The Sleeping and the Dead (29 page)

“You have funny ideas about nothing. It didn't sound like nothing.”

I changed the subject. “Are you all right now?” His face looked like a clay mask in the glow of the laptop.

“I'll be OK…” He choked it off before it started again.

“You need a fresh beer.” I got him a can of Budweiser from the fridge.

He took a small sip. “Your friend, the cop,” he said. “He doesn't like me being here.”

“Screw him.”

“Did you tell him about the picture you found?”

I shrugged and flicked cigarette ash on the floor between my legs. James carefully stood his beer on the arm of the couch, like a man defusing a bomb. A droplet of dew ran down the side of the can and sank into the other stains in the fabric. “I hate cops,” he muttered. “They're bastards. Every last one.”

“Adam's not a bastard,” I said, wondering,
Why am I defending him
? Adam
was
being a bastard about James. “He's my friend. He's worried about me.”

“Is that all?” James asked.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

He wouldn't look at me now. He traced another drop of dew down the side of his beer can. “He's a guy. Maybe he has personal reasons for not wanting me here.”

That pissed me off, even though it shouldn't have. I'd practically accused Adam of the same thing. It didn't change how I felt now. “First of all, Adam's my NA sponsor, so that's not going to happen because it would be a violation of trust. Second, he's gay. So don't go second-guessing other people's motives if you don't know the first fucking thing about them, OK?”

He picked up his beer and held it to his mouth without drinking. “Sorry,” he said. He took a long swig, his throat rising and falling like a piece of machinery. He socked that can away like a regular frat boy, crumpled the empty in his hand. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “It's just that every time I turn around, some cop is trying to screw up my life.”

“Cops see it all,” I said. “They don't always get it right.”

“Yeah, but when they get it wrong, innocent people die with a needle in their arm.”

“Why do you think so many cops end up alcoholics, drug addicts, divorced?” I was describing myself.

He shrugged, sullen. All he could see was his own point of view, and I couldn't blame him. One thing you don't want in your life is some cop who's married to the idea that you broke the law. It really won't matter if you're innocent or guilty, he's going to find a way to bring you down. All the same, I could understand Adam's concern, and deep down I still harbored a niggling doubt about James. How did Endo find that key, unless he already knew about it?

“Maybe I can help you see the situation from a cop's point of view,” I offered.

“I really don't care to see their point of view,” he said.

“Just sit still and listen for a minute. Like I said before, when a woman is killed, cops automatically look at the husband or boyfriend. That's a fact of life. Also, you're up to your ass in debt…”

“How…” he started to say, then realized how stupid that question would sound.

I continued, “… up to your ass in debt. Your wife had a big insurance policy and her folks had money. That's motive.”

“I never tried to collect on her policy.”

“Because the insurance company wouldn't pay as long as you were a suspect.”

“I didn't want to collect.”

“You couldn't collect, whether you wanted to or not. Cops don't care about your noble intentions. All they see is the insurance policy and how much you stand to collect.”

“OK,” he said, calming down a little. “I can see that. I never thought of it that way. But it's not gambling debt.”

“What then?”

“Stocks. I was in deep, day trading, borrowing money to cover my losses.”

“Borrowing from who?”

“Leg breakers. The banks wouldn't talk to me anymore.”

“If you needed money, why not sell the house?”

“The house belongs to Ashley's parents. They bought it for us as a wedding present, but the title is still in their name. They're very controlling people, especially her dad. We had to stay married for ten years before they would give us the house outright. After the…” He paused again and his eyes watered up. “After Ashley died, they let me keep living there for her sake, until I was actually convicted. Innocent until proven guilty. They're Democrats.”

“How generous of them,” I said.

“They don't talk to me anymore. We talk through their lawyer. After I lost my job, I needed every penny to pay the lawyers and keep the gorillas off my back. The other day I got a margin call, so I sold Ashley's cameras. I had no choice. I sold my Lexus a couple of days ago.”

“So you defintely had motive. Means is obvious enough—you were her husband.” I had to stop myself. Here he was helping me to dig his own grave, yet for some reason I still trusted him.

I continued, tried to be more diplomatic, and failed. “All that's left is opportunity, and that's the sticky part. You have a perfect alibi.”

“Exactly,” he said without moving his lips. They were flat gash across his face.

“But that doesn't mean you weren't involved. You could have hired it out.” Then, because I still had that niggling doubt, I said, “Wayne Endo,” to see how he would react.

He didn't, except to say, “What?” That eased my mind a bit. Either he didn't know Endo or he was a damned good actor. Damn good. The best ones always are. Not even Perry Mason can shake them.

“Did you ever know or meet a man named Wayne Endo?” I asked.

“Not that I remember.”

“Never talked to him in a chat room online?”

“I don't do that kind of thing.”

“Never picked him up in a bar anywhere?”

“You mean like a gay bar?”

I didn't say anything.

“I was married!”

“Lots of gay men are married. You wouldn't be the first.”

He just shook his head. This was a pointless line of inquiry, anyway. Adam was wrong about James and I knew it. I took a drag and blew the smoke at the computer screen, then clicked to the next image in the camera file. It was a picture of me, naked, asleep in bed with my brother's baseball bat clutched between my legs. I had kicked off the covers. The angle was low and foreshortened, as though the camera had been sitting on the nightstand when the photo was shot.

I closed the image, but left the computer on. “Endo isn't your typical serial killer,” I said. “He may not even
be
a serial killer. He murders people he thinks have betrayed him, or to send messages to people who have betrayed him.”

“What's that got to do with me?”

I probably shouldn't have told him. If he did have something to do with his wife's murder, all I was doing was giving him the opportunity to cover his tracks. But I didn't think he was guilty. Maybe I didn't want to think he was guilty. “Maybe you met Endo. Maybe you had a brief affair. Maybe he fixated on you and when you didn't return his affections, he killed your wife and tried to frame you for it.”

“But that's not what happened.”

“What really happened doesn't matter,” I tried to explain. This wasn't some show on television. Justice might not prevail in the end. “All that matters is what the DA
thinks
happened, and what he can convince a jury to believe about you. Which is more plausible? That you had a gay affair that went bad and your lover murdered your wife? Or your wife just happened to be in the perfect place at the perfect time to catch the Playhouse Killer in the act, that he killed her, staged her body, found a hidden and unknown key that allowed him to frame you, then accidentally took a photo of himself standing over the body of his victim?” Just as I finished, a tremendous crack of thunder broke right over our heads, putting an exclamation point on my conclusion.

James said nothing, but his eyes had that drawn look of panic, as though for the first time he could see how thin the line was keeping him from death row. If Endo was captured, the cops, maybe even Adam, would paint the same scenario and Endo would plead to it to buy himself a reduced sentence. That's all it would take to put James St. Michael on a gurney.

He had never faced that reality. Like most people, he assumed truth would win out, and justice would be served in the end. Meanwhile, he'd blamed the cops.

I almost told him about Sean. Maybe if he knew that I understood what it was like to lose someone, he could unload some of that grief. But I would have sounded like a Narcotics Anonymous counselor.
Hello, my name is Jackie, and I'm still grieving my brother's murder
.

Truth was, I really couldn't know what James had been through, just like he couldn't know what I'd been through. You can talk about it, but nobody can share those dark watches of the night with you. James had been dealing with this the best he could for two years, but the cops wouldn't let him move on. They wouldn't let him bury his wife.

I reached across and took his crumpled beer can, tossed it in the trash in the dark. I couldn't even see the garbage pail, but Zen-like I swished it, nothing but net. The thunder was pretty much constant now, but still distant, except for that one crack.

“You want another beer?”

“Please.” I sucked the foam off the top before handing it to him. He thanked me and set it on the arm of the couch without taking a drink. I stood in the door with the cold blowing out around my legs. James was staring sightlessly into the bedroom, one side of his face lit up by the light from the refrigerator. The other side was so dark I couldn't see it.

“I didn't kill my wife,” he said, turning to me. “I loved Ashley. I still love her.”

“I believe you.”

“I wish I could believe you do.”

“I wish you could, too.” He sat with his chin resting on the back of the couch. His hair was softer than it looked, but his cheeks were rough. He needed a shave. “If I thought for one second you had murdered your wife, do you honestly think I would kiss you?” I leaned forward in the chair and kissed him on the mouth. He kissed me back, but only a little. Ashley was still there inside him, the memory of her, holding him back. I could feel her. I could almost see her. He was the only thing holding her in this world, but if he let her go, they'd both be lost.

I kissed him again and this time he put his hand on the back of my head, and now he clove to me with a terrible desperation, like a drowning or starving man. I don't know if I was merely standing in for his lost wife, if he even knew who he was kissing. It didn't matter. I could hardly breathe but it didn't feel like I needed to breathe. I was starving, too. Two starved children devouring each other. I felt the wet on my cheeks from his tears and he let me go just enough to breathe, and rested his forehead against mine.

“I've spent the last two years wondering whether I'd ever prove my innocence,” he said.

“Nobody's innocent,” I said, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “We're just not all guilty. Can you stay here tonight?”

He nodded.

 

41

H
IS MOUTH TASTED COOL AND
earthy, like water from a mountain stream, like snow and the wind and the melting sunlight, with just a hint of beer. Mine felt like a bayou full of rotting gar and lovesick bullfrogs. I couldn't remember if I had brushed my teeth that morning. I hadn't eaten all day. I was living on cigarettes and beer.

I took his hand and pulled him to the bedroom door so he could see the bed against the wall. It was easy enough to spot it in the strobes of lightning outside the window. I put a hand on his chest and kissed him again, briefly, just with the lips, and said, “Give me a minute.” I let my hand drift down his chest, over the rippling muscles of his belly, just so he had no doubts what I intended. Then I took the two steps back into the bathroom and closed the door.

I gazed in the mirror for a moment and hardly recognized myself. My face was so pale my eyebrows looked like someone had drawn them with Magic Marker. My eyes were tiny beneath them, squinting suspiciously at the person in the mirror. I pulled down my jeans and panties, then shucked off my shirt and bra and tossed them in the shower.

I faced my naked self in the mirror once more. At least with tits I looked more like me, or the me I expected. My vision remained about twenty-one years old, back in the day when married photography professors asked me to stay after class and model for them. But my ribs, God, my ribs. I looked like a medical specimen. The smack had eaten away at me all these years. It was going to take awhile before I stopped looking like a junkie.
Thank God for darkness as well as light
.
I hope I wake up before he does
. I opened the medicine cabinet, leaving the mirror tilted against the wall so I wouldn't have to look at myself again.

I loaded up my toothbrush and set about trying to scrub eight years of cigarette tar from my teeth. I heard James say, “Hey!”

I stopped for a minute and listened, but all I heard over the running faucet was the approaching storm, an almost continuous grumble of thunder. I turned off the light and opened the door.

James was lying on the bed with his shirt off, but still wearing his jeans. He lay almost against the wall, his face hidden in the shadow thrown by the headboard from the red streetlight outside the window. The light turned green. I suddenly felt ridiculously awkward, standing naked before him in that ghastly glow.

My laptop was still on, its screen shining off the refrigerator door in the next room. My camera rested beside it on the kitchen table, still plugged into the computer. Each flicker of lightning made the camera lens wink like a dark and knowing eye, with a weird purplish dot of light glowing deep within the lens.