Going to the Bad (32 page)

It made sense, but somehow I didn't read Kincaid that way. As morally reprehensible as his actions were, he wasn't a violent street dealer.

I took a deep breath. “Tell me about how Carter King died.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I made a promise to Bud. Mida knows what happened because she was there, and Warner and I know because she called us for help after, but it's going to die with us.”

“There's someone else who knows. Bud told my boyfriend, Rod, at least some of the truth while they were waiting for the ambulance.”

Kelvin's eyes widened, but he didn't say anything.

“Bud was frightened that Carter King's body had been discovered,” I continued. “He asked Rod to warn Leland Warner so he could throw money around and make sure the truth didn't come out.”

Kelvin hesitated. “Did your boyfriend tell you how King died?”

I nodded. “He and Warner both did.”

“Warner did what?” Kelvin looked like a man who wanted a fight but couldn't get out of his chair, which was exactly what he was. “One promise to keep in his entire life and that SOB tells you—the last person in the world Bud would want to know.”

“Don't be so hard on Warner. He made sure the body got destroyed and is giving the Kings a bagful of money to forget it was ever on their property.” I paused. “Also, I'm pretty sure he lied to me. My boyfriend definitely lied.”

Kelvin went still. “What did they say?”

“That Bud killed Carter King during some kind of drunken fight over something that nobody really knows or cares about.”

Kelvin leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. After waiting for too long, I finally realized he wasn't going to say anything.

“I believe Bud did kill Carter, but it's the why and how that nobody's being honest about.”

Kelvin's eyes stayed closed.

“What was Bud's relationship with Mida King?”

His head tilted down and he looked at me. “What do you mean?”

“You want to explain why instead of calling the police, Mida called Bud's friends to come and help cover up her own brother's death?”

More silence from Kelvin, so I continued, “I think Bud and Mida were having an affair. He was doubling up—Mida and Erabelle at the same time—but he'd decided to marry Erabelle. He'd written to her from Alaska promising.”

Excitement moved me to stand. “Carter got angry. Bud had
used his sister. Back then, premarital sex was a big deal. Maybe Carter thought she was ruined or something.”

My mind raced through the ugly scenarios I'd devised on the way over. I grasped for one horrible enough that everyone, even Rod, would be determined to keep it from me. “Maybe she had an abortion. Some kind of horrible back-alley thing. Maybe Bud even forced her do it so he'd be free to marry Erabelle. Carter would have been furious. They fought. Carter died.”

Kelvin stared at me. He only broke eye contact to blink. Then he said, “That's it. I'm sorry, it's terrible, but that's the truth. Mida and Bud admitted everything when Warner and I arrived.”

With great difficulty, Kelvin forced himself to stand. He patted me on the back before wobbling into the kitchenette. “Try not to hold it against him. Bud made a mistake. He would've taken it back if he could.”

Kelvin's feet slipped across the carpet. I heard him fiddling with the pills in the kitchenette.

How did I feel? I'd fought to discover the truth. I'd even risked danger and injury. Bud was flawed. He'd made terrible mistakes out of self-interest and greed, but I loved him. Why had everyone doubted me? Even Bud himself didn't believe I could handle this. I couldn't wait to find Rod and tell him how wrong he'd been, how seriously he'd underestimated me.

But in the background of my pride, a part of me knew something wasn't right.

I followed Kelvin into the kitchenette. “How did Carter King die? Warner said Bud beat him to death.”

“Don't mind that,” he said after too long of a pause. “Warner exaggerated, is all.”

I watched as Kelvin picked up one of the pill bottles, looked at the label, then set it down.

“I don't think so,” I said. “Warner looked genuinely disgusted. I think it fundamentally changed the way Warner thought of Bud, to know he was capable of something so violent.”

“Nah. Erabelle is what ended that friendship.” Kelvin picked up another pill bottle. “One bad punch killed Carter. Bud didn't mean it to happen.”

“I saw the body. The entire skull was smashed in.”

Kelvin tried to open one of the pill bottles. “I told them not to give me the childproof ones. Do I look like I got kids?”

I reached out and stopped Kelvin's hand on the bottle. “You already have your pills set up in that plastic container in the living room.”

He tried to laugh. “You're right. I plain forgot. I guess that's what you call a senior moment.”

He was lying, of course. Kelvin hadn't needed or wanted pills. He came into the kitchen to avoid me. He left now for the same reason.

“I'm sure you've got more questions about Bud and Mida,” he said on his way back to the recliner. “But I'm real tired. Let me get some of my strength back and we'll talk again in a few days.”

Kelvin's voice rang hollow in my ears, and not because of his fatigue or illness. The tone was that of a parent telling an anxious child that nothing bad would ever happen. It was an obvious lie, but so much better than admitting that cancer, housing bubbles, and terrorist attacks probably waited in the future.

I followed and stood in front of Kelvin as he sat down. “Was I wrong about Bud and Mida?”

“No. You got it.” He pulled a blanket over his legs. “But maybe we can talk about it in a few days. I'm running a temperature.”

“Bud wouldn't beat someone to death.” But even as I said it, I knew it wasn't true. “He'd have to be so incredibly angry. There's nothing that could make him that angry.”

Except there was something.

The idea tore its way through me. Even then, I couldn't summon the strength to say it out loud.

Christmas Day, 1:17 p.m.

K
elvin took a sip of 7UP. “Let this rest. You figured it
out. Time to let it go.”

I tried to ask the question, but gravity increased tenfold. My legs gave out and I sat straight down on the ottoman.

Kelvin's eyes widened in alarm.

I struggled and finally said it. “Did Carter King hurt my father?”

Kelvin flinched.

Tears came to my eyes. I tried to speak, but it was so hard. “How bad?”

After a long pause Kelvin looked up. “Bad.”

“Was it just physical or . . .” My throat closed and I couldn't get the words out. I let a sob escape to clear the way, then said, “Was it sexual abuse too?”

“Folks didn't talk about it back then. Nobody knew what
pedophile
meant, but we had them around, all the same.”

“How did Bud know?”

“Mida told him. She caught her brother at it, but didn't know what to do. She felt responsible. That's why she helped us hide the body, not cause there was anything romantic between her and Bud.”

“My dad didn't . . .” The rest of the sentence got lost in my tears.

Kelvin ripped two tissues from the end table and forced them into my hand. “I'm sorry, dear. I couldn't make that out.”

“My dad didn't talk until he was nine. Bud had to tell the school he was mute.”

Kelvin sat back. “Abuse at that age, it's hard to overcome, but your dad did better than a lot I've seen. He never hurt nobody else. Didn't get into drugs like a lot of survivors do. He worked hard and had a family of his own.”

“He killed himself, didn't he?”

Kelvin didn't answer.

“Didn't he?” I yelled.

He recoiled, startled by my suddenly raised voice, but then said, “Bud always figured he did. I guess he tried once before when you were real little. Bud blamed himself, of course.”

Rage gushed inside me. It was like a previously untapped deposit that had always been there. It flowed now because I was forced to admit that my father's pain—his depression, sorrow, and own rage—had all been stronger than his love for me. He'd left me without his protection. He'd made a choice to leave.

And my father had, in his turn, been abandoned by Bud. Dumped, after the recent trauma of losing his mother and father, to live with a pedophile because Bud couldn't be bothered with his own brother. Bud had chased excitement and adventure. He'd run from Erabelle, responsibility, and obligation.

I raised my hand to my face and jabbed at the open wound. It didn't work. The real hurt did almost nothing to dull the one inside me.

Kelvin jerked to attention. “What are you doing? Your face is bleeding.” He ripped more tissues from the end table. “Here, put pressure on that.”

I ignored the offered tissues. “I hate him.”

He struggled to stand. “I know. I hate Carter King too.” He held my chin and pressed the tissues to my face himself. “But there's nothing to do now. He's been buried for fifty years.”

“No.” I paused to sob. “I hate Bud.”

Kelvin lowered his hand. His eyes glassed over, but he managed to hold in the tears. “That's what Bud was afraid of.”

I had to move. I couldn't bear to be trapped in the little
apartment. At the door, I stopped and turned around. I still held the pawnshop binder to my chest as though it were a shield. “Thank you for your help. You've been very good.”

I left the building and got in the news van. I drove, but not to any place in particular. At one point I had to pull over. Rage swelled in my limbs. I pounded the steering wheel and kicked blindly. I didn't even know why. I just did it.

I passed Westside Hospital—a different facility from the one Bud was in—and stopped. Because, apparently, there was no limit to what I could be wrong about, I decided to see if I needed stitches. My pride was salved only slightly by their use of glue instead of needle and thread.

The physician's assistant said I'd have a scar, but a relatively minor cosmetic procedure might remove it in the future. I walked back to the car with a prescription for a light painkiller and an antibiotic. It reminded me of Kincaid.

I drove to Rosedale. It wasn't rational, but when I saw Bouncer through the window of his mother's store, I felt better.

I parked and he opened the front door for me. “What happened to your face?”

“Can I come in?”

He stepped back so I could enter, then locked the door behind me. He'd been alone in the store, unpacking boxes and restocking the shelves, but said he had coffee made in the back.

We sat at the same table his mother had been using to cut pages from the Bibles the night before. I wrapped my cold hands around the warm ceramic mug, but didn't drink its contents.

I told him about Bud—how he'd killed Carter King and why, how he'd assumed Carter's name, and how Bud had been the one selling Bibles with Bouncer's mother in '84.

When I finished, he crossed his arms. “Why are you here telling me this?”

“I thought you'd want to know about Bud, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I don't know.” I pushed the coffee away. My rising annoyance absolved me of having to pretend I liked it. “Maybe I didn't want to be alone.”

“You've got people. You've got a guy who obviously loves you and friends.”

I stood. “I wish I could push a button and make them all go away.”

“Why?”

“Because I hate being tangled up in their lives. I don't want to feel hurt or angry when they let me down, and I don't want to be terrified that something bad might happen to them.”

Instead of being judgmental, as I expected, Bouncer nodded. “I feel that way about my mom sometimes. She won't go straight. I don't think it's even about the money. When I tell her how hard it is for me to know she could get that third strike, she tells me not to worry, like it's a choice or a switch I can flip.”

He stood up and started back out to the storefront. “There's no way for me to stop worrying about her. That's part of being in a family, even if it's a family of two.”

I followed him to where he'd been unpacking boxes. “I don't want to be in a family.”

“But you don't want to be alone either.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because being alone is an easy dream to realize.” He grinned. “And instead of doing it, you came here to tell me that we might, in fact, be family.”

He reached down and picked up several Bibles, then placed the stolen merchandise on an empty shelf.

“If I'm so desperate to connect with you, then why don't I know your name?”

“Because until this moment you haven't cared enough to learn that my name is Jake.”

“Exactly. Because caring is the worst.”

“You'll get no argument from me.” He shelved more Bibles.
“And short of the person you love dying or magically ceasing to exist, there's no way out. You're trapped.”

A fantasy of running away dazzled me for a moment. Erabelle had escaped the ties that bind by moving to Indonesia. It felt so seductive—severing every claim on me, every relationship that required something I wasn't able to give. No more feeling guilty because I'd hurt someone. No more feeling angry because people had hurt me.

It came just as suddenly as the truth about my father and Carter King. I sucked in a breath and rocked back.

“Are you okay?” Bouncer said. “Is something wrong?”

“I know who shot Bud.” My mind whipped through scenarios. I reached a particularly awful one and jumped up. “And I think they're going to do it again.”

I raced back to the van. I flipped through the pawnshop binder trying to see what Bud must have seen. I didn't look for the brooch, but rather I focused on the transactions from the previous weeks. I saw enough to confirm I was right and called Lucero.