by Tony Healey
Harper looks at the TV, feels her heart sink at the sight of Stu’s ex.
The captain shakes his head wearily, looking all the more as if he has the weight of the world resting upon his shoulders. “This bullshit with your ex can’t be seen to be getting in the way of this investigation. So, as of now, Raley, I don’t want you within shouting distance of this case. I can’t have you in the public eye, not like this. For all intents and purposes, you’re suspended with pay until this has passed. As for you, Harper, I want you to take a few days off. Cool the fuck down. The investigation comes first, Detectives, not your love life.”
“Sir! You can’t expect me to stop working on this case,” Harper tells him, the wind knocked out of her.
Morelli looks at her. “Who said anything about doing that? I’m saying I don’t want to see you in this station for forty-eight hours. Understand?”
“Captain!” Stu stands and Harper knows what’s coming. “Dudley—”
“Is a competent detective,” Harper cuts in. Stu looks at her, unsure of what she’s doing. “More than capable of continuing the investigation.”
Morelli frowns as he regards the both of them. “I don’t appreciate the personal lives of my detectives disrupting an ongoing investigation. Especially a high-profile one like this is turning into. Or the drama you’ve brought into my station. I don’t know what’s going on with you two, but I want you to sort your shit out.”
“We will.”
“Great. Now will the both of you please get the fuck out of here?”
Stu shakes his head as they walk away from Morelli’s office, everyone watching them, neither of them caring about the looks they’re getting.
“I don’t understand you,” he says.
Harper scans the office, spots Dudley over in a corner, on the phone. “I didn’t think you would. Look, go grab what we need. Slip out the back, okay? I’ll pick you up from there so the reporters don’t see you coming and add more fuel to the fire.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
She doesn’t answer him, just heads for John Dudley, aware of how disheveled she looks, how she has been humiliated in front of all her colleagues, and really not caring. She glances back to make sure Stu hasn’t followed her. He hasn’t.
“Dudley?”
He turns the phone away. “Yes, Jane?”
“Can I have a word?”
His tongue flicks out over his top lip, lizardlike. “Sure,” he says, voice not so cocksure as usual. Harper leads him to one of the interview rooms and shuts the door. “What’s this about?”
“You know what the hell this is about, John,” Harper says, hands on her hips. “It’s about you telling Stu’s ex-wife that we were having an affair when we weren’t.”
Dudley doesn’t even try to deny it. His tongue flicks out again. “Look, I didn’t mean it like that. I bumped into her, we got to talking—”
Harper slaps him in the face. Dudley recoils, his hand to his cheek. “Christ! What was that for?”
She jabs him in the chest. “Interfere in my personal business again, I’ll make it my purpose in life to fuck you, alright?”
“Y-y-yes,” he stammers, blood rushing to his head.
She opens the door and looks back at him. “Why did you do it? What made you start this, John? Is this some kind of joke to you?”
Dudley can’t maintain eye contact with her. He has to look away, look down at the floor, one hand clamped to the side of his face. Harper already feels a pang of guilt for hitting him so hard.
“I saw you with Raley and . . . I suppose I thought . . . we . . .”
Harper looks him up and down. “You’re pathetic,” she says, slamming the door behind her.
Lester has Mack down on the ground, hands around his throat, squeezing so hard his fingers almost break the flesh. Mack’s last gargled breaths come sputtering out, his eyes bulging. Lester smiles behind the mask. The release is the same as when he takes the life from his girls. When he sees the light drain from their eyes, sees it dwindle to nothing, it’s the biggest thrill he’s ever known. A sense of greatness. The power of his own hands, bringing death, ending their journey.
But it’s not the only thing that’s the same. His cock is stiff in his shorts, throbbing against the constricting material, aching to be let free.
That there is a man . . .
Lester loosens his grip on Mack’s throat. Now he’s not sure.
You gettin’ hard for a man are you turned on?
He lets go altogether. Mack gasps for breath, coughing and spluttering as Lester rolls off him.
If you get a hard-on from a man then you’re one of them queers! What will people think if you’re one of them, huh? Remember what i said about queers?
Mack thinks he has a chance. He thinks Lester will let him go.
“No!”
Lester stands, drags Mack out to the yard. He looks around. He sees the swing set. He hauls him over to it, grabs Mack’s head in both hands, and screams as he proceeds to bash Mack’s head against the rusted metal. The sound hurtling out of Lester’s mouth is guttural, primal, from someplace deep inside. He breaks Mack’s skull open, continues to crash his head against the frame of the swing until there are brains and blood. Until Mack’s legs have stopped kicking.
Lester screams like a savage long after he is finished. When the scream has died in his throat, he reaches down to rub his softening cock. Lester feels wet, examines his fingers, and finds them covered in sticky semen.
He holds his hands out in front of him and they’re shaking.
10
“Come in,” Stu tells Harper, unlocking his door. “Let me pour you a drink or something.”
Harper thinks about it and is about to tell him no, she should really get back, when she finds herself saying the complete opposite. Why not? It’s been a shitty kind of day. I mean, could this day get any worse?
“Alright.”
Stu smiles. “Good. I’ve got Glenfiddich.”
“Even better, then.”
Up in Stu’s apartment, Harper flops onto his sofa as he fixes the drinks. Neat, no ice, no mixer. He hands her the glass, clinking his against hers. “Cheers.”
“Cheers.” Harper knocks it back, feels its velvet smoothness in her gullet, the burn as it reaches her insides and the ensuing warmth throughout. “God, that hit the spot.”
“Another?” he asks, draining his glass in the same fashion.
“Please.”
Harper runs her fingers through her hair, kicks her shoes off.
“Here you go,” he says, handing her back the glass. “What a shitty day.”
“Tell me about it. What’re you going to do about Karen?”
Stu thinks for a moment. “Let it blow over. There’s no more point talking to her. I’ll change my number. That way she’s got no way to contact me. She sure as hell won’t come to the station again. We’ve got no ties, she’s got no reason to call me anymore, huh?”
“Other than to give you shit, you mean.”
He laughs. “Yeah, something like that. Anyway, how’s the hair? You’re the one who got roughed up today.”
“I take it you haven’t seen the massive shiner you got.”
“Really?” Stu gets up and finds a mirror. “Ah, damn. That’s a beauty.”
Harper shakes her head, laughing, lifting the glass to her lips. “I confronted Dudley.”
“What? That was my job!”
She puts a hand on his knee. “Calm down. It’s all out in the open. He did it because he was jealous of us.”
“You mean he’s got a thing for you?”
“Uh-huh. That’s why he did it. I don’t think he expected it to go down the way it did at the station, though,” Harper says. “I’ll be interested to see what he does now. Whether he stays and tries to work it out, or gets a transfer.”
“Hopefully the latter,” Stu says, drinking his scotch.
“He’s just a mean little man.” Harper reaches up, rests her
palm against the side of his face. “Stud. Your poor eye.”
“It’s nothing.”
Whether it’s the scotch, the emotion that rides in on the wake of a trauma, or just a case of perfect timing, Harper finds herself sitting up, leaning forward. Stu leans into her, his hand going to her waist, everything else forgotten. They kiss, softly at first, then with their lips pressed hard against one another, teeth clashing, tongues exploring, teasing, playing. His hand rides up her shirt, finds her breast, gives it a firm squeeze. Harper traces her fingers down his chest, to his leg, to his groin.
“You’re sure?” Stu asks her, pulling away.
“I need this,” she tells him between heavy breaths, looking deep into his eyes, pulling him back in, wanting him to take her, wanting to feel wanted. If for only the night, she wants all of that.
She wants to forget.
Ida lights a couple of candles, then holds the end of her cigarette to one of the flickering flames. The cigarette smoldering between her pursed lips, she flips through her record collection, letting fate decide.
She smiles when she pulls Blonde on Blonde—long one of her favorites—from the stack. She jumps in with “I Want You,” swaying her hips back and forth to the freewheeling rhythm. She cracks open a cold beer, drinking and smoking as she slow dances around the house. Ida is caught up in the music, in her own thoughts, in the feelings Dylan always manages to expose.
Her favorite comes last, and it makes her more contemplative: “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”
I am that sad-eyed lady, Ida thinks, finishing her beer, thinking that maybe she’s had too many, but that maybe it’s okay. She should have another. Drink until she sleeps.
Maybe the dream won’t come, then.
Ida sits on her sofa, sets what’s left of her cigarette on the edge of the ashtray, and buries her face in her hands. What she felt, visiting the spot where her mother died, has lingered. It was an aching loss, a knowledge of something terrible. She felt what her mother felt, the crushing, desperate panic.
She begins to sob, listening to Dylan’s drawl, the tragedy of the musical arrangement, her ragged breath coming between waves of her grief. Blonde on Blonde comes to an end, the needle arm lifting from the vinyl, the turntable stopping dead, but the speakers still crackling, waiting for their next song. Their next voice.
An old poem surfaces in her mind. Something by Robert Frost she remembers from when she was a teenager:
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
She has spent her entire life waiting to see what will trouble her dreams. Ida slips Blonde on Blonde back in its sleeve and busies herself picking something else. She’s in no hurry to sleep.
Lester has put the mask and belt back in their special place—the stiff white cotton folded the exact same way he always does, shown the respect it deserves. The belt held in his hand, gripping the buckle, then coiling the leather tight around his fist. He put them in the drawer, in the cabinet next to his bed, as he always did.
He tips his head back, drains the last of a beer, then tosses the empty can out across the grass. There’s something fitting about toasting Mack’s body with his own beer. The flies have gathered on his corpse—they cluster around the opening in his skull. It’s like a yawning mouth in the middle of all that white scalp and short, bristly, red hair. The brain matter that sticks to the swing set has already started to dry.
Lester looks at the old trash cans. The remains will never fit in one as he is. Lester goes into the house, where he keeps the log-splitting axe next to the fridge. He walks toward Mack’s body, swinging the axe back and forth, hefting its weight in his hands. Best to remove Mack’s legs and arms, then cut his torso in two. That way he can stuff him into one of the cans, and keep the fire contained to one cylinder.
“Forry, Mack,” he spits, lifting the axe high. The blade flashes in the fading light, and he brings it down with a heavy chomping sound.
When he’s done, Lester wipes the blood splatter from his mouth and fetches one of the rusted old trash cans. He drags it across the grass, sets it just right, then piles Mack’s body parts inside. His head sits on the top, like a cherry on a cake. A liberal soaking with gasoline, and Lester lights a match, tossing it in and stepping back. The flames roar, consuming Mack’s head, melting it away. It reminds Lester of a hog roast he once watched on TV. The fat popped and hissed as the hog turned on the spit, the same way Mack does now. When all is said and done, and the fire has died away, he will collect the charred bones and teeth and bury them.
The air is filled with cloying smoke and the stink of burnt pork, but Lester watches the fire dance long after the stars have come out. He doesn’t know how he got to be so clever.
Harper lies stretched out on Stu’s bed, one leg over his, listening to his breathing as he sleeps. There’s a thin sheet across them—it’s too hot in his apartment to sleep with anything heavier. The fan turns on the ceiling, chomping at the warm air.
She tries to get a fix on what’s going to happen with her and Stu. Was tonight one last fling? Or was it the beginning of a continuation? Harper closes her eyes, tries to switch off, but she can’t. The last thing she wanted to do was get into another full-on relationship. Leaving San Francisco, she’d been happy to call it a day on men for a while. Let her marriage shrink in the distance before she started looking forward to whatever was next.
But I didn’t count on meeting a guy like Stu.
Deep down he is a good person, a caring individual who’s been through the wringer just as she has. It helps that he’s good-looking, too. In a way, they’d needed each other.
Is that all it is? A relationship born of convenience?
Harper looks at him, at his chest rising and falling, at the shadow of the fan intermittently revealing his face and suspending it in shadow in the space of seconds.
No. This is more. We were meant to get together.
Morelli tasked them with getting their heads right, and she knows that none of this will help. It’ll only make matters more complicated. She’d been determined to cool it off between herself and Stu.
Lasted long, didn’t it?
Harper gets up, careful not to wake him, and hunts for her clothes. The clock says 2:00 a.m. She has to get out of there, get to her own place. Dressing in the dark, she looks at Stu and feels her stomach flutter, not only at the sight of him, but at the prospect of being with him. In that moment, Harper almost stays.
But before she can rethink it, she’s out in the street, unlocking her car.
There was no sleep to be found. Harper stops outside Albie’s apartment complex, and he climbs into the passenger seat.
“Morning.”
It’s already light at six in the morning, and Harper has her shades on. “I guess it is.”
Albie looks behind him. “No Stu?”
“Afraid not,” Harper says, putting the car into gear and starting off. “Stu Raley is otherwise indisposed. We’ll shoot over, just the two of us.”
“Okay. And if the captain asks?” Albie asks her.
“I don’t know.” Harper shrugs. “Tell him to kiss your ass?”
“Thanks. Big help.” Albie runs a hand over his face. “Listen, Harper . . . is this, like, off the record?”
“No, we arranged this yesterday.”
He shifts in his seat. “Yeah, I know that. But that was before the Queen Bitch from Satan’s Armpit came in the station and pulled half your scalp out.”
“Don’t sweat it, Albie.”
“I’m not. I’m not. Believe me. But word is Morelli suspended you,” he says. She can hear the uncertainty, the nervousness in his voice.
Harper glances sidelong at him. “It’s only half true. I’m still on the case. It’s all complicated, Albie. Just trust me. Nothing will fall on you.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
Twenty minutes later, they arrive at the residence of Hugo Escovado. Harper sits with her hands on the
steering wheel, regarding the house through the windshield.
Across the road is the patrol car. “Come on, let’s get this done,” she says, climbing out.
She crosses the street, Albie in tow. The two male officers in the black-and-white get out and stretch.
“Ah! If it isn’t Weinberg and Tasker.”
Weinberg tips his hat. “Morning, Detective.”
She looks at his partner, on the other side of the car. “Feeling better now, Tasker?”
“Almost,” he says, embarrassed.
“Where d’you want us?” Weinberg asks her.
Harper thumbs in the direction of the house. “We’re going in there to talk to a suspect. I want you two fine gentlemen to wait at the door. If you hear me shout, one goes in the front door. The other goes round back.”
“Got it. You’re the boss,” Weinberg says.
Harper looks at Albie. “Don’t you say anything.”
“Was I about to?”
Esmerelda Escovado stands to one side and tells them to go on through to the living room.
Harper notices the pictures on the walls. Hugo, his parents, and what looks like a younger sister.
“I’ll just go wake him. He’s still asleep,” Esmerelda says. “Please, sit down. I won’t be a minute.”
Harper smiles. “Thank you.”
There are two sofas and a chair. Albie sits in the chair, and Harper sits on the sofa to the right. When Hugo and his mother come downstairs, they will intuitively choose to sit on the middle sofa, as it’s unoccupied—when you board a bus or train, you hunt for two free seats together. You don’t just sit right next to a stranger . . . unless that’s your thing, of course.
“Detectives, this is my son, Hugo,” Esmerelda says.
Hugo enters the living room sheepishly. “Uh . . . hi.”
Harper nods. “Morning, Hugo. Please, take a seat. I am Detective Jane Harper. That there is Detective Albie Goode. We’re with Hope’s Peak PD.”
Hugo has turned a definite shade of white. He sits down and his mother perches next to him. “Is my son in trouble?”