The Road to Vent Haven

The Murder of The Adequate Rando

Randy leaked blood all over the dressing room floor. The carpet would have to go, that's for certain. I wouldn't want to have to be the one who did it. It occurred to me as quickly that the owner would consider that part of my job.

I didn't want to get too close. The sensible thing to do in circumstances like these, I've found, is not to be in a room with a recently murdered body. Unfortunately for me -- and evidently the late The Adequate Rando -- he was a piece of crap. After our fight, it would not be outside his wheelhouse to try to spook me, like that would make me look like an idiot. "Hey, remember that time I pretended I was murdered, and you fell for it like a chump and tried to see if I was alive? God, what a moron you are!"

I stepped in to see if the magic wand in his eye was more than a prop.

If it were, this was the best-damned horror makeup I'd seen in my career. It was jammed in there something good. That would have taken some force, or he landed on it when he fell. It looked like he might have popped his eyeball, but that's not my department. The result would have been the same, so it didn't seem to matter.

He wasn't the least presentable body I had ever seen. The blood had made his costume more eye-catching. I doubted he would have appreciated either this truth or my phrasing. Punchlines were never his strong suit.

I rested my fingertips on his carotid artery. After this amount of blood, Randy couldn't have a pulse. He was still as warm as I imagined he had been in life. (Though, in more perfect honesty, I imagined him feverish and tacky to the touch in life. It was something about his unruly mop of curling red hair and a spotted complexion a shade different. Yet another reason he always wore a mask onstage.)

"I know who did this," said a gruff voice in the corner, the sort of voice you'd imagine only from a police detective a week from retirement.

I looked around the room, but this was only for that moment of denial. I knew who was talking. Woodrow and I had had a few conversations since I started here, and he understood I would hold a conversation with him. We played cards once, which perplexed Randy when he walked in on it.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "So?"

"So, you might want to listen to me before the cops get here. Dope."

I went over to him, his denim legs crossed under a hand-sewn flannel too large for him. I took a cape off him, straightening his posture. "This isn't any of my business. I just found him. I barely owe him alerting the police that they need to pick him up, only I don't want someone else to find him like this."

"Is that so? Because, from where I'm sitting, you spread forensic evidence all over this goddamned room. Did you even touch the wand? What the hell is wrong with you, Chuck?" He scoffed. "But, sure, you walk out of this room--a room I am positive people will gleefully say they saw you enter--and tell the police that you just happened to show up to a murder scene."

He wasn't looking at me. He couldn't without help. I didn't see him smile, but I imagined I did. If he could smile now, it would be smug, no matter the sharp lines down from the corners of his mouth.

"I didn't do it."

He laughed uproariously. If anyone else could hear him, I would already be in handcuffs. "Yeah, I know that perfectly well, pal. Why don't you stick a hand up my ass and see if I can't convince anyone else? I am ready and willing to testify, just point me to the stand, bailiff. The whole truth and nothin' but the truth, so help me God."

His actual voice was a world different from the languid drawl Randy had given him in his act like he was perpetually stoned. It was lazy, a cheap joke, but he didn't know any other kind. Randy took the cadence from Cheech and Chong movies he had snuck into when he was a kid. I tried to get him to watch Clerks when it came out a couple of years ago, but he said he couldn't sit through anything black and white. He implied that I was trying to be pretentious.