Night Work (12 page)

“To Marlene?”

“Is it possible?”

“I don’t see how. Laurel was killed in her house in Westchester, over two years ago. Her parents came home from a vacation and found her in her bedroom. She was …” I didn’t even want to finish the sentence.

“Somebody broke in,” Shea said.

“Yes. Through the back door. But people break into houses all the time. You and I both know that. That’s the only thing in common here.”

“Besides you.”

“Besides me. If you really stretch it.”

“You or somebody you know,” he said. “Maybe somebody from your life, I mean. Not Marlene’s.”

“Two years apart,” I said. “A fiancée and now a woman I just met.”

“You’re probably right. It’s a stretch. I’m just trying to cover all the bases.”

“I hope you’ll let me know if you find out anything,” I said. I stood up and straightened my back. It felt like I had been sitting in that chair all day.

“Of course I will. In the meantime, let me know if anything else comes to you.”

“I’ll keep thinking about it,” I said.

Like I’d be able to do anything else.

By the time I got back to work, all of my kids had come and gone, keeping their regular appointments as required by the terms of their probation. Charlie had covered all of them, it turned out. While I was down at the station, writing down every single little detail I could think of from Saturday night, Charlie was sitting here with my clients, listening to them talk about what they’d been doing for the last week. It was a pretty mundane part of the job—a good week was a boring week, after all. No drugs bought or sold. No fellow students assaulted. No items taken from their rightful owners. Still, boring or not, this was maybe my favorite part of the week, hearing these people talk about their lives, the struggles they went through every day, the battles they fought, big or small. It felt good to be a part of them. Other people’s lives, not my own.

Charlie had already left, leaving only some fairly cryptic notes for me. “Jamaal said it’s all been tight”—that was maybe the best of them. Like “tight” was something I could follow up on the next time I saw him.

I sat in my chair while the day faded away. I took
out a pad and a pen, sat there for a good twenty minutes waiting for something to hit me.

Somebody from my life, he had said. Detective Shea’s idea, that maybe I was the common link between Laurel and Marlene. That it wasn’t all a horrible coincidence.

Insanity, Joe. Sheer insanity. Isn’t it?

Before I could answer my own question, Larry poked his head around my door.

“You came back,” he said.

“Yeah, I wanted to make sure everything was okay here. All my appointments from today.”

“I told you, we had it covered. You should go home now.”

“Yeah, maybe I will.”

“How’d everything go at the police station?”

“Good.” That’s all I felt like saying at the moment.

“Anything you want to talk about?”

I looked at him. Every conversation we had, he’d always be standing out in the hallway, leaning in at me but never actually stepping foot in my office.

“We should make some time tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”

“Good enough. I’ll see you then. Have a good night.”

That sounded like my cue, so I packed up my bag and got the hell out of there. It was almost dark when I stepped outside, the whole day having slipped right away from me. Not much accomplished, nobody’s
life made any better at all. On the way home, my cell phone rang. It was Howie.

“How’d it go?” he said. “What’s Billy the Kid up to?”

“Billy the who?”

“Detective Shea. That’s his nickname, Billy the Kid. Did you see the little gun in his ear?”

“The six-shooter, yeah.”

“So come on over,” he said. “You can tell me about it in person.”

“You guys don’t want me over there tonight.”

“Elaine says you need to come over.”

“No, Howie. Really …”

“She made her lasagna for you.”

“What time should I be there?”

“That’s more like it. We’ll see you at seven thirty?”

“I’ll be there.”

I drove to the gym and parked in my usual spot by the back stairs. When I went inside, Maurice was finishing up his workout. It didn’t look like he’d done any sparring, but then I didn’t see Rolando around. Maybe life was changing for him already, before his baby was even born.

Maurice grabbed me by the head, the way only a man who is twice as strong as you can do. He looked at my eyebrow, at the scar he was personally responsible for. “You healed up well,” he said. I was no longer surprised by how soft his voice was, how thoughtful he seemed in every moment outside of the ring. Rolando
was the same way, and just about every other good boxer I had ever seen step into this gym. As much as boxers thrive on violence, how can it be that they turn into philosophers when they take off the gloves?

“But why are your hands taped up?” Maurice said.

Anderson saved me before I had to explain it again. “Leave the man alone,” he said. “He’s having a bad enough day already.”

“I’m just looking after my friend here,” Maurice said. “I’m not supposed to do that?”

“How long did you jump rope, anyway? Two minutes?”

I could tell where this was going, so I tried to excuse myself. Anderson stopped me before I could hit the stairs.

“Joe, that woman came back,” he said.

“What?”

“The woman who was here last night, the one we sent to the shelter.”

“She came back
here?
What did she want?”

“She was looking for you,” he said. “I tried to talk to her, but I didn’t get much out of her. I think I got her general feeling, though …”

“Which was what?”

“That the whole thing last night was a big mistake. That she was heading back home and wanted to, hell, I don’t know. Tell you to leave well enough alone next time.”

Not good at all, obviously. Not if she was heading back into a war zone. But why stop here to tell
me off? Unless she really wanted me to talk her out of it.

“We should call that shelter,” Maurice said. “Make them come and get her again.”

“They can’t take her against her will,” I said. “If she wants to go home, she can.”

“I’m telling you, we should all go pay her husband a visit,” Anderson said. “We’ll straighten him out real quick.”

“I’ll go see her,” I said. “If I need you, I’ll let you know. I promise.”

That didn’t seem to satisfy either of them, but I knew it was the only way to go. It might make me late for dinner, but this was something I could do, at least. Instead of hanging around the gym, thinking about dead women … I could go help somebody who was still alive.

I
passed the station on my way down to the waterfront. I was tempted to stop for a moment, ask Detective Shea if there’d been any developments yet, but hell, it had only been a matter of hours. Things just don’t move that fast.

I drove all the way down to the Rondout Creek. The shops and restaurants were all lit up, lots of cars parked on the street, a few boats in the slips. People walking around, enjoying the warm night. I looped around past Block Park to the neighborhood of small, dark houses down the creek and stopped in front of the familiar duplex. The Schuler family on one side,
my client Wayne among them, the kid I still hadn’t hooked up with, come to think of it. On the other side Sandra and her husband, and for the life of me I couldn’t even remember her last name at that point, if I had ever known it.

I got out of the car and went to her door. I knocked, waited a minute, knocked harder. The windows were dark. On the scrubby little lawn there was the same lonely pinwheel decoration, only now it was bent over halfway to the ground.

I went next door and knocked at the Schulers’, figuring I could talk to Wayne’s mother, find out if she knew anything, had heard anything through the thin wall. There was nobody home there, either. Or if they were, they were doing a great job of hiding it.

I stood there in front of the place, looking at the bent pinwheel. For some reason it made me feel a little sick to my stomach, like it summarized the lives of both families who lived here. My Laurel, I said to myself, what have I done here? Did I stick my nose in a bad situation and make it even worse? Tell me what to do.

And why do I feel like I just lost you tonight? Marlene’s the one who was killed, her body not even in the ground yet, and all I can think about is you. What in goddamned hell is wrong with me? I can’t even grieve the right way.

I heard music up the street, then a dog barking. A moist wind came in off the creek, smelling like something primeval. I didn’t want to be there anymore.
It was time to go see two of the last people on earth who actually looked forward to me knocking on their door.

H
owie and Elaine lived just south of the city, on the far side of the creek. They were still in a condo while they waited to buy a house, but it was the greatest condo in all of Ulster County exactly once a year, when you could sit on the back deck overlooking the creek and watch the July Fourth fireworks.

Elaine answered the door. She had been my first real girlfriend, if you went all the way back to eighth grade. Come to think of it, she had my virginity tucked away in a sock drawer somewhere. But that was one summer among kids, and in the end she hooked up with Howie and never looked back. We’d all stuck together ever since—Elaine was the one with the great basement and the parents who didn’t give a crap what we did down there as long as we didn’t kill anybody or burn down the house. We had a whole gang that used to hang out in that basement, smoking pot and doing other things that it was now my official job to discourage and Howie’s job to actually arrest you for.

“You look horrible,” she said.

“Thanks. It’s good to see you, too.”

“I’m serious. Look at your eyes.”

“Elaine, a person can’t look at his own eyes.”

“And your hands! Why are they all taped up?”

“Where’s Howie?”

“He’ll be out in a minute. Come on in.”

She pulled me through the doorway and hugged me. Then she looked at me for a long moment, apparently trying to think of something else to say. I saved her by excusing myself and going to the bathroom. When I looked in the mirror I saw what she had been talking about. My eyes were so red, you’d guess I was up all night playing poker with six chain-smokers.

I ran some cold water and splashed it on my face. When I came back out, Howie was waiting for me.

“JT,” he said. “Tell me everything. Start with what the hell happened to your hands.”

“Let the man sit down,” Elaine said. “Pour him a drink or something.”

He did. A few minutes later, we were all sitting at the table, having Elaine’s world-famous lasagna and starting in on a bottle of red wine. Only then did Howie press me for the details again.

“So Billy the Kid,” he said. “He’s some piece of work, huh? You think the chief would let me get an earring like that?”

“Not happening,” Elaine said.

“On me, I think it would work.”

“Not. Happening.”

“Tell me,” he said, turning to me. “Did he work you over?”

“No, not really,” I said. “He seemed to want my help more than anything else. He even made me write down everything I could think of. I mean, like every single little detail about Saturday night. He said it was some kind of self-hypnosis.”

Howie dropped his fork. “He made you do what? Self-hypnosis?”

“It prompts your mind,” I said. “Makes you remember more. At least that’s what he said.”

“Did it work?”

“I don’t think so. I mean, I didn’t remember anything useful.”

He looked at Elaine and then back at me. “JT, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of. Self-hypnosis, my God …”

“He mentioned something else.” I wasn’t even sure if I should bring it up, but what the hell. “He was wondering if maybe I might be the connection somehow.”

“The connection between what?”

“Between Laurel and Marlene. That they might be connected. Through me.”

“You’re not serious,” Howie said. “I mean, what is this guy smoking?”

“It was just an idea. That somehow, I don’t know … Somebody from my past … I know it sounds crazy.”

“It
is
crazy. They bring this jackass all the way down from Albany …”

“But then I couldn’t help thinking,” I said. “I mean, think about it. If I have to violate someone …”

“Stop,” he said. “Stop right there. You’re saying that if you have to violate somebody and they go to jail, they’re gonna blame you for it? And then when they finally get out of jail, they’re gonna come after you? But instead of coming after
you,
they’re gonna
go after the women in your life? Assuming you can even call Marlene that based on one freakin’ blind date? Is that the theory?”

I shook my head. “You’re right. It’s insane. But he brought it up, so it’s been in my head all day.”

“That would be worse,” Elaine said.

“What would be?”

“Killing the people around you. That would be worse than just killing you. Much worse. Just think about it.”

We both stared at her.

“Of course, maybe it wasn’t someone you violated,” she said. “Maybe it was someone you
didn’t
violate.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if somebody should have gone to prison but didn’t? Because you kept them out. And then later on they did something horrible to someone else.”

“And then
that
person …” I said.

“You’re gonna drive yourself crazy with this,” Howie said.

“I’m sorry,” Elaine said. “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

I didn’t get much more chance to think about it. The phone rang at that moment. Howie got up to answer it. Elaine topped off my wineglass.

“What do you need?” I heard Howie say into the phone. He looked over at me, a cloud of unhappy confusion passing over his face.

“Do I know where he is? Yeah, he’s right here. We’re having dinner. Why do you—”

He stopped and listened.