The Odds (15 page)

Her father. She can almost feel him in the room. He was a “fine” man, the minister said at the funeral. But the minister didn’t even know her father. He was just there to make fifty bucks, Alison explained, for saying a few words. The word
fine
is so … clean. It is the thing itself, slender and simple. A fine gentleman, Dickens might have called her father. A fine gentleman has patience and knowledge while a brute is all impatience and blunt instruments. Self-control and kindness. Yes, that’s how her father was.

She repositions the book before her on the kitchen table. Because it’s a book about miracles, it manages to seduce her for a few minutes from the man in the living room, who himself is a story to rival the one in print.

Twenty pages later, she gets up and tiptoes again to look at him. Nick opens his eyes. Her heart jumps,
she
jumps, and a little sound escapes her. He looks startled, too.

“Where am I?” he asks.

“Here. In our house. Our living room.”

They both still themselves. His electric eyes flash with fear, then soften.

“What happened—?” He feels for his leg, and his hand hits the Styrofoam, making a muted thump. He gets up on an elbow and reaches for the blankets that cover him. “Is my leg o—?” he begins.

“Don’t move. You’re okay. Don’t you remember? I gave you pain pills, then my brother reset it. Well, he checked the setting and recast it.”

“Recast? This is a cast?”

“A splint. A made-up one.”

“What is it?”

“Styrofoam.”

“That works?”

“It’s working, we think.”

“You set my leg?”

“Yes. My brother did, mostly.”

“I don’t feel too good.”

“In what way?”

“Weak. Hard to think.”

“That would be normal after what you’ve been through.”

“How long have I been out?”

“Just last night. It’s Sunday.”

He nods.

“Do you drink coffee?”

“Coffee? Yeah.”

“I’ll get you a cup.” She hurries to the kitchen and pours so fast, she spills some of the coffee and has to slow herself down and wipe things up. When she returns, he has peeled the blanket back and is looking at his leg.

She puts the cup of coffee beside him on the floor.

He is up on one elbow still, learning his surroundings. “How did you move me?”

“We carried you in the sheet again. Into the kitchen, then from the kitchen to here. You don’t remember?”

“I remember now. The kitchen. I was on a couple of pills, right?”

“Yes. We couldn’t work on your leg without pain pills. …”

“Why did you do this for me?”

Meg tries to find the right, the most accurate answer. “My brother and I thought we knew how, that together we could figure how.”

“But you’re kids.”

“We studied what we should do. It’s temporary anyway. A hospital would do it better.”

He falls silent. He brings the mug to his lips, sips, puts it back down. He says slowly, “I don’t get it. I’m grateful. I don’t get it though. I asked for whiskey and a stick or something and you did all this.”

“You were kind to me. Twice.”

“I was?” He blinks rapidly.

“At the pizza shop. Alison had a flyer. She called and ordered wrong. I didn’t have enough money and you gave the pizza to me anyway. That was the first time.” He doesn’t remember.

“Who’s Alison?”

“She used to live here.”

He lies back and rests for a minute.

“And then you gave me some food.”

“I remember that.”

Meg comes closer and lifts the coffee cup. In the hospitals they give patients straws that bend so they don’t have to move. She will have to pass through McDonald’s and filch a couple.

He raises himself up again. “My clothes,” he says.

“I saved them, but they’re no good. I have to get you something else.”

“Your father’s?”

“If … if there is something that would work.” She and Laurie had snatched a few of their father’s things when Alison was giving them away, but only things they thought they could use for cleaning, sleeping in, just clothes that allowed them to feel close to him still. Was any of that going to be usable?

“I don’t get it,” he says again, eyes narrowed. He takes the cup from her hands and swallows some coffee. “How did you study”—he nods toward his leg—“about my injury?”

“Internet. And I went to the hospital and asked some questions.”

His eyes widen.

“I think I did it okay. I said it was a school project.”

He takes another drink of coffee and tries to put the cup down on his own, but trying to find the level space on the floor is too intricate a move, and she has to take it from him.

“Joel’s going out to find crutches today. For when you feel up to it. No hurry.”

“How am I going to get out of here without clothes?”

“I’ll buy you something, but not until Tuesday.”

“What’s today?”

“Sunday.”

“Oh. That’s right. You told me.”

“And tomorrow’s a holiday.” His face is strained, trying to remember what holiday. “Memorial Day. We can’t afford to go to a real store. We have to wait till the thrift stores open. I don’t think you’re strong enough to do anything much yet anyway. Give it a couple of days.”

“In here?”

“Yes. Well, probably better upstairs.”

He looks around, getting the lay of the land. “Will I be able to walk?”

“I don’t know.”

“It hurts like hell.”

“I think it would.” She is getting used to the shifting expressions on his face. “There are only four more of these little buggers—pain pills. After that, you have to start on Advil, which isn’t very strong. It’s all I could find. Try not to worry. Try to get some rest.”

“What about whiskey?”

“You don’t have enough money. Unless you have more somewhere.”

“I had some money in my wallet.”

“You only had another forty. We used some already and we’re going to need more supplies.”

“What’s going to happen when whoever takes care of you finds me here?”

“It’ll be okay.”

“Why don’t I believe that?”

“It will.”

“Where are they?”

“They … work. They might not be back for quite a while.”

It got quiet for a moment. He was figuring he was going to need the jar or the bathroom, one or the other, soon enough. She isn’t afraid of anything having to do with taking care of him, but by the way he pulled the covers over him even when he exposed his leg, she knows he has modesty and some pride. Up and down the steps on crutches if they manage to find them is possible eventually, but more than he can handle today. Up the stairs on his bum
might
be possible.

Better to say it all out loud, deal with it. “We probably will have to put you upstairs where you can have a bed that’s a height you can get to from standing. And our bathroom is up there.”

He swears under his breath as he lets himself down again. He turns slightly to look at her. “What’d I do last night?”

“Jar.”

“If I had a pair of crutches—,” he says.

“Right. We just have to find them.”

“How?”

“My brother will go out after breakfast. Until then, the jar. It’s okay. It’s no trouble.”

After a while, he asks, “Who was here last night?”

“My brother, my sisters, and me. Nobody else saw, if that’s what you’re asking.”

From upstairs comes a small noise, someone getting out of bed. Laurie, from the light footsteps. The sounds that are utterly familiar to Meg make Nick go tense.

“It’s my sister. Try to rest. It’s only us.”

He tries to rest. He’s only pretending.

First Laurie comes down the stairs, then minutes later, Joel and Susannah. They slide into the room and stand, awed, looking at their captive.

“Don’t stare at him,” Meg says.

“I’m the Christmas tree with all the lights on,” he mutters wryly.

Meg urges them toward the kitchen. “Let him rest a bit.” Before she vacates the room herself, she asks him, “Would you like TV? I’ll put it on. For company?”

His eyes move along with the TV for a minute or two and he is asleep again.

   COLLEEN GREER AND POTOCKI hadn’t been long on duty on Sunday morning when Colleen heard on her radio the 911 call for a patrol car. The operator was saying, “We have a call from a pay phone. A kid’s voice. Says there’s something up at a house on this street called McCandor. The kid thinks it’s 822 or something, green paint. Said there might be a dead person or maybe a murder on the second floor. I couldn’t keep him on. That’s all we have to go on.”

Colleen got on the phone and identified herself. “We’re Homicide on duty. We can be there in ninety seconds. We’re right at Headquarters.”

She waved to Potocki. “We maybe got another one.”

Farber would see they were needed in Homicide.

Disappointment leaked into the voice of the policeman who’d also just answered the call. He said, “Oh. Okay, yes, Detective.” Patrol cops wanted to make their mistakes among their own rank with nobody scrutinizing, nobody seeing if they accidentally stepped on evidence.

“I’m on it, too,” a voice came from a second patrol car.

Nellins and Hrznak, two old homicide detectives who were also on duty, looked up as if the tornado that swept around them was kicking dust into their faces. They squinted as Colleen flew past them.

Colleen could hear a siren starting up in the neighborhood. Those guys loved their sirens—sometimes needed them to get through traffic, but mostly it amounted to yelling yahoo. She and Potocki hurried through the parking lot to the car they were using. “Could be nothing,” he was saying.

“Could be something.”

Potocki drove today, and he drove fast, laughing. “Go get ’em, girl. Nothing lazy about you. You’re stepping on their heels.”

Colleen tried to remember something. There was a phrase for
stepping on the heels of
. Out of Shakespeare.
Hamlet
. She could almost grab hold of it, but it eluded her. She could distinctly remember her teacher talking about it. Couldn’t remember the phrase. “Damn, damn,” she whispered.

“What?” Potocki asked.

“Oh, nothing.” She told him what she was trying to remember.

It seemed 822 McCandor didn’t exist anymore, but 826 had green painted external shutters on some of the second-floor windows. Two patrol cars were out front.

“Oh, look. They waited for us. They did.”

“Your voice,” Potocki said. “The sound of your voice. Very authoritative.”

“That and they’re chicken.” She and Potocki got out of their car.

The two patrol cops from the first car came around from the back. One and Two, she named them. “Point of entry seems to be a plywood plank. My guess is you just push it to go in, you pull it by some of the nails to board the place up.”

“It was in place, boarded up?” Colleen asked. Two more patrol cops came up to them—Three and Four.

“Yeah, but we messed with it and it’s partway down.”

She said to the first two, “That means whoever called this in possibly went to the trouble of boarding it up—”

All six tromped around to the backyard—if you could call it a yard, smaller than a postage stamp. A tree, two overgrown bushes, and some wild weedy grasses would have blocked a lot of the view from anyone across the alley in what looked to be other abandoned houses.

Potocki said quietly, “Two of you go out front to make sure nobody escapes that way.” He gave Cops Three and Four a few seconds to return to the front door. “Come on, guys.”

They all drew their guns. The plywood door went down easily, and all four of them smelled death.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

Potocki and the two cops went in while Colleen covered them from the doorway. They plastered themselves against the walls downstairs and swept the space a couple of times. Then Colleen went in herself. Their feet crunched glass, cardboard, nails, and other noisy debris as they moved.

There was nothing to see downstairs. Guns still drawn, they climbed up to where the smell was.

There were flies clustered around the body of a man who looked at first glance like a deadbeat. Tangled hair, clothes none too tidy, aggressive facial hair, the face of the borderline personality. Shot straight through the chest, straight to the heart.

They took a moment to stand back and survey the mess. The chaos would talk eventually, but Colleen couldn’t read it off the bat. She moved forward to examine the dead man’s pockets, but before she tiptoed through the clearest part of the mess, there was a new siren outside—and soon after, more sounds, a shout, and a “Hold on.”

Stepping on their heels was Franklin Farber.

The head of Narcotics was banging up the steps, saying, “Wait, wait, wait. Just hold up. Greer and Potocki, move back.” Farber looked at the body, reached forward to pull up the long sleeves covering the man’s arms. There were no tracks.

Potocki said, “Commander, I have to ask you to stop. You’re interfering with a Homicide investigation.”

“Well, the two of you are needed for a Narcotics investigation. I thought I made that clear.”

Potocki lit into him. “We were first on the scene. We got a Homicide call.”

“For a while, you privilege Narcotics.”

“But Homicide can’t take a backseat to Narcotics. Anywhere. Any time.”

Farber looked around at the cops and the detectives gathered. “But I have clearance to use you two the way I want to; there are other people on duty to take the Homicide cases.”

“Who?” Potocki asked, even though he knew the answer.

“Nellins and Hrznak are twiddling their thumbs back there while we have a big case to build in the next couple of weeks. I called them. They’ll be here in a minute. They told me the two of you
leapt
at it.” Farber took a big pause and summoned some diplomacy. “I think we didn’t get all the directions clear yesterday. You’ve already started in on work for me— You want to talk to your commander?”

Greer and Potocki watched as Farber pressed a couple of buttons on his phone. “Hey. Farber here. How you doing? Yeah, I know you started it. Can you talk? Okay. Here’s the thing. I want your two people on my team, not jumping at other cases, but— Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I happen to have the chief by the balls on this one.”