Light Before Day (25 page)

I replaced the cut cuffs with my own grip and walked the kid to the front door. I kicked it open and shoved him through, the cleaver raised at my side in case he made any sudden moves.

He turned, a stupid confidence returning to him now that he was an inch outside of the apartment. "I would have told them you tried to fuck me," he informed me.

"You're going to be fucked for the rest of your life, Philip."

I closed the door on him. I watched through the peephole as he flew

down the front steps and out of the building.

C H A P T E R 11

I took a seat across from Elena Castillo at the butcher-block table. She stared expressionlessly at the table as she pulled a pack of cigarettes from her jeans pocket and lit one. There was a small glass ashtray on the kitchen counter. I got it for her.

"She said they had a fight," Elena said. "She said they had a fight the morning he went out.

That's all."

I had expected her to lace into me for letting the kid go, but it seemed as if the events Scott Koffler had spoken of had slugged the breath as well as the anger out of her. "You really gonna meet with that guy?"

I needed to steer her back to safer ground if I was going to gain access to Melissa. "How long have you and Melissa been friends?"

"Since high school," she said. "They called us the Stepford Bitches. It was me, Melissa, and this girl Caitlin. Caitlin went off to school in New York, and when she came back she wasn't Caitlin anymore. Missy moved down here to become a marine's wife and I went to Oxnard so I could find out what divorce is like before I hit forty."

She didn't return my smile. "Melissa used to be my rock," she said. "My husband didn't even tell me he was leaving me. I came home one day and the apartment was totally empty.

Afterwards I came down here. She was going to support me. Emotionally, I mean."

"How long ago did you move down here?"

"Two years," she said.

"Was Corey McCormick still in their lives then?"

She shook her head. "Missy mentioned him. She said he and Danny used to be friends, but then Corey came out of the closet and left the marines. Then she told me—"

"He went to West Hollywood and died of AIDS," I finished for her.

"Obviously, that didn't happen, right?" she asked. "That guy . . ."

"His name is Scott Koffler."

"He said Corey's missing."

"He went missing the day after Danny came to West Hollywood."

"You're trying to find him?" she asked. "Missy said you showed her his picture."

"I'm trying to find out what he did before he left," I said, averting my eyes. "If that leads to him, then so be it."

I got up from the table and asked her if she wanted anything to drink. She answered by staring at me. "Were you his boyfriend or something?"

"Something. Yeah." I didn't know what else I could say to persuade her. "I need to talk her, Elena."

"You need to, huh?"

"I want to," I said.

She rubbed at her eyelids with a thumb and forefinger. "Don't give me some bullshit about the truth setting you free," she said. "She knows the truth and she's not free. She's been in that bedroom ever since I brought her here. The only way the truth can set you free is if you give it to someone else and they do something with it. Something good."

I heard the challenge. It took me several minutes to decide how I should rise to it. "The Marine Corps is conducting its own investigation into the crash, right?"

"Yeah."

"Has Melissa given a statement yet?"

"Not yet."

"The Armed Services' policy on homosexuality makes gay service members susceptible to blackmail."

"You think she should make this political? Danny killed four men. The other wives turned their backs on Melissa at the memorial service on Monday morning. You think she can change any of that by getting up there and saying that Danny was a—"

I cut her off before the word
fag
could come out of her mouth. "She can't change any of it, Elena. She can only change what she says."

Elena went to the living room window. The slanting sunlight turned the gauze curtains opaque and gave her copper-colored hair a bright halo. "She can also change her prescriptions every now and then, I guess," Elena said bitterly. When she turned to face me, I got the sense that she had settled an argument she was having with herself.

"You have to ask her a question for me, too," she said. "You have to ask her why a perfectly healthy, beautiful twenty-seven-year-old would get her tubes tied."

I waited outside the open door to Melissa's bedroom as Elena went inside. In the milky light, I saw cardboard boxes inside, stacked three high against one wall, their bottoms bulging.

Obviously Melissa had no plans to return to the apartment she had shared with her husband. A Vornado fan stood at the foot of the bed, its dull rush accompanying the roar of the white noise machine on the nightstand.

Melissa Brady slept flat on her back beneath a smooth sea of comforter. It was clear that she hadn't moved much during her slumber and didn't plan to start. From the nightstand drawer, Elena pulled out a plastic pill case, the kind with a slot for each day of the week. The slot for that day was almost empty. Elena pulled a red pill from the slot for the next day and the one after.

Elena smoothed Melissa's hair from her forehead. The woman didn't stir. I felt like I was intruding upon a moment between lovers, so I withdrew to the living room. I heard whispers coming from the bedroom. Several minutes later, a shower started running.

Corey had hired Scott Koffler himself. I tried to absorb this fact. Billy Hathill had not been the go-between, as I had suspected. I remembered Jimmy's assertion from the night before: If Corey had needed Billy Hatfill to carry out his revenge, that meant Billy had provided something essential to the plan.

I heard shuffling behind me. Melissa Brady's damp hair hung flat and straight down the back of her head. She wore a baby-blue bathrobe and matching slippers. She reacted to the sight of me just as she had reacted to Corey's photograph that afternoon.

She screwed her eyes shut and spun away from me. Elena blocked her path. When Elena

gripped her right shoulder, Melissa batted her arm away with surprising force. "No!" Elena seized Melissa by both biceps and held her in place. The dam on her anger had burst and I could see it flooding her eyes, filling her throat. "This isn't working, okay?" Elena hissed to her. "It's just not working and I'm tired of it!"

Melissa's entire body quivered. Sobs exploded out of her. Elena pulled the other woman's shaking body to her, but her own stance was rigid; all she was doing was holding Melissa in place.

"Melissa?" I asked.

Her sobs abated.

"How long has it been since you've seen Corey McCormick?"

Melissa muttered something I couldn't make out. "Four years," Elena said.

"Do you know why he left the Marine Corps?"

Melissa turned sharply to face me. Her robe fell open, revealing a pair of men's boxer shorts and a moth-eaten V-neck T-shirt underneath. Her eyes were wild—whatever pills Elena had given her were coursing through her system.

"We were friends, all right?" she yelled at me, her voice thick. "The three of us. Me, Danny, and Corey!

"We used to hang out together all the time. Danny and I were engaged. We used to joke that Corey was like our son, even though he was only two years younger. Still, it was like he was a kid sometimes. And Danny tried to help him out with stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Corey ran away from home when he was sixteen. Danny was a foster kid, but he had managed to make a life for himself. A
good
one! He wanted to show Corey how to do it." Her face wrinkled and her sobs crumpled her mouth.

I gave her a little time to catch her breath. "What happened?" I asked.

"Danny was . . . acting weird, all right? I thought he was just nervous about getting married.

But he was . . . disappearing."

"What do you mean?"

"He'd go off by himself and wouldn't come back for, like, a whole day" she said, her words coming out in a rush, without a breath in between. "Corey said it was drugs. Corey's mother, she was a meth addict or something. She went to prison. He said if it was drugs we had to do something. He said we had to save Danny."

I flashed on the tableau of my bloodied drug dealer lying facedown on the floor of his apartment, saw Corey rifling through my bookshelves in the middle of the night as he searched for my stash.

"I was
scared,"
Melissa wailed. "I didn't know what to do." She managed to still herself. "I asked Corey to follow him."

"What happened?" I asked, working to keep my voice composed as well.

I watched Melissa travel out of her body and out of the room. She lowered her head and gazed between the toes of her baby-blue slippers.

"Corey followed him for two days," she said, suddenly sounding drowsy. "He said that Danny got a motel room in San Diego. He said Danny kept going to playgrounds."

I saw where this headed. It was clear from the blank expression on her face that Elena Castillo did not.

"He said that Danny would go in the bathrooms, like he was ... checking them out, you know?

Then he'd go to another playground and do the same thing. Then he'd sit on a bench and watch the kids. He didn't do anything, but Corey said ..."

Words failed her. Elena brought one hand to her chest as she leaned the back of her head against the wall, her face grim.

"What, Melissa?" I finally asked. 'What did Corey say?"

"He said it looked like Danny was
planning
something."

I met Elena's eyes briefly. I wanted to tell Elena that Melissa had just told her why she had her tubes tied at the age of twenty-seven.

"I thought he was lying," Melissa said in a tiny voice.

"Corey?"

She nodded. "I knew Corey wasn't interested in women—that was why he spent so much time with us. I never thought he was in love with Danny. Not until he started saying that shit. I thought Corey was trying to break us up. I didn't think it was true." Her now-wild eyes met mine.

"I thought Corey was
lying!"

Elena flinched, and I had to work not to. The agony in Melissa's voice told me that she had since learned Corey had told her the truth.

'What did you say to Corey?"

Her eyes drifted shut, forcing tears down her flaming cheeks. "I told him he had to leave."

Then her gaze grew suddenly fierce and defiant. "I told him that if he ever came back to Oceanside, I would file a report with his commanding officer. I told him he could either go AWOL

or have the words
discharged for homosexual acts
stamped on every piece of paper that had his name on it for the rest of his life."

She had channeled a four-year-old rage and filled the living room with it. She had no idea that for me, she had just damned herself, and for a brief instant I wanted to prove this fact to her by throwing her across the room. Then I realized that I was reacting as Corey must have: He had wanted to punish the woman standing in front of me as much as he had wanted to punish her husband. She was the one who had snatched away what was probably the only stable and meaningful life he'd ever known.
"Did
Corey love him, Melissa?" I asked.

The question threw her. It looked as if she had listened to an echo of what she'd just said and hated the sound of it.

"Did you have any proof that Corey was in love with your husband?" I asked.

"No," she said with what I decided was both petulance and shame. After having been threatened with a discharge, Corey could have made a preemptive strike against Daniel Brady and filed a complaint of his own. It sounded like Corey didn't have any hard proof that Daniel Brady had molested children, but if the two men had a sexual history together, Corey could have used that to strike back at the woman who had threatened to take his life away. But he hadn't done that.

Daniel Brady had not been Corey's lover. He had been his mentor and his guide. Corey had done nothing more than obey Melissa's instructions; he had followed Daniel Brady and reported back to Melissa on what he had seen. If the relationship among the three of them had been as strong as Melissa said it was, I couldn't see why Corey would have concocted this story.

The sudden surge of sympathy I felt for Corey made me want to run from the room. I felt compelled to choose between Melissa's pain or Corey's vengeful rage. I tried not to choose at all, tried to keep my breaths steady. I had to get to the end of the story.

"You know Corey wasn't lying," I finally said. "You know that now. Don't you, Melissa?"

Melissa crossed her arms over her stomach, her jaw quivering. "Why did you throw your computer out the window?" "It was a movie. It started playing the minute I opened it. I couldn't get to it to stop. There was a little boy . . ." "How little?" I heard myself ask.

"I don't know," she whispered. "Twelve. Thirteen, maybe." Too young for the boy to have been one of Scott Koffler's young charges. A cold acid roiled my stomach. I tried to absorb the information she was giving me without putting it together too quickly. I didn't want to get distracted.

She continued. "He was drugged . . . the boy. Someone held his face up for the camera by the back of his hair." Melissa went to demonstrate the motion on her own hair, but stopped, screwing her eyes shut, summoning the strength to continue. "There was a white background, a bed-sheet, and it was taped to something, I could tell . . . There were some pillows on the floor."

She gestured weakly in the air in front of her and fell silent again. Elena remained leaning against the wall, her back to us, her head bowed; it was clear that she was listening as intently as I was.

"Then Danny came in," she said. "He was wearing a mask, but I could tell it was him. He didn't . . . have any
pants
on. He was wearing this leather jacket... It was him. I knew it was him.

I could
see ..
." She didn't have to tell me what part of her husband's body she was referring to.