The Weight of Stones (26 page)

“Leroux was coming around and muscling him?”

“Him, yeah. And the other guy too, probably.”

“What other guy?”

“I told all that to the cops, but they didn't do anything about it. This guy came around in a car one time with Leroux, and Gavin was down in the lobby finishing a smoke, and he saw this guy sitting in Leroux's car, and he recognized him or something. I'm not sure. When he saw Leroux, he called out to this other guy he had seen in the car. The guy in the car followed them up to the apartment, and they were all yelling. I hid in the bathroom closet because I was...I was too high to go out. I heard them talking to Gavin, like they were trying to convince him of something. Then Leroux and the other guy took off, and Gavin was, I don't know...I'd never seen him like that before. He wasn't even high, he was just freaking out. He was paranoid. I couldn't make any sense out of him. He told me to take a bag and go to one of our friend's places for a while until things cooled down.”

Then she broke and began to cry again. He reached out and touched her hands, but she pulled them away to wipe her eyes.

“The next day I heard on the radio. On the
fucking radio,”
she said. “He was found in that field by the overpass. He was right, you know. To be paranoid. It wasn't just the drugs or whatever.
He was right.”

McKelvey exhaled a long breath. He had seen everything, the crime scene photos and the body itself on that cold table, but hearing her speak of the
impact,
the human impact of that single action made everything fresh again. Like a wound coming open, splitting stitches, the blood beginning to flow once again across the scar tissue. He breathed, and refocused.

“Listen, I told the detective all of this stuff, and nothing ever came of it. I asked the investigator before I went into rehab if Leroux was going to go down for this. He said he was still working the angles. Bullshit. Cops don't know their assholes from their brains.”

He took a deep breath to quell the butterflies in his stomach.

“Were you brought down to the station and interviewed?”

“Nope. I called the number they listed in the paper and talked to that one cop. We met in a coffee shop up there at Jane and Finch. He didn't even take any notes or anything. He wanted to know if I was home when Gavin went out that night, and I told him he had sent me away. And that was about it. He said the best thing I could do was leave town, start over somewhere else. Fucking asshole was even going to give me some money, can you believe that?”

McKelvey blinked and tried to retrain his focus. An image was emerging here. “Would you recognize the cop if I showed you a picture?” he said.

She shrugged and said, “Sure. I think.”

He went to the bedroom and took down the box with his scrapbook and the spare .25 shells. He opened the box of shells and spilled a dozen into his palm, slipping them into his front pocket as he returned to the kitchen with the book. He stood there and flipped through the pages until he found the one he sought. A black and white photograph taken of the boys at the old division. He turned the photo so that she could see it and put a finger beneath one of the two dozen faces. “Is that him?”

“Yup,” she said. “That's the asshole. He's uglier now, fatter, but that's him.”

He gritted his teeth and held himself upright as he stared at the face of Detective Raj Balani.

“Are you guys friends or something?” she said.

But he didn't answer. Instead he closed the book, pushed it across the table and finished the last of his drink.

“Listen,” he said, “it's late. You can sleep in the master bedroom.” “Where are you going to sleep?”

“Don't worry about me. I'll take the chair in the living room.”

She looked tired the way children do, with her eyelids dropping.

“What are we doing in the morning?” she said. “I have to get all my stuff.”

“Let's just worry about tonight,” he said.

Duguay moved across the city in the middle of the night, the window in the borrowed car rolled down to let in the air. He thought of calling Danny to ask him to meet up at the shop first thing in the morning but chose to let his friend sleep. When he was finished with this, he would wait outside the auto body shop until the sun came up, then he could say his goodbyes to Danny and head up to Midland to collect his cash. From there it was wide open. Another new start. It was getting harder to imagine. Thoughts of roots and a home, some place to leave and come back to. Streets you walked down half asleep, corners you turned without even thinking.

He reached out and turned off the radio just as the news was coming on of an explosion in the east end. An industrial complex. Firefighters were on the scene. There were reports of casualties, but details were few.

He drove and thought of how he had been willing to let the cop McKelvey off the hook, how he had tried to convince Bouchard to let it slide. And he was rewarded for this softness with what? A fucking gun in his face? On his territory? In front of his girls? There were no further negotiations to be held. The man had left him no choice. It was beyond pride and street reputation; McKelvey had made it personal. And he moved backwards in his thoughts as well, from McKelvey back to Leroux and from Leroux to Balani. Allowing the crackhead Leroux to saddle up with the dirty cop was his only major error in judgement in an otherwise solid career. Just like you, Duguay; if you're gonna fuck up, go big.

His dog rode in the back with his snout to the window, watching and breathing and waiting to please his owner.

Twenty-Five

M
cKelvey woke in the earliest hours of the morning with the clear knowledge that someone was coming into his house. He lifted up, immediately awake, and reached beneath the chair cushion for the pistol. Rudolph rose with him, a sleek and silent shadow, and followed without hesitation. The training kicked in, and McKelvey slowed his breathing as he made his way down the darkened hallway, all of the moments of his life converging to this one point. He stopped at the bedroom, where the girl was sleeping. He crept up to her and put a hand over her mouth. She startled and let out a muffled noise, her legs kicking in protest.

“Shhh,” he said, “stay in here with the door locked. Don't come out, no matter what you hear. Use the phone on the desk to call my friend Hattie. Her number's written on the pad there.”

She nodded and stared at him with wild eyes, but she did as he said. She was curling the blankets around herself as he backed out of the room and closed the door.

When he heard the locks slide then the chain rattle free, he took Rudolph by the collar and stepped just around the corner into the living room. Suddenly the door was open, and the pit bull was charging into the house, nails digging for purchase across the slippery hardwood, the big man just a step behind. Rudolph tore from McKelvey's grip, all musculature and momentum, and the two animals were at each other's throats in the hallway, their toothy snarls and growls too sharp and too loud in the small space, the sounds of a fight to the death.

McKelvey gripped the small pistol, and for the first time doubted his choice of weapon. The lazy choice, because it had been there all along, but now it felt too small in the palm of his hand. His service Glock was what he wanted, the weight of it. Everything was slowed down, surreal. He stepped into the hallway as the dark figure passed by, and he called out, a word or a command, and the intruder turned, coming around, his hand moving behind his back, reaching for a weapon. They were swathed in shadows, but McKelvey could make out the man's face, the whites of his eyes.
Duguay.
He set his legs, drew his bead, and fired. The gunshot was a sharp crack, and the noise rang, a stink of cordite in the air.

Duguay fumbled, still reaching, pulling a big black pistol out of his waistband, but McKelvey got off another shot, and Duguay slipped or lost his balance, and he went down, squeezing off two shots as he fell. The higher calibre shots thundered like artillery in the small room, deafening. McKelvey was winded, stunned, and by the time he got his bearings, he was not standing but slumped against the wall, with no recollection of how he got from there to here. His back against the door frame, he reached down with a hand and felt the inside of his right leg, close to his crotch. It was sticky with blood.
Warm.
The wound was numb, then it began to sting, and it buzzed with full-on pain. He needed to tie his leg. A tourniquet. Elevate the leg, slow the bleeding...

The dogs were in the kitchen now, and the noise was from hell itself, the awful sounds of two beasts fighting for their lives. Then just as quickly, there was only the sound of low whimpering, murmurs. Duguay made a sound, trying to pull up or move, his heel against the hardwood. McKelvey grunted and gritted his teeth and, keeping his back against the door frame, used his good leg to pull himself to a standing position. He was woozy, and he felt like he might get sick. He had the pistol in his right hand. He brought the weapon up, checked the safety, and moved to the wounded man in his hallway. Duguay's gun, a thick Browning automatic, was held loosely in his palm, too heavy to raise, and McKelvey kicked the hand then kicked the pistol free. It slid down the hallway. He looked down upon Duguay, aiming the .25 at the man's head. Duguay had taken a shot to the neck. He was attempting to speak, but there was only the buzzing of blood forming bubbles at his lips.

The rage and the adrenaline spun, and McKelvey was down on a knee, his hand working across Duguay's face, the butt of the pistol hitting bone and flesh like a hammer, but Duguay was out, and McKelvey was drained, and the blows petered out like a car running out of gas. McKelvey's heart was hammering, and with each beat it sent a spasm of pain through his leg. He needed a tourniquet, he needed to get the girl and get out. Somebody would come looking for Duguay, of that he was certain. Had to call Hattie. He rose and gave Duguay a final hard kick as he limped up the hallway and stooped to release the clip from Duguay's handgun. He slid the clip in his pants pocket and continued on, his ears still ringing.

The girl was crying in the closet when McKelvey came through the door. He went to the dresser, found one of his old neck ties, and tied it tightly around the top of his thigh. He sounded as though he had run a marathon, his chest heaving, his hands bloodied.

“It's okay,” he said, “it's okay. Come on, we have to get out of here.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, and her voice sounded like a little girl's now, all of the street smarts and attitude vanished in an instant. She wanted a teddy bear, she wanted her blanket.

“Home,” he said. “I'm taking you home.”

He grabbed a knapsack from his closet and threw in a pair of jeans, then added a pack of bandages and gauze from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He paused long enough to wash the blood from his shaking hands. Jessie followed him without a word. He put the pistol in his waistband, covered it with his shirt and limped out past the carnage in the hallway, and it was strange and it was horrific, and the scene suddenly reminded him of a call to an armed robbery he'd taken years back. How he'd come through the door of the Korean's convenience store, a place where he bought coffee now and then on the midnight shift, how he'd found the old man sprawled by the tumbled display of potato chips, a pool of blood at his side. It was amazing how much blood the human body could hold, and spill.

Jessie was crying and confused, and McKelvey had only a moment to look in on the dogs. He saw the bodies beneath the kitchen table, all of the chairs upturned, the matted fur, the streaks of blood, and understood it had been an epic battle, and now both the combatants lay mortally wounded. He looked at Rudolph, the dog's face turned to the side, tongue hanging slack between blood-stained teeth, his eyes open and glassy, seeing everything and nothing all at once, and McKelvey was filled with a sense of gratitude.
You were a good dog
.

McKelvey told the girl not to look as they passed down the hallway, but she stole a glance, and he heard her draw a sharp breath as he guided her past the body.

“You killed him,” she said quietly, a statement of the facts.

He tightened his grip on her arm and said, “Don't stop. Don't look back.”