He says nothing until I start to rise.
“Okay, okay.” He’d have his hands out in a defensive gesture if he could, waving them in the air like a maniac. “I do remember.”
“Oh? And what do you remember?” I don’t need to know this for my plan to work. I’m just interested, as a fellow participant in this game of life and death.
“We argued, like I told you, and she picked up the phone and threatened to call the police. So I hit her, and once I did that, I knew there’d be no way to shut her up.”
“Come now, Bob. She’s a domestic-abuse victim. She’s used to keeping her trap shut when a man hits her.”
“Not this time. She told me I was going to lose my job for what I’d done, and she was right too, so I hit her again, this time harder. Then I shoved her onto the bed and. .” He stops, either to think of what to say next, or to invent it. “Well, I needed to make it look like she was one of your victims, Joe.”
“And you knew just how to do it. You screwed that prostitute I killed the other night. You did to her what your wife won’t let you even think about. And you take that experience from Becky the Whore to Little Miss Domestic Abuse.”
“I had to make it look real,” he says, and he says it in a defeated tone, not the kind of tone somebody who stands by their work would use.
“Is that all, Bob? Or did you want to enjoy yourself as well? Come on, you can tell me. I’m not here to judge you. I just want to hear how you’re no better than me.” He stares right at me. His face, tight with rage, spits the answer at me. “Sure, I enjoyed it. Like, I mean, what wasn’t to enjoy? Pure power.”
“Pure power. Isn’t that the answer, Bob? Isn’t that what we all look for?”
“What do you want from me?”
“That’s a question, Bob.”
“I don’t give a shit, Joe. Just tell me what you want, or fuck off. You’re wasting my time, you little asshole.” I’m not shocked at his sudden outburst. Over the last hour, I’ve touched several nerves. Before all of this is over, a knife is going to touch several more.
“The requirement is simple. All you need to do is listen.”
“That simple, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Bullshit,” he says. “What do I have to listen to?”
“A confession.”
“Yours?”
“Funnily enough, no. But it’s your job to be my security, my insurance if you like. You knew from the moment you saw my face I was either going to kill you or make a deal. Well, here’s the deal, Bob. I will give you twenty thousand dollars, in cash, tomorrow night, to listen to a confession. That’s all you have to do. Just sit and listen and remember. Do you think you can handle that?”
“Then what? You let me go, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“And what’s in it for you?”
“My freedom. Yours too.”
“And if I refuse?”
“I’ll kill you. Right now.”
“I want half the money now.”
“You’re not really in a situation to ask for anything, Bob.” I stand and walk over to him.
“What are you doing?” I tilt the chair back and start dragging it across the carpet. It’s damn heavy, and my testicle starts to throb.
“Joe? What the hell are you up to?”
“Shut up, Bob.” I continue pulling on the chair, and it makes scuff marks across the carpet, but finally I manage to get Calhoun into the bathroom. “I’m afraid you’ll have to spend the night here.”
“Why?”
“Safer that way.”
“For who?”
“For me.”
I pull out some duct tape. “Anything else before I seal you up for the night?”
“You’re a real psycho, Joe, do you know that?”
“I know lots of things, Detective Inspector.”
I run the tape across his mouth. Then I head back into the bedroom and take the parking ticket from my briefcase. I squat down behind Bob, grab the skin on the back of his hand, and start twisting until he unclenches it, then I push his fingertips against the ticket.
“No going anywhere, Bob. Oh, and the toilet’s there if you need it.” I grin at him, then walk back into the bedroom, closing the door behind me. I put the ticket into an evidence bag, then into my briefcase.
I lock the house before leaving. It’s dark when I get outside. I feel like I’m suffering from heat exhaustion, but after a minute in the cool air that problem disappears. The streetlights throw a pale glow into the black night. I drive Calhoun’s car into town and grab the ticket from the machine at the entrance to the parking building. I head up the ramps-the number of cars getting fewer the higher I drive-until I reach the very top, where there is only one. I don’t turn the car sharply enough, and end up scraping the corner of the front bumper all along the side of the other car, leaving a deep graze and a line of small dents. I notice that the tires on the other car have half deflated over time. I climb out. The smell coming from the trunk of the abandoned car is barely noticeable.
With nothing else to do, I head toward home and toward the end of another long night.
Another phase completed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
She doesn’t know this is where she is driving to until she pulls up the long, twisting driveway lined with beautiful trees, which is ironic because she wanted to come here earlier and found herself driving in a different direction. She can’t park in her usual spot because the church has become a crime scene, so she parks out on the street and uses a smaller entrance to walk through.
Sally makes her way to her brother’s grave and crouches down next to it, not over it. She’s always careful about that. She has a whirlwind of scenarios racing through her head, but she can’t comprehend any of them, and the ones she can almost grasp keep floating away from her.
Joe and the second man had been inside for at least an hour. She had been relieved when Joe came out okay, and tempted to follow him, but she was more curious about who the second man was. She’d waited another half hour, but he hadn’t shown up. Most likely he lived there.
She starts brushing her hands back and forth through the grass, letting the soft textures tickle her palms. The grass is wet. She had written down the address before leaving. What she would do with that information she wasn’t sure. Probably just leave it scrawled across the notepad in her front seat for the next few weeks before balling it up and tossing it out.
Joe driving different cars. Joe with files at his house. Joe with a missing testicle. Joe secretly meeting people.
Well, okay, Joe went to somebody’s house, the same way she’s gone to other people’s houses. Gone there and had coffee, played some cards, killed some time, ate some dinner. What is so suspicious about that?
Nothing. Except Joe parked two blocks away and left in a different car. Plus the house-somehow she knows that house.
“So what do I do, Martin?”
If her brother could reach out from his grave and offer her some advice, it wouldn’t be Do nothing. It was her doing nothing that had got Martin killed five years ago. It has been her lack of responsibility, her laziness, her unawareness. She was doing nothing five years ago when she should have been doing something. She should have been doing anything to stop Martin from being hit at forty miles an hour in a thirty-mile zone. It wasn’t the school’s fault. It wasn’t even really the driver’s fault. It was her fault. She knows some people would blame God, and she suspects her parents split the blame between her and Him.
That’s why her mother flinches when she puts an arm around her. That’s why her parents didn’t try to convince her to stay at nursing school, and allowed her to give up her career to help them pay the bills.
It was difficult not to hate God. It was His fault for making Martin intellectually handicapped. It was easy to lay blame with her, though. It was her fault that Martin had run out into traffic. Her fault for forgetting how excitable he could be when she finished her studies early and got the chance to pick him up from school. She’d rung home to say she could pick Martin up. Her mother had told her not to worry, but Sally had gone ahead and worried. She loved the look on Martin’s face when he stepped out of school and saw her waiting there for him.