by Paul Cleave
He finds the right unit. There are lights on inside. He feels nervous. He tucks the beer under one arm and knocks on the door. He can hear a TV going inside, but nothing else.
He knocks again. “Albert?”
Nothing. He walks around the unit and is able to peek through a gap in the curtain and into the living room. Albert is facing away from him, toward the TV, of which they both have a clear view. Turns out the world is full of reality shows these days. He wonders if his own life would ever make for good reality TV, and decides it probably wouldn’t. It would, for lack of a better word, be too real. Albert is sitting on a couch with patterns of flowers on it. There is a machine next to him that looks like a dehumidifier, only there’s a clear tube leading from it to Albert, providing him oxygen.
Caleb taps on the window.
Albert jumps a little, then turns toward the sound. It’s obvious he can’t see anything beyond the window, so Caleb taps on the window again, then moves to the door. He knocks and waits, and a few seconds later the front door opens.
“Yes?”
“Albert McFarlane?” Caleb says.
“Yes, that’s right,” Albert answers. He’s bald with ears that are pushed out slightly wider than normal because of the oxygen tube going over them and tucking into his nose, which is red and looks irritated. When he talks, he wheezes, and the effort is making him puff hard. He puts a finger on the bridge of his glasses and pushes them a little closer to his eyeballs, so close the lenses must nearly touch. His eyes narrow as he focuses on the way everything has just been magnified.
“My name is Caleb Cole,” Caleb says, “do you remember me?”
“Remember you?” Albert leans forward and takes a closer look. “Are you one of my grandchildren?”
Caleb shakes his head. “No. Do you mind if I come in?”
“Are you trying to sell me something, son?”
He lifts up the beer. “No. I just wanna shoot the breeze,” he says, figuring the term will make Albert happy.
“Ah huh, well that’s mighty good, son, but I still don’t remember you, and I don’t drink beer anymore. Doctor’s orders. But hell, it’s not like I got much more to do, so sure, come on in.”
Albert steps aside and Caleb walks in and closes the door behind him. Albert’s clothes are hanging from his body with all the shape of laundry hanging on the line, and he’s squinting, as if trying to see past the cataracts clouding his vision. He doesn’t look well. Caleb has seen people with cancer before, and that’s exactly what it looks like Albert has.
“Take a seat,” Albert says. “Can I make you a coffee?”
“Sure, thanks,” Caleb says, and he sits the beer on the coffee table and makes a mental note to take it with him since Albert doesn’t want any. He follows Albert into the kitchen, which isn’t far since it’s effectively part of the living room. The oxygen tube looks long enough to hang somebody a few times over.
“Kettle just finished boiling a few minutes ago,” Albert says, then reaches up into the cupboard for a cup. “How do you like it?”
“Strong,” Caleb says. “No sugar. No milk.”
“Well, that I can do.”
The house is small. From the space between the kitchen and living room he can see down the hallway. It’s not a complicated layout. A bedroom, a toilet, a bathroom, not much else. It looks like a lonely life, and he guesses that’s just the way it goes when you get to this age. It’s not like people are dancing in the streets. Hell, nobody even saw him come in here and no doubt nobody will see him leave either. People in this community can only see about thirty feet ahead and fifty years into the past and not much else.
“What did you say your name was again?” Albert asks.
“Caleb Cole,” he says.
“And we know each other,” Albert says.
“This is your family?” Cole asks, looking at some of the photographs in the room. There are pictures of a lady in most of them, she ages at the same rate as Albert, then disappears. There are children and grandchildren. The living room is full of the knickknacks of life. There’s a cordless phone on a small table to the side of the couch, the phone large and heavy and perhaps one of the first ever built. The TV is on mute, but the oxygen machine is humming like a fridge. He wonders how Albert can sleep at night with it running.
“Yep.”
“You see them much?”
“Huh! You’ve got to be kidding. Here,” Albert says, and slides a coffee along the bench toward Caleb. It’s hot. He picks it up and both men sit down in the living room, and Caleb rests the coffee on the table next to the beer.
“Caleb Cole,” Albert says, then sips at his own coffee, which he was already working at when Caleb arrived.
“That’s right,” Caleb says, picking his coffee back up and blowing at it, trying to cool it down. People on the TV are chanting at something, yelling at somebody to “jump, jump, jump.” Maybe reality TV is all about people standing on rooftops. The room is hot. There is a fan suspended just below the ceiling, slowly circulating the sticky air. If the future he’d meant to have had come true, he’s not so sure he’d have liked living in a place like this.
“Can’t say it rings a bell.”
“Think back,” Caleb says. “Seventeen years.”
The edges of Albert’s face turn downward, and his face seems to shrink in on itself. “Seventeen years? Jesus, son, I’m lucky if I can remember back seventeen hours.”
“There was a legal case you were involved with.”
“A case? You got the wrong man, son. I’m not a lawyer. I used to be a teacher. A damn good one too. Why, some of my students still write me. I have letters, a whole bunch of them, maybe two dozen from kids who have grown up and made something of themselves. Ah, hell, that’s where I know you from, right? You used to be a student. Which year, son? How old are you?”
“Fifty,” Cole says. “I turned fifty last year.”
“Fifty! Well now, no way you can be one of my grandkids, and I don’t see how I would have taught you,” he says. “You’ve got the wrong teacher. What did you say you were? A lawyer? What kind of lawyer?”
“No. I used to be a teacher too.”
“You’re a teacher? You teach law?”
“I taught high school. At least I used to, I gave it up fifteen years ago.”
“Ah, that’s what I did. Did that for over forty years. You’d have been ten at the time when I started, unless my math is wrong, which means—ah, hell, you could have been one of my students. Is that where I know you from?”
Caleb shakes his head. “No.” He keeps blowing at his coffee, cooling it down. “You were on a case,” he says, “seventeen years ago. You were involved in a trial. You were a character witness.”
“A witness? Oh, that takes me back. I haven’t thought about that in years. When was that? Twenty years ago.”
“It was seventeen.”
“Seventeen? Well, if you say so. It was an awful case,” he says. “Was my first and only time in court. I’d never want to do that again. But what could I do? I had to go. And that poor little girl,” he says, “kidnapped and . . . and . . . the things he did to her. She was lucky to have survived. That boy, he was something. Scary as shit. But it wasn’t his fault, you know? That’s what I said. He used to be one of my students.”
“I know.”
Albert leans forward and adjusts the flow on his oxygen machine, turning one of the dials up from a three to a three and a half. “I mean, it was pretty obvious he was messed up in the head. His mother, she’d done a hell of a job on him. Ruined him for life. Made him completely mental. Poor bastard never had a chance. The same year he was in my class, she put him into a coma. Beat the shit out of him. He tried coming back later that year, but it just didn’t work.”
Caleb is nodding. The coffee is finally cool enough to sip at. He’s going to either need to clean the cup when he’s done or take it with him. “So you got up in the witness box and told the jury and the judge that what he did w
asn’t his fault.”
The old man fixes him an annoyed look. “It wasn’t like that. Sure, I got up there and I had to tell everybody what he’d been like as a kid at school. I had to explain how much he changed after the beating, and yeah, of course I said things weren’t his fault. He was a victim too. I didn’t get up there and say it was okay what he did. If I remember right, he still got locked away. Went to a hospital, didn’t he? Jury found him not guilty because he wasn’t competent. Not sure how long he got. Ten years. Twenty, maybe.”
“Two.”
“Two? Are you sure, son?”
“Very.”
Caleb keeps drinking, staring over the top of the cup as he does so. When a quarter of it is gone, he looks down at it. “This is good coffee, Al. Do you mind if I call you Al?” And before Al can answer, he puts the coffee back onto the table and stands up. “Let me ask you a question, Al. If I were to kill you right now do you think a jury like the one you spoke to would make the same decision? Do you think they would find I wasn’t competent and put me away for two years?”
“How did you say we know each other exactly?” Al asks, his tired old face forming concern.
“Well, I didn’t say exactly,” Caleb says, “and the truth of the matter is we’ve never really met until tonight,” he says, and he reaches around to his back where he has the handle of the knife tucked into his belt, the blade safely flat against his spine. He pulls it out. “But we’re meeting now, so how about I explain why I’m here, see if I can get you to remember why it was only two years and not ten,” he says, and then the explaining begins.
CHAPTER FOUR
There are already minivan cabs pulling up outside Popular Consensus. They’re filling up with cops and slowly pulling away. The water in the gutters and road is reflecting the lights coming from all the bars and streetlights. There’s no sign of the moon, no sign of any stars, just endless clouds. At least it’s stopped raining, but what rain has already fallen splashes off the street as cars pass us, and it feels like it’s going to come back. Nobody seems to be able to walk in a straight line. I have no idea what’s happened, and unless it’s a call to stop a local brewery from flooding, none of these people should be allowed to be involved. If they were sober, they’d know that. I suspect they even know it drunk. Problem is the police force is understaffed, there are no other options, and whatever has happened is important enough for all of these off-duty detectives to pile themselves inside the arriving minivans.
“You gonna fill me in?” I ask, leading Schroder back to the parking garage.
“Christ, I really need to take a piss.”
“I’ll wait here.”
“It’s okay. I can hold on.”
“Where we heading?”
“I gotta make another call,” he says, and pulls out his cell phone. We take the elevator up to the top floor and he leans against the wall of it the entire trip, pulling his cell phone away from his ear and studying it every few seconds or so. “No signal,” he says.
We reach my car.
“Does this seat belt work?” he asks, tugging at it.
“I don’t know. I’ve never had any passengers.”
“You lose a bet?” he asks.
“What?”
“That why you driving this thing?”
“I’m happy if you want to walk.”
“Might be safer. And quicker.”
“And wetter. Just tell me where we’re heading.”
“The retirement community.”
“Which one?” I ask, taking the ramps down to the bottom floor.
“What do you mean which one? Oh, shit . . . hang on, let me think a second. It’s . . . ah, shit, hang on.” He’s halfway through composing a text to find out when he remembers. “Lakeview Homes. You know where it is?”
“Listen, Carl, I don’t think it’s a good idea you going there.”
“I’ve only had a couple of beers, Theo.”
“You were starting your fourth. And that’s four too many.”
“Jesus, I should have gone with the others.”
“And what? Lose your job along with the rest of them?”
“No chance of that. Who the hell would they replace us with?”
I get his point. I pull into traffic and one of the taxis loaded up with cops cuts me off, almost taking out the side of my car. I try to toot at him but my horn doesn’t work. There is a small amount of drizzle back in the air. I turn on the wipers. The one on Schroder’s side gets to its apex with short, jerking motions, shudders at the top, then dies up there. Schroder taps the inside of the windshield.
“Jesus, Tate, you couldn’t find something better than this?”
“You want to tell me what all this is about?”
“You already know,” he says. “It’s why so many of us got the call.”
He’s right, I do know. “Who’s the victim?”
“Guy by the name of Herbert Poole. Apparently he’s been all cut to hell.”
Traffic has thinned since the drive to Popular Consensus, but it’s still moving slow because of the recent rain. The intersection ahead has lost power to the traffic lights, half the drivers treating it like a traffic circle, the other half in too much of a hurry to care much about giving way. The gutters are flooding out into the streets. It’s another twenty minutes to Lakeview Homes, a good chunk of that time Schroder sits with his head back against the seat and one hand covering his face, the only sign that he’s still awake are his random patches of hiccupping. The rain disappears again. Still no stars.
Lakeview Homes overlooks some meadows and forestry on one side, all of it trailing out of sight into the darkness. Beyond it, and empty at this time of night, is a golf course that costs two hundred dollars a round. On this side of the forest it looks over suburbia with a long driveway heading out to the main road. Despite its name, the retirement home manages to be situated nowhere near any lake. The nearest body of water is a gymnasium with a pool six blocks away. There are already half a dozen patrol cars at the scene and one cab. There’s a line of detectives heading toward the field, they’re moving behind the big trees and emptying their bladders, the headlight beams helping them find their way.
“Jesus,” I say, and Schroder sits up and takes a look. “Every detective on the force is here and drunk.”
“It’s not our fault. How were we to know this was going to happen today?”
“Statistically, it was always going to happen. You didn’t keep anybody in reserve?”
“Jesus, Tate, you may not have liked Landry, but the rest of us did.”
“Carl . . .”
“Don’t worry,” he says, slapping me on the shoulder. “I’m the boss here, and I’m telling you, looking at a dead body has a way of sobering people up.”
“And so does losing your job. Best thing for your colleagues right now is to get back into those cabs and get the hell out of here.”
“And I’m sure between us we’ll all figure that out.”
At the moment the detectives do seem to be figuring it out. They’re coming back from behind the trees and leaning against the minivan cabs, none of which have left yet. Detective Kent is among them. They’re figuring out there’s a line here that if they cross will see them reprimanded, or worse, fired. There are old people standing at windows backlit by TVs and dining room lights, they’re staring out at the show, all of them hoping they’re about to get visitors.
“Jesus, that’s disgusting,” Schroder says, watching another detective race off behind a tree. “But better than pissing on the front lawn,” he adds, and chases off after him to do the same. The uniformed officers don’t know what to do. They’re caught between telling their superiors to go home and letting them contaminate a crime scene. The residents and staff are just as unimpressed, and it can only be a matter of minutes before the reporters arrive. This is going to end badly for Schroder and for every drunk cop here. In a sober condition, any of them would know being here was a mistake, but that’s the probl
em with drunk people—they make bad decisions. Sober, everybody knows they shouldn’t drink and drive, but when you’re drunk it never seems such a bad idea. That’s what landed me in jail last year.
The retirement community is full of units that are almost small houses but not quite, the roofs all black, the walls painted the same color as Bambi. The creative imagination behind the whole complex could have been shaped by Lego. There are millions of flowers everywhere just the way old people like them, only the flowers are in their final days before the cold weather robs them of life. There’s a connection between plants and the elderly—as soon as you turn sixty it must be compulsory to like roses and rhododendrons. The only thing I can see to stop burglars breaking in on a daily basis is the fact there isn’t much to steal except record collections and memories and clothes swinging in and out of fashion.
“Sir?” one of the officers asks, walking over to me. He’s young looking and nervous and this may or may not be his first crime scene, but it’s definitely one he wishes he wasn’t here for. “You look to be about the only detective here who’s not half-wasted.”
I don’t even have to think about it. I start nodding. “Tell me what we’ve got,” I tell him.
I follow him to a unit where two other officers are standing outside. There’s a front porch and a swing chair and the whole thing is soaking wet. On a nice day maybe the old folks sit out here and sip lemonade and talk about the war, talk about how far Christchurch has slipped, talk about the good ol’ days. The officers are talking to a guy in his eighties who looks pale, who has probably sat on this porch countless times in the sun but what he discovered half an hour ago drained the tan right out of him. A second guy, this one thirty years younger, has to keep wiping at the rain dripping from his fringe. He’s shorter and rounder and doesn’t need a name badge to tell me he’s in some administration role here at the home, probably the manager. He’s seen dead bodies before—you don’t get to work in this kind of place without witnessing your fair share of death—but no doubt what’s behind door number one is death of a different variety, death of the sort that requires crime scene tape and latex gloves and people looking for clues. Death like that often comes with the need for a mop and bucket. Best anybody can hope for is it comes with answers.