Remembering Sarah

by Chris Mooney

  “I wanted to talk to you about that night on the hill.”

  Sammy grew still, a guy wishing he could shrink or turn invisible. He stuffed his hands in his jean pockets and studied the floor.

  “Neal,” Ray said. “As in Neal Sonnenberg.”

  Sammy nodded and Ray mumbled something under his breath.

  Mike stood there and watched as Ray and his son exchanged glances. Then Ray said, “Neal lives here in Belham. Across the street from Jonah.” Ray turned back to his son. “What’s this blog business?”

  Sammy shuffled back into the hallway, and Mike heard feet pounding up the stairs. Mike slid his attention to Ray, who now looked as nervous as his son, like he wanted to disappear.

  “Something going on with Jonah?” Mike asked.

  “I haven’t heard anything.”

  He’s lying, Mike thought. He’s either lying or stalling—or both.

  Sammy came back downstairs with a laptop. He set it up on the kitchen counter and then removed the phone jack from the phone and plugged the wire into the back of the laptop. He turned it on, and as they waited for the computer to boot up, Mike noticed the tension in the kid’s shoulders, the nervous way he kept swallowing.

  Less than two minutes later, Sammy had logged onto the Internet, and on the screen was a site called Neal’s Place. It was filled with photos of a lanky kid with spiked black hair posing with women of varying ages on beaches, at football games, in parking lots, at Hooters. All the women were insanely good-looking and wore either tight or revealing clothing, and in every one of them Neal wore a lottery-winning smile.

  Sammy double-clicked on a picture at the bottom and a screen popped up asking for a name and password. He filled it in and hit ENTER.

  A new screen with a headline in big, bold letters: HUNTING THE BOOGEYMAN. Mike saw a picture of himself placing the lilacs on top of the hill and to the left of the picture, Sammy’s friend Neal’s commentary.

  Ray said, “Jesus Christ.”

  Sammy went on the defensive: “I didn’t know about it until yesterday. Neal has it set up so you can only access it through a password. And you can’t find it through a Google search. The only reason I know about it is ’cause Barry Paley told me about it and gave me the password to get on.”

  “How long has Neal been doing this?” Ray getting angry now.

  “I don’t know. A year,maybe.” Sammy turned to Mike, looking for forgiveness or at least some measure of understanding. “I swear to God I’m telling you the truth,” Sammy added, his voice trembling, about to break. “I swear to God.”

  Mike was staring at the laptop’s screen. All he could see was the other picture, the one of Jonah standing on top of the hill, holding the flowers in his hands, inhaling the scent of the lilacs.

  Neal Sonnenberg’s online journal was a six-page rambling narrative of what time Jonah left the house, where he went on his walks, and what he did. After Mike read it, he printed out the text and pictures and then left the Pinkerton home, hopped in his truck and dialed information. There was only one Sonnenberg listed. Mike was on his way to the house when his cell phone rang.

  “You know the terms of the restraining order,” Merrick said. “You come over here, you’ll be violating the terms.”

  Ray Pinkerton must have called Merrick.

  Mike said, “How long have you been there watching Jonah from the kid’s house?”

  “When I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

  “Like the website, right?”

  “You read the kid’s online journal. There was nothing there.”

  “Maybe you didn’t see the picture of Jonah standing up on the top of the hill holding the flowers I left, or the pictures of him walking the trails near the back of my house.”

  “I asked you politely to stay out of this, and yet you keep screwing with my investigation.”

  “Maybe if you did your job I wouldn’t have to.”

  “You come here, you’re going to jail,” Merrick said. “That’s a promise.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Mike had left an important set of plans for an upcoming addition inside his office, so he swung by his house, relieved to find no reporters. People had stopped by and placed flowers, cards and pictures of Sarah across his front lawn. He parked in the garage and grabbed the mail satchel he had picked up earlier at the post office. Mike had put a hold on his mail the day after Sarah’s jacket was discovered.

  It was just after eleven. He was wide awake and decided to go through the mail here. The shades in the TV room were drawn. He grabbed a Coke from the fridge and the garbage pail from the kitchen, turned the TV to ESPN, and then started sorting through the mountain of envelopes, packages and catalogues.

  So far, none of the letters were from crazies claiming to have planted the jacket on the cross or saying that they knew what Jonah had done to her. Those letters, when they were found, were put in a special pile for Merrick. Most of the letters were prayer cards from people he had never met or letters from psychics, like this one written on pink paper: MADAME DORA, INTERNATIONAL PSYCHIC. The woman in the attached color brochure looked like Bill in a blond wig. Mike crumpled the paper into a ball and tossed it at the garbage pail set up in the corner.

  Sarah’s jacket was at the lab. Latex-covered hands were reading their microscopes and slides, preparing to pry the jacket of its secrets.

  So what made Jonah decide to, after all this time, not only reveal the jacket, but to put it on a cross?

  The question came at Mike again and again and he still couldn’t make sense of it. Of course, that didn’t stop any number of retired FBI profilers and so-called experts on the criminal mind from getting their face-time on TV. A local big-shot criminal psychiatrist who specialized in psychopathic personalities was quoted in yesterday’s Herald as saying—and Mike was paraphrasing here—that Jonah was, in his own,perverted, psychopathic way, telling the police he was ready to talk. He knew he was dying and felt he should confess, but see, he couldn’t just pick up the phone and do it. No, he had to be forced, so he planted the evidence and now it was up to the police to play their part.

  Someone knocked on the front door.

  Mike went over to the window, pulled back the shades and peeked outside. No TV van or car, so it couldn’t be a reporter.

  Maybe it’s Merrick.

  The knock came again as Mike walked into the foyer. He opened the door and stared at the face on the other side of the storm door.

  “Polite thing to do is to invite me in,” Lou said.

  Mike thought about it for a moment, then opened the door. Lou stepped inside the foyer. Mike checked for a car, didn’t see one. Had Lou been following him?

  “You’re looking good, Michael. Lean and mean.”

  The same could be said of Lou. He was lean, always had been, the meanness and hair-trigger rage somehow preserving him. His hair was grayer, his tanned face a bit more weathered from decades of baking in the sun, but there was no question that Lou still possessed the confident, youthful swagger of his former self, a successful street fighter who knew how to hit you so you couldn’t stand for weeks.

  Or make you disappear, a voice added. Let’s not forget about that particular talent.

  Mike shut the door. “Police know you’re back in town?”

  “No, and I’d appreciate it if you kept it quiet,” Lou said. He was dressed in a black suit and a white shirt, his black shoes shined and spotless. “I take it you’re still buddy-buddy with that cop there, the one who looks like Mike Tyson, what’s his name? Zukowski?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Came by to talk.” Lou lit a cigarette with the gold lighter embossed with the Marine emblem on the front, the lighter a fixture in the house as long as Mike could remember. The flame jumped across Lou’s face, then disappeared. “We gonna just stand here or can we sit down?”

  “Here’s fine.”

  Lou took a long drag of his cigarette, his face emotionless as he looked around the room
s. “Dr. Jackson lived here. Used to hold poker games right in there.” He pointed to the dining room. “Decent enough guy. Had a bad gambling problem though.”

  “That the guy I saw you work over with a pipe on Devon Street?”

  Lou picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue and examined it. “All this time, your circumstances, I thought it might have made you a bit more forgiving.”

  “St. Stephen’s is in the other direction.”

  The words didn’t register, just fell through Lou’s eyes like stones down a well.

  “You know Jonah’s dying,” Lou said.

  “Everyone does.”

  “I mean he’s going to buy the farm any day now. His nightstand and kitchen table are full of all kinds of medicine—morphine, Demerol, Prozac, you name it. I’m amazed the son of a bitch can still walk.”

  Mike started to speak then stopped.

  Lou knew about the medicine because he had been inside Jonah’s house.

  “Lot of weird shit going on in there,” Lou said. “Guy’s got Christmas lights and decorations hung around his bedroom, his living room—he’s got these toys all over the place. Phil told me—”

  “Phil?”

  “Phil Debrussio, one of Jonah’s bodyguards. There’s two of them. Press has been all over Jonah since Sarah’s jacket was found.”

  Sarah, Lou saying her name like she belonged to him too.

  “This business with Christmas decorations and the toys, it’s called regression,” Lou said. “Jonah’s hospice nurse, this broad Terry Russell, she said that can happen when a patient is dying. He goes back to happier times in his life, know what I mean?”

  “She told you this?”

  “Course not. She won’t talk with me, and she sure as hell isn’t going to talk to you. Broad’s under strict orders from Merrick not to say a word to you, as is that kid who did that website on Jonah.” Lou paused, letting that comment sink in for a moment. He took another long drag from his cigarette. “When Jonah’s lucid, he talks a lot to his lawyer,” he said in a plume of smoke. “He’s terrified of dying in jail. Lawyer keeps telling him not to worry.”

  Jesus. He’s bugged the place.

  “I think it’s time Jonah talks,” Lou said, Mike hearing that effortless, magnetic confidence in Lou’s words and remembering how his mother had responded to that voice time and time again, believing that the next time he’d keep his anger in check, promise not to drive his point home with his fists.

  “I’m not asking you to get involved,” Lou said, “but if the police come around and start asking questions, I may need an alibi.”

  Not once had Mike crossed that line into Lou’s other life. Growing up, if Cadillac Jack or any of the other lowlifes stopped by to play cards or talk business, Mike would leave for Bill’s or, if that wasn’t an option, he’d close his bedroom door and turn up the volume on the black-and-white TV or the radio.

  Mike said, “Let the police handle this.”

  “That what you want?”

  “They know what they’re doing.”

  “How do you think Jonah got out of the house that night without being spotted?” Lou grinned, then added, “Next time you see your buddy Zukowski, ask him why the guy they got watching Jonah keeps falling asleep.”

  “You do anything to screw this up,” Mike said evenly, “and I’ll tell Merrick about this conversation.”

  Lou’s eyes took on a disturbing vacant quality. He stepped forward, the cigarette dangling from his mouth, and Mike felt like a kid again, his attention automatically shifting to Lou’s fists, watching to see if they would clench up, the sure sign that a beating was on the way. Those hands had loved Mike’s mother, had beaten her and, Mike was sure, had buried her.

  “That night I bumped into you at McCarthy’s. I woke up the next morning and found out you put Jonah into a coma.”

  “That was an accident,” Mike said, looking up. “I didn’t plan on it.”

  “That what you tell yourself when you look in the mirror?”

  Mike held his father’s gaze. “It’s the truth.”

  “The police are doing such a great job, why’d you drop by Jonah’s last Friday?”

  “Stay away from this.”

  “Jonah talks a lot in his sleep. I haven’t been able to make out much, but he’s said Sarah’s name a few times. You change your mind, leave a message with George at McCarthy’s. He’ll know how to get in touch with me.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The first Friday of every month, Mike knew Slow Ed got together with some of the guys from Highland Auto Body to play poker. Mike swung by the garage, and after a ten-minute conversation with the owner, found out where tonight’s eight o’clock game was being held.

  Mike pulled out of the garage, with one hand on the steering wheel, the other on his cell, dialing Bill’s number.

  “How’d the procedure go?” Bill had undergone a vasectomy earlier that afternoon.

  “It’s been four hours now and my giblets are still the size of cantaloupes,” Bill said. “Minor swelling, my ass. Can you pick me up some more ice?”

  “Sure. Anything else?”

  “Two gallons of skim milk. Grace just dumped the last gallon into the tub—don’t ask. Oh, and pick up some Rolaids. Patty’s making turkey meatloaf for dinner.”

  “See you in a few.”

  “Hurry. I’m surrounded by mental patients.”

  Mike drove downtown. Even now, in the most complimentary sun, downtown Belham had the grimy feel of the forgotten. High TV, the electronics store where Mr. Dempson used to repair VCRs and TVs, was boarded up, just one of the many victims of the disposable mall mentality; why fix it when you can pitch it and buy it newer and cheaper and faster? Kingworld Shoes couldn’t offer the same low mall prices and was forced to close. Two years ago, a fire had gutted the hockey rink where Sarah had attended several birthday parties along with the empty store next to it, Cusiack Fabrics (WORLD FAMOUS SINCE 1912 the sign had once read). The Strand, the old movie house he had gone to with his mother, where he had taken Sarah to see E. T., was going to be torn down next. The only building that had survived was the public library. Lou, if he had been in a generous mood, would drive them to the library, Mike sitting on the front steps with him, listening to Lou blabber about how if he could have back the half of his life he spent waiting for women he’d live to be well over a hundred.

  Collette’s Grocery was also on the chopping block. Come next year, the store would be transformed into one of the big brand-name super grocery stores complete with pharmacy and film developing. The landscape around him was changing and yet nobody seemed to notice or care, he wasn’t sure which.

  Mike decided to pick up some items for himself while he was here. He pushed the cart to the dairy, where he spotted Father Connelly dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, examining the yogurt selections. Mike wondered if he should turn around. Too late. Father Jack had spotted him.

  “Michael.”

  Why does he look nervous—and why is he looking over my shoulder?

  Mike turned around.

  Francis Jonah was pointing at a carton of orange juice, his other hand gripping his cane. Two guys in suits stood next to him—the bodyguards, both of them thick and wide. The guy with the shaved head picked up the orange carton and added it to the handcart. The other guy was short and had a buzz cut and a single diamond earring in his left ear. His eyes were fastened on Mike.

  “Come on, Mr. Sullivan,” Buzz Cut said. “You know the drill.”

  Mike didn’t move, watching as Jonah slid his attention away from the orange juice selections and pulled the oxygen mask from his face.

  “You heard the man,” Jonah wheezed. “Leave.”

  Mike’s mind filled with an image of Sarah, her vision terribly blurred without her glasses, crying out for help as she swatted away the strange hands eager to touch her.

  “You’re in violation of your probation,” Jonah said. “I have a cell phone, and I have witnesses. Right, Father Co
nnelly? Go ahead, Chucky, make the call.”

  Father Jack gripped Mike’s bicep. “Leave him to God,” he whispered.

  Jonah licked his lips, his eyes gleaming.

  Reggie Dempson still lived in the same ranch house where he had grown up with his three sisters and their mother, Crazy Alice, a woman who used to make her kids sleep with tinfoil on their heads to keep the UFO that circled their house every night from reading their thoughts. Slow Ed’s champagne-colored Honda Accord was parked in the driveway.

  At a quarter to ten, Mike parked across the street, shut off the truck and pulled out a fresh pack of Marlboros, smoked and waited.

  Half a pack later, at ten-thirty, Slow Ed emerged from Dempson’s front door, his massive frame plopping down the front steps as he waved goodbye to Reggie. Mike started his truck and rolled down the window just as Slow Ed reached his car.

  “Not a good idea to drink and drive, Officer Zukowski. Let me give you a lift home.”

  “Talk to Merrick,” Slow Ed said, opening the car door.

  “Your boss seems to have a problem returning his phone calls.”

  “Maybe he’s afraid you’re going to go postal on Jonah again.”

  “So Merrick has something on Jonah.”

  “You said that—not me.”

  “Come on, Ed, I’m just asking for a progress report. You must know something by now.”

  “Like I said, talk to Merrick.”

  “I hear the guy you have watching Jonah’s house has trouble staying awake on the job,” Mike said. “I hope the press doesn’t find out about that.”

  Slow Ed straightened, and then lumbered over to the truck, propping one arm on the roof as he leaned in close to Mike’s window.

  “I like you, Sully. I’ve always considered you a solid guy, which is why I decided to help you out the first time. I tell you we’re looking at this guy Jonah, about his background and name change before he came back here—I tell you all of this in confidence and you thank me by turning into Wyatt Earp, remember?”