Late Rain (12 page)

Croy called the name again, and Stanley stopped and lifted his hand to his eyes.

Then Croy stepped up and hit him with the sockful of heavy-gauge washers. Stanley turned at the last moment though, and Croy hit him in the shoulder instead of the head.

Then Stanley swung back and hit Croy with the stringer of fish Croy hadn’t noticed he was carrying.

Croy could smell the fish on his cheeks, and the skin underneath his left eyes was stinging from where one of the fins had cut him.

Stanley swung the fish again. It felt like Croy was getting slapped by three pairs of hands at the same time.

He dropped the sock and took out his knife.

Stanley had a bunch of brightly colored lures attached to his vest, and after Croy knocked him to the ground, he was careful not to catch his gloves on them when he tore open the vest and started stabbing Stanley in the stomach.

He wasn’t sure exactly how much noise Stanley made because Croy was doing a rhyme in his head while he stabbed him.

After a while, his arm got tired, so he stopped.

Croy rocked back on his heels.

Some of the washers had spilled out of the tube sock where he’d dropped it, and Croy started gathering them up, but then he remembered his knife was still inside Stanley. His arm had been so tired he’d let go of it without thinking.

Croy leaned back over and started rummaging around Stanley’s insides. His fingers were slippery and made a lot of sounds like rubber boots stuck in mud.

It took a long time to find the knife.

Just as he was about to straighten up, Croy noticed the thin, shiny chain spilling from Stanley’s pocket, and he wrapped it around his index finger and pulled, and a gold pocketwatch followed.

Some blood had gotten on it. Croy wiped it off and put the pocketwatch in his pocket. He liked the idea that its name matched where you were supposed to put it.

Two egrets landed on the dock and moved in little circles on the planking. There were shadows on the lawn now.

For a moment, Croy thought he saw someone standing among some bushes down in the corner of the yard.

It looked like another old man.

A car door slammed shut on the other side of the house.

Croy hesitated, looked toward the bushes again, then picked up his knife and took off running for his car.

He made sure he kept the blade pointed down when he ran.

BEN DECOVIC WAS WORKING the North Shore sector and ended up the first one on the scene at the Tedros place. An old man in a green cardigan and baggy pants was standing at the end of the drive and frantically waved him in. He identified himself as Leonard Renisopolos, a friend of Stanley’s, and told Ben he’d found the body, and then he pointed to the rear of the house and said, “From the bushes. He walk right up I am making the call to the police.”

Renisopolos suddenly stopped and gestured for Ben to pull his gun. “Maybe he still there.”

“What do you mean? Who?”

“The man I’m thinking is the one did it to Stanley. He just stand there. I hurry to wait out front for you.”

Ben sprinted back to his car and called in the full platter. Two other patrol cars pulled in, and Ben waved one officer to the front of the house and motioned the other to follow him.

Stanley Tedros was lying in the middle of the backyard. Jack Carson stood a few feet away from the body.

Ben and the other officer walked down the lawn, guns still drawn. “You ok, Jack?” Ben asked. “What are you doing here?” Ben stepped over and quickly patted Jack down. No weapons.

The other units arrived.

“I’m thirsty,” Jack Carson said.

“Oh man, look at this,” the other officer said.

Ben had spent enough time in bars with off-duty cops who, over drinks, talked up the number of corpses they’d seen and then tried to top each other with stories of the ones who’d been in the worst shape, the cops—at least publicly—all subscribing to the conventional wisdom that seeing enough corpses eventually toughened you to the reality of death, but Ben, like most cops, knew that conventional wisdom worked fine when you were perched on a bar stool but was not much help anywhere else.

Stanley Tedros looked like someone had run over his abdomen with a lawn mower.

“Jack,” Ben said, “did you do this? You can tell me.”

“Something’s wrong with this man,” Jack said, then went silent and studied the stringer of fish lying next to Stanley’s right leg.

“Did you see what happened here, Jack?”

“Yes.”

The EMS people arrived.

Another patrolman appeared at the back door of the house and shouted down that the place was clear.

A moment later, Leonard Renisopolos, gesturing and talking excitedly, walked down the lawn flanked by two Homicide detectives, Hatch and Gramble. Both had on anonymous brown suits. Above his, Hatch’s face was lean and sharp-featured, topped with a military-sized buzz cut. Gramble’s face wore a fast food diet and a pair of unfashionably long sideburns.

Hatch stepped over. “You’re the one caught the call, right?”

Ben gave him what little he had and was explaining who Jack Carson was and how he more than likely had ended up in Stanley Tedros’s yard when Hatch interrupted him and said, “You’re telling me we got either a suspect or eyewitness here, and the guy’s got Alzheimer’s? Wait’ll Gramble hears this.” Hatch shook his head.

Three officers finished the initial sweep of the adjoining lot. Someone yelled that the tech people were here. Another patrolman appeared at the top of the lawn and shouted down that they had a woman out front claiming to be the old man’s daughter.

“Which one?” Hatch said. “We got three old men here. One dead. One who can barely speak English. And one with Alzheimer’s. Probably a couple more too we haven’t met yet.”

“Carson,” the patrolman said. “She said her name’s Anne Carson.”

Hatch waved to let her through, then told Ben to move the old man out of the way so the crime techs could work. “Babysit the daughter and old man until I see what Gramble’s got from the Greek.”

Somebody called out that the coroner was on her way.

Anne Carson ran down the lawn and up to her father. “You’re all right,” she said, grabbing him by the arms. “I’ve been looking for you. I heard the sirens and saw all the lights and thought that—” She stepped back and started crying.

Despite himself, Ben felt it, that tug, faint but unmistakable, of old ambition, the desire to be at the center of things, working a homicide again, the pull of everything he’d told himself he’d left behind when he resigned from the Ryland police force.

Hatch walked back over, introduced himself to Anne Carson, and then said, “See if you can get your father to tell you what happened here.”

Anne wiped at her eyes and over the next twenty-five minutes did her best to elicit a response from Jack, but got nowhere. Jack just became more agitated and disoriented.

The crime tech people had set up arc lights and were sweeping the lawn. Another group was working the house.

“I’m sorry,” Anne said finally. Hatch said she’d have to accompany Jack to the station when they were done here and see if they could try again to work up something resembling a statement.

Jack kept swiveling his head, taking in the action around him, opening and closing his left hand. He kept the other in a tight fist and pressed against his leg.

“Is something wrong with his hand?” Ben said. “Look, the right one.”

Anne lifted his arm and gently worked on unlocking her father’s fingers, asking him if he could tell her what he’d seen as she did so, and Jack said nothing but slowly unclenched his fist. In the center of his palm were a half dozen heavy gauge washers.

“You find these here?” Hatch asked Jack.

Jack furrowed his brow.

Hatch asked Anne to check her father’s front shirt pocket. She pulled out a small fistful of tangled paper clips, a bottle cap, some string and rubber bands, a pen, some salt and pepper packets, and three lint-covered Life Savers.

“A little bit of a pack rat, huh?” Hatch said.

“The guy who bushwhacked me at the Passion Palace,” Ben said, “we found some washers on the scene afterwards. He put them in a sock.”

Hatch juggled the washers in his hand. “This the one where you lost your Glock, right?” He looked over at Anne and smiled.

Ben involuntarily clenched his fist and then chastised himself, embarrassed. Ego, the pecking order, were nothing new in a Homicide squad.

Hatch pushed it a little more. “Decovic, you go back out front and help with crowd control and traffic. Once the coroner’s done, we’ll be moving the body.”

He paused for effect.. “And don’t worry, I’ll have the crime tech boys and girls look for any others like these that might be around.”

Ben nodded and just managed to avoid eye contact with Anne Carson before turning and starting up the lawn.

He slowed, then paused, when off to his right, a patrolman and a man and woman appeared. The man looked to be in his early to midthirties, heavyset, with thick black hair. He was wearing a brightly colored golfing outfit. The woman had dark blond hair spilling to the middle of her back. She carried herself with the self-conscious posture of a model and wore a pair of tight black jeans and a pale blue short-sleeved sweater.

The heavyset man suddenly broke free and ran down the lawn, the patrolman hurrying to keep up.

The woman stopped and looked over her shoulder toward the back door of the house.

It was a small thing, easily lost in everything else going on in the yard, the rigid posture and backward glance held a couple beats longer than you’d expect, and Ben might have summarily dismissed it if he hadn’t seen the expression on her face when she brought her head back around. The initial puzzlement had hardened into what looked like a mask of pure rage. It suddenly disappeared when she noticed Ben standing off to her left.

She lowered her head and walked down to the middle of the backyard.

Ben waited a moment, curious.

There.

Another quick glance back. He caught it.

Then the heavyset man turned and pulled her to his chest. He was crying.

Ben moved to the front of the house and joined a young patrolman behind the yellow crime scene tape stretched across Stanley Tedros’s drive. The street was full of neighbors, onlookers, and local media people clamoring for details.

The young patrolman stepped closer to Ben and winked. “Hope my mama’s watching the Eleven tonight,” he said, nodding toward the cameras. “They’ve been taking my picture.”

Ben asked, “Who were the two you just let by?”

“Buddy Tedros,” the patrolman said. “He’s the nephew. The other was his wife.” He paused and leaned closer. “Did you get a look at her? That sweater? Those jeans? She’s really something.”

“Yes, she is,” Ben said.

BUDDY HAD GONE to meet with the probate lawyers early, and Corrine Tedros had slept in, and now as she dressed for her hair appointment, she practiced the postures of grief, running them through her mind like a set of calisthenics, visualizing the appropriate reactions to the seemingly endless succession of social functions and obligations that a death dragged after it.

There were times you were expected to be strong. Times when you were supposed to give in to grief and break down. Times when you were supposed to be upbeat. Times when solemn. Times that called for a combination of reactions, a shading of grief and loss.

Reminding herself that Stanley was dead helped. It was difficult though to reconcile the Stanley Tedros everyone else evoked and mourned with her memories of those pot-roast-laced Sunday afternoons soundtracked with
Zorba
and Stanley’s verbal jabs, all the insinuations he tossed Corrine’s way about her character.

The calling hours at the funeral home had to be extended for two days to accommodate the crowds. The service at the Greek Orthodox Church had been SRO, with the mayor, the entire city council, and the governor present, and the graveside ceremony had pulled in a huge crowd, Buddy having shut down Stanco Beverages for all three shifts. A wake, held at Stanley’s buddy, Nick Renisopolos’s, house had lasted all night, and the kitchen and dining room of Corrine’s and Buddy’s house were overflowing with Greek casseroles and desserts from well-wishers and friends.

The CBS evening news had given over one of its closing segments, forty-five seconds, to Stanley’s funeral and Julep’s current popularity.

Wherever Corrine turned, Stanley’s name was on somebody’s lips, his presence everywhere, his personal qualities continuously paraded in impromptu and official testimonials, and Corrine had to remind herself to stay focused and not let her guard down, and in order to do that, she found herself thinking more and more often not of Stanley Tedros but of her life in Bradford, Indiana and the anger and fear embedded in those memories.

Anger and fear, she’d discovered, could produce a very workable facsimile of grief.

Corrine finished dressing, got in her car, and drove to Le Nouvelle Femme Salon. Richard, her stylist, had the third chair waiting for her.

After she was seated, he started moving his hands through her hair, stopping at various lengths to provide commentary on the effect of the cuts.

“For most women,” he said, “my goal is the creation of beauty. I take whatever Nature has bestowed and find the cut that will enhance or reveal what is beautiful in the woman. For that, I need the eyes of a sculptor.”

He paused, gathering Corrine’s hair at shoulder length and studying her image in the mirror before them. “With you,” he went on, “it is something different entirely. I do not create. I discover. The beauty is there always. It’s rare and uncanny. No matter what the cut, you are beautiful. With you, I am like a painter who must understand light.”

Richard knew how to earn his tips. Corrine would give him that. She watched him set out his line of scissors, then drape the black vinyl apron over her and tie it at the neck. She dropped her head back over the wash basin and closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of the weight of the water in her hair and the smell of the shampoo and conditioner.