When Steve finally turned back, he thanked the doctor and gave me a sad smile. He told me that we had the most family he’d ever imagined for one lifetime. I loved him for what he said, but soon after he stood up and left the room. I had never felt so alone in my life.
When I was alone again, I hid beneath the bedcovers and remembered the days following Katie’s death. I stayed inside the warm, cozy bubble of blankets, closed off from the world around me, thinking about what might have been if I hadn’t lost our baby.
“Katie, will you take care of my baby?” I asked, sending her a prayer and hoping she heard me.
TWENTY-THREE
“I’M READY TO GO,” I said, sounding impatient while Steve tuned to a different channel on the television set. The television’s speaker spat tinny static while the screen filled with a rumbly snow. “Did you hear me? Where are my clothes?”
“Almost have it,” he answered—a baseball game appeared briefly, an umpire yelling the batter’s count. “Ha! See that? Much better.”
“My clothes?
“Too soon,” he answered without turning around. “You know what the doctors said. I mean, with a fever, they’re not going to let you come home, babe.”
“You mean the fever they gave me,” I countered, annoyed at having picked up the flu. But it wasn’t just the flu. I knew that. I’d picked up something else too: a small infection around the incisions. Feverish and with a chill, I was sick.
“No clothes here anyway,” he continued, turning back just as the screen filled with snow. “Damn it!”
The television’s hissing and Steve’s complaining grated on my nerves. I pushed buttons on the remote with my thumb, shutting it off, bringing quiet to the room. He turned back with a childish pout, disappointed I’d taken his plaything away from him. I patted my bed.
“Just sit with me. Tell me about your day.” He moved to the chair next to me, but stood behind it, fidgeting and scanning the room and darting looks out the window. I knew the hospital was making him uncomfortable—bringing back memories of being shot, of nearly dying. I could see it in the way he clutched his leg, covering a wound that had already healed, protecting it like a gem. The television had kept him busy, kept his mind occupied. I needed to get his mind clear of where it was going. “And what do you mean, no clothes?”
“Home,” he answered, finally sitting down. I leaned over the edge of the bed, stretching my hand to take his. I winced at a fresh ache in my side. “You okay?”
“Just sore,” I told him, but a knifing throb came next. The infection wasn’t getting any better. “Can you bring me some clothes when you come back? Doubt you’d want me going home in this thing.” I pushed the thin gown against my chest, giving him something playful to see, though I didn’t feel playful.
He nodded and joked, “Maybe keep the gown? I especially like how it opens in the back.” He smacked his lips, playing along.
“I’ll leave it open for you,” I answered, flicking my brow up and down. It felt good to joke, particularly to make bedroom jokes. We hadn’t talked once about not having any more children. The silence sat heavy like dreadful news I had to give. The playful banter was one thing, but I had no idea how we’d ever approach sex again. “And some makeup too? Bring my travel bag with you. I’m not going outside looking like this.”
“How about your ring?” he asked, putting on an ugly grimace. I sat up, reaching to turn Needle, but found only a bare finger. I’d had my ring at the club, played with her as I danced with Theresa. Faint images shuffled in my head, and I saw myself on the dance floor. I saw Needle, a strobe light glinting off its sharp point. The muddled images of the night went black then, and my memory filled with glaring red lights and the shrill of a siren. “What a God-awful, ugly thing that is.”
“Hey . . .” I said, raising my voice and trying to sound hurt. I had to think of what to tell him. From his reaction, it was clear he had no idea what it really was, had no idea there was a deadly syringe buried inside. “Watch it. That ring was the last gift Katie ever gave to me. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—or something like that. It’s special to me.”
Steve pressed his lips together, turning them white, his face filling with his typical apologetic I’m-a-dope expression. “I’m . . . I’m sorry, babe.” The humor in his voice was gone. “Really. I had no idea.”
I shook my head, playing the hurtful role in the scene I’d staged. “It’s not exactly my style, but I like to wear it.” I told him. “Can you bring it?”
He agreed, adding, “Still ugly, though.”
“Hey!” I warned again, and jokingly raised my hand.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said. His face lit up as he pulled a small sheaf of papers from his jacket.
He shifted from the chair over to my bed—the single motion was smooth and without effort. As he settled next to me, I curled myself around him and encouraged him to lean back. He did, and I felt whole. The unfurled papers fought against his hands, wrapping around his fingers while he pressed to hold them open. But I saw enough on the face of the first page to make my heart swell with excitement for him. I shook against a passing shiver and huddled closer, stealing his heat.
“First one. My first law-school paper—got a B! I’m officially a law student.”
“Babe, that’s awesome,” I told him, motioning to my lips for a kiss. “How’d you like writing it?”
“You know, it wasn’t all that bad . . .” he began, talking as he rocked his head on his shoulders. “Don’t get me wrong, hated the writing part. But having been a detective for so long, I found I only needed to change my viewpoint—give it a lawyer’s perspective. So that’s what I wrote.” He traced the waxy-red, penned grade with his finger, admiring it like a boy winning his first trophy. A sting came to my eyes, and I pushed myself up to hug him. “I can do this, Amy. I don’t think I’ll need to be a cop forever.”
“You’re right,” I told him. He looked at me with a confidence and sense of accomplishment I hadn’t seen since he’d passed his detective’s exam. I took his face in my hands and added, “I know you can do this.”
TWENTY-FOUR
THE DAYS GREW LONG as I sat in the hospital and waited for nothing to happen. I felt like a butterfly trapped in a mason jar, bouncing off the glass, desperate to get out. And the doctors? To them I was a butterfly and they were the children who had captured me; they passed me around, poking and prodding. I could tell they were bored of me as well, and that was okay. Every day I’d ask if that day was the day I could leave, and every day they’d tell me, “We’ll see about tomorrow.”
Tomorrow never came. I wanted to go home, though. I needed to go home.
“Can I get some aspirin?” I asked, motioning to indicate a headache.
“Let me see what I can give you, dear,” a nurse answered, trading glances between me and the program on the television screen. When she disappeared I fumbled for the television’s remote, hit the power button before her return. The screen went dark, leaving behind a faint mirror image of my room.
“Time for some sleep?” she asked when she returned, disappointment on her face.
“Something like that,” I answered, taking the aspirin and chasing them with a gulp of water. A chill instantly ran through me, giving me a fresh shiver. Fever played with my body, keeping me cold while I sweated like an icy drink sitting in the sun. The nurse saw me shiver and helped with the blankets before leaving me alone to gaze out my window. The truth was, I couldn’t sleep—but I didn’t tell her that. I closed my eyes and listened to her scratch a new note in my chart, flipping the pages before leaving.
“I am the butterfly in the jar,” I muttered into my pillow, feeling choked with loneliness and self-pity. “And the butterfly always dies.”
“Butterfly?” I heard a strange voice and tried to sit up. My incisions echoed a painful jab, slowing me. “Maybe because you’re leaving the window open.”
“Brian!” I said, smiling at the sight of Nerd.
I did a double take. It was his voice, but his hair had been neatly combed back and he was dressed for a night out.
Must be a dinner date, I thought, immediately jealous. Becky the librarian? I wondered next.
“Don’t you look all spiffy when you’re not hiding behind your computer?”
“They must have you on some decent drugs, if you’re calling me by my name,” he answered, but then jokingly turned to his side and modeled his outfit. “Had some help, but that’s a story for another time,” he confessed.
“Why another time?” I asked, wanting to hear more. “Please, do tell.”
“It can wait. I have to talk to you.”
“Come here,” I said. There was urgency in his voice, but I ignored it and held my hands out to hug him. Admittedly, the hug was a touch out of character for me, and he hesitated. “I think you’re right. They’ve got me on the giddy stuff—take advantage of the moment.”
“I will,” he answered. He sat down on the edge of my bed and got right to business, slipping a computer tablet over the sheets. With a push of the home button the screen came alive, prompting me for a code. “You’ll want this while you’re away from the office.”
I held the tablet, my hands trembling. Brian noticed. Embarrassed, I laughed it off, explaining: “Must be the drugs.” I shook my hands to get the jitters out and perched my finger over the display. “I can pick any code?”
“Something only you’d know,” he confirmed. The urgency in his tone returned, telling me there was a problem.
I quickly put in six digits, using what would have been the birth date of our unborn child. The emotion was still fresh, like my scars. It was a date only I’d know, and one that would stay with me forever.
“What am I looking at?” I asked. The screen refreshed with a listing I didn’t recognize. The tablet was light enough, but my hands continued to shake and Brian took hold of one end to steady the screen. He pointed at the left-hand column, showing me street addresses and long numbers that could have been computer MAC addresses. But these numbers were different.
“Those are vehicle identification numbers,” he began. “The addresses of where the vehicles are located.”
“VINs?” I asked, my gut soured then, as I realized why he came to talk to me. “You’re talking about the cars and the list I sent you?”
“Your husband,” he exclaimed reluctantly. “Not just him, actually. This is a full-on investigation. They’re working a list from the DMV.”
I thought back to the pictures of the tire treads, and asked, “How did they go from tires to actual cars?”
“Not like the old days. Today, every tire is searchable online. A simple query and you’ve got a list of car models that used them and their years. Another search against the DMV, and you’ve got addresses.”
“Like a glass slipper,” I mumbled, realizing that what couldn’t be solved easily thirty years ago was a few keystrokes away today.
Nerd swiped the screen, and images of cars appeared. Fat cars, skinny cars, all of them from an era I only remembered through classic songs heard over the radio. Two screens in, I saw my mother’s car again. This time, though, I didn’t see just a Xerox photocopy like I’d seen in Steve’s file—it was my parents’ old car. Nerd swiped, showing another blur of rusted car bodies and broken windshields. I lifted his hand from the screen and swiped back to the picture of our station wagon.
Suddenly, I was tiny again and huddled on the car’s floor, hidden behind the tall vinyl seats, waiting for my mother to motion to me, to tell me when to act. The smell of diesel fuel and cigarette smoke filled my nose. The skin on my legs stung, rubbed raw from the scratchy floor mats. The memory of creaking leather and the cut of my father’s belt on my palms made me reel. I wanted to throw the tablet from my lap.
“You know, don’t you?” Nerd asked. His voice was thin, like a breath, a whisper. A sense of paranoia came over me, wondering if he’d discovered my secrets. Maybe he had. Maybe he’d followed Steve’s lead and finished putting the puzzle together. “You know what your husband is looking for.”
“I do,” I answered sadly, searching his eyes.
He put his hand on mine, touched my finger to the glass, made it press on the picture of my parents’ station wagon. The screen flashed, zooming out to show a list of dates and addresses. My mother’s address was listed first, right next to my father’s name as the owner.
“That was your father’s car,” Nerd confirmed.
“My mother drove it,” I corrected him. “My father had a small red coupe . . . but I can’t remember the make.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he told me. “It’s the station wagon your husband is interested in. Amy, this isn’t the only thing he’s been trying to track down.”
“What else?” I asked, finding I couldn’t bring myself to look away from the station wagon. I hadn’t been inside the car since I was a child but I remembered every detail, every scratch, every dent.
How many men?
“What else does Steve know?”
Brian leaned back and dug out his phone, tapped the screen to bring up a list of notes. “I’ve been following his online activity—spying so to speak. He’s been digging through a collection of unsolved murder cases: dates, times, locations, autopsy reports. Everything. They’re all connected.” He tapped and swiped and opened another note, turning the phone sideways to show me a picture of a corporate identification badge. And at the center of the laminated badge I saw a grainy photo of my father.
“My father?” I asked, confused. I knew the picture: it was his work ID, it’d hung inside a plastic pocket protector for as long as I could remember. “How in the world did you find that?”
“You’d be surprised what companies keep. They don’t delete anything . . . and I mean nothing,” he answered. His voice lifted—he was proud of his latest hack. When he saw my face, though, he quieted down. “The police investigation includes your father’s records, all the traveling he did, all the sales he made.”
“Travel records?” I asked, still confused. Images spun into motion, making it hard to focus. I saw my father’s luggage at our front door. I saw him leaving for the airport, going to some faraway place where he’d pick up a new teddy bear or a T-shirt for me. “My dad? He traveled for work . . . traveled a lot. Computers or something like that.”
“Yeah, you might say that,” Nerd began.
“What do you mean?”
Nerd belched a short guffaw, “Don’t you know?” he asked. I shook my head. Confused. “Your father helped to build the mainframe industry. He’s responsible for putting them in over half the banks across the country.”
“Oh,” I whispered. “I knew he traveled a lot.” I was repeating myself. I was fading, my fever rising.
“Amy?” Nerd asked, but I couldn’t answer while staring at the tablet. “This can wait till later.”
“No!” I barked. “Sorry. No. Please, tell me everything.”
He swiped the screen and showed me the picture of a church. Dilapidated and abandoned, the windows gone, leaving black holes like empty eyes, the wood slats beneath rotted and creased into a crooked frown.
“That’s where it is.”
“That place looks abandoned.”
“Abandoned a long time now, but it was an active congregation when your father donated the station wagon to it.” Nerd flipped back and ran his finger down the screen, stopping on the mileage and the year. “Not sure why he wouldn’t have sold the car. It wasn’t that old.”
“With the church abandoned, the car has got to be gone by now.”
Another hand swipe and pictures of men flew across the screen. They wore the same death-filled faces I’d seen spill out of Steve’s case file.
“Your husband has something that links the station wagon to these unsolved murders. Something more than just tire tracks. Maybe motor oil—maybe a sort of DNA test for oil brand. Whatever he’s found, it’s enough to lead him to your parent’s station wagon.”
&nbs
p; “Are you’re saying the car is still around?” I asked, disbelieving. He nodded. “Impossible.”
“I thought so too, so I decided to make a call and find out for myself. It’s there. See, behind there?” he asked, pointing to a corner of the photo. Beneath his finger, I saw a barn. “The son of the pastor told me that the church’s station wagon was parked inside there. Been there for as long as he could remember. His father kept it clean and covered, but stopped driving when a stroke took his driver’s license.”
“And it is still there . . .” I said again, sliding my finger over the image, sounding more convinced. “After all this time.”
“Amy?” Nerd said, dipping his chin low enough to meet my eyes. “Amy, what’s your husband going to find inside?”
I considered his question, considered who we were and whether I could trust him enough to tell the truth. I bit my lip, casting my gaze from the tablet to Nerd and back. “I don’t know,” I finally answered, deciding there was little to gain in telling him more than he already knew. “Best to let this play out. I guess he’s going to find what he’s going to find.”
“I can go to the car and search it,” he offered. “Just a few hours from here.”
It was a kind offer, but he’d never be able to remove all the traces of DNA that must have still been in there. I shook my head and asked, “Would you do something else?”
“What?”
“Burn it, Brian. Burn it!” I answered, raising my chin and meeting him with a hard stare.
He moved back quickly, leaning far enough away to lose hold of the tablet. I gripped the metal and glass, holding it while keeping my eyes fixed with his. I could tell he was thinking it through, thinking about it as though he was working a problem in his code.
Affair with Murder The Complete Box Set Page 37