Somebody I Used to Know

by David Bell

  * * *

  Once we were home, my head buzzing a little and my belly full of good food made by good friends, Riley settled into his bed, let out a long sigh, and fell asleep.

  “See?” I said. “Being with those rowdy kids all day isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  He ignored me.

  I’d received a text from work. Olivia Bloom asked me if I was ready to come back on Monday and “get into the swing of things again.” It was Saturday evening, and I looked at the two days of the weekend as a long trudge across a desert. What was I going to do but sit and stew and feel worse?

  I told Olivia I’d be there bright and early. If I’d had a key to the office, I would have gone in right that moment. But I didn’t. So I was left alone with only a sleeping dog for company.

  I paced around the apartment a little. Washed my few dishes, put in a load of laundry. Then my phone was in my hand, dialing Heather.

  “Do you have your kids this weekend?” I asked.

  “Not tonight. They’re going to a basketball game with their dad.”

  “Would you like to come over?”

  Heather played it cool. I knew she was mad because I’d left town without seeing her and was abrupt with her in the process. She was going to make me work for her affections.

  “I don’t know . . .” she said finally.

  “Riley misses you,” I said. “And I’ll tell you all about my little trip yesterday. You’ll be interested.”

  “Hmm. Do you think I’m that easy?”

  “No,” I said. “But I am.”

  She told me she’d see me at six.

  I didn’t cook much. I knew how to pour dog food into Riley’s bowl and boil water for my oatmeal or spaghetti. But that was as far as it went. So Heather and I went to dinner at Scotty and Maria’s, a local Italian place.

  Once we were seated, Heather reached out and placed her hand on top of mine. “Why don’t we get a drink? Wine? Oh, wait. You don’t like wine.”

  I ordered a beer, even though I’d already had some at Laurel’s house, and once I swallowed some of it, I felt better. Heather sipped her wine and said, “Are you going to tell me about your secret trip?”

  I needed to pace myself with both food and drink, and I needed to be clearheaded. I wanted to tell someone about my trip to Hanfort.

  “Sure,” I said. And I did, speaking in a low voice. While I told her about Loretta Stieger, Heather listened and asked only a few questions. When I talked about Roger Kirby and his self-righteous indignation, Heather curled her lip. She asked me how old he was.

  “He must be in his seventies,” I said.

  “So he was in his fifties when he and Marissa . . .” She made a face like she’d swallowed a lemon. “Sorry. You probably don’t want to think about all that.”

  “I don’t.” I looked around the restaurant, watching the other diners, who all looked happy and at ease. “It’s tough to admit I might have lost her to a man thirty years older than me.”

  Heather reached her hand out again. “It’s not about you. You’ve always been a prize. It was something about Marissa. Maybe she was hung up on her dad. That’s why girls go after older men. They have daddy issues.”

  I pictured Brent Minor. He was distant and cold, all about business. But Marissa never doubted that her father loved and cared for her. So I gulped some more beer. Did it matter what Marissa sought in Roger Kirby?

  “Is that all you learned?” Heather asked.

  “Roger Kirby isn’t the worst of it.”

  “What could be worse than that?”

  I told her about Blake Brown. His breakup with Marissa and the fire in Florida. While I spoke, it felt as though everything in the restaurant grew still, telescoping down to the two of us as I shared the hideous news. Heather sat frozen, her hand resting on the stem of her wineglass. She looked away from me, while I continued to speak, and when I’d told her everything about Blake and the fire, she didn’t say anything. She stared into her wine, her finger tapping the tabletop.

  “They don’t know for sure, of course,” I said. “But circumstantially it looks like Marissa’s death could be murder. I talked to that cop who investigated the fire originally, and he said he had his doubts about it being an accident back then. Something about a nine-one-one call. It was a woman who called in, and according to this detective, she sounded like she was surprised there were people in the house. I guess he was right—there might have been more to the case, but I don’t know what the nine-one-one call could have to do with Blake, since it was a woman who made it.”

  “Shit,” Heather said. She looked distracted and unnerved by the information I’d shared with her. She lifted her hand to her temple and rubbed it as if it hurt. “What are they going to do now?”

  “Who knows?” I said. “It’s all over. The evidence is gone, the house, the nine-one-one tapes. It’s all over and gone. They’ll talk to this guy, and we can all hope he’ll confess.”

  Heather left her wineglass on the table and took a couple of long swallows of water. I remembered the way my appetite faded after talking to Nate about the fire, and I worried Heather was experiencing the same thing.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is lousy dinner conversation. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “It’s just shocking, that’s all,” she said, trying to put on a brave face. “Shocking and terrible.”

  “And you wonder why I’m single,” I said. “Talking about something this gruesome when we go out to a nice restaurant.”

  Heather forced a smile, but the mood was dead on the table. And we ate mostly in silence.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Heather left in the morning. She had to pick her kids up from their father’s house, and then they were all going to a cookout at a family friend’s. She invited me halfheartedly, after telling me her ex-husband would be there, and I was more than happy to pass.

  By mid-afternoon, I had made good progress on catching up with my work. Instead of being two weeks behind, I was only one. I slipped out for a sandwich and came back a half hour later and had just started answering more e-mails when the phone rang. I wanted to ignore it, but I figured it was Heather. When I looked at the caller ID, though, I saw it was Mick Brosius.

  “Just wanted to give you a heads-up about something,” he said. “I figured you’d want to know.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “They’ve made an arrest,” he said.

  “An arrest?”

  It didn’t register with me. An arrest for what?

  “Emily Russell. The murder. The cops arrested a guy this morning. They think they have their man.”

  It felt like I sat holding the phone for a long, long time. I wasn’t even sure what I was feeling or what I was supposed to feel. I knew there were people who would have cheered or been elated over the news, but I wasn’t one of them. Emily was still dead. Nothing could change that. Nothing could change any of it.

  “Who is it?” I asked.

  “A local scumbag. His name’s . . . let me see. Lance Hillman. Apparently, they caught him breaking into a motel room last night. They checked his truck, and he had an iPod belonging to the Russell girl. Hillman admitted to breaking into her room and about twenty-five others around town.”

  “Did he really kill her?”

  “I don’t know. He clammed up. But he broke into another motel room across town and found a woman sleeping in her bed. She says he tried to strangle her too. Most burglars, if they find someone inside, they run. Not this guy. He went after this woman. He’s a real maniac.”

  “So maybe they found their guy,” I said.

  “The cops think so,” Brosius said. “I talked to Reece this morning. I’m sure he doesn’t even remember you exist. Closing a murder case looks pretty good in a town like this. It doesn’t happen every day.”
<
br />   I stared out the window to the parking lot. It was empty, the day quiet and overcast. Was I supposed to feel nothing when the mystery was solved?

  “Are you there, Nick?”

  “I’m here, yes.”

  “Are you okay? You got quiet on me.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  * * *

  I waited for my obligatory call from Laurel. It took twenty minutes to arrive.

  When I answered, she simply said, “Did you hear?”

  “I did,” I said. “Brosius called me.”

  “I’ve been trying to find out more, but they’re being pretty tight-lipped about it all. I may sneak down there later.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Aren’t you trying to spend the day with your kids? You were gone Friday and part of Saturday.”

  “Sure,” she said. “But I thought we’d find out as much as we could right away. To be honest, I thought you’d want to know.”

  “I already know what I need to know,” I said, sounding very much like a Zen master. “The only thing I don’t really know is how Emily knew me. Maybe you were right. Maybe she wanted to thank me for helping one of her relatives.”

  “Maybe,” Laurel said, unconvinced.

  “Maybe she ran away in the store because she’s shy.”

  “You seem pretty calm, all things considered,” she said.

  “I guess I’m not a murder suspect anymore.”

  “I do think you’re off the hook,” she said.

  “And I guess I’ve been thinking about a lot of things,” I said. “The one thing I want I can’t have. So if I can’t have that, what does the rest matter?”

  “And what’s the one thing you want?” Laurel asked.

  “I want Marissa back.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  They arraigned the man, Lance Hillman, a couple of days later, charging him with the string of motel burglaries as well as Emily’s murder. He pleaded not guilty to all of it, despite having previously admitted to at least some of the robberies.

  I watched the proceedings on the local news. Hillman wore a long, scraggly beard, and beneath his orange prison jumpsuit, his arms were covered with tattoos. Those arms had supposedly squeezed the life out of Emily Russell before she could find me and accomplish whatever mission she had set herself on, a mission neither her parents nor her friends knew anything about.

  Laurel let me know that things were moving slowly in Hanfort. Yes, they intended to speak to Blake Brown about the fire that killed Marissa and her three roommates, but it wasn’t a priority. I tried not to think about it. Heather’s children were staying with her that week, so we saw very little of each other. We ate lunch together once and had a couple of phone calls, but that was it, even though I would have welcomed more of a distraction.

  My life brightened considerably when Gina called me one evening to ask for a favor. She told me she had to run to a meeting at work, but Andrew’s regular babysitter was unavailable.

  “Can I just drop him off for an hour?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I’m home.”

  “You’re sure you don’t mind?” Gina asked.

  “I don’t mind. We can watch the basketball game or something.”

  And that’s exactly what we did. The Cavaliers were playing the Heat, and we watched the Cavs getting trounced in the early part of the game. Gina told me Andrew hadn’t eaten much at dinner, so I made sure to give him plenty of potato chips and popcorn, all the things a nine-year-old boy and a forty-year-old man loved. I didn’t know when I’d see him again. Life is short, I figured, so I encouraged him to live it up. Even Riley stirred and wagged his tail. He curled up next to Andrew on the couch and didn’t move.

  “Do you think LeBron will ever come back to the Cavs?” Andrew asked.

  “Not a chance,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Really. Would you move to Cleveland from Miami?” I asked.

  “I think he will,” Andrew said.

  “Maybe you’re an optimist,” I said.

  “The Cavaliers are good to watch,” Andrew said. “But I’m ready for baseball.”

  “I hear you. Just a couple of weeks. Any predictions on the Reds?”

  Andrew thought this over carefully, like he worked at the State Department and was being asked for a foreign policy recommendation. I agreed with the seriousness of the question.

  “I think they’re a five hundred team this year,” Andrew said. “Leadoff is a question mark. So is the bullpen. Five hundred.”

  “Impressive.”

  “I’ve been reading the blogs online,” he said.

  “I haven’t,” I said. “They depress me. I’m going to be the optimist this time and say they win ninety games and get the wild card.”

  Andrew looked skeptical, but he was too nice to say anything.

  “You don’t believe it?” I asked.

  “No.” He looked certain, confident, a tiny wise man.

  “You’re probably right,” I said. “But I’d hate to think you’re a cynic already.”

  It was the fastest hour of my life. When Gina showed up, I thought only ten minutes had passed. I expected her to complain about the potato chip remnants and the bowl with the collection of unpopped popcorn kernels in the bottom. She looked them over and smiled, ruffling Andrew’s hair.

  “Looks like you had fun,” she said. “Both of you.”

  “We did,” Andrew said.

  “Do you mind waiting in the car, buddy?” she said. “I have to talk to Nick for a second.”

  “Sure,” Andrew said. He came over to me and we high-fived. “Thanks, Nick.”

  “Sure thing.” I felt lighter, happier. But I knew I couldn’t tell him I’d see him soon or anything like that because I didn’t know if I would. “Take care,” I said.

  When Andrew was gone, Gina turned to me. “Thanks,” she said. “I’m sorry to dump this on you at the last minute.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked. “We had a blast.”

  “I figured you would. I knew you’d both like it. I can’t really talk sports with him, as you know. He misses that.”

  “Doesn’t Dale talk sports?” I asked. “He looked like a healthy young lad.”

  Gina gave me a warning look. “He’s not around much. And he’s not a sports guy. Not like you two.”

  “I’m happy to do it,” I said.

  “I know,” she said. “I hate all this shuttling around. When my parents split up, I vowed I’d never do it to my kid.”

  “I remember.” I shrugged. “My parents were unhappily married, but they were always together. There’s no right or wrong way to do it. And for the record, you’re doing well. He’s a great kid.”

  “Thanks,” she said. I could tell she meant it. “It seems like just yesterday I brought him home from the hospital. It’s all going by so fast.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “I’m three years older than you. That’s three years closer to the grave.”

  “Oh, Nick. You know, in the past, I’d laugh at you for saying something like that, but I have no room to now.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked. “You’re passing up the chance to laugh at me?”

  Her face grew serious, her brow furrowing as she thought about something. “Do you remember we talked on the phone a while ago, right after you were in the news for being a murder suspect?”

  “I do,” I said. “Did you see I’m off the hook?”

  “I did.” Gina shivered about something. “That guy they arrested. Ugh. To think of what he did to that beautiful girl. I hope he didn’t . . . It sounds awful to say, but I hope he just killed her. I hope he didn’t do more to her.”

  “Me too.”

  “Anyway, I mentioned to you
that some guy disappeared from my dorm when I was at Ohio State.”

  I tried to remember the details of the call. All I really remembered was being concerned that Andrew would see me on the news and think I was a psychopath. I’d much rather talk to him about the Reds than about what it means to be a person of interest in a homicide investigation.

  “I vaguely remember.”

  “Well, it’s not important,” she said, looking down at the keys in her hand. “What’s important is that it sent me into this nostalgia spiral. I started looking up old friends on Facebook. I exchanged messages with people I hadn’t talked to in years. I found out what people are doing with their lives. We’ve all become adults with kids and jobs and houses. It’s like someone hit fast-forward on everything.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “One of my friends remembered the missing guy’s name. Charles Blevins. Do you know they never found him? Still. His family has a website about it.” She stood with her arms folded over her chest. “I don’t know. Andrew is growing up so fast. I don’t want him to miss out on what he gets from you. I think about that guy being missing, being away from his family and the people he cares about all that time. I guess what I’m saying is . . . I’m open to more of this, the kind of thing that happened tonight. More time with you guys together. Let’s just see how it goes.”

  I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t. Instead I just smiled.

  “Thanks,” I said. “Really. I mean it, and I think it’s good for both of us.”

  “I agree,” she said.

  “If they ever find Charles Blevins, I’ll send him a thank-you.”

  “We’ll talk soon.” She slipped out the door into the cool night.

  It felt like the start of something new.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  After Gina left, I watched the end of the basketball game. I’d had my fill of junk food and intended to stare at the TV until I felt so drowsy I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.