Homicide Related (8 page)

She pulled him inside and wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his, and, for the first time in almost a week, for the very first time, he didn't think about Nevin. He didn't think about Lorraine, either.

For once, Dooley's uncle wasn't waiting up for him. His bedroom door was open, a sure sign he was alone. Dooley peeked in. His uncle was asleep—passed out?—on the bed. He was fully clothed and he was snoring.

The weekend. Dooley went to work, where he emptied the drop box and scanned and re-shelved all the incoming items before heading up to the cash to start checking them out again, Saturday being the video store's busiest day. He wished he was working all weekend. It would pass the time. Beth had left with her mother first thing in the morning to visit some of her mother's friends at their cottage up north somewhere. They wouldn't be driving back until late Sunday night.

His uncle was cleaning up the kitchen when Dooley got home.

“Did you eat?” he said.

Dooley shook his head. His uncle began taking things out of the fridge—lemon chicken, rice, broccoli with some kind of sauce on it.

“A couple of detectives came by the store,” he said as he slid a plate of food into the microwave.

“Cop detectives?”

His uncle nodded.

“What did they want?”

“They were asking about Lorraine.”

“Asking what?”

“What she'd been up to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Apparently someone told them she'd been clean for a while,” his uncle said. “They asked me about that.”

“Why?”

“They're taking a closer look at what happened. They may want to talk to you, Ryan.”

“
Me?
What could I tell them?”

“You're her son.” As if that answered his question. “You know your rights?”

“My
rights
? ” What did his rights have to do with Lorraine?

“You're still a juvenile. You don't have to talk to them if you don't want to and, for sure, you don't have to talk to them alone.”

Dooley stared at his uncle. “You told me they said it was a drug overdose.”

“It was.”

“So what are they looking at?”

“They're looking at why.”

“Why what? Why an overdose?” They had to be kidding.

“Apparently there were some bruises.”

“Bruises?”

“Apparently. Could be nothing related. Or could be that someone was holding her, maybe forcing her.”

“Forcing her to what?”

“There were needle marks, but only one was recent.”

“So?” Dooley said. When a person quit trying to stay straight, all it took was one.

“I don't read minds. I'm just telling you what they said.”

The microwave beeped. Dooley's uncle opened it, took out the plate of food, and set it down in front of Dooley.

Dooley didn't get out of bed the next day until noon. What was the point? He didn't have to work, and Beth wasn't around. He had homework to do, but he couldn't get himself even remotely excited about it. He thought about Lorraine.

She was dead. That should have meant something to him. She was his mother, after all. But the only feeling he could identify was anger. She had never come to see him, even though it turned out she had been living just across town the whole time he'd been locked up. What kind of mother behaved like that? What business did she have even being a mother? The best thing he could do was forget about her. Move on. Move forward. Do what he'd been doing ever since they'd let him out—be something different. Be nothing at all like her. Not only did he think he
could
do it but he actually
wanted
to do it. He wanted something different. Something worthwhile.

So, yeah, forget about her.

His uncle was quiet all day. He spent most of his time up in his office, working on whatever it was he worked on when he was up there. His business, mostly. He reviewed his accounts. He fiddled with spreadsheets. He read dry-cleaning newsletters. He devoured the financial pages of the newspaper. He made plans. He'd been talking about a third store, if he could find the right location, maybe somewhere near a police station where he could offer specials to cops.

Supper was Chinese take-out. They ate in front of the TV, his uncle acting like he was riveted by
60 Minutes
before he finally went back upstairs. Dooley stayed down in the living room and surfed the channels. He got a real jolt when he saw Lorraine's picture on the eleven o'clock news—a thirty-second clip about “yet another drug death” that mentioned, but did not go into, an “ongoing police investigation”—and was glad Beth was in a car somewhere, driving back from wherever she'd been. He wondered who else might be watching the news and might be as surprised as he was by that picture. But the truth was that none of the people he knew now had met Lorraine. He never talked about her. She had a different last name than his. Most of the people he used to know had never met her, either. He'd never taken any of his friends back to his place. The whole deal back then had been to get away from wherever home happened to be and to stay away as long as possible.

The service for Lorraine was held on Monday morning. Dooley put on the suit he had worn only once, also to a funeral. When he went downstairs, his uncle, also in a suit, a black one that had cost him more than Dooley made in three or four months at the video store, was adjusting his tie. His eyes met Dooley's in the hall mirror.

“You still didn't tell her?” he said. He meant Beth.

Dooley shook his head. He thought his uncle might have something more to say on the subject, but he didn't. Instead, he studied his reflection, frowned, and adjusted his tie again. When he was finally satisfied, he said, “We might as well get this done.”

Dooley was surprised to find maybe twenty people in the room at the funeral home. He knew his uncle was surprised, too, because he went back out and checked the name in the slot beside the door to make sure he hadn't stumbled in on the wrong service.

“I guess putting a notice in the newspaper worked, huh?” Dooley said.

His uncle didn't answer. He didn't circulate, either. But a couple of people—women—went up to him and introduced themselves. Dooley decided that they must have known Lorraine pretty well because they had no trouble picking him out as her brother.

“I can't believe she's really gone,” one of them said.

Dooley's uncle didn't say anything.

Another woman, this one thin and hard, with a voice corroded by too much of something—cigarettes? booze? drugs?—approached Dooley and said, “You're her son.” Dooley must have looked surprised, because then she said, “Lorraine showed me a picture. She was doing so well.”

Dooley couldn't imagine it.

The guy who did the service—Dooley supposed he was some kind of clergyman—obviously didn't know Lorraine. Dooley wondered where his uncle had found him. Maybe he was part of some cut-rate cremation special deal. He called Lorraine the devoted
(devoted!)
mother of Ryan and beloved (uh-huh) younger sister of Gary. He talked about her struggle with drugs and alcohol (the drugs and alcohol part was right, but Dooley had never witnessed any struggle; what he'd seen had been more like a love affair) and said that she had recently made progress in that area. (Who had told him that? The same person who had told the cops?)

And that was it.

The clergyman (assuming that's what he was) finished talking and left the front of the room. Dooley's uncle stood up and left the room altogether. By the time Dooley caught up with him, he was out in the parking lot, his overcoat on, loosening his tie and looking—Dooley had no trouble reading the expression on his face—like he needed a drink.

“Is that it?” Dooley said.

“Yeah, that's it,” his uncle said.

Dooley wanted to shake him and say, “She was your sister. Didn't you want to say anything?” But he kept his mouth shut. If his uncle had had something to say, he would have said it. There would have been no stopping him.

“You should go to school,” his uncle said, putting it to him as if that was what everyone was expected to do right after they'd paid their last respects to their mother.

“You're kidding, right?” Dooley said.

His uncle fixed him with his flinty cop eyes.

“You going to tell me you're too broken up to concentrate?”

Jesus. Dooley knew his uncle was a hard-ass, but this took it to a whole new level.

“What about you?” Dooley said. “Are you going to work?”

His uncle gave him a look, like, what else?

After his uncle left, Dooley went back into the funeral home. Most of the people who had been at the service were still there, clustered in small groups outside the room where the casket was. One of the groups, consisting of four women, turned and looked at him. Then three of the women glanced at the fourth—slender, with a tired but friendly face—who stepped away from them and came toward Dooley. She was better dressed than the others, like she belonged in an office and kept up on the fashion trends. She smelled good, too, like soap and shampoo and toothpaste. Clean.

“You must be Ryan,” she said.

He nodded.

“Lorraine was very proud of you.”

He stared at the woman. She looked normal, but it was almost impossible for Dooley to imagine a normal person saying that with a straight face.

“I'm Gloria Thomas,” she said. “I was Lorraine's sponsor.”

“Sponsor?” Did she mean what he thought she meant? “What group?”

“Narcotics Anonymous.”

He almost laughed.

“Well, she died of a drug overdose, so …”

“I know,” Gloria Thomas said. “I'm sorry.” She had blue-green eyes that never let go of his. “She called me the night she died.”

“Yeah?” Dooley could just picture it: Lorraine crying on her sponsor's shoulder:
I'm so tempted; help me, stop me.
Or maybe she'd called after she was already fucked up:
I'm so
bad. I said I would stop, and now look what I've done.
Looking for absolution. “What did she say?”