That night, I heard something in the back yard.
A thunderstorm had rolled in after dinner, dumping nearly an inch of rain and dropping the temperature by twenty degrees. My mom had opened all the upstairs windows, and I had fallen asleep earlier to a chorus of crickets and bullfrogs.
But something else woke me up.
I wasn’t sure if I had dreamt or imagined it, but I got out of bed and went to the window.
The back yard was cloaked in darkness, the weeping willow a towering shadow against an even darker backdrop. A lonely bullfrog croaked somewhere in the weeds and I could hear the muffled barking of a dog from the next block over.
I was just about to return to bed when I saw it: a shadow breaking away and moving independent of the other shadows around it. The shadow was in the shape of a person.
And then I heard it, the same sound that had woken me earlier: a thump followed by another thump, and then the sound of two feet landing on soggy grass.
Someone had just climbed over the fence in the back yard and jumped to the other side.
****
I sat on the front porch and watched the sanitation guys emptying our trash cans into the back of their truck. I wondered if they ever found anything valuable in the garbage. It seemed like such a cool job.
I hadn’t told anyone about what I’d seen and heard the night before. First of all, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I hadn’t dreamt the whole damn thing. My head was still fuzzy. Second of all, I didn’t want to worry my parents. They were tense enough with everything that was going on. I’d even heard my mom after dinner last night blame my dad for picking that spot for the goldfish pond.
The street was quiet today. No police had come by the house for almost a week, and the news people hadn’t been by in even longer. It had been an exciting adventure while it lasted, but I was glad life was getting back to normal.
“Caught you daydreaming, didn’t I?”
I looked up and saw our mailman, Mr. DeMarco’s, smiling face.
I laughed. “Guilty as charged.”
He stepped past me onto the porch, stuffed some mail into the box, and plopped down next to me on the stoop.
“I’m getting too old for this job.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped the sweat from his face. As usual, I caught a faint whiff of his cologne. It was the same stuff my father used to wear. Blue Velvet or something like that. He looked over at me. “You doing okay, partner?”
Mr. DeMarco had been asking me that ever since it all happened. He said finding dead folks in your back yard was no joking matter, and I shouldn’t hide my feelings if I was struggling. Mr. DeMarco was cool like that. All us kids loved him. He was old, had to be at least sixty, but he would still toss his mailbag under a tree some days and play whiffle ball or kick ball with us. Other times, he’d treat us all to fudgesicles if the ice cream man was making his rounds.
“I’m doing good,” I said.
“Any plans for today?” He glanced up at blue sky. “Looks like it’s gonna be a good one.”
“We’re going fishing down at the creek. Just waiting on Jimmy to finish mowing his lawn.”
He got to his feet with a groan. “Now that’s a great way to spend a day like today. Even if they ain’t biting.”
“Oh, they’ll be biting all right,” I said, grinning. “We’ve got our secret bait.”
He squinted at me. “Lemme guess…cheese balls?”
“How’d the heck you know?!”
Mr. DeMarco tilted his head back and laughed. It was a good, happy sound.
“I know because that’s exactly what my friends and me used for bait in that exact same creek fifty years ago! Those fatty carp love cheese balls!”
I laughed.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, face turning serious. “I told that police detective pretty much the same thing when he asked. Me and my friends used to run this neighborhood just like you and yours. Fishing, kick the can, racing our go-karts down Golden Elm.”
I imagined Mr. DeMarco cruising down the road in a go-kart. Then, I thought of something I’d never thought of before.
“Did you and your friends know Walter Jenkins?”
Mr. DeMarco nodded. “Sure did. Even raked his leaves and cleaned his gutters once or twice. Me and Kenny Crawford, God rest his soul. Told the detective that, too.”
“What was he like?” I asked.
“He was a good man, Kevin. Don’t you listen to any of the rumors going ’round.” He paused, thinking for a moment. “Mr. Jenkins reminded me a lot of my own father. That’s how highly I thought of him.”
I nodded and was about to respond — when a loud whistle sounded from somewhere down the street.
I whistled back and jumped to my feet. “Gotta go, Mr. DeMarco.”
“Summer awaits, Kev. Those carp won’t wait forever!”
****
Later that night, I sat by my bedroom window and watched over the back yard. After nearly two hours of seeing and hearing nothing out of the ordinary, I returned to my bed and was asleep within minutes. I didn’t have any bad dreams that night.
****
Two amazing things occurred later in the week.
The first happened on Thursday morning while I was eating breakfast on the back patio with my mom. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I went to take it out and my mom said, “Uh uh, no phones at the table, remember?”
I put my hands out proclaiming my innocence. “I was just gonna turn off the ringer. Geez.”
“Don’t you geez me, mister.”
I smiled and switched off the ringer on my phone — and saw the text.
I thought I was going to faint right on top of my plate of French toast.
The text wasn’t from Jimmy or Charlie, as I had expected.
The text was from Katy McCammon.
Kevin, I’m having a pool party this Sunday at 2. You should come. Lemme know. Katy ϑ
I placed my phone beside my plate and read the text a second and third time from the corner of my eye. Then, I broke the world speed record for eating French toast and dumped my dishes in the kitchen sink. I yelled goodbye to my mom and ran down Golden Elm Lane as fast as I could to show Jimmy.
The second amazing occurrence happened on Friday evening, just before dinner. My dad and I were watching a Seinfeld re-run when the phone rang. My mother picked up in the other room. A moment later, she came in with the cordless phone pressed against her chest.
“It’s Detective Sharretts,” she said in a low voice, handing the phone to my father.
“Hello?” My father mostly listened, every once in awhile punctuating the conversation with an “uh huh” or a “no kidding” or an “okay.”
After several minutes of this, he finally hung up. “Well, that was interesting.”
Stone faced, he walked back to his reading chair and sat down. Turned up the volume on the television. Stared silently at the screen.
My mother (“Honeyyy!”) and I (“Dadddd!”) erupted at the same time.
He cracked up laughing.
“Tell us what he said!” I begged.
It took another thirty seconds for my father’s giggling to wind down, then he filled us in. “Detective Martin said they have a person of interest in custody.”
My mother clasped her hands together. “Thank God.”
“A former resident of Dayton who moved away a long time ago,” my father continued. “Evidently he admitted to everything. The detectives are going over his story to make sure it all adds up, but Detective Sharretts thinks it will. In the meantime, they at least have him on a weapons charge, so he’s not going anywhere…”
****
I had a hard time falling asleep on Saturday night — I kept telling myself: In fifteen hours, you’ll be looking at Katy McCammon in a bikini; in fourteen
hours, you’ll be sitting in Katy’s back yard with all the cool kids; in thirteen hours… — so I found an old movie to watch on television. When the credits rolled at one a.m., my eyes were finally getting drowsy.
That’s when I heard the footsteps. Not outside in the yard, but inside the house this time.
I held my breath — and heard it again.
A creak on the stairs. Getting closer.
My entire body broke out in cold sweat.
It’s just Mom coming back from getting a drink of water, I thought. She has trouble sleeping. But I knew better. My mom hadn’t woken in the middle of the night in forever, not since she’d started taking sleeping pills. And forget about my father, he slept like a bear in hibernation.
Another creak and the whisper of a footstep on hardwood floor. Someone moving slow and stealthily. Someone creeping.
The house was silent for the next minute or two, and I was just beginning to believe I’d imagined the whole thing, when I heard a quiet thump from down the hallway, from the direction of my parents’ room. And then I heard a second thump. Like something heavy hitting the floor.
I snatched my cellphone from the end table next to my bed and pulled the covers up over my head like I used to do when I was a little kid and afraid of the monster that lived inside my closet. I punched in the security code and keyed in 911, but I didn’t press SEND.
My bedroom door creaked open.
Even underneath the blanket, I could hear someone in the room breathing.
Something unnamable — no, it had a name; it was terror — stopped me from pushing SEND, stopped me from leaping to my feet and trying to flee.
It’s Walter Jenkins and he has a knife.
My heart was beating so hard that I couldn’t hear the footsteps shuffling closer. I couldn’t hear the breathing growing more labored.
But nothing was wrong with my nose — and that’s when I smelled it.
The faint scent of cologne. Blue Velvet or Blue Ice or whatever the hell it was called.
Now I knew who’d buried the hands in my back yard all those years ago.
Now I knew whom the keychain belonged to.
He wanted it back.
DIRTY
COPPERS
1
It was one of those nights when I just couldn’t help it—I wanted to hump her, and I was ashamed of myself as usual.
Heather Neely’s husband was a copper who had been kidnapped by a gang of thugs called the Marauders. They’d held him hostage for sixteen days until the coppers finally gave in and released two Marauder gang members. The thing was, these two were supposed to be executed on YOU ASKED FOR IT, that holo show where they do some pretty outrageous stuff, including letting five-year-olds execute baddies.
Anyway, the Marauders got their punks back, and the coppers got Bob Neely back. Sort of, anyway.
The Marauders had cut out both of his eyes, all of his nose, and sliced off a decent chunk of his tongue for good measure. The eye thing was kind of ironic, couple years ago Heather having lost one of her own eyes to one of those attack dogs the genetics labs sell to the criminal underground.
The docs did everything they could for Bob Neely but even given modern medicine there are limits. Especially with psychological damage as severe as his.
So now Neely sits in a dark room at home. He has withdrawn completely from what we call reality. Vegetable is the word we’re talking here.
So I do all I can for the poor bastard. Couple times a week, I bang his wife.
****
“You got any money?” Heather Neely asked.
“Not much,” I said. “Why? You runnin’ short again?”
“Yeah, kinda.” She looked over at me. “Maybe it’s time for the gorilla mask.”
I nodded. I needed some extra credits myself.
Now before you get all uppity about this very delicate subject we’re about to discuss, just remember one thing. You take that forty-seven percent inflation rate we’ve got, and you couple that with the new budget cut-backs imposed on coppers, and you consider that most of us are married with families, and maybe you can understand why we don the gorilla mask so damn often.
I said, “It’s my turn to be the robber.”
“The hell it is. We flipped for it last time, remember? This time it’s my turn.”
“Broads.”
“Yeah, and what would you do without us?”
Before we got a chance to pick a location, let alone put on the gorilla mask, we got a call about a very bad accident.
Two hover cars had collided over a slum area, and not only had the cars fallen to earth, their fiery debris had set three houses on fire. It was a mess.
We headed east and five minutes later we spotted an orange-yellow glow on the horizon. Even when we were still up in the air, and angling down for a landing, you could hear little kids screaming in the burning houses.
The cliché is that coppers joke this stuff away. That’s never worked for me. I see this kind of shit…I want to get sick and then I want to kill somebody. Like the undoubtedly doped-up hover car driver who caused the accident.
This kind of thing was happening every goddamn day. That’s why hover car operator licenses were so hard to come by. The law tried to give only the most trustworthy people licenses. But, hell, since when has the law been perfect?
The holo people were already there and they were having a wonderful time. A little girl — no older than three-years-old — came screaming out of one of the burning houses, her hair and arms and legs dripping with fire. Next door, a naked woman dangled from an upstairs window ledge. This was all great video for the evening network holos.
Neely nudged me in the side and said, “I get the mask tonight.” She slipped me the shooter. “You get the gun.”
A shooter is what folks used to call a throw-down gun. A weapon that couldn’t be traced to anybody. Cops like Neely and I carry them all the time.
The scene was even uglier from the ground. I couldn’t handle it. I spent most of my time searching the crowd, trying to find the driver responsible for all this.
The occupants of the first car were white-haired people, old and obviously married. The woman had a gash across her forehead. The man looked dazed. Neither of them looked badly hurt.
Took me about fifteen minutes to find the other guy, what with the crowd and all the holo reporters. He was sitting on a porch stoop, barking into the communicator on his wrist. The accident had left his shiny new mesh clothes a little grubby but nothing could detract from the pure patrician arrogance of him.
I kicked the communicator from his wrist.
“Hey!” he said.
“Up.”
“What?”
“Get up. On your feet.”
“Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?”
“No, and I don’t give a rat’s ass, either. You know how many people you killed tonight, motherfucker? You see that little girl back there on fire?”
I grabbed his arm and jabbed the sensor needle deep into his wrist.
He screamed. Sensor needles hurt like a bitch. Especially when you use them like weapons.
“This is illegal.”
“No shit?” I said. “I guess I better start reading the rule book, huh?”
The sensor needle, just as I’d suspected it would, gave me a reading of five points plus. Off the fucking charts. The indicated drug was stardust, which explained why he’d been able to compose himself so quickly. Stardust fades when any kind of trauma is involved. A guy can look clean and sober and still have a lot of that shit running through his veins.
“Come on, we’re going out back,” I said.
“What?”
“Between these houses here.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you. That was my shyster I was talking to, a
nd he said he’d come right over.”
“He did, huh?”
I grabbed the guy by the back of his neck and shoved him between the houses.
Even with the fire and black smoke filling the air, you could smell the stench of the ghetto here. Hell, you could practically taste it. Hot night like this, it was all a copper could do to avoid upchucking. This was one of those neighborhoods where even the little kids carry pieces, and where every family has two or three mutated pit bulls. Mean, blood-thirsty dogs. And they still get robbed all the time.
I got him to the alley and said, “You believe in God?”
“What?”
“I asked if you believed in God.”
“No. Why?”
“Good. Then this’ll go faster.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“If you said you believed in God, then I would’ve given you time to say a couple of prayers. Now I ain’t gonna give you any time at all.”
“You son-of-a-bitch. You let me go and you let me go right now—”
I brought the shooter up and blew away half his head. It came apart in two large bloody chunks that landed wetly on the gravel behind me. Roving dogs would feast on the pieces later.
I checked over my shoulder for witnesses. No one. Nothing moved.
I wiped the shooter down clean, taking out a can of WIPE, which destroys even microscopic evidence, and then set the piece in his hand.
Sumbitch was feeling so guilty about what he did tonight, he took a shooter and killed himself. Poor noble bastard.
That would be my story. Sure, his shyster would piss and moan about it but unless the dead guy had heavy political connections, the case would be closed.
Most coppers executed people. The courts were so clogged they couldn’t handle much more. So when it was a clear-cut case like this one, why not save everybody a little time and money? And to be perfectly honest, there are some of these people I don’t mind executing. Not at all.
I slipped out of the alley and spotted Neely in the crowd.
“How’d it go?” she said.
I shrugged. “You know.”
My communicator buzzed. The robot dispatcher spoke so loudly that Neely didn’t need to turn on her own communicator. Even above the din of the accident, she could hear just fine. Bots are loud-mouthed obnoxious sons-of-bitches and almost every copper I know would love a chance to execute one of them.
The Long Way Home Page 12