Eat'em (6 page)

Chapter 11

I hurried away from the science lab with Eat’em riding along in my backpack, just his head poking through the top.

“Don’t you dare stop for her,” the demon said, “Bros before hoes, yes Jacob?”

“Where’d you hear that?” I said under my breath in spite of the lingering crowd. College campus is the ideal location for any schizophrenic. Nobody cares much if you talk to yourself as it’s a pretty common occurrence with most students. I’d avoid having a fist fight with Eat’em, sure, but I wasn’t much worried about someone noticing me speak with him. Still, just in case, I often wore a Bluetooth headset. I rarely talked to anyone on the phone through it, and never listened to music, but perception is everything, and a well placed earpiece allowed me to talk to Eat’em unbothered almost anywhere.

“Uncle V, yo!” Eat’em patted me on the shoulder. “
Don’t you know, B’s come and go, not talkin’ ‘bout your bro, so drop your hoe.
Val knows what it means to be a friend, yes. Unlike you.”

“Unlike me?” I stopped. “If he’s so perfect, why don’t you hang out with him then.”

“He ignores me, yes. Duh!” Eat’em tugged on my collar. “You stopped. Don’t stop! She’s right behind us!”

“Hey, Handsome Jake,” Dixie’s hand grazed my elbow as I turned around. She swept a violet-streaked bang from her face and said breathlessly. “Why are you off in such a hurry?”

“YOU SUCK!” Eat’em screeched from my shoulder.

“I have to catch up with my uncle and Isaac,” I said. “They’re waiting for me.”

“I could give you a ride.”

“I’ll poop in your shoes,” Eat’em threatened.

“That’s okay,” I smiled my appreciation. “They’ve been waiting. I don’t want to tell them they’ve been sitting around for nothing.”

“That’s right,” Eat’em climbed from the bag, sat on my shoulder, and wrapped his arm around the back of my head. “Bros before hoes!”

“But next time,” I said.

Dixie nodded, crossing her arms in a self embrace. The top of her floral sundress pulled down ever so slightly revealing the perfectly formed lines leading from her collarbone to her sternum. She had more muscle and tone than her small frame should have been able to build. Growing from her chest and blooming on her right shoulder was the bright tattoo of a black orchid, with more than a slight resemblance to the art of Georgia O’Keefe.

I struggled to keep my eyes on hers and found myself staring at her blood-red lips at least twice.

“Or,” Dixie smiled, “you might give me a ride one day.”

“I don’t have a car.”

“I do.”

“Then,” my voice caught in my throat. I stared at her lips, but I could see her whole body perfectly clear like she was a centerfold pullout. She wore purple heels that matched her dress and her hair. Her legs were alabaster in cream stockings. I wondered if they were thigh highs or hose. I stammered. “Then, um, why do you need a ride?”

“You’re hopeless.” Dixie laughed and pressed a palm to my chest as if to check my pulse. She laughed before giving me a flick on my shoulder. “I almost forgot! Are you, like, having Jodi do your laundry now?”

“Jodi?”

“Miss Kempter,” she said. “Did you not just give her a laundry bag from your backpack?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. My focus narrowed back to her eyes again. With the sun beating down on us they were almost another shade of twilight. “I mean no. It’s for some experiment thing. Not a big deal.”

Dixie hit my arm. “Are you doing extra credit without me?”

“No,” I shook my head. “No, I swear. Nothing like that. It’s just something I had a question about and I didn’t want to have to wait until whenever we cover the material. It’s nothing. Really.”

“Whatever it is,” she puckered her lips. “It sounds boring.”

“To a dullard like you, yes!” Eat’em scoffed. “Zing! Yes, Jacob? Big Time!”

“It is,” I said. “Pretty boring.”

“Do you have a Facebook account?” Dixie asked, changing the subject once more.

“No.”

She gasped, “How. Do. You. Breathe?”

“What’s she talking about?” Eat’em asked.

I answered both of them at once, “I don’t know.”

“Well,” she said, “everyone has one. So you need to get one. Social networking. Otherwise, how am I supposed to get a hold of you?”

“Morse Code?”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Dumb joke.”

“Me too, Jacob,” she smiled sheepishly and pretended to tap out a message. “Beep. Beepbeep. Beep. Beep. That means get on Facebook so I can get a hold of you.”

“Sounded more like
Shave and a haircut.
”

“You,” she said, “are a major dork.”

“I realize,” I said. “I’m sorry, I really got to go.”

“Right, Valentine and Isaac,” she said. “See you later... on the interwebs!”

She blew me a kiss and Eat’em belched in response.

Chapter 12

I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of it. Instead of relying on an imagined sixth sense to track down the blonde, all I needed to do was surf the web.

Dixie, you’re a genius!

Scouring page after page I dug through the profiles of UT alums. My first search brought up hits in the hundreds of thousands. People tagged themselves to the school dating as far back as the 70’s. Some former students even used their thirty year old school photos on their profile, which made my search that much more difficult.

I narrowed the field to current students aged eighteen to twenty-five and the list became more manageable. Then it was just a matter of surfing until I found her.

Eat’em dug through the cracks in the couch on a quest for day old chip crumbs, which he called consumptive loot. He pulled at the cushions, rummaged through my bedding, and shook the seats for whatever morsels he could find, grumbling as he went.

“This,” he said. “Oooo this too, yes. Very salvageable. We’ll put this one over here.”

He added a handful of chip crumbles to a pile on the coffee table and meticulously picked out bits of lint. Then he scooped the whole mound into his mouth and washed it down with a bottle of A1 left out from Val’s lunch – a Hamburger Mac Hot Pocket and microwavable French fries.

After finishing off the steak sauce, something I’d surely pay for later, Eat’em drug himself onto my lap and curled up in front of the laptop.

“Three, yes,” he said, “definitely a three.”

“Three?”

“Her.” He nodded at the screen. I was on the profile of a Hispanic girl with drawn on eyebrows.

“She’s a three?”

“Yep.”

“Out of what?” I asked. “Five?”

“Fifty,” Eat’em said. “Six percenter, yes. Ugh.”

Laughing I asked, “How about her?” and clicked over to an Irish woman with fiery red hair and pools of freckles.

“Eight.”

“Her?” I clicked to another.

“Two,” he said, “No, no… One. One-point-five. No, one. One’s right, yes. One.”

I looked at the oil-tanned brunette on the screen. She had long eyelashes, a slender face, pouty lips, and perfect skin. A botany major. She could have been a model for all I could tell.

“A one?” I asked. “You’re giving her a one?”

“Yes.”

“Out of fifty?”

“Hundred for her,” he said, mocking a shiver.

“One out of one hundred?” I said, “Are you kidding? Who taught you this scale garbage anyway?”

“Valentine.”

“Ha,” I clicked to another picture of the brunette. A top-down shot, revealing a respectable amount of cleavage. “And you think Val would give her a one? Out of a hundred?”

“Oh no,” Eat’em said, “he’d give her a perfect, yes.”

I nodded, “Yeah, she looks pretty close to me.”

“Well, you both have low standards.”

“Alright,” I said, “explain it to me then. What’s wrong with her?”

Eat’em sighed and pointed out her flaws. “Her tresses are fake, yes. Her expression is fake, yes. Her mammaries are fake, yes. Fake. Fake. Fake. She conceals herself in blush and dye, she’s ominous, she’s small, and the picture is distorted to make her look even smaller, yes. Obviously, she’s a one.”

I minimized the window, showing Eat’em Dixie’s profile. In it she sat half cross-legged on a carpet, with her head rested against her lifted right knee. She wore a pair of jeans and an oriental inspired shirt. Her hair was cut much shorter than she wore it now, still with her trademark violet locks. She looked relaxed, and natural, like someone caught in mid-conversation.

“How about her,” I asked.

“Ew…” Eat’em shook his head. “I won’t answer that.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, “your heartbeat went up.”

“No it didn’t.”

“Did so.”

“It didn’t.”

“Yes it did,” Eat’em grunted. “She popped up and you got all flustered, yes. ‘Oooo she’s so appealing.’ ‘Oooo she’s a Virgo.’ ‘Oooo she smells like detergent.’”

“Stop,” I said.

Heat rushed into my cheeks. It hadn’t occurred to me and I felt completely foolish. Stupid.

“See,” Eat’em stretched and thumped my chest. “It did.”

I clicked the search bar. “I’m such an idiot.”

“Agreed.”

I typed ‘planetarium’ and hit enter. The page loaded with just more than a dozen results. Scrolling down, I checked each profile hoping to see the blonde.

No blonde.

“Damn it!” I rubbed my eyes. My head hurt from staring at the laptop screen the whole day. “I’ve got to put this down for a while.”

“Yes, put it down. Social networking is for the anti-social, yes?,” Eat’em shut my laptop and stood on it as I slid it onto the cluttered coffee table. “Keystrokes are a sign of the solipsistic lonely sort. Self-imposed solitary confinement, yes! You can’t rip all them ones and twos from the screen, Jacob. Do you know what else you can’t rip from the screen?”

“What?” I leaned back and followed a crack along the ceiling with my eyes. I couldn’t remember seeing it before. Pretty much, I felt like the worst detective ever.

“Rip it!” Eat’em clapped for my attention.

“Rip what?” I asked, still fixated on the narrow crack.

“NO!” Eat’em said, “RIP IT! One for me. One for you. Yes? You’re tired. I’m thirsty. Let’s get your wallet and go procure us some rip its!”

“I should have guessed,” I said. Then the epiphany crashed into my skull like a kid using bowling balls for skipping rocks. I spent all afternoon skimming the surface for the girl, when I could have plunged into the depths a day ago. “The wallet!”

I raced over to my backup and emptied the contents on the floor. There it was. A brown leather wallet, could it belong to the number one Deftones fan? I fumbled through the contents; a frequent meal card for a sandwich shop, credit cards, a couple dollars… and finally… a driver’s license:

Louise Parsons

Sex: Male  Height: 6’5”  Weight: 235 lbs

His address.

“I like what you’re thinking,” Eat’em said as he climbed onto my shoulder and tapped the ID with the tip of his tail.

“Find him, find the girl,” I said.

“Yes,” the demon said, “that too. I was thinking more along the lines of having him pay for the rip its.”

Chapter 13

“Of course I suspected him right away,” Lieutenant Bellecroix scrapes a fingernail along the side of the pulpit. A nervous habit, perhaps. I imagine he was the type to carve his initials into every desk he sat at. “You can’t take one look at the kid without being suspicious.”

“Objection!” Mike and Eat’em sound off together.

“Sustained.”

Bellecroix leans back and rolls his head toward the ceiling, intentionally avoiding eye contact with me. At the beginning of the trial he looked at me only with contempt, scowling at every turn, but now he just looks tired. His cheeks droop with sleeplessness. His lips crack from dehydration. His eyes no longer burn with rage.

“It’s not how he looks,” Bellecroix continues. “It’s the way he looks. It’s how he behaves.”

“How does he behave?” Gomes asks.

“First time I seen him,” Bellecroix says, “We’d gotten a lot of calls some kid is walking down Cooper Street covered in blood. And, I mean, he’s head-to-toe covered. It’s on his shirt, it’s in his hair, it’s on his shoes. I know spray patterns when I see them. I’ve seen enough, and I know, this kid was just involved in something bad. So, I pick him up and bring him in.”

Bellecroix studies me the same way he did then. As if he never could get the image out of his head.

“I can’t –
not
– bring him in looking like that,” he continues. “In the car, he doesn’t say anything. Just stares blankly out the window. I asked him if he’s okay. I told him it wasn’t an arrest. But he’s just silent. Not shaken. Just silent. It’s like he’s coming up with a story to tell. That’s the vibe I get from him.”

“A vibe?” Gomes asks.

“Well, yeah,” Bellecroix says, “I’m not a mind reader. I got a vibe. Now, I’m not thinking he necessarily did something bad. Maybe he was a victim. Someone’s obviously really hurt. Maybe he was in shock. He ain’t talking.

“We have our procedures. We start by interviewing him three different times. He doesn’t get a word out with me, so he talks to someone else and then one more officer after that. Then we have him write out his account for the day, everything that happened in as much detail as he can. That’s the first time he mentions a dog.”

“A dog?” Gomes lifts an eyebrow toward me. “His dog?”

“Yeah,” Bellecroix says, “He wrote that he had a dog get out. Run into some razor wire. He finds it and gets bloodied up when he’s trying to get it out.”

I remember the day. I remember the trail of lies I spun. I remember how hard it had been to fight the need to let someone in. The lieutenant seemed trusting… a deceiver in his own right.

Bellecroix continues, “I asked him what kind of dog. Mastiff, he tells me. Named General Lee. I tell him interesting choice in names and I ask him, like Dukes of Hazard, huh? He says, yes. He’s relaxing a bit.”

Gomes holds up a hand and says, “General Lee. That’s the famous name of a Civil War general, isn’t it? Sounds similar to another case you…”

“Objection!” Big Mike slams both hands on the table as he jerks upward. “Leading the witness.”

Judge Brentt nods and warns Gomes to stay on topic.

“I was merely breaking ice with Mr. Brook,” the lieutenant says. “Trying to get him to open up. At that point it was just important for us to find out if the blood he is covered in belongs to somebody that might need help or worse yet be dead. But when it came down to it, when we told him we needed to get DNA from his clothing, he said the fourth amendment protects him from unwarranted search and seizure. He said if we weren’t charging him, he wouldn’t let us take a sample. Said it was his right to not have police desecrate his pet more so than what’d already been done. There was nothing we could do.”

“So your hands were tied?” Gomes asks.

“Our hands were tied,” Bellecroix says. “He called his uncle to pick him up and that was it.

“How could I not be suspicious after that? Do you know how many people come into my precinct and have the Bill of Rights memorized? Recite the Fourth Amendment? To this day… one. Is it an important document everyone should know? Sure… but nobody does. Except for Jacob. Jacob, who is picked up from the side of the road after numerous phone calls from passersby all stating he’s drenched in blood.”

“Did his story check out?” Gomes asks. The slick DA appears disheveled as ever. He hardly bothers shaving anymore, and often smells of day old alcohol. He figures he won this case from the start and is simply playing the waiting game. His overconfidence bleeds into his demeanor.

“No,” Bellecroix says, “but it didn’t need to. We had nothing to hold him on. Being cut up and bruised and lying about a dog isn’t grounds enough to force him to cooperate. The kid knew his rights and we let him go.”

“Even covered in blood.”

“Even covered in blood, absolutely,” Bellecroix shakes his head. “There are countless reasons he could be covered in blood without doing what he did.”

“Objection!” Mike slams the table again. His stamina in the case might be my greatest asset. He told me the goal was to outlast them.
A long trial is in our favor
.

“Sustained.”

“It’s not illegal to have blood on you,” Bellecroix says. “And it’s not illegal to lie to police – unless we’re building a case and require your testimony. Sure, someone might get rung up for perjury charges here, but for me, only the evidence will tell me if you’re lying or not.”

He gnaws at a cuticle, looking at me only briefly before finding something else to be distracted with. Mike leans over and whispers, “Fidgeting means he don’t believe his own words.”

“I didn’t have the evidence,” Bellecroix says. “I didn’t have the crime. We picked Mr. Brook off the streets and I believe we were right to do so.”

What he didn’t say on stand was that he took a swab of the blood from the chair I sat on during interrogation. It may be inadmissible in court, but I am not the only one who can play vigilante.