Bad People (19 page)

And the outrage would come only later, when it would do no good.

Keys in hand, she looked at the detective, aware that her mouth had formed an “o” and also aware of not being able to do anything about it. He spoke.

“Mrs. Hart,” he said, and stopped. She didn’t bother to correct him this time; she knew he knew her name. This is just what he did.

He continued. “Early night?”

Connie stayed by the light switch, the door open behind her: some kind of instinct at work, leaving her with an avenue of escape.

The fat policeman reached down by the side of the chair that he occupied,
her
chair—the chair he
overpowered
is more like it—and reached into his overstuffed and open vinyl bag. He pulled a Ziploc bag free from the rest of the erupting contents. The bag contained Robb’s black gun. Brussels held the bag by one corner, pinkie finger extended as if to indicate a miniscule china teacup rather than a plastic bag which sank and stretched toward the ground at its lowermost corner, the place where the short muzzle burrowed. “I’m here to return your property,” Brussels said.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“You know what this means,” he said. His face was soft as gray-white clay that you could leave handprints in. The eyes never dried, she had noticed that before; stayed wet like twin sink drains.

“No?” she said, providing the up-talk inflected to her answer that he’d noticeably left absent from his question.

“The case is closed, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll be disappointed to know that we will never find out who did this terrible thing to your husband.”

His stare went to her hand, which was holding her keys. The keys were ringing, tolling, because her hand was shaking, hard and suddenly. She hated the thought of crying before this reptile, but her eyes were welling with tears that would betray her. Her knees buckled, but she refused to let herself fall.

His clay-face expression changed, flowed into surprise then slid into something like pity. His bulk shifted forward, as if compelled by a better instinct to rise, but gravity insisted he not. Now his face flashed anger, as if her crumbling made him want to force himself to hate her so much more.

He laid the baggie with the gun on the floor. “You’re all set,” he said and waited.

She stood, one hand behind herself, pressed between the small of her back and the wall.

“Please leave,” she told him.

He looked to his left, almost started to say something. He wordlessly rose by pushing himself up with his arms. He bent, and lifted his bag. He took two steps, toward her and the open door. She instinctually shrank from his nearer presence.

He stood close enough so that she had to smell his breath, and the mildew of him. Her disgust deepened. They never tried to find out who murdered Robb, they—he—wanted it to be her, that was all they cared about. “Why?” she said, hearing her own voice, like a stranger’s, beyond her control.

The question seemed to give him something. He smiled slightly. He didn’t answer. Leaving her there, her question dangling, seemed to give him the closest thing to pleasure he might be capable of feeling. A brief satisfaction. Then he seemed to will himself to harden again. He could do that. Men could do that. “You don’t have no pictures of your husband around,” he said. “Not a one. Now this gun will maybe give you the closure you need. So you can mourn properly. Good night.” He went out, shutting her door behind himself.

Connie went to the kitchen counter, released her handful of keys and put down her pocket book. She gripped and held the counter with both hands for a full minute. There was no one to talk to, no one to call.

So that was it. No more to do, no more to follow. Just sit here and cry and wait for Stephen-David to come home, if he did. And he wouldn’t want to talk to her anyway. And she couldn’t talk to him. There had to be something. Some refuse. Escape.

Robb had escaped, hadn’t he? Had been escaping down to Vegas, and mortgaging their lives. Should she have told Brussels about that? Would he have cared?

You don’t have pictures
, the cop had said.
Not a one
. How to explain that? It wouldn’t make any difference to him. He had his opinion. Anything she said, if she tried to explain the reason, that everything like that was in storage still until she was ready to look at it. Or until Stephen-David was. Stephen-David acted so cruel, so calloused, she was afraid to even offer him some of the packed-away photos for his room. She didn’t want to see him sneer at the gesture, sneer at his own father. Hate his own father.

The way she hated his father.

That was it. Grief kept her from unpacking the photos. She hated Robb. For the lies, for the secrets, but even more than that.

She hated him for dying.

How to explain that to this cop? Maybe the other one, the younger one? But wasn’t that their game? Good cop/bad cop, like on TV? Did they really do it that way? Probably it was more complex. Or simpler. Or maybe they didn’t bother. Even the younger one, Detective Starvold, was a cipher. He could be pretending. They could all be pretending.

She let the image of the Starvold linger. Handsome, but not her type. Puffy, pillow lips. He had beautiful lips. Starvold and Brussels. Beauty and the beast. She found herself leaning against the counter, pushing the rounded corner against herself, low, deep. If, instead Starvold had found his way into her home. If
he
had broken it.

She hiked her dress up, over her hips, pressed her hand under the hose, down between her legs, tears streaming down her face. Came in moments, with a cry and a heavy awareness of shame. She sank to her knees, incomplete. Unsatisfied.

She did not move. Then she reached to the counter to steady herself and she got up, and her hand laid over the open contents of her bag, and her cell phone. She took the phone and leaned against the wall under the counter rather than getting up.

Her eye shadow, and she hadn’t used that much, she thought, looked streaked in the shiny exterior of the phone.

She opened the phone, scrolled through the recent calls. Mostly the same people. And Luke. He liked her. Yet it was a bad idea. Too young. And he had called a lot. Might be needy. She counted back to calls. No, not so many. Only seven calls. In five weeks. Little more than a call a week. No too many. Not needy. Interested, though. Interested and possibly not fickle. Tenacious. She should have left him a message earlier; that would make it easier not too call now. But she couldn’t call him twice in one night. Talk about needy….

He wouldn’t judge her, not for calling twice. He might even be flattered. Should be flattered, dammit. And if not, if a second call put him off, she would never know, because she would likely neither see nor hear from him again if he didn’t pick up now.

She pressed redial before she had even made up her mind whether calling him was what she really wanted to do. Before she had even had a chance to think about whether she would leave a message or not.

A voice came through.

“Yes,” answered Luke, not using her name, maybe recognizing her. Or maybe not caring enough to pay attention to who had called him before taking the call.

“Hi,” said she. “Are you busy?”

Nothing. He had hesitated. She could have slapped herself—stupid thing to say, Saturday night, of course he was doing something, and now she had given him the upper hand, and the perfect excuse out of the conversation. So she took his pause, set it and her fear aside, and glided right through it.

If she allowed him to talk, he might say something stupid, as men tended to do, when confronted with the sure thing, and blow it for himself. And blow it for her. “I want to see you,” she said. “Tonight. Tell me when you can get away.”

Her turn to have fun needed to come around eventually. Why couldn’t it be her turn right now? She smiled to herself, and a spot in her abdomen glowed like sunrise. Fun, she was thinking, incanting to herself: let me have fun.

Chapter 21: Connie, Luke

He suggested they meet for a drink, at the same place they had had dinner that time. He just wasn’t getting it yet, but she couldn’t have him come to her condo, so she agreed. She almost suggested another restaurant, then, it occurred to her he might not know many places, and already felt comfortable there, so she bit her tongue.

As it turned out they didn’t even get into the restaurant.

She saw him on the sidewalk as she pulled up near the front of the restaurant. He came over to her car, and she asked him to hop in and keep her company while she circled for a parking space. She had intended to park in a garage, but instead, now with Luke beside her, she drove off the main strip, into the residential streets.

She found a spot and parked. She grazed his hand with hers while reaching for emergency brake. She unbuckled her safety belt.

“Thanks for coming out with me,” she said.

He started to say something, but she leaned out of her seat to stop him, resting a hand on his wide chest. She kissed him before she lost her nerve.

He hadn’t shaved and the roughness of his face, so good—strange and familiar—to feel after so long, encouraged her.

She forced her tongue into his open mouth. He breathed. Her heart pounded blood into her ears, yet Luke was so relaxed his heart seemed to beat barely, if at all.

What she was doing pleased him, though. She could tell. He put his hands on her waist and moved them up her back, over her shoulders and neck, as if wanting to take the full measure of her in. Large, granite hands. She felt tiny in them. Understood.

No. Not understood. Never that. But accepted. Almost.

“Where can we go?” she said. Somewhere.

She went on to hint they should go to his place. He hesitated so she didn’t push it. She thought he might be ashamed of his apartment—bachelor boy—but she wouldn’t have cared. Anyway, she realized she wanted to go with him to a hotel. To charge a room, and not care about it for a few hours. Spend some of the money she no longer had. Order room service. Camp out. Hide out.

The downtown hotels were close, but then she thought of the Edgewater or one of the other hotels at the piers. When she’d first gotten married she had wanted to live down there, but it didn’t make financial sense at the time. She could live there now, she thought, if she hadn’t already bought the Meridian Valley condo. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

He said he could pick up his car some other time, so they rode together in hers down to the piers. The Edgewater was booked but they got in at the Marriot.

Their room was on a corner, and because the hotel stood at the base of a hill—the hill below the market—the old concrete stair causeway up to the market ran close to their window. The view looked mysterious, the way a city she had known so well and lived in so long could only look from a fresh perspective. Exotic, large and unreal. Dark and sexy. Not Seattle at all. Connie and Luke took the bed diagonally, not the way you were supposed to be on a bed, and fucked, their clothing half-off. They didn’t have condoms and she didn’t care. She was on top and he nearly missed pulling out in time, and she loved that she had made him come like that.

She lay on top him for an indefinable time afterward, perspiration chilling into the chasm their torsos formed. Chin at his neck, she buried her face in the pillow, delaying the time she would have to look at him, half hoping he would fall asleep before that happened, knowing she would hate him if he did.

“I haven’t told you everything,” she said.

She’d told him nothing really.

“Go on.”

Hands against his chest, she pushed herself up, and regarded his outline in the dark. For a moment. Then two.

She pushed herself off him sunk down on her back in the too-soft mattress and beddings. She had the thoughts now that she always had in hotel rooms. How many people have fucked in this bed? How many lay here lonely?

How many people died?

A knot formed in the small of her back and she drove her fist into it, kneaded it with her knuckle.

“Here,” he said, turning her. “Let me.”

He began to work her spine. Hands were better than sex.

She needed that and, she realized, might have avoided all this had she only thought to go to a massage therapist.

Luke was good, she almost said to him he should forget real estate and do
this
professionally, just joking, but she didn’t want to say anything at all and risk breaking the spell. The dreaminess. She drifted. This was good.

He blew on her neck. His breath was cold and tickled, forcing her eyes open. She caught shadows on the wall, and her gaze darted. She sat up.

The air conditioning had come on in the room and was moving the vertical blinds. That made the shadows. And it wasn’t Luke’s breath on her now she realized, no one’s breath could be that cold, that must be the air-con too.

“Lie back down.”

She did, but first rolled over onto her back. He took hold of her arm and started moving it, slowly loosening her rotator cup. Maybe he
was
a masseur. She sighed.