Crooked House

by Joe McKinney

  “I do need to talk to you about something when you’re done though.”

  He’d been right. Something was bothering her. “You wanna talk now? My shower can wait.”

  “No, just go do that. I’ll be in when you’re done.”

  He went into the bedroom and tossed the mail onto the bed. He unpacked and undressed without really thinking about what he was doing. Even the anger he’d felt out in the driveway was gone now. He kept thinking of Sarah. He’d seen that troubled look on her face before, when he told her about the whole business in Matt Landis’ office and how he was now unemployed. It had felt like an indictment then. Seeing it now, it filled him with an unfocused sense of dread.

  Robert climbed into the shower and let the water run over him, his thoughts turning again to Crook House. That upstairs study was going to be glorious. All those books. All that baseball stuff. Here in this house he did everything on a laptop at the kitchen table, or on the living room floor when Angela had a project or some big homework assignment. But he would have his own wing of the house to work in now. He’d grown up in the little town of Marion, Indiana, and in his youth there’d been a dense strip of forestland along the edge of town the kids all called the Devil’s Den. As a boy, he’d spent most of his summers wandering that forest, dreaming he was Luke Skywalker, Yoda on his back, training him in the ways of The Force. A secret thrill had shot through him every time he got ready to enter the Den, and, for the first time in twenty years, he was feeling that thrill again. Only this time, it would be the library at Crook House that he’d be exploring. He envisioned himself pacing in front of the bookshelf, exploring it, reading until he passed out on the cot along the back wall. Or getting drunk on red wine and passing out on the cot. Or on that big oaken desk. Hell, he could run around in his underwear shouting like a loon, playing Nirvana records so loudly his eardrums would bleed. It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter, because for the first time since leaving the Devil’s Den, he’d have his own private retreat, his own little slice of heaven.

  His hair was full of lather when he heard his name.

  He stopped, listened, heard it again.

  God damn it, he thought. They always did this to him. He couldn’t even take a shower without being bothered.

  “I’m in the shower,” he called out.

  He listened, his fingers still in his hair, but heard nothing else.

  Robert ducked his head under the water and rinsed the shampoo out quickly. Knowing Sarah, she was probably just outside the bathroom door, unwilling to give him even a moment’s peace.

  “I’m coming,” he said.

  He shut off the water and was about to step out when he heard the sound of someone sobbing from the bedroom.

  “Sarah?”

  There was no answer, but the sobbing went on.

  He dried off quickly, threw the towel around his slowly spreading, milk white belly, and opened the door to the bedroom.

  But there was no one there, just Angela’s stuffed raccoon staring at him from the bed. She must have slept there with Sarah last night, he thought.

  “Sarah?” he called again.

  The bedroom door opened and Sarah came in. She was wearing black warm up pants and a vanilla top that fit snuggly to the swells of her breasts. She’d pulled her wavy brown hair back into a ponytail that showed the delicate line of her neck. He felt something stirring in his groin as he traced her curves. When they’d first met, back when she was the secretary in the English Office at Columbia, she’d admitted to him that she’d moonlighted as a waitress in a men’s club for a short time. He’d asked her if she’d ever danced, and at first she’d told him no, though later admitted that she had, for a short time, done a little dancing. Just to pay the bills. She still had the body of a dancer, though, and there were times, like now, as he stood there in nothing but a towel, that he was keenly aware of that fact. He’d been serious about asking her to join him in the shower. Being away from her for two days, he missed her, and he was feeling more than a little horny.

  But the expression on her face quickly dispelled any thoughts along that line. There was an almost haunted look in her eyes.

  “I heard you crying,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  She went to the mule chest they shared and took out a pair of underwear for him. He got dressed, then watched her as she sat down on the bed. There was a letter of some sort in her hand.

  She’s definitely scared about something, he thought.

  “You gonna tell me what’s wrong?” he asked.

  “I got a call from the school today.”

  His pulse quickened. “Which school?”

  “Angela’s. Jay Carroll tried to check Angela out of class today.”

  “He did what?”

  Jay Carroll was the guy she’d been dating before Robert. He was Angela’s birth father, and, in Robert’s opinion, a sorry excuse for a man. He’d only met the guy a few times – Jay had been drunk each time – but that was enough. The guy was some kind of actor, commercials mainly, and Robert had been completely disgusted by his arrogance. He’d pretty much dropped off the planet for a bunch of years, never once calling to check on Sarah or even sending her a birthday card. But his mother apparently lived in Ocala, and Jay came back to be with her about a year ago. A few times since then they’d gotten drunken calls in the middle of the night, and now and then they saw a red Ford pickup across the street, the guy behind the tinted glass a vague beer-drinking silhouette. It’d been creepy, but never anything the cops were willing to call a crime.

  Sarah was shaking her head. “They wouldn’t let him take her, and they called me right away.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would he do that? What makes him think he has the right?”

  “He told the ladies in the office he wanted to take her to McDonald’s.”

  “Oh man.”

  Robert sat down on the bed next to her. He wasn’t Angela’s birth father, that was true enough, but he was sure as hell her dad. Robert felt that link between them clear down to his bones. If that bastard ever so much as touched her.

  He looked down at his lap, where his fists were turning white at the knuckles.

  “What did you do?” he said. “Did you call the cops?”

  “No,” she said. “I wanted to show you this first?” She handed him the letter. “That came yesterday. The postal lady brought it to the door personally.”

  She didn’t say more, just sat there, looking at the letter, waiting for him to read it.

  It was from a law firm in Ocala. It was short, but even for that he found it difficult to pull the sense out of it. Something about paternity and a hearing to decide custody.

  “What’s this mean, ‘...documentary proof that the birth mother is morally unfit to raise a teenage girl?’ What the hell kind of statement is that?”

  Sarah could only stammer and shrug.

  Robert tried to read the letter through again, but it was all too much for him to process. Christ, he didn’t need this right now. Not now.

  He tossed the letter aside and rubbed his temples.

  He had a monster headache, like some little bastard was standing on the bridge of his nose pounding on his forehead with a mallet. Wasn’t coming home supposed to be a man’s rest and comfort? Wasn’t his home supposed to be his refuge? He told himself he loved this, being home with his wife and his daughter. But it scared him a little that he could be pushed hard enough to question that.

  “Robert,” Sarah said, and put her arm around him. “I won’t let him take her. I won’t.”

  He put his arm around her and squeezed. He muttered something he hoped would be comforting. But in his mind he was miles away, thinking of how nice it would be when they were all finally at Crook House.

  They could start over.

  He couldn’t wait.

  December 18

  They left for San Antonio three days later, Robert and the girls and as many boxes as they could carry stuffed into the backse
at and trunk of Robert’s six-year-old Mazda. It had been a busy last few days for all of them, and Angela especially was exhausted. Robert glanced back at her in the rearview mirror. She was still sleeping. Poor thing. In the last two days, she’d said good-bye to her school and all her friends, packed up a house, stayed up late, and been awoken before dawn to load up the car for this trip. Her breakfast had been McDonald’s drive-thru fare, eaten off of the top of the cardboard boxes that shared her seat. Looking back at her, he could tell she was wiped out, emotionally and physically. The sleep would do her good.

  It was a pity she was still out, though, because they were coming up on the Sabine River Bridge that connected Louisiana and Texas. As a college student, years ago, before he met Sarah and before Angela came into his life, he’d gone on a Spring Break road trip with some buddies, first to New Orleans and then down to South Padre Island before heading back home to Ohio State. He’d been driving a tired old Toyota Celica that belonged to his roommate, and as they approached the bridge and then headed up the rise on the Louisiana side, he’d had serious doubts that the little car was going to make it over the crest of the bridge. It was enormous, five hundred feet high at least, and between the woefully underpowered car with the four big guys inside and their luggage in the back, it’d been a hard climb. They made nervous jokes about getting out to push. But they made it over the crest and started down the other side, during which his doubts had renewed themselves. Now that they’d made it up, with Texas looming before them, would the brakes be up to the task of slowing them down?

  But for as scary as the car ride had been, the view, he remembered, was spectacular. They’d been so high up. The Sabine River had shone like molten copper in the evening sun. The big cargo ships that plied the waters down there were majestic, like rust-colored icebergs. He remembered the way the car smelled, four guys cooped up with a bunch of fried seafood and beer and no air conditioning; and yet, for all that, it had seemed so beautiful, so perfect. So long ago, he thought. Back when there were no worries, no reason to fear the future.

  “What are you thinking about?” Sarah asked him.

  “Hmm?”

  “You had that faraway look. I know that look. You’re daydreaming.”

  “I was thinking of the last time I drove this stretch of highway. Remember me telling you about that road trip I took down to South Padre my junior year at Ohio State?”

  “Mmm,” she said, noncommittally.

  “The view off this bridge coming up is absolutely incredible. You want to wake her up?”

  “Do you?”

  “Kinda, yeah. It’s an amazing view. And this’ll be her first look at Texas.”

  Sarah rubbed the .40 caliber shell casing that suspended from the chain around her neck. She looked back at Angela and studied her for a moment.

  “No,” she said at last, “let her sleep.”

  “You sure?”

  “She’s tired, Robert. It’s been a crazy last few days. What time do you think we’ll make it into San Antonio?”

  “Hard to say. I guess it depends on the traffic through Houston. Maybe around eight.”

  “God, that long?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, it’s a long drive. Hey, it was nice of Thom to have Trinity’s bankers take care of the house, huh? That’s a big load off.”

  “Mmm hmm,” she said.

  Was that a touch of frost he heard in her tone? He hadn’t really expected a conversation to develop. He was really just testing her waters, anxious to see if she was still upset with him. Upon his return to Florida, Sarah had asked him how they possibly expected to sell their house in a crappy economy in just two days. She was furious about it, actually, even though she’d wanted out of that place pretty much since they moved in. God, how they had fought. It all came out. How pissed she was at him for quitting his job, for turning their lives upside down, for being so selfish. Robert gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, the knuckles on his right hand sending him a warning tingle. They were still bruised where, in his rage, he’d punched the wall. Sarah had watched him do it, no emotion whatsoever on her face, except for maybe exhaustion, and then walked away.

  Not knowing what else to do, he called Thom Horner and asked what they could do about selling the house, and once again his old mentor came through. Trinity’s bank could take over the sale of the house, Thom said. Their people would do everything. All Robert and Sarah needed to do was sign the appropriate forms when the time came.

  Robert stole a glance at her. She was dressed in little white shorts and a red camisole top with the white of her bra strap showing at her shoulders. She had one long leg up, her foot resting on the dash, her gaze fixed out the passenger window. He wondered what she was thinking about. The trouble with Jay Carroll, maybe. Or maybe everything else going on, their bills, his quitting his job, Angela’s braces, the move. Maybe all of it. Perhaps, like him, she had grown so used to a constant flood of trouble that she couldn’t let her guard down, even when good things happened. She’d even gotten upset with him when he told her what Thom had said about having a job for her.

  She was rubbing the shell casing again. He remembered it falling from her collar to the floor in the hospital. He and Sarah and Angela had stood there, watching it come to rest, waiting for someone in charge to pick it up, someone who was supposed to need it for evidence or whatever the hell the cops did.

  But no one had.

  It fell to the floor and stayed there.

  Alone, while a parade of cops and nurses and doctors walked by, profound in the silence.

  After what seemed like a painful forever, Sarah reached down and picked it up. “Do you think I can keep it?” she’d asked.

  He’d looked around at all the hum of the emergency room swirling around them, everyone looking intense and impatient, and then back at the shell casing in her hand. With three cops dead, no one seemed much interested in them, uninjured as they were. He looked from her to the spent shell casing that had fallen from her collar, and then he’d nodded.

  “Put it in your pocket,” he said.

  “Robert!”

  His thoughts snapped back to the moment. They were drifting onto the shoulder and getting dangerously close to the Jersey wall. He shook himself and brought the car under control.

  “Got it,” he said. “No problem.”

  He smiled at her, and she sort of smiled in return, but said nothing, and the next moment, she went back to looking at Louisiana speeding by outside her window. Her fingers went back to the shell casing, and he readjusted his grip on the wheel, his eyes on the road. But soon his mind had wandered back to that hospital emergency room and the shell casing on the floor at their feet.

  That first summer they were in Florida, about eight years ago, he’d taken them to Disney World. After a day at the Magic Kingdom they were exhausted and hungry and down to their last few dollars, so they’d stopped at a little diner for some burgers and fries. But midway through their meal a couple a few tables away started arguing, and it got bad enough somebody called the cops. The first cop to show up started talking to the boyfriend, who looked like a steroid-fueled gym nut, and the next instant, before Robert had a chance to get Sarah and Angela out of there, the cop and the boyfriend started fighting. It got nasty real fast as the two men rolled around the floor, kicking and punching, knocking over chairs and tables. The rest of the diner’s patrons jumped to their feet, but were otherwise too stunned, and, like Robert, too scared to do anything.

  Then, when two more cops came running in, it looked like things might actually get under control. But that was when the boyfriend came up with the first cop’s gun and fired at the approaching officers. The first one went down right away, dead, a bullet through his eye. The second one dropped to his knees, hit in the shoulder, and then crawled behind the cash register.

  The boyfriend stood over the cop whose gun he now carried and shot him at point-blank range. Robert and Angela had been less than three feet away when the bullet blasted
out a good sized chunk of the cop’s face.

  Angela screamed and scrambled behind Robert.

  Robert was so scared he could barely process what was going on. He backed away from the dead cop with the blasted face and kept backing up until he could go no further.

  When he looked up, the steroid-raging boyfriend was staring at him over the sights of the dead cop’s gun. Robert’s eyes went wide. His vision tunneled around the huge open bore of the pistol. It looked big as a cave. He could hear himself whimpering. He could feel his blood pounding in his ears. His bowels turned to water, and he was pretty sure he’d pissed in his jeans.

  And then there was a shot.

  The boyfriend tumbled to the ground, gut punched.

  But he didn’t stop fighting. He turned and fired at the cop he’d wounded earlier.

  From somewhere off to Robert’s right he heard a man scream in pain. Then more shots. The two men must have fired half a dozen rounds each before both collapsed. And, as a horrified calm fell over the scene, Robert stared into the dying eyes of the boyfriend, unable to look away as the blind rage that had fueled the man gradually dimmed to the vacant stare of death.

  He didn’t move until he heard crying behind him.

  Stiff and drained from his body’s adrenaline, he turned to see Sarah and Angela behind him. Angela had her face buried in Sarah’s side, while Sarah was staring at him, her eyes lit with fear and wonder and something that could have only been love.

  He shook his head, unable to formulate any words.

  “You were going to take a bullet for us,” she said at last.

  Before he could tell her he’d been too scared to realize he was about to do any such thing, she threw herself into his arms, her face in his neck.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  It was from one of the last few shots that the enraged boyfriend fired that the shell casing that hung from Sarah’s neck had come. For her, and for him too, it had become a symbol of their marriage, a symbol of how lucky they were to find each other, and how it was the two of them against the world. The fact that she was rubbing it he took for a good thing. There was strength in that talisman. And hopefully, he thought, she’d be able to call upon some of that strength in the days ahead. It was going to be rough on her, getting settled into the new house, his new job, new friends, all of it. But at least they had each other.