by David Bell
“What’s he doing with the money?” Stynes asked.
“I know the place looks like a rattrap, but he did use the money for some capital improvements. He put a new roof on. Bought new Bibles and pews. Cleaned up some debts. About what you would expect.”
“So what’s the problem?” Stynes asked.
“None really. I set the money up in a mutual fund for him. Pretty safe stuff, enough to generate a little income and build a nest egg.” Bower rubbed his right eye. “Of course, the economy went off the cliff a couple of years ago, and even people who invested in safe stuff lost a chunk of change.”
“And so did Reverend Fred.”
“He did. It’ll come back eventually, but he blamed me for it. Thought I should have been even safer and more conservative than I was.”
“Should you have?”
“A guy in my business can always be safer,” Bower said. “But you can be so safe sometimes you’re not doing anybody any good. At some point, you might just want to stuff the money under your mattress, you know?”
“And is this the root of the reverend’s complaint?”
“Every time he gets a quarterly report and the account has lost a few hundred bucks, he calls me up and accuses me of ripping him off. Usually, by the time the next report comes along the money is made up again. Sometimes he makes a lot more, and then he cools down. He’s a hothead.”
“Why doesn’t he fire you?”
“Like I said, I’m cheap. And so is Reverend Fred. The better question is why don’t I dump him. He’s a permanent headache.”
“And why don’t you?” Stynes asked.
“I have to be honest, I kind of like the guy,” Bower said. “I disagree with everything he believes, and he’s a pain in my ass, but he’s entertaining. I don’t get much entertainment in my line of work.”
Stynes closed the notebook but didn’t get up. “Yeah, I kind of agree with you, Mr. Bower.” Stynes hooked his pen back onto his shirt pocket. He didn’t look at Ray Bower when he said, “How do you feel about Reverend Fred hiring Dante Rogers to work at his church?”
“He did what?”
“Don’t you read the paper?” Stynes asked.
“You mean those articles about the murder?” Bower said. “I didn’t read them. I try not to relive that stuff. I have a lot of bad memories from that time.”
“Dante works at the Reverend Fred’s church,” Stynes said. “I saw him there just yesterday.”
Bower’s lips pressed together. His face darkened. “I didn’t know that. As far as I’m concerned, they shouldn’t allow that bastard back into society at all. He killed a kid. And he’s a pervert.”
“He did his time.”
“Not enough. Not enough at all.”
“You seem pretty angry about it still,” Stynes said, although Bower’s anger possessed a practiced, almost scripted quality that Stynes had seen before. People often felt they had to display their anger in a predictable fashion, the way they saw people on TV do it to reporters and news anchors. They worried if they didn’t express anger and outrage in its proper, acceptable forms, others would feel they were heartless and unfeeling. Stynes filed the response away in the back of his mind. “You know the Mannings pretty well, right?”
“Sure.”
“Still see them?”
“Not really.” Bower seemed to want to stop his answer right there, but Stynes just kept watching him, waiting. After a few moments, Bower gave in to the stare down and continued. “Our kids played together when they were little. The kids grew up. The parents drifted apart. That murder took a big toll on Ginny Manning.”
“That’s Justin and Janet’s mother?”
“Yes. Virginia. People called her Ginny if they knew her well.” The tension around Bower’s jaw eased a little. His eyes lost their focus for just a second as he appeared to think about something. Then he said, “That boy’s death killed her. It really did.”
“That’s what people say.”
“After the murder, things weren’t the same. How could they be?”
“Indeed. It must have been scary for you. Michael was there that day.”
“I feel like we dodged a bullet.”
“What is Michael doing these days?” Stynes asked.
“He’s back in Dove Point.”
“He is?”
“He’s been back about six weeks.” Something else took over Ray Bower’s face as he talked about his son. It wasn’t the look of a proud father, someone who glowed because the prodigal son had returned to the fold. He looked confused more than anything else, like he had things he wanted to say about Michael, but couldn’t be sure if they were the correct or appropriate things to say to a stranger about one’s child. “He lost his job apparently, over in Columbus. He’s back here figuring out his next move. To be honest, I’m not really sure what his plans are.”
“It must be nice to have him here.”
“Sure, yeah, it’s great.” Again the words seemed forced. So did the smile. “He’s staying at his mom’s house.”
“Well,” Stynes said, “I’ve taken up a lot of your time.”
“It’s not a problem,” Bower said. “I’ll call Reverend Fred later today and smooth his feathers. Although that Rogers thing…”
He let his voice trail off.
Stynes pushed himself up from the chair and reached across the desk to shake Ray Bower’s hand. “I guess you don’t see much of Bill Manning either?” he asked.
Bower looked surprised by the question. He let go of Stynes’s hand.
“No, I don’t. Like I said, we’re not close anymore.”
“You think Justin’s death affected him as much as Virginia?” Stynes asked.
Ray Bower seemed to think his answer over carefully. “Bill is a tough nut to crack. I’m not sure he ever let on how he felt about anything.”
“Strong, silent type?”
“Well, you know him. If you can figure that man out, Detective, you’re a smarter man than me.”
“How do you mean that?”
Bower rubbed his chin. “I’m not sure he ever felt anything for anybody. If he did, he kept it hidden. His wife, his kids, his friends. I don’t know what goes on inside him.”
“Thanks,” Stynes said. He stopped at the door to Bower’s office. “By the way, congratulations.”
“What’s that?”
Stynes pointed to his own-empty-ring finger and then pointed behind him in Cindy’s general direction.
Ray Bower’s face flushed even more than it did at the mention of Dante Rogers. He ducked his head a little in an aw-shucks, you-got-me kind of way.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s going to be a small wedding.”
“You could do it while your son’s in town,” Stynes said.
Bower looked as though that notion had never occurred to him. “Yeah, we’ll see.”
On the way out, Stynes congratulated Cindy. She insisted on showing him the ring, which he complimented appropriately. He excused himself and left the building before she launched too deeply into a rundown of her plans for the wedding, which seemed more elaborate than what Ray Bower was considering.
Chapter Nineteen
Ashleigh slept poorly, her dreams populated by weird, shifting images of Dante Rogers and the man from the porch. She felt unrested and anxious when she opened her eyes just before nine o’clock, knowing that today she would go back to the apartment complex to find Steven Kollman. The kids she went to school with talked about feeling the same way whenever a test approached. Some of them took pills for it. Antianxiety. Antidepressants. Tests and school never ruffled Ashleigh. She carried an unspoken contempt for the kids who relied on pills to get through their days.
But she suddenly felt different about that. If a pill had been within her reach, she thought she might have taken it.
She checked her phone and saw a text from Kevin.
Meet at Macs at noon. Have 2 wk brkfst.
Noon?
Ashleigh alm
ost screamed. They were supposed to go at ten, and now he couldn’t go until noon. She shut the phone without responding, flopped back onto the bed, and stared at the ceiling.
Waiting. Why was she always waiting?
She walked to McDonald’s around eleven, after spending the morning trying to distract herself by drawing out every task she performed. Slow breakfast. Slow shower. She even sat and listened while her grandpa lectured her for fifteen uninterrupted minutes on why the Reds would never win the World Series with their current manager.
As she walked along the hot road, she thought about what lay ahead, and her nerves jangled even more. She remembered everything Kevin had said at the park and on the bus the other day.
What if the guy was dangerous? What if he was crazy?
Ashleigh read the news on the Internet. She loved the “News of the Weird” feature, the bizarre stories compiled from around the country and around the world. Construction workers with nails through their heads, enormous chain reaction car accidents in the fog, babies switched at birth who end up marrying each other.
But some of the stories disturbed her, even with her appetite for strangeness. Serial killers, young girls held hostage in basements, doctors who raped their patients.
What if she ended up in one of those stories? The girl killed by a creep who claimed to know something about her uncle’s murder.
She took a few deep breaths, told herself she couldn’t let those thoughts take over her mind. She didn’t need pills. She wouldn’t let her mind twist her into knots.
She decided to eat while waiting for Kevin. At eleven fifteen, the restaurant remained relatively calm. A few of the old men who gathered for their morning coffee and biscuit still remained. Ashleigh took some sort of comfort from their presence. They seemed like part of the order of the town, like the monument to President Grant on the courthouse lawn or the Fall Festival in October. Their number never decreased. Even when one of them died, another old guy showed up, keeping the number of the group about the same. A part of her wished that her grandpa would come and join them, that he would leave the house a little more and talk to somebody. But he didn’t seem to be the type of man who could even stand to talk to other men. Ashleigh just didn’t know if he’d always been so closed down, or if her uncle’s death sealed her grandpa off from the rest of the world.
Kevin worked in the back, so Ashleigh didn’t see him. She ordered Chicken McNuggets, fries, and a Coke and took her tray to a table in the corner. The lunchtime crowd would arrive soon, goofy-looking businessmen in their starched white shirts, mothers pulling a train of kids behind them. She wanted to stay out of everyone’s way and eat in peace. She wanted to think about and prepare for seeing Steven Kollman.
What would she say to him?
She decided to be direct, to just ask him what he knew. Just say it straight out.
Listen, dude, I don’t mean to freak you out or anything, but I’ve got to know what you know. And if you don’t know anything, leave my mom alone…
She had a mouthful of McNugget and her eyes on the parking lot when Kevin slid into the booth across from her. Ashleigh jumped a little, lost in imagining the scenario at the apartment complex.
“Easy, Ash. It’s just me.”
He smiled wide. Ashleigh had to admit she was happy to see him, even if he did make her jump.
“Are you the fry guy today?” she asked. “These McNuggets are a little dry.”
“I’ll tell the chef.”
“I was just thinking about Kollman, and what I’m going to say to him.”
“About that…”
Ashleigh understood what his words meant.
“About that?” she said. “What are you doing?”
Kevin held his hands out. Placating. Ashleigh hated being placated.
“It’s just a delay,” Kevin said.
“A delay?”
“Two people called off,” he said. “They need me to stay through lunch.”
“We made these plans.” She didn’t want to sound whiny, but she was pissed, and her voice rose beyond her control. “You know how important this is.”
“I know, I know. But the other day when we went to see this guy, I showed up late and got written up.”
“So?”
“So my dad knows the manager. They’re friends from the Optimists Club or something, and my dad gave me this big bullshit talk about not being late again.”
“You won’t be late,” Ashleigh said. “You’re already here.”
“I feel like I can’t say no,” Kevin said. “And my dad said I need to save money for a car in the fall. It’s just until three. Then we can go.”
“Three?”
“Hell, the guy probably isn’t even home. We went in the morning last time and he wasn’t there. He probably works somewhere, so if we go later we’ll catch him. Makes sense, right?”
Ashleigh looked back out the window. A minivan and an SUV pulled in. Any minute and they’d start spilling kids out their sides, the parents irritable, the kids little eating machines. What Kevin said made sense, but she didn’t want to wait.
We made plans.
“Fine,” she said. “Work until three.”
Kevin didn’t say anything. He looked around the restaurant.
“What?” Ashleigh asked.
“You know, other people have things going on in their lives. I’m offering to go with you. It will just be later.”
“Fine.” She took a long drink.
“I know what that means,” he said. “You’re pissed. I get it. I get how much this means to you. But we have to compromise sometimes, you know? Like you going to football or basketball games when I know you don’t want to. Now I’m asking you to wait for me. Jesus, just once could you give somebody a break? Could you? Like Kelcey in the park. Why lash out at people who mean well?”
Ashleigh didn’t meet his eye. He’d never spoken to her like this, and it brought an unnatural burning to her eyes, something that made her feel like a little kid.
But she wasn’t going to cry.
She wasn’t going to show it.
“It’s fine,” she said. “Just work.”
But Kevin didn’t leave. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Come on, Ash. I’m sorry-”
She pulled her hand away. “It’s fine. Go.”
He leaned back. “We can do it at three. You can hang out at the library or back home, and we can leave right at three.”
“Okay,” she said. “Really.”
She offered nothing else, so Kevin went back to work. She finished eating alone.
The bus dropped Ashleigh at the same stop as the other day-Hamilton Avenue, a few blocks’ walk from Steven Kollman’s apartment complex. She stepped out into the heat, the crappy food from McDonald’s heavy in her stomach. She’d left the restaurant without talking to Kevin. She’d handed the woman at the cash register a note, written on a thin paper napkin.
Going to library. See you at 3.
By three, Ashleigh expected-hoped-to have everything with Steven Kollman wrapped up. She could go back and meet Kevin and tell him what had happened. She could do it on her own.
But as she walked down the sidewalk toward the street where the apartment complex sat, she started to doubt the wisdom of what she was doing. What was she going to do-a skinny fifteen-year-old girl armed with scraps of information? What would she do if the guy was a rapist or a killer?
But she wouldn’t turn back. Couldn’t and wouldn’t.
It meant too much and she’d waited too long.
Ashleigh remembered the building. The cooking smells in the hallway were worse than what she ate at McDonald’s. Everyone seemed to have their TVs blaring. She didn’t want to think about what went on behind all those doors, the empty, boring lives led by people with nothing better to do than watch TV all day.
But was her grandpa any different? And what right did she have to come down on these people so hard? Maybe they were like her grandpa and had lost
their jobs or had someone close to them die, leaving them to fend for themselves.
Ashleigh stopped on the first landing. She knew she judged others harshly, even went so far as to look down on anyone she considered stupid or ignorant-and as far as Ashleigh was concerned, that meant a lot of people.
But what if Kevin was right? What if she never gave anybody a break? Her mom, her grandpa, Kevin, Kelcey, the kids at school. People she didn’t even know as she walked through her life. Maybe this guy, Steven Kollman, was one of those people. Someone who had been dealt a bad hand, never given a chance by the world, and so he ended up living in a dumpy apartment building in Dove Point, Ohio.
Ashleigh hoped to find out soon enough, so she resumed her climb up the stairs.
She had taken just a few steps when she heard the whooshing sound. It repeated itself rhythmically-whoosh whoosh whoosh. Ashleigh couldn’t place it, but it sounded like it was coming from the top floor, where Steven Kollman lived. She moved past the second landing, and the noise increased. When the third floor came into sight, Ashleigh had a pretty good guess as to what the noise was.
Steven Kollman’s apartment door was wide-open. Three large dark garbage bags sat just outside of it. They looked to be filled to bursting. Every time the whoosh sound came again, a puff of dust and dirt came out the door of the apartment like a little cloud. Someone was cleaning Steven’s apartment. Really cleaning it.
Was it Steven?
Or…
The sweeping stopped, and the familiar head of the building manager popped out of the apartment door. For a short moment, it looked like he didn’t know who Ashleigh was and wanted to ask her what she needed. But then recognition spread across his face. His eyes brightened and his eyebrows raised behind the loose-fitting glasses.
“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Steven’s…what? Are you his cousin or something? I forget.”