by Jodi Compton
With his other hand, he pulled up his shirt. “A lot of people think a paraplegic’s body has one sharp line between sensation and no sensation, like the line that divides light and dark on the moon,” he said. “But it’s more like the way twilight falls on the earth.”
He placed my hand high on his rib cage. “Here, I can feel everything.” He slid his hand and mine, underneath it, a little lower. “Down here, only temperature, but not pressure. Down here,” a little lower still, “full dark.”
Keeping eye contact, I laid my left hand on the other side of his rib cage, and Cicero put his hands on my hips, pulling me toward him. There was nowhere to go but onto the wheelchair, and cautiously I put my knees on each side of his thighs, on the edges of the seat, so I was kneeling in front of him.
He had no insecurity about having to tip his face upward to kiss a woman, and when he did it, he went deep almost immediately, probing with his tongue. It shocked me; that kind of deep, invasive kiss from a virtual stranger was disturbing and exciting and I felt something roll over deep in my stomach, like nerves, except warmer.
Our dim reflection in the mirrored closet doors showed man, woman, and chair; a sexual tableau I’d never expected to be a part of. Men had taken me into their homes before, and into their beds. But in climbing onto Cicero ’s wheelchair, I was being taken into the very center of his life, almost his body. It made me wonder if Cicero Ruiz had a special insight into how it felt to be penetrated.
***
The third time I woke up, the flames of the candles were almost completely recessed in deep pits of wax. It no longer mattered; the sky was lightening to predawn blue beyond the window, just starting to illuminate the bedroom. Cicero slept so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his skin. It was reassuring until I saw Shiloh’s old shirt hanging off the back of Cicero ’s wheelchair, and I felt something cold in my stomach, like I was looking at a map and nothing was familiar.
I slipped out of bed and put my clothes on as quietly as possible, picked up the prescription, and turned the knob of the bedroom door in that time-honored, half-speed way people do when they are sneaking into, or out of, bedrooms.
Cicero didn’t even open his eyes when he spoke, and his voice was rusty with sleep.
“It’s just a little sympathy between humans, Sarah,” he said. “Don’t let it ruin your week.”
9
After eight uninterrupted hours of sleep at home, I woke up in my warm, stifling bedroom wanting several things all at once: ice water; a hot, hot shower; and some kind of food I couldn’t quite identify. I satisfied the first two needs first, lingering in the shower. It was amazing how much better my ear felt already. It wasn’t even sore. It just had that pleasant, empty heaviness that sometimes replaces pain, the way your head feels after a particularly nasty headache rolls out, letting you free of its grip at last.
Dressed in a pair of cutoffs and a tank shirt against the hot weather, I went into the kitchen and looked over the lightly stocked refrigerator and cupboards. Nothing appealed to me. Whatever this odd craving was, it wasn’t the usual impulse-eating suspects: caffeine, sugar, salt, or red meat. I went out the back entryway, into the yard.
Last night’s storm had left the skies clean, with just a few white clouds left over in the west. The sun was high in the sky, but the overhanging elms filtered out all but a few of its rays. My neighbor’s underfed Siamese cat prowled through the overgrown grass of our narrow, untended backyard, stopped, assessed me as no threat, and went on. I, also, went on, to the basement door and down into the cobwebbed dimness.
Down here was what Shiloh called the “Armageddon food,” canned things only to be eaten in case of natural disaster, riot, martial law, or nuclear attack. I’d always thought the kind of food that kept well in emergencies- ready-to-eat, low-sodium soups and powdered milk and fruit in syrup- was too depressing to be eaten as the world fell apart. “We need liquor down here,” I’d said. “A few bottles of whiskey and some jars of chocolate sauce.”
Shiloh, sitting on his heels in the dimness, surveying the shelves, had dryly agreed. Oh, sure, he’d said. Maybe we should put a bed down here, too. As the world goes up in flames outside, we can give ourselves over to every kind of perversion. And then he’d given me that look, the one that reminded me that few people have as deep a pleasure in wickedness as the once devout, like Shiloh, a preacher’s son.
Goddammit. While it was impossible to forget that I was living alone, that my husband was in prison in another state, every once in a while it hit me afresh that, hey, it’s Shiloh who isn’t here anymore. And today of all days I did not want to be thinking those kinds of thoughts.
Fortunately, I was almost immediately distracted. As I moved for the stairs with a jar of applesauce and a can of pears in my hands, I tripped in the poorly lit surroundings. The culprit, on the floor, was an old and battered toolbox that I knew held tools we didn’t use on a weekly or even monthly basis, unlike the wrench and pliers. But I knew without opening it that it held something else, too: an unregistered.25 with cheap silver plating.
Genevieve’s sister, Deb, had given it to me, what seemed like a hundred years ago. She’d come by it innocently enough; it was a relic from her days of living in a bad East St. Louis neighborhood. She was overdue to get rid of it, and I’d promised her I’d take care of that. But immediately after that, Shiloh ’s disappearance and our subsequent troubles had wiped my promise from my mind. I’d stashed the cheap little gun in the basement, and here it had remained. Given the suspicion I’d been under in the Royce Stewart case, I’d felt I couldn’t simply take it to work and give it to our evidence techs for disposal. That was truer than ever now, with Gray Diaz in town.
I nudged the toolbox away from the base of the stairs with my foot, deciding I’d deal with the.25 soon, but not today.
Upstairs again, I ate the whole can of pears with a little grated cheddar cheese on top of it, and was a quarter of the way into the jar of applesauce when I heard a knock at my door.
The curtains on the windowed top half of the door were sheer, and through them I could see a full, broad masculine form. I pulled back the curtain and saw Detective Van Noord, to whom I’d made my apologies yesterday before fleeing work.
I opened the door. “What’s going on?”
“Prewitt sent me,” he said. “To see if you were here. We couldn’t get ahold of you.”
“It’s my day off,” I said. “Is something going on?”
I meant a public-safety emergency, all hands needed. But the afternoon outside was quiet, no sirens in the distance.
“No, nothing like that,” Van Noord said. “But you left so abruptly yesterday, in the middle of your shift, that Prewitt was worried. He asked me to check on the situation.”
“I was sick,” I said blankly. “I told you that yesterday.”
“I know, and I told him, but he still asked me to check on you, and then we couldn’t reach you, not on your cell or your pager-”
“Why didn’t you call here?” I asked again.
“We did, and kept getting a busy signal.”
“The phone’s off the hook,” I said, remembering only now the decision I’d made very early that morning. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry anyone.”
But it still didn’t make any sense, Prewitt sending Van Noord here. “Are you shorthanded?” I asked. “I’m feeling a lot better today. I could come in.”
“Oh, no, no,” he said, waving off the suggestion. “You stay home, take care of that ear. But you might want to keep your cell on. Just so we can get in touch if we need you,” he advised.
“Sure,” I agreed.
When he was gone, I went into the kitchen and put the phone receiver back on its cradle. Then I poured myself a glass of water and washed down the first dose of antibiotics. I’d bought them just after leaving Cicero ’s, at a 24-hour pharmacy, waiting at the counter with a nonchalance so forced it would have clearly broadcast my paranoia to anyone who’d truly bee
n paying attention.
The world had gone crazy, I thought. I was scamming prescription drugs. Lieutenant Prewitt was sending his detectives around to check on sick personnel. The sanest person I’d dealt with in the last forty-eight hours was Cicero Ruiz.
Cicero. Now, there was a problem.
In the brief time that I’d known Cicero Ruiz, I’d seen him not only give an examination and dispense medical advice, but also perform something that qualified as minor surgery. Then he’d revealed himself to be in possession of a prescription pad and willing to write a prescription; I had only his word that he was making a solitary exception in my case. Cicero had incriminated himself as readily and thoroughly as if I’d written a script for him to follow. But I couldn’t turn him in, not now. It was as simple as this: I’d given him my word.
He’d extracted that promise from me only in relation to the illegal prescription and the prospect that I’d get caught with it. But in principle, I’d promised something much larger. I do not need to get arrested, Cicero had said. I’d promised I wouldn’t get him in trouble with the law.
Even if I hadn’t made that promise, would I be on more solid ground right now? The greater issue was my own behavior. I hadn’t faked an ear infection. That had been genuine, and I’d accepted medical care from Cicero for it, which had to be the ethical equivalent of buying stolen goods from a fence or placing a bet with an illegal bookmaker. Then I’d participated in a prescription fraud. And just for good measure, I’d become sexually involved with a suspect.
Whatever happened, I couldn’t turn him in now. I’d crossed too many lines.
10
“I feel really bad,” I said.
I was standing on the Hennessys’ doorstep. Marlinchen had answered my knock, tinier than I remembered in faded jeans and what looked like a child’s T-shirt with a pencil-line dark-blue heart at the center. She’d listened with guarded patience as I’d explained about the illness that had made me a little more than twenty-four hours late in keeping our appointment.
Only late yesterday had I remembered it, my promise to drive out and talk with Marlinchen again. What made me feel worse was that when I’d checked the messages on my cell phone, there’d been nothing from her. She’d written me off as an adult who’d dismissed her and her problems as insignificant.
“I thought you’d changed your mind,” Marlinchen told me. “You made a point of saying that Aidan was way out of your jurisdiction.”
“I wouldn’t just stand you up,” I said. “Can I come in now, or is this a bad time?”
“It’s fine,” Marlinchen said, stepping aside to let me into their entryway. “But I thought you worked in the afternoon and evening.”
“I do, but this is my day off,” I said. “And anyway, I’m rotating back onto day shifts soon.”
Marlinchen led me back toward the kitchen and family room where we’d been earlier. Nowhere in the house could I hear activity, but there was a live feel in the air, and I knew the boys were around.
The kitchen, in fact, was occupied, but not by anyone cooking or eating. Instead, Donal sat in a chair that was elevated by an encyclopedia volume under each leg. He had a beach towel wrapped around his chest and shoulders. A pair of shears lay on a nearby counter, and a small corona of light-brown hair lay on the floor around the chair legs.
“Donal, you remember Detective Pribek,” Marlinchen said, picking up the shears.
“Hello,” Donal said.
“Hey,” I said. On second inspection, he looked younger than 11, his face still soft and pale with childhood.
To Marlinchen, I said, “Maybe I should wait until you’re done with Donal’s haircut before we get into… what we talked about the other day.”
But she disagreed. “All my brothers know the situation,” she said. “We can discuss it now.”
“All right,” I said. “Let me start with a broad question: Why wasn’t Aidan living at home?”
Marlinchen finger-combed Donal’s hair until a half inch stuck out at the ends, then cut. “Dad is a widower. He was raising five small children. That was just too many,” she said. “Aidan was the oldest, and the best suited to adapt to life away from home.”
“I thought Aidan was your twin,” I said.
Marlinchen smiled. “I make that mistake a lot, calling Aidan ‘the oldest.’ I don’t know why I do that, he was only born fifty-seven minutes before me.” She smoothed Donal’s hair down over his ear, then took up another thick strand and trimmed the end. “It’s ironic, too, because Aidan was held back to repeat the fourth grade, so after that, a lot of people assumed he was younger than me.”
That didn’t really tell me anything; I tried to get back on track. “That was the only reason Aidan was sent away?” I reiterated. “Your father just had too many kids?”
“Do you have children, Detective Pribek?” Marlinchen asked. Her voice had that faint shimmer of patronization that mothers have when asking single friends this question.
“No,” I admitted.
“Of course, I don’t either,” she said, “but I know it’s very, very difficult raising five kids on your own. Dad tried, but he just had his hands too full, with his teaching and his writing. He also had pretty severe pain sometimes, from a degenerative disk. There were episodes where it was almost disabling.” More hair fell. “Later, he developed an ulcer, I think from the pressure of working and raising a family on his own.”
“Mmm,” I said, noncommittal. “When was the last time you heard from Aidan?”
“We don’t really hear from him,” Marlinchen said. Her eyes were down, on her work. “The last I saw him was when he left for Illinois.” Another tiny sheaf of light-brown hair fluttered to the floor.
“ Illinois?” I said.
“Before he went to Georgia, he lived with our aunt, Brigitte, outside of Rockford, Illinois,” Marlinchen explained. “He would have stayed there, but Aunt Brigitte died five months later, and that was when Pete Benjamin offered to let Aidan live on his farm.”
“How did your aunt die?” I asked.
“A car accident,” Marlinchen said.
“How did your father and Pete Benjamin know each other?” I said.
“They grew up in Atlanta together,” she said. “Pete inherited a lot of land and went to farm it. Dad went to college, and the rest was history.” She paused to concentrate, lining up hair. “I think Dad thought Aidan would learn a lot from living on a farm. Dad left college at 19 and traveled through America, and he worked a lot of manual jobs, like farm labor. He said he learned more about life working on the road than in any classroom.”
Marlinchen tugged at the hair on either side of Donal’s ears. “Does this look even to you, Detective Pribek?”
I studied her handiwork. “Yeah,” I said. “I think it does.”
Marlinchen pulled back the beach towel. “Off you go, sport,” she said.
“Finally,” Donal said. “Can I have a Popsicle?”
“I guess that’d be all right,” Marlinchen said.
As Donal raided the refrigerator and left, I asked, “Do you know anything about Aidan’s friends in Georgia, his interests, where he might have gone?”
Marlinchen shook her head. “I wish I did. Maybe Mr. Benjamin can help you with that.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “I’ll need his phone number. And I could use a picture of Aidan.”
***
Upstairs, the first doorway was Marlinchen’s. Inside, she almost immediately folded her legs underneath her and sank to a cross-legged position beside the bed. Reaching underneath the dust ruffle, she pulled out a wooden box and opened the lid. “This’ll take me just a minute,” she said.
While Marlinchen riffled through her box, I looked around at her bedroom. It was orderly and clean; I wouldn’t have expected otherwise. The twin bed was neatly made, covered in cream-colored eyelet. Her desk faced the window, likewise painted cream, and at its edge a pen with an old-fashioned ostrich-feather plume stood at the ready
. It was charming, but the real work undoubtedly was done on the laptop that sat, jarringly modern, at the desk’s center.
“Do you write?” I asked her. “I mean, outside of school?”
Marlinchen shook her head, still looking down into the box. “Liam does,” she said.
Atop the dresser were two photos in frames. One was a snapshot of Marlinchen among classmates on what looked like a class trip to a Twins game, another of Marlinchen and her three younger brothers on the bank of a creek. For the bedroom of a middle-class teenage girl, it was a surprisingly small amount of sentimentalia. In doing missing-persons work, I’d been in a few adolescent girls’ rooms, and I’d seen displays that made me wish I owned stock in Kodak: dates, proms, class trips, sleepovers, all memorialized in pictures.
“Here,” Marlinchen’s voice interrupted me, “while you’re looking at photos, here’s one of Aidan.”
The Polaroid showed a boy of perhaps 11, standing next to a tire swing, which dangled from the willow I’d seen on the far side of the house. The boy in the photo clearly was going to be tall, taller than Hugh Hennessy, I thought. And, though the detail didn’t leap out, when you looked at the hand on the rope, you could see the nub of dark pink flesh where the smallest finger should have been. Otherwise, Aidan Hennessy was pleasant-looking, serious in expression, blond and blue-eyed like his sister.
“Listen,” I said, “do you have a photo of Aidan that’s more recent?” I said.
“No,” she said. “Is that a problem?”
“Yes,” I said. “The years between 12 and 17 are important ones. Kids change a lot. Hair gets darker, and faces change shape as they lose baby fat. Or sometimes kids gain weight. And they pierce and bleach and dye, too.”