Angie nodded.
“I’d still like to take a look back there.”
“Be my guest.”
He tipped his hat again and walked back around as we stood on the porch and listened to his footsteps crunch through the frozen grass.
“Where’d Devin get this kid?” Angie said. “Mayberry?”
“Probably a nephew,” I said.
“Of Devin’s?” She shook her head. “No way.”
“Trust me. Devin’s got eight sisters and half of them are nuns. Literally. The other half are married to men who know they take a back seat to the Lord.”
“How’d Devin come out of that gene pool?”
“It’s mystery, I admit.”
“This one’s so innocent and forthright,” she said.
“He’s too young for you.”
“Every boy needs a woman to corrupt him,” she said.
“And you’re just the girl to do it.”
“Bet your ass. Did you see the way those thighs of his moved in those tight pants?”
I sighed.
The flashlight beam preceded Timothy Dunn’s crunching feet as he came back around the house.
“All clear,” he said as we came back out on the steps.
“Thank you, Officer.”
He met her eyes and his pupils dilated, then fluttered to his right.
“Tim,” he said. “Please call me Tim, Miss.”
“Then call me Angie. He’s Patrick.”
He nodded and his eyes glanced guiltily over my face.
“So,” he said.
“So,” Angie said.
“So, I’ll be in the car. If I need to approach the house I’ll call first. Sergeant Amronklin gave me the number.”
“What if the line’s busy?” I said.
He’d thought of that. “Three flashes from my flashlight directed at that window.” He pointed at the living room. “I’ve seen a diagram of the house and that should carry into any room except the kitchen and bathroom. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“And finally, if you’re asleep or don’t see it, I’ll ring the bell. Two short rings. Okay?”
“Sounds good,” I said.
“You’ll be fine,” he said.
Angie nodded. “Thank you, Tim.”
He nodded, but couldn’t meet her eyes. He walked back across the street and down to his car and climbed in.
I grimaced at Angie. “Tim,” I said.
“Oh, shut up.”
“They’ll get over it,” Angie said.
We sat in the dining room talking about Grace and Mae. From there, I could see the dot of red light pulsing from the alarm console by the front door. Instead of reassuring me, it seemed only to underscore our vulnerability.
“No, they won’t.”
“If they love you, they’ll see you were just cracking under stress. Cracking badly, I admit, but cracking.”
I shook my head. “Grace was right. I brought it into her home. And then I became it. I terrified her child, Angie.”
“Kids are resilient,” she said.
“If you were Grace, and I pulled that performance on you, gave your child nightmares for a month probably, what would you do?”
“I’m not Grace.”
“But if you were.”
She shook her head, looked down at the beer in her hand.
“Come on,” I said.
She was still looking at the beer when she spoke. “I’d probably want you out of my life. Forever.”
We moved to the bedroom, sat in chairs on either side of the bed, both of us exhausted but still too wired to sleep.
The rain had stopped and the lights in the bedroom were off as the ice cast silver light against the windows and bathed the room in pearl.
“It’ll eat us eventually,” Angie said. “The violence.”
“I always thought we were stronger than it.”
“You were wrong. It infests you after a while.”
“You talking about me or you?”
“Both of us. Remember when I shot Bobby Royce a few years ago?”
I remembered. “You saved my life.”
“By taking his.” She took a deep drag on her cigarette. “I told myself for years that I didn’t feel what I felt when I pulled the trigger, that I couldn’t have.”
“What’d you feel?” I said.
She leaned forward in the chair, her feet on the edge of the bed, and hugged her knees.
“I felt like God,” she said. “I felt great, Patrick.”
Later, she lay in bed with the ashtray on her abdomen, staring up at the ceiling while I remained in the chair.
“This is my last case,” she said. “Least for a while.”
“Okay.”
She turned her head on the pillow. “You don’t mind?”
“No.”
She blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
“I’m so tired of being scared, Patrick. I’m so tired of all that fear turning into anger. I’m exhausted by how much all of it makes me hate.”
“I know,” I said.
“I’m tired of dealing with psychotics and deadbeats and scumbags and liars on a continual basis. I’m starting to think that’s all there is in the world.”
I nodded. I was tired of it, too.
“We’re still young.” She looked over at me. “You know?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re still young enough to change if we want. We’re young enough to get clean again.”
I leaned forward. “How long have you felt this way?”
“Ever since we killed Marion Socia. Maybe ever since I killed Bobby Royce, I don’t know. But a long time. I’ve felt so dirty for so long, Patrick. And I didn’t used to.”
My voice was a whisper. “Can we get clean, though, Ange? Or is it already too late?”
She shrugged. “It’s worth a try. Don’t you think?”
“Sure.” I reached across and took her hand. “If you think so, it’s worth it.”
She smiled. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
“Back at you,” I said.
“I sat up in Angie’s bed with a start.
“What?” I said, but no one was talking to me.
The apartment was still. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something move. I turned and looked at the far window. As I stared at the frozen panes, dark leaf silhouettes pressed flat against the glass, then snapped back into the darkness as the poplar tree outside bowed in the wind.
I noticed that the red digital numbers of her alarm clock were black.
I found my watch on the dresser, leaned down to catch the icy light from the window: 1:45.
I turned on the bed and lifted the window shade behind me, looked at houses around me. Every light was out, even porch lights. The neighborhood looked like a mountain hamlet, glazed in ice, deprived of electricity.
When the phone rang, it was a shattering sound.
I grabbed it. “Hello.”
“Mr. Kenzie?”
“Yes.”
“Tim Dunn.”
“The lights are out.”
“Yes,” he said. “In pockets all over the city. The ice is turning heavy and yanking down lines, blowing transformers across the state. I’ve apprised Boston Edison of our situation, but it’s still going to take a while.”
“Okay. Thanks, Officer Dunn.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Officer Dunn?”
“Yes?”
“Which of Devin’s sisters is your mother?”
“How’d you know?”
“I’m a detective, remember?”
He chuckled. “Theresa.”
“Ah,” I said. “One of the older sisters. Devin’s afraid of the older ones.”
He laughed softly. “I know. It’s kind of funny.”
“Thanks for looking out for us, Officer Dunn.”
“Any time,” he said. “’Night, Mr. Kenzie.”
I hung up, stared out at the h
ushed mixture of deep black and bright silver and pearl.
“Patrick?”
Her head rose up off the pillow and her left hand pulled a mass of tangled hair off her face. She pushed herself up on an elbow and I was very aware of her breasts moving under her Monsignor Ryan Memorial High School T-shirt.
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“Bad dream?” She sat up, one leg under her, the other slipping out, smooth and bare, from under the sheet.
“I thought I heard something.” I nodded in the direction of the window. “Turned out to be a tree branch.”
She yawned. “I keep meaning to trim that.”
“Lights are out, too. All over town.”
She peeked under the shade. “Wow.”
“Dunn said transformers are blowing all over the state.”
“No, no,” she said abruptly and threw back the sheet, got out of bed. “No way. Too dark.”
She rummaged through her closet until she found a shoebox. She placed it on the floor and pulled out a handful of white candles.
“You want a hand?” I said.
She shook her head and walked around the room, placing the candles in holders and stands I couldn’t see in the dark. She had them tucked everywhere—on the two nightstands, the dresser, the vanity chest. It was almost unsettling to watch her light the wicks, her thumb never once releasing the ignitor on her lighter as she pivoted from one candle to the next until the shadows of flame flickered and expanded against the walls in the light they’d created.
In under two minutes she turned the room into one that resembled a chapel far more than a bedroom.
“There,” she said as she slid back under the covers.
For at least a minute, neither of us said anything. I watched the flames flicker and grow, the warm yellow light play off our flesh, begin to glow in the strands of her hair.
She turned on the bed so that she was facing me, her legs crossed at the knees, tucked against her, the sheet bunched at her waist. She kneaded it between her hands, and tilted her head and shook it so that her hair untangled some more and fell down her back.
“I keep seeing corpses in my dreams,” she said.
“I just see Evandro,” I admitted.
“What’s he doing?” She leaned forward a bit.
“Coming for us,” I said. “Steadily.”
“In my dreams, he’s already arrived.”
“So those corpses…”
“They’re ours.” Her hands clenched together in her lap and she looked at them as if she expected them to tear apart from each other on their own.
“I’m not ready to die, Patrick.”
I sat up against the headboard. “Neither am I.”
She leaned forward. With her hands clenched on her lap and her upper body leaning in toward me, her thick hair framing her face so that I could barely see it, she seemed conspiratorial, vested in secrets she might never share.
“If anyone can get to us—”
“That’s not going to happen.”
She leaned her forehead against mine. “Yes, it is.”
The house creaked, settling another hundredth of an inch closer to the earth.
“We’re ready if he comes for us.”
She laughed and it was a wet, strangled sound.
“We’re basket cases, Patrick. You know it, I know it, and he probably knows it. We haven’t eaten or slept decently in days. He’s screwed us emotionally and psychologically and just about every other way you can think of.” Her damp hands pressed against my cheeks. “If he chooses, he can bury us.”
I could feel tremors, like sudden jolts of electricity, explode under her palms. The heat and blood and tidal tuggings of her body pulsed through her T-shirt and I knew she was probably right.
If he wanted to, he’d bury us.
And that knowledge was so goddamned ugly, so polluted with the basest sort of self-awareness—that we were nothing, any of us, but a pile of organs and veins and muscle and valves hanging suspended in currents of blood within frail, uselessly vain exteriors. And that with a flick of a switch, Evandro could come along and shut us down, turn us off as easily as turning off a light, and our particular pile of organs and valves would cease to function, and the lights would go out and the darkness would be total.
“Remember what we talked about,” I said. “If we die, we’re taking him with us.”
“So what?” she said. “So fucking what, Patrick? I don’t want to take Evandro with me. I simply do not want to die. I want him to leave me alone.”
“Hey,” I said softly. “It’s okay. Come on.”
She smiled sadly at me. “I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s the dead of night and I’m more afraid than I’ve ever been in my life and I’m not up to the tough-guy platitudes right now. They feel terribly hollow lately.”
Her eyes were moist and so were her palms as she pulled them down my cheeks, began to lean back on her haunches.
I caught her hands gently at the wrists, and she leaned forward again. Her right hand moved into my hair, pushing it back off my forehead as she lowered her body onto mine and her thighs slid in between mine and her left foot grazed my right as she pushed the sheet down to the foot of the bed.
A strand of her hair tickled my left eye and we both froze with our faces almost touching. I could smell fear on her breath, fear in our hair, on our skin.
Her dark eyes peered into my face with a mixture of curiosity, determination, and the ghosts of old ancient hurts we never talked about. Her fingers dug deeply into my hair and her pelvic bone drove down against my own.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said.
“No,” I said.
“What about Grace?” she whispered.
I let the question hang there because I didn’t have an answer.
“What about Phil?” I said.
“Phil’s over,” she said.
“There are good reasons we haven’t done this in seventeen years,” I said.
“I know. I’m trying to remember them.”
I raised my hand, pushed it through the hair along her left temple and she nipped at my wrist with her teeth and arched her back, drove her pelvic bone even deeper.
“Renee,” she said and gripped the hair by my temples with a sudden anger.
“Renee’s gone.” I gripped her hair just as roughly.
“You’re so sure?”
“You ever hear me talk about her?” I slid my left leg along the edge of her right, hooked my ankle over hers.
“Conspicuously,” she said. Her left hand slid down my chest, squeezed my hip at the place where bare skin met boxer shorts. “You conspicuously don’t talk about a woman you married.” The heel of her hand nudged an edge of underwear over my hip.
“Ange—”
“Don’t say my name.”
“What?”
“Not when we’re talking about you and my sister.”
There it was. A full decade since we’d so much as broached the subject, and it was back out again with all its sordid implications.
She leaned back until she was sitting on my thighs and my hands had fallen to her hips.
“I’ve paid enough for her,” I said.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “I’m beyond the point of caring about it, though. At the moment anyway.”
“Ange—”
She put a finger to my lips, then she leaned back again and peeled her T-shirt off her body. She tossed it to the side of the bed and grasped my hands and pulled them up over her rib cage and placed them on her breasts.
She lowered her head and her hair fell over my hands. “I’ve missed you for seventeen years,” she murmured.
“Me too,” I said hoarsely.
“Good,” she whispered.
Her hair fell in my face again as her lips hovered over mine and her knees locked against my thighs and pushed my underwear down my legs. Her s
lim tongue flicked against my upper lip. “Good,” she said again.
I raised my head and kissed her. My right hand caught in the tangles of her hair, and as my mouth dropped back from hers, she followed it, closing her lips over it and burying her tongue inside. My hands dropped down her back, the fingers pressing either side of her spinal cord before they hooked under the elastic band of her underpants.
She raised an arm and gripped the headboard, her body rising up mine as my tongue found her throat and my hands turned her underpants into a silk coil that rolled tightly over her hips and the rise of her ass. Her breast sank into my mouth and she gasped slightly, pulled the headboard against the mattress. The heel of her hand ran roughly down my abdomen and into my groin and she kicked at the coil of underwear around her ankles as she lowered herself back down my body.
And the phone rang.
“Fuck ’em,” I said. “Whoever it is.”
Her nose bumped lightly off mine and she groaned and then we both laughed, our teeth an inch apart.
“Help me get these off,” she said. “I’m all tied up down here.”
The phone rang again, loud and shrill.
Our legs and underwear had become completely intertwined and my hand slid down her legs and reached for them and met Angie’s hand down there too and the sudden touch of it was one of the most erotic sensations I’ve ever encountered.
The phone rang again and she arched sideways on the bed as our ankles came free and I could see sweat glistening on her olive skin in the candlelight.
Angie groaned, but it was a groan of pure annoyance and exasperation, and our bodies slid against each other as she reached over me for the phone.
“It could be Officer Dunn,” she said. “Shit.”
“Tim,” I said. “Call him Tim.”
“Fuck you,” she said with a throaty laugh and slapped my chest.
She brought the receiver back over my body with her and fell away from me onto the bed, her olive skin further darkened by the white sheet below it.
“Hello,” she said and blew at wet strands of hair clinging to her forehead.
I could hear the sound of something scratching. Softly, but persistently. I looked at the window to my right, saw the dark leaves scrape the pane.
Scratch, scratch.
Angie’s right leg pulled away from mine, and my flesh suddenly felt cold.
“Phil, please,” she said. “It’s almost two in the morning.”
Darkness, Take My Hand Page 27