A Fistful of Rain (20 page)

The way she was looking at me, it made me think of Joan.

“Mim.” Van said my name softly. “I just want to help you—”

“The way you sent me home?” It burst out as a shout, and I felt like shit the second after I heard myself say it, but I followed it up anyway. “You mean the way you helped me like that? You want to help me, Van, just give me the cash!”

It hurt her, and it showed in the anger that flared in her eyes, and I had to look away from her again.

“All right, Mim. You write me the check and I’ll call my banker tomorrow, have him get the cash together. You can pick it up from Graham when it’s ready.”

I had my checkbook in one of my cargo pockets, and a ballpoint, and I went to the makeup table and wrote it out. After I signed my name I looked up at the reflection, and Van wasn’t even watching me anymore, but was sitting on the edge of the bed and looking at the door. I tore the check free and put the book and the pen back in my pocket, then brought it over to her.

She looked at it in my extended hand, and I felt sick because I thought she was going to tell me she had changed her mind, but she took it. She folded the paper perfectly in half.

“Thank you,” I said.

“It’s funny,” Van said quietly. “I never figured out of the three of us, that you’d be the cliché.”

“And what does
that
mean?”

“It means you’re the one angling to live fast, die young, and leave the good-looking corpse.” She got up and tucked the check into her jeans pocket. “You’re going to self-destruct or something. It’s becoming pretty obvious that I can’t stop it, either, any more than I can stop you drinking.”

“Would it make you happy to know I haven’t had a drink since my brother’s funeral?”

“You think that’s a fucking achievement? Sober for twenty-four hours? Call me in a month, tell me the same thing.”

“I will.”

“I don’t think you will. I don’t think you’ll be able to.”

She went to the door, ready to leave and join her guests. I followed her out, into the hallway. The party noise rushed at us, loud voices and the thunder of music. We walked back to the main room together, but just before we hit it, Van put her hand on my arm and stopped me.

“Whoever it is, whatever they have on you, they’re never going to stop,” she said. “They’ll bleed you until you’re dead, and then they’ll pick over your corpse. Think about that.”

Then she waded into the room, taking hugs and laughter, pulling admirers into her wake exactly like what they were—groupies following a rock star.

CHAPTER 27

I was out the door and halfway to my car when Hoffman caught up with me, saying, “Hey, wait a minute.”

“No,” I threw over my shoulder, and kept going. I heard her sneakers slapping in puddles as she accelerated, long strides, coming alongside. She reached the Jeep ahead of me, put herself between me and the driver’s door. It was cold enough that her breath made clouds with each exhale.

“Please get out of my way,” I said.

“Look, you’re not a suspect, it’s okay to talk to me.”

“I don’t want to talk to you. Hell, I don’t want to see you. You weren’t even supposed to be here tonight.”

“I was invited.”

“Well, that was Van’s mistake, and I shouldn’t have to suffer for it.”

Hoffman gave a half-laugh. “You really have no idea how to deal with me, do you? Your gaydar went off and you went straight to the bunker.”

“If that’s what you want to believe.”

“I think we both know it’s the truth. I think we both know you’ve been waiting for a nice butch to come along and take care of you for a while now.”

“I think we both know you’re full of shit,” I said, or at least started to say, but everything after “think” was lost in her mouth, because she started kissing me.

She was fierce about it, and a flicker ran through me, urging me to resist, but there was another one, stronger and hotter, and that was the one I went with, feeling the cool of her sweat and the heat of her skin and the warmth of her body against the chill of the air. I pressed myself into her, and she put her hands on my hips and pulled me with her as she stepped back, and we moved, me pushing up on tiptoe to keep my lips to hers, as she got me around to the back of the Jeep and out of the light.

Her fingers came up, touched my neck, light on my collarbone, and I tried to touch her back, but she wouldn’t have any, batting my hand away and pinning me to the back of the car with a thigh between my own. The pressure transferred to muscles, my knees shaking, and she put her mouth on my neck, and it felt wonderful and strange, that softness against the bruise there. I let my head rest against the Jeep, feeling the cold metal and glass on my back, and I pulled air loud, pulled it again louder when her hands went under my shirt.

There were stars visible through the trees, and the music was still whispering in the background, and I heard her breathing, quick and sure, and my own, more ragged, louder. She growled from her throat, her hands shifted, my breathing caught, resumed, faster. Her mouth brushed my ear.

“Jesus God, I want you,” she murmured.

And it was so nice to be wanted, and she rocked against me, and I thought I would dissolve, and there was no panic and no fear, and for a euphoric moment, there wasn’t even me.

Then she was pulling away, catching her breath as I tried to catch my own. She gave me another kiss, the ferocity gone.

“You’ve got my number,” Hoffman said. “Give me a call.”

CHAPTER 28

It was just eleven when I got home, and I locked up and set the alarm, thinking that whatever had just happened, I was happy for it. That lasted until I saw the “all portals secure” message on the LCD.

Like the alarm had done me a damn bit of good thus far. Like I was going to be able to sleep in my bed tonight feeling anything close to secure.

I took a long shower, realized that I wasn’t ready to sleep just yet, and pulled on some clothes. There was a last, lonely beer in the fridge, and I opened it, lit a smoke, and went down to the music room.

He waited until I’d set the bottle down and was reaching for the Les Paul, and I heard the sliding of nylon on nylon, and then he grabbed me from behind, easily, like he did this sort of thing all the time. I started to scream, first in surprise, though terror was next on the list, but there was leather suddenly covering my mouth and nose, fingers strong and hard pressing with the one hand while he wrapped his other arm around my middle, pulling me back, pinning me to him.

I struggled, just blind panic, my feet lashing out in the air. My right toe hit the stand for the Les Paul, and it toppled and took one of the Strats and the Godin LG with it, sending them all into my Marshal half-stack with a crash. His grip stayed tight on my face, and he was pinching my nose, and I was suffocating. I got my hands up on his arms, trying to break the grip that was killing me, and I realized I’d never had the strength to do that kind of thing, and I never would.

There was sound in my ears, feedback, high-pitched and ascending, but with a fuzz beneath it, like white noise. I tried biting the hand over my face, but my teeth touched nothing but leather. It felt like I was drunk, and I could feel my hold on his fingers and hand slipping.

A voice broke through all the noise in my head, hanging in my left ear, terrifying because of its lack of feeling.

“Thing about a soundproof room,” the Parka Man said. “You can scream all you want.”

Then he pitched me forward, letting go of my face, and I felt the concrete beneath the padding on the floor, and I slammed into the guitar stands. The headstock of the fallen Strat caught me in the right side, in the ribs, and it hurt and made me cry out with what little air I had remaining. I tried righting myself, gasping, and he came at me again, pulling me up by my shirt. Threads popped in his grip.

“Go ahead, scream.” The voice came from beneath the hood, behind the mask, and I saw his lips for a second in the cutout, thin and curling. From the corner of my eye, I caught the movement of his free hand, and it disappeared, and then my belly was crushed.

I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t see, the world swimming. He must have dropped me then, but I don’t remember it. I was still choking for air, but now I couldn’t inhale, it was as if my diaphragm had frozen, locked in a sustain. Nothing coming in, nothing coming out, and I was going to die without making a sound.

Parka Man dropped a knee beside my head, grabbed my hair again in one gloved hand. He lifted my face, twisting, making sure I could see him, making sure that I couldn’t see anything.

“Cops,” he said. “Talking to you, you talking to them.”

New shame cascaded through me, the knowledge that he’d been watching me at Van’s, had seen Hoffman and me. I tried shaking my head, to tell him that he was wrong, that I hadn’t told anyone anything, that the thing between Hoffman and me was just a stupid kiss, nothing more. His grip was so tight that when I tried the movement, I felt my hair tearing.

“You better not,” he told me. “Nothing about me, about you, about Tommy. They ask whatever they want, you don’t answer. Lie to your heart’s content, they expect that, but you don’t ever mention me. I’ll know.”

The shake hadn’t worked, so I tried a nod, still pushing for a breath. Everything below my ribs felt like it had just stopped working, like it wasn’t even attached any longer.

“I’ll know,” he repeated.

He shoved my face down again, into the floor, letting go of my hair. I saw the edge of a boot, and then my diaphragm unlocked with a spasm, and I gasped in a breath. He made the same noise he had in Mikel’s condo, the one that sounded like he was happy, but he wasn’t moving, and I could feel him looking at me.

“Roll over.”

I couldn’t even manage a plea.

“Roll. Over.”

I closed my eyes and pushed my palms against the carpet, rolling onto my back. I brought my arms around, I suppose it was a strange, instinctive kind of modesty, trying to protect my chest, and I thought he would at least let me keep that, but I felt his gloves on my arms, and he pulled them away.

“Open your eyes,” he told me.

It might have been the hardest thing I’d ever been asked to do, and for what felt like minutes, I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I thought about his threat, about screaming, calling for help, but even if I had lungs like Van, no one would come. In my music room, soundproofed and cocooned, I had no way out.

Nothing looked back at me, just the mask inside the hood, dark on darker, empty. I couldn’t even find his eyes, but I could feel the stare creeping down me. Everything Hoffman had said rushed back at me. I’d felt the eyes of tens of thousands watching me live, I’d known millions more had done the same on screens and pages. Pictures taped to walls and downloaded onto desktops, the gaze of men and women, boys and girls, and I’d had to accept it without too much thought, because it was the kind of thing you couldn’t think about for too long, and even now, with the new pictures, they paled next to this.

This was new humiliation, and I wanted to wail. I wanted to beg him to release me, to leave me alone, because I didn’t deserve this.

Some songs end the way they want to end, you can’t do anything about it, and when you fight it, you end with junk. It was his song now, I realized: he’d pick the ending.

The Parka Man put the heel of his boot on the fingers of my left hand, my fretting hand, and let the promise of more weight rest there, pressing just a little. His head hadn’t moved, the dark, vacant holes still watching me. I bit into my tongue, not wanting to give him a sound.

“I’ll know,” he said.

Then he dropped the rest of the weight, and I tasted blood in my mouth as he ground his heel on my fingers. In my knuckles, I felt bone grinding on cartilage. My eyes filled with tears, hot ones, spilling down the sides of my face, dripping into my ears.

It hurt so bad that when he stopped, I didn’t know it.

“I own you,” the Parka Man said, and I heard his boots climbing the stairs. Then only silence.

I rolled onto my side, holding my fingers in my right hand, and I wept.

CHAPTER 29

It took two rapid-fire shots of Jack to make the pain in my hand subside a little, and even then, the sickness in my head remained. I broke ice into a dishtowel, wrapped my fingers with it, praying they weren’t broken. The ache was constant, and felt deep in the bone.

I checked the whole house, trying to make certain he was gone, looking in all the closets, in all the hiding places. It was when I was checking the pantry that I saw how he’d done the alarm, and that was the final straw, maybe.

The control box was high on the wall, above my stock of canned goods, and the door to it was open. I had to take a chair from the kitchen table to get a good look, and when I did I saw that all of the fuses had been pulled, except for the one to the control panel. It could tell me that all portals were secure to the day I died, it would always be lying.

He could come and go as he pleased. He’d done it twice already, maybe more than that. He certainly had been waiting for me in the basement even before I got home.

It was what Van had said, too. He wouldn’t ever stop. Even if he was sincere now in his promise to return Tommy to me in exchange for cash, that would change, that would change as soon as he saw how easily he could control me.

Which is what made me remember the other thing Van had said, about how I was going to end up. But Van was wrong about one thing: I was doubting that the corpse I left behind would be all that nice on the eyes.

He owned me.

He would kill Tommy. Then he would kill me.

The only way I could stop it was if I found him first.

It took me until dawn to find a place to start, and it seemed weak, even by my desperate standards, but I didn’t have anything else. Thinking about everything he’d said, how he’d said it, the one thing I kept coming back to were the words he’d used in Mikel’s condo.

You’ve sure grown up.

It could mean a lot of things, I told myself. It could mean all kinds of things.

But maybe it means foster care.

There were forty-nine Larkins in the Qwest White Pages, and another twenty-three when I used the iMac in my office to do a Google search. Since I couldn’t remember the first name of either of the parents or most of the kids, I almost panicked. I couldn’t remember the name of any of the four sons.

Of the two daughters, I knew one of them was called Sheila, and I remembered that because I had been so mean to her. Another Google search, this time specifically for Sheila Larkin in Portland, Oregon, kicked back several hits, and by the time I’d sorted all of them it was already past nine, but I’d narrowed it down to three. One of them was thirteen, and had a page devoted to her favorite television shows, movies, and musicians.

She wasn’t a fan.

The second one was just a faculty listing at OHSU, in the Pediatric Care Unit.

The third was attached to a Web site for “Cuddle Group Daycare,” and that was the one I went with, because at the top of the Web page for the site there was a spinning Jesus fish. A phone number and e-mail link were included at the bottom of the page.

I called, and it was answered after four rings. Children were hollering in the background.

“Cuddle Group Daycare.”

“I’m trying to reach Sheila Larkin,” I said. “Is she there?”

“This is she. Who is this, please?”

“My name’s Miriam Bracca. I don’t know if you remember me.”

There was the barest of pauses. “Of course I remember you. What can I do for you, Miss Bracca?”

“It’s actually a little awkward, I was wondering if I could come and talk to you.”

Another pause. I heard a child’s shriek, but I couldn’t tell if it was delight or outrage.

“When?” Sheila Larkin asked.

“Sooner the better, actually.”

“If you don’t mind some dirty diapers, you can come over now.” She gave me an address in the southeast part of town, near Reed College, and I told her I thought it would be about an hour before I got there, and she said that would be fine.

I changed into day clothes, then gave myself a status report in the mirror. My fingers hurt, and the knuckles were swollen, but I could move them, and there was no visible bruising. The gash on my forehead looked calmer, too, less angry. But now I had a golf-ball-sized bruise on the side of my chest from the collision with the Strat, and the marks on my throat were clearly visible, if somewhat faint.

I used makeup to cover what I could, and was headed downstairs when the doorbell rang.

It was Hoffman and Marcus. He was wearing a duplicate of his work suit, and she was going with another slacks-blouse-blazer combo, and when I opened the door she shot me a grin, and when I didn’t return it, it crumpled like rice paper.

“I was on my way out,” I said.

“This won’t take long,” Marcus said. “Could we come in?”

I tried to look past them without being obvious about it, tried to determine if the Parka Man was watching. Leaving them to linger on the porch was only going to make matters worse, but letting them inside might get Tommy killed.

“What’s this about?”

“Let’s go inside, we can talk.”

My hesitation was growing obvious, and I caved, letting them through and then closing the door fast behind them. I had to hope Parka Man wasn’t watching, that he was confident in the scare he’d thrown into me the night before.

They waited, followed me down the hall to the kitchen. Hoffman held up just inside the archway, watching me with her cop look, the one that made it impossible to read her emotions. Marcus went to the table and took a seat.

“What’s this about?” I asked again.

“Have you seen your father in the last twenty-four hours?” Hoffman asked.

“Nope,” I said, and I sounded convincing to me.

“He was staying at your brother’s place, did you know that?”

“I’m not surprised. I don’t think he had anywhere else to go.”

“But you haven’t been to see him there?”

“Why would I?”

“You haven’t been there?” Hoffman asked again.

“No, I haven’t seen him since the funeral.”

“He’s not at your brother’s,” Marcus said. “We went by to talk to him this morning, early, and he wasn’t there.”

Hoffman’s expression faltered, her brow creasing, and I knew she was trying to figure out why I’d gone cold on her, and I only hoped she took it the wrong way.

She said, “Normally, someone doesn’t answer the door, we don’t make a thing out of it. They’re out or they’re asleep.”

“Both possible,” I said.

“That’s what we’d be thinking, too, except that Allan, here, he saw something that got us a little worried. He saw some blood, dried blood, on the front step of the condo.”

She paused, waiting for me to react. I didn’t say anything.

Marcus picked it up. “Blood at a crime scene, that’s not unusual, you know. And your brother’s place, that’s a crime scene. So I’m all fired up to go in, hey, it’s blood, maybe there’s trouble. But Tracy here, she’s cooler than me, she says wait a sec, she pulls out her phone, gets one of the state techs on the line, one of the guys who processed your brother’s murder. And she asks them if they pulled any blood evidence from outside of the house. You know what the answer to that is?”

I shrugged, shaking a cigarette loose from my pack on the counter. It was easier to look at the yellow box of smokes than at either of them.

“The answer was no, there was no blood pulled from outside. So we effected an entry, because that’s probable cause, you see.”

“Your father’s missing,” Hoffman said. “There’s a large amount of blood—and it’s new, it’s not your brother’s—in the living room there. Your father’s clothes are still in the guest room. How’d you cut your forehead, Miss Bracca?”

It was the refusal to use my first name that did it, made me see where they were going.

“I took a spill,” I said.

“Looks nasty.”

“I was pretty loaded.”

There was silence. Marcus and Hoffman waited. I tried to think of something to say, and it occurred to me that any lie I gave them now was only going to make things worse. If they knew it was Tommy’s blood on the carpet, then they had probably found some of mine, too; if they had, then they’d be able to match it to the samples they’d taken from my towels and sheets and so on when they’d searched my own home.

Which meant they’d know I had been there. It was only a matter of time.

Marcus asked, “We’re wondering if you’d be willing to come downtown with us and answer some more questions.”

“I really can’t,” I said. “I have an appointment I need to keep.”

“It won’t take long,” Marcus said.

“I’m thinking I should call my lawyer.”

“As always, that’s your prerogative.”

Hoffman didn’t say anything.

I found Chapel’s number and called his office as they watched me. When the receptionist answered, I gave her my name and said I needed to speak to Mr. Chapel.

“I’m sorry, Miss Bracca, but he’s busy at the moment,” the receptionist said.

“It’s Joy, right?” I asked.

She seemed pleased that I’d remembered. “Yes, it is.”

“Joy, could you tell him that there are two detectives in my kitchen asking me to go downtown with them?”

“Just a second,” she said.

The hold music, appallingly enough, was Rosie 105 FM, and they were halfway through the second verse of “Lie Life.” I thought about singing along, and decided against it.

As the third chorus was ending, Chapel came on the line. He was brusque.

“It’s Hoffman and Marcus?”

“Yeah.”

“Put one of them on,” Chapel said.

I extended the phone to Hoffman. “He wants to talk to you.”

She took the phone out of my hand, meeting my eyes. There was anger, and there was hurt, and I tried to give her nothing in return. She put the phone to her ear and said her name, and then for most of a minute, didn’t say anything else.

Then she said, “No, you’ve made that perfectly clear,” and offered the phone back to me.

“They’re leaving,” Chapel told me. “I’ve told them that they are under no circumstances to question you about anything without me present, and that if they want to take you downtown, they’re going to need a warrant. I’m going to stay on the phone. You follow them out, make sure they leave your property. I’ll wait.”

“Gotcha.”

I set the phone down on the counter, and Marcus was already halfway to the front door, Hoffman following. I went after them. Marcus exited first, but Hoffman stopped on the porch to pick up the morning paper and hand it over.

“Don’t make last night a mistake,” she said. “Let me help you.”

I shook my head, said, “I don’t need help.”

And I shut the door on her.

“Why were they there?” Chapel demanded.

I relayed everything the detectives had told me, without embellishment.

“Do you know where your father is?”

“No idea.”

“And you haven’t been to your brother’s condo?”

“Not since I found his body,” I said. “Can I ask you, that bit about a warrant? Are they liable to come back with one?”

“Not unless they’ve got some damn compelling evidence and the D.A. is willing to charge you. It’s the same situation as before. And with the pictures in the media, and so soon after your brother’s murder? Unless the D.A. knows you did something wrong, unless he can prove it, he’d look like a complete asshole. If what you’re telling me is right, they don’t even have a crime.”

“They said there was blood.”

“That doesn’t mean anything. Suppose your father went on a bender, cut his wrists, and then thought better of it? Maybe he’s in a bed at Legacy Emanuel or Providence as a John Doe. Until they know what’s happened to him, they’ve got nothing. And if they think there’s a murder, they need a body, or a head, or some heart or brain matter. Otherwise, they’ve got nothing.”

“So I don’t have to worry about them?”

“Not unless there’s something you haven’t told me,” Chapel said.

I was finding it easier and easier to lie without pause. “No, nothing. They just made me nervous, that’s all.”

“They’re detectives, they do it on purpose. Call me if they come back.”

I told him I would, hung up, and headed for my appointment with Cuddle Group Daycare.