The Last Kind Words: A Novel

by Tom Piccirilli

  I stopped in Gramp’s room and found him snoozing. It was a relief to see him that way. He looked like he’d just lain down after pulling a particularly exhausting grift. I had the intense urge to wake him up and talk with him. I had the irrational feeling that if I caught him at the right moment I might be able to sneak past his disease. Distract, divert, and charm it. He’d yawn and look at me the way he used to and say, Terry, we’ve got a good day ahead of us. A damn good day. Tight cooze and big coin. He’d chuck me under the chin and give a wink. His hair would be mussed from a night of tossing and the hole in his skull would be on display, black and beckoning. You with me?

  I stepped into Collie’s room. It hadn’t been changed either. I wondered how difficult it was for my mother to come in here and dust and revisit his belongings. I looked around and tried to spot any sign of madness. I slid a finger across the spines of the books on his shelves. At least half of them were mine. I could almost feel Becky Clarke’s breath on my neck. I checked his caches. They were all empty.

  I drove over to the address listed on the police report as the Clarke house. It had rained during the night and a mist rose off the streets in the growing morning heat. The family hadn’t moved from Brightwaters village. That surprised me. After a tragedy like the one they’d suffered through, I’d assumed they would have wanted to get as far off Long Island as possible. But they’d stuck it out. I wondered if they’d left Rebecca’s bedroom untouched the way I’d heard some families did when they lost their children too soon. The way my own parents hadn’t changed a thing in my room.

  I parked up the road and watched the house. It was two-storied and gabled, painted a charming yellow.

  The dream had begun to wear away. It felt distant and unknowable. I didn’t know why I was here. I was trying to reconnect to something I didn’t want to be connected to in the first place. But the only way to learn what might have been going through Collie’s mind, if he had smoked Becky, was to start with her. I wanted to look at home photos. I wanted to get a sense of her. I didn’t know what I wanted to do.

  “Jesus, what the fuck?”

  I started my car. I felt like an idiot. I was about to pull away, when the mother came out of the house, followed by the father. Their names were in the file but I didn’t feel the need to check. They were both professionals, dressed in proper business suits, holding briefcases. He had on a power tie and she wore a skirt that emphasized her lovely legs. He was eating a cruller and trying not to get any sugar on his lapel. She sipped coffee. He finished in three bites and popped the code into the garage keypad. The door slid up. Inside was a two-year-old Lexus. The Clarkes said a few words to each other and climbed into the car together. She was behind the wheel. The train station was ten minutes away. They probably both worked on Wall Street within a block of each other. They’d take the LIRR into the city and sit side by side doing the Times crossword puzzle or double-checking yesterday’s stock figures.

  The front door slammed again. A nine- or ten-year-old girl carrying a backpack hopped off the tile stoop, followed by her teenage sister. Sixteen or seventeen and tall, nearly six foot. They walked over to the car and spoke to their parents but didn’t get in. Mom and Dad waved and pulled out. The garage door closed. The sisters started walking together toward the corner bus stop. The teenager had no book bag, which made me wonder if she was a troublemaker at school, sitting in the last row, popping gum and sneering. Her little sister ran ahead, and she put an extra step in her stride. They both had black hair, shoulder length when it wasn’t splayed and hooked by the breeze.

  The Clarkes had a first-rate security system. I had the right tools for the job but it would take me a while to trip the system. It looked like I wouldn’t need them. The back door was ajar.

  Even after losing one daughter, they left the door open. She might’ve been killed in a park but they should’ve learned something about safety precautions. I shook my head.

  I moved fast through the house. For the first time in my life I felt like an intruder. Scoring a place was one thing, but nosing around, being a snoop, hunting through the belongings of the dead, it somehow felt more corrupt.

  I hit the master bedroom. Clarke had a .45 in his nightstand drawer. It was loaded. I thought that was a good thing. He might not have time to unlock the piece from a safety box and snap in the clip if someone tried to take his other daughters from him. My respect for Mr. Clarke went up a hair, even if he was a stupid bastard for leaving the door open.

  There were three other bedrooms in the home. One was clearly the little girl’s. It looked like a holdover nursery. There were block letters around the mirror, spelling out SHARON. Pink walls and white bookcases full of dolls. But she was getting old enough to assert herself. There were posters of the latest movie stars and a couple of boy bands. Beside her bed was a shelf full of paperbacks. She liked those ’tween vampire romances that I used to read to Dale. I recognized several of the titles.

  Branching off from the end of the hall were the other two bedrooms. They were damn near identical. I couldn’t tell which was Rebecca’s and which was the other sister’s. The parents not only kept Becky’s room the same, they still dusted and sprayed air freshener.

  Lots of prints of famous artwork on the walls. Looked like one or both of the sisters were interested in the likes of Manet, Jackson Pollock, Dali. I could check the dressers and become a fucking panty sniffer, see which one’s underwear smelled fresher, but I already felt too ashamed. When even a thief feels embarrassed, you know something is way out of line.

  I started with the room on the left. There were no photos. I didn’t know what else I was looking for. Some connection between Rebecca and Collie? Between her and some boyfriend? Gilmore figured it was always the boyfriend.

  The cops would’ve been through the place five years ago. They would’ve searched the drawers and found a diary or anything else that might’ve given them a lead. I stuck to the most likely places for a hidden cache. Most teens had one. A secret stash of cigarettes, joints, porn, boosted cash, self-taken nudie shots, or anything else they wanted to hide from their parents.

  I checked the floor and ceiling of the closet. The air vent. The molding in the corners of the room. I pulled out drawers in case any of them had false bottoms or had been shortened to leave room behind them. I scored when I spotted a loose faceplate on one of the wall sockets.

  The wiring had been disconnected. There was a cubbyhole about five inches deep. Inside was a dime bag of marijuana, half a bottle of what looked like Oxycontin, and several other bottles of Valium, Xanax, and Zoloft. The shit was serious. There were also stolen sheets of empty scrips. I pocketed a couple of them. You never knew.

  The pot was skunkweed but it was fresh. This was the seventeen-year-old’s room. She liked to mellow out and did what she had to do to follow her buzz and blunt her anxieties. After what she’d been through, I didn’t blame her. But she was overdoing the self-medication. Too many antidepressants could have opposite the intended effect.

  I crossed the hall to Becky’s room, hating myself. I felt like a total fraud. Collie’s name was stuck in my teeth. I’d been in the house almost ten minutes. That was a lot of time to be inside. I scouted the likely hot spots, tried the outlets first just to see if the seventeen-year-old had picked up the trick from Becky. There was nothing anywhere.

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  I spun and the teenage girl was there in the doorway.

  If someone comes in the door, you dive out the window. That was one of the basic tenets of being a thief.

  Except that she had her father’s .45 trained on me.

  They hadn’t been as careless as I’d thought. She was just walking her sister to the corner stop, waiting with her until the bus arrived. That’s why the door had been left open.

  “Oh, hey there,” I said, propping a high-wattage smile in place. “I rang the bell. And knocked, but no one answered. The door was open. I’m Freddy of Freddy’s Fix-It. Seems like you’
ve got some faulty wiring that your father wants me to check out.”

  “The front door was locked. The back door was open.”

  “Right,” I said. “See, I was calling out and I decided to come around the side of the house over there and—”

  “Where’s your toolbox?”

  “Oh, that’s in the truck.”

  “So where’s your truck?”

  “We didn’t have a flangella voltometer with us. Very important during electrical work, otherwise you can fry the frammistat. My partner left to go get—”

  “Shove it. Who are you?”

  “Everybody knows Freddy.”

  She was pretty, or had been once. Now her face was thin and drawn, with dark steaming eyes and heavy frown lines across her brow and around her mouth. In ten or twenty years they’d be deep as knife tracks. At the top of her arm, the hint of a tattoo edged out from beneath her black T-shirt. She was underage too. I wondered who this prick was that kept inking all these little girls.

  She reminded me more than a little of Dale. The gun never wavered. It was a heavy piece of hardware. She held it with a two-handed grip, and the muscles in her forearms were tense and sharply defined.

  I winced and waited for the screaming. I thought, Now Gilmore is really going to tune up my ass in a holding cell.

  “I know you,” she said.

  “Everyone knows Freddy of Freddy’s Fix—”

  “No, I know you, fucker!”

  I didn’t like the way she said it. There was rage there as well as anguish and an undercurrent of vengeance. I never wanted to be around someone who sounded like that, much less someone pointing a large-caliber weapon at my heart. My back began to crawl with cold sweat. My breathing hitched.

  “You’re one of them,” she continued. “One of those people. That family. Named after dogs.”

  Christ. I wasn’t going to be able to cover the ground between us before she pulled the trigger. The window was closed and locked and there was a screen. I wasn’t going to be able to duck through it and run away. I could only hold my ground and pray I didn’t piss myself. I hoped she called the cops instead of taking her hate out on the wrong Rand.

  “Which one are you?” she asked. “Tell me.”

  “Terrier,” I admitted.

  “You look like your brother.”

  “Right, but I’m not him.”

  “But you’re in my house.”

  She had me there. “I found the piece in your father’s nightstand drawer. I removed the clip.”

  “No, you didn’t. I checked. I always check. My dad’s taught me all about guns since I was twelve. I’m a good shot. Not that I’d have to be at this range.”

  “Shit. Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  “You’re not going to get the chance.”

  “Just let me explain.”

  “You people are thieves and liars and murderers. What makes you think I’m going to listen to you even one more second?”

  It was a good question. If I came home and found the brother of the man who’d murdered my sister standing in the middle of her bedroom, I would’ve made my play by now, whatever it was.

  But along with the low-slung burning fury and the distress and the dull edginess that comes when someone hooked on pills needs to pop another one, she was intrigued and wanted to know what the hell I was doing here.

  I had to engage her. I said, “Your rooms are the same. Yours and Becky’s. Why?”

  “So you’ve already been in mine.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you steal anything?”

  “No.”

  “Not enough time?”

  “There was plenty of time. But I’m not a thief anymore.”

  “Now you just break in to houses but don’t take anything.”

  “Technically I didn’t break in. I just—”

  “Shut up!”

  “Your rooms are the same, except you’ve got a hiding place for your goodies. You’re hooked on antianxiety meds.”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth opened as if I’d just slapped her. It was an ugly expression on a cute face. Then she grinned without humor. That was worse. She studied me and was offended by what she saw. “Care to guess why, you prick?”

  I nodded. “I already know why. You should just call the cops. Ask for Detective Gilmore. Don’t worry, he’ll definitely give me a good beating. He already has this week. He’ll probably let you watch. Or help.”

  She was still calm, assured, centered, but the hate inside her was looking to get out, and it flickered in her eyes. They were at least a little crazy. I’d done that to her. My family had done that to her.

  “Last chance to tell me why you’re here. After this, I think I’m going to shoot you. I’m not sure where. Maybe in the knee. Maybe the balls. Maybe the head. I haven’t decided. Did you think about dying when you were going through our things?”

  “No.”

  “You should’ve. You must know something about last chances. Your brother’s used all of his up.”

  I kept hoping she’d step farther into the room, or that her arms would tire, or that she’d drop her gaze and give me half a second to make some kind of a break. But it wasn’t going to happen. I could usually make a lie sound like the truth, but I was floundering with her. I felt sheepish just being here. I wondered if I could make the truth sound like the truth.

  I said, “I’m in your house because I was hoping your parents hadn’t changed Rebecca’s room.”

  “Why would you care about that?”

  “I wanted to look at photos. I wanted to know a little more about her. My brother says he didn’t kill her. He admits he murdered the other seven people but says he didn’t touch her. He begged me to look into it.”

  She started to laugh very quietly. It was grotesque. I’d made a similar noise when I’d run from my brother, pale and shaking. Her pupils were very large.

  The girl said, “First you called her Becky, then Rebecca.”

  I’d noted that too. “It was wrong of me to act so familiar.”

  “Your game doesn’t even have any rules, does it?” she said. “You think it’s wrong to call her Becky but you don’t mind going through the drawers of a home you’ve invaded? Standing in a room of a girl murdered by your brother?”

  “Actually, I do mind. I’m pretty ashamed. Listen, why don’t you call the cops?”

  “What makes you think I won’t shoot you?”

  “I was raised as a burglar. My whole life I’ve done nothing but take stupid chances. This is just one more.”

  She lowered the gun a fraction, then raised it again. I was hoping if she pulled the trigger she would only shoot me in the leg. I very carefully reached for my pack of cigarettes and shook one out.

  She said, “There’s no smoking in the house.”

  I put the butt back in the pack. “Where do you smoke your pot?”

  “In the yard, when no one else is home.”

  “Fire your dealer. It’s cheap weed.”

  “Your brother,” she said. The word itself seemed to dry her mouth. She licked her lips and swallowed. “Do you believe him?”

  “No,” I told her. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Then why come around?”

  “He’s my brother. I’ve hated him most of my life. But he’s my brother.”

  “Why do you hate him so much?”

  The question flustered me. I wasn’t sure that I’d ever thought about it before. I struggled for an answer. Long before the competition over women, even before the bad blood over incidents I remembered clearly—the times he ran out on me during a job, the taunts, the drunken posturing, the fights he started with fences that came back to cause me troubles—I had loved him. We had been friends. He’d protected me. I could remember riding on the handlebars of his bicycle while he kept one arm around my waist to keep me from falling. I thought he would never hurt me. But it had shifted somewhere, in a way I still didn’t understand. He
grew angry with me, seemed to always be on the attack. I thought of him stabbing me with the Revolutionary War figure that led to the awful scarring on my chest.

  But I supposed that he had his reasons too, if someone had bothered to ask him. Maybe he was only reacting to something I put out into the world. He probably thought that I was distant, cold, a tightass. Maybe I didn’t watch his back enough. Maybe he expected me to love him more, or better. Perhaps the truth was no deeper than the fact that Collie and I were simply wired to be enemies.

  She squinted at me as if my hesitation was enough of a response. “You said a detective beat you up. That the truth?”

  “Last night.”

  “I don’t see any marks.”

  I lifted my shirt. The bruises on my kidneys were a mottled blue and yellow. She appeared to be impressed with either my asskicking or my dog tat. She seemed to come to a decision. She lowered the gun. I had no doubt that if I moved toward her or tried to run or said anything out of line she’d shoot me out of my shoes. I stood still in the center of the room.

  “Why did he hit you?” she asked.

  “Because I stole some files from him. I wanted to read the original reports.”

  “I thought you weren’t a thief anymore.”

  “I’ve backslid a little,” I admitted.

  “And?”

  “And Collie confessed to all the other murders but not your sister’s.”

  “I know that. Of course I know that. That’s why you’re here?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why didn’t you look into this five years ago?”

  “He only just asked me.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She kept the .45 low against the side of her leg, the way the pros did when they walked into a place to knock it over. “He’s crazy.”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “And you’re crazy for helping him.”

  “Probably,” I said. “Tell me about Rebecca.”

  “Tell you what? I don’t know what to say.”

  “She was seventeen.”

  “That’s right.”