A Stranger Lies There

by Stephen Santogrossi

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “What?”

  “Paperwork screwup. It happens.”

  I wanted to rip the car apart. I wanted to grab both their necks and throttle them until my strength gave out or they crashed the car. I’d been chasing smoke, and now Deirdre was dead.

  “My wife had a miscarriage three months into our first pregnancy,” I heard Branson say over the roaring in my head. “Took me a long time to convince her it wasn’t her fault.”

  I saw myself last night, working in the shop. Finishing up and going into the house. Stopping at the bedroom door as I’d done and seeing Deirdre asleep on top of the covers. But in my mind, I got into bed beside her, and watched the rise and fall of her chest until I fell asleep, no thoughts of Turret to invade my dreams.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “You coming?” Branson said, leaning into the car with his door open behind him. We’d stopped in front of the house.

  I got out into the heat. Two of my neighbors were standing in the front yard next door, talking quietly. Most of the official vehicles were gone. The crime scene tape marking off the property was still there, and a white police van was parked in front. A man in shirtsleeves and slacks took a large toolbox from the back of the van into the house ahead of us. We ducked under the yellow tape and followed him.

  “Anything I can do to help, Tim,” Ralph from across the street called out. I lifted my hand to him without turning around.

  Inside had already acquired the sterile, clinical environment of a laboratory. Two technicians worked in the bedroom, gathering prints under a bright floodlight they’d put in the corner on a stand. The hot bulb must have added a good five degrees to the already warm room. It left nothing to the imagination, showering everything with a radiance so strong I half expected to see my bones through my hands. Deirdre’s body had already been removed, and the bed seemed huge and empty without her. I looked away quickly.

  Branson got the okay from one of the investigators for me to take a bag from the open closet and stuff it with some clothes. Next I went to the dresser, which was covered in fingerprint powder. I looked to Branson for approval. He nodded after the tech told him he’d finished with it. I took some underwear and socks out of the top drawer, then glanced around the room.

  “You guys have her purse?”

  “We haven’t gone through it yet,” the second technician said.

  “I need the car keys.”

  “You don’t have your own?” Branson asked.

  “Not to hers.”

  “You got spares somewhere?”

  I nodded at the nighttable on her side of the bed.

  “How about it?” Branson asked the guy.

  “Let me see,” he answered, walking over to it. He opened the drawer with a gloved hand and looked inside. Pulled out the small key ring, holding it up for me to see. “These them?”

  I nodded, and he looked to Branson. “Okay with me,” Branson said.

  Tidwell, who’d been standing in the doorway, agreed. “I can’t imagine finding prints on them and nothing else.”

  I caught the keys as they were tossed to me. Told them I was ready to go, wanting to get out of there as fast as possible. Outside, I got in the car. Deirdre’s scent lingered inside, a lavender soap she used. I put my head on the steering wheel, eyes squeezed shut to cut off the tears that threatened once again.

  A knock on the driver’s window. I looked up and rolled it down. “You okay to drive?” Tidwell asked. I nodded, started the car. “Hey,” he said, getting my attention. “Don’t leave town, all right? We may need you.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “You’re going somewhere now.”

  “I just have to get outta here.”

  “If I call in tonight, they’ll know where to reach you, right?”

  “Soon as I know,” I said, putting it into gear and backing down the driveway.

  I drove without thinking. No destination in mind, a hot wind blowing through the car. Turning corners yet escaping nothing, the choices I’d made following me wherever I went. Last night at the kitchen table, Deirdre had sensed what was coming, that I wouldn’t let go until it was too late. She’d known it wasn’t Turret who tormented me, and I realized that even if we’d been told right away he couldn’t have done it, things wouldn’t have turned out any different.

  I kept driving, the pain and loss I felt hardening into a tight knot in my stomach. Eventually I found myself on Highway 111 going back toward the city. The valley around it was bronzed with the fading evening light. Every day, from early morning to midafternoon, the sun was all-powerful and merciless. A glowering, unquenchable ball of fire. But as it neared its nightly resting place beyond the western peaks, it lost much of its ferocity, becoming more muted and buttery. The sky, bleached bone-white with the sun at its zenith, was now regaining its azure splendor, and the soil, pale and wrinkled in the noontime hours, reawakened like a ripening orange.

  Just before Windy Point at the edge of the desert, I turned off into the packed hard sand by the side of the road, and the small, cleared circle of land a hundred yards into the scrubland was flat and empty and still. Tire tracks and the remains of campfires were the only signs that anyone ever came here. This was where I’d proposed to Deirdre three years ago, the Desert Angel looking down on us while the wind buffeted the car like something alive.

  Now the area was windless and silent. I parked and got out of the car, searching for that familiar imprint upon the mountain. The mountain stared back down at me, offering nothing. It grew in solemn ranks, each more imposing than the last. My eyes swept its surface, back and forth and up and down. But I saw only hard, faceless dirt. I felt my heart drop into the dust at my feet, then the sun crashed into the mountain and ripped open on its jagged peaks, and I screamed until my throat was as raw and parched as the desert around me.

  CITY

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Dusk now, the city in shadow, recovering from another long hot day. I was parked across the street from Deirdre’s clinic. Streetlamps flickered to life. Traffic lights had that weird, watery luminance when the last minutes of daylight float in the atmosphere before evaporating into the night sky.

  An hour earlier, I’d ended up at Nate’s on Palm Canyon Drive. I almost ordered a whiskey, but didn’t want to start down that road. Settled for a ginger ale instead. The place had been pretty quiet. I watched the bartender polish glasses so I wouldn’t have to face myself in the mirror above the bar. Tidwell’s words kept coming back to me, though I tried to force them away. Maybe he was right. Maybe Deirdre couldn’t deal with the possibility that my past was about to pounce on us. Or that she would lose me in the process, not just physically but emotionally. Either way, I wouldn’t be there. All the things she’d overcome by herself, maybe she just didn’t think she could do it again.

  Deirdre had grown up in New York, where she was sexually abused by an uncle while still in grammar school. It had continued for a few years, until she reached junior high, and the repressed shame and guilt eventually caught up with her. Her sister died in Deirdre’s senior year of high school. She stopped caring about herself after that. Heroin dulled the edges of her ravaged self-esteem, and her early and mid-twenties were consumed by the addiction before she’d finally cleaned up and moved across country to this desert. I’d come out here about the same time, both of us fleeing demons we’d so far been unable to shake. We used to laugh that maybe they couldn’t stand the heat. But we both knew what it really was, and now, in my stubbornness, all of it had been lost.

  The ginger ale in front of me had turned to water, the ice melting and sending condensation down the sides of the glass. It was slippery and cold in my hand as I turned it back and forth. The news about Turret took everything out of me. With no focus for my anger I was impotent. I went over the interview at the police station, then thought of how quickly they’d finished with Deirdre’s car. Her keys were sitting next to my glass on the bar, and I knew then what I had to
do. I left without touching my drink.

  The palm trees along the sidewalk rustled in the breeze that came down off the mountain. An empty paper cup skidded on the pavement past the car. It had little company, with vehicle and pedestrian traffic beginning to thin out as evening descended. I’d give it a few more minutes. I felt raw and scraped out, as if my insides had been scoured with steel brushes. There was no getting around the fact that if I hadn’t left last night, Deirdre would still be alive. Probably getting off work right about now, her long hair blowing in the breeze as she glided down the sidewalk.

  She gets in the car and sits beside me, shutting the door to seal in the silence. Her warm hand rests on my arm, and I hear her whisper, “Stay with me, Tim. Here. Now.”

  I took Deirdre’s spare keys from my pocket as I approached the clinic. Once inside, I locked the door behind me. The alarm whistled faintly, waiting for someone to key in the proper code. I had less than a minute before it would go off in a keening blare that would alert the police. On several previous visits here with Deirdre, I’d observed her punching in the code on the alarm’s keypad. I couldn’t remember the actual numbers she’d used, but I was fairly confident of being able to recall the pattern once I saw the keyboard.

  Hurrying to a small closet a few feet in, I opened the door and found the green alarm control panel. Hoping the code hadn’t been changed since the last time I was here, I tried it out. The whistling stopped and the LCD screen told me I’d been successful.

  Relieved, I went to Deirdre’s office without turning on any lights. I closed the door before switching one on. There was a wedding photo of us in a gold frame on her desk. A casual picture taken by one of the guests, showing us dancing arm in arm. Deirdre had a loopy grin on her face, her hands on my back clutching both of her shoes. Her bare feet were on top of mine as I struggled with the dance steps, all five-foot-ten of her leaning into me. I picked up the picture and smiled, remembering that perfect day. My thumb caressed the smooth glass in front of her image. Putting it back, I went straight for the file cabinet in the corner, used another of Deirdre’s keys to unlock it. The current client files were in the top drawer, about ten of them she dealt with personally. I removed the top page from each, which listed personal information like addresses and telephone numbers, stacked them in the automatic document feeder and turned on the machine. While it warmed up, I opened the second file drawer and saw that it held previous patient files, going back about six months, and I prepared to copy those too.

  Everything I thought could be useful, about forty files in all, I copied. It went quicker than I expected with the automated machine, and I was done in about twenty minutes. After recollating the files, I found an empty folder for the copies. Before I left, I grabbed our wedding picture and included it with the documents in the folder, switched off the lights and reset the alarm.

  Outside, I turned around to lock the door behind me. As I did so, the picture of me and Deirdre slid out of the folder and clattered on the pavement. I was afraid it had broken, but found that it was okay when I picked it up. I locked the door, knowing I’d probably never return. Back in the car, I put the sheaf of papers on the seat beside me with the photograph on top. As I drove away, the streetlights slid over the picture frame’s glass and reflected into my eyes.

  There was a Denny’s next door to the motel off the freeway. I ordered the first thing I saw on the menu, not caring what it was. It was strictly for nourishment, fuel for the following day, and I didn’t really taste any of it. I sat at the counter and watched the waitresses scurry back and forth. The cooks behind the order window worked methodically over hissing clouds of steam and sizzling grease. It brought back the time I’d spent working in the prison kitchen, first doing post-meal cleanings, then the cooking itself. I’d been out a long time, but it didn’t feel that way.

  As I ate, I went over my plans for tomorrow. I’d taken Deirdre’s case files in order to begin tracking down her clients, hoping to speak to as many of them as I could about the possible identity of the young man shot down in our front yard. It was the only thing I could think to do. If both deaths were related to the area’s burgeoning drug trade, I’d do my damndest to prove it. I was absolutely convinced, unlike the cops, that Deirdre’s death wasn’t self-inflicted or accidental.

  I finished the meal and left a ten on the counter, then checked into the motel next door. The room was plain and impersonal, exactly what I needed. I sat down on the bed, looked at the phone. Didn’t want to deal with it, but I decided to get it over with. Someone picked up after three rings.

  “Can I speak to Allie?”

  “Is that you, Tim?”

  “Allie?”

  “Oh, Tim, I’m so sorry. We’re all just in shock. How are you doing?”

  “I don’t think it’s hit me yet. I mean, I’ve had some moments, but…” I started over. “I’m going to need your help.”

  “Anything.”

  “Can you call anybody that may not have heard yet? I’m just not up to it.”

  “Everybody at the clinic knows. I don’t have Terry’s number though.” Terry. Deirdre’s friend from Triumph Outreach.

  “I’m sure it’ll be in the Rolodex on her desk in the office. I’d give it to you but I’m not at home.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “I think so.”

  “The news said … what happened, Tim?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She seemed fine.”

  “She was. Allie, she didn’t do that to herself.”

  “I knew it. I knew she didn’t.” A shaky breath. “But the police think…”

  “They don’t know her the way we do.”

  “What about you, Tim?”

  “I don’t know. I’m still trying to sort it all out. First the other murder. Now Deirdre. I don’t know.”

  “She called me last night.”

  “What?”

  “I talked to her last night.”

  “When?”

  “You were in the shop.”

  I couldn’t seem to absorb the news. “What did she say?”

  “She was worried about you.”

  It just couldn’t get any worse. Everything I’d done was wrong. “She tried to talk me out of getting involved. And I didn’t listen.”

  “It’s not your fault, Tim.”

  “I wasn’t there for her.”

  “It’s not.” I knew she wanted to ask why I’d gone down to Indio, but she didn’t. “When’s the funeral?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” I had to end this, now. “Allie, I may not be in touch for a couple days.”

  “I understand.”

  “But I’ll call when I have the arrangements.”

  “Okay.” A pause. “God, I’ll miss her. I miss her now.”

  “I know. Goodbye, Allie.”

  I hung up. The phone at home was probably ringing off the hook from other friends, but they’d just have to fill the machine. I got up and turned on the TV. Went to the window and pulled the curtains. The room reflected back at me, obscuring the night outside. I switched off the lamp and stood in the darkness with the TV flickering in the background. Watched the traffic zoom by on the freeway, my reflection coming and going with the light from the television screen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The next morning was bright and hot, and I woke up sweating to the sound of a morning news show. I switched it off, took a long hot shower until steam filled the bathroom and my skin prickled with heat. Still wet, I went into the bedroom and turned on the window air conditioner. Let the cold blast of air dry my skin and shock me into wakefulness. Then I dressed, combed my wet hair back and went down to the restaurant. I ordered a large breakfast and drank cup after cup of strong black coffee, steeling myself for the coming day.

  Back in the room, I spread the copies I’d made last night on the bed, and started with Deirdre’s most recent clients. The first number didn’t answer. The second one was answered by a man who sounded in
a rush.

  “I’m looking for Michael D’Angelo.”

  “You found him,” he said before speaking to someone else. “Not now, Trish.” Then he was back. “Who’s this?”

  “I’m sorry. This is Tim Ryder. I think you knew my wife, Deirdre.”

  “Yeah,” he said, drawing it out warily. “I know a Deirdre.”

  “I don’t know if you heard—”

  “Look, I’m on my way to work. What’s this all about?”

  “I guess maybe you didn’t see the news.”

  “What news?”

  “She’s dead.”

  I heard a woman in the background, and his voice got muffled before he came back. “Did I hear you right?”

  “You did.”

  “My God! That’s … that’s terrible. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Can we talk sometime today?”

  “You said you’re her husband?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m really sorry. I can’t … what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Maybe we could meet somewhere.”

  “I guess. But I don’t see how—”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I don’t know if I feel comfortable—”

  “It would really help me out. Deirdre too.”

  “How did she die?”

  “Can we talk about it later?”

  “Well … if you can make it out to the San Gorgonio Inn. What’s today?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “I get a break around ten.”

  “I could be there then. Where at?”

  “The parking lot. Don’t ask for me, I’ll find you. My boss is just looking for a reason.”

  “No problem. I’ll see you at ten.”

  The next one had an answering machine, which I didn’t bother with, and the one after that rang and rang. Number five picked up just before I was going to move on.

  A woman, speaking very quietly. “Hello?”

  “Is this Monica?” The TV was on behind her.

  “Yeah.” Tired, without inflection.