Late Rain (35 page)

Ben glanced over his shoulder.

The feeling, again, of a lopsided déjà vu, of something not quite right.

He took Croy’s hands and put them on the dishtowels and asked, “Can you hold them and press? Can you manage that, Croy?”

Croy said, “Every gun has a number, but not every number has a gun. That’s why you need to rhyme things.”

Ben got up and stepped over to the door and looked into the dining room.

There were three empty glasses on the table. They’d been there all along, but he’d been in a hurry and assumed two because two was what he thought he was looking at.

Behind him, Croy was counting, repeating the same sequence of numbers he’d run through with Ben.

Ben was suddenly nauseous.

A .22 Charter-Arms. That’s what he’d taken from Croy.

Ben slipped out the back door. Outside, the air was still dry, but the wind had picked up, a hot steady gusting like someone running full-out. It carried faint traces of smoke from the fires to the west.

Ben worked his way toward the front of the house.

Three empty glasses, not two. He’d missed that. He’d assumed two people, not three.

Just as the adrenaline rush of returning fire had kept him from registering the sound of the two rounds that had been fired at him from across the living room.

He had found Croy in the kitchen and thought he’d been the one who shot Croy. Ben figured he’d caught a lucky break returning fire.

He had not bothered to look beyond that.

But, like a voice, you get to recognize the sound of a caliber.

The two shots in the living room had not come from a .22. Something larger bored instead, probably a .38 or .45.

He slowed as he neared the corner of the front porch. The limbs and leaves on the old trees canopying Sonny Gramm’s house were alive with wind, exposing and then hiding an immense bone-white half-moon.

A rattle of keys. A shadow hunched over the driver’s side door of Gramm’s Mustang.

A moment later, the interior light came on.

A woman tossed her purse inside, pausing in the wedge of light to put her shoes back on. She lifted one leg, her hand reaching back, then froze when she sensed Ben’s presence. The hair spilling down her back was silver in the moonlight.

“Easy, Mrs. Tedros,” Ben said. “No sudden moves.”

“You mean like this?” she asked without turning around and stepped out of the wedge of light, stopping along the side of the Mustang’s hood.

“I told you to stay where you were,” Ben said.

“Is Croy dead?” She was still standing with her back to Ben, her hands at her sides.

“No, but close to it.” Ben paused, then asked Corrine to raise her arms, slowly, and put her hands on top of her head.

She ignored him.

The driver’s side door of the Mustang had not been opened all the way, and a strong gust of wind caught it. The door rocked on its hinges and started to close, creating a slow strobe as the interior light cut on and off when the door bounced against the frame.

“Was Croy able to talk?” Corrine asked.

“A little,” Ben said. He glanced down at his watch.

She laughed. “I don’t suppose there’s the chance we could work something between us, Officer Decovic, is there?”

“No,” Ben said. He moved a step closer. The wind in the leaves above them was distorting his field of vision. Shadows wavered and swarmed. Moonlight splashed and receded.

“I didn’t kill Sonny Gramm,” Corrine said.

“You’ll probably be ok then,” Ben said. “Buddy’ll buy you a good lawyer. Now please do what I asked.” Ben repeated his request for Corrine to slowly lift and put her hands on top of her head.

She still had her back to him.

Wind. Shadows. Moonlight. Everything roiling.

“Backup will be here any time now,” Ben said. “There’s no need for this.”

She laughed again.

“I think I’m past the point of backup and lawyers,” Corrine Tedros said.

The wind hit the car door, and the car door hit the frame and jumped. The interior light went on and off.

“Do you know what happens, Officer Decovic, if you look at anything long enough?”

Ben waited a moment before answering no.

“Oh, I believe you do,” she said.

The wind kicking in. A smear of shadows and moonlight.

“I have the gun I took off Croy,” Corrine said. “You know that, though, don’t you?”

“It’d be better all the way around if you did what I told you,” Ben said.

“Nobody asks to be born, Officer Decovic,” she said. “No choice there.”

“You have one now,” Ben said.

Another laugh. “Indeed I do,” she said. She slowly lifted her right arm and opened her hand. Something hard bounced on the hood of the Mustang.

“Satisfied?” she asked.

“Steady now, Mrs. Tedros,” Ben said. “Turn around slowly.”

“Call me Betsy,” she said.

Shadows and splashes of moonlight.

Corrine Tedros started to turn.

The leaves shifting.

Ben saw it then.

A shoe, not the .38, on the hood of the car.

Corrine swung and brought up her arm.

Ben stepped to the left and fired.

CROY WENDALL HAD NEVER BEEN in a hospital before. He’d never been shot before either. When he wasn’t sleeping, he made lists in his head of other things he had never been. Mostly he slept though and had dreams of very small things.

There were tubes running into and taped to his arms and wires running from his chest and stomach to machines that made sounds like hungry baby birds and flashed bright green numbers.

At first, Croy assumed that when he left the hospital he could take all the tubes and wires and machines with him, and he’d had to hide his disappointment when a nurse explained that wasn’t the way it worked. He’d liked the idea that he’d be part-machine and part-Croy and that the machines would read what was going on inside him and turn it into numbers.

The nurse also told him he was in Intensive Care and gave him pills to swallow. Croy kept track of their colors and then swallowed them and watched the machines to see what numbers the colors were.

Mr. Balen came to see him every day. He asked Croy a lot of questions, but sometimes the sleepiness made it hard to remember if Croy had answered them.

Mr. Balen had dark circles under his eyes, and his hands were jumpy.

Today, Mr. Balen stopped the nurse from giving Croy the blue pill and the red pills and told her to bring them back later. The nurse didn’t like that, but she did it because Mr. Balen pointed his finger at her and said some lawyer words, and after she left, Mr. Balen had smiled at Croy and asked how he was doing.

Croy said his tooth felt much better.

Mr. Balen tapped one of the tubes running into Croy’s arm. “That’s because of the antibiotics,” he said. “When we get you out of here, I’ve got a dental appointment set up for you. We’ll get the tooth taken care of before you have to appear in court.”

The two sides of Mr. Balen’s mustache did not quite match, and there were little scratches around his chin where he’d cut himself shaving. He had on a red and blue tie that Croy liked because they were the colors of the pills that the nurse would give him when she came back later.

Mr. Balen leaned closer to the bed. “I need you to listen carefully, Croy. You’ll be leaving Intensive Care tomorrow or the day after, and when you do, there will be some policemen who want to talk to you. I’ve been able to keep them away so far, but that will change very soon. They will be asking you a lot of questions.”

Mr. Balen paused and looked at Croy for a while. Then he asked, “Do you remember who you killed, Croy?”

Croy frowned and said, “When?” Croy had done a lot of crimes. Not all of them were killing, but some of them were.

“Since you first met Mrs. Tedros,” Mr. Balen said.

“Three,” Croy said. “Mr. Stanley, Jamie, and Mr. Sonny.” Croy stopped. “Oh, and Missy. I forgot her. That makes four. I don’t know about the policewoman I threw into the window of the restaurant.”

“Don’t worry about her,” Mr. Balen said. “Do you remember who shot you?”

Croy told him Mrs. Tedros. Mr. Balen smiled and nodded his head twice.

“I want you to do something for me, Croy,” he said. “I want you to forget everything else but those four dead people. Can you do that?”

Croy nodded. Forgetting was easy.

“The police will be asking you questions,” Mr. Balen said, “and this is what you need to tell them. You forget everything else, and you tell them what I’m going to tell you. Just that, ok? Nothing else.”

Mr. Balen then talked about the crimes Croy had done.

Croy listened hard because even though the four people he was supposed to remember were in what Mr. Balen said, they were not in it like it happened. Some of it was like it happened, but not all, and so Croy was listening as hard as he could because Mr. Balen was watching to see if he was.

This is what Croy was supposed to tell the policemen: Corrine Tedros had been afraid that Stanley Tedros was going to turn her husband Buddy against her. Stanley couldn’t stand the idea that Buddy had married a woman who wasn’t Greek. He didn’t hide that feeling, and Stanley had told Corrine he was going to find a way to break up the marriage before the year was out. Stanley’s influenceover his nephew was very strong, and Corrine had every reason to believe Stanley would make good on his threat. She went to Sonny Gramm who she used to work for and asked Sonny for help. Sonny introduced her to Croy. Corrine met Croy and offered him money to kill Stanley. Croy did. Then Buddy Tedros put out the reward for information about Stanley’s murder. It took a while, but Croy’s friend Jamie figured out Croy was the one who killed Stanley, so Croy had to kill Jamie. Missy was in the house with Jamie, so Croy had to kill her too. Then Corrine Tedros called Croy again because she had another problem. Sonny Gramm was trying to blackmail her about hiring Croy to kill Stanley. Corrine Tedros was afraid again and hired Croy to kill Sonny Gramm. On the night Corrine was supposed to pay the blackmail money to Sonny Gramm, Croy went with her. He killed Sonny like Corrine had asked him to. Croy thought she was going to give him some money for shooting Sonny, but Corrine shot Croy instead. She left Croy for dead, and then the policeman shot Corrine when she was leaving Sonny Gramm’s place.

Mr. Balen finished the story and looked at Croy.

Croy said that Mr. Balen had forgotten to put Mr. LaVell and himself in what happened.

Mr. Balen nodded. “Mr. LaVell and I are part of what you’re supposed to forget, Croy.”

Croy said ok and then asked about Jamie and him smashing Mr. Sonny’s Mustang and putting the rats in his house.

Mr. Balen said to make that not happen too. “There’s no real evidence to tie either of you to the crimes, and with Jamie dead, no one to claim otherwise.” Mr. Balen paused and tapped Croy’s arm. “Anybody asks, you tell them you weren’t there and don’t know anything about it.”

“That policeman knows though,” Croy said.

“But he can’t prove it,” Mr. Balen said, “and that makes it the same as if it didn’t happen.”

Mr. Balen got Croy a glass of water with little pieces of ice in it, and then he made Croy tell the story like he had told it to Croy.

“After I leave today,” Mr. Balen said, “I want you to tell that story to yourself over and over until you remember it all.”

Croy said he could do that. It would be like saying the numbers and rhymes in his head.

Mr. Balen winked and smiled. The two sides of his mustache fought with each other.

Croy asked if the fire had burned up the cabin and the tree with the frogs. He could tell Mr. Balen didn’t know what he meant at first, but then he nodded and said that the fire was out now, but it had burned up the cabin.

Mr. Balen looked at him for a long time after that. Then he folded his hands and said, “I remember how much you liked that cabin, and I have a surprise for you. I’m going to build you another cabin, Croy, if you tell the police what I told you to tell them. The new cabin will be yours, nobody else’s.”

Croy told him he would like a new cabin. He asked if it could be painted orange inside.

Mr. Balen said that would be no problem, and then he was quiet again.

After a while, he said, “There’s one other thing, Croy, about telling the story like I told it to you. You killed some people, so you’ll have to go to prison for a while. As your lawyer, it’ll be my job to make that stay as short as possible, but there’s no getting around the fact that you’ll be spending some time behind bars.”

Mr. Balen went on to talk about mitigating and extenuating circumstances and how the story Croy would tell assigned primary motive to Mrs. Tedros and how if they caught the right judge, Mr. Balen could cook the case so that the sentencing would be bearable.

Croy was thinking about the new cabin and the sound of the frogs in the river at twilight, and he didn’t say anything for a while.

Mr. Balen’s hands got jumpy again.

“You’re worried about prison,” Mr. Balen said. “That’s perfectly understandable, Croy.” He stopped to nod twice. “Mr. LaVell and I have discussed this too. He wants to do something for you, and he wanted to be here to tell you himself, but something came up, and he couldn’t make it, so he asked me to tell you for him.”

Croy listened to Mr. Balen name some money for each year of his sentencing. Mr. Balen took a little brown book from the inside pocket of his coat and showed it to Croy. Croy’s name was in it and an account number next to his name. There were little squares and columns on the pages.

“Each year,” Mr. Balen said, tapping the Deposit column. “Just like a payday.” He started nodding again. “If you think about it, Croy, prison will be just like having a job except you don’t have to get up and go to it every day. You’ll already be there.”

“And you’ll build me a cabin too?” Croy asked.

“Absolutely,” Mr. Balen said.

Croy said ok.

Mr. Balen tapped him on the arm again and smiled. The two sides of his mustache weren’t fighting anymore. He told Croy he’d be back to see him tomorrow, and if the police showed up in the meantime, Croy should tell them he wanted his lawyer present and then wait for him to get there before Croy started telling the story they’d told today.