes smarted and stung. Through the tears, he heard it hit the tub with a mushy flop: kitty litter. If 842 First Street housed neither wife nor girlfriend, one thing lived there for sure─a cat. Or, possibly, ten.

John stood up, caught his breath, and tried to adjust to the noxious fumes. After a few minutes his nostrils dulled to the smell. He bent down again to brown balls of cat feces. And then, impossibly, his eyes focused on something worse.

Worms! Long, straight, thick, white, worms.

A retch tore his stomach and he stumbled away to hang expectantly over the commode, heaving. He had always had the weakest stomach at surveillance trash-pickings. Thank God the guys weren't here to see this.

He had to get done. He had to pack this shit out of here, now. John took a deep breath and turned back to the tub. Strange—all of these worms looked ramrod straight. John reached out with a gloved finger. Lollipop sticks?

He picked two up. A soft marble of chocolate candy topped each stick, crunchy crystals of hard chocolate candy clinging to the stick beneath. If you liked chocolate lollipops, why on earth would you eat only the hard candy and leave the soft interior on the stick? Did Clay have some kind of sticky dental work? Another addendum to John's head file of completely useless information.