Five Minutes Alone (25 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Schroder leads Tate inside and he sits on the couch and Tate sits opposite him in the chair and he doesn’t offer him a drink, even though part of him is telling him that’s what he should do. A beer, he imagines, is probably the right kind of beverage for what’s about to take place. But Tate doesn’t drink anymore. He wonders what Warren is thinking.

“What people am I supposed to have killed?” he asks.

“The shower curtain,” Tate says.

“What?”

“It was new. It still had the fold lines in it.”

Schroder nods. They unfolded the curtain and hung it up and he took the packaging and the receipt with him. He knows where this is going.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about the shower curtain. And in the end all that thinking led me to the supermarket it was purchased from. It was just a matter of searching for shower curtains that had been purchased in the middle of the night. I went there expecting to see either you or Kelly Summers.”

“Why me?”

“You were the detective who arrested Dwight Smith. You knew about the Collard brothers. About how to try and hide a crime on a set of train tracks. You knew about Grover Hills. I suspected,” Theo says, “but I didn’t believe it. Not until this morning when I watched you on a security monitor buying the curtain now hanging in Kelly Summers’s bathroom. You bought two of them. Did you use the second one last night?”

“I see,” he says, not answering the question. He should have
used something other than a shower curtain. Or used nothing. He did what he thought was the right thing at the time.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”

“No,” Schroder says. “There is more. First explain something to me, because there’s something I don’t understand.”

“What?”

“You saw the footage this morning. That is before you found Kelly Summers dead, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“So you had this theory about the shower curtain yesterday. That means you looked through Kelly Summers’s house. That means you would have seen the broken window latch. What that also means is you knew immediately that Kelly Summers was involved, and yet you didn’t go to the supermarket right away. You didn’t because you didn’t want to send Kelly Summers to jail. You were okay with the fact that Dwight Smith was dead. Isn’t that right?”

“I’m not okay with any of this,” Tate says, and then he gets loud. “What in the hell were you thinking, Carl?”

“It just happened,” he says. “I was trying to help her.”

“And now she’s dead.”

“So is that my fault for helping her?” he asks. “Or your fault for trying to help her get away with it?”

“What the—”

“It’s not either of those,” Schroder says. “It’s Dwight Smith’s fault. He’s the one who hurt her. He’s the reason she’s dead now. Not us. There’s no need for you to beat yourself up about it, just as there’s no need for me.”

“And Peter Crowley? Is there no need there too?”

“I wish that had also gone differently,” he says.

Tate shakes his head. “You’re unbelievable. I want you to tell me what happened on Friday night.”

“Do I need a lawyer?”

“Please, Carl, just tell me.”

“What, as one friend to another?”

“As one cop to another,” Tate says, and he looks ready to slam his hand onto the coffee table.

“I’m no longer a cop.”

“But you think you are. Deep down, you do.”

“Maybe,” he says. “You’re the only one who knows about this, aren’t you.”

Tate nods.

“Is it going to stay that way?”

“Just tell me what happened,” Tate says.

“Are you here to arrest me?”

“Just tell me.”

“Did Kelly leave a suicide note? Did she talk about Friday night and what happened?”

Tate nods. “Her version doesn’t include you.”

“I didn’t want her to die. All of this was to save her. It’s not essential that you believe that, but I would like you to. How did she do it? Pills?”

“Yes.”

“Well it’s better than what would have happened if I hadn’t shown up.”

“Is that what you think? That it makes it better?” Tate asks.

“That’s exactly what I think, and I’m pretty sure that’s what you think too, and I’m as sure as hell that Kelly thought the same thing,” he says. “I saved her and she died on her own terms, and if I hadn’t saved her she would have died horribly. You didn’t see him, Theo, and I did. Dwight Smith was ten seconds away from putting his dick into her, and probably two minutes away from putting in a knife.”

“Why didn’t you call the police? Why were you even following him?”

“It was a gift to the Old Me,” he says.

“To who?”

“To the Old Schroder.”

So he tells Tate everything about the conversation. And the realization that Dwight Smith was going to live a better life than
him. He tells him about Friday night. About following Dwight Smith to Kelly Summers’s house. About climbing the fence and finding the bedroom window open and Kelly face down on the bathroom floor. “She asked me for her five minutes,” he says, when he’s done telling Tate, then sits in silence for Tate to work it out.

Only he doesn’t work it out. “Her five minutes? What five minutes?”

“Think about it.”

“I am thinking about it.”

“How many times were we asked by somebody to give them five minutes alone with—” He stops talking when Tate’s hand goes up in the air in a stopping gesture.

“I get it,” Tate says. “So Kelly asked for her five minutes alone with Dwight.”

“You can’t sit there and tell me over the years you didn’t wish you could have given that to people too. I think you’d have wanted your five minutes. In fact I’m pretty sure you’ve had them.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times I had nothing to do with Quentin James disappearing.”

“Whatever you say, Theo,” he says, and that’s okay, because Tate can believe what he wants for the moment. “The point is still the same—if you were offered five minutes with the man who hurt your family, you’d take it. That’s what Kelly Summers wanted and I had no reason to deny her.”

“So you helped her.”

“To a point, yes.”

“The same way you helped Peter Crowley?”

He sighs. He’s getting annoyed at Tate, then wonders how a man who feels nothing can get annoyed. The answer is he’s still evolving. Something inside has broken free, and though not all the emotions are there, some are. “Look, things with Peter didn’t go to plan. And I’m sorry about that. But he made a mistake and he paid the price.”

“He made a mistake because you put him into a situation you couldn’t control.”

“He wanted his five minutes.”

“I’m sure he wanted to be alive at the end of them. You went to him, right? You phoned the prison and got Collard’s information, and then went and wound Peter up. I just don’t understand why.”

“You’re right. I did phone the prison, and I did go to Peter, and I was right because he did want his five minutes,” he says, but he doesn’t say that Peter needed convincing, that he needed reminding. “We drove them out to Grover Hills, but then the Collards got away and killed Peter, and then they phoned for help. It was me or them. It was self-defense.”

“No, it’s not, because you took the Collards out there. If anything, it was self-defense on their part.”

“You can’t have it both ways, Tate. You can’t say it was self-defense for them when they had time to think about what they were doing, then not say it was self-defense for Kelly too. She wanted her five minutes and got it, and Peter wanted his and missed out, then those four men wanted their five minutes too. It’s a miracle it’s not me out there burned to a crisp. It was those guys that brought the dog and the gas and the guns. But you still haven’t told me why you’re here, Theo.”

Theo leans forward. Schroder isn’t sure if any of these answers are what his former colleague wants to hear. “And you haven’t told me why the Collard brothers. Why did you call the prison to learn about Dwight Smith’s cellmates?”

“Why does it matter? What is done is done.”

“You could face the death penalty, don’t you get that?”

“I know this is hard for you, Theo,” he says, and it would have been hard for the Old Him too. He knows what the Old Him would be saying if he was sitting where Theo is sitting, and figures it wouldn’t be that much different from what he’s hearing anyway. “It’s hard because you would have done the same thing.”

“No. I would have called the police. I wouldn’t have let Kelly deal with a man like Dwight Smith. You let it get out of hand.”

“Like you did three years ago with Quentin James?”

“I told you already that—”

Now it’s Schroder’s turn to put up his hand. “That you had nothing to do with his disappearance, yes, I know.”

“I didn’t kill Quentin James,” Tate says, “but I wanted to. But this—what you’re doing, this is wrong. You’re targeting people who have done nothing to you.”

“So that’s where you draw the line? If it’s personal then it’s okay?”

“That’s . . . you’re twisting my words,” Tate says.

“And you’re wasting our time. Look, Theo, like I said a minute ago, what is done is done. I did what I did last night to protect Kelly Summers. I didn’t want her going to jail and no matter what you say, you know she didn’t deserve to be locked away. I had her best interests at heart. I let her do what she needed to do, and then I needed to do what it took to cover it up. So I thought why not wipe out another couple of low-life degenerates and make it look like a vigilante was on the loose? It’d take the focus away from Kelly. Now it doesn’t matter, right? Kelly is dead and Peter is dead and there are no more tracks to cover, and if you arrest me then it’s hard for you to explain why you left it a day to investigate the shower curtain, and why you never told anybody this morning about the supermarket footage you saw.”

Tate says nothing, but he can see the man thinking, can see possibilities come and go, then he leans further forward and starts talking. “You’re wrong about that. I came here because I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted you to tell me something that made you innocent of all of this.”

“All I was trying to do was help Kelly Summers,” he says.

“I know.” Tate stands up. “Listen, Carl, you’ve been good to me over the last few years, really good. And . . . and I’m sorry about what happened to you, and sorry for the person you’ve become, but most of all I’m sorry for what I’m about to do. I’m going to have to take you down to the station. You’re going to have to be accountable for what you’ve done. Given the circumstances—”

“Given the circumstances what, Theo? They’ll let me off?”

“No. But—”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. Goddamn it, Carl, why the hell did you have to put me in this situation?”

“So that’s it? You’re going to arrest me?”

“They have your DNA,” Tate says.

“What?”

“The dog. It bit you, right?”

“Shit.”

“You didn’t think about that, did you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “They don’t have my DNA on record.”

“Not yet, but they’ll come for it when they start to figure out what I figured out. I’m sorry, Carl, but I have no choice.”

“Actually, Theo, you do. I think you need to sit back down for a minute because there’s something else you ought to know.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

I feel like putting my fist through the side window of my car. I get in and put on my seat belt and then I start punching the steering wheel. Then I undo my seat belt, get back out, walk around the car unsure of where I’m going, only to complete a full circle and climb back in.

What. The hell. Am I going to do?

I reach into my pocket and pull out the small wooden toy Schroder gave me. It’s the toy I hung over Quentin James’s grave. I don’t really know why I put it there. Maybe as a reminder to what that man had done. I don’t know. I really don’t. What I do know is I wish I hadn’t.

I start the car. Schroder didn’t tell me how he found the grave, but it must have something to do with Bridget. He says he’s always known where the body was, and that today he went there to retrieve the small toy as proof, but I don’t think so. I think Bridget took him there. I don’t know why she would have done that, but I think she wasn’t herself when she did it. I think she was some other version of Bridget, one whose brain chemistry is becoming more and more out of whack. I think that’s what she is hiding from me. I think she promised Schroder not to say anything.

A different version of Schroder. A different version of Bridget. And me? Which version of Tate is going to deal with this? Drunk Tate? It’s been a year since he and I have shot the breeze, but oh how I miss him.

Killer Tate?

I punch the steering wheel one more time for luck. Does Schroder feel any remorse over what happened? I should have told Kent about the shower curtain right away. We could have arrested Sum
mers and Schroder yesterday. Peter Crowley would not have died. Bridget wouldn’t have shown Schroder where Quentin James’s body is. Kelly Summers would still be alive. I shouldn’t be a cop. Shouldn’t have been let back on the force. Being a cop is just getting people killed.

And now what? What if Schroder kills again?

Only he won’t. He promised me it was over. He told me it’s my job to lead the investigation in a different direction. To make sure he doesn’t make a blip on anybody’s radar. And if I can’t do that, then I’ll be going to jail right alongside him.

I don’t drive back home for a shovel, instead I drive to a hardware store and buy a new one. I don’t want to have to answer my wife’s questions, and I don’t want to face her right now, because I might just tell her what’s happened and I don’t want her to know. I don’t want her to feel any guiltier than she must already be feeling. The store is open until eight p.m., which gives me twenty minutes. Normally I like hardware shopping. I think it’s like shoe shopping for women. This time I spend less than five minutes and less than fifty dollars on a shovel and then I take the same route I took yesterday afternoon out to the woods. The sun is heading quickly for the horizon now, and in fifteen minutes it’ll be gone, but it’ll stay light until around nine.

I call Bridget on the way and tell her something has come up and that I’m going to be another two hours. She sounds disappointed. I tell her I’m sorry and she says that’s okay, that her mom will stay because her dad wants to get back home because there’s a movie on TV he really wants to see, which sounds like the kind of thing my own mom would say about my dad. I get to the woods and I park the car and I carry the flashlight and the shovel and walk for ten minutes and there are enough footprints in the dirt now to make it look like a walkway at an airport.

I reach the grave.

It’s open.

Quentin James is gone.