The Last Kind Words (42 page)

I
visited Collie one last time. I requested that we meet in the area where I’d first spoken with him, where we could talk on the phone and there would be reinforced glass between us.

The screws brought him in and took their time unlocking his chains. He must’ve come straight from the gym. He was still sweaty and the veins remained knotted all across his arms, twisting red and black in his throat. He smiled at me through the glass but he knew something was wrong. I was a little heartened to realize he could still worry about something even now.

The screws left and Collie spun his chair around, sat backward as usual, and snatched up the phone. I took a breath and reached up to mine. I moved stiffly. It had taken twenty staples to close the jagged tears in my side. The emergency-room docs had done an excellent job patching me up. They told me the scars wouldn’t be bad. The dog tattoo would need some touching up, though.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again,” my brother said.

“I didn’t plan on coming back,” I told him.

“So why are you here?”

I could feel that old singular pain rising once again. My foolish mantra returned to me. It beat along with my pulse. I can do this. I can do this.

“You were right,” I said. “Someone else snuffed Becky Clarke.”

He let go with a chuckle that grew wilder until it became a whoop. It got the screws looking in at us. “I knew it. Lin was right. My girl is sharp as hell. Idiot cops couldn’t figure it out, but she did.” He raised his chin and eyed me. “Did you find him?”

“Yes,” I said.

He waited for me to continue. I didn’t. I decided there was no need to tell him that I thought Lin had been wrong too. I didn’t believe Grey was a serial killer. Instead, there was a world of mad dogs like him, husbands and boyfriends who couldn’t contain their rage, whose hands had learned how to batter and strangle. The world was littered with dead young brunettes.

His face emptied of its usual high-strung emotion. He looked at me with some real attentiveness. “Did you take care of it yourself? There’s been no word here. Nothing on the circuit. Lin hasn’t said anything.”

“I handled it. Nobody else knows.”

“Right. But I can see you’re holding back. You’ve got more to say.”

I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me about how you kissed them?”

Collie looked away in embarrassment. His face flushed until it glowed pink. I had never seen my brother embarrassed about anything. It was a revelation. I had learned something new about him on the eve of his death, and that disturbed me. I didn’t want to believe that there was more I might learn about my brother, if we had more time.

“I didn’t know they knew about that,” he said.

“Forensics did their job. Did you really think they’d miss that?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was in the files. Your attorneys should have used it.”

“I didn’t care. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want them to fight for me either.”

“You should have told me anyway. Maybe it would have helped convince me that you hadn’t iced Rebecca Clarke.”

“Nothing was going to convince you one way or the other. You were either going to help or you weren’t.”

He was right. I couldn’t argue the point. Right from the beginning I knew I was going to help. Even before he asked me. Despite my own protests. He called me and I had come running home.

“Why’d you put your lips on them, Collie?”

“I just did, Terry.”

We were bound by our rituals. The underneath forced him to kill with viciousness, but perhaps it couldn’t steal all of his love from him.
Maybe it was his way of begging forgiveness from them. Or him forgiving them for allowing themselves to become his victims and the impetus for his own destruction.

“So tell me,” he said. “What happened? Who was it?”

I leaned so far toward the glass that he actually drew away on the other side. “I want the truth from you, Collie, do you understand? Don’t run any kind of a game on me. Don’t hold back. Don’t lie. Talk straight. If you’ve got any kind of a heart, use it now. You owe me that much.”

“What the hell do you mean, Terry?”

I enunciated every word very clearly into the phone.
“Did … you … know?”

“Did I know what?”

“Did you have any idea at all who it was?”

He shook his head. “No, of course I don’t know who it was. If I’d known I wouldn’t have needed you to check into it. What happened? What did you do?”

I said, “Does it really matter?”

He glanced away again. “No, I suppose not.”

I looked at my brother for so long that his expression shifted several times. He smiled, then frowned, then a hint of real concern began to ply his features.

“What is it, Terry? What do you need to say?”

My throat was raw. I swallowed several times. I looked at my reflection and then realized it wasn’t my reflection. I was staring at my brother. We were the same. Maybe it was the onset of Alzheimer’s, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there really was no reason. Maybe Grey had none either. It might not have been the girl who broke his heart. It might have been anything at all. And me. And me. Was I going to wind up collecting Toby mugs or would I murder young women who reminded me of Kimmy? I was already a murderer. I should be sitting on the other side of the glass. I had a premonition that I would be someday.

“What is it?” he repeated.

I sucked air like I was suffocating. “Collie, I have to tell you something.”

“Okay. That’s okay, Terry. You can tell me anything you need to. Go on. What is it? Tell me.”

I said, “I love you.”

He couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d opened all the doors and ushered him to a limousine and driven him out of there. His face grew a healthy, youthful pink again. It took ten years off him. He looked like a kid again. “What?”

“You’re my brother and I love you. But I can’t forgive you. Do you understand? I’ll never forgive you. When they put you on the table, when they put poison in your blood. When they murder you, Collie … I’m sorry, but I’m going to be glad. What you see when you look at me that last time? You’re going to see someone who’s wishing that you burn in hell. But I’m not lying. I love you.”

I put my hand to the glass and fanned my fingers. His eyes were wide and his mouth had dropped open. He looked frozen in the glare of open emotion. He didn’t respond to my gesture. I hung up the phone. The screws came and put chains on my brother and led him out. I watched him shuffle through the door. He started to turn his silver head and look back at me but didn’t complete the motion. I sat there until one of the screws told me to leave.

The
next day Collie gave it one last romp for posterity’s sake. He was going to go out having some fun. He fought them with a huge smile on his face. I knew he wasn’t really trying to hurt anyone. He was just putting on one last show for his own entertainment. The screws wrestled him down to the floor and fell over themselves. The priest stepped away and kept reading from the Bible in a shaky voice.

I concentrated on Collie. I put my will into it. I focused all my attention and directed it with all my mental wattage and tried to find him in the distance between us. I thought maybe it would be enough for him to make a last-ditch effort to connect with me.

Collie glanced up once and grinned at me through the window even while they swung their billy clubs at his back.

They strapped him down to the table and stuck the needle in. He had no last words. Not even for his wife. Lin sat expressionless beside me. I wanted to jump out of my skin but she seemed relaxed, almost serene. She’d married him knowing this would be the final outcome.

I didn’t know any of the other witnesses. I had wondered if the Clarkes would show up. I wondered if anyone else here was a relative of one of Collie’s other victims. I tried to read their expressions. I couldn’t. We all looked about the same kind of haunted.

His eyes were stone, but I imagined what it must be like staring at a group of pitiless people who all wanted you dead. Even your own brother. It felt like they wanted me dead too.

The machine took no time at all.

Collie shut his eyes and then it was over.

As we were leaving Lin folded up and almost fell. I reached out and
took her in my arms and turned her to my chest. I let her sob for both of us. It went on for a long time. When she was done she pushed off me and walked away.

There was cheering outside. People hooting and flashing their headlights. Protesters were holding candles and singing hymns. It was an emotionally charged moment. I didn’t know which camp I fit into more. Vicky and her news crew were interviewing folks. I thought Eve would be on hand but she wasn’t. Maybe she’d already moved off to a new story.

Gilmore stood out beyond the gate. I walked over to him. He was smoking a cigarette. He was a touch pale. It only peripherally had to do with my brother. I knew he was thinking about family again, the family an orphan like him had never had, and the family that he couldn’t hold on to himself.

He said, “I don’t know what to say, Terrier.”

“You don’t have to say anything. In fact, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Your mother, she—”

“What happened between you and Phyllis?” I asked.

He looked down and let a stream of smoke out. When he looked back up it was like he’d forgotten I was there. It took him another moment to respond. “She left me.”

“Any chance you can win her back?”

“I doubt it.”

“Is it what you want? To have her back?”

He paused. He wasn’t thinking about the answer, just whether he should tell me. “More than anything.”

“Then do whatever she needs you to do, right? Quit the force if it’s that. Be a straight arrow if it’s that. Be a better father if it’s that. Spend more time with the family, whatever it is she needs. Do it.”

“It’s easy advice but hard to change.” He shook his head. “She won’t take me back.”

I thought about him bringing my father into his ordeal. My old man breaking in to houses again, but not to juke the places, just to snap photos
or to stand among the dreams of what might have been, the wreckage of our reality. “Then move on. Stop hanging around executions and people like the Rands.”

His lips crimped into that fucked grin again. I wanted to slap it off like it was an insect that had landed on him. “Why are you saying this? You know how ridiculous you are, Terry?”

“As a matter of fact I do. That’s proof that I know what I’m talking about, Gilmore. I’m Exhibit A.”

I walked away. He had as good a chance as anyone at pulling it together and getting himself back on track. So long as he stayed out of our backyard.

I got into my car. I sat there in the lot, watching the crowd. From a distance I couldn’t tell the divergent groups apart anymore. The moon climbed into the night sky. The candles went out one by one. I turned the key and threw the car into drive, then put it in park again and turned off the engine. My brother was still inside somewhere. I thought I would wait with him a little longer.

My mother phoned. She spoke my name and then said nothing more for a time. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to tell her, how much detail to give. A heavy numbness had settled on me. It was lulling and I shut my eyes.

She finally managed to ask, “Did he say anything?”

“No.”

“Are you all right?”

“I will be.”

“Come home.”

I went home. A couple of news crews were out in front. They jumped in my face. JFK barked his ass off. I said nothing. It was three in the morning.

I walked in. They were sitting in the kitchen. My mother had prepared food. It seemed right. We all took our usual places. The three empty seats seemed not to be empty at all.

No one said anything. No one asked me anything. Dale almost got up the nerve at one point but backed out. I was glad. My mother fixed
me a sandwich and I ate without tasting. I helped with the dishes. She’d bought a crumb cake. It was Collie’s favorite. Dale cut us each a piece and put them on plates and we sat and stared. Eventually my mother cleaned the table again.

I was her only son now. I thought I should make some kind of grand familial demonstration. I didn’t know what it should be, so I did nothing.

My father took his beer cooler out onto the porch. The news vans were gone. I sat with him. We drank in silence. JFK circled the yard restlessly, cutting in and out of the brush and prowling the property line. My father got drunk enough that he nearly passed out. I helped him to bed. My mother feigned sleep as I laid my old man beside her.

I passed Dale’s door and heard her crying. I knocked softly and she quieted. I walked in and sat on the edge of her mattress the way I used to do when reading those vampire romances to her. I pulled a blanket over her shoulder. I rubbed her back until her breathing softened and I knew she was asleep.

I laid down beside her but couldn’t keep my eyes closed. I stared at the ceiling and thought of everything and thought of nothing. I got up at dawn and went for an easy run around the college campus with JFK. My staples pulled and bled a little but there was no major damage. When we got back I showered, got dressed, and went shopping.