County Line Read Online Free PDF Page B

of sweat and shit, finished by a basal fungal skank. The surest way to know someone is living on the street is to find yourself downwind from them. With no home to go to, your personal hygiene options are limited. Maybe you can take a shower at a shelter, assuming you can get into one. But a lot of street folks avoid the shelters, too often places to have their meager belongings stolen, to be beaten or raped. Chase Fairweather’s bath in RJ’s tub might have been his first in months, and this at the tail end of cold, damp weather when layers are the only protection. No telling how long he’d been marinating in his own secretions. In a way I’m lucky. His clothing will be worse than the sleeping bag, but they’re the M.E.’s problem.
    The cops left the rest of his detritus untouched. There isn’t much. I circle the coffee table, review the evidence. The empty cans, a dried splash of either soup or vomit on the floor between the sofa and the coffee table. The cable remote pokes up from between the seat cushions. The TV stand is at the end of the coffee table. Fairweather could lie back in his nest and watch the tube while slurping unheated soup. I grab the remote and press the power button. The TV comes to life, midstream of a looping movie preview: half-glimpsed tits, shirtless men with goatees, nonsensical dialog. I bring up the menu and navigate to the account history screen. The bastard had been watching pay-per-view porn on Ruby Jane’s dime for at least two days; he racked up over a hundred bucks in charges. I lift my gaze to the large framed print of Cézanne’s Bibemus Quarry which hangs on the wall over the TV. One of Ruby Jane’s favorites, purchased at the Museum Folkwang in Essen during a trip to Europe while she was in college. I wonder if Fairweather even noticed the painting’s contrasting green and russet hues. Too busy pounding the pud on Ruby Jane’s sofa. I shudder.
    “At least now we know how long your guest was visiting, darling.”
    My voice sounds flat in the big space. I switch to the Weather Channel and head for the utility room for cleaning supplies. The living room won’t be too bad, but the bathroom is another matter. Fairweather was a poor aim from either barrel. I’m grateful he didn’t spread out more. I snap on a pair of nitrile gloves and get to work.
    Thirty minutes later I escape the bathroom, sweaty and smelling of bleach—a radical improvement.
    The Weather Channel is running a scrolling list of forecasted highs and lows across the country to a backdrop of chirpy pseudo-jazz. I peel off my gloves to let my hands breathe. Los Angeles will be seventy-two and sunny, New York a cool fifty-one. Portland can expect the usual: sunny, rainy, cool, possibly warm. Wear fucking layers. I wonder if Ruby Jane’s whereabouts are represented on the list.
    A dark lump on the floor jammed under the end of Chase’s sofa catches my eye, a battered backpack. “Dead Chase, you’ve been holding out on me.” I pull on a fresh pair of nitrile gloves.
    To my relief, the pack’s contents aren’t limited to overly-scrutinized porn rags. A small plastic box filled with half-smoked cigarettes, a wad of mismatched socks and underwear, a P-38 can opener. Another bottle of aspirin and a few empty insulin vials from a pharmacy in Anacortes, Washington. He never bothered to dispose of his disposable insulin syringes.
    There’s not much else, empty packages of peanut butter crackers and shreds of unidentifiable paper. At the bottom of the pack I find a large Ziploc bag with a photo album inside.
    Jackpot. Maybe.
    The album is snapshot-sized and half-full. Most of the pictures are impersonal location shots. A sunny street café with a chalk menu board in Spanish, a stand of tall trees with open ground between them. An empty beach, the water grey and washed-out. I see few people in any of the pictures, and none who appear to be the subject of the shot. They appear to be random passersby caught on film by