Playing Dead (35 page)

“I need to tell you something about Jack Smith,” Lyle said when I finished. “My friend at
Texas Monthly
’s back. He’d never heard of a Jack Smith, so he checked it out. An IT intern was bribed to set up a voicemail and email for Smith. A kid from Princeton. You think he’d know better.” Princeton. Jack’s supposed alma mater.

“Tommie, you need to stay away from that guy. Seriously
think about taking Sadie and Maddie and going somewhere. The next step needs to involve the police.”

“I’ll talk to Hudson about it,” I said noncommittally.

“Good. One more thing. Did you happen to read about Barbara Monroe?”

It took a sleepy second to jog my memory. Barbara Monroe, previously known as Barbara Thurman, star reporter. It seemed like years since I’d talked to her about Adriana’s kidnapping.

“Someone broke into her house. The
Chicago Tribune
ran the story this morning.”

“What happened?”

“They are using it as the centerpiece on the
Tribune
home page. It would have been a Metro brief but a rescue dog bit a chunk out of the intruder and saved the day. Readers love that kind of thing.” This last part came out a little annoyed.

“Let me call you back, Lyle. No, really, I promise.” I clicked off before he could start up with the yelling again.

My laptop was still in my backpack. I pulled it out, flipped it open, and sat cross-legged on the bed while the living, breathing lump beside me didn’t budge. The wireless internet connection worked right away, a freak gift courtesy of the Charles Wesley Motor Lodge across the road, which boasted such amenities.

RESCUE DOG RESCUES RIGHT BACK
, the headline read, over a picture of a familiar grinning black dog with a white megaphone cuff around his neck and a new patch taped over one eye. The story, posted two hours and twenty-three minutes ago, had 400,342 hits.

The
Tribune
photographer made the heroic effort to take Cricket’s best side, without any scabs showing. The night before last, a man in a navy ski mask entered the Monroe house, apparently expecting it to be empty. But one of Barbara’s daughters was home alone, heard a noise, and wandered out of her bedroom,
where she had been studying. The intruder grabbed her and Cricket went wild, banging against his crate door in the kitchen until it fell off the hinges. Cricket bit a chunk out of the guy, which was being tested for DNA.

I scrolled down more, skimming quickly. One of Cricket’s eyes was damaged. He might lose some sight. The police believed it to be a random break-in.

The story finished with Cricket’s sad history of disease and abuse at the hands of a previous owner, his rescue by the SPCA, and the numbers and addresses of three of Chicago’s primary animal shelters.

Good for Cricket. Hundreds of people would scurry to the shelters this weekend to save lives on doggy death row. Unfortunately, a third of them would return the dogs two weeks later after deciding that their cute fuzzy faces weren’t worth all the poop and pee, that actual work was involved to love something that was damaged.

I punched my cell phone.

“Lyle?”

“I was sleeping.”

“I told you I was calling back.”

He grunted sarcastically.

“Do you think I’m the reason Barbara’s house got hit? That they’re looking for something?”

“Maybe. I went over those Bennett crime scene pictures again. We’ve still been unable to trace the sender. Can you call up the slide show wherever the hell you are?”

I clicked on the icon reluctantly. I didn’t really want to ever see these bloody images again.

“You got it up, Tommie? Are you there?”

“Yes. To both.”

“A source of mine faxed the crime scene and coroner reports
on all six of the victims. Here’s something surprising: The FBI woman and Fred Bennett weren’t shot. The woman was hit in the head and strangled. The father was beaten with, and I quote, ‘a narrow lead object, probably a pipe.’ ”

“Why wasn’t this reported?”

“According to my friend, cause of death was inked out in the reports handed out to the press. He had to really dig for the original reports.”

“Who is your friend?”

Lyle acted as if he hadn’t heard me. “This couldn’t have been a one-man job. Really look at the pictures. Fred Bennett didn’t go down easily or quietly. The wife, the kids, would have jumped out a window while that was going down. There were at least two attackers. I think one man took out the FBI agent in the laundry room while she was pulling out a load of clothes. Then he moved on to the father, in the kitchen. The rest of the family was attacked simultaneously at the back of the house
by someone else
.”

“The kids and the mother were killed by a Sig semi-automatic.” It was a detail I remembered from one of the
Chicago Tribune
clips. “It was left at the scene.”

“As far as I can tell, that’s true,” Lyle said. “But there were
three
different methods of killing. There’s a psychotic quality to this. Like a Coen Brothers movie. A thrill kill.”

I wasn’t even really sure why any of this mattered. So what if Anthony Marchetti had an accomplice?

“This wasn’t Marchetti’s style,” Lyle insisted, determined to make his point. “There’s nothing in his history about killing women and kids. This job was inefficient. Messy. Beneath him.”

“Damning with faint praise,” I said softly. “But thanks.” I understood now. Lyle believed that Anthony Marchetti was my father. He was trying to make it as OK as it could be.

After we hung up, I stared at the photograph of the blood-spattered
kitchen. Fred Bennett had been preparing a bedtime snack for his kids. An attempt to make their uprooted lives in a safe house feel a little normal? Did he pretend that they were on a big adventure? Or did he tell them the truth?

Plastic bowls with cartoon figures were lined up on the kitchen counter. Three glasses stood untouched, in a neat row, poured to the brim with juice. The popcorn, though, was everywhere. On the floor, on the counters, some of it dyed red like for a Christmas tree chain. The white cabinets slashed with blood.

A Jackson Pollock canvas.

A Coen Brothers movie.

I said their names softly.

Alyssa. Robert. Joe.

My breath grew more shallow, a rope of dread spinning tight around my chest.

Focus. Don’t give in.

I drew my knees up, settling my eyes on one of the printed cupcakes running down my pajama legs.

Pink frosting, lots of sprinkles.

Imagine something happy
.

The taste of tart strawberry icing, a table piled with presents, a balloon floating away.

Suffocating to death on this hard, filthy floor
.

All the oxygen in the room was suddenly gone, as if someone had shut off a valve.

And then, nothing.

Twenty minutes later, I found myself shivering on the bathroom floor.

T
he next morning, for a crisp hundred-dollar bill, Hudson talked the man behind the motel desk at the Charles Wesley Lodge into returning my rental car to a branch in Durant so we could ride home together in his company-owned, late-model black Ford F-350 with a high-end blinking GPS device wired to God knows how many satellites roving above our heads.

It was custom-built into the dash with an oversized screen and so many buttons and lights that I wondered if it also had the capabilities to shoot lasers and grill a hot dog. The tinted windows, Hudson told me, were bulletproof and the outside was armor-plated. The truck was a loaner, headed for Afghanistan in a month. As soon as we sped by the Idabel city limits sign, I closed my eyes and tucked myself into a corner of the passenger seat with a pillow I’d spied in a plastic bag under the truck bed cover, neatly stacked beside a built-in firearms safe and a first-aid kit.

But Hudson had other ideas. Like a conversation.

“You recognized those two men in the photo at the sheriff’s office.” It wasn’t a question.

“Not exactly. Jack mentioned them. At least I think he did.”

“Jack.”

“Yes, Jack. Before he passed out on my kitchen floor, he mumbled
something about a hobbit and a giant. And Anthony Marchetti being a liar. The men in that picture fit the bill.”

“I can’t believe you went back to the house.”

I ignored his anger. “The Jeep was parked out front. Packed with documents. Lots about Marchetti. I found a picture of me in one of the folders from when I was still competing. Jack was too drunk to explain. You’re swerving.”

“You went in alone.”

“I think you’re missing the point.”

“According to you, I usually do.”

He stuck the cord of an iPod into an auxiliary plug, adjusted earbuds, and turned his attention to the road. It struck me that we were not a very good team. I wadded myself back into the corner and shut my eyes again.

Almost immediately, my cell phone sang out from the depths of my backpack. I pulled it out on the fourth ring. Private caller.

“Hello?” I asked hopefully. I’d left the phone on because I didn’t want to miss a call from Sadie. Hudson had wanted me to shut it off, worried that it could be tracked.

“I thought you were strung up somewhere! Like,
dead
.” I held the phone tightly against my ear so Hudson couldn’t listen in on Charla’s wailing. I shouldn’t have worried; his iPod was turned up so loud that I could hear Johnny Cash walking the line.

“No,” I told Charla. “Not strung up.” Not yet.

“It’s an emergency.
An emergency
. Your dad wants you to come to see him tomorrow during visiting hours. My lawyer called to say an anonymous donor is going to put ten thousand in my defense fund if I cooperate. If you don’t come, it will be
big
trouble for me.”

When did I become responsible for the fate of this squeaky death row inmate who had me on speed-dial?

I tried to speak calmly. “That’s not going to happen.”

“What? The trouble? I’m damn sure it is if you don’t show up.”

“I’m not coming.”
My tone was not to be reckoned with. I didn’t care what Anthony Marchetti had to say, I would never believe a word of it. I glanced at Hudson. His head was bopping, eyes on the road.

“I’m supposed to tell you that you were lucky in Chicago,” Charla whined. “That you won’t be so lucky again.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No. Supposably, it’s a fact.” The word
supposably
always set my teeth on edge. It was a Texas colloquialism used by a quarter of the state. It’s probably in the dictionary now a few skips ahead of Sarah Palin’s
refudiate
.

“Are you listening to me? He says to tell you they’re following you all the time, even if you can’t see them. He says to trust
no one
.”

“I got that loud and clear the last time you called.”

I couldn’t help but glance over my shoulder at the rear window. Summer wheat grass rippled on either side of a retreating ribbon of black highway, empty except for a rusted green pickup on the verge of passing us. I really ought to be driving. That pickup should not be taking us down.

I returned to Charla. “Are they threatening you?”

“Are you not hearing me? Lordy. Although the guard who’s my contact is not bad. He drops good stuff on me. Like a box of Whitman’s Samplers and that Dove lotion that turns you tan real gradual so nobody knows it’s fake. People just say you look healthy.”

Exasperated, I tried to get her back on point. “You know that if you take money, you are theirs forever. Did you ever wonder why Marchetti chose you? Because the guards think you are susceptible. I am probably not the last assignment they have in mind for you.”

“Mmmmhhmmmm,” Charla said, noncommittally. “I don’t know what septi-whatever means. Here comes my keeper. I don’t want to scare you or nothing. At this point, you’re like my dear third cousin and I’m thinking you’d be a good character witness for me at my appeal. But I’m supposed to tell you one last thing.” I heard the muffled sound of voices before she came back on the line.

“You’re currently ten or so miles outside of Melissa, Texas. Going about fifty-five. Why so slow?” Then, wistfully, “I wonder who Melissa was. I bet she was pretty. A natural blonde. She was probably so beautiful that her Daddy named a town after her. I wished my Daddy had named a town after me. Instead, he was just a shitty, lying drunk.”

A slight commotion, and then a click.