A Stranger Lies There

by Stephen Santogrossi

  When I saw Branson and Tidwell approaching through the dried grass, the dam finally broke. The blood rushed in my ears. My voice was an incoherent torrent of accusation and blame. I struggled past Tidwell, who tried to hold me back, into Branson, who went down in the grass at my feet with blood running from his nose. Then I was on top of him, my fists pummeling his face and chest, with Tidwell shouting in my ear. He pulled me off in a tangle of flailing arms and flying fists. I landed on my back with his knee on my chest and his gun in my face.

  “Right there, buddy!” he warned. I heard the hammer click back, the black hole of the gun barrel offering infinity if I chose it.

  “Do what you have to,” I whispered. Tidwell uncocked the gun and holstered it, roughly pulled me off the ground.

  He whirled me around and slammed on the cuffs. “You better get it together, man, and fast.”

  The two patrol officers had come outside, and they were re-holstering their weapons. Tidwell marched me past Branson, who was muttering under his breath and brushing dead grass from his rumpled suit, to the dark sedan sitting by the curb behind the black and white. He shoved me into the back seat. Rolled the window down before slamming the door shut.

  “Stay there, Ryder. Don’t even think about moving.”

  Tidwell joined Branson in the middle of the yard and said something to him. Branson silently shook his head in response, dabbed at his nose with a handkerchief. Blood spotted his white dress shirt. They both turned to look at me in the car watching them, Branson with a frown on his face but no apparent rancor toward me. Tidwell just shook his head disgustedly and went into the house; Branson nodded solemnly in my direction before turning to follow him inside.

  An ambulance and a second patrol car pulled up. Lights flashing, sirens blaring. One of the officers on the scene met the two who’d just arrived, conferred with them briefly, then directed the medics into the house.

  Another officer approached and leaned toward me through the open window. “I don’t have to worry about you out here, do I?”

  I ignored him. He shrugged and leaned against the back of the car, watched the crime scene tape being strung up around the front of the house. Evidently, he’d been assigned to guard me.

  Closing my eyes, I let my head fall back to the seat. I tried to block out everything that was happening. No luck. I heard more vehicles pulling up, brakes squealing and doors thumping shut. Hurried footsteps going back and forth. Orders being given and acknowledged. Shocked whispers and conjecture from the neighbors gathered once again in the street. The news people finally arrived, drawn by their ever-vigilant police scanners.

  One reporter made it to the car. “Is that your wife in there, Mr. Ryder?”

  The question startled me. I opened my eyes to see a microphone jammed through the window, before the cop rushed back over and grabbed him. “How does it feel to be going through this again?” he yelled over the officer’s shoulder as he was being escorted away.

  I watched all the activity swirling around me, trapped. Tidwell came out of the house and got into the car. He twisted around in the front seat and pushed the hair back from his sweating forehead. “You okay?”

  I looked away, not answering.

  “I’m sorry this happened,” he said.

  “A lot of good your sorrys do for Deirdre. If somebody had listened to me last night, or even this morning, she may have had a chance. So take your apology and shove it.”

  Tidwell’s eyes flashed angrily. “Watch it.” He was about to say something else, but then stopped himself and sighed.

  “I guess I’ll be going to jail again for hitting Branson.”

  “No. We’re not going to arrest you for that. Branson feels as bad as I do about this.” He paused for emphasis. “But you really gotta cool it.”

  I practically spat the next words at him. “Cool it? My wife is dead.” I shook my head, tired of being angry. “You guys should have been here. As soon as I told you something was wrong. You fucked up and Deirdre paid for it.”

  “Look. I told you there was nothing we could do. We can’t go running all over town every time someone thinks something may be wrong. We’d never get anything done. And you gave us a lot to do last night.”

  “I’m not interested in excuses,” I told him. “Just find the guy who did this to her.”

  A steady look from Tidwell, like something was on his mind. He blew air out of his mouth and his eyes slid away.

  “What?” I asked apprehensively.

  “I hate to tell you this, but right now we’re not even sure it’s a homicide.”

  “You gotta be kidding!” I shouted, barely able to restrain myself. My voice lowered a notch. “What are you talking about?” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Branson watching the exchange from the lawn.

  Tidwell glanced his way for a second, as if for support, then told me, “We’ve only taken a quick look so far, but there’s no sign of violence or struggle anywhere in the house, including the bedroom.” He stopped, reluctant to go on, but I already knew what he was going to say. “And with her history of drug—”

  “Fuck you. She’s been clean since I’ve known her. Not one relapse.”

  No response.

  “You think this is all a big fucking coincidence? Some guy ends up dead on our front lawn, and two days later my wife OD’s?”

  An earlier thought resurfaced, but I pushed it away.

  “There is no way she did that to herself, no fucking chance. That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard. I told you what happened last night. She was all set to come out to Indio for me. What do you think, she decided a quick nod would be the thing to do before getting behind the wheel?”

  Branson was suddenly there, standing outside the car. “Maybe she was already high when you called her.”

  That took me aback. Deirdre had sounded out of it when she first answered the phone, and I’d assumed that was from sleep. But she’d recovered quickly, and seemed clearheaded and razor-sharp when I told her what was up. Branson had to be wrong. I’d have known if she was using. Wouldn’t I?

  “No,” I said, putting it out of my mind with an emphatic shake of my head. “Didn’t happen that way. She had help with that syringe.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” Tidwell said. “If there’s evidence of that, we’ll find it.” He looked up as the coroner’s wagon arrived and backed partway into the driveway. Branson went over to meet it and led them into the house.

  “I just can’t believe I let her down,” I said to myself. Grief was waiting to pull me under, a dark undertow.

  “I promise, if your wife was murdered we’ll get the guy. Just let us do our jobs.” A pause. “We’re going to need a complete statement from you about how you found her. At the station. You up to that?”

  “I guess so.” I was suddenly very tired. Shock was beginning to set in. “Whatever.”

  “Let me go tell Branson.” He left me alone and I stared straight ahead. Unmoving, barely breathing. Retreating into myself. The flashing red and blue lights blurred together, the sounds of emergency activity fading away. Why hadn’t she fought? The question came out of nowhere, and with it, a stinging shame for thinking that way. Maybe Deirdre thought she could handle the dose. Or that I’d make it back, or send the cops her way in time to revive her. Either way, it was better than accepting the finality of a bullet in the head.

  Tidwell reappeared beside me. Opened my door and turned me around to take off the cuffs. He returned them to the case on his belt and shut the door, then circled around to the driver’s side and got in. I sat back, hands still clasped behind me, unable to look back as we drove away.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Back at the police station for the third time in two days. Tidwell sat me down in the conference room and left to get some coffee. He brought in two styrofoam cups, but I didn’t touch mine, leaving it sitting in front of me. The glass-topped table reflected the lighted fluorescent squares above as the steam from the coffee curled
upwards.

  “Wait here,” Tidwell told me and walked across the squad room to a large office, where he spoke with someone sitting behind a desk. Presently, Tidwell turned to look at me. The other man nodded, saying one last thing before Tidwell stepped out and closed the office door. On the way back, he stopped and talked to one of the other detectives for a moment, then went to his own desk. Rummaged around in there until he found a cassette tape, which he removed from its wrapper and slid into a small tape recorder. He brought it in with him, along with a dog-eared legal pad and pen. I heard phones ringing and the chatter of a typewriter before he closed the conference room door and sat down.

  “Branson should be here any minute. We’ll start without him.” After clicking on the tape recorder, Tidwell recited our names and the date and time.

  “You got out of here about eight this morning. Did you call her first thing?”

  The coffee was hot under my fingertips, and I dug my nails into the styrofoam. “I used the phone booth at the bank.”

  Tidwell nodded at me to go on.

  “The machine picked up.” The cup buckled inward, snapping. Hot coffee spread over the table, burning my hand. We both got up to avoid the spill, but it soaked Tidwell’s legal pad. He got the tape recorder just in time.

  “Sorry.”

  “You said you were up to this.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  Tidwell shook his head. Picked up the tablet and turned it sideways so the coffee dripped off. Then he ripped off the wet pages and threw them into a trashcan in the corner. He was fuming, his voice low and calm. “That’s all you get, Ryder. Next time I punch your ticket.”

  “Understood.”

  “Sit down.”

  I did. Tidwell went out to the coffee machine and brought back some paper towels. He tossed them over the spill and I watched the coffee soak into the paper.

  “Let’s try this again,” he said.

  The next few minutes were a painful recollection of the events this morning after my release, everything described in meticulous detail.

  “How did you find her?”

  I looked at him stupidly. “I walked into the bedroom.”

  “No, I mean … I’m gonna have to ask you about the condition of the … how she looked.”

  “You saw her.”

  “You didn’t—did you try to revive her?”

  “She was cold.”

  “Move her in any way?”

  “No.”

  “Hold her in your arms? Anything like that?”

  “I lay on the bed with her until you guys showed up.”

  “So we saw her exactly as you found her.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t disturb anything in the room.”

  “I used the phone. That was it.”

  “How about the needle?”

  “Didn’t touch it.”

  “Okay.” Tidwell wrote something down. “Did you see anything, anything, that made you think she was forced?”

  The question hung in the air a moment. “She had to have been.”

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “I didn’t do a whole lot of looking around.”

  “But you didn’t see anything?”

  I knew the direction this thing was taking. “No. But I told you, the front door wasn’t locked and the alarm wasn’t set.”

  “You sure you locked the door last night before you left?”

  “Yes.”

  “And set the alarm?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Tidwell studied me a few seconds. “But you were pretty wound up weren’t you? You could have forgotten.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s possible you left without thinking.”

  “No way. Not a chance. I can picture myself doing it right now.”

  More scribbling.

  “Look, I’m positive that door was locked and the alarm was on. Somebody was in that house.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. The guy I fought with last night.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He had enough time to do it. Probably went there right after I got stuck in that field. He’d be free and clear.”

  “Uh-huh. Let’s go back to last night. You called her from the motel.”

  “Yeah. Right before the police got there.”

  “How did she seem?”

  “Tired. I woke her up.”

  No response.

  “It was after one in the morning.”

  “And you woke her up.”

  I realized what he was getting at—if it had gone the way I thought, the man should have been there already. “I got my car back on the road pretty quick.”

  He nodded. “So she sounded groggy.”

  “Only at first.”

  Tidwell waited.

  “She wasn’t high.”

  “And then what?”

  “I told her where I was. Gave her directions.”

  “She leave right away?”

  “She said she would.”

  “You get the feeling she wasn’t alone?”

  “What?”

  “That someone was with her? Telling her what to say?”

  I couldn’t say I had. “No.”

  He wrote that down. “Was she mad at you? For going off like that?”

  “No. In fact, she apologized for something that happened earlier.” I wished I hadn’t brought that up.

  “What?”

  “It was nothing. Just a personal thing.”

  “Nothing to do with the murder?”

  I didn’t want to answer. “Look, I know what you’re gonna say, but it wasn’t like that.”

  “What did you two argue about?”

  “It wasn’t an argument. She thinks—thought—I was getting too wrapped up in it. Because of Turret.”

  “She was upset.”

  “I’m telling you she had no reason to start using again.”

  “You told me that in the car. But you’ve got to prepare yourself if she was. The fact remains that you were both dealing with a lot, even without Turret. And I don’t have to tell you how addicts—or ex-addicts—sometimes handle stress.”

  “I resent you telling me what my wife was about.”

  Branson walked in. He looked at the coffee I’d spilled, then at me before sitting down. He’d washed the blood off his face and changed his shirt.

  “We were just about done,” Tidwell told him.

  Branson nodded and addressed me. “There’s a hole in the wall in the kitchen, like someone punched it. You know how it got there?”

  “I lost my temper last night when every reporter in the city was calling us. You’ll find the phone in pieces.”

  “That was my next question,” he said, and turned to Tidwell. “You wanna go on?”

  “I think I got all we’ll need for now,” he answered, switching off the tape recorder.

  “We should be done at the house by tonight,” Branson told me.

  “Doesn’t matter. I don’t think I’d make it through the night alone in there.”

  Branson frowned. “Where did you plan on sleeping?”

  “I haven’t really thought about it.”

  “We need to know where to reach you.”

  “I’ll let you know.” I felt like driving, and never stopping. “I’ll need my car.”

  “We’re not done with it yet.”

  I looked at Tidwell. “What about Deirdre’s?”

  “It has to be printed.”

  That made sense. If the guy accosted Deirdre as she was leaving to meet me, he might have touched a door handle or something. But it left me in a lurch.

  “I can’t have my car. And I can’t have her car either?”

  They looked at each other, and Tidwell leaned over and punched a number into the speaker phone sitting on the table.

  “Mitchell,” someone answered on what sounded like a cell phone.

  “Steve. This is Ti
dwell. Print the car first, okay?”

  “You got it. Anything else?”

  “No. See you in a bit. And thanks.” Tidwell ended the call and turned to me. “You hungry?”

  “I guess so.”

  “I’ll pick up some burgers,” Branson said, turning to go. Tidwell followed him into the squad room. I heard him ask if there was anything new at the scene before their voices faded. Then he came back in.

  “You mind waiting in here?”

  “I need a restroom.”

  “Down the hall to your right. Come on back when you’re done.”

  He followed me out of the conference room and sat down at his desk. I took a short corridor to the restroom, which smelled of disinfectant. A bulletin board above the urinal had the sports page tacked to it, but I didn’t read it. At the sink, I found the soap dispenser empty. I turned on the water anyway, splashed my face with cold water. Cursed under my breath when I saw they had one of those drying machines, forcing me to use toilet paper. In the mirror, I wiped the remaining water off my face and ran my fingers through my hair. None of it did any good. I closed my eyes. Gripped the sides of the basin and squeezed, putting my head down. The door opened behind me, and I realized I’d been knocking my head softly against the mirror. I looked up, embarrassed, as one of the detectives came in.

  “How’s it going?” he said without interest, eyeing my reflection before going into the stall. I caught the door and left.

  Back in the conference room, I watched Tidwell doing some paperwork at his desk. The phones in there rang every few minutes, but otherwise it was pretty quiet. Then Branson came in, the smell of grilled meat and fries following him.

  After eating, we went out to their car again. Neither of them spoke. Tidwell glanced back at me every now and then in the rearview mirror. It was late afternoon but the air conditioner was on full blast, whistling through the vents.

  “Where’s Turret?” I asked.

  “He’s not a suspect,” Branson answered.

  “Why not?”

  Branson turned around. “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Ryder. But we work better without interference.”

  Tidwell’s eyes kept coming back to me in the mirror. “Turret was still in jail at the time of the first murder,” he said.