Orchard Grove (17 page)

She nodded. “Orchard Grove was our family farm. Burns Apple Orchard. I was just twelve years old when my stepfather disappeared and the land was sold off, the apple trees cut down, and these houses built.”

She was staring at the tree, but I could tell she was seeing something else instead. Something from her past that haunted her. A part of me wanted to ask her what she was seeing, but then another part of me insisted I keep my mouth shut. That whatever was running through her brain was not very pleasant, and perhaps even disturbing.

“Yes,” she said, “I grew up on this land. This orchard was my home.”

I felt a tightness in my throat and in my chest.

“You’ve come back home,” I said.

“That’s one way of putting it,” she said. “And that apple tree? It shouldn’t be here.”

“I don’t understand. Why shouldn’t it? Maybe they didn’t cut them all down.”

“They did cut them all. I was here. I watched them destroy all of the trees. I wanted them destroyed. I watched them burn. My mother watched it happen too. She held my hand, and we both watched until every single tree in the orchard was gone.”

In my head I saw the tractors, saw the men with their chain saws cutting down the trees. I saw the wood being burned and I saw the charred barren land. I saw what Lana was seeing.

“So why is the tree still here?” I asked.

“Because it was cut down, but not killed. If you really want to kill something… kill it for good… you have to destroy it at its roots. Or else it will grow back. And when it does it will be distorted and ugly and so rotten inside you can’t even enjoy its fruit.”

I gazed at the ugly, stunted apples. “Those apples are rotten, aren’t they?”

“The tree is strangled by the roots of the other trees that have grown around it. The fruit doesn’t get enough nutrients from the ground, and it doesn’t get enough sun. The apples it produces are bitter and sour.”

I shook my head.

She refocused her gaze on me, picked up her coffee, drank some, then set it back down again. “Ethan,” she went on, “what would you say if I asked you to help me with something? Something very… well, let’s call it delicate and very illegal.”

I don’t know why the question gave me reason to pause. After last night’s less than legal game, it shouldn’t have been any more shocking asking me if I preferred apple juice to orange.

“There’d be a great deal of money in it for you, Ethan,” she added. “More than a great deal. Perhaps you could use it. Or is that pot garden keeping you flush?”

The corners on her mouth rose up, giving her the look of someone who knew far more about me than I realized.

I stole another sip of coffee.

“I’m listening,” I said.

She breathed in slowly, then exhaled even more slowly. She pulled her kimono tighter around her, as if a sharp chill just coursed through her veins.

“I’m not entirely sure how to say this,” she said, her eyes once more focused on the sun. “So perhaps I should just come right out and say it.”

I looked at her face, her eyes shielded by the sunglasses. Watched her lips move as I listened for the words.

“I want John dead,” she said.

The words might have come out as barely more than a whisper, but my ears were ringing, my head pounding, as if she’d gotten up from her chair and screamed in my ear.

“Why are you telling me this?” I said, choking on my words.

“Because I can’t do it on my own. I need your help, Ethan. And what’s more…”

Her thought trailed off, until I said, “And what’s more
what
?”

“And what’s more,” she repeated, “I know how much you’d like to see him dead too.”

She uncrossed her arms, allowed her robe to open up again, just enough so that I could make out the smooth tan flesh in the space between her breasts. It was all I needed to feel my already boiling blood speed rapidly through my veins and capillaries. For my sex to grow hard as a rock. She was right, of course. I did want to see him dead. After what he’d done to Susan last night, and after what he’d done to me by making me watch, I wanted nothing more than to see him dead and gone.

“What exactly did you have in mind, Lana?” I said.

She said, “I’m going to invite you and Susan over for a barbeque tonight to make up for the craziness that went on last night at your house. It will be a way for us to say we’re sorry and no hard feelings.”

“You don’t waste time,” I said.

“It must be tonight or never.”

“Why? Why tonight?”

“Because John is going to kill me.”

Pulse elevated. Throat constricted.

“He’s going to kill me and make it look like an accident,” she went on.

If it wasn’t for my foot, I would have shot up.

“Let’s just fucking call the police right now,” I said. “He’s already hit you in the eye.”

Her face went pale.

“You don’t understand,” she cried. “He
is
the police. They will believe his story, no matter what. Even if they know he’s lying. And yes, even if he’s already hit me.”

“I get it,” I said. “That’s the way the cops work in Albany. They serve and protect their own.”

She nodded, wiped a tear from her face with the back of her hand.

I said, “How do you know he’s going to kill you and why? I just assumed he was as much in love with you as I am.”

“He knows I committed the worst sin a cop’s wife can possibly commit.”

“I’m listening, Lana.”

“I slept with his partner, Carl. And now he has no choice but to kill me.”

News of her sleeping with Carl felt like a punch to the gut, even if I had suspected the truth all along. But I didn’t want to give away my emotions.

“He wants to kill you purely out of revenge,” I said, trying my best to maintain a straight face.

“No,” she said. “To save face.”

We sat quiet for a moment, while the cicadas buzzed in the trees and our hearts beat.

She added, “I overheard him on the phone… it must have been one of his minions. Someone he trusts. He asked the guy to come over to do one of his special ‘clean up jobs.’” She shuddered, delicately. “How many of those do you think he’s ordered?” She leaned forward, her eyes intent on mine. “At some point this afternoon he’s going to bring Carl over here so that all three of us can confront one another. It will be the final proof he needs to condemn and convict me, if you want to think of it that way. Then, tonight, before we go to bed, I’m to have an accident. I’m going to fall down the stairs. That’s how it’s going to look.”

“And you’re sure this is planned for tonight?” A question for which I already knew the bloody answer.

“Yes. So you see, Ethan, we must do it this evening before he has the chance to get at me first. No choice. We have no choice in the world.”

I exhaled. “I see everything clearly now. You want my wife and I to come over so you can buy some time. But tell me something. What if Susan refuses to step foot back over here after what went down last night? What if she never wants to see John again?”

“She’ll want to,” she said, wiping more tears from her face.

“How can you be so sure I’ll help you?” I said, after a beat. “Is John’s murder really worth it?”

“You won’t have to lay a hand on him,” she said. “I have it all figured out. That’s the real reason why I need you and Susan to be here tonight. Don’t you see, Ethan? John is going to kill himself with a little help from his friends.”

S
he’s certain the police did not get a good look at her, because as soon as the white lights broke through the tree cover, she slipped the cleaver into her leather bag, grabbed it by the strap, and put her high school sprinter abilities to the test. She turned and ran as fast as she could into the woods. At best they’ve captured the fleeting image of someone running away. Someone who’s wearing a hoodie and blue jeans. That’s as far as the description will go. They won’t even be sure if the person they witnessed running away is a man or a woman.

She runs through the brush, the branches slapping her smooth face, stinging it, making blue eyes tear. She scoots down to the gravelly bank in order to heave the bag into the river, which she does. She then runs some more. But in her head, however, she knows that running is futile. That there are too many cops and she will never be able to outrun them all. She needs a hiding place. Needs it now.

Soon she comes upon a concrete culvert that empties into the river. The aroma coming up from the culvert is most unpleasant. Like raw sewage combined with rotting food and toxic chemicals that must come from one of the refineries inside the adjacent Port of Albany.

She stops in her tracks, stands perfectly still.

Up ahead in the distance, she can make out the metal smoke stacks and big iron oil drums inside the port. She sees the flames spouting from out of the stacks of the refineries, sees the bright lights that illuminate the metal trucks and buildings that litter it behind a fence topped with razor wire. Listening carefully, she can make out not only the sounds of trucks, machines, and voices coming from the port, but also the much closer sound of the police as they smash through the brush on foot. They’re like human bulldozers. She’s convinced then that despite her speed, they’ve managed to keep up and now they are on her tail.

Locking eyes onto the culvert, she knows she has no choice.

Crouching, she steps inside the culvert opening, drops down to all fours, crawls into the pitch black, foul smelling opening.

“Patience,” she whispers to herself. “Chill out, Lana, and it will all be all right.”

She crawls into the dark unknown.

S
he poured more coffee for me, this time adding a shot of whiskey. A concoction my long dead grandfather used to refer to as “Coffee Royals” but which she called, “Killer Coffee.”

“How appropriate,” I said under my breath. A comment that went ignored.

While I sipped the coffee, she began to script, in detail, how she planned on killing her husband. The plot centered around his love of guns. What she had in mind was almost too simple to be believable, but at the same time, possessed a kind of beauty in its uncomplicatedness. Like a rose I guess, its core thorn hidden from view until it pokes you. Draws your blood.

First things first. We would get John drunk at the barbeque. After all, it was a Friday night, and he usually didn’t have to play cop on Saturdays. Apparently, his habit on late Friday afternoons was to stop at a downtown watering hole on his way home. In particular, a bar called Thatcher Street Pub way down off North Broadway where the abandoned steel mills were located. According to Lana, the cops owned the joint and paid “a special price for beer and shots” which in her mind translated into free. A bottomless well of alcohol for well-armed men who craved conflict.

“I thought you said he and Carl were coming by for a final showdown?”

“They are. But they'll come here first, before the drinking begins. That will provide the fuel for his alibi, everyone will know he’ll need to get good and loaded this afternoon.”

“Nothing like a little heartbreak for working up a mean, mean thirst,” I said.

She sat back in her chair and said, “By the time he’ll arrive back from two hours of nonstop drinking, he’ll already be pretty lit up.”

“So what, precisely, do you expect of me?” I asked.

“When he arrives, I want you to insist there’s no hard feelings over last night. You understand some serious swinging when you see it. If you acted upset at all, it’s just because you’re not used to that kind of swinger’s game. The mixing of the dangerous with the erotic.” She inhaled and exhaled once more, as if all this were taking a great effort to explain. And maybe it was. “Then, when that’s over, I want you to praise him for what a great cop he must be. He loves to be buttered up. What kind of pig doesn’t? Finally, once that’s accomplished, you will ask him if you can get a look at his prized gun collection.”

“Gun collection,” I said, like a question.

“A gunroom inside a converted bedroom. He has fifty or one hundred or I don’t know how the hell many pistols and rifles, all under glass on display.” She smiled. “It’s what you do when your dick is too small. How you compensate, I guess.”