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Where the Broken Lie

Page 16

by Derek Rempfer


  I can kill.

  … he wasn’t a killer. Yes, he had killed, but that didn’t make him a killer. It had not been his intent to kill Katie. And he had felt the crushing guilt of what he done every day since. He latched on to that guilt as evidence of his innate goodness. He was a good man who had done a terrible thing. But only a good man could feel bad about doing evil …

  Something electric and wiry snakes its way through my brain. Lips dry and tongue thick, I reach blindly to my nightstand for the glass of water that isn’t there. I squish my head between both hands to suppress the pain that came from sitting up too quickly. I rub my eyes and remember the night before …

  Tammy and Tory packed up their stuff and have left for home. I am alone. The emptiness of this house is haunting and for the first time in my life, I am afraid to be alone here. I make myself a vodka tonic. Then a second and a third. I drink them in silence in the chair that had been Grandma’s.

  Knitting needles and yarn stick out from the bag beside the chair, an almost finished white and blue baby blanket stuffed down inside of it. On the end table is a TV Guide with an unfunny sitcom star on the cover. A universal remote. A coaster. A rotary phone. A lamp.

  A distorted version of me stares back from the black screen of the television.

  Around me the walls are covered with photographs of family. The picture of Grandpa and Grandma on their wedding day in the center of one wall, surrounded by everyone who ultimately came from them.

  The clocks tick and tock loudly in their offbeat rhythms the same way they did in my dream. In sync with none of it, my heart still beats. Chest rising and falling unnaturally, I force the air out of me. Blood pulsates through my body in quiet fury, causing muscles to throb and fingers to curl.

  And then, finally, the sound of something heavy on the steps of the back porch. I count the steps until the screen door squeals open and my grandfather steps inside.

  He says hi and I say something back that comes out slurred and unintelligible.

  “You’re drunk,” he says with a smirk and a hint of approval.

  “Worse things to be.”

  I drink from my vodka tonic and slurp up the ice cubes, swirling them around the inside of my mouth before crunching them to water. I set the drink on the table and stare outside through the picture window in front of me. The same window Grandma had stared through as she lay in bed dying.

  “Just an observation. Not a judgment.”

  “Judge not lest ye be judged, right?”

  He looks at me sideways, wolfish eyes narrow and probing. I have seen this in him once before. It was the night he went searching for Katie Cooper with the rest of the town.

  “Grandpa, they’re going to find her, right? I mean, you’ll find her?”

  “Think I’ll make myself a drink, too” he growls. “Seems like a good night to get drunk.”

  He comes back a couple minutes later with four fingers of Scotch in a tumbler, no ice. He sits down in the chair opposite from me and takes a sip.

  With a fiery exhale, he says, “Where are your ladies at? In bed already?”

  “Gone. And they won’t be coming back.”

  I stare at him hard, but he holds my gaze. No hints revealed in the eyes of the wolf.

  “That’s too bad. I liked having them here. Helped fill the emptiness your Grandma left. I suppose that means you’ll be going soon, too.”

  “Why didn’t you visit Grandma more in the nursing home?”

  I had wanted to ask him why he killed Katie Cooper, but this came out instead.

  He leans forward in his chair and hangs his head.

  “I know. I know, Tuck. I should have, but I just … I couldn’t stand seeing her like that. I know it’s not right, but your Grandma understood. Believe me, she understood.”

  “Understood what, that you put your own feelings ahead of hers as she lay on her deathbed?”

  “I suppose you could put it that way. I ain’t justifying it, Tuck. I’m telling you I was wrong.”

  “You knew it was wrong then, but you did it anyway.”

  “Yes, I suppose I did,” he says dismissively.

  Blood and alcohol race to my head as I rise from the chair.

  “You knew it was wrong then, but you did it anyway,” I repeat.

  “I heard you the first time,” Grandpa says defiantly. “What do you want me to say? I’m sorry, okay?”

  “YOU KNEW IT WAS WRONG THEN, BUT YOU DID ANYWAY!” I shout.

  And in the heavy quietness that followed, I realize that I am standing above Grandpa now and pointing out the window behind him. Pointing at the Cooper’s house.

  Fear in those wolf eyes now, they dart around. Then a slight shift of his head as he looks over his shoulder at what I am pointing at. What he already knows is there. He gathers himself and stands.

  “I’m getting another drink. Maybe you ought to do the same.”

  As he tries to slip by me, I grab his shoulder, whip him back around, and shove him down into his chair again.

  “NO! No, Grandpa. I’m not finished.”

  In my rage, I had clipped him on the nose and he is bleeding. He squeezes at it gently, wipes a bare arm across his face and smears the blood.

  “What the hell are you doing, Tuck?” he whispers.

  “Just trying to figure some things out, Grandpa.”

  The word hangs on my lips like a dying breath—Grandpaaah.

  My father’s father. His blood in my blood. The weight of it all sunk me and I briefly consider forgiveness because it seems like the best way to be able to love myself. But it’s only a moment and in the end I decide that it is my fate to love us both less.

  “Grandpa,” I repeat, checking the taste of the word on my tongue.

  All tenderness has been drained from the word and in its place all things wicked. All things unnatural. All things heinous.

  “Why did you tell Alvin Keller that you saw James Johnson with Katie Cooper the day that she was killed?”

  “What? James who?”

  “Johnson. That was Slim Jim’s real name. James Johnson. Now, why did you tell Old Man Keller you saw him with Katie?”

  “How the hell—who told you about that? Alvin tell you that?”

  “Never mind how I found out, just answer the damn question. Why did you say you saw them together?”

  “Because I did.”

  “No. You didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I did, Tuck. I seen them as I was coming back in from town. I had run out to buy some whiskey,” he says lifting his glass of Scotch as evidence of the claim. “I know I shouldn’t have left your sister like that, but I did. And I seen them when I come back into town.”

  I tell him about Slim Jim’s late night snack at the Halperns that very night.

  “Does that sound like the actions of a man who’s just killed a little girl?”

  “How the hell should I know? That Slim Jim was nutty as a fruitcake, everyone knew that.”

  He gets up again and pushes his way past me, the blood on his arm smears across my shirt.

  I want to believe him and it would be so easy to. I can end it all it right now and go on pretending until I forget it all together.

  I look at the burnt red streak on my shirt, dab at it, and hold it to my eyes. Grandpa’s bloodstains on my hand. His blood on me. His blood in me. I want it to be good blood.

  My eyes land on the day’s mail piled on the dining room table.

  An idea.

  I look again at the blood on my hand.

  After a moment, I say, “He was a little touched in the head. That’s true.”

  Grandpa lets out a deep sigh and after a moment says, “I always felt kind of sorry for the guy, wondered if maybe there was some way we might have helped him that could have prevented what happened.”

  Broken parts, I thought.

  Grandpa moves in close to me and cautiously rests a hand on my shoulder.

  “Hey, what say I get us a couple more drinks?”


  I glance again at the mail on the table.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “I think we could both probably use another one. Thanks.”

  When he exits the room, I grab the mail from the dining room table and pull out one of Grandma’s hospital bills that had been delivered that day. I slide it into my back pocket and sit back down in my chair.

  Grandpa returns and hands me my drink.

  “Here you go. Made it just the way you like it—extra strong.”

  He takes a big drink of his Scotch, exhales an approving hiss, and holds the half-empty glass up to his.

  “And mine, extra stronger.”

  He winks at me and I smile weakly.

  “You’re running with the big dogs now, Tuck. Be careful.”

  “I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I say, but he waves it off.

  “No,” I continue. “I am. It’s just … I started getting these anonymous letters out at the cemetery saying Slim Jim didn’t kill Katie.”

  “That’s what set you off on me? A letter from some anonymous crackpot?”

  “Sounds stupid, I know. I guess I’m still not in my right mind yet.”

  He gives me a grandfatherly grin that lets me know I am forgiven and then he takes another swig of Scotch.

  Looking over the top of the glass at me, he says, “So you been talking to Alvin Keller, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  Then he lifts the glass again and pours the remainder of that firewater down his throat, swallowing it in three easy gulps—mouth open wide, eyes like saucers, features exaggerated by the glass in front of his face and the alcohol inside of me.

  My what sharp teeth you have, I think.

  My hands caress the rim of my own glass and I twirl it slowly around on the table.

  “It took a while, but he eventually showed himself—it was Keller writing those letters at Slim Jim’s grave. That’s how I found out that he was the anonymous tipster. Told me that story of you leaving Heather alone, but I was thinking Heather was with us in Glidden. Now, that I think about it, though … I guess I’m not so sure. That was an awfully long time ago. Anyway, you can see how that got me to wondering, right?”

  “Yeah, sure. I can see that, but … Christ, Tuck, I’m your Grandpa. Hows ‘bout a little benefit of the doubt?”

  “I know, I know. Anyway, that Old Man got me so screwed up with some of the shit he was telling me … I wasn’t thinking straight. Crazy old man, small town rumors. I should know better.”

  Then I lead him out a little further.

  I lift my face to meet his gaze, contrive a look of embarrassment and say, “The thing is … the thing is, Grandpa …”

  “What?” he prompts, seeming more amused than anything else, but with a touch of concern behind the laughter.

  “It’s like I said, Grandpa, he really got to me. I mean, I believed him to the point that I actually, I don’t know, dug into it a little. You know?”

  “Whadya mean dug into it?”

  “You know, I looked into it. Investigated, I guess you could say.”

  His eyebrows move together ever so slightly and his eyes narrow.

  “Investigated, huh? Christ, that was twenty years ago, Tuck. What the hell is there to investigate?”

  “More than you’d think, actually. See, they kept the evidence. All these years they kept the evidence up at the Sheriff’s office.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “I do. It’s been in a little shoebox in a backroom. Just sitting there collecting dust all these years.”

  “How ‘bout that.”

  “Yeah, how about that,” I volley back, the words coming out a little sharper than I had intended.

  I affect a tender smile and sip my drink.

  “So, Sheriff Buck, he let you have a look at it, did he?”

  Then he lurches forward and from the edge of his seat says, “What did you find in the shoebox, Tuck—shoes?”

  The whiskey is starting to hit him now. He laughs hard and leans back in his seat again.

  “No, no shoes. But there was a plastic bag with some of her belongings.”

  “Belongings?”

  “Oh, you know, things that she was wearing and carrying with her that day. Even the bag has a few hairs in it that don’t like they’re Katie’s and there were stains on the clothes, too. I figure maybe they could be from the killer—you know, blood or spit or …”

  I get up from my chair.

  “So anyway, turns out that there’s a lot they can do with evidence these days that they couldn’t do back then.”

  “Yeah? Like what?”

  “Like DNA testing.”

  Grandpa sets his empty glass on the end table and walks toward the bay window. He wipes a hand over his mouth to clean away the froth around his lips.

  “Anyway, I uh … well, Grandpa, I ended up—let’s say ‘borrowing’—a hair sample from your comb—not the easiest of tasks, by the way,” I say with a smile.

  He starts to say something, stops.

  Raises his hand, lowers it.

  Wipes a hand across his mostly bald head, which is starting to glisten with sweat.

  I continue.

  “So, I take that hair of yours and the bag of evidence and I take them to this girl I went to school with—Laurie Monroe. You remember her, don’t ya? Norma and Glenn’s daughter. Real smart girl. Anyway, I take them to Laurie at the county hospital to do a DNA comparison. You know they can do that now? I mean, technically Laurie shouldn’t be doing this, but you know how it is with old friends.”

  Best buds forever.

  Suddenly, like someone has just yelled “draw,” Grandpa turns to face me with his trigger finger pointed at my chest.

  “Jesus Christ, Tuck! You, you, what, you hear some bullshit story from a hundred years ago and just, what, just forget everything else? Just forget everything and turn on your own family?”

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what else I can say. I just, I haven’t been myself lately—you know, with the baby and all—and then Keller hits me with this stuff and…I don’t know, I guess I needed something else to think about.”

  Outside, a boy and a girl ride by on their bikes.

  Maybe they’re going to The Garden.

  “Well … what can these tests prove anyhow?” he asks.

  “The truth. That you’re innocent and I’m an ass for ever thinking otherwise.”

  “Ok, good. That’s good.”

  A puzzled look falls over him. He is processing things. Again he starts to say something and stops himself.

  He turns away from me and looks out the window.

  “Well … what if …”

  This is it. This is where he breaks.

  Or where he doesn’t.

  Seconds pass. Life stops. And then …

  “What if they make a mistake?”

  And I know. With that one little question I now know for sure.

  I know.

  And part of what I know is how wrong I was about everything I ever thought I knew before.

  The clocks begin ticking again. Life has returned.

  “A mistake?”

  “Well, yeah, sure. What if they do something wrong and it looks like they might match or somethin’?”

  “No, Grandpa, it doesn’t work that way. If they match, well then …”

  He turns to look at me.

  “Then that would make you Katie’s killer.”

  I inch toward him.

  “So it’s not going to match, right? Right, Grandpa?” I repeat louder.

  Then lowering my face in front of him to catch his gaze.

  “Right?”

  He jerks his eyes back up, back to the moment and says, “What’s that?”

  “How else could your DNA match the DNA from Katie’s underwear?”

  “A mistake. Like I said, they could make a mistake.”

  “No. I told you, it doesn’t work that way. They can’t make a mistake like that.”

  “Christ, Tuck, I wi
sh to hell you hadn’t dragged me into this mess. That was a hundred years ago. It was someone else.”

  And now for my bluff.

  From my back pocket I pull out the envelope that contains Grandma’s hospital bill. I flash it in front of him long enough for him to see the hospital logo.

  “As luck would have it, I got the results back from the hospital today. Didn’t think Laurie would be able to run the tests so quickly, but here we are.”

  He stands in silence. Blood gone from his face. Air wheezing from his mouth and nose. Big circular stains have formed each armpit. His chest is heaving so hard I wonder if this is what a heart attack looks like from the outside.

  “What am I going to find in here, Grandpa?”

  Again the look on his face takes me back to the night Katie had gone missing when I had begged him to tell me he was going to find her. A look that a child might see as sorrow, but an adult recognizes as guilt.

  I thought about the doctor from my nightmare. How he had winked at me and smiled that razor-blade smile, holding the dead child out in front of him. The same way Grandpa had done with Tory that day she’d gone missing. Had I somehow known this all along?

  I begin to tear the envelope open.

  “Tuck,” he says, thrusting a hand out toward me.

  “What, Grandpa? What is it? Is there something you want to tell me?”

  I pause, think about Katie. Maybe it was a prayer.

  “Pedophile,” I say, spitting the word at him.

  “Killer.”

  The words come out in a voice that I don’t recognize as my own.

  He gulps and lowers his hand.

  “No,” he says. “No. That wasn’t me. That’s not who I am. That was a hundred years ago.”

  The clocks tick through the moment. The only evidence that the world hadn’t stopped again.

  “Tell you what,” I say. “I don’t want to know what’s inside. You understand me? I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!” I yell, slapping him across the face with the envelope at the same time.

  I pull back, step away, catch my breath. He cowers in his chair, unwilling to look at me.

  “I already know, but I don’t want to know. So, here’s what I’m going to do. It’s nine o’clock. I’m going to put this envelope back in my pocket and I’m going to walk up to Mustang’s and I’m going to drink until I can’t see straight. And when the bar closes at two and it’s time for my drunk ass to come back here, I’m going to open up this envelope and I’m going to read the results. Then I’m going to come back here, Grandpa. Once I know what I already know, I’m going to come back here and I’m going to … I’m going to deal with it. You understand me? Five hours from now, I’m going to deal with things. Don’t waste these five hours trying to come up with excuses or lies. Use these hours like they’re your last.”

 

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