Deadly Kiss

by Bob Bickford

  “How come he smells so good?” he asked, looking at Jenny’s face. “Did you put something on him?”

  “Brand new babies just smell good, silly,” she said.

  She kicked off her high heels, smoothed her skirt, and settled herself on the bed. She lay on her side, head propped on an elbow so she could watch her son. A red-faced yawn made her laugh delightedly. She cooed as the baby fussed for a minute or two and then dropped into sleep.

  Sam hadn’t known, all through the pregnancy, how to feel about being a father. He was older, at thirty-three, than he had imagined he would be when it happened. He still didn’t know what to think, or how to act. He did know that this tiny face was perhaps the most perfect thing he had ever seen. He leaned down, almost fearfully, and kissed his baby son.

  “You might be a Michael, but you’ll never have to fight dragons,” he whispered. “Not as long as I’m around.”

  Sam and Jenny lay facing each other, their sleeping baby between them. It was a moment that was enough, and it never ended, not really.

  ***

  Present Day:

  Sergeant John Park stood with me in Molly’s driveway. We watched the ambulance turn onto the lake road and head toward the highway. The splash of red lights was visible up against the pines for a long way.

  “You following them?” he asked.

  “They’ll be working on her for a while, I imagine. I’ll be there by the time they put her in a room.” I was fighting my emotions. I felt exhausted and nearly overwhelmed, but the night wasn’t done for me.

  “I can’t tell you how lucky she was, Mike. He fired through the glass part of the screen door; she’d left the inner door open for some air. He used a shotgun. It must have been a light load. The pellets blew out the window and then deflected all over the place. She really got hit by a cloud of glass and not much else.”

  “Bad enough,” I said.

  “Tell me about it. It’s a miracle she has two eyes left. Her face got cut to shit. She’s gonna have some trouble with this, maybe. There could be scars. Most women would. You know the guy, right?”

  “I know him. He’s an old man, an American.”

  “And he has something against Molly?”

  “Something against me,” I said. “My family, more like it. He knew my dad.”

  “So he takes it out on Molly?” he asked angrily. “What am I missing here?”

  “He’s a bit crazy, John. The situation’s crazy. Molly just got in the middle.”

  “Whatever you’re not telling me now, you’ll tell me when you can? So I can do my job?”

  I nodded.

  “If he’s an American, how did he even find you on a map? This isn’t the beaten trail.”

  “He was our guest here last week. He was visiting both Molly and me. She met him in Atlanta, when she came to my dad’s funeral. Now, I have a question. How the fuck did he get a gun up here, John?”

  “No idea,” he said, jerking his chin at the small car parked across the road. “That’s his rental car. He picked it up at the Toronto airport. He couldn’t legally buy a firearm in Canada--but in the small towns between here and there? This is hunting country, Mike. Ask nicely, and someone would have a rifle or shotgun they’d take a few bucks for. No one would worry much about selling to an old man, if his story was good.”

  He shook his head, disgusted. “Come to think of it, he could have walked into just about any bar on the way here tonight,” he said. “A drunk needing a few bucks for his next round would probably sell his sister, and for sure have an old shotgun in the basement he’d part with. He couldn’t be fussy about ammunition though, and I imagine that’s what saved her life tonight.”

  He looked at his cruiser, anxious to get going. “Let’s lock her house,” he said, “and get out of here.”

  “I have a key. I may clean up a bit before I leave. She can’t come back home to this.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Our man left the keys in the ignition of his car over there. Don’t let me forget them, okay? I’m happier with him out there on foot. We’ll tow it in the morning.”

  Headlights turned into the drive. I saw that it was Bill. He got out, leaving his door open, and came toward us. In the wash from the headlights, his face was ghastly. Molly was like a daughter to him. I met him halfway and filled him in. He stared at the ground, shaken, while I spoke.

  “Should I head to the hospital now?” he asked.

  “No, I don’t think so,” I said. “Kate’s with her. By the time they get her fixed up, she’ll be asleep. I’m sure she’ll be doped up. She’s going to need sleep as much as anything. She’s had a terrible night.”

  He looked utterly bereft. He nodded a hello to John Park, who had come up beside me. “I saw all the police lights go by the marina about an hour ago,” he said. “I thought maybe there was a drowning on the lake tonight. I got up and sat by the window and then decided to drive by here and make sure Molly was asleep. My God--I’m glad Diane didn’t wake up. We’ll head over there in the morning.”

  “I hate to ask you this, Bill,” I said. “I still have some running around tonight. Can you keep the dog for me? Until tomorrow?”

  He nodded absently. “Sure.”

  “I didn’t bring his leash; I’m sorry.”

  “He won’t be no trouble. He never is. He’s a good dog, so he is a little hairy, but what can you do about that, eh?”

  He took Blue’s collar and started for his vehicle. Blue resisted and looked back at me. I crouched in front of him and spoke softly. In a moment, he shook Bill’s hand off his neck and led the way to the truck.

  “Lock up good, Bill!” John called. “I’ll have cruisers patrol all night, and get a boat in the water at first light, but until we find him, remember--he’s an old man, but he’s crazy, and he’s got a gun.”

  Bill waved back at us without turning around. He backed the truck out and left.

  “He isn’t going to hurt anyone else, John,” I said. “He needs help.”

  “We hope so,” he said. “Where you headed?”

  “I’ll pick up a few things and go on to the hospital,” I said. “I want to be there when she wakes up.”

  He looked up at the woods across the road. The tall pines were black against the night sky. His eyes roamed the dark, a cop’s restless look that missed nothing. “Watch yourself,” he said. “Seriously.”

  His brake lights flashed once, at the curve in the road, and then John was gone. I looked at Molly’s empty house and was unspeakably sad. I trudged up the driveway to shut the lights off, and lock up. I stopped in the back entrance. The empty kitchen was a brightly lit horror. The floor was a bloody mess. Footprints tracked everywhere were just beginning to dry. Bandages and wrappers lay in sticky pools. It seemed impossible to me that Molly had survived this, and I fought the urge to race to the hospital.

  I found a mop, bucket, and garbage bags, and got to work. I changed the hot soapy water twice. By the time I was done, I was glad to get out of the house. It felt strange and unfriendly, not like her space anymore.

  I left the kitchen light on, and locked the door behind me. The night was winding its way onward. It was just after three when I walked down to the water. I had inadvertently shut off the dock light when I hit the switches by the back door. I wished that I hadn’t, but I wasn’t going to go back. I got into the boat and switched on the running lights. I missed the stupid dog.

  Before I switched on the engine, my cell phone vibrated, as if on cue. I answered, and was greeted by complete silence. There was flash behind my retinas, the branches of a dead tree against a pale purple sky. I sat down in the pilot’s seat, the silent phone held to my ear.

  “Mike,” he finally said.

  “Hello, Roy.”

  “Is Molly going to be all right?”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “You know where I am?”

  I looked across the dark water. I had left the island without turning my own dock light on. I was two-for-two
on dock lights tonight.

  “You’re on Echo Island, Roy,” I said. “When I came over, you passed me going the other way. No one thought to wonder where Molly’s boat was. Since there’s no phone reception there except out on the dock, that’s where you are. You’re standing on my dock. If you look across the water you can see my lights. I’m sitting in my boat. Might help if we look at each other while we talk.”

  “I can hear you fine,” he said. “I don’t need to look at you. Can’t see you a mile away in the dark, anyway.”

  “You can look across the water and see me all you need to. If you look over here where I am, it might keep the bad things away.” I could sense him considering it and I waited quietly.

  “Might,” he finally said. “She was the only girl I ever kissed, you know. Wanda. I guess now that it’s over, I’m saddest about her.”

  “She didn’t do anything, did she? I suspected her all along of the phone calls and the blackmail, and she never knew a thing about it.”

  “She was as guilty as we all were.”

  “Why, Roy? Why all this?”

  “They killed my daddy,” he said heavily. “I might’ve been responsible for Eli, but all the rest of you got my daddy killed.”

  “Why Molly? Why me?”

  “Sins of the fathers,” he said. “Some things don’t ever go away, ’less you make them go all the way away.”

  “I’ve been wondering, Roy. Arthur Sutton got shot in his living room. Neighbor saw a black guy walk out of the bushes in the front yard right after. Everyone assumes some gangsta rapper was protecting drug turf. It’s almost funny. It was you, wasn’t it?”

  His silence was assent. “Poor Arthur,” he said. “He suspected that his mama didn’t kill herself. He thought it was you did it. I guess sooner or later he’d of figured out the truth, but what did I care if I got caught? Just self-preservation kicking in, I guess. Stupid.”

  “Here’s what I want to know. How the hell did you get Wanda Sutton up a ladder to hang herself? Would someone really do that if they had a gun pointed at them?”

  “She wanted to,” he said.

  “She wanted to? You expect me to believe that?”

  “I pointed a gun to get her into the car and out to the old store,” he said. “She put up a fight, for an old woman, the whole way there. I tell you. Once we were inside, I thought I’d have to shoot her, but she went up the ladder and stepped off, with no prodding from me. She wanted to be done with all of it, too.”

  “That’s hard to swallow, Ray. Why would she do that?”

  “Tired, I expect. Like me.”

  “And my dad?” I asked. “Why the blackmail. You didn’t need the money, did you?”

  “I didn’t blackmail him, Mike. I didn’t. He came up with that notion on his own, and I played along with it.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  I glared across the reach, gripping the phone so hard my hand hurt.

  “I think he needed to be punished. He came to Wanda and he came to me, a few months ago; just an old man crying about what he did. He shot her daddy and her uncle, and my daddy got hung for it, and he was never taken to task. He was looking for a clean conscience, so he came to us and confessed. Shit, Wanda knew all about it sixty-five years ago, and never saw fit to tell me about it. Let me believe my own daddy did it, when it was yours the whole time.”

  “He did it for your brother,” I said. “The men he shot tortured and brutalized your brother, and got away scot-free. He did it for you--and he was ten fucking years old.”

  “I know that,” he said softly. “You think I don’t know that?”

  The evening was taking its toll. I felt my chest grow tight from tears and anger. “Then why blackmail him?”

  “I didn’t,” he said. “I just said that. Do you know your own father less than I do? He would have spit in anyone’s face who tried that. He would have faced a firing squad before he paid someone a nickel for their silence. Do you not get it?”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “I called him, and I wanted to see him suffer. I didn’t have a plan beyond that.” His voice rose. “Blackmail. He made that up in his own head. He decided that that’s what I wanted and delivered me every penny he had. Once he got the idea that’s what my calls were about, I just didn’t say different.”

  “You’re blaming him for being blackmailed?” I asked, incredulous.

  “It shocked the hell out of me. I thought he had dementia at first, but then I decided he just needed to be punished so bad that he was making it up for himself. I told him where to drop the money, and he did it. I wasn’t going to deny the man some misery before he died, if that’s what he wanted.”

  “He died before you could kill him, though,” I said.

  “He did do that,” Roy said. “I would have hung him, same as my daddy, same as Wanda. He didn’t give me the satisfaction. I have to respect that, I guess.”

  “I do, too. I respect the hell out of him.”

  “Mostly, he was tired, though. Like Wanda. Like me.”

  There was the sound of a marine engine from far off, and lights in the passage between Duck and Long Duck islands grew larger. Eventually the boat passed between us. At this hour, it was either a provincial police launch looking for Roy, or a group of drunks on the way home to bed. I watched its lights get smaller.

  “I know what you did, too,” I said. “Molly told me about Eli.”

  “My mama never forgave me,” he said. “She didn’t figure it out until after my brother got found and they buried him. One day she recollected that Eli had been moping around the house all day, because I was supposed to take him fishing. I had better, more important things to do. He was home and I was out, on the day it happened. Peas in a pod, they took the wrong one. They came and took away the wrong pea.”

  “They were evil men, Roy. That wasn’t your fault.”

  “I don’t know if they were evil,” he said. “They were scared. Scared of what that kiss was going to do to Wanda, to their family. Ironic, isn’t it? They let the genie out of the lamp. They killed my brother and gave the kiss all its power.”

  “Doesn’t make it your fault.”

  “I think they honestly intended to scare him, scare him so bad he’d never tell anyone that he kissed a white girl. Eli never knew what they were talking about, so he couldn’t cooperate. It made them so mad they lost control.”

  I realized he was crying. The words were coming hard.

  “If I would have spoken up,” he said, “if I would of said something when they came to our house, they would have taken me. Maybe they would have just slapped me around some and let me go. Maybe none of this would have happened.”

  “That does no good now, Roy. No point in thinking about it that way.”

  The lights from the passing craft were nearly out of sight when the small waves from its wake finished their half-mile journey to me. They gently rocked me and slapped the hull of my boat.

  “You know the hell of it?” Roy asked. “The thing that makes me sad still, all those years later? I had nothing to do that day. I just left the house so that I could get rid of my younger brother, and his pestering me with questions about everything he saw. You never saw a kid like that for questions all day. The last day of his life, and I wouldn’t take him fishing.”

  “Kids, Roy. Big brothers, little brothers. What can you do?”

  “What can you do?” he agreed. “I never felt bad about the kiss, though. Never kissed a girl before that, or since. Black, white, or any other kind.”

  “Never?” I asked, startled.

  “Never. Not what you’re thinking, either. Mama made a big deal when I was older about sins of the fathers, and I shouldn’t never have children, but I also never had the time. I was married to medicine. Never thought much about it ’til I was too old. I always remembered that kiss, though. She planted it on me, but I didn’t mind. I still think about it sometimes; that day seems close enough to touch.”

&nbs
p; “What now?” I asked.

  “Just goodbye, I guess. I’m done. I’m not coming after you.”

  “You think the kiss is going to stand for that?” I asked. “You think it’ll just let you walk away?”

  “I’ll take care of the kiss,” he said. “I’ll take care of the kiss. It’s done with everyone else but me.”

  His guilt and grief had driven him crazy, and my father’s confession had driven his insanity out into the open. I felt tremendous sorrow for him.

  “Everyone’s gone now Roy,” I said. “All three kids behind that store, all of their families. Just you and me left.”

  “And now your baby.”

  Hearing it said out loud in that way made the baby more real to me. It was a good feeling. “I can’t let you go on,” I said. “The baby means I can’t risk it. You understand that?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “Does it matter?” he finally asked. “Would it ever matter in a court of law?”

  It was my turn to have no answer.

  “Do one thing for me?” he asked.

  “If I can.”

  “Tell Molly to have a happy baby for me. She isn’t going to want to hear it, but give her my best. She’ll never forgive me. I understand that.”

  “She already has forgiven you,” I said. “If you think different, you don’t know Molly. She sent me to you, as a matter of fact. Why don’t you stay there and meet me on the dock?”

  “I don’t think so, Mike.”

  “I’m coming out there, Roy. Molly made me promise. Whatever happens from here, I’ll stay with you. You won’t be alone, okay?”

  For a long moment, he didn’t answer, and I wasn’t sure he was going to. Finally he spoke. “Thank you for that. I appreciate it. Come on ahead, but come slow.”

  I went back to the island. I had only been gone for a few hours, but the night seemed endless. Maybe it was always dark, and the sun was something that I had dreamed once. As I came close, I saw Molly’s boat tied up there. Even without lights, I could tell that the dock was empty. No one was waiting for me. I nosed in, opposite her red-and-white bowrider.