What I had to do was turn myself in.
I rubbed my thumb against the red fingerprint stained into Detective Kirchbaum’s card. Was that a one? A seven? Dried blood covered the last number, and I couldn’t scrape it off.
“Please make it quick,” the person behind the desk said, handing me a phone.
The sign on the wall next to me said The Bighorn Hotel, and this was the closest place to Clair’s where someone actually let me borrow a phone. People walked back and forth from the lobby to the ballroom, carrying all sorts of equipment. Easels. Microphones. Lights. Ladders.
I dialed Kirchbaum’s number, stepping away from the hotel employee and the crowd. It didn’t even make it to the second ring. The receiver clicked awake.
“Hello?” I asked. “This is Kurt. The…the model.” I coughed into my shoulder. “Right…so, uhh…shit. I don’t know how to do this.”
Someone carried a microphone stand past me. “You should know,” I said. “I think Jimmy, err, James…fuck, I don’t know his last name. But I think he killed Nathan and,” my eyes bulged with pressure. “And Verona.”
Easels snapped open in the ballroom, and I walked towards their sound, through the entryway, waiting for Kirchbaum to say something on the other end of the phone. Large windows stretched the entire length of one of the ballroom walls. Floor to ceiling. Cars zipped past on the street beyond.
When he didn’t respond, I continued, “I know…I lied…I’m a liar. I sold drugs, and I knew Nathan, and I slept with his girlfriend because she was really nice, and she smelled good, and he beat me up for it.”
Some guy in a blue, satin shirt stood up the microphone stand in front of the wall of windows. More easels clicked open.
“And then I met Verona, but it’s my fault she died because Nathan’s girlfriend told me that her therapist told her that ‘love beats the shit out of us,’ and I’m really starting to think I might actually be a bad person.”
The guy in the blue shirt finished twisting his microphone stand and picked up the ladder resting next to him. He pulled it open, placing it as close to the glass windows as he could.
I said, “I’m really starting to think I fucked up here.”
The man in the blue shirt climbed the ladder until his head almost hit the ceiling. From the ground, someone else handed him a large, slightly off-white, vinyl sign.
“Anyways, Jimmy,” I breathed into the phone. “Yeah, he must have found out Nathan was a snitch somehow. Because no one would want to mug Jimmy, right? He’s huge. And I bet Nathan fought back, and you could check his fingernails. You could do, like, a DNA thing.”
The ladder swayed as the guy in the satin shirt tried to keep his balance while holding the sign. It thudded against the window, almost slipping to the floor. The person on the ground grabbed his own ladder and set it up next to his friend’s.
“I mean, I know that girl pulled the trigger, but Jimmy, he was talking to her. All the time. They were at this Halloween party, and they were together in his truck once. Oh and the beetle!” I exclaimed, thumping the wall next to me. “Yeah. There’s a dead beetle outside the house. Right by the window. He must have stepped on it because…because he was spying on me. And I was telling Cla…uhh…someone how I thought Jimmy killed Nathan. And it was, like, the day before Verona died.”
Two straps hung over the friend’s shoulder. Once he reached the top of his ladder, he tossed one to the guy in the satin-shirt. They both draped the rope over the exposed pipe running from the ceiling.
“I mean, I know that girl pulled the trigger, and I know that Jimmy probably told her to, and I know that he may even be working for those drug dealers you’re looking for. But,” I whispered. “But why do I still feel like it’s my fault?”
Outside, cars sped past the giant windows while the guy in the satin-shirt handed one edge of the banner to his friend. They tied it tight to the straps. As they let go to climb down their ladders, it swung slowly over the ballroom.
Verona Miller: In Memoriam.
“I guess…I just missed a lot of signs,” I said.
The receiver hissed back. Static. Was Kirchbaum even listening? More easels clicked open in the ballroom. A minefield of tall metal frames that stood open like animal traps.
“So are you going to, like, arrest me?” I asked.
Finally, he said something. Except the voice wasn’t Kirchbaum’s. It wasn’t even a man’s. It was just some lady.
“Is this some kind of joke?” she asked.
I finally got a hold of him. Kirchbaum. It had taken me two more tries to dial his number right. But when I did, he had told me not to move—that he’d be right there.
We were sitting inside some themed restaurant that was part of the hotel. Painted waves crested the top of the walls, and a giant aquarium bubbled next to us. The menu in front of me said Welcome to the Mirage.
There was no one else here.
“And you don’t know where Ms. Miller kept her paintings?” Kirchbaum asked.
The sound of microphone feedback rang from the ballroom on the other side of the building where everyone else was still setting up for Verona’s memorial show.
I shook my head.
He scribbled something into his pad of paper while, in the aquarium, a fish with red fins peeked from behind a fake sunken ship.
“And you have no idea where your friend James might be?” the detective asked next.
The fish darted closer, diving from the toy ship into a tall garden of plastic coral.
“He’s not my friend,” I said.
A waitress appeared at the end of our table. “Welcome to the Mirage.” Her voice was as crisp as her starched uniform. “Our special tonight is the Red Snapper, I couldn’t recommend it more. We are also known for—”
Kirchbaum didn’t even bother to look up from his notes. “Coffee for me. Snapper for him,” he said. “Thanks.”
The waitress nodded, marching off.
“So your friend, James,” Kirchbaum continued. “You said he’s working with some high-level dealers.”
In the aquarium, the small fish peeked at me from behind the coral. It slowly swam through the imitation garden until it bumped its head into the glass that separated us. I raised a finger and traced it back and forth. The fish swam along with it.
“He’s not my friend,” I repeated.
Kirchbaum put his pen down and folded his arms. His eyes pierced right through mine, right into my brain. “So,” he said. “How bad is your drug habit?”
Something in the water darted towards my finger. A black blur that immediately disappeared in the opposite direction it had come.
“Can’t you just, like, arrest me now?” I asked. “I really don’t want to get into all this.”
Behind the glass, the red fish still had its eyes on me, but a trail of dark brown slime flowed out from behind it.
Kirchbaum leaned back in the booth. He chewed his lips together and rolled his eyes up as if he were trying to look into his own brain. Finally, he sighed.
“You’ve met my daughter, right?” he asked. “When she drew that picture of you?” The booth squeaked as he leaned forward. “Do you know what a love addict is, Kurt?”
The dark slime in the tank sank towards the plastic coral garden, and what looked like a tiny pink balloon animal rose from the fish's backside. Intestines. That black blur had taken a bite. The front half of the dying animal floated further from my finger, tossed towards the fake shipwreck by artificial currents.
“Love addict,” Kirchbaum repeated. “That’s the nice term for it—the term therapists use when they don’t want to upset fathers.” He paused, scratching his neck like he would rather claw it off than continue talking. “Well…anyways. It’s not important.” He waved his hand in front of him as though he were waving away a bad memory. “The point is, we’re all addicted to something, right?”
The fish's eye wouldn’t shut. The creature lay sprawled against a tiny treasure chest white its guts slipped further outside of its body. A column of air bubbles shot up through the innards, and they flailed around like an inflatable advertisement dummy.
“So, no. I’m not going to arrest you,” Kirchbaum said. “I’m going to do something else.”
The waitress reappeared at the end of our table, holding a pot of coffee. “Sorry,” she said, “but I’m afraid we’re out of the fish.”
Kirchbaum sighed, looking down at his menu. “How about chicken?”
I burped into my shoulder as I followed the detective outside. The stink of half-digested chicken singed my nose, and Kirchbaum was still going on about what his plan was for me.
“The place is called New Bloom Recovery,” he said, pulling his keys from his pocket. “It’s where I sent my daughter. Have you heard of it?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a state sponsored clinic,” he explained, pointing his keys at some purple, rusted minivan parked against the sidewalk. “So no need to worry about money.”
He beeped his car unlocked and got to the edge of the sidewalk before stopping. “You know,” he said. “Your girlfriend’s dad really wants to go after you. A lot of people do.”
He turned around to face me. Over his shoulder, the sun reflected off some other car parked further down the street, and I had to shade my eyes.
“I don’t want to do that,” Kirchbaum said. “I don’t like arresting troubled guys.”
This other car sparkled like it had just been washed, and my stomach groaned. Kirchbaum moved his head, blocking my view. He was trying to look through my eyes and into my brain again.
“I want you to know that I’m giving you an opportunity here,” he said.
From down the street, an engine started, and all I could say was, “You forgot to grab the to-go boxes.”
He paused, looking me up and down. Finally, he nodded towards his purple minivan. “The door’s unlocked if you want to get in…up to you.”
He stepped past me and towards the hotel restaurant. Once the glass door shut behind him, the engine up the street roared louder.
I walked into the road, towards the detective's beat up car. The jagged mountains had started to pierce the setting sun, and my leg wasn’t even throbbing anymore. No more sharp stings. No thundering pulses.
Brakes squealed.
The shiny car that had been parked further down the block was now sliding to a stop right in front of me—a clean, dark sedan. Both my face and the sign from the hotel’s restaurant reflected backwards off the opaque windows.
Mirage.
It rolled itself down—the passenger’s window—replacing my face with someone else's. Someone with a raised scar covering their cheek. Someone a lot of people were looking for. Inside the car, whoever was driving pressed a button, and the back door popped open.
The person in the passenger’s seat, Jimmy. He said, “Get in.”