“Sorry to bother you,” I say. I take a step down the porch, then turn back before they’ve closed the door.
“I’m a policeman,” I say. “Do you have food?”
They nod.
“How much?”
“A lot,” says the woman.
“Enough,” says the man.
“Okay,” I say. Our bones are rattled by a reverberant boom from the southwest, the area of Little Pond Road and the reservoir.
“Do me a favor, folks: Don’t answer your door anymore.”
They nod, wide eyed. “You mean, tonight?”
“Just don’t answer your door anymore.”
The wind is picking up, summer breezes transforming into a panicky wind, sending leaves skittering down the street and banging garbage cans together and fanning the flames jumping up off the roof of the prison.
Houdini bounds down the porch ahead of me and we go to the other torch-lit house, number nine Delaney Street. As we cross the lawn, Houdini barks at the ground and some nocturnal creature leaps away from him, rustling a row of bushes. Even in the darkness the heat is unrelenting. My arm sweats in the sling. It’s a rickety wooden porch, cluttered with old junk. The door is unpainted and there’s a big New England Patriots beach towel strung across the front windows. This is right—it seems right—like just the sort of house where a quasi-employed twenty-year-old jack-of-all-trades would be crashing with assorted friends and acquaintances. I take the steps, two at a time, my heart beating fast for Martha.
Cortez was hit on the head this morning, he said, three hours before I got there. I got there at around 11:30. That means Martha was taken twelve hours ago. I bang on the door and call out “Jeremy—” the story alive and clear in my head.
Jeremy loved Martha. Martha loved her husband.
But canny young Jeremy had seen into the husband’s secret heart, and he knew that what Brett wanted was to leave. He knew from long talks over grocery runs and late nights at the pizza joint that Brett’s heart was straining at the leash: Here was a strange and high-minded man who wanted to use the last months to do some furious good in the world—who felt sure, in fact, that God was calling him to do so. But he was trapped by another kind of goodness, bound by his marriage vows.
And so Jeremy’s plan, the forged diary page, the deceit, like something out of Shakespeare, something from the opera: exile the man by guile, take the woman by force.
“Jeremy?” I call again, rattle the handle.
Fresh gunfire rends the air like distant thunder, and I hear indiscriminate screaming and then, by some trick of the wind, snatches from a desperate conversation—“no, come on—no…” “shut up, you shut your mouth”—from some other crisis, some other corner of the city.
No one answers the door. The wind is rifling my hair, raising hackles on my neck. Time to get in there.
“Stay,” I tell the dog. “Stand guard.” He looks up at me, his head at a tilt, his teeth bared. “Anybody comes up the steps, bark. Anybody comes out but me, attack. Okay?”
Houdini settles on his haunches at the top of the stairs, silent and purposeful. I haul back and kick, hard, with my right foot. The thin wood splinters; my body explodes in pain. The tissue shrieks in my sewn-up arm. I scream and double over and scream again, hold my head down until the pain concludes its route along the lines of my leg into the arm and back down to the ground. Houdini stands there, eyes wide with sympathy and wonder, but keeping in position as I have instructed.
“Good boy,” I mutter, breathing in and out, in and out. “Good boy.”
When I can move I go inside, into a dark and cluttered living room, one flickering torch burning down in a vase. A suitcase is propped against the back wall, half open, a few T-shirts spilling out like clustered snakes. An unplugged refrigerator lies on its side in the front room like a beached whale; someone has spray painted DOES NOT WORK across the top of it.
“Martha?” I call, and again, shouting, stepping carefully forward, no gun, hands raised before me. “Martha?
To the right is an arched doorway leading to a kitchen, to the left a long hallway. I head to the hallway and trip on something—a pair of sneakers, tongues lolling out obscenely, no laces. Once, I bet, this house was littered with pizza boxes, beer cans; once the TV was always on, someone was always on the sofa getting high, people were stumbling into and out of the bathroom getting dressed for smalltime retail gigs. It’s dark now; now all these young men are gone, wandering around the world. I imagine them, one gone home to be with mom and dad, one coupled off in an asteroid marriage, one to New Orleans, off and running.
And one still here. One a kidnapper, a murderer.
I hear him just at the moment I see him, slumped on a landing at the top of the stairs, moaning.
“Hey,” he says dimly, his voice thick. “Someone there?”
Jeremy Canliss is collapsed with his back against the bannister, hovering above me on the stair landing, the outline of a man against the darkness like a ghost caught halfway to heaven. The little ponytail is undone, and his hair is greasy and lank, framing the small scared face. His eyes are twitching and sorrowful, his cheeks red and flushed, like he’s nothing but a kid with a crush, a kid with a crush on Martha Milano.
A long-barreled rifle with a mounted scope, the gun he used to shoot Brett Cavatone, lies next to him on the floor, the barrel facing the wall, the handle jammed awkwardly under his left buttock.
“It’s Detective Palace, Jeremy.” I say it strong, barreling my voice up the stairs. It feels good, just the action of raising my voice, dipping into that powerful tough-policeman register. “Stay right where you are.”
“You’re like a monster, dude,” he says, light amusement coloring his strained voice. “From a monster movie. The man who would not fucking quit.”
“I need you to stand up, please, and put your hands in the air.”
He laughs and mutters, “Cool, man,” but stays where he is, his head rolling a little on his neck. It’s like he’s the last man at the frat party, abandoned by his brothers to sleep it off on the landing, maybe tumble down the steps.
I have no authority. I have no gun. I take a step up, toward the killer.
“Where’s Martha, Jeremy?”
“I do not know.”
“Where is she?”
“I wish I knew.”
I take another step.
“Who’s N.?”
“Nobody,” he whispers, laughs. “It stands for ‘nobody.’ Funny, right?”
I’m not laughing. I take another step, getting closer. He’s still not moving.
“Why did you do it?” he asks me, petulant, childish.
“Why did I do what, Jeremy?”
“Go and get him. I told you not to do that. I told you.” He looks at me with genuine bafflement, puzzled and sorrowful. “I just wanted my chance, you know? I just wanted a chance with her. I just needed her to be alone, so I could talk to her, so I could make her understand.”
All this I already know. After he created his forgery, tore out a page from Martha’s hot-pink cinnamon-scented diary and crafted the incriminating passage, he “discovered” it and passed it on to Brett.
Jeez, man, I don’t know how to tell you this… this was just, like, lying open… in your house… I’m sorry… I’m really sorry.
Any husband would have been skeptical, would have confronted his wife, demanded an explanation, hoped for a misunderstanding. Except for Brett: the husband who wanted to go, who wanted his marriage to be over, for the contract to be abrogated so he could go off and do God’s work in the woods.
“He didn’t even love her,” Jeremy says, shaking his head, looking up at the ceiling. “You know? He didn’t even love her. I love her.”
“Where is she?” I ask him again, and he doesn’t answer.
Another step and now I’m halfway up the flight of steps, almost within lunging distance of that damn rifle. I picture the physical motions—one last quick leap upward, push the suspect
to the left with the force of my body, grab the rifle from under his body with my right hand. I don’t have a right hand.
“Where is she, Jeremy?”
“I told you. I told you I don’t know.”
“That’s not true.”
I’m trying to keep my voice even, be calm, be cool, let him know that he can trust me, but inside I am exploding with anger at this foolish child and his stupid useless violent love. A year and a half ago all of this would have been a postadolescent crush, a daydream about a buddy’s wife. But in Maia’s shadow it’s blossomed like nightshade, become a crazed obsession, a murderous plot.
He licks his lips, brings a hand up and rubs his face. I’m starting to get the very strong impression that the kid is high as a satellite, that he’s drifting somewhere out of radio’s reach.
“Martha?” I shout, loud, and get no reaction—not from Jeremy and not from some distant corner of the house, not from any closet or crawl space. “Martha, it’s Henry. I need you to yell if you can hear me.”
“Shut up,” Jeremy says sharply, suddenly, anger clouding his voice. He shifts on the steps and grabs the butt of the rifle. The scruff of a beard, the sad little-boy face. “She’s not here. I wish she was here, but she’s not.”
He says the words so quiet and soft, I wish she was here, but she’s not, and I get very cold, like my insides are an underwater cavern suddenly flooded with frozen sea.
“Is she dead now? Did you kill her, Jeremy?”
“No. I just wanted to talk to her.”
“You went to get her. This morning?”
“Yes.” He nods, mouth slack and open.
“What happened, Jeremy?”
“Nothing. She was gone.” He looks at me, helpless, confused. “There was some man there, I saw him—”
“Cortez. You attacked him. On the porch.”
“No… no, he was inside. Martha was gone. I didn’t understand. I left.”
“That’s not true, Jeremy.” I shake my head, speak gently, coaxing. “What did you do to her?”
“I told you, she wasn’t there.” He twitches and yelps, rising quickly, improbably, to his feet. “I told you. I love her.”
He stumbles toward me, the gun raised, and I take a step back on the stairs, putting up my one good hand in front of my face as if I could catch a bullet, like Superman, pluck it from the air and throw it back at him. A year and a half ago, I would have been a detective, interviewing suspects—except not even. I still would have been a patrolman, looping Loudon Road, picking up shoplifters and litterbugs.
“Jeremy—”
“No more,” he says, and I say, “No, please—” and he’s waving the thing in a wide arc as he comes down the steps, now the barrel is aimed at the wall, now at the floor, and then at me, right at my face.
My heart flutters and dives. I don’t want to die—I don’t—even now, I want to keep living.
“Wait, Jeremy,” I say. “Please.”
There’s a bang at the bottom of the stairs, as loud as a firework, and Jeremy’s eyes go wide and I whip around to see what he sees. The wind carried open the splintered door, flung it aside to reveal Houdini on the porch, staring stone-faced into the house, silent and cruel, eyes unwavering and teeth bared, sides flecked with ash and mud. The dog is lit from behind by the roaring furnace of the prison. Jeremy shrieks as the dog glares up at us, yellowed and ferocious and strange, and I leap up the three steps remaining and press my left forearm into Jeremy’s throat to pin him to the wall.
“Where is she?”
“I swear—” He’s struggling to breathe. Staring goggle eyed over my shoulder at the dog. “I swear, I don’t know.”
“Not true.” I tower over the kid. I’m leaning into his throat with the blunt object of my arm, and it’s killing him and I don’t care. “You saw Cortez coming and you smashed him with a shovel.”
He gasps, squeezes out words. “I don’t know who that is.” He struggles, breathes. “I would not hurt her.”
I stare at his terror-stricken eyes and try to think. She waved me away, Cortez had said, she treated him like a Jehovah’s Witness. Why did she do that, dismiss her protector? And she had a suitcase, he said, she was waiting for someone. Not Jeremy, surely—but who? I’m thinking about the timing of this—what day was Brett shot and when did Jeremy get back from shooting him and what time this morning did Martha tell Cortez to leave her be? The world is spinning, days and events spilling over one another like loose marbles in a bag.
“I’ll die,” Jeremy gasps, and I recover myself and I let him loose.
“No, you won’t.”
“You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m already dead.”
I can see it now, in his eyes, the welling sickness, the pupils tightening. Dammit.
“Come on,” I say, crouching, pulling on his left arm with my left arm. “Let’s get to the bathroom.”
He waves me off, slumps back against the bannister.
I roll him down the stairs, drag him to the bathroom, watching the black bruise take shape across his Adam’s apple where I attacked him. I don’t know when he took the pills, I don’t know how long he was sitting there before I showed up. If I can get him to the john I can bend him over the toilet, get those pills up. Clear whatever it is from his system. I can do that. His body can’t have metabolized much of the poison, not yet, it’s too soon.
“Jeremy?”
Laboriously I settle him on his knees in front of the toilet and he wobbles, body rolling forward and back. I clap my hands in front of his face. His head lists on his neck and his torso slides forward.
“Jeremy!” I throw the taps so I can splash cold water on his face, and of course nothing comes out. The flesh of his body is getting strangely warm, like he might begin to melt like a wax candle, turn from solid to liquid and drip away from my grasp.
I try one more time: “Where’s Martha, Jeremy?”
“You’ll find her,” he says, almost gently, encouragingly, like a coach—and you can really see it, with an overdose, you can watch the light dripping out of someone’s eyes. “I bet you can find anyone.”
* * *
Houdini and I look in every corner of that house. In every corner and under every bed and mattress, in the cheap wood pantry, overrun with roaches and water bugs, in the dark spiderwebbed corners of the basement.
My arm swells and radiates heat and pain. Sweat runs down my forehead and into my eyes. We look and look.
But it’s not that big a house, and I’m not looking for misplaced keys or a wayward pair of glasses. It’s a human being. My terrified friend, bound and trembling, or her body, hollow and staring. But we keep looking. There’s no attic; the second-floor bedrooms are arched and peaked, but I get up on a chair and bang on the plaster of the ceiling to eliminate the possibility of a hidey-hole or secret room where Martha might have been shoved, duct-taped and struggling. The closets, the kitchen, the closets again, tearing everything out, kicking against the beadboard for a false back or hidden chamber.
Houdini yelps and sniffs at the floorboards. I find a claw hammer in a tool chest in the pantry, and I use the claw to pry up the floor in the living room, board by board, my back aching against the strain of it. I ignore the stabs of pain and the waves of nausea, drag up the boards one at a time like peeling open a stubborn fruit, but beneath the floor is insulation and pipes and the view of the basement.
I check it again, the basement, but she’s not there—she’s not here—she’s nowhere.
I keep looking. The noise of the guns and the screaming outside, the windows lit up with the fire across the street, I keep looking, long after even the most diligent investigator would be forced to conclude that Martha Milano is not inside this house.
I look and look and scream her name until I’m hoarse.
* * *
Jeremy’s body I leave in the bathtub. There is no other option that makes sense. I happen to know that the Willard Street Funeral Parlor is home now to a clutch of
doomsday prophets, just as I happen to know that the morgue in the basement of Concord Hospital is abandoned, Dr. Fenton now upstairs doing furious triage along with whoever else is around.
There is nowhere to report this death or deliver this corpse, because suddenly the streets are on fire and ours is a savage land. I lay the man out more neatly in his claw-footed bathtub, push his eyelids shut with my forefingers, and go.
6.
My house is gone.
When at last the dog and I get back to my address on Clinton Street, we find just the bones of a house, just the beams, leaning precariously in the summer darkness among the shadowy silver maples. It was stripped for the metal and the siding and the bricks and then burned; or possibly it burned first, and then the looters came and carried away the remains. Grim drifting heaps of ash and stray pieces of furniture. My hoard of goods, my jars of peanut butter and my gas mask and my jugs of water, these were beneath the floorboards under the sofa in the back end of the living room. The hoard is gone. The floorboards are gone. The sofa is gone. The living room is gone.
Houdini and I wander slowly through the ruins like we’re walking on the moon. The cement foundation is still in place, and I can trace the rough outlines of where the rooms used to be: the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen. Disintegrating plasterboard piles that used to be walls. Houdini noses at the wreckage and comes up with a table leg, clutched in his jaws like a shankbone. I find my copy of Farley and Leonard’s Criminal Investigation, charred, recognizable by the pattern of colors on the cover. Piano keys like teeth. A scattering of old Polaroids: my parents mugging at a holiday party, Dad in a mistletoe cap, Mom’s lips brushing his cheek.
I am aware, in an abstract way, that this is a catastrophe. The countdown has begun, and all the haphazard arrangements—the rummages and the ersatz restaurants and the bartering and the residents associations—all of the vestigial institutions are crumbling into the past, and it’s every man for himself from now on, and here I am with no house, no gun, no possessions of any kind. I’m down one arm. I’m wearing a borrowed shirt and torn suit pants.
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