Angels Burning

by Tawni O'Dell

  I lead them through the house and onto my deck. Neely then follows me into the kitchen. We’re barely inside before I start pumping her for information.

  “So where’s his wife or ex-wife?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You’ve just spent the entire day with a brother you haven’t seen in twenty-five years who has a son we never even knew existed and you didn’t bother to ask him about the boy’s mother?”

  She opens the refrigerator and brings out three beers.

  “I’m not you,” she says, handing me one.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “I didn’t interrogate him.”

  “I repeat, what is that supposed to mean?”

  She opens her bottle and takes a swig.

  “From the sound of things they’ve been on their own for a while, but Mason quotes his mom a lot like he’s just talked to her and it doesn’t seem to bother Champ. Wherever she is, I don’t think they’re on bad terms.”

  I check on my mac and cheese in the oven. About fifteen more minutes. Perfect.

  “What did you find out? Where are they from? What does he do for a living?”

  She shrugs, reaches for a fork, and starts eating potato salad out of the serving bowl.

  “They’ve moved around a lot. He’s had a bunch of different jobs. Nothing good.”

  “You mean he doesn’t work with dogs.”

  “Nope.”

  I swat her hand out of the bowl.

  “Did he . . . ?” I toss back my head and make the motion of drinking at my lips.

  “Or?” I follow it by pantomiming popping pills, shooting up, and taking a hit off a joint.

  “He slept,” she answers me. “I never saw him take anything, although I saw him smoke a cigarette and he definitely has the shakes.”

  “What kind of shakes? Drug shakes? Booze shakes?”

  She raises her hands and waves them wildly at me.

  “Shakes,” she whispers dramatically, and frowns at me.

  “What happened with Derk?”

  “Nothing. He came back with the dogs like I said he would. Have you ever seen him climb a tree?”

  “I know. He’s part squirrel.”

  She waits until my back is turned while I’m salting the steaks and she eats more potato salad.

  “He played with Mason for a little while. I was surprised, but they seemed to get along. I took him home with Tug. I’m really worried about Tug. He’s so angry.”

  “What do you expect? His sister was just murdered.”

  “That should make him sad, not angry.”

  “Stages of grieving,” I say. “Anger’s one of them.”

  I pick up the plate of steaks. She grabs the beers. We head outside.

  “You know Tug won’t get any help,” she tells me. “He has no one to talk to.”

  “We didn’t get any help.”

  “But at least we had each other. And Grandma.”

  “He has a family.”

  I say the words, but I know Tug’s family isn’t going to be any help to him at all.

  I’ve decided I’m not going to tell Neely about Uncle Eddie and Hòa Bình aka Maybe for now. Neely doesn’t forgive and she doesn’t forget. Eddie could sell everything he owns and donate it to the ASPCA and spend the rest of his life washing baby penguins pulled out of oil spills and tracking down poachers in Africa, and it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to her. He mistreated a dog: end of story.

  We have a nice meal together. Even the bugs cooperate and leave us alone. It’s a softly warm night, and as the sun begins to set and the sky turns from azure to lilac, the few clouds break apart and drift away, leaving behind a twinkling spray of stars and a bright white crescent moon.

  During dinner, I reassess my earlier criticism of Neely’s inability to get any information out of Champ. He’s surprisingly adept at avoiding all topics related to his personal life. Even I have a tough time uncovering anything meaningful.

  She was right about the shakes. He’s a drinker. He drinks most of my beer, and after he and Mason wash the dishes, he asks if I have anything harder. I lie and tell him no, but when he says he’ll go out and buy a bottle, I miraculously find some whiskey.

  The subject of sleeping accommodations comes up. Champ insists they can stay in a motel but Neely offers them my home. She has just as much room as I do, but her need for privacy borders on insanity.

  When I ask how long they’re staying, Champ announces that he thinks he’s going to look for a job here. I glance at Mason to see how he takes the news, but he’s digging into a bowl of ice cream and doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  “That’s great,” Neely exclaims. “We’d love to have you back home. Wouldn’t we, Dove?”

  “Of course. You guys can have the guest bedroom or maybe Mason would like to sleep in the grotto.”

  “The grotto?” Champ wonders.

  “It’s not a grotto,” Neely explains. “It’s a garret. The little room under the roof. When we were kids living in the old house with Mom, Dove used to like this house and would talk about living in it someday. She accidentally called the top room a grotto. And it stuck. She still calls it that.”

  Mason looks up from his bowl with his mouth ringed in chocolate syrup.

  “What’d you say about Garrett?”

  “It’s a little room at the top of a house.”

  He bursts into laughter.

  “Do you know what’s so funny?” I ask Champ.

  “I think so.”

  Once Mason calms down enough to be able to talk, he gulps, “My best friend’s named Garrett. Wait’ll I tell him he’s named after a room.”

  “He’s not named after a room any more than you’re named after a jar,” Champ tells him.

  “Your dad’s named after a dog,” I volunteer.

  “I know, but that’s not as funny.”

  “Your aunt Dove’s named after soap,” Neely says.

  This sends Mason into another fit of hilarity.

  Since he thinks this is so hysterical, I get up and go to the bathroom and come back with a cake of Dove soap.

  Champ takes it from me and smells it through its wrapper.

  “Reminds me of Mom,” he says simply.

  He sets it down on the table in front of Mason, whose giggles are starting to trail off.

  “This was the only soap our mom used,” Champ further explains. “And she was obsessed with being clean.”

  Neely picks up the soap and examines it like she’s never seen it before.

  “That’s for sure,” she comments. “You ever wonder why?”

  “What about Aunt Neely’s name?” Mason asks.

  “Neely’s named after a character in a book called Valley of the Dolls,” I answer him. “Our mom read it when she was pregnant with her. It was a big bestseller at the time.”

  “What was the character like?”

  “She was a feisty song-and-dance girl from the wrong side of the tracks who became a pill-popping, alcoholic movie star who destroyed everyone she loved on her relentless climb to the top.”

  He looks over at Neely.

  “Why would your mom name you after her?”

  She plunks down the soap.

  “She had high hopes for me.”

  Apparently I have to take matters into my own hands if I want to unearth any personal information about my brother or my nephew.

  I signal at Neely to take Champ and his drink outside on the deck.

  “How would you feel about moving here?” I ask Mason once they’ve gone.

  “I don’t care. We move a lot. I’ll miss Garrett.”

  “What about your mom? Do you mind me asking? Where is she?”

  He takes a few bites of ice cream, then sets down his spoon and reaches across the table for his Trapper. I wait for the rip of the Velcro.

  I think maybe he’s going to show me a picture of her, but he pulls out a copy of a death
certificate and hands it to me.

  “My mom died of a very bad disease called AIDS. She was an intra venus drug user.”

  He breaks the word “intravenous” into two words and I wonder if he knows the actual meaning of it or if he thinks it has something to do with the planet and maybe believes that her addiction was a science fiction experiment that got out of hand.

  “But she loved me very much,” he finishes.

  I look down at the piece of paper. I can’t read anything, not even her name. My vision is blurred with tears I don’t want to inflict upon this little boy.

  “I’m sorry, Mason.”

  “I’m not sick,” he says, going back to his ice cream. “I’ve never been sick a day in my life. Dad loves to tell people this.”

  “Dove!” Neely shouts from the deck. “Your work cell’s ringing.”

  “Answer it for me.”

  I take a seat across from Mason and try to figure out what I should say next. I’ve settled on asking him if he’s seen any good movies lately when Neely bursts into the room, my screen door banging shut behind her.

  She has the pallor of a corpse and the hot stare of an escaped convict with baying hounds on his trail. I’ve never seen this amount of despair on her face, not even when I told her about Gil and Champ.

  “Tug’s at the Masseys’ house,” she says. “He has a gun.”

  chapter thirteen

  THERE ARE VERY SPECIFIC police guidelines for dealing with an armed someone threatening to blow the head off an unarmed someone who he believes has wronged him in a despicable and utterly unforgivable way. They exist for a reason. They usually work, and the instances where they don’t, it’s a fair bet nothing could have saved the situation.

  As I’m about to step onto the Masseys’ immaculate lawn glowing an emerald green beneath the street lamp, I know I’m not going to apply a single one of them. I’m about to leave all my experience and training at the curb, along with my job title and several knots of panicked neighbors, and become nothing more than a foolish, middle-aged woman in a gaudy sundress with a Glock.

  I can hear Tug’s shouting from outside. He and Zane are in the Masseys’ living room standing only a few feet apart. The windows are open. The curtains are parted. An overhead light and a floor lamp are on, and I can clearly see the rifle he has resting against his shoulder pointed at Zane, who has his hands held up in front of his chest, palms out, like he’s frozen in a game of patty-cake.

  Under no circumstances should I try to enter the home. I should try to communicate with Tug from outside. I should wait for backup. Other officers will be here momentarily. I can hear the sirens in the distance.

  Brie Massey is standing in the middle of the yard, her face contorted and tear-streaked, raptly watching the scene playing out in the window as if the boys were putting on a particularly heart-wrenching performance of a beloved play.

  She turns at the sound of my car door slamming. I notice her knees and forehead are bloodied, and I immediately know she was with Zane when Tug arrived. Once she realized what was about to happen, she would’ve grabbed on to her son, trying to make herself into something more than a shield, a maternal protective coating. Tug would’ve had to peel her off him and throw her out the door. She stumbled and fell onto the front walk.

  She forgets about the window and comes running at me, the wild desperation in her eyes making me think she’s planning to knock me to the ground, already blaming me for what’s about to happen to her son, but she drops to her injured knees in front of me and throws her arms around my legs.

  “Save him,” she sobs. “You have to save him. Please save him.”

  I look back at Neely, who insisted on coming with me. I know she wants the same thing, only she’s thinking about the other boy’s life.

  Our eyes connect and she nods at me.

  Where is Terry? I wonder as I head for the house. It’s a little after nine. Does he have a bowling night or a weekly poker game with the boys? Is he running an errand? Did the missus send him out for ice cream before settling down to watch TV, or is he on a beer run? Is he putting a case of Yuengling in his trunk right now, singing an eighties tune he just heard on the oldies station that reminds him of summers when he was a kid, while his son is about to be murdered in his own living room?

  Where’s the younger sister?

  From inside I hear Tug screaming, “You killed her! Why can’t you say it? We all know you did it. You killed her!”

  “I didn’t do it!” Zane moans, his denial broken up by weeping. “I loved Cam.”

  “Shut up!” Tug shrieks. “You’re a liar!”

  I don’t try to talk to him through the open window. I go directly to the front door and have a perverse moment where I think about ringing the doorbell.

  I’m armed with my gun and two important pieces of information. One, Tug’s had plenty of time to shoot Zane and he hasn’t. This means he’s conflicted. And two, he used the word “we.” This is not a decision he made on his own. He’s been put up to it even if he doesn’t realize it. Deep down Tug doesn’t want to do this, but that doesn’t mean he won’t.

  Before I push open the door, I become remarkably calm and aware. I hear one of our cruisers arrive and hear Blonski shout, “Chief ! Wait!” I notice a crack in the walkway where a few weeds have poked through, and considering the fastidious care Brie and Terry give to the rest of their yard, I know it must drive them both crazy and I wonder why they haven’t fixed it yet. I look down at my feet in a pair of sandals I threw on and notice my toenail polish is beginning to chip. The memory of Camio’s polish, vivid pink against her cold white skin smudged with warm black earth, pops unwelcome into my head and I feel like I’ve been sucker punched in the gut.

  I call out Tug’s name and step inside.

  I never stopped to think how Zane would react to my entrance.

  Upon hearing my voice, Tug turns toward me and Zane dashes for the nearest doorway. Tug catches the movement out of the corner of his eye and his hunter’s reflexes whirl him back around, shooting.

  It’s over that quickly.

  Zane falls to the floor.

  I scream at Tug. It’s enough to distract him.

  He whips back in my direction with his rifle poised to shoot me. I stand braced with my handgun pointed at him knowing my chance is over.

  My own life doesn’t flash before my eyes. I think of Camio again and how she was helping her sister get her GED and how she helped her uncle deal with his demons and how she wanted to grow up and join a profession where she might have helped countless troubled, unhappy people. I see them stretched out before me on a country road waiting patiently in line for relief that will never come to them.

  “What would Camio want you to do?” I ask him quietly and evenly, trying to keep my voice steady, which is proving easier than keeping my gun steady.

  “She loves you, Tug. That love doesn’t die with the person. Getting revenge for her isn’t loving her back. Being a good person is loving her back.”

  He’s shaking just as much as I am: his gun, his skinny adolescent arms, his chicken legs in his baggy jeans. His lips, nose, and eyebrows twitch crazily like separate living creatures trying desperately to get off his face. If ever there was a stressful time when he needed to act out his nickname, it’s now. I want to tell him, It’s okay, go ahead, put down the gun, and grab an ear.

  Behind me I hear other officers enter the house. Planks of red and blue lights slice through the darkness outside.

  He falls apart. He could’ve just as easily shot me, then maybe even shot another cop before he was gunned down himself. But he didn’t. I don’t know who gets credit for this miraculous save, but it certainly isn’t me.

  The rifle hits Brie and Terry’s polished hardwood floor with a loud clack and Tug follows, crumpling into a heap, covering his face with his oversize hands he hasn’t grown into yet, convulsing with loud, ugly, braying sobs.

  I don’t secure the prisoner. I don’t remove his gun
from his reach. I don’t do anything I’m supposed to do. I run for Zane.

  He’s been shot once in the right side. He’s unconscious but still has a pulse.

  The room suddenly fills with noise. Rushing footsteps, men shouting, radios squawking, sirens wailing. I’m putting pressure on Zane’s wound when Brie Massey comes up behind me and all other sounds are extinguished as completely as a small fire beneath a heavy blanket.

  I never want to hear a scream like that again in my life. Ever.

  TUG TRULY IS OUR COLLAR. The shooting of Zane Massey occurred in our town. My officers have taken him back to our station to get a statement and process him with my sister acting as a de facto parent until his own can be notified.

  I can’t shake the creepy feeling that his parents know exactly where he is and what he’s done, that they sent him out to do it without a single thought about what might happen to him. Did they actually think he could get away with it? Didn’t they realize he could end up dead or in jail for the rest of his life? Losing a child should make a family draw the others nearer, not sacrifice another in the name of vengeance.

  Nolan was on the scene instantly. It turns out he was at the Dairy Queen going through surveillance footage looking for Lonnie Harris. The shooting impacts his case, since both Zane and Tug are still persons of interest in Camio’s murder, and as I’m sitting in his car with his siren screaming and light flashing, driving ninety-five miles an hour on our way to Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh where Zane has been taken in a helicopter, I’m telling myself this is the only reason he showed up. I don’t want him to care about me. I don’t want anyone to care about me. I don’t deserve compassion.

  I’m not cold, but I can’t stop my teeth from chattering or my hands from shaking. He’s wrapped me in his suit jacket and given me his thermos of hot coffee that I set between my knees and occasionally clench like a Thighmaster.

  He hasn’t asked me a single question about what happened. I guess on some level he doesn’t have to. He survived being shot twelve years ago, but his best friend didn’t. A survivalist who was very vocal about his hatred of cops was wanted for questioning regarding a bomb that was found by a much-lauded janitor in a county courthouse basement before it went off. Ten troopers were sent to the suspect’s home. They thought the property was secure. They were wrong. The guy’s wife snuck up behind Nolan and shot Trooper John Jankewicz in the back of the head before he could react. Nolan got off three shots that killed her but not before she put one in his chest.