The Dead Past (14 page)

"It's nothing for you and me to be concerned about. I was wrong."

"Even about
Broghin
being rattled?"

He paused. He didn't like me playing devil's advocate, but the reason he'd been waiting for me today was so I could do exactly that. Where this went was more a battle of wills than a matter of facts. Would my and Anna's pushy imaginations win out over the cut-and-dried police investigation? I'd been in Felicity Grove for three days and nothing had happened so far concerning the murder—if it was a murder. Richie's body being left on my grandmother's lawn appeared more like coincidence every day, and if that were true, I could leave for Manhattan anytime. Just so long as I could be sure she was safe.

"You were certain
Broghin
was on edge because he was hiding something," I said. "You thought he or his family had been threatened."

Lowell sternly faced ahead, stopping at a stop sign and waving a woman and her two children across. "He must be having troubles with Clarice. They get into their moods, and they've both got rotten tempers. I've seen them go at it a couple of times before. Afterwards, she cooks him his favorite dinner and he buys flowers and they're as cuddly as a couple of panda bears."

"Lowell, I know you're feeling divided right now but you should have read the whole note. That was sloppy, and you're not sloppy. Why would
Broghin
be sitting in his office rereading an old love letter from his wife?"

"He probably dug it up to remind himself of when things were better. Men do strange things when they're fighting with their wives."

"And their consciences," I said. "You know you're going to come around soon enough, so stop arguing."

His knuckles went white on the steering wheel and I thought:
If he hits me in the center of my forehead I won't even look as good as a plateful of ham on the floor
.

"What about the dry spot on Richie's leg?" I asked.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. "I don't know," he said half-heartedly. "I may have been mistaken."

"You're fighting yourself at every turn here, Lowell. This involves
Broghin
in some stupid way and you don't want to believe it. All right, I have a bias against the man and don't really think he's all that big a fool, but something's going on here. It's probably something dumb or macho, but it's getting in his way. He's your boss, friend, and mentor, I suppose, and you've seen him put his life on the line. That means a lot. That loyalty of yours proves you're a hell of a man, but maybe it's too thick for you to see the truth."

"Which is?"

"We still have to find out. And we aren't going to do it by playing blind civil servant."

His chin snapped up. "Christ. You're still one for talking big when you haven't got much to say, Johnny."

"Is it possible that this love letter
had
been left on the body?"

We came to a red light and he turned and stared at me. I felt like I had when we'd been in high school and losing to a better team and there was time for one last play, maybe, with a chance to tie, not even to win but just to tie, and we'd look at each other across the huddle knowing we had only a thread to hang on to, hardly recognizable with the mud and grease paint, both of us feeling the weight of ephemeral glory on our backs along with the momentary hopes of our girlfriends and families and the rest of the fans in the stands, wondering if we'd blow it. "How should I know?" he said. "Anything is possible."

"Then we—"

The dispatcher came over his radio in a sharply garbled crackle: "Lowell?"

He snatched the transceiver. "I'm here, Meg."

I could barely make out her words. Meg spoke rapidly, the static blaring: "Jackie
Bubrick
just called. Says her daughter and no-good son-in-law are going at it again, and this time Aaron's hopped into it, too. Getting ugly. Somebody's waving a gun around."

"Who is it, Meg?"

"She was wailing and didn't say. Maybe Aaron decided to clean house all by himself."

"I'm only three miles away."

"You want I should send another car?"

"No, I'll handle it," he said and slung the transceiver.

He stomped the gas pedal but didn't put on his lights or siren. "Third time I've been here in as many weeks." We slipped through the back roads, and he made a few quick rights and sped down a winding street for several blocks to a dead end where the snow plows hadn't done a good job. The cruiser slid in slush and Lowell pulled up at a dingy house, wheeling into a long driveway and parked at a cool cop car angle. Once he cut the engine we could hear distant yelling inside. The storm door hung askew from one hinge as if somebody had either barged in or rushed out.

"Do you want me to stay in the car?" I asked.

"Do what you want," Lowell said.

I wasn't sure what to make of his reply so I followed him up the porch. Lowell had to yank the storm door aside to get in. The top hinge snapped as he entered, and the door practically fell into my arms. Lowell walked in and said, "Sheriff's department," in a booming, authoritative voice. I thought I was right behind him, but by the time I got the door propped against the siding he was gone.

From somewhere deep in the house, a girl yelled, "Don't! Daddy, no!" Another woman, Jackie
Bubrick
I presumed, continued to wail. I peered into a dining room full of overturned chairs, shattered dishes, and the remains of meatloaf on the floor. There was a crash. I followed the sounds down a corridor which led to basement stairs. Lowell stood at the bottom with his arms crossed across his chest, and I walked down to stand beside him.

The basement had actually been a small furnished apartment, and was now the fragments of one. The brawl that apparently started upstairs during lunch had been taken down here. A busted twelve-inch television lay keeled over in the midst of other scattered bric-a-brac, wisps of gray smoke trailing from the broken screen.

A sobbing girl of about twenty, dressed in jeans and a cotton blouse, cried in the far corner, holding a chipped vase close to her chest. Her stomach was slightly distended; she was at least five months pregnant. Dried blood speckled her nostrils and there was an ugly purple welt along her neck. She was being hugged by her mother, a large woman wearing a pink housecoat, sobbing hysterically and with so much hair piled into a tight bun at the top of her head that it looked like a pin prick would explode her head.

Two men were in the center of the room among the wreckage of a stereo system and broken tables. Aaron
Bubrick
was fiftyish, his hair in a tangle, clothes rumpled and collar ripped. He breathed heavily and leaned back against a wall. His son-in-law was sprawled on the floor on his hands and knees; the kid was in sweatpants and a gravy-stained T-shirt. He looked younger than the girl, acne-ridden face twisted into a road map of rage, staring over his shoulder at Aaron. Both men had gashes on their arms and were bleeding from their mouths. The kid had tears of fury dribbling from his eyes and there was spittle on his chin. Aaron
Bubrick
had a .38 automatic pointed at the head of his daughter's husband.

"Daddy, let him up!" she shouted.

Jackie
Bubrick
wept and held her tighter. She choked out, "Aaron, you damn fool. Put that pistol away before you hurt somebody."

"Don't, Daddy! Please, it's okay now!"

Aaron
Bubrick
gave them both curt nods and rubbed the back of his hand across his smeared cheeks. "Don't what, Angie? Ten minutes ago you were shrieking like a banshee, screaming you hated his guts and wished him dead and wanted me to make him leave you alone."

Wild alarm and guilt filled Angie's eyes. "But he… he's learned his lesson."

"I'm not inclined to agree with you, Angie.”

“Tell him, Dean!"

"There's nothing he can tell me."

"Tell him, Dean! Tell him you won't—"

From the floor, Dean muttered, "Shut up, you bitch." He seemed to want to murder everyone in the room and then go out and club baby seals.

With his free hand balled into a fist, Aaron punched the boy solidly between the shoulder blades and pushed him down hard. "I'd say you're all for proving my point, boy."

"When I get up, old man, I'm—"

"You'll do nothing un-amiable less you want a hole in your chest, that's for sure."

"I'm gonna—"

"You'll pack your bags and get out of my house, you stinking parasite!" Up until then, Aaron had a hold on his anger, but his neck flushed and those strange alien veins men in their fifties get at their temples suddenly pulsed. "You've been sponging off me for a year now, and never a word of thanks in all that time. You're one of the worst chiselers I've ever seen. An able-bodied man like you sleeping 'til noon and not bothering to go looking for a job. Not even caring. And with a child on the way." He shook his head in disbelief. "And then you slap her for no reason. My daughter. A pregnant girl."

Dean's lips crawled into a sneer. "She's got your big mouth."

"Get up and get out, boy."

Lowell moved for the first time since we'd come in on the scene. His walk was slow and his motions nonthreatening. He kept his arms crossed, I thought, so that no one would mistake him for going for his gun.

"You about done, Aaron?" he asked.

"Soon as this piece of shit runt gets his scrawny tail out of my house."

"I'll go," Dean murmured. "Let me just tell my wife how much—"

"No, I don't think so," said Aaron. "You can call her from a Motel Six."

From my angle on the stairs I had a better view of what was about to happen than either Lowell or Aaron
Bubrick
. I saw Dean's shoulder muscles bunch and his thighs knot up; he sprang forward. No chance to call out. Aaron dropped his arm a few inches so the boy could rise and Dean wheeled and hit him in the forearm. Lowell moved at almost the same moment. Dean was closer and shoved Aaron aside and wrestled the gun from his numb hand. The struggle lasted only an instant but the barrel had been pointed directly at my feet during that time. An image of my footless body toppling down the steps lit my head. Aaron cried out and fell backwards as Dean kneed him in the groin, holding the .38 now. Once Lowell realized he was not going to beat Dean to the gun, he quickly stepped in front of Aaron. The older man doubled over, gasping and trying to catch his breath. I didn't know what to do so I didn't do anything.

Dean's bloody smile was like a scrape across his face, teeth showing red. He wasn't sure who to take his anger out on, his father-in-law or the deputy, his wife or her mother. He looked around from one to another, and his gaze thankfully passed over me as if I were invisible. Lowell Tully's barrel chest blocked him from getting a bead on Aaron, so finally Dean settled for pointing the gun at Lowell.

"You didn't even pull him off me!" he shouted.

"Nope," Lowell said.

"He was gonna kill me!"

"Seems to me you were getting a little taste of what you give."

"You son of a bitch."

Lowell's granite features never altered. His eyes had a scary glaze like a wolverine's, blazing with intensity, and he looked that much more deadly because he acted so passively. "Dean, if you put that gun down in the next five seconds you might be able to walk out of here on your own. Otherwise you're going to the hospital. And then to jail for a lot longer than you'll be able to handle."

Dean brought the .38 up and held it pointed directly between Lowell's eyes. The pit of my stomach did flip-flops and my groin tightened. If he pulled the trigger I'd have to kill the kid.

"You like being in control," Lowell said to him, as if discussing a good book. "Noticed that about you from the first. It's why you like being married to Angie, 'cause you figure you can always be in charge, slap her around now and then, put her in her place."