4 The Killing Bee (20 page)

No answer.

I stepped past the machines toward the back room of the store. Now I was able to identify the voices. They belonged to New York Knicks announcers. Somebody had a television set on.

I rounded the corner and immediately came face
-to-face with all three Robinsons. Lou and Mark were sitting on a worn-out sofa watching the game. Except now they were watching
me
. Sylvia sat in a nearby chair that had some stuffing showing. She was watching me too.

Decidedly unpleasant.

But now was no time to be shy. Or scared. If only one of them were in the room, and that one was a murderer, then I'd be in trouble. But I couldn't imagine all three of them would whack me together. That would be too weird.

I waded in, aiming imaginary lasers at their souls. "I know everything," I said.

Lou turned to Sylvia. "Can you believe this guy?"

"I know about Mark stealing the skateboard. I know they were leaning on you hard to give him Ritalin. And it was all coming to a head on Tuesday."

"You're getting on my goddamn nerves," Lou said.

"I know Mark k
illed Sam Meckel. There's a witness who heard Mark yelling at him that morning in his office."

I was stretching, of course. But they didn't know that.

The three of them just stared at me in shock. Seconds passed. On TV, the Knicks were losing by fifteen.

Lou came out of it first. "Sylvia," he said. "I hear a customer."

I hadn't heard anything, myself. But Sylvia went out of the room. Then Lou stepped behind me, quick as Latrell Sprewell driving to the hoop, and slammed the door shut.

Now there were three of us alone in here. The room suddenly felt extremely small. There was a greasy smell, like somebody
had been eating a burger and fries. I felt like choking.

And Lou felt like choking me. "You're full of crap," he said. "Nobody heard my son screaming. Mark wasn't there."

I looked at Mark. He said nothing.

I spread my palm
s wide, trying to look conciliatory. "Lou, the sooner you come clean, the better. I'm sure Mark wasn't
trying
to kill Meckel. They just got in an argument—"

I barely saw Lou's fist coming. It hit me smack in the forehead. I staggered back against the doorknob and fell to the floor. Then he kicked me in the ribs.

Repeatedly. And he was wearing boots.

I tried to protect my sides with my arms. He was screaming at me, cussing, going berserk. Listening to him, it flashed on me that his screams were higher pitched than his regular voice, which was pretty high already. Maybe Barry had been wrong yet again about that yelling. Maybe it was Lou.

And maybe Lou was about to commit his third murder.

His son wasn't doing anything to stop it,
that’s for sure. He just cowered there rooted to the spot.

I wasn't doing much to stop it, either. My arms
were protecting my ribs from getting kicked, but then he started aiming at my head.

And my head was in no mood for this. It had been only four days since my concussion. One of Lou's kicks landed pretty
hard, and my ears started ringing. My brain got fuzzy. The ringing . . . the screaming . . . the Knicks. . . .

Some barely alert part of me noticed a boot coming straight at my eyes. I moved my head just in time and the boot flew by me. It hit some of my naturally curly hair but nothing else.

The close call seemed to knock my brain back into semi-normality. I rolled away from Lou and tried to get up.

But he came at me again, with a primordial yell. He reared back his boot, aimed at my face, and cut loose.

I snapped my face back out of the way. This time, as his boot whizzed by, I swept my arm underneath it and caught it on the backswing. I shoved Lou's foot as hard as I could, and he lost his balance. He tripped and fell.

I jumped up. If only I could make it out the door. I lunged toward it.

But Lou got up, too. He roared and matched my lunge. Now I couldn't open the door and get out, because opening it would take too many precious milliseconds. Lou would be all over me.

But then, magically, the door opened by itself
—or that's what I thought until I saw Sylvia right behind it. She must have heard all the screaming.

I didn't waste any time. I threw Sylvia out of the way and ran, holding my side. Lou chased me to the front door, yelling some rather rude remarks. But when I made it out to the street, he didn't follow.

I ran a couple of blocks, then slowed to a walk.

With the danger su
bsiding, my body began to register all my new pains. I felt like my head was split open and my ribs were broken. Or maybe the other way around. Not the pleasantest way to spend a Saturday afternoon. I stumbled the block and a half to Broadway and made it into Madeline's Espresso Bar.

Dave, the cop who was going out with Madeline, was sitting at the front counter eating a sandwich. Brie and sliced pear on a baguette. I doubt he ever ate anything remotely resembling that before he met Madeline. I went up to him. "Hey, Dave."

He looked up and saw the big bruise forming in the middle of my forehead, thanks to Lou's first punch. "What the hell happened to you?"

"I ran into several doors. You think you could give me a lift to the emergency room?"

He put down his baguette and got up. "No problem."

"Sorry to interrupt your lunch."

"Like I said, no problem. I'm sure you've got one hell of a story."

On the way to the hospital I told it to him, as coherently as my addled brain would allow. "So I'm thinking of pressing
charges," I said after I'd finished. "Maybe that will stir things up. The cops will start investigating the Robinson family for the murders."

"Which Robinson are you betting on?"

"Before, my money was on the kid, but now I don't know. Lou certainly proved he was capable. He almost killed
me
just now."

"But maybe he just flipped out all of a sudden because you were getting too close to nailing his kid."

I squirmed uncomfortably and undid the seat belt. My ribs were killing me. "Whoever killed Meckel and Helquist, I need you fearless cops to look into it, not me. My health can't take much more of this."

"I just wish you had more hard evidence against the Robinsons."

I pointed to the bump on my forehead. "Doesn't this count as hard evidence the guy's at least worth checking out?"

"Hey,
it’s not me you have to convince. The chief is still stuck on Laura Braithwaite."

"For Helquist
’s murder, too?"

"Yup. Sorry to tell you this, but the D.A.'s going to see the judge on Monday about revoking bail."

"Oh, Lord."

"What do you expect? She was found standin
g beside the dead man with the murder weapon in her hand. And it’s pretty tough to believe Lou or his kid or anybody else could've snuck into Meckel's office that morning with nobody seeing them."

I had thought about that a lot. "There was a good twenty minutes when Meckel was in his office and that front hallway was empty. Except for the gifted and talented parents coming through with their kids. I figure there was a total of maybe one minute during that twenty-minu
te period when someone was actually in the hallway. It would have been easy for the killer to go into Meckel's office, get in a quick screaming fight, give him one fateful wallop with the trophy, and then run out."

Dave sat there looking doubtful.

"Look, it was only seven-twenty in the morning," I said. "The school wasn't exactly bustling."

"The problem is, Jake, Laura's not the only one with legal problems," Dave said as he pulled into the emergency room entrance. "You remember the judge saying if you kept investigating, your bail would be revoked?"

"Don't bother me with petty details."

"You questioning the Robinsons is a pretty clear case of you violating the judge's order. I'm not sure you want to call attention to that. Unless you want to spend some time in county."

Good grief. "So what do you suggest I do?"

Dave didn't answer. But unfortunately I already knew the only sol
ution: I had to get so much evidence that Little Napoleon would feel stupid messing with me.

I stepped gingerly out of Dave's car, heading for my least favorite place in the universe: the hospital.

No, that's not quite true. My least favorite place is jail. But hospitals rank right up there.

I went up to the triage nurse. She determined I wasn't dying, only in severe pain, so it wouldn't matter if I sat and suffered indefinitely in a molded plastic seat in the waiting room. I asked her for aspirin, but she said she wasn't authorized. The hospital could get sued if I had an adver
se reaction. I considered vaulting across her desk and searching her cabinets, but decided it would take too much effort.

Dave came in and
sat with me for a while, spreading gloom and pessimism about the murder cases. I eventually asked him to go to my house and babysit my kids so Andrea could come to the hospital and keep me company instead.

By the time Andrea got there, I had finally been admitted into the examination room. The doctor, a friendly young Pakistani woman, was poking and prodding me in ways I would have enjoyed under other circumstances.

An X-ray technician took about a hundred pictures of my ribs. I couldn't help remembering that when I was a kid, my father made a big deal of not letting the dentist take too many pictures of my teeth, because he said X rays cause cancer.

I seemed to have mortality on my mind that afternoon
—an unfortunate side effect of being in a hospital. "Should I be worrying about all these head injuries?" I said. "Am I going to end up like Muhammed Ali?"

Andrea folded her hands together and switched into sympathetic mode, like she always does when I go hypochondriac on her. "Muhammed Ali made a living out of getting banged on the head.
That’s different."

"Is it? Seems to me, every time I get involved in a murder, I end up with a concussion."

"That only happened one other time."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"See, I don't remember that. Probably a sign my brain is already shot."

"Hey, if your brain got rearranged a little, it might not be such a bad thing."

I rolled my eyes. But the old eye sockets didn't appreciate the effort. "Andrea, would you mind going out to Rite-Aid and copping some aspirin for me?"

"Don't they have some here?"

"
It’s contraband."

So Andrea took off on her mission of mercy. That left me alone in the room when Sylvia Robinson walked in.

I immediately got a visceral fear that Sylvia was going to strangle me with a stethoscope or something and finish off the job her husband had started. But she wasn't holding any weapons in her hands as she perched on the doctor's stool opposite me. She was wearing faded blue jeans and an old yellow T-shirt. Her shoulders were hunched up. Focusing on her up close, she looked a lot older than I'd remembered, like she'd aged ten years in the past week.

"How are you feeling?" she said anxiously.

"Couldn't be better."

"Lou feels terrible about this."

"Yeah, so do I."

"I don't know what came over him."

"I do. He's upset his son killed somebody."

"That's not true."

"Then he's upset
he
killed somebody. Your husband and your son both have slight problems with impulse control, don't they?"

She gazed steadily at me. "I understand what you're trying to do. You want me to get all upset and say something stupid."

She was right. While I sat there and tried to figure out my next ploy, she continued on. "Look, between Kinko's and that horrible teacher, my family has been going through hell. I've been after Lou to see a therapist, and after what he did to you today, he's finally agreed. All three of us are gonna see a therapist. But I want you to know, I've never seen Lou hit anybody before. He's been a little verbally abusive to me and Mark, but he's never been physical. He's a good man."

While I digested that
little speech, and tried to decide whether I bought it, Sylvia said, "I don't like what you're doing to my family. But I understand you're just doing what you feel you have to do. Why don't you just tell me what you want to know, and I'll do my best to answer you."

Why was Sylvia being so accommodating all of a sudden, after spending the whole week stonewalling
me? Was she simply suffering from a sudden attack of the guilts, after her husband's assault?

Her next comment explained everything
—or at least seemed to. "All I'm asking in return is, please don't tell the police what my husband did today. I swear, he's not really
like
that."