Drift (17 page)

“Maybe no one else saw it.” As soon as I said it, another call came in.

“I saw it on two channels in Philly. I imagine it was on the others, too.”

The incoming call was the Philadelphia police. I didn’t click over.

Danny laughed. “If you need to take that call, I can hold.”

“No, that’s okay. I have a feeling they’ll call back.”

“Probably a good bet. I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow. Try to get a good night’s sleep, okay? I don’t want to have to listen to Laura the whole way home going on about how you look like shit.”

“I love you, too.”

35

McClintock, the funeral director, called at nine to remind me the car would arrive at ten. I’d been up since five—not due to any virtue or industry, but because what little sleep I was getting was not of the fun variety.

By the time I’d gotten to bed, I’d stiffened up enough that it hurt just to toss and turn, but I had enough on my mind that I tossed and turned anyway. And my mind was twitching and fidgeting even more than my body, between the ache and sadness over losing my mom and Frank, stress over what was waiting for me back in Philly, and a nagging suspicion that the case that just wrapped up hadn’t wrapped up at all.

I hadn’t forgotten about Frank’s funeral, but maybe I kind of tried to, sinking my teeth into a case I shouldn’t have been involved in to take my mind off the things I didn’t want to think about. And now that the case was supposed to be over, my brain kept insisting there was something else to it. I had to wonder if I just didn’t want to let it go.

But there was still George Arnett’s friend with the piercings, the guy who cleaned my clock. He wasn’t any of the bodies at Crooked Creek Farm, so unless he was sitting in a trailer behind his mother’s house with a bullet in his head, he was probably still running around out there. Hell, he was probably the one who did Dwight Cooney. And even apart from that, I had a sense that something else was going on, that this bust was not the end of it.

When I finally got to sleep, I dreamed about kids eating ice-cream cones with crack in it, and monster stalks of corn that were bloated and sickly. There was also a dream from when I was a kid. It was the one where I come home, and there’s no one there, just the faintest scent of smoke. When I was a kid it scared the crap out of me. I hadn’t had it in a while. As I’ve gotten older, a strange nostalgia sometimes accompanied it, memories of my mom coming into my room to make sure I was okay, stroking my forehead and making me smile, lying with me until I went back to sleep. No matter how long it took.

There may have been plenty of terrible things out there in the real world, but the things that scared me the most, the horrible figments of my own imagination, were powerless in the presence of my mom. It was a feeling of absolute safety and security. This time, though, when it woke me up, that nostalgic feeling was followed by the aching awareness that she was gone.

That’s when I got up and started drinking coffee.

After McClintock’s call, I gave Moose’s open bedroom door a loud, coplike bang. He awoke with a start, and immediately grabbed his head with both hands.

“Car’s coming at ten o’clock,” I said, a little bit louder than necessary.

He groaned.

I put on my suit, went downstairs and called Nola to see if she wanted to ride in the car. She didn’t answer and I didn’t leave a message.

Moose came downstairs forty minutes later, showered and wearing a suit but looking rough. The suit looked like he had bought it before he finished growing, but I gave him credit for having one. What really looked like crap was his face: pale and drawn with dark rings under his eyes.

He put on a pair of wraparound sunglasses, and sat quietly on the sofa until the car showed up.

McClintock was sitting up front with the driver. Moose and I got in the back and looked out our respective windows.

The service was in the little church with the white steeple, the one we had seen from Hawk Mountain. Having seen the view from the mountaintop, I could picture where the church was in relation to the house and the rest of the town.

Nola was standing outside the church when we got there. Her hair was up and she had on a plain black dress and heels, a string of pearls, and a little bit of makeup. She gave me a tight smile and patted me on the shoulder. “I saw the news,” she said, her hand coming up to touch the bruise on the side of my face. “That was a bigger deal than you let on. You okay?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I’m okay.” The events of the last few days had taken my mind off Frank and my mom. Now I felt like I was back inside that bubble.

McClintock had every detail under control. He led me to the bottom of the steps and stood with me while I accepted condolences from the two dozen people who showed up. Most of them were older, friends of my mom and Frank. A lot of them looked vaguely familiar, either from decades earlier, or from my mom’s funeral. There weren’t as many as showed up then, and I wondered at first if she was that much more popular than Frank. She had a lot of friends from volunteering at the library. But many of the attendees forwarded regrets from spouses or friends who were under the weather. Maybe they had the same thing as Pruitt’s absentees. I wondered if he would call them sissies, too.

Singly and in pairs, they came up and shook my hand and said how they knew Frank or my mom and how they were sorry. Then they headed up the steps into the church. At the end of the line were Danny and Laura Tennison. I was relieved to see them, a breath of normalcy that breached the bubble, even if just for a second.

“Hi, Doyle,” said Laura. She gave me a kiss on the cheek, then wiped off the lipstick, looking up at my face with an expression of genuine concern. “How are you holding up?”

“You know me. I’m okay.”

Danny leaned forward and spoke quietly. “You look like shit.”

“More than usual?”

“About the same. Like the suit, though.”

They headed up the steps, and as I started to follow them, I heard a soft whistle, and I turned to see Stan Bowers walking up, wrapping a tie around his neck. In the time it took him to close the six paces between us, he looped the tie into a tight little knot.

“Hey, Carrick. How you holding up?”

“You know.”

“Yeah, I do. You don’t look too banged up, considering.”

“Thanks for coming.”

“You know it.”

McClintock cleared his throat beside me and glanced down at his watch.

“All right,” I said. “I got to get in there.”

“I’ll see you afterward.”

It seemed that McClintock touched my elbow and suddenly I was seated in the front of the church, just like at my mom’s funeral. Everything about it reminded me of my mom’s funeral, including my efforts not to think about her because I was worried I would lose it if I did. The biggest difference was that Frank wasn’t sitting next to me. I was so busy not thinking about my mom, I forgot to not think about Frank, and when I looked at the empty space on the pew beside me, I felt the muscles tighten in my jaw and my throat.

Nola was sitting on the other side of the church, Moose right next to her, still looking like hell. The urn with Frank’s ashes was sitting on a pedestal. The service itself was a blur, a lot of stifled coughs while the reverend recited a mixture of prayers and platitudes, with just enough vague personal details sprinkled in to make you wonder if at some point he had actually met Frank. Not that I could have come up with anything better.

Lost in my own thoughts—about Frank, about my mom, my dad, memories from my childhood—I felt like a spectator, of the service as well as the memories. It was like watching Nick at Night: sepia-toned childhood memories interrupted by commercials from the present day—drug dealers, land developers, crop fires, trucks running me off the road.

By the time the service was over, my feet were itching in my three-hour shoes and I was desperate to get out of there. But McClintock steered me back to the steps in front of the church so I could graciously receive everyone’s condolences yet again. With all the coughing going on, I made a mental note to track down some hand sanitizer.

Moose was at the front of the line, with Squirrel, whom I hadn’t realized was there. They both mumbled something and shook my hand before disappearing.

The rest of the crowd was kind enough not to disperse until everyone had a chance to shake my hand once more. While I was chatting with a blue-haired old woman whose name I had forgotten in the hour since we’d last spoken, I noticed Bowers and Tennison standing off to the side. They were quietly chatting and sharing a furtive laugh. At one point, they both looked over at me, then both looked away. I had the distinct impression that they were trading Doyle Carrick stories. Pricks.

As another old woman stepped up to tell me she was still sorry, I noticed Nola chatting with Laura Tennison. I liked that even less.

*   *   *

I don’t think McClintock had approved when I said no, I did not want a reception. Standing there holding hands with the last old lady in line, I knew I had used up all my civility, and I was grateful I had stood my ground.

When it was all over, Nola came up and told me that she had to drive over to Harrisburg, but that she could blow it off if I wanted some company. As much as I didn’t want to say no, the fact was I needed to be alone.

I think she understood. I think she was relieved.

McClintock packed me into the limo and drove me home. He opened my door, gave me a small, sad smile, and shook my hand. Then he got back into the car and drove off.

I watched as the car curved along Bayberry Road and disappeared, and suddenly I felt very alone.

A warm breeze swept across me. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the feel of it for a moment before slowly climbing the steps. It felt like the end of the summer. A butterfly floated by, and I thought about Mexico, about finding out where the butterflies were headed and going down there to wait for them. Entering the house, I also thought about going to bed. But I knew that if I did, I might stay there for a week.

Sydney Bricker had given me a list of papers I needed to find—life insurance, bank statements, deeds—and a strong suggestion that I do it sooner rather than later. So instead of going upstairs, I went into Frank’s office, confronting two of my greatest phobias: paperwork and awkward personal matters.

It felt like I was violating his inner sanctum, rude just to be in there when he was so powerless to stop me.

Behind the desk was a wooden credenza, and inside it were boxes of all sorts of papers. They were stacked neatly, if not exactly filed, and I was pretty sure I would find what I was looking for inside them.

When I opened the first box, I caught a whiff of something so faint I didn’t completely recognize it at first. But part of me did: a combination of leather and aftershave and something else, like tweed. It was Frank. I smiled when my brain caught up with my nose, but my eyes were already wet.

Within five minutes I’d found everything I was looking for. Alongside neatly bundled stacks of bank statements and utility bills was an accordion folder marked “Important Papers,” with each of the tabs marked with one of the items on Bricker’s list. I wondered if they had been in cahoots, or if this was something normal grown-ups did.

It was cathartic, but almost anticlimactic. I had nothing else to do, so I put the papers I needed on the desk and moved on to the next box. This one was clearly my mom’s, and the fragrance totally different, mostly Chanel. My throat caught as I opened it. There was an envelope of old photos, mostly her and me. I was a kid, and she was a beautiful young woman. There were some old tax returns, a few résumés. I lifted out a stack of old manila envelopes, and felt something bulky in one of them. I opened the flap and slid it out: my dad’s wristwatch.

I felt a surge of emotions, but before they could assemble into anything coherent, I caught a whiff of smoke and ashes, the faint but acrid smell of something burnt that was not meant to burn. The hairs on my arms rose up as I recognized the smell from my nightmares. I quickly slid the watch back into its envelope. But before I could put the envelope back in the box, I saw something that stopped me.

A restraining order.

“Meredith Carrick,” it said across the top. Scanning it, I picked out words like “protection from abuse” and “battery.” I felt a jarring sense of disequilibrium. I’d had my problems with Frank, especially in the early days, but strangely, in the days since he died, I felt closer to him than ever before. Now this. I would never in a million years have suspected him of this.

Then I saw the date. Three months before the motel room fire that killed my dad. Then I saw the name. David Carrick.

At first it made no sense to me. Then it came back in snippets: arguments, shouting and cursing, broken furniture, tears. Apologies. I remembered driving with my mother at night, wondering where we were going. It was a school night, and it was an adventure, staying in a hotel, but the gnawing feeling in my stomach came back to me so clearly that I felt it again sitting there on the floor. I remembered coming back home the next day and knowing that my dad no longer lived there.

Suddenly, I felt completely devoid of energy. I left everything right where it was. Feeling sore and stiff and creakier than the steps I was climbing, I went upstairs to bed.

36

It was after dark when I awoke. A gusty breeze was rustling the trees and billowing the curtains. The windows were open, and I lay there in the darkness, feeling the air on my skin and the electricity of an approaching storm. I tried not to think about the restraining order, or anything else.

I tried to go back to sleep, but that wasn’t happening, so I moved on to plan B.

Pulling on my jeans and a T-shirt, I went downstairs without turning on the lights. I banged my toe, but took it as fair punishment for not knowing the layout of the place a little better. In the darkness, I grabbed a square bottle from the bar, pretty sure it was Jack Daniel’s, and went onto the front porch. In the back of my mind, I wondered about Moose—if he was asleep or out somewhere. At some point I’d have to figure out what to do with him long term. I definitely didn’t want to be roomies for life, but I probably wasn’t going to keep the house anyway. At the moment, I was just glad to have some time on my own.