The serrated, high-pitched sound of a zip tie splintered away the silence. Hudson set the duffel bag onto the floor. His shoulder burned from having hauled it the two and a half blocks from where they’d parked. It was minus twenty-seven without the wind chill. The tip of his nose was ice-cold, as well as his fingers, but the rest of him was thawed from the exertion. He looked down, his eyes having adjusted to the dark now, and hoped his cold-blooded cargo hadn’t frozen to death.
As if in answer, the bag moved.
“What the fu—”
Another whine of a zip tie.
Kole grabbed a T-shirt from off the floor and stuffed it in Muntz’s mouth. The large man writhed and kicked his bare feet against the mattress, but he didn’t scream. Not that anyone would hear him if he did. Muntz lived in the back entrance of a martinizing shop. It was midnight and the place was well past closed.
His door had been unlocked. Now, Kole leaned in, closer than he would have if Muntz’s mouth wasn’t full of cotton. “You know what they did to liars in medieval times, Ronald? Oh, sorry. I guess you can’t really talk. Just nod for yes and shake for no. Got it?”
From where he stood at the foot of the bed, Hudson saw beads of sweat swell on Muntz’s forehead. When Muntz didn’t move, Kole flicked his ear. He nodded fervently, prompting Kole to continue with his lesson.
“They used something called a pear of anguish. It was this metal contraption that looked like a pear—thus the name—and they’d shove it in your mouth, busting up your teeth on its way in.”
The lump in Muntz’s throat bobbed. He squeezed his eyes shut and started to groan. Kole flicked his ear again. “Hey, listen up. I might have a pop quiz for you, later. Now this pear, right? It had a screw, and when you turned it, these sharp petals unfurled that would rip your mouth apart. You follow?”
Muntz nodded emphatically. His eyes widened then, darting around, searching for the device.
“Relax,” said Kole. “We didn’t bring one. We brought something else. Which, if you tell us why you planted a Desert Eagle in Tobias Shannon’s place—who you might know better as Hades—we won’t have to use. Okay?”
Muntz nodded again.
Kole and Hudson made eye contact. When Hudson gave the command, Kole yanked the shirt out of Muntz’s mouth. The man gasped like he’d just spent the last several seconds underwater.
“What do you want with me?” he yelled. The metal bed frame protested as he tried to wrench his wrists free. The bed would collapse before that happened.
Kole cocked his gun and pointed it between Muntz’s eyes. “How ‘bout you chill the fuck out for a second. We’re gonna try this interview thing again, and this time, Investigator Hudson’s gonna ask you some questions.”
“I don’t know shit about Hades—”
“Bullshit.” The word was sharp off Hudson’s tongue. He felt suddenly hot, his blood carbonated as it pumped through his veins. “You lied in the interview room. Why?”
Muntz spat, and Hudson heard the wet discharge slap against Kole’s cheek. Kole pushed the barrel of the gun to Muntz’s forehead. Muntz laughed, showing a mouthful of cracked, tar-stained teeth. “How’s your friend? Still deader than a doornail? Killing me won’t bring him back, you know.”
“Why did you lie, Ronald?” Kole pushed through.
Hudson was shaking. He was glad it was dark, that Muntz wouldn’t see the trail of sweat sliding down his jawline. The muscles in his arms burned. The duffel bag had to weigh thirty or more pounds. And she was starting to get restless.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“The asshole who shot Garrison spray-painted his shoes,” said Kole. “We saw the black under your fingernails when you were washing your hands.”
Muntz’s laugh sounded like a cat being strangled. “You think it was me?”
“Congratulations on putting two and two together,” said Kole.
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, Hudson scanned the room. It was spartan, with empty beer cans and chip bags strewn about. A grease-stained take-out bag slumped on a Formica countertop, adding to the place’s stink. On a ratty old recliner rested a laptop; a jar of Vaseline and crumpled tissues on the end table. He remembered, suddenly, what Tobias had said about Muntz soliciting sixteen-year-old girls for sex, and wondered if he was staring at the scene of a crime. If only Muntz would have run into Morgan posing as an adolescent; she would have branded him for the ruined and ruinous thing he was.
“What’s the matter, four-eyes? You never seen a fifi before?”
“A what?” Hudson’s eyes roamed the table again, this time landing on a cylindrical object that appeared to be made from washcloths and duct tape.
“It’s a masturbation device,” said Kole. “They make ’em in prison.”
“You wouldn’t last ten seconds inside,” Muntz chided Hudson. “Skinny thing like you’d be bitched up so fast—”
For perhaps the first time in his life, Hudson felt pure, unadulterated rage. He thought of Garrison lying faceup on the grimy gas station floor. Of Tobias sitting behind a glass partition. Of a young Morgan crying herself to sleep in her childhood torture chamber.
His sweet Nandalie lying lifeless on the concrete.
The anger awakened every cell in his body, compelled him to hoist the duffel bag onto the mattress, drag the zipper across it, and let the ten-foot-long serpent spill out onto the rumpled blankets.
Persephone was a boa constrictor, pale as moonlight with rivers of black creating a diamond pattern on her scales. When Hudson had coaxed her into the bag with a frozen mouse back at Tobias’s place, all he could think of was how her skin reminded him of Morgan—white as snow, smooth as a scar, black ink on her flesh.
Muntz shrieked and began to kick wildly. The snake recoiled, only to wrap around his thick ankle. “Get it away from me!”
Kole stuffed the shirt back into Muntz’s mouth, kept the gun trained on his forehead.
“Her name is Persephone,” said Hudson. “And she isn’t too happy that Hades has gone away. If you help us clear his name, maybe she’ll forgive you.”
“The black under your fingernails. Was it spray paint, Ronald?” asked Kole. He yanked the shirt out of Muntz’s mouth. “Talk.”
“Spray paint?” Muntz’s forehead wrinkled. His eyes swept back and forth, searching his memory. “No, it’s grease, man. I’m a mechanic.”
“And a hit man.”
“A hit man? No, you got it all wrong.”
“You know, Persephone can smell a lie. You feel her tongue flicking against your skin?”
On the bed, Persephone undulated like a wave. She was one long muscle, tightening and curling, slithering under the blanket. Muntz’s planet of a face imploded. He looked like a jack-o’-lantern two weeks after Halloween.
“It’s grease!” insisted Muntz. “I work on cars and shit!”
“I didn’t know a practicing mechanic was eligible for unemployment,” said Hudson. He’d done his homework earlier, going through the recycling bin Muntz had dragged to the curb. The guy was collecting six hundred dollars a week, and spending it on Cheetos and malt liquor, apparently.
“I work off the books, at my buddy’s garage.” Something changed in Muntz, then. A delayed reaction to knowing he’d been caught, perhaps. “That’s where he found me. I guess all these years later, he knew I wouldn’t be good for nothing more than fixin’ cars.”
“That’s where who found you?” Kole still held his gun, but it wasn’t trained on Muntz anymore. The barrel was lowered toward the edge of the mattress.
“Mr. Reynolds.”
“Clive?” said Hudson. Jesus, he knew it.
The wrinkles in Muntz’s forehead deepened. “No. Christopher.”
The name slammed into Hudson like a bullet. Vertigo claimed him. His chest heaved beneath his jacket and his head felt fuzzy. The room began to tilt as pieces of the investigation fell into place. He heard Kole speak, but it sounded like they were underwater. Every word had a muffled, disorienting quality.
Of course. Christopher had taken the photos of Clive with his secret family. Suddenly, he saw his life flash before his eyes—not his own life, but Clive’s—all his memories, his secrets immortalized in tiny purple negatives.
“—opher want with you?” He caught the end of what Kole was saying.
Muntz shook his head. “Get it out of here, please!” he shouted.
“As soon as you talk, Persephone goes back in the bag.”
Hudson watched Muntz’s Adam’s apple bob in his throat. He half expected him to spit again. Instead, he said, “He said he needed a favor. Gave me a gun and the address of where to plant it. I thought that was it. Then the day after I’d done it, he came to me again and said I had to tell five-o that it was Hades who shot that cop.” He closed his eyes, no doubt trying to shut out the feeling of a boa constrictor entwining herself around his legs. “He said to get in a fight or something so I could make a bargain. He didn’t want me just going up to the counter and confessin’. That would have raised a red flag, he said.”
“Why would you do all that for him?” Kole asked. “Why not just head outta town and turn him in?”
Muntz laughed. “Where’m I gonna go? And who would believe me? That’s how he got me after he killed Dez.”
“He killed who?” said Hudson. “When?” He searched his memory, trying to recall what Christopher Reynolds looked like. He had to be in his sixties by now, if not older.
Fat tears rolled down Muntz’s cheeks. His face, neck, every inch of exposed skin glistened in the hoary moonlight that filtered in through the shoebox-sized window. “He came to the shop I was working at … twenty years ago. Needed to get rid of this Porsche, a classic, 1978 Widowmaker. He wanted to sell it for parts.” He bit his lip, fighting back a whimper as Persephone began to coil around his leg. “My buddy, Dez, noticed a pair of panties on the floor by the passenger seat, and a training bra, like, for a younger girl.” He writhed as the snake tightened. The zip ties cut into his wrists. “Dez threatened to call the cops, turn him in for child molesting. We both knew who he was. I mean, Clive Reynolds was the only guy rich enough within a thousand-mile radius to own a Porsche 930 Turbo, and his brother was never far from him. Classic coattail rider. So, Dez made him a deal. He wouldn’t tell if Chris left him the car. He’d have sold it out of state, I’m sure, made a mint.” He sighed, hot air and phlegm rattling in his throat.
“I take it Chris didn’t like the ultimatum,” said Kole.
Muntz shook his head slowly. His eyes glazed over as if he’d slipped into a trance. He opened his mouth, but his words hung suspended for a moment, his memories from one single day twenty years ago coming back together. Hudson had no doubt it was the first time he’d recounted it out loud. “He snapped,” he said, finally. “It was like the devil suddenly possessed him. His eyes … they were dark and bright at the same time. He grabbed a torque wrench from the bench and bashed Dez’s skull in. He hit the floor like a ton of bricks. Blood sprayed everywhere.”
Hudson glanced from Muntz to Kole. The sergeant didn’t move, didn’t breathe, even, as though he feared the slightest sound would cause Muntz to stop talking.
Muntz squeezed his eyes shut again as Persephone made a ripple under the blanket.
“Then what?” Kole dared, when Muntz went mute for thirty seconds. The silence pulsed. “Ronald?”
“He told me to make it all disappear,” Muntz blurted. “The car, the wrench, the blood. He said if I didn’t, he’d tell police I killed Dez. Because who would they believe?” His eyes were wild as he regarded each of them in turn. “A poor kid like me who had a few misdemeanors on his record, or him? So, I waited ’til dark and drove it into the lake. Turned off the lights. Launched it right off the pier.” He sighed. His jaw tensed. “I let the car sink all the way to the bottom, waited until it was fully submerged. Then I climbed out the window and swam for my fucking life.” His whole body was racked by sobs as the repressed terrors of that day came flooding back.
“You’re telling us you squeezed out of that tiny opening?” tried Kole, and Hudson remembered leaning half in, half out of the driver’s side window when the Porsche was in the impound lot. The edges had cut into his shoulders, and he was much thinner than Muntz.
Muntz sniffed. “It was twenty years ago, man. I ain’t what I used to be. Keeping a secret like this … it packs on the pounds.”
Kole gave Hudson a look that said He ain’t kidding, but Hudson was preoccupied with putting the pieces together. The edges of his vision darkened. Black filled the room, making way for an imaginary film reel of incriminating images to be projected over the shadows.
The young girl’s underwear on the seat of the Porsche. Christopher Reynolds smashing the witness’s head in with a torque wrench. Sending the other witness to his probable death. And yet, he knew Muntz had survived the lake.
Because he’d waited for him.
Just like he’d waited in the weeds, snapping photograph after photograph of Clive with Morgan and Ava.
It was exactly how he must have waited at the smoldering remains of The Ruins, watching to make sure Morgan found the key that would lure her home to Black Harbor. M.R. Besides Clive, Christopher might be the only person on earth who knew her as Morgan Reynolds.
“I always knew it would come back to haunt me.” Muntz sighed. Fat beads of sweat glistened in his forehead creases.
“He pay you?” asked Kole. “To frame Hades.”
“He said there’d be reward money and that I could collect it. Get out of town. Finally start clean.”
“But why him?” Hudson wondered. Of all the criminals in this place, why did it have to be his brother who was framed for his best friend’s murder?
“In case you forgot, this is Black Harbor. Nothing’s sacred. He knew Hades’s brother was a cop. Said you were diggin’ too deep.” Muntz cracked an eye open to peer at Hudson. His cheeks were red as Persephone began to tighten around his neck.
Hudson pressed his cold fingertips to his temples, fighting a wave of nausea. His brother’s incarceration was his fault. He should have listened to Kole and stayed out of the investigation of Garrison’s death. Because now, his disobedience had planted himself directly in Christopher Reynolds’s sights. And who knew what else the old man was capable of?