by Tim Green
“You’re early,” she said, slapping his hand away from her thigh, but still obviously pleased with the surprise. At her feet a dozen freshly stained Popsicle sticks were stacked up like bones.
“I needed to think,” he told her over the cries of their children.
“Think?” she said as if that were the strangest thing she’d ever heard of.
“Yeah,” he said, “after a swim.”
With that, he set his beer can down on the deck and lightly spun around, launching himself into the middle of the small round pool. The ensuing splash bowed the aluminum sidewalls, swamping gallons of water over the edge and bringing more squeals from his children, who were now clutching their noodles like life preservers. Up and down Tidwell heaved himself at the pool’s center, creating a personal tidal wave amid a gale of laughter. Up and down he pumped the water until his breath became short and wheezy. He stopped to watch the children pitch about on the crests of the waves and laughed out loud.
Wearily, he waded to the edge and hoisted himself up onto the deck that was now stained dark from the water.
“That looks so fun,” his wife said.
In one corner of the rectangular deck a bright blue tarp covered an old recliner. Tidwell dried himself and whipped the tarp off the chair. The imitation leather was faded and patched with black electrical tape. He picked up his beer, draped a towel over his back, then sat down with a heavy gasp.
“Damn,” he said, sipping his beer.
“What?” his wife asked.
“My sunglasses,” he said.
“I’ll get them.”
“No, that’s okay,” he said, but she was already up and halfway down the stairs. When she came back, and he had his beer and his sunglasses and his chair and the sun and his children were playing between themselves again, Tidwell began to think. His wife left him alone, as did his children after a stern warning from their mother to give him a minute to unwind. In the peace of the hot sun he turned over in his mind exactly what he should do.
No, that wasn’t it at all, he thought. He knew what he should do. The question was: What was he going to do?
He snorted again. Who wouldn’t want either of them dead? He remembered being offered a position on the sex crimes unit years ago. It would have been a promotion for Tidwell at the time, and something that was hard to pass up. But those were the investigators who got called to the scene when a person was sexually victimized in any way. Often the perpetrators were family members, still present at the scene.
“I wouldn’t be any good at it, Lieutenant,” he’d said to the supervisor who interviewed him. “If I showed up and saw one of those women or kids after one of them sons-of-bitches did what they do and they were around, you’d have a murder on your hands on top of everything else.”
That was what he’d said, that he’d kill someone who did a thing like that if he had to see it. He meant it, too. He couldn’t even think of coming face-to-face with those victims, to see the tears, the horror, and not react. Corralling these perverts the way he did, like animals, that was okay. He could do that with a certain detachment. And he was proud of his job, even if it didn’t go far enough.
Now someone had seen it through a little farther than he did, and Tidwell was pretty sure he knew who that someone was. Mark Kane. Probably not the man’s real name, but Tidwell could see Kane’s face clearly in his mind, his straight blond hair, his small round glasses. It struck him as peculiar when Kane had come back to examine the subdirectory for a second time. That was just two weeks after the first time and only a few days before Roland Lincoln had been found dead.
At the time, even though Tidwell thought it was strange, he hadn’t connected the death of Lincoln with the blond-headed man called Mark Kane. Now, though, with two of his sex offenders killed in the exact same bullet-ridden fashion, Tidwell couldn’t help piecing the whole thing together. His mind came to the conclusion the way a child will automatically finish a rhyme.
If he did pass on his information to the detectives, there were no guarantees that they would find Mark Kane. But if he did nothing, he knew Kane would never be caught. Neither Zuckerman nor Nelson was going to bust his hump on this one.
“Honey,” Tidwell said suddenly to his wife. He was watching the kids from behind his dark glasses. During his reverie his wife had replenished him with a fresh can of beer, and he sipped at it gently.
“Yes love?” she replied, reaching across the space that divided them and taking his hand into hers.
“Don’t do that, Bill!” he barked out abruptly. His ten-year-old boy, big like Tidwell, was dunking his twelve-year-old sister under the water. The boy immediately stopped and his sister began to defend his actions.
“Those are the rules,” he said flatly, hiding his inner pleasure at the girl’s loyalty, “and I don’t want to hear no more.”
He glowered at the kids for a few moments, making his point, before saying to his wife, “You know the kind of people I have to keep track of.”
“I do,” she said, uncertain. Tidwell rarely talked about work.
“There’s someone out there killing them,” he said.
“Emerson?”
“A guy came in about two months ago,” he explained, “a sharp-dressed guy in a suit with blond hair—good-looking guy. Blue eyes. Quiet. A lawyer, so he said. He wanted to see the directory.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, right?” his wife said.
“No,” he replied, “not at all. Anyone has the right to look at it. It’s just that most people don’t, that’s all. Don’t have the stomach for it. Talk themselves out of it. Pretend things like that can’t happen to them. Pretend that it’s always someone else, somewhere else. But if they knew . . . If they knew . . .”
Tidwell shook his head, then realized he had wandered off the subject. “So a couple of pretty bad ones have been murdered and I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the blond guy, the lawyer,” he said.
“How can you think that?” she asked.
“I just do,” he said simply, “that’s all. Asking to see the directory once, that’s one thing. Twice, that’s strange. Throw two murders on top and you have to connect them all. You just have to.”
“But people get killed all the time,” she said.
“They do,” he said, “but not the same type of person in the same exact way. Both of them were kidnappers, rapists. And both were shot to pieces right in their homes. Both crime scenes were clean, crazy clean, like a professional job . . . Whenever you think you have just a coincidence, you probably don’t.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“Technically,” he said, “it’s not my job. I’m not a homicide detective and the guys who are, I promise you, wouldn’t be happy to hear my opinions.”
“But you could tell them at least,” his wife said.
“I could,” Tidwell said, staring at his kids, “and that’s the problem. I could, and I probably should, and they might find this guy. But the problem is, honey, I don’t want them to find this guy . . . That’s just the truth and that’s the problem. I’m a cop, and I don’t want them to find this guy who’s a killer.”
Tidwell looked at his wife. She returned his gaze with a placid expression of understanding.
“Can you imagine?” Tidwell said, raising his beer can in the direction of their children.
“No,” she said sharply. “Don’t. Don’t even say it.”
CHAPTER 21
Jack found a garbage bag under the sink. It smelled under there, so he ran the disposal. It still smelled. He went into the refrigerator for a lemon and opened one of the plastic drawers at the bottom. Blue and white mold had taken over three peaches. Jack’s face crinkled in disgust. He picked them up with one finger and his thumb and dumped them into the garbage bag. Below them was the lemon, brown and soft but remarkably free from most of the mold.
The lemon went into the disposal. Jack ran the water and ground it up, then sniffed the sink
. Better. He went back to the refrigerator and began to throw things in, half-empty red-and-white boxes of Chinese food, a carton of spoiled milk, other things he didn’t even know he had. He filled the bag, then went back under the sink for another.
Beth was coming. They were going to a show in the city: Blue Man Group: Tubes. Jack had seen it years ago on a trip to Chicago with Angela. She didn’t get it. Jack couldn’t forget. They were mimes who did an incredible production of percussion, acrobatics, and comedy. He knew Beth would like it. They liked the same things. Art-house movies and books. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Bruce Springsteen and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Carole King. She even liked the smell of chestnuts roasting in the summertime on the corner by Central Park. They’d taken a walk there the last time they’d gone into the city.
This time, instead of Jack driving out to get her on the eastern end of the island, then going to the city, then driving her back, then coming home, Beth suggested they leave from his house. She would be the first person aside from him to walk through the door since Angela had walked out. He thought they might have a drink before they left. That meant he had to at least clean the kitchen, the living room, the front hall, and the bathroom. For everything else, he’d just shut the doors.
In the living room he began to pick up cans. He went back to the kitchen to clear the counters and the floor. Three bags later he started to mop and vacuum. Then he found an old towel and wiped all the countertops and tabletops before cleaning out the bathroom with lemon-scented ammonia. There was filth everywhere, but nothing that he couldn’t get rid of with some effort. When the whole downstairs smelled like lemons, he washed out his rag and toted it upstairs along with the vacuum. His bedroom was next.
There was no need to clean it for Beth. They weren’t that far along, but the sound of squeaking wood on his coffee table and the smell of lemon everywhere had inspired him. On his way down the upstairs hall, he glanced into Janet’s room. Dust lay like a white film of snow on top of her desk. Her computer screen was gray with it. There was a book on geometry no one had bothered to take back to the school. Cobwebs hung from the recessed light fixtures. Stuffed animals sat in a fading pile on her bed. Jack felt his breath leave him.
He should clean this room. She might come home. Not today or tomorrow, but one day she might. Her room shouldn’t be this way. He pushed open the door and stepped tentatively inside. He sneezed and his eyes began to water.
He plugged in the vacuum and began to run it over the carpet, leaving broad clean blue tracks in its wake. It felt good. When the visible part of the rug was done, he switched off the vacuum and moved the bed. Underneath it was even worse, but he could clean that, too. There was a small suitcase jammed under there, and a soccer ball. Jack picked up the ball and turned it over in his hands. On the wall were posters. The Dave Matthews Band. Britney Spears. There was a bookcase across from the bed. Trophies rested, heavy and dull in their coats of dust.
A flicker of the nightmare flashed in Jack’s mind. His breathing came now in short staggered gulps. He grew dizzy again. He threw the soccer ball into the bookcase and heard himself scream. The trophies toppled from their shelves. Jack attacked them, throwing them across the room two or three at a time, punching holes in the sheetrock.
When they were gone he pulled the bookcase down with a crash. He turned to the desk and swept the book and the computer off onto the floor. The computer exploded in a rain of sparks. Jack grabbed the screen to smash it again and the shock knocked him flat. There was ringing in his ears. There was ringing in the air mingled with the smell of burning plastic.
He lay for a long time before the ringing stopped. After it did, he heard someone calling his name. He shut his eyes and felt the tears roll down his dirty cheeks. He shut them even tighter and tried to stifle his sobs.
He felt a hand touching his. It was that same hand. That warm hand, full of life.
“Jack,” Beth said, “what happened? Are you all right?”
Jack nodded and sat up slowly. He pulled her to him and held her.
“Jack?” she said.
“I’m okay,” he said. “I was just . . . cleaning and I . . . I just don’t know if she’ll ever be better.”
“Oh, Jack,” she said, clutching him tight, gently rubbing the back of his head. “I’m so sorry.”
She helped him to his feet and together they looked at the mess.
“Come on. Let’s go,” Jack said. He felt his cheeks flush with embarrassment.
“I want to help you,” she said. She put her hand on the back of his neck and gave it a gentle squeeze
“I know, but let’s go. I’ve got the tickets.”
“We don’t have to.” She glanced down at the computer, which had begun to smoke again.
“No, I want to. You’ll love these guys. It’s weird, but you’ll like it,” he said. “Forget about this. Just forget it. I was cleaning up and I kind of lost it. It just happens to me. I’m sorry.”
“I could help you pick up,” she said. She left him to unplug the broken computer from the wall.
“Not now,” he said. “I don’t want to be here.”
“Let’s go downstairs, okay?” Beth took his hand and led him out of the room and down the stairs.
“Can I get you something?” she asked. “A glass of water?”
“Maybe a beer,” he said. “But I can get it.”
“No, you sit down. I’ll get it. We can talk.”
She led him to the couch, and he watched her march across the room and into the kitchen as if she’d been there a thousand times. Jack heard the bottles inside the door of his refrigerator rattle.
“Do you want a glass?” she asked from in there.
“No, that’s okay.”
Beth returned with a can of Foster’s and a small green bottle of Perrier. He’d bought a six-pack of the stuff just for her.
“With lemon,” she said, looking at the bottle and handing him the beer. “That was nice.”
Jack cracked the can of beer open with a hiss and took a long drink. The frosty metal chilled the tips of his fingers and he set the can down on the coffee table. Beth looked around and found an old Newsweek magazine in a rack beside the couch. She slid it under his beer can.
“Thanks,” he said.
“It’s a nice table,” she said. “What is that? Cherry?”
“Mahogany I think.”
“You have to take care of it if you want it to stay nice.” She was smiling at him and he knew she didn’t mean it in a bad way.
“You should have seen it an hour ago,” he said, looking around. “This place was a mess.”
“I smell a lot of lemon cleaner,” she said.
“It didn’t really bother me,” he said. “I didn’t even notice to tell you the truth and then you said you’d come over and I was like, wow, what a pigsty. I got on a roll and I started to do the upstairs and I realized that I never . . . That was the first time I even went in her room since . . . Isn’t it weird how you can go past something every day and never really see it?”
Jack drank some more of his beer and looked at the floor.
“You did good,” she said. “I like that smell. My mom used to polish the woodwork with lemon Pledge. It’s kind of like that.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled at him again.
“No, not for that,” he said. “Thanks for not turning around and never coming back.”
“I wouldn’t do that. Do you think I’d do that?”
“No,” he said. “I know you feel too sorry for me to do that, I guess.”
Beth put her hand up to his face and ran her fingers through his hair. “Do you think that’s why I’m here? Because I feel sorry for you?”
“Partly, I guess.”
Her smile grew sad. She tilted her head and her eyes bore into his. She shook her head slowly and spoke in a quiet voice.
“That’s not why I’m here,” she said. “I’m here because you’re nice and you’re smart, and maybe
even a little because you look like Robert Redford.”
“Robert Redford?”
“When he was young. In a way. Not exactly.
“You’re a good man, Jack,” she said after a while.
“No,” he said. “I’m not. I’m really not.”
CHAPTER 22
Three weeks later Beth wanted to see an art-house movie about a kid in England who wanted to dance in the ballet. Jack wanted to make her happy in just about any way he could, so he agreed without comment. For the first thirty minutes he thought of nothing but his daughter and escape plans and hidden guns and vengeance. But soon the movie screen overtook what was inside his head. Instead of a lot of dancing, the movie was really about realizing your dreams and becoming whole. When the credits rolled his face was wet with tears. His cheeks grew warm when Beth noticed. She grabbed his hand.
It was hope, not despair, that left him wiping the tear tracks from his face as the two of them walked out of the theater and into the balmy night. Jack drew a deep breath before letting it out slowly.
“I liked that,” Beth said. “Did you?”
“Would you like a drink?” He didn’t want to talk about the movie.
“Sure,” she said, looking up at him with her easy smile and the small space between her teeth.
“Jack?” She reached up and touched his cheek. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,’’ he said, smiling back. “Just a little shaky. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t say that.”
He tilted his head to kiss her, oblivious to the other moviegoers surging past them in the dull glow of the parking lot. When their lips met, it was Beth who pulled him close, pressing her body against his and turning the kiss into something more than what he had meant it to be, reminding him of high school. She wore a long burgundy blazer over a snug white halter top. He wrapped his arm under the blazer and felt her hot, bare skin.
Without speaking, she gently pulled away.
“I liked that,” she said in a whisper that he’d never heard before.