Damage

by Mark Feggeler

  "No respect for the dead," she mumbled.

  "Or the living," he added, patting her back. "You want me to get rid of them?"

  Her head nodded as she wiped away tears. It was all the invitation he needed. He had never liked most of the assholes in the fraternity, so it wouldn't cause him any remorse to evict them from the premises on behalf of Emily and the rest of Jake's family. Judging by the number of vehicles, there were at least four of them in the house. He wasted no time getting to the point when he stepped inside.

  "All of you, get the hell out, now!"

  Ray recognized three of the men. They were comfortably lounging with a fourth person, much younger and very likely a current student, in the living room. Someone else was walking down the staircase. As the four people in the living room stared at Ray, the fifth entered the room grinning stupidly and holding high over his head a painted rock white with Greek lettering.

  "Found it!" he announced, then looked at Ray. "Hey, Billy's little brother! Been a long time."

  "You guys need to leave," Ray demanded.

  The young frat boy stood, flexing his chest like he was ready for a fight. Typical, thought Ray. The four older guys stared blankly at Ray as though he were speaking a foreign language. He failed to recall any of their names, but he was able to recall character traits. He turned to the one he remembered being the most level-headed of the bunch to make his case. The man's head was clean shaven, though at college he always sported a long ponytail. He also had a distinctive name.

  "Jake's sister is outside having a meltdown right now about you assholes are treating this like some kind of happy reunion," Ray said. "She doesn't want you here."

  The one with the rock put his free hand on Ray's shoulder. "Calm down, little brother."

  "I'm not one of your brothers," Ray said, yanking himself free. "I'm not even Billy's brother. We're cousins, you dumb shit. Now, I'm telling you, if you all don't clear out I'm gonna tell Emily just to go ahead and call the cops on you." He turned back to the bald frat brother. "Seriously. Her brother isn't dead twenty-four hours and you guys are raiding his house like a gang of kids set loose in a candy store. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves."

  The college-aged frat boy continued his flexing, trying to look menacing. The man who had been upstairs stared sheepishly down at the rock in his hands. The bald man appeared to reflect on what Ray had said. He stood up.

  "You're right, Ray. We jumped the gun. Trevor, relax before you strain a nipple." The college boy backed down at the command. "We didn't mean to cause her any grief. You think she'd mind if we at least took Jake's pledge rock?"

  "I'm sure that'll be fine," Ray said. "Just leave everything else."

  "It's all we really wanted anyway," baldy said. "Come on guys. Let's head out."

  Ray ushered them out onto the driveway. Emily was nowhere to be seen. Before they drove off, the bald frat brother handed Ray a business card. Ray never would have pegged him for an attorney with his own practice in Raleigh. Dunforth MacReedy, the name on the card, was as stupid as Ray recalled thinking it was back at college.

  "Give me a call if you ever need legal help," he said. "Tell Emily we're sorry. See you tomorrow at the service."

  Ray walked around the house and found Emily at the front of the garage looking fixedly at Jake's car beyond the police tape. They stood, side by side, for several minutes in silence. Maybe it was a trick of his mind, but the grating scent of exhaust still hung heavy around the free-standing structure. The car door sat open, as though Jake had just parked and would be stepping out any second.

  "We've decided to have a memorial service tomorrow evening at Pope's Funeral Home," Emily said in a dreamy, breathy voice. She spoke unemotionally, even though her face was red and her eyes swollen from crying.

  "I figured you might hold it in Durham," Ray said.

  Emily shook her head. "There's nobody left there now that Momma moved in with Shelly and David. Glen Meadows is just as easy for everybody to get to as anywhere else, so why not here. Plus, we won't have to transport the body."

  Ray nodded.

  A little while later, Emily got in her car and drove off, leaving Ray to lock up the house. The absolute silence permeating the small, two-story home was unsettling. Despite the nerve endings along his shoulders tingling more and more with each step he climbed, he felt he needed to check on something. He turned left at the top of the stairs into the sparsely furnished office-like room with the desk. The enveloped marked "For Clay" he had found neatly positioned in the center of the blotter was still there, money and all. It annoyed him not to have proper justification for being angry at the frat boys. He had counted on that envelope being gone, yet there it was. The idiot with the pledge rock must have seen it and had the decency to leave it behind. Ray decided to take the envelope with him for safekeeping until he could find out who Clay was and give him the money.

  As he walked to his car parked next door, Ray spotted a shiny black Camry, just like the one he had seen when leaving his apartment earlier in the afternoon. It was parked several hundred feet away, at the farthest end of the dead-end street, and facing in his direction.

  Tuesday, Part III

  The visitor parking lot at Tramway Regional Medical Center had recently been repaved. The glass and steel of the tall building at the top of the hill sparkled in the afternoon sunlight. The new wing of the hospital was still fairly new. The grand opening had been one of Ray's first assignments when he joined the Citizen-Gazette. Jared Upton was there with the chamber's gigantic scissors and Ray spent much of the function chasing down hospital board members and administrators to ensure he had their names spelled correctly for the ribbon cutting photo caption. He wasn't exactly certain why he was at the hospital now.

  A nagging sensation in the pit of his stomach made him think he was somehow neglecting Correen Wallace. He had been there at her side to help when she was in need, seen the fear in her eyes as she clung to life. Ever since the ambulance took her away, he felt as though he had abandoned her.

  Inside the brightly lit lobby, Ray was immediately struck by a portrait he had passed many times before, but to which he had paid little attention. He thought, at first glance, it was a portrait of Correen Wallace until the gray hair and aged features made him realize it couldn't be. The name on the small gold plate tacked to the bottom of the wood frame told him the woman's name was Belinda 'Bertie' Lowson. The lobby was dedicated in her name for her "tireless service to the hospital and its patients, and dedication to the financial stability and enhancement of patient care through direct support and fundraising."

  "Your daughter better have the penthouse suite," Ray mumbled under his breath at Bertie Lowson's smiling portrait.

  "Can I help you, young man?" asked a soft, gravely voice behind him.

  Ray turned, hoping the other person hadn't overheard him, and found himself facing an elderly man in a white volunteer coat. His name tag stated simply "Harold, Volunteer." He was a grandfatherly, gentle looking old man. Ray couldn't help grinning at the sight of him.

  "I was just admiring the painting," Ray said.

  Harold beamed. "Old Bertie was a wonderful gal."

  "Her daughter looks exactly like her," Ray said, turning back to the portrait.

  "That she does," Harold said.

  "It's a shame what happened this weekend," Ray said.

  "Terrible," Harold said, shaking his head. "Oh, just terrible. Who could want to do such a thing to such nice young people?"

  "You know them well?" Ray asked.

  "Not the husband so much, but the daughter, yes," Harold explained. "Bertie and I used to work shifts together a couple afternoons a week. Corrie would often stop by to visit her mother. They were very close. That was before this new building went up, of course, back when the main entrance was over on the east side of campus. I was glad Bertie lasted long enough to meet her grandchildren. They were the light of her life at the end of it all."

  "So she only died recently,
then" Ray interjected. "Because the littlest one can't be more than two or three years old."

  Harold nodded with his eyes closed. The reminiscing appeared to have made him emotional, though he did his best to maintain his composure.

  "What about Mrs. Lowson's husband, Avery? Did he come around much?"

  Harold cocked his head and pursed his lips disapprovingly. "My mother taught me to keep my mouth shut if I didn't have nothing nice to say. Let's just leave it at that."

  "Fair enough," Ray said, smiling for what seemed the first time that day. "Say, you couldn't tell me what room they have her daughter in, could you?"

  Harold's head shook again. "I'd like to help you, young man, I really would, but they have security watching her and the police said family only, not that there's much family left to visit. You aren't family, are you?"

  "No," Ray admitted. He instinctively held out his hands, palms up, and looked down at the cuts on them. "I was one of the people who found her yesterday. And, well, I've just been curious how she's doing and thought... Don't worry about it."

  Harold gently took one of Ray's wrists and gazed intently at the many little scratches. He shot Ray a glance and said "Come on."

  A few minutes later, Ray was in the Green Elevator holding a small scrap of paper with the number 5203 written on it in Harold's shaky script. He stepped out onto the fifth floor and followed signs that led him around a glass-walled waiting room and to a nurse's station. Officer Jason Hussey of the Glen Meadows Police Department had his elbows resting on the high counter and his rear sticking out into the corridor as he tried to make conversation with a pretty, blond nurse filling out charts at the station. Hussey was the officer Ray usually spoke with each morning to get the Glen Meadows criminal activity report for the Citizen-Gazette. A tall, lean man in his mid-thirties, he also was a personal friend of Billy's. The two hunted deer together occasionally and honed their shooting skills at the local target range. He noticed Ray only when they were a few feet apart.

  "Oh, hell," Hussey drawled. "They let damn anybody wander in through them doors, don't they?"

  Ray leaned on the counter next to the policeman. The young nurse looked up at him distractedly and immediately went back to her chart.

  "Chief Yeager still letting you pretend to be a cop?" Ray asked.

  Hussey leaned over and tapped the desk to get the nurse's attention. "I can arrest this man if he starts causing any trouble. I could shoot him, too, but that'd cause me an awful lot of paperwork."

  "Can't imagine what that's like," the nurse complained as she tried to concentrate on the charts in front of her.

  Ray chose not to respond to Hussey. He didn't have the mental capacity at the moment to exchange good-natured verbal volleys. Instead, he asked how Correen Wallace was doing. The question caught the nurse's attention.

  "Are you related to Mrs. Wallace?"

  "Huh? No, I'm not a member of the family."

  The nurse gave Ray a long, critical stare. "I know you," she said.

  "Do you take the Citizen-Gazette?" Ray asked. "I write a column every Wednesday. My picture's always at the top of it."

  "That's it," she said, then stared at him again. "Is there something you need here?"

  "Relax. This is the white knight who rescued your patient," Hussey proudly said, landing his broad hand between Ray's shoulder blades with a wince-inducing smack.

  The nurse turned as an alarm bell somewhere nearby began to ding softly. She told Ray to wait with Hussey while she checked on her patients. Hussey leaned over, resting his head in his hands to watch her walk away.

  "That is a thing of rarest beauty," he said dreamily.

  "And you're a married man," Ray said, though he couldn't disagree with Hussey's assessment. When the shapely distraction was out of sight, Ray spotted room 5203 and asked if he could visit Correen Wallace.

  "You boys really should come together," Hussey complained. "Chief'll give me hell if I keep letting people in and out all day."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Billy," Hussey said. "He was here about an hour ago to see her. What the hell happened out there anyway? I never seen him more shook up. He stayed in there twenty minutes, or so, and If I didn't know any better I'd say he was praying."

  "Praying?"

  "That's what it sounded like to me," Hussey said. "Either that, or he was talking to himself, cause she's unconscious. If he was trying to talk to her, I guarantee it was a one-way conversation. All I heard clearly was him telling her he was sorry."

  "He was acting funny at their house when we first found her," Ray said, thinking back to the day before, recalling how Billy stood gawking over her. "I can't remember him ever being affected like that by anything."

  "It happens to all of us at some point. You feel like ain't nothing gonna surprise you no more, and then something just hits you hard in the chest." Hussey popped his fist against his sternum. The natural joviality of his face diminished. "With me, it's kids. First time I saw one I was still pretty new, working over near Charlotte. Pretty little black girl, all bruised up, clothes a mess, just staring up at the sky like she was daydreaming. I had all to do to keep from bawling like a newborn right there at the scene."

  A brief silence passed between them. Ray had never seen a serious side to Hussey, and he wasn't sure he liked seeing it now. Life was easier to understand when simple people remained simple.

  "Can I peak in from the hallway or something?" Ray asked. "I just feel like I need to see her. Make sure she's okay."

  "That's about the same as what Billy said. You gonna start praying, too? Might as well turn the whole damn place into a church." Hussey sighed and gave Ray a dubious glare. "All right, take a minute, if you need to. I'll tell miss pretty britches I gave you permission if she squawks about it."

  "What are you going to tell miss pretty britches?" the nurse asked. They hadn't heard her return to the station. Ray felt his face flush. Hussey just smiled and told Ray to go on.

  The patient in the bed was almost unrecognizable as the spritely partygoer Ray had bantered happily with at the groundbreaking ceremony just two days earlier. With the blinds drawn to block the afternoon sun, the room was dark and quiet. No machines beeped, no little lights blinked. The only medical equipment he spotted was an intravenous drip leading to a port at her wrist. Swelling and dark purple bruising distorted the right side of her face. Her right arm was hidden under the blanket, but appeared to be in a cast. At the foot of the bed, her toes poked out into the open air from the end of a cast.

  A rolling table next to the bed held two small floral arrangements and many get well cards. He read a few of the cards -- mostly simple notes from friends and acquaintances by the look of them. Nothing on the table came from her father. Avery Lowson was so concerned for his daughter he couldn't even be bothered to send her flowers or a five-dollar mylar balloon from the gift shop. He probably hadn't come to visit, either. The old man could barely walk the length of his living room without stopping several times to rest.

  Standing at the foot of Correen's hospital bed marveling at the thought of that fragile woman being tough enough to survive her many injuries, Ray wondered how long she had waited in the bushes after falling from the window like a bird shot from the sky. Had she been conscious the entire time? Maybe she watched her husband's killer casually stroll away, assuming she was dead. The added security, lame as it might be at the moment, made perfect sense. Whoever did this to her might return to finish the job. Unless, of course, he had already committed suicide by suffocating himself in his own garage after sobering up enough to realize what he had done. If only she could open her eyes long enough to tell him what happened. Just a minute would be all he would need to confirm or deny his suspicions, but she didn't move. Ray tried to imagine Jake pulling out a gun and shooting Evan Wallace in the chest, then turning to chase Correen Wallace up the stairs. Yet again, he failed to convincingly cast Jake in the role of killer. His brain simply would not allow the images to f
orm.

  Correen took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. Ray watched her face closely and was relieved when it became clear she wasn't waking up. He gently pulled down the blanket to cover her exposed toes.

  Shuffling footsteps in the hallway startled him. He turned to see Officer Hussey standing in the doorway. "Time to go," Hussey said in a quietly respectful tone.

  Shafts of light snuck through cracks between the vertical blinds and were inching across the room toward the patient. Ray motioned to Hussey to wait and went over to the window to straighten the blinds. He could see the entire visitor parking lot through the tinted window. Parked not far from a dormant crepe myrtle was Ray's beige compact car. It was easy to spot, even easier now because a black Camry had pulled up behind it and a man was standing next to it peering in the driver side window. Ray hastily motioned to Hussey to join him at the window.

  "That's my car," Ray whispered.

  Hussey squinted, but didn't seem to spot anything troublesome.

  "That one there," Ray said. "Fifth back from the end. The Tercel. Somebody's checking out my car."

  "That's definitely somebody," Hussey whispered in agreement. "It ain't a crime to admire another man's chariot. Mind you, that ain't much of a thing to admire."

  "Can you see who it is?"

  "From up here?" Hussey made a half-hearted attempt. "Looks like a man wearing a hat. Is that one of them Humphrey Bogart hats?"

  "You mean a fedora?"

  "I don't know what you call 'em, but it's definitely the kind they wear in old black and white movies," Hussey said. "Uh oh. I guess you got nothing worth stealing. He's heading back to his car."

  "I saw that car parked down the street from where I live," Ray said. "It was there around lunch time."

  "You think somebody's following you?"

  Ray thought about it. Maybe it wasn't the same car he saw parked on his block. Maybe the guy in the fedora was just some random person doing some random thing that involved snooping around his car. Maybe the guy had been parked there earlier in the day and lost his phone, or his wallet, and was back looking for it.