Deadline (19 page)

I got up and got my jacket and gloves.

“I'm going out to get some air,” I said. “Want to come?”

“No, thanks,” she said, and turned a page.

I hadn't intended to go far. Maybe just go out behind the house for a while and look at the stars. The stars were beautiful in Androscoggin when the wind wasn't blowing the wrong way. When it did blow the wrong way, from the east, the paper-mill steam blotted out the stars like a cloud.

The stairs were dark and I walked carefully. When I got to the door, I turned to my left and looked up.

“Hey,” Cormier said.

“How's it going?” I answered.

He was with another guy, smaller, in his late teens or early twenties. The younger guy was wearing a dirty baseball cap with a picture of a truck and the Ford logo. Cormier's hat was blaze orange, a hunting hat. His eye patch was white.

They stood side by side. Both held longneck Bud bottles.

We looked at each other for a moment. The buddy cleared his throat and spat on the snow-packed driveway. He had a stringy mustache that looked even stringier when he pursed his lips to spit. Cormier took a sip of beer and let the bottle fall. The buddy did the same.

Beer up. Beer down. Like an oil rig.

“I wanted to know if you've been thinkin' about it,” he said. “You know where I'm comin' from?”

“Out from under some rock?” I said.

The buddy took a step forward, his chin out, mouth hanging open. I took that to mean that he was offended.

“Hey, I came to talk to you,” Cormier said. “Don't start in, 'cause I'll end it this time.”

“That why you brought shithead here?”

“Come on,” the buddy said. “Let's do it.”

“I'm not gonna do anything. I live here, remember? I want you to go. Or do we have to talk about how Cormier doesn't want to go to jail?”

“Who does?” Cormier said. “Hey, I didn't come for this bullshit. I came to say somethin'.”

“So say it.”

Cormier looked at me for a second. I looked back at him. Army fatigue jacket. Brown leather boots. Shirt open at the neck despite the cold. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

“Hey, I got a reason to not want this to go to court,” he said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“If it does, it screws me up with somethin' else. My son. His mother. She sees an assault and she goes to the judge, says I'm dangerous. We got joint custody, and I don't want to lose it.”

“So who's this guy?” I said. “Your lawyer?”

“Ah, don't mind him. He's a buddy. He ain't here to do nothin'. He's just … come on, man. Cops make it sound like you killed somebody. It wasn't friggin' nothin' and you know it. I got a chance to make a grand a week cuttin' wood out in Washington, man, and I
don't need this hangin' around my neck. What do you want? Friggin' blood?”

No more bar brawler. This was a young man concerned about his future. His son. If I didn't agree to erase this black mark from his otherwise-pristine record, the poor kid would end up … end up like his father. If you can't stomp authority, talk your way around it.

The survival instinct was a wonderful thing, responsible for some of the best dramatic performances you'll see. A guy pounds his girlfriend, puts her in the hospital with her nose all mashed in and her ribs broken, spits on her bloody face. And when he gets up before the judge, he's all shined up like the Kiwanis man of the year. Yessir. No, sir. I'm very sorry, sir. I guess I just lost it.

Cormier and friend still stood there.

“So you won't get the big job in Washington with an assault charge on your record?”

“I won't get the job, waitin' around here for lawyers and cops to get their shit together. Come on, what's the big deal? You weren't even hurt, man. Gimme a break.”

I said nothing. The buddy eyed me, then looked away. The street was hushed. Cormier watched me closely, probably trying to fight back his natural inclination to beat my head in until I would agree to testify to his nonviolent character.

Then he broke.

“Jesus, who the hell do you think you are? A goddamn fight in a goddamn bar and you're tryin' to put me away for life, for God's sake. Forget it. You're okay. I'm the one who had to go to the hospital.”

For a moment, déjà vu, the real kind. Martin, his back against the wall. Now Cormier.

We stood there, the three of us, spouting steamy breath into the cold night air.

“Why me?” I said. “Why'd you pick me out? I don't even know you.”

“I told the cops that.”

“Tell me. Now.”

The buddy's eyes were fixed on mine, like a snake's. I stared right back at him, then at Cormier. The buddy took a long pull on his beer.

Did Cormier not want to talk in front of him? Maybe the word would be out that he wimped out. Begged instead of threatened. Some pussy hits him in the eye and he runs scared.

“They were talkin' about it at the mill,” he said, almost softly.

“You don't work there anymore.”

“I still see those guys around,” Cormier said.

His beer was empty. My feet were cold.

“What'd they say at the mill?” I asked.

“That this guy at the paper was trying to shut the place down.”

“Not true. Crazy,” I said.

“Hey, it's what they said. These guys got families, car payments, you know? They don't screw around when it comes to their paychecks.”

“Who does?”

The buddy's beer was gone, too. He looked restless, bored with the talk.

“How'd you know who I was at the bar?” I asked.

They both grinned.

“We just knew. We know a lot of stuff. Like you got a couple tickets in that black piece of crap you drive. Like the cops know you
drink and would love to bag you for OUI. You ought to junk that pecker box and get somethin' that isn't so friggin' noticeable.”

“What, you a deputy now or what?” I said.

They grinned. Joe and Frank. The Hardy Boys.

The balance of power had shifted a little. They were cocky, talking too much. But the cop thing made me feel surrounded.

I had my back to the door. They stood between me and the cars.

“So whaddya say?” Cormier said.

We were buddies now. The three of us.

“I'll think about it.”

“About what?” he exploded. “About what? ‘I'll think about it,' he says.”

Cormier said it like he was imitating a sissy. We weren't buddies anymore.

“You keep talking and you're gonna have tampering with a witness. Class C. What will that do to your kid?”

“I'm not tamperin' with anybody,” he said. “I tamper with you, you'll friggin' know it, peckerhead.”

“Cops'll know it, too.”

“Frig the cops,” he said.

Cormier looked at me and then turned and flung his beer bottle toward the trees at the back of the yard. The bottle clanged but didn't break. His buddy turned and whipped his, low and hard, and it shattered.

I looked at him.

“You know you throw like a girl?” I said.

He jumped at me, but Cormier pulled him back. I looked at them and the buddy spat. A gob of saliva and mucus landed next to
my right foot. I turned and took two steps to the door and stepped inside. As I walked up the stairs, I heard the buddy's voice.

“Chickenshit wimp,” he called.

“Redundant moron,” I said, and I walked up the stairs and into the kitchen and Roxanne was standing there against the counter, her arms folded and her face gray.

She didn't look mad. She looked scared.

“What's the matter?” I said. “Are you sick?”

She shook her head and took a shallow breath. The phone was off the hook on the counter.

“Somebody call?” I asked.

Roxanne nodded.

“Twice,” she said.

“Who was it? What's going on?”

Roxanne bit her lip and started to cry.

14

“I
t sounded like maybe it was a woman at first,” Roxanne said. “Maybe a woman who smokes a lot. That raspy kind of voice.”

She sipped her wine twice. I hung up the phone and went and sat beside her on the couch and waited.

“I thought maybe it was somebody you worked with. She said, at least I thought it was a she, I don't know. She said she was a friend of yours and she'd heard a lot about me. That's what she said. I said, ‘Oh, that's nice.' Oh, God.”

Roxanne stopped. She looked small and vulnerable.

“And then the voice changed a little. Like it wasn't as much like a woman.”

“What did it sound like?”

“Oh, I don't know how to describe it. Not a normal voice, that's all. Like a neuter or something.”

She sipped.

“He, it, it said I should come to town more often because … because he liked to see me in my blue panties. I was shocked. I thought I hadn't heard right, like it didn't sink in. I said, ‘What?' It said, it said I had a nice ass and he'd seen me take my panties off.”

I put my arm on her shoulder.

“Jack, I have—”

“I know,” I said.

“God, Jack! What kind of a place is this? That's what you said Arthur did, isn't it? God, this place is sick. Oh, that voice, it was … I can still hear it.”

I gave her shoulder a squeeze and told her to take it easy. I couldn't tell her she shouldn't worry because that was not true. There was reason to worry. I felt outnumbered again, like I had felt talking to Cormier about the cops. I felt that way again, only worse.

Roxanne leaned on my shoulder, her legs pulled up underneath her on the couch. I didn't tell her about Cormier. Maybe the two things were related. Cormier and his friend get me outside. The third person calls Roxanne, knowing she's alone. But who even knew she was here? I hadn't known she was coming. They had to be watching the house. Would Cormier have that kind of patience? That temper? Could he just sit and wait like that? Set something up that took more planning than picking a fight?

And this took planning.

Unless the caller had been just lucky, he—or she—had been watching Roxanne. She had a pair of medium blue underpants. She had worn them the last time she had come to see me. But Roxanne didn't cavort around the house in her underwear. It was too cold. She might have walked through to the bathroom off the kitchen. I tried to remember and couldn't.

The caller must have had a clear view. Maybe into the bedroom. He must have used binoculars.

Or a telephoto.

Roxanne was saved by the bell. The phone. It was one of her supervisors, and he said somebody was “in crisis,” which meant something in the jargon of the social worker.

Roxanne pulled herself together, said she would come but it would be about an hour and a half.

“Yeah, I know forty-three Chestnut,” she said. “Oh, do I know it.”

She left with her eyes still red, her skin still pale. I walked her to the car door, locked it when I closed it. She reached over and locked the other doors and then gave me a little wave and was gone.

In the back driveway, I walked along the edge of the trees to the place where there was a path worn by the neighborhood kids on knobby-tired bikes. I slid down the litter of oak leaves and snow and fell twice in the dark. I followed the path to the next block and walked down Penobscot Street all the way to downtown.

At the Food Stop, I turned left up the hill and doubled back. In five minutes, I was above the house in the trees that you reached from the next block. Crouched in the dark, I looked at the lights of the living room windows and tried to remember everything I could about Roxanne's last visit.

We'd sat in the living room and had drinks. After a while, we had gone to bed, but I was sure we had pulled the shades in the bedroom. But we hadn't closed the door. I crunched through the brush to my left to see if the bedroom ever came into view. Branches tore at my hair. I slipped and caught myself on a branch, which snapped off. But the bedroom couldn't be seen, not from this side of the house. And the embankment dropped off behind the house. From there, you'd need a helicopter.

Had Roxanne walked through the living room in her underwear? I tried to remember. She had gone to get her wine off the table by the
couch. But had she been undressed? I couldn't remember. I did know she had left early Monday morning and had dressed in the dark. That meant it had to have been Sunday night. And without a lens of some kind, there was no way that you could tell the color of anything, much less a pair of moving panties.

So it must have been a vigil. Waiting in the cold for a flicker of movement. Who would go through that for a glimpse of a woman? Arthur. But Arthur was dead that day. The caller had been very much alive.

I turned stiffly and gave the house a last look.

Someone was in the living room window.

I plunged down the hill, sliding and running and falling through the trees, and ran across the lawn and up the driveway. When I got to the door, I slowed and opened it, closing it carefully behind me. Staying close to the wall to keep the stairs from creaking, I crept to the second floor and stood outside the kitchen door. Music was playing; Brubeck.“Pennies from Heaven.” I pushed the door open slowly.