A Quiet Neighbor (35 page)

Chapter
Twenty-Nine:

Wednesday,
June 20, 2012

3:21
A.M.

Neil Wilcox:

I must have blacked out.

Thrashing from discomfort, soreness, and the
worst headache of my life, I jerk upward in a heaving panic. I feel pain, all
over, radiating in all directions. My ears ring. I feel tattered, like blown
out speakers.

Wincing, I gradually prop myself onto my
elbows. A leather ottoman stands at the foot of the deep cushioned couch—that
couch got a lot of snuggle time back in the day—and I am able to lean against
it until the ricocheting pain abates to a dull ache. Gasping for breath, I open
my bloodshot eyes.

I was out cold for nearly five hours.

I look over toward the motionless silhouette of
my faithful companion. No rise and fall. No sounds of breath.
Poor Mr.
Dimples. Poor me. I am now completely alone.

I immediately hoist myself up and hobble to the
patio. A thick blanket of fog envelops me the minute my bare feet touch the
stamped concrete slab. I shiver but the cold will not distract me. Opening the
tool shed, I reach for the long-handled shovel and begin mechanically digging a
hole beside the rose bush, one foot long by one foot wide by two feet deep.

The shovelhead makes a flat scraping sound each
time it slices into the earth, ringing out each time it strikes cobble. Small
pebbles clamor and skid across the patio each time I pull the shovel out and
pour soil onto the pile. I do not care if the neighbors wake from the noise.
They probably won’t; if they do, well, fuck them. It would just be payback for
all the times they chose to annoy me.

I can still hear the wind chime.
That damn
wind chime. I’ll show you—

My mind is full of poisonous rage. My atrophied
muscles strain under the resistance of each shovelful of soil. Thin beads of
sweat trickle down my haggard face, hairy back, and from under my arms. Having
not showered from the night’s excursion, the sour stink of my body starts to
make me gag.

I redouble my focus, pushing through the
strain, the stench, the annoyance of the darkness, of the thick fog obstructing
my vision, and that damn wind chime. I continue digging the hole, slowly but
surely, seething in a full-fledged thought-attack.

Fuck those neighbors.
Thump.
Fuck every last one.
Clang!
Fuck you!
Clump,
clatter-clatter-clatter.
Fuck it all!

After thirty-five minutes, I stand back and
wipe the sweat off my brow. I sink back into my folding Algoma Sport Couch—the
electric blue, loveseat-style lawn chair I received as a Christmas bonus four
years ago; the very spot where Betsy and I lazed away so many afternoons in
blissful nothingness—balancing the shovel vertically, clutching the handle
loosely in front of my face. I stare through the gap of the handle and see
double.

The hole is dug. Now all I have to do is toss
in Mr. Dimples. The muscles in my face go lax. I find myself in an emotionless
state. After all the loss, all the confusion, how can there be any emotion
left? I am drained. I feel nothing.

I mechanically move my arms and legs to finish
a task my reptile brain has willed me to do. Picking up the dead dog is a feat
in and of itself. My back wrenches with spasms; a wave of nauseating pain
radiates from my sacrum. I push through the pain and slowly lower myself to my
hands and knees until I am on all fours. Carefully I wrap Mr. Dimples in a thin
blanket, the blanket that Elizabeth made for him when we first picked him up
from the animal shelter. It once was bright blue with a Mickey Mouse patch sewn
in the corner; now it is faded with age, tattered from play, and stained from
past accidents.

I tuck the blue bundle containing Mr. Dimples
beneath my arm, assume a crooked three-point stance, then push myself up to
stand with grunts of agony welling from my bowels. The rigidity of his body
unnerves me.

Remembering the glint in my Betsy’s eye when
she held the pug’s rumpled face against her own, brings back a wave of sadness.
I will the memories away. I have work to do. And I have to do it fast, before—

Before what? I cannot remember. All I remember is
pain. Confusion. Regret.

I drop the tightly wrapped pug into the damp
hole. The bundle lands with a dull thud. A startled spider scurries out of the
hole and rushes across the patio, toward the dirt pile. Taking in deep breaths
of damp June air, I bury my pug-child of fifteen years.

Shoomp! Thump. Screee! Clump. Clang! Thump.
Tap-tap-tap. Smoosh, tap-tap—

Silence.

A soft mound of coffee-brown soil soon covers
the pet who has been a child to my Betsy and a walking companion to me.

I look up, finally noticing the agitated
neighbors watching from their upstairs windows, looking down onto my patio with
hatred from their lit bedrooms. They say nothing, or do they?
Fuck them all.
I return my gaze back to the mound of dirt beside the rosebush.

Leaning against the shovel beside the makeshift
grave, my heart sags. There is no aching pull toward Mr. Dimples, only jealousy
and reproach.

Mr. Dimples is now pain-free and licking
Betsy’s beautiful face in heaven, while I am left behind to rot in pain and
agony over losing my darling Betsy all over again. So close…I was so close to
having her back. To filling this house with the love and energy only she was
capable of giving. Her cheerful smile and sensitive nature would have restored
me to my old self. At least, that was the plan. That was what I had hoped. Now,
where there was once hope, darkness dwells.

Another bout of pain, acute and centered on my
heart, brings me to my knees.
Nine-one-one. I need to call nine-one-one.
Light fades from my eyes. My body loses feeling and goes limp.
Betsy would
have known what to do.
What should I—

I don’t remember calling for an ambulance, but
I must have, because the next thing I know I am staring into a brightly lit
room. Long rows of fluorescent light banks tile the ceiling. Annoyingly, the
lights flicker and buzz with old ballasts. They fill the room with a sterile
strobe. Plain white walls and bland, minimalistic lacquered birch furniture surround
me. I see needles and tubes sticking into and out of every orifice possible,
plus some orifices I never knew possible.

A tube scratches my raw throat whenever I try
to form a word or swallow. The cottony dryness makes me crave a cool glass of
water. I panic.
Someone’s gagged me. Play it cool, Joe,
Kidnapped? Could I have been drugged and then kidnapped? Why me? What did I
ever do that was so wrong? Gotta make up a cover story, figure out where they
took me—

My head throbs and my eyelids fight to close.
Quickly I process the room. Across is a clock mounted above a boxed television
set, ticking obnoxiously, taunting me.

Turning my head is surprisingly difficult. In
the fluorescent haze I notice a large lump on the hospital bed beside mine, and
above the bed is a solitary window.

I am not alone. So I have a neighbor with a
better view. And better service, judging by the lump’s serenity. The lump is
calm, transfixed in a deep and soundless sleep. How I envy my new and
mysterious neighbor.

It is work to lift my eyelids. They seem to
droop closed whenever I lose total focus. I feel a heavy numbness. The thought
of suicide tantalizes me with every tick of the clock.
Am I
dying?
A spark of hope momentarily energizes me, alarming the
beeping machines to beep a little louder and with more urgency. The lines on
the monitors fluctuate with long and short jagged lines.

Suddenly, my empty room is filled with men and
women donning masks and green latex gloves.
Green…why green? Green
vinyl covers everything in this drab place. Why? Green makes me think of puke.
Yellow? No, yellow makes me think of pus. Red? No, red is the color of blood.
Pink? No, watery blood. Orange? Hmmm…Yes, orange could work. Why not use the
color orange? Fresh-squeezed orange juice sounds good right about now…

With many hands roaming over my body, faces popping
in and out of my blurred field of vision, I strain to hear the murmuring around
me. They are talking to each other as if I am not able to hear, in
doctor-speak. I feel like screaming, but I am paralyzed by the numbness. The
words come to my ears in shards. Fading fast, I will my mind to stay alert, but
can only catch pieces of the cryptic conversation.

“Wilcox…myocardial infarction…”

“Neighbor called nine-one-one…”

“Empty house…alone…”

“Pancreatic cancer…possibly terminal…more
tests…”

“Yes, checking insurance…no family…alone…”

Alone
.
I will soon die alone
.
That
much, I understand. I am being pulled into a deep sleep without getting the answer
to my most pertinent question:
how much longer do I have to
suffer?

HOSPITAL
ROOM (VI):

Saturday,
August 25, 2012

3:00
P.M.

Detective Kylie Kang:

In the sweltering heat of August, the low thrum
from the overworked air conditioners is a blessing thoroughly appreciated by
the hospital staff, visitors, and patients alike. Flip-flops slap
arrhythmically between polished floors and calloused heels as visitors walk
along the echoing corridors. Sunflowers and daisies brighten the drab and
depressing rooms. Flat screen televisions mounted around the waiting rooms roll
closed-captioned public service announcements on endless loop: “Beating the
Heat,” “What is Hypertension? Blood Pressure and You,” and “FIT Test: A New
Alternative to Colonoscopy.” Small children sit in the cafeteria relishing cool
popsicles while their parents grab an iced tea or blended coffee drink to pass
the time. The waiting rooms are filled with patients and guests, who sit fanning
themselves and relishing the cool air. They don’t seem to mind the delays
today.

I am one of those people, flip-flopping lazily
down the hall toward Gramps’ room. I visit him less and less these days. I am
embarrassed to see him. To show him what a failure I’ve become. I don’t want
him to see me like this, so I stay away.

The Holmes case has been put on indefinite hold
as of last week. When I was out on “vacation,” Pickering took over the case but
wasn’t able to get very far. After a month of dickering around, Lieutenant
Malone tasked two grunts from evidence storage to remove and catalog the case files.
They cataloged everything into two long evidence boxes, and took the boxes back
to the warehouse to be placed in the cold case section. The growing number of
cold cases was a sore spot for Declan, since it put a blemish on his otherwise
impeccable performance review with the fourth floor brass.

When I returned, the other three cases left on
my immaculate desk quickly took precedence. Fortunately for me, I didn’t have
the luxury of time to feel remorse on the job. Once I returned from mandatory
leave, I fell right back into step with the other cases.

But after-hours, I never stop thinking about
that case. About Brett. About everything.

Having watched Brett’s interrogation on tape,
it revealed nothing extra. He didn’t even mention our history.
So how did
Declan and everyone else find out about
my mistake seventeen years ago?
Did Pickering stop the tape—knowing I’d get my hands on it later—before he
asked the personal questions?
I was obsessed with knowing how everyone
found out.
Ugh.
It was so frustrating being the odd man out. Pickering
and Malone weren’t talking and Eve was constantly giving me the pity eyes so I
couldn’t even approach her. But, from all the kissy faces thrown my way, I
figured, they didn’t know much or else I’d be getting a lot worse. At least
that was a plus.

And I didn’t have the heart to ask Brett,
especially at our last meeting. I just kept the conversation strictly related
to the case; all business. I don’t know why, but I told him I would continue
looking into his stepdaughter’s case even after it ran cold. He didn’t seem to
care. I thought he’d be grateful that I cared, but he seemed relieved that the
case was put on the shelf to rot.
Was he guilty after all?

He confided that the case was starting to wear
thin on him and his wife. It was like Loral was the piece that didn’t quite fit
and now, they could somehow move forward and begin again as a close-knit
family. It was as if her death knocked sense back into them both, and they
realized how much they wanted to be one unit again. He was ashamed to think
this way, but it was true. Apparently, he thought I’d hold no judgment and he
could speak freely and candidly.

I didn’t know how to respond.

I spent so much of my free time obsessing over
the case, as did Pickering and his team, and for what? The family didn’t even
seem to care. Why should I care more? Why should any of us?

After carefully dissecting all the evidence,
combing through each page of the case files with professional scrutiny,
interrogating everyone—from family members to neighbors to long-shot
connections—and spending months of expensive detective work, they came out with
more questions and even fewer answers. Nothing fit: motive, timing, alibi, MO,
lack of evidence.

On one hand it looked like an accidental death
at the hand of a loved one; on the other hand it appeared to be a professional
killing by a trained martial artist, with a cleaner sent in to destroy
evidence. But why? Nothing was coming together in one cohesive unit. There was
no motive.

It was also annoying that I could no longer be
lead detective, let alone be part of the core team in the investigation. At
least Pickering regularly provided me with updates, saying it was a simple
favor between partners. But the weekly boxes of doughnut holes I brought him
probably had something to do with his newfound sense of charity. He always
seemed to open up once he popped the first sweet doughy goodness into his mouth
and sipped gingerly on hot coffee. Unfortunately, the updates provided little
satisfaction as they were always dead ends.

A dozen doughnut holes didn’t break the bank, a
least. You get what you pay for.

I was confident that eventually the case would
be solved, mainly because I had my ego in the ring on this one. No murder could
be that clean, that flawless. There was something we missed, or someone.

The case that Declan’s grandfather, retired
Chief George Malone, remembered—of a teenage boy, who in self-defense used his
newly developed martial arts technique to protect himself and his girlfriend
(the perp’s daughter), and ended up killing the man—was a clear open-and-shut
case. The daughter was being abused and molested by the big bad father and the
knight-in-shining-armor boyfriend came at a bad time, caught the man in the
act, and hit him with a one-in-a-million fatal haymaker. The boy was lucky the
man was drunk; otherwise, he could have easily been killed.

Neil Wilcox would be a middle-aged man by now,
nearing his fifties. And the death he administered was the result of a fluke, a
desperate strike from a protective, scared teenage boyfriend. His record since
that day was squeaky clean, not even a parking ticket.

There was no indication that Neil Wilcox had
any connection with the vic, let alone a motive. No one in the family had ever heard
of him, there was no mention of him in Loral’s notebook, and none of Loral’s
friends recognized the name, either.

The only interesting tie between them was
location. He lived a few blocks away in a condominium complex. But they
couldn’t tie him to the school where the vic died. They were grasping at
straws. While I was game to gnaw down any and all leads to the nubs, Pickering
and the Lieutenant found no need of pursuing that particular lead any further.

The notebook they found tightly wedged in the
back of Loral’s waistband did nothing except reveal that she was a complex
teenager filled with sadness and anger. Not atypical. Tess asked to have it
returned to her, so once the copies were made and the pages tested for trace
evidence, the notebook was given back to the family.

The cell phone with the dead battery yielded
nothing interesting once the lab techs downloaded the call log—just calls to
home and her boyfriend.

Not long after, the case went cold.

The silver lining of the case, if there was
such a thing, was that it brought Brett and Leila back into my life. To have
closure. To get a chance to clear the air, say our apologies, and move on. I
needed to confront my past and deal with the uncanny sparks that still flew in
my mind for Brett. But I thought I’d have more time to sort through my feelings.
Instead of ripping off the proverbial bandage, I attempted to run myself ragged
with more cases and intense workouts. I was beyond beat.

Brett was the first person I’d ever loved, and
as ridiculous as it might seem, the only person I thought I’d ever love. He was
the reason I built a thick barrier between my heart and men. There had been a
few who seemed to express an interest at one time or another, but Brett still
held my heart; I turned them away without so much as a peck on the cheek. I
built a cold front and men turned the other way.

So when Brett called and asked to meet, a part
of me hoped the meeting would lead to something more. I couldn’t postpone
facing my fears, my feelings, any longer. I picked the same coffee shop up the
street from my apartment—my usual rendezvous point—but once I stepped inside,
an hour early as usual, I regretted it. Tazza d’Oro, although spacious and
buzzing with people coming and going for their morning cup of joe, suddenly
seemed too intimate and closed in. I should have chosen somewhere outdoors,
like the fountain at Balboa Park. Somewhere open.

I sat at my usual corner table—the one with a
clear view of the door, tucked between a lush green ficus and the newspaper
vending machine—cradling my cooling mug of coffee in trembling hands. I allowed
too much time to fidget and worry. Deciding to scan my Blackberry for unread
emails and messages, I grabbed my cell and began aimlessly rummaging from one
read email to the next, trashing the ones that I no longer needed.

Ten minutes late, as usual, Brett strolled in
through the door. Strikingly handsome in just a faded black shirt and dark
denim jeans, he combed through his thick black hair with his hand and offered a
friendly smile. His blue eyes were nervous and wary as was his stance, but his
voice was steady and clear.

I tried standing, but my legs were
uncomfortably wobbly and I feared I’d make a fool of myself, so I sat in place
and waved a hand. When he turned to me, my breath caught in my throat. I wasn’t
supposed to feel anything for him anymore. But I did. I really, really did.

Face taut and eyes darting every which way,
Brett cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together as if he was cold. The
weather outside was a warm seventy five degrees, so I knew he wasn’t cold, just
anxious. I waited for him to get his coffee and sit in the same honey-colored
bench seat Leila sat in before.

“Ky, thanks for meeting me.”

I nodded. Afraid my voice might crack and give
away my feelings, I didn’t speak.

“Thanks for still looking into the case even
though everyone seems to have forgotten about it already. My family and I
appreciate it.”

I swallowed hard. “Yes, well, it’s my job.”

Brett just nodded and stared into his speckled
ceramic mug, which he cupped tightly between his thick hands. The pausing
silence stifled the air between us. Uncomfortable, he shifted in his seat and
avoided my eyes. “But, that’s not why I called. I feel like you’ve been
avoiding me or maybe I’ve been avoiding you, you know, considering our history…”
Trailing off, he laughed nervously. He took a sip of coffee. “You probably
already have, but I’m trying to put all that past me. It was so long ago and we
were just kids then. I hope you’re doing the same. I mean, of course you are.
Right?” This time he raised his head and looked straight into me. His blue eyes
were round and hopeful, yet strained.

I nodded again. Taking a sip of coffee, I took
a moment to clear the cobwebs tangling my thoughts. “Yes. It’s all water under
the bridge.”

Lost in thought, he continued, “Good. Good. So
I, uh, forgot to ask, with all the finger pointing and everything, but how are
you? Is there someone special in your life?”

“What?” My mouth hung agape.
Is he asking
because he wants to be that person?
“Nope. Still single.”

“Oh.” By the look in his eyes and his stiff
posture, I realized that he regretted asking the question. Apparently he was
just trying to make small talk with an old acquaintance, and that’s the
question you ask right? How’s the significant other? Any kids to mention or
show pictures of? And he probably hoped I was in a serious relationship so
there was no chance of another mistake.

I watched as he mindlessly drummed his fingers
on the glass tabletop. As he leaned back in his seat, I caught tiny nicks in
his face from the morning shave. I remembered the time when he was about
thirteen, when he told me that a real man used a double-edged or straight
razor.
Shaving’s an art and a real man takes it to heart
, he used to say
while flashing his magnetic smile. I wondered if he still used a straight razor
or if he had resorted to a multi-blade. How much of him was the same guy I fell
in love with?

“So your department closed the case on Loral?
We’ll never know who killed her or what happened?”

I leaned forward and placed his drumming hands
in my warm ones. Looking into his misty blue eyes I said as evenly as I could,
“I’m working on it.” And that was the truth. I was working on it; always would,
until the person responsible was caught and brought to justice.

Nodding, he gave my hands a squeeze before
pulling away. Looking down, he shifted in his seat, suddenly uncomfortable.
“Tess and I thought it would be best for us to move. I—uh, talked to my parents
and they want to be a part of the girls’ lives since they’ve already missed out
on so much.” He looked up. “Ky, we’re moving back to Walnut.”