Chapter 18
It’s not my house. Better not be. But the closer I get, the louder the music – the peculiar thump and whine of the dirty South. And the cars get thicker, too, lining the curb on either side of the street.
Rolling up to my driveway, I find a Toyota suv squatting halfway over the line, with a queue of others sitting bumper-to-bumper all the way up to the garage. The windows of Tommy’s apartment glow orange, silhouettes grinding in and out of view.
As I sit there, foot on the brake, a group of young men in jeans and V-neck shirts thread their way toward the back, hoisting twelve-packs of Shiner and Lone Star to keep from clipping an antenna or side-view mirror. The one bringing up the rear pauses, cups a hand to his mouth, and howls into the night “Whoooo-hoo,” already lit up from the previous stop on their evening crawl.
A fantasy reel flickers to life in my mind: I’m dragging Tommy down the apartment steps by the scruff of the neck, kneeling him down on the curb, dispatching him execution-style. But violence isn’t the answer. Except when it is.
Down at the end of the street I find a parking spot, then double back along the sidewalk. The neighbors have taken refuge behind closed drapes and lowered blinds, but my house emits no light.
I let myself in the front door. Inside, the only illumination comes through the back windows, a grid of shadows with the occasional figure ducking past. The only sound is the muffled music and the vibration of hundred-year-old glass in the windowpanes. Otherwise, the house is so still it could pass for abandoned.
I head to the back, lifting a shade with my finger. The yard is empty, but a crowd of people congregates on the stairs, most sitting while a few cling to the railing, trying to pick their way to the top. I count fifteen, maybe sixteen heads, and I’m guessing there are as many more again packed into the small apartment.
Another reel: the wooden stairs collapsing under the weight, Tommy teetering on the threshold to keep his balance, arms wind-milling through the air, then falling with a gasp onto the jagged tip of a two-by-four.
I told him to keep things low-key. I told him there would be trouble.
“Satisfied?”
Her voice makes me jump. Behind me, veiled by the dark, Charlotte sits gargoyle-like in a wing chair, her feet on the cushion, knees drawn up to her chin.
“I didn’t see you there.”
She keeps very still. “You said you were going to have a talk with him. You promised to at least do that.”
“I did,” I say. “I told you that.”
“It wasn’t enough.” Her voice rises. “It obviously wasn’t enough.”
“I guess not. And you’ve been sitting here all this time? In the dark? You should have at least called me, babe – ”
“And said what?” She throws up her hands, but without much force in the gesture, weary of repeating the complaint. “Anyway, there’s no telling where you’d be this time of night. No, wait.” A stiff laugh escapes her lips. “You’d be where you always are. Even though you promised me you wouldn’t go there anymore.”
“Charlotte – ”
“I’m tired,” she says. “Tired of what’s going on under my nose. Tired of every conversation turning into some kind of argument.”
The fight goes out of her, and in the gloom I can see her gazing at me, her bottom lip in a swollen pout. That gesture strips years off her. I feel my heart moving in my chest.
“So am I.” I perch on the edge of the sofa, stretching my arm toward her, resting a hand on her knee. “I have a blind spot when it comes to that kid. I know that.”
She covers my hand with hers. “You identify with him.”
“It’s not that.”
“Roland, it is. Trust me, I know you.” She rubs at my knuckle with her thumb, smiling in the darkness. “You cut him slack because you’ve been cut so much slack yourself. Do unto others, you think. You have this crazy take on the Golden Rule.”
“Is that such a bad thing?”
“No, honey, it’s not. But you do it because you’re afraid.”
“Of what?” I ask.
“Of the world coming down on you. It’s like he’s your good luck charm or something. So long as you let him run wild, you can run wild, too.”
I squeeze her knee, then slip my hand away. “I’m not running wild. And I don’t identify with that slacker, either. And to prove it, I’ll go talk to him now. I’ll throw them all out.”
“My hero,” she says with a girlish laugh, not even a hint of irony. Then she uncoils and puts her arms around me, pulling us close. “It’s the right thing to do. And don’t worry about the consequences.”
“I’ll go right now.”
She draws my head down, hands warm on my cheeks, anointing my forehead with a kiss.
I throw the back door open, pound my way across the deck. Seeing me coming, the more perceptive people on the stairs realize the party’s over. They stand and make way for my ascent, slipping down the driveway once I pass them. Near the top, a shaggy-haired boy squints appraisingly at me, blowing smoke through his pursed lips. He starts to gesture toward me with the lit cigarette, starts to open his mouth to speak. I swipe the cancer stick out of his grasp, sending it somersaulting into the night, then shoulder him out of the way.
The apartment door hangs wide. I give it a kick anyway, to get people’s attention. The furniture’s shoved into the corners to accommodate more people, all of them youngish, probably a mix of college kids and Tommy’s fellow grad student instructors. And strangers, too, I bet.
“Tommy!”
Heads turn, couples break up, but my tenant is nowhere to be seen. I squeeze through the door to the bedroom, but he isn’t in there. I head for the narrow galley kitchen.
“Tommy!”
In the kitchen, sitting on the counter with her feet propped on the opposite cabinet, the waitress from the Paragon. Marta. She sips from a red plastic cup, gazing absently through the arrow-slit window. The others packed into the kitchen file out at my appearing. She glances over, recognizes me, and chucks her cup into the sink.
“What is this?” she says. “Police harassment?”
“Where’s Tommy?”
“He left not long after I showed up. Didn’t want to talk, I guess. But listen, you should leave him alone. He hasn’t done anything.”
“He’s done this,” I say, sweeping my hand inadvertently against the refrigerator. I try again, motioning carefully at the party still ebbing along over my shoulder.
“So what?”
“So I told him not to.”
“What does it matter to the police if he invites some people over?”
“It matters to me,” I say. “I live here.”
She cocks her head, then smiles wryly. “This is your place? You’re the landlord? So that’s how he knows you.” Her eyes roll. “Now it all starts to make sense.”
I don’t have time for this. There’s a neck to wring. But there aren’t many places to hide in here, so I suspect she’s right about Tommy taking a hike. Who throws a party and then leaves? The more I think about it, the more my tenant fits the bill.
“Your wife is nice,” Marta says.
“My wife?”
“The lady who lives here – she’s your wife, isn’t she?”
I nod. “How do you know her?”
“I met her,” she says. “When I was here before. She gave me a ride home.”
“That was you?” I ask, leaning against the cabinet across from her, arms crossed, not exactly blocking the exit but fencing her in a bit.
She glances out the window again, nodding.
“Charlotte, my wife . . . she was worried about you.”
There’s something false about her sudden laugh. “About me?”
“You were in quite a state, she said. She even thought maybe something happened to you, that you’d been drugged or something.”
Her bravado is gone, and in spite of the heavy eyeliner and tight-fitting top, she seems quite childlike and small, almost virginal. And she’s lost all ability to meet my gaze. Still, her voice keeps its hardness, projecting world-weary scorn.
“I was just a little out of it from the night before.”
“Are you and Tommy friends or something?”
“Do I look like any of these people are my friends? I just know him from the bar. A bunch of them come in and, I don’t know, I just thought it might be fun. See how the other half parties, you know? Personally, I didn’t bother finishing school, and if you ask me, I didn’t miss anything. From what I see here” – she nods toward the living area – “I’d say I didn’t miss nothing at all.”
“How old are you, Marta?”
“Old enough.”
“Twenty-one, at least?”
She rolls her eyes again. “Well, duh. You know where I work.”
“Charlotte said that when she drove you home, she dropped you at a dorm. If you’re not in school, why do you live in the dorms?”
“I don’t,” she says. “That’s just where I left my car.”
“She also said you couldn’t remember who you came with.”
“Not their names.”
“Is that a common thing for you, memory loss?”
She glares are me. “I’m not good with names, okay? That doesn’t mean anything. Look, I said your wife was nice to me. I wasn’t trying to make a big thing out of it.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I’m just concerned. Because if something did happen to you – ”
“Then what?”
“Then I’d have to do something about it.”
The words come out, they float between us in the air, unseen but making their presence felt. Why am I worried? The memory of Charlotte’s distress, perhaps. The sudden though incomplete vulnerability Marta’s shown, or my earlier hunch that her hardness concealed a penchant for abuse. Or maybe it’s all the missing girls at the back of my mind, blending together, seeping out as a general concern for young femininity. Hannah Mayhew, the nation’s absent daughter, and the nameless one I tried to make her into – not even a woman, just a pattern of blood on the sheets.
And behind them all, the girl who’s always absent but always threatening to make herself tangible, always visible in hints and traces in the face and shape of every woman I see of a certain age. The one I won’t talk about, because Charlotte’s right about the futility of revisiting the past.
“You’re kind of nice,” Marta says, “in a weird sort of way.”
“Not really. Not once you get to know me.”
“Tommy says you are.”
He has his reasons. And maybe Charlotte sees them more clearly than I do. I’ve been shielding him without realizing why, afraid that a reckoning of any kind could start off a chain reaction, forcing everything into the light. As a consequence, a girl like this, motivated by God knows what undefined ambition, some desire to belong, could come under my roof and suffer – what? Nothing, she says, and I want to believe her. I want to believe I don’t deserve a reckoning on her account.
“You’re young,” I tell her. “I don’t know what happened to you the other night, if anything did. But your life . . . it should be a lot more than this. I’m just saying, don’t waste it.”
She hops off the counter, heading slowly toward the living room. “I’m not looking for a surrogate daddy,” she says, “but if I was . . .”
A surrogate daddy. And what is Tommy to me? An adopted son?
“Get out of here. I’m gonna be rude to some people. You don’t want to see me when I get rude.”
“You forget,” she says. “I already have.”
Tommy’s party ends not with a whimper but a bang, the sound of me snapping the door shut behind the last of his friends. I follow them down the stairs, herding the pack, channeling people into their cars and then tapping the roofs until they pull away. The final car reverses down the drive with me trailing the bumper, hands on my hips, badge and holstered gun gleaming in the headlights. If Tommy gets it into his head to throw another shindig, I have a feeling not too many of these folks will see fit to attend.
Once they’re gone, I camp out on the front steps for a little while on the off chance my tenant will return. But I figure he’s been tipped off and decided to spend the rest of the night on somebody’s couch. Back inside, Charlotte greets me at the door. I start to say something, but she pushes her lips against mine.
“You did it,” she says. “Time for your reward.”
“You were right,” I say.
“Don’t sound so surprised. Now come on.”
I let her take my hand and lead me up the back stairs. All is not right in my world, but one small corner is about to get noticeably better.
It’s Marta at the breakfast table this time, looking just like she did a few hours ago. She sinks a spoon into her cereal, letting milk drip over the side, and Charlotte gazes at her fondly, stroking her hair. They show no surprise when I appear at the door. They both smile at me, both with the same smile, bearing a resemblance to each other that they don’t in real life.
“I’m all grown up,” Marta says, holding her spoon up like an exclamation mark.
Then the kitchen door starts rattling over her shoulder. A knock so loud it sends tremors through the floorboards. They turn, eyes wide, Marta dropping the spoon into the bowl, Charlotte covering her mouth with her hand.
“Don’t let him in,” Marta pleads.
“Let who in?” My legs take me forward. My hand goes to the doorknob.
“Please don’t do it! Please, please, please!”
“Don’t be afraid,” I say.
“Roland.” Charlotte’s voice. “Roland, wake up.”
My eyes blink open. I turn toward her. “What?”
“Someone’s pounding on the door.”
“For real?”
And then I hear it. The nightstand clock reads just past six. I roll out of bed, pulling my pants on, sliding my pistol from the holster. An overreaction, maybe, but it’s underreacting that gets people killed. At the bedroom door I pause and turn. Charlotte’s crouched at the bedside, feeling around for her discarded clothes.
The back door rattles on its hinges. Whoever’s doing the knocking, he’s hitting wood, not glass, otherwise there’d be shards all across the kitchen floor. I don’t open it. I don’t slit the shades for a peek. Instead, I go to the window overlooking the deck, which affords a flanking view of the back door. Tommy’s my prime suspect, and I’m considering putting a round into him. Nothing fatal, just a nick in the thigh. I know firsthand how annoying those can be.
When I part the shades for a look, it isn’t Tommy at all. I pad into the kitchen, tuck my sig into the snack drawer, then unbolt the lock.
Wilcox glares at me, nodding slowly. “I should have known.”
“Known what?” I ask. Then, when he doesn’t answer: “I meant to call you.”
I beckon him over the threshold, motioning in the direction of the breakfast table, but he doesn’t budge an inch. He wears a gray suit and regimental tie. Already, there are sweat stains on his white, spread-collared shirt.
“I didn’t come here to chat,” he says. “But I heard about your new case. I want you to tell me one thing – and you’d better not lie to me, because I’ll know if you do. Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with Joe Thomson’s death.”
“What?” I take a step back. “Is that what you came here for?”
“I know you didn’t pull the trigger, Roland. That’s not what I’m saying. But are you working some kind of angle here, using me to do it? All that work I did with the DA, and suddenly the guy tops himself. And who do they put in charge of the investigation but you? Questions are going to be asked. It’s already happening. Just so you know, I won’t be covering for you.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” I say.
“Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“I didn’t.”
“It was just a coincidence. The guy’s cracking up, he’s feeling guilty about turning on his friends, and in a fit of despair he dumps one in the brainpan. Happens all the time.”
“He didn’t just shoot himself.”
“No? Then what?”
“What do you think?”
He runs the back of his hand over his forehead, mopping the sweat. “I think that if you’re trying to play me here, if this is some kind of windup so you can settle the score with Reg Keller – ”
“They did it,” I say. “I can’t prove that yet, but we both know it’s true. He was going to roll over on them, so they staged his death. What else could it be?”
“Yeah, but how would they find out? You think he told them?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
I’m not going to tell him about my call to Stephanie Thomson and how she tipped Salazar off. The thing about Wilcox is, he likes everything to be neat. Even at our best, my unpredictability could make him nervous. Pulling over on the highway and switching a digital recorder on so Donald Fauk could do his patriotic duty by confessing to his wife’s murder – that had made his skin crawl. He’d have kept Fauk quiet until we could hustle him into an interview room, everything tidy and squared away.
But I knew, in spite of everything I was going through at that moment, a much worse ordeal than a superficial gunshot, a pain I would have endured a thousand gunshots to forgo, I knew that it was now or never with Fauk, whether the confession was orthodox or not.
“You’re upset,” I tell him. “I get that. But you haven’t done anything wrong here, and neither have I. They’re the ones who did this, and they’re going to pay for it. Just stick with me, all right?”
“I’m not lifting a finger for you.”
“Fine,” I say, shrugging off the hurt. And it does hurt to hear him speaking this way. “You don’t have to do a thing. I don’t want you to do a thing, if you get my drift. The thing I specifically don’t want you to do is tell my captain – or anybody else, for that matter – about the deal we had in place for Thomson. They’ll pull me off the investigation if they find out.”
Finally, he steps into the house, a bum-rush over the threshold, getting right up in my face, jamming his finger into my chest.
“You think I can keep that quiet? They’re gonna find out, my friend. Bascombe already talked to a guy in my office.”
I shake my head. “He only knows about the past. Not this. And I’m not asking for a cover-up here. Just keep your own mouth shut, okay? Buy me some time, at least.”
His finger rears back for another peck, then pauses in the air. His eyes drift over my shoulder. I turn to find Charlotte there, wearing my shirt from last night. Her legs look pale in the morning sun. Her eyes blink.
“Stephen,” she says, doing another button up. “What are you doing here so early? What are you doing here at all? I haven’t seen you in . . . forever.”
He drops his eyes and backs off, mumbling excuses on his way out the door.
“Don’t leave on my account,” she says.
He turns his back on us and goes, not even bothering to shut the door. I hear his shoes tapping the concrete, then his car door slamming and the engine turning over.
“What was that all about?”
I shut the door, turning the dead bolt. “Work.”
While she kicks off breakfast, I go upstairs, running my head under the shower and then dressing quickly, collecting my keys and wallet, my empty holster, my newly charged phone. Coffee is on the table when I return, and so is my pistol.
“I found that in the drawer,” Charlotte says, buttering some toast.
I eat fast, but not fast enough. Just as I’m leaving, my phone starts to ring.
“Who is it?” she asks.
“I don’t recognize the number.”
She walks toward me. “If it’s somebody with information wanting to meet up face-to-face, I’m not letting you out that door.”
“Don’t worry.”
The voice on the other end of the line crackles with nerves, but after a sentence or two I realize it’s the overeager crime-scene tech, Edgar Castro.
“It’s a little early, Edgar.”
“Is it? I’ve been up all night.”
“Are you going to tell me why, or do I have to guess?”
He clears his throat before continuing. “The thing is, I’m getting static here from my boss, like they don’t want me to make a big deal out of this. And maybe it’s nothing, but . . .”
“Maybe what’s nothing?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” he says. “But I thought you’d want to know.”
“Know what?”
“It’d be easier to show you than try to explain.”
“Show me what?”
“Could you come down to the lab?”
I sigh, rolling my eyes for Charlotte’s benefit. She rolls hers back for mine.
“Half an hour,” I say to Castro.
“Excellent,” he replies. I imagine him on the other end of the line, pumping his fist in triumph. Whatever has got him so worked up, it better have the same effect on me.