Skewed

by Anne McAneny

  “He wasn’t tied up in it, Sheriff,” Wexler said.

  “He was it,” I finished.

  CHAPTER 36

  “How were you supposed to know?” Wexler said after my hundredth lament. “The guy’s been fooling a lot of people for a long time.”

  “I’m supposed to have radar for these things. I’m supposed to spot things when they’re off, remember?”

  “Why should you expect more from yourself than everyone else?”

  “Because I’ve been dealing with it since I was born. Since a month before I was born. This guy played me. Played on all my weaknesses and I never even saw it.”

  “You did. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have mentioned him to me. You wouldn’t have gotten those negative vibes. You knew something was wrong, but maybe you wanted to believe that not everything in your life revolved around this Haiku mess.”

  It had been a rough ride home for Wexler, between consoling me and barking out orders to the police force back home, but he held it together like a symphony conductor. With his phone as a tool, he set up BOLOs—Be on the Lookout alerts—arranged a wall-to-wall search of cottage five, convinced Nicholls to interrogate all staff and guests at the Aberdeen, and dispatched two officers to question hospital staff about the day Leroy Fitzsimmons intercepted me in the parking lot.

  In between Wexler’s controlled but energetic directives, I wailed out random things: There wasn’t even a niece! What was with the war photos? Did his feet really turn in like that, or was he wearing prosthetics? How did he get a copy of my brother’s book before me?

  The last question gave Wexler an idea. He called the IT guys to track down all the sales of My Life as a Harried Haiku Twin to see if they could discover where Leroy had purchased the book. Unfortunately for the investigation, but fortunately for candidate Jack Perkins, the book had been preselling well for two months. Over ten thousand copies had been shipped the day it became available.

  Wexler then pulled out a small tape recorder and recited everything he could remember from his visit to cottage five while Leroy was sequestered in the bedroom doing God knows what. Maybe loading a gun to kill the detective who was a little too close for comfort.

  To really top things off, I returned home to find my apartment had been rifled through. Leroy had been here—on foot this time. Anyone else would have disagreed that my apartment had been searched, but anyone else didn’t live here. Everything was off just enough to make the entire scene wrong in my head.

  I checked the front door inside and out. No sign of forced entry. No unusual smudges or marks on the white paint. I marched to the back window, confident that the intruder had left long ago. The window was unlocked and I cursed myself for not being able to remember if I’d locked it after feeding Percival.

  I glanced around. What had Leroy been looking for, anyway? The damn haiku? Didn’t he know that if I had it, I’d have gone to the police long ago? Was he looking for something I hadn’t even thought to look for? Maybe Annelise Abel had been right all those years ago. I was nothing but a naïve hick fresh off the turnip truck. And then I let out a low grumble filled with self-disgust. I’d had thirty years to look for that stupid haiku and I’d never done it. Sure, I hadn’t believed it existed, but that was no excuse.

  My brother appeared at my open door. “Janie, don’t you know any bum could walk in off the street?”

  “Too easy,” I said. “What do you want?”

  “First, I want to thank you for this.” He held up the cover of Crime Time showing a picture of me giving the world the bird.

  “Not bad for an out-of-focus picture through a screen,” I said. Crime Time was a free rag that flew off the shelves in Kingsley because it contained two weeks’ worth of perps every time it came out. Kingsley locals delighted in searching for felons they might know—some sort of bingo for the warped.

  “Somebody took this picture at Dizzy’s crime scene,” Jack said, “and unfortunately, it’s good enough for people to know it’s my sister.”

  “Want me to get it framed so you can hang it across from your desk?”

  He sneered.

  “Don’t worry about it, Baby Bro. You’re about to have much bigger issues hogging the front page.”

  “Like what?”

  While making us tea, I explained about Leroy Fitzsimmons. Jack’s mouth remained slack most of the time.

  “How did I not know about this?” he said.

  “You’re the deputy AG. They bring you in later, not when the manhunt’s just getting started.”

  “I’ve got to get my staffers on this. This is awesome.”

  “Awesome?”

  “The pursuit and capture of this Leroy Fitzsimmons guy will be front-page news every day. Perfect timing. Only two weeks till the election.”

  This version of Jack was so familiar by now that his comments barely fazed me. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you,” I said. “How come you never looked for the haiku?”

  The incredulous look on his face was complemented by a scowl. “What are you talking about?”

  “You and Grady. You were so tight all these years. If there was a third person in the room and Grady believed Mom had found a real haiku, why didn’t he ask you to find it? Or at least ask Grandpa?”

  “Right,” said Jack, his tone mocking. “The guy who shot his pregnant girlfriend was going to call her dad and ask for favors. Come on! Grandpa hated Grady’s guts. And in case you’ve forgotten, it wasn’t until after I moved out of the house that I struck up a relationship with Grady—nineteen years after the shooting—a bit late to start a search for some stupid scrap of paper that was probably in Mom’s pocket or purse.”

  I detested logic when I was steamed up, female, and full of emotions. Jack knew it, so he continued. “Besides, Grandpa wouldn’t have allowed it. It would have lent credence to Grady’s version of events. When Grandpa found out about the first time I visited Grady, he was so pissed he didn’t speak to me for almost a year.”

  “What? When was that?”

  “You were off at school, and then you took that internship in North Carolina for the summer. You probably didn’t notice that the three of us hadn’t been together from one Christmas to the next.”

  I thought back. He was right. I had chalked it up to busy schedules, but there had been serious tension and an endless string of excuses why Jack couldn’t come home for holidays and breaks.

  “Speaking of Grandpa Barton,” he said, “I’m as shaken up as you are about the whole situation, but if Grandpa doesn’t make it, you have any idea where all the old stuff is?”

  Apparently Jack hadn’t yet reached his low in my eyes. I smirked and shook my head at him.

  “I’m just saying, what if?”

  “What stuff are you talking about?” I said.

  “All the furniture and stuff he got rid of when he redecorated for that dog trainer lady he was dating.”

  “Why?”

  “Uh, I can’t exactly have a random storage locker showing up on some crap reality show ten years from now, revealing personal details about our family.”

  “Ironic, coming from a guy who puts out a biography at age twenty-nine and thinks it’s newsworthy every time he farts. Tell me, Jack, do you describe your own ass on those occasions, or does your ghostwriter do it for you?”

  He sighed. “Get away from those cops, Janie. They’re turning you into a pig.” He pressed a button on his phone. “I’ll take care of it.” Into the phone he barked, “Randall, can you troll around the local storage places, find out if they have a contract with Barton Perkins? . . . Yeah, there’s at least eight of them in the area . . . And, Randall? Come down hard if you find the unit, in case the owner gets ideas about cashing in on my name.”

  As nauseating as his last sentence was, I ignored it and grabbed my brother’s arm. “Jack! The stuff!”

  “
Yeah, I’m on it. Did you not hear the conversation?”

  “No. What if the haiku is in storage? If Mom hid it in a couch cushion or under a pillow or something, it might still be there.”

  “We don’t even know if there is a storage unit. Grandpa might’ve sold the furniture or given it to Goodwill. I never even asked. Remember we came home for Christmas that year and everything was different?”

  I did remember, and I recalled the unexpected feeling of relief, as if the burden of living in a shrine to Mom and Grandma had been lifted. Every room had a fresh layout, new floors, and a cheery, bright decor—except for Mom’s bedroom, of course; that had never been touched. Grandpa’s dog-training girlfriend could have bribed him with a trapeze in his bedroom, complete with whips and ropes, and he still wouldn’t have allowed her to change Mom’s room.

  “Let me know if your guy finds the storage unit,” I said. “I’d like to search it.”

  “For God’s sake, Janie, it’d be like looking for a particular grain of sand on the beach. You’re nuts. Let it go. The cops will find this Leroy Fitzsimmons and we can bask in the limelight.”

  “You can bask alone.”

  Jack shook his head. “Do what you want, but I’m moving forward. I can’t wait for Grady to get out.”

  “Jesus. When is that?”

  “Final paperwork needs one last signature, but they’re keeping the details quiet to avoid a bunch of reporters.”

  “This is going to suck.”

  “Are you serious? Look at your life. You’re employed and talented, you’ve got a brother on his way up, you’re considered attractive from what I hear, and you’re famous. Most people strive for that last one their whole lives. You had it handed to you, and you’ve never once used it to your advantage.”

  I spun on him, the frustrations of my day mounting. “You’re so twisted, Jack, it’s like you believe your own spin. You can’t even see what you are because you’re one with this sickness you’ve become.”

  Jack kept his cool. “You know why you don’t like me anymore, Janie? Because every time you want to hide behind your lens and cry, Woe is me, my mommy was killed, my daddy’s a murderer, and people take my picture when I don’t want them to, I’m the perfect counterexample. There’s nothing you can claim you went through that I didn’t experience—and I turned out pretty damn awesome. I’m the living counterpunch to every sucker punch you ever tried to land.”

  I huffed and puffed but couldn’t have blown a single house down, not even one built on excuses and resentment.

  “If you think about it,” Jack continued, “you pulled off a pretty neat trick. By digging into those two photos, you exonerated Grady. Can’t wait to see how you handle that one. It’ll be like one of those films of a building collapsing, the kind they play in slow motion so you can see every splinter of the termite-eaten wood crumbling to the ground.” Jack rubbed his fingers together as if discarding specks of dust. “And nobody really remembers the old building when the shiny new one is built.” He strode to the door, its creaky hinges contrasting perfectly with the well-oiled spring in his step. “See you later. I’ve got a press corps to manipulate.”

  I threw a pillow at the door as he closed it. All it did was give off dust. From down the hall, I heard a distant, haughty bellow. “Love ya, sis!”

  “Love you, too,” I mumbled.

  I hated when he was right.

  CHAPTER 37

  I stayed up late, touching base with Nicholls and Wexler on the massive search for Leroy. They’d wanted to send an officer for my protection, but I felt confident that Leroy wasn’t after me. He knew everything I knew, and if he’d wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. My body could have rotted away in cottage five for months until some ninety-year-old ex-senator got horny and hit up the Aberdeen for a quickie. Besides, Leroy needed me alive. He was after the haiku and figured I had as good a chance of finding it for him as anybody. I wondered how my mom had come across it. Didn’t seem the type of item a killer would leave lying around.

  I grabbed my brother’s book. It had a chapter on the Haiku Killer, complete with photos of the corpses—treated respectfully enough, despite the pesky fact that they’d been murdered—and images of the hand-printed haikus. Looking at everything anew, with Leroy in mind, perhaps I could uncover some fresh detail.

  I already knew Professor Biedermann’s haiku:

  Death greatest of all

  Busy yet barren am I

  Blest be as I deem

  The second line could actually be about Leroy himself. Declaring himself a busy man—an in-demand contract worker—who found life barren, with a father who berated everything he did. According to the 24-7 retrospectives now playing on TV, Leroy had stayed busy through the years. Grew up in Ridge, helped out at the church, rose at dawn to take care of the pigs and chickens, and kept house with his sister. He’d gotten in minor trouble with the law—stealing gas for a friend’s truck, graffiti, and public drunkenness—but nothing to keep him from getting drafted in the final years of conscription. He was sent to Vietnam at the end of 1970, got involved in the troop expansion into Laos, and then captured—details about this remained sparse. He was released from a prisoner of war camp two years later when the peace agreement was signed in Paris. Before his capture, he really had been his regiment’s unofficial photographer, as well as a decent soldier, taught to kill efficiently and without emotion. Was that a natural fit for Leroy, or a mind-altering ordeal?

  In the years following his discharge, either life or the service had taken its toll and Leroy had finally sought help for his demons.

  “Sure, I remember him,” said a bespectacled doctor on TV, whose scattershot hair made Einstein look fashionable. “I wanted him on antipsychotics. He thought everyone was after him, from the grocery cashier to the paperboy. He didn’t act on his paranoia, but that can change, as I predicted it would. No friends to speak of, unless you counted his sister. And the conspiracy theories in his head, I mean, it’s no surprise to me it all caught up with him.”

  I wanted to kick the television. Not only was this quack revealing confidential information, but he seemed the type that would stick an old lady on antipsychotics to monitor changes in her knitting habits.

  “I honestly don’t remember him,” said another psychiatrist, calmly confident, distant, and cold, “but according to the file, we thought we were dealing with PTSD, or stress response syndrome, as we called it then. He had residual family issues and showed classic signs of depression, anxiety, and mild increased emotional arousal, where the patient is always on guard. We put him on antidepressants and low-dose anti-anxiety meds.”

  Back to the eager Einstein-haired doc: “I wanted to blue-paper him, but no, the big shots didn’t think he was a threat to himself or others. Of course, as I became a big shot myself, I got more patients committed than any other doctor in the history of that hospital”—he leaned into the camera—“and I’m feeling rather vindicated today. What say the naysayers now, as they hunker down, trying to avoid the Haiku Killer?”

  Anyone watching who didn’t want to slap the arrogance right off this guy’s face had to be schizo themselves.

  The program cut to a mousy administrator, her greasy hair highlighted by a chipped bobby pin flattening her cowlick. She chewed gum and couldn’t have conjured one shit about her hospital’s shoddy recordkeeping if a bipolar ex-con with homicidal tendencies had pressed a gun to her head. “I guess they lost track of him. There’s no record of any return visits or follow-ups, so they’d have had no idea if he continued on his prescribed regimen or not. Doesn’t sound like it, though.”

  According to an assortment of people who’d encountered Leroy, he became a drifter, but never a beggar, picking up manual-labor work where he could, renting rooms by the week or month. One reporter dug up people who’d hired him; they all said the same, predictable thing—seemed nice, quiet, did his work,
kept to himself, almost obsessively so—except for one woman who said he freaked her out. Said he muttered to himself all day, his lips moving with no discernible words, and he was always jotting things down in a tiny notebook that he’d protect like gold in his pocket. She fired him after one day because he wouldn’t look her in the eye. Oddly, she looked a lot like my mother might have at fifty.

  I muted the TV, read the bios of the victims in Jack’s book, then glanced back up to see the harsh, taciturn eyes of Leroy’s father staring at me through an old photo on my high-def screen. The digital rendering made him look stern and soulless—or was it a realistic depiction of the man who’d raised Leroy? If so, the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree, but it did make the apple more pitiful.

  The pretty news anchor transitioned viewers to teenage photos of Leroy, always in the shadow of his lanky father, like he was just a whisper of a person, so dominated by his surly elder that he seemed less than a beaten dog, expected to perform without an ounce of pride. And if it felt that way to me, how must it have felt to Leroy? No wonder he’d tried to fill his emptiness with others’ blood, others’ lives. Yes, busy yet barren was Leroy.

  My cell phone rang. “Hey, Wexler, you catch him single-handedly?”

  “I wish. I’m outside your apartment. Can I come up?”

  The idea of Wexler in my apartment made me panic. Not only was there something intimate about it, but the guy was a neat-freak. I dusted as often as I cleaned my fridge—and my fridge had three-year-old ketchup spills in it. I buzzed him in, although the building lock was broken half the time.

  He got to the door quickly and seemed distracted. “Hey, Janie, everything okay here?”

  “You could have asked me that over the phone. What’s up?”

  “There was activity at your house.”

  “At Grandpa’s? Was it Leroy?”

  “They think it was neighborhood kids messing around. Found some eggs thrown at the windows, but I felt uneasy about it.”