Late Rain (20 page)

Dead was dead
. Ask any cop or mortician. A corpse was a corpse. One was no different from another. Death was always a tautology.

Except somehow against all logic, it wasn’t. You knew it in your bones that some deaths
meant
. They refused to be reduced to a least common denominator and flared, however briefly, in and against the darkness.

Ben Decovic’s wife’s death should have
meant
. Their love and her life should have ensured that it did.

Diane Decovic went to the dry cleaners, and then she was dead.

Cause and effect fled. Nothing held or fit. A sequence of events, that’s all, no sense, all underwritten by Accident. She was alive, and then she wasn’t.

Diane’s sister had been getting married that weekend, and Ben was supposed to pick up his suit from Central Cleaners on his way home. Paperwork had kept him working overtime, so Diane said she’d pick up the suit instead. Ben thanked her and said he’d see her soon.

Her last words to him had been to ask what he wanted for dinner.

Then Greg Hollinger happened.

And Diane Decovic bled out in the parking lot of Central Cleaners under a cloudless January sun.

When Ben tried afterwards to inhabit his days, Greg Hollinger happened there too. Ben listened to and read all the subsequent news and police reports, patiently waiting for a motive to reveal itself, sure that one had to be there to account for the death of his wife and the four others, a motive that, in turn, would be the first step for him to find a way to give shape to his grief.

Greg Hollinger and his life, however, turned out to be their own tautology, and the deaths over the course of an afternoon of a line supervisor, elementary school teacher, bartender, CPA, and veterinarian ceased to be newsworthy. Without a motive, there was no narrative, and without a narrative, the newspeople could not call and present it as a tragedy because a story that was not a story made viewers uncomfortable. A story that was not a story would sooner or later be replaced by one that was, and Ben Decovic watched his wife and the others drop off the radar of the national news. It was as if she had died a second time.

He went back to work.

He discovered he’d lost his eye. He couldn’t read a crime scene or a suspect anymore. There were fault lines running through everything he’d once believed. He was living on a different earth.

He stayed on the job, keeping busy, working extra shifts, wanting to believe that the touch, his eye, would return.

In the meantime, he started drinking.

Days and months passed. Ben didn’t worry about distinguishing between them anymore.

One day, he found himself entering St. Mark’s. Father John Sarko had just concluded morning mass and was heading for the sacristy when Ben called out to him.

Ben looked down and discovered he was pointing a Bersa .22 at Sarko. Ben recognized the gun—a sub-compact he’d bought Diane for when he was working late shifts—but did not remember how it had ended up in his hand.

Ben liked Father Sarko. He was a good man. He had done the funeral mass for Diane, and he had done it with solemnity and reverence, and Ben would always be grateful to him for that.

But it wasn’t enough. There was not enough of
enough
to contain Ben’s grief. Nor enough grief to contain the unruly and stubborn love Ben had for his wife.

Ben had moved further into the nave. He kept the Bersa trained on the center of Sarko’s chest.

Ben wasn’t sure if he’d come to shoot Father Sarko or himself or both.

Please give me the gun, Ben
, Father Sarko had said.
You’ve been drinking.

I want you to do your job
, Ben had said. He pointed the Bersa at Sarko’s head.
It’s not enough to bury her. I want to know why. Why I didn’t go to pick up the suit. Why Diane opened the door of Central Cleaners and started across the parking lot at the same moment Greg Hollinger pulled into it. Why Greg Hollinger did what he did. Why Greg Hollinger was born in the first place. Why love and work can’t save you. Why every prayer sticks in my throat.

Why.
Ben wanted nothing less.

He had not heard Andy Calucci come up behind him. Just as he had not seen the acolyte crack open the door of the sacristy when Ben had begun yelling or heard the call the acolyte made on his cell phone. Just as he had not noticed that the acolyte was Andy’s nephew, Tommy.

Andy Calucci was a member of St. Mark’s. He and the Father went way back. Andy talked to Father Sarko, and then he powwowed with the brass on the force, and the morning and the drinking and the gun-pointing went away, and Ben went on to take a medical leave and dried out. When the medical leave finished, he extended it by taking an unpaid leave of absence and signed on for six weeks at a time-share at Magnolia Beach, South Carolina, a place that existed as a speck on the far horizon of his childhood, embedded in a dim boyhood memory of standing on the ocean’s edge and surf-fishing with his father while his mother sat further up the beach under a striped umbrella and read a fat paperback.

The time-share ran out. Ben resigned from the Ryland Police Department. He put Diane’s and his house up for rent. He found an opening in Patrol. He took it. He moved into the White Palms Apartments. It was a sequence of events that he’d tried to convince himself passed for a fresh start.

CORRINE TEDROS had not made an appointment. She drove to Raychard Balen’s Conway office, ignored the protests of the receptionist in the ante-room, and went straight through the door to the inner office without knocking.

Balen was working on a phone conversation and simultaneously circling items with a felt tip pen from sections of the
Sun News
, the
State
, the
Post and Courier
, and the
Magnolia Beach Monitor
spread across his desk. He glanced up at Corrine and gestured toward a chair. Corrine remained standing.

Balen cut short the phone call. There were small white flecks of what appeared to be dried toothpaste on the lens of his wire frames, and the left half of the thin black mustache he sported did not quite match up with the right. A pair of brown cloth suspenders hung loosely over his rumpled white shirt, and Balen had yet to get around to knotting his tie.

“A surprise visit,” he said. He motioned toward the chair again. “You could have saved yourself the drive though. I’m scheduled to be at the Magnolia Beach branch tomorrow.”

“There was a luncheon with the mayor yesterday,” Corrine said.

Balen nodded. “I am aware of that. In point of fact, I was invited to attend but regretfully had other matters to attend to.”

“My husband attended the luncheon. So did Wayne LaVell. In point of fact,” Corrine said, leaning on the words, “LaVell sat next to him.”

Balen raised his eyebrows, then shrugged. “The mayor’s social secretary does not confer with me about seating arrangements, Corrine.”

“I want to know what’s going on with Wayne LaVell,” Corrine said, “and what he wants.”

“The same things you and I do,” Balen said. “To live a long, prosperous, and happy life.”

“Tell him to stay away from me and my husband then,” Corrine said.

Raychard Balen lightly brushed the right half of his mustache with his thumb. “If I were to do so,” he said, “I’d have to make some tonal adjustments to that statement. Otherwise, Mr. LaVell might perceive it as a threat. I know I’m certainly in danger of doing so.”

“I have a life here,” Corrine said.

Balen steepled his fingers. “Mr. LaVell is aware of that.”

“No goddamn way you can call his showing up here a coincidence.” Corrine felt her face begin to flush.

“Perhaps you are overestimating your importance in this matter. It’s a common enough occurrence in our culture today.” Balen paused. “Have you considered that Mr. LaVell is perhaps here on other business?”

“You won’t tell me what he wants?”

Balen sighed. “I’m not at liberty to say. To do so would break client-attorney confidentiality.”

“Fine. Play it that way,” Corrine said, unable to keep the anger from her voice. “But you’d better understand something. If things go to shit, I’ll take you and Wayne LaVell down with me. I’ll say we were all in it together. I’ll say you approached me with the idea of killing Stanley Tedros and that you were fronting for Wayne LaVell and his business interests, and I’ll make a judge and jury believe I had no choice, absolutely no fucking choice, but to go along with both of you.”

Raychard Balen looked down at his desk. He picked up the black felt tip pen. He uncapped and recapped it. He set it back down.

“You need to be careful, Mrs. Tedros, with what you say in the heat of the moment,” Balen said, looking directly at Corrine. “Because they may be words that you will later deeply regret having spoken.”

CROY WENDALL had been in his room working on the model of a small dinosaur with a complicated name that Croy could not make rhyme with anything when Jamie came home from an early afternoon of drinking beer at Mac’s Shack, his favorite bar, and stood outside Croy’s door and knocked until Croy set down the glue-capped toothpick and followed him out to the living room where Missy was sitting on the couch, knees to chin, watching television. Croy pretended she was wearing underwear.

Jamie waved two plastic bags with store names on them. His eyes had that beer look to them, and he was smiling a lot.

Croy sat down on the couch next to Missy. Some of her hair was caught under the neck brace, and it made part of her head look flat.

“I went shopping,” Jamie said, weaving from foot to foot. “Presents.” He handed Missy one of the bags and Croy the other.

Jamie had money in his pockets because he and Croy had been working for Mr. Sharpe and his landscaping business the last three days.

Croy opened his bag. Inside was a white T-shirt with black letters that said
I Mean Business
and a small can of beef stew that was Croy’s favorite brand.

In Missy’s bag was a new teddy that looked like it was made of pink cellophane and a pair of blue flip flops with little sea-horses at the top where the toes went.

Croy and Missy took turns thanking Jamie, and then Missy got up to change into her present. While Jamie got some beer from the kitchen, Croy took off his T-shirt and pulled the new one on. It was a size too small, and squeezed his chest and shoulders the same way drinking something cold too fast did to the inside of Croy’s throat, but Croy didn’t say anything to Jamie about it.

“Looks good,” Jamie said. He dropped into the recliner and set a six-pack of beer on his chest, then clicked the remote until the television was on a music video station. A band was standing on the shore of an island and playing very loud.

“Did Mr. Balen call?” Jamie asked.

Croy told him no.

“Maybe he will yet,” Jamie said. “What time is it, anyway?”

Croy started to reach for the pocketwatch and then made his hand stop because he knew Jamie was watching him in that way that seemed like he wasn’t, so Croy got up and checked the kitchen clock instead.

Another music video came on, and it had a band in an airplane. Jamie knew the names of the people in the band, and he told them to Croy.

Croy nodded, then looked down at the bag with the store name on it. It was lying next to his feet like a small pet.

Jamie had been in a good mood lately. Yesterday he told Croy twelve times that Croy was his best friend. Croy knew how many times because he’d kept count.

Missy came back wearing the pink teddy. Like Croy’s T-shirt, it looked a size too small. She had put on some lipstick too, but most of it came off when Jamie handed her his beer and she took a long swallow and then wiped her mouth.

“My Queen,” Jamie said when Missy stepped back and turned for Jamie in a slow circle.

The tips of Croy’s fingers had a hard shell on them from the glue. He was careful, but the tube was very soft, and it was hard to keep the glue on the toothpick. His fingertips made a click whenever Croy rubbed them together.

“Tell you what, Missy,” Jamie said, “why don’t you fire up Croy’s beef stew for him?”

Croy wanted to go back to his room and work on the model, but Missy was already on the way to the kitchen before he could say anything.

The television screen kept filling up with music videos, and it was hard to tell them apart. There’d been one with a girl singer in an elevator and a lot of people getting in and out of it, and then there was a girl singer in a car, and Croy wasn’t sure if it was the same singer or not, and it was even more confusing because she was always stopping to let people in or out of the car, and when Croy looked over at Jamie, he winked and toasted Croy with one of the beers from the six-pack, and then Missy was back with some snacks and a bowl of beef stew, and Croy tried to make things slow down and separate into the right order by picking up his spoon and eating the beef stew, but Missy had microwaved it too high and Croy burned his tongue, so he just held the bowl in his lap for a while.

A commercial came on, and Jamie spilled some beer down his chin.

Croy tried to remember if he’d put the cap back on the glue before he followed Jamie into the living room.

Missy started dancing to the videos. She told Croy she thought his gray hair was cute even though it did not match how old he really was and that it was too bad that Croy didn’t sex because she had a friend she could fix him up with.

Croy tried the beef stew again.

Missy mixed up the dancing, sometimes going fast, sometimes slow, and after a while she climbed up on the chair with Jamie and was sitting on his lap and licking at his ear, and Jamie set the beer cans on the floor and pulled Missy even closer, and they made noises and moved their hands around. Croy finished his beef stew and set the bowl on the floor next to the plastic bag and went back to his room, even though Jamie had told him it was ok to stay and watch television.

Croy locked the door and worked on his model. He glued the jawline to the head. Next were the hands and feet, which were claws, and Croy was very careful and did not mix them up with each other.