Animosity (5 page)

I set the glass on a shelf beside the sofa, gazed up at him.

“Her name was Rebecca Faye Lanning,” Norton announced. As if he’d been waiting for the perfect moment to fill me in, and this was it. I wondered what kind of reaction he was searching for, and if mine satisfied him. “She was nine years old.”

“God,” I said.

Hembry added, “We figure you scared the perp off. You and your dog.”

For the next minute or so, the only sound between us was the tingle and ping of the wind chimes swaying back and forth on my front porch. Their high yet mournful song came to us through my open living room window like memories of better times borne on a warm summer breeze.

“I assume you haven’t found him yet,” I said.

“We haven’t,” Norton replied. “Yet.”

“Our K-9 units plan to comb the park all evening,” said Hembry. “You had him cornered. Nowhere else he could have gone, except through the woods.”

“Right,” I said.

“Did you know the child?” Norton asked me.

“No.”

The detectives glanced at one another, but said nothing.

“Her family,” I said. “Do they live around here?”

My extremities felt oddly numb. My voice seemed to come from someone else, from hundreds of miles away.

Hembry nodded. “Tamarack Circle, next street over.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “I can’t imagine what they’re going through right now.”

“No one can,” said Norton.

For the first time I noticed how the taller detective’s otherwise perfectly trimmed eyebrows met in the middle. One hard, black line above his hard, black eyes. In my novels, such a trait would have been a telltale sign that Norton was a werewolf. A man who turned into a monster by the light of the full moon.

But this was real life. This wasn’t fiction. A human monster walked among us in broad daylight.

“We’ll get him,” said Hembry. “I promise you that. Maybe not today. It might not even be a month from now. But we will get the son of a bitch.”

“I hope so,” I said.

“If it’s the last thing we do,” said Norton.

I took a few more long, loud swallows from my glass of water. The way Norton kept staring at me made me uncomfortable. As if he were running some sort of sci-fi mind-scan on me in hopes of unveiling every deep, dark secret lurking within my past.

Sorry to disappoint you,
I was tempted to tell the guy
, but I’m about as boring as they come.

Then again, perhaps not.

Because I suddenly realized what was on Detective Norton’s mind, a split-second before his next words fell from between his lips. I knew what those glances they kept giving one another were all about, and why the detectives lingered in my living room, talking to yours truly when I was so sure they could have been doing more good out there on the streets searching for Rebecca Lanning’s killer. There was a bit of unfinished business here, as far as Detectives Norton and Hembry were concerned. Questions yet unanswered…

When I realized this, I felt cold. Like something inside of me had died.

“Mr. Holland,” Norton said, “please understand that this is standard procedure. It may seem irrelevant to you in regards to what has happened here today, but I must ask you to clarify a few things before we go any further with this investigation.”

I nodded. Shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Waited for it.

“On February 18, ——, you were charged with statutory rape. Is that correct?”

“That’s… correct,” I said, staring down at my lap.

“Mr. Holland? I didn’t hear you.”

“It’s true,” I said, louder this time. I gnashed my teeth, fought to keep my rising anger in check. “It’s… yeah, that’s right.”

“And you were convicted?”

“I pled guilty.”

But you already knew that, so why the hell are you asking?
I wanted to scream at him.

The detectives glanced at one another for what felt like the ten-millionth time. Then they returned their attention to me.

“Would you care to tell us what happened?” Norton said, pulling a small notepad and ballpoint pen from inside his suit-coat.

“Is that really necessary?” I said. “I mean, I don’t see how this has anything to do with—”

“Please, Mr. Holland,” Detective Hembry interrupted me. He held up one hand, in a placating gesture. “As my partner said, this is standard procedure. We’re just talking here. But I think it would be best for all of us if you explain what happened in your own words. Otherwise, we have nothing to go on but court records. We would really like to hear your side of the story, sir.”

I shook my head, sighed. “It was… a stupid mistake I made when I was young. That’s all. I was a dumb kid. I screwed up. But then I took my punishment like a man. There’s nothing more to tell.”

Norton scribbled something in his notepad, but said nothing.

“I’ve never been in any kind of trouble with the law, before or since,” I explained. And then I insisted again, “I was young. It was a stupid mistake.”

“Duly noted,” Norton mumbled.

“I should have known this would come up sooner or later.”

“Tell us what happened, Mr. Holland,” said Detective Hembry. “Please.”

And so I did. I left out nothing. I told them about a ravishing young lady named Bridget Prescott… about that fateful Valentine’s Day years ago when I ended up in the hospital, my body broken and bruised… about my brush with the law when I was twenty years old, and the price I had paid for thinking I knew all of life’s answers when I was barely old enough to understand its questions in the first place. It wasn’t easy, being forced to revisit this part of my past I had tried to bury, but I had no choice. Halfway through my story, I decided it
was
for the best. If either of these men thought for a second that I was hiding anything from them—
anything—
they would cease to believe a word I said.

When I finished, Detective Norton slid his pad and pen back into his jacket, said, “Okay, then. Thank you for clearing that up.”

“Is this going to be a problem?” I asked him. “I think I have a right to know if y—”

“Nah,” said Hembry.

“It shouldn’t be,” said Norton.

Outside, on the porch, I heard Officer Whitmire say something. I could not make out his words or see to whom he was speaking. A radio squawked briefly, and that was followed by another quick murmur of conversation. The policeman’s footsteps clunked from one side of the porch to the other, then back again.

I wondered if he had been eavesdropping on my story through the open window.

Detective Hembry, meanwhile, had wandered out of my living room, into the hallway. He stood outside my office now, his hands jingling change in his pockets as he peered into the room. Beyond his considerable belly I could see the bookshelves housing all of my first and foreign editions along one wall, and a framed poster of the cover art for my last novel,
Slow Burn
(my biggest seller to date)
,
centered above my desk. To the right of that was the window through which I peered, daydreaming, each time I came down with a bad case of procrastination disguised as writer’s block. The screensaver on my computer monitor was a montage of old black-and-white Marilyn Monroe photographs. Beside it, the CPU tower hummed quietly, reminding me that I needed to get back to work, like,
yesterday
.

Hembry looked back at me with a sly grin, as if we now shared some momentous secret. “Where you write your books?”

“Yeah.”

“Fascinating.”

He took a minute to dab at his brow with his yellow handkerchief before turning to the closed door on the other side of the hallway. He chuckled at the sign posted there. It was a homemade affair fashioned from a rainbow of construction paper, crayons, and glitter: NO BOYS ALLOWED (EXEPT DAD)!!!

“My daughter’s room,” I said.

Hembry shot yet another glance at his partner. Norton stared at me.

“She lives with her mother,” I felt the need to add, though I didn’t know why. “We’re divorced.”

“I see.”

“How old is your daughter?” Norton asked me.

“She’ll be twelve next month.”

Hembry jiggled the doorknob to Samantha’s room. It was unlocked, but he didn’t try to open the door. He just stood there jiggling the knob for a few seconds as if he liked the sound it made.

I frowned.

Finally, the chubby detective turned to his partner.

“I think we’ve got all the information we need here,” he said. “You ready to roll?”

Norton reached into his suit-coat, pulled out his notepad again and flipped it to the first page, where he had scribbled my phone number earlier. “We can reach you at this number if we have any further questions, correct?”

“I’m always home,” I said.

“Very good.”

I stood to show them out. A tad too eagerly, perhaps.

As I led them to the door, I heard two muffled barks from my backyard. I reminded myself to go check on Norman after the detectives left. See how he was holding up. Hopefully much better than his master.

“By the way, Mr. Holland,” Detective Hembry said then, lingering in my foyer, “I did want to ask you…”

“Yes?”

“Would you mind… er… that is…”

“What is it, Detective?”

“I don’t suppose you could sign something for me, could you?”

“Um, sure,” I said, a bit taken aback. I hadn’t pegged either of these guys as horror fans. “I guess I could do that.”

Hembry pulled something from his back pocket, held it out to me. It was a dog-eared copy of my third novel,
The Ancient Ones.
The first printing, with the garish red-eyed demon thing on the cover. One of only two books I have written which I can truly say I
loathe.
The critics were right about that one.

“I’d appreciate the hell out of it,” he said. “If you’re sure you wouldn’t mind?”

I took it from him, opened the cover.

After a quick, self-conscious grin in his partner’s direction, Hembry said, “Make it to ‘Paul,’ please?”

He handed me a pen, and I clenched it so tightly my knuckles turned bone-white.

TO DETECTIVE PAUL, I scrawled in wide, angry letters upon the title page, DON’T LET THE BAD GUYS GET YOU!

When I was done, I shoved the book back into his hands.

Hembry ogled his newfound prize.

At last I stepped back, preparing to slam the door behind them, but Detective Norton stopped in the threshold. He turned, held up one long, skinny finger.

“There is one last thing, Mr. Holland,” he said.

I kept my hand on the door. Gave him an exhausted
oh-boy-there’s-more-I-can’t-wait
expression.

“Just to eliminate you as a suspect beyond a shadow of a doubt,” Norton said, that hard, black line above his eyes looking harder and blacker than ever, “you wouldn’t have a problem with giving us a DNA sample, would you? If we were to request such a thing in the next few days?”

I sighed. Shook my head. Stared at the floor. Wanted to scream at them both to get the hell off my property.

He said, “At this point, it’s not something you have to do. But understand that we can get a search warrant, if necessary. Then you would have no choice.”

“No,” I said. “I’ll do it.”

“Of course he’ll do it,” said Hembry, slapping his partner on the back. “Why wouldn’t he?”

They left without another word, their heels clicking down my front steps as they stalked toward their shiny black Buick at the curb.

Officer Keith Whitmire turned to me, nodded but did not speak, before rushing to follow them. He spoke with the two detectives briefly, and then they got into their car.

I closed my front door, tried not to worry about the rest of my neighbors gathered on the opposite side of the street.

I counted a dozen of them out there, give or take. Pointing. Whispering. Watching the detectives leave my home. Shouting troubled questions toward the cop who lived at the end of our block.

Whitmire joined the throng, and he wasted no time obliging them as soon as his superiors drove away.

I realized I did not care at all.

The only thing on my mind at that moment was the bathroom at the end of the hall.

I covered my mouth, made a retching noise as I ran.

For the second time that day, I knew I was about to be sick.

Poinsettia Lane was changing.

Once upon a time, my neighborhood had seemed so perfect in every way. Now, the street outside my home had become a serpentine black path upon which I never again wanted to step foot, lest it lead me toward more awful truths. Beneath every immaculately groomed yard was buried an abominable secret, and behind every door lurked another ugly sin.

A child had been raped. Murdered.