A Reason to Live (Marty Singer1) (25 page)

You never get used to waltzing up to what you have to assume is a place of danger, the home of the guy who pulled the trigger or held the knife or swung the pipe. A knot of anxiety starts to unravel somewhere behind your bellybutton and spreads throughout your body. You do your best to ignore it and experience takes care of the feeling once things heat up, but the first few minutes before something goes down are the worst. Of course, Wheeler might not even be here. I had to treat the situation as if there was an armed lunatic hiding behind the door, but act as though I'd shown up to chat about the weather. Layla Green might be a sweet Southern belle and invite me in for iced-tea or Catalpa Street might see more bullets flying in the next five minutes than it had since the Civil War.

I peeked in the window. The blinds were down, but I could make out the living room through a bent louver.

"See anything?" Julie asked.

"Old, beat-up couch. Paper plates on the coffee table. Some crap on the floor. Big plasma TV."

"At least she has her priorities straight," Julie said, looking around the yard. Cheap plastic chairs, the kind that melt and start to buckle when it gets too hot, sat on the slab front porch. They'd been white, once, but now were green with an algae-like growth on the legs. A dozen damp cigarette butts, kissed with lipstick marks, moldered in a glass ashtray on a side table and a deflated beach ball lay trapped between a chair and the wall. We checked around back where I found more trophies of suburban bliss: a cracked kiddie pool, a push mower leaning up against the house, a rusting grill with a couple of empty propane tanks lolling around. I sidled up to the back door, which looked into an ugly, if neat, kitchen. Faux cherry cabinets, brass-patina knobs, linoleum floor cut and colored to look like Italian marble, but $1.99 a square foot at your local hardware store. I put my ear to the door and held my breath until my pulse was knocking in my ears. Nothing.

We went around front and walked up to the door again. I told Julie to stand well off to one side, then I knocked. I stepped back and let my hands swing down by my sides. Non-threatening, but ready to go for my gun in a hurry. It was a wasted precaution: two more authoritative knocks and I was sure no one was home. At least, no one willing to answer the door.

"Singer," Julie called and gestured towards the road, where a postal truck pulled up to the gate with its blinkers on.

I hurried to meet the truck by the mailbox, resisting the urge to rub my hands together in glee. Mailmen, paperboys, and garbage collectors are some of the best informants you can dig up. They know everything about anything that goes on in their neighborhood, often so happy to spill the beans that it's hard to get them to shut up. Behind the wheel was a white guy about sixty, sporting a long, drooping mustache and watery blue eyes. He looked back at me, poker-faced.

"Hi," I said, holding a hand up, trying to look neighborly.

"Hi, yourself," the mailman said.

"Sorry to bother you. We're friends of Michael's, down from DC for the day," I said. "I thought I'd surprise him, but it looks like there's nobody home."

"Michael who?"

"Wheeler," I said, acting surprised. "Michael Wheeler."

The mailman chewed his mustache with his lower lip, a habit he seemed to do often, judging by how stained it was. "Michael Wheeler? Nobody by that name here."

"You sure?" I asked, then patted my pockets. "I'm sure I've got the right address."

"Damn right I'm sure," the mailman said. "I've been doing this route for ten years and Layla's the only one who's ever lived here. She's had some lazy shits you might call boyfriends hang around for a while, but I don't think any of them was named Michael."

"Michael's her brother."

"Well, that ain't it, then," he said. "Besides, none of them stuck around long enough to get their mail delivered here."

"He might've just rolled into town," I said. "Would you have seen him around?"

"Maybe, maybe not. You think you'd notice those kinds of things, but I'm only here for a few minutes a day. The Tates down the road had their parents visiting for three weeks and I didn't know about it until today."

"Is that Layla's van?" I said, waving at the blue monster in the driveway.

"Yeah. Transmission's gone. She's driving a rental now, I think. Girl's hard on cars, doesn't know enough to drop a quart of oil into it every once in a while."

"Any idea when she gets home?" Julie asked. "Maybe she can set us straight about Michael."

"Around five. She works down at AgCon, in the office there. All those girls leave at five on the dot. I get stuck in traffic when the place lets out."

"All right, then," I said, looking at Julie as if conferring. "Maybe we'll try back around five or six, see if she can help us out."

He nodded, a short jab of his head forward and down. "Good luck."

We waved as he pulled away, then I led Julie out of the yard, pulling the fence door behind us and heading for the car.

"Nosy bastard," she said as we got into the car.

"All postmen are," I said, starting the engine and pulling out onto the road. "And ten will get you twenty he'll call us into the local cops if we don't head out like we said we were going to."

"To where?"

"We've got some time to kill. We can grab a late lunch and make it back here long before Layla gets off work."

"Maybe I can look in the cooler again, see what I can find," Julie said. I didn't look at her, but could hear the grin in her voice.

"I won't stop you," I said, and concentrated on driving.

We parked near the center of town. I would've headed for the biggest crowd of people to find a good place to sit and eat, but Julie pulled out her phone again and told me where we were going, a bistro called the Blue Arbor. It was a quiet café tucked between a pair of antique shops. We got a table with a white tablecloth, a fresh rose in a small crystal vase, and a view of the street. The waiter brought some bread with soft butter. We ordered and then sat looking at each other.

"So," I said.

"So," she said back. "Why'd you get divorced?'

I sat back. "Don't you want to warm up, start with the small stuff?"

"Why bother?" she said. "Lay it on me."

"I thought I already did," I said.

She smiled sweetly. "Technically, I think I laid it on you."

"Ah, yeah," I said, spinning my spoon on top of my place mat. I cleared my throat. "Her name was Sherry. Married nine years. No kids."

"Didn't want them or no time?"

"Just didn't happen," I said. "Which is all right. They would've been an afterthought. For me, at least."

"Was that the problem? The job?"

"Probably. We were young and tough and thought we could get through anything. Rookie cop gets off at five in the morning, sleeps all day, gets up and does it all again.
We'll work through it, honey. It won't be forever.
Then the promotion to Homicide and getting in at five seems like paradise. And it's not like you can come home and talk about your work if you want a stable home life."

"How bad could it be?"

"Bad."

"Try me," she said.

"No," I said.

"Yes."

I sighed, glanced away, looked back at her. "One time, someone calls in a homicide. Home invasion, guy's been robbed. Gun shot wound to the head. No one found him for a week. We go in there, find he's got a dog that couldn't get out. The dog survived, but not because it knew how to use a can opener. And that was one of the
funny
stories."

Julie took a sip of water. "Where is she now?"

"Not sure. We parted, stayed in touch, fell out of touch. I think she lives in Austin now with some Greek guy, owns a night club and a Dairy Queen."

Our food came and we tucked in. Which is to say, I stirred the cream in my coffee and took two bites out of a chicken salad sandwich. Julie ate delicately, taking a small bite from her sandwich and looking at the result before taking another. At that rate, it would take two hours for her to finish, but I was content to watch.

"Are you feeling all right?" she asked, looking at my almost untouched food.

"Yeah. I want to be ready and able if we need to do any heavy sleuthing. Not queasy and sick by the side of the road while the bad guy drives away."

"You need to eat more if you're not going to faint instead."

"I'll get to it, thanks."

She was quiet for a moment, then said, "Sorry. I shouldn't be so bossy."

"You're not."

"My mom had cancer," she said suddenly. Her gaze was turned down, looking at her plate. "I tried to get her to eat all the time, you know, figuring that when you eat, you get energy, and with enough energy you can beat anything. Obviously, that's not how it works, but you don't always act logically under the circumstances."

"It was hard?"

"Breast cancer. Quick. But not quick enough." She made a face. "What the hell am I doing? I shouldn't be talking to you like this."

"Don't sweat it," I said, with more gusto than I felt. "I'm getting good care and great doctors. And I've got a couple reasons to live, now."

I put emphasis on the "now" and she gave me a shy look, then smiled. We ate the rest of our lunch, I paid the bill, and we left with a bounce in our step.

. . .

The bounce took a hit when I rounded the corner by the visitor's center and saw a Waynesboro City police cruiser parked next to my car. Leaning against the front fender, arms crossed, was a local boy in blue, complete with cowboy hat and mirror shades. We walked up to him. His nameplate said Hanson.

"This isn't where the country cop tells the big city dick to get the hell out of his town, is it?" I asked.

Hanson tilted his head. "I don't think so," he said, with none of the Southern twang I was expecting. "I'm from Boston. So, unless you're the country cop, I think you've got the wrong scenario. Though you might be a dick. Not sure about that part, yet."

"Fair enough," I said. "How can I help you?"

"Gary Deaver told me he saw a guy and a gal poking around Layla Green's house earlier today. Gave me your plates, the make and model of your car."

"Who's Gary Deaver?" Julie asked.

"Mailman. Looks like a walrus."

"Damn it," I said.

He seemed amused. "That's Gary. It's his dream to catch a crook or a spy or a terrorist in the act. He'll call me later, dying to know if I locked you up."

"Me, too," I said.

"I didn't think much of it, but you did me a favor and parked down the street from police HQ. I saw your ride when I got back from lunch. You look like a cop, talk like a cop, but you didn't check in at the station. Thought I'd see what your interest was."

I eyed him up. Hanson was playing friendly-like, but he could make my life miserable if he thought I was jerking him around. So I gave him the condensed version, stressing my thirty years as a cop but downplaying the part about him possibly having a murderer laying low in his town. I didn't need him rounding up a posse and storming the house on Catalpa Street before I could get out there and ask some questions.

He chewed it over. "You're retired?"

"Yep."

"And you don't have a license?"

"Only to drive."

"You got a gun?"

I hesitated, but why? He could find out easily enough. "Yes. Registered."

He looked out over the street for a second, then back at me. "That's not a good combination."

"Nope," I admitted. "I wouldn't like it if it were my beat."

"You got your driver's license on you?" I handed it over and he pushed himself away from the car. "Gimme a sec."

He slipped into the driver's side of the cruiser and got on his radio while I tried to look unperturbed. Julie pushed up her sunglasses and stared into space like this happened all the time. A family of four walked by, glancing from the cop car to me and back. The mother snagged her little boy by the collar and pulled him close as they hurried down the sidewalk, but the kid slipped backwards glances under her arm until they rounded the corner.

Hanson got out of the car. He handed me my ID. I pocketed it and said, "You know someone in MPDC?"

"Remember Bill Collier?"

"Hell, yes," I said. "Runs the armory. Or used to. Gave me grief every time I went to the range."

He grinned. "Me, too. He's my uncle. The one who got me into law enforcement in the first place."

"What'd he suck you in with? The stories about the money? Or the beautiful women?"

"He says you got him out of jam once," Hanson said.

"Nothing he couldn't have gotten himself out of," I said. "Bill likes his booze. And his guns. I helped him sort the two out, is all."

"He owes you. Which means I do, too. Though that doesn't mean you can head for Green's house and start shooting the windows out of her place."

"I just need to ask her a couple questions. I'll know in thirty seconds if it was a waste of time. Or if she's not telling me the truth."

"Yeah, but then what?"

"Then I come and get you," I said.

"Uh, huh," he said, and looked at me. "Listen, do me a favor and keep your head on straight. I don't want you lighting the town up to get this guy."

"I didn't come down here to blow people away, Hanson."

"Hey, it's the worst-case scenario, is all," he said. "Ask your questions, get your answers, and get out of there. If I hear about anything else, then we have to come get you. Got it?"

I wasn't entitled to more than that. "Sure."

He reached in a pocket and handed me his card. "And give me a call when you roll out of town. I'd like to know you got what you came for."

"And that I'm out of your hair."

"That, too," he said, a smile stretching wide. "Blame me?"

"Not one bit," I said.

. . .

Hanson let me go and I drove carefully while still in his view, but mashed the gas once I was out of town. Getting the green light from the local law enforcement had cut into time better spent casing Layla's house before she got back from work.