by Andrew Lanh
He was antsy. “What about the money?”
“Fuck the money,” Hank shouted. “There is no money. There shouldn’t be any money. This is a man’s life, Dustin.”
“I know, I know. But the money.”
“Stop it,” I yelled at him. “This is over now. Your family has to reveal the remains to the authorities. Get that body back home. Assuming it’s a real story and not a fake story. A real MIA.”
“It’s real, but my mother…”
“Wrong,” I said forcefully. “Everything is wrong about this.”
Dustin, scratching his cheek, shaken. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I do.” I stood up. “I’ll also tell the Farmington cops. Hank’ll take care of the state cops.” He nodded at me. “They can refocus their investigation. If need be. The detectives will follow up on this.”
Dustin jumped up, then reached down and gulped down the rest of the water in the glass. He spun around, a dervish, looking at the front window where the sleet pinged and rattled the panes, then at his book bag on the floor. He grabbed his coat and pulled on his knit cap.
“Can we wait a bit?”
“No.”
“The money is a…my mother…”
“No.”
Suddenly he lurked toward the coffee table, grabbed the bone fragment and began wrapping it in the tissue. I grabbed his hand and unfolded his tight fingers. “No.”
“I gotta put it back.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You can’t have it.”
I held his shoulder. “You’re not taking it out of here. This is evidence of something. A body most likely. Maybe. It stays here.” I gripped the bone fragment in my palm. “Sort of degraded, maybe not viable DNA but…maybe mitochondrial DNA. It stays with me.”
“You can’t steal it.”
I didn’t answer.
“Goodnight, Dustin.” From Hank. “We’ll talk to you tomorrow. Okay?” He tried to soften his voice. “It’s gonna be all right. This is gonna come to an end.”
“But I can’t go home like this.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I’m gonna be in trouble with Mom. She’s gonna notice it’s gone.”
“You’re a big boy,” I said. “Deal with it. Tell her what we talked about.”
An arch laugh. “You think she’s gonna believe me?” Fire in his eyes. “I can’t mention I came here.”
“No, Dustin.”
Suddenly he pumped his fist in the air and scrunched up his face. “I thought you two were my friends.” His voice broke at the end.
I reached out to touch his arm but he backed off, pulled away.
“We are, Dustin. We are your friends.”
“You’re…you’re fucking losers like everybody I ever met in my life.”
His eyes teared up as he stumbled to the door, fought with the knob, and then rushed out of the apartment, leaving the door open. I could hear his furious steps flying down the staircase. The front door slammed with a thud.
Chapter Twenty-seven
At first I had no idea who was on the line. Indistinct words. Finally a high-pitched “Rick.” More silence. The sound of banging in the background, a door slammed, then a run of rapid-pace Vietnamese, furious, shrill, rising and falling.
“Rick, it’s me.” Swallowed words, a mouth close to the receiver.
“Dustin, what’s going on? Who’s screaming?”
Silence.
Then a loud whisper. “Mom is losing her fucking mind.”
I glanced at the clock on my computer screen. Five o’clock. Christmas Eve. Darkness had fallen, snow had begun to fall, and I was idly playing solitaire on my laptop. From the apartment above me wafted the choral sounds of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” The other tenant in the building was a taciturn retired librarian who’d been playing Christmas carols too loudly since—I’m exaggerating only a little—early October. I’d planned on a light supper because I’d promised Gracie I’d go with her to Midnight Mass at St. Timothy’s down the street. She liked to hear Christmas carols. When I told her all she had to do was sit in my apartment, she told me I would burn in hell. In her gritty falsetto: “On the first day of Christmas, Rick was sent to hell…”
“Dustin, what?” Silence, more screaming. “Dustin, are you okay?”
He breathed into the phone. “She’s flipping out, man.”
“What happened?”
An edge to his voice. “What do you think happened? She goes to do something with that damn shrine and she finds the box missing. Freak out. She comes pounding on my door. She’s—like hysterical for hours now.”
“She knows you took it?”
“Who else? The ghost of Christmas past?”
“All right. Calm down. Tell me about it.”
He yelled into the phone, his voice cracking. “You know, it’s been a shitty day. I shouldn’t have gone to your place with—you know—it. A goddamn mistake.”
“Dustin, what do you want me to do?”
Silence, more screaming in the background, his mother pounding on his door. He yelled something at her, sort of like couldyoustopthisnow—one long word, said so fast it was nearly incomprehensible. Silence again. Then, “This is all your fault.”
“Dustin…”
A long sigh. “Nothing is good around here.”
“Did you tell her that I have it?” Silence. “Dustin?”
He hissed into the phone. “God, no. You think I’m nuts.”
“What did you tell her?”
A raspy laugh. “I told her I hid it in my locker at the college.”
“You don’t have a locker at the college.”
“Really, Sherlock? She doesn’t know that. I didn’t mention you or Hank. That would have sent her off into outer space. Nobody can know about the two of you.”
“So what did she say?”
“I gotta bring it back. Taking it was a curse, a crime. Stealing. I took the key that God gave her. The fucking key. Gospel of wealth crap. Christ, I knew something was wrong when I came out of my room. She’s like—evil eyeing me, miserable, moody, but she didn’t say anything. Timmy and Rosie and one of my cousins had stopped in, yammering about Christmas shit. So Mom couldn’t say anything.”
“She wouldn’t let on?”
“You crazy? When I walked in, she throws me a real mean look. I knew something was up. I mean, she practically threw them out, and then the screaming started.”
“Dustin, again—what do you want me to do?”
“Give it back.”
“Impossible.”
A long silence, silence in the background. “She called Uncle Binh. I heard her. They’re on the way here.” A sardonic laugh. “He’s gonna run me over with his chair.”
“What are you gonna tell them?”
“I don’t have a fucking clue, man.”
“You said it was a bad day, Dustin. What do you mean?”
I could hear him breath in. “I was at the college library real early this morning. I had to return some books. Otherwise they won’t release my lousy grades, you know. When I was leaving, there was…like I felt someone was tailing me all the way home.”
“How do you know that?” I caught my breath.
“Like in the rearview mirror this car was always there. I mean, always two cars back or so. I first saw it in the school parking lot, didn’t pay any attention. But then one street, then another, another, all the way home. I stopped for coffee and I swear it was behind some parked cars. Then I pulled over at Walmart to buy Mom a Christmas something-or-other, and I swear I saw a flash of that car turn in behind me, four or five car lengths away. I’m not imagining it, Rick.”
“Coincidence?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“What did it look like?”
“Dunno. Cars are cars to me. But it had this white door. A black car with one white door. Dark windows. So tinted so you can’t see the fucker.”
“Did you hear any noise? Like a…ka-clunk sound.”
“That makes no sense.” He paused. More pounding on his door. “I came home and hid in my room—made believe I wasn’t here.”
“Dustin, I want you to meet me somewhere right now.”
“Yeah, what? Knock over my mother to get out. I can’t climb outta the window. The projects got bars on all the first-floor windows. It’s a prison, you know.”
I counted a heartbeat. “Get out somehow. Meet me at the Burger King down on Route 6, the one near your house. Wait there. I’ll see your car, then I’ll follow you out of there, see if that car is following you.”
“You’re scaring the shit outta me.”
“Good, Dustin. You’ve been scaring the shit out of everybody else.”
He broke in, angry. “I’m gonna go now.” His lips close to the phone. “This is all your fault.”
The line went dead. I dialed Hank, filling him in. “Where are you?”
“Finishing a shift. Southington. I’ll head over. Meet you there. I’m in my cruiser.”
“No sirens?”
“Not unless my public demands it.”
“I don’t like the idea of that phantom car following him, Hank.”
“Maybe this afternoon we can find the creep. If he’s trailing Dustin, we can do our own little dance up that avenue. The Grinch who got caught on Christmas.”
It took me twenty minutes to get to the Burger King parking lot. Snow had begun falling, so folks slowed down. Parked near the entrance, I waited. No Dustin. I’d checked inside when I first arrived, moved through bunches of shoving teenagers in a holiday mood, but no Dustin. So I waited. Cars streamed through the drive-thru, idled in the lot. A popular teenage hangout, souped-up Toyotas and Hondas and loud-muffler cars with tinted windows. Booming rap music, an incessant bass line punctuating the lazy afternoon.
The snow fell harder now. The blizzard they’d predicted. A Christmas Eve postcard from New England, but a bad night for driving. Cars skidding off the road. Drunken revelers filled with road rage. All is calm. All is bright. Hank texted me and I replied:
maybe still in his room
A horn blared. Another beat-up Toyota that reminded me of Dustin’s bucket of bolts. But not Dustin. His phone went to message over and over. Two boys threw snowballs at each other, while a third kept yelling in a singsong voice, “Strike one, strike two, strike three.”
Strike three: time for me to leave.
Hank’s return text:
head to his house. I’m almost near BK. Home of the whopper
A traffic jam on Route 6, the falling snow hampering movement. I inched along, but finally turned off toward the projects.
A car zipped by on the narrow road, swept past me, headed in the opposite direction. Dustin’s rinky-dink Toyota.
Through the blur of falling snow and the shadowy light from a streetlight, I spotted his face, his body hunched over the steering wheel. A gust of wind hurled a wall of thick snow against my own windshield, and I braked. I glanced up in time to spot another car speed by. The black car with the white-primer door. Dark tinted windows.
Ka-clunk ka-clunk ka-clunk.
Loud, then fading away.
A car behind me, a few in front, all creeping slowly. Desperate, I pulled to the right onto the shoulder, and the car behind me swerved, braked, and slid on the slippery pavement, the driver raising a fist at me, cursing, but pulling away. I waited to make a U-turn.
I called Hank, switching on speakerphone. “Dustin’s headed toward Route 6.”
I could hear Hank’s radio beeping. “I’m turning off the avenue now.”
“He’s being followed.”
“Christ.”
I maneuvered my car into the passing lane in order to get by a slow-moving car, nearly sideswiped an oil delivery truck whose driver gave me the finger. At the end of the street, up ahead a hundred yards, a suddenly loud bang. The whiny scrape of metal against metal. A fender bender. The cars crawled to a stop. Horns blew.
Peering through the wet windshield, I spotted Dustin’s car careen to the right, tires dragging on the ice-slicked curb. Bouncing off the curb, he pulled into the Gospel of Wealth Ministry parking lot. He disappeared from view.
I inched along.
Up ahead the white-primer car pulled around a stalled car, sped into the lot, and disappeared from my sight.
“The church parking lot,” I told Hank.
“Christ, I’m bottlenecked. Some yahoo jumped a stop sign and hit an SUV. Nobody is happy.”
“I can’t see Dustin.” I stretched my neck. “This isn’t good.”
“I’m gonna use my siren to get through the crowd. What we call a perk of the profession.”
In the distance the sudden wail of his police siren, which comforted me, though it didn’t seem to be getting closer. A horn blew. Another. A gust of snow blew against my windshield. Close enough now, I swerved out of the driving lane, hugged the shoulder, jerked the car across some frozen lawn, and sped into the parking lot.
The wide doors of the church were open, crowds streaming out. The end of an early Christmas Eve service. Clusters of excited folks worked their way through the lanes, dusting off cars, starting motors. I cruised around the front, weaving through people who’d stopped to chat, but no Dustin. He’d vanished in the vast parking lot. Frantic, I rolled my window down, stretching my neck out, my eyes flicking away the snowflakes. A trio of old women interlocked arms and walked across the slippery pavement. The women were laughing, looking up at the snow. They stepped in front of me, moving slowly, and I waited, my heart racing, my palms wet.
Suddenly Dustin’s car appeared at the far end of the lane, hesitated, started to turn left, then switched to the right, indecisive. Too far from me to see his face. He paused as a group of parishioners shuffled in front of him. A few hundred yards away from me now, he backed up, then lurched forward as he tried to squeeze between two parked cars. For a moment his car disappeared, but then popped into view. His car jerked forward, stalled, sputtered, inched along.
Snow clouded my windshield.
A motor revved. Dustin’s car jerked to a stop.
A loud burst of gunfire. Pop pop.
His front windshield blew apart. His car careened to the right, smashed into a parked car.
“Hank, shots fired.”
“I’m in the lot.”
I stopped my car and jumped out, ran.
Another shot. Pop.
Sudden panic. Madness. The easy-going holiday crowd began running, screaming, ducking behind cars, pushing their way back into the church. Folks hurried by me, horror on their faces. An old woman fell, rolled on the ground. I heard her weeping. Too many people, chaos, and Dustin’s car up against a car, steam coming out of the radiator.
The wail of Hank’s siren as he maneuvered the cruiser up another lane, headed around the back.
I ran toward Dustin’s car, my gun drawn, but a man pushing past me spotted my gun and howled, “He got him a gun.” Loud, crazy, his voice sailed out over the heads of the crowd. “A gun.” People hit the ground.
Yards away now, Dustin opened his door and stumbled out. For a moment he leaned against the open door, as if uncertain what to do, then he wobbled away.
“Dustin,” I yelled, but I doubted whether he heard me. “Dustin.”
Hank’s cruiser came from behind.
Dustin staggered toward the church doors. Stunned, I realized his face was covered with blood. He was wearing a white T-shirt and baggy pants, one hand pulling up a pant leg as he ran away. No coat. He slipped, regained his balance, started to run.
“Dustin.” He didn’t look back.
For a seco
nd he paused, his hands fluttering in the air—but almost in slow motion, floating, a body suspended in space.
Then, deafening, another shot burst from somewhere deep among the parked cars, the shooter crouched down, out of sight. Dustin spun his body around, and I saw the front of his white T-shirt turn bright red. He doubled over, staggered, and reached for the fender of a car that had pulled up near the front entrance. Someone inside, already bent over, hiding, quickly peeked but then ducked down, out of sight.
Dustin took a step toward the church steps, feeble, halting.
Running, I slid on a patch of ice. A flash of movement, someone slinking through the parked cars. Suddenly I spotted an arm outstretched, the gun aiming at Dustin. Poised, ready, sure of itself.
A parishioner, crouched down, hidden, screamed, and the hand wavered.
Dustin started to sink to the ground.
The gun pointed.
Another shot rang out, explosive, but from a few cars away.
I watched a body stumble into view, stagger, slip to the ground. In seconds Hank appeared, his face tense, his hand gripping his gun.
I hurried near.
Hank flicked his head toward the body on the ground. “Wild Bill Hickok’s got nothing on me.”
The wail of an ambulance turning into the lot.
Hank nodded at me. “I called ahead.” He pointed. “Dustin.”
He stood over the body while I rushed to Dustin. Nosy folks, gathering, leaned in. A woman who said she was a nurse was holding Dustin’s head in her lap, but she looked worried. Slowly she stoked his hair and rubbed his cheeks, rocking back and forth. A wadded handkerchief pressed against the hole in his chest. He wasn’t moving. His legs stretched out, covered with a haze of falling snow. She cradled his body as she tried to breathe life into him. Frightened, holding my breath, I touched his bloodied wrist. A faint pulse, almost nonexistent. My fingers were sticky with blood. I caught the eye of the nurse. She was shaking her head.
“No,” I said. “No.”