Steel Breeze

by Douglas Wynne

  Karen’s footsteps creaked softly on the carpeted stairs. She entered the study and set a steaming cup of coffee on the desk and a gentle hand on Phil’s shoulder. He touched the hand with his own and squeezed her fingers.

  “You could watch him from the chair in his room, you know,” Karen said.

  Lucas was sleeping in Sandy’s old bedroom, where they now kept a treadmill and a guitar Phil could play a few chords on. Today they would ask Lucas what he wanted the room to look like because it would be his own room for a while. Then they would make a list of things they needed for him.

  “I don’t want to disturb him,” Phil said.

  “I don’t know how you get any comfort from watching that thing.”

  “Can’t say I do.”

  “Isn’t it a little creepy, him looking like he’s on one of those tapes you used to have to watch after a robbery?”

  Phil took a sip of the coffee. “It’s not like that. We haven’t seen him much since Sandy died. It’s just good to see him at all. He’s gotten so big.”

  “He has. But this…him being here, it isn’t about seeing him more.”

  “I know.”

  Karen’s hand tightened on his shoulder, and she asked a question that Phil knew she probably wouldn’t have asked if they’d been looking at each other instead of at the boy on the monitor: “Do you think Desmond did it? Do you think he killed her?”

  “He asked me that himself last night.”

  “Not in front of Lucas.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “No you don’t think he did it?”

  “No, he didn’t ask me in front of Lucas. I don’t know if he did it. I can’t rule it out, but I think…no.”

  “But you don’t think he’s stable.”

  “Do you?”

  She sighed, but didn’t answer the question.

  “He’s been through a lot,” Phil said.

  “And he has a very active imagination,” Karen said, “I think that’s what Sandy fell in love with.”

  “It’s getting the better of him. His judgment’s no good.”

  “You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself of that.”

  “No, I’m convinced. Even if Harwood is the wrong guy, which is a really big ‘if,’ but just supposing Desmond is right and the killer is still out there…then this is the safest place for Lucas, not some slum-lord special on the beach.”

  “I did worry about Lucas getting into the water with the riptide while his father had his nose in a book or a laptop.”

  “See? No matter how you look at it, he’s safer here.”

  “But judges don’t take kids away from their parents just because the house doesn’t have cameras and alarms, or because it’s too close to the beach, Phil.”

  Phil took another sip of coffee.

  Karen took her hand off his shoulder.

  He cocked his head in her direction, but kept his eyes on the screen.

  Karen asked, “What do you think Sandy would say about what we’re doing?”

  “Don’t forget about the sword, Karen. He got it out of storage and brought it into the house. Tell me Lucas wasn’t in a dangerous environment.”

  “And we only know about that because of all this spying.”

  “Thank heaven we know.”

  She left the room as quietly as she had entered.

  Phil opened the home security program and changed a few settings. After Sandy’s death he’d dumped a lot of money into upgrades. He’d been too tired to change the settings last night after finally getting Lucas to sleep, but tonight, and every night after, he wanted the lights to come on in the master bedroom if Lucas woke up and left his room to go to the bathroom or for a drink of water. The boy was going to be feeling vulnerable, now more than ever with neither parent around to tend to his needs. Phil would rise at any hour to make sure that Lucas didn’t feel alone.

  The smell of breakfast drifted up from the kitchen, and Phil’s stomach groaned in reply. Within a couple of seconds, Lucas also groaned—Phil could hear the sound from down the hall while he watched Lucas on the monitor: kicking, rolling onto his stomach, and then propping himself up on his elbows, blinking at the unfamiliar bedroom. Good timing. Phil closed the security program, rolled his chair away from the desk, and ambled down the hall with his coffee mug in hand. Lucas stood in the doorway of the spare bedroom, looking groggy.

  “Papa,” he said.

  “Good morning, champ. You sleep okay?”

  Lucas nodded slightly, staring at a spot on the carpet. Then he shivered and said, “I hafta pee.”

  “Okay, let’s go to the potty. You know the way.”

  Toddling down the hall with his grandfather’s hand on the back of his head, Lucas said, “I want Daddy.”

  “We’ll see about that, we’ll see. You like French toast and bacon? Nana made some.”

  * * *

  They ate in silence until the doorbell chimed. Phil and Karen exchanged a look of alarm.

  “Daddy!” Lucas said as he hopped down from his seat and ran to the window. Phil made it to the door almost as fast.

  “It’s not Daddy. Why isn’t it Daddy, Papa?”

  Phil could see Chuck Fournier’s black Corvette through the leaded glass panes. He opened the door on Fournier—freshly shaven and dressed in a pistachio green short-sleeved shirt and a yellow tie. On his way to work or church, or maybe church followed by work.

  “Morning, Phil. I was in the neighborhood. Heard it went down pretty easy last night, but I wanted to check in anyway. Mind if I come in?”

  Phil hesitated, then opened the door wider and stepped aside. “I thought you might be him,” Phil said, and tilted his head in Lucas’s direction to indicate the need for cautious words. “If he does drop by, it might not go so smoothly today if he sees your car in the driveway before he even gets to the door.”

  “I’ll only stay for a minute. Hi, Karen. Hey, Lucas! Remember me? You helped us draw a picture the other day.”

  Lucas stepped behind Karen’s leg and grasped a few inches of her blouse. Phil was relieved the kid didn’t go whole hog and revert to sucking his thumb. But that might be next if the world didn’t stop shifting under his feet.

  “Something smells good,” Fournier said.

  “Come in and have a seat, Chuck,” Karen said, “I’ll zap some of that French toast for you. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Thanks, but no. I'm trying to cut back. Already had one. But the bacon sure smells good. And do I see eggs?” He lifted the corner of a red-plaid cloth napkin and peered into a steaming bowl while Karen laid a clean plate down in front of a vacant chair and said, “Just some left over from the French toast that I scrambled up. Help yourself.”

  Lucas hovered by his own chair where strips of French toast were getting cold on an Elmo plate beside a glass of apple juice. He watched Fournier settle in and frowned. “Nana, can I do my puzzle in the den?”

  “Three more bites of French toast and you can.”

  Lucas picked up a strip and made two small, quick chomps, chewed enough to make room for the third bite, then fulfilled the contract. “Make sure you chew it,” Karen said as Lucas ran from the room. Karen followed.

  “You might not see Desmond today, after all.” Fournier said around a mouthful of eggs and bacon. “I just got a call from a friend at Cedar Junction. Apparently Desmond has an appointment to visit Greg Harwood today. Set it up yesterday, and he hasn't called to cancel after what happened last night. Not yet, anyway. Must be pretty important to him.”

  “You're shitting me.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why would he want to do that?”

  “Well…. My first thought is that Des wants to see if Harwood’s coherent enough to contradict anything he might say about that night now that it’s under the microscope again.“

  “Is it? Are you reopening the case?”

  “No. Not unless he does something really stupid. Which he might.”

&nb
sp; Phil took the last two pieces of bacon before Fournier could. He wasn't really hungry anymore, just didn't want to watch Fournier eat them.

  “Okay,” Phil said, “So that's your first thought…. One thing I learned on the job is that first thoughts are usually wrong. Do you have a second thought?”

  “You don’t think he killed Sandy,” Fournier said in a low monotone that still sounded too loud to Phil with Lucas in the next room. He could hear Karen and Lucas talking about the puzzle, her leaving enough space in the conversation to maybe listen in, and no TV in the background.

  Phil was getting tired of the question, but he supposed it was the price of taking guardianship. “You need to understand that Karen and I aren't trying to open that wound. That is not what this is about. It's about Lucas and keeping him safe. Desmond...he's acting erratically, and I can't say why, but I had to get Lucas out of there.”

  They sat in silence. Karen said something about looking for a corner piece with blue on it. Phil took a bite of bacon. It tasted bitter.

  “Did Desmond tell you that he also visited Salerno's karate studio?”

  “Isn't that an Aikido place?”

  “Same diff. Did you know?”

  “No, I didn't.” This was getting stranger.

  “He's revisiting the case. So am I, unofficially.”

  “Are you ready for the avalanche of shit you're going to bring down on yourself if word gets out that a detective thinks Harwood may be innocent?“

  “Nothing's getting out, Phil.”

  “What if he's right?”

  “I don't follow.”

  “What if Desmond isn't losing his grip?” Phil asked, “What if someone else did kill Sandy…someone who's still out there?”

  “Think about Sandy, Phil. I knew her since we were kids, and she didn't have an enemy in the world. If the crazy man we picked up with the murder weapon didn't do it, then it had to be the crazy man she was married to, who by the way already had the weapon in his possession. A third man is one too many. You know it is.”

  Phil nodded.

  Chuck Fournier slid his chair back, stood up, and reached across the table for a handful of blueberries. He stuffed them into his mouth and brushed the water droplets off his hand with two swipes across his pants. “I’ll be in touch.”

  Chapter 12

  It rained all the way down Route 495 and showed no signs of letting up in South Walpole. Cedar Junction Correctional Facility came up on the left, looking like it had been in the rain since the day it was built. The white limestone façade and concrete steps were stained with rust trails running from every iron light fixture and handrail. A pair of flags, limp and drenched, flanked the path. Razor wire spilled over the walls like rampant vines.

  Climbing the steps with his notebook in hand, Desmond peeled a sticker off the thigh of the khakis he had bought for the visit (he had learned from the website that jeans weren’t allowed). Dark raindrops speckled the fabric in pinpoints, exploding outward in a way that faintly reminded him of the flashbulbs that had left purple splotches on his field of vision the last time he’d been this close to Greg Harwood, at the sentencing.

  Desmond had avoided most of the trial. He’d told himself at the time that grieving or not, he had a child to support and had to go to work. But Principal Rosenbaum would have understood if he’d taken the time off to attend. Instead, he had immersed himself in work and kept the TV off during the news hour every night. As a writer, Desmond knew that conflict and confrontation were the twin engines of character building. In life, he did his damnedest to avoid both.

  Now he was finally going to see the man condemned for killing his wife, and where was his righteous rage? Where was his personal breakthrough to a new stratum of courage? He wasn’t here to finally face a monster. He was entering this dungeon with pen, not sword, because of his growing certainty that the monster wasn’t sequestered within its walls after all, and he supposed that made him still a coward. He dropped his hand into his pocket where the fountain pen rested (tip up to avoid staining the new pants) and jabbed his thumb on its sharp point, a self-punishing jolt that snapped him into the present moment.

  Inside, the prison reminded him of every public school he’d ever worked in—all cinderblock and tile, iron radiators and plenty of clocks, every surface covered with industrial gray or blue paint that was probably applied annually to cover the grime. Not a soft surface in the place or a scrap of fabric that wasn’t on someone’s body. All bright, echoing spaces.

  Desmond hoped the guards wouldn’t confiscate his pen and notebook, but it was the first thing they did before they led him to the visitors’ room and left him standing beside a plastic chair in front of a window and a metal box that cradled a beige phone connected by a flexible steel cable. Desmond sat down as Harwood entered through a door beyond the glass. The prisoner kept his eyes fixed on the floor until he was settled in his seat. He shot a nervous glance at Desmond and then looked down at his hands, folded in front of him on the counter. He was dressed in an orange DOC smock that reminded Desmond of doctor’s scrubs. His short gray hair, glasses, and slim frame completed the association. If life had dealt Harwood a different hand, if he hadn’t fallen on hard times and hard liquor, maybe he would have ended up in a different institution, working as an orderly or a nurse, in a hospital, taking his smock off at the end of the day, and leaving echoing halls of human suffering behind. It was a habit for Desmond to free associate like this, a writer’s game, placing people in imaginary scenarios inspired by details. He couldn’t help it.

  Harwood picked up the phone and listened, but didn’t look up. Desmond thought he looked like he was bracing himself to hear whatever the husband of the victim needed to say, had resigned himself out of duty to give Desmond a target for whatever that might be, but was limiting the interaction to simply taking the blow. He didn’t have to make eye contact, didn’t have to speak. He just had to show up, sit down, and take it.

  “Do you know who I am?” Desmond said into the phone.

  “You’re the husband,” Harwood said without looking up.

  “Whose husband?”

  Harwood’s eyelids fluttered. “You want me say I’m sorry?”

  “Are you?”

  “If you want.”

  “Don’t tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me what you remember about that night, now that you’re cleaned up and you’ve had time to think about it.”

  “Don’t remember much.”

  “Did you break into my house and then kill my wife in the backyard?”

  Harwood’s fingers tightened around the phone, and his eyes met Desmond’s. “You tell me. You were there, you tell me. Did I do those things? Did I kill her?”

  “I was sleeping.”

  “Maybe I was too. ‘Member waking up with that sword in my hand, all sticky from blood….”

  “Where were you when you woke up?”

  “My camp.”

  “Is that all you remember?”

  Harwood looked down again, a faraway look in his eyes. He scratched the chest of his orange smock.

  “Did you see anyone else? Anyone who didn’t live in the camp?”

  “Used to see all kinds of things when I was using. Don’t anymore.”

  “What did you see…when you woke up, what did you see?”

  “I think I told the police about it back then. Don’t ‘member much now.”

  “Tell me. Please.”

  “Mister Carmichael, if I killed your wife, I’m sorry. I don’t think I woulda meant to hurt a woman like that. I musta mistaken her for somethin’ else. I have a daughter, you know.”

  “I know. They told me she visits you.”

  Harwood nodded. His skin was as pale as paper, laced with a filigree of blown blood vessels like some indecipherable script, but now it flushed scarlet. He said, “Been good for me in that one way. I don’t think she’d know me if I wasn’t in here.”

  “Who did you see when you woke up holding the sword?”r />
  “Reapers,” Harwood whispered fiercely.

  “Reapers?”

  “Death angels in black skirts, faces like…all clouds and teeth. Like what you call wrath o’ God.”

  “Angels. There was more than one?”

  Harwood nodded. “Don’t angels come in pairs? Other one stood back from the firelight, in the shadows.”

  “Did they say anything to you?”

  “Said I done the deed, killed a lady. He had my Bible in his hand; only thing I kept from my mother. Angel handed it to me, told me I should repent, confess it, else they was gonna do my kin like I done that lady.”

  “You’re sure there were two of them?” Desmond felt the fingers on the phone going cold.

  Harwood’s face twisted with a wry smile. “People say drunks see double…but I never did.”

  * * *

  When Desmond got back to the car, his cell phone was vibrating in the glove box. There was a missed call and a voice message. At first he thought it might be the Parsons or their lawyer trying to establish the rules of engagement, but the number wasn’t from a local area code. He played the voicemail.

  “Mr. Carmichael, my name is Erin Drelick and I’m a Special Agent with the FBI. I have a question for you related to a case I’m working on. Please call me at your earliest convenience.”

  Desmond took the recently confiscated and returned pen from his pocket, played the message again, and jotted down the number she spoke at the end, just in case. Then he checked it against the one in the phone’s memory and hit SEND. The same soft, professional voice greeted him after one ring. “Mr. Carmichael. Thanks for getting back to me so soon.”

  “Sure. How can I help you?”

  “Ordinarily I like to have this sort of conversation in person, but I’m with the bureau in California, so you’ll understand why that’s not possible.”

  “Okay….”

  “I’m working on a case that has some similarity to that of your wife. Are you familiar with the murder of a California man named Geoff Lamprey?”