Rage Against the Dying

Fifteen





Or thought I was in control until a knock at the door made me jump a little. There had never been closed doors and knocking until this moment. There had never been jumping. “Not now,” I said loudly enough to be heard through the door, then afraid I had spoken too harshly, added, “Perfesser Darling.”

“It’s your cell phone, Honey. It’s buzzing.”

Everything normal. I got up, opened the door and smiled.

“Sorry, just thinking hard.” I really did feel sorry, because at that moment there was something invisible yet more impermeable than a Kevlar vest slipping between me and Carlo. A lie wide enough to divide us. This is what I had tried so desperately, risked everything, to keep from happening, but it was happening just the same. Even in the stress of the moment, bigger-picture things like danger and death, there was this little pinch in my heart. Maybe that’s what they mean when they talk about hearts breaking.

So far Carlo didn’t seem to notice the difference. “That business you’re involved with?”

“Uh-huh, that.”

As Carlo handed me the phone, his eyes drifted over my shoulder and stopped. That would be where I left my Smith on the desk. We both pretended it wasn’t there.

I smiled my reassurance again and he turned away to let me answer the phone.

“Brigid,” the voice said.

“Hello, Coleman.”

“So, what do you think? Did you look at the video?” She sounded a little disappointed, as if she already knew the answer to that.

I forced my thoughts to something I temporarily couldn’t give a shit about. “No, not yet. I’ve been a little preoccupied with some personal business.”

“That’s where…” She sighed, knowing she’d gone over all that already. “I was thinking I’d go see Lynch’s father out in Benson tomorrow. We didn’t take the time to interview him and he’s so close.”

“That’s premature. You need to develop an interview plan.”

“You think I didn’t already do that?”

In my distracted state I’d forgotten this was cross-the-t Coleman I was talking to. “So, go.”

“Come with.”

“No,” I started, then thought about my being attacked in the wash two days after I got reinvolved with the Route 66 case. Visiting Lynch’s father might not be such a bad idea. “Okay, why not. When do you want to go?”

“Swing by my office first thing in the morning since it’s on the way. I’ll drive from there.”

I hung up (I don’t care what they call it these days) the phone and sat for a while, wondering if I should hide the gun or keep it handy. I covered it with the manila envelope. Then I threw the backpack into the washing machine with the other clothes and made a mental note to wash them again, but for now I let the exhaustion wash back over me. I spent the rest of the day pretending not to brood while I made my plan for finding out who wanted me dead.

“You know what?” I said, going into the kitchen in the late afternoon where Carlo had just poured himself a glass of Chianti and put some Triscuits and a hunk of smoked Gouda in a plastic bowl. “I think I’m in the mood for a drink. I guess that fall stunned me more than I want to admit.”

“Shall I fix one for you?” Carlo makes a good vodka martini, loads the glass with olives, making it more of a salad than a drink so I feel less like a lush.

I watched Carlo with the shaker while thinking of having, for the first time in my life, someone close enough to me to be in danger. I was part of a family, a pack if you counted the Pugs. I carried my martini out to the backyard under the pretext of relaxing, but actually to assess the perimeter of our property in case of attack. There were no houses in back of ours except for in the far distance, where the ground rose up to the mountain. On either side we were separated from the neighbors by five-foot cinder-block walls. The neighbors to the right were snowbirds who wouldn’t be returning until the weather cooled. Someone could easily hop over that wall. Or simply unlatch the gate leading to our backyard, though the rusty latch made so much racket the Pugs would surely be alerted. They had followed me out and were sniffing for lizards by the bougainvillea. I should have a shepherd, I thought, or at least a hound. These guys put together wouldn’t make one decent dog.

I walked out a bit to the life-size statue of Saint Francis and wondered whether Jane bought it for Carlo before or after she bought the Pugs. By that time the drink settled me some and I was able to go back over my experience of the afternoon more calmly than before, like watching someone else’s movie frame by frame. Old women. Condom on a string. Blood in the van. Broken bones. Other bodies. Photo of me. News clip on a DVD. Barbie lunch box.

Nothing.

Dinnertime came and there we were, just like always, cozily munching on chicken curry sandwiches that Carlo, trying to be subtle in his hovering, fixed for us. The Pugs sat at attention waiting for the empty dishes to be lowered at the end of the meal so they could clean up the chicken residue.

There was nothing on the news that night about a body being discovered outside the city, no ticker headline running across the bottom of the television that read Former FBI Agent Sought in Tucson Slaying. I had mixed emotions. If the body was found it might be identified. And knowing who it was would lead me closer to finding out who sent him. On the other hand, with every twenty-four hours that passed, decomposition and insect activity would destroy more and more evidence of my involvement.

Either way the time dragged. In the evening the phone in the kitchen rang twice, once from a telemarketer offering us reduced rates for credit card transfers, and once from Carlo’s sister in Ann Arbor. Each time I was certain it was Max coming to get me after discovering the body. After that I unplugged the phone and turned off my cell so I could relax a little.

At bedtime, still with the events of the day replaying in my head, I kissed Carlo to reassure myself, though I noticed that our glances slid by each other in a way they never had before, as if I was afraid my eyes would reflect what I had seen that day and he sensed my secrecy. Just my guilty conscience working my imagination, I’m sure, but this is what it would have been like at the best of times, married in the Bureau: half-truths and sliding eyes. As it was, despite all my precautions, I couldn’t keep from fearing that it was only a matter of time until Carlo would discover the woman I really was and look at me the way Paul had.

Carlo turned the ceiling fan on and the light off, and in the dark my thoughts shifted. If I hadn’t tried to cover up the incident in the wash, if I had told Max about what I did, he would have found the envelope with the photos that showed I was a target. Then I would have had him on my side. If that were the case, I would have given anything to repeat the last ten hours, given anything but Carlo, that is.

Long after his breathing had settled into that quiet rhythm that told me he was asleep, I reached over and lightly brushed his hand through the sheet, my touch lingering on his man-size knuckles. When that didn’t wake him I folded slowly, one millimeter at a time, my fingers around his thumb, trying not to imagine it disappearing, my ending up with nothing but a wad of bedsheet in my grip.

What do they call this, obsessing? I was obsessing.

I finally fell asleep to the sound of a pack of coyotes somewhere in the arroyos beyond our property. It was a chorus of barks, howls, coughs, cackles, and a high-pitched keen, like manic ghosts. Carlo told me once they do that when they’ve killed something.