The Last Kind Words: A Novel

by Tom Piccirilli

  “Why keep them out here? Why not bring them into the house?”

  He shrugged. “They’re not really for show. They’re just for me. I like looking at them. They’re something delicate made during a terrible time.”

  He sounded a little embarrassed, like he expected me to think less of him.

  “Tell me about them,” I said.

  “Nothing too interesting to tell. They were produced by U.S. forces from ’45 to around early ’52, at the end of the occupation. It was a short production period so these pieces are fairly scarce. The bisque figures are less common than the porcelain, and usually they’re of higher quality. You saw the import stamp on the bottom. They were all required to have the ‘Made in Occupied Japan’ or just ‘Occupied Japan’ mark.”

  “How valuable are they?” I asked.

  “Depends on the individual piece,” he said. “Piano babies can range from twenty-five to a hundred dollars. Toby mugs from, say, ten to maybe eighty-five dollars. There’s a couple of shops out in Southampton that really try to gouge you. Salt-and-pepper shakers list for up to maybe forty dollars a pair.”

  I didn’t know what a piano baby or a Toby mug might be, but my father was actually excited to be talking about the figurines, so I let him go on. I’d imagined they must be expensive antiques worth in the thousands. To hear him price them at ten or twenty bucks really stunned me.

  He went on about the salt-and-pepper shakers, poodles, boy with begging dog, boy with fish on line, girl holding flower, and how thousands of pieces had been copied in European styles. I wasn’t really listening. I was watching him. He looked happy and animated. There wasn’t much in the world for him to be buoyant about, so I was glad he had this.

  My father was too short to wipe down the top few inches of the case, so I did it for him. When I was finished I stared at my reflection and watched the man behind me. It was the only way I could meet his eyes.

  “Dad,” I said.

  There was something in my voice that warned him. I turned and watched as his shoulders hitched. He cocked his head slightly. I knew his body language like I knew my own. He was setting his resolve, waiting for the pain. I waited too, for the confidence to ask the question. It took time to find it.

  “Why did you boost Kimmy’s place?”

  “I didn’t boost it,” he said.

  “You went there.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were caught.”

  He almost smiled. “Yeah.”

  My old man rarely did anything that got under my skin, but that smile did it. I threw down the dust rag. I took a step toward him. My blood surged and I got up close, in his face, thinking, Am I about to hit my father? Is it possible I can do that? If I can do that, then he could watch me making love to a woman through her window.

  “You had to have wanted to be caught. You’re too good otherwise.”

  His lips slid into a self-effacing grin. It only masked the truth. “I’m getting old.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “Do you really want one, Terry?” he asked.

  “For Christ’s sake, yes.”

  The grin dropped. His eyes filled with emotion. It was something I wasn’t quite prepared to see. A quiver of fear went through me and I was suddenly sorry I’d decided to face him at all.

  His shoulders slumped again, and he walked to the worktable and sat heavily on the stool there. “I heard Kimmy had a baby. I wanted to see her.”

  “Why?”

  His face tightened. “I’ve got to explain everything to you?” There was a hint of anger in his voice. When I was a kid, that used to terrify me. Now it was even worse. “You leaving us … and Collie about to die … it’s got me … I’ve been … been—”

  He couldn’t put it into words. He hit the wall. It had been so long since he’d opened up about anything that I could see the confusion and fear in his expression as he tried to talk. His eyes shifted back to his figurines as if they helped to ground him.

  I wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, perhaps even hug him. But that would be too much. It would overpower him. It would suffocate him. I waited in silence with him, and when the silence got to be too much I said, “Go on, Dad.”

  “I always thought I’d have grandkids. I’ve been thinking about that some lately. Kimmy … I thought when she got pregnant that …” He drifted to a close, his thumbs brushing across his fingertips like he was getting ready to jug a safe.

  “You knew about that?” I asked.

  “How stupid do you think we are? Of course we knew. She was family. The baby—” He regained some composure. “Anyway, I’d been thinking about her and the kid she and Chub had. I just wanted to see her.”

  “You could’ve knocked on the door.”

  “No, I couldn’t have. Anyway, the little girl kicked off her blanket. I pulled it back over her. Stood there a few seconds too long, Chub caught me in the room. He was understandably … uh, irritated and called the cops. Kimmy tried to talk him out of it but it was too late. So I got hauled in. Chub dropped the charges an hour later. I played like I was getting senile and walked in to the wrong house. It was an easy sell, what with Gramp. So there it is.”

  He hadn’t told me because I’d asked, I knew. It had been something inside him that needed out. Now that it was, he didn’t look angry or indignant. He hadn’t been looking for any kind of forgiveness or absolution from me. He’d only explained himself because he’d wanted to.

  I did put my hand on his shoulder then, for an instant, and then walked back into the house.

  I helped my mother feed my grandfather his lunch. I’d just managed to get the last forkful of chicken salad down his throat when a news flash broke in on his cartoons. Instead of his chin dropping, he lifted his head a little higher, his eyes dark and alert. Vicky was on the scene at the park. She looked gorgeous and smiled endearingly.

  Cara Clarke’s body had been discovered hanging from a tree in the same location where her sister Rebecca’s strangled corpse had been found five years earlier.

  They put up a photo of Collie. We looked like twins.

  The crime scene was a quiet bedlam. Hundreds of people had turned out to stand behind the police lines and watch the cops working the scene for evidence and taking photos of Cara Clarke’s body. Some were on their knees weeping. A lot of them were praying. Flowers were already on display. They’d stack them up on the spot for years to come.

  Vicky and her film crew were still covering the story. I made sure she didn’t spot me, or she would have beelined for me. Gilmore walked past twice, looking angry and in command. I tried to get his attention. We had to talk.

  The heat was going to come down on me now. After five years away, I return home, visit my brother twice in prison, and now the sister of one of the women he’d been convicted of murdering was dead in almost the same way.

  I tried to imagine what could have happened. The reports said she’d been hanged. They were playing up the fact that she was on antidepressants, and they hadn’t even found her extra stash or the stolen scrips yet. A lot of trauma victims tended to revisit the scene where they’d lost a loved one to commit suicide. Psychiatrists were on camera, discussing the rise in teen suicide.

  I stepped up to one of the uniforms standing guard around the scene. I said, “Tell Gilmore that Terry Rand is here.”

  “Detective Gilmore is extremely busy right now, sir.”

  “I have information he’ll want to hear.”

  The guy actually sighed. I didn’t blame him. They were going to be getting hundreds of tips an hour from all over the place. “Of course, sir. We’ll be happy to take your statement. Simply line up to the left, please. Someone will be with you shortly.”

  “It’s important and it’s real.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Seriously, don’t brush me off. He needs to hear this, and he needs to hear it now.”

  “Line up to the left. Or you’re welcome to come down to the station, sir.”
>
  I slipped under the crime-scene tape. It was a bold move. Five cops descended on me in an instant. They wrestled me back, saying, “Sir, sir, please, you are not allowed on this side of the tape!”

  “Let me talk to Gilmore. My name is Terry Rand. He’ll want to hear this.”

  The disturbance caught Gilmore’s attention. He came over. The other police officers dispersed. He shook his head at me. “Terrier, today you’re just being a pain in the ass. If this is about that nonsense with your brother, I’m going to give profound consideration to running you in.”

  “Is this your case?”

  “For the moment it’s everybody’s case.”

  “Let me spill what I know. Then you decide.”

  “Okay, but make it fast.”

  I told him the truth. All of it. Starting with me watching the Clarke house, creeping the place, getting caught by Cara, staring down the .45. If I caught another beating for it, that was fine by me. I was used to pissing blood. I was less accustomed to murder.

  He listened intently. His little grin dropped from his face, but his lips were still busy, curling and uncurling. He looked at me and his expression shifted into earnest worry. I knew what he was thinking. That maybe I had snuffed Cara in order to help my brother. That this was my confession. I held his gaze. I thought he might arrest me on the spot. I was ready to lie on my belly again and put my hands behind my head.

  “Let’s go talk in my car,” he said. “I want to hear you repeat everything you just told me. Everything.”

  “In your car?”

  “In my car. Come on, Terry.”

  He should’ve dragged me to the precinct and gotten me on video. He was cutting me some slack, but he should’ve known better. We marched over to where his car was parked on the lawn. I didn’t want to see Cara’s corpse, but I couldn’t help staring. Forensics was still working on her, so they couldn’t cover her up yet. Her face had gone an ashen gray, and her protruding tongue looked exceptionally pink against her darkened chin. Her eyes were only half open but had bulged forward from the sockets. I stifled a groan. I was probably acting very suspicious. I was probably sealing my own doom.

  He said, “In back.” We both got in the back, and I kept looking at the police crawling all over the area. Forensics was working on the tree limb, taking photos, checking the scuffs on the bark. Cara Clarke had been tall, nearly six foot, the branch was fairly low. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a strong man to heft her up and make it look like she had hanged herself. I couldn’t spot anything that Cara might have leaped from, but she could have conceivably climbed onto the branch herself.

  “How was she done?” I asked.

  “Hanged.”

  “They said that on the news. But how?”

  “Terry, I can’t talk about that with you.”

  “I might be able to help.”

  A squall filled Gilmore’s face. “How in the hell are you going to do that?”

  I saw several thoughts whip through his eyes. He thought about grilling me. He thought about giving me friendly advice to get out of town. He thought about raiding the Rand house and seeing if there might be something around to implicate me in the girl’s murder. He was an almost-bent cop. That meant he picked and chose when he’d cross the line and when he wouldn’t. You never knew when he might go by the book and when he might not.

  Surprisingly, he settled on simply answering my original question. “A nylon cord, the kind used to tie dock cushions and bumpers to the sides of boats.”

  “Does her father own a boat?” I asked.

  “Yes. A twenty-four-foot Wellcraft cuddy. Keeps it docked at a marina but apparently hasn’t taken it out in years.”

  “Cord in the garage?”

  “We’re not discussing this further.”

  I thought of Sharon, the youngest sister, who would now be coddled obsessively by her parents. They were going to hold her close but not close enough, because the ghosts of her sisters were always going to get more attention.

  “Did you find the .45?” I asked. “Or any gun? She was tough. She knew how to fire a gun. Check her hands for gunpowder residue.”

  “I don’t need a career thief to teach me how to do the job of a police officer. She didn’t pull the trigger on you. You managed to talk your way out of it.”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to talk her into showing up here. Was she done on the spot or strangled elsewhere and left here?”

  Gilmore snapped his fingers under my nose. His expression had hardened. His eyes weren’t full of sadness anymore, they were like shale. “Focus now, Terrier. You don’t ask the questions. You answer them. You assure me of your sincerity and maybe I won’t throw you in jail tonight. Or maybe I will. Did you have anything at all to do with this?”

  “No. How long’s she been dead?”

  “Get out and go home.”

  “Tell me, all right?”

  He turned away for a moment, and when he turned back he stared deeply into my face, trying to read whether I was someone he could trust. I wasn’t, of course, but he was still giving me leeway. I knew why. On some level he was acting like I was his younger brother, the punk always getting his nose dirty but who was forgiven for it. He looked away again, and when he faced me I could see that he’d come to a decision.

  “Early this morning,” he said. “And just so I know, Terrier, where were you this morning?”

  I didn’t want to drag Eve Drayton into this but there was no choice. I told him about Eve and even my father’s figurine collecting, but I left out the bit about Higgins. Gilmore nodded.

  “Your old man, he likes his Toby mugs.”

  “How the hell do you know that?”

  “He’s showed them to me before. Now, give me the names of all the antidepressants again and exactly where I can find them in her room.”

  I told him about the false outlet and the five-inch-deep cubbyhole.

  Gilmore nodded. “She only had legal prescriptions for the Zoloft and Valium. All of those others, in combination—self-medicating on stolen pills, maybe expired—who the hell knows how someone will react with all of that in their system.”

  “So you think she really offed herself?” I asked.

  “That’s what it looks like so far,” he said.

  “I don’t think she would do it.”

  He frowned at me, his face mottled with emotion. “How do you know?”

  “I just feel it.”

  “You met her for what? All of fifteen minutes?”

  “It was enough,” I said.

  He scoffed. He seemed to take a dim kind of pleasure in schooling me on the realities of the world. “No, it’s not. Twenty years isn’t enough for you to really know someone, or do I need to remind you of that?”

  I held my hands up in a gesture that might have been anger or helplessness. “No, you don’t.”

  “She was a screwed-up kid taking powerful meds in dangerous amounts. With all the renewed coverage on the case of her sister’s murder, she was probably hurting worse than ever. And you showing up in the middle of her bedroom couldn’t have helped any.”

  “Listen to me, she was sharp, she was on the ball, she—”

  “You don’t know a thing, Terrier. Now go home. Don’t mention any of this to your journalist girlfriend or I’ll—”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “—pull you in on obstruction. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then go.”

  I got out. I walked toward the crime-scene tape. I glanced back at Cara. Figures in blue uniforms and white gloves worked over her excitedly. Who had iced her? Why now? I thought, My Christ, has he been watching me? Is he following me? Is he that close even now? Her dead eyes were aimed in my direction.

  I headed back to my car. I sat heavily behind the wheel. I scanned the faces in the crowd. The only one I recognized in the area was Gilmore’s.

  Is h
e that close even now?

  The dead girl continued to watch me. My body was a little ahead of my mind. I glanced in the rearview and saw that my face was pale.

  I imagined Gilmore sitting with my father, playing cards with my uncles, being friendly with my brother. I saw the two of them out at the Elbow Room together, sharing stories, frustrations, fears. I thought of him opening up to Collie about his marital troubles. Gilmore had told me, Anytime you get too curious about what was going on in his head, remember where that kind of thinking leads. Maybe he’d gotten close enough that the underneath had swallowed him too.

  My father had said, He’s got too much time on his hands. I don’t know what he does with it all.

  I gripped the steering wheel, my thoughts burning. I tried to turn myself away from what I was thinking, but I couldn’t.

  He’d tracked me to the Elbow Room. He hadn’t worked the cases, he’d told me, but he’d looked into them. But what if he was already familiar with them? The whores, the drug addicts, the women presumably murdered by their boyfriends. Gilmore would know exactly what to do to make those cases look like accidents or suicides. He’d know how to plant evidence to point at a husband or a pimp.

  I shook my head to shake the questions off or to line the pieces up in place. Was that why his wife had left him? After he’d killed Rebecca Clarke in the park, did she know her husband had gone off the big ledge?

  I thought about Gilmore wanting to become a part of my family and what that might actually mean. What if he’d been following Collie? He was always around, always in our business. He’d spent so much time projecting that big-brother vibe that I was starting to pick up on it.

  Except my big brother was insane.

  Gilmore could’ve been shadowing Collie around that night. He could’ve sensed what was going to happen. He was going to lose his wife and kids. He was already heading out onto the edge.

  I said the name once out loud. “Gilmore.”

  Christ, it was crazy. I shook my head again. Collie had me so twisted up I didn’t know what to think anymore. Gilmore. Was it possible? Why was I wasting time even considering it?