All the Things You Are

by Declan Hughes

  ‘They came around the theater looking for me, you know.’

  ‘They did not.’

  ‘The cops caught one of them – he had an unlicensed weapon, he got six months or something. The other two made Anthony Vasquez tell them who I was. They beat him up.’

  ‘And what happened, did they catch up to you?’

  ‘One night on my way to the theater. I said I didn’t set the cops on them. They wanted money, and I told them what we earned in the theater, and they looked at me like I was a moron, and I privately agreed with them. There was a moment when I thought they were going to try and get paid in kind, but then they just shrugged it off and left. Anthony Vasquez told me I was very lucky, and that I should lie low when their buddy got out. And that was that.’

  Paul Casey shakes his head.

  ‘I know,’ Claire says. ‘It’s just, that’s all I can think of. That’s the sum total of my experience with bad guys. But it’s ridiculous, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s more likely Gene Peterson came down to kill your dog himself. Seeing as how he disliked Danny anyway, and probably contracted a strong dislike of you after that evening, I know I would have in his shoes.’

  And Claire realizes that yes, of course, this is true, and that Danny had been armed with many good reasons for killing Gene Peterson, she had seen him herself, for God’s sake, advancing on him armed with the knife that was used in the killing. Her hope that somehow it was her fault was a kind of magical thinking, a prayer that her husband was not a murderer. She still prays, but she’s not sure how alive her hope is.

  ‘You’ve got to go,’ Paul says.

  ‘I feel embarrassed.’

  ‘Don’t be. That’s what the cops do all the time, don’t they, check out leads?’

  ‘Not about that. About … last week. You must have thought I was nuts. Woman on the verge, type of thing.’

  ‘Well. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t been warned.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean … I had fair warning of how you were feeling, or how you thought you felt.’

  ‘Paul, I didn’t even know you were going to be in the Old Town Ale House until you showed up last Tuesday.’

  ‘Maybe not. But the messages you sent me were pretty to the point.’

  ‘What messages?’

  ‘On Facebook.’

  ‘I didn’t send you messages on Facebook. I don’t do Facebook.’

  ‘Well, someone does, with your name, and a whole bunch of shots of you, and links to your website.’

  ‘And this person, pretending to be me, sent you messages saying what?’

  ‘Saying … that you missed me, and wondered how I was, and if I was lonely, and … and then they kind of got riper.’

  ‘Riper?’

  ‘Yeah. Pretty much … that if I wanted to sleep with you, you’d be into it, no questions asked, no strings attached.’

  ‘That subtle?’

  ‘Actually, less subtle than that. Totally not suitable for work.’

  ‘On Facebook?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  And Claire, who has never even visited her Facebook page, nonetheless must concede that one exists, set up for her by her friend Dee. Could someone have hacked into it? Claire wouldn’t know how you did that. But Dee would.

  More than You Know

  In the parking lot of the Clock Tower Square Resort in Rockford, by the red Ford Mustang, without warning, without a sound, Jeff Torrance suddenly hits the deck.

  ‘Jeff? Jeff, are you OK?’ Danny says.

  Danny hears a kind of growling sound, hears Jeff’s boots kick against the concrete, hears the car keys jangle. He rounds the car and rears back involuntarily, crying out in shock and then rushing to Jeff’s kicking, flailing body, to the bloody hole in Jeff’s face where his nose was. Jeff’s breath comes in gurgling spurts, as if he’s drowning in his own blood. Danny reaches his hands in and tears them away, not knowing how to help. What the fuck has happened?

  ‘Been shot,’ Jeff manages. ‘Get … go. Go.’

  A last sluicing rattle from his throat, and then he’s gone, his body still, his eyes staring up at the gray afternoon light.

  He’s been shot? Danny stands and scans the surrounding area, but can see nothing and no one, except a couple of people collecting their cars and a bus turning in off the highway to set down passengers. What the fuck? Someone shot Jeff? Maybe they’ll try and shoot him.

  Go. Go.

  ‘Something happen to your friend, mister?’

  It’s a man in his sixties, plaid shirt, windbreaker, big jeans, Bulls hat.

  ‘I think he’s been shot,’ Danny says, gesturing with his hands, which he sees are coated with Jeff’s blood. He sees the man staring at his hands, and then at his face.

  ‘One minute he was there, the next …’

  ‘You see where it came from?’ the man says, looking around.

  Go. Go.

  ‘No. I … could you call for some help? An ambulance. And I’ll … stay with the body.’

  The man nods. He trusts him. Of course he does. Everyone trusts everyone. It’s the Mid-fucking-West for Christ’s sake. There he goes, in his big-ass jeans, jogging towards the door of Ruby Tuesday’s.

  Everyone trusts everyone, except for the guy with the gun.

  Go. Go.

  Danny grabs the keys out of Jeff’s hand, gets in the Mustang and hits the gas. He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t wipe the blood off his hands. He drives just below the speed limit. He doesn’t rant and rave, he doesn’t swear, he doesn’t even think. He keeps himself very still, concentrating only on the next mile of highway, and then the mile after that. He needs to be calm, and hold firm. He needs to talk to Dave Ricks and to Gene Peterson. He needs to find out who is trying to destroy his life.

  Detective Fox didn’t tell Claire Taylor she was forbidden from leaving Dane County, but she hadn’t expected her to bolt. She wasn’t a suspect; her alibi checked out – indeed, they had told her that, if anything, she could well be in danger. Mostly, they wanted her in plain sight, because if Danny Brogan was going to reappear, it was likely going to be to see his wife. But she had taken off, telling Officer Colby quite truthfully she was going to her friend Dee St Clair’s place downtown. Colby had let Fowler know. But Fowler was in the middle of issuing an inter-agency BOLO to the assorted state and county police and highway patrols in Wisconsin and Illinois for Danny Brogan on suspicion of murder, then ensuring TV and media had the photographs and information they needed. Whatever else he had found to do after that – get a cup of coffee or check whether the uniforms had uncovered anything going door-to-door, which of course they hadn’t because the nearest doors to the Brogan house on Arboretum Avenue weren’t near enough to let anyone see or hear anything of use – turned out to be just long enough to allow Claire to get away.

  ‘She told Colby she needed to have a shower, change her clothes, borrow things from her friend, so on. I thought, first, that figures, and second, well, she’d probably be a while.’

  Because women take so long to get ready, you know what they’re like, Nora Fox thinks but doesn’t bother saying. Which is why she’s left Fowler at the station house, where he’s happier anyway, running background checks on Danny Brogan and the victim Claire Taylor identified as Gene Peterson and trying to get prints on the murder weapon fast-tracked through the lab. They dusted the photograph and the figurine at the Arboretum Avenue house for Brogan’s prints and if they can get a match with the Sabatier, that’d be free drinks at the Old Fashioned tonight. Ken might even stay for a third.

  First, Nora swung by Brogan’s and quizzed an extremely blonde bar manager by the name of Karen Cassidy, who had been present at the family barbecue the previous Sunday, and who immediately went on the defensive.

  ‘Even if I could remember something, I probably wouldn’t tell you, but since I can’t remember anything, it means I had too much to drink, so I can’t tell you,’ said Karen Cassidy. Brogan had been in the bar spo
radically for the rest of the week, he hadn’t appeared any more distracted than usual, she didn’t know of any money troubles – certainly there were none at Brogan’s. Nora pressed her further for signs of erratic behavior on Danny’s part.

  ‘Look, you’re wasting your time,’ the diminutive blonde snapped. ‘First, there’s no conceivable way Danny Brogan would let his kids come to any harm. Second, if he’s in any other kind of trouble, I told you, I’d always try and protect him. So would anyone else in here.’

  ‘Karen, what if I told you I thought Danny might be in trouble himself? That this Gene Peterson was some kind of threat to him, that they maybe had a fight, there was an accidental killing, Danny panicked and took off, taking care to keep his kids safe first, as you said. What if the best way of protecting him is to find him?’

  Nora was kind of winging it, but only kind of; for whatever reason: Claire Taylor’s poise, Danny Brogan’s profile, the way the house was left, the fact the wife wasn’t murdered, none of these pointed to a serious kids-in-jeopardy situation or the need for an Amber Alert. That was as far as Nora was prepared to go for now.

  ‘In that context, Karen, anything you can give me? We know he didn’t take his own vehicle. Would he have traveled with a friend?

  Nora was sure Karen Cassidy knew the answer to that one, and there was a moment when it looked like she would tell, but then a dishwasher growled its rinse refrain behind the bar counter and Karen’s gaze returned to blank.

  ‘The other scenario, which makes things look even worse for Danny, is that he is being set up to take the fall for this Gene Peterson’s murder. The family dog was mutilated and killed, which his wife said Danny could never have done.’

  Karen’s eyes opened wide on that one, and her mouth formed an O of outrage. Nora pressed home.

  ‘In which case, it’s not the Police Department finding him he has to fear, it’s whoever committed these violent crimes.’

  And Karen bit her lip, exhaled and said, ‘If he went with anyone, it was likely Jeff Torrance.’

  Nora got a Spring Harbor address from Karen for Jeff and immediately called Ken Fowler and asked him to check it out.

  Now she is in Dee St Clair’s salon on Dayton. It’s quiet on Monday near lunchtime, and four young hairdressers with just-so haircuts are watching raptly as an extremely slender Chinese gentleman with black hair to his ass is doing something asymmetrical to the head of a fifth young hairdresser. Every so often he says something like, ‘Always weighing for balance, for fall,’ or ‘Cut brisk, not rushed,’ in a self-caressing little voice, and the hairdressers murmur their approval.

  ‘The Maestro at work,’ Dee St Clair says, having introduced herself and led Nora to a low-lit spa room in back with mirrors and basins and couches and scented candles and repetitive electronic music trilling soothingly from concealed speakers. Nora would like to spend a relaxing hour or two being pampered here. Later. On someone else’s dime.

  ‘Ms St Clair, you’ve heard about what happened up at Claire and Danny Brogan’s house, I assume,’ she says.

  ‘It’s so unbelievable,’ Dee St Clair says, and makes what Nora can only describe as a face, a kind of fright mask of horror and concern that is presumably genuine but looks so fake it makes Nora want to laugh.

  ‘Were you aware of the gravity of the situation when you assisted Ms Taylor in her flight?’

  ‘I let her borrow my car to drive to Chicago. I don’t think that amounts to “assisting her in her flight”. She wanted to go, and figured it would be too complicated to take one of her own on account of her backyard being a crime scene. Anyway, Claire has nothing to do with what happened, does she?’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me. You are her oldest friend, is that right?’

  ‘I’ve known her a long time, yes.’

  ‘Since she was at UW Madison. And that would have been the early nineties?’

  ‘I opened the salon here in ’ninety-three.’

  ‘So do you have any idea what made her take off so rapidly, or who she would have gone to see in Chicago?’

  ‘I don’t know. She said she had a plan. I … look, I don’t know if this is relevant or not, but I think she might have hooked up with an old boyfriend when she was in Chicago last week. Guy called Paul Casey, she used to work in the theater down there with him.’

  ‘So what, was she planning to leave her husband?’

  ‘God, no. At least, I don’t think so. Did she tell you she was? She didn’t tell me. God, how amazing if she was. I don’t mean, amazing good, just … amazing. I did ask her, you know, if anything happened. Not a glimmer.’

  ‘If something had happened, could Danny Brogan have found out?’

  ‘I have no idea. She’s very cagey about stuff, Claire, not like me, I’ll tell you whatever you need to know, and a lot you don’t; Claire, she’d’ve worked well in the CIA, I think. Or like an undercover cop. Keeps stuff from me, I’d say she could keep it from him too.’

  ‘Any other stresses on the marriage recently?’

  Dee does a funny-you-should-ask thing with her eyebrow that makes Nora think fleetingly of a drag queen.

  ‘Well – they did lose some money with Jonathan Glatt.’

  ‘She told us that.’

  Dee almost pouts, like a teen sulking because her news is no longer news. Nora hands Dee a copy of the photo of the victim Claire found among her possessions.

  ‘Your friend Claire Taylor identified the body as being that of Gene Peterson. Did you know this man? If not Peterson, we certainly think it was one of Danny Brogan’s old friends. This is what he looked like in high school.’

  A frown creases Dee St Clair’s forehead, as if she is trying to stop herself from expressing the emotion she naturally feels. In the normal run of things, Nora Fox would identify this as a fairly straightforward tell, but St Clair’s mannerisms are so generally off-kilter it’s hard to tell. When she lifts her face, it’s devoid of any expression.

  ‘I’ve never seen him before in my life. But I only came to Madison in my twenties, all Danny’s buddies had gone by then.’

  ‘And, Ms St Clair, do you have any idea where the Brogan children might be?’

  Dee shakes her head, and makes a face eloquent with pain and distress – the most persuasive and lifelike she’s looked, Nora thinks.

  ‘I’m afraid I have no idea.’

  ‘One more thing, Ms St Clair: Danny Brogan. You say you first met Claire Taylor when she was at UW. She would have been going out with Danny then, right? But when she left for Chicago, you stayed here, isn’t that right?’

  ‘Salon wouldn’t have run itself, Detective,’ Dee says. ‘And we were friends, not lovers.’

  ‘Of course not. Did you and Danny see anything of each other? I don’t mean romantically – necessarily – I mean as friends?’

  And whatever faces Dee pulls in reaction to this, genuine or cosmetic – and she seems to run through panic, outrage, fear and bitterness in short succession – there’s no mistaking, in Nora ’s eyes at any rate, a glitter in the eyes, a flush of heat in the brow, a thickening in the voice when Dee replies.

  ‘Not really. I mean, we bumped into each other from time to time – hard not to, in a city the size of Madison – but I was – am – Claire’s friend, not Danny’s. Not that I’m not Danny’s friend too, but … well, you know what I mean.’

  ‘Of course,’ Nora says. Of course, she thinks, as well. Maybe nothing happened, but if it didn’t, you wanted it to. Maybe something happened, but then it stopped, and you wanted it to continue. But what did that amount to? God knows, she has friends and exes in common. Some you stay friendly with, others you drift apart from. Might add up to something, might not. The thousand and one details that together make up police work. Of which, one might be useful.

  That’s all she wants from Dee St Clair for now. Nora notes down the Toyota’s plate and asks her to get in touch if she hears anything more. She can’t say for sure, but she thinks Dee looks kind of shaken
by the encounter as she stands in the doorway of the salon, seeing her off, or just making sure she goes. Maybe it’s just what normal, innocent people feel when they’ve spoken to the cops: relief that they don’t have to do it every day. Or maybe it’s what every woman her age is prone to (because Nora’s roughly of an age with Dee St Clair): in one light, you’re the essential you, you’re who you always were; in another, or in the morning, or without warning, you look tired, and lonely, and scared.

  In the car on the way past Camp Randall Stadium, headed for Monroe High, Nora is still thinking about Dee St Clair. Maybe anyone is vulnerable to the badly timed question. God knows, there was one guy in her twenties, if he walked in front of the car now, she doesn’t know what she’d do. Run him over, perhaps. She doesn’t like to talk about him, gets all hot and bothered, or unconvincingly nonchalant, if anyone brings him up. He’s married now, with kids, and she still feels … what? She still is not prepared even to analyze how she feels. It’s why all those websites are just wrong, Friends Reunited and Facebook and so on. Because it would be one thing if she ran into … Gary … she feels a frisson mouthing the word, like a schoolgirl writing her crush’s name on her pencil case, Gary, God, she is ridiculous. It would be one thing if she ran into Gary again in a bar, say, or … well, in a bar is the way she’s decided it would happen, a hotel bar actually, for reasons, yes, pretty obvious reasons. And whatever happened, would happen. It would be chance. It would be fate. And we’re all at the mercy of that.

  It’s another thing trawling through your past for everyone you ever kissed and getting in touch with them all and putting yourself in the way of them, like you could rewind your life and start afresh. Last time Nora checked, that was called soliciting. And it never works out, because you can’t go back. Dance in one direction only. She knows that if she did bump into Gary (in New York, where nobody knows her, she doesn’t care which hotel), within minutes of the second drink, she’d probably remember all the things about him (because he’d remind her of them) that used to get on her nerves, and eventually caused her to dump him in the first place. That’s right, she dumped him. And that’s that. No second chances. Is that what Claire Taylor wanted in Chicago, a second chance? And what did Danny Brogan want? And did he want it enough to kill?