Night Work (18 page)

“You want to get a drink or something? Come on, we’ll go to the Shamrock.”

“You’ll get in hot water with your chief,” I said. “You don’t need that.”

“You don’t think I am already? I’m supposed to be meeting with him right now. He’s probably looking all over the building for me.”

“Why are you pulling second shift these days, anyway?”

“Why do you think? To keep me away from you-know-who.”

“You better go, then. Get back to work.”

“Are you sure you’re gonna be all right?”

“I’m sure.” I opened the car door and got out. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Hey, JT.”

I was just about to close the door. “What?”

“Anything you need. You know that. No matter what.”

“I know, Howie. I appreciate it.”

“Go get some sleep.”

“Good night.”

I closed the door. I stood there on the sidewalk, watching him swing the car around and head back down the hill. He drove fast, like a cop.

I looked up at the building, at the tall dark windows. Then I scanned the street, looking at every parked car, at the one man walking past the YMCA, at the group of kids coming out of the Planet Wings. I wondered if I’d ever be able to go anywhere again without looking over my shoulder.

I went around the side of the building to the back door. It was dark, like on any night, as I stepped out from under the streetlamp and into the little alcove. I had my keys out and was reaching for the old metal door, ready to give it a good yank after turning the key. That’s when the whole world came crashing down on my head.

I saw bright cartoon stars for a second, as something hit me hard above the left eye. Then a pair of strong hands slipped around my throat. I grabbed for
them, my own hands wrapping around a pair of thick wrists. I had no leverage, no way to break his hold on my neck. I tried to dig my fingernails into his flesh, but his grip got even tighter.

“You,” a low voice said. “You.”

I kicked at his knees, tried to run the edge of my shoe down his shins. He swung me around and banged the back of my head against the metal door.

“You. You.”

I tried to yell out. Help. One word. Help. I had no voice now. No breath at all. He was squeezing the air out of me, the life right out of my body. I raked at his wrists again, took a swing at his head. I couldn’t reach him.

“You. It was you.”

I saw his face. It was vaguely familiar to me, a faint bell ringing in the back of my head. A part of me was watching the whole struggle, as if from above, with no panic, no desperation, watching my own body losing its power, my mind losing its consciousness, everything draining away, the lights growing dim.

No. I won’t go down like this.

Pull back, pull back. Push him away, just one inch, so I can breathe. Just one breath and the lights will come back on.

I jerked my head back, felt his grip weakening for one instant. I tried to take a breath, felt his hands tighten again, felt him pulling me close to him, his breath hot in my face now.

“You. God damn it, it was you.”

So close to him now. I have an opening. One chance to take my shot. Anderson’s voice in my head. Right there, Joe. Hit him right there, kid. The old liver shot and he’ll fold up like a cheap umbrella.

Right hand into a fist. Bring the whole body behind it, from the feet up. Turn the shoulder and drive.

I hit him in the gut, felt my fist go into his soft belly, like reaching right inside him. He made an elephant sound and dropped his hands from my throat. I gasped for air and swung again, hooking an overhand left to his chin. All the times I’d hit a heavy bag or the target mitts that Anderson would hold up for me. One two three, Joe, bang bang bang, just like that, then the big one, boom, only now it was real and I was hitting live flesh and bone, feeling the give in my knuckles as I swung again and again, connecting on most of them, keeping my balance whenever I missed, keeping my weight above my feet the way I’d been taught. I hit him right in the face, three times in a row, solid shots I could feel all the way up through my shoulders, then one more final body shot, so hard I could feel it rippling through his soft gut. He fell back against the door, slid down slowly until he was sitting on the concrete.

I went halfway down myself, stayed bent over for a long time, flexing my hands and sucking in the night air. My lungs were burning. When I finally looked over at him again, he was crying softly, hardly making a sound.

This isn’t the man, I thought. This is not the man I
chased, not the man who outran me. This guy is at least fifty pounds overweight. I could run circles around him.

“Who are you?” I said, rubbing my throat. “Tell me your name.”

The tears kept running down his face. His body was shaking.

“She’s dead,” he said. “Sandy’s dead and you’re still walking around a free man.”

“Sandy,” I said. Then I remembered where I had seen him before. This was Sandra Barron’s husband, the man whose door I had knocked on that day, the man who watched me give one of my cards to his wife.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said. “I’m going to strangle you to death just like you did to Sandy. If it’s the last thing I do, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

“I didn’t do it. Listen to me. I didn’t kill your wife.”

“Yes, you did. I know you did.”

“I swear to you, Mr. Barron. It wasn’t me.”

“She came here to see you. I know she did. You tried to take her away from me.”

“No. Mr. Barron—”

“But you couldn’t hold on to her, could you … She came back to me. Like I knew she would. So you killed her.”

“No.”

“I told the police all about you,” he said. “I told them, God damn it. Why aren’t you locked up yet? Why are you still walking around after what you did?”

“I don’t know how to convince you,” I said. “I didn’t kill your wife, but I’m going to find out who did, okay?”

He shook his head. He started to cry again. I had no idea where he would have ranked on the abusive husband scale when his wife was alive, but as a grieving widower he was sure as hell hitting his marks.

“Just get out of here,” I said. “Go home.”

“I’ll be back. I promise you.”

I watched him pick himself up off the ground, one unsteady leg after the other until he was standing again.

“I’ll be watching you, Trumbull. You can count on it.”

“I hate to tell you,” I said, “but you’ll have to get in line for that.”

He winced with every step, moving like a man of a hundred. I let him pass me, keeping a few feet between us just in case he had any more ideas.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said. I couldn’t help saying it.

He stopped. For a moment I thought we were going to start all over again, but then he kept walking. I watched him until he turned the corner, then I found my keys on the ground. I unlocked the door, went in, and made my way up the back steps, already wondering how bad I’d feel the next day.

I turned on the light in my apartment, blinking at the sudden glare. Ice, I said to myself. Ice and aspirin.

I went to the refrigerator and emptied out a tray of ice cubes into my last clean dish towel. I pressed it to my forehead, above my left eye.

“Hell of a day,” I said to Laurel’s picture. I looked at her face. I wanted to reach into the photograph and touch her.

That’s when it came back to me. The night I was standing on the other side of the room, my back to this picture, like she was really there watching me, like I had something to hide from her. What I had done with the other woman that night…

Over here, I thought. I went to the window, where the row of shelves ended. This spot right here, where the metal bracket sticks out. My back is turned to Laurel and I’m taking the tie from around my neck, draping it over the bracket, hardly even thinking about it, my mind elsewhere, wondering if I had done the right thing that night, if Laurel was watching me from somewhere, and if she was, if she was beyond jealousy and betrayal and heartache.

Standing right here, putting that tie right up here, like so. My red tie.

I put down the ice. I got on my knees, looked around on the floor, looked under the bottom row of CDs, where the tie might be hiding, kicked down there in a careless moment maybe. I started taking the CDs off the shelf, carefully at first, stacking them neatly, growing more frantic as I uncovered nothing but a bare wall and a few dusty cobwebs.

It’s here somewhere, I said to myself. That tie could not have ended up around Marlene’s neck. It’s here in this room and I have to find it.

I looked everywhere. I tore the place apart.

There was no red tie.

Another night passed. A thing more useless to me than ever. Gone were the nights when I’d actually lie down in my bed and sleep, when I’d recharge my batteries and maybe even have a nice dream or two. When Laurel was killed, I spent twenty nights in a row sitting in a chair, a coat or a blanket or whatever else happened to be within reach wrapped around my shoulders, no matter how hot the room was, until the sun came up again. Or walking the dark streets of Kingston, usually finding myself uptown, somehow drawn to the old buildings and more than once to St. Joseph’s Church. On one side of the building there are statues, a whole scene laid out, the Holy Mother appearing to the children at Fatima, with an iron fence around the statues with a timeworn bench for people to kneel on. I’d never seen anyone praying, but then I was usually there at two or three in the morning. I’d lean over with my elbows on the top of the fence and I’d look at Mary, the three children, the two sheep. I wouldn’t know why I was there, but a few nights later I’d be back.

I don’t know if I truly learned how to sleep again, but two years later, I could at least spend a whole
night in my bed without seeing Laurel’s face or trying to run to her, running the way you do in a dream, like it’s something your body is trying to invent on the spot. Two years and now here I was, my truce with sleep officially broken, although now instead of walking the streets at night I got to do things like fighting for my life in my own doorway and then spending the next few hours looking for a tie just to prove I didn’t use it to strangle someone.

Eventually, the body gives out and you go into a strange limbo, somewhere between asleep and awake. I knew that place well. I was there when the sound came to me, a sound that was too familiar …

Knocking. I sat up straight, looked around the place, at the disaster. Whoever it was knocked on the door again. I got up and opened it.

It was Detective Shea.

“If you’re going to come here every morning,” I said, “you gotta start bringing coffee.”

“What happened to you?”

I was wondering if he really wanted the full double-column list, but then I realized he was probably talking about my face. “Just a random assault on the street,” I said. “Doesn’t even crack the Top Five this week.”

“Somebody attacked you? Was it someone you know?”

“If I tell you who, you’ll have to go charge him. It’s the last thing he needs right now.”

“Under the circumstances, I think I should really know what happened, Joe.”

“I’ll tell you when this whole thing is over. I promise.”

“You’re seriously not going to tell me.”

“I assume you had some reason to come see me, Detective?”

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” he said, with a sigh of exasperation. He looked past me at the hundreds of CDs all over the floor. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I apologize for the mess. I was rearranging my collection.”

He nodded his head slowly. “Okay.”

“I needed something to take my mind off things. Things like being accused of murder.”

“Nobody accused you, Joe.”

“You always let your partner run the show like that? You barely say a word.”

“He’s the senior investigator.”

“And your job is what, to come check on me every morning? Make sure I haven’t skipped town?”

“You’re not being fair now.”

“So what do you really think?” I said. “Your partner’s not here. Tell me if you really think I killed those women.”

He thought about it for a moment. “I don’t see how you could have. Put it this way—you’d have to prove to me that you did.”

“Well, something tells me you and the Rhino aren’t on the same page, then.”

“Who told you about his nickname? No, wait, let me guess…”

“I hear you and Howie have some history.”

He shook his head and smiled. “He’s your best friend, so I won’t bother defending myself.”

“I’d like to bring up a possibility,” I said, “if you don’t mind hearing it.”

“Go ahead.”

I closed the door halfway, then bent down by the doorknob. Shea gave me a puzzled look, eventually leaning down to the same level.

“This place is pretty old,” I said. “This lock probably hasn’t been changed in fifty years.” I ran my hand along the brass plate, rattled the knob. How many times had it been opened and closed over the years, back when this place was a bus station and this room was the manager’s office?

“What are you suggesting?” he said.

“I’m positive that I had my red tie with me when I got back here that night,” I said, figuring what the hell, might as well get that out in the open. If it really was my tie, they were going to find out about it, one way or another. “And I’m equally positive that it’s not here now.”

“You’re saying somebody broke into your place and took your tie?”

“Maybe my shoelaces, too.”

“But you were
wearing
your tie. If she was killed
right after you left … Are you saying the killer got in here that night while you were asleep? That he stole it without waking you up and went back to her place?”

“No, that doesn’t make any sense. I didn’t go to sleep for a long time, in any case.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I don’t know, Detective. I’m trying to figure it out.”

We both stood up. “So what next?” he said.

“Are you going to help me go through all my old cases?”

“Of course,” he said. I thought he might have hesitated for just a split second, but if he did, he recovered well. “Let me go check back in with Detective Rhinehart, and then I’ll do whatever I can.”