Saint Homicide (Single Shot) (4 page)

“An address would help,” I admitted. “I guess that goes without saying.”

The man looked at the woman and she shrugged. “Fuck it. Who cares at this point?”

The man glanced at a dirty scrap of paper taped to the wall by a cordless phone base and rattled off the address. I picked up the pen from the counter and scribbled on my palm.

The woman smiled. It wasn’t warm. She said, “Hope you find your girl,” and the words slithered out of her mouth with insinuation. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I just turned and walked out.

*

Climbing into my car, the tall woman’s ugly voice still in my head, a thought hit me like a seizure.
If Lynn goes away I’ll be left alone with Jennifer. 

Jennifer.

I had cried so little at what had happened to her. Neither of us had been criers to begin with, and I don’t know what she would have done if I’d been in the accident instead of her. But every day I spent with the weak, bitter woman down the hall—the woman whose emotions had dissolved into a constantly shifting balance of fear, anger and self-pity, the woman who had nothing left to give me—the more I realized that I was a barely functioning human being without my wife. The Bible said that in marriage two become one, and it was true. I had lost half of myself in that crushed car.

But Lynn. There was no way of getting Jennifer back, but I could still save Lynn. I could still do one good thing with my life.

Chapter 4

Randall lived in a sprawling trailer park called Indian Head Estates that sat just off the interstate. At the entrance to the park stood a five-foot wooden Indian head mounted to a cement base. Randall’s trailer was the last home on Tomahawk Street, just before the road itself stopped, blocked off by a fluorescent orange construction barricade that read: Do Not Enter.

I parked on the road and walked across the dirt yard to the trailer. An old Razorback flag hung limply in the light emanating from inside. Past a rodent-brown station wagon in the drive, I stepped onto a wobbly wooden porch and pulled back the screen door. It screeched like a cat, and almost to compensate for this noise I knocked quite gently on the door.

Nothing.

I knocked again, louder this time and the sound seemed to carry all the way down the street.

A gray sliver of shadow crossed the curtains and footsteps clomped across thin floors. The door sighed as it inched open and released a pungent breath of cigarette smoke and cat urine. The three inches between the door and the jamb were empty except for a few chipped links of a gold chain.

The haggard remains of a woman’s voice asked, “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you this late, ma’am, but I’m looking for Randall Terpweiler. Are you his mother?”

“Who are you?”

I told her my name.

“Do I know you?” Ms. Terpweiler asked.

“No ma’am, we’ve never met.”

She did not respond. All I could see through the door was brown paneling and the end of a sky blue couch.

“Randall ain’t here.”

“I see. Do you know Lynn?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m looking for her. I’m her brother-in-law.”

“Her sister’s…”

“I’m married to her sister,” I said. “It’s actually about my wife, Lynn’s sister. That’s why I need to see Lynn.”

The door closed. I heard the chain slide, and the door opened wide. A woman wearing a threadbare flannel shirt with a single button in the middle holding it together stared down at me. Her skin hung off her face like a mask that didn’t quite fit. A soft bloated stomach stuck out from the bottom of her shirt, but her chest above the button was as flat as a cutting board.

“You’re Lynn’s brother.”

“Brother-in-law. I’m married to Jennifer, her sister.”

“You want to come in?”

I thanked her, and she moved to the side. I stepped into the trailer, and though the stench of cat urine jabbed up my nostrils like sewing needles I didn’t see a cat anywhere.

Ms. Terpweiler shuffled past me to an expensive-looking recliner, which I noted matched  the equally nice-looking couch. She eased herself into the recliner.

“Have yourself a seat.”

I moved to the couch, and the cushions hugged me as I sat down.

“Nice, huh?” Ms. Terpweiler said.

“Yes.”

I patted the couch and nodded at her recliner. “Where’d you get them?”

“My son gave them to me.”

“Randall?”

She nodded and picked up a can of Coors and sipped it from a straw.

I asked, “Have you seen him today?”

“You like that couch?”

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

She grinned and took another drink.

I asked, “Have you seen your son tonight?”

“You got any kids?”

I shook my head. “No, ma’am.”

“You gonna have some?”

“We can’t,” I said. “Not anymore.”

The first time I kissed Jennifer, I had told her I wanted a Christian wife and a house full of children and she had blushed and touched my lips with her forefinger and said, “I can’t believe how amazing you are.”

Ms. Terpweiler sucked at her beer straw. “Kids are a worry. They worry you every day they’re on this earth.”

“They’re worth it though, aren’t they?”

She chewed her pale bottom lip. “I guess.”

I wanted to press her on the whereabouts of Randall, but I could tell I would have to come at it obliquely. “How many kids do you have?”

“Two.”

“Boys? Or…”

“Boy and a girl.” She shook her head and finished her beer and got up to get another from the kitchen. “I had a boy and a girl. Now ain’t that supposed to be the perfect combination?”

“I suppose.”

She shrugged and cracked open her beer. Then she unwrapped a new straw from a small box marked Bolewska Restaurant Supply next to her recliner.

I waited.

She said, “You know how come your family can hurt you so bad? It’s cause you expect more out of them. You think the ties that bind will do a little binding, but they don’t. Not in the end. When I went through my mastectomies do you think either of them kids showed up?” She flopped back down in her recliner, took a long pull from her beer, and sighed. “They eventually showed up, I guess. Randall had to work, but he did come to see me the next day.”

“What’s he do?”

“Works at a video store.”

“What kind of video store?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Do you know where Randall is now? I really need to talk to him.”

“Have you met my daughter?”

“Ms. Terpweiler, I—”

“Her name is Tisha.”

“Ms. Terpweiler,” I said. “I need to see Randall. Lynn’s with him and it’s very important that I speak with her.”

“She’s eighteen,” Ms. Terpweiler said.

“Your daughter?”

“Only eighteen and she’s already hooked on drugs.” Her eyes were pink and her face seemed to shiver. “My baby girl.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“You ever use any drugs?”

I shook my head. “I’ve never even had a drink.”

She smiled and took a sip from her beer straw. “How’d you manage that?”

I shrugged. “I suppose I believed them when they said it was bad for you.”

“Not me,” she said. “I started drinking when I was thirteen. Drank a lot. Lost my virginity when I was thirteen, too. Real red letter year.”

I rubbed my face and stared at beer stains on the cheap carpeting.

“I wasn’t much of a mother,” she said. “Never used drugs, though. Never did. Not until this cancer a few years ago, and then I was always on pills. I took more pills than Elvis.”

I leaned forward and locked eyes with her. “Where is Randall?”

She sipped her beer and stared at me. For the first time, she seemed to have heard the question. She put down the beer. “And why,” she asked, “would I tell you that?”

I was about to say something when footsteps pounded onto the porch and the screen door screeched open. I grabbed the arm of the sofa to push myself up. Before I could, however, the door opened and a girl walked inside.

Her brown hair was yanked back in a cherry red clip, and she wore an oversized black NASCAR t-shirt over a pair of blue jeans with no coat. As she fixed me with a quick assessing glance, I noticed that she had a jarring underbite.

Ms. Terpweiler took a sip from her beer straw and said, “This is my daughter Tisha.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello.”

When she spoke that word, from my vantage point on the sofa I had a perfect view of her mouth—or what was left of it. The girl clearly had no teeth on the top of her mouth, and her remaining bottom teeth were a smoky shade of gray.

Tisha nodded at me. “Who’re you?” Her voice was artless and direct, but hampered by her missing upper teeth.

“Daniel,” I said. “I’m Lynn’s brother-in-law.”

She watched me watch her and then, seemingly satisfied that a painful but necessary threshold had been breeched, she seemed to relax. She smiled a closed-lip smile and slid her hands into the pocket of her jeans.

“Have you seen her?” I asked.

Tisha walked over, plopped down next to me on the couch. “So you’re the brother-in-law.”

“Yes…”

“Lynn said you’re super religious.”

“Did she?”

Tisha had lost any hint of self-consciousness about her mouth, and now she grinned like a hillbilly. “Yep. Said you used to be religious, but since your wife’s accident you turned like super hardcore religious.”

Ms. Terpweiler stared at me over her beer.

“I suppose so,” I said.

Tisha said, “I never even been to church.”

“Ever?”

“Not except for weddings and funerals and stuff. I seen preachers marrying and burying, but I never seen one preach a sermon in church. You know, like a sermon-sermon.”

I was aware that this was the perfect opportunity to do God’s work, to ask the questions, to start the conversation.
Well, have you ever heard about Jesus? Do you know he died for your sins? Do you ever feel guilty? Alone? Unloved? Do you know God wants to take all of those feelings and heal them, to fill you with light and truth and healing? Do you know God loves you?

I couldn’t bring myself to do it, though. I’d gone into a porn booth, and now I was going to witness? No.

I chuckled at my own absurdity.

“What?” Tisha asked.

“Nothing,” I said. “I was just thinking. Life’s funny.”

“Yeah,” Ms. Terpweiler said, “it’s a fucking riot.”

Tisha waved her away. “Don’t listen to her. She gets all bitter. Don’t you, Momma?”

Ms. Terpweiler leaned forward. “Tell me something, Mr. Jesus. If there’s a god then how come I got the cancer? Why’d he let that happen?”

Tisha smiled and slapped my knee. “Good question!”

I held out my hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know why He does what He does. I know He can help you through it.”

Ms. Terpweiler frowned and sat back in her recliner. “That’s like asking the arsonist to help put out the fire.”

I dropped my hands and looked at the carpet. “I...”

Tisha said, “Lynn’s dad was a preacher, wasn’t he?”

“Yes. Brother Peter. That’s how I met Jennifer and Lynn. I went to their church. Brother Peter was my pastor, my spiritual mentor.”

“What was he like?”

“He was the greatest man I ever met.”

“Hmm. That ain’t the way she talks about him.”

“What? What do you mean?”

The girl shrugged. “That’s just not the way she talks about him.”

“How does she talk about him?”

“Mostly she don’t.”

“When she does, how does she?”

The two women exchanged glances. Tisha was still smiling. Her mother was still frowning.

I rubbed my face. I couldn’t imagine my sister-in-law sitting here with these people. “Look,” I said. “I need to find Lynn. It is incredibly important that I find her.”

Ms. Terpweiler said, “We don’t know where she is.”

“That’s not the impression I got from you earlier.”

Ms. Terpweiler took a sip of her beer, swished it around in her mouth, swallowed it and said, “I don’t give a good country fuck about your impressions.”

Tisha said, “In case you missed it, Daniel, that was Momma’s way of ending the conversation.”

I sighed.

Tisha stared at me. “You ain’t got no idea where they are?”

“Well, I have reason to think they might be at the dogfights.”

“We don’t know where the damn dogfights are,” Ms. Terpweiler said.

Tisha said, “I do!”

“You do?” Ms. Terpweiler asked, genuinely surprised.

“Sure.”

I turned to her. “Can you tell me where they are?”

“Hell, I’ll do you one better. If you give me a ride, I’ll take you.”