Hell's Bay (34 page)

There was a guest room full of cardboard boxes and a computer set up on a small desk. Books were piled on the floor beside the desk, and more books were crammed in a metal bookcase that looked like army surplus. A stack of papers with red-ink scribbles in the margins. C.C.'s office. Where he'd done his grading, planned his speeches. Where he'd studied the science, written his letters of appeal to politicians and state agencies and all the others whose job it was to protect people like C.C., but rarely found the time.

The parents' bedroom was cramped. They'd chosen the smallest of the three for themselves, given the master to Griffin. The bed itself was only a double, a black-and-white quilt for a cover, a single painting on the wall of a slightly sexy portrait of a naked lady sitting in a rocking chair. It wasn't Sasha and wasn't even close to her body type. But it hung directly across from the bed like some aphrodisiac that both of them found arousing.

He went into the blue-and-white-tiled bathroom. One toothbrush, the usual soaps and lotions and shampoos. Hanging on the back of the bathroom door was a green one-piece bathing suit. Sugarman touched its silky fabric and wondered about it hanging there so long out of season.

The tour told him nothing except these were ordinary people. A family of modest means. A couple of splashes of color in an otherwise unexceptional home. He stood in the living room awhile and scanned the furniture and walls to see if there was anything he'd missed, to pick up any stray vibrations.

On the big screen at the multiplex, homicidal monsters inhabited rooms with obscene scrawls on the walls, notebooks full of depraved drawings. Violated Barbie dolls hung by strings from their ceilings, jelly jars full of eyeballs and minced-up body parts, all the sick, bizzaro stuff that scared audiences silly. But Sugarman had been in enough killers' houses to know that most were indistinguishable from their neighbors'. Peanut butter on white bread and cable TV.

He went back to the kitchen, opened the fridge. The usual OJ, butter, head of iceberg lettuce turning brown, jelly, skim milk, and a white paper sack.

Sugar looked back toward the living room. No one kicking the door down to take him off to prison. Not yet anyway.

He took out the paper sack and rolled it open and peeked in at half a bagel. Exciting stuff.

There was something he hadn't come across in his cruise through the house. Something almost every family had and that usually told more about them than any other item.

After a few minutes going through closets and drawers, he found it in the bedside table that stood by Sasha's side. He deduced that it was her side because ajar of hand cream sat by the base of the lamp. Call him Sherlock.

In the second drawer was a fat red leather photo album.

Sugar sat down on the black-and-white quilt and flipped it open. He was feeling no sense of urgency, no reason to hurry except for the churn of hunger in his belly. He paged through the baby pictures, the first bike, the football phase. Griffin had been a wide receiver, it seemed, won a varsity letter. A scholar athlete. And there were report cards, all A's, an SAT printout with the boy's scores. Missed a perfect 2400 by five points. Slipped on the verbal part, must've flubbed an anal-ogy. There were photos of fishing trips, some of C.C. and Griffin barbecuing out back. Father and son shooting lighter fluid into the Weber grill and ducking back from the flames.

Love. Fun. Pride. One shot after another of those same three things. Then there was Sasha in camouflage uniform and boots—standing awkwardly for the occasion, a hokey salute and grin. A page later was another of Sasha wearing jeans and a white T-shirt and sitting at a picnic table beside a black woman. Griffin was in the background tossing a Frisbee to a kid about his age. A family outing at some park. The black woman mugging for the picture, a toothy smile, her arm slung over Sasha's shoulder, giving her a girl-pal hug.

Of course.

Sasha and Timmy Whalen. Same age. Small town. Maybe former classmates. Two strong women, outcasts who'd found each other.

Sugarman flipped to the last pages.

A black-and-white photo was fixed cockeyed to the page. Sasha Olsen standing with some army buddies. Behind them was the famous square, Saddam's statue broken off its pedestal and dragged into the dirt. Sasha was the only soldier not smiling. “Love you, miss you, be home soon, Mom” was scrawled at the bottom of the shot.

And that was it. The rest of the pages were blank.

Sugar put the album back in the nightstand.

He sat for a while looking at the naked woman in the rocker. Big nipples, a fringe of pubic hair peeking above her crossed thighs. Not smutty in any way. Just a natural pose. A naked woman in a rocking chair. Sugarman was still staring at that, trying to imagine what it signified to Sasha and C.C., when he heard the front door shut hard.

He got up and walked to the bedroom door.

Whoever had come inside was standing out of view in the living room.

There were times when Sugar wished he carried a concealed weapon. This was one. But he'd driven to Summerland to sniff around, not shoot anyone, and still, even now, even caught in the act of burglarizing a house, he considered civility to be his best defense.

Going toe-to-toe with a war hero was not an inviting prospect. He kept in shape and still had a few take-down moves from his cop days, but he couldn't recall when he'd last used one.

He looked around the room for something to defend himself with. A fireplace poker would've been nice. But all he saw were lamps.

So he did the only thing he knew to do. He called out hello.

 

 

 

 

The person in the living room didn't answer.

“My name is Sugarman. I'm not armed. I'm not here to steal anything. I came on a social call. Door was open, I just walked in.”

He heard the crack of a floorboard, maybe out front, maybe beneath his own feet. His pulse was chunking so loud in his ears he couldn't be sure.

“I'm in the back bedroom, and I'm stepping into the hallway now. I've got my hands up. No weapon. No gun, no knife, nothing. I'm stepping through the living room door now. Don't get nervous on me.”

She was sitting in the fake leather recliner. Changed from her uniform of khaki trousers and blue shirt into scruffy jeans and a black top. Her nine millimeter lay in her lap, a Glock, her hand around the grip, finger resting against the edge of the trigger guard.

“Come here often?” Sugarman took a step into the room.

“Let's drop the wiseass thing, what do you say? It's such a strain.”

“Fair enough.”

Sugarman edged to the center of the room. Being in close quarters with a cop whose weapon was drawn was like coming upon a hammerhead while snorkeling. Look away, go about your business. If he wanted you, he could have you.

“Mind if I get an apple? I'm starving.”

Sugarman moved to the kitchen before Timmy could answer.

“Get back in here.”

He was at the sink, a quick pass of his left hand across the silverware in the drying rack, while he reached out with his right for an apple. He managed to palm a table knife and turned to Timmy, holding out an apple.

“Care for one?”

“Put it back.”

“I'm starving,” Sugarman said.

“Put it back in the bowl, turn around, and walk slowly into the living room. Do it now.”

Sugarman got the knife up his shirt cuff, pinching it in place with one finger.

Timmy followed him back into the living room.

“Don't turn around,” she said. “Raise your hands straight up. You know the drill.”

Sugarman lifted his hands and waited. Knife pinched against his wrist.

She tapped her pistol barrel once against his spine, then frisked him one-handed, sliding up and down his jeans, to his crotch, then around his waist. Up and down his rib cage. Patting his pockets, front and back. Slower than seemed strictly professional, or maybe that was wishful thinking. Then another tap against the spine to let him know she was done.

He stepped forward, lowered his hands and sat in a blue wingback chair. She took a seat across the room, ten feet.

“Houses this close together,” Sugar said, “lots of people would hear the gunshot.”

“A black man burglarizing a house,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said. “You'd probably get a raise.”

“I wish you hadn't come to my town,” she said. “And I wish I'd kept my mouth shut a whole lot tighter.”

“But I did. And you didn't.”

“Yeah.”

“I'm curious why. I don't think I tricked anything out of you.”

“Give yourself more credit. You noticed what a lot of men wouldn't.”

“You know what?” he said. “I think you've been waiting for me. You knew it was coming. You had to. A person like Abigail Bates, no way that's just going to blow over.”

“Okay,” she said. “There's some of that. Counting off the seconds. Looking up when the door opened. Sure, I expected someone to come.”

“And yet you weren't all that prepared to fake it.”

“You're better than you think, Sugarman. Disarming, is what you are.”

“Oh, come on. I'm not that good. I think this has been burning a hole in your gut. You've been waiting for some-body to confess to.”

She forced a smile.

“It usually works the other way,” she said. “The person the gun's pointed at does the confessing.”

“So where do we go from here?”

“Why don't you tell me what you know, or what you think you know. And then you tell me what you think you're going to do about it.”

“Okay,” he said. “That's fair.”

He could feel the knife cold against his wrist.

“So go.”

“You and Sasha were friends. Best friends.”

“And you know that how?”

“Photo album, back bedroom.”

She gave him a quiet look and shook her head.

Sugarman glanced out the front window. In the yard across the street two couples were having a neighborly chat. A handful of kids taking turns on a slippery slide rolled out on the front lawn in front of them.

“So C.C. Olsen dies. It's ugly. It tears her up. Sasha's been in Iraq, seen terrible shit, but losing her husband like that, no, that's worse. Especially because it looks like the cancer didn't just pop out of his genetic code. In some way or another it was Bates cancer. Milligan cancer.”

Timmy Whalen shifted her eyes to the floor between them.

One of the girls across the street, seven, maybe eight, was sprinting too fast and throwing herself headfirst onto the slippery slide, a reckless dive. The parents weren't really watching, and Sugar felt like going to the door and shouting at them to be more goddamn vigilant. Then he remembered the Glock in Timmy's lap and eased back against the cushions.

“Then there's Carter Mosley,” Sugar said. “Your phone buddy.”

Timmy flinched and released a breath. He'd crossed a line with that one. This was the watershed moment for Timmy Whalen. One way or the other, it was the beginning of a new way of life for her.

“Here's how it went,” Sugar said. “Mosley calls you on the morning of July eighteenth, right after Abigail Bates left his office. He informed you of her destination, that she was going canoeing on the Peace River. For some time she'd been suggesting she might do this, so you've all been waiting for this day. As soon as Mosley hangs up, you call Sasha, pass it on. He calls you, you call her. Like laundering money. You don't deposit your ill-gotten gains directly in a bank, just like you don't call the hit man's home phone. You dial the hit man's friend, the sheriff, of all people, leave it for her to do.

“So there. You call, Sasha gets into a bathing suit. Maybe the green one hanging back there in her bathroom. She jumps in her truck and off she goes to the highway Ms. Bates would have to use to get to the canoe place. She spots Abigail's car, follows her till she turns off, just to be sure, then goes up the river to where she knows Ms. Bates will pass by. Sasha knows the river. Everybody around here knows the river and where the tough turns are. So she goes there and waits.”

“Why does she do that? The sheriff.”

“Why does the sheriff get her hands dirty?”

“Yes. Why would she do that? Something that extreme.”

“Oh, I think anybody who's been a cop could sympathize. It's because of that oath she's taken. She's come to believe Abigail Bates is the biggest threat to the people of the community she's sworn to protect and defend. So when the opportunity arises, she aids her friend in removing that threat.”

Timmy Whalen was holding his eyes.

“And you, Mr. Sugarman? You approve of that kind of behavior?”

“I wish I did.”

“You don't. You don't see how that would serve justice? More than standing by and letting kids sit all day long inside a poisoned schoolhouse.”

“I can see the temptation. I'll give you that.”

He studied the bright pinpoints in the center of her caramel eyes. If she was about to kill him she wasn't giving it away. If anything, her eyes looked sad. Worn out. But it was not an observation he'd bet his life on. So he kept his legs taut, ready to spring.

“Let me get this straight, Sugarman. If you'd been in my place, you would have resisted the temptation. You would've been strong. Knowingly sacrifice more young people to the great god of capitalism and the Boy Scout honor code. Is that it?”

“A sheriff doesn't get to decide those things. I wish I could lie and say otherwise, but, no, you did wrong.”

She licked her upper lip, swallowed, then reset her hand on the Glock.

“Well, I appreciate your candor.”

Sugarman checked on the kids across the street. The parents had dispersed and the children were bored with the slippery slide and had moved on to their skateboards. No broken necks yet. Once again his anxieties had flared over nothing. Been happening a lot lately. Ever since his own girls got so damn exploratory, Sugar found himself worrying about threats the rest of the world didn't seem to notice.