by Jodi Compton
When we’d hung up, I got up from my place on the floor, went into the kitchen, and opened a can of tuna, scraping it onto an old, chipped plate.
The examination of the car was probably the worst of Diaz’s investigation. What else was there for him to do, a search of the house? Diaz was a perceptive guy. Surely he’d recognize that I wasn’t the sort of person to keep a diary, and if I did, I wouldn’t write down explicitly incriminating things in it: Dear Diary, I sure am glad I got away with killing Royce Stewart, and torching his place, too! No, Diaz knew better.
I forced open the back screen door- it was really getting stiff- and set down the plate of tuna on the back step. From his prowls in the grass, the Siamese glared as though I were trying to poison him, but I knew he’d approach and eat after I was gone.
I didn’t go back into the house, but down into the basement, instead, where the little.25, which Genevieve’s sister had pressed on me, rested in the toolbox. I’d never used it; in fact, as far as I knew it had never been used in any crime. But I didn’t feel comfortable having it around. Regardless of how unlikely it was that Diaz would get a warrant for the house, it was time for the little gun to go. The river would take it off my hands. One short walk out to the bridge, and the gun would scud gently along the riverbed until it got hung up on some natural impediment, to lie unseen and untouched for some small eternity.
It was when I was back in the house, watching the Siamese eat in that both dainty and ravenous way cats do, that I realized I knew somebody who needed the.25 a little more than the waters of the Mississippi.
***
The dinner hour was over, but the pleasant smell of cooking hung in the air of Cicero ’s hallway. The door at the end of the hall was open, and I waved at the shaven-headed boy standing in it as I approached. He made a half nod in return, chin thrust in the air.
I shifted the brown paper bag in my arms and knocked at Cicero ’s door. No one answered.
Could he be sleeping? It was too early for that. I knocked again.
“Shorty looking for ya,” the boy in the doorway said to someone inside. I turned and saw the boy moving aside, heard Cicero making his goodbyes to the other people he’d been visiting inside the apartment.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been called Shorty before,” I said when Cicero was at my side. He opened the door to his apartment, which was unlocked.
“It means ‘girlfriend,’ ” he said.
“I know what it means,” I said, and left it at that. He couldn’t have known why it gave me a little chill to be called that, Royce Stewart’s nickname. “Anyway,” I said, “I brought you some things. From what you’d call the informal economy. You like tomatoes, right?”
“I love tomatoes,” Cicero said, his face slightly tipped to look down into the bag, “and these still have that great smell. Of the leaves, I mean.”
It was one of my favorite things, too, the sharp spice of tomato leaves, so different from the sweetness of the fruit. “I know,” I said.
Cicero went to put the bag on his kitchen counter. I used the time to dig into my shoulder bag. “This is the other thing,” I said, pulling the.25 from the bag; its cheap silver plating gleamed in the lamplight. Earlier, I’d cleaned and oiled and test-fired it, ensuring that it was in working condition.
“Sarah, is that real?” Cicero had turned to look.
“It’s real,” I said. “It comes from- a kind of an in-law,” I said. Genevieve was, after all, practically family to me.
“Is your husband’s whole family involved in crime?” Cicero asked me, only half kidding.
I didn’t answer him directly. “This gun isn’t registered to anyone that I know of, and if any crimes were committed with it, they were long ago and over state lines,” I said. “I was going to get rid of it, but you need it more.”
“You think I need it?” Cicero said. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him surprised before. There really was a first time for everything. “What would I need a gun for?”
“You operate a cash business,” I told him, “in a public housing building.”
“Thanks for the thought, but no,” Cicero said. “I don’t like guns.”
“You don’t have to like it,” I said. “But in a place like this-”
“In case you weren’t aware,” Cicero interrupted, “many people who live in public housing are working parents. Or senior citizens. The rate of church attendance-”
“I get your point,” I said, setting the gun down on the table, into a kind of psychological escrow between us. “It doesn’t really matter where you live. You keep cash in your home, and people know that. That’s a risk in any neighborhood.”
“No,” Cicero said. “People here look out for each other, and they respect what I do. I’ve helped many of them.” He saw that I was about to speak again and raised his hands. “I understand the point you’re making. I do. But I won’t arm myself against my own patients.”
“You open your door to strangers, no questions asked,” I said.
“I open my door to people in need,” he said. “The elderly, the indigent.”
“Can you honestly tell me you’ve never treated someone who was injured in the commission of a crime, or couldn’t seek treatment in an ER because they were wanted by the authorities?”
“I don’t ask those kind of questions,” he said.
“That’s my point,” I said.
“I’m not worried about that,” Cicero said. “I’m a very good judge of people.”
“Really?” I said. “Did you know I’m a cop?”
The words seemed to hang in the air between us for a long time.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said.
I nodded.
He believed me. Behind his dark eyes, all the evidence was aligning. “When you first came here,” he said slowly, “were you gathering information for an arrest?”
“Yes,” I said.
“The cold was a pretext.”
“Yes.”
“I see,” Cicero said. “Get out of here.”
“What?” I said. There had been no change in his expression.
“You lied to me,” Cicero said. “You came to me asking for help. I took you on faith, and you lied to me.”
The literal excuse was on the tip of my tongue, that he’d never asked outright what I did for a living, but it sounded small and weak to my own ears.
“I lied for you, too,” I said. “I’ve sheltered you from arrest and prosecution.”
“Why?” Cicero said. “Because you pity me?”
“No, of course not,” I said quickly. “I just didn’t think you deserved to be in prison.”
“In case you’ve been missing the subtle nuances, I’m already in a prison,” Cicero said. “But catching subtle nuances isn’t your strong point.”
This was something different, a shift in tone.
“You think you weren’t lying to me because you never said outright that you weren’t a cop,” he said. “You tell yourself you’re not having an affair because you don’t sleep with me anymore.”
I felt as though I’d swallowed too much ice water. “ Cicero,” I began, but already I saw it was hopeless. “Will you at least keep the gun?”
“No,” Cicero said.
I picked it up off the table, feeling heat crawling on my skin, under my face, on the back of my neck. He watched me.
At the door, I said, “ Cicero, is this about what happened to your brother?”
“Goodbye, Sarah,” he said.
26
Marlinchen surprised me when I came home that night by suggesting a glass of wine out under the magnolia tree. I was about to tell her that I didn’t think it wise that she made a habit of wine at the end of the day, but she must have seen it coming, because she corrected me. “I meant wine for you, and I’d have a ginger ale or something,” she said.
As we emerged from the French doors, I nearly collided with Aidan, who was out on the deck without the light on.
> “What are you doing out here?” Marlinchen asked him.
“Just getting some air,” Aidan said.
“Oh,” Marlinchen said, accepting it. But I saw the narrow outline of his lighter in the front of his jeans, and I knew he’d been just about to sneak a cigarette. To cover his tracks, I spoke up. “You know what I was noticing yesterday?” I said, looking up at the roofline. “Your house.”
“Oh, God,” Marlinchen said, following my gaze. “Does it need some kind of expensive repairs?”
“No,” I said. “I was just thinking that whoever did the repairs, after the lightning strike, did a really good job. I’ve seen it from all angles, and I can’t even identify the spot where it was repaired. Where exactly was it hit?”
It was Aidan who spoke. “Lightning struck the house?” he asked. “When was this?”
“You must remember,” Marlinchen said, surprised. “Back when we were kids. It was really loud.”
But there was no recognition on Aidan’s face. “It was that long ago?” he said. “I mean, are you sure I was living here then?”
Marlinchen nodded. “Oh, yes. This was before Colm was born. It was that night when Mother got so upset. She was crying, remember?” When it was clear that he didn’t, she shook her head. “Boys. You can sleep through anything.”
Just then, Colm’s voice interrupted. “Marlinchen!” His disembodied voice floated through the window.
Marlinchen made a little face, as if to apologize for the interruption. “What?” she said loudly, leaning slightly toward the open window and her out-of-sight brother.
“We can’t find Donal’s, you know, his sign-up form!”
Whatever it was that Donal was registering for- a sports league or summer school- Marlinchen seemed to be familiar with it. “Duty calls,” she said to us. “I’ll be right back.”
I stopped her. “Wait,” I said. “You didn’t answer my question, about what part of the house was struck.”
Marlinchen paused, with her hand on the door. “Sorry,” she said. “After all this time, I can’t remember.”
She went in. I turned back to Aidan.
“You know,” I said, “if lightning really did strike your house, you shouldn’t have been able to sleep through it.”
“I believe you,” Aidan said. “When I was living in Georgia, lightning hit a tree about a hundred yards from where I was working. That was loud enough to put the fear of God into me, and a hundred yards was a pretty safe distance.”
“Maybe you weren’t at home that night,” I suggested. “Could it have happened during the time that you were in the hospital?”
“The hospital?” Aidan echoed.
“When you lost your finger,” I explained. “That would have been around the same time, according to what Marlinchen says.”
This did not clear up Aidan’s confusion. “I don’t think I was ever in the hospital,” he said. “I mean, it was just a finger. It’s grisly, but there’s not much you can do for an injury like that. Stop the bleeding, save the finger if you can, amputate if you can’t. It’s not like you’d need the ICU.”
“No,” I said, seeing that he was right. But hadn’t Marlinchen said that Aidan had gone away for a time?
Quick footsteps announced Marlinchen’s return, and she emerged onto the back deck. “Ready?” she said to me.
We walked down to the magnolia tree, to sit in full view of the moonlit waters of the lake. Sitting cross-legged, I opened the wine bottle and poured some into a plastic cup. The first swallow burned a warm path down my throat.
“Other than his speech difficulties,” Marlinchen said, “Dad was looking really good yesterday. Didn’t you think so?”
“Sure,” I said, although I had little basis for comparison, other than the photos I’d seen of younger, healthier Hughs.
I swallowed more wine and lay back, the dark form of the last magnolia blossom nodding above me. For a while, we didn’t speak. A bulky, graceful black shadow swept overhead, not far from the lake’s banks. An owl, hunting by night.
Then Marlinchen said, “Are you okay, Sarah?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I asked.
“You seemed a little”- she wavered one hand in the air-“a little off when you came in tonight.”
When I didn’t say anything, she spoke again, and this time more carefully. “You never talk about your husband,” she said. “It’s like he’s dead, instead of in prison.”
A single magnolia petal fell from the tree and lay between us, creamy white at its wide end, smudged magenta at the inner tip.
“When we talked about Shiloh,” I said, “I just said he was in Wisconsin. I don’t remember telling you he was in prison.”
Even in the dimness I saw Marlinchen’s face begin to stain its familiar pink.
“I was curious,” she said. “I ran your name through a search engine.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “But you also could have asked me. I would have told you.”
But my reference to Shiloh, that night, had been meant to deceive, I realized, and now I was ashamed of that. Unshaded, unadulterated truth was in short supply in the Hennessy household, and I hadn’t really helped matters by adding half-truths of my own. Maybe somewhere in the moral calculus it had made a difference.
“I should have been up-front with you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right,” she said.
“I guess I don’t talk about him because I don’t talk with him. He hasn’t written to me for several months.”
“That’s awful,” she said. “Why not?”
I picked up the magnolia petal and stroked it with my thumb. Its texture was somewhere between velvet and candle wax. “I remind Shiloh of things he’d rather forget,” I said. “When I was looking for him, I found out something about him he didn’t want me to know, and it opened up an old wound for him.”
“What did you find out?” Marlinchen said.
“That belongs to him,” I said. “It’s not mine to share.”
“So when he gets out, what’ll you do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Sharp surprise registered on her features. I’d given the wrong response.
“You think adults always know the answers?” I said.
“Well, no,” she admitted. “It’s just that… you seem so certain about everything.”
“No,” I said. “Cops aren’t really encouraged to second-guess themselves, but I make missteps all the time.” I was thinking about Cicero, and the little.25 now resting in the glove compartment of my car. “You try to help people, and sometimes it seems they don’t really want to be helped.”
Marlinchen nodded as if she knew what I was saying, although I doubted she really could. “Have you ever thought about doing something else for a living?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It’s the only thing I’m trained for,” I said.
She wasn’t satisfied. “But why?”
“Why what?”
“It wasn’t always the only thing you’re trained for. At some point you made a decision to get trained for it. That’s why you dropped out of college, right? To go into police work?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “When I left school, the last thing on my mind was becoming a cop.”
“What changed your mind?”
Those who go into law enforcement have a list of stock answers; generally, the same ones they give during the interview part of the application process: I want to help people, every day there’s a new challenge, I hate the thought of working at a desk. I didn’t use any of them.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Well, I do, but it’s a long story. A long, boring story.”
I must have made it sound sufficiently boring, because Marlinchen didn’t pursue it any further. After a few more minutes, by some silent agreement, we rose and headed up toward the house.
Much later, after the kids had gone to sleep and the
house had quieted, I stood at Hugh Hennessy’s high window and looked down. I was still thinking about Marlinchen’s sketchy tale of lightning striking the house and Aidan’s inability to remember any such event.
Catholic by bloodline only, I had no religious training, but as a child I’d been haunted by something that the other kids had taken from their Sunday school teachings: that the world had been perfect, and then sin had entered it in a bolt of lightning. It was a metaphor, but for years I’d believed it literally.
Now I saw the Hennessy family in the same terms, unexpectedly and swiftly cursed. They’d been this Edenic little family, then lightning struck the house, then Aidan lost his finger to a brutal dog, then Elisabeth Hennessy drowned in the waters of the lake. Was it all simply bad luck?
Soon Marlinchen would be 18 and the guardian of her younger siblings, and my responsibilities here would be over. The best thing would be for me to ignore my feeling that something had gone very wrong with this family long before I was part of their lives. But I wasn’t sure I could.
Marlinchen had asked me tonight why I chose to become a cop. She was right; it wasn’t something I had drifted into. It was something I had chosen, part of what Genevieve called my headfirst impulse to help people.
Just before I slept that night, I heard the cry of a barred owl out over the lake. It sounded very like a human scream.
27
When I left Minnesota at 18, to claim a basketball scholarship at UNLV, I hadn’t seen a future as a cop ahead of me. I wasn’t looking too far ahead: just to more basketball and more schooling, in that order of importance. One thing I did feel fairly sure of was that I wouldn’t live in Minnesota again. I’d grown up in New Mexico and thought myself a Westerner; going to school in Las Vegas was like going home, I’d told myself.
It wasn’t. Vegas was sprawling and vivid and exciting, all in ways that couldn’t involve an 18-year-old with little money and no car, who knew no one. Nor, that year, did I see much time in basketball games. I’d expected that, but still it made me restless. I went to my classes, trying and failing to be interested in the general-education, Western-civilization courses that make up a freshman’s schedule. I didn’t feel like a student. I didn’t feel like an athlete. I didn’t have any sense of a life coming together.