“I know your classes are hard,” Marcus said, “but they’re the pathway to your dreams. Lots of folks can’t stay on their pathway or their dreams don’t make sense. Look at those kids on American Idol, the ones that don’t make the cut. Can’t sing worth a damn and what do they always say after they’ve been humiliated? But it’s my dream and Mariah Carey said I shouldn’t give up! Yeah, well, you don’t have Mariah Carey’s voice so get that dumb-ass dream out of your head. What Mariah Carey should be telling them is to follow their abilities and make a dream out of what God gave them.” Marcus smiled that big sunny smile and saw the future in Isaiah’s eyes. “God gave you wings so you could fly up that pathway to the very top,” he said. “That’s where the best dreams are.”
Isaiah always thought Marcus should have been an engineer or an architect but he’d only just graduated high school when their mother died during an operation and their father fell into a deep depression and killed himself. Marcus was left caring for a ten-year-old boy and ended up a jack-of-all-trades. Isaiah had watched for signs of disappointment but never saw any or heard anything in Marcus’s voice. He always sounded like things had turned out exactly the way he’d planned them.
Isaiah couldn’t finish his homework. He slung his books into the wall and stormed around the bedroom spitting out words like cobra strikes. Fucking Marcus. How could you do that? Why didn’t you look? Are you stupid? Fucking Marcus. What am I supposed to do now? It was happening all the time now, the rage boiling up inside his chest, threatening to explode and kill everyone around him. He stopped and stood there with his fists clenched and nothing to punch. It was luck how things turned out so why even try if you were going to get hit by a car? Why not coast if your fate wasn’t in your hands? Why do anything at all if Marcus wasn’t there?
Isaiah’s anger was consuming him. It had nowhere to go, nothing to focus on. He knew if he went on this way he’d end up in a mental ward. He was out on the balcony at dawn when the idea came to him, lifting and warming like the morning sun on his face. He’d go after Marcus’s killer. Find him. Hunt him down, tell him he didn’t kill just anyone, he killed Marcus, the best person in the world—and then make that murdering piece of shit pay.
CHAPTER SIX
Burnout
July 2013
Isaiah and Dodson went around the pool and headed toward the stand of ficus trees at the back of Cal’s property. The dog and the man had come from there.
“You talk too much,” Isaiah said. “All that stuff about do you have any reason to believe—”
“I’m trying to give you the appearance of professionalism,” Dodson said.
“Didn’t I tell you about this? Didn’t I tell you I do things my own way?”
“You ask me, your way needs a serious overhaul, you hope to make it in times like these. You can’t be standing there talking to yourself and staring off into space like some kinda damn psychic. You need to communicate with your clients, be optimistic, make them feel like they getting something for their money.”
“They’ll feel like they’re getting something for their money when they get something for their money.”
They arrived at the trees and saw a cluster of footprints on the damp ground. The dog prints were big, like the clawed feet on Auntie May’s antique chifforobe. Isaiah kneeled and took a closer look. Dodson knew the crew was watching from the house so he kneeled next to Isaiah and pointed at a nonexistent clue.
“What you looking for?” Dodson said. “We already know the dog and the dog man was here.”
“The dog man was wearing Crocs,” Isaiah said. “Those big goofy rubber things with holes in them? The brand name is imprinted on the sole, see it there?”
“What are all those?” Dodson said. There were dozens of cylindrical impressions about eighteen inches long, all of them facing the same way.
“One of those low beach chairs,” Isaiah said. “The dog man sat here watching the house.”
“Why didn’t he watch from out front?”
“Private security would have been on him. Nobody parks in the street.”
It was just like old times, Dodson thought, trying to trip Isaiah up or make him say I don’t know. “If the dog man was back here how could he tell when to send in the dog?”
“He was here for weeks,” Isaiah said. “He knew what the cars sounded like. When they all left he knew Cal was alone.”
Behind the trees, a tall wooden fence separated Cal’s property from an alley where the trash bins were picked up. A hole had been cut in the fence just big enough for a man and his dog to get through.
“Well, guess we know how he got in,” Dodson said. “I think that’s Bobby Grimes.”