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Authors: Christopher Ransom

Tags: #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #Suspense

The Haunting of James Hastings (9 page)

BOOK: The Haunting of James Hastings

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‘And you just decided to rent the house next door? Sort of insinuate yourself into the swing of the neighborhood before you divulged this? Lady, are you out of your fucking mind? Who does this?’

‘I know how it sounds,’ she said. Her face was dirty with tears. ‘I was confused. I tried to imagine what your life was like now and I was afraid of making it worse. The lease is only month to month. I thought I could help you in some other way, if I got to know you first, maybe I could do something to make your life better, and then I realized I wasn’t acting rationally and I just - here I am, okay? It’s not up to me.’

I could not stay seated. ‘You stupid woman. You keep saying these things. You think this is how it goes?’

‘It was an accident! I don’t have anybody left!’

I watched her, waiting to see if she would hyperventilate. She rocked back and forth on my couch and cried with the force of an emergency room. I got up and walked into the kitchen. I stared at the window above the sink. After a few minutes she quieted down again. I went back in and glared at her.

‘What I am supposed to do with this knowledge?’

‘What I said,’ she hiccuped. ‘Anything, whatever you feel is right. I’ll do anything you want me to do. It’s your right.’

‘What is this, your idea of some tribal custom? Your people are responsible for my loss, you’re my compensation? Is that what you think I need? Bullshit. You’re lonely. You have nothing left. Your life is shit and now you want me to make it better. You want forgiveness for your husband and that’s not fucking going to happen.’

Her eyes never wavered from mine. ‘I will do
whatever you want
.’

I watched her for a moment. I wanted lots of things from her. Good things, bad things. Mostly bad.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘What I want is for you to leave.’

She didn’t move.

‘Get out of my house. Right now.’

She stood, fighting the urge to try one more time. Then she saw that if she were to stay, if she were to go against my wishes in this moment, I would hurt her.

‘I’ll be next door,’ she said. ‘Whatever you . . .’

She walked quickly to the front door and exited, leaving me to decide her fate.

‘She answered all my questions,’ my old friend Detective Bergen said. His hair was shorter. All his blond curls except the little baby pompadour at the front of his forehead had been buzzed off. ‘I reviewed the report. I referenced the husband’s note with his bank signatures. I reviewed her original statements to the officers who responded to the call. She offered to let us poly her. I told her that was up to you. I can arrange that, if you decide to go that far. But it’s rare for someone to come forward like this, especially considering she had to know that if we hadn’t found the truck or a witness after a year, we weren’t likely to. She’s smart enough to know we’re going to double-check everything, make sure it fits, which I have. The only crime she’s committed is withholding evidence and knowledge, which she did for, what, three weeks? Not quite a month anyway. We could push that, but given her state of mind, what she’s been through, I’m not sure the DA’s going to go to bat for us in any meaningful way. I’m not sure what else I can tell you right now, James.’

‘Her story checks out,’ I said.

‘Looks that way.’

We were seated on the deck at Johnny’s, the patio bar overlooking Venice Beach, where firm, barefoot waitresses with ratty braids were used to serving me cheap beer and cheap oysters. The morning after Annette’s magical appearance, I called Bergen and told him her story. He didn’t seem surprised. I guess he’d heard stranger things. Two hours later I watched through the window as he rolled up to speak with her next door, unannounced. She stepped out on the porch. He showed her his badge. She invited him inside and then I couldn’t see anything. Her shades were drawn. He was in the house for an hour and a half. When he finished, he headed toward his car, paused as if remembering me and then walked across my lawn. I opened the front door. He told me to sit tight, avoid talking to her until he could go over everything. He said he would get back to me in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and here we were.

‘How’d he do it?’ I said.

‘The accident?’

‘Kill himself.’

‘Blew his head off in the garage. Had a forty-four he used for target practice. That was . . . uncommon, being that he was a little guy. Forty-four is a cannon, more at home in a set of mitts. Arthur had little lady hands, but ballistics tested positive for powder and it was registered in his name. The signature matched. He was wearing a light blue suit. A funeral suit. That’s a delusion, there. The preparation without thinking about the mess.’

I made a face. ‘She found him like that?’

Bergen nodded. ‘Bad, bad deal all around.’

We took a moment to drink our beers and stare at the waves. The sky was overcast and the waves were the color of liquid pewter. The beach looked dirty. No one was lying in the sand. I could see Bergen was relieved, even if I wasn’t. He got to close another case, though I guess compared to the rest of his load it hadn’t really been much of a case to begin with.

‘What am I supposed to do now?’

‘Up to you. Could hire an attorney. I’m sure you could find one who’d be happy to file a civil. Try to prove she knew about it a year ago and helped cover it up. Go after his auto policy. I don’t know what her assets are, but a jury would probably give you most of them, plus something for punitive.’

‘Punitive,’ I said.

‘You spent a year wondering what happened. Grieving, without closure. A psychologist might argue that you will now have to start over. The clock has been set back. I’m not saying that’s true - I’m not a shrink. How you deal with it is up to you. But as far as what a jury will believe, yeah, you’re the victim here.’

‘I could profit from Stacey’s death.’

Bergen snorted. ‘Hey, you asked.’

‘I’m sorry.’ The idea of courtrooms and trials all for some money made me feel ill. ‘What I meant was, what am I supposed to do about her, this Annette?’

‘She took out a month to month lease. She seemed confused about why she moved in the first place, but it’s guilt. Call it a nightingale effect. She thinks she can help you, which will of course make her feel better. I told her that is not her job and she should refrain from further contact. I made sure she heard me.’

I nodded. This all sounded so reasonable.

Bergen leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘You don’t want her for a neighbor, we can make her go away. Easily.’

This was, I admit, comforting. I imagined her packing up her U-Haul again, the LAPD escorting her out of West Adams, probably over the hill to the Valley.

‘Do you think she’s nuts?’ I said. ‘She’s got to be, right?’

Bergen grinned. ‘No more than most of the beautiful women in this town.’

‘Is she dangerous, Tod?’

‘She’s been through the wringer. My take is she’s honestly trying to do the right thing, and that’s something. But if you decide to let her stay - and, really, it’s up to you, you’re calling the shots here - my advice would be to keep your distance. I’m not saying she’s dangerous, but you don’t need the headache.’

I didn’t quite understand what he was getting at.

Bergen put his hands out. ‘No offense, but between the two of you there’s enough trauma and bad juju to feed a shrink for decades.’

‘You’re saying don’t get involved?’ I scoffed. ‘Don’t worry about that.’

‘People don’t meet this way, James. Not happy people. And when they do, they don’t get any happier.’

I pushed an oyster shell like a little sled around the dish of ice. ‘I know.’

‘Good. Have you met anyone? You at least get laid since last time we spoke?’

‘No.’ I thought of Lucy Arnold. ‘But I have a few feelers out.’

A ringtone I recognized as the opening bass line to Aerosmith’s ‘Sweet Emotion’ began to play from under the table. Bergen flipped his clamshell and said, ‘Bergen’. He stood and I was given to understand someone else needed his investigative skills more than I did. ‘Tell Hayden to look at the AA files and call me as soon as he can. I’m on my way.’

The clamshell clammed. ‘Sorry, bud, gotta motor.’ He dropped a twenty on the table and put on his Michael Mann sunglasses.

I stood. We shook hands. ‘Thanks for the help.’

‘Call me if you have any problems with her,’ Bergen said. ‘But unless you go looking for it, I don’t think you will.’

‘Okay.’

He hesitated before leaving. ‘James.’

‘Yeah?’

‘You’re young. You served your time. No one else is holding the keys to the cell now. Understand?’

I did.

I considered the situation very carefully and waited a whole week before I went to see her again.

As I stood on Mr Ennis’s porch and she opened the door without a greeting, I was reminded of those adorable but mildly hardened sitcom wives, the kind married to such a lovable schlub you think if he could land her maybe you could too. Given what she had been through, she should have looked worse. But maybe she was still in shock.

‘I just wanted to thank you for cooperating with Detective Bergen,’ I said. ‘He’s a good one. He looked out for me last year.’

She nodded solemnly. An awkward moment stretched between us. When it seemed it would not pass, she stepped back.

‘Come in, have a seat.’

I heard Bergen’s warning in my head as I stepped inside. I wondered what had happened to the turtle, Tiny Mr Ennis.

‘I would imagine you have more questions,’ she said, turning to the refrigerator.

The living room, kitchen and hallway had been painted sunny shades of blue and yellow. She had moved in a set of wooden chairs and a round dining-room table, a bookshelf (still empty) and a few other tastefully out of place things: a roll-top desk with pigeon holes and a green leather surface, an expensive piece of exercise equipment, a small wafer-thin television standing on a wine cabinet with chicken-wire doors. I guessed she was serious about this.

‘I do,’ I said. ‘So many I don’t know where to start.’

‘Would you like something to drink?’

‘A beer if you have one.’ I pulled a chair from the little breakfast table in the kitchen, right about where the flowers would have been floating.

She returned with two bottles of Budweiser. I accepted reluctantly. The King of Beers gives me headaches. She sat across from me, waiting for me to start.

‘I guess we’re neighbors,’ I said, tilting my bottle at her. ‘Cheers.’

‘Is that all right?’

‘For now. But I’ll be watching you.’ I wanted that to be laced with humor. It wasn’t.

A minute of silence passed. I wondered what her husband had looked like. I made him bald, thin, hirsute. Sweaty.

‘You don’t sound like you’re from Los Angeles,’ she said.

I did not like to be reminded of my pre-Ghost accent, the slight Oklahoma drawl that was one-third southern, one third western, the last third some kind of corrupted surfer cadence that stemmed from my slow metabolism and generally mellow vibe.

‘We moved here from Tulsa.’

‘For jobs?’ She was going carefully, her shoulders tense.

‘Sort of.’

‘Are you an actor?’

‘Close. I was a double.’

‘I’m not familiar with the movie business. Is that like a stuntman?’

‘More like a stand-in.’

She cracked a thin smile. ‘You mean like for butt shots?’

BOOK: The Haunting of James Hastings

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