The Tanglewood Murders. David Weedmark
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paper, let it stream out the window and into the night.
“You bastard,” laughed Scotty. “I’d have called!”
“She didn’t give it to you.”
“So you should call!” Scotty shouted.
“Why?” asked Taylor. “I know where she works. She’s at Beck’s more than she’s home anyway.”
“Still...” Scotty began until “Highway to Hell” came on the radio, and he lost his train of thought.
“We go back to work in eight hours,” said Taylor. “Just get me home.”
Randy Caines was not a drinker of coffee. He liked tea—black and sweet. As he pressed the back of a spoon against a bloated teabag, he watched with pointed attention as the dark brown fluid leeched into the stained saucer. He squeezed honey, thick and yellow, generously into his cup as he stirred it around. Then, as his thick fingers held the cord of the dangling teabag, he lifted the saucer, tipped it, and watched the bitter remains drizzle into his cup.
Caines ran his portion of the Tanglewood empire from an old steel school-teacher’s desk in the corner of the shipping platform, just outside Michael Voracci’s private office.
His desk was covered with scattered papers, crumpled Kleenex, invoices, shipping documents and a couple of twenty-year-old copies of Swank and Hustler magazines. In the centre of this were a grimy computer keyboard and a dusty monitor with an amber screen. To everyone’s surprise, Caines could find any paper he needed on his desk, almost by touch. It was a mess, but it was his mess. He owned it.
He looked up and glared as Taylor approached him. It was nearly six a.m.
“Don’t punch in,” he growled, punctuating each word with a tap of his pencil on the edge of the desk.
Ben adjusted his ball cap. “Why the hell not?”
“No one is working today. You know why.”
“Why?”
“Because they found Wagner’s girl,” Caines said with a glare. His eyes were piercing and cold—filled with hate. It was not something Taylor could take personally. He knew Caines well enough to know he would not cancel a day of work for just anything. Caines enjoyed displaying aggression on every occasion.
“I know about her,” said Taylor, refusing to give her a name in Caines’ presence. He doubted Caines could remember Anna’s name without serious effort. “Now tell me why I’m not working today.”
“The fucking cops. They’re interviewing everyone today. Everyone. So no one is working.”
Taylor nodded thoughtfully before sliding his time card into the punch clock. The sound of the bolt inside the clock echoed through the warehouse.
“I don’t see any cops here,” said Taylor without expression.
“When they come to see me, I’ll punch out.”
Caines nodded dismissively as he sat back in his chair. “Make sure you do. I swear, you’re the only guy here with a friggin’ head on his shoulders.”
“I’d have to agree,” Taylor nodded, “seeing as we’re the only two here.”
Caines stood up. “You know I meant everyone here but me.”
Taylor suppressed a grin.
“Now get to work.”
Taylor turned away and climbed into his forklift. He hit the gas and leaned on the horn as he passed Caines’ desk. Caines lifted his middle finger in the air without looking up from his paperwork.
Randy Caines took nothing personally. That the world was harsh to everyone was a lesson he had learned long ago. Most of that education had come at the hands of his father, Lenny Caines, an underemployed truck driver who had battled, with little success, addictions to alcohol, narcotics and amphetamines for most of his short hard life. Caines’ decision to deal with the world in the same manner it had always dealt with his father had come several days after his father’s funeral, when Caines was seventeen.
He remembered the day with the vividness of a favorite old Technicolor movie, which he played back to himself nearly every day. It was nearly lunchtime when his English teacher, Mrs. Sibley, had placed on his desk his essay with a large red F written on the cover page. Caines was furious. It had been copied word for word from a paper she had awarded a B the year before. He had been up most of the night typing the paper. In fact, he had never worked so hard on a school assignment as he had on that paper. Three hours. Fifteen pages. Word for word. Typed with two fingers at a time.
“You know my dad just died,” he said as she walked away down the aisle.
“I’m sorry for that,” she replied. “But it’s still plagiarized. And you submitted this before your father passed away.”
As she finished depositing papers on the desks at the end of the aisle, she turned around to find Randy Caines standing behind her, his acne-ridden face glaring at her.
He had never punched a woman before, except his sister when they were kids. His sister had been a lot younger and tougher and had always been able to brace herself for the punch. Caines could still remember how soft the woman’s slender belly had been and the look of surprise on her face as his fist connected. He could vividly recall the scent of spearmint gum mixed with the pleasant odour of her perfume, her breath wafting into his face as she cried out in surprise and pain. The sound of her fingers sliding across the formica desk as she tried to keep her balance. The soft thud of her shoulder striking the tile floor. The sight of her bare legs as the green dress rode up her thighs. It was probably a good thing he’d held back, he later decided, or he might have killed the bitch.
He had been arrested outside his house that afternoon when he’d returned home, but the charges were dropped within hours. He was expelled. Randy Caines would never have to take shit from anyone ever again.
The following afternoon, he’d followed the railroad tracks to a small ravine, climbed down the slope and sat down near the creek. There, while smoking Marlboros and drinking from a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels his father had left behind, he charted a new direction for his life. It was obvious that he was not a scholar. He possessed no talents; he was not an athlete; he possessed no skills or trades. So he decided to enlist in the armed forces and in the end he spent four years with the military. He served in Cyprus and Rwanda but spent most of his time in Canada, on base at Trenton and Petawawa. When he left the military with no more than his corporal stripes, a little more weight, and two tattoos, Caines found himself in the same position he had been in before he’d enlisted. Like the slow-moving freight train that rumbled above his head, he decided to make use of the one thing he had in common with that train, honed by his time in the army: fearless brute force.
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