The Lost (4 page)

There was a clock on the wall next to Gehrig with a plaque under it saying
IRISH TIME
, but no clock with the real time. Schilling stared at it without really seeing it. Teddy was Polish but he’d bought the bar from an Irishman and never bothered to change the clock or anything else about the place. He wondered if Teddy knew what time it was in Poland.

“I’ve got to go talk with the mother.”

“No you don’t. Why?”

“You know why.”

“It was four years ago, Charlie. She stopped calling, what, two-and-a-half years ago? Let it ride.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

“You already did the
most
you could do for chrissake.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Okay, I’m a dope. Tell me what I don’t get.”

“I don’t care anymore, Ed. Most of the time I just don’t give a shit. I used to want to nail that Pye kid real bad. I went from that to figuring he’d slip up one of these days and I could wait. I went from that to figuring we’d
never
nail him, not for anything. Not even for a parking ticket and guess what? We didn’t. I had a woman couple of nights ago over on Cedar Street, little white house next to the corner. Noise complaint, two in the morning. She’s new here and I think there’s something going on between her and the neighbors, bad blood or something.

“Anyhow the uniforms go over and she’s lying on the floor unconcious, stark naked with her panties pulled over her head. She’s been raped so bad she can barely stand. A year ago, two years, it would have made me mad as hell. Now it’s like it’s the ass end of another real bad day, you know?”

“See? Same kind of blues I got. Only you got it a little later.”

“No. You’re wrong. You’re telling me you quit because the job description changed, you didn’t want to chase the bad guys. I’m staying on because I
do
want to chase the bad guys, I always did, but jesus, I need something to shake me.”

“They catch this joker?”

“Jokers. Three mean boozers from Dover. One of them’s her ex-boyfriend and the other two are his army buddies. She ID’d them right away. And all I’m thinking is, these guys are incredibly stupid. They should have killed her. Now how about that? I’m thinking if they killed her they might have got away with it.”

“Shit, Charlie. That’s a hell of a thing to say.”

“You get no argument from me. That’s my point.”

Altman, Heinz and Earle had moved on to a loud discussion about who was the better fighter, Joe Louis or Mohammed Ali, who Altman still insisted on calling Cassius Clay. The juke was blaring out a Frankie Valle tune.

It was like the sixties had never happened in Panik’s joint.

They had definitely happened to Schilling.

“Pye, the mother and Elise Hanion were the last ones who really got to me. I want to touch bases with her.”

“Phone her up.”

“Won’t do.”

“You’re telling me you’re gonna drive all the way to Short Hills?”

“Soon as I leave here.”

Ed nodded toward the scotch glass.

“You better go easy, then.”

“I can drive on three.”

“You can drive on five. I was your partner, remember? But I’d just as soon you didn’t.”

It was two hours from Sparta to Short Hills, out of the lakes district down through rolling hills to flatlands and once he hit Route 10 he took his time. He could drive on three but two would push him over the Breathalyzer limit and cop or not it would not be a good idea to get himself pulled over down here. Not in Short Hills anyway. The town was about as prosperous as New Jersey got and despite what most out-of-staters thought that was considerable. Their police were entirely by the book and their chief an irascible old son of a bitch in Schilling’s opinion. Besides, it was getting on to dark and his night vision wasn’t exactly what it used to be.

Number 245 Old Short Hills Road looked pretty much the same as the last time he’d seen it maybe a year ago. Except that the big black Lincoln wasn’t there anymore. The husband, the lawyer, had held on to that and the word was not much else, leaving Barbara Hanlon the big white house on the corner, the three-acre plot behind it and presumably a settlement large enough to cover Elise’s medical expenses and for Barbara to go on living in the style to which she’d become accustomed. In place of the Lincoln there was a dark blue Ferrari now. The Ferrari looked lonely on the long wide blacktop and dwarfed by the house.

Barbara Hanlon had told him once that theirs had been a happy marriage and he’d believed her. He guessed that too had taken a bullet in the head four years ago though nobody had been aware of it at the time. Elise had outlived her parents’ marriage by just under a year.

The lawyer’d remarried. The wife hadn’t.

He parked behind the Ferrari, got out and took the winding walkway up the hill through the carefully tended lawn and shrubbery to the steps, wondering just why he was here now that in fact he
was
here and what in hell he was going to say to her. He hadn’t rehearsed this. During the drive his mind had been mostly a blank, focused only on the road ahead, on the process of getting there. Probably he was defending himself against something. He didn’t know. Right now he felt like a toad on a four-lane expressway. Something just might roll him over. He probably should have taken Ed’s advice and phoned.

He crunched the last of his peppermint Lifesaver with his front teeth and swallowed it against whiskey breath and climbed the steps and rang the bell.

She took a while coming. He almost rang again. He had time to think that maybe there was nobody home. But the living room lights were on and there was the Ferrari sitting in the driveway.

He needn’t have bothered with the Lifesaver. The woman who opened the door was one he almost didn’t recognize. The Barbara Hanlon he knew, even in her grief, even in those awful first days and nights at the hospital, had been proud and strong and very nearly beautiful, the length of her chin almost, but not quite, spoiling her elegant patrician features. As the investigation faltered and finally died she would visit the station trying to urge them on, eyes flashing with a fury only barely restrained by her sense of dignity and sheer will. It was always clear she shopped the best stores. Her grooming dotted all the
i
’s and crossed the
t
’s. She struck him as a tough lady and Schilling admired her.

There was nothing tough about her now.

This Barbara Hanlon was a mess.

She’d gained maybe twenty pounds since he saw her last. That was very clear to Schilling because beneath the thin satin robe she was also clearly naked. The robe didn’t do much in the way of obscuring the fuller breasts and belly. Her face looked puffy and her makeup smudged. The long brown hair was lank and needed brushing. Her eyes were red and he was betting it wasn’t tears that got them that way.

She held both sides of the doorframe for balance. As drunk as Schilling had ever been in his life and that was going some. She stunk of gin and cigarette smoke. She stood in the doorway polluting the Short Hills air.

“Christ,” she said. “It’s you.”

Even the voice had changed. Like she was living with a permanent head cold now.

“I heard about Elise, Mrs. Hanlon.”

“You did.”

“I thought I’d come by.”

She nodded. Weaved. Everything he’d said so far sounded lame to him but he had to wonder if she even noticed.

“I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

She stared at him. Empty-eyed and then not. As though some sort of light upstairs kept blinking on and off.

“Hon? Who’s that?”

The voice was a man’s and it was every bit as slurred as hers was.

They’d been having a little party here.

On the eve of her daughter’s death.

He appeared behind her barefoot, wearing wrinkled slacks and nothing else. He was fastening his belt. He had a bony chest and thin pale arms and he’d needed a shave since yesterday.

“Policeman, Eddie. Sparta Police. Come to see us ’bout Elise. Detective Charles Schilling. The gen’lman who investigated the case. This is Eddie.”

“That’s awfully nice of you,” Eddie said. He reached out and Schilling shook his hand.

He didn’t know what to say. He felt suddenly very weary. He didn’t know whether he was disgusted or sad or angry with her or exactly what he was. Maybe he was all those things at once or maybe none of them.

“She died eleven thirty-five this morning. They called me. Said she passed away.”

“I know, Mrs. Hanlon. I’d asked the hospital to phone me at the station if and when, so they had a note on the chart to that effect. I guess I learned a little while after you did.”

“I’m a little drunk, y’know?”

“I figure you probably have a right to be.”

She started to cry. The man behind her put a hand on her shoulder. The man looked both befuddled and sincere.

“Thing is, I been a little drunk a lot these days. I never did drink much before ’cept maybe a glass of wine but now I do. With Eddie. I met Eddie . . . where did we meet, Eddie?”

“We met at the Standish House, Barb. At the bar there.”

“That’s right. We met at the bar. Thing is, see, it’s not just today. You understand?”

“I understand.”

“It’s good of you to come by, Officer,” Eddie said. He had both hands on her shoulders now. She was quietly sobbing. Her face was red and streaked with tears.

“It’s not just ’cause Elise’s gone. I wish to hell I could tell you that it was.”

“Elise’s been gone a long, long time,” Eddie said to him. “Y’know?”

There was nothing he could do here. Not for himself and not for them. He knew about drunks. When Lila and the kids had left him he’d taken to starting the morning with a couple shots of vodka and then nipping from his flask all day and passing out at night. The usual sad and stupid story. It was Ed who threw his ass into detox, telling the chief he was visiting a sick brother in Florida. Which turned out to be a poor choice of places to lie about when he returned without so much as a hint of a tan.

“If you need any help with this,” he said, “with the drinking I mean, give me a call. Either of you. I know a good place. I’ve been there myself. Anything I can do, you call me. I’m truly sorry about your daughter, Mrs. Hanlon.”

“Me too,” she said. “Real sorry.”

It should have sounded silly. It didn’t.

It sounded like a voice up out of a well.

“Thanks, Officer,” Eddie said.

He turned and walked down the steps and heard the door close behind him and thought that he’d probably interrupted them fucking, or drunk as they were, trying to fuck and that it probably wasn’t a bad idea on a night like she was having to be fucking or trying to fuck, that it was flesh on flesh at least and that was something. He got in the car and headed back to Sparta and one or two more drinks at Panik’s.

His visit hadn’t worked. He felt nothing.

Chapter Two

Tim

Tim Bess thought that probably he was in love with Jennifer Fitch but lately, over the last year or so, she kept making it harder for him to
stay
in love with her. It never had stopped him in the past that
she
was crazy about Ray. That was a given. She’d been crazy about Ray for years. And she wasn’t alone, Ray being who he was. She was only one of many. But it wasn’t her thing with Ray that bothered him.

Stuff was just
happening
to her.

It was only ten past midnight and here she was drunk on beer and stoned on dope already. They were waiting for Ray by the baseball field behind the high school and Ray was forty minutes late as usual but this time Tim was worried. He wasn’t going to like seeing Jennifer the way she was. It was going to piss him off. Hell, she had to hold on to the wire backstop to keep from falling. The only time she let go was to reach down for another bottle of Miller. After two beers and a half-dozen tokes of homegrown Tim wasn’t exactly stone-cold sober himself but he had it to where he could handle it and Jennifer didn’t.