“That’s it. I swear.”
“It was your boot prints on the floor?”
“Probably.”
“So what do they care for? Those men. If that’s all that happened. They should be grateful to you. Not looking like they want to hurt somebody.”
“All I can figure is they came home and found her there, probably sleeping it off on the mattress, mud everywhere, some man’s boot prints leading into the room where she is, and they jumped to the wrong conclusions. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but she had a pretty good-size bruise on her face. Somebody had laid into her for some reason.”
Cindy was silent awhile, looking at me but not looking at me, if you know what I mean. Convincing herself to believe me, you know? And I want her to believe me, Spence. More than anything in the world I want that. Even though I’m sick to my stomach for not telling her the whole truth.
So finally she says, “So now what?”
“Now nothing,” I say.
“Are you sure? What about those men?”
“They were fishing, that’s all. I’m guessing that girl mentioned that the guy who helped her was on a motorcycle. And they matched up the boot prints with GI desert boots. But that’s all they know. That’s all they’ll ever know.”
“So how’d they match the boots and the motorcycle with you?”
“Your fucking father, that’s how. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to swear. But I saw him pointing me out to them. Apparently he knows them. I can even hear that slimy you-know-what. ‘Hey, my son-in-law has boots like that. Hey, my son-in-law rides a motorcycle.’”
“I saw you talking to him.”
“I know you did. I’m not trying to hide anything here.”
A few moments passed. Then she laid a hand against my chest. “Every time I see him I get sick to my stomach.”
“That makes two of us. I told him you don’t want him around. I told him I better never see him anywhere near this place again.”
I thought she might have a few more questions for me, but she didn’t. The thing about Cindy is, she knows what she has, and she knows she wants to keep it. She slid up closer and laid her head against my shoulder. I put my arm around her and buried my nose and mouth in her hair. Her scent went into me like light into darkness.
The only problem was, I knew the darkness was still there. I knew it was all around us now. And I knew who had invited it in.
First grade started for Dani the day after Labor Day. On Friday of that week I had a job interview with Lowe’s in the afternoon—nothing special, wear a red vest and a name tag and help people find the lightbulb aisle, that kind of thing—so Cindy had to get off work early to pick up Dani. There’s an afterschool program at the school she goes to, though; they hire a couple of high schoolers to watch the little ones until four in the afternoon, keeping them active on the playground or on rainy days in the gym. But on Friday those extra minutes or so of playtime brought Cindy as close to a breakdown, and me too in a different kind of way, as either of us ever wants to come.
Cindy pulled into the parking lot a few minutes before four, she said, and she recognized Phil McClaine through the chain-link fence the moment she saw him. He was pushing Dani and a few other kids on the merry-go-round. Pushing nice and easy, Cindy told me later, not super fast or dangerous, but that didn’t keep her from flying into a panic and running onto the playground past the high-school girl who was standing there texting somebody. Cindy grabbed up Dani, and once she had her safe and sound, she turned on McClaine and said, “What are you doing here?”
Cindy said he kept right on smiling and pushing the merry-go-round and said, “She sure is a pretty girl, Cindy. Takes after her mother.”
The man is evil, Spence. My blood runs cold just writing this now. Imagine what Cindy was feeling at the time. I know you never had kids but I also know you wanted them. I remember you talking about it on several occasions.
Anyway, Cindy told him, “You stay away from my children! If I ever see you here again—”
He turned away from the merry-go-round then, which made Cindy jump back a little. And he said, “I imagine you have to run over to Baker Street to pick up Emma now, right? So I’ll tell you ladies goodbye. I hope you had fun, Dani. I did. And don’t forget; tell your daddy I need to have a little talk with him, okay?”
Then he walked away grinning, Cindy said. Sauntered over to the parking lot and up to his truck. Got in and drove away.
You can bet that Cindy gave the high-school girl an earful. She even went inside to the office and demanded they enforce some kind of security system so that nobody gets into that playground but parents and kids. But she didn’t want to waste a lot of time in there, she wanted to get over to the daycare and make sure Emma was okay.
It was maybe thirty minutes later I pulled into the driveway on my bike, and within fifteen seconds there was Cindy in the garage with me, standing up close and practically screaming at me in a hoarse whisper about what had happened. I didn’t even have time to get off the bike.
And I lost it. How did that asshole know where to find my babies? He must have been watching us, following us, figuring out when to pull that kind of shit. I swear, Spence, the whole time we were together over in Iraq, I never felt such red-hot hatred or anger for anybody. But there in my garage, even though there was still plenty of daylight streaming in, everything went tight and black on me except for Cindy’s face, and it was so strained with fear that I barely recognized her.
I popped the bike into neutral and shoved it backward out of the garage so fast I nearly laid it down twice, but then got turned and thumbed down the starter and was out on the street again. Cindy was back there in the garage holding her belly and screaming at me to come back, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was pure hatred and nothing else. Nothing but blind, stupid hatred with murder in my eyes.
The only place I knew to look for him was the meth house. If I got there and the place was empty, I was going to tear it apart board by board looking for his address. At one point it occurred to me that Pops might know where McClaine lived—I mean hell, he was probably in the phone book, or I could track him down online—but I didn’t want to stop or turn around and take the time for anything more sensible. I wanted to kill that motherfucker.