Angels With Razor Wings

First published in Turkish Delight: An Anthology from Michael Terence Publishing - 2017

 Carly Sue had floated on her back on the calm yellow waters of Wolf River. Over her, heavy branches bowed to create a makeshift foliage of arches like the cathedrals in those fancy books at the library. The blinding June sunshine filtered between waxy leaves and broke on the surface of the water into a dozen shimmers but she hadn’t seen any of that. 

Fish always go for the eyes first, at least that’s what Jamie overheard when she went down to the County morgue to identify Carly Sue’s little body. Not much of a body really, bloated flesh the ashen colour of death minus the bits the fish and other small animals had nibbled on. Not much of Carly Sue really, of the eleven-year-old Jamie knew and loved so much with knobby knees and those goddamn pink sneakers she would never take off. They didn’t find those when they fished her out. She listened to them and answered their questions as best she could, standing stiff and straight as a utility pole on the Interstate. Once they were finished with her, Jamie strode outside and around the back of the building. She leaned forehead against the wall and finally puked her breakfast but, she waited until the dead of night after everybody had gone to sleep in the house to cry and scream into her pillow.

 ***

Jamie marched down toward Sal’s—hands buried deep in the pockets of her army jacket and cap firmly screwed on her head, ragged visor tilted down. A week of no goddamn news, she thought as she kicked an empty can. One of the deputies at the station had told her that Memphis had sent a Detective to be in charge of the investigation and he was presently having lunch at Sal’s. She wasn’t sure which deputy had told her; Barlow only had two—Dumb and Dumber, she called them. She couldn’t tell them apart, same look of stupid on their faces. She stepped in and scanned the inside of the dim lit room, which smelt like an ashtray stuffed with bodies in need of a good scrub. She clocked the Detective hunched over a table drinking his lunch. 

“You Jimmy Whitaker?” she demanded arms crossed scowling down at him.

“Who’s asking?” The question escaped amid the beer sloshing about in his mouth.

“A fucking concerned citizen.”

She dropped sideways in the chair opposite him draping one arm on its back. The man in front of her parading as a Law Enforcement Officer wore a three-day stubble and a crumpled shirt that wouldn’t look out of place on a wino. He stared back at her with bloodshot eyes that hadn’t seen a good night sleep in a long time.

“What you concerned about little girl?” He snorted taking a swig from his drink.

“Fuck you, I ain’t no little girl I’m seventeen, you old tramp. I want to know what’s happening with the Fields investigation.”

“Fields?”

“Carly Sue Fields, the kid you fished out of the Wolf River a week ago. What’s happening? You got… what do you call them? Leads. You got any of them leads?”

“Jesus, that investigation.” He rubbed the stubble on his jaw, which made a harsh grating sound. “Tell me about that one, I ask to be put on loan out of Memphis so I could stop dealing with that kind of fucked-up shit, I mean killing little kids. I’m sent out to the sticks and that’s the first case I catch. That poor girl…” He drowned the images and the rest of that sentence with whatever was left in his bottle before motioning for Sal to bring him another one.

“So?”

“Sorry, can’t tell you anything. You ain’t family. Her folks are back in some town in Missouri.”

“You listen, I was more of a family to that girl than those hicks ever were. She lived with me for going on two years now.”

“Oh, so you’re Ange? They told me about you at the station you live with the old Jensen down Walton Road and you take in the strays: runaways and all other sorts of messed-up kids.”

“Yeah that’s me, alright.”

“Why they call you Ange instead of Jamie, anyway?”

“None of your business.” She shrugged. How about Carly Sue?”

“Sorry, nothing I can tell you.”

“Goddamn what good are you for then?”

She stormed out tipping the chair over and leaving it on the floor. The swings of her ponytail counting the rhythm of the seething anger rising within.

She reached the house and slumped on the porch swing making the rusty chains creak under her weight. The open window behind her brought the muffled voices of the twins arguing. Nothing of concern really, they were always arguing about something. She also caught a whiff of fried catfish and pickles, sure sign that Jensen was home. 

She pushed her feet against the planks of the porch and the swing whined away. She was grateful for the little wind it created. The sun had dipped behind the buildings but it had left its stuffy heat behind. It was all around her pressing against her skin, suffocating her more than usual. Frustration and memories of Carly Sue welled up in her eyes and she wiped them away with her shirt sleeve. Goddamn, she was just a sweet kid. The coroner had been reluctant but she had insisted and he had explained all that they did to her. How they molested her body and innocence until they took everything she had, but it wasn’t enough and they took her life too, smothered it out of her. Jamie had seen the dark purple shadows around the frail broken neck. A scream gathered in her throat and her dirty fingernails dug into her palms.

“Hey, Ange!” Timmy chimed jumping on her lap. She swallowed the cry and manufactured a smile for him.

“Hey, monster. What you been up to?”

“Digging earthworm in the backyard with Mel.”

“Well, that explains those grimy paws putting dirt all over my shirt.” 

She tickled him just so she could hear the tinkles of his laugh, distracting her mind for a moment from the darkness creeping at her edges. These days her hands itched to break something, to bring pain instead of comfort, especially to the particular son of a bitch who killed Carly Sue. She’d love to snap his bones and feed them to the dogs. 

“Stop it!” He squirmed about digging his little elbows into her sides. “Hey, Ange?”

“Yes?”

“When’s Carly Sue coming home?”

The question caught her by surprise and her fingers went dead. She had explained it all to Timmy but how much could a five-year-old understand that there’s no coming back from that kind of gone? She held him tight and buried her sorrows in his hair but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get rid of the anger, that was stuck in her like a knife between the ribs.

 ***

Another week of no answers. Jamie kicked the screen door open and stepped into the heatwave. She coiled her hair before trapping them beneath her cap pulling down on the frayed visor. The relentless sun bleached the sidewalk and the fried patch of lawn that clung to the dirt in the yard. She was about to turn around to check if she could find a pair of sunglasses in one of the kitchen drawers when she noticed a patrol car down the street.

“Hey stop,” she yelled as she broke into a run. “Hey, wait a minute.” She caught up with it and banged on the protruding boot. “Goddamn, stop!”

Finally, the car came to halt and she discovered Dumb, or was it Dumber behind the wheel.

“Hey, Deputy.”

“Hi, Jamie. What do you want?”

“I spoke to the Detective…”

“Detective Whitaker?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. He said you had news about Carly Sue?”

“He did?” Furrowed hesitation spread over his face as he played with his moustache.

“Sure did, said you had a lead.” She grinned. 

“I’m not sure…”

“C’mon, I was on my way to the station to get the lowdown so you can sure spare me the trek and just tell me now.” The words escaped her mouth still painfully stretched in a wide smile. “He’ll sure be glad that you saved him the time.”

“Oh, ok then.” Police around here, dumber than a sack of rocks. “Yeah, we got a lead alright. Some bikers witnessed Marty Wicks talked to Carly Sue before she got into his truck and he was the last person to see to her but— “

“But what?”

“We’ve got no evidence. It’s all circumstantial as they say at the DA office in Memphis.”

Jamie’s hands balled into tight fist, the rage rattling her small bones building up worse than toxic fumes in a cheap meth lab. It exploded with a kick to the driver’s door.

“Hey, what you do that for?”

The deputy’s unanswered question disappeared in a cloud of grit as Jamie sprinted down the road. 

 ***

“Is it true, you know who killed Carly Sue?” Jamie asked as she slid a chair over before straddling it. Her dark eyes probed the crumpled face of Det. Whitaker. Just look like one of his shirts, she thought.

“What makes you think— “

“Your deputy told me, goddamn is it true? Did Marty Wicks do it?”

“Damn idiot running his mouth. Yeah, Marty Wicks’ our perp. He did it alright.”

“So? Aren’t you gonna arrest him, or something?”

“Or something,” he stated into the neck of this bottle but she knew from her old man that there’re never any answers to be found at the bottom of one, only problems, misery and bad hangovers, “I can’t we have nothing on him, no evidence or DNA, the river washed all that away.”

“How do you know it’s him then?”

“Oh, it’s him alright. Witnesses saw him talking to her, son of a bitch got a record too, not the first time he’s done that sort of thing…” He slurred.

“How many of those you had?” she asked nodding towards the bottle in his hand.

“Not enough,” he sighed finishing it before motioning to Sal to bring another.

“Can’t you get him to confess?”

“Nah, he ain’t stupid. He knows if he shuts his mouth we got nothin’. He’s even been bragging about how he’s got us.”

“That’s it? What y’all good for?” She snatched the bottle Sal dropped on the table and took a long swig of it. They stared at her before the Detective asked Sal for another.

“That’s it. I don’t like it any more then you do, kid but— “

“I ain’t a kid— “

“Really pisses me off that scumbags like Marty Wicks get away with shit like this. I promise you sometimes if I wasn’t a cop…” His meaty fingers strangled that bottle of beer so hard, he might shatter it. She wondered what had happened to damage him that bad but she sensed an opening in his words and in this hand around that glass neck that she couldn’t ignore. She leaned forward and dropped her voice.

“If I was to take care of it, do you have my back?”

“Wait, what?”

“If I was to take care of it, do you have my back?”

He scoffed at her hard. “Whatcha’ gonna do with your little freckled face and twig arms? You couldn’t even win a fight with an alley cat.”

She ignored his contempt and stared him down. “Answer, do you have my back?”

His eyes probed her assessing how serious she was. She didn’t waiver and showed him the determination of a stray dog ready to fight to the death for a scrap of meat.

“Yeah, if you did I got your back but tell me why do they call you Ange?”

“Told you, none of your damn business. Just ain’t go about forgetting your promise, Detective.”

 ***

Jamie was flying down main street, one of the deputies huffing after her. She had the advantage of not having to carry the same heavy load of fat strapped to his gut. She made a hard right almost skidding to a stop. Her lungs burnt hard in her chest but the finish line came into view—the entrance to Sal’s. She would find him there, spent more time in that place than at the station. Jamie crashed through the double doors and didn’t slow down until she collapsed in a chair opposite Whitaker. The low thump of her body interrupted him chewing on a bacon rasher. 

“Easy, kid.”

She smiled in between jagged breath before downing half his beer.

“Remember your promise?” she asked after wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

Before he could respond, the deputy stumbled through the door, his face as flustered as that of a cheating husband caught with his pants down. The sweat, he was drenched in had pooled under his armpits and the rolls of his chest darkening his shirt a nauseating shade of brown. 

“Don’t. Move.” He ordered a chubby finger pointed at Jamie. She replied with an arched eyebrow and two raised hands showing good faith that she wasn’t going anywhere.

“What seems to be the trouble, officer?” She smirked.

“Don’t play smart ass, you know what’s what. You need to come with me and answer some question about what happened to Marty Wicks.”

Det. Whitaker’s attention and face perked up at the mention of the name.

“What happened to Wicks?”

“Well, you’ll know if you ever answered your damn phone.” The jab earned the deputy a dark scowl that made him cower and Jamie decided that today this one was Dumber. “Wicks was found this morning in his bed, throat cut like a pig at the slaughterhouse, soaked in bleach and…”

“And, what?” Whittaker snapped.

“And with his junk cut off and stuffed in his mouth.”

“Is that so?” The words were for the deputy but his attention was focused on Jamie, eyes hooked on hers as she took another gulp of his beer.

“Yeah, this one was seen leaving The Salty Dawg with him night before last.”

Jamie rested her forearms on the table and leaned closer to the Detective ignoring Dumber.

“Should I tell him or you wanna do the honours?”

“What she talking about, Whitaker?”

Silence settled around the table, heavy and uncomfortable like the heatwave outside. Jamie didn’t back down in her stare off with Whitaker assessing if she had bet on the right horse. He fished a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and slid one between his lips. They waited on him as he took his time like a shy virgin on her wedding night. 

“She was with me, found her drunk by the side of the road with Marty and drove her arse back home.”

“Is that true?” Dumber stammered at Jamie.

“What you asking her for? You think I’m lying?”

“Sorry Detective, of course not… I just thought— “

“Don’t think that’s bad for you. Head back to the station and prepare me a file on this. I’ll be along in a bit.”

The deputy scrammed back out knocking into chairs, and patrons on his way out. Might need a word stronger than Dumber for this one, Jamie thought smiling at his embarrassing exit.

“So how you do it?” He pinched the question along with the filter of his cigarette and she eyed him sideways. “I mean hypothetically.”

“What that means?”

“Means if it was you how you have done it. Just exchanging theories no more.”

“Well, hypothetically,” she said her tongue stumbling over the unfamiliar ten-Dollar word, “I would have bumped into him at The Salty Dawg and done shots with him although I would have pretended drinking some and puked the rest and just acted drunk. I would have flirted too to get him horny. Then when he was hammered, I would have suggested getting back to his. I might have let him feel me up with his sweaty paws and slobber into my neck and around my mouth to get him unsuspected.” Whitaker’s body moved forward drawn to her story. She rinsed her mouth with a swallow of beer and hunched over the table. “Maybe I would have let him take me to bed and insisted to keep my cap on and in his drunken state, he would have found that fucking hot. And then, when he was on top of me busy trying to stuff his junk inside me, I would just…”

Jamie pulled on the visor as she leaned closer again. A flash of silver sliced the air. Her fingers were at his throat, the cold tickle of a blade against the skin covering his jugular. She smiled at him as she lifted the razor away from his flesh and stashed it back in the frayed opening under the visor of her cap.

“Anything else?”

She leaned back into the chair, arms crossed and a smug lopsided smile on her face. He signalled for Sal to bring out two whiskeys. The old man shuffled over and settled two glasses and the bottle on the table. He didn’t fancy doing the back and forth, Jamie guessed. Whitaker poured them double measures. He raised his glass to her before tossing it down his throat. Jamie slowly drank hers, tasted like honey compared to Jensen’s moonshine.

“Yeah, why they call you Ange?”

“None of— “

“C’mon kid, you own me.”

She shrugged. “Guess so. Old Jensen got me that nickname when he first found me all grimy and bloody. He took one look and said — child, ya’ look like an ange’, an ange’ with a dirty face.” She mimicked the chewed-up diction that came with a mouth that lacked teeth. “Kinda stuck after that.”

“Huhn, how about that? I guess angels around here don’t only have dirty faces they also have razor wings. Hey, where’d he found you?”

She smiled. “None of your goddamn business.”