Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

Rachette sat in the front seat of his SUV, staring at the small house silhouetted in the orange glow of the setting sun behind the western wall of the Chautauqua Valley.

At one time, he’d been jealous of the place. A small two-bedroom set among the trees, a baseball throw from the river. Now, as he stared out of the bug-stained windshield of his truck, the place looked run down. The flower boxes sprouted weeds, and the lawn surrounding the place was sporadic and unkempt. The garden gnomes that at one point spiced the place up now looked like partygoers standing among discarded beer cans.

He tapped and pinched his cell phone screen, zooming the camera into the license plate of the Ford Fiesta parked behind Yates’s truck in the driveway, and took a photo. He would run the information tomorrow at the station to get a hit. Rachette had never seen the vehicle before but certainly didn’t like the guys driving it. They had the look of dangerous drug dealers. At least, the passenger of the car had looked mean. He was muscular, covered in tattoos, and had a look that said he’d hurt a lot of people. The driver—a tall, skinny guy with long hair and a dumb smile—not so much.

A TV flickered in the window, showing an episode of Friends. Friends.

Rachette scoffed aloud.

Inside the window, the tall guy stood up from the couch, no longer carrying the paper bag he had taken in. He counted a stack of bills and put them in his pocket, solidifying Rachette’s earlier guess of drug dealers.

Dealers. For what? How far had Yates slipped? How far had Rachette let him slip? That second question was like a punch in the gut.

He rechecked the quality of the picture and pocketed his phone. Then he shoved another handful of fries in his mouth.

Damn, he loved these fries. It had been at least two years since he’d allowed himself the indulgence. Ironically, it had been Yates who had turned him around back then, getting him to realize the weight he had put on was doing nobody any good. It had been Yates alone who had pushed him to get back in shape. Now Rachette couldn’t believe how much Yates had let himself go.

Rachette ignored the churning bomb about to explode in his gut and unwrapped another burger, finishing it in a few bites. He washed it all down with a supersized Coca-Cola, closing his eyes at the sweet, salty taste as it slid down his throat.

What was Rachette doing, relapsing like this? Something about coming here had freed all those inner demons he’d locked away twenty-four months ago.

The phone rang, beeping in the speakers as the dashboard system took the call and displayed Charlotte’s number.

“Shit.” He slid his tongue around, swallowing the final pieces of his last bite, and pressed the answer button. “Hey, babe.”

“Hey, where are you?”

He turned down the volume. “I’m just…finishing up some calls.”

“I didn’t see you when I left the squad room.”

This was the problem with working in the same freaking building with his wife. Any time he took a shit, she knew about it. “I’m just out. Okay?”

“Okay…” she said.

“Listen, sorry. I’m just a little shaken up about today. I’ll see you later. You guys can eat without me.”

“Shaken up? Where are you? I’ll pick you up when you want to come home.”

“No,” he said, irritation rising in his voice. “Look, I’m not drinking. I’ll just be home in a bit.”

She hesitated, then said. “Okay. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Bye.”

He poked the dash screen and ended the call.

He shut his eyes, relaxing the tension in his jaw. When he opened them, he set aside the food and opened the door.

Wiping his hands on his jeans, he marched to the house with long, purposeful strides.

He stepped up onto the porch and pounded the door three times.

“Who is it?” a voice said, muffled.

“Who is it? Your mom, asshole! Open up!” He tried the door, but it was locked .

A commotion inside, somebody saying to stay back.

The door opened, and the first thing that came out was the barrel of Yates’s personal Glock 19.

“Get that shit out of my face,” Rachette said, pushing the gun aside.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Yates lowered the gun, eyes bulging, barely visible through the slits of greasy hair that hung low on his forehead. His beard was almost down to his chest, streaked with two silver plumes that would have been cool had it not been for the knots that proved it hadn’t been washed since inception.

“Who’s this?” Skinny-Guy stood by the television. His tone was incredulous.

Rachette turned his head slowly, raking his eyes from the greaseball’s flip-flopped feet to his pimple-scarred face. “I’m your worst nightmare, asshole.”

“Okay.” The guy laughed, and Rachette let his face go blank.

Thick-and-Dangerous, the source of Skinny-Guy’s confidence no doubt, stood up from the couch. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you turn around and leave, huh?”

Rachette smiled brightly. Mocking the guy’s tone precisely, he said, “Hey, prick, why don’t you go fuck yourself, huh?”

“Okay, Rachette, dude.” Yates put the gun in the back of his pants and held up his hands. “Relax.”

Thick-and-Dangerous walked up and stood chest-to-chest with Rachette, looking down from at least a head taller height.

Rachette punched him in the jaw at a diagonal angle, knocking him out instantly. Knees buckling, he landed in a heap, but before he was on the ground, Rachette was already stepping over him toward Skinny-Guy.

Yates tried to stop him, but being such a slow-weak version of his former self, Rachette slapped him away easily.

“Hey, man! Chill ou—” Skinny-Guy didn’t get the words out because Rachette grabbed him by the shirt, pulled, and launched him out the door. The guy windmill-stepped twice and tumbled off the deck in a cloud of limbs before rolling down the stairs.

“Ah!”

Thick-and-Dangerous stirred awake, so Rachette kicked the side of his head, putting him back to sleep. Then, he grabbed him by the feet and pulled all two-hundred-fifty pounds of him out of the house, down the stairs, and to the back door of the car.

The exertion took every bit of his strength and then some. Dropping the guy’s beefy legs, he screamed in triumph into the blood-orange sky and flexed his arms. “Ahhhh!”

Again, he turned to Skinny-Guy and pointed at the rear door. “Open it.”

“Okay. Yeah, okay.” The guy got up and snapped to attention, opening the rear door.

“Get him in.”

Thick-and-Dangerous groaned, trying to get up.

Rachette pulled his own gun from the rear of his pants.

“Whoa, man! Get in, Calvin! Get in. He’s getting in.”

Rachette put the gun to the head of Thick-and-Dangerous. “Get up and get in.”

The guy did.

Rachette shut the door and pointed the gun at Skinny- Guy. “If either of you come back here ever again, I’ll shoot you dead and throw you in an abandoned mine shaft.”

“Yes. Yes, sir. We’re leaving.” He ran around the car, jammed his bony limbs behind the wheel, and fired up the engine.

Rachette watched the vehicle back up and sputter away.

Then he vomited. All the food he’d just packed into his belly came out in a torrent onto the ground.

Eyes watering, he turned to the blurry form standing in the doorway.

“Ho-ly shit,” Yates said.

Rachette wiped his mouth. “Hey, man.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Rachette laughed, not having to act to make it sound psychotic. “Mind if I come in?” He wiped his eyes, putting the gun in the back of his pants as he stepped up the stairs.

Yates backed up, watching him with a defiant, untrusting glare.

It was the loss of trust that really pissed Rachette off. After everything they’d been through, he was looking at him like he was some stranger off the street, like less of a friend than those two assholes that had just sold him death in a bag. But Rachette remained silent, shutting the door behind him. He took in the interior of the place.

The blank walls were the first thing that struck him. A few months ago, back when Yates had been on the good track, healing his body, mind, and soul and on his way back into the detective squad, he had been in the thick of his relationship with Gemma Thatcher. Back then, the walls had been covered in a style beyond Rachette’s comprehension .

In some way Rachette would never understand, Yates had won the woman’s heart during a case involving her restaurant. After his gunshot wound to the chest, she had taken it upon herself to nurse him back to health, and they had fallen in love. The kind of love that made Rachette jealous and a little bit sick. Like…how could two people get along so well without even the occasional misunderstanding? Rachette had never witnessed so much as a millisecond of awkwardness between them. Only hand-holding, and kissing, and laughing. Nauseating.

When she’d moved in, although ludicrously quick for Rachette’s taste, the whole thing had seemed normal. In-line with the rest of their whirlwind relationship. And she hadn’t just moved in; she had transformed the place with furniture, paint, and rugs, all paid for with a diamond-encrusted credit card.

But then something had happened, and she was gone. Rachette was pretty sure she’d left all the stuff. So…where was it?

His eyes went to the corner. It lacked something. And then it all came to him.

“Where’s your guitar?”

Yates said nothing.

“You sold your guitar? The guitar your dad gave you?”

Not a hint of shame shone in Yates’s dead eyes. “Hocked it.”

“You sold the guitar your dead father gave you for drugs.”

Yates’s eyelids lowered to half-mast.

“And that’s where all the decorations went, too?”

Yates shrugged.

“Geez, man. That’s pathetic.” He walked around the living room, taking in the place like he was on a house tour in an episode of Lifestyles of the Broken and Disturbed.

As he approached the pitted Barcalounger, Yates was clearly using with a vengeance, the smell of body odor intensified, along with the scent of stale beer. It was like they were standing in Beer Goggles on a Saturday night.

“Found two dead bodies yesterday.”

Yates said nothing.

“Yep. Couple of biker dudes from Sons of the Void. They were shot and killed. We’re looking for the killer now. Strangely enough, it looks like it might have been some old guy. Doesn’t look like a killer at all. Wolf’s going up to northern Colorado. Place called Doyle. You been there?”

When Yates remained silent again, Rachette looked at him.

“Are you listening?”

“I’m listening. I just don’t particularly care.”

The words spit in the face of Rachette’s temper, but he kept himself calm. He took a few breaths, just like Patterson had been yammering on about with her martial arts training. Surprisingly, it somewhat worked. After the anger went away, he felt the sucking emptiness that filled the room.

“It’s really sad in here,” Rachette said, his voice low. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”

Yates’s eyes flashed. “Oh, you’re sad? Well, go fuck yourself with your tiny dick. That will give you a real reason to be sad.”

“Okay.” Rachette picked a brown paper bag up off the table next to the chair, making sure to knock over a few beer cans as he did so. He pulled out two plastic bags filled with hundreds of pills each. Pounds of them .

He lifted the bag and looked at the markings. “Hydrocodone. Percocet.”

Yates’s eyes flashed again, this time with possessiveness.

“Are you kidding me?” Rachette opened one of the bags and pulled out a pill. “These are real?”

Yates said nothing.

“I’m assuming so. Otherwise, you’d be dead a hundred times over, taking this much counterfeit stuff. You do remember counterfeit pills laced with deadly amounts of fentanyl from your job as a detective with the local sheriff’s department, don’t you?”

Yates rolled his eyes. He went to an end table next to the couch and brought over a handful of blue-tipped paper strips. “Fentanyl test strips. I pick a few random pills and have them test them in front of me. Any presence of the stuff and I pull the plug. But I trust them. There’s never been any fentanyl. They’re real.”

“How are you getting these?” Rachette asked, holding both bags up to the light.

Yates pointed out the window. “The two guys you just beat the piss out of.”

“How are they getting them?”

Yates shrugged.

Rachette shook his head, lowering the bags. “You remember me coming over a few weeks ago?”

The look in Yates’s eye said no.

“You were passed out in the chair here. The door was open, so I came in. I woke you up. We talked, but I wondered if you would remember any of it.”

“I wondered why I found my pills in the fireplace.”

Rachette smiled. “Good detective work. Although…th at’s not what you are anymore. Right? Now you’re just a junky.”

Yates raised his chin.

Rachette looked him up and down. “Look at yourself.”

“Give me those.”

“You know they’re gunning to bring in another detective.”

Yates stared at the bags of pills.

“You haven’t spoken to Dr. Hawkwood. You haven’t come in to talk to Waze. You’re ignoring his calls.”

Rachette went to the fireplace, kicking aside another beer can. The carpet was covered in crumbs, thousands of multicolored flecks of snack food crushed into bits.

“You dumped a billionaire’s daughter. Do you recall that? Does that even register in your mind? She was in love with you. A billionaire’s daughter! A lifetime of sipping wine on mega yachts, and you dumped her. You said, ‘Hey, I’d rather hang out with a couple of losers,’ and you kicked her out of your place.”

“Don’t put those in there.”

Rachette reached the wall and flicked the switch. The fireplace ignited with a woosh. He tossed the bags in.

“No!” Yates rushed over, stumbling to his knees, almost going into the fire headfirst. Without hesitation, he thrust his arm into the flames and pulled out the melted ziplock bags. Pills scattered everywhere, some in the fire, but most onto the carpet.

“Ah, shit.” Yates sucked on a finger. “Bastard!”

Rachette watched in silent horror, the room filling with the scent of burnt plastic and arm hair.

Yates scooped the pills into piles and shoved them into the pockets of his sweatpants. Gathering every last salvageable one, he stood up and walked through the empty dining area—the one that used to hold a modern-designed hand-carved wooden table and six chairs—and entered the kitchen.

He put the pills away somewhere and then came back, this time with the gun in his hand.

Rachette remained where he was, his legs warming from the fire next to him. Sweat slid down the side of his face from his hairline and streaked down the tense muscles of his neck.

“What are you doing? Pussy?”

To Yates’s credit, a bit of sanity was left in there and he kept the gun dangling at his side. “Just get out. I don’t want you here.”

“No.”

“Get out!” He stepped up to Rachette and pointed the gun at his face.

Rachette slapped his hand away and took the gun with a fluid-twisting movement that was disturbingly easy.

Yates attacked, punching him hard in the side.

Rachette reared up with his elbow, connecting with Yates’s forehead.

Yates stumbled backward and crashed into the corner of the room, slid down the wall, and landed on his backside.

“Just stay down.”

Yates sat there, breathing heavily. He put a hand to his chest, panic flashing in his eyes.

“Are you alright?” Rachette stepped toward him.

Yates composed himself, and his face transformed into a mask of rage. He bared his teeth and shook his head, a hate-filled grunt rumbling in his body as he stood up.

“Yeah,” Rachette said. “There you are. There’s Yates! ”

“Get the fuck out of here!” Spit flew from his lips. The words choked his throat. “Get out! And don’t ever come back!”

Rachette walked to the door and opened it. He underhand tossed Yates’s Glock on the Barcalounger.

“No,” he said. “That I’m certainly not going to do.” And then he left and shut the door behind him.