by Blake Banner
* * *
At three PM, we stood on the steps outside Sue Mackenzie’s house, ringing her bell again. She eventually came to the door after about five minutes, looking groggy. Her clothes were rumpled and slightly askew, like she’d been sleeping dressed. She saw who we were and opened the iron gate to us without saying anything, then led the way indoors. I saw there was a blanket on the sofa. She moved toward it, then stopped and ran her fingers through her hair.
“You want tea, coffee?”
I was about to say we didn’t, but Dehan said, “You want me to make it?”
Sue nodded. “Yeah, tea.” She pointed vaguely. “It’s in the cupboard.”
Dehan went to the kitchen and we sat. Sue curled up in the corner of the sofa and pulled the blanket up around her.
“You feel up to talking, Sue?”
She nodded.
I thought for a moment, then asked, “What’s the deal with you and Ed?”
She didn’t answer for a bit, then said, “What do you mean, ‘the deal?’”
“When we spoke to you this morning, you said Luis was a bad influence on Sebastian. When we spoke to Ed and Mary Irizarry, Ed said that Sebastian was a bad influence on Luis.” I spread my hands. “You were all real close. Then when they moved to Morris Park, you lost touch. Mary speaks kindly of you. He doesn’t. It doesn’t take a genius to see that you two have some kind of issue.”
She spent a while picking absently at the threads in the blanket. Then she took a deep, shuddering breath. “Luis is a nice kid. He’s just a bit wild. When they were younger, he was lovely to have around.” She gave a wet smile. “He was always joking, always laughing. His humor was irrepressible. Sebastian loved him like a brother. Maybe if he’d had a brother… But Matt died…
“As they got older, they both proved to be very bright. But Sebastian was more than bright. He was highly intelligent, like his father. He had Matt’s temperament, too: dedicated, serious, kind. Luis was out to enjoy life. I always felt he was a distraction for Sebastian. Sebastian told me I was wrong. He welcomed the distraction…”
Dehan came and placed two mugs of tea on the table, and handed one to Sue. She sat and noted, “From what Frank, the ME, says, Sebastian was doing very well.”
“He was.”
I smiled. “So Luis wasn’t having that much of a negative effect.”
“I guess not.” She shrugged. “Mothers…”
I waited a moment, but she wasn’t going to say any more, so I pressed the point. “Your explanation only tells half the story, Sue. It doesn’t explain why Ed is so hostile.”
She gave another small shrug. “Ed is hostile to everybody and everything.”
“He wasn’t always, though, was he? There was a time when you were all close friends.”
She held the mug in both hands, staring into it as though she was trying to draw strength from the hot brew. After a moment, she said, “Do we have to do this?”
“We won’t know until you tell us what it’s about. For my part, Sue, I don’t intend to leave a single stone unturned in my search for whoever did this.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them again. They were swollen. She looked doped, but doped with pain.
“Matt and Ed had met at college. They were both law majors, both left-wing liberals, both deeply concerned about social justice and civil rights. But Matt lacked that aggression, that killer instinct you needed to be a good defense attorney. Besides, he was always more concerned about educating people to understand and embrace equality and diversity, rather than dividing society into stereotypical good guys and bad guys, and then punishing the bad guys.” She gave a small, sad laugh. “I used to tease him that he only married me as a political statement, but that wasn’t true. He was the most honest, noble man I ever knew.”
She paused. After a moment, Dehan asked her. “How did Ed feel about your marriage?”
Sue made a face. “To begin with, we all got on well. We all shared the same beliefs and ideals. I guess, while we were students, and just after we started work, we all felt we were making a statement with our friendship. But when Matt got ill, and we learned that there was nothing the doctors could do about it, things began to change.”
“In what way?”
“The real bond of friendship had always been between Ed and Matt. Mary and I were fond of each other, but I guess the driving force of the group had always been Ed. He was very virile and strong. And he had chosen Matt for his friend. When he learned that Matt was dying, I think it hit him harder than he was willing to admit. He became increasingly aggressive, bitter, patronizing…”
I frowned. “Toward whom, Sue? Aggressive and patronizing toward whom?”
She was quiet for a long moment. “Toward everybody. Toward Mary, toward me… Then, he suddenly announced that they were moving. He was doing very well in his practice. He was popular with the Latino community, he was an active campaigner for civil rights, he was very vocal, and all of that added up to a thriving practice. So he announced to us that he was buying a house in Morris Park. Shortly after that, Matt died and they moved.”
Dehan was watching her with a furrowed brow, aware, as I was, that she was talking around something. She sipped her tea, waited a moment, but Sue seemed to have come to a stop. So Dehan asked the question I had been thinking.
“Sue, none of this explains Ed’s hostility toward you and Sebastian.”
She started to talk two or three times, but each time ended with a deep sigh. Finally, she said, “You have to understand that I was very fond of Ed, in spite of his brash character. But Ed hates me, and he hated Sebastian, because he made a pass at me and I rejected him… and he raped me.”
TEN
The room was very quiet. Sue was staring into her mug of tea and Dehan and I were watching her closely. My mind was racing, trying to fit this new fact into the incomplete picture I had. Dehan leaned forward and placed her mug on the table and her elbows on her knees.
“Eduardo Irizarry raped you?”
“Right here, in this room. The day after my husband’s funeral.”
“The day after…?”
“He’d taken to coming around during Matt’s illness, ostensibly to see how I was, how I was coping. I suppose I should have said something, but to be honest, I had enough on my plate with Matt’s illness, knowing I was losing him, without the added anxiety of falling out with Ed and Mary.” She sighed. “Besides, he never did anything. He was always kind and thoughtful. I suppose in some way I was grateful to him for the attention. I did say a few times that it would be nice if Mary came with him, but he always made some excuse.”
She went quiet, picking at the minute hairs on the blanket with her left hand. She drained her mug and set it down on the floor beside her, then spoke almost like an automaton.
“You can imagine the state I was in the day after the funeral. My doctor had given me tablets to help me sleep, and I am pretty sure I overdosed on them that night. I slept right through the morning and finally woke up when Ed rang on the bell. I came down, I must have looked a wreck. He made me some tea and, I don’t remember how it went exactly, but he started talking about how I was going to need help. Now, without Matt, without his income, alone with a small boy, how was I going to cope?” She gave a small, humorless laugh. “I could hardly believe my ears. I told him I had just buried my husband, I was doped out of my head and I had only just got up…!” She spread her hands and shook her head, made eye contact with Dehan for the first time. “Couldn’t it wait? But he insisted.”
“He was setting the ground.”
Sue nodded. “Exactly, but I was too doped up to see it. Finally, he came straight out with it. We could reach an arrangement. He could help me. They were moving, but his office is right near here, in Colgate Avenue. I could work part-time, cook him lunch, sometimes he could stay the night. His wife need never know. He had it all worked out, the way men do.” She looked at me and sighed. “Sorry. No offense.” She turne
d back to Dehan, shook her head, and started to cry, picking at the threads of her blanket again.
“It was like he’d kicked me in the stomach, slapped me in the face. I couldn’t believe it. I screamed at him to get out. It was the worst thing I could have done. He went crazy, called me a filthy whore, slapped me, then threw me on the sofa and raped me.”
She gripped her mouth with her hand, trying to stifle the sobs. She spoke with her eyes closed and her voice muffled. “I was so scared. He gripped my throat with both hands and squeezed. I thought he was going to choke me. He was like an animal. I really thought I was going to die.” She stopped, was quiet for a while, then went on, “When he left, he called me a puta, said that if I reported him he would destroy me.”
Dehan shook her head. “Why didn’t you report him, Sue?”
She spread her hands again, shook her head. It was a pathetic gesture. “I was broken. I loved my husband so much. I had lost him. I didn’t know how I was going to cope with life. I was worried sick about Sebastian, about what would become of him. Can you imagine what he would have done to me in court? I was so weak, so exhausted, so tired…” Again she shook her head. “I just couldn’t face it. It was easier to pretend it had never happened.”
I said, “It must have been hard to see Mary after that.”
“I didn’t. I never saw her again. They moved a couple of months later.”
She fell silent. I said absently, “But the boys stayed in touch…”
She nodded at the blanket. “Social media at first. Then when Luis got older, he used to come and visit… Always against his father’s wishes. I believe most of the time, he didn’t know where his son was. Later, they deliberately chose to study medicine together.”
There were a couple of questions burning in my mind, but something told me to wait. I glanced at Dehan, wondering if she was thinking the same. My gut told me she was. She looked at me. I gave a small nod and she said, “I think we’re done for today, Sue. You want me to call Peggy for you, tell her you’re awake?”
She shook her head. “I’ll call her. Thanks.” Then she looked up at Dehan. “Detective… Carmen. May I call you Carmen? I remember you. You were older than the other kids, but I remember you.” She frowned and for a moment I thought she was going to start crying again. “I’ve never told anybody what happened that day. It has been a real relief to get it out. Thank you.”
She reached up and took Dehan’s hand. Dehan gave it a squeeze. “Sure. If you need anything, you know where to find us. Just give us a call.”
We let ourselves out. The sky was still bright, but you could feel the summer evening creeping in at the edges. I felt suddenly weary and leaned on the roof of the car.
Dehan leaned opposite, with the key in her hand. “Quite a day, huh?”
I nodded and glanced at my watch. “It’s almost six o’clock. We’ve been on the go since before three. What do you say we let Angela sleep, head back to my place, and have an early supper?”
She opened the car door. “I’ll drive you back, but I won’t stay.” She climbed in and I climbed in after her. She fired up the engine and pulled away. “It’s been a real long day, I could use some sleep.”
“Sure. Me, too.”
We drove in a silence that started to become awkward. Eventually, I said, “So did you notice anything absent from Sue’s narrative?”
She frowned. “Like what?”
“Same thing that was absent from Ed’s narrative.” I looked at her.
She glanced back and gave her head a quick shake. “What?”
I gave a small shrug. “Rosario.”
Her frown deepened. After a moment, she said, “Huh!” and then, “I guess you’re right.”
“She was part of the gang. So much so that your mother stopped hanging out with her. Yet nobody talks about her. The only person who mentioned her was Mary, and that was to say that she was dead, after we had mentioned her. If you didn’t know already that Rosario was part of that crowd, to hear them talk, you would never guess.” I shrugged again. “It makes you wonder, what is it about Rosario that makes people not talk about her?”
She glanced at me. “Rape?”
I raised my eyebrows and sucked my teeth. “We now have two rapes in one small group of friends. To be more precise, we have three women and two rapes. And the boy who was murdered is the son of one of the rape victims.”
“Yeah, that had struck me. It doesn’t give us a motive, but it sure as hell suggests there might be one in there somewhere.” She wagged a finger in my direction without looking at me. “I’ll tell you something else. Ed is very reluctant to cooperate with the investigation. Why would a father be reluctant to cooperate with the police in investigating his own son’s attempted murder?”
I stared out the window and said, absently, half to myself, “What would make him reluctant…?”
“Yeah, OK, that.”
“You think Ed shot his own son?”
“We already agreed visibility was terrible. He may not have known the passenger was Luis. Like you said, he didn’t go and finish him off. His intended victim was the driver.”
“Mm-hm… You have a point. But we are still left with the question, what is his motive? After all these years.”
She thought for a moment. “What if Sebastian had found out about his mother’s rape? Maybe he was threatening to report him.”
I made an ‘am not convinced’ face. “Rape is almost impossible to prove if you don’t got forensic evidence almost immediately. There is practically nothing Sebastian could have done. Also…” I shook my head. “We still have that billion dollar question—how did the killer know that they were going to be there at that time?”
She screwed up her brow. “Yeah, especially when you consider it was Angela’s car, not theirs.”
I closed my eyes. “They go from work to Lynda’s house. They get maggot. Somehow, in the early hours of the morning, they go to Angela’s. What happens there, we don’t know, but they end up borrowing her car. And somehow, between their leaving Lynda and getting into Angela’s car, the killer discovers where they are and decides to strike.” I puffed out my cheeks and blew. “That’s not a statement of fact, just an hypothesis.”
“An hypothesis?”
“Yes. And not a very persuasive one.”
“OK. I don’t see how it can be any other way.” I didn’t answer and she looked at me. “Do you?”
“I’m not sure. I’m going to eat a bison steak and drink my half of a bottle of wine and think about it.”
She went quiet. After a moment, she said, “You have bison steak? How?”
I smiled. “You can order it online. I thought I’d surprise you.”
“That’s sweet.”
“I have my sweet side.”
She smiled, but didn’t say anything and we drove on in silence. When we pulled in to Haight Avenue and she stopped in front of my house, she said suddenly, “You have. A surprisingly sweet side. Sweeter than I expected.”
Somehow, she made it sound like that wasn’t a good thing. I stared at her for a long moment, then asked, “Dehan, did I do anything while we were in Goa? Anything to…” I shrugged. “To upset you?”
She stared back at me. Her expression was hard to fathom. There was a thin smile, but that was only on her lips. Her eyes were hard and lingered somewhere between amusement and anger.
“As far as I remember, Stone, you didn’t do anything in Goa.”
I frowned.
She looked at her watch. “I’d better get going. I’m wrecked. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I opened the door, hesitated, and said, “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”
“Enjoy your steak and your wine.”
I climbed out of the car and watched her drive away into the gathering dusk with a strange feeling of unhappiness, made worse by the lack of sleep. All in all, it had been a bad day. One of those really bad days.
I went inside, slung a pizza in the oven and cracked a c
old beer.
ELEVEN
I was woken up by my doorbell ringing. It was already light outside. I fumbled for my watch and saw it was seven AM. I had slept little and badly. I opened the window and leaned out. First I saw Dehan’s car. Then I saw her looking up at me. She gave me that inscrutable smile and said, “Put some clothes on, you’ll scare the neighbors.”
I said, “You have a key. Use it.”
“I left it at home.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “You want to come down and open the door?”
I pulled my pants on, and a shirt, and went down to let her in. As she stepped over the threshold, she said, “I thought you’d be up.”
“Yeah. I didn’t sleep so well. I’m going to jump in the shower. You know where the kitchen is.”
I stood for ten minutes, letting the alternating piping hot and excruciatingly cold water batter some sense into me, toweled myself dry, dressed, and went down. I stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She was standing, watching me. She still had her jacket on and her hands in her jacket pockets. There was no coffee, no bacon, no eggs. I frowned.
“What’s going on?”
She did her inscrutable thing. “You ready?”
“Do you mind if I have breakfast?”
“Sure.”
I went into the kitchen feeling mad and not sure why. I grabbed the percolator.
“You want coffee?”
“No thanks. I had some already.”
I dropped the percolator by the sink, muttered, “Ah, forget it,” and went to grab my jacket. “Let’s go.”
At the door, I turned back and grabbed my car keys from the dish on the breakfast bar. As I closed the door, she looked at me like she was questioning my IQ. “What’re you doing?”
“Today I’m using my car. You’re welcome to ride along. If you prefer to use your car, that’s fine. We can communicate by radio, or cell phone.”
My car is a burgundy, 1964 Mark II Jaguar, and one of the few possessions I have that I am genuinely attached to. I like driving it, and it helps me to think. I climbed in and pulled the door closed. I inserted the key in the ignition and counted slowly to three. I hadn’t heard the bleep of Dehan’s Focus, so I figured she was going to ride with me. I turned the key as she opened the door. The engine growled, she climbed in, and I pulled away.