It was funny; she didn’t press me about what I did to get myself thrown off the force, or why I hadn’t dated during the last seven years. For the rest of the lunch, we stuck with small talk, only superficial stuff. When I tried asking her why she left Montreal she changed the subject to how nice the weather was, then her face darkened as she stared at her hands. I moved the conversation to her cats and that brightened her back up. She told me they were Persians and that she had brought them with her from Canada. Before too long she was smiling again.
After lunch we strolled around some of the stores. At one point she took hold of my hand. It felt nicer than I would have expected.
We made our way down to Lake Champlain. After walking for a few minutes along the shore, we sat on some rocks and looked out at the water. I saw a couple of seagulls flying overhead, and as I watched them, I found my thoughts drifting. I felt calm sitting there. The noises that had been buzzing through my head for the past several days were silent. Charlotte brought me out of it by asking how I knew Manny Vassey.
‘I got to know him when I was a cop,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t he a criminal?’
‘Yeah, he was.’
‘And you’re friends with him?’
‘Not exactly.’ I hesitated as I tried to think of a way to broach the subject of what I really needed from her. Because what I really needed from her wasn’t a girlfriend or a relationship, but for her to overdose Manny – maybe with morphine, maybe with something else. As I thought about it, I realized how crazy the idea was. It was more than a long shot, it was nuts. Completely, absolutely nuts. I felt cold all of a sudden, especially in the head. The coldness was penetrating deep into my eye sockets. Kind of like when you eat ice cream too fast, except worse. I had to look away from her. But I had no other choice – no other way out that I could see – so I stumbled along, my voice sounding strange and foreign to me.
‘I guess over the years I’ve grown to respect him, at least at some level, and maybe somewhat begrudgingly,’ I said. ‘He was always a tough, hard sonofabitch. But no one should have to die the way he’s dying.’
I could feel the words drying up in my throat. I shifted my gaze back to her. Charlotte sat silently watching me, her color having dropped to a pasty white. Her mouth looked so small, her lips almost disappearing into her face. I forced myself to push forward, ignoring the queasiness that was working its way into my stomach.
‘It just doesn’t seem right.’ I coughed and cleared my throat, my voice growing hoarse as I continued. ‘Especially when it would take only a little extra morphine to put him out of his misery.’
‘Is that why you asked me out?’
‘What?’
‘I asked you if that was why you asked me out,’ she said.
There was no nervousness in her eyes. There was really nothing there. Her expression had hardened into something not quite human. I barely recognized her. I found myself shaking my head.
‘I don’t get what you’re asking,’ I said.
She just sat staring at me. After a while she told me that Alice Cook at the information desk had stopped her when she had gone back to the hospital to get my allergy medication.
‘Alice told me that you were asking about me,’ Charlotte said. ‘She told me what you did to Mr Coakley. She told me how you went to prison. Please, Joe, don’t lie to me. Tell me why you asked me out. Was it to get me to overdose Mr Vassey with morphine? Because I would never do that.’
So Alice had recognized me after all. Probably hit her after we had talked. Now I knew the reason for Charlotte’s funk earlier and it left my head spinning. I heard myself mumble something about how I had no idea what she was talking about. ‘I was only making an observation,’ I forced out. ‘Why would you think I’d want something like that?’
‘Mr Coakley spends a lot of time visiting Mr Vassey.’
‘So? What does that have to do with me? And I told you before why I asked you out. That was the only reason.’
We sat quietly after that. I’m not sure how long. It might’ve been ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but it seemed like an eternity. After a while she leaned against me. I looked over and saw her expression had softened. She moved closer and rested her head against my shoulder.
‘Aren’t the clouds lovely,’ she whispered.
It was weird. She acted as if nothing had happened. There were no questions about what I had done to Phil, or about my being in jail, or my interest in Manny Vassey. She just sat quietly, occasionally making comments about how nice a day she was having or how beautiful the lake and sky were. Later, when we drove back to Bradley, it was more of the same. On the way back she told me she’d like something to eat so we stopped off at a diner. I could barely stomach anything and only had a few spoons of rice pudding. I watched as Charlotte took bird-sized bites from a grilled cheese sandwich. During it all my mind raced as I tried to understand how my conversation with her went the way it did, and more importantly, what I was going to do next.
When I got her back to her apartment, she hesitated and moved awkwardly towards me.
‘Would you like to come in?’ she asked.
‘I’d like to,’ I said, ‘but your cats and my allergies—’
‘Your medication should be good for twelve hours.’
‘I’d better not risk it, at least not tonight. I still feel a little shaky from before.’
I wasn’t exaggerating. I did feel shaky. Maybe not from my earlier allergic reaction, but I still felt shaky as hell. I could see a thought start to formulate in her eyes about us maybe finding someplace else to be alone, so I moved quickly and gave her a long kiss. When I moved away I asked if I could see her tomorrow when she got off work.
‘I could pick you up here,’ I said.
She nodded. ‘I’d like that. I finish work tomorrow at seven. Why don’t you come by at eight?’
I told her I’d see her then and gave her a quick kiss before leaving. As I drove back to my parents’ house, I kept playing the scene at the lake over and over again in my head. Maybe my comment about putting Manny out of his misery was out of line, but how could she make the leap from that to guessing that I only asked her out so I could manipulate her into overdosing Manny? The only thing I could come up with was she must have overheard Manny and Phil talking together. Maybe she overheard Phil trying to convince Manny to incriminate me. Anyway, I couldn’t get that out of my head, that and the fact that even though she knew what I had done, she was willing to go out with me and pretend that none of it ever happened.
What really got to me was the look on her face when she was waiting for me to explain myself. It was the type of look you might see at an accident site when a bystander catches a glimpse of something he wishes to hell he never saw. And she knew damn well I was lying! She knew it, but went straight into denial, pretending everything between us was hunky-dory.
By the time I got to my parents’ house, I was feeling worse than shaky – kind of weak in the knees, like all I wanted to do was get to bed, lie down and hide from the world. When I opened the door I saw both my parents sitting in the den. They had the TV set on, but it was obvious they weren’t paying attention to it. When they turned to me, my mom’s mouth started to move as if she were chewing gum and my dad looked as if he dreaded what was about to happen.
‘Can you sit down, Joey?’ my dad asked.
‘What’s this about?’
My mom’s mouth was closed but it was still moving furiously. It seemed like an effort for her to stop it. ‘Do what your father tells you to do,’ she demanded sharply.
I took a couple of steps into the room. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m tired and I don’t have time for this nonsense. What do you want?’
‘Sit down!’ my mom ordered, her voice shrill and bordering on hysteria, her mouth once again chewing away on her imaginary gum.
‘If this is about what happened at church—’
‘Elaine called us today,’ my dad said. He had slouched forward and was
wringing his hands. He could barely look up at me. ‘She told us how you drove to Albany the other day and how you called this morning. Courtney’s been upset all day about your call.’
At first I was numb. Then as I looked at them, at my mom’s raisin-like face rigid with fury and my dad’s hangdog beaten expression, I could feel the blood rush to my head.
‘You lied to me before,’ I said. ‘You knew where my daughters were and you lied to me about it.’
‘Son, listen to me—’
But I didn’t. I turned and raced out of the room.
The blood was now boiling in me. I was actually seeing red, honest to God. I started choking on the treachery and unfairness of it; that my own parents would conspire with my ex-wife to keep me away from my daughters.
My parents must’ve sat in their chairs stunned. I don’t think they had any idea where I was headed until I locked the door to their bedroom. Then I heard some activity from them, but I ignored it. I started pulling drawers from the dressers and dumping their contents onto the floor. My dad knocked meekly on the door, asking me to unlock it, and then my mom joined in, rapping on it frantically, but I ignored them. And then I found the pictures.
There were maybe fifty of them in total. They were all of Melissa and Courtney taken at different ages. As I looked at them, I felt the rage that had been burning inside me fizzle away. Both my girls looked a lot like Elaine. They were both petite and blonde. They both had such thin legs and arms. As I went through the pictures and saw my girls as they grew older, I could see some of me in Courtney, at least around the eyes. And there was a little bit of me in Melissa too; this sorrowful little smile that she had. Both girls had grown up to look a lot like Elaine; they were both pretty as hell, but there was just enough of me in both of them to keep them from being beautiful.
The rapping on the door had grown harder and more frantic. My mom yelled at me not to dare go through her things. The combination of it – her yelling and the rapping – knocked me out of my thoughts. I felt a heaviness settle in my throat. I closed my eyes and tried to swallow back the emotion that was fighting its way forward. I was damned if I was going to let the two of them see me cry. It took some effort, and some deep breathing, but I got myself under control.
I went over to the door and opened it. The two of them stood there, shocked, their eyes first going to the mess on the floor and then to the stack of photos that I was holding. My dad looked like death warmed over, my mom’s shriveled face was livid.
‘You had no right going through my possessions,’ my mom squeezed out in a tight, cold voice.
‘Shut up.’
‘Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that,’ my dad said without much conviction.
‘You two can go screw yourselves,’ I said. ‘You’re going to lie to me about my daughters? You couldn’t even let me see pictures of them? Go to hell.’
‘Give me those pictures,’ my mom demanded. And then she made a grab for them. I backed away and raised my hand so I was holding them above her head. She started hopping up and down trying to reach for them.
‘You give those back to me or I’ll call the police on you,’ she forced out between hops. She was breathing heavily now. ‘What you’re doing is stealing.’
‘Go right ahead and call them,’ I said.
The whole situation was so laughable that I couldn’t help myself. I just started laughing like a crazy man. Maybe I was having some sort of minor breakdown, I don’t know, but I just kept laughing away as my mom hopped up and down trying to grab those photos from me.
The gunshot brought me out of it. That one shot was really made up of almost four simultaneous noises – the gun blast, glass breaking, a whirling rush past my ear, and then the bullet thudding into the wall. Four distinct noises all within the span of less than a second. I pushed both my mom and dad down and then dove to the floor.
Just before I hit the floor there was another shot and the sound of another window shattering. Then I heard tires squeal as a car raced away. At first my mind was completely blank, and when it started working again, all I could think was that sonofabitch Junior had tried making a go at me. I got to my feet and raced to the front door, but the car was long gone.
I went outside and could see from the street the two windows that were shot out. I had a pretty good idea where the shots came from. A car must’ve stopped in front of the house and fired the shots before speeding off. The first one had missed me by inches. It had been too close to have been meant as a warning. Whoever fired the shot was trying to blow my head off.
As I was standing there a couple of the neighbors poked their heads out. I yelled to them, asking whether anyone saw anything, but they just shook their heads and went back inside.
I ran back into the house and to my parents’ room. Both of them were still on the floor. My dad looked out of it and my mom was making little mewing noises as she clutched at her hip. I saw where one of the bullets had hit the wall, and dug it out with a penknife. My guess, it was a seven millimeter, probably fired from a hunting rifle. I got on the phone and called the police and asked them to send an ambulance. Then I went over to my parents.
My dad was sitting up, but was still completely out of it. I helped him to his feet and walked him over to the bed. After I had him laid down I went over to my mom and knelt next to her.
She looked like she was in a great deal of pain as she clutched at her hip and made tiny sobbing noises.
‘Mom, do you think you can stand up?’ I asked.
‘Get away from me, just leave and get away from me!’
‘You don’t mean that. You’re in pain. Let me—’
‘I said get away from me! And get out of my house! I don’t ever want you back here.’
She had her eyes shut and tears were streaming down her small withered face. As I knelt next to her, she let go of her hip with her right hand and swung out, catching me on the side of the face. There wasn’t much to her blow, probably weaker than what a three-year-old might do, but the shock of it sent me to my feet and stepping away from her.
The hell with it. The hell with both of them.
I looked around and saw that when I had dove to the floor after the first gunshot, I had flung the photos and they were now scattered across the room. I bent over and started picking them up. I was only partially paying attention to my dad, but noticed he had gotten off his bed and was standing beside me. All of a sudden, he started pummeling me, hitting me with both fists – not hard enough to do any real damage, but hard enough to hurt. And hard enough to almost send me to the floor. I caught my balance and moved back a few steps before turning to face him.
‘You heard your mother,’ he cried. He had his fists clenched and was waving them at me. ‘Get out of our house!’
‘Dad. Come on—’
‘You’re not welcome here! Get out!’
He took a step towards me and I just shook my head and left the room and kept walking until I was out of the house. When I got to the curb I sat down. As I waited for the police to show up, I looked over the photos that I had grabbed. I had only been able to pick up six of them. Still, it settled me down to look at images of Melissa and Courtney as they smiled shyly at the camera.
The cruiser came quickly. It’s not every day in Bradley you have shots fired at a residential home. The siren turned off and Bill Wright and a younger cop that I didn’t know got out of the car.
Bill stood for a moment and peered at the two broken windows before addressing me.
‘What happened here?’ he asked.
‘Someone took a couple of shots at me from outside. The first shot missed me by inches.’
Bill turned his gaze back towards the windows. ‘You called for an ambulance. Is anyone hurt?’
‘I pushed my parents to the floor after the first shot. I think my mom might’ve broken her hip.’
‘It was just you and your mom and dad inside?’
‘Yeah.’
Bill turned to the younger
cop. ‘Mike, go inside and see how they’re doing. Take their statements, and also, give the station another call, make sure an ambulance is on its way.’
The younger cop, Mike, gave me a funny look before leaving us. Bill stood awkwardly for a moment and then looked back again towards the house.
‘The ambulance should’ve been here by now,’ he muttered under his breath. Then to me, ‘Did you see anything?’
‘No. After the shots were fired I ran outside, but whoever did this was long gone.’
‘Any idea who might’ve shot at you?’
‘No idea. As I told you, I didn’t see anyone.’
Of course, that wasn’t what he asked. Annoyance disturbed his long narrow face. He turned to stare at me for a few seconds before looking away. In any case he let it drop.
‘Why were you waiting outside for us?’
‘My parents didn’t want me in their house.’
He nodded as if that made perfect sense. He asked, ‘You haven’t looked around for shell casings, have you?’
I shook my head. ‘I dug one of the bullets out of the bedroom wall. It looks like a seven millimeter. I left it on top of the dresser.’
‘I’ll see if I can find any casings.’
He took out a flashlight and started searching the ground. I watched as he walked back and forth. After a few minutes he found one and held it up with a pencil. At that moment an ambulance pulled up. Two EMT workers jumped out of it.
‘You took your time coming here,’ I said.
Neither of them bothered to look at me. One of them told me they left as soon as they got the call. The other one addressed Bill. ‘What do we have here?’ he asked.
‘An elderly woman might’ve broken her hip.’
Without being asked, I told them that my mom was sixty-three. The EMTs ignored me and opened the back of their ambulance and took out a stretcher. Then they made a beeline to the house, leaving me and Bill Wright alone. I just sat and stared at him. Eventually, he flinched under it.
‘You were holding up the ambulance,’ I said.
He pretended not to hear me.
Small Crimes Page 14