White Birch Graffiti (White Birch Village Book 2)

by Jeff Van Valer

  Frank hesitated over the death of Ted’s friend but seemed to drop it.

  “And here’s another thing, Ted,” Frank said a little later. “We have officers in your garage. We opened the door into the house to see if the, uh… the bullet went through the door or if it was lodged in it.”

  “You want that bullet.”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Find it. Do everything you need.”

  “Ted, we can’t just go into your house without…”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Can I take that as verbal consent?”

  “Carte blanche, Frank. Look at whatever you want to look at.”

  Frank—friggin’ jerk-off—was the last person Ted wanted to talk to. Guy kept asking how Ted felt, commented how his heart rate and blood pressure looked better. I’m a doctor, Frank. Don’t tell me about my blood pressure. When Frank said he’d called Ted’s dad, Ted thought You leave my dad alone. He’s got better things to…

  Ted wanted to see his parents.

  Through the initial questioning, Frank was civil enough, Ted supposed. The detective did seem to stare quite a bit, though. Every so often he puffed out his giant mustache, either in swallowing his own spit or in making the face of someone handing down judgment. To Ted, Frank looked like a walrus when he made that face. The detective maintained a phony-looking contriteness. He kept his hands open and sat down to keep from towering over Ted. Somewhere in Frank’s police training, Ted supposed, the detective had learned what kinds of body language to employ when trying to engage the trust of a suspect. The feigned patience and sympathy were insulting. In a game of good cop bad cop, Frank should never try to be the good one. He could never hide his I’ve-got-you-by-the-balls-now approach. Son of a bitch.

  Frank eventually left Ted alone to be observed overnight in the hospital next to a vital signs monitor that wouldn’t stop beeping.

  Kathryn occasionally mentioned police taking on a knowing servitude for what they call APE cases. Acute Political Emergencies. A murdered prosecutor, at least for Blue County, Indiana, was the mother of all APE cases. The second round of questioning came and went Saturday morning. Ted was still in the hospital when Frank and his partner left just before lunch.

  Frank also made it perfectly clear he’d spoken to Kathryn’s secretary. Her blabbermouth x-ray-tech husband opined about Ted’s relationship with Joni. Ted’s blood pressure dropped again when Frank mentioned the life-insurance policies he and Kathryn had upped in the last year. Looked like Donna spilled on that, too. Frank puffed out his mustache and dropped more canned apologies for having to ask the questions in the first place. Then he had the gall to say he appreciated Ted’s cooperation.

  As though I had a choice.

  Sometime after Frank and his partner left, Ted’s idle mind took him back to medical school, to his forensic pathology rotation and the irrigated, stainless steel autopsy table.

  She might be on the table this minute, he thought to himself. There, his headless wife, the string of skull bits, scalp, and freshly highlighted hair would be hanging over the table’s side, dripping dark red blood onto the concrete floor. The two arms of the Y-incision would meet at her xiphoid process, from which the Y’s one leg would slice down past her navel. The bone saw, that giant, angry cousin of the dentist’s drill, would wail as it oscillated, lengthwise, through her sternum and echo down the gloss-painted, concrete-block walls of the medical center’s basement. Filleted open from her shoulders to her waist, Kathryn would be routinely disemboweled, organ after organ splatting into a stainless steel pan hanging from a scale.

  It would be cold in there. She’d hate that. As though on the outsides of two open doors, her breasts would hang upside down on either side of her, maybe even pressing against the table’s cool steel.

  The reek of a hundred open abdominal cavities crept up from Ted’s banks of surplus medical training. The autopsy technician would tell stories about his Friday night, and the intense red of Kathryn’s insides would contrast with the deathly white of her skin. Red-on-white-on-silver.

  With Jessie Gables, it would’ve been red-on-charcoal-on-silver.

  Ted pictured a mocking Frank Bruska at fourteen, in the park that October day so long ago. Hey, Ted! he might say. Maybe they cut up your wife AND your mom on the same TABLE!

  The cold of the autopsy suite made Ted think of Kathryn’s favorite sweater. He wanted to hit something but calmed himself. His thoughts went on that way, as though stuck in a maze. But soon, he found what the bloodhound of his relentless, self-spiting imagination always sniffed for: Lloyd in the fire.

  The room’s light changed. Two shadows appeared in the doorway.

  “Ted.” Dad. Dad and Suzanne. Ted swung his legs around to sit on the bed’s edge. Suzanne’s eyes welled with tears as she marched to his side, sat next to him, and wrapped her arms around him. He hugged her and decided he would try not to cry. She kissed him in front of his ear, as she usually did.

  “Can you stand up?” his dad asked.

  Ted stood, holding Suzanne’s hand. “How’s your chest x-ray, Dad?”

  “I haven’t seen Dr. Patel yet. That’s next week.”

  “Dad. You should—”

  “Listen, Buddy Boy,” Roy said. “There are more pressing matters.”

  Buddy Boy. In a few seconds Ted fell, helpless, into his dad’s arms. But in a minute or so, his grasp changed from a hug to a physical exam. Ted took inventory, by feel, of his dad’s ribs and the lack of subcutaneous fat covering them. He sniffed deeply and said, “You’ve lost weight, Dad.”

  “Leave it alone, kid. You hear me? It’s all about you right now.”

  Ted sniffed again, collecting himself. He stood back, holding his dad’s shoulders, giving him a final once-over.

  “Five pounds in a month,” Roy said. “Right, Suze? We’ve been eating a lot of salad, haven’t we?”

  “We have, Ted,” Suzanne said. “We’re both trying to be healthy.”

  “Dad…”

  “We’re from Indiana, Ted. We all need to lose weight. I’m okay.”

  “Did you drive all night to get here?” From Gulf Shores? “What is that? Eleven hours?”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “How was your trip?” Ted asked, looking back and forth between them.

  “It was good,” his dad said. Any time Roy Gables said, It was good without saying anything else, it meant it was troublesome or it was tiresome or I’d rather talk about something else.

  “You look tired, Dad. You need to—”

  “And you look like absolute hell, Ted. Let’s concentrate on you for a spell, shall we?”

  They sat and talked until Ted’s internist arrived in the early afternoon. Full of IV fluids, Ted was deemed stable and discharged from Blue County Hospital. He wondered why Frank hadn’t been by to arrest him.

  Ted left with his parents and went to the home in which he grew up. The three of them brewed a pot of coffee and ate sandwiches in the kitchen. Ted noticed his dad ate only half of his.

  Unpleasant conversations were had about funeral services and discussions with Ted’s in-laws. Roy made the phone call, which was short. He described the conversation: It was good.

  Ted learned after Roy’s perfunctory discussion with John and Sally Radiford something he never knew. The news kicked him in the teeth. Kathryn wanted to be buried in her hometown. Thirteen years of morning coffee, dinners at home, date nights and pillow talk never covered the topic. But he respected it. If the Radifords said so, it was Kathryn’s wish. She would rest in a place, one Willow Bend Cemetery, Ted had never seen.

  Suzanne said they would work on a memorial in Blue River. But either way, the funeral would be in Broadbent, Ohio. Her parents had already arranged something for Tuesday morning, with calling hours Monday evening. Monday. (Ted figured Kathryn’s dad flexed some angry lawyer muscle in some way, to get her body shipped home as soon as possible.) In the damp earth of some cemetery somewhere, Kathryn would fre
eze in the ground. She’d spend eternity next to some crappy street, where cigarette butts and dead leaves lined the curbs. Where styrofoam cups and plastic grocery bags blew in the wind, past people who didn’t care.

  Ted told himself it didn’t matter. It did, of course, but something mattering and being something you can change are two different things. The funeral would be a visit with in-laws who never liked him. A visit with no Kathryn. It would be Thanksgiving from hell and ten times worse. Suzanne’s hand settled on Ted’s arm at the perfect time to remind him he was with people who loved him and who knew him better than he knew himself.

  You’re a sympathy magnet, Ted.

  But loneliness overtook him anyway. They discussed the investigation. There was no way around his being Suspect number one. Roy told Ted the truth would come out, that Frank’s always been a good member of the force and Don’t worry, Ted. No one thinks you were involved. The opinion rolled from the retired lawman’s tongue like the phrase It was good.

  That night, Ted slept in his boyhood bed. He laid in the dark, spinning his wedding band around his finger, a habit he’d indulged since he first put it on. As he did, he wondered what he would do with Kathryn’s ring. Bury her with it on? Take the diamond and fashion it into a ring for himself? Sell the whole thing to thwart future, torturous reminders of her demise? Sell it for beer money? Maybe so he could hate himself for having done so? Toss it into the ocean like that old lady did with the big jewel in Titanic?

  And what of his ring? Maybe somebody’d just up and tell him: Take your ring off. She’s dead. Move on.

  He dreaded his trip to Broadbent, Ohio. But he’d go, of course.

  If Frank would let him.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Rockford Butcher took two .45 hollow points to the chest and one to the face. The man’s upper back and shoulders hit the top of his car’s doorframe as he fell back, doubling at the waist, his butt on the driver seat. What was left of his head came to rest near his knees. Lewis left the dead man’s wallet alone.

  The evening news would use the phrase execution-style in its report, and Lewis didn’t care. He’d dispensed with what Mr. Gray called the murder suits, opting instead to shoot from a splatter-proof fifteen or twenty feet.

  Lewis picked up the spent shell casings and jogged in safe darkness to the street behind him, where Mr. Gray waited in the van. “Money,” he told himself. “There’s going to be money. It’s nothing personal, Butcher.” Talking to himself quietly and quickly was a tactic Lewis had developed to ward off the need to vomit every time he killed someone up close. Shootings were bad enough. He didn’t at all enjoy stabbings, like Mr. Gray. Any guy who talked about his kids with a loving smile and liked stabbing people had to be missing a few pieces. Lewis got into the van, and the two drove off, toward Wisconsin.

  ~~~

  About an hour later, the partners slid into a diner’s orange naugahyde booth. Mr. Gray held up the sat phone, as though giving a toast. “Mr. Green called,” he said, pocketing the phone.

  Lewis hated his partner’s face. “Did he, now.”

  “He’s not pleased.”

  “I don’t care how pleased he is. Did he call us off?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, fuck him.”

  “Said do everything but Montana and get back for the”—whispering—“doctor.”

  “How’re they gonna take care of Montana?”

  “I asked that, and he told me to mind my own business.”

  “He say anything about what’s gonna happen to the pay?”

  “Said we’d talk about it. And to let him know if we miss again.”

  A Buddy Holly tune wafted from the speakers. Love for real, the old crooner sang, and not fade away. The waitress brought Lewis a glass of water and Mr. Gray a plate of spaghetti. Mr. Gray emptied half a silver-topped, glass shaker of Parmesan onto his plate while ribbing Lewis for being unable to eat.

  “Good job down there in Rockford,” Mr. Gray said with a mouthful of spaghetti.

  Lewis watched his partner’s face change in a familiar way. Here it comes, he thought.

  “Least you didn’t grease this guy’s wife.”

  And there it went. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

  Mr. Gray gulped down his next load of red-tinged pasta, twirling the next giant bite on his fork. Lewis wanted to punch the utensil into the back of his partner’s throat.

  ~~~

  On their way to pay a certain forty-two-year-old basketball coach an early-morning visit in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, the topic came up again. But only in Lewis’s mind. Focused on the exclusive sat phone relationship, Lewis wondered not if, but how these six men were related. Who’s going to connect these hits? Six men in six states. Are they in together on some kind of business dealing?

  He pictured a boardroom meeting somewhere in a couple of days with six empty chairs. A crisp-suited Englishman with a handlebar mustache asks, I say. Where the devil have they all gone? Then a bubblegum-smacking secretary from Jersey, emery board on her nails, says, Oh—smack, smack, smack—They’ve all been bumped owaff.

  Lewis almost grinned at the scenario. Sudden deaths in a current business venture, legal or not, would be ridiculous. And traceable. Besides, what business would a doctor, a couple of professors, a butcher, a basketball coach, and a minister have together? All they had in common were their ages. So what, then, did they have in common?

  Knowledge emerged as the answer. They all knew something from somewhere, some time. Something nobody else knew. Something worth killing for. So what would that be? Since they all lived in different places with different lives, maybe it was something from a long time ago. He considered bringing it up in conversation with Mr. Gray, but he thought better of it, thinking an air of indifference was far safer.

  Mr. Gray, driving, moved his hand—quickly, for how casual the man seemed to be—to pat the coat pocket that contained the sat phone.

  Damn! Lewis wanted to say. You lose something? But he kept his eyes on the road, pretending not to notice. Lewis wasn’t sure what his partner was afraid of: whether he’d left the phone in the restaurant or allowed it to fall into Lewis’s hands. Lewis decided to assume it was the latter. But either way, his partner appeared to be hiding something.

  CHAPTER 16

  Ted’s father-in-law, John Radiford, mumbled something to a guy who looked like a butler. Calling hours had just started, and the place was quiet. In a black suit and burgundy tie, Ted stood next to his wife’s coffin.

  The Brodmann McArdle Funeral Home was a quaint place, a proud family business. Beyond the clashing and nauseating arrays of flower aromas, the place smelled overly clean, like a church. It was a chemical type of clean. Better that, Ted supposed, than all the other stuff a funeral home could smell like. Salty finger food baked in a hidden kitchen. Staff members in dark clothes and quiet shoes glided through the shadows like ghosts.

  Sally Radiford, a lady to whom gravity had not been kind, busied herself with a floral arrangement. John attended to her as he always had. Ted’s in-laws hadn’t said much to him, and about that, he had no complaint. Sally was well versed in the deliberate practice of wordlessness. John seemed to reign over his world through scowls and grunts. Kathryn’s sister communicated volumes through her near-perpetual absence. Ted, for lack of Detroit Lions football to watch year after year, had learned to play all the Radifords’ games.

  He wished for his dad and Suzanne to show up. They said they’d be along in the evening. They’d stay the night and be at the funeral the next morning. Ted hid a wince as he wondered if his dad really was feeling as well as he’d said. He wanted the judge to eat a cheeseburger and gain a few pounds. Just a few pounds, so it doesn’t look like cancer after all.

  Ted watched Kathryn’s father. A vague sort of anger seemed to lord over the man’s entire face. His predominant expression incriminated a perpetual impatience, that of a professional accustomed to servile deference. His face’s centerpiece bore a telling redne
ss. Tiny, dilated arteries drew a roadmap leading to a swollen, red and purple nose. A beak like that said Hello. I am a heavy, heavy drinker. Ted wondered if, at 4 p.m., his father-in-law had already been hitting the sauce. Maybe a flask hid in the aging attorney’s inside coat pocket. Maybe, every time Sally stole off to the restroom to hike up her girdle, John took a quick snort.

  A giant grandfather clock played four unobtrusive bongs. The bell above the door jingled. Ted and his in-laws looked forward, through the suite’s double doors. In walked a middle-aged man, agreeing to hand his battered overcoat to the butler type. He wore khaki pants and a cruddy blazer that fit in the shoulders but was too small further down. The man wasn’t exactly obese, but his tie didn’t hang so much from the neck as it lay on his dumpy belly. He pursed his lips, pushing out that most prominent facial feature, the mustache.

  Ted’s mouth opened. Frank Bruska. You gotta be kidding me.

  Ted started toward him, feeling annoyed, even invaded, but oddly grateful for the escape from the in-laws. When Ted approached, Frank puffed out his mustache and swallowed. Ted tried not to stare at it. The thing damned-near covered the guy’s entire mouth. It was almost comical. The man’s face itself, with such a big mustache and a small chin, was a caricature. Ted wondered if Frank wore the mustache to cover the scar on his upper lip or just to put a floor under that ugly nose and shifty eyes. Frank swallowed hard and cleared his throat, making the most severe walrus face Ted had ever seen. Only the tusks were missing.