“I would wake up before Michael in the morning, so I walked Dalma before breakfast,” Karen said. “After dinner was his turn.”
“And how did the dog get back after your husband got killed?” Perhaps charm school was an option for the boy.
Karen, to her credit, did not flinch. “Dalma knew the way back, and she came running as soon as it happened,” she said. “She must have bitten the person who . . . did it, because she had a little blood around her mouth. It was how I knew something was wrong, when the dog came home alone.” Karen turned her head toward the window for a moment, and I think Dalma whimpered a bit.
Ethan, who has seen more television in his lifetime than most ninety-year-olds, spends the bulk of his time on what we shall call the more animated forms of entertainment, so the intricate points of forensic science are lost on him. Blood spatter, DNA, semen samples: alas, all these were foreign to my son, the poor deprived child. Or at least I thought so, until he said, “Did the blood on the dog’s mouth match Justin Fowler’s?”
Karen shook her head slowly. “Dalma had licked the blood off her mouth before the police got here. It never occurred to me to save some. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
I knew Justin Fowler didn’t appear to have any recent bite marks on his hands, or anywhere else I could see, but that was not, in itself, physical evidence. Aside from Karen’s word for it, there was no proof the dog had bitten anyone.
“Mrs. Huston,” my son said politely, “who hated your husband so much he’d kill him?”
Rezenbach wanted to go into apoplexy, but a twelve-year-old kid with Asperger’s asking questions in the most innocent tone imaginable didn’t make that a realistic option. He puffed out his lips a couple of times, but never really managed a sound.
Karen looked Ethan straight in the eye. “I don’t know anyone who even disliked him, Ethan,” she said. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
“No, Mrs. Huston,” said the “afflicted” boy. “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
The dog wagged her tail appealingly when we stood, and Rezenbach even shook hands with Ethan, although I’m sure he went to wash off the AS the minute we left. Karen thanked Ethan for his concern, and we bundled ourselves up against the light breeze, which threatened to push the Pocono Mountains straight into New Jersey if it didn’t abate soon.
In the car, while I fumbled with the heater (pushing the fan button in the minivan up to maximum), Ethan sighed and looked back at the house.
“She’s still hiding something,” he said. Then he sat back and started making noises under his breath again.
Chapter Seven
“What you said was hurtful.”
Abby had waited all evening, through a very tense dinner, to find an excuse to lure me to the basement. The rest of the family, extended and otherwise, was upstairs, participating in various activities, all of which involved electronic devices.
“I know,” I answered. “I’m sorry. I’ve felt bad about it all day.”
“The problem is,” she went on as if I hadn’t spoken, “you were right.”
That I hadn’t expected, and when I turned to face her, I nearly tripped over the ancient assemble-it-yourself end table we use down there.
“I was what?”
“You were right. I wasn’t even listening to Ethan’s side of the story. I was acting differently than I normally do because Howard was there. I’ve been that way since he arrived.” Abby’s face was sad, and that’s the last thing on this earth I want to see. I walked to her and embraced her, and she put her head down on my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally. Her voice was a little shaky, but I don’t think she was crying.
“You don’t have to apologize to me,” I told her. “I’m as guilty as you are, if not more. But you do need to talk to your son.”
“I already have. I reduced his sentence to no PlayStation tonight, and Dylan can’t use it either.”
I leaned back and looked at her. “Howard agreed to that?”
She put on a grin I’ve never actually seen before, one that had a touch of naughty little girl in it. “Howard wasn’t consulted.”
I hugged her closer, which is what I always want to do anyway. “Good for you,” I said. “You’re finally growing up.”
“Yeah,” my wife said with a touch of pride in her voice.
“Any chance you can teach me how?”
“That, my love, is a lost cause.” She grinned at me. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
It would have been the perfect place for a big kiss and a Hollywood ending, which reminded me that, with four days left before I had to put up or shut up, I hadn’t done any work on the screenplay yet. So I leaned in for the kiss of the century.
And naturally, the phone rang.
Within a heartbeat, Leah was at the top of the stairs yelling down.
“Dad! It’s Uncle Mahoney!”
Natch. Up the stairs, away from a kiss that might have been sung about by villagers for centuries to come, and toward a conversation with a humongous rental mechanic. Life causes us to make odd choices sometimes.
“What’s up?” I started. There were lips warming up for me in the basement, and no time to waste.
“I have a plan,” came the response. “A very famous plan.”
Chapter Eight
The next day was Sunday, when Mahoney and his tormentor didn’t work, and when we couldn’t put into action the Very Famous Plan (it’s a reference to the Beatles movie Help!, and I’m sorry, but you’ll have to take my word for how funny it is). So, having worked out the details on the phone Saturday night, we arranged to meet Monday morning at the appointed place and time.
Sunday morning, I took a chance that the North Brunswick Police Department wasn’t terribly used to dealing with murders, and might have their detectives working overtime. I called Rodriguez. And he was there. Score one for diligence and hunches.
“Is there something I can do for you, Tucker? Because I sure am feeling underworked here.” Rodriguez was so good at playing the TV detective, I thought of asking Waterman to cast him in the movie I hadn’t rewritten yet.
“It’s nice to talk to you, too, Lieutenant. Should I ask if you’ve caught any ‘skells’ today, or gotten someone ‘jammed up’? I just love to hear you guys talk the talk.”
“Is there a reason I’m talking to you today, when I should be home with my family?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” I answered. “I have a couple of questions. Was there any indication that Michael Huston’s dog had bitten someone the night of the murder?”
“No,” he said after a moment. “Why?”
“Karen Huston says the dog came back to the house with blood on her mouth.”
“First I’m hearing about it. Any clothing fibers, hairs, anything like that?”
“Not that I know of,” I told him. “She was pretty upset, as you might imagine, and maybe wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“I’ll check into it,” he said. “Even tips from someone like you have to get investigated in a murder.”
It’s touching when public servants take you seriously.
“Something else you might want to check up on,” I told him. “Justin Fowler says he found the gun in a hiding place he and his brother used when they were kids. But Kevin was supposedly in Indiana at college when the weapon was found. Can you . . .
“We’ve already checked the phone records,” Rodriguez said.
“Believe it or not, occasionally the cops do a better job of crime detection than electronics writers.”
“So?”
“So, what?”
“So, what did the phone records show?”
“Kevin Fowler called his mother three times the week before the murder. Each of the calls came from a number in Muncie, Indiana. No mistake.”
“Any possibility the calls could have been from someone else at the same number, or does he have a cell phone that carries an Indiana exchange?”
“Wow, if only we’d thought to check that!” Rodriguez marveled. “Damn, I’m going to have to go back to the Police Academy for lessons from freelance writers!”
“Okay, Rodriguez, you win the Sarcasm Ribbon for the year. Feel better? Now, what about the phone number?”
“His cell phone is a Jersey number. Whether or not it was Fowler himself on the line, I can’t possibly know. We didn’t have a tap on the line.”
“Okay, how about this: any news on who might have put up the money for Justin’s bail?”
Rodriguez paused a moment, perhaps trying to come up with exactly the right sardonic tone to take. “The fact is, Tucker, I have confidential sources that indicate Justin’s bail money came from a . . . local businessman.”
Whoa.
“You mean Justin Fowler was bailed out of jail by Hyman Shapiro?”
Rodriguez didn’t answer, and in that, there was answer enough.
To tell the truth, I would have preferred the sarcasm.
Chapter Nine
“You’d have been so proud of your son yesterday,” I told Abby that night as we were finding the bed under the pile of laundry I’d dumped there.
I’m the person who stays home most of the time, and I do the laundry in my family. I realize I’m supposed to be somehow ashamed of this strike against my manhood, but the truth is, I don’t mind doing the laundry for the family. In fact, I kind of like doing the laundry for the family, and can’t figure out how, in the modern age, this is somehow thought of as a feminine function. We have washing machines and automatic dryers, don’t we? What are guys better at than playing with machines?
The part I don’t like is folding the damn laundry after it comes out of the dryer, and putting the newly clean clothes away. So I tend to leave the whole pile on our bed, and put it off until the last minute, which is when Abby and I are ready to get into said bed. This forces the issue, and on more occasions than not, prompts my wife to help me fold. Since there is no machine involved, folding, in my opinion, is a unisex activity.
“Really?” she said, forcing me back on topic. “He’d make a good reporter, you think?”
“I don’t know about that, since I’ve read his English homework,” I said. “He writes good poetry, which I could never do, but his prose is, let’s say, uninspired. What I’m saying is that he exhibited excellent investigative skills, and people skills, that you wouldn’t have expected.”
“I wouldn’t have expected any people skills,” Abby answered honestly. Perhaps this is the place to note we try to be as clear-eyed and objective about our children, and particularly Ethan, as we can be.
“I don’t know if it’s all the social skills training,” I said, trying to match some of the four million athletic socks in all sizes that had taken over my sleeping area, “but he assessed the situation, asked the important questions, and got answers I might not have gotten. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a cute twelve-year-old boy . . .
“A gorgeous twelve-year-old boy,” my wife corrected. Okay, so we’re mostly clear-eyed and objective.
“. . . but Karen Huston really took him seriously. And I really don’t think Justin Fowler cared if Ethan was gorgeous or not.”
Aha! Two socks with the same stripes! But they were different sizes. Curse you, Hanes Hosiery!
“You think maybe we could start buying distinctive socks for each family member, so I can tell the difference between my socks and Ethan’s?” I asked.
“What difference does it make?” Abby said. “They’re all clean. Divide them up equally and take half.”
I chose not to comment on such a revolting suggestion, and went on. “Anyway, I was impressed, and I told him so,” I said.
“I’m still not comfortable with you involving Ethan in this story,” Abby said, successfully pairing up three matching pairs without even breathing hard. “You’ve already been abducted once. And there were those three men. Thank goodness they haven’t come back.”
If I didn’t correct her, I would have been party to a direct lie, and I can’t do that to Abby with any real conviction—or hope of keeping all my body parts intact. “There’s something I haven’t told you . . . I began.
Immediately, she turned from the Spider-Man t-shirt she was folding, her eyes narrowing. “What?” she asked. So I told her about the subsequent sighting of the Three Unwise Men, and the conversation I’d had with Big.
“What is it we’re supposed to need protection from?” she asked when I was finished, her voice barely under control.
“I have no idea,” I told her honestly. “They wouldn’t tell me. Personally, I think it’s just Shapiro’s way of keeping an eye on me. I can’t think of anyone else who might be coming after me.”
She gave me an Abby stare. “You should have told me.”
“I did tell you. I just waited a day until I did.”
“Nice tap dancing.”
“And they say we Jewish men have no rhythm,” I told her. She made a face at me.
We’d finally completed the folding, and had organized the laundry into four piles, one for each family member. I had drawn the line at doing Howard’s laundry, although the suggestion had been made implicitly.
I took my pile, which consisted mostly of socks and underwear, and stored it in the three-drawer bachelor’s chest on my side of the bed. Abigail stashed her considerably more eclectic stack in the Ikea armoire I’d assembled for her. Storage space in Midland Heights is a commodity just a hair less precious than a 1951 Mickey Mantle rookie baseball card.
The children’s clothing piles were taken off our bed and placed on the floor, to be distributed in the morning. With that done, we were finally ready to actually climb into bed, which we did.
“I don’t like it when you keep things from me that could be dangerous,” Abby said as she turned off the light over her head.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” I said. “I have no idea what the danger is. What should I have told you—’watch out for . . . something?’ I’d sound like the guy in charge of Homeland Security: ‘The threat level today is magenta. Dress accordingly.’”
“Just promise me you’ll let me know when to wear the Kevlar vest to work, okay?” Abby likes to stay fashion conscious.
“It’ll look sexy on you, no matter what,” I told her.
There was a long silence while my wife didn’t laugh.
“Okay,” I said. “I promise.”
She reached out a hand and touched my arm, which on a slow night can be enough for me. Suddenly, Abby was kissing me and holding me close. “Come here,” she said.
I did, but not without the obligatory mock horror. “But dear,” I said, “company’s in the house.”
“Screw ‘em,” she said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I’ve had a better offer.”
Chapter Ten
Sitting in a cold car on Easton Avenue in New Brunswick, I couldn’t remember why I had agreed to the Very Famous Plan in the first place. The idea of turning the car off, so as to draw less attention, was Mahoney’s, and the fact that his van was allowed to run its heater the whole time I was freezing various useful parts of my anatomy off was not warming my heart, or for that matter, my right hand, either.
“Be a man,” Mahoney taunted me from his cell phone. “Live with a little adversity.”
“Easy for you to say,” I reminded him. “You’re in the warm glow of a large, heated vehicle. I’m living like a homeless man, but without seventeen layers of clothing.”
The target vehicle, which Mahoney had finished repairing ten minutes ago, was a late model Chevrolet Cavalier, the very definition of Generic Car. It had suffered an electrical problem that disabled not only its ignition, but also its power windows, which had left the driver with his window down while waiting for the rental crew to pick him up before the repair. At this moment, I could sympathize.
“You’ve had it far too easy for far too long,” Mahoney continued. “You never even commute out of your house.
”
I was looking at Thomas Sweets, the ice cream parlor on Easton that under normal circumstances would be, for me, an absolute haven. “Mr. Sweets,” as it’s known at my house, makes the best chocolate chip cookie ice cream in the universe. A shame you couldn’t put it on a Sonny Amster bagel, but there are limits. Anyway, at that moment, the thought of ice cream was just making me colder.
“For someone who never leaves the house,” I told him, “I’ve been following you around in a decrepit minivan an awful lot lately.”
“Welcome to the real world, pal,” he said.
“If this is the real world, can I go back to the Matrix? I think I took the wrong pill.”
This hilarity threatened to go unchecked until a late model Honda Civic approached the Chevy, and the single occupant got out to open the hood.
“He’s here,” I told Mahoney as quickly as I could.
“On my way,” he said.
Grateful to the intruder, I started the minivan, flooding its interior with, um, slightly less frigid air (I had been meaning to get Mahoney to take a look at the heater). In a flash, I had taken another sip of my recently hot chocolate and watched intently. My part in the Very Famous Plan at this point was to sit tight and watch. Which had also been my part up until now, so I was getting good at it.
Within seconds, Mahoney pulled the van, which he had parked around the corner, back onto Easton. The street, a main drag near the Rutgers College campus, was crowded at eleven in the morning, but he quickly managed to get close to the rental car and cut off the tormentor’s chance of escape. That was Mahoney’s role in the Very Famous Plan.
But before he could get out of the van and confront the saboteur, the Mole took option B, which we had outlined during the Very Famous Planning.
He looked, saw Mahoney, and decided to abandon the car. In other words, he just ran away.
Mahoney gave me a nod and put the van into gear. He followed the Mole around the corner onto Somerset Street, going north toward College Avenue. My role now was to pull out of the parking space I had near the Rutgers garage, past Noodle Gourmet, and block the saboteur’s car so he couldn’t double back.
As Dog Is My Witness Page 16