by Ben Sanders
He knew he had to rig the scene, and he knew he had no time. Castle doctrine wouldn’t cut it: Jack didn’t look like a burglar. He was in a thousand-dollar suit, no mask, no tools, no weapon, no forced-entry damage. It looked like he was welcomed in for murder.
So he has to have a gun—
“Miles, what’s wrong?”
He said, “Call nine-one-one, say I shot him.”
“What?” Her hair was bed-tousled and hanging forward, framing wide eyes.
“He’s got no weapon. You were upstairs, and I shot him.”
She couldn’t be part of it. They’d be caught out if they both told lies. I saw nothing was simple enough. Then again, she’d have to say she touched the shotgun—if they cordite-swabbed her, she’d come up positive …
She was struggling though: “What? Why’s he got no gun? What the fuck was he doing?” Like she was offended he’d come unprepared.
Miles didn’t answer, put a hand on the shotgun as he stood up, but she wouldn’t let it go. “Miles, what are you doing?”
He pried her hands gently off the gun, one then the other. “It’s got to look right. And it won’t look right if you’re standing here with the murder weapon.”
“So what do I do?”
“Call nine-one-one, and say I killed Jack.”
He didn’t wait around to argue. He left the shotgun on the ground by the body and ran for the front door, caught himself in the entry hall.
There must be a gun. He must have brought a gun. There’d be something in his car at least—
Lucy shouted from another room, a question garbled by his ringing ears. He didn’t answer, just ran back for the body, head pounding.
Pat-check round two:
No ankle piece.
Nothing in his belt.
The coat again—
He pried the fabric off the sopping wound. Something crackled. A pocket held a bloodied envelope. He fumbled the flap—motor skills wrecked by stress—yanked out the page within.
A message in a careful, sloping hand. Classy stuff: a fountain pen on heavy paper stock. A pellet hole and blood had marred one corner.
Miles scanned it:
I don’t really know how to say this, but I loved you since I first saw you …
Perfect. He’d come for love, not death, and she’d blitzed him with a shotgun. He stuffed the paper in his pocket and ran for the door again.
NINE
NEW YORK, NY
Miles Keller
Sunday morning, he was up at six thirty. He left the hotel and walked east in bleak, overcast light, heavy clouds trying for rain. The black SUVs were gone, and the traffic was mainly empty cabs, fatigued-looking drivers coming off the night shift. Predawn in New York City, down on Canal Street, was a glimpse of New York at the end of the world: doors shuttered and the foot traffic mainly ragtag folk in earnest conversation with themselves, like trying to reconcile the event that left them in an empty city.
At the Canal Street station, he was the only person who looked like a passenger. There were three other guys asleep by a supermarket cart stacked high with camping gear, and topped with a sign that read FUCK THE ONE PERCENT. He figured only one percent of people could get a cart through a subway turnstile.
He caught a Q train heading down toward Manhattan Beach, sat up by the forward door with the volume of his iPod cranked above the squeal of the track. He liked the subway on Sundays. Patronage was at its most diverse. This carriage had a dreadlocked surfer plus board; an old lady who looked church-bound, given her attire; a young guy rapping along to headphones; and a cop-cum-heist-man if you counted Miles. All of them nodding with the train’s motion and the rapper throwing in the odd hand gesture for good measure.
Miles got off at Avenue U in Sheepshead Bay, came down off the platform into light rain and found the city already facing the day: traffic solid even on the cross streets, trucks an earache of gnashed metal, and the sidewalks busy even with the stores still closed. He ate breakfast at the Three Star Restaurant, and then walked south through the residential streets, what used to be no-frills Brooklyn clapboard before it all got gentrified. Now there were picket fences and tidy little planter boxes everywhere, snazzy European cars parked along the curbs.
It was the same architecture down on Twenty-third Street, but not quite so refined. His house was in the middle of the block. The mailbox was beyond salvation, crooked on its post and choking on leaflets. The gate seemed to yelp as he opened it. He went up the driveway and knocked at the front door. A minute’s silence, and then a black guy in his midthirties answered. He wore a sweatshirt with the hood up and had a cigarette behind each ear, one eyebrow raised as if the sight of Miles was vaguely novel: this coat-clad bearded stranger with sunglasses and no expression.
Miles said, “Is DeSean in?”
“Uh, yeah. You’re the cop, right?”
Miles said, “Yeah. I’m the cop.”
The guy leaned out to check the street, mouth ajar, like he was balancing a piece of raw meat on his tongue. It was a common expression among those considered badass. He stepped back and lifted his chin at Miles. “You can come in.”
“Well thank you.”
The house smelled like marijuana, and he could hear digitized warfare from a video game. He locked the door behind him as he entered and then followed the guy through to the living room. They had a PlayStation hooked up to his TV, some kind of army propaganda showing in high-definition, so precise it looked more horrific than reality. There was another guy on the sofa with his back to the door, and he turned to Miles as he stepped in.
“Hey, Miles.”
“Hey, DeSean.”
The guy who’d answered the door picked up a controller and took a seat in Miles’s La-Z-Boy, cranked the lever back to full recline. There was a Benelli pump-action shotgun on the floor beside him.
Miles said, “Do you have a name, too?”
“Ee-rack.”
“Ee-rack?”
“Like the country, Iraq, but you say it with an ‘E.’”
Miles said, “Cool. Where’s Lucy?”
DeSean said, “Taking a bath. Probably knew you’re coming over.”
Miles didn’t answer. They were Stanton’s guys, but Stanton didn’t know the full story. He thought they were just minding the place. There was no way he’d approve the real setup: Miles using this as a safe house for Lucy, with DeSean running protection.
It was overkill, anyway. No one could find him here. He’d made the purchase through a shell company, and used Chester Burrows of Stanton & Associates as his nominee on the LLC paperwork. Even NYPD didn’t know about the place. His personnel file listed his address as a one-room apartment up in Bed-Stuy. It belonged to his brother, but he wouldn’t be needing it any time soon. Nate was doing fifteen to twenty up at Attica for Robbery 1.
He walked along to the kitchen and saw that they’d already had breakfast, unless these were yesterday’s dishes: possibly every utensil he owned spread across the counter and covered to varying degrees with what looked like pancake batter. There was a carton of premade stuff standing on the table. He looked around for the cat’s bowl, saw a saucer of half-eaten meat on the floor by the refrigerator. He opened the kitchen door to the backyard and whistled lightly through his teeth. “Warren!”
He stood there a minute, and then a gray cat appeared from around the corner of the house. It trotted over on dainty paws, saggy undergut gently pendulous, rubbed against his shin as it came inside. It was just a neighborhood stray, and he figured it had a long list of house calls, given its girth. But he still enjoyed the visits.
The cat mewed at him.
“Yeah, I know. It’s the wrong food on the wrong plate.”
It mewed again. Miles pulled his earbuds through his shirt and put his iPod on the counter. “Yeah, I got you covered.”
The cat did figure eights around his ankles as he took its bowl down off the fridge and filled it with meat from a sachet of pet food.
“You need water as well?”
No answer.
“Yeah, probably.”
He scraped the old food into the trash and then filled another bowl with water and set it on the floor. Then he walked along to the spare bedroom he used as an office, sat at the desk, and took a cell phone out of a drawer. The phone was a security weak point, but the risk was acceptable. The device had no GPS function, so it would have to be triangulated off tower pings, and that would require a warrant. It received one call a week, from his brother at the Attica Correctional Facility, upstate. He connected the phone to its charger, powered it on, and waited for it to ring.
Eight o’clock. Eight oh five.
He sat at the desk with the phone in front of him and listened to artillery noise from the living room. The phone didn’t ring.
Eight ten.
He placed his hands on the desk and watched random fingers rise and fall, killing time.
The phone didn’t ring.
Miles picked it up and dialed a number.
“Operations.”
“This is Detective Miles Keller, NYPD. My brother—”
“This is an internal line, Keller.”
“My brother’s missed a call—”
“I’m sorry, you’ll have to follow the procedure like everybody else. Don’t call again.”
He lost the line.
“Shit.”
He put the phone down and leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. He could hear the clank of tank tracks, a diesel rumble. Don’t think about it now—
He got up and went through to the living room and said, “I thought two grand a week included keeping the place tidy, maybe clearing the mail every so often.”
They were both perched on the edge of their seats, watching a head on the TV screen hover inside crosshairs. The head exploded. They both leaned back and sighed, seemingly relieved.
DeSean said, “Thought you were paying for my badass protection skills.”
Miles said, “Some badass cleaning skills would be good, too. And Warren has beef. He doesn’t like the venison stuff.”
“Yeah, whatever. The cat’s brutal, man. You don’t give it what it wants, it’s just on your case all day. Meow meow meow. Jesus.”
“Who’s been hitting the Mary Jane?”
“I don’t know. Probably your pussycat, trying to chill the fuck out.”
Miles waited.
DeSean said, “Man, not us. It’s just Lucy on the weed.”
“You realize she has emphysema, right?”
“Yeah, well, you tell her.”
Miles didn’t answer. He walked upstairs, marijuana scent growing stronger. He saw his bedroom door ajar, a narrow slice of empty bed, sheets in disarray. He listened at the bathroom door for a second and then knocked.
“Luce?”
No answer.
He said her name again and when she didn’t reply, he tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open and there she was on her back in the tub, just her head and knees above the foam. She had the air tank standing next to her, the plastic mask covering her mouth and nose. Her eyes had been closed but they opened as he stepped in.
He said, “Why didn’t you say something?”
“So you’d come in and we wouldn’t have to talk through the wall.”
He stepped out again and began to close the door.
“Oh, come on. Don’t be dumb.” She fanned her arms through the water, waves going through the foam, the lumpy surface warping gently. He paused on the threshold and then stepped in again and closed the door, sat down on the corner of the tub.
She said, “It’s like a freak show or something—pay a dollar and see the masked mermaid.”
He said, “Marijuana meant to help your lungs?”
She shrugged. “It’s helping something. I’m like Clinton, though: I don’t inhale. I just light it up and sit it in an ashtray. You still get the smell of it, maybe a little high, I guess.”
There was a cutthroat razor on the shelf beside her, blade open. He reached across the water and picked it up. “What’re you doing with this?”
“Nothing. Backup plan.”
He could see himself in the blade, a sliver of eye and nose and lip. He said, “Yeah? What does that mean?”
She closed her eyes again. A soft marijuana smile on her lips. “You know … Nice hot bath, light a joint, and then just disappear.”
“Oh, Christ.” He folded the blade. “Sure. You know how many people I’ve seen dead in bathtubs? You show up, everyone’s crying, and there’s a pale body in bright-red water.”
She gave a long blink as if picturing it, and said, “There’d be variations though, right? Sometimes you’d show up, and no one would be crying.”
He didn’t like her tone: too conversational. Like she’d been thinking this through for a while.
“Luce, if you’re going to cut your wrists, I’ll have you committed.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh jeez, relax.” She raised a dripping hand and flicked the metal tank. It rang dully. “I’m not peering over the edge. Just thinking about my options.”
He didn’t answer.
Lucy said, “You’re too easy to wind up.” She built herself a mound of foam on her belly. “One day, people’ll have a little pill in their medicine cabinet, and when they’ve had enough, you just swallow with a glass of water.”
“Tidier than opening your wrist in the bathtub.”
She rocked her head slightly as if settling on a pillow. “I’m not going to do it this week. Or this decade, hopefully. But it’s nice knowing I’ve got a checkout option.”
He rubbed his face with his hands. “There are better ways of doing it, believe me.”
“Yeah. A better way would be to get rich—maybe five, ten million bucks—set myself up with a pad in Oregon, and then, you know.” She ramped a hand upward, pointing heavenward. “Take off in comfort.”
“Why Oregon?”
“It’s on the coast, and euthanasia’s kosher.”
“You’re a long way from needing to worry about it.”
“Yeah, hopefully. But as I say: nice to have options though, right?”
He thought he’d just come to feed the cat and talk to his brother.
He watched the knife turn over in his hands a few times. He said, “Look. I don’t mind helping you out. You can stay here as long as you want. But you’re not doing me any favors if you clock out in my tub.”
She didn’t answer.
He listened to the water clapping lightly on the enamel. “I’ve got some money coming my way—”
“The tax-free kind?”
He said, “Enough that we can go somewhere and you can check out in comfort.”
She said, “‘We’? I didn’t know we were back to ‘we.’ Strange living arrangement so far, but it’s a start, isn’t it?”
She was smiling, but he didn’t want to get into it. They’d had an affair, and it ended his marriage, and he thought he’d never forgive himself. He didn’t know how to say that without it sounding way too heavy.
Caitlyn knew of Lucy for two months before the split. That’s what she told him, anyway—a gut feel, based on his evasiveness. She’d made plans to leave him, rented an apartment in Williamsburg, and then moved possessions out by stealth. The day she left, he came home and found her suitcases in the entry hall, Caitlyn coming down the corridor with her arms folded—not so much angry as uncompromising. There was no way he could change her mind. She knew he was seeing someone else. She told him Lucy had called the house, wanting to speak to him.
His infidelity required no more proof. The call was enough. It brought her gut feeling to critical mass. She never came back to the house. He remembered the emptiness, and remembered hating it. He’d reach a point where he thought he was coping, and then he’d notice where items were missing—a vase or an album that she’d taken—and the feeling of her absence would reset to its most acute. It was the loss of small things he struggled to get over:
hearing her in another room, walking past a doorway and seeing her with a book. He started reading more, listening to audiobooks, working through titles he knew she’d read, trying to guess what she’d have to say about them.
He wondered now what she’d say about this arrangement: protecting the woman who’d helped break up his marriage, and lying for her, too. The Jack Deen killing to his name for the sake of Lucy’s freedom. What would Caitlyn say about all that? Probably that she was vindicated, right for claiming that Lucy was more than just a fling.
Whatever she was, she cut short his musing: “Funny how dead hit men don’t bother you—like, happy to lie about it, make it look like something it wasn’t, and then you probably slept like a baby, right? Then if someone wants to die by choice, you get all torn up about it.”
He turned the knife over a couple more times. She hadn’t seemed fazed about killing Jack Deen, but then why should she? Miles hadn’t told her he had nothing but a love letter. He’d seen her all those years ago, and never forgot her. He’d flown up to make something happen, and she killed him. He couldn’t tell her that. It’d wreck her life as well as Jack’s.
He said, “It took you fourteen trillion years to get here—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah—”
“And this is your one brief glimpse of everything that exists. So why leave any sooner than you absolutely have to?”
She didn’t answer, just lay there with her eyes shut, seeming very tranquil. He guessed they were done with suicide.
He said, “What are your housemates like?”
“You need a happier subject?”
He didn’t answer.
“They’re good guys.” A smile flickered. “Ee-rack or Eye-rack or whatever his name is, he told me he had this vacation planned, right? Going to take a week off, always wanted to see France. Then he found out the cost of flights, couldn’t afford it, so he just did a virtual tour on Google Maps, spent a week going around the streets.”
There was a knock at the door.
Miles said, “Yeah?”
DeSean said, “Thought there’d be more splashing and giggling.”
“What is it?”