Bad People (43 page)

“Ankle still bothering you?” Until Tommy saw Ethan limp, he’d forgotten Ethan sprained it in a foot chase a week ago.

“It’s nothing,” said Ethan.

“Nothing hell. You’re getting old, son. If you want I’ll warm a little milk up in a saucepan for you. Like
my
mommy used to do for me.”

“You’re mommy wasn’t as ugly as you are, was she?”

Tommy laughed and grabbed a dishtowel.

When the dishes were done, Tommy and Ethan bullshitted awhile longer in the kitchen, then moved to the living room, where Ethan had another root beer. Then Ethan stretched, yawned, and looked around for his coat.

“Conversation is only as interesting as it’s weakest participant,” said Tommy.

Ethan smiled and got to his feet.

Tommy’s cell rang. It had fallen out of his pocket and between the cushions. He must have forgotten to turn it off. He fished it out of the couch and looked at it.

“Is it work?” asked Ethan.

“If it is, I don’t recognize the number.”

“Leave it if you don’t want to answer,” said Ethan.

Tommy was congenitally unable to leave a phone to ring, and Ethan probably knew that. Tommy pushed the green button with his index finger and then put the phone to his ear.

He knew the voice on the other end, knew it immediately.

He shot a glance at Ethan, and the glance must have telegraphed his interest, because Ethan put his coat back down and got interested too.

“Uh,” said Tommy to the voice. “Yes, I remember, you.” He listened with half his attention, and watched Ethan watching me, with the rest of it.

“Calm down,” he said. “… and when was this? No. I see. I’m listening…Don’t do that, just stay where you are. That’s not important now…. Okay what’s the address? No, I’m coming. I am coming…. Right.”

He turned off the phone.

“What’s up?” asked Ethan.

Tommy called upstairs. “Chrystal! Ethan and I are going out! You need anything I’m on the cell okay?”

“Where are we going?” Ethan asked.

“You remember the Wexler case? Connie Wexler. Gal and her partner killed her husband last summer?”

“And?”

“That was her.”

“She confess?”

“Not entirely. She thinks her son is in danger.”

“You didn’t tell her to call 911,” said Ethan.

“She gave up the accomplice, the business partner, and a third person.”

“Just like that? Now on the phone? Why did she do that?”

“She’s hysterical. Sounds like the whole thing is unraveling. She thinks this other guy is coming after her. She’s home alone. And she’s afraid for her son.”

“So she should definitely call 911.”

“I think we need to go pick her up. Without unis.”

“Oh yeah?” said Ethan. He was listening hard, but he looked away, like he knew he wasn’t going to like what he was about to hear.

“Supposedly this other guy has the gun.”

“
The
gun? Wasn’t that a strangling?”

“The gun that was in the home. The gun he couldn’t get to because it was locked in his office, and the murder happened in the garage?”

“So?”

“The gun I snatched out of impound and gave to her the night I busted into her apartment. The gun I hoped she’d freak out and spill her guts over. Now this accomplice has it in his possession. Stole it from her, she says.”

“You never said anything to me about giving her no gun.”

“No. I didn’t, did I.”

Ethan shook his head. He took his service revolver and holster out of his jacket, and clipped the holster to his belt. “Sounds like kind of a mess you made, Tommy.”

It was.

Chapter 48: Connie

Connie, already on her knees, doubled over now, and drove her fists into her gut. She had dropped her phone. When she picked it up again the line was dead. She had every reason to suspect that what Barry said was a lie: a demented lie conjured up by whatever emotional disturbance had taken him over.

Only she knew that, though it was madness, it was no lie.

Luke’s behavior after seeing Barry in the lobby made sense now.

Things fell into place, like the moon crossing over the sun, stopping there, leaving the world in perfect darkness. She dug into the carpet with her nails, which tore and broke. She wanted her hands around Barry’s neck. If only she had known when he was lying there in a pool of his own blood, a pool of his own tepid cuts. No wonder he wanted to die. And he should die. She thought about the shotgun in Barry’s garage.

Would she have had the courage to go in there and get it for him? She would have lain it at his feet. Told him to finish the job. Shoot her or himself, which didn’t matter. This was hell.

She needed Stephen-David. She needed her son safe, even though he was blissfully unaware of what had happened.

She envied him. She wished she could shield him from this, but how was that possible? Barry had been like an uncle to him growing up. At times. It was too much, but she knew she had to get out of the house now.

Because of Luke.

And the whole black truth.

But he could come back. She needed to protect herself from that. Another fear shot through her.

Like a bullet.

She
couldn’t
leave.

She couldn’t do anything until she found Stephen-David. If he came home and Luke came back….

She didn’t know which way to look. Panic, the feeling of being buried, overcame her, the weight of the air crushed on her body. This was what came of being a bad mother, all kinds of a bad person. She couldn’t even find her son now to tell him to stay away from her.

She grabbed the phone again.

Her hands shook so hard she was unable to find the right button for what felt like minutes. She steadied the phone in both hands, speaking to herself. “Call Stephen-David,” she told herself.

He is there, he will answer this time
, she told herself.
He will answer. Then call the police and tell them everything you know.

The phone rang. It rang. “Please pick up, please please,” she said to the rings. Four rings. Stephen David’s voice mail recording. She bellowed into the phone. She must have sounded half insane, but it didn’t matter. If it scared him, all the better. “Stephen-David, wherever you are. Don’t come home until you hear from me. Or the police. Don’t go to Barry’s for any reason. Stay away from Barry, stay away from Luke. If you see either of them, call the police! Call the police!”

She ended the call, ran into her bedroom, went through the desk and found one of the cards one of the detectives had given her. It belonged to the older detective. The fat, hulking, bleary man who had come to her house, broke in that night. She wanted the other detective’s card but she couldn’t find it. She called the fat man’s number. They would listen to her. They would know what she was talking about and they hated her, so they would come.

The fat man picked up and she tried to get her story out, but he kept interrupting to tell her to talk slower, to calm down.

But they were coming. That was the main thing, the only thing that mattered. To keep Luke and Barry away from Stephen-David.

Connie wiped her eyes and her nose on her sleeve. She tried Stephen-David’s phone again. Please, please, please, she thought.

An answer.

The girl, but this time she spoke: a soft little voice, frightened. Connie tried not to let this girl’s fear echo back in her own voice. She tried.

“H-hello,” said Connie. “This is S/D’s mom. Is—is…I’m calling to see if you guys are all right. Is S/D there?”

“He’s here,” said the girl. “I know who you are.”

That was strange. “May I speak to him please?”

“N-no,” said the girl. “Not right now. You should come pick him up. He’s okay—he’s okay, but well you should just come pick him up.”

“Let me speak to him,” said Connie. She tried to use calming tones, to no further spook the spooked girl.

“I can’t.” The girl started to cry. “I can’t but he’s okay, Connie. You need to come pick him up. He’s okay, but you need to hurry. Really, really hurry.”

The way the girl spoke her name disturbed Connie. Not a surprise that she knew it, not if she were a friend of S/D’s but it was the way she said it. Not the inflection of a high school girl talking to a boyfriend’s Mom. The inflection of an adult.

“Where are you?” Connie asked the girl.

There was a pause.

“Please,” said Connie. “I’ll come. Tell me where.”

“But you can’t call the police, okay?”

“What’s happening? What’s happening. Tell me.”

“But you can’t call the police. If you’re going to, then I’m not going to tell you.”

“I won’t call the police. I just want S/D safe.”

“It’s your old house,” said the girl. “He’s in the living room, but you have to climb in through the side window. Please hurry.” She hung up.

Connie sobbed and yelled into the phone. She dialed back but the girl did not answer. Instead the not-available voice message come on.

Connie tore through her desk and found the manila envelope with the paperwork on the old house.

On her way out the door she tore the envelope nearly in half to get to the set of house keys inside.

She let the envelope fall to the floor in the hallway as she pulled the door shut behind her.

She ran down to the basement and her car. She did not wait for the garage gate to lift all the way, as she pulled out into the street.

The gate’s bottom squealed and scraped her car’s roof. A truck entering the intersection startled her, when Connie failed to stop for a light.

The truck’s driver slammed his brakes so hard the rear of his truck jumped what looked like a yard into the air.

The truck’s front bumper bounced against the side of Connie’s car, pushing it sideways. The driver blew his horn. Connie had hit her own brakes instinctively. The smell of smoky rubber filled the air. Connie put her foot on the gas again. She kept going.

49: Luke

Luke drove to the house.

He had found a shotgun and some shells in Barry’s garage, and had taken them. The shotgun rested on the passenger side floor leaning against the passenger door. He liked it there. He imagined what it would have done to Barry, if only he had found it before going upstairs, or even the day before.

Better that he hadn’t. The noise would have been too loud for even Barry’s indifferent neighbors to fail noticing.

Luke would have no such worry at Connie and Robb’s old house. The street was rural, on the edge of the city, and with the housing crisis, it had become a ghost town. He imagined the roar the weapon would make, the heat that would infuse his hands when he fired, the billows of blood and explosions bone he and the shotgun would make together.

On the street, he spotted SD’s little hybrid, the only car parked on the almost perfectly dark street.

Luke’s headlights flashed on Ardiss standing in the yard. She started to run toward the car.

He had clearly instructed her to stay in the house, but she had ignored him. He pulled in behind the hybrid. Ardiss tried to pull open the door, which was locked. She saw the shotgun, looked at it for a moment, then pulled at the handle again, trying to get in.

Luke turned the engine off, unbuckled, and stepped out of the car.

“What are you doing!” yelled Ardiss. “Let me in! Let’s go!”

“Tell me where he is,” said Luke.

“He’s gone,” said Ardiss.

“You said you knocked him out. Hit him with a shovel. You said he’s in the living room. I told you to stay with him.”

“He woke up and he left. He’s gone.”

Luke pointed to S/D’s hybrid, exposing her lie.

Ardiss paused. “I said he’s gone. We have to go! We have to go.”

“I told you to stay with him,” said Luke.

He knew she was lying; S/D was still inside. He leaned back into the car and took out the shotgun. He had Connie’s pistol in his pocket.

The pistol had grown cold since he had killed Barry with it.

“What are you going to do?” said Ardiss.

“I want to check around,” he told her.

“Why? I told you he’s gone!”

“I believe you. Come on. Come here.”

“Me?” said Ardiss. “Why do I have to go?”

He spoke to her more forcefully, pointed to the ground at his feet as he did. “Ardiss! Now!”

She jumped in fright, but she obeyed, meekly and correctly coming to his side. He put his hand at the crux of her shoulder and her neck, squeezing her mildly, and pulling her closer. “I don’t need you giving me a hard time right now.”