by Anne McAneny
“Why?”
“She loved trying new things. Told me she was going to be the most well-rounded first lady in the White House.”
“She believed in you.”
“Like no one ever had—and I wasn’t exactly lacking for support. But when Bridget Perkins believed in you, you felt it. She had this radiance; able to entrance people without trying.”
“Like a vampire?”
He grinned. “She was a night person, that’s for sure. She’d work late, then stay up till the wee hours sketching, sculpting, or writing in her journals.”
“Journals? I’ve never seen any journals.”
“She kept them since she was fifteen, I think. Maybe they’re still tucked away somewhere.”
I felt cheated, like he’d confided that a piece of my mother still existed but no one had thought it worth mentioning. All I had were a few old sketches, some school papers, a small collection of her clay sculptures, and my childhood fantasies. If there was a journal somewhere, I’d sure like to see it.
“If my mom had all this ambition, why was she working in a diner?”
“She wouldn’t take money from your grandfather or me. Insisted on putting herself through school, because that’s how the Perkins family had always done it. You know she was studying art, right?”
“Only a few credits to go.”
“The rote book stuff didn’t come easy to her. Her mind was all over the place, like a bullet ricocheting around a steel room.”
“Speaking of bullets, where’d you learn to shoot?”
“Summers with my grandparents in South Carolina. They had a little land and a lot of bullets. Learned to shoot before I was potty trained.”
I laughed at the exaggeration.
“I swear. There’s a picture of me in a diaper, wearing gigantic earmuffs and shooting a twenty-two.”
“You did well yesterday,” I said, avoiding mention of how he didn’t do so well thirty years ago.
Grady sighed. “In prison, a them-or-you mentality takes over. You don’t act, you die. No two ways about it.”
“You were in with some hardened criminals, I guess.”
“Why not? I was a murderer in the public’s eyes.”
His statement hung in the air between us like an unexploded grenade, and then he exploded it.
“I was responsible for the death of a guy inside, about fifteen years ago.”
I glanced at him, desperate to gauge his intent by sharing that bombshell, but his eyes were distant, his fingers covering the corner of his mouth as he decided what to share.
“We didn’t hit it off, to say the least,” he said, “recognizing characteristics in each other that were bound to conflict. I was a leader on the inside; earned it the hard way. It’s the reason I can barely lift my left arm over my head, and you don’t want to know about the scars under this shirt.”
“I saw them yesterday.”
“Anyway, this guy didn’t fit in the hierarchy and my guys picked up on the tension.”
He left it there, turning his attention to a sticky spot on the passenger window.
“Sounds like your guys were hired killers, instructed by you.”
“Not at all. Things happen in prison without direct communication. There’s an undercurrent. You know how women get on the same cycles when they hang around each other?”
My cheeks burned. Had the female prison guards left issues of Cosmo lying around? “Yes.”
“It’s the same with men. Every inmate picks up the same vibrations when their hands are on the bars long enough. Your feet are touching the same concrete when those metal doors slam at night. The reverberations tear through your body like a recurring nightmare. I didn’t issue any orders, but the disharmony between me and this other guy, it was tangible.”
“And the guy with the sharpest shiv picked up on it?”
It came out more accusatory than I’d intended, but not as pointed as the weapon used on Grady’s enemy.
“He bled to death in the shower.”
I couldn’t mask my horror.
“Come on, Janie. I never even knew who did it.”
“But you knew why.”
“It was understood.”
I suddenly saw Grady as a child, a gun shoved in his hand, a toughness preached into his core with a drive instilled by a cold mother. Born with thick coats of veneer, he’d struggled to peel them away to reveal his heart, his compassion. Maybe it was my mother, she of unicycle dreams and deft fingers, who melted his layers enough to allow his heart to beat loudly and to love. And when the time came to don the layers once more, in prison, it was easy for him, like slipping on a familiar coat. I didn’t know. But how else to understand a man who went to prison unjustly for murder, only to become a violent leader inside? Would Grady’s layers melt again? If what I saw in his eyes yesterday was any indication, he still had some work to do.
The mood in the car took its cue from the heavy clouds above as we climbed the mountain toward Sam’s place.
“I won’t tell anyone about your crime scene quirks, Janie. Don’t worry. But doesn’t it put your job and reputation at risk? Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”
“I’m no klepto!”
“Didn’t say you were. But if you’re stealing—”
“I don’t steal. I . . . restructure. It’s my own thing.”
“Okay,” he said, his voice pleasant and light.
I sighed. “Look, I don’t mess with crime scenes. Not enough to matter, anyway. And it’s wrong, absolutely, but taking that tennis ball was a bad mistake, a panicked reaction to a photographer.” I smacked the steering wheel like a petulant teen. “You know what? Rocko’s gang probably figured I had that tennis ball because of that photographer’s picture—and people wouldn’t be taking my picture all the damn time if it weren’t for you, so gimme a break here, okay?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw him grinning, but I refused to look. Was he enjoying a taste of the fatherly role he’d wanted to play for decades? Maybe so, but I wasn’t yet accustomed to playing the daughter.
We entered the area where Sam lived and nausea overtook me as the road wound tighter and the cliffs grew steeper. My tires hugged the center line as Grady directed me to an isolated home at a crisp elevation in the Blue Ridge Mountains. When we got out of the car, I sucked in deep breaths to clear the nausea while he seemed in awe of the view, taking in eyefuls of everything he could.
“I’d forgotten,” he said simply. And I understood.
We walked past two cars in the driveway, an old Pontiac and a compact SUV with a nursing school sticker on the back. “Sam’s been really ill the past few months,” Grady explained. “COPD.”
“Might be why he’s not answering his phone.”
We trudged up the dozen slate steps to the front door. Before we could ring the bell, a small Hispanic woman, about forty, pulled it open and nearly dropped the box in her hand. “Lord have mercy! Didn’t hear you pull up.”
Grady smiled and put out his hand to hold the door for her. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You must be Sam’s nurse, Millie.”
Sam had probably mentioned the name in his letters, and Grady, like any good politician, had tucked it away for future use.
“Yes, sir, I am.” She seemed flustered. “You here to see Mr. Kowalczyk?”
“We are. I’m Grady McLemore and this is Janie Perkins.”
From her full-on blush, I figured she’d mistaken us for the king and queen of England. “Oh, yes, I know. An honor to meet you, sir. And you, ma’am.” She’d added the last three words as a rushed courtesy. “Mr. Kowalczyk worked for you back in the day, didn’t he, Senator?”
“Sure did,” Grady said, showing no hesitation in responding to the Senator label. “Really helped me out.”
“I’m afraid
Mr. Kowalczyk isn’t here.” She looked genuinely distressed, not so much because Sam was absent, but because she didn’t want to disappoint her idol. “I come by twice a week, but he’s not here this morning. I’m a little worried.”
“Does he normally go out?” I asked.
“Not in his condition. Hard for him to stay gone long, but it’s strange because his car is still here. He can’t walk but a quarter mile or so, and that’s on a good day without a mountain for a backyard. I was going to come back in an hour and call the police if he wasn’t back.”
“Would you mind if we looked around?” I said. “See if we can figure something out?”
She seemed hesitant, but when she glanced at Grady, he worked his magic and she stepped aside. “Sure.”
“Thanks, Millie,” Grady said. “By the way, Sam mentioned you several times. Said he appreciates everything you do, and that you even laugh at his Polish jokes.”
“Sometimes they’re actually funny,” she said, her face glowing. Grady really had been born for this crap.
We entered Sam’s home. It was decorated in predictable mountain mode: dark beams, mounted animal heads, Southwest-themed furniture, rustic wall hangings. It smelled stagnant, though, as if Sam rarely let in fresh air, perhaps feeling he only deserved the bottled-up staleness of his own exhalations. It was an immediate, dour impression of a man I’d never met, but it hit me hard. A sudden pang of jealousy washed over me. Even this man, who I instinctively didn’t like, had known my mom as I never had—living, speaking, enchanting, thieving.
I tried to focus on the task at hand—learning what this ex-con could contribute to the current craziness in Caulfield.
The tiny kitchen gave off an air of loneliness. Four of everything, with a single dirty dish on the counter, a congealed, crusty egg yolk covering it. Was it just me, or was the dried yolk flipping me off? The sink was bone dry, as if the faucet hadn’t been turned on for days. Millie’s duties must not have extended to housecleaning.
I wandered to the bedroom. The comforter was freshly fluffed, but the whole ensemble smelled sweaty, and the contents of the coffee mug at the bedside had partially evaporated, a dark ring hovering above the current level of liquid like an ugly halo. “Looks like he hasn’t been here for a while.”
“What was your first clue?” Grady said. “The stale smell or the complete lack of life?”
I glanced at Grady. He’d spoken sarcastically, but he might have hit the mark.
“Think he went on a trip?” Grady asked.
“Without telling his nurse? And without his car?” I wandered to Sam’s desk in the corner of the bedroom to examine the scattered files. “Looks like he was getting ready to give you a final report,” I said. One folder was open, filled with photocopies of canceled checks from a lawyer’s office, drawn from Grady McLemore’s account. “You were generous.”
“You want results, you pay for them,” he said. “I wanted results.”
I picked up a thick green file that contained dozens of manila folders labeled with names, including Mickey Busker, Lucinda Lowry, Doris Murphy—the judgmental customer who’d chatted flowers with my mom—and Abner Abel, along with a bunch of people I didn’t know. I peeked inside Abner Abel’s file first. It included a copy of his birth certificate, an ancient photo of him as a child, church bulletins where he was listed as a deacon, his tax records, and several candid shots taken by someone—probably Sam—who must have followed him.
This Sam guy was good. The photos included Mr. Abel leaving Field Diner two weeks after the shooting, exiting church with his family, shopping at the hardware store, and making a delivery to a butcher at least twenty miles from Caulfield. Next was a clumped collection of photos, taken through a window, of Mr. Abel meeting with other people in the dimly lit basement of an old building, followed by a picture of the building itself—a crumbling warehouse in Kingsley that had recently been converted to condos. What the hell kind of weird cult had Abner Abel belonged to? I swear, if it was some branch of the Psycho-Ticks, I might flip out. I turned the photos over. All were dated twenty years ago or more.
“He had quite the file on Abner Abel,” I said to Grady.
“That’s the name! That’s the guy your mom said might know about us. Nasty piece of work. He and your mom had words that night at the diner.”
Even though I knew the story, I wanted Grady’s version. “What about?”
“I guess he’d seen her in a car with Sam when they were returning from the Aberdeen and didn’t appreciate our . . . I don’t know . . . duplicity. He took off without it coming to anything, but it left your mom shaken up, not that anyone else could tell.”
“How could you tell?”
Grady smiled. “She had systems for everything, from the way she did her laundry to the way she arranged things in her apron pockets.”
I smiled, remembering Jack’s childhood penchant for sorting and labeling his Hot Wheels and plastic dinosaurs.
Grady continued. “She would keep customer orders and bills in one pocket, payment and change in another, tips in a third, and personal items in the fourth. After Mr. Abel threw his crumpled bills on the table and huffed past me, I saw her put that money in the wrong pocket, and that’s when I knew how flustered she was.”
“What a detail to remember.”
“The things I remember about your mother could fill a book.”
“If you write it, I’d like to read it.”
He glanced up and we shared a moment; it felt like my mom was in the room, linking us together. I returned to the files and opened the one on Mickey Busker, the tree-jerking loon. According to Sam’s notes, Mickey had shit for brains, no friends except his right hand, and a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. There was a record of a short jail stint for indecent exposure, and two DUIs, which might explain his two-wheeled mode of transportation between trees. Maybe Sam Kowalczyk wasn’t so bad, given our similar conclusions about Mickey.
The other files covered people from campaign stops—some of them real crackpots, one with a serious gun fetish—and vendors in town that Sam and Grady had worked with, as well as Aberdeen Hotel employees and Field Diner workers.
The last file was empty except for a chintzy key, the type that came with bargain luggage and could be bitten in half by a toothless man. I glanced around for anything lock-worthy, and finally noticed the top right-hand drawer of Sam’s desk. Without weighing the morality of such an action or the chances of Sam walking in and catching me red-handed, I opened the drawer. It was crammed full of boring files: tax receipts, bills owed, bank statements, and dozens of things in life that should come with a pocket CPA. I’d have kept that drawer locked, too, just to keep from looking at it. I almost closed it, but a slight pull beyond its natural extension revealed a cluster of files stuffed behind the regular rack. I yanked them out.
The first was labeled “Family Photos” with a pink tab. It contained a slew of old, faded pictures that Sam’s parents must have passed on to him. The way they stuck together indicated Sam didn’t waste much time reminiscing. The sight of the second file elicited a gasp from my throat, one that failed to draw Grady’s attention. He was on the bed paging through old campaign photo albums.
“Grady,” I croaked, “you need to see this.”
He didn’t respond.
“Grady,” I repeated sternly.
“Yes, sorry,” he said. “There’s a picture here with your mom in the background. Sam took it the day we met.”
The great orator’s voice cracked. If Jack were here, he’d record that crack, practice it, and break it out at the next campaign stop. Grady was barely holding it together, but I knew my news trumped anything he had.
He wiped his face with his hands as he crossed the room, then leaned one hand on the desk and the other on the back of my chair, like Nicholls did when examining crime photos at my desk; the implied ca
maraderie felt good, but made me regret what I had to show him.
“What’ve you got?”
“Sam had this file hidden.” I flipped it open to reveal four photos of Leroy Fitzsimmons. “These photos were taken at Leroy’s house in Ridge, West Virginia, so Sam did know Rusty’s real identity. He knew exactly where Leroy lived and what he was up to.”
“But Sam had files on lots of people,” Grady said. “It doesn’t mean he thought that Leroy Fitzsimmons was the Haiku Killer.”
I closed the file and showed him the label: 5-7-5.
“Five-seven-five,” I said. “That has to be code for the Haiku Killer.”
Grady put on his reading glasses and took hold of the file. “It’s got to be a coincidence. Sam was a loyal friend.”
“Sam needed your money.”
Grady turned the file to get a better look at the tab. He read the tiny date scribbled next to the 5-7-5 title. “If you’re right, Sam’s known for over twenty years that Leroy was the Haiku Killer.”
CHAPTER 42
After recovering from the shock, Grady and I dug deeper into the 5-7-5 file. Despite Grady’s determination to examine everything, catching his most loyal friend in a decades-long act of deceit took its toll.
“Sam was my friend,” he mumbled periodically in meek protest. It was enough to break the coldest of hearts.
The file included photos of young Leroy Fitzsimmons outside his house in Ridge. The bushes in the front yard were small and new and the house hadn’t yet begun its illusion of sinking. The grass was neatly mown as it had been when I was there, and everything looked younger, more hopeful, including Leroy. In one photo, Leroy was bending down to stroke the back of a dark hound who gazed up at him with affection.
Another photo showed Leroy taking a group shot of the church choir beneath a huge walnut tree. Little did he know that Sam Kowalczyk was snapping away in the shadows.