The Prettiest Feathers (14 page)

“I said ’em all when I handed you that Irish.”

“You want a hit off this?”

“You know I don’t drink in uniform.”

I did know that. Fuzzy could drink most guys under the table, but for all the years I’d known him, I never saw him violate department policy.

I took another swallow and closed my eyes. The picture of Sarah in her sea of blood returned.

“Shit,” I said.

“It’s just starting, Bobby,” Fuzzy said. “Be a while before it goes away—if it ever does.”

He parked at the hydrant in front of my apartment building. Once we were upstairs, Fuzzy stripped to his skivvies, and grabbed a pair of my jeans and a baggy flannel shirt off the floor. He was my height, but had about fifty pounds on me—most of it right behind the belt buckle. He zipped the jeans as far as he could, allowed the shirt to billow out over his gut, then found himself a glass and a couple of ice cubes. I handed him the bottle and he poured enough of the Irish to cover the ice.

“You live in filth,” he said.

He always said that. It was a ritual every time he came to my place. It was also true.

He handed the bottle back and we both drank.

“When my Monica died, I thought it was the end of everything,” he said. “In a way, maybe it was. But I had to go on. I still had one kid at home. I had to work. I had to have a life. But it wasn’t easy, Bobby. And it won’t be easy for you.”

“It isn’t like that,” I said, thinking at the same time that
maybe it was. “Sarah and I already had different lives. Hell, we had different lives when we were still together. It’s just that I don’t want to think of her the way I found her, but there isn’t any way around it. I don’t want to think of her dead. I don’t want to start to go over there and realize I can’t.”

Fuzzy nodded, drowning his ice in Irish again.

“We had a crazy life together,” I told him, “and we had a crazy life when we weren’t together.”

There was a knock at the door.

“This’ll be Hanson,” Fuzzy said as he went to let the captain in.

“Himself,” I said. “Think he’ll read me my rights?”

Hanson is one of those cops who knows he’s going to be captain the day he writes his first parking ticket. He knows it because he’s already made a list of all the asses he has to kiss to get there. It has nothing to do with being a good cop—which Hanson isn’t and never has been. It’s politics.

He also wants five copies of everything. Fuzzy says the captain is the only guy he knows who uses five-ply toilet paper.

Hanson shook my hand, said how sorry he was, and apologized because there were a few questions he had to ask. It was all routine until he asked me why I was at Sarah’s house in the first place—what had brought me there so early in the morning.

“I’d been there several times throughout the night, looking for her,” I said. “It had to do with a case I’m working.”

Hanson looked skeptical, but I didn’t give a shit.

“You getting anything from the scene?” Fuzzy asked.

“They were just getting started when I left. Detective Frank’s in charge. She’ll be in touch.”

Hanson started for the door, then stopped. “One last thing,” he said. “Before you get too far into that bottle, Lannehan, move the cruiser off the hydrant.”

“Right, Captain,” Fuzzy said, and followed Hanson out.

When Fuzzy came back upstairs, we had a couple more drinks, then he changed back into his uniform and left.

I was alone. I also
felt
alone, and it bothered me. I didn’t finish the bottle, but I’d had enough so that it served as an anesthetic. I was finally numb enough to say it aloud: “Sarah is dead.”

I walked around the place practicing saying the words, getting used to them. I stepped over piles of clothes, newspapers, yesterday’s boxes from Chinese take-out, chanting, “Sarah is dead.” I wanted the words to stop being a feeling; wanted them to become just a sound.

The picture wouldn’t fade—Sarah on the floor of her living room, in a blood-red frame.

Then I said the next set of words. “Sarah was murdered.”

That brought another picture into focus: the man I knew as Alan Carver standing in the interrogation room, looking down at his expensive watch.

But this time I was emptying a fourteen-shot clip into his face.

I hate funerals. But my being Sarah’s ex-husband made me the closest thing to a relative she had, so I made the arrangements. I decided on a memorial service at a small Unitarian church a couple of blocks from Sarah’s house, and I wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. I put a notice in the morning paper on Tuesday, in case anyone wanted to attend.

I don’t remember much from the service. Sheila from the massage parlor wobbled in on a pair of spike heels, tripping over the carpet. She was wrapped tight in black spandex pants, complete with stirrups, and a flowered orange blouse struggling to cover her chest. She was also carrying a guitar case.

“This is turning into a fucking freak show,” I muttered to Fuzzy.

Captain Hanson showed—his malleable, political face baggy and full of sorrow, or the residue of a hangover. I
figured he’d be disappointed that he wouldn’t get to present a flag to anyone.

When it was my turn to speak, Fuzzy hit me with his elbow. I knew it was coming, but I hadn’t thought about it. I had no idea what I was going to say. I went up there and stood and looked down at the floor. “We were divorced,” I said. “I think we were closer friends after we split up than during the time we were together.”

I looked out at the almost empty room. I could feel the tears forming in my eyes. I never for a minute thought that I’d cry, but the tears did start rolling down both sides of my face.

So many different things went through my mind—stupid little events in our lives. They didn’t seem at all important at the time.

My face was wet when I sat back down. Then I heard the guitar, and what sounded to me like the most beautiful voice in the world. Sheila’s eyes were closed. Her fingers seemed to find all the right strings by themselves. I recognized the song. I’d never thought much about it—just an old, slow song.

Sheila just sat there with her guitar and whatever she was thinking. Fuzzy was wiping his eyes with a dirty handkerchief he kept in the inside pocket of the only sport jacket he owned. It was over.

And as I walked out into the sunlight, I knew that it was just beginning.

I
didn’t like my last view of Robert, with Fuzzy leading him off to a bottle of booze. I grew seriously concerned when, two days later, he wasn’t answering his phone.

I had to talk to him. When Hanson left the crime scene on Monday, he said he was going to catch up with Robert and Fuzzy. He didn’t want me questioning my own partner, and elected himself to do it. According to all the textbooks, Robert was the prime suspect. Ex-husband. Discovered the body. Tons of emotional baggage. Quick temper. Heavy drinker. But life isn’t a textbook. Anyone who knew Robert knew he didn’t do it.

Even so, we had to go through the formalities. Hanson did that. But in his report, which I had just finished reading, he had written one alarming word: suicidal.

I went over to Robert’s apartment and was relieved when I heard signs of life on the other side of his door. It sounded like he was dismantling the place.

It didn’t take long to establish that Robert had no intention of opening the door for me, so I opened it myself. I’ve
been studying karate since I was four. Except for matches at the gym, I’ve seldom had to use it. When I do resort to it in hand-to-hand combat, my opponent thinks, for a moment, that I’m asking him to dance. More than one crackhead has done a double take, then stopped to see what my next move will be. And that’s when I strike. I’ve been told that it’s a beautiful thing to behold: the graceful lift and dart of my leg, the fall of my victim—it’s like a ballet of broken bones. But since I left street patrol, I don’t get much chance to show it off. Homicide investigations tend to be passive, with hours spent staring at the same reports, hoping that something new will appear on the page.

Once I got the door out of the way, the first thing I noticed was the mess. Empty cardboard cartons and crushed beer cans all over the floor. Wadded-up bags that looked as if they had once held pretzels or potato chips. Some cheese dip drying in a dish. Cigarette butts everywhere, some in an ashtray, but most just dropped on the floor. The drapes were pulled shut, giving the place a midnight feel even though it was noon. And there were fragments of his tape deck scattered all over the floor.

Robert stood there, looking at me through unfocused eyes, as if daring me to take one step in his direction. He was holding a hammer.

“Look,” I told him. “I need you to sober up, and fast. I’m going to clear this case, and you’re going to help me do it.”

He swayed a bit, like a spring was loose, but I thought I saw him nod.

“Good,” I said. “I need to know everything you’ve got on a guy named Alan Chadwick.”

“Never heard of him,” Robert said, digging another Old Milwaukee out of the box.

“Come on, Robert. Think. Chadwick. Lives in Hasty Hills.”

“I’m telling you I don’t know the guy.”

“His prints turned up at Sarah’s house.”

If you ever want Robert’s complete—and sober—attention,
just hand him a piece of evidence. It’s amazing. He can be falling down drunk one second, and stone-cold sober the next.

“So what does it mean?” he asked.

“You tell me. We ran the latents picked up at the house, but all we got were yours, hers, and his. When we put his prints through the national search, we got the match in Connecticut. There’s no criminal record. His prints are on file because he works for the government. The guy’s an MD.”

“What kind of jobs are there in government for a doctor?”

“He’s a medical examiner. I’ve tried to reach him, but there’s something wrong with his phone. A recorded message comes on saying the line’s being checked for trouble.”

I handed him a Post-it note with Chadwick’s address. “I want you to check it out,” I said.

He rubbed at the two days’ growth on his chin. I knew he was planning out the rest of his day: shower, shave, coffee, Chadwick. Having him follow up a lead was the quickest way I knew to get Robert to rejoin the living.

It was a strange thing about Chadwick’s prints. They didn’t turn up in just those locations where a burglar or a garden variety murderer would leave them—on her body, in her jewelry box, or on the doorknob. They were on her magazine covers, in her lingerie drawer, on her geranium pot, even on a business card from some antique shop over in Landgrove. You name it—Chadwick had touched it. The way I saw it, our reclusive Sarah had invited someone new into every aspect of her life.

L
ane timed her arrival perfectly.

She got to my front door just as the hammer came down on the metal cabinet of the Sony tape deck. It made a satisfying noise and a dent, but nothing shattered.

I swung again, this time at the front of the machine. Plastic shattered, the sound of the music wobbled, and the deck crashed into the wall behind the shelf.

Lane kept knocking, and I kept ignoring her, wielding my hammer.

The third blow killed it, but I didn’t stop there. I don’t know how many times I smashed the thing, but I was hammering away long after “Fear Loves This Place” had died.

I remember killing wasps when I was a kid. I’d been stung a few times when I was down at the coal pier diving off the tower. I always swelled up and ached all over, so whenever I had the chance, I killed wasps. And I didn’t just swat them, kill them, and leave it at that. I ground them into nothing, repeatedly twisting my shoe on them until there was less than dust. At those times, I could feel my heart going
wild in my chest. I wasn’t a sadist. I was just terrified, and proving it—with overkill.

I was still beating on the fragments of the cassette when Lane started yelling at me to open the door.

“Nobody’s home,” I said.

“What are you doing in there? Robert, please open up.”