House of Smoke (16 page)

“Where the hell are you going?”

“I’m sleeping in the girls’ room tonight.” She started walking around the bed, towards the door.

“The fuck you are,” he told her, jumping out of his side. He was between her and the door, blocking her escape.

She stood in the middle of the room, arms folded across her chest, glaring at him.

“Eric, get out of my way.”

“Get back in bed, Kate.”

“Get out of my way, goddamn you.”

“Not till we make love.”

“We’re not making love tonight.”

“Fine, then we’ll just have a quick fuck.”

“No. Nothing.”

“So now I’m not even good enough to fuck, is that it?”

“I don’t want to tonight, that’s all.” Her voice started rising in concert with her anger. “I’m not some dog that has to lie down for you any time you order me to, okay?” She was glad the girls hadn’t come home with her, she didn’t want them hearing this, not that they hadn’t, many times.

“You’re a cunt, you know that, Kate? A world-class, A-number-one cunt.”

“Fine. I’m a cunt. Now get out of my way.”

He stood with his back against the door, naked, hands on hips like a gunslinger, glaring at her, daring her.

She could feel tears coming. Don’t, she commanded herself, don’t let him do this to you.

“Why do you have to do this, Eric?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.

“Because you’re my wife, and I’m sick and tired of you not being a wife. I AM SICK AND FUCKING TIRED OF IT, ALL RIGHT?!” he screamed.

She felt dizzy, lightheaded. She put a hand on the dresser to keep from falling.

“Can’t you appreciate what I’ve been through?” she asked, trying to reason with him. “My life has been hell for a month, Eric, you more than anyone should be understanding about that.”

“My life hasn’t been hell?” he countered. “You think this has been some fucking bed of roses for me?”

“It’s been rough on both of us, I know that, but I’m the one that had to go through it all. If it happened to you, Eric, I wouldn’t be taking this attitude. I’d be trying to support you, not tear you down, for godsakes.”

The tears were coming, dribbling out the corners of her eyes. She scrunched her lids up to try and stop them before he could see. Thank God it was dark.

“The problem with that, dear wife,” he sneered, “is that it would not have happened to me. That’s the goddamn problem in a nutshell, Kate”
—
now it was pouring out of him, an avalanche of anger and emotion, “you fucked up because you’re not good enough, that’s the fucking problem, that’s why three people are dead, the fact is that you’re a shitty cop and shouldn’t ever have been let on the goddamn force in the first place, that is the fucking problem!”

“You bastard. You fucking bastard!” she screamed.

“You talked that guy into doing it, you cunt, didn’t you?” he screamed back. “You’re not just a shitty cop,” he continued, his voice at fever pitch, “another shitty woman who got on the force because of the bullshit quota
—
it’s you, lady, your own specific personality, your own poison. That’s what pushed that poor bastard over the edge!”

“Eat shit and die!” she came back at him.

“I understand,” he snapped. “I understand like no one understands. Because you do the same fucking thing to me.”

Her eyes dried up immediately. She felt a cold chill passing through her body like a cleansing shower.

“I’m done listening to you,” she told him. “I’m leaving. Now get out of my way.”

“Over my dead body.”

“Have it your way.”

“That’s my intention,” he told her, and in one step he moved to his bureau, with a second he took his service automatic out of the underwear drawer where he kept it, and with a third he drew on her.

Pee dribbled down her leg. It felt cold. She didn’t try to stop the flow.

“Put it down,” she said.

“The wrong woman was killed back there!” he ranted. “That’s the problem. He killed the wrong woman. But I can fix that now.”

The gun was in his hand, dangling, his finger light on the trigger.

She was going to die; he was going to kill her, gun her down in her own house, and she realized with that terrible clarity people have when they’re facing their own mortality that she was that woman back there in that house, that her fate was that woman’s fate.

“My children,” she chanted to herself, as if saying a final act of contrition, “my girls.” Because she was never going to see them again; of all the worst things death would bring, it would be that she would not see her children again.

And then he was on her, two steps forward and his hand was going up and coming down, the side of his pistol smashing against the side of her head, she actually saw stars, it was like her head was exploding, and then he was beating her, beating her to a bloody pulp, smashing his fists against her face, her body, his arms working like jackhammers, beating her within an inch of her life.

She was curled up on the floor in the fetal position, unable to move. She felt the pistol barrel pressed against her temple.

“The next time,” he threatened her, “the next time, I will pull the damn trigger. Consider yourself lucky this time.”

She knew that was true. It was a matter of time.

She lay on the floor, semiconscious, listening as he got dressed, went out, drove off in his car.

Somehow she managed to drag herself onto her bed, to peel off her nightgown, stained with blood, her blood, to stagger into the bathroom; seeing herself so wasted and so beaten was as frightening as when he had been beating on her, she wanted to cry now, to wash this horror away, but she couldn’t, she was far beyond tears, bone dry, somehow she managed to wash off the worst of it and pull on some sweats and get her feet into flops and stagger out of the house with nothing but her purse and her gun. Somehow she managed to get down the sidewalk to her car, start it up, and drive away. To the Oakland Women’s Shelter, the only place she knew she would be safe.

“Jesus!” one of the women in the group exclaimed, shaking her head.

“That’s bad,” mutters another. They’ve all heard these stories, but they never, thankfully, get inured to them. “That’s brutal.”

While she was telling this story Kate had maintained her composure; now her hands are shaking, her entire body shivers involuntarily.

“Can I have one of your cigarettes?” she asks the woman sitting next to her. She doesn’t know why she wants a smoke, since her lips are dry, she has cotton mouth to the max, but she needs a crutch, an immediate fix.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Maxine says.

“I don’t, but I want one now.”

The woman sitting next to Kate holds Kate’s hand steady while she lights the cigarette and takes a deep drag. Another woman puts a fresh cup of coffee into Kate’s free hand.

“Thanks,” she mutters. She feels completely wiped out.

“Did you go back?” a woman ventures to ask. They have to ask these questions, even if they seem insensitive, it’s the way the group works.

“No. I never went back,” she tells them.

“Good,” several say, cheering, encouraging her. “Way to go.”

“Piece of
shit
!” This expletive comes from Conchita, who is sitting two seats away, vaporizing her own Marlboro Light 100. First-generation Mexican-American, thirtyish, strong and proud. On the edge of her chair as she listens, she is always the most empathetic woman in the room. Kate feels closer to her than to anyone else in the group, and has from her first time here, there’s a similarity in backgrounds and attitudes—neither suffers anything easily. Conchita is blind in one eye, the pupil fixed, opaque. A gift from a customer when she was, as she insists on bluntly putting it, peddling her unliberated ass on Haley St. several years ago.

“I’ve never laid this out to anyone before,” Kate tells her group. “Not even the shrinks. Not this way.”

“You did great, wonderful,” Maxine assures her. She comes over and gives Kate a hug. Several of the other women do also. She can feel the evil shit pouring out of her body in a rush.

“All those years I’d been feeling this incredible guilt,” Kate tells them. “I was convinced that whatever punishment Eric dished out to me, I deserved it. That’s how I felt.”

“You were
not
guilty,” Conchita says, getting in Kate’s face. “You
thought
you were guilty,” she amplifies. “
Thought
, not were. You were not guilty of any fucking thing!”

The women laugh at the double entendre, much-needed relief.

“Of anything, period,” Conchita continues, laughing herself. “Fucking or not fucking.”

“I know that now,” Kate says. “I know that. Hey,” she adds, “don’t forget—I won.”

“What did you win?” Maxine asks.

“I got out,” Kate answers. “And I never did let him have sex with me, he couldn’t make me screw him.”

“Screw him!” Conchita crows.

“All of them!” cries another woman.

“Not all of them,” Kate says, disagreeing. “Just Eric.”

“God Almighty, girl, aren’t you down on all men, after living in hell like that?” yet another member of the group throws out.

Kate shakes her head emphatically.

“No,” she answers. “I liked men before Eric, I liked men during Eric, and I like men now, after Eric. He was a prick, but that doesn’t mean they all are.” She smiles, almost sheepishly. “I like men, what can I tell you?”

“You’ve got guts, lady,” Maxine tells her, admiringly. “It’s a great thing, too, after you’ve been through what you have.”

“I’m not going to curl up and die because one asshole wants me to,” Kate answers.

“That took incredible courage,” Mildred Willard tells Kate.

“Thank you, but I didn’t have much choice. It was either that or let him kill me.”

“Telling your story, that’s what I meant,” Mildred clarifies. “You told it so cleanly, so directly.”

The two of them are standing in the near-empty parking lot, next to Mildred’s Range Rover. The others have left, they’re the last stragglers.

Kate admires Mildred. Mildred is a substantial woman in her own right. Just coming here, week after week, a woman of her age and stature. Most women in her position would say the hell with it, they wouldn’t have the guts to come out of the closet.

“Thanks. And thanks for the recommendation,” she adds.

“Laura Sparks?”

Kate nods.

“She’s my client, which, by the way, is privileged, but since you sent her to me, I guess I can tell you that much.”

“I wouldn’t say a word to anyone, believe me,” Mildred swears.

“She doesn’t know about … how we met, how we know each other?”

“Oh no,” Mildred vows. “No one knows about this except the people in our group. And I would never want that information divulged.”

“Don’t worry,” Kate assures her. “Me, either.”

“She’s a nice girl,” Mildred comments. “I hope you can help her.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“With her life,” Mildred clarifies. “She comes from a powerful female lineage. She needs to find her own space.”

“That’s not what people hire me to do,” Kate states. “Out of my range.”

“You can help,” Mildred rejoins, touching Kate’s hand. “You have your own brand of power. Let some of it rub off on Laura.”

Kate shakes her head. “No,” she repeats adamantly. “No way, that’s just …The answer is no, I’m sorry, Mildred. I’m not a social worker and I’m not a psychologist. They get involved in people’s lives in ways I don’t ever want to. I’ll do as good a job for her as I do for all my clients, but I’m not a nursemaid.” She’s talking more rapidly than usual, there’s a nervousness in her voice, the cause of which she doesn’t quite understand. “I do not want that kind of personal involvement with a client,” she insists. “With anyone,” she adds in a sudden but not completely unexpected flash of clarity.

“That’s not me.”

T
HE THIRD MAN ON
the boat—Rusty’s helper—is named Wes Gillroy. Laura had been introduced to him when she’d first come on board. After that they had barely exchanged a dozen words; anything that had to be communicated to him from Morgan or her had gone through Rusty or Frank, like Wes was someone who didn’t exist for the women as a person in his own right.

That’s all Laura remembers about him, his name. And what he looks like, in a vague, general way. She wasn’t paying him any attention, she had tunnel vision for Frank.

Kate hands her visitor’s slip to the duty officer at the county jail. He looks at her. She’s wearing a professional suit, low heels, not much makeup.

“Are you a relative, or the attorney?”

She hands him her identification. “I’m a private investigator assigned to this case.”

“Does the prisoner know you? Know you’re coming?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t have to see you if he doesn’t want to.” He hands her back her ID.

“That’s up to him.”

“Hang on a minute.” He punches some data into the computer on his desk.

Jesus, these guys, she thinks. If you’re a civilian who they don’t know they’ll give you the runaround from here until Tuesday. She recalls a line of dialogue from
The French Connection
—“Never trust nobody.”

The duty officer looks from his screen to her. “No can do,” he tells her.

“Why not?”

“He’s not in custody here.”

What the hell? “Where is he?”

“He made bail. He’s gone.”

Well, fuck. She’s just starting out on this case and already she’s on the wrong foot.

She goes back to her office, thinking about her next move. She’ll have to find out who wrote Gillroy’s bond, where he lives, all that drudge stuff she was hoping to avoid.

The phone rings.

“Hello,” she answers curtly. She hates getting phone calls when she’s thinking unpleasant thoughts.

“Is this Blanchard Investigations?” the voice on the other end of the line asks; a man’s voice, one she knows. “The famous Blanchard Investigations?” he adds.