They Ate the Waitress Read online

  “How amazing,” she said flatly. She rang up the light and shoved it into a plastic bag, nearly tearing a hole in the bottom. “Nick, I’ve heard stories about you, but it’s hard to tell the truth from myths, urban legends, and your own lies. Are you any good at what you do?”

  “I’m the best there is, baby!”

  She jabbed him in the chest with a sharply-manicured finger. “Do you remember what I told you about that?”

  “That if I keep calling you ‘baby,’ you’ll use my testicles for castanets?”

  “And I won’t warn you again. Now, as I was saying, I might have a way for you to work off your debt. – As a detective, you ass. Stop smiling at me like that.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” He used his fingers to pull the corners of his mouth into a more serious expression. “Please, continue.”

  “A few weeks ago, my cat died, so I went to the pet store to get a new one. They had Perma-Kittens on sale. I guess they do something to their growth hormone levels so they stay small and cute forever. Not important. The point is that the salesclerk was really creepy. He kept standing too close to me, asking me personal questions, touching my hair.” She cringed at the memory. “He must have copied my address of off my credit card because, ever since then, he’s been stalking me!”

  “Stalking? What has he been doing, exactly?” It was important to ask. Sophia was given to exaggeration. She had once called in sick with the bubonic plague.

  “He shows up outside my apartment, he shows up here, he’s at the grocery store whenever I am…” She switched on her clipboard and tapped to open a folder. “I’ve been keeping notes; it’s all right here. I told my security patrol about it, but they won’t do anything. Each time he appears, we’re in a public place, so he hasn’t broken any laws. I can’t prove he’s following me, but maybe you can.”

  He considered his options. On one hand, he was already on a case, which was taking up a lot of his time. On the other hand, Little Brother’s could turn his tab over to a collections agency, and the collections agents could take his possessions in payment. They could take his car, his computer, his drugs… “I’ll do it!”

  “Oh, thank you so much!” She leaned over the counter, giving him a grateful hug.

  “Email me your notes tomorrow morning and I’ll get started as soon as I can. You might consider skipping work. If he’s dangerous, it could be the only way to insure your safety.” He wanted to add “and you could spend the day off with me,” but it didn’t seem worth the effort.

  She handed him his bag and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Stop by if you want anything else from me.” Seeing confusion in his eyes, she added, “I mean more detective stuff. You know, magnifying glass, pipe, deerstalker hat…”

  “Oh, that. Yes, will do.” They said their goodbyes and he headed to the door, lighting yet another cigarette.

  “You should quit smoking,” she called after him.

  “I should do a lot of things.”

  Chapter Four

  Early the next morning, Nick forced himself out of bed and drove out to Renée’s apartment, where he searched for a way inside. The building’s forty-three stories of chrome and glass shone brightly in the rising sun. In a recent newsfeed interview, the architect had said that the shape of the building was supposed to represent “the triumph of the human spirit over adversity.” Nick thought it looked more like a giant marital aid, but what did he know about modern art?

  He found a small, open window near the ground. Kicking out the screen, he slid inside, dropping down into the building’s laundry room. “That was easy. I’ve seen daycare centers with better security. Of course, they needed it. Some of those kids could be dangerous, especially the ones in solitary confinement. Well, while I’m down here, I should pick up a disguise.” There were several piles of clothes left by people waiting for an empty washer. Digging through the dirty laundry, he searched for something that didn’t smell too strongly of sweat, smoke, or other, more mysterious odors. He grabbed a knit cap and an oversized basketball jersey and headed for the stairs.

  The apartment doors were reinforced steel, locked with fingerprint scanners. His usual methods would be no help getting inside Renée’s. He knocked on the maintenance manager’s door and a beefy man in blue coveralls answered. Just past the doorway stood a small table with a glass jar on top marked “Tipping isn’t just for cows.”

  “And just what in the hell do you want?” the maintenance man demanded. “There’s a pretty long waiting list for repairs, so if your refrigerator is broken or something, it’ll stay that way until Cocytus boils. Unless you want to throw some coin in my tip jar.”

  “No, that’s not it,” Nick said. “Listen, I used to live here with this girl. She kicked me out of the apartment a month ago and she still hasn’t sent me my stuff. I just want inside to get my television.”

  “Not my problem,” the maintenance man said, cracking his knuckles.

  “I’ll give you fourteen dollars.”

  He considered Nick’s kind offer for a moment. “Yeah, alright. But listen: if she finds out about this, I never saw you.”

  The maintenance man led the way to Renée’s apartment. There were a couple of young girls in the hallway playing with a robot kitten. Or, rather, they were watching the robot kitten play by itself. Most toys were so advanced that they didn’t need the child at all. It was almost as good as watching television.

  “Here we are, apartment 43.” The maintenance man pressed his thumb to the scanner plate and weaved Nick inside. “Hey, buddy, remember, you’re just taking your TV. If anything else comes up missing, I can always give your description to the security patrols.”

  “Make sure to tell them about my adorable dimples.”

  “Weirdo.”

  Nick slammed the door and turned to examine his surroundings. As Renée’s murder was not yet public knowledge, her rent and utilities were still being automatically withdrawn from her bank account. As far as the apartment superintendent knew, she was still living there. Her place had been left as it was the day she was murdered. At least, for the most part. A maid service still came by once a week. This meant that any fingerprints or DNA evidence would have been long since wiped away.

  “On the other hand,” he thought, “their cleaning the apartment is a clue in itself. A maid wouldn’t have cleaned up blood splatters or bullet holes. If her apartment looked like a crime scene, they would have called a security patrol. That means one of two things: either the murder happened someplace else, or Renée was killed in a way that didn’t leave a mess.”

  The apartment was annoyingly cheerful. The sunny yellow walls were covered in posters of babies dressed like flowers and kittens clinging to tree limbs. The window blinds were on a timer, opening automatically at dawn. Oddly, none of her windows doubled as TVs. Apparently Renée liked to look outside.

  In the corner of the living room stood a small bookshelf filled with memory tabs and photo albums. “Looks like Renée wasn’t a big fan of reading,” he thought. “An entire bookshelf for only three books.” Taking a closer look, he realized that the “books” were actually Schlock Products™ Secret Safes, metal boxes disguised as large dictionaries. They might have passed for genuine books if the word “Dictionary” hadn’t been in quotation marks. Renée hadn’t bothered to lock them. There was nothing inside but cheap costume jewelry and a few antique Federal Reserve Notes. He pocketed the later, planning to give them to Sophia, as she collected that sort of thing. She also collected celebrity blood samples, but he didn’t see any lying around.

  Above the bookshelf was a cork bulletin board with various theater tickets, receipts, and notes pinned to it. “Buy eggs,” “Get keys back from Clayton,” “Tell Mom that’s not a neck massager.”

  Nick walked into the bathroom, which Renée had apparently turned into a shampoo history museum. Other than the clutter, the bathroom was as spotless as an albino Dalmatian. In fact, it was so clean that he felt guilty about his own bathroom, where the
mildew was evolving into intelligent life.

  After searching the bedroom, he decided that Todd was right. There were no signs of a struggle, nothing out of the ordinary, even under the ultraviolet light. He grabbed some things from Renée’s lingerie drawer, just so the visit wouldn’t be a complete waste of time.

  ◊

  Sophia’s email didn’t arrive until late that night. Her stalker’s name was Luke Bender, a low-level employee at a pet store called “Fur Sure.” At first, he would just appear in line behind her at the coffee shop or the deli. She assumed he lived in the area, that it was only a coincidence. However, she started seeing him in the parking lot of her apartment complex. She would leave for work at eleven PM and he would be there, watching her door. When she got to Little Brother’s, he would be there, pretending to shop. She never actually saw him follow her but, clearly, he must have. If Nick could prove Luke had been following her, there was a good chance Luke’s insurance company would charge him with stalking.

  One thing Nick had in his favor was the respective genders of the people involved. It was much harder to pursue a stalking case when it was a woman stalking a man. For men, being followed by an obsessed female was a common fantasy, so much so that Washington had a chain of Rent-A-Stalker stores. Customers could hire an actress to pursue them, lurk outside their bedroom window, or confront them in public and scream “Why oh why won’t you let me love you?”

  Sophia had drawn a map at the bottom of her email. “That’s odd,” he thought. “She sent me Bender’s home address. How would she get that? I’ll have to ask her about it later.” Stranger still, the address was in a very upscale neighborhood. The homes in the area were all in the multimillion dollar range, far too expensive for anyone working at a pet store. He made a mental note to find out how Luke could pay for such a place.

  Closing the email, he switched to the internet and searched for Luke Bender in the newsfeed archives. There were dozens of results:

  Local Man Arrested for Stealing Merry-Go-Round

  Local Man Arrested for Selling Orphans through the Mail

  Local Man Arrested for Renting Internal Organs to Elderly

  Local Man Arrested for Running Penguin Cock Fights

  Local Man Arrested for Operating Taco Stand in Public Restroom

  Skimming the last article, Nick thought that anyone dumb enough to buy a taco in a men’s room deserved what they got. “Regardless, this Bender sounds like a real loser, and possibly dangerous. I’d better pay him a visit.”

  Fur Sure had a sign in the front window advertising the Perma-Kittens sale. The sign noted that, due to several pending lawsuits, Perma-Babies were no longer available. Stepping inside, Nick checked the nametags of all the salesclerks he could find. None of them said “Luke.” He wandered to the aquarium department at the back of the store.

  A small photograph on the wall showed a bored-looking man holding a tiny, plastic net, the kind used to extract fish from a tank. His thick hair was spiked with gel, and a dragon tattooed wrapped around each arm. His eyebrows were pierced with enough rings to support a curtain rod. The photo caption read “Luke Bender, Fish and Aquarium Department Ass. Manager.”

  “His parents must be so proud. Well, if he’s not working tonight, he might be out at Sophie’s place. I should make sure she’s okay. First, in case he shows up later, a little surveillance.” He waited for the fish aisle to be clear of customers and salesclerks. Moving quickly, he plunged his arms into a tank and hid a tiny, waterproof surveillance camera inside one of the goldfish. Wiping his hands on his shirt, he returned to his car.

  The drive to Sophia’s apartment complex was familiar, almost reassuringly so. He had met her two years earlier, when she had first started working at Little Brother’s. Since then, he had given her a ride home from work maybe half a dozen times. She never invited him inside. After working all night, she was always exhausted and would head directly to bed. At least, that was the reason she always gave. Why would she lie?

  He drove through the lot, searching for anyone that looked out of place. Each apartment had its own entrance, which meant that Luke could see Sophia the moment she stepped outside. But the cars were empty. If Luke were there, he wasn’t sitting in his car. Perhaps his obsession had moved beyond stalking.

  He imagined her standing in her bathtub, shaving her legs, and cutting herself with the razor. In his mind, he saw a single drop of blood rolling down her thigh and splashing on the floor. Her eyes would follow the drop of blood on its journey, and then she would look up to see Luke standing in the doorway. Her screams would only excite him more.

  “Oh, holy hell.”

  Nick parked across two spaces, ran to her apartment, and banged on her door. Nothing. “Maybe she’s in bed… being smothered with a pillow. I should break the door down.” He turned on his heel, intending to grab his Halligan tool from his trunk, but he stopped short. Her car wasn’t in the lot. “What the hell? I told her to stay home from work!” His anger vanished as suddenly as it came. What if Luke was at Little Brother’s?

  He crossed town as fast as his car could take him. Pulling in front of the door, he ran inside, his engine still running. “Where’s Sophia?” he shouted at no one in particular.

  “Who’s asking?” a salesman said. Keeping his eyes on Nick, he reached below the display counter, feeling for the alarm button.

  Nick produced his manhunter’s badge. “Is she here or not?”

  “She’s in the back, selling someone a pistol.”

  Sure enough, Sophia was standing behind the gun counter, calmly talking with a customer. “You can hide a gun on your body and still pass a strip search,” she explained. “Of course, if you do get kidnapped, anything your captors do to you can’t possibly be worse than the process of hiding the gun.”

  “Good point,” the customer said. “Do you have anything smaller than a .22?”

  She nodded. Glancing up, she noticed Nick staring at her. “Nick! What’s wrong?”

  “Why are you here, Wynne?” he demanded.

  “I work here. Big Boss Man tends to pay me more if I show up. Did you solve my case already?”

  “No, I just wanted…” Glancing around the room, he noticed a large poster advertising one of Little Brother’s new sale items, a plastic gun that looked like something from a 1940’s space movie.

  Try the new Enuresis Zapper! Only $299.95 for your very own incontinence-producing ray gun! Works up to fifty yards away! Fun at parties!

  Indicating the poster, he said, “I’d like one of those. Do you do gift wrap? My nephew’s turning eight next week…”

  Back at home, he collapsed on his couch, three hundred dollars poorer and incredibly depressed. His mind tortured him with questions. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he just talk to her? Should he chase her stalker first or Renée’s killer? Did he have any drugs left? He decided to deal with the last question first, as it was the easiest.

  Moments later, he was sprawled on the floor, watching his head float to the ceiling. What was he thinking about before? Something about a girl?

  Chapter Five

  The next morning, Nick was in the shower, debating what to do next. He came up with some of his best ideas in the shower, which is why most of them involved rubber ducks or dandruff shampoo. Toweling off, he grabbed his transmitter from atop his dresser. “Trans Sweeny.”

  The transmitter was the size of a golf ball cut in half and looked something like a chrome-plated ladybug. At the sound of Nick’s voice, the transmitter opened its “eyes,” two tiny cameras that would send his image to Todd Sweeny’s home video screen. Moments later, a six-inch hologram of Todd’s head appeared above Nick’s palm.

  “Ah, Mr. Wergild, yes. What can I do for you?”

  “I need to see whatever’s left of Flockhart. After you chop up a corpse, what happens to the remains?”

  “After we strip a long pig of its meat,” Todd corrected, “we sell the leftovers to an elderly couple in Oregon who make scrimshaw.
”

  “…What’s scrimshaw?” he asked reluctantly. Whatever it was, he knew he wouldn’t like the answer.

  “Art made from bones.”

  “Oh, lovely. That’s not creepy at all…”

  ◊

  The scrimshaw store was in the tiny town of Fossil, Oregon, about three hours away. The shop wasn’t hard to find, as there were only about five hundred people in the whole area. It was a dilapidated shack with faded blue paint, sitting across the street from a museum. A battered sign outside read “Napoleon’s Boney Art.”

  “That’s the thing I hate about my job,” Nick thought. “I can arrest murderers and rapists, but I’m powerless to stop people who make bad puns.”

  The inside of the store was one large room. The walls were darkly stained paneling decorated with autographed photos of the various celebrities that had supposedly been there. Strangely, they were all signed in the same handwriting, and many of the celebrities had forgotten how to spell their own names. Either the photos were fakes or the Hollywood lifestyle had rotted their brains. Possibly both.

  Ancient, glass display cases divided the store into several sections. One case held flutes carved from femurs. Another case was filled with bowls made from skulls, some bleached white, but most painted in bright colors. Stacked near the door, a few pieces of furniture made from bones and barbed wire slowly gathered dust.

  In the back of the store stood the sales counter, an immense, oaken thing inlayed with pieces of bone. On top of the counter, next to the cash register, a gray parrot dozed in a wrought iron birdcage. Behind the counter, a white haired man sat on a stool and stared at a grainy hologram of a daytime talk show.

  “You must be Napoleon,” Nick said, extending his hand. “Or should I say mister....” Napoleon ignored his attempt at a handshake. Awkwardly, Nick pulled his hand away and drummed his fingers on the counter. “Nice parrot.”