by Jodi Compton
“Field’s caught her in the store, right?” I asked. “So they got all the items back undamaged?”
“Right, but they want to press charges.”
That was fairly common procedure- department stores always like to discourage shoplifters- and trying to dissuade the manager from pressing charges probably wouldn’t be easy, but it would have to be done.
“I’ll be down to get Ghislaine as soon as I talk to the store manager,” I said. “Tell her to sit tight, okay?”
“Uh-huh,” Vignale said. There was more than a little wry disapproval in his voice, but he said no more, except “I’ll tell her.”
***
Forty-five minutes later, I was waiting at a side door while Officer Vignale went back to retrieve Ghislaine.
The heavy door swung open and Ghislaine came out. Despite her everyday clothes- a T-shirt and cutoffs and bright plastic flats- she smelled of an only-for-evening scent; she’d been sampling at the perfume counter.
“Bye!” she said brightly to Vignale, who did not respond. Ghislaine turned to me. “Thanks for coming down so fast, Sarah.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said pleasantly. “Where’s Shadrick?” All Ghislaine had with her was a bag from Sam Goody.
“Oh,” she said. “My friend Flora lives near here. I got her to pick him up for me and take him home.”
“Did you take the bus down here?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“You need a ride home, then?”
Ghislaine gave me a slanted look. She sensed that my generosity was out of place, given the circumstances. “Really?” she asked.
“I’m going that way anyhow,” I lied.
“That’d be great,” she said, her good humor bubbling up again.
As we headed out of the station, she hefted the Sam Goody bag at her side, and said, “Don’t worry, this stuff’s legit.”
“I know,” I said. “Generally, shoplifters don’t bother to steal the bag.”
“Oh, listen to you,” she mocked, opening the car door to slide inside. “The stuff at Field’s was, like, chickenshit, not even a hundred dollars’ worth of stuff. Otherwise you wouldn’t have been able to fix it.”
We pulled out into the street and began to navigate the one-way interchanges of downtown Minneapolis. I headed toward Ghislaine’s neighborhood- Cicero’s, too- but I took us down several side streets, moving away from the city’s center and from streets on which the buses ran.
“This isn’t the fastest way to my place,” Ghislaine said, flipping down the sun visor to look for a mirror.
“I know,” I said. “I thought we could use an extra couple of minutes to talk.” I damped down the noise from the radio.
She glanced over at me. “About what?” she asked, shifting in her seat.
“We need to talk about what you told Officer Vignale, about you being my informant and helping me with the ‘doctor’ in the Third Precinct.”
“Well, that was true,” she said.
“Right. I asked you about him, you told me what you knew, I compensated you. That was the extent of your help. You’re not assisting me on an ongoing basis.”
Ghislaine looked ahead, as if the traffic were fascinating.
“So unless I’m mistaken, when you told Officer Vignale to ‘remind’ me of it, you were threatening to give up Cisco unless I came down and bailed you out.”
Mixed feelings flickered in her eyes; insecurity turned to a determination to counterattack. “Well, I just thought it was interesting,” Ghislaine said, her voice rising in imitation of harmless surmise, “that I never heard anything about him getting arrested. I was like, ‘I told Sarah about him, I wonder what happened.’ So I thought maybe I should tell someone else.” Ghislaine smiled, all innocence. “I mean, what better place for an agoraphobic guy than prison? He wouldn’t have to go outside for years.”
“ Cicero ’s not agoraphobic,” I said.
“ Cicero?” Ghislaine repeated, and there was a world of speculation in the one word. Oh, hell, I thought. I hadn’t meant to use his real name.
“What is this guy,” she went on, her tone brightly insinuating, “your new best friend?”
Ghislaine had seen me around the neighborhood; I knew that from our encounter on the bus. And she heard things, which was what made her a good informant. I wondered how much she really knew about my repeated visits to the towers. Obviously she knew enough. She’d guessed that threatening Cicero would get her what she wanted, and I’d unwillingly confirmed it by fixing her shoplifting bust.
I pulled to the curb.
“What are you doing?” she asked, looking around at the side street we were on, brown brick apartment buildings on each side.
“This is where you get out,” I said.
“But we’re a mile from where I live!” Ghislaine protested.
“Yeah, I know,” I said. I turned in my seat, one elbow resting on the steering wheel. “You could use the walk, Ghislaine. You need some time alone to get your head straight and think about how smart it is for you to try to jerk me around.”
Her coral lips opened slightly, in shock.
“I’m going to say this real loud and clear for the cheap seats: I don’t explain to you how I do my job, and you don’t ask,” I said. “You don’t drop my name to get out of petty-theft busts, and you’re never going to mention Cicero Ruiz again, not even to a meter reader. You forget that, and I’m going to make sure you end up in an agoraphobe’s paradise.” I put my hand on the gearshift. “Now get out.”
Ghislaine’s lips tightened, but she climbed out of the car, her plastic bag rustling. She didn’t close the door right away.
“I didn’t know you were so hard up, Detective Pribek,” she said bitterly.
I reached over and pulled the door shut, put the car in gear. She yelled after me.
“If you dig crippled guys, Sarah, the Cities are full of white ones! Why don’t you just go down to the VA Hospital and pick yourself one out!”
29
Several days passed. Comfortable now with Aidan’s presence in the Hennessy home, I spent less time there, and my nights at home.
There, late at night, I found myself restless, surfing late-night TV. Occasionally, pausing on one of the educational channels, I’d see a show on forensics: techs observing the glow of Leuco Crystal Violet stains or peering at fibers under a microscope. I’d switch away quickly. Other than that, I kept my mind off Gray Diaz. Likewise Cicero Ruiz. My aborted letter to Shiloh remained buried under newspapers and unpaid bills. Work, in general, was uneventful.
One such workday ended with an errand out toward the lake country, reinterviewing a witness in an old case with leads sputtering out. On my way back, I passed a bus stop and a very familiar figure waiting there: Aidan Hennessy. I pulled over; he recognized my car and came to meet me.
“What’s up?” He shielded his face against the setting sun.
In that moment, I was surprised to realize how much I liked him. Somehow, I’d gotten more comfortable with Aidan Hennessy than with anyone else in his family, which was remarkable, given how we’d started out. I’d spent much more time with Marlinchen, and I did like her, but I could never quite get comfortable around her. Her shifts in mood, her endless caution, always weighing her own words and those of people around her… Sometimes she made me tired. Aidan Hennessy was laconic, uncomplicated. More than anyone else in his family, he reminded me of myself.
“Thought you might need a ride,” I said, and Aidan climbed in.
“I’m not going home,” he told me. “I’m going to the store. I promised to make dinner tonight, but I need a few things.”
“Okay,” I said. “I can drop you off there, but I could also probably give you a ride to the store and then home, if you’ll go downtown with me first. I’ve got to check in before I leave for the day.”
“Okay with me,” Aidan said. “I’m not in a hurry.”
I accelerated, trying to slide onto the 394 in advance of a
moving van traveling at a good clip. When I had, Aidan spoke again. “I just got a job,” he said.
“No kidding?” I said. “That’s great. Where?”
“At a nursery. Of plants, not kids. It doesn’t pay that great, but it’ll help out at home.” He lifted his ponytail and shifted it to the other side of his neck, cooling the skin underneath.
We drove a few miles in silence. The rays of the lowering sun hit the windshield, which turned its new purplish color. “You’ve got a weird haze on your windows,” Aidan said, rubbing it with his finger.
“I know,” I said.
“It’s not coming off.” He was still worrying it.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “It’s permanent.”
“You must really like this car,” he said.
I didn’t say anything.
Downtown, Aidan went up in the elevator with me to the detective division. He didn’t say anything while we were up there, but I saw him craning slightly to look around, perhaps surprised at how much it looked like any other office setting. I switched my voice mail over to forward to my pager and spoke briefly to Vang, then Aidan and I left.
At the store, he found what he needed: a cheap whole chicken, several potatoes, an onion. He also bought us each a Coke, and paid with money from the Hennessy household fund. Then we walked back outside, into the early-evening heat, and stopped in our tracks, looking around.
The Nova was nowhere to be seen. Out of laziness, not wanting to cruise the aisles for the nearest possible parking space, I’d simply parked at the edge of the lot. Now the car seemed to be gone.
“What the hell?” I said.
“There it is,” Aidan said.
He was pointing at a truck and horse trailer at the edge of the parking lot. I’d simply assumed that it was parked along the edge of the lot, with no other cars behind it. Now I saw, through the windows of the big Ram truck, a slice of the Nova’s roof was visible.
“I think that guy’s illegally parked,” I said. “I don’t think he’s supposed to have a vehicle this long parked over two spaces. Maybe I should cite him.” We were headed across the parking lot, toward the trailer.
“You have a citation book with you?” Aidan said skeptically.
“I’m an officer of the law,” I said as we circled around the rear of the horse trailer. “Anything I write on will hold up in court. I think.”
“You think?” Aidan said, and snorted with laughter.
“Sure,” I said. “Where’s your receipt for the groceries? I’ll-Jesus!”
I jumped, and a thin brown waterspout of Coke leapt from the can. A dog had sprung up from the bench seat of the pickup truck, barking and snarling, safely behind the closed window, but only inches from our faces.
“Holy shit,” I said. The Doberman continued to bark at us, its sharp-snouted face mashed up against the saliva-smeared glass, teeth bared. Then I got a good look at Aidan. He had dropped his bag of groceries and was half bent at the waist, his hands on his thighs as if for support.
“Are you okay?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding, his face pale. “I’m all right.” He tried to laugh. “I’m a real tough guy, eh? Scared of a dog locked in a truck.”
“It startled me, too,” I assured him.
He bent and picked up the grocery bag, taking a deep steadying breath as he did so. “Let’s go,” he said.
When we were out on the road, Aidan spoke again. “I’ve just got a thing about dogs,” he said. “Because of my hand.”
I nodded. “Do you remember the day you lost your finger?” I asked him, steering us onto the highway. “I mean, really remember it?”
“I have this snapshot image,” he said. “I can see my hand with the finger half torn off, and the blood just starting to flow. The dog didn’t take it off cleanly. It was semiattached, but I guess it wasn’t… what’s the word? Viable. So a doctor must have finished the job.”
Aidan checked to see if I was okay with this grisly story, and apparently I wasn’t turning pale, because he went on.
“At the base of the finger, below the main wound, there was a separate tooth mark, I guess from where the dog gripped and let go before biting down again and taking the finger. In my memory, it’s a dent, just starting to fill up with blood. Now it’s a scar.” Aidan extended his left hand, slightly tilted, so I could see the pink mark just below the stump.
“What kind of dog was it?” I asked, returning my gaze to the highway.
“A pit bull, I think,” Aidan said. “That’s what I remember most, the white face with pointed-back ears.”
“Pit bulls just don’t seem to fit with your neighborhood,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s weird, I know.”
After a moment, I spoke again, asking Aidan what most likely seemed to him an unrelated question.
“When you lived in Georgia,” I said, “what did you do for fun?”
“Fun?” Aidan said. “Not a lot. There wasn’t much to do out where Pete lived.”
“Did you ever hunt?” I asked. “Go target shooting?”
“Hunt, no,” he said. “I went target shooting, once. We knocked cans off a fence.”
“How did it make you feel, handling a gun?” I asked.
“It was boring,” Aidan said, shrugging. “Once I’d done it, I didn’t feel like doing it again.”
“Did it make you nervous?” I asked.
“Not really,” he said. “Why? Are you recruiting for the police academy?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head in amusement. “My job isn’t really about shooting, anyway. They make you learn to use the gun before they turn you loose with it, but if you’re lucky, you never have to shoot anyone on the job. I never have.”
“I was going to say, you should be talking to Colm,” Aidan went on. “I think he’d probably have about eight guns by now, if Hugh weren’t so opposed to them.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Colm mentioned that, about your father.”
The Hennessys were like a family viewed through a prism. Nothing lined up. Hugh loved his antique pistols and had kept them in his study; no, Hugh hated guns and wouldn’t have one in his house. Marlinchen was afraid of loud noises, but Aidan wasn’t scared of guns. On the other hand, he really was afraid of dogs. It didn’t square with my theory about the study. I didn’t know if I could make sense of it at all.
“What about you?” Aidan said, breaking into my thoughts. “Did you ever hunt?”
“Me?” I said.
“Well, you grew up on the Range,” he said. “Lots of people hunt and fish there.”
I shook my head. “When I lived in New Mexico, for a while I was infatuated with my older brother’s crossbow. Then I shot a deer with it. I can’t even remember if it was deliberate or a whim or even just an accident, but I know after that I never wanted to hunt. Couldn’t stand the idea.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “But my anti-hunting morals don’t run that deep. I mean, I eat meat.”
“Good,” Aidan said. “You can stay for dinner, then.”
***
Aidan’s meal-baked chicken and mashed potatoes with a green salad- was simple and satisfying, not quite as well seasoned as the dishes his twin sister prepared. At the table, the kids talked about final exams, summer coming, and their plans to visit their mother’s grave on her upcoming birthday.
After we were done eating, Marlinchen said, “Donal, maybe you want to go watch some TV? We’re going to talk about some boring stuff.”
To a lot of kids, a phrase like that makes the radar go straight up; they know the truly interesting grown-up issues are going to be put on the table. But Donal accepted his sister’s words at face value. He left.
When he’d gone, Marlinchen said, “I talked to Ms. Andersen today, about Dad.”
I recognized the name, after a moment: I’d seen it on a bulletin board at Park Christian. She was the medical social worker in charge there.
“How is he?” Colm asked.
“Good,” she said. “He’s been steadily improving. You guys knew that. In fact, Ms. Andersen says he can live at home.”
Beside me, I felt Aidan shift in his chair, but he said nothing.
“He still needs physical therapy, and speech therapy,” she said. “But all that can be done here. Ms. Andersen’s going to help us with all those things. I agreed that we can move him home next week.”
“Wait a minute,” Aidan said. “Just like that? This is something we need to talk about.”
“I would have discussed it with you guys before I said yes,” Marlinchen said, “if we had any alternative. But we don’t. Dad’s insurance won’t pay for his hospitalization if the hospital itself has recommended outpatient treatment.” She speared a stray piece of lettuce on her salad plate, but didn’t eat. “You know what the money situation is like. We can’t pay for it ourselves.”
“Isn’t physical and speech therapy and home care going to cost us, too?” Aidan pointed out.
Marlinchen straightened confidently. “That’s the thing,” she said. “Dad’s insurance is pretty good on paying for outpatient services like that. The therapists can even come out here. Home care is a little different. We won’t have someone live in, but Dad’s at moderate-assist level.” When no one seemed to know what that meant, she explained. “That means he needs help with 50 percent or fewer of daily activities.”
If anyone was bothered by my presence at a family discussion, they didn’t say so, and I made no move to get up.
“That’ll improve as Dad keeps up with his rehab,” Marlinchen went on. “It won’t be a big deal, especially since there are five of us here with him. We’ll all pitch in.”
“I won’t,” Aidan said.
Marlinchen looked politely confused, as if she’d misheard.
“I’ve got a job,” Aidan said. “I’ll help with money. But I can’t bring him his meals or sit with him and pretend… pretend that…”
Liam was looking down at the carpet, as if embarrassed. Colm’s face was unreadable.