by John Lutz
“Personal is our son lying in a hospital bed for weeks without moving unless somebody turns him over. Personal is me listening to you grinding your teeth all night while you whimper with bad dreams. And personal is me having to listen to you imply I care more about revenge and money than I do about our son.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Joe, and you know it.”
“Stop telling me what I know.”
She looked away and wrapped her arms tightly around her bent knees, gently rocking back and forth. “I’m afraid for Alan. I’m afraid of what your hate might do to us, Joe.
I’m afraid of courts and lawyers. I can’t help it, I’m fucking afraid!”
“This might not even get to court. The hospital might try to settle.”
“They already tried once.”
“Cindy? Stop rocking! You look like a goddamn nut-case!”
She seemed to hear only her own internal rhythm.
“Cindy? Honey? Damnit! Answer me!” She did, in a mumble he couldn’t understand. She was talking more and more like that lately, as if they were speaking underwater and she was drifting away from him.
He leaned closer. “Cindy?”
She mumbled again. It sounded something like “God help us.”
*
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“A subpoena!” Anne cried to Horn that evening as soon as she came home from work. “For Christ’s sake, a subpoena!” Stress had clenched her face like a fist. A strand of blond hair stuck out above one ear, while another dangled over her forehead. She slammed the door behind her, shutting out the world beyond the brownstone.
“I’ve seen them before,” Horn said, staying calm, hoping it would be catching. He put the Cuban cigar he’d been contemplating taking outside to smoke back in his pocket, then gently pried the envelope she was waving around from her hand.
He unfolded the document inside, kinked from the pressure of her tense fingers, and scanned it.
“Court date’s not for two months,” he said, handing the subpoena back to her. “Give yourself some time to think about this, Anne. Plenty of things can happen over two months.”
“Such as?”
“A settlement.”
“You don’t seem to understand that I, the radiology department, the ER personnel, the hospital, have done nothing wrong! ”
“I do understand. I’m usually the one trying to reassure you of that. Remember, you were telling me the other day about how guilty you felt.”
She gave him a weary, disdainful look, then turned her back on him and trudged up the stairs, moving like an arthritic.
“Feeling and knowing are two different things,” she said without looking back.
They are, Horn thought. They surely are.
He took the cigar back out of his pocket and went outside to smoke and walk, and think.
22
Saint Will.
Paula had spent the rest of the day talking to people in Will Lincoln’s neighborhood. Everyone, from Lincoln’s barber to the patrons of a corner tavern, Minnie’s Place, where he sometimes stopped in for a drink, held a positive view of Lincoln. A sweet-natured, friendly kind of guy, they all said.
A regular guy, despite the odd way he had of turning a dollar, buying and collecting scrap metal, worthless junk, and welding it into art.
It wasn’t until Paula talked to a Mrs. Dorothy Neidler, who lived in a small clapboard house directly across the street from Lincoln’s similar house, that a sour note was struck.
“C’mon in,” Mrs. Neidler said, when finally convinced Paula was a genuine NYPD detective and wanted to chat about Lincoln. Paula had the feeling that Lincoln was one of her favorite things to talk about.
The living room looked like a worn-out, badly designed set from a fifties sitcom. Tables and chairs were blond mod-erne and included a kidney-shaped coffee table. The blue sofa and chairs matched each other but nothing else, though NIGHT VICTIMS
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Paula guessed they went okay with the sculpted gray wall-to-wall carpet. Clear plastic still covered the shades of the matching lamps on the matching tables on each side of the sofa. In a corner, near some red drapes, sat a blond console TV with a black ceramic panther on it. The panther was actually a planter that featured plastic flowers and a night-light.
Paula wondered, where was the basket chair?
Dorothy Neidler was in her seventies and thin, hunched, bitter, and gray. There were short vertical slash marks above her upper lip that looked like old scars from when someone had sewn her mouth shut. When she moved she left in the air a cloying wake of perfume that didn’t quite disguise a sharp medicinal scent.
As soon as Paula had seated herself on the stiff blue sofa, Mrs. Neidler offered her a glass of lemonade. Paula accepted and five minutes later was not at all surprised to find the lemonade almost too sour to drink. But she did drink it, sipping cautiously and not making a face. She said nothing, knowing from experience when to wait. It was obvious that a tale or two bounded around in the older woman’s mind, itching to escape to a sympathetic ear. That ear would be Paula’s, if she could be patient.
Mrs. Neidler trained faded blue eyes on her.
Paula smiled. Sipped.
“So somebody figured it out,” Mrs. Neidler said.
“Only partly,” Paula said, playing along, thinking maybe she was dealing with the neighborhood witch, a busybody with too much imagination.
But Mrs. Neidler seemed reasonably normal. She had no overt symptoms of being a neurotic or an irrational gossip, simply a gossip. Her clouded eyes seemed permanently pained and narrowed by what might have been a lifetime of disappointments, but Paula had seen the same look on a lot of older people. It was as if they were bewildered and bitter from having glanced in the mirror one day and noticing that somehow they’d suddenly aged. Will I have that look?
Mrs. Neidler shifted about in her stiff blue chair.
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Paula sipped silently, knowing the pump was primed.
“Well, maybe I can enlighten you on the other part,” Mrs.
Neidler said.
Paula leaned forward, not overdoing it. Sip. Look interested.
“Those two are having trouble.”
“Uh-huh,” Paula said. Sip. Don’t pucker!
“I guess you people know what kind of trouble.”
“Some of it, yes.” Paula got out her leather-bound notepad and a yellow stub of a number-two pencil. Waited.
“I think he leaves the kids alone.”
“That’s how we figure it,” Paula said, pretending to take notes. Mrs. Neidler was talking for the record now.
“But I’ve seen the bruises on Kim.” Paula remembered Lincoln’s wife was named Kim. “Have you ever actually seen him strike his wife?”
“Are you from South Carolina?” Mrs. Neidler abruptly asked.
“No. Louisiana. Cajun country.”
Mrs. Neidler squinted and stared at her as if she’d mentioned one of the other planets. “The men there . . . are they of a violent nature?”
“Some. Like anywhere else, I suppose. You were telling me you thought there might be some domestic violence in the Lincoln home.”
“I’ve seen movement behind their blinds. Silhouettes. I can read that kind of body language, even in shadow. Violence, I’m sure, Officer . . .”
“‘Paula’ will be fine.” Paula smiled and worked the blunt point of the pencil.
“Paula, I’m no stranger to domestic abuse.”
“Too many women aren’t.”
“I’ve seen poor Kim at the grocery or drugstore without bruises. Then I’ve heard her and that husband of hers shouting at each other, even from across the street. I could never make out the words, but I recognize the sounds. There’s no mistaking them.” Mrs. Neidler dabbed at a blue eye that had NIGHT VICTIMS
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teared up. “The next day I’d see Kim again. She t
hinks she covers the marks with makeup, but another woman, one with experience, can see behind the makeup.”
“Have you ever asked her about any of this?” Mrs. Neidler shook her head violently. “Not my place.” Paula thought of differing with her, then changed her mind. “But you’ve never seen him harm the children?” Two of them, Paula recalled. Girls ages seven and ten.
“Never. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t. Go and talk to their teachers. They might tell you. Teachers can tell, even though they’re afraid to speak up sometimes.” Mrs. Neidler shook her head again and clucked her tongue. “Everybody’s suing everybody these days. Have you noticed?”
“Hard not to,” Paula said.
“Some teachers’d talk, though.”
“School’s out for the summer,” Paula reminded her.
“Ah, I forgot. Old people do forget.”
“They remember, too,” Paula said.
“Those two girls, cute as buttons, are away at camp, come to think of it. They’re always at one camp or another during the summers. Some people see camps as full-time baby-sitters, have you noticed?”
“I have.”
“And that Will Lincoln keeps odd hours. Works late in that garage art studio of his. Lots of times banging away on metal: bangedy, bangedy, bang! Got no close neighbors on either side of his house. I’m the closest one, so I’ve gotta put up with the noise. Bangedy, bangedy!” Paula leaned sideways and glanced out the living room’s picture window. Mrs. Neidler had a view up the driveway of the modest house across the street. Most of the detached garage, gray clapboard like the house, was visible, including a garage window.
“I see the light on in that garage till all hours. And sometimes I’m up at night—old people don’t sleep well, you know. I see him leave the garage, must be by some back way.
He sneaks down the driveway past that old eyesore truck of 154
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his, to where he leaves his car parked on the street. Then drives away quiet like.”
Oh, boy! “About what time of night does he do this?”
“Early morning, really. I’d say about one or two o’clock.
Sometimes even later.”
“And what time does he return?”
“Various times. Mostly he’s gone more’n an hour, though.
Ask me, I’d say he’s seeing some other woman. Be good if he left Kim, beat up on the other one. She’d be the one that deserves it.”
Paula was getting some idea of what had happened to Mrs. Neidler long ago. “Does Lincoln work in his garage every night?”
“Most every one. Sometimes he’s in there during the day, but almost always at night.”
“Do you think he might go out there to get away from Kim? Feeling guilty, maybe?”
“Haw! Not feeling guilty. Not that one. That one’s not at all how everybody sees him.” She gingerly touched the pink scalp below her sparse gray hair, as if caressing an old injury. “They never are.”
“They?”
“The ones that mistreat women.”
“You’re right about that,” Paula said. “Do you have much contact with Will Lincoln? Do you two ever talk?”
“Not hardly anymore. He saw me looking out the window at him one night about two in the morning. Began treating me cool after that. Not that we were ever chummy. Kim, though, she’s not like him. She’s still nice as pie to me.” Paula looked up from the notes she was taking. “Do you think you’re in any physical danger, Mrs. Neidler?”
“Not hardly. Not with my late second husband’s twelve-gauge shotgun in the house. I was Portland County ladies’
skeet shooting champion two years running. That was some time back, though.”
“And you keep the shotgun nearby?”
“Nearby and loaded.”
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Uh-oh . . . Paula showed no reaction but made a note of that.
“Tell you what,” she said to Mrs. Neidler. “I’m going to give you one of my cards. Call me if you see anything else suspicious. Anything at all. Don’t mention our conversation.
And if you happen to see me around in the neighborhood, don’t let on we’re friends.”
“Count on me, Paula. I know how the police work.” Paula leaned forward and placed her business card and half-finished tumbler of lemonade on the glass-topped coffee table. She stood up and slid her notepad into her purse.
“If you see a strange car parked near here with someone in it, that’ll probably be me or another detective.”
“Uh-huh. A stakeout. Watching Lincoln’s house.”
“And yours, too. For protection. Just in case, whether you need it or not.” She edged toward the door. Mrs. Neidler seemed reluctant to stand up and show her out. Obviously not enough people were good listeners and she wasn’t eager for Paula to leave.
“Please don’t get up,” Paula said.
But when Paula was almost at the door, Mrs. Neidler wrested herself up from her chair and plodded over to usher her out.
Paula stepped outside onto the porch. It was almost dusk and had cooled into the seventies. The darkening sky had the look of being hazed by smoke, but she could see or smell nothing suggesting a fire.
“You be careful, Paula,” Mrs. Neidler cautioned.
“I always am,” Paula assured her, glancing back at Mrs.
Neidler through the screen door. “Skeet shooting,” she said to the aged form in the shadow of the dark screen. “That’s marvelous.”
“Ladies’ champion,” Mrs. Neidler said. “Two years running. Some time back, though.”
“Still . . .” Paula said, stepping down off the porch.
“Still,” Mrs. Neidler said behind her.
*
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John Lutz
Paula sat in the unmarked, which was half a block down from Will Lincoln’s gray house with its green metal awnings, and waited for him to leave. It had grown dark, and lights were on in the house. Paula drove to the end of the block once and did a turnaround, checking the garage. Its single, dark window seemed to peer back at her blankly.
There was a rusty old Dodge pickup truck with a low front tire in the driveway: the eyesore Mrs. Neidler had mentioned. The truck seemed not to have moved since Paula had first seen it that afternoon. It looked as if it might not be able to move.
She returned to her parking space, which was midway between two streetlights and in the shadow of a big maple tree.
Today she’d brought along a plastic portable device that enabled her to relieve her bladder without leaving the car.
She’d never shown this valuable accessory to Bickerstaff, who usually availed himself of concealing foliage or dark passageways. There was no need for such a thing when they ran stakeouts together, and he would wait and watch while she found a public rest room. Such a gentleman.
She’d had to use the portable potty only once tonight, squirming to gain proper position in the car, then congratulating herself on her neatness, when a man emerged from the Lincoln house.
Paula hastily rearranged her clothes and got comfortable again behind the steering wheel, glancing at the luminous hands of her wristwatch. Almost ten o’clock.
She was too far away to recognize Lincoln for sure from his photograph, but the man’s height and weight looked about right, and he’d come out of Lincoln’s house. He also walked past the pickup truck, on down the driveway, and got into a ratty-looking twelve-year-old Pontiac, tan with a black cloth roof, that was parked near the house. Figuring the de-crepit pickup truck wasn’t regular transportation, Paula had already checked the license plates of the cars on the street.
Like the truck, the rusty old Pontiac was registered to Will Lincoln.
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The old car needed exhaust work. It growled loudly when it started, then popped and rattled like a machine gun when it pulled away from the curb. Paula followed in the unmarked.
&
nbsp; She thought that if this guy was smart, he’d trade both his clunkers in on one reliable vehicle that wasn’t a tetanus risk.
But the Pontiac quieted down to a steady roar when it got up to speed.
Lincoln didn’t drive very far, only about five blocks to Minnie’s Place, the neighborhood bar Paula had checked out earlier. She hoped no one in there would mention to Lincoln that she’d been around asking about him. There was a chance they wouldn’t. Probably there’d be a different bartender on duty by now and mostly different patrons. And contrary to TV, movies, and popular fiction, lots of citizens actually didn’t mind helping the police.
Some citizens, anyway.
Minnie’s must not have been crowded, because Lincoln found a parking space almost in front of the entrance. Paula parallel-parked between a van and a compact pickup truck and watched him climb out of the old Pontiac and enter Minnie’s.
When he crossed a patch of bright light beneath the bar’s illuminated sign, Paula got a good look at him for the first time and knew for sure she’d been following the right man.
Dark hair with a bald spot, slim, muscular build, long neck and jaw. There was an arm-swinging swagger in his stride that was a challenge. Try me. I’m easy to provoke.
Paula considered going into Minnie’s and unobtrusively watching Lincoln, then thought better of the idea. Maybe it would work if she knew the place was packed with drinkers who’d provide some cover. As it was, she figured her wisest course was to stay in the car and wait for Lincoln to come back out.
She settled low in the seat and listened to salsa on the factory-installed radio. The evening was warm, so she 158
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cranked down the unmarked’s front windows. The back of her neck rested against the lowered, padded headrest. She half closed her eyes, slipping into stakeout mode. Though she wouldn’t sleep, she’d still rest, and a part of her mind would be alert to the comings and goings at Minnie’s Place.
Minnie—if there was a Minnie—must do all right.
Somebody entered or left the bar every five minutes or so.
Mostly men, but a few women. Paula wondered if someone was making book in there. Or dealing drugs.
Time passed, and more time. Paula, thinking about Lincoln in there drinking all that draft beer (Budweiser, the day bartender had informed her), used the portable potty again. It was getting full and she was beginning to worry.