Sweet Dreams, Irene (5 page)

“Sammy is your age?”

“A little older. She’s seventeen, I’m sixteen. I won’t be seventeen until January.”

“She’s free to make her own choices, even bad ones, Jacob. Don’t feel guilty. There are other kids at the shelter she could have chosen as friends, and you said yourself she was already into it before she moved there.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I just wish there was something I could do.”

“Keep her occupied with other interests, other friends.”

“You probably saw why she doesn’t have too many friends.”

“You saw through it—other people can, too.”

He was quiet until we pulled up in his driveway.

“Thanks, Miss Kelly. Thanks for trying, anyway.” He walked back into the house in the same glum mood I had seen him in first thing that morning. I was, at that moment, happy to be heading toward forty after all. I wouldn’t be sixteen again for anything.

I
STOPPED BY
the store on the way home and bought some candy and a pumpkin. Pickings were slim by then, but I did manage to find a bag or two of not-too-unpopular candy bars. At the checkout stand I had an inspiration and bought something for Frank.

I
OPENED
my front door cautiously, and found myself battling the fear that always overtook me when I was home alone. I live in a little 1930s-style bungalow in a neighborhood that threatens to become more upscale, a relatively peaceful area. But the violence of the previous summer had been brought to my doorstep, and try as I might, I could not yet feel safe in my own home. The window blasted out by gunfire had been replaced, the locks improved, the wall replastered—even my grandfather’s chair had been repaired and reupholstered. I was the only item that was still damaged.

Wild Bill Cody, my gray, twenty-pound tomcat, heard the door open and came bounding in, scolding me loudly when he reached my feet. I picked him up and scratched his ears; he closed his eyes and purred loudly. “It’s your own fault, Romeo,” I said. He clawed my arm in response. I dropped him on the floor with a yelp. We were even.

He trotted after me, following me into the kitchen. I opened a can of some foul-smelling stuff he was fond of. I rinsed the cat food can and put it in the recycling bin. He was already chowing down, but he looked up and blinked his thanks.

I watched him with affection. Lately he had been shuffled around like an orphan, traveling between my place and Frank’s. At first he was a terror to transport, employing a vast array of tricks for fighting the cat carrier, and wreaking havoc on Frank’s house when we got there. Frank learned to catproof his place and Cody learned—after two or three times of being left by his lonesome—that if he was going to make a stink about it, he’d be left behind. This time he had refused to come when I called for him, so I had left some dry food and fresh water near his cat door.

Outside of shredding the newspapers I put down to shield the kitchen table, Cody didn’t interfere with my pumpkin-carving efforts. He made the biggest mess he could with the papers, decided he didn’t like the smell of pumpkin pulp, and took off. After a minute, I wondered what he was up to, and found him chewing on a candy bar. It was one that had a mint flavor—a particular weakness of Cody’s. I took it from him and got a nice scratch for my efforts. I was going to have to watch that candy bowl like a hawk.

The trick-or-treaters started arriving, and kept me busy for the next few hours. It is not a good idea to rest your hopes for the next generation on what they choose for Halloween costumes. While I knew that the boys probably wouldn’t
all
end up being mass murderers and leaders of evil space empires, I couldn’t help but feel dismayed about the number of princesses and ballerinas I was greeting. Just when I feared that there were no tomboys left in Las Piernas, a little girl came trundling up the steps carrying a sword, a black buccaneer’s hat perched atop her head.

“You’re a pirate!” I said.

“I’m a pirate
captain!
“she corrected.

I gave her six times as much candy as the usual ration, and told her to be sure to thank her parents for me.

F
RANK CALLED
as business was slacking off, at about 8:30, saying he wouldn’t be free until after 11:00—could I wait? I told him I’d have a snack and wait for him to get back for dinner. I air-popped some popcorn and curled up on the couch to listen to a Kings game in progress. Cody strolled over and settled on my lap. He smelled suspiciously of mint, but I didn’t see a half-eaten candy bar anywhere.

During the second period break, I packed up my clothes for work the next day. Frank and I were alternating between houses—one week at mine, one week at his. It was an arrangement that had already grown tiresome, but neither of us had broached the subject of moving in together. Or whatever it was we were going to do next. I was happy to keep packing clothes and cat for a while.

On my way back to the living room to listen to the second period, I stepped on something soft—Cody’s candy bar. I bagged up the remaining candy and stuck it in the freezer. What worked with Frank would work with Cody. After that I was completely absorbed in listening to the hockey game. The Kings won in overtime and I was jumping up and down and whooping for joy when the front door burst open, scaring me clean out of my wits.

Frank and I stood looking at one another with startled expressions.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I heard screaming.”

“I’m fine,” I said sheepishly.

The announcer was saying, “So the Kings win it with thirty seconds left in overtime …”

“I should have known,” said Frank, coming over to give me a hug.

I looked up at him. “You’re tired. Let’s just go over to your place and I’ll fix you something there.”

He seemed tempted for a brief moment, then said, “No, I promised you dinner out tonight, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

I frowned. It was easy to see that he was exhausted. He had worked long hours all week, and the case he was on now—the murder of a four-year-old girl—had been especially hard on him. He was usually able to distance himself emotionally from the grisly business he had to deal with at work, but this case had bothered him. He bottled up most of his agitation over it, but it seemed to me that effort was wearing him down as well, and from time to time I caught glimpses of how much it had disturbed him.

On top of the strain of this case, the last few weeks had been rough ones for another reason: Frank wasn’t getting along very well with his new lieutenant, Dave Carlson. Lieutenant Carlson was an ambitious man, and I suspected he was somewhat jealous of Frank’s popularity with both the other cops and their captain, John Bredloe. Carlson and Frank had already had a couple of minor run-ins, and Bredloe had backed up Frank both times. That didn’t score him any points with the lieutenant.

“I’m willing to take a rain check on the evening out,” I said.

“Get a sweater, it’s cool outside.”

Okay, so he wanted to go out. We went to an all-night cafe, Bernie’s, which is not far from my house. The food was good, but despite the fact there wasn’t much of a crowd, the service was pathetically slow.

“I talked to my mom,” Frank said. “She doesn’t have a problem with having you join us for Thanksgiving.”

That didn’t sound quite the same as boundless enthusiasm, but maybe he was too tired to convey her level of interest in having me there. Besides, I had made up my mind about it anyway.

“Great, I’ll be happy to be with your family for Thanksgiving. Thanks for inviting me.”

His face went quickly from puzzled to pleased. With a little food and coffee in him, Frank perked up a bit, but we were both ready to head for home. I looked around. If our waitress was in the room, she was wearing a cloaking device.

“You know, Frank, I have thought about our growing old together—I just didn’t think we were going to do it in Bernie’s.”

“Yeah, I wanted dessert, but I’m afraid to order it; we’d be here ’til I’m pensioned.”

“Don’t bother,” I said, reaching into my bag and pulling out a Snickers bar—the little gift I had bought for him at the checkout stand. “Have at it, sweet tooth.”

He grinned in appreciation. “You know, Irene, I think I might satisfy one other craving tonight as well.”

“You taking up smoking?”

“One more guess.”

The waitress chose this moment to reappear.

It was about 1:30 in the morning by the time we got back to my house. We captured Cody and I grabbed my clothes and overnight bag. We decided to go to Frank’s place in one car—he would bring me back in the morning.

As we made our way up the walk to his house in the early hours of All Saints’ Day, we both saw something that made us stop and stare.

Mrs. Fremont’s lights were on, and her front door was wide open. Even from where we stood, we could see the crudely drawn goat’s head on the door.

S
TAY HERE!”
he said, running across the lawn to Mrs. Fremont’s house. I thought of following him anyway, but just then Cody gave a pitiful yowl from his cat carrier, and I realized Frank had set it down near the driveway.

I heard Frank calling Mrs. Fremont’s name, and I turned back to see him pulling out his gun before going into the house.

I quickly put Cody inside Frank’s house, then went next door. “Frank?!” I shouted at the bottom of the steps, not wanting him to mistake me for an intruder. Something told me that whoever had been here was already long gone, and that Frank wasn’t likely to find anyone in the house. I was half-right.

From the doorstep, I could see Frank at the end of the hallway, bent over something in an odd way; he hadn’t responded when I called. As I walked toward him he looked up suddenly, an expression of anguish on his face. Before him, on the floor, Mrs. Fremont lay face down in a pool of blood. On the floor next to her, someone had drawn a circled pentagram in blood.

“Don’t touch anything,” he said, his voice strained. He stood up, and I saw that she had taken some kind of crushing blow to her head. As I stared down at the body, Frank reached over and turned me away. “Let’s go home—I’ve got to call this in.” I held on to him and somehow we stumbled back to the house.

I sat numbly while he went to the telephone. He was visibly upset, but he took a minute to regain his self-control and was able to put the call in without betraying emotion of any kind. He stood there, staring at the phone for a moment, then walked over to me and took my face in his hands. “Please stay here. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.

I felt unable to do anything but nod. He seemed so calm, but something in his eyes hurt to look at. For a moment, he looked as if he were ready to say more, but he dropped his hands and turned and left quickly.

Cody found me sitting on the couch, and jumped up into my lap. I thought of Mrs. Fremont and the conversations I had with her not twenty-four hours ago, of how alive and vibrant she was then. Endless questions crossed my mind, questions without any possibility of being answered at that time.

The goat’s head and the pentangle made me think of Sammy and her coven of witches. Was Satanism on the rampage in Las Piernas? Could Sammy’s routine about paganism versus Satanism have been a cover-up of some kind? She had been afraid of the man in the goat’s mask. Wasn’t that connected to Satanism? What did Sammy really know?

I saw the reflection of the blue-and-red lights of police cars on the walls, soon followed by the crackle of radios. I looked out and saw Lieutenant Carlson pull up. I sat back down, sad and suddenly weary, but not feeling as if I could sleep.

To my surprise, about half an hour later, Frank came back home. I got up to greet him, but something in his walk warned me to keep my distance. When he was close enough for me to see his face, the coldness there came at me like a blow.

“What’s wrong?”

He walked past me and over to his liquor cabinet. He poured himself a large scotch and downed it quickly.

“What’s wrong?” I asked again.

“Carlson won’t let me work on it. He basically ordered me to leave.”

“Why?”

He shrugged his shoulders, poured himself another scotch, and downed it as easily as the first. I was wondering if he was going to stay up all night drinking, but he put the bottle away and said, “I’m going to bed.”

I followed him into the bedroom and we got undressed in silence, Frank keeping his eyes averted from me. We got into bed, and he turned away from me. I reached to rub his shoulders, but he pulled away, moving his large frame to the edge of the bed. You don’t have to call Western Union for me. I got the message.

I rolled over so that we were lying back-to-back, and turned out the light. The room was bathed in pulsing lights from the police cars next door. Doors opened and closed, voices carried on the night air. My muscles ached with tension.

“Irene?”

I turned back, thinking maybe he wanted to talk after all. There was a long silence.

“What, Frank?”

Still more silence. I was about to give up when he said, “I think we should take a few days off from each other.”

I didn’t answer because I couldn’t answer. My throat was constricted and I could feel tears welling up. I rolled away on the off chance he would turn and look at me. I lay there for a long time before I was able to breathe normally.

Before we started sleeping together in that bed, I had spent a number of years living alone. My friends and family always worried that I was lonely then. But in all those years, I was never as lonely as I was that night, lying less than three feet away from Frank Harriman.

B
ETWEEN MY EMOTIONAL STATE
and the noise next door, I didn’t sleep at all that night. The two triple-sized scotches had apparently done the trick for the bastard next to me, although I noticed he was extremely restless even as he snored away.

I went from feeling extremely sorry for myself to being extremely angry with Frank. I was pissed at myself as well, for not having a car to make an escape in. I considered calling a cab. Maybe because it was a Holy Day of Obligation, I prayed for strength.

At dawn, watching Frank and wondering if I would ever watch him sleep again, something like sympathy found its way past my anger. I remembered how upset he had been earlier, how close he had been to Mrs. Fremont. I thought of the helplessness he must have felt when Carlson took him off the case. I didn’t like the idea that withdrawing from me might be his way of dealing with his own emotions, but I concluded that like it or not, I was going to have to give him the time alone he wanted. I reminded myself that he had said “a few days,” not “I never want to see you again.”

I’d been around too long to feel much comfort in this last thought. I hated being in the position of waiting to see if he still wanted me.

I decided the answer to my problems was to busy myself with the election and to do what I could to find out about occult groups in Las Piernas. If the paper raised a stink about it, I figured I could argue reasonably that I wasn’t working on a crime story—after all, I had already been contacted by someone who had indicated a connection would be made between Satanism and the D.A.’s race. Besides, who knew how much longer I’d be bedding a cop? It might only be a few more minutes.

Sometimes my own sense of humor backfires on me.

I decided that the odds of Frank waking up and taking me into his arms and murmuring, “Darling, how could I have been so wrong! I can’t live without you …” were slim to none. So I carefully slid out of bed and went down the hall to the bathroom and took a shower. Okay, so what if we usually took one together? That was just water conservation, right?

I was in a really foul mood by the time I dried off. Frank wasn’t awake yet. I carried my clothes into the bathroom and got dressed there. I was too restless to stay in the house, so I went out onto the patio. That wasn’t such a great idea. It made me think of standing in the backyard of Casa de Esperanza, hearing Mrs. Fremont tell me Frank was a keeper. Well, I apparently hadn’t set the hook properly—he was wriggling away.

I heard him moving around inside the house; heard the shower and later, kitchen noises. My own appetite was running around somewhere with my ability to sleep. I couldn’t take looking at the garden anymore, caught between the loss of Mrs. Fremont and the distance from Frank, so I left the yard through the gate. I walked past Mrs. Fremont’s house without more than a glance at the yellow police barricade tape that sealed it, and headed for the beach. It was only a short walk from the house.

I stood at the edge of a walkway that led down to the beach. The Pacific stretched out in dark gray, the autumn sky cloudy to match. As I stood there, it worked its magic, the rhythm of the waves breaking on the shore easing away my tension.

By the time I walked back to Frank’s house, I was calm. I had decided not to push him, and not to make too much of what he had said in bed. I had plenty to do between now and whenever he wanted to see me again.

I went into the house. I could hear Frank washing the dishes. I avoided the kitchen and gathered my things together from his bathroom and bedroom. That left Cody. When I walked out into the living room, Frank was holding him, scratching his ears. “We’d better go,” I said.

Frank put Cody in his carrier, then picked it up and came over to get my bag. “I can manage,” I said. He looked at me for the first time since the night before. He looked unhappy, more sad than angry, but he said nothing. We walked out to the car in silence.

The drive to my house was silent as well. He helped me bring Cody in, not trying for the bag this time. As he set the carrier down, he looked at me. I couldn’t stand the thought of him just driving off.

“Why?”

He looked away. “It’s not you.”

“If it’s not me, why are you shutting me out?”

“Just give me a few days.”

“Fine.”

He finally looked at me again. “I don’t want to hurt you, Irene.”

To avoid shouting “Too late!” into his face, I bent down to let Cody out of his carrier; by the time I stood up, Frank had left.

I looked out the front window; he was sitting in his car. He hadn’t started the engine. “Please come back,” I whispered.

He drove off.

I WENT INTO
the office taking deep breaths and internally chanting something that went like this: I will not take it out on the people who work with me.

I met Wrigley on the staircase.

“Well, good morning, Miss Kelly. Just wanted you to know I took Miss Martin off that ridiculous little assignment you gave her last night. She had more important things to do.”

… Eight…Nine…Ten. Still pissed. Remembering the chant, I said, “You’re not doing her any favors.”

He laughed and shoved his way past me. I resisted the strong temptation to kick his double jugs down the stairs.

Just as I reached the newsroom door, Stacee Martin came flying out. She looked at me and burst into tears, then ran off down the hall.

For a moment I debated whether to follow her or mind my own sordid business, and decided that maybe John had given her a hard time about not covering the story. As I walked into the newsroom, a group of people were standing around John. Suddenly there was a burst of laughter, the kind of laughter you hear when a joke has been made at someone else’s expense. I decided not to join them, and walked over to my desk.

“What’s wrong with you, Irene?” one of the reporters called out.

“Police brutality,” another yelled, and there was more laughter. It was a stupid, worn-out remark, and usually I would have met it with a comeback of my own. I could see from the look of anticipation on most of the faces that they were waiting for just such a repartee, but I was too far out on the edge of my ability to keep my temper to respond. I glanced at John, and saw a worried look on his face. I turned and walked back out of the newsroom. As the door closed behind me I could hear John yelling at everyone to get back to work.

I went into the morgue, away from prying eyes, and used the computer there to open the file on the Gillespie murder. That was the case Frank was working on. I’m not sure exactly why I reviewed this particular file, except that I knew the case was bothering Frank; maybe I just wanted to try to understand what was going on with him. I realized that as busy as I had been with the election, I hadn’t paid much attention to this case. I did remember that Mark Baker, the reporter who covered the story, had been pretty shaken up by it.

Megan Gillespie was a beautiful four-year-old girl, the only daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth Gillespie. She had disappeared from a city park, where she had been attending a children’s birthday party one Saturday afternoon in late September. Her body had been found in a trash bin in an industrial park a week later, now about three weeks ago. She had been sexually molested. Cause of death was strangulation.

I closed the file with a shudder. Although Las Piernas was big enough to have its share of crime, including homicide, this type of case was rare. I didn’t need to read more of the file to know that although the case was being worked on actively, no suspect had been charged. The level of fear in the community, especially among people with small children of their own, was palpable. The pressure on the police was tremendous, but I didn’t think that was what bothered Frank. He had lived with that before. It was more likely that the very nature of this particular case had upset him.

“Excuse me, Miss Kelly?”

I know I must have jumped. When I managed to find my voice, I said, “What is it, Stacee?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I’m okay. What do you need?”

“I just wanted to apologize. I wasn’t able to cover the coalition meeting last night.”

In view of what I had just read, I couldn’t have cared less. “I know,” I said.

“You know?”

“Yes, Wrigley stopped me on the stairs to gloat over it.”

“Oh.” Her eyes misted over.

I wish I could tell you that I was moved, but I wasn’t; I was just angry. The day was going lousy and I just didn’t have patience. But I held my tongue, because I remembered my chant.

Finally, she said, “Well, I apologize anyway. It won’t happen again.”

“Why should I believe that?” I said, nasty in spite of myself.

“I guess you don’t really have any reason to. I wanted to tell you that I learned a lesson—I really don’t think I want anything more to do with—well, I’ll just say Mr. Wrigley has made a first-class fool of me and I deserve it. If you’ll give me another chance, I won’t disappoint you.”

I was too tired and frazzled to argue with her, and God knows I didn’t want her to sit there and confess all the lurid details of her liaison with Wrigley. “I’ll see what I can come up with for you. Are you here to do more research?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good. Come by my desk later and we’ll talk it over.”

She smiled a little and said, “Thank you, Miss Kelly.”

I logged off the computer and headed back to my desk. Compared to the pain the Gillespies were living with, I guessed I could cope with my little aches. I remembered O’Connor quoting something to me once. “Irene,” he said, “if everyone in the world could put all of their troubles in a basket, we’d each still want to pick our own problems back out of it.”

I’d take mine over the Gillespies’ any day.