Act of Betrayal

by Shirley Kennett

  “I know, sweetie. That’s why I’m going over to his house. I don’t know when I’ll be home. He might want to talk a long time, maybe all night.”

  She explained about the officer coming to stay with him and Winston.

  “You and Winston use the security chain and ask for ID before you let him in. He’s about twenty-seven years old and blond, so you know what to expect. Have him phone me when he arrives. I hate to admit it, but I haven’t even talked to the guy. That’s not something I’d ordinarily do. I’d at least like to speak to him and tell him all the bad tricks you play.”

  “Hey. No fair.”

  “Actually, I just want to know he got there okay. You guys can order a pizza for the three of you. There’s money in the desk drawer.”

  “All right! I get to choose something good since you’re not here to vote for all those veggies.”

  She smiled. A conversation with Thomas could fly off in any direction, but sooner or later came down to food. “I’ll phone later tonight. Take care, T-man.”

  “You too, Mom. And tell Schultz… well, you’ll think of something.”

  Six

  LADEN WITH SACKS OF roast beef sandwiches and fries, and with a two-liter plastic bottle of Coke tucked awkwardly under her arm, PJ made her way up the front walkway leading to Schultz’s home. The lawn looked neglected, burned out in the August heat and ragged from lack of mowing. She doubted that its condition was going to improve over the rest of the summer. She climbed half a dozen steps and stood on a four-by-four concrete landing that served as the entry porch. It wasn’t covered by a roof, and PJ felt exposed as she stood there. The century-old home painted in shades of gray and trimmed with white had seemed welcoming on previous visits, but on this trip it seemed dour and disapproving. She could swear that the third-floor dormers were frowning down at her. A curtain moved in a window next door, and she wondered if the neighbors all had the news.

  She had no free hand to press the doorbell, so she leaned her elbow on it.

  The door opened almost immediately, as though Schultz had been watching her coming up the sidewalk. One look at his face, and she was glad she had come.

  “Is that Diet Coke?” he said.

  “Nope. The real stuff.”

  “You said the magic words. Come on in.”

  She stepped in and Schultz closed the door behind her, cutting off the sunlight and heat. It was after six o’clock, but the heat and humidity outside showed no sign of letting up for the night. All the curtains on the first floor were drawn shut, and no lights were turned on. He had cranked the air-conditioner way down. It was cold.

  “You expecting penguins any minute?” PJ said. “It’s freezing in here.”

  “Oh? I didn’t notice,” he said. “When I got home, it was hot, so I turned down the dial. I guess I set it too low. Here, I’ll take those bags.”

  He took two bags in one hand, clamped the two-liter bottle in the other, and walked off, leaving her standing in the entry hall. She sought out the thermostat, locating it down the main hall outside the bathroom. It was set on sixty degrees. She bumped it up to seventy-four, then joined him in the kitchen.

  He had dumped fries out on a napkin and unwrapped one of the sandwiches, but then had gotten stalled. He sat at the table staring in the direction of the food, but not seeing it. She opened kitchen cabinets until she found some glasses. The ice cube trays in the refrigerator were empty, so she poured them each a glass of Coke without ice. Luckily it was cold already—she had gotten it from a refrigerated case at the store. When she sat down opposite him at the kitchen table, he began to eat without waiting for her to unpack her food.

  “Thanks for bringing this stuff,” he said between bites. “I owe you one.”

  The rest of the meal passed in silence, except for the sounds of eating, which seemed magnified in Schultz’s small kitchen. The high ceilings added to the situation, but Schultz didn’t seem to notice. PJ imagined her chewing noises and slurps coming back around like an echo long after she had left.

  She was sitting close to Schultz, but the two of them seemed to be in different worlds.

  “Sshh,” he said. “You talk too much.” And he closed her mouth with a kiss.

  PJ responded, leaning into Schultz’s warm, reassuring presence, and let herself be enclosed in his arms. For the first time in many days she could close her eyes and not be haunted by terrible images of death. A draining and emotional homicide case had just concluded, and Schultz had driven her home. They were alone in her kitchen.

  For a moment she forgot her battered and stitched body and rested her head on his chest. It was awkward at the kitchen table, so they moved to the couch in the living room. His hands gently roamed her body, avoiding the painful spots from her ordeal. It was soothing, so soothing, to relax and let Schultz’s strength serve for the two of them.

  Fatigue and painkillers did their work, and she faded to sleep. In the morning, she woke with Schultz beside her. He must have carried her upstairs to bed. She nestled against him, smiling at the way his erection tented the blanket. His hands and his kisses were more insistent than on the night before, and she felt his fingers leaving trails of fire on her skin.

  She sat up on the edge of the bed, naked, her back to him.

  “We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said. “I don’t know if this is what I want. What either of us really wants.”

  He said nothing. She could feel her own heart beating, and there was a roaring in her ears.

  “We’ve got to think more about this,” she said. “This is complicated. We work together.”

  And you’re bouncing around from one woman to another since you got divorced, she’d thought. Maybe I’m just the next in line.

  She heard him get up and dress, but didn’t turn around. She was afraid of meeting his eyes, afraid that the insubstantial barrier she had built with her words would collapse if she looked in his eyes right then.

  She got up and went into the bathroom. When she came out after a long shower, he was gone.

  The note read: Take as much time as you want. I love you. We can work it out.

  The phone in Schultz’s kitchen rang, but he didn’t make a move to answer it. After a few rings, PJ answered it herself. It was Dave checking in, with the news that eighteen chemical supply houses had been placed on their contact list, and that not a single one of them had anyone to answer the phone past 5:00 P.M. except security guards. Short of tracking down the owners at home and persuading them to go back into the office, there was nothing to do but wait until business hours resumed the next morning. Dave inquired tentatively about Schultz, and got a report that food had been offered to the gods and all was well for the moment.

  When they finished eating, Schultz cleared the wrappers and glasses, then stood facing away from her at the kitchen counter longer than necessary. She thought he might be crying. She rose and walked toward him, intending to lay a hand on his shoulder.

  “Schultz, I—”

  He rounded on her, and she saw that his eyes were dry and hot.

  “Don’t try any of that shrink bullshit about grief on me, Doc,” he said. “You have no idea how I’m feeling, so don’t say that you do. I’ll handle this in my own way.”

  PJ shut her mouth, suppressing the unspoken words of sympathy.

  “I’m going out,” he said. “You can go home or come along or sit here at my table by yourself, for all I care. But I’m leaving.”

  He left the house, walking with long strides. Worried, she scurried after him. He got into his car, which was parked at the curb in front of hers. She barely had time to make it to her car and keep him in sight as he drove off.

  She couldn’t get her thoughts to straighten out as she pursued Schultz. Why couldn’t he accept any comfort from her? Weren’t they close enough so that he could turn to her when trouble came along? If there was such emotional distance between them, surely there couldn’t be anything other than a professional relationship. Yet, she reminded hers
elf, people grieved in individual ways, and maybe his was solitary.

  PJ raised her hand to her lips, feeling the pressure of Schultz’s kiss months after it was placed there, on a night when she was the one who needed comfort.

  God, the man isn’t easy. Nothing about him is easy.

  He was heading downtown, and she thought with relief that he was going back to work. It was a controlled environment, and she could talk some sense into him there.

  Instead of going to the headquarters building, he wound his way through unfamiliar downtown streets she hadn’t had reason to travel, and pulled up in front of a bar on Broadway, south of the main commercial district. As soon as she realized the destination, she knew that he was about to go on a drinking binge, as Howard had described. Should she try to stop him, or let him grieve in whatever way he wanted?

  Stopping him didn’t appear to be an option, because while she had spent indecisive moments in her car at the curb, he had gotten out of his and was already pushing open the door of the bar. Setting aside her deeper concerns to deal with the moment, PJ hurried after him. At least she could be some sort of stabilizing influence, and make sure he got home safely.

  At 10:00 P.M., PJ finished up her third glass of orange juice. She had stayed away from alcohol entirely, determined not to repeat her wine-drinking fiasco of the night before. Schultz was drinking Scotch, and she thought he’d had a couple of refills, but didn’t really pay attention because she was so distracted by his behavior. He had gone through several stages from surly to glad-handing everyone who got within reach. He talked about everything but his family.

  A dark cloud had settled over him in the last hour, and his glass stood untouched on the bar. She felt that he was ready to leave. When he came out of the bathroom and wove his way back to the stool next to her, she suggested that he go home. She was prepared to stay until they got kicked out of the bar, but if she could get him home at an early hour, so much the better. She could send Officer Baker home and stay with Thomas herself, and Schultz would have a long time to rest. If the way he looked was any indication, he was going to need some recovery time.

  To her surprise, he agreed. He offered to drive her home and spend the night in her bed. It wasn’t the first suggestive remark he’d made while they were at the bar, but it was the mildest of them. She hoped he wouldn’t remember his behavior in the morning—especially the times she’d had to remove his hands from various portions of her anatomy.

  “You’re not driving, Leo. Give me your keys.”

  “Why should I? You afraid I’ll pick up some hot little thing and fuck ’er brains out?”

  “Something like that. Just give me the keys.”

  “Come’n get ’em.”

  So she did. She searched his pockets, eliciting more crude comments, until she extracted a set of keys. One of them was marked with a police department number, which made it the car key. He’d need his house keys. She removed the car key and handed him the rest, then asked the bartender to call a taxi. When the taxi arrived, she hustled Schultz in and gave the driver the address. Schultz had given up protesting, evidently seeing that it was useless to argue with her. The driver’s attitude improved when PJ gave him twenty-five dollars, which was all she had left after paying the bar bill for the two of them. Schultz had left home with two dollars in his wallet.

  Schultz tapped on the glass that separated him from the taxi driver.

  “Just pull around the block until she leaves,” he said. “Women think they can run your life.” The last part he added to make the driver think they were on the same wavelength, two beleaguered and worldly men. It worked. The man nodded and took off.

  The taxi took a slow turn around the block and by the time they got back to the bar, PJ’s Escort was gone. Schultz opened the door and got out.

  “Keep the fare,” he said. The driver nodded happily and took off.

  Schultz dug into his pocket for his wallet and removed the spare car key he always kept there, right next to the folded fifty-dollar bill for emergencies. He patted the roof of the reddish-orange Pacer affectionately. It wasn’t the greatest car he’d ever gotten assigned by Vehicles, but it had proven to be reliable, even if the steering did pull sharply to the right. Tonight it would take him exactly where he wanted to go, and that was the nearest liquor store. The time in the bar with PJ was merely a prelude to the real thing. He’d actually had little to drink, and nothing in the last hour.

  It was time to get down to the business of forgetting, and that required a lot more than a few hours with a well-meaning impediment named PJ Gray.

  PJ quietly shut the rear door of her home and walked into the living room, announcing herself as she did so. Al Baker rose from the couch, where he had been watching an opera on PBS. He was in his late twenties, blond, tan, muscular, wearing cutoff shorts and a tank top. A bit of California transplanted to south St. Louis.

  “Hi,” he said. “I didn’t expect you until after midnight, at least.”

  “We broke up early. Tired, I guess,” PJ said.

  “How’s Detective Schultz?”

  “As well as can be expected.” She didn’t add that she thought Schultz was a saturated sponge as far as alcohol was concerned. “Thanks for coming over tonight.”

  “No problem. I love kids. Thomas really whipped me on that X-Wing game. He’s good on the computer. Good kid, too. We hopped in my car and drove Winston home about an hour ago.”

  “You guys got pizza, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. We argued over that,” Al said with a grin. “I’m a vegetarian, and that boy’s a hopeless carnivore.”

  Al collected a magazine he’d propped open on the couch. Scientific American. So he watched opera and read science articles in his spare time. PJ found herself admiring his trim waist and the firm contents of the cutoffs as Al walked away from her. She wondered if he was married. Or if that made any difference.

  “Dr. Gray?”

  “Hum? What?”

  “I said goodnight, Dr. Gray. Give Detective Schultz my sympathies.”

  “Oh, of course. Goodnight.”

  PJ closed the door behind him, feeling what could only be described as horny, a response out of sync with the day’s events. She wondered if the bartender had spiked her orange juice or if Schultz’s persistently roaming hands had sparked her sex drive.

  Upstairs, PJ changed into her pajamas and splashed water on her face at the bathroom sink. Finally, she was tired—drained—and no remnant of her earlier response to Al Baker remained.

  She went into Thomas’s room and let her eyes adjust to the low level of light provided by a night-light next to his bed. He was sleeping on his stomach, with one leg completely off the bed and his face turned away from her. He had surrendered his pillow to Megabite, who curled there like the Queen of All Cats, paid her due by her humans. Megabite’s eyes opened slightly, showing little slices of the cat life within that never slept deeply.

  All she could see above the blanket was Thomas’s hair, disarrayed and blacker than the moonlit night sky outside his window. In the dim light she could make out the cluttered top of his dresser, and a photo frame standing there. She couldn’t see the picture in the frame, but she knew it was of Schultz with his arm on Thomas’s shoulder, the day they had all gone to a baseball game together. Schultz had bought her son a Cardinals cap. The picture had caught the moment, a half-smile on Schultz’s face and lines pinched between his eyebrows, Thomas grinning and giving a thumbs-up, black eyes full of life, the red hat barely containing his exuberant hair.

  The image of Schultz’s son appeared in front of her, and the remembered smell of death filled her nostrils. She was glad it wasn’t her son. She turned and left the room in which Thomas slept, thankfully alive, and felt guilty for the selfish thought.

  When Schultz arrived home he climbed the stairs to the front door accompanied by the satisfying clinks of three fifths of Scotch bumping together inside their sturdy brown bag. The house was dark, and he left it that
way. He went into the kitchen to get a glass for the Scotch, having decided to be civilized and not drink directly from the bottle.

  He was alone, and it was time to give that pact that he’d made with himself a rest, the one where he’d promised not to fall apart. There was no one around. He could drop the pretense of holding up in public and dig himself a hole in the ground for a while.

  Schultz knew that in a couple of days when the haze wore off and he couldn’t justify the binge anymore, nothing would have changed. Rick would still be dead. Schultz would still be a shitty father whose intervention in the downward spiral of his son’s life had come too late. And he would still be the asshole who had given the boy’s mother—his own son’s mother, his wife of many years, for Christ’s sake—the news over the phone. He should have gone to her in person, like the time he went to see her to find out if their marriage was really over.

  He wondered if he would actually have been crass enough to leave a message on her answering machine if she hadn’t been home.

  Schultz fumbled for a glass in the cabinet next to the sink. There was enough moonlight coming in the window over the sink so that he could see to pour himself three fingers, not bothering with ice. Lifting the glass, he peered through the Scotch as if it were a window to his heart. If he squinted hard enough, he might find a shred of decency there.

  He didn’t deserve PJ, that was certain. After this was over, he’d lay off trying to get her to admit she loved him.

  Through the murky darkness of the liquid in the raised glass, a small light shimmered. It reminded him of when he was a kid, still living on the farm before his parents were killed. He’d sneak out to the swimming hole when there was a full summer moon. He wasn’t supposed to, and he didn’t take his little brother because even with a child’s reasoning he knew it was dangerous, and he didn’t want anything to happen to George.

  Naked in the night, the sounds of the country around him, Schultz had plunged into water that looked black. He knew it was clear as glass, since he could see the bottom during the day. Ten feet down, at the bottom of his dive, he’d open his eyes and look through the heavy smothering water, searching for the sky. And there would be the moon, glorious and beckoning, up in the life-giving air. He’d flex his young arms and push himself to the surface, using the round, shimmering white ball of the moon to keep him oriented. Otherwise, he might lose his way in the uniform blackness.