Criminal (15 page)

He clenched his hands. There were tiny rips up and down his fingers—like paper cuts, only deeper. His sutured ankle felt like it was on fire. He tried to stand, but his knees wouldn’t hold him. He forced himself up to standing. This time he stumbled. He grabbed onto one of the studs. A splinter dug into his palm. He screamed just to let out some of the pain. There was not a muscle in his body that did not ache.

All for nothing.

Will took his handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his face. He grabbed his jacket off the nail. The streetlight was no longer strobing when he pulled himself out of the basement. The air was so crisp that he started coughing. He spit out more chunks of plaster. Will went to the faucet in the middle of the yard. It was the same one he’d used as a kid during the summer months when Mrs. Flannigan locked them all out of the house and told them not to come back until suppertime. The pump handle was nearly rusted through.

Carefully, Will moved the lever up and down until a thin stream of water came out of the spigot. He put his mouth to the water and drank until he felt knives in his stomach. Then he put his head under the stream and washed off the grime. His eyes stung from the water. There were probably chemicals in there that he didn’t want to know about. A tannery had operated down the street when he was growing up. Will had probably drunk enough benzene to fill a cancer ward.

Another souvenir from his childhood.

He pushed himself up, using the pump for leverage. The handle snapped off. Will could only shake his head. He tossed the handle into the yard and started the long walk home.

Will sat at his kitchen table, hands clutching a blue file folder. His eyes wouldn’t stay open. He was punch-drunk from exhaustion. He hadn’t bothered to go to bed. By the time he got home, it was already three in the morning. He had to leave by four to get to the airport in time for the business travelers. He’d taken a shower. He’d cooked a breakfast he couldn’t eat. He’d walked the dog around the block. He’d shined his scuffed shoes. He’d put on a suit and tie. He’d used Bactine on the thousands of tiny cuts and blisters on his hands. He’d wiped away the weird pink fluid seeping through the Band-Aid on his ankle.

And now he couldn’t make himself get up from the table.

Will picked at the edge of the file folder. His mother’s name was neatly typed on the label stuck to the tab. Will had seen the letters so many times that they were burned into his retinas. He was twenty-two years old before he finally gained access to her information. There was a lot of paperwork that had to be filled out. He’d had to go down to the courthouse. There were other things, too, all of which involved navigating the juvenile justice system. The biggest obstacle was Will. He’d had to get to a point in his life where the prospect of going before a judge didn’t bring on a cold sweat.

Betty came in through the dog door. She gave Will a curious look. The dog was adopted, an embarrassingly tiny Chihuahua mix that had come to Will through no fault of his own. She put her front feet on his thigh. She looked perplexed when Will didn’t lean back to let her into his lap. After a while, she gave up, circling the floor three times before settling down in front of her food bowls.

Will let his gaze fall back to the file, his mother’s name. The black typed letters were sharp on the white label. Not that it was white anymore. Will had rubbed his fingers along her name so many times that he’d yellowed the paper label.

He opened the file. The first page was what you’d usually find in a police report. The date was followed by the case number at the top. Then there was the section for the more salient details. Name, address, weight, height, cause of death.

Homicide.

Will stared at his mother’s picture. Polaroid. It was taken years before her death. She was thirteen, maybe fourteen. As with the label, the photo was yellowed from being handled so much. Or maybe age had broken down the processing chemicals. She was standing in front of a Christmas tree. Will had been told the camera was a gift from her parents. She was holding up a pair of socks, probably another gift. There was a smile on her face.

Will wasn’t the type of man to stare in the mirror, but he’d spent plenty of time examining his features one by one, trying to find similarities between himself and his mother. They had the same almond shape to their eyes. Even in the faded photo, he could see the color was the same blue. His blond hair was sandy, shaded more toward brown than his mother’s almost yellow curls. One of his bottom teeth was slightly crooked like hers. She was wearing a retainer in the photo. The tooth had probably been pulled back into line by the time she was murdered.

Will lined up the photo to the edge of the front page, making sure to keep the paper clip in the same spot. He turned to the second page. His eyes couldn’t focus on the words. The text jumped around. Will blinked several times, then stared at the first word of the first line. He knew it by heart, so it came easy to him.

“Victim.”

Will swallowed. He read the next words.

“… was found at Techwood Homes.”

Will closed the file. There was no need to read through the details again. They were ingrained in his memory. They were a part of his waking existence.

He looked at his mother’s name again. The letters weren’t so crisp this time. If his brain hadn’t filled in the words, he doubted he’d be able to make them out.

Will had never been much of a reader. The words moved around the page. The letters transposed. Over the years, he’d figured out some tricks to help him pass for more fluent. A ruler under a line of text kept one row from blending in with another. He used his fingers to isolate difficult words, then repeated the sentence in his head to test for sense. Still, it took him twice as long as Faith to fill out the various reports that had to be submitted on a daily basis. That a person like Will had chosen a career that relied so heavily on paperwork was something Dante could’ve written about.

Will was in college by the time he figured out that he had dyslexia. Or, rather, he had been told. It was the fifteenth anniversary of John Lennon’s death. Will’s music appreciation professor was talking about how it was believed that Lennon had dyslexia. In great detail, she described the signs and symptoms of the disorder. She could’ve been reading from the book of Will’s life. In fact, the woman had basically delivered a soliloquy directly to Will on the gift of being different.

Will had dropped the class. He didn’t want to be different. He wanted to blend in. He wanted to be normal. He’d been told most of his school life that he didn’t fit into the classroom structure. Teachers had called him stupid. They’d put him in the back of the room and told him to stop asking questions when he would never understand the answers. Will had even been called to the principal’s office his junior year and had been told that maybe it was time for him to drop out.

If not for Mrs. Flannigan at the children’s home, Will probably would have left school. He could vividly remember the morning she’d found him in bed rather than waiting outside for the school bus. Will had seen her slap other kids plenty of times. Nothing bad, just a smack on the bottom or across the face. He’d never been hit by her before, but she slapped him then. Hard. She had to stand on her tiptoes to do it. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” she’d commanded. “And get your ass on that bus before I lock you in the pantry.”

Will could never tell this story to Sara. It was yet another part of his life she would never understand. She would see this as abuse. She would probably say it was cruel. For Will, it had been exactly what he needed. Because if Mrs. Flannigan hadn’t cared enough to climb those stairs and push him out the front door, no one else would have bothered.

Betty’s ears perked up. Her tags jingled on her collar as she turned her head. A low growl came out of her throat. Will heard a key in the front door lock. For just a second, he thought it might be Sara. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of lightness. And then he remembered that Sara didn’t have a key to his house. And then the darkness came back when he remembered why. Sara didn’t need a key. They didn’t spend much time here. They always stayed in her apartment because at Will’s, there was the constant threat of Angie walking in on them.

“Willie?” Angie called as she made her way through the living room. She paused at the open kitchen doorway. Angie had always embraced her feminine side. She favored figure-hugging skirts and shirts that showed her ample cleavage. Today, she was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans that hung low on her hips. She had lost weight in the three weeks since he’d last seen her. The pants were loose, but not on purpose. Will could see a black thong peeking over the top of the waistband.

Betty started growling again. Angie hissed at the dog. Then she looked at Will. Then she looked at the light blue file folder in his hand. She asked, “Reading up, baby?”

Will didn’t answer.

Angie walked to the refrigerator and took out a bottle of water. She unscrewed the cap. She took a long swig as she studied Will. “You look like shit.”

He felt like shit. All he wanted to do was put his head down on the table and sleep. “What do you want?”

She leaned back against the counter. He should’ve been surprised by her words, but then, nothing Angie said ever really surprised him. “What are we going to do about your father?”

Will stared down at the file. The kitchen was quiet. He could hear the whistling sound of Betty’s breathing, the tinkle of the tags on her collar as she settled back down.

Angie had never been good at waiting him out. “Well?”

Will didn’t have an answer for her. Eighteen hours of thinking about it pretty much nonstop hadn’t brought any solutions. “I’m not going to do anything.”

Angie seemed disappointed. “You need to call your girlfriend and ask for your balls back.”

Will glared at her. “What do you want, Angie?”

“Your father’s been out for almost six weeks. Did you know that?”

Will felt his stomach clench. He hadn’t bothered to look up the details in the state database, but he’d assumed the release was recent, in the last few days, not almost two months ago.

She said, “He’s sixty-four now. Diabetic. Had a massive heart attack a few years ago. Old people are expensive to take care of.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I was at his parole hearing. Thought I’d see you there, but no.” She raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to ask the obvious question. When Will didn’t, she volunteered, “He looks good for his age. Been keeping in shape. I guess the heart attack scared him.” She smiled. “You’ve got his mouth. The same shape to your lips.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“The point is, I remember our promise.”

Will looked down at his hands. He picked at a torn cuticle. “We were kids back then, Angie.”

“Put a knife in his throat. Jam a crowbar in his head. Shoot him up with H and make it look like an accident. That was your favorite one, right?” She leaned down, inserting herself in his line of sight. “You pussin’ out on me, Wilbur?” He moved away from her. “Do I need to remind you what happened to your mother?”

Will tried to clear his throat, but something got stuck.

Angie dragged over a chair and sat a few inches away from him. “Listen, baby, you can have all the fun you want with your little doctor friend. You know I’ve had my share. But this is business. This goes back to you and me and a promise we made to each other.” She waited another beat, then said, “What happened to your mother, what happened to you—all because of that bastard—we can’t just let that go, Will. He has to pay.”

Will’s cuticle started to bleed, but he couldn’t stop picking at the skin. Angie’s words stirred up something familiar inside of him. The anger. The rage. The need for revenge. Will had spent the last ten years of his life trying to let that go, and now Angie was shoving it back in his face.

He told her, “You’re not in a position to talk to me about broken promises.”

“Ashleigh Snyder.”

Will’s head jerked up, surprised to hear her mention the missing girl.

Angie smiled as she tapped her finger on his mother’s file. “You’re forgetting that I know everything, baby. Every detail. Every last drop. You think he’s changed his ways? You think he’s too old to get around? Let me tell you, honey, he’s been busy inside. He could outrun you, out-jump you, out-kill you. Just looking at him made me scared, and you know I don’t scare easy.”

Will looked at her finger. The nail polish was chipped.

“Are you listening to me, Will?”

He waited for her to stop touching his mother’s file.

Slowly, she moved her hand away.

Angie had helped him fill out the paperwork to get the documents. Angie had been the first to show him his mother’s photograph. Angie had read the autopsy report aloud when Will, so upset he could barely function, was unable to make sense of it. Lacerations. Abrasions. Scratches. Tears. Wounds. The indescribable rendered in cold, medical language. Like Will, Angie knew every word. She knew every awful thing. She knew the pain and the misery, just like she knew when she finished telling Will what had happened to his mother, he had been so violently ill that he’d started coughing up blood.

She said, “He’s holed up at the Four Seasons on Fourteenth. I guess his money earned some interest over the years.”

“You’ve been watching him?”

“I’ve got a friend in security keeping an eye on him for me.” She pursed her lips. “It’s not a bad life. Five-star hotel. He uses the gym every morning. He orders room service. He goes for walks. He hangs out at the bar.”

Will pictured every single tableau. The thought of this man living such an easy life put a fist in his stomach.

“It’s all right,” she soothed. Will couldn’t stop looking at the file. His hands were gripping the edge. “It’s me, baby. You don’t have to pretend with me.”

He flinched as Angie’s fingers traced down his neck, his back. Her fingernails lined up with the scars that mottled his skin. “You can talk to me about it. I was there. I know what went down. I’m not going to judge you.” Will shook his head, but she kept touching him, her hand going to the front of his chest, tips of her fingers finding the perfectly round circles where the tip of a burning cigarette had seared into his flesh. Her mouth was at his ear. “You think this would’ve happened to you if your mother had been around? You think she would’ve let them hurt her baby boy?”