“She’s a smart girl, Matthew. She figured out how to find me,” Grandma Jo said.
“Yeah. She’s smart. She’s like her mom in so many ways.” I hated the clogged sound in his voice, like he was trying not to cry.
I stepped into the kitchen.
In a flash, he was up from the table, arms wrapped around me in a hug. I buried my face in his shirt, soaking in his warmth and the comfort I’d always felt when he held me. My racing heart slowed to match his, beat for beat. “I’m so sorry, Dad. I should have known you’d never do something like that.”
“Hush, baby.” He smoothed my hair. “I should have told you years ago. I never should have lied about it.”
He released me from the hug and held me at arm’s length. “Explain to me what you told your grandmother about Carl.”
“He was there that day, Dad. He was there when Mom was shot.” I took a step back from him and looked up into his face. “I might not have shot my mother. Will you help me find out?”
“Of course,” he said. “Back to back. Always.”
* * *
It wasn’t hard to get an appointment with Carl Harrington. Dad used a fake name so he wouldn’t know who we were. We told the receptionist we were interested in the master planned community, the one where Mom was killed. Carl had become the Realtor for the project after Mom died. It had launched him, like it had been about to launch Mom.
He was sitting in his car near the gated entrance when we got there. I walked up to him first and knocked on the window. The air was so dry I thought I heard a hiss as all the moisture evaporated from my skin.
Carl got out of his car, squinting against the sun. When he got a good look at my face, his own paled. His gaze went to Dad then. “Matthew?”
“Carl,” Dad said.
“You should have let me know it was you making the appointment.” He got out of the car and shook Dad’s hand. Then he turned to me. “Is this Lucy? My God, you look just like your mother.”
“So I hear,” I said, stepping back from him before he could come in for a hug or a handshake. The idea repulsed me.
Carl turned back to Dad. “You’re moving back? And you want to live here?”
“I don’t think so.” Dad shook his head. “Lucy has started to remember things from that day. Flashes are how she describes it. Noises. Smells. A man and a woman arguing. We thought coming here to where it happened might jog more memories loose.”
Carl turned to me, his Adam’s apple working up and down in his throat. “Is that so?”
“Yeah,” I said, stepping up next to my dad. “It’s getting clearer every day.”
“That, uh, must be hard,” he said. “Everyone hoped you were young enough to never remember what happened that day.”
“Especially you, I bet,” I said, rubbing my arms, feeling strangely cold in the flat bright Arizona sunshine.
“Pardon me?” He made a show of looking confused, but he wasn’t much of an actor.
“You especially wouldn’t want me to remember.” Flashes went off like strobe lights in my head. Images. Sounds. This man. This face. Yelling all this should be his.
“Why would you say that?” he asked.
“Because you’re the one who shot my mom. You came to the model home that day. I don’t know what you were planning, but it didn’t go the way you wanted, and you got angry. Really angry. You yelled, but she didn’t back down. She gave as good as she got,” I said, amazed that my voice didn’t tremble.
“She would have. That’s exactly what Molly was like,” Dad chimed in.
My dad and I had been living a lie, but so had this man. All that was going to end and it was going to end now. “I don’t know if you already knew about the gun in her purse or if you saw it there, but you grabbed it and you shot her.”
“You … you remember it?” he whispered.
“Bits and pieces. Pretty soon I’ll have all the details and it won’t matter how long ago it was. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
Carl turned back toward his car, but Dad shifted so he was between Carl and the vehicle.
Dad shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe what was happening. “I knew you were jealous. I knew you wanted this project, and that Realtor of the Year award. But to shoot her? To kill her? Over a stupid trophy? And to let everyone blame a little girl?”
Carl looked around as if there might be an escape hatch. There wasn’t. Just houses and desert. His face twisted and it was the face from the dream, distorted and ugly. “It should have been a fifty-fifty split,” Carl said, his voice tight. “I just wanted to talk to her about it, but she … she laughed at me. She was so greedy she wanted it all for herself.”
“So you shot her? And let them think it was me?” I knew the answer. It still amazed me.
Dad took out his phone. “I’m calling the police.”
That’s when Carl made a break for it. He feinted around Dad and headed toward the desert, his dress shoes sliding on the pavement. I don’t know where he thought he’d go. There was nothing but miles of saguaro and sage all around us. Still, he ran.
Too bad for him I’m pretty much always the best slide tackler on the field.
* * *
Dad and I walked into the house, and everyone went silent. Every head turned toward us. I was used to it. I’d been the new kid at so many schools, been introduced to so many classes, walked on the field with so many new teams. Based on the way Dad’s hand tightened around mine, he wasn’t quite as inured to it.
The place smelled amazing, like baking bread and sage. Everyone ranged around a bunch of tables strung together to accommodate a crowd, and there was definitely more than enough food on them to feed everybody twice over.
Then a man stood up from the long table. I knew his face. He looked a lot like Dad. That’s not why I recognized him, though. I recognized him from his Facebook posts.
“Matthew?” my uncle said.
“Ian?” Dad responded.
Then it was like being in the middle of a rugby scrum. There were people all around us. Hugging us. Kissing us. Touching us. Everyone talking all at once. Asking questions. Making comments.
I kept hearing just one thing, though: Welcome home.
NIGHT OF THE LIVING DOG
By David Bart
This night’s a complete bust.
The pizza delivery took way longer than thirty minutes, still didn’t get it free. And Chloe recently developed an interest in jocks, refused to answer my texts, except she threw a bit of shade via an emoticon with its red tongue sticking out. So, my parent-free night of debauchery and hot, spicy pizza was officially a big, fat—
Agonizing screech!
I jumped, then recognized the creaks and groans of our garage door suffering the painful throes of opening. Which was odd because Mom and Dad never got in until well after midnight from date night; often tipsy. The DVR, however, showed 11:13.
The open pizza box on the carpet was about to get me busted for eating in the living room. I slid the box beneath the coffee table with my bare foot just as the door burst open and slammed into the wall! Sheetrock particles filtered down from the newly punched hole like a bad case of dandruff.
Mom hurried inside, headed for the staircase, ignoring her only—and therefore favorite—child.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
No reply.
Are my parents getting a divorce? I can’t see Dad springing the Big D on her over stale Olive Garden breadsticks and a cheap Chianti; they love each other, get along great; after all, they do a night out every month.
Dad stepped inside, stopped, and frowned at the hole in the wall. He glanced my way and then looked up at Mom as she ascended the stairs.
I rose from the couch, flinching at the squishy sensation only lukewarm mozzarella provides as it oozes up between your toes—and no, this wasn’t the first time. “Dad?”
He rummaged inside the liquor cabinet, bottles clinking, searching for something made in S
cotland or Kentucky. Finally poured himself a bourbon and gulped it down; let out that ahhh sound parents do to embarrass their kids.
“Is anybody gonna tell me what’s wrong?” I asked, probably too loudly.
My glasses slipped, and I shoved them higher up a nose so long it had inspired Jason Gonzalez to dub me Cyrano. Mom claimed my nose was regal, but moms are like that.
In response to my question, Dad gestured toward the couch as he collapsed into his leather recliner with a whoosh, sloshing booze onto his date-night Hawaiian shirt.
“Perfect,” he said, and then saw my red foot. “Wyatt, you get that tomato sauce on Mom’s new carpet, she’ll skin us both.”
“Dad, what happened?” I asked, grabbing a few napkins and sitting down to clean off my toes.
“Son, we saw a … a…” He couldn’t get it out, shuddered and turned his face away to hide misting eyes.
A car wreck? Elvis alive in Illinois?
I tossed the yucky napkins into the box next to the last pizza slice, the one with my footprint in it, and leaned forward, elbows on my knees—not comfortable when you have bony appendages.
“Wyatt, we saw a man…”
I waited, less than patiently.
Dad exhaled forcefully and said, “We saw a man shot to death.”
I snorted, settling back into the cushions with relief; he wouldn’t be joking if they were getting a divorce. My old man, eh, always kidding around!
But then I had a sobering thought: Gallows humor is not his style. Which meant he was telling the truth.
“Wait, what?” I said, leaning forward again. “You saw what?”
Why shouldn’t I be confused?—I mean, that kinda thing happens in movies, not in real life, especially in or near Urbana-Champaign. We’re way south of Chicago, and the only violent gangs we have down here are U of I basketball fans.
On the other hand, we have a septuagenarian reality-show host as the leader of the free world, so I guess anything could happen.
Dad refilled his glass. “We went to the police station, and they dispatched a twelve-year-old patrolman to check Rohnert Park. No body. No sign of violence. No other witnesses, park was empty. But the officious little twit did call the animal shelter to report the stray dog—they’re gonna pick it up in the morning, Wyatt. Breaks my heart, that pooch saved our—”
I interrupted: “What dog?”
He leaned back, took another swig, and said, “Okay … so, I’d just whacked my head on the picnic table in the park, raised up too quickly ’cause I’d heard a loud noise.”
I knew better than to ask him why they were under the table. I’m young, not stupid.
“I didn’t know what that sound was—muffled—like a gun fired in a barrel or something, but still loud.”
Not knowing what else to do, I nodded.
“We heard someone groaning from off in the distance … About fifty feet away, a guy looked like he was pointing down at a prone body, but with its leg bent at the knee, sticking up.”
“This was in Rohnert Park?” I asked.
He nodded. “Then I heard the loud noise again and I knew it was a gun, silenced maybe; not like in the movies at all. Anyway, and I’ll never forget this, the guy on the ground jerked and his leg shot straight out.”
Dad got another drink while I tried to process. I felt kinda tingly, like some kind of galvanic current was pulsing over my skin.
“Your mom cried out at the most unholy thing I’ve ever heard, son—the wet, sickening sound of bullets hitting flesh.”
I pictured movie scenes of battles, drive-bys, and shoot-’em-up scenes in Tarantino flicks—hard to imagine it in some idyllic park in the Midwest.
“The killer crouched down, looked toward our picnic table, lurched into a full-out run, gun out in front, long hair trailing behind him like some ghoul in a movie. It was surreal.”
Words escaped me, I could only just sit there and listen.
“We clung to each other and I was sure we were going to die and I’m thinking: fight or flee, fight or flee, fight or … know what I mean?”
My mouth was dry. “What happened then?”
Dad’s face lit up with his first grin since coming home. “This beautiful, wonderful dog came thundering out from behind a dumpster and stopped right in the path of the assassin!”
* * *
As Dad spoke, I could see it, feel it, my own folks in the middle of some hellish TV movie. I mean, this killer—can’t believe I’m thinking that word in the context of everyday life—was running toward them, pointing a gun he’d just used to kill a man, so they knew he’d use it on them; but Dad’s buzzed on wine, impotent to do anything, his mind vacant of any viable plan of action.
“How’d you get away?” I asked, needing details, because concentrating on minutiae often curbs my anxiety.
“The guy tripped over the dog, went ass over applecart—I heard the wind knocked out of him and his gun went flying. So we got up and ran to the car.”
But as he talked—and try as I might to pay attention—I just couldn’t focus. I thought of the ludicrousness of all of us, glommed on to video games, movies, Facebook, Twitter, interminable news coverage; never feeling, smelling, or hearing the spine-numbing terror, the acrid odor of smoke, or the ear-blistering gunshots.
I wondered: Would I be able to act under those circumstances?
Not likely. I’m not James Bond, nobody is … In fact, even James Bond isn’t James Bond.
“The dog looked like Old Yeller, Wyatt, ’member that flick?” He wiped a hand below his eyes.
Was he being sentimental about the old Disney movie or having a nervous breakdown?
I frowned. “Are you saying the mutt did it on purpose, like Old Yeller and the pigs?”
He shrugged. “It’s a reach, I know, but it was damned fortuitous.” He took a deep breath and stepped over to the liquor cabinet. “I better go up and see about your mom.” He grabbed a bottle of cognac by its skinny neck, along with a couple of snifters, and headed for the stairs.
When he reached the first landing, I said, “What if the killer followed you home?”
His head swiveled toward the night-blackened windows and he hurried back down, set the bottle and clinking glasses on the coffee table, grabbed the cord for the drapes and jerked them hand over hand until they were closed, and then headed upstairs—no doubt to the closet where he kept Grandpa’s old 12 gauge.
I’d never seen Dad scared before. I wolfed down the cold pizza slice I’d stepped on, ignoring the footprint. Comfort food, to shut out the sense of being in a nightmare with no awakening.
Went upstairs to their bedroom and hugged Mom, patting her on the back like I was the parent. After she settled down some, I said good night, headed back downstairs, and snuck out of the house; scared as I was, I really needed to check our neighborhood for strangers.
After I drove around near home for a while, I headed to Rohnert Park.
I had my choice of spaces in the empty parking lot. The cement picnic table Dad described was near the foot-powered swan boats. A bell tower on the hilltop overlooking the pond provided a little night music, but after it chimed a dozen times, my surroundings became preternaturally quiet—too quiet, as they say in old movies. No crickets. Or night birds. Not even a breeze.
A yellow dog trotted up from the pond, muzzle dripping water, the falling drops illuminated by a sodium-vapor security lamp at the far end of the parking lot. The stray’s ribs showed, and it was so scraggly it might’ve been a zombie dog—’course, those are rare in Illinois.
He trotted toward the dumpster, no doubt hoping to scare up a late-night snack, since I was apparently too rude to have brought him anything.
I ran over and jumped in my VW, drove to a Steak ’n Shake for a sack of burgers. When I returned, I asked, “Want some sliders, boy?”
He gobbled down three double-burgers, buns and all. I’d gotten one for myself with mustard and onions, and he ate that, too, then jumped into the passenge
r seat like he did it every day.
At Wal-Mart, I got food and water dishes, dog chow, a collar, leash, and a supersized sack of chews. I don’t make much money with my part-time gig at When Your Mouse Don’t Byte, a computer repair shop, so I didn’t have enough for the chews.
Tina Principe was on the register. We were in the Pythagoras math club and often geeked out together, shrieking over a solution to some particularly obtuse problem. She read my face about the chews: “I got this,” she said, winking while grabbing her purse from under the counter before stuffing the unaffordable chews into the bag.
At home, I fired up my laptop and alerted the embarrassingly small number of my “friends” on Facebook to the incident at Rohnert Park in Urbana: man killed, body removed. “You monkeys see or hear some evil, please speak.”
The first respondent suggested alien abduction. Probes and other things.
Another accused me of being the killer.
The third offered suggestions as to how to find the body, including a midnight séance.
But the last one—my personal favorite—posted a recipe for “killer” nachos, thereby demonstrating the amazing ability of our species to avoid comprehension.
Chloe of the wandering eye texted with, “OMG, is everybody all right—were you there?”
I replied with the tongue-protruding emoticon she’d used on me. I have some pride.
* * *
Next morning, Mom and Dad were glad to see the yellow dog, Dad ruffling its fur, Mom grateful, though less than thrilled at an obvious violation of trust: I’d snuck out to the park last night without saying anything.
And when I asked to keep him, she replied: “No. And a man was killed in that park, Wyatt—what were you thinking?”
But like most teenagers, I’d cultivated various tactics in order to get my way.
“He saved you guys from certain death, you owe him,” I said.
Life Is Short and Then You Die_First Encounters With Murder From Mystery Writers of America Page 14