“You’re born for this work, Ruzak, you know that?”
She knocked again, this time an urgent rap-rap-rap.
“Somebody’s coming,” she whispered. “I hear them.”
I pressed my back against the wall, in case they were checking her out through the window. I heard the latch turn and the door came open a few inches. I held my breath so the person on the other side wouldn’t see it fog.
“Yes?”
“Angela Cummings?” Felicia said.
“Yes?”
“Angela,” Felicia said, her tone both kind and urgent. “We know he’s here and we want to help. We want to help him and we want to help you help him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I heard Angela say. “I really don’t.” But the door stayed open a crack. Felicia should stick her foot between the door and the frame. That was PI 101, but I couldn’t expect Felicia to know that.
“We know he’s the one,” Felicia said. “The police don’t, not yet, but close this door and in five minutes they’ll have the SWAT team in position.”
“He’s not. He didn’t. They caught the guy who did. He confessed.”
“Caught the guy who did what?” Felicia asked. “I thought you didn’t know what I was talking about. Look, we’re not here to arrest anyone. We just want to talk.”
“We?”
I pushed away from the wall and stood behind Felicia. Through the crack, I could see one large, teary eyeball over a slice of nose.
“Hey,” the girl said, her voice rising. “I don’t know who you people are or who sent you—”
“I’m Teddy Ruzak,” I said. “And Jack Minor sent me.”
FORTY-FIVE
Behind the girl, a shadow moved, then spoke. “Angela, you better let them in.”
The door abruptly swung closed. Felicia looked over her shoulder at me, the red scarf cupping her delicate chin.
“I think she disagrees,” she said.
The door opened again, and Angela stepped back to let us pass. Several feet into the gloomy entryway stood the kid in the hoodie. Angela closed the door and threw the deadbolt, and then the four us stood there, and nobody seemed to have anything to say.
“I didn’t kill him,” the kid said.
“But you were there,” I said. “With the guy who did.”
He didn’t say anything. I went on, “Three of you, and then you mutilated his corpse.”
“I didn’t,” the kid whispered. “I never touched the guy. Eric cut the letters.”
“But it was your idea. Angela had told you about the tetragrammaton. Was that some kind of joke?”
“No.” He shook his head. In the weak light spilling from the kitchen behind him, he had all the physical presence of a drug addict. I still couldn’t make out his face. “We panicked, man. That other guy, his buddy, he saw us. He saw everything. So Brice took after him, chased him down the street, left us there with the body and we didn’t know what to do. So I said, ‘Let’s make it look like some crazed serial killer did it.’ But I didn’t do it; I didn’t cut him up; it wasn’t me. I was saying let’s leave a note or something and Eric said we can’t leave a note—there’d be fingerprints—and anyway, we didn’t have anything to write with, so he found a broken bottle in the alley …”
He choked up. Angela brushed past me and stood by his side, pulling his hand into both of hers.
“I said we gotta do this. We gotta do this and in a couple days we’ll write a letter to the cops calling ourselves the Yahweh Killers or something like that so they’ll think it’s some kind of weird cult or something.”
“Brilliant plan,” Felicia said.
“We were drunk! I mean, shit, I’ve never been in trouble. I’ve never even had a fucking traffic ticket! Brice went crazy on the old guy over that hat. That fucking hat!”
“He is crazy,” Angela said softly. “I told you not to hang out with him.”
“Brice was the one who beat me up,” I said.
Angela nodded. “I told Liam I was meeting you at the park, and he told Brice.”
“You gotta understand,” Liam said. “I can’t go to prison. Jesus Christ, I’m supposed to graduate this spring!”
“And get married,” Angela said softly. “Please, Mr. Ruzak, I’ve been telling him to go to the cops. They’ll go easy on him if he cooperates, right? Won’t they cut him a deal if he agrees to testify?”
“I never touched him,” Liam cried. “I never touched the old fuck!”
“Stop that,” I said. “Don’t call him that.”
“You shouldn’t call him that, Liam,” Angela said.
“Where are they? Where are Brice and Eric?” I asked.
“Man, you don’t know. Eric isn’t so bad, but Brice will fucking kill you, man.”
I said to Angela, “So after I called you, you called Liam. What about Brice and Eric?”
She shook her head. “I called Liam. Just Liam.”
“Did you call them?” I asked Liam. “Do they know that I know?”
“Are you serious? I waited until my shift was up and then I came over here to figure out what to do. I don’t know what to do!”
“That’s okay,” Felicia said. “We do.”
FORTY-SIX
They sat in the backseat on the short drive from campus to downtown, holding hands. Angela urged him into saying the Lord’s Prayer with her. I finally got a look at his features: sallow, pinched, pocked by acne scars, and for some reason I thought of Ichabod Crane.
“I’m sorry you got hurt, Mr. Ruzak,” Angela offered as we waited for the light to change on the corner of Cumberland and Main. “It’s my fault. I saw the flyer on campus and I don’t know why I couldn’t say anything on the phone. It wasn’t about the money. I’m a good person. Liam’s a good person. And Eric, he just does whatever Brice tells him to do.”
“Eric’s a moron,” Liam said. “They’re both fucking morons.”
“I told him not to hang with Brice,” Angela said.
“He won’t let ‘em take him alive,” Liam said. “He told me that, if it ever went down.”
“What a shame,” Felicia said. “I’ll miss him.”
Liam started to cry. Angela slipped her arm around his shoulder and he collapsed into her chest. She stroked his black, greasy hair and whispered, “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Put yourself into the Lord’s hands now. Ask Jesus into your heart. Tell him you’re sorry and he’ll forgive you.” I had the feeling I was hearing a reprise of a speech she had given many times. “He loves you, Liam, he loves you so much and you know what? So do I. I don’t care what you did. That’s what it’s about, baby. Love. Love, love, love, baby.” She kissed the top of his head. “All things for a reason, baby. All things for a reason.”
“Tell that to Jack Minor,” Felicia muttered.
“Here’s what I don’t get,” Liam said, his voice coming up muffled between his girlfriend’s breasts. “You, Ruzak. I don’t get you. Who the hell was that old guy to you? Why the hell do you care?”
“Ruzak is on a mission of God,” Felicia said. “His humble instrument.”
“Oh, Christ,” Liam moaned.
“He’s a roundabout operator,” I said. “Inscrutable.”
The dome of the Sunsphere shone in the night sky behind us; a golden halo shimmered in the falling snow, a circle of beatific light. Why the hell did I care? I didn’t answer, because I had come to the point where I understood the question was irrelevant. Only one question really mattered, and it wasn’t that one. Maybe Jack Minor lying dead in my alleyway was the answer, or maybe it was just another way of putting the same question that we’ve been asking since we dropped from the trees and rose on two legs to survey the landscape: Hello, are you there? Can you hear me? Who are you and what do you want?
The answer eludes us.
DECEMBER 24
FORTY-SEVEN
By midmorning Amanda had packed up, her old duffle by the door with Archie beside it
, his dog senses tingling at the impending disintegration of our little pack. I was up by eight, showered and dressed, and made a quick run to the Krispy Kreme while Amanda snored on the sofa. I took Archie with me for a little private time.
“Look,” I said, as he stared at me from the passenger seat. “You and I have to come to some sort of understanding here. For better or worse, fate’s dumped you into my lap, and we both had better get used to it. I think what gets to me most is this feeling of expectation or dread, the way you just stare at me, like you’re afraid I’m going to wig out on you. I’m really a fairly balanced person. I tend to think too much and get too wrapped up in trivialities, sort of a borderline autistic—don’t think I haven’t thought of that—but that doesn’t mean I’m a bad person or, more to the point, a poor owner. I promise to give you a warm place to sleep and tasty kibble and take you on walks and play with you. Well, as long as my super doesn’t kick you out—I’m going to have to work on that problem. The point is, I appreciate the fact that you’re an excellent listener; it’s really impressive the way you seem to cling to my every word, but there’s a reason we tell little kids not to stare, you know?”
Amanda was up by the time we returned with the doughnuts. I also picked up a couple of their medium-brew coffees. Like soft-drink products, coffee always tasted better from a restaurant.
“Maybe I should stay,” she said. Without her makeup, she looked about twelve years old. “You’re going to be alone for Christmas.”
“I’m working down at the mission tomorrow,” I said. “And you should be home with your family.”
“Do you like me, Ruzak?” she asked.
“Sure I like you. I can’t thank you enough for helping me through all this.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I have this difficulty,” I said. “This fear of foisting my foibles on others.”
“That’s stupid,” she said. “If everybody waited until they were perfect—”
“Oh, I know I’ll never get to that point. I’d just like to be a little more sure of what I want.”
“The plain truth is you don’t find me attractive. Why can’t you say that? And if you’re afraid you’ll hurt my feelings, tell me what’s worse: finding me unattractive and lying about it or thinking I’m gross and telling me the truth?”
“That’s sort of a false choice.”
“So you do find me attractive, and this is all about you not knowing what you want?”
“Well.”
“Ruzak, how can you decide what you want unless you try it? It’s like deciding you don’t like sushi without ever tasting it.”
She licked the glaze from her fingertips. Before I allowed myself to think, I leaned forward and kissed her sugary lips. Our eyes met for an instant, and then she slapped me very hard across the left cheek.
“Bastard,” she said.
I offered to walk her to her car. She told me she was perfectly capable of walking by herself.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“Don’t.”
She wasn’t gone five minutes when the phone rang. I was so sure it was her, I didn’t bother to look at the caller ID.
“Hello, Mr. Ruzak,” Detective Black said. “Just wanted to let you know we got Brice Carlson last night.”
“Alive?”
“Surrendered without incident. He was holed up at his parents’ house down in Polk County. Denies everything, but Eric Reston broke yesterday and confessed.”
“It’s done,” I said.
“All but the shouting.”
“Well,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“We’d like to go after him for the assault on you,” she said. “We’ve got Angela’s and Liam’s testimony and we can get Brice’s cell phone records—Liam stated he called him that afternoon.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t think so. You’ve got him on Jack. That’s enough.”
“You’re sure?”
I told her I was, down to my shoestrings.
“Okay. I had one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“An apology. You were right and I was wrong. You know,” she said. “In six years as a homicide detective, I’ve never encountered a case quite like this one. I’ve never had an eyewitness confess to something he didn’t do. I just wanted you to understand there was no bad faith involved. We honestly thought we had the right guy.”
It was more of an acknowledgment than an apology, but I didn’t press it.
“And if you hadn’t stuck to your guns, an innocent man might have paid a very dear price.”
“Right,” I said. “One’s enough.”
“One’s enough?”
“I mean Jack. Don’t get me wrong, detective, I’m glad we got these boys, but it’s one of those things that bring closure but no satisfaction.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Ruzak.”
“Three college kids on a drunk kill a harmless homeless person over a hat. My understanding is this Brice character was nothing but a punk and a thug, but these other two weren’t bad kids, just weak, and now they have no future, and Jack is dead, though I guess you could say he didn’t have a future, either. It just seems so … useless.”
“Sounds to me like somebody’s got the Christmas blues.”
“Oh, I’m an optimist at heart,” I said. “But if you’re gonna get in the water, you gotta risk a riptide or two.”
A day after his father’s release from prison, Robert Matthews showed up at my door with his dad in hand and a chip on his shoulder.
“I oughta punch you in the face for what you did to my old man,” Robert said.
“Ruzak didn’t do anything to me,” Reggie said.
“Did I ask for your input?” Robert asked him. “Look, Ruzak, we had a deal and I’m not leavin’ town without the balance of what you owe me.”
“What I owe Reggie, you mean.”
“Whatever!”
“The reward was, I think, um, rewardable upon arrest and conviction …”
“That’s not what you told me in Johnson City.”
“But if you read the flyer—”
“You told me one half right now and the next half when somebody went to jail. Well, I read the papers. Somebody’s in jail—where’s my twelve-fifty?”
“My twelve-fifty,” Reggie said.
“Whatever! Plus the fact I should sue you for breach of contract, Ruzak, kidnapping under false pretenses; I don’t know, I’m not a fucking lawyer, but they threw my dad in prison after beating a false confession out of him, and you didn’t even bother to tell me!”
“They didn’t beat me,” Reggie said. “I confessed falsely of my own free will.”
“In fact,” Robert said, jabbing his finger at my nose, “you lied about it! You told me he was living here!”
“He asked me not to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Maybe that’s a question you should ask him.”
“Look, I didn’t come all this way to bandy words with you, dickhead.”
“Bandy?”
“I just want what’s mine.”
“Mine,” Reggie said.
“Whatever!”
“Let me get my checkbook,” I said.
So I wrote out a check to Reggie Matthews for $12,500. Then I handed the check to Reggie. I wished them both a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I closed the door and heard Robert saying loudly in the hall, “Dad, if I let you keep it, it’ll be gone in a month!”
I felt bad for Reggie, but told myself that whole setup was an accident of nature, which really had nothing to do with me.
After getting off the phone with Detective Black, I took Archie for a walk, wrapping him in my overcoat for the trip outside lest Whittaker or one of his spies was on the prowl. Then I went back upstairs, where I put on a pot of coffee because I still had half a dozen Krispy Kremes left and nobody to share them with
. Archie sat at my feet and stared while I chewed.
“Not good for you,” I said. “And besides, nobody likes a beggar.”
And of course I thought of Jack when I said it, and not how I usually thought of him, tossed on a pile of garbage, dead eyes wide open, but the day before, standing by my car in the middle of the street, the questioning look when I passed my hat through the open window. God bless, he murmured. The way he appeared in my rearview mirror as I drove away, clutching that hat, astounded by his good fortune, a solitary figure standing on a street corner in the rain, as ubiquitous and forgettable as any street person.
Beggars can’t be choosers. If wishes were horses, a beggar could ride. My mother had a boatload of sayings, a seemingly endless supply of bromides for every possible occasion, I guess because clichés are the convenient hooks we use for hanging our hats of uncertainty.
I washed up in the kitchen sink, scrubbing my hands until the knuckles turned raw. Something felt like it was slipping inside, so acting on instinct—maybe the same instinct that drove me to give Jack my floppy hat—I put Archie in his cage and headed downstairs for my car.
I stopped at Walgreens first and purchased a stocking with an embroidered puppy on the front, filled with bones and chewies and a little packet of breath fresheners, sort of like Tic Tacs for canines.
A year ago on this night, I was at Mom’s house leafing through old photos of Christmases past. There’s Dad pulling another shirt from a box. There’s Teddy with his first bike. There’s your cousin Ernie from New Jersey, don’t you remember him? I wondered what happened to those albums—did I stick them in my closet? Our old house in Fountain City had a big fireplace where Mom hung our stockings, three in a row, until Dad died, and then there were two. Where did those end up? I tried to remember if I had a box in the closet labeled “Christmas.” If I found mine and put it out tonight, how much faith did I have it would be filled to overflowing on Christmas morning?
I pulled into the Park Rite lot beside the Ely Building and Lonny came out of his little booth, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
The Highly Effective Detective Goes to the Dogs Page 19