The Request

by David Bell

  “I know. And it will make them nervous. You know what it’s like if they think something’s wrong with me or Henry.”

  My in-laws lived halfway down on the right, a redbrick house with large windows and a three-car garage. I half expected my mother-in-law, Karen, to be standing on the lawn, arms wide, ready to snatch Henry out of the backseat and whisk him into the house. But she wasn’t outside.

  Yet.

  I pulled into their driveway and stopped. But I kept the car running.

  “Do you want to leave?” I asked.

  “No. I’m sure they saw us. We’ll just have to . . . I don’t know. I don’t want to tell them about Kyle coming to the house. Not right away. Or Blake. Or any of it. I’ll try to keep it under wraps.”

  “Good luck. Their favorite pastimes are worrying and asking questions.”

  “Cut them some slack,” Amanda said, repeating one of her favorite lines. “You know why they act this way.”

  As if on cue, the front door opened, and Karen came breezing out, on her face a smile as wide as the front yard. She wore a hooded sweatshirt, and leggings that emphasized the figure she kept slim through hours of tennis and yoga.

  Amanda placed her hand on my knee. “Are you okay? You don’t have to come in. You can just go. You can call Rountree and try to find out what’s going on.”

  “She won’t answer if she’s in the middle of all that craziness.”

  “It might not be Blake,” she said. “It might be someone we don’t even know about.”

  “True. We don’t know what all Jennifer was mixed up with. Or who.”

  I thought of the hateful comments on Twitter, the ones accusing her of everything from organized crime to drug trafficking. I scolded myself for thinking the same way, for letting that virus infect me.

  I had no idea what was going on. None of us did.

  But before I could regroup, the back door of the car was pulled open, and Karen was leaning in, unbuckling Henry from his car seat as he squealed for joy at the sight of her.

  “There’s our little guy,” she said. “Look how big he’s getting. I think he’s bigger today than he was yesterday.” She removed Henry from the car so fast you would have thought we were sinking in a lake and he needed to be rescued. “Come in, come in,” she said. “I’m so happy to see all of you.”

  Amanda and I looked at each other. We felt we had no choice.

  We unbuckled and followed grandmother and grandson into the house.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  “Bill?” Karen still held Henry, and she called to her husband from the foyer. “Bill? They’re here.”

  “Mom, where is he?” Amanda asked.

  “He’s glued to the TV. Where else? I’m sure he can’t hear me.”

  “Then why are you yelling for him?” Amanda asked.

  But Karen went on into the house, either ignoring or not hearing the question. Amanda rolled her eyes, a scene that must have been replicated ten thousand times during her childhood. We followed along in Karen’s wake.

  She led us back to the family room. Before we even arrived there, I heard the TV playing. And I could tell what Bill was watching.

  “. . . we go there now for more details on this police shooting . . .”

  I looked at Amanda. She had heard it too. No choice. Bill’s hearing had been declining for the last five years, and his TV volume went higher and higher each time we visited them. He always seemed to have the TV turned to either the news or a true-crime story. Murder and mayhem unleashed on the heartland seemed to appeal to him . . . but also made him more afraid of everything that moved. He once spoke openly of buying a gun, which prompted Amanda to say she wouldn’t bring Henry to their house if he did. Given everything that had been going on, I kind of wondered if I felt differently about my father-in-law packing heat.

  Bill waved to us but kept his eyes on the TV screen. I saw the police station, with a bunch of cars and news vans out front. A reporter stood stoically with a microphone in her hand.

  “Honey, can you turn that down a little?” Karen asked.

  “Are you following this?” he asked. I assumed he meant the question for Amanda and me. “The cops shot a guy downtown. They think he killed that girl they found dead last night. Did you hear about all that?”

  “Yes, we heard, Dad,” Amanda said. “Are they saying anything new?”

  “That girl, the one who got murdered—they said she worked at a nonprofit that helped prisoners get jobs. How much do you want to bet—”

  “Dad? Are they saying anything new?”

  “Not really. They never do.”

  “Have they said who got killed?” I asked. I hoped I didn’t sound overly curious. Or shaken.

  “They’re not saying,” Bill said. He looked at us both for a moment as though he had just noticed we were standing there. “Well, why don’t the two of you sit down?”

  “Bill, why don’t you get them a drink? We have some rolls left over from breakfast.”

  “We’re fine, Mom.”

  And we both sat on the couch, staring at the TV. Karen placed Henry on a blanket she’d already laid out on the floor. She began handing him blocks and cars and toys, more than the boy could ever grab and suck on in a lifetime of trying.

  “Can you believe this is happening here?” Bill asked the entire room, his hands wide, his eyeglasses slipping to the end of his nose. The top of his head was as bald as ice, and the fringe of hair that remained was completely gray. He answered his own question, not bothering to wait for a response. “A murder last night, and then this shooting today. Not that I think what the cops did is murder. I mean, if the guy drew on them or something to resist arrest, then what could they do? But how many murders do you think we had in Rossingville last year? Do you know?”

  I shrugged. “Ten?”

  “Four. Four.” He held up his hand with four fingers extended for emphasis, his gold watch slipping down his arm. “This is the fourth one for this year. And it’s only April. And this woman got killed in her own home. By some intruder. You all lock your doors every night, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Dad,” Amanda said.

  “Have you thought about an alarm system? Living downtown like that.”

  “We might actually,” Amanda said.

  “With a baby you need to be more careful. Someone might want to take him.”

  “Bill, why would you say that?” Karen asked.

  “I’m just saying—kids . . . they’re vulnerable. Really vulnerable.”

  His words brought an awkward silence over everyone. Only the TV kept the room from becoming as quiet as a church. I couldn’t help it. My eyes trailed across the room to a portrait of Mallory, one taken when she was in the eighth grade and had only one year to live. She wore a white sweater and a smile with braces. She looked so much like Amanda that if I hadn’t been told Amanda had had a sister, I would have thought it was a picture of her.

  “Actually, I need to tell you something,” Amanda said. And I could tell what she was going to do. She was about to tell them the truth. She and her parents had that kind of relationship, the kind where they really told one another things. The three of them were close, a relationship—so Amanda said—forged from the grief over their deceased daughter and sister. I’d lost my dad suddenly, but I still wasn’t as open with my mom as Amanda was with Karen and Bill. She had said she wanted to keep everything quiet, but I knew she couldn’t. Not with them. “Can you turn the TV down a little, Dad?”

  “Well, they might say something important. Ryan acted like he wanted to hear.”

  “Dad? Please?”

  Bill responded to the pleading in her voice and fumbled around for a moment before he found the remote, lifted his glasses to his forehead, and muted the TV. The silence felt as welcome as rain on a hot summer day. I could think.

 
“What is it, honey?” Karen asked. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, Mom. I just wanted to tell you about something that happened this morning.”

  Karen pointed to Henry, her face half-happy and half-surprised. “It’s not . . . I mean . . . it’s too soon, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not pregnant, Mom. Okay? Just listen.”

  “Okay,” Karen said, but I could tell she was stung by Amanda’s orders. “I just wanted to hear some happy news, and I’m afraid that’s not what you’re about to give me.”

  Bill turned his body to face us, reluctantly peeling his eyes away from the TV screen, which had shifted to a commercial for credit-card-debt relief.

  “Do you remember Ryan’s friend Blake? He was in our wedding.”

  Bill nodded. “The short guy who drank and talked a lot.”

  “That’s him,” I said. “He was my best man.”

  “Isn’t he the one who hurt Henry?” Karen asked. “Didn’t he drop him?”

  “He didn’t drop him, Karen,” I said.

  Amanda placed a calming hand on my knee. “He didn’t drop Henry, Mom. No one has dropped Henry.”

  “Well, he did something. You have to be careful who holds the baby, Amanda. You heard your father. Children are vulnerable.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that, Mom. Can we just talk about something else?” Amanda sounded like a kindergarten teacher trying to keep her unruly charges under control. “Look, as it turns out, Blake knew this woman who was murdered. Jennifer. They were”—her hand waved in the air as she decided which word to use—“friends of some kind. I’m not sure how close they were.”

  Her parents were both rapt. Lips parted, eyes wide. They had suddenly found themselves a couple of degrees away from a murder victim.

  Amanda went on. “So the police want to question Blake, because they want to question everyone who knew Jennifer. That’s logical, right? If there’s a murder, they want to talk to everyone who knew the victim.”

  Bill nodded, and so did Karen. They’d watched enough Law & Order to get that.

  “In fact,” Amanda said, “they came to our house because they wanted to know if we had seen Blake.”

  For a moment, I wondered if she was going to mention my connection to Jennifer. How would that play with my conspiracy-minded in-laws? Me getting secret messages from a woman who ended up dead. I already knew not only would they not like or understand it, but they’d zero in on it for the rest of our lives. I’d always be the son-in-law who’d brought a trail of murder into their lives.

  “They came to your house?” Bill asked. “Looking for this Blake guy?”

  “Right. And we don’t know where he is. But we’re a little worried because we heard on the radio that a suspect in this murder was killed by the police. We don’t know if it was Blake or not.”

  Bill sat up straighter. “You think the police might have shot Blake? That he’s the killer?”

  “We don’t know,” I said. “We really don’t. But we’re worried.”

  Karen and Bill exchanged a look, their faces pale.

  “And we’re worried about his fiancée, Sam,” Amanda said. “You’ve met her, Mom. She came to the baby shower here.”

  Karen nodded as Henry squirmed on the floor next to her. “A sweet girl, yes. I remember her. The teacher.”

  “She’s at the police station too. They wanted to talk to her about Blake. So it’s kind of a stressful time.”

  “I hear you,” Karen said. “But she’s a smart girl. It’s always up to the women to keep things together when the men do crazy stuff and go off the rails. Do you remember when your father wanted to buy a motorcycle and I had to talk him out of it?”

  Bill ignored Karen as his face shifted from confusion to concern. “Do you want me to turn it off, honey? I can if it’s upsetting either of you. A young girl dying like this. I guess it’s upsetting to all of us. They showed her parents this morning . . . coming into the police station.” He swallowed. Hard. “It’s hell for them.”

  And my mind went to the Steiners. To Dawn. If Amanda’s family found out about the accident, about my being the driver . . . everything would come up again. The old scabs and scars would break open like a fault in the earth.

  “I know, Dad. But we want to watch it. We just . . . It could be difficult. For all of us.”

  “Keep the volume lower, Bill,” Karen said.

  The commercial ended, and first we saw the anchor in the studio, and then they threw the feed back to the reporter at the police station. She held a piece of paper in front of her and, just as Bill turned the volume back up, she told us that she had breaking news from a source inside the police department. They had learned the identity of the man killed by the police earlier that day.

  My hand fumbled in the space between Amanda and me until it gripped hers. When it did, I squeezed tight, and she squeezed back. Her skin felt warm. Comforting.

  I had no idea how much this announcement meant to me. I had no idea how much I feared hearing that Blake was dead. I felt a variety of emotions for him, many of them negative. And I had no idea what he might have done to Jennifer.

  But to think of his life being extinguished, to think of him losing his cool so much that the police killed him, how could it even be possible? The fear I felt traveled through me like freezing water, chilling every outpost of my body. I pulled Amanda a little closer, hoping for warmth.

  “Police say the man killed this morning and a suspect in the death of Jennifer Bates was twenty-eight-year-old Kyle Dornan, a resident of Rossingville—”

  Amanda yelled so loud everyone looked at her. Even Henry.

  She held her hand to her chest. Her eyes were wide, filled with emotion.

  I tried to shuffle through my feelings. Relief, yes. I felt relief. Also shock. Horror. Fear.

  Fear. That man Kyle Dornan. He’d come so close to our lives. He’d come to our house. And whatever he’d done with the police was enough for them to kill him.

  “That’s not your friend, is it?” Bill asked. “So that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “It is good, Dad,” Amanda said. “It isn’t Blake.”

  “Are you relieved, honey?” Karen asked. “Why do you look that way?”

  Amanda breathed deeply. Her chest rose and fell like she’d just run a fast mile. Her lips looked cracked and dry.

  “He’s not our friend,” Amanda said. “Not at all. But we know him too. He came to our house this morning.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Bill and Karen bombarded us with questions right away, and it took Amanda long minutes of reassuring with calming words before they settled down to listen. Since it looked to be a longer conversation, Karen decided we all needed to eat something, so she went to the kitchen and started to take food out of the refrigerator and the cabinets. While she did that, the rest of us watched more of the news coverage, which offered little in terms of new information about the death of Kyle Dornan. Except when the reporter on the scene announced that sources inside the police department were telling her they believed Kyle Dornan was responsible for Jennifer Bates’s death. Kyle had had a criminal record. He’d committed an assault while he was in college in another state. And he was currently wanted for another felony assault, something having to do with an altercation in a bar. I assumed it involved a jagged broken bottle and too much bourbon.

  Police sources theorized he had resisted and taken a stand because of that outstanding charge. If he had gone into custody, he’d have faced the music. He had opted to go down swinging.

  I checked my phone as much as I could, refreshing the Twitter feed in desperate hope of finding new information and growing agitated when none came. The fastest means of information spreading known to humanity, and it wasn’t fast enough for me.

  Amanda gestured to me, telling me to put the phone away, as we all moved
to the dining room table, and while we ate—sandwiches and chips and some kind of insanely gorgeous and fresh fruit salad Karen seemed to have conjured out of thin air—Amanda finished telling her parents about Kyle’s appearance at our house. She spared them no detail, and both of her parents gasped repeatedly and shook their heads, a combination of indignation at Kyle’s craziness and fear for their daughter’s and grandson’s safety.

  I added my own encounter with Kyle at Blake and Samantha’s house. The way he had broken in, the bottle he had menaced me with, his rush to get out of the house and avoid the police. They showed less concern for me than they did for Amanda and Henry—only to be expected—but when I finished, Bill attempted to sum it all up nicely for the table.

  “Well,” he said, still chewing, a dab of mayonnaise on his chin, “good riddance to him. And you should get that alarm system. Listen to what I’m telling you. Innocent people, families—they’re vulnerable. You know, I’ve been thinking of getting a handgun—”

  “Dad, not the gun again. Okay? Not that.”

  My own feelings about those events we’d learned of on the news ran a more complicated gamut. I tried hard to reconcile my relief that Kyle would not be able to come back and menace Amanda or Henry or anybody else with the horror at the violent death of another human being. I certainly would have preferred that Kyle had surrendered, had a trial, and faced whatever music he needed to face without dying, but it was all beyond my control.

  Could his death possibly signal a return to some semblance of normalcy? Did it mean Amanda and Henry could return home and have nothing to worry about?

  While we ate, the news continued to play. A different reporter came on camera and told us that police were compiling a case against Kyle, one that included forensic evidence from the scene as well as the statements of friends and family who thought Kyle was growing too possessive and controlling of Jennifer in recent weeks.

  “What a creep,” Bill said. Mercifully, he’d swallowed his food first.

  I exchanged a look with Amanda. I saw the relief in her eyes. She said to me what I was thinking.