Damage Control

by Robert Dugoni

  “Molly’s fine.”

  Her mother pulled open the refrigerator. “Let me fix you something. How about a glass of lemonade? I have turkey. Or I could defrost some chicken. I think I may have—”

  “—Mom.”

  Her mother paused.

  “I’m not out here by accident. Come sit down.”

  Her mother closed the refrigerator. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She walked cautiously to the round kitchen table; a vase filled with fresh-cut roses from the yard was in the center. She pulled out a chair and sat on the edge of the seat.

  “I have bad news,” Dana said, and she knew from her mother’s expression that she had heard the same echo Dana had heard from five years earlier.

  “You’re not sick; are you? Molly’s not sick.”

  “No, Mom. Molly’s not sick,” she said. “It’s James.” The words caught in Dana’s throat. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “He’s gone. James is gone.”

  Her mother’s brow furrowed. Her eyes watered. “Gone?” she asked, the realization registering as it only could in a mother who had just lost a child. Her body collapsed under the weight of her agony.

  “He’s dead, Mom. James is dead,” Dana said, and she knew she would hear the echo of those words as well for many years.

  9

  THE DOGWOOD SHADED the kitchen a parlor gray as the sun dipped below the top of the foliage. Dana stood at the slate kitchen counter filling a teakettle with water and staring out into the backyard. The patio furniture had rust along the legs of the table and chairs. They would need to be cleaned, the seat cushions removed from storage, the white pop-up tents erected. There would be another gathering at the Hill home on the shores of Lake Washington. An Irish Catholic wake. Break out the liquor.

  The adrenaline that had fueled her through the initial trauma and given her the strength to identify James’s body, to tell her mother, and to call the appropriate relatives and friends had given way to a dull lassitude. Some friends and relatives had already heard the news. They wanted to talk to her about it and ask her questions, but she had no answers for them and no desire to try to explain. Some offered to come to the house. She politely declined. Reporters called. She told them the family had no comment. Then she unplugged the telephone.

  Her mother lay in her bedroom upstairs, behind the closed door at the end of the hall. She had collapsed in the kitchen, toppling from the edge of her chair, and would have crashed to the floor had Dana not caught her. Jack Porter, for years the Hill family doctor, did not hesitate when Dana called him. He came to the house and gave Kathy Hill something to calm her nerves and to lower her blood pressure.

  The hot water from the faucet overflowed the top of the teakettle, stinging Dana’s hand. She turned it off, drained water from the top of the kettle, and turned instinctively to where the stove had once been but where now was a tiled counter. Her mother had remodeled the kitchen after her husband died, along with the three bathrooms. The stove, a restaurant-size range with eight burners and a grill big enough to cook for an army, was now located in a center island below a hood from which hung pots and pans. Dana had never understood why her mother had waited to remodel until she was alone in the house. Now Dana thought she understood perfectly. It was the same reason her mother had persisted in cleaning a self-cleaning oven: She needed things to do.

  Dana put the kettle on the front burner. It ignited with a small pop and brought the faint odor of gas. Blue-yellow fingers lapped at its copper bottom until Dana adjusted the flame. She heard the sound of car tires turning in to the driveway, and stepped to the Dutch door. The blue BMW rolled to a stop next to her Explorer. Grant emerged carrying Molly, who was eating a chocolate ice cream cone, remnants smeared on her face and down the front of her blue dress. Dana looked at her watch; Molly would never eat her dinner. She shook her head. It suddenly seemed so unimportant.

  She opened the door and walked outside. Upon seeing her, Molly ran forward, smiling brightly, the chocolate around her lips giving her a clownish appearance. “Mommy.”

  The site of her little girl brought Dana to tears. She crouched and hugged her. When she pulled away, Molly asked, “Why are you crying, Mommy?”

  Dana wiped her tears. “Mommy’s sad, honey.”

  “Don’t be sad.” Molly held up the melting cone. “Do you want a taste?”

  Dana took a small taste.

  “Is that my little girl? Is that my Molly?” Kathy Hill came through the Dutch door wearing a white bathrobe and slippers, her hair flowing down her back. Makeup did not hide her puffy red eyes.

  “Mom, Dr. Porter told you to stay in bed.”

  Her mother walked past Dana and took Molly in her arms. “Is that my baby? Hello, my angel.”

  “I got an ice cream, Grandma.”

  “Yes, angel, I see that.” Kathy closed her eyes, cradling the little girl.

  “Hi, Kathy,” Grant said.

  Kathy did not look up. “Hello, Grant.”

  “I’m very sorry about James.”

  “Thank you.” Kathy swept up Molly in her arms. “Come on, angel, let’s go upstairs and read some books.”

  “Grandma’s sad.”

  “Yes, angel. Grandma’s very sad,” she said, carrying Molly back through the Dutch door.

  Dana stepped forward, burying her face against Grant’s starched white shirt, crying on his chest. He caressed the back of her head as the events of the day cascaded down on her like broken glass, leaving tiny, painful cuts. After a minute she stepped back and wiped her tears. She’d left a smudge of mascara on his shirt. “Thanks for bringing her out here.” Her voice was thick and husky.

  “I’d keep her with me if I could.”

  Dana cleared her throat, pulled a wad of tissue from her back pocket, and blew her nose. “It’s okay. I want her here with me. She’s good therapy for Mom.”

  Grant looked up at the dormer window on the second level. “How’s she doing?”

  “As well as can be expected. You could go up and talk with her.”

  Grant looked away from the window. “Probably not a good idea. I never seem to be able to say the right thing. You know she has issues with me. Have the police told you anything more?”

  She shook her head and closed her eyes. “They beat him to death, Grant.”

  “Jesus.”

  “For what?” she asked, feeling the anger burn. “James didn’t have anything. He’d given everything away after he quit practicing law. Why would they rob him? Why not come here?” She extended her arms. “This is where the money is.”

  “People here have walls and gates, Dana. They have security systems.”

  “They killed him for nothing, Grant. They killed my brother for nothing.”

  “And the police have no idea who it was, no leads of any kind?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “They have fingerprints and shoe prints but nothing confirmed yet.” She sighed. “I’d like you to stay, Grant.”

  He stepped forward and held her again. He smelled of Armani cologne. It reminded her of law school and those moments when he had been there for her. But that was before the pressures of billable hours and making partner and finding and keeping clients had changed him. It was before ten years of getting up every morning and going to work to fight with someone had made him confrontational and cynical of people and their motives. It was before his own failures had made him resent her success. Sensitive to this, she rarely discussed her own career and instead focused on encouraging him, even after the second law firm had let him go. But after Molly’s birth, there wasn’t enough time in the day to be a wife, a cook, the family chauffeur, errand girl, lawyer, mommy, and to pacify a grown man’s ego. Grant responded by working more and finding excuses to stay out late.

  He spoke with his chin resting on the top of her head. “Your family needs you to be strong.” His hands pressed her shoulder blades, but she felt no warmth. His voice contained no comfort. The wool of his suit jacket itched
her cheek. “You’re strong. If anyone can get through this, it’s you.”

  “It’s too much,” she said, crying again. “It hurts, Grant. God, it hurts to lose him.”

  He held her, and for a moment she thought he might stay. But then his hands slipped from her back. “You know I start the Nelson trial in Chicago on Monday, and the rest of this week is just out of control. Hell broke loose today. They filed thirteen motions in limine and a forty-five-page trial brief. I can’t do anything less.”

  “Couldn’t Bergman handle the trial?”

  He pulled back with a look of incredulity. “This is my chance. Bergman is giving me Nelson Industries on a silver platter. When I win, I’ll put another thirty million dollars in the shareholders’ pockets—the biggest contingency award in the history of the firm. I’ll be a superstar. It’s my tenure. Nelson Industries will be a guaranteed three-million-dollar client in my column. I’ll be—we’ll be set for life. We can get a house on the lake, a boat, everything we’ve wanted.”

  At the moment she didn’t want anything. She no longer wanted him. The law had not changed him. It had just defined who he was all along. She studied the moss that had worked its way through the mortar of the stone walkway, undermining its integrity, and thought of her marriage. Removing the moss would not be easy.

  10

  ESPN’S SPORTSCENTER filled the cramped motel room with animated chatter. Two sportscasters sat behind a miniature studio desk, narrating the day’s highlights. Laurence King turned the volume up high, but the newscasters’ voices still did not drown out the sound of the woman through the paper-thin wall.

  “More, honey. Yes. Yes. Yes, baby.”

  The photograph of Mount Ranier on the wall thumped rhythmically. The lamp shade on the wood-veneer nightstand vibrated. Had it not been bolted down, it likely would have slid off. The woman was being well paid to moan, but at the moment King didn’t want to hear it.

  “Oh, you’re big. You’re so big. You just fill me up, baby.”

  King pounded his fist on the wall. “Shut the fuck up.” The grunting and groaning continued, uninterrupted. King paced the worn brown carpet, alternately rubbing at the coarse dark stubble of his chin and biting at his thumbnail, perpetually stained with grease and dirt from his work as a day laborer for a construction company. The room held the smell of body odor and moldy wood.

  “Fifteen thousand.” Marshall Cole paced an area near the bathroom, stepping around and over fast-food bags, a grease-stained pizza box, beer bottles, and articles of clothing he continued to discard—first his shoes and socks, then his shirt. He stood naked to the waist, his blue jeans hanging from narrow hips, holes worn in the knees. They had buried his other clothes in a dirt field behind the motel, digging the hole deep enough to prevent stray dogs from unearthing them, searching for the scent of blood.

  “Fifteen thousand.” Cole compulsively tugged at the bill of his Seattle Mariners baseball cap, alternately pulling it low on his forehead and pushing it onto the crown of his head. “You tell him we want fifteen thousand. I didn’t sign up to kill nobody, Larry. No fucking way.” He pointed to King. “It was supposed to be a burglary. That’s what you said. You said the man told you it was a burglary. Empty. The fucking place was supposed to be empty, man.”

  “Shut up,” King shouted at the wall, growing more angry.

  “Nobody said nothing about killing anyone. I ain’t no killer. They’ll kill me for this. They’ll kill us both.”

  King turned from the wall and took a step toward Cole. “Shut up.” He’d had enough whining from the little prick. “Shut the fuck up. Don’t tell me what to do. Don’t fucking tell me what to do.”

  Cole stepped back, no match for King, who stood six foot two and weighed 255 pounds. Cole was rail-thin, with a washboard stomach that displayed protruding ribs. He had a nervous stomach and irritable bowel syndrome, which caused him to spend more time in the bathroom than a janitor and prevented him from keeping anything in long enough to put on weight. With full lips, green eyes, and sandy-blond hair that hung past his shoulders, Cole would have been called pretty if he’d been born a woman.

  “Fifteen thousand,” Cole muttered under his breath. “Enough money to get out of here. Maybe go to Canada. They don’t extradite from Canada, do they? Shit!” He threw the cap on the floor and tugged at his hair. “I had to do it. He saw me. He looked right at me.”

  “Just take it easy.” King walked to the window and eased back the heavy curtain. The Emerald Inn sat like a boil on a dog’s butt. King hadn’t chosen it for the ambience. He’d chosen it because the rooms were off an outdoor landing that offered a clear view of the dirt and gravel parking lot out front. The same four cars remained. More would arrive after last call at the Four Aces Bar, half a mile down the road. King checked his watch and turned from the window. “I’ll get the fifteen grand, and we’ll get out of here. Nobody’s going to know anything.”

  “Something’s wrong.” Cole stood and paced again. “Something ain’t right. I can feel these things. I told you, I can feel them.”

  “I’ll handle it,” King growled.

  Someone knocked on the door.

  Cole’s head snapped as if on a string, his eyes wide as those of a spooked horse. King put a finger to his lips and quietly pressed an eye to the peephole. No way the man could have parked the car in the lot, then walked up the two flights of stairs and down the landing without King hearing him. Fuck, the landing shook each time someone passed the door. And yet somehow the man had done just that. He stood on the landing, his face distorted in the round hole, the pointed nose bulbous and hooked at the tip, with his black wraparound sunglasses bulging like the depthless eyes of a hawk. King stepped back and pointed to the interior door that led to the adjacent room.

  Cole shoved the cap back on his head and quickly gathered his clothes. He grabbed a 9mm automatic from the top of the television, dropped a tennis shoe on the floor, and kicked it ahead of him as he hurried through the doorway, closing the door behind him.

  King stuffed a Falcon 9mm in the front of his jeans and pulled his shirt closed, then rethought it and pulled it open. Show of force. Let the man know he meant business. He removed the security latch, pulled open the door, and stepped back. The man entered and closed the door without uttering a word. He wore a brown leather jacket, straight-leg blue jeans, and black boots. In his right hand he carried a green garbage bag. He dropped it on the carpet. King knew the man was military of some kind: army or marines. King had done four years in the army. He understood military. He could spot it from across a fucking room. This guy wasn’t just a grunt, though. He carried himself different. He was likely one of those Special Forces types—a Ranger or SEAL or some damn thing. Whatever he was, the guy gave King the creeps. He never smiled. Never changed expressions. Just stared with that blank expression, King’s distorted image reflecting back at him in those ever-present sunglasses. King wished he’d never spoken to the man at the bar. He wished he’d just turned down the drinks and walked away. But five thousand bucks for a simple burglary had been too good to pass up, and King needed the money to pay his ex-wife child support or his ass was going back to county. Besides, what was done was done. There was no sense crying over it.

  King stood at the foot of the bed closest to the bathroom with his hands on his hips and his shirt pulled back to display the butt of the Falcon against his hairy stomach. “We have a problem. The place wasn’t empty. You said it would be empty.”

  The man put his hands in his jacket pockets. “It was.”

  “Was for about twenty minutes. Then the fucking guy came home and walked right into the room.”

  “So I read.” The man was obviously referring to the article in the metro section of the Seattle Times. His fucking face was like a damn statue. “Unfortunate.”

  “Unfortunate? Unfortunate, my ass. You didn’t say anything about killing anybody.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  In the background, the sportscasters
continued to discuss the baseball highlights from games played earlier that day.

  “And we didn’t sign on for killing nobody. We ain’t killers. That’s not what we was paid for,” King said.

  “Did you get the items?”

  “Maybe we did. Maybe we didn’t. What we need to talk about is what we were paid to do and what we weren’t paid to do. The place was supposed to be empty. That’s what you told us.”

  “Did you get the items?”

  “Are you deaf?” The man did not answer. He just kept staring the fucking stare that sent a chill through King. He fought against it, but his eyes shifted to the pillow on the unmade bed. The man walked to the head of the bed, rolled back the pillow, and picked up the manila envelope. He opened it, studying its contents.

  “Oh, God,” the woman next door yelled. “Harder, baby. Harder. You just about there, sugar.”

  “We want more money,” King said. “Fifteen thousand.”

  “Bring it, sugar. Harder. Bring it harder.”

  The man rummaged through the envelope. “You did not get all the items.”

  King laughed. “Are you shitting me, man? The guy came home! Shit, you’re lucky we got that much stuff. Cole was in the goddamn bedroom when the guy walked in. So, fuck yeah, that’s all, and fuck if I care. Fifteen thousand. We need to go somewhere for a while and let this die down.”

  The man shoved the envelope inside his jacket, returning his hands to his pockets. “I didn’t ask you to kill anyone,” he said matter-of-factly. “It was not your assignment.”

  “Now, honey. Now. Come on. Come on, sugar.”

  King was stunned. “You are a piece of fucking work. My assignment? This ain’t the military, shithead, I don’t take orders from nobody no more.” He pointed at the envelope for emphasis. “We got what we could, nearly everything. We did more than our assignment. We did a hell of a lot more. We didn’t sign on for killing nobody.”

  “You don’t want to go back to jail, is that it?”