Waterproof Dress Shoes: 4
A Crime Miniseries
(Authors note: Welcome back to the world of Waterproof Dress Shoes. I am beginning to see the shape of this story. I’m expecting somewhere around 10 to 12 parts, who knows. It’s fun to write. Things are pulling together in my mind and I’m excited to write it. If you missed the other parts, here they are; One, Two, Three, badabing badaboom. Now back to it.)
The smell of spicy beef twists out of the food truck in greasy smoke. Vince nods to the cook. “Three beef.”
Cook nods and starts sizzling meat. New guy stares at the menu for a long time. “I’ll take a… Hmm… could I get three of the mushroom tacos, please?”
Cook nods, beef hisses, Vince curls his lip. “Mushroom? That’s not a taco. It’s got no meat.”
“Have you ever tried it?” New guy curls an eyebrow into an interrogative. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”
Vince feels his phone purr in his jacket, he turns away, phone on ear. “Yeah.”
It’s the lab coats with results on ballistics from the first crime scene. “You want the good or the weird?”
Vince scratches his chin, tongues his broken tooth. “Give me the good.”
“The bullet we recovered from the brick has a print on it, very clear. We're running it now, but it's likely the seller not the shooter.”
“What makes you say that?
“Because of the weird.”
“And what is the weird?”
“The bullet was never fired.”
“The hell you mean it was never fired?”
“I mean the bullet we recovered from the brick wall is an unused bullet, fully intact. It’s a bit dinged up from the brick, obviously, but it's the whole bullet, casing and everything.”
Vince twists his mouth, mines the broken tooth deposit. The beef snake finishes hissing, three tacos handed out wordlessly. Vince pinches the phone to his ear with a shoulder. “Well shit. Alright.”
“Mhm, we’ve got details on the trace and everything. I’ll send what we have.”
“Alright.”
Vince irons out the kink in his neck, his phone drops. He instinctively reaches for it, tossing three hot tacos onto the wet pavement. “Shit, damn it.” The phone hits on the corner, disembowels itself on the sidewalk, three separate parts clattering away. “Fucking hell.”
New guy grabs two of the bits. Vince mutters, picking the last piece out of an opaque puddle. New guy holds out the bits. “Oof. Looks busted. That sucks.” Vince takes the pieces. “I don't give a rats ass about the phone, its the tacos I'm pissed about. Now I got to buy three more.”
New guy holds out the mushrooms. “You can have some of mine?”
“Fuck you if you think I'm eating that shit.”
“Seriously, they're good. Just try one.”
“Not on your life.”
New guy retracts the mushrooms.
The sterile room where the labcoats work is cold as a witches tit. Vince watches New guy hold up a dime bag to the fluorescents. They hum in reply. Inside the bag is a bullet the color of dehydrated piss. New guy turns it about, analyzing, very official, very serious. “I don’t understand, how is this even possible? Are you sure this is the bullet that killed the first victim? There wasn’t like a mixup in the lab or something?”
Vince watches the offense climb onto the Labcoats eyebrows, pressing them down into a scowl. “Yes. Positive.”
New guy reasserts how much he doesn’t understand. Vince grabs the dime bag bullet and looks it over, considering the situation. “So, you’re saying somehow this bullet was going fast enough to go clean through our guy’s arm and head and into a brick wall, but wasn’t fired from a gun?”
Pleated white shoulders shrug. “That’s what the evidence says.”
“Well what the hell.”
New guy is so serious he gives off heat. “This is some X-files type stuff.”
He continues talking, Vince ignores him. His tongue is sore from plumbing dental caverns. New guy elbows him. “What?”
New guy has quizzical eyebrows. “You good?”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s go. We got to talk to the families.”
New guy butters the labcoat. “Well. Thanks, Jim. Call us with any updates — actually call me, Vince busted his phone.”
“Mhm. Will do.”
Vince has already begun walking away.
New guys desk is pristine and pushed up on Vince’s like a dog in heat. Vince's desk is a graveyard of cups. New guy hop-skips to catch up. “Where to next, partner? Interview families?”
“First guy was recently divorced, no kids. And don't call me partner.”
“So, the second vic's family?”
Vince grips his forehead, melts into his desk chair. New guy sits with a wheeze of fresh leather, scoots his chair over real close, the castors squeak. He waits for Vince to finish doing geometry on his forehead. Vince imitates the leather. “Alright. Let's run through what we know. We got two victims of similar crimes, nothing major in common between them. Both shot on the street, shooter was in a van. The bullet from the first victim has a print on it.”
“Then there's the weird stuff: a bright light went off just before the shots, and the bullets weren't fired from a gun.”
“We need to verify that on the second shooting, but yeah, seems likely.”
“So, maybe the bright flash has something to do with the firing mechanism for the bullets?”
“Could be. Shooter seems attached his van for some reason too, could be related.”
A Labcoat appears with a manilla folder, tosses it lightly into the graveyard, tipping over a foam cup. New guy scrunches his sniffer. “You should clean off your desk, its gross.”
“You should clean out yours and fuck off.”
New guy assembles an armful of cups, deposits them into a trashcan, says hey to somebody. Vince opens the manilla mouth, reads the info on the print from the bullet. New guy birds his neck around to read it sideways. Vince slides the folder to him. “And we got to talk to this guy,” Vince taps a thick finger, “his print is on the bullet. Likely he picked it up to show it to a customer or something.”
“So, we talk to him and see if he remembers anything weird recently.”
Vince closes the folder mouth, heads toward the coffee but stops when he hears someone calling out. “Detectives.” with urgent flavor.
Vince looks to New guy. Front desk lady is clicking across linoleum toward them. New guy offers concern. “What is it, what's wrong, Janice? Are you okay?”
“Something just arrived in the mail. I only touched the one corner.”
She turns and leads them back to her desk.
Tucked into a wide envelope is a glossy print photo. It is peeking out, the only visible part of the image, a bloody arm, the rest is darkness.
The moment when Vince destroys his tacos and his phone - I felt that. The annoyance, panic, and anger you've written are superb.
Plus, I'm with the new guy. I love mushroom tacos.
Excellent chapter, and you ended it in the perfect place.