Time Release (8 page)

“Yeah, well. Slow week. Sonny ever call you?”

“Met with him yesterday, believe it or not. Interesting kid,” Christensen said, then waited.

“So?” Downing asked.

“Very casual. Didn't talk about anything significant. But I'm going to try to get him to meet again next week. If it goes well, I hope we'll start getting together a couple times a week. I'm trying to work my schedule around it.”

He waited for some reaction from Downing, but heard none. “You're right,” he continued, “the hand thing is pretty odd. So maybe I can help. We'll just see where it goes from there.”

The detective sighed. “So you don't think I'm totally off-base?”

“Do I see any big red flags? No. But I read his file and felt him out a bit. There are indicators I'd like to explore. I just want to make sure we give him every chance to deal with things, if that's what he needs.”

“Never mind what everybody says,” Downing said, “I knew you weren't such an asshole.”

“Thanks so much,” Christensen said. “But I've got to be honest. I'm not willing to take the kind of risks I've taken with you in the past. If one of your suspects goes after me now, I leave two orphans. What if Tataglia had had better aim last year? The girls would have lost me just a year after losing Molly.”

“Totally different situation,” Downing said.

“Bullshit, Grady. There's a particularly vicious mass murderer out there somewhere. If you're right, he's still operating. And he's smart. His victims die without ever knowing what hit them. I went nuts in the grocery store tonight thinking of all the ways he could get me or the kids if he decided to try. If you weren't a cop, would you want to be involved?”

Downing seemed to consider the question. “Do you think you weigh more or less after you fart?” he said finally. “Think about it before you answer.”

“I'm serious.”

“I think more, since methane is lighter than air. Makes your body like a hot-air balloon, you know. Once you let 'er rip, I think you'd weigh more.”

“Goddamnit, Grady. Are you listening?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Chickie, lighten up,” he said. “But you're right. I suppose there's some exposure on your part, talking to his kid and all.”

“Exposure?”

“You know. Risk. But not much.”

“Explain.”

“I've seen the report the FBI profilers down at Quantico did on the Primenyl killer,” Downing said. “Dead ringer for Corbett, by the way. More important, it says randomness is his thing. That's the thrill. So it'd be completely out of character for him to fuck with people like us. He's not motivated by revenge or because he's afraid of getting caught. He's got some other agenda. So I really don't think it's an issue.”

“Not an issue,” Christensen repeated. It wasn't the reassurance he'd hoped for, but Downing was probably right.

“Don't just blow me off, Grady.”

“Got to, sport. Gotta run. Some crackhead down in the Hill just blew a big hole in his dealer. Sent him and two handfuls of cash through a second-floor window onto Wylie Avenue. Quite a party when he landed. Somebody's gotta clean up the trash.”

Drug killings in the Hill District. Rookie stuff. “Who'd
you
piss off?” Christensen said. During the long silence, he remembered Brenna's story about Downing's fall from grace during Primenyl. He suddenly regretted the words, knew they must have cut deep.

“You'll keep me posted on Sonny, then?” Downing said.

“Sure, Grady,” Christensen said. “Listen, I didn't mean—” But Downing had already hung up.

“Sure you want out here?”

Sonny fumbled for the door handle, which came off in his hand as the door sprung open. He handed it to the driver, hoisted his daypack onto one shoulder, and scratched the head of the panting hound in the backseat. Then he pointed to the southbound entrance ramp just across the road. “Appreciate the ride. You can get back on right there.”

He watched until the car wheezed up the ramp, trailing vapor in the 40-degree air, and was gone. No, he didn't want out here. Hitching rides was bad enough, but this place flat-out scared him. Ridgeville was dominated by Webber Industries, the town's biggest employer, operating out of an industrial terror of a plant just across the interstate. All rusting metal vats and screeching noise and random puffs of chemical-smelling vapor. He recognized the company's Pegasus logo from the Pitt chem lab stockroom, and for the first time it occurred to him that his mother had lived much of her life in the shadow of the country's most frequently indicted industrial chemical producer.

To Sonny's left sat one of Ridgeville's other booming enterprises, a drive-thru beer distributorship. The owner of Boboli's Beer Haus never met an ID card he didn't like. Sonny stopped to marvel again at the ballsiness of it all—a line of beater cars lined up from the loading dock into the street, a cocky teenager behind the wheel of each one. On Saturday mornings like this, the line never seemed to shrink.

The path to his mother's apartment ran along Hartwell Creek, a twenty-yard-wide gash of rust-colored water that ran right past the Webber plant and never froze, no matter how cold the weather got. Sonny noticed, but it didn't seem to bother anyone else. The plant was all the town had left after I-79 started carrying most of the traffic past, rather than through, Ridgeville. But Sonny saw the creek water with the eyes of an open-water swimmer, and swimmers had a phrase for water like that: death soup.

In the distance, maybe half a mile beyond Webber, the front face of Borman State Hospital rose like a redbrick tombstone. The lawn was well-barbered in summer—with dazed patients always shuffling along behind lawn mowers—but the grass had turned crisp and brown with the early frost. What in August usually looked like a stately old plantation seemed, under the threatening sky, like the Hollywood version of a mental hospital, which it pretty much was.

He'd visited his mother there once during her six-month stay, but only once. A social worker brought him out on a Sunday a month or so after his dad left, a couple weeks after David's funeral. He remembered because it was the day he realized, as they drove out through Borman's wrought-iron gate and away from a woman who didn't seem to recognize him, that he was alone. He'd never felt the same about Ridgeville again.

Until then, his impression of his mother's hometown was shaped by her stories of growing up there, rosy small-town memories she told often and fondly when he was a kid. The Borman hospital in those stories was just a place she played, the biggest yard in town, a place with a secret tire swing and a creek and a rope just long enough to reach deep water. That Borman, the one his mother talked about, sounded like a kids' paradise. The Borman just ahead, the one she wouldn't talk about anymore, had bars on the windows and smelled like piss and disinfectant. Sonny remembered that much from one visit eight years ago, that and the vivid sounds of corralled madness.

The path veered left, then plunged into a thicket of dead blackberry bushes and scrub oak. Branches scratched his bare arms, but he didn't try to clear the way. Best to push on, do his duty, then hitch back across town before the whole day was shot. He came out in a clearing just twenty yards from the entrance to Lakeview Pointe Estates, apartments with no lake view, pointe, or estates. Sonny took a deep breath, then walked up the crumbling driveway, stepping carefully to keep the pea-gravel out of his shoes.

The curtains of his mother's second-floor apartment were drawn. Maybe he'd misunderstood. Or maybe she was out of medicine again and depressed. As he knocked, he noticed that her car wasn't in its usual spot. Where could she have gone? The drapes suddenly parted and his mother squinted out, offering a smile and a timid wave. Sonny waited while she undid the door's various dead bolts and chain locks.

“Saturday already?” she said. She pulled a strand of gray-streaked brown hair from in front of her face and tucked it behind her ear. “Oh, Sonny. I haven't cleaned. I haven't cooked.”

“Mom, it's okay.”

She waved him off, then started pacing, arms folded, hands cupping her opposite elbows. She was wearing a long flannel nightgown underneath a knee-length Penguins jersey, topped by the peacoat he bought her for $12 at a Goodwill store in East Liberty. “I didn't get any groceries. I haven't been hungry,” she said. “So I don't have anything for you to eat. I'm just so tired all the time. God, it's good to see you. Look at me. I'm such a mess. My teeth aren't brushed. They're so yellow. I don't know why. I brush and brush but nothing helps.”

She always seemed small when she was depressed. Her narrow shoulders rolled forward, her head dipped, her voice became little more than a stage whisper. Her eyes drifted, caught on things that didn't matter, then drifted again. He thought she was pretty, even on bad days like this. When he was a kid, she wore her long hair in a tight bun anchored by a single crossways chopstick—something he'd always found exotic and wonderful. Now her hair was dirty and unbrushed, and she seldom saw the point in getting dressed. He knew enough about mental illness to understand, but affection isn't easy after being stranded for five years in foster care. Duty was the only thing that brought him here on Saturday mornings.

Sonny gently moved her aside so he could get into the apartment. It was like walking into a desert, dry and hot. “Where's your car, Mom?”

She shrugged, then started to dead-bolt the door. The room smelled like the stale air inside a basketball, but with a trace of tobacco. The Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote carried on their endless chase on the tiny TV in the living room. Sonny turned down the volume and adjusted the antenna. He passed his hand over the electric heat register under the apartment's single front window. It was blowing hard. The thermostat needle was pegged at 85.

“Did you loan your car to Mr. Balkin again?”

“Can I get you some Gatorade? I still have Gatorade. I like the strawberry kind.”

Sonny put his hand on her shoulder, but she wouldn't look at him. “Mom, does Mr. Balkin have your car again?”

“He's a nice man. You know him, don't you? Lives over in C? Longish hair? Very nice, really. Helps me out with things. He changed one of those fluorescent bulbs in the kitchen the other day just because I asked him.”

Real nice man, Sonny thought. Borrowed her car for an afternoon last month and kept it two weeks. Brought it back, no apologies, with an empty tank and a crushed left taillight. He didn't admit it happened during one of his low-grade parking-lot drug deals until Sonny threatened to call the cops, and only then did he peel off five twenties to pay for it. Sonny used the money for her groceries and put that month's disability check into her bank account.

Seeing her treated like a doormat still bothered him, but it had been that way as long as Sonny could remember. She seemed to bring out the worst in people who prey on the weak, people like his dad. At the end, he was such a bastard. Sonny flashed on a scene: A Sunday afternoon. Summer. The Jancey Street house. He and his brother sitting, bruised and crying, in the window seat of an upstairs bedroom. All they'd done was ask him for another dog, but he'd been drinking and it set him off. When he was done with them he turned, as usual, on their mother. From above, they watched the torture carry into the front yard. His father's twisted laugh. The neighbors' dumbstruck faces. Their mother on all fours, still in her nightgown, barking each time his bare foot landed on her rump.

Sonny checked the refrigerator. She still had two bottles of insulin left, but she hadn't been to the grocery store since he'd gone the Saturday before. At least she'd eaten most of what he bought. She was down to ketchup, pickles, bread, and Gatorade, which for some reason she considered essential.

“Mr. Balkin's taking advantage of you, Mom. He knows you won't do anything about the car until I come to get it back. Tell him no next time, okay?”

She smoothed her hair again. “He says he needs it for his business. I just use it to run around in. Pick up little things, run to the pharmacy, that kind of stuff. So I don't mind, really. It doesn't matter.”

Sonny scanned the kitchen cupboard where she kept her medicine. The lithium bottle was empty. Her needlepoint frame and a mound of fabric sat on the counter just below. Ivy leaves in two shades of green thread were taking shape on yet another dish towel. He already had a dozen.

“You need to eat, Mom,” he said. “And I need the car to get to the store and back. If I have to walk, I can only carry a couple bags.”

She unfolded her arms and fingered the blue buttons on the peacoat. Then she folded them and started pacing again. “I go to the store if I need something. I do. Just jump in the car and go—”

Sonny cut her off. “You need your pills and your insulin, Mom. The refrigerator's almost empty. You keep giving away your car to that prick across the way. We've talked about all this before.”

She turned her back. “Strawberry Gatorade's the best, don't you think? I took a bottle to Dr. Root. He likes it too.”

Sonny leaned forward, resting his elbows on the Formica countertop. No point in talking about it again.

“How is Dr. Root?” he asked.

His mother smiled. When she did, the outside corners of her eyes dipped, giving her face a sad, fallen look. “I think he's crazy,” she said.

“Then you're even.”

She looked hurt. Her eyes fixed for a second on his, long enough to register damage, then they were off again.

“It was a joke, Mom. Come on.” Sonny struggled to recover. “Hey, I'm seeing a shrink, too.”

Her pacing slowed, then stopped. She fingered the hem of the Penguins jersey, then stopped that, too. Suddenly, his mother was motionless. It was like watching a mime's version of a toy robot with dying batteries.

“Why?” she said, her attention suddenly diverted by the bread crumbs on the countertop. She'd probably eaten nothing but toast for a few days. She brushed the crumbs into the oversized sink, which was full of unwashed, unmatched plates, bowls, and cups, and turned on the water. When it ran hot, she squeezed some blue Dawn in a slow figure eight over the pile.

“Your mother is so disgusting,” she said. “So you're seeing someone?”

“No big deal,” he said. “My hands still bother me sometimes. Nobody else has figured it out, so why not? That's all.”

“I know a lot of doctors,” she said.

“He's not at Borman, Mom. He's down at Pitt. And he's just a counselor or a psychologist or something.”

Her gaze held his until he looked away. He opened the refrigerator and peered in. He wasn't thirsty, but he rinsed a plastic cup in the hot-water stream and filled it with reddish Gatorade, then set the half-empty bottle on the counter.

“What's his name?” she asked.

“Christensen. Jim, I think. Know him?”

She shook her head, face blank. “What do you talk about?”

“Nothing much so far,” he said. “Swimming. Growing up. He talks a lot about his kids. It's real casual.”

She shoved her hands into the peacoat pockets. He couldn't remember seeing her so still.

“There's good doctors and bad doctors,” she said, her laugh strong and steady. “We've probably seen them all.”

Sonny smiled. She didn't joke often, even before things got bad. But she had a point. During her time at Borman and the years of therapy since, she'd probably talked to dozens. And it seemed like the county hauled him into the Children's Services office once a month during his years in foster care to talk to one psychologist or another.

“Yeah, between you, me, and David—,” he said, then stopped. He hadn't thought much about his older brother lately, and it made him sad. He turned his back to his mother and refilled his cup.

“David was weak,” she said. She was tugging a pack of Camels from the peacoat pocket when Sonny turned around. The cup slipped from his hand to the floor, exploding in a strawberry-red gusher that soaked his feet and sprayed the kitchen cabinets.

“Shit,” he said, scrambling for the dishrag hanging from the faucet.

His mother leaned back against the counter, watching him wipe up the puddles. “Make sure you get it good,” she said. “I won't have ants.”

He rinsed the rag twice to clean up the sticky mess. As he finished, he heard the crinkle of the cigarette pack. He looked up just as she pulled one out and retrieved a disposable lighter from the other coat pocket. Sonny flinched at the smell of smoke. His chest tightened.

“Could you not do that?” he said. He was breathing hard, still on his hands and knees. His mother just smiled. He stood up. His throat burned. He felt dizzy. The cigarette glowed brighter as she inhaled deep and slow.

Fuck this. He had to get out, out into the cold air, away from her. Get your own car back. Get your own medicine and groceries. When were you ever there for me? But even as he took the stairs two at a time to the ground floor and ran back toward the interstate, he knew he'd be back next Saturday. It wasn't until he stuck out his thumb on the I-79 entrance ramp that he realized the red-stained rag was still in his hand.