Past Crimes (23 page)

By the time I pulled onto Davey’s block, he was ass-deep into his talking jag again, laughing in shaky circles about how he couldn’t believe we had actually gotten away, and fuck, weren’t the gunshots louder than he’d ever imagined, and somehow he didn’t think anyone had seen us. I was still thinking about the three dead guys and how to make sure nobody ever connected them to us.

I set the brake a few doors down from the Tolan house and just stared at Davey until he wound down a notch.

“Your mom’s inside,” I said once he could meet my eyes for more than half a second. “She’s gonna ask where you were.”

“Right. Okay. Well, I was with you, right? Just hanging out?”

I shook my head. “You weren’t with me. You haven’t seen me since we left the party last night. You were out alone. You were pumped up after the party, and you went out walking, and you’ve been walking for hours.”

“That’s it? Just walking? Shit, nobody’s going to believe that.”

It was still dark enough out that the streetlights were on. The beams cast deep shadows in the car. But I didn’t need more light to tell that Davey’s hands were twisting and pulling feverishly at his faded Slipknot T-shirt.

“Walking all alone means you don’t need anybody to verify where you were, or when. You and I don’t need to tell the same story, ’cause there is no story. You were out walking. Simple. You get me?”

“But Jesus, Van. My ma. She’s gonna—”

My forearm cramped, I was squeezing the steering wheel
so hard. “Davey. Guys got
killed
tonight. You get it? I’m not worried about your ma. She’s maybe just the warm-up, you know?”

“What do you mean? Cops?” Davey looked out the back window of the Cavalier.

“They could find out you knew Bobby Sessions and come around to ask about him.”

“How would they know that?”

“I don’t
know
, Davey. Maybe Bobby wrote a note for his girlfriend, telling her he was going to see you. Maybe the cops call every number in his cell phone.”

Davey blinked at me. Not getting it. His brain was still redlining on adrenaline.

I stretched until my shoulder joints popped. Tried to relax so Davey could follow my lead. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the cops might come around, so you pick a story and you stay with it. Keep it simple. Out walking. You don’t know what time, really. If they push hard, then say you were drunk off your ass and you didn’t want to get into trouble with your mom. But save it until they really push.”

Davey shrugged. “Ma will think I was drunk anyway.”

“Even better.”

I’d have to think up a story to tell Dono. I couldn’t let him go driving around town in a car that an eyewitness might be describing to cops right this minute. Preferably an excuse that didn’t involve me being right in the middle of a triple homicide.

“You ready?” I said to Davey.

“Yeah. No problem. Fuck, what a wild night, huh? Can you believe—”

“Davey.”

“Okay, yeah. It’s cool. I got this.”

I watched him lope up the sidewalk, a spring in his step. High on life. I’d have to keep close tabs on him during the next few days. In case he came crashing to earth. I could
imagine another kind of talking jag, this one rocket-fueled by guilt. I should call him later, to check up on him.

Shit. My cell phone. Davey had called it from the Holiday Haus. It wasn’t attached to my name. But could the cops track down where the phone was, somehow? I didn’t know.

On the way home, I broke the phone into pieces and tossed the bits down a couple of different sewer grates. My graduation present had lasted five days.

Anything else I’d forgotten? The car, the phone. I’d been careful not to leave fingerprints at the Holiday Haus. But maybe Davey had. I couldn’t be sure that he’d had his driving gloves on every minute. Or maybe we’d been caught on film by a security camera somewhere in the alley.

Nothing I could do about those things now. Just get the Cavalier tucked away in the garage before some alert citizen took any notice of it. And cross my fingers.

A light fog had drifted in with the dawn by the time I reached the house. I pulled in to the driveway, got out, and unlocked the garage door, pulled hard to roll it all the way up in one go.

And found myself staring at a familiar gray Silverado pickup.

Dono was home.

Shit
.

He’d told me he’d be back on Monday, damn it. That whatever job it was he had going in the town of Gillette, Wyoming, would be on Sunday afternoon, and he’d be coming straight back. If it really had been Wyoming.

Focus. I had to get the car into the garage. I jumped back inside it and reversed out of the driveway. I didn’t have keys for the pickup, but its doors were unlocked. It took me about two minutes to hot-wire the ignition and swap it for the Cavalier.

Once the garage door was closed again, I exhaled. And realized that the truck’s engine had been cold. So Dono had
been back for at least an hour, I guessed. Maybe he’d turned up right after I left. If he’d come direct from Gillette, he might have driven all night. He could be asleep right now, crashed out after fifteen hours at the wheel.

I unlocked the front door and slipped into the entryway. The security system was blinking red. I punched in the code, and the light went green.

“The graduate,” Dono said, his voice floating in from the front room.

Damn it. I took a deep breath and came around the corner. He was sitting in his leather wing-back chair, a bottle of beer in his hand, long legs stretched out in front of him. He hadn’t been watching TV. No book on the side table. Just sitting there, drinking and thinking. D&T, as he called it.

“You get your diploma?” he asked.

“They send those to us later,” I said. “At the ceremony they just handed us pieces of rolled-up paper.”

“Bait and switch.” He waved at the window. “You want to tell me what the Christ that was all about?” He’d watched me swap the Cavalier for the pickup.

Dive on in. “I didn’t want to leave the car on the street.”

“No?”

“I got pulled over. Speeding. The cop ran the plates. I don’t know how clean that car is—like, maybe it’s okay for a traffic stop but it’ll get flagged on somebody’s report if the history’s cloned from a car in another state. Figured I’d get it out of sight until I could ask.” I was talking too fast.

Dono’s dark eyes were flat, his brow smooth. “He didn’t let you off with a warning.” It wasn’t a question.

“I offered to take care of it,” I said.

“How much?”

“A hundred. What was left of the money you gave me last week.”

“And the man took it?”

“Yeah. He thought a lot about it while he pretended to look over the car. But he took it.”

Dono took a pull on his beer. Still regarding me. “He ran the plates, you said?”

“Yeah. At least I think he did. He sat in his car for five minutes before he got out and walked up to me.”

“Not a cycle cop, then.”

Shit. Almost all traffic enforcement in the city was on motorcycles. Cars were usually only on the freeways.

“No,” I said.

“Seattle?”

“State trooper.”

“Huh. I’d thought you said cop. Whereabouts?”

“Off the Stroud exit. He was behind the overpass.”

Dono exhaled, a slow, whisper sound. He set the beer down and got up from the chair. His neck and chin had a five-day growth of black beard, and his blue chambray shirt and jeans were wrinkled and limp after the all-night drive, but he looked fresh. All loose muscle and long bone. He walked over to the front windows and glanced down at the roof of the garage with the Cavalier inside it.

“If I call a friend in SPD,” Dono said, “and ask him to find out if anyone’s looking for a car like our own there. What’s he likely to tell me?”

“Probably nothing,” I said.

Dono waited, still facing the window. Giving me a chance to confess my sins.

I needed to keep Davey out of this. All the way out.

If Dono learned the truth, he’d kill Davey.
Literally
kill him. Davey could link me with a heavy felony, manslaughter at least, even if he was the one who’d pulled the trigger.

I knew how my grandfather thought. Davey and I would hold that rap over each other for the rest of our lives. Unless Davey wasn’t able to tell anyone.

I took a deep breath. “Cops might be trying to find a witness.”

“To what?” said Dono.

“A shooting. Maybe more.”

He turned to look at me. I managed not to glance away.

“I was setting up a job,” I said, “on the other side of the hill.”

Dono’s face turned to stone.

“Planning a job,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“And then suddenly gunfire broke out. What store?”

I couldn’t mention the Holiday Haus. What if Dono traded information with his cop contact while asking about the Cavalier?
Hey, tell me about this car, I’ll tell you a way to look good with the local owners, point out where some lowlife has cut their alarm to come back later. Take a bite out of crime
. The police might sweep the shop, maybe find Davey’s fingerprints in the place and connect them with the prints on the gun we’d dropped at the scene.

I rolled my neck, hoping Dono read my hesitation as fear of punishment. “It’s a consignment place called Guinevere’s, off of Summit.” Two blocks away from where the shooting had been. “A lot of women’s jewelry. I didn’t get serious about it. Just checked out the cameras and figured out how to grease the rear alarm on the store. Later I could bring the right tools.”

“And?”

“So two drunk guys came out of the alley across the street. Yelling at each other. Then one of them pulls a gun, starts waving it, and the other one takes off running up the street toward me. The first guy shoots—I don’t know if he really wants to kill the other one or just scare him—but I tore ass out of there as fast as I could. Somebody might have seen them. Maybe the car, too.”

“Fleeing the scene,” Dono said.

“I was just trying not to get my head blown off. But then I started thinking about the car and wondering if somebody got the license, so—” I pointed in the direction of the garage.

“The right idea,” said Dono, nodding slowly. “And all that bullshit about getting pulled over?”

“I know I fucked up,” I said. “I shouldn’t have gone looking for a score. I was pissed off about not going with you.” I shrugged. “It was stupid.”

“Yes it was.” He took three steps and stood right in front of me. Eye to eye, except that his eyes were two inches higher.

“No jacket,” he said.

“It wasn’t so cold last night.”

“Indestructible.” He pressed a big finger to my forehead, on the puffy bruise where the skinhead’s fist had connected. I winced. Dono reached out and tore open the snaps on the plaid flannel shirt, revealing my T-shirt underneath.

“Somebody’s blood is decorating you,” he said.

I didn’t answer. No point.

“Tell them a story,” Dono said quietly, studying the pattern of dried rust-colored dots on my T-shirt. “And keep that story close to what’s real. Tell
me
a story.” He might have been talking to himself, until he looked back up at me. There was something there I had never seen before.

An emptiness.

“What’s real about you?” he said. “Did you pull the trigger?”

It was out. Almost.

Christ, Davey, you had better keep your mouth shut. You don’t want to see what I’m seeing.

“Did you shoot somebody?” Dono said again.

“Yes,” I said.

“You
kill
somebody?”

“Yes.”

His fist caught me across the cheekbone, snapping my head back, sending me stumbling into the foyer wall. I
knocked down the big framed picture of horses pulling a hay cart, and the glass shattered at my feet, a sharper sound than the burst inside my head as Dono hit me again.

I ducked and scrambled away, trying to cover up. Another punch caught me high on the ribs, an iron slap of pain that took the air from my lungs. I fell to my knees, rolled out of reach just as Dono’s kick cracked the wainscoting.

“
Stupid. Ruinous. Fuck
,” Dono was saying, part of a torrent of words pouring forth with as much force behind them as the blows. He reached for the umbrella stand, and I knew what was coming. I scrabbled along the floor to the more open ground of the kitchen, scattering chairs as I ducked under the broad dining table. I couldn’t breathe.

Dono’s lead-packed walking stick smashed another chair aside like it was made of toothpicks.

“Come out!” he shouted. “Come out, you ungrateful filth!” He hammered the stick down on the table, and I heard the wood veneer splinter. “Take what’s fucking coming to you!”

He was going to kill me. Dono was going to crush my skull and stuff me in the trunk of the Cavalier, letting us both sink to the bottom of the sound. He reared back and slammed the sole of his boot into the edge of the heavy table, sending it skidding a yard across the linoleum.

I got my feet under me and shoved up beneath the table as hard as I could. It was too heavy to lift completely, but I got it moving, tilting toward Dono like a wave. The thick oak slab crashed over onto him, pinning him back against the wall.

“Run, then,” he said. “Run away from it.”

I
was
running. I was clumsily scrambling over the table legs and toppled chairs toward the back door of the house.

Dono threw the shillelagh at me and heaved the table off himself. The door was bolted. I turned and grabbed the first thing I saw with any weight to it—an ashtray pinning down
a stack of newspapers on the counter—and flung it at Dono’s head. He ducked, and it bounced off his shoulder, shattering some dishes on the counter behind him.

He was on me. I swung frantic haymaker punches. Dono took the first on his neck and slipped the second, and then gave back a straight pop to my nose that might have ended it, except that I was already jumping aside to kick wildly at his groin. The kick smacked into his kneecap, and he hissed with pain, his next punch going wide, and I saw the opening, saw it like a good shortstop sees the easy double, and I threw a whipping left hook to his temple that landed so hard my hand and forearm went numb.