by Bryan Gilmer
“Fucking damn it,” Jeff told the steering wheel. Asking the Sheriff’s Office to look for a beige Chrysler minivan in Rocky Falls at rush hour was like telling a Rocky Falls high school principal they were looking for a white kid with acne in a Polo shirt and jeans.
Jeff reminded himself the van he’d seen pass the Reuss’ house might have nothing to do with the burglary.
But it was the guy. Jeff could feel it. Fucking damn it.
* * *
An unmarked Crown Victoria rolled up to the curb at the Reusses’ just as Jeff returned. Two marked cruisers already stood in the driveway, and the uniforms were talking to the couple.
As Lt. Randy Cooperton stepped out of the car, Jeff wondered whether they made Wake County deputies pass a physical fitness qualification every year, and if so, how this guy pulled it off.
Jeff saw a goose egg in Cooperton’s jaw and knew he was about to shake hands with someone who had been spitting all day.
He gripped Cooperton’s hand swiftly, shoving his own forward until the webbing of their thumbs met. Jeff’s father had taught him the trick to protect his fingers from being crushed in a Southern Baptist handshake. Cooperton always made Jeff glad.
“Where you been?”
“Trying to run down a suspicious vehicle, but lost it in traffic,” Jeff told him.
Cooperton pulled out his notebook to write down the description, but when he heard it, he just laughed. “Without a plate, most likely have better luck working the crime scene. Come on, take me inside.”
Jeff nodded, and Cooperton directed a perfect stream of brown saliva onto the pavement.
* * *
In all, the burglar or burglars had taken Mrs. Reuss’ jewelry box, two DVD players, a PlayStation game console, a 60-inch plasma-screen from the family room and an under-cabinet LCD TV from the kitchen, where they’d taken the trouble to undo the four mounting screws.
So the burglars had been in the house a while. Twelve grand in property, maybe twice that much again in property damage. Still no sign of forced entry. Jeff was still thinking garage door, and Cooperton agreed.
Cooperton sucked a wad of snot deeper into his head, a sound that echoed loudly in the garage. “If they had a truck in here with the door down, they had all the damn time in the world. Two or three men could have loaded everything up in about 15 minutes.”
Somehow, it was now 11 p.m. He and Cooperton raised the garage door and walked outside.
“Press is here,” Cooperton muttered and nodded toward a young woman at the end of the driveway talking to Cooperton’s uniform sergeant.
She looked as if she were in her late 20s like Jeff, and she held a skinny reporter’s notepad. Her oversize nose marred an otherwise pretty face. Brunette hair with obviously artificial blonde streaks fell past her shoulders. She wore a floral print sundress Jeff thought he remembered from the cover of one of Ashlyn’s catalogs. It showed off the tanned undulations of her shoulders and collarbones. The sergeant was giving her the longest no-comment Jeff had ever heard.
“Caroline Kramden, queen of the dipshits at the Rocky Falls bureau of the P&L,” Cooperton said. The Triangle Progress-Leader was the big paper in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill metro area. “She’s a giant pain in my giant ass.”
Jeff told the Reusses he’d meet with them the next day at the Courtyard by Marriott, where they planned to spend the night.
He fired up the gray sports car and discarded the urge to stop at a quickie mart for a pack of Camel Lights – a bad habit from prep school. Instead, he turned up a song called “Cross the Bridge,” by Nickel Creek, a band that played bluegrass instruments in an innovative style. He’d seen them in concert four times, but now they were on a “hiatus.” Damn shame.
He took Rocky Falls Boulevard south toward downtown Raleigh, blinking when he again recalled the body of the gorgeous dog in such an undignified pose on the kitchen floor.
He turned onto Wake Forest Road, then crossed the I-440 inner perimeter, where the neighborhoods still looked suburban, but old enough that there were trees taller than 10 feet. He parked in his usual spot at Ashlyn’s complex, climbed the concrete stairs and let himself back inside. She was leaving the next morning for a six-week continuing education thing at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. But even tonight, he’d ended up working late again, and she’d ended up going to bed before he got home.
Jeff took off his clothes. Ashlyn slept in a tight ball at the top corner of the queen-size bed. She stirred as he got underneath the patchwork quilt – she slept under it year-round no matter how cold she had to set the air conditioning.
He tried to savor the feeling of being next to her, but his thoughts returned to the still form of Beatrice – Beebee. And he remembered a woman with whom falling asleep spooned up was always like becoming part of one body with two hearts, and that led him to the realization that he merely felt pressed against Ashlyn.
After he turned onto his back, he finally fell asleep.
Three
Jeff’s dream always began with the near-comic ring of the empty Coke can tipping over on top of the dresser, bouncing three quick times and then rolling across the polished wood.
Within the dream, the sleeping Jeff wakened alone in his old bedroom in Scranton to see a shadow move, then suddenly freeze. Then he gathered the comforter from the underside in soft, warm fistfuls and leapt out of bed at the figure, trapping it in the fabric, crushing it against the dresser, smelling the intruder’s stale sweat, seeing nothing, wondering with startling clarity whether any of the bones he heard and felt breaking against the sharp wooden edge beneath his weight were his own – wondering whether the intruder had a weapon, expecting to feel its blade or scorching projectile.
“I will fucking shoot you, cocksucker!” dream Jeff heard himself yell, a panicked bluff, since he was armed only with the blanket.
Then the startlingly childlike yelp and whimper, the wounded figure wriggling free of the fabric, dashing through the open bedroom door, half-falling down the stairs and throwing open the front door. He stood in confusion, tumbled toward his cellphone …
Tonight, like always, three ringing gunshots ended the dream.
He sat up panting in bed now in this real room, sweating and gasping air and scanning the shadows, knowing no one was here but his girlfriend, snoring. And yet again Jeff’s brain and blood pulsed with the remembered emotions of the dream without the anesthesia of shock that had helped him survive the day it had all been real.
TUESDAY
Four
Just after midnight, Leonard had fenced the guns and TVs and stuff through the back door of the pawnshop he’d found in Raleigh. It was easier than he’d thought; he’d never sold off stolen property before. He’d never even stolen anything before – except one package of bass guitar strings from the instrument store in the old neighborhood, 30 years ago. But man, had he been thinking about it. Especially these past few months.
Track Two was finished. He followed Rocky Falls Boulevard north over the overpass for I-540, the new west-east arc of road 13 miles north of North Carolina’s capital building, and drove past a brand-new shopping center with a Bed, Bath & Beyond among a standard assortment of big-box chains. Signboards on neighboring vacant tracts stood in silhouette. Leonard couldn’t read them, but they all said something similar: “Will Divide,” “Build to Suit.” This land along the highway retained a few archeological sites of industrial and agricultural North Carolina, but they were soon to be bulldozed.
The outer perimeter freeway and the boulevard, which had been widened from a two-lane road, were creating this new, soulless suburb, unofficially dubbed Rocky Falls. The asphalt scars cut through thousands of acres of paper-company pine forest and farmland that had fallen out of use. Now developers were jamming it full of garage doors and sod and nursery-perfect saplings.
Leonard clamped his jaw. It was time to trade in the van. He was keeping the sunglasses, though. He stuck them into his shirt pocket. He had to stop at Kroger for
more of their house-brand sanitizer. It was both the cheapest and best-tasting he’d tried.
He steered the minivan into Jeb’s Paint & Body, brightly lit, but with no neighbors – and deserted as usual at this hour. At the back of the lot, he was pleased to find a gray Nissan Pathfinder that hadn’t been there before. No major damage he could see. Perfect.
In the month since he and his wife had separated, Leonard had been composing the perfect jazz album of burglaries.
More than a year ago, his wife – ex wife, estranged wife, whatever – the soulless bitch – had dragged him down here to the North Carolina burbs from New York City, which was where a jazzman belonged. From the first day, Leonard had hated almost everything about the generic sprawl around the McHouse where the two of them had lived.
Leonard backed the minivan into a parking spot at the body shop and turned off the ignition. The teddy bear charm was cute, he thought as he palmed the keys. He loved keychains.
He scanned the van’s interior to make sure he’d cleaned everything up. Just for fun, he wiped the steering wheel and door handles with the tail of his shirt, not that anyone would check the van for prints. He plucked the white envelope from the map pocket of the driver’s door, got out and locked the van with the plastic remote. Ugly piece of crapola, this van, but it had been good camouflage for his work. He was glad to be rid of it. He slammed the door with his butt and dusted off his hands as he walked toward the building.
The white envelope had some lady’s name and address on it. There were instructions to replace the van’s slightly dented front fender, which might have been hit by a basketball or something, the kind of thing sane people wouldn’t fix. But everything had to be perfect in Rocky freakin’ Falls. Leonard dropped the keys back inside, where he’d gotten them, and pressed its re-sealable flap closed.
He pulled his fishing pole from his bag: Three feet of springy wire with a disk magnet soldered onto the end. He walked to body shop’s key drop, a brass mail slot next to the door. He threaded the tool through the hole. He heard three ticks and fished the wire toward him. Three envelopes were stuck to the magnet.
He read the labels but didn’t see one for the Pathfinder. So he set those aside and stuck it in again. This time, a single envelope came up; bingo, the Nissan. In for scratches down the side to be “filled/re-painted.” Cosmetic surgery for a car.
He opened the flap and poured the key into his hand. Damn, he was smart. Keys were usually made of brass, which meant a magnet couldn’t grab them, but the people who lent him their cars were kind enough to leave their keys on steel key rings, in this case, one with a gold-tone Duke University “D.”
Leonard dropped the minivan envelope back into the slot with the three rejects and headed for the Nissan. Body shops never started work on a vehicle the morning after it was dropped off.
He hit the remote to unlock the Pathfinder, tucked the envelope into the map pocket of the driver’s door and started it up. Half a tank of gas, probably plenty even at the rate this beast drank it. After the quick stop at Kroger, he would go home to get his tools and catch a couple hours’ sleep. Big day tomorrow.
Five
Jeff woke to the seductive smells of banana pancakes and coffee. He put on his boxers and T-shirt, ducked into the bathroom to pee, then wandered down the short hallway to the kitchen.
Ashlyn stood at her stove wearing a grocer’s apron over her nightshirt. She was just five feet tall and pink-skinned, with blonde hair that flipped up naturally where it brushed her shoulders. She had a reluctant smile and an adorable nose, and people thought she was 10 years younger than 27, probably because of her meek way of speaking to people. She worked as a regional immunization consultant for the North Carolina Division of Public Health.
“Doesn’t this look delicious.” Jeff pressed into her narrow back, urged his hands underneath her arms and inside the apron front.
She curved her body back against him and curled her neck for an upside-down kiss. Moments like these kept him sticking around with her.
“You had another bad dream.”
“I guess so. No big deal.”
“You were up for 20 minutes. What was it?”
Ashlyn knew Jeff had nightmares. He had told her the story of the break-in in Scranton. But he’d never told her how they connected, how much all of it still bothered him. “I don’t even remember. Whatever it was sure enough woke me up. I just went to get a glass of water and check my e-mail before I lay back down.”
Ashlyn never seemed satisfied with these explanations, but he’d snapped at her once when she’d pressed. Jeff drew in and let out a breath. She gave up too easily.
He turned away from her and poured a cup of coffee. “You want me to carry your stuff down while you finish cooking?”
“I decided I’m not going.”
“That’s crazy talk.” But when he looked, she was smiling.
“I know. Maybe you can fit into my suitcase.” A pause. “Hey, we didn’t get a chance to say goodbye last night.”
Then she was slipping her arms around him from behind, and then they were sitting on the same kitchen chair, her on top facing him, apron on the floor nearby, her head thrown backward.
Afterward, they drowsily ate the pancakes and showered, her first, then him. They washed the dishes, and he loaded her last couple of boxes into her lime green Volkswagen New Beetle. She cried a little and made him show her his copy of her apartment key.
He watched the cute little car turn out of the parking lot and wondered what the time apart would tell about their relationship.
He wasn’t sure what he felt besides vaguely uncomfortable. He went back upstairs and packed some of his things into his hiking day pack. He’d been sleeping at Ashlyn’s every night since he’d sold his condo. But he very specifically hadn’t moved in with her, though she kept putting his deodorant into her cabinet and hanging his pants in one end of her closet.
He had told his mom their relationship was complicated, and she had responded, “I don’t really think so, J.D. She’s pretty and she’s sweet, but I just don’t think you love her. I think you’re just passing time with her because you’re lonely.”
Six
The doorbell rang while Sandie Lyman was in the bathroom. She pulled her scrub pants back into place and checked herself in the mirror. The bell rang again, so she skipped washing her hands. No one would know. She went to answer the door.
She’d gotten another nurse to cover the first two hours of her shift so she’d be home to meet the piano tuner. In the 15 minutes she’d been by herself, she’d realized how much she liked having the place to herself occasionally, without the girls or Nathan around. She resolved to create time home alone at least once a month.
She could see a slight man peering through a clear section of the leaded glass in her front door. He wore a tweed, snap-brim cap and an unruly graying beard, though he didn’t look any older than her, mid-40s, maybe. She was pleased he was on time.
She opened the front door and said hello. He gave her a furtive glance that avoided eye contact and shook her hand. Then, he looked past her, as if trying to locate the piano. He had his hands jammed into the pockets of his twill pants and a leather pouch slung over his shoulder. Probably 5-10, but that slump of his made him look more like 5-6.
“It’s right in here,” Sandie said, and led him to a walnut paneled side room they called the library, even though there were no books. “I’ll run get an extension cord so you can plug in your tuner.”
He mumbled something toward the carpet and shook his head. When she asked him to repeat it, he exaggerated the pronunciation and the words came out terse; his voice was startlingly high: “I don’t use one. I tune by ear.”
“But how do you know which pitch to start with?”
He seemed to be humming now. Socially awkward little man.
“Um, I say how do you get your starting pitch?”
“That’s it – A440,” he mumbled. “Four hundred forty vibrations p
er second. The A above middle C. It’s the tone orchestras tune to.”
“You have perfect pitch?”
“Active absolute pitch.” The words spilled out now. “Perfect pitch just means if somebody plays a note, the person can tell you which note. But I can hum any note you name, perfectly in tune, without a reference pitch.”
“Active absolute pitch. Never heard of that.”
“Only about 1 in 10,000 people.”
She was skeptical of this guy now, but her neighbors in Crabapple Orchard swore by Leonard Noblac. Her regular guy was in Vienna for six weeks, and the piano sounded terrible. Her neighbors were all pains in the ass; she figured this Leonard knew what he was doing if he could keep them happy.
He sat on the bench of her Kimball console and opened the lid. He snapped out the panel that concealed the tuning pegs, then struck the A key near the center of the keyboard.
“Wow. That’s it.”
“The piano is slightly flat. They tend to do that between tunings. But most people would consider them the same.”
Sandie suppressed the urge to roll her eyes, but she guessed this was what you wanted in a piano tuner. “Will you be longer than an hour?”
He struck a series of keys to play octaves up and down the keyboard, then struck a couple of two-note harmonies. He pulled out the wood-handled wrench piano tuners always used. He didn’t turn around. “It’s not off much. I’d say maybe 40 minutes.”
“Great. I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything.”