He lay back on the lawn, his chest heaving, scalding rivulets of sweat running down far too many parts of his body. The Rainbow Arms looked sad, tired, and decrepit. Why did he live here? Why had he chosen to live here?
But the answers to those questions were unrelated to what had been occurring lately. Detective Ormsby had already asked them, and they had been answered, honestly.
And suddenly, David knew that his time here at the Rainbow Arms was nearing its end. He had had enough of his tiny apartment and its spartan furnishings. He was done with ignoring the deterioration stalking steadily northwards from Easton Avenue. He loved the courtyard, as well as his occasional chats with Bill, Janice and Clair, but it was time to move on, it was time to move out. He had taught himself to live simply and to live well. Lesson earned, lesson learned. But right now, as of this moment, the absolute last thing he wanted to do was to spend another hour, let alone another night, in this antiquated, rundown excuse for a home, no matter how much he had thrilled to discover himself able to thrive here.
The geranium bushes appeared weakly. The grass felt insubstantial beneath his hands. The Rainbow Arms itself looked shabby and battered, weather-beaten by the callousness of both time and circumstance. Its best years lay long in the past, and David could see this clearly now as he stared up at it in the stark, noonday sun.
His breathing had slowed, but it would be a while before it returned to normal. He smelled, but there wasn’t much he could do to fix that just now. He rose, brushed off his hands and pants, and did what he could to straighten himself up.
And then David strode up the walkway to the lobby, and directly past his apartment door to the passageway that led to the courtyard. Johnson let out a couple yelps from inside 1F, but obviously wasn’t aware that it was his master’s footsteps he was hearing out there.
David stepped through the gate into the courtyard, unlatched the inner gate, and then knocked briskly on the front door of Bill’s cottage.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Bill opened the door himself. “Hey,” he said. He wasn’t exactly disheveled, but he wasn’t exactly put together, either.
David eyeballed his friend, wondering if he’d gotten everything all wrong. Bill looked old, confused, and as if he’d spent the entire morning sleeping one off.
In, out, in, out went David’s breathing, far faster than he would have liked. “Did you do it?” he asked, his tone harsh, his articulation crisp and even.
“Do what?” Bill goggled at him, clearly unaware of where David’s thoughts had been traveling.
“Did you kill him? Did you kill Heck?”
Bill’s face froze. He took an automatic step backwards, and unwittingly kicked over one of his spindly side tables. “Wha… Wha – ” He didn’t even glance behind him as the table, along with its contents, crashed to the floor.
David advanced to the threshold. “Was it you?” he challenged roughly. “Tell me! Did you murder him, like you murdered Jim Frisk all those years ago?”
Bill’s hands had started to shake, and his countenance blanched. He grabbed hold of the back of a chair, and took one more reverse step. “I… How did you…”
A searing pain thrust through David’s head, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he yanked his head to the side. It worsened for a few agonizing seconds, and then eased, gradually lessening to become a dull, throbbing ache.
He tentatively opened his eyes to see Bill moving toward him, concerned. “Hey, you okay, man?”
David tried to wave him off, but found himself falling uncontrollably forward. He grabbed for the doorframe, but it was Bill’s hands that caught him instead. Seconds later, Bill had his arm around David’s waist, and he was carrying him to his usual chair.
“Siddown. Don’t try ’n move. I’m gettin’ you some water.”
The water was cool and delicious. David slurped it all down, never so grateful for the simple pleasure.
Bill refilled his glass, and then sat down across from him. David’s color was better, but hadn’t quite returned to normal. His breathing was still ragged, and he inhaled some more liquid before trusting himself to speak again.
“I… uh…” Bill looked away, toward one of the windows. And then he exhaled heavily, nodded to himself, and met David’s gaze again. “I did. I did it. I did both of ’em.” He drew in a long, quavering breath, and then swallowed, the sound grotesque and magnified in the dim, quiet room. “I ain’t proud of it. But yuh, it was me. That what ya wanted to hear me say?”
David bit his lip. It was not what he had wanted to hear come out of Bill’s mouth, not in the least. “Why?” he choked out.
Bill closed his own eyes for a second. “Because,” he answered, and his voice was edged with toughness. “Because they deserved it, that’s why.”
“How can you…” But David couldn’t finish the question. He shook his head, stymied by both his physical discomfort, and the unwillingness to face the fact that Bill Lopes, his friend and drinking buddy, was a double murderer.
“Heck was a louse,” stated Bill. “I hated that no-good piece of shit from the first time I laid eyes on him.”
David could see the anger rippling through Bill’s thoughts, spreading its power through his physical being as well.
“I didn’t know he was hittin’ her, but I shoulda,” he went on. “She couldn’t hide it no more that one day, but I’d figgered it out by then. I could just tell, the way he always swaggered in and treated her like a trash can or a mop. That’s why I busted on him a few months ago. The door wasn’t closed all the way, and I heard her cry out. So I just went right on in and broke it up.”
David’s eyebrows had risen to the sky.
“She didn’t tell ya, huh?”
But his expression had answered for him. David eked out a “No,” but Bill was already speaking again.
“He’d been grippin’ her arms so tight they was turnin’ purple. Holdin’ her with her face down on the kitchen counter. ‘Why not? Why not?’ he kept yellin’ at her over and over again. Well, I showed ’im why not. I kicked his legs out from under ’im, and got ’im right down on the floor ’imself, my knees stuck up in his back. ‘Don’t you ever hit her again!’ I told ’im. And I told ’im again and again, givin’ his stupid-ass head a good knock on the floor each time so he’d learn the message good.”
David was almost petrified, imagining the hulking, furious Bill Lopes beating the crap out of Heck Vance while a terrified Janice Templeton looked on.
“And don’t think I’m stupid,” added Bill. “I told ’im that it would stay between us, what I did to ’im. No police, no nobody. I wasn’t gonna rat on Heck, but I also didn’t want ’im gettin’ some of his asshole buddies together and comin’ after me for shamin’ ’im.” One of Bill’s hands flew into the air to wave the idea away. “Course, I also told ’im not to lay another hand on Janice, ’n you and me both know he didn’t keep that promise. Man like him, he couldn’t. No way.”
David understood. The Heck Vances of this world never could learn a useful lesson, no matter how well it had been taught.
“That day, he waltzed on by ’bout eleven thirty, jus’ like I said. I was out front, mowin’ the lawn. Janice, she’d been botherin’ me to get at this leak under her kitchen sink for a while, but I’d been puttin’ it off. So a bit later, as I was headin’ back on in here, I hear him yell after me: ‘Hey! Fix-it man. Ya wanna get in here and fix this Goddamn sink?’ I turn to look at him, and there he is, just standin’ there glarin’ at me from her door like he was gonna come beat on me if I didn’t jump to do his business. But I kept my cool and said sure, I’d be back in a couple minutes or so.”
Bill had begun to grip the arm of his chair. His eyes were focused, his voice was taut. “I got my toolbox out, just pissed as hell. I ain’t no servant, and if I was gonna be anybody’s servant, I sure as hell wasn’t gonna be his! But on my way past the fountain, I had an idea. I’d drained it before I did the mowin’, cuz it’s easier to clean up when
it’s empty ’n dry, and one of them stone pieces that hides the pump motor was sittin’ on the ground, right in my way. I hoisted it, and slipped it into my toolbox.”
David was rapt, knowing full well where this was headed. Bill wasn’t speaking to him anymore; he was telling his tale to the room, or to himself. He didn’t need David as an audience to continue.
“So I go on in to Janice’s apartment, no way was I gonna knock politely on the door. And there’s Heck, waitin’ for me in the kitchen with his arms crossed and this shit-eatin’ grin on his puss. I woulda belted him right there, but kept it steady. ‘Where’s the leak?’ I asked him. ‘Under the sink,’ he said. ‘What are ya, stupid?’ So I get down on my knees and look, but pretend I can’t see none of the water that sure ’nuff is drippin’ ever’where in there. I stand back up and say, ‘Show me.’ And he gets all pissed off, ’n starts insultin’ me again. But he’s gotta prove his point, so down he goes. And by the time he’s halfway up, still calling me a stupid, blind old man, I’d laid into him with the stone I’d picked up.” Bill displayed what was almost a smile. “One smack probably took care of the job, but I gave ’im a few more, just to be sure.”
And David could easily imagine Bill giving that chore his all, ensuring that at least this boyfriend of Janice’s would never hit her again.
“It’s been harder than the other time,” Bill said, his voice lower and pensive. “Maybe it’s age. Or maybe I just ain’t as sure of myself as I was then.”
David didn’t know if he should respond. He certainly didn’t want to. But Bill was once again looking at him, seeking, perhaps, some sort of reaction, condemning or not. “Did the other guys get blamed?” he asked hesitantly. “For Jim Frisk? Had they been there at all?”
A chuckle escaped as Bill leaned toward him. “Oh, they’d been there, all right. They’d done a good number on old Jim. I found him lying there, I wasn’t gonna let that opportunity go to waste. I finished ’im, went a quarter mile out back to bury the cookin’ pot I did it with, and then ran back home and called the police.”
“Like you had Janice do when she came home in the middle of the night.”
“Yuh. I was actually hopin’ she’d be comin’ back the next day, but it worked out. Just ever’one lost a night’s sleep, and we got that Ormsky all up in our faces.”
David found himself unable to withhold his own chuckle. “Did they arrest or catch the guys who’d come after Jim Frisk?”
Bill shook his head. “Nope. Same deal, they skipped town. My Mum, she had her suspicions ’bout me, ’cause she knew how I could never stand ’im. But I was eighteen, and ready to get outta the nest anyways. I left a few weeks later. Saw her a few times more before she died, but she never asked. Probably shoulda told her, she at least woulda known I cared.”
Another soft chuckle emerged from David. It was almost funny, sitting here and listening as Bill described how he’d offed two men, some forty-odd years apart. He had come to the cottage angry, worked up and furious for having been lied to and duped, and yet now he was closing in on calm, his still-heightened breathing aside. All he needed was a cold can of Miller Genuine Draft in his hand, and it could have been any evening of the week, with a game about to come on, and Bill and he shooting the shit.
“What did you do with the stone?” David asked aloud. The ache in his head was dissipating, slowly, slowly lifting away.
“Stone?” Bill seemed bewildered.
“From the fountain. The one you used to…”
“Oh. That.” He almost looked embarrassed. “I cleaned it. That afternoon, when I worked on the fountain. I had hosed it down some right after, but then got to worryin’ that some of the stuff had dripped off as I headed back here. It was when I was checkin’ the common area that those two thugs showed up ’n began bangin’ on the door, hollerin’ for Heck to come out.”
“So it’s in the fountain now. Where it’s been all along.”
“Yuh. Nice and tidy, clean as a whistle.”
David was pleased for some reason that Bill had stated this without a hint of pride in his actions.
“Bill,” he said quietly.
“Yeah?” Bill had reclined in his chair, but now sat up again. He didn’t look anxious so much as resigned.
“What about Clair?”
The bewilderment surfaced again. Clearly, it wasn’t a question he’d anticipated. “What about ’er?”
But after he’d spoken, David caught just a shadow of the guarded wariness that Bill had demonstrated with Ormsby. “Did she… have anything to do with this?” he asked.
Bill’s hand shot up again. He looked angry as he practically threw himself backwards. “They gave notice. Standard thirty days. Gotta start showin’ the place again. You know anyone lookin’, send ’em my way.”
But David smelled the diversion, and it stank. “What did she say to you?”
Bill snorted. “That woman? That they’d be out by the end of the day. Broke the lease, but the owners’ll nick the deposit.”
“No. Bill. What did Clair say to you?” But David felt ill once more. The possibility of never seeing Clair again was worse than disturbing, for as much as he didn’t know who or what she was, he felt an overwhelming desire to understand her, to understand how such strange profundities could keep emerging from the mouth of a little girl.
Bill’s eyes had been plying the ratty woodwork above one of the windows, but they gradually lowered to meet David’s gaze. “How’d ya know?” he asked gruffly.
“I just did. What did she say?”
But Bill didn’t want to tell. He studied the television, the curtains, the floor, the piles of magazines that looked as though they hadn’t been riffled through in decades, an unopened can of Miller Genuine Draft that had somehow escaped him before.
And then, yet again, he looked at David. “Fine,” he said. “It don’t make no sense, no how.” His fingers, though, were working over the arm of his chair once more. “Ya know how I saw ’er take your hand the other day?” he asked.
David nodded.
“Well, she did that to me, too. A week ago. It’s why I… why I was so curious about what she said to you.”
“Oh. That makes sense.” And it did. Bill had actually been pushy – for Bill – that day, but David got it. He’d felt the same determined need to know what Clair had said to Bill!
“I was comin’ toward the courtyard after gettin’ the mail, and she was comin’ out. Or so it looked – I never heard the gate shut. I stepped back so she could pass, but the next thing I know, she’d taken ahold of me like she did you.” He lifted his hand and stared at it. “Her fingers – they were hot, like they’d been in an oven or somethin’. It was like a power that flowed through her, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t let go, even though it just seemed wrong, me standin’ there holdin’ this girl’s hand in full sight of anyone that came by.” Bill’s arm sank to his chair again. “And then she said it. ‘If you do it again, the same thing’ll happen.’ It was screwy. And when I asked what the hell she meant by it, that was when she smiled. ‘You’ll know, Bill. You’ll know when,’ she said. ‘Everything’ll be okay, just like before.’ And then she let go of me, and ran on upstairs to ’er apartment.”
David was riveted. Clair had arranged everything! She had done nothing wrong, she’d taken no physical part in anything, but her prints were all over everything that had occurred at the Rainbow Arms the previous Wednesday. Once again, he felt both awe and fear regarding the first grader from Apartment 2B. Once again, the stilted phrases that she had spoken to him while holding his own hand began to roam his thoughts.
Four things that you love, you will lose.
And if that wasn’t a completely screwy statement, he didn’t know what was.
But one of them could be yours again. And I hope for that, David, I do.
Combine all of that with her pronouncement that he would know himself, and David could probably book a psychiatrist for the next ten years just to explore the endles
s possibilities to which her utterances could lead.
Bill gently cleared his throat. David returned to the cottage.
“So…” began Bill, and then he looked down at the floor again. “I guess… I should ask…”
“It’s not going anywhere, Bill,” David stated simply. He had spoken quietly not only because he didn’t want his headache to rebound, but also because it was a subject best addressed discreetly. “That’s a promise.”
Bill swallowed once more, and almost looked as if he were going to cry. “And I promise you, David. I’ll never do anything like that again. Ever. Never.”
As a tear actually stole its way onto Bill’s grizzled face, David couldn’t help a gibe. “Better not,” he replied. “If you continue your pattern, you’ll be well over a hundred the next time. I’d be seventy-something, but I’d still have to turn you over to Detective Ormsby.”
A wet guffaw shook Bill’s entire body. “He’s actually next on my list,” he said before stifling what could have been either a cough or a laugh.
“Not if I get there first,” was David’s response. “And on my list, he’s number one through ten right now.”
Bill closed his eyes as the tears flooded in, running in streams down his cheeks, spilling in great drops onto his pants.
“I’m going to go now, Bill,” David said. He stood, and cautiously made his way toward his friend, grateful to find the dizziness gone, his control over his body restored. He placed a hand on Bill’s quivering shoulder. “I’m not going to say you did the right thing. But I also don’t believe you did the wrong thing. Either time.” He gave his shoulder a firm squeeze. “I’ll see ya. Later this week. Beers are on me.”
And then he turned toward the door of the cottage without looking back. And he let himself out.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
David stood for a few minutes in front of Bill’s door, unwilling to return just yet to the claustrophobic confines of his apartment. Johnson would no doubt be more than eager to go out, but the idea of meandering the avenues of Shady Grove while he mulled over all that he had just learned was about as appealing as revisiting his college years, knowing all that he knew as an adult.
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