The Accident (42 page)

Sally was perplexed. “What? Why would I buy drugs from Sheila or anyone else?”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Before she died, she was thinking about starting up a little business, selling common prescriptions for way less than what they cost at regular drugstores.”

Sally’s eyebrows went up. “Wow. I could have used those.”

“No, you wouldn’t have wanted them. They could have been totally useless.” We sat down opposite each other.

Sally said, “What’s the latest on Doug?”

“All I really know is they’ve charged him.”

“I can’t believe it,” Sally said.

“Me neither.”

“I mean, we’ve worked with him for years. I never would have thought.”

Sally’s definition of “I can’t believe it” was evidently different from mine. She was shocked, but accepting. I really, truly did not believe it.

“I think I know what happened,” Sally said. “I mean, it’s only a theory. But I think once Theo realized Doug had substituted those bad parts, they got into a fight, and maybe Doug was afraid Theo would tell you what he’d done.”

“Maybe,” I said, with little enthusiasm. “But it’s not like him. I don’t see Doug shooting someone in the back.”

“A lot of people have done things lately we didn’t think made much sense,” she said, and I knew she was talking about Sheila.

“Let me get to what I came to ask you about,” I said. Sally looked at me expectantly. “I got a call from Detective Stryker. She said Theo was writing some kind of a note, maybe not long before he got killed.”

“What kind of note? Where did she find it?”

“On the kitchen table in the trailer, I think, under some other papers. Stryker said it looked like he was writing something to me. Making notes, trying to figure out what he was going to say.”

“He did that,” Sally said. “Writing wasn’t something he was all that good at. He’d jot down ideas and bits and pieces of what he wanted to say before he’d write a letter. What were the notes?”

“They were kind of disjointed, didn’t make all that much sense, but there was one thing that stood out. He said something along the lines of ‘Sorry about your wife.’ ”

“Sorry about
Sheila
?”

I nodded. “What do you make of that?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, it probably means just what it says. He was sorry Sheila passed away.”

I shook my head. “I don’t get that. Theo and I were hardly friends. Especially after that blowup we’d had. And it’s been a few weeks now since Sheila died. Why tell me now?”

Sally shook her head. “It is kind of screwy, isn’t it?”

“It’s why I asked you how well you really knew him. Do you think it’s possible Theo had anything to do with Sheila’s death?”

Sally stood up. “Oh God, Glen, really. I can’t believe you.”

“I’m just asking,” I said.

“I know you didn’t like him, that you thought he did shit work, that those truck nuts hanging off his bumper offended your fine sensibilities, but Jesus, are you kidding me? Thinking Theo killed your wife? Glen,
no one
killed Sheila. The only one who can be blamed for Sheila’s death is Sheila. Look, I know how much it hurts you for me to say that, but it’s the truth, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can move on with your life and stop torturing the rest of us.”

“But Theo sounds like he was feeling guilty about something.”

She shook her head. She was furious, her cheeks flushed.

“This is, like, this is the most unbelievable thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said.

I stood up. I knew we were done here. “I’m sorry, Sally,” I said. “I don’t mean this as an attack on you.”

She was moving toward the front door. “I think you should go, Glen.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And I think I’d like to give my notice.”

“What?”

“I don’t think I can work for you anymore.”

“Sally, please.”

“I’m sorry, but I think I need to move on. With my personal life, with work. Maybe I just need to start all over again. I bet I could get a good price for this house. I could go live someplace else.”

“Sally, I’m really sorry. I think the world of you. We need to let things settle down. We’re all on edge. There’s been so much happening the last month. For me, for you. Take a couple of weeks off. Maybe talk to somebody. Honestly, I’ve been thinking about doing that. Some days, I think I’m going to go out of my head. Just take—”

She had the door open. “Go, Glen. Just go.”

I went.

FIFTY-ONE

Rona Wedmore had gone home with two Big Macs and a large order of fries. No Cokes, no milk shakes. There were drinks in the fridge at home. No sense paying takeout restaurant prices for something you already had at home. And besides, McDonald’s didn’t have beer.

She pulled in to the driveway of her Stratford house and let herself in.

“I’m home,” she called out. “And I’ve got Mickey D’s.”

There was no reply. But Detective Wedmore showed no concern about that. She could hear a TV going. Sounded like an episode of
Seinfeld
.

Lamont loved to watch
Seinfeld
. Rona hoped one day he might even laugh during an episode.

She took her gun from her belt and locked it in a desk drawer in a spare bedroom she used as an office. Even if she was only going to be home for a short while, she always took off her weapon and put it in a secured location.

That done, she came into the kitchen and walked through it to a small room at the back of the house, the one they’d fixed up before Lamont went over. Not big, but big enough for a loveseat and a coffee table and a TV. They spent a lot of time in here together. Lamont spent almost all of his time in here.

“Hey, babe,” she said, walking in with the brown takeout bag. She leaned over and kissed her husband on the forehead. He kept staring
straight ahead at the adventures of Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. “You want a beer with dinner?” Lamont said nothing. “A beer it is.”

She set up two TV trays in front of the loveseat, then went into the kitchen. She put the Big Macs on plates and split the large order of fries between them. She squeezed some ketchup out onto Lamont’s plate. She’d never really cared for ketchup on her fries. She just liked them salty.

She put the plates on the trays, then went back into the kitchen. She filled a glass with water from the tap for herself and reached into the fridge for a beer. She returned to the TV room. Lamont had not started his burger or eaten a fry. He always waited for her. He wasn’t much on the “please” and “thank you” thing these days, but he never began a meal until she’d sat down with him.

Rona Wedmore took a bite of the Big Mac. Lamont did the same.

“Every once in a while,” she said, “these just hit the spot. Don’t you think?”

The doctor had said that just because he didn’t have anything to say didn’t mean he didn’t want her to talk to him. She’d gotten used to carrying on these one-sided conversations for several months now. She wished Lamont would get so sick of listening to her blather on about work and the weather and could Barack pull it together for a second term that he’d finally turn and say to her something like “For the love of God, would you please just shut the fuck up?”

How she’d love that.

Lamont dipped a french fry in ketchup and put it into his mouth whole. He watched Kramer whip open the door, slide into Jerry’s apartment.

“I never get tired of that,” Rona said. “It kills me every time.”

When the commercials came on, she told him about her day. “This is the first time I ever had to investigate a cop,” she said. “I’ve got to walk on eggshells on this one. But this guy, there’s something seriously bent about him. Isn’t the slightest bit curious about how his wife died. What the hell do you make of that?”

Lamont ate another fry.

The doctor said he might snap out of it tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe in a year.

Maybe never.

But at least he could be home. He functioned, more or less. Could take a shower, dress himself, slap a sandwich together. She could even phone and he’d check the caller ID and if it was her he’d pick up and she could give him a message. Just so long as she didn’t need him to answer back, she was okay.

Sometimes she just called to say she loved him.

And there’d be silence on the other end of the line.

“I hear ya, babe,” she’d say. “I hear ya.”

As a police detective, she’d seen things. Working in Milford, maybe she didn’t see, with any regularity, the kinds of things cops in L.A. or Miami or New York saw, but she’d seen some things.

But she couldn’t imagine what Lamont had witnessed over there in Iraq. She’d been told by others what it was—about the Iraqi schoolchildren, how they’d blundered into that IED—but she still couldn’t get her head around it.

Guess Lamont couldn’t, either.

When he was finished with his burger and fries, Wedmore took the dishes into the kitchen and put away the TV trays. She returned and sat next to him on the couch.

“I’m gonna have to go out for a bit,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be long. But I talked to this man today, his wife died in a car accident a few weeks ago, and this guy, and his daughter, you wouldn’t believe the shit they’ve been going through. He thinks there’s something fishy about how his wife got killed. I think there is, too.”

Lamont picked up the remote and started surfing through channels.

“Even though I told him I wasn’t going to do anything with this until tomorrow, I’m going to try to talk to someone tonight. You okay if I head out for a bit?”

Lamont landed on an episode of
Star Trek
. The original one, with Kirk and Spock.

Wedmore gave him another kiss on the forehead. She put her gun back on her belt, slipped on her jacket, and went out the door.

She drove back over the bridge into Milford, past Riverside Honda, which was still in the process of being rebuilt after that fire, then found her way into Belinda Morton’s neighborhood and parked across the street from
the house. She looked at it a moment, then got out. She did a quick scan of the street, something she always did out of practice. Saw a dark Chrysler parked a few houses down.

It was quiet.

She went up to the door and rang the bell.

It was almost comical, in a way. The moment she hit the button, there came a scream from inside the house, like maybe she’d caused it to happen.

Rona did three things in very quick succession. She got out her phone, hit a button, and said, “Officer needs assistance.” And she rattled off the address. The phone went back into her pocket, the gun came off her belt.

This time, instead of using the doorbell, she banged on the door with her fist.

“Police!” she shouted.

But the woman was still screaming.

Wedmore didn’t have the luxury of waiting for backup. She tried the door, found it unlocked, and swung it open, stepping back out of the doorway at the same moment. Carefully, she peeked her head around, both hands on her weapon, arms locked. There was no one in the front hall.

The screaming had stopped, but now a woman, presumably the one who’d been making all the noise, was pleading, “Please don’t kill him! Please. Just take the money and go.”

A man’s voice: “Give me the envelope.”

Wedmore followed the voices. She went through the dining room, then past a room where a large television hung crookedly from the wall, the screen smashed.

Now, a second man’s voice, whimpering, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. Just take it!”

Wedmore considered her options. Hold her position in the hall until help arrived? Shout out from where she was that the police were in the house? Or just—

The woman screamed again. “Don’t shoot him! No!”

Wedmore appeared to be out of options. She came through the door. In a nanosecond, she took in the scene.

The room was a study. On the far side of the room, a broad oak desk. Heavily stacked bookshelves lined walls. To the right, a window that looked out onto the backyard.

On the wall behind the desk, a framed picture on hinges was swung back to reveal an open wall safe.

A woman Rona Wedmore recognized as Belinda Morton was standing off to one side, her face raw with horror. A middle-aged balding man Wedmore believed was George Morton, his head smeared with blood, was on his knees, looking up into the barrel of a gun. Training the weapon on him was a lean, well-dressed man with gleaming black hair. Wedmore did not recognize him.

With her arms set rigidly before her, and both hands on her gun, she shouted with a voice she barely recognized as her own: “Police! Drop it!”

The man was quicker than she had anticipated. One moment he was facing Belinda Morton’s husband, and now his entire upper body had shifted and he was looking right at Wedmore.

The gun had moved, too. The barrel was now little more than a black dot in Wedmore’s eye.

She pushed herself to the right at the same time as she shouted, again, “Drop—”

She barely heard the
pfft
.

Sure felt it, though.

She got off one shot in return. Didn’t have a chance to see whether she’d hit her target.

Wedmore was going down.

FIFTY-TWO

Darren Slocum, sitting out on the street in the Chrysler, heard the shot.

“Oh shit,” he said aloud.

He reached over for the keys, which were still in the ignition, got out of the car, and stood with the passenger door open, wondering what he should do. Much depended on who’d been shot. If anyone had been at all. It could have been some kind of warning shot. A gun might have gone off by accident. Someone might have fired at someone else and missed.

What Slocum did know was who’d gone into that house. He’d watched Rona Wedmore get out of her car, cross the street, and bang on the door. From his position, he thought he’d heard some commotion in the house, but wasn’t sure. He’d seen Wedmore get out her phone and make the briefest of calls before unholstering her weapon and entering the premises.

Not good.

If Wedmore had shot Sommer, the smartest thing he could do was disappear. And not in Sommer’s car. Best to toss the keys back in, leave the Chrysler on the street, let everyone believe Sommer came to the Morton house alone. If Slocum left in the car, and police couldn’t find one outside the house, they’d know Sommer had an accomplice.