Flowering Judas (18 page)

Gregor's phone made that odd tinkling noise that announced a text message coming in. Howard sat still and watched while Gregor opened the message, read what was there, and then texted back again. He did not text-type as fast as Howard had seen the kids do it, but he wasn't a complete klutz, either. Gregor closed the phone.

“That's it,” he said. “The New York State Police do have a service you can use if you don't have a proper medical examiner's office. I'll talk to them later on this afternoon and we'll arrange for them to pick up Chester Morton's body and do a more thorough autopsy. Then, if you don't mind, I'd like you to haul out all of that old evidence and let me go through it. In the end, we've got four questions that need to be answered before we can be sure that we know what really happened here. First, why did Chester Morton disappear? Second, why did Chester Morton come back? Third, where did Chester Morton die? And fourth, was Chester Morton murdered, or did he commit suicide? If you answer those four questions, you'll at least know what happened here. Whether you can make a case for it in court is another thing. That will have to be up to you.”

Howard got the car started and pulled it slowly around in the dirt ruts until they were facing the exit and on their way out. A woman came out on the steps of the trailer that directly abutted the one they were just in, and Howard saluted her halfheartedly. Then he got the car out onto Watertown Avenue and turned back toward the central station.

“I've never understood the people who live in that place,” he said. “I mean, it's one thing if you don't have a choice, if you're disabled or something like that. Then you have to take what you can get. I don't understand people who could do something to get themselves out of there and don't.”

“Can many of them do something to get themselves out of there?” Gregor asked.

“Some of them at least could have, once,” Howard said. “See that woman I waved to back there? Althy Michaelman.
Althea
Michaelman. Her mother was like that, all these fancy names. She had a sister named Jael, from the Bible. The sister's long gone. Althy was in my class in high school.”

“Intelligent?”

“I don't know what you mean by intelligent,” Howard said. “She was bright enough until she got to be about sixteen. Then it was guys here and guys there. She never graduated. She got pregnant and got on welfare and moved out there. And she's been out there ever since, half drowned in beer. She's got four kids and none of them are worth a damn that I can see, except maybe the youngest one. The youngest one goes to the community college and she's got a job.”

They were almost back, but the clouds had had enough. They were black and close to the ground, and now they opened up and started pouring rain over everything. It was big-dropped, soaking rain, the kind Howard liked least.

“Do you know everybody in town?” Gregor asked him. “Everyplace we go, you seem to have gone to high school with half the people in the room.”

“It's a small town,” Howard said, easing his car around to the back to park it. Gregor Demarkian's driver's car was there, with the driver still inside it. The driver was reading a book. “It was an even smaller town then,” Howard went on. “There were only about a hundred and twenty people in my graduating class. It's odd to think of what happened to everybody. Charlene married to Stew Morton. Althy in the trailer park. Not that Charlene would have been surprised about that. She always thought Althy was a tramp, even in high school. But that might have had something to do with the fact that Althy was pretty, and Charlene was definitely not. Funny to think Althy was pretty once, isn't it?”

“I don't know,” Gregor said.

Howard watched him get out of the car and then got out himself. He didn't have an umbrella with him and the rain poured down over his head like a shower that had been turned on too high. Gregor was getting wet, too, but he didn't seem to mind it. He went to his own car and tapped on the driver's window to get his attention.

“Well?” Howard said.

“I want to go back to the hotel and work on a couple of things,” Gregor said. “It's getting late anyway. I'll talk to the state police and set up a time and place so that we can get that body properly examined. Are you going to be on your cell phone all evening?”

“I always keep the cell phone on,” Howard said.

“Good. I'm going to get out of this rain. I'll talk to you later.”

Howard thought he ought to get out of this rain, too, but he stood for a while watching Gregor Demarkian get into his car. When the car started up and began to ease out of its parking place, Howard turned toward the back door of central station and started walking across the lot. He did not feel very well at the moment. He wasn't really sure why. Maybe it was just that he was tense.

He got to the back door of the station and slipped into the back hall there, past the rain.

When he had first talked to Marianne Glew about calling in Gregor Demarkian, she had warned him that he was going to cause more trouble than he would fix. He thought now that this was probably true.

3

It was raining when Haydee Michaelman left the trailer that evening, raining in that way where water pours out of the sky in sheets. She was running late and it was going to take even longer to get to school than usual. She wouldn't be able to use the shortcuts now, both because of the wet—the ground out there got muddy as hell—and because of the dark. It was enough to make her want to scream. She wanted to scream all the louder because her wasted time had been so thoroughly wasted. It had been forty-five straight minutes of Mike whining about what she owed him and how he was going to get it.

“You're not so big I can't take my belt to you,” he'd said.

Haydee hardly believed she'd heard it. It was like something out of a Lifetime movie.

“I might not be too big, but you're too drunk,” she'd said. “And I know how to dial nine-one-one and I've got nothing against filing charges when the police get here. If you want money, go get a job and make some for yourself.”

“I can't get a job, you fucking cunt,” Mike had said, except he wasn't “saying” things by then. He was more like spitting them. “I'm disabled. I'm sick. You know I'm sick.”

“You drink too much beer, that's all that's sick about you. You've got a doctor that's willing to write you notes to the state. God, the two of you are a pair, you really are. Get off your butts and do something for once.”

“You owe me,” Mike had said. “You owe me. And if you don't fork over that cash, I'm going to throw you out of here right on your ass, and see how you like it. Fucking cunt.”

Haydee picked her way down the rutted mud flat that served as a “road” inside the trailer park. She wasn't going to hand over her money to Mike Katowski, or to her mother, and she didn't think either one of them would ever throw her out. She was the only one who was working. She was the only one who was ever working. They were too sure they could get some money off her sometime to want her to leave.

On the other hand, leaving would be a good idea. Someday Mike was going to actually come at her, and she was actually going to have to call 911. That would be all right as far as it went. She was more than happy to see Mike's ass in jail. The problem was that if he put her in the hospital, she could miss school and work for days.

Haydee got out to Watertown Avenue and started to cross it, when a car park on the shoulder honked at her. She ignored it. Cars honked at women on Watertown Avenue, especially women coming out of the trailer park. They all figured that if women were coming out of the trailer park, they had to be willing to … well.

The car honked again. Haydee ignored it again. There was a lot of traffic and she was stuck having to wait. Then a voice she recognized said, “Haydee? Haydee, it's me. I thought you might need a ride.”

It took a few seconds for her mind to adjust, but she really did recognize the voice. It was Kenny Morton from English class. She wondered for a second if he'd come out here to pick up hookers, but she didn't think so. She'd have seen him here before if he was in the habit of doing that.

Kenny had the window on his car rolled down. The rain was falling down on the length of his arm.

“You can't really be thinking of walking to school in this,” he said. “You can't. It's a complete mess out there.”

Haydee came over to the car. “You're going to school?”

“Well, I would be. We have English class. I just saw the weather and thought you'd like to have a ride. Then when you didn't come out, I wondered if I'd gotten it wrong. I mean, you know, that you were working. Do you want to get in so I can close this window and stop getting soaked?”

Haydee was already soaked. She was a little worried she would ruin the upholstery of the car. She was more than a little worried that somebody would see her getting in. She got in anyway, and slammed the door shut behind her.

Kenny rolled up his window. The heater was on, just a little, to keep the windows from fogging up. “You really were going to walk to school in this stuff,” he said. “That's crazy. Why didn't you call me? You're going to get sick, acting like that.”

“I don't have your number,” Haydee said.

Kenny gave her a long look of exasperation, then reached into the pocket of his pants and came up with a little plastic case of business cards. “Take one of those,” he said, throwing them down on her lap. “My cell phone number is on the top. Where's your friend Desiree?”

“I don't know. I haven't seen her around. She doesn't always come to class.”

“So you walk back and forth to school by yourself.?” He eased out into traffic.

“If I have to,” Haydee said. “I don't think Desiree really wants to be in school. She only goes because I do and I nag her about it. But you have to go to school, you know. If you don't go to school, you get stuck working at the Quik-Go for the rest of your life.”

There were cars and people going by. Haydee could see he was going around by the reservoir, not the way she went through town. It was a nicer drive, but a much longer walk.

“Do you mind if I ask you something personal?”

“No,” Haydee said. “I guess not. What is it?”

“Well,” Kenny said, “the thing is. Well, are you all right? Because last class, you know, and now tonight, you don't look too good. You're shaking like a leaf. And okay, that could be the rain this time, but you were doing it last time, and it was a really nice day. So…”

Haydee thought about it for a minute, but then it didn't seem important to hide anything. There was nothing about her life he couldn't guess just by knowing where she lived.

“I had a fight,” she said. “Not a physical fight, you know. Just a screaming fight.”

“With your mother?”

“With her boyfriend. He knows I've got money stashed away someplace. They both do. I don't know how they find out, but they always know. And last time I'd put away nearly twelve hundred dollars and they found it, and of course before I realized they'd found it it was gone. So this time I found a better hiding place. So he was screaming at me. And he was going through my room. Once a couple of weeks ago he actually dug up the dirt around the trailer looking for it. He says he didn't, but the dirt was dug up. He's crazy. But I want that money for a car, and he's not going to get it.”

“Does he—hit you?”

“Not yet,” Haydee said.

They had reached the DMV building, which always made Haydee think of an elementary school. It was that kind of building. On the other side of the road was the river.

“Why do you keep it around, if you don't want him to find it?” Kenny sounded genuinely puzzled. “Why don't you just put it in the bank?”

“I looked into it for a while,” Haydee said. “It costs money to have an account in a bank. The only way it doesn't is if you have a big amount you can leave there all the time, or if you can have where you work direct deposit your paycheck. And the Quik-Go wouldn't know direct deposit from a cucumber. I mean, you know, it's very nice people, the people who own it, but—”

“They're from China,” Kenny said. “I know. Not all banks charge you, though. You could join the credit union. You're a student. Anybody who's a student or a teacher or on staff at Mattatuck–Harvey can join it. And they don't charge fees for a savings account. I could take you over there tomorrow if you have the time. I could—I could come with you to get your money, wherever you've put it, so this guy couldn't jump you, you know, and then I could take you out to the credit union and you could open an account. Then you could put your money in there when you got it. That has to be better than hiding it out at your mother's place. He couldn't get to it there.”

“That's true,” Haydee said.

They were at the reservoir now, going over it to the other side of the river where everything was green and country. Haydee liked it out here, even in the rain.

“Thank you,” she said finally. “I'm sorry if I seem abrupt, or something. I'm just a little tired. Thank you for this. I'd really like to do it, if you could.”

“Tomorrow?”

“I could do it tomorrow in the morning,” Haydee said. “I'm supposed to start work at one and be there until six, I think. I really need a car. If I had a car, I could get a job out at Walmart or maybe in one of the supermarkets. Someplace that paid more money and could give me better hours.”

“So, okay, we'll get your money into the credit union, then we'll go looking for that car. I don't mean right away, I mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Haydee said. “That's all right.”

Kenny was silent for a long moment while they negotiated an intersection with a traffic light, but almost nothing built about around it to justify needing the light. Finally Kenny cleared his throat and said, “You know, I don't mean to be a jerk, or anything, but maybe you ought to consider finding someplace else to live. I don't like the sound of your mother's boyfriend. And ‘not yet' doesn't sound like you're sure he's never going to beat you up.”