Past Sins

by Thomas Grant Bruso

  Domestic disputes. Automobile accidents. Missing children. Barroom brawls. Murder.

  I am glad for the occasional murder, or testosterone-fueled fistfight at the local watering hole, or a drunk driver crashing his vehicle into a telephone poll. They remind me how lucky I am to be alive.

  I accept anything but the abusive, haunted life I had come out of during my childhood. I’d see my father’s bearded face and hear him hissing at me when I closed my eyes at night: Sissy Boy. Mama’s boy. Queer.

  I fight to put people like him behind bars where they belong.

  Ms. Findings yanks me out of my trance, a muffling discord of jumbled words.

  I nod and blink a few times, inhaling deeply, pretending that I’ve heard and comprehended every word. She sounds sleepy when I hear her say, “A door slammed shut. I heard footsteps. But after Killer stopped growling, it went dead quiet. I rolled onto my side and went back to sleep.”

  “Killer?” I say.

  She looks at me strangely. “My dog.”

  I smell the sweet peppermint Lifesaver Ryan is sucking on. He is making a racket with that tiny piece of candy, clicking it back and forth between his teeth.

  I look down at my notepad. It is blank. I have not written a single word.

  My mouth tastes bitter, acidic. I ask the elderly woman, “What time did you hear all of this?”

  Another look, her pencil-lined eyebrows furrowing. “Did you not hear me?” She stops talking as if she’s lost her breath, and her expression changes.

  I hear footsteps behind and turn to see Barton standing in the doorway across the hall from the victim’s apartment. “Fellows,” he says, “you need to hurry it up.”

  Ryan nudges me. “Let’s go,” he says, nodding at me. To Ms. Findings: “Thanks for your time, ma’am.”

  Her eyes are wide and spooked, and her head is shaking like one of those bobblehead toys.

  She slinks back into her dark apartment, shutting the door in our faces. I hear the chain lock slide into place and her small footsteps pad away, receding into the apartment.

  “You all right?” Ryan asks me.

  I look at my blank notepad and then up at my former partner, nodding. His jaw is working overtime, chomping another peppermint to smithereens.

  We knock on a handful of other doors and talk to more tenants, but our inquiries come up empty. Nobody heard or saw anything.

  Everyone was asleep.

  We meet up with the police chief in the victim’s apartment to exchange our minimal list of notes, but when we’re all standing around talking and strategizing, the county coroner arrives, followed by the flashing red and blue lights and screeching siren of a Black Hills ambulance.

  Dr. Alfred Stully stands five-six feet and carries his trusty medical handbag. He rakes a liver-spotted hand over the Trump comb-over strands of hair left on his receding hairline.

  “Wicked weather,” he says, his breathing labored and wheezy as he waddles over to us standing around the dead girl. He clicks his tongue, emitting a tsk-tsk sound and circles us like a shark. His jowly chin jostles as he shifts around the room, examining the corpse.

  “Poor girl,” he whispers, mostly to himself.

  But the chief hears him, and says, “How soon will we know a time of death?”

  Dr. Stully moans as he crouches and kneels by the body, reaching a hand out to the armchair for support. He stops and asks, “Has this been dusted for fingerprints?”

  Barton nods, folding his arms across his barrel chest.

  We watch the coroner work his magic, staring intently at the dark bruising around the vic’s doll-like neck. “The strangle marks are deep,” he says, touching the blue skin with a gloved hand. “Boy,” he adds, groaning and wincing and protesting aloud about his arthritic knees as he pulls himself up and stands, wiping his sweaty face with the crook of his arm.

  After a few more minutes with the deceased, he conjures up a short answer. “I’ll know more about time of death during my autopsy.”

  I yank on the chief’s coat sleeve, and gesture him away from the eyes and ears of everybody else in the room, as the CSI team in white suits continue to dust and photograph the scene.

  Ryan joins us by the door, hovering over the chief’s shoulder. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind, Ballinger,” he says, waiting for me to talk.

  “Our killer may still be in the area,” I say, feeling the tiny follicles of hair prickling on the back of my neck.

  “We canvassed the area before I called you,” Barton says. “I’m sure the killer is far from here by now.”

  I nod, but the look in my buddy Ryan’s doe-like gaze when I notice him staring back at me, weaves a dark, different tale. He watches me assuredly, his head cocked to the side, gesturing me out into the hall.

  I turn to the chief. “How do you want us to proceed?”

  He shrugs. “Not much more we can do here tonight. Head home. Get some sleep. I’ll call if I hear anything. Thanks for your help.”

  I know I won’t sleep. After working a case, I’m usually wide-awake for a few hours. Decompression comes later when I’m sitting in front of the TV, watching football and struggling to keep my eyes open.

  “Thanks, Chief,” I say and walk out into the hall.

  Ryan catches up to me and stops me when I’m descending the staircase.

  I watch him running toward me in slow motion like one of the “Baywatch” lifeguards.

  I wonder what he looks like in a speedo, and I fight the urge to dispel the thought.

  He catches me off guard. “Do you want to grab a beer?”

  “I’m beat, man,” I say, gripping the railing and turning to go down.

  He blows a stream of air out from between his bleached white teeth and a knee-buckling smile. “Suit yourself.”

  We’re just friends, I tell myself. Two guys who work together.

  Nothing more.

  He says, “Maybe we can catch a game. Shoot the shit. Get our minds off this shitty job.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  He nods. “All right. Fine. See you tomorrow. Drive safe.” He turns to leave.

  I yell, “Ryan, wait,” and step up onto the landing.

  He ambles back down the hall, his long arms swinging at his sides. His expression is piqued with curiosity, waiting for me to speak.

  I glance down at the bottom of the dark staircase then up at my ex-partner’s face, highlighted by a light fixture on the wall. “I’m sorry if I was an asshole.”

  He squints at me, and his lips start to move, but I can see he is struggling to find the right words.

  It’s been a long time, I recall, since Ryan and I hung out.

  “I don’t like to commit to anything,” I say. “Not even a beer. I’m going through some stuff right now.”

  “You like to be alone,” he says. “I get it. My sister is the same way. She likes to keep to herself. There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember it.” He scrunches his nose, and looks upward, thinking. “Intel…Intro…Invoice.”

  I laugh. “Introvert.”

  He points at me, wagging a finger. “Yeah. That’s it. It’s cool. I understand. I’m like that sometimes.”

  “Have a good night, man.”

  “Yeah.” It is a short, snappish response.

  As he turns and heads back to the commotion down the hall, high-pitched voices and heavy footfalls, a bar of light from the harsh white fluorescence flashes across his soft features. But something changes in his expression.

  As our gazes lock and I glimpse his hard stare, a cold shiver crawls down my back.

  Chapter 3

  Deputy Hawkins is still manning the front door when I toss my booties into a trashcan by the foyer door and step out into a drizzly warm night.

  “You look like a mannequin standing under the porch light,” I say, smiling and wishing him a goodnight.

  “Fuck you, Ballinger,” he retorts, a hint of humor in his deadpan delivery.

  I la
ugh and wave a hand over my shoulder at him. I cross the spongy front lawn and reach the sidewalk.

  The street looks like a scene in a horror movie, as I walk through a thick blanket of fog to get to my car. It is as if smoke is being pumped from a machine, obscuring the leafy limbs of sycamore trees around me.

  The group of four sorority girls that were outside the apartment when I arrived earlier is still waiting on the sidewalk. I walk a few feet from where they’re standing under a large elm tree next to my cruiser.

  Before I can introduce myself, one of the girls asks if there is any more news about their friend Kimberly.

  “It’s still an ongoing investigation,” I tell them.

  “How could this have happened?” one of the girls asks, crying so hard it is difficult to understand her.

  “Which one of you reported the incident?” I ask.

  The shortest girl in the group releases her friend’s hand and steps forward. Curls of red hair poke out from beneath the hoodie of her raincoat.

  “Are you Callie?” I ask.

  She nods and sniffs, wiping her tear-stained face.

  “May I ask you a few questions?”

  “I’ve already spoken to the chief of police.”

  “Would you mind answering some follow up questions?”

  I can tell Callie is having a difficult time keeping herself together. She is shaking and crying, which prompts Sarah, the team leader, to come over and wrap her arms around her, trying to keep her calm.

  “What can you tell me about Ms. Block?” I ask, pulling out my notepad from my jacket pocket and blinking back heavy rain falling into my eyes. “Was she involved in a relationship with anybody?”

  Sarah shakes her head and answers for Callie who is crying uncontrollably and cannot talk. “We made a pledge when we joined the Phi Sum Beta sorority that we’d abstain until marriage.”

  Odd, I think, but reserve my opinion as I look to Callie. She is sobbing into her friend’s shoulder. “Callie, may I ask you some questions?”

  She nods and takes a deep breath, squaring her shoulders, trying to compose herself. Her makeup is smudged and running down her cheeks. “What time did you call your friend Kimberly tonight?”

  She looks to her sorority sister for encouragement, and after she gathers enough confidence, she answers, “It was around midnight, I think.”

  “And Ms. Block didn’t answer?”

  Headshake. “After the second call, I got worried that something was terribly wrong.”

  “Why were you worried?”

  “Because Callie never misses a phone call.”

  “It was midnight. She could’ve been asleep.”

  Callie says, “Kim always answers our calls.”

  After I finish writing in my notepad, I look up at the girls. “I’m not familiar with sororities,” I say. “But if Ms. Block was involved in—” I check my notes for the name of the sorority house “—Phi Sum Beta, then why was she living at this apartment building?”

  Sarah answers for Callie. “The college campus proposes separate housing for sorority students so not all of us have to live in sorority houses, if we choose not to.”

  “Do you know why Kimberley chose to live at this apartment and not in a sorority house?” I ask.

  “Kimberly told us that her parents had some reservations about her living in a sorority house with other girls.” Callie shrugs. “They had heard negative things about sorority life.”

  “Like what?”

  Callie hedges. “Hazing. Parties. Sex.”

  “Do they exist?” I ask.

  “Not in our little group,” Sarah answers.

  “Not even sex?” I ask, hoping my question doesn’t sound presumptuous.

  Sarah says, “Like I told you earlier, it’s the house rules.”

  Bizarre.

  “What if somebody from the sorority doesn’t follow the rules?” I ask.

  “She’s expelled from the sorority house,” Sarah says. “Indefinitely.”

  “Is your sorority religious?” I ask, recalling the rosary in Ms. Block’s hand.

  “Phi Sum Beta is a Christian sorority,” Sarah answers, nodding. “Why do you ask?”

  “Kim was holding a rosary in her hand,” Callie says before I can answer.

  I look at Callie who is crying hard into her hands.

  Sarah puts a hand on her sorority sister’s shoulder.

  “Did Ms. Block have any enemies?” I ask.

  Sarah almost laughs. “Enemies? No. Kimberly was a people pleaser. Everybody liked her.”

  Not everybody, I want to say, but instead I turn to Callie and ask, “Did you see anything out of the ordinary when you arrived at Ms. Block’s apartment tonight?”

  She wipes her nose with a tissue that Sarah hands her. “No.”

  “What time did you get here?”

  “The chief of police has already asked us these questions, Officer,” Callie says, defensively.

  “It’s an ongoing investigation, Miss. I’m just following up on some loose ends.”

  “I’m sorry.” She heaves a deep sigh. “Close to midnight. Somewhere around there.”

  “Did you see anybody else in the vicinity?” I ask.

  “I wasn’t paying attention, Officer. I was in shock when I saw Kim lying on the floor.”

  I glimpse the other girls in the group standing five feet away from us. “Did any of you see Ms. Block prior to midnight?”

  Everyone answers no, and shakes their head—except Sarah.

  She looks up at me and says, “We hung out before Bio class. She was supposed to come over to the Phi Sum Beta house for one of our meetings with the other sorority girls.”

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “She told me she had something to do after class.”

  “Do you know what she meant by that?”

  “No.”

  I scribble more notes into my notepad. “Thanks for your time,” I say, looking up at the girls and closing my notepad.

  “What happens now?” Sarah asks.

  I slide the notepad into my uniform breast pocket and wipe my wet face with the back of my hand. “The police department will continue to investigate the case. We’ll be in contact.”

  “That’s it?” Sarah asked, embracing Callie.

  “For now. We’ll be in touch.” I watch the group of girls turning and walking away. “Would you like a ride back to your house?”

  Sarah thanks me for the offer, but declines, and all four of them continue down the sidewalk, hunched against the driving rain.

  I step out into the street to my car to unlock the driver’s side door and get in behind the wheel. But it is not until I start the ignition that I notice a scrap of paper tucked beneath the left windshield wiper.

  I stare at it, puzzled. Is it a ticket?

  I look out the window to the shoulder for a no parking sign. I can’t see through the dense rain.

  “Shit,” I mumble, opening the door and getting back out.

  Looking around the street, everything is quiet. I have to lift the windshield wiper to remove the damp paper without tearing it. I get back inside the car and hold the note under the dull light of the console, squinting to read the almost illegible handwriting.

  The interior of the car is chilly, despite the August heat. I re-read the three words written in the messy penmanship: I miss you.

  I start to panic, my heart beating unusually fast. I turn over the meticulously folded piece of paper and feel along the raised grooves where the tip of the pen was pressed down firmly.

  I stare out the window at the cloak of rain enveloping vehicles on the side of the street, and the hazy outlines of nearby houses. My gaze falls to the piece of paper in my lap as a familiar name jumps out at me from the lingering darkness.

  Steve.

  I see him clearly, his brown eyes burrowing a hole in the back of my head. The frayed ends of his punk band pink bangs hang over one side of his face.

  He wears braces to st
raighten his bottom teeth, and when he opens his mouth to smile, I return the favor.

  I smile in the dark, holding the paper up to the light and staring at the words he wrote, over and over. A niggling voice in my head urges me to call him.

  Do it, you idiot. Talk to him. Tell him how you feel.

  Then I hear another voice, not Steve’s, not mine, blurring between this world and the other. It is drowning out my thoughts, and the image of Steve vaporizes in the air.

  My father is talking to me: Be a man. Show me how tough you are. Real men don’t show their feelings.

  He is not hissing, not this time. But his words are like weapons. I can feel the burning sting of them as my hands clench around the steering wheel, drowning out Steve’s words.

  I clamp my eyes shut and see the color red, brightening around the edges of my vision. I see my father’s face, the intensity in his eyes, and the way he says my name, “Jack.” His voice is grating, slicing the ends of my nerves.

  I turn the key in the ignition and scan through the radio stations, pleased to hear other voices beside my father’s.

  Hip-hop. Rap. New Age.

  Anything. Everything.

  I pull away from the curb, reaching down for the mysterious note in my lap, and heading to my apartment, driving slowly through hard rain.

  Twenty minutes later, I sit outside the townhouse building of my apartment with the car still running.

  The dark scrim of night is opaque like thick soup. I look to where the bottle of Russian Standard Vodka sits in a brown paper bag on the passenger seat.

  Booze: my favorite vice.

  I turn off the car and grab the paper bag next to me. I open the door and step out into the empty street. The air is moist and fragrant and I smell lavender, jasmine, and honeysuckle wafting past me from a neighboring garden.

  I slam the car door shut, lock it, and run up the cobblestone walkway to the apartment’s front door.

  Inside, I shake off the rain and notice that the elevator is out of service.