Harmless (12 page)
I kept my facts to
myself. It didn’t feel like the right time to tell him.
I told him about my
issues with abrupt endings, about
not knowing
, about how I have trouble
engaging in anything that takes time or might cause a denial of resolution.
He said, “You can’t
live like that. You have no control over the end. Jan didn’t live that way.
Whatever happened, happened, and God help me, I hope they catch whoever did it
and punish him, but she didn’t live like she was looking for death around every
corner. If you’re afraid of—what did you call it, a denial of resolution? If
you’re afraid of that, what you’re really creating is a denial of
experience
.”
I nodded. He was
right. I hadn’t looked at it from that angle before.
“It’s hard to deal with
the loss,” he said, “but I don’t regret a single second of my experiences with
Linda and Jan. You need to live like you won’t regret a single second of
yours. If you live with that fear, you’d be better off climbing into a coffin,
closing the lid, and letting somebody bury you alive. It’s the same thing.”
“Yeah, that makes
sense.”
“I’m serious. Don’t
waste your life on fear.”
We sat quietly for a
moment. Me staring into my empty mug, Clarence twisting a napkin between his
fingertips. With the comforting session passed, Clarence having done more of
the heavy lifting in that department than I had, I decided that Kerry would be
pleased with how stable he seemed to be, and that I could move forward with my
task of finding her killer. Maybe he had some ideas. Maybe he had some clues.
But first, I allowed my
curiosity to prevail.
“Did she ever say
anything about me?”
“Jan?”
“Yeah.”
“She told me your
step-hen joke.”
“I’ve had better ones.”
“I laughed.”
“Anything else? You
know, about me, specifically?”
He hesitated, rolled
the napkin into a thin tube. “Right, um, you want the truth, or should I
sugarcoat it?”
“The truth. I can
handle it.”
“I don’t know if you
knew this about her, but she wasn’t one to mince words. How did she put it?
You were—you were too weird to be cute. Almost like it was a shame. From the
way she talked, it sounded like you had a pretty big crush on her.”
Too weird to be cute
. It didn’t sting as much as it could’ve, given the
fact that I’d already learned that in her diary. I was hoping for
more—something she’d left out of her note to me. I didn’t mention I’d read
every single one of her private thoughts.
“A crush sounds about
right.” A small lie.
“You sure that was all
it was? The way you were crying earlier—”
“Maybe it was more than
that.”
“Did you love her?”
“From a distance. In
my own way. Unrequited, unfortunately.”
“
Unrequited
.
She had that effect on people. Good heart, good soul. People were drawn to
her and they couldn’t figure out why. The guy that was here earlier, before you
stopped by—he said the exact same thing.”
“The guy? What guy?”
Naturally, a twinge of jealousy formed a sucking black hole in the bottom of my
gut and took away all the happy-feel-good sensations I’d built up while talking
to Clarence. She hadn’t mentioned another suitor in her diary. There were no
scribbles of disdain regarding another victim of unrequited love. Who could he
be? I’d never seen another man at Kerry’s house.
Or had I? That
morning: “I’m a friend. I’m just here to pay my respects.”
“What did he look
like?” I asked.
“Normal, I guess.
Brown hair, about six feet tall. Average build. I’d never seen him before,
but he was awfully familiar with Jan.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Why are you so
curious?”
“Please. Tell me.”
(Again with the pleading. I was on a roll.)
“White polo and brown
slacks.”
“You’re positive?”
“I don’t see what
this—”
“Stay there. I’ll be
right back.”
I flew from my chair
and out through the living room, across the porch, and then jumped down to the
walkway. Thomas glanced up as I ran toward his cruiser. He dropped his phone
and fumbled with the seat belt, trying to get out. I made it to the car and
jerked open the passenger’s door before he could exit.
“What happened?” he
asked. “Something wrong?”
“Get in here.”
“What?”
“Come inside with me.
I may know who the killer is, but you need to talk to Clarence, too.”
“What?”
“Hurry.” I slammed the
door and bounded back inside with Thomas close behind.
Clarence had moved to
the living room. He waited with wide eyes that flicked back and forth from me
to Thomas. He said, “What’s going on?”
“Clarence, this is
Officer Planck. Thomas. A friend of mine. We’re working together. We’re
trying to find out who was in your daughter’s house last night.”
“Sir,” Thomas said, acknowledging
him.
“Wait, what? Somebody
was in her house?”
“She didn’t kill
herself. She was murdered.”
“I knew it.”
“I didn’t tell you this
earlier—”
“Why?” he interrupted.
“Why wouldn’t you tell me something like that?”
“I didn’t—I didn’t want
you to...you know, I thought it might be too much. I was going to say
something.”
“When?”
“Well, I mean, now. I
wanted to give you time to grieve.”
“Jesus, I’ll do that
later. What happened? Did you tell the police?” He looked at Thomas. “He
told you, right? Did you say something to the detectives?”
Thomas said, “It’s
difficult—”
“What’s difficult about
it?”
“Mr. Pendragon is
concerned for his—for his safety.”
“His
safety
?”
I said, “The short
version is—I went into her house after I heard the gunshot, after I saw her fly
out the window. I wanted to catch whoever did it.”
“So who did it?”
“I don’t know. He or
she or whoever it was, they knocked me out.” I looked over at Thomas, decided
to leave out the part about finding my things. Finding her diary. It was too
much to explain. It wasn’t a lie, really. More like a retention of
information. “When I woke up, I panicked. With all the stuff they can do with
DNA testing these days, I didn’t want anyone to think it was me.”
Thomas nodded. He
understood why I didn’t say anything.
“But if you didn’t do
it, why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Because they’ll screw
it up. They’ve already told you they think she committed suicide. Thomas—I
mean, Officer Planck has offered to help me. We’re doing this sort of off the
record.”
“
Off the record?
You think you can do better than
trained detectives?
”
“In this case, yeah.
Look—aside from you, your family, I knew her better than anyone else. I can do
this. I
want
to do this. For you. For her.”
“Steve, I don’t—”
“Please, trust me on
this.”
“I don’t think it’s
such a good idea.”
What I said next caused
a visual adjustment in his demeanor. The proverbial light bulb. “I can give
you what they can’t. If we tell the detectives and they find him, he’ll go to
prison and get three square meals a day and be out in ten years on good
behavior. Your daughter’s murderer, he’ll go free, and he may do it again to
somebody else’s little girl. Do you want him to take a vacation, or do you
want
revenge?
”
His shoulders dropped,
he crossed his arms, and he gave that same protruding bottom lip and half-frown
that’s usually accompanied by, “Huh. Well how ‘bout that.”
You know you’ve done
the same thing before. Like when you discover something obvious—for example,
the fact that pterodactyl is spelled with a silent P. See? Again, reality
modified. What you thought was so, wasn’t.
Thomas said, “Whoa,
wait a second. I never agreed to anything like that.”
“Not now. Let him
think.”
“No way, Pendragon. I
agreed to help, but not to anything resembling revenge, if that’s what you have
in mind.”
Clarence watched us
like we were a sideshow act.
I said, “We have an
agreement. If you don’t want to uphold your end of the deal, let me tell you
one thing: I can be a pretty fucking good remora.”
“A what?”
The strength of my
point, my perfectly timed analogy, was lost on him.
Disappointed and
frustrated, I said, “A remora. Those parasitic fish that latch on to sharks.”
“Then just say
‘parasite,’ dipshit.”
Clarence stepped
forward, put a hand on each of our shoulders. “Say I agree to this, say I
don’t mention a word to the detectives—what happens to the three of us?”
I said, “You,
Thomas—you’re both in the clear. It’s all on me.”
“You don’t have to do
that.”
“Yeah, man, don’t throw
your life away. We’ll figure something out. Something that’ll save both our
asses,” Thomas said.
“Uh-uh. I don’t care.
She’s dead and I don’t care
what
happens to me anymore.”
To Clarence, I said,
“All I need is
your
permission.”
To Thomas, I said, “All
I need is
your
help.”
They both paused, and
then nodded in unison. Permission granted. Help offered, begrudgingly.
“Good. Now, the man
that came to see you, Clarence—he was in her backyard this morning.”
It was Thomas’s turn to
have wide eyes. “What man? You didn’t tell me—”
“I know, and I’m sorry,
but I didn’t want to distract you until we talked to him. Tell Thomas what you
told me.”
Clarence shook his
head, shrugged. “What’s there to tell? A friend of Jan’s came by about a half
hour before you got here. About six feet tall, brown hair. White shirt and
brown slacks. I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“That same guy was in
her yard this morning. I saw him snooping around from my upstairs window, so I
yelled down to see what he was doing. He said he was there to pay his
respects.”
Thomas said, “So?”
“He said he was her
friend,” Clarence repeated.
“
So?!
He
ran
away
from me when I went down to talk to him. Ran away like he’d done
something wrong, and then he shows up here.”
Thomas said, “Are you
sure he wasn’t just—”
“Wasn’t just what?”
“I don’t know, maybe
you scared him.”
“Seriously? What—why?”
“What’re you so worked
up about?”
“Yeah,” Clarence said,
“he seemed like a nice guy. Stopped by to make sure I was okay after he’d
heard what happened.”
“Listen to me—
the
guy knew my name
. He knew my name, Thomas. How would he know my name?”
“Maybe she told him.
Maybe she said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this crazy neighbor named Steve. You gotta meet
this guy sometime.’”
I paused. My heartbeat
slowed. I had to admit to the possibility. “Yeah, maybe, but I don’t think
so. It still doesn’t change the fact that he ran out of Kerry’s backyard like
he was afraid of something.”
Clarence said, “Who’s
Kerry?”
“Jan. I mean Jan.”
“But you said Kerry.”
“That’s how I knew
her.”
“That’s how you knew
her? I don’t understand. Did she say that was her name—or…or what?”
His confusion became my
confusion. Hadn’t she told him? Hadn’t she mentioned that she was hiding from
Harry DeShazo and that she’d stolen two million dollars? She couldn’t have.
Otherwise he would’ve recognized her fake identity. Or, I thought, maybe he
was hiding the fact and didn’t want to let on that I knew what he knew in front
of Thomas.
It became clear that he
had no idea what I was talking about.
Clarence sat on his
couch, limp (“gutted,” perhaps—choose your poison), staring out the front
window while Thomas and I argued in the kitchen. After I explained to him what
I’d learned, every bit of his positivity from earlier faded, replaced with one
continuous refrain: “I didn’t know. Oh my God, what did I do?”
We’d left him alone to
accept what had happened and what he’d unintentionally done. And he hadn’t
handled that particular lack of control so well.
By Kerry not telling
him, by wishing to remain a bright ray of sunshine in her father’s eyes, to not
give him any more undue stress, she had inadvertently sealed her eventual
fate. Without her secret to temper the way he freely shared information with
friends and family and former coworkers, he’d left a trail of crumbs that more
closely resembled entire loaves of bread.
How she’d managed to
stay hidden from DeShazo for six whole months was anybody’s guess.
I could only assume
that he’d tried to find her on his own for a while before giving in and
enlisting the help of someone else.
Someone named Edward
Strout—the man in the yard, the man that had visited Clarence earlier.
Clarence told us that
Strout hadn’t stayed long. He’d stopped by, introduced himself as a friend of
Jan’s (evidently he knew enough to call her Jan and not Kerry; if I could take
that moment back, if I could’ve spared poor Clarence from the knowledge that
he’d been at fault, I would’ve) and that he’d come to offer his condolences.
“Terrible shame,”
Strout had said. “Such a wonderful, wonderful girl. I was drawn to her. I
was a moth, she was a flame.”
To me, they sounded
like the words of a guilty man.
Eh, not really, because
I very well could’ve used the same, tired moth-to-a-flame analogy as Strout,
and I certainly wasn’t guilty, but I wanted so badly to assume that they held
enough weight to ensure he was the culprit.
If he had become
familiar enough with Kerry to fall under her spell (cliché alert, but yes, this
is exactly what happened and it’s hard to describe it any other way), why
hadn’t she mentioned him? Perhaps he didn’t scare her at all. Perhaps she had
actually considered him a friend.
And then he had
murdered her.
Was it a leap to form
that theory at the time? Undoubtedly, but I was partly correct.
Ye olde Pendragon
intuition. Yet another benefit of superior genes.
As we stood in the
kitchen’s center, to the left of the refrigerator and to the right of the
pantry, I can only describe Thomas’s state as one of
vibration
. Anger shook
his body.
He said, “First, you
lie to me about everything you’d found in her house. Why didn’t you tell me
about the diary? I mean,
good God
, Steve. Second, you hid the fact
that this DeShazo guy might be the one, and instead of looking for him, we’re
here, ruining her dad’s life. And third—
third
, you’re hiding two
million dollars of stolen money in your house? What the hell, man? Are you
trying to send me to prison? You know what they do to cops in prison?”
“Keep your voice down.
And it’s probably not as bad as you think.”
“You’re one fist away
from a broken nose, chief. One fist, got me?”
“Okay, okay, just ease
up. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the diary, but how was I supposed to
know I’d find a letter written to me in there, huh? All I wanted—honest to
God—all I wanted was one last little moment with Kerry to myself.”
“By reading a
private
diary? You get how wrong that is, right? Tell me you do, because if I’m gonna
help you, I’ve got to know that you at least have some sense of…some sense of
social awareness. We don’t have room for your pity party to get in the way.”
“My pity party gave us
the only lead we’ve got, didn’t it?”
He had no response. He
realized I was right. Thomas stomped over to the kitchen sink, leaned on it
with his hands, his back to me, staring out the window. He slapped the faucet
handle up and washed his face, then tore a paper towel loose and scrubbed dry.
“Unreal, bro. Just unreal.”
“What’s unreal?”
“You. This situation.
Enabling you—whatever the hell it is I’m doing. I should walk out that door
right now.”
I hesitated. I didn’t
want to push too far. I picked up a saltshaker and tossed it back and forth,
gently reminding him, “Remora.”
“Remora. Right.” He
wadded up the paper towel and slung it into the sink. “So what’s next,
parasite? You got anything else you’re hiding from me? Rule number one: you
hide anything—and I mean anything else from me—and I walk, understood? I want
to hear when you took a dump—”
“That’s not really
necessary, is it?”
“I want to hear what
you had for breakfast—”
“Oatmeal.”
“—and I want to hear
about any calls coming in and out of your house, any moves you make, any
clues
you come across, Sherlock, because I can’t keep an eye on you
twenty-four-seven. Full disclosure. That’s the only way.”
“Is there a rule number
two?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘rule number
one.’ Is there a rule number two?”
“Shut up. Just shut
up. I can’t even—I’m taking you home.”
“But you said—”
“I’m taking you home.
We’ll regroup tonight when my shift’s done.”
“Tonight? Why?”
“Because if I have to
look at you for five more minutes, my head’s going to explode.”
“Yeah, but it takes,
like, twelve minutes to get back to my house.”
“Jesus. I give up.
Get in the car. Just go get in the car.
Now
.”
***
Before we left, I did
something so completely out of character that even I was taken aback. I walked
up to Clarence, motioned for him to stand from the couch, and I
initiated
a hug. This doesn’t happen. Ever. Why? It’s complicated. It’s almost
become a thing with me. As much as I don’t enjoy being touched by strangers, I
abhor the idea of reaching out to someone and drawing them in. Except Kerry.
I would’ve given my life to embrace her just once.
I think—and I could be
wrong—that this comes from attempting to hug Shayna and being met with
rejection and disgust. When such an occurrence happens often enough, it tends
to create a reactionary response deep within your brain. Hug attempt,
rejection. Hug attempt, rejection. If I attempt to hug anyone, I might be
rejected. And since I’d read Kerry’s diary and learned that she would’ve
returned the affection, it made it more unbearable to realize the opportunity
was gone, forever.
Clarence said, “Thank
you. Be careful, Steve.”
“I will, don’t worry. We’ll
be as efficient as the post office.”
“Huh?”
“You know, the post
office. It blows my mind how I can drop a letter to Brian Williams in a blue
metal box and a day later—”
Thomas grabbed my shirt
and yanked me toward the door. “Let’s go. I don’t have two hours to waste on
you explaining how awesome the post office is. We’ll keep you posted, Mr.
Oliver—oh, and if that guy Strout shows up here or calls you or you find
something that might help us, call as soon as you can. I left my number on
your whiteboard. If Schott and Berger come by, you never saw us.”
Clarence pantomimed
locking his lips and tossing the key over his shoulder.
He waved goodbye.
Thomas and I rode back
to my house in silence.
It took twelve minutes.
His head didn’t
explode.
Not that it would’ve
literally
exploded, mind you, but from the look on his face—flat-lined lips, jaw muscles
clenching and unclenching as he ground his teeth—I say he wasn’t too far
removed from it happening
figuratively
.
Which reminds me: no
matter what anyone says, they didn’t
literally
shit a brick. Didn’t
happen. The day it does, I’ll look for you on national television. I can see
it now, Brian Williams on The Nightly News: “Coming up next, a man literally
bleeeeeps
a brick. You gotta see this to believe it, folks. Stay tuned.” Or maybe Wolf
Blitzer will scoop the story. Do me a favor and sell it to the highest bidder,
because you’ll need to pay some hospital bills.
As we pulled into my
driveway, Thomas didn’t make eye contact. He slammed the cruiser into park and
sat with the engine idling, waiting silently.
I said, “I don’t
usually apologize, not when I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong, but I just
want you to know—”
“Not another word,
Pendragon. Get out of the car and walk away. I’ll be back around eight to
talk about where we go from here.”
“But what about
Strout? What if he runs? We need to find him now, right?”
“Go look for yourself.
Maybe you’ll solve the mystery while I’m doing my actual freakin’ job.”
“I need your—”
“I can’t help you right
now! I can’t stand to look at you for another second. And besides, if anyone
catches us out together, particularly Schott and Berger, it’ll look even more
suspicious.”
“What about the
ride-along?”
“I didn’t think that
one through. We need to be more discreet.”
“If you say so.”
“Just get out, bro.
I’m serious.”
“Out, out, damned
Steve? Is that it?”
He turned his head away
and pointed at my door.
“Fine. See you at
eight.”
I climbed out of his
cruiser and trudged toward my porch as he whipped out of the driveway and sped
off.
Alone. Again. Cast
off like that annoying piece of lint in your belly button.
I’m sorry for the
tangent here, but I need to ask you something: is your belly button lint always
blue? I could wear a white shirt with pink polka dots for a month, and
somehow,
somehow
, my belly button lint would still be blue. How, how,
how
does that happen? Does it have anything to do with the chemical makeup of my
skin down in the depths of that little cavern? It boggles my mind. Yet
another instance of my bane, the
not knowing
. Get used to it. I have
plenty more where that came from.
With Kerry dead, Thomas
mad, Clarence mourning, DeShazo a continent away, and Strout in hiding or on
his way to Mexico, I had no direction to go but sideways and not the slightest
inkling as to what I should do next.
That’s not entirely
true—I searched for “Edward Strout” online and, as expected, found nothing.
After that, as my
mother likes to say, I fiddle-farted around the house for a couple of hours. I
cleaned up, I fed Sparkle’s insatiable appetite again, and I tried to fill the
hole inside me by eating a guilty-pleasure lunch. Three bites of the most
glorious concoction known to man, peanut butter and jelly, was all I could
handle. I tossed the uneaten remnants into the trash.
In short, I was bored.
And then incredibly, soul-crushingly lonely as I moved out to the front porch
and saw Kerry’s empty, hollow home.
Okay, you got me. I
don’t mean
literally
hollow. Her belongings, her furniture, and her fish
remained inside. It’s a figure of speech. More of a reflection on my
emotional state than a clarification of fact.
I checked my watch.
Mailman Jeffrey wouldn’t be around to listen to my polite conversation for
another hour. I thought about visiting Darlene or Michelle, but I neither
wanted nor desired alcohol or clean laundry. Great company, both of them,
although not quite worth the expenditure of the limited energy I had. Darlene
doesn’t listen that well when she’s busy, and Michelle claims she has actual,
physical problems with her hearing, so it takes some effort to keep their
attention or talk loud enough to be heard over the din of twenty washing
machines.
Another time check.
Three minutes gone.
I imagined Thomas
returning that night only to find my dusty, grinning, cobweb-covered skeleton
sitting there, having reached that stage of decomposition hours before. And
oddly enough, I pictured Sparkle sitting beside it, licking his lips.
Which reminds me—Shayna
pushed Sparkle out the door with me. She hated him. I remember her saying,
“You love that cat so much, but don’t think for one second that he wouldn’t
tear out your throat if he was hungry enough.” I didn’t believe it. Still
don’t. But the image of him licking his chops beside my skeleton was enough to
give me the heebie jeebies.
Lost in thought, I
nearly tipped my chair over when my cell rang in my pocket.
I didn’t recognize the
number. Typically I don’t answer when this happens, but I was so starved for
some kind of forward-moving action, I couldn’t resist. “Steve Pendragon here.”
“Hey, Pendragon, sorry
for such a quick exit earlier.”
