Serpents Rising. David A. Poulsen
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cruising, gets lucky this time, sees a friend of Jay’s, also a user, coming out of a house carrying something. There’s another guy on the porch of this place, badass-looking guy … Blevins figures he’s found a crack house.”
“Good guess,” I said.
Cobb nodded. “This other kid, his name is Max, leaves and badass goes back inside. Blevins decides he’s going in there.”
“Shit,” I said.
“It gets worse,” Cobb looked at me. “Blevins hunts and he’s a gun collector, has a handgun with him. Decides to take it along thinking he might wave it around a little, scare the crap out of these creeps and warn them off selling product to his kid. Figures he’ll tell them that if they do, he’ll come back. Like Sylvester Stallone. His words, not mine.”
“The gun loaded?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ve got a hall-of-fame hangover and I can see a hundred holes in his line of thinking.”
Cobb shrugged, noncommittal. “Maybe. But you don’t have kids. Never had to go through what Larry Blevins has. Desperate people do desperate things. Stupid things, because they’re not thinking clearly. Blevins knows that now.”
Cobb paused and we both drank some of our coffee. He set his down, resumed the story.
“The door’s open so he walks in. One guy’s on a cell phone, the other one, the same guy who’d been on the front steps with Max, is sitting behind a table. There’s a bunch of stuff Blevins has seen in pictures on the Internet spread out all over the table.”
“I’ve seen those pictures,” I said.
“He tells them why he’s there.”
I whistled. “This guy’s got balls.”
“Big time. The first guy, the one behind the table, says he’s never heard of anyone named Jay. He sticks with that for a while, laughing like it’s all a big joke. Blevins wasn’t sure what he said that changed the guy’s attitude, but suddenly the guy goes from all smiles to mean as a snake — tells Blevins to get his ass out of there, or he’ll put him out.”
“And all this time Blevins is holding a gun.”
Cobb nodded.
“The dealer also has balls.”
“Now he tells Blevins that Jay’s one of their most valued customers, says they could work up a family package if he really wants to bond with his son. Blevins actually points the gun at him, but that just gets the guy laughing again, like it’s the funniest thing he’s seen in a long time. Just then the front door opens and a girl, younger than Jay, walks into the place. Blevins said she looked maybe fifteen, sixteen.
“Laughing Boy says something about how now the fun would really begin, because Carly doesn’t have any money and she needs a load. Blevins tries to take the girl by the arm and push her back out of there but she twists away, tells him to fuck off. The guy behind the table stands up, starts coming around the table. Blevins tells him to back off but the guy keeps coming. Blevins said he was tall, real tall, maybe six-six, but he isn’t laughing anymore and he’s got something in his hand. Maybe a knife, Blevins wasn’t sure.
“Blevins shoots him. Twice.”
“Jesus.”
“Then everything gets loud. The young girl, Carly, she’s screaming, the other guy is yelling and knocking over chairs and stuff wanting to get out of there. Blevins told me he thought the guy was trying to get to the back door. Anyway, wherever he’s going he isn’t fast enough and Blevins shoots him too.”
Cobb stopped talking. Neither of us spoke for quite a while. I’ve covered crime in Calgary for a dozen years and I’ve heard lots of stories, some bad, some real bad. This was one of the real bad ones.
Desperation.
“What about the girl … Carly?” I was almost afraid to ask. If Blevins had completely lost it, who knew what else he’d done?
“Blevins didn’t know. He thought she ran out the door … the front door. When he went back outside he didn’t see her. He got in his car and drove away.”
I took a breath.
“What did Blevins think you could do for him?”
“Nothing. That wasn’t why he’d come to see me.”
“What then?”
“He’s worried about Jay. That he might be in danger.”
“Why? Was the kid there?”
“No, but the guy on the cell phone, Blevins said it was like he was doing play-by-play, telling whoever he was talking to that Jay-boy’s old man is here and oooh he has a gun and he’s such a scary man … same deal, like it was all a big joke.
“Blevins figures, and he’s probably right, that whoever was on the other end of the line will know who shot those guys. Might even think Jay was there, with his old man. And he’s worried that maybe they’ll try to get to Jay … a payback thing.”
“Were the two guys dead? Did he check?”
“He says he didn’t but he put two in the middle of the first guy’s chest. The second guy, the one on the cell phone, he got him with a head shot. He figured they were both dead.”
Two in the middle of the chest. Head shot. “The guy was good under pressure.”
“Real good.”
“And Blevins wants you to…?”
“Find Jay. If these guys’ bosses, associates, partners, whatever, go looking for him …” Cobb didn’t finish the sentence.
“The kid could be hard to keep safe. If he’s using and needs to make a buy …” It was my turn to leave a sentence unfinished.
Cobb nodded. “I know that. So does Blevins. But he’s hired me to try.”
Another long silence.
I rubbed my hand over the stubble that was the result of not having shaved for a couple of days. Cobb may have been right. I likely did look like crap.
“You think Blevins’s story was for real?”
“I already checked. Made a couple of calls. Two shooting victims, no information on the condition of the victims, found at a house on Raleigh Avenue.”
“Okay, so it sounds like it’s the real deal.”
“When Blevins finished talking to me, he walked over and dropped a handgun into one of my filing cabinet drawers. Guess he didn’t think he’d need it anymore.”
“Let me guess — the two guys were shot with a handgun that matches the make and model of the one Blevins deposited in your filing cabinet.”
“Check.”
“What about Blevins?”
“He said he’d be turning himself in but needed twenty-four hours to take care of a few things.”
“I hope shooting some more people wasn’t one of the things he had to take care of.”
“I asked him that. He said it wasn’t.”
“And you believed him.”
“He’s not a nut, Adam. He’s a guy who lost it and shot two people who were hurting his son. Something that in his position I could have done. He’s aware of what he did and all he cares about is keeping the kid safe.”
I stared at the ceiling for a while trying to make sense of it. With limited success.
“I guess that brings us to me. When you came in here you mentioned wanting my help.”
He nodded. “My time on the force, and even the work