Five
She had known he would seek her out, so it didn’t surprise her to find him on the other side of her front door. But why did he have to choose here instead of her office, impersonal territory that held no memories for either of them? She could have handled it there, much more easily.
Once he hadn’t appeared at her office, she’d assumed he’d show up the next day. Otherwise she would have prepared herself both mentally and physically for his arrival. She’d have put on something slightly less revealing and vulnerability-inducing than a pale peach robe with nothing but a pair of fuzzy slippers underneath it. Part of her wanted to escape to her bedroom to put on something more appropriate before she opened the door to him. She had no idea if he’d wait that long, and she wanted this over.
She took one last look through the peephole, steeling herself for the encounter that was to come. She might not have changed much, but he had. Thirteen years ago, he’d been a young man just coming into his own—thinner, more wiry than he was today. Back then, he’d been clear-eyed and avid—hungry for the job. Today she’d seen something in his eyes, a world-weariness and fatigue she would never have expected to see in the eyes of the young man she knew. She suspected that, more than the sensual quality of his eyes, had been what captivated her that afternoon. For the first time she’d seen depth in his eyes and couldn’t help wondering how they’d gotten so deep.
The doorbell buzzed again, spurring her to action. She pulled the door open and saw him, the real him, not distorted by the glass in the door. He stood inside the glass storm door, one hand braced on the jamb.
He offered her a faint smile, a sardonic bend of his lips that reminded her of the first time she’d opened that door for him. It had been a Saturday night, a day her father hadn’t worked. He’d spent all day cleaning the house, or rather overseeing her clean it, since men didn’t stoop to doing anything so unmanly as wielding a dust cloth. He spent the latter part of the evening readying himself as if he were preparing himself for a date.
He’d made her dress, too, for what reason she couldn’t fathom since no one was coming there to see her. Besides, the only person they were expecting was his new partner, some rookie he was training, a kid barely five years older than her own fifteen years. What was the big deal about that?
When the doorbell rang, he’d literally pushed her toward the door. “Go answer the door, girl. He’s liable to think you don’t have any manners.”
A year ago, she might have been excited to meet the man who worked with her father, but nothing excited her now. Not since her life ended and all that remained was the existence she had left. She trudged toward the door. With wooden movements she pulled it open. On the other side stood the most beautiful man she had ever seen. He smiled at her, just a hint of a thing, like he had some secret he might whisper in your ear if you let him.
She didn’t smile back, simply stared into his eyes colored a warm chocolate brown shaded by long sooty lashes. It wasn’t a look of interest, though she knew half of her friends would have swooned already just from looking at him. Her gaze was an assessing one, one that sought to gauge his character. He appeared not to notice.
“You must be Alex,” he said. “Your father’s told me a lot about you.”
I bet, she thought without rancor. But certainly not everything. “Please come in,” she’d said, stepping aside for him to enter.
She hadn’t admitted to herself then, but that smile of his got to her. It still did. It spoke of a charm he didn’t turn on or off but simply possessed, like the color of his eyes or the cleft in his chin.
But she wasn’t any more ready to make a fool of herself over him now than she had been then. She stood silent, waiting for him to speak. This was his show. If he wanted something from her, he’d have to ask for it.
“Hello, Alex,” he said finally, as if to confirm he’d figured out who she was. “It’s been a long time.”
For a moment, Alex simply stared at him, his words echoing in her ears. It’s been a long time. Part of her wanted to hit him with her fists and rail, “Whose fault is that?” She wasn’t the one to disappear. She was the one whose phone calls went unanswered or even acknowledged.
She’d told herself that if he wanted something from her he’d have to ask for it. But she saw in his continuing silence that he wouldn’t even give her that.
With a sigh of capitulation, she said. “I suppose you want to come in.”
“That was the plan.”
“Then don’t let me stop you.” She moved aside and gestured for him to enter.
He did as she suggested, stepping over the threshold, crowding her in the small foyer. The lion hadn’t quite finished with its end of March, making a coat necessary. Zack wore a khaki duster that he didn’t bother to remove. He still had on the gray suit he’d worn that afternoon, suggesting that he’d come here straight from work, although it was already past nine o’clock. Both his failure to relieve himself of his coat and the fact he hadn’t changed suggested he intended to keep this visit brief. She could hope, couldn’t she?
She turned and headed for the living room that opened out from the foyer to claim one edge of the sofa, tucking her feet beneath her. “Then what can I do for you, Zach? Despite what McKay thinks, Thorpe did not call me. I checked the logs. Maybe he called and hung up or didn’t give his name. Even if he had, I couldn’t tell you what he said. You know that. If it hadn’t been plastered all over the papers that I’d been treating Thorpe I couldn’t have told you that much. I can’t help you.”
She’d hoped to put him off with her comments, to make him see he was wasting his time. He appeared not to notice, his attention taken up by examining the room from where he stood by her father’s favorite chair.
When he finally settled his gaze on her again it was with a look of nostalgia. “I take it you’re not much on redecorating.”
No, in the past thirteen years, she’d left things pretty much where they’d been. Right now, she couldn’t remember having even painted the place. The house was frozen in time, much like she’d allowed herself to freeze, until recently. This place, this home, no longer suited her and she’d contemplated selling.
“I’m sure you didn’t come here to discuss my décor. What do you want, Zach?”
“If I wanted to talk to you about Walter Thorpe I would have come to your office.”
He spoke with a quiet intensity and in his eyes she saw the only hint of uncertainty she’d ever witnessed there. He brushed a hand over his hair. “Look, Alex, now that I’m here, I don’t know what to say.”
“There isn’t anything for you to say.” The past was the past, a history neither of them could go back and change. What she needed from him she’d needed thirteen years ago. Any apology, any explanation came too many years too late. She didn’t need anything from him anymore.
His expression darkened. “I don’t blame you for hating me.”
“I don’t hate you,” she said. She never had. She crediting him with leaving her to the wolves, much the way her mother had by dying when she was twelve years old. That seemed to be the way of things in her life, the ones she loved the most never stayed. But, in truth, he’d never been responsible for her. She’d only wanted it that way.
She stood, crossing her arms, a posture she recognized as defensive. “Go home, Zach. There’s nothing for you here. If you want a trip down memory lane, I can’t travel it with you. If you want absolution, call your priest. If you need some counseling, make an appointment like everyone else. I have an early morning tomorrow and need to get some sleep.”
He shoved his hands in his trouser pockets, rocking backward, considering her. “You didn’t used to be so hard, Alex.”
Annoyed at his implication, she snapped, “I didn’t used to be a lot of things.” She sighed, letting her pique abate. “I’m sure you can find your way out.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, but she could sense the capitulation in him. He withdrew his hands from his
pockets to let them hang by his sides. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”
He shrugged and turned toward the door. She waited, her breath held, listening for the sound of the door opening and shutting, leaving him on the outside. Hearing them both, she released her breath, got up from her perch on the sofa, and went to the door to lock it.
For a moment, she leaned her back against the wooden surface, breathing deeply. He was gone. That’s what she’d wanted from the moment he’d shown up at her door. The only thing marring her relief was the notion that she’d hurt him by dismissing him so abruptly. That wasn’t her plan, but she knew that’s what she’d accomplished. Oh well, she’d have to live with that, since as much as he felt he had to answer for, if she let him in, he’d want answers as well. They weren’t kids anymore. He’d expect the truth from her, and that she couldn’t give him. She wouldn’t go back, wouldn’t revisit the past, not for anyone, not even him. She’d barely survived it the first time.
Better to let him think she blamed him than to risk opening the past to scrutiny. That’s what she told herself, anyway, as she pushed off the door, ascended the stairs, and got into bed. But she lay in bed a long time, watching the patterns cast by the headlights of passing cars dance on her bedroom walls.
Zach sat in his car, still staring up at the house long after the light in Alex’s bedroom window had flickered on and off. Or, rather, the bedroom that had been hers a lifetime ago. It surprised him that she still used it. Why hadn’t she moved into the larger bedroom at the back of the house? Sammy was long dead and the house was hers to do with what she liked.
Mentally, Zach shrugged. Wondering about Alex’s sleep arrangements was only a distraction from what really bothered him. He’d known she wouldn’t welcome him into her home, but he hadn’t expected her to throw him out so roundly, at least not before he got out any of the things he wanted to tell her—words that now tumbled through his mind but none of which had made it out of his mouth. At least he’d gotten to give her some sort of apology even if it wasn’t what she deserved.
The expression “too little, too late” came to his mind. That’s what anything he could say to her now would be. He accepted that, just as he accepted that coming here had served one purpose only, that of making himself feel better. So far, even that was a bust.
His gaze shifted to the entrance to the house. A five-foot wire and post fence guarded the perimeter of the property that had once belonged to Samuel Yates. As realty spaces went, it wasn’t a large plot; big enough for a patch of lawn out front, a barbecue pit and an inground pool out back, but not much else. The house itself wasn’t large either, but big enough to feel like a real home.
He’d once asked Sammy why he’d bought this house, in the shade of million-dollar homes in Riverdale, when elsewhere in the Bronx he could have gotten more for his money. He’d said, “I bought the best house I could afford in the best neighborhood. You can’t do any better than that.” That was Sammy; everything he owned or liked or respected was the best, including Sammy himself. His way was the right way; his ideas were the best ideas. No one was a better cop than he was.
Rumors abounded that Sammy’s bullheadedness had earned him his nickname, but there were other stories, flattering in a way that only other cops appreciate: Sammy was built like the proverbial bull with beefy shoulders, a broad muscular back, and a thick midsection. By the time Zach met him, his hair had thinned in such a way that the tufts remaining at the top of his head stood up like horns when not slicked down.
Some said that Sammy could fell any door he put one of his massive shoulders to. According to Sammy, that one had started when he burst through a steel-plated door to get to the victim of a child snatching that had been traced to that location. Sammy attributed his feat to being hopped up on adrenaline, too much caffeine, and too little sleep to think before he acted. The little girl on the other side of the door had been too overwhelmed with relief to care.
Some said committing a crime was like waving a red flag in Sammy’s face; he’d keep coming after you until he got you. Then there was the time Sammy was in foot pursuit of a man who’d robbed a woman’s pocketbook at gunpoint. Legend had it the suspect turned and fired on Sammy, hitting him three times. But Sammy still kept coming, until he tackled the perp and took his weapon. In truth, Sammy’d been hit once, a flesh wound that barely nipped his shoulder, but like any other myth, its veracity wasn’t based on anything so mundane as the facts.
If you asked Sammy, he’d earned the name on his first post, walking a beat in Spanish Harlem. Sammy was old school, a relic from before the police department went PC, one of the first black cops the department deigned to admit. To hear Sammy tell it, it wasn’t uncommon in those days to draw the worst assignments or be cast as the screwup when things went sour or, worst of all, to call in for backup that never showed. He got used to going it alone, charging in and defusing a situation before it got out of control. And, Sammy had once told him with a grin, he’d been young and stupid and willing to fight anyone that swung on him. He wasn’t quick enough to use his hands or handy enough with a stick. He’d put his shoulder in the perp’s gut and take him down that way. Worked every damn time.
Zach had been assigned to the Forty-second Precinct in the Morissania Section of the Bronx straight out of the academy. That first day, Sammy had come up to him. “I hear you’re a good cop.”
Zach couldn’t imagine who’d said that or what anyone had to go on to make that type of statement. He hadn’t had a chance to prove much of anything to anyone yet. But he knew who Sammy was. A smile sneaked across Zach’s face at the compliment. “Yeah?”
Sammy gave him a once-over that suggested whoever had given him the good word had lied. “If you want to stay alive, you’ll ride with me.”
Zach laughed to himself in the confines of his car, remembering. That was Sammy, as much as he gave, he could often taketh away. But Sammy had taken him in hand, as if it were his personal mission to school Zach in the way of all things. For a kid whose father had died and whose siblings ignored him for the most part, that was a big thing.
They’d been partnered about six months when Sammy made the pronouncement that Zach should come to his house for dinner the following night. Had he been asked, Zach would have turned him down. It was his day off, time to think of something more fragrant than the smell in the sector car and softer than its upholstery. But nobody argued with Sammy; at least nobody won.
Given Sammy’s over-the-top personality, Zach had assumed his daughter would be more of the same. He hadn’t expected the girl who opened the door to him. Tall and skinny, dressed in a navy shirtwaist dress with a white collar, her hair styled into two braids that hung past her shoulders, she struck him as an older, darker yet equally morose version of Wednesday Addams. She’d stared up at him with huge, dark eyes that assessed him, and worse, found him, in some way, wanting. Or maybe she’d simply been dismissing him as a nine-second curiosity and nothing more.
During the ensuing meal of roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, and string beans, she hadn’t spoken one word and fled the table as soon as the last morsel of her food passed her lips.
After she’d left, Sammy had turned to him, his face split with a grin of fatherly pride. “So what do you think?”
Zach shrugged. What was he supposed to make of an unsmiling, utterly silent girl who looked at him like he was as welcome as a case of chickenpox? “She always so talkative?” he asked finally.
Sammy lifted one shoulder as he shoveled another forkful into his mouth. “She’ll come around.”
Zach shrugged again and focused on his own food. Even if she did, what difference would it make? He didn’t plan to make a habit of dining here.
He didn’t see her again, until after he bid Sammy good night later that evening. He’d walked out to his car and looked back at the house. She was standing at the window on the second floor. Without thinking, he lifted a hand and waved to her. In reaction she lifted her hand and gave
him the finger before retreating. He shook his head and laughed. Maybe there was a bit of Sammy in her after all.
She hadn’t wanted anything to do with him then, and it looked like they were back where they started. Part of him wished he could do what she wanted and leave her alone, but he knew he wouldn’t do that. He had a case to solve, and more than that, an opportunity to make right what he’d messed up so long ago.
Sammy had taught him well. He wouldn’t give up until he got what he wanted, both personally and professionally.
He smiled to himself as a plan formed in his mind. He’d worn her down once and he could do it again. “This isn’t over, Alex,” he whispered to the night air, started his car, and pulled away.
Six
The following morning, Zach was waiting for McKay when he came in to the station. Zach leaned back in McKay’s chair, with his feet propped up on the desk, his eyes closed. He was tired and testy, having fought a losing battle in the bid for sleep the previous night, but neither his lack of sleep nor his mood was responsible for his posture. He hoped to annoy McKay, put him on edge.
He knew he’d succeeded when McKay stomped to a stop next to the desk. “You got something for me already?”
Zach opened his eyes and focused on the other man. He did have something for him, but not the way McKay meant. After the meeting broke up yesterday, Smitty had told him about the way the rest of the meeting had gone. He said Alex had held her own, but she shouldn’t have had to. McKay had been hoping to rattle her with his little slide show and had gotten exactly what he deserved for that: nothing.
On top of that, word had it that McKay had been assigned the case right after the first body was found. He hadn’t done much with it until the councilwoman’s daughter turned up. Apparently some vics were worth the effort in McKay’s book and some weren’t.
Body of Lies Page 4