“Oh, I know about Rinaldi.”
“He said you’re friends, you two.”
Noyce chuckled. “Did he, now.”
“He didn’t exactly play by the rules on the GRPD. He was squeezed out on suspicions of holding on to cash in a drug bust.”
“How do you know that?” Noyce was suddenly intrigued.
“I called Grand Rapids, asked around until I found someone who knew him.”
Noyce frowned, shook his head. “I’d rather you didn’t call GR.”
“Why not?”
“People talk. Rumors spread like wildfire. Things could get back to Rinaldi, and I don’t want him knowing that we’ve been asking around about him. That way we’re more likely to catch him in a lie.”
“Okay, makes sense.”
“You saying you like Rinaldi for the Stadler homicide?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Edward Rinaldi’s an ex-cop, and a guy like that may know people, you know?”
“Who might have done a hit on some loony ex-employee?” Noyce replaced his glasses, raised one brow.
“Far-fetched, right?”
“Just a little.”
“But no more unlikely than a crack-related murder involving a guy who doesn’t fit the profile of a crackhead, had no crack in his bloodstream, and had fake crack in his pocket. A setup, in other words.”
“You make a good point.”
“Also, no fingerprints anywhere on the plastic wrapped over the body. Traces of talc indicating that surgical gloves were used to move the body. It’s all very strange. I’d like to get Rinaldi’s phone records.”
Noyce gave a long sigh. “Man, you’re opening a can of worms with Stratton.”
“What about Rinaldi’s personal phone records—home, cell, whatever?”
“Easier.”
“Could you sign off on that?”
Noyce bit his lip. “Sure. I’ll do it. You got an instinct, I like to go with it. But Audrey, listen. The Stratton Corporation has a lot of enemies in this town.”
“Tell me about it.”
“That’s why I want to be fair. I don’t want it to look like we’re going after them arbitrarily, trying to embarrass them. Bowing to public pressure, pandering. Nothing like that. I want us to play fair, but just as important, I want the appearance of fairness, okay?”
“Of course.”
“Just so long as we’re on the same page here.”
40
Cassie Stadler’s house was on West Sixteenth Street, in the part of Fenwick still known as Steepletown because of all the churches that used to be there. It was an area Nick knew well; he’d grown up here, in a tiny brown split-level with a little scrubby lawn, a chain-link fence keeping out the neighbors. When Nick was a kid, Steepletown was blue-collar, most of the men factory workers employed at Stratton. Mostly Polish Catholic, too, though the Conovers were neither Polish nor members of Sacred Heart. This was a place where people kept their money in mattresses.
He was overcome by a strange, wistful nostalgia driving through these streets. It all looked and smelled so familiar, the American Legion hall, the bowling alley, the pool hall. The triple-deckers, the aluminum siding, Corky’s Bottled Liquors. Even the cars were still big and American. Unlike the rest of Fenwick, which had gone upscale and fancy, vegan and latte, with all the galleries and the SUVs and the BMWs, something uncomfortable and ill fitting about it, like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s high heels. Just before he parked the car at the curb in front of the house, a song came on the radio: Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman.” One of Laura’s favorites. She’d taught herself to play it on the piano, not badly at all. She’d sing it in the shower—“Oh, she takes care of herself…”—badly, offkey, in a thin, wobbly voice. Hearing it caused a lump to rise in Nick’s throat. He switched the radio off, couldn’t take it, and had to sit there in the car for a few minutes before he got out.
He rang the doorbell: six melodious tones sounding like a carillon. The door opened, a small figure emerging from the gloom behind the dusty screen door.
What the hell am I doing? he thought. Jesus, this is insane. The daughter of the man I killed.
Everyone is beloved by someone, the cop had said.
This is that someone.
“Mr. Conover,” she said. She wore a black T-shirt and worn jeans. She was slim, even tinier than he remembered from the funeral, and her expression was hard, wary.
“May I come in for a second?”
Her eyes were red-rimmed, raccoon smudges beneath. “Why?”
“I have something for you.”
She stared some more, then shrugged. “Okay.” The bare minimum of politeness, nothing more. She pushed open the screen door.
Nick entered a small, dark foyer that smelled of mildew and damp carpeting. Mail lay in heaps on a trestle table. There were a few homey touches—a painting in an ornate gold frame, a bad seascape, looked like a reproduction. A vase of dried flowers. A lamp with a fringed shade. A sampler in a severe black frame, done in needlepoint or whatever, that said LET ME LIVE IN THE HOUSE BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD AND BE A FRIEND TO MAN, over a stitched image of a house that looked a good deal nicer than the one it hung in. It seemed as if nothing had been moved, or dusted, in a decade. He caught a glimpse of a small kitchen, a big old white round-shouldered refrigerator.
She backed up a few steps, standing in a cone of light from a torchere. “What’s this all about?”
Nick produced the envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. She took it, gave a puzzled look, examined the envelope as if she’d never seen one before. Then she slid out the pale blue check. When she saw the amount, she betrayed no surprise, no reaction at all. “I don’t get it.”
“The least we can do,” Nick said.
“What’s it for?”
“The severance pay your father should have gotten.”
Realization dawned in her eyes. “My dad quit.”
“He was a troubled man.”
She flashed a smile, bright white teeth, that in another context would have been sexy. Now it seemed just unsettling. “This is so interesting,” she said. Her voice was velvety smooth, pleasingly deep. There was something about her mouth, the way it curled up at the ends even when she wasn’t smiling, giving her a kind of knowing look.
“Hmm?”
“This,” she said.
“The check? I don’t understand.”
“No. You. What you’re doing here.”
“Oh?”
“It’s like you’re making a payoff.”
“A payoff? No. Your father should have been counseled better at his outplacement interview. We shouldn’t have let him walk out without the same severance package everyone else got, whether he quit or not. He was angry, and rightly so. But he was a longtime employee who deserved better than that.”
“It’s a hell of a lot of money.”
“He worked for Stratton for thirty-six years. It’s what he was entitled to. Maybe not legally, but morally.”
“It’s guilt money. Schuldgeld, in German, right?” Those corners of her mouth turned all the way up in a canny smile. Closer to a smirk, maybe. “The word guilt has the same root as the German word for money, Geld.”
“I wouldn’t know.” He felt his insides clutch tight. “I just didn’t think you should be left high and dry.”
“God, I don’t know how you can stand doing what you do.”
She has the right to go after me, Nick thought. Let her. Let her rant, do her whole anti-corporate thing. Trash Stratton, and me. Make her feel better. Maybe that’s why you’re here: masochism.
“Ah, right,” he said. “‘Slasher Nick’ and all that.”
“I mean, it can’t be easy. Being hated by just about everyone in town.”
“Part of my job,” he said.
“Must be nice to have one.”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
“Life must have been a lot easier a couple of year
s ago when everyone loved you, I bet. You must have felt you were really in the groove, hitting on all cylinders. Then all of a sudden you’re the bad guy.”
“It’s not a popularity contest.” The hell was this?
A mysterious smile. “A man like you wants to be liked. Needs to be liked.”
“I should be going.”
“I’m making you uncomfortable,” she said. “You’re not the introspective type.” A beat. “Why are you really here? Don’t trust the messenger service?”
Nick shook his head vaguely. “I’m not sure. Maybe I feel really bad for you. I lost my wife last year. I know how hard this can be.”
When she looked up at him, there seemed to be a kind of pain in the depths of her hazel eyes. “Kids?”
“Two. Girl and a boy.”
“How old?”
“Julia’s ten. Lucas is sixteen.”
“God, to lose your mother at that age. I guess there’s always enough pain to go around at the banquet of life. Plenty of seconds, right?” She sounded as if the wind had suddenly gone out of her.
“I’ve got to get back. I’m sorry if it bothered you, me coming by like this.”
Suddenly she sank to the floor, collapsing into a seated position on the wall-to-wall carpet, canting to one side. Her legs folded up under her. She supported herself with one arm. “Jesus,” she said.
“You okay?” Nick came up to her, leaned over.
Her other hand was against her forehead. Her eyes were closed. Her translucent skin was ashen.
“Jesus, I’m sorry. All the blood just left my head, and I…”
“What can I get you?”
She shook her head. “I just need to sit down. Lightheaded.”
“Glass of water or something?” He kneeled beside her. She looked like she was on the verge of toppling over, passing out. “Food, maybe?”
She shook her head again. “I’m fine.”
“I don’t think so. Stay there, I’ll get you something.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said, her eyes unfocused. “Forget it, don’t worry about it. I’m fine.”
Nick got up, went into the kitchen. Dirty dishes were piled up in the sink and on the counter next to it, a bunch of Chinese takeout cartons. He looked around, found the electric stove, a kettle sitting on one burner. He picked it up, felt it was empty. He filled it in the sink, shoving aside some of the stacked plates to make room for the kettle. It took him a couple of seconds to figure out which knob on the stove turned on which burner. The burner took a long time to go from black to orange.
“You like Szechuan Garden?” he called out.
Silence.
“You okay?” he said.
“It’s pretty gross, actually,” she said after another pause, voice weak. “There’s like two, maybe three Chinese restaurants in this whole town, one worse than the next.” Another pause. “There’s more than that on my block in Chicago.”
“Looks like you get a lot of takeout from there anyway.”
“I can walk to it. I haven’t felt much like cooking, since…”
She was standing at the threshold to the kitchen, entered slowly and unsteadily. She sank down in one of the kitchen chairs, chrome with a red vinyl seat back, the table red Formica with a cracked ice pattern and chrome banding around the edge.
The teakettle was making a hollow roaring sound. Nick opened the refrigerator—“Frigidaire” on the front in that great old squat script, raised metal lettering, reminding Nick of the refrigerator in his childhood home—and found it pretty much empty. A quart of skim milk, an opened bottle of Australian chardonnay with a cork in it; a carton of eggs, half gone.
He found a rind of Parmesan cheese, a salvageable bunch of scallions.
“You got a grater?”
“You serious?”
41
He set the omelet on the table before her, a fork and a paper napkin, a mug of tea. The mug, he noticed too late, had the old 1970s Stratton logo on one side.
She dug into it, eating ravenously.
“When’s the last time you ate today?” Nick asked.
“Right now,” she said. “I forgot to eat.”
“Forgot?”
“I’ve had other things on my mind. Hey, this isn’t bad.”
“Thank you.”
“I wouldn’t have figured you for a chef.”
“That’s about the extent of my cooking ability.”
“I feel way better already. Thank you. I thought I was going to pass out.”
“You’re welcome. I saw some salami in there, but I thought you might be a vegan or something.”
“Vegans don’t eat eggs,” she said. “Yum. God, you know, there’s some kinds of ribbon worms that actually eat themselves if they don’t find any food.”
“Glad I got here in time.”
“The head of Stratton makes a mean omelet. Wait till the newspapers get hold of that.”
“So how did you end up in Chicago?”
“Long story. I grew up here. But my mom grew tired of my dad’s craziness, when I was like nine or ten. That was before he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. She moved to the Windy City and left me here with Dad. A couple of years later, I went to live with her and her new husband. Hey, this is my house, and I’m not being much of a hostess.”
She got up, went over to one of the lower cabinets, opened the door. It held a collection of dusty bottles, vermouth and Baileys Irish Cream and such. “Let me guess—you’re a Scotch kinda guy.”
“I’ve got to get home to the kids.”
“Oh,” she said. “Right. Sure.” Something waiflike and needy in her face got to him. He’d told Marta an hour or so; another hour wouldn’t be a big deal.
“But maybe a little Scotch would be okay.”
She seemed to light up, leaned over and pulled out a bottle of Jameson. “Irish, not Scotch—okay?”
“Fine with me.”
She pulled out a cut-glass tumbler from the same cabinet. “Whoo boy,” she said, blowing a cloud of dust out of it. She held it under the running tap in the sink. “I’m going to say rocks.”
“Hmm?”
“Ice cubes. You drink your whiskey on the rocks.” She went to the antique Frigidaire, opened the freezer, took out the kind of ice tray Nick hadn’t seen in decades, aluminum with the lever you pull up to break the ice into cubes. She yanked back the handle, making a scrunching sound that sounded like his childhood. Reminded him of his dad, who liked his Scotch on the rocks, every night and too much of it.
She plopped a handful of jagged cubes into the glass, glugged in a few inches of whiskey, came over and handed it to him. She looked directly into his eyes, the first time she’d done that. Her eyes were big and gray-green and lucid, and Nick felt a tug in his groin. He immediately felt a flush of shame. Jesus, he thought.
“Thanks,” he said. The glass had FAMOUS GROUSE etched into it. It was the kind of thing you get at a liquor store packed with the bottle, a promotional deal.
“How about you?”
“I hate whiskey,” she said. The kettle began whistling shrilly. She pulled it off the burner, found a carton of teabags in a drawer, and poured herself a mug of herbal tea.
“How does it feel being home?” The whiskey had a pleasant bite to it, and he felt its effect immediately. He didn’t recall when he’d last eaten anything himself, actually.
“Strange,” she said, sitting down at the table. “Brings a lot of things back. Some good things, some not good things.” She looked at him. “I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Try me.”
“Do you know what it’s like to have a parent with severe mental illness? The whole point is, you’re a child, so you don’t grasp what’s going on.”
“Right. How could you?”
Cassie closed her eyes, and it was as if she were in some other place. “So you’re his beloved daughter, and he hugs you like nobody can hug you and he puts his forehead to yours and you feel so safe, and s
o loved, and everything’s right with the world. And then, one day, he’s different—except, as far as he’s concerned, you’re different.”
“Because of the disease.”
“He looks at you and you’re a stranger to him. You’re not his beloved daughter now. Maybe you resemble her, but he’s not fooled, he knows you’ve been replaced by someone or something else. He looks at you and he sees a Fembot, you know? And you say, ‘Daddy!’ You’re three or four or five and you throw your arms open, waiting for your super-special hug. And he says, ‘Who are you? Who are you really?’ and he says, ‘Get away! Get away! Get away!’” Her mimicry was uncanny; Nick was beginning to glimpse the nightmare she had endured. “You realize that he’s terrified of you. And it’s different from anything you’ve ever experienced. Because it isn’t what happens when, you know, you misbehave, and Mommy or Daddy turns red and you get yelled at. Every kid knows what that’s like. They’re mad. But you know they still love you, and they’re still aware of your existence. They don’t think you’re an alien. They’re not frightened of you. It’s different when a parent has schizophrenia. It steals over them, and suddenly you don’t exist to them any longer. You’re not a daughter anymore. Just some impostor. Just some intruder. Some…outsider. Someone who doesn’t belong.” She smiled sadly.
“He was ill.”
“He was ill,” Cassie repeated. “But a child doesn’t understand that. A child can’t understand it. Even if anybody had explained to me, I probably wouldn’t have understood.” She sniffed, her eyes flooded with tears. She frowned, turned away, wiped her eyes with her T-shirt, exposing her flat belly, a tiny pouting navel. Nick tried not to look.
“Nobody ever told you what was going on?”
“When I was maybe thirteen, I finally figured it out. My mother didn’t want to deal, and her way of not dealing meant you didn’t talk about it. Which is pretty crazy, too, when you think about it.”
“I can’t imagine what you had to go through.” And he couldn’t—not what she’d had to go through, nor what her father’s death was causing her to relive. He ached to do something for her.
“No, you can’t imagine. But it messes with your head. I mean, it messed with mine.”
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