Ben

 

“Nope, never seen him before,” the man said gruffly. He shut the door in my face.

 

I growled and slammed my fist against my thigh. Then, realizing I was crumbling the paper in my hand into an unusable mess, I relaxed and smoothed it out. I plucked the pen from my pocket and scratched off another name from the list.

 

I was painfully aware that going down all the John Robinisons in the phone book was an idiotic way of doing things, but I didn’t have any other ideas that struck me as particularly brilliant. Half a dozen down and not a single one of the bastards had ever even seen the man in the photograph that Ivan’s guy had given me. There were only a couple more, and then I would be back to square one.

 

Dina hadn’t been much use. I’d stopped by her place first, on the off chance that she knew something she hadn’t already told us years ago. One look at the picture and she shook her head confusedly. She looked up eagerly and asked, “Do you know something new? Are you going to catch them?”

 

“I don’t know, Dina,” I’d said. “I’m trying my damnest. I don’t know whether this picture is even helpful. Even if the guy does know something, it’s been three years since Olaf went down. The son of a bitch could’ve skipped town a long time ago.”

 

She’d clutched my arm, her grip surprisingly strong for a woman as tired-looking as her. “Find him,” she’d said, eyes blazing. “He knows something. I can feel it.”

 

I promised her I’d do my best, then I’d hit the sidewalks to beat down doors until someone gave me an answer worth chasing.

 

Yet, a full day later, it looked like I was going to come up empty-handed. I was down to the last JohnRobinson the book, and the sun was about to set behind me. I felt my muscles sagging on the bones. It was tiring to have doors slammed in my face over and over again, not just literally but figuratively, too. Every person who told me they’d never heard of JohnRobinsonnever seen a man like the one in the picture was one more severed possibility, one more nail in the coffin of my dead friend, my murdered brother.

 

I checked the address on the mailbox in front of me with the list in my hand. Yep, this was the place. One last visit before I headed home and tried to figure out what my next move might be. I walked up the driveway, climbed the short staircase to the porch, and pressed my thumb against the doorbell.

 

I heard it echoing inside, followed by the yip of a little dog and a man cursing. “Shut up, ya cunt,” he bellowed roughly. Slippered feet slushed along the floor, growing louder as he walked in my direction. The chain rattled and then the door was yanked open. “What do you want?” he demanded.

 

I looked up. It was him. John Robinson. There wasn’t a sliver of doubt in my mind that this was the same man. The mustache was gone, but there was no mistaking that bulbous nose and shiny bald head I’d been shoving in people’s faces all day. It was him.

 

I wasn’t going to take the chance of him getting away. I was sick and tired of being polite. A full day of rude assholes slamming a door in my face had worked my patience to the bone, and I was never a patient man to begin with.

 

I moved quickly. I leaned forward and planted one wide hand on the door to prevent him from shutting it. He began to shout, “What the fuck—” but the words were barely out of his mouth before I’d reached my other hand forward to pin him by his throat against the wall.

 

“Let’s go, motherfucker,” I growled. “You and I are gonna have a chat.”

 

His eyes bulged out of his skull as he gurgled, spit flecking on his lips. I threw him down the entry hallway and kicked the door shut, locking it behind me. I didn’t want to risk someone else coming home unexpectedly.

 

“Who the hell are you? How dare you assault me in my own home. I’m going to call the police right this fucking—”

 

“Shut the fuck up, John,” I said calmly. I turned and lifted the bottom edge of my shirt to show him the gun tucked into the waistband of my jeans. He turned white and stopped talking immediately. “Good man. Now, walk inside, and let’s have a seat. I’m not going to hurt you. I just have a few questions I’d like to ask.” I let the shirt fall back over my weapon. When he didn’t move, I raised an eyebrow and jerked my head towards the living room.

 

“Okay,” he mumbled, turning and shuffling inside. “This way.”

 

I followed him in. Something collided with my ankle and I looked down to see a curly-haired little dog planting its feet on my calf and looking up at me with its tongue out. “Cute pup,” I remarked.

 

“That’s Noodle,” he said. His voice was still shaking with fear.

 

“Come here, Noodle,” I said. I picked him up and placed him on my lap as I settled down on the plaid couch. “Sit, boy. You, too, John.”

 

John took a careful seat in the rickety chair that faced opposite the couch. He had put on a few pounds in the years since the picture I had was taken. A small potbelly stretched the fabric of his undershirt. “This is about what I saw, ain’t it?” he asked dejectedly. “The woman, Stanwell or Sanders or whatever her name was.”

 

I nodded slowly, keeping an eye on him as I petted the dog in my lap. Normally, I hated little rodent-looking fuckers like this, but for some reason Noodle was winning me over. He curled into a ball in the crevice between my knees and started to snore. “Tell me everything you remember,” I said.

 

“I knew it. You look just like the bastard who was there that night. The one who got all shot up.”

 

“Watch yourself,” I warned.

 

John blanched. “I’m sorry. Was he a friend of yours?”

 

“You could say that.”

 

“Well, I meant no disrespect. He was a mess, that’s all I’m sayin’. They did a number on him, poor fella.”

 

“Start from the beginning, John.”

 

He leaned back, sniffled, and wiped the back of his hand across his nose. “All right. I used to be on the force, yeah?” He pointed at a medal hanging on the mantle above the fireplace to my left. Albuquerque Police Department was stamped across the outer rim in big blue letters.

 

“Anyway, being a policeman ain’t exactly the road to El Dorado, if you know what I’m saying. Almost every guy in blue takes side jobs to make ends meet, put food on the table for the wife and kids, you know.”

 

“Sure.”

 

“Some guys do the seedier stuff—playing bodyguard for a mobster type, giving some of the coyotes a hand with pullin’ immigrants across the border, you know. I never had much of an appetite for that kind of thing, though. Too much risk. I ain’t much of a risk taker. But a man’s still gotta provide, and my ex-wife, being the money-grubbing whore that she was, didn’t make that easy on me. So I took a job working security at night for an apartment building that one of the biker gang guys owned.”

 

“James Sanders.”

 

“That’s the guy. I never met him personally; it was all set up through a buddy of mine, God rest his soul. But it was a steady gig, it paid pretty well, and there was never any trouble. Well, until all of a sudden there was.”

 

I dropped the dog and scooted forward onto the edge of the couch. “Keep going,” I ordered. “Don’t leave out a single detail.”

 

John sighed and scratched at a scab on the side of his head. “I don’t think you’re gonna love what I have to say.”

 

“I don’t care. Just keep talking.”

 

“Okay. So, this night, the night everything went down, I was at the desk up front, as usual. I’m half paying attention, half reading the newspaper, ’cause I didn’t expect anything, you know? Nothing had ever happened before! Not an ounce of a stir, and then, boom! There he is.”

 

“Who?”

 

“That’s the thing,” he said timidly. “I don’t know.”

 

I was on John in a single pounce. I grabbed the front of his shirt in my hands and roared into his face, “Why don’t you know? Why don’t you know, John?”

 

“He was wearing a mask! He was wearing a mask!” he screamed. He was blubbering all of the sudden, fat, pathetic tears rolling down his face.

 

I dropped him back in the chair, disgusted, and wiped my hands on my jeans.

 

“Please don’t hurt me,” he moaned. “I’m telling you everything I remember, I swear.”

 

I sighed and plopped back down on the couch, my head in my hands. The dog jumped back into my lap. I was too depressed to shoo it away.

 

Ivan’s tip was useless after all. This sorry bastard had actually seen the motherfucker who did it, the man who killed Olaf and James’s wife, but I was no closer to figuring out who it actually was than I had been this morning. All this for nothing. Not a damn thing.

 

“He jumped over the desk and hit me with the gun,” he continued in a low voice. “I blacked out. When I woke up, the ambulances were there and the people were already dead. I swear, that’s all I remember.”

 

“Thanks,” I said. I stood up and started to walk towards the door, dropping Noodle back into John’s lap as I passed him.

 

“It was funny, though. The paramedic said he’d never seen such a weird bruise before. Looked like the outline of a big knife in my forehead.”

 

I froze in my tracks with my hand on the doorknob. “What did you say?” I asked cautiously.

 

John twisted in his chair to face me. “On my forehead, where the guy hit me. It left a big outline of a knife in the skin. They actually tested it and said there was red paint flakes in the wound. Weird. Never did figure out what that meant.

 

Red paint. A knife imprint. A memory hit me. Jay tossing a gun on my desk. “Duncan and Spark took this from one of the guards.” I looked at the butt of the weapon—a red knife was printed in the handle.

 

“You’re sure?” I asked.

 

“Scout’s honor,” he said, eyes round with seriousness. “Just one of those weird things, you know? It never led anywhere.”

 

I stared him down for a moment. As far as I could tell, he was telling me everything he knew. There was no reason for him to hold back. The police had finished interrogating him a long time ago. Besides, being unconscious during the crime made one neither a liability for the murderer nor a suspect for the police. They’d probably figured he was useless. I would have, too, if I were them. But now he was telling something that might take me one step closer towards finding this son of a bitch and doing what should have been done a long time ago: getting my revenge.

 

“Thanks, John,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. If you remember anything else—anything at all—you come on down to the Dark Knights’ headquarters and you tell me.”

 

“Will do.” He nodded furiously. I was about to leave when he added, “And I’m sorry about your friend, by the way.”

 

“I am, too, John. I am, too.”