Dane put his hands up in surrender. “It’s where we’re going when we get finished at Blackwell’s apartment.”
Roselita didn’t argue or even acknowledge Dane’s answer. She just kept burning down the interstate as if there were no such thing as Georgia state troopers, with Dane holding tight to the armrest. Roselita finally pulled off onto the exit 83 ramp and rolled to a stop at the red light at the bottom of the hill. She waited out the light impatiently and for the adjacent light to turn yellow, then punched the gas, launching the car left hard enough to press Dane into the window beside him. Dane straightened his sunglasses and shook his head.
* * *
The building that the late Arnie Blackwell called home was one of the many old stick-built houses that stood elbow to elbow with one another, lining both sides of South Greene Street. All the houses were nearly identical, with real wood siding and decades-old paint that had peeled so badly over the years it looked as if the entire neighborhood caught leprosy, every wall covered in scales that curled up in thin rolls. Like a lot of the old houses in this area of the city, this one had been chopped up and rebuilt to accommodate several tenants. The house had been built in the early fifties by American union carpenters, but the original owners had long since vacated, fleeing urban decay. The renovations that followed were cheap and hastily done, and it was always easy to rent out to tenants with bad credit or to low-income families who couldn’t afford nicer complexes.
This area of Cobb County was one of the oldest residential zones in central Atlanta. It was even called Old Towne—always with an e on the end of Towne. The old English spelling did nothing for the neighborhood’s appearance, but looked good on the sign leading in and allowed the homeowners and management companies to charge a few dollars more a month on account of the vintage, historic feel. It didn’t change the fact that the entire neighborhood was a thug-infested shithole.
The Blackwell brothers rented the bottom half of the dilapidated house, and their apartment consisted of two bedrooms, a small kitchen–dining room, an even smaller living area, and a single bathroom that couldn’t be occupied by two people at once. Most of the stuff Arnold had left behind was already on the curb for the vultures to pick through. A few locals scattered from the trash heap as the Infiniti pulled to the curb. The pungent smell of cop had that effect in places like this. Dane got out of the car and peeked into one of the heavy plastic trash cans filled with paper, broken pieces of particleboard, and beer bottles. The house’s owners had wasted no time in getting a dead man’s home move-in ready for a new tenant.
Dane picked through the trash bin and found nothing of interest, so he climbed the crumbling brick steps onto the primer-gray porch. The door was unlocked, so he turned the knob and inched it open. “You coming?” he shouted over to Roselita, who’d gotten out of the car but stopped short of the dry brown grass out front.
“Nah, I told you. I’ve seen it. There’s nothing in there. Knock yourself out.”
“Right.”
Dane pushed the door all the way open. He instinctively ran his hand over the Redhawk clipped to his belt before walking in. He felt relatively sure that he wouldn’t have a need for it, but the cool brushed steel of the .45 tight against his hip still felt reassuring. The living space was cleared out of any furniture that may have been there, leaving the hardwood floors dusty and unswept. Bits of trash and a few dust bunnies were the only things left in the room to prove anyone had ever lived here. There wasn’t any furniture on the curb next to the trash bins, so the owners must’ve found some other use for it, or maybe Arnold had gotten rid of it before he left to get himself killed. That meant he had no intention of ever coming back here. That also meant that Roselita was probably right about this being a waste of time. Still, Dane preferred his mistakes to be his own. An ancient window-unit air conditioner hung in the window directly across from the door. A pigtail of electrical cord hung free beneath it. The closest wall socket was over ten feet away by the kitchen, so Blackwell must’ve been using an extension cord to run it—to cool the box. Dane thought about how he and Ned used to hunt down details like that in the aftermath of a house fire. Ned was like a bloodhound at a fire scene. One of the best Dane had ever known.
Ned.
It was the first time Dane had thought about his friend all day. The last thing he said to him was that he’d be right behind him. He’d bring him some cigarettes. A pang of guilt shot through Dane for standing Ned up like that, but there was plenty of time to sort that out. Dane had a plan for Ned, and even after all the time that had passed between them, he was sure Ned knew it.
The apartment had a shotgun layout. That meant the only way to get from the front door to the back door was to walk through every room, so Dane moved slowly over the creaky floorboards until he got to the kitchen. It was as bare as the living room, except for an old microwave that looked like it was built the same year as the window unit, a dirty plastic coffee maker missing the carafe, and some old newspaper. Coffee had spilled and dried on the countertop, and Dane touched at it. There was a fine layer of dust over the spill and the rest of the counter, so it wasn’t recent. He picked up the newspaper dated weeks prior and set it back down. Half of it stayed stuck to the Formica in the dried spill.
Probably the reason it’s still there, Dane thought, and wiped the dust from his hand onto his cargos. He opened the fridge to nothing but an empty pizza box and the stench of old food. The light came on, so the electric hadn’t been cut off. He opened the cabinets one by one—all empty. No glassware. No plates. Nothing. He kept walking and opened the next door, which led to the bigger of the two bedrooms. This room had the bathroom and a small closet with accordion-style doors. He slid one side of the closet door open with the back of his hand—nothing but wire coat hangers and more dust. A queen-sized bed with paper-thin sheets took up most of the room, along with an empty dresser with nothing on top but an ashtray overstuffed with Doral cigarette butts—all burned to the filter. The room reeked of cigarette smoke. A few centerfolds from crude porn magazines were tacked to the walls, and Dane wondered if the shitbirds who owned the place left them hanging there as some warped selling point. The girls in the pictures looked barely old enough to be out of high school. Dane felt his heart double its weight. What happened to these women? he thought. Where were their fathers? Could their parents have stopped them? Dane felt acid burn the back of his throat. These were questions he would never get answers to. He thought about his daughter and felt stiff fingers squeeze his already-heavy heart. His palms moistened to a clammy white and he reached into his pocket and ran his fingers over the deformed metal bullet there. He closed his eyes and focused on his breathing for a full minute as the panic attack faded.
When he opened his eyes, he felt weak and was thankful Velasquez had stayed outside and not been witness to it. Dane put his head back in the game. He lifted the two-page centerfolds up by the bottom edges as if he might find something written on the wall behind them, or maybe an undiscovered hole in the Sheetrock like in The Shawshank Redemption, but the walls were blank and intact. Dane felt silly for thinking they wouldn’t be.
The bathroom hadn’t been cleaned in years, and the smell alone convinced Dane to skip that tiny room altogether. He opened the door that led into what must’ve been William’s room. Hanging above the bed was one poster of a rock band that read INTRODUCING THE BLACK CROWES across the feet of Chris Robinson and the boys. The bed in this room was a twin, pushed flush against the wall, with nothing on the bare mattress and box spring but a stuffed penguin and navy blue quilt. Dane picked up the quilt to find it wasn’t a quilt at all. It was a moving blanket—a goddamn moving blanket—the kind you rent from U-Haul to protect furniture. This miserable piece of shit, Blackwell, didn’t even bother to get his kid brother a proper blanket. Dane shook his head. And tossed the stiff blanket back on the bed. The closet was no more than two feet deep, and it was as empty as the other one. There wasn’t a chest of drawers in this room, but there were two makeshift bookcases made from two-by-six pine boards, held together with ten-penny nails. Not master carpentry, but sturdy and difficult to move. That was most likely why they were still there.