Good Day In Hell (10 page)

Keller put the toilet lid down and sat on it. He pulled his cell phone out of his belt holster and looked at the screen. He wondered if Oscar had found anything out. He started to hit the speed dial, then stopped himself. “I’m taking the night off,” he said out loud. He stood up and moved to the sink. After washing his face in cold water, he dried himself vigorously with one of the thick towels hanging on the rack. He looked at himself in the mirror. Something’s left a mark on you, Shelby had said. Keller shook his head. They were nice people. Normal people. Nice normal people having a nice normal dinner with friends. And Keller knew as certainly as he knew anything else that he didn’t belong here. For the first time, that thought made him sad. He took a deep breath and went back out to the living room.

The atmosphere had changed. Shelby sat on the end of the couch looking glum. Marie’s face was expressionless, but her lips were tight with anger.

“What happened?” Keller said.

No one answered for a moment. Then Shelby spoke up. “I just got a call from the major,” he said.

He looked at Marie. Her expression said it all. “They didn’t approve the overtime,” Keller said. She nodded her head with one short angry jerk of her chin.

“I can talk to him again, Jones,” Shelby said.

She shook her head and smiled at him. “Thanks, Shelby,” she said softly. “But you know and I know it wouldn’t do any good.” She stood up. “I appreciate you going to bat for me,” she said. “I really do.”

Shelby stood up as well. “You’re a good officer, Jones,” he said. “There’ll be other chances.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Maybe.” She looked at Keller. “I guess we should go.”

“Yeah, okay,” Keller replied.

“Now, you don’t have to—,” Shelby began, but Marie cut him off. “I don’t think I’d be real good company right now, sorry,” she said. “But thanks again.”

They got their coats in silence. Barbara Shelby came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “You’re leaving?” she asked.

“I guess so,” Marie said.

Barbara looked dismayed, but quickly recovered her poise. “Well, it was nice meeting you,” she said. “Come back anytime.”

“Thanks,” Marie said. She walked over and gave Barbara a quick hug. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“No problem, hon,” Barbara murmured back. She glanced at Keller, who was getting his jacket out of the coat closet. She looked as if she was going to say something else, but just gave Marie’s shoulder a quick squeeze before letting her go.

They walked in silence to Keller’s car. Once they were inside, Marie slumped in the passenger seat. Her voice was tight with fury. “Couldn’t spare a patrol officer,” she sneered. “Can’t justify the overtime. Damn it!” she said. She slammed a hand down on the dashboard. “Bet they’d have justified the overtime for a guy.”

It was an hour and a half drive back to the coast. A few turns brought them to the main artery, Interstate 95, then down through long stretches of darkened country with no company but their own headlights and the looming silhouettes of trees beside the road. They drove in silence for a while, then Marie spoke up.

“The Shelbys are nice people,” she said.

“Yeah,” Keller said.

“I think Carmen has a crush on you,” she said teasingly.

“Huh,” Keller said. He didn’t know how else to respond. After a few moments, Marie sighed. “It all seems so far away now.”

“What does?”

There was another long silence before Marie spoke. “When I was growing up,” she said, “my dad loved detective novels. He really liked this series about a guy named Travis McGee. You ever read those?”

“A couple,” Keller said, wondering at the apparent change of subject. “There was this thing where they all had colors in the title, I remember that.”

“Right,” Marie said. “That’s the one. Dad loved those. So I loved them too, because I wanted to be like Dad. I read all of them.” Keller was silent. “Anyway, remember how McGee lived on this houseboat? Had all sorts of adventures. He got knocked around, shot at, stabbed, blown up…and in the end, he usually managed to kill the bad guy. And then…he’d go back to his boat, pour himself a drink, and next
book he’d be the same guy. Same philosophical attitude.” She chuckled. “Same kind of screwed-up attitude toward women, although I didn’t notice that ‘til later.” The smile left her face. “But he was the same guy, even after he’d killed someone. Even after…even after he’d nearly been killed himself. He could go right back to being the guy he always was.”

“Yeah,” Keller said. “That’s how it works in stories. But if someone really went through what those guys go through that many times, they’d be totally batshit crazy.”

Marie fell silent. After a few moments, she said softly, “Is that what’s going to happen to me?”

He glanced over at her. He could barely make out her face in the dim light from the dashboard. “No,” he said. “At least I don’t think so.”

“You sure?” she said. He thought of the images that still haunted him, the faces and screams of the dead. Marie had seen her partner die, killed by his own bad judgment. She had shot a killer in the back to protect Keller’s life. He didn’t want to think of Marie going through the same hell he had been through.

“You’ve got a lot to anchor you,” he said finally. “Your dad. Ben.”

He heard her shift in the seat, sensed that she had turned to face him. He kept his eyes on the road. “What about you?” she said. When he didn’t answer, she went on. “My dad wonders if you’ll be there for me.”

He waited a few moments before responding. “I’m not going to lie to you,” he said. “It’s not something I’ve got a lot of experience in.”

“I know,” she said softly.

“All I can tell you is I’ll try. I’ll do my best.”

She reached out and stroked the back of his neck gently. “Okay,” she said. “That’ll do for now.” She paused. “Because I want us to be together, Jack. I want to be there for you, too. I noticed you didn’t ask.”

“Ask what?”

“If I was going to be there for you, too. Did you just assume it or are you afraid to ask?”

He shrugged. “I’m sort of taking this one day at a time.”

“That’s not an answer, Jack.”

“Like I said, it’s not something I have a lot of experience in.”

“You mean trusting people,” she said. “Is it because of what happened to you in the army?” she asked. “Or because your mom walked out on you?”

“Jacky.” His grandmother’s voice came from the kitchen. “Come eat something.”

“I’m okay,” Keller said, even though hunger was gnawing at his gut. “Mom said she was going to take me to McDonald’s.”

“You ought not eat all that greasy food,” his grandmother said. The advice was delivered reflexively, without heat. Keller ignored it. The phone rang. He heard his grandmother pick up the receiver. Keller looked back toward the kitchen, then back out to the driveway. He heard his grandmother pick up the phone.

“Hello?” her voice took on a sharper tone. “Where are you? Well, why not?”

Keller leaned his forehead against the window and closed his eyes. There was a lump in his throat that made it hard for him to swallow.

“We’ve been waiting for two hours, Sheila,” his grandmother said. “I don’t care if you…I just think you should care more about your son…Don’t you talk to me like that…”

There was a silence, then the sound of the receiver being hung up. Keller heard the sound of footsteps as his grandmother came into the room. He didn’t open his eyes.

“Come on, Jackson,” he heard his grandmother say. He felt her hand, bony and delicate, on his shoulder. “Let’s go to Mickey D ‘s. You and me.”

Keller choked back the lump in his throat. He knew if he let it go, it would burst out and let loose a flood of tears that would drown him, carry him away. “I’m not hungry,” was all he said.

His grandmother’s hand stayed on his shoulder for a moment. Then she patted him once, twice, weakly, and she walked away.

Keller shook his head to clear it of the memory. “It wasn’t the walking out,” he said. “It was the walking back in at random intervals.”

“I’m not her, Jack,” she said. “I want to be with you. I want you to want to be with me. And Ben. I want—” She hesitated. “I want us to be a family.”

And there it is, Keller thought. The hope he’d given up long ago. And with the hope, the bone-deep fear that it was another illusion, that it would fall through again. A part of him was screaming to back away, to turn his back, to go back to the way he had been for so long. But then he remembered what that had been like. The walking dead, a friend had called it. He took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said. “I want that, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really.”

She leaned over and kissed him on the ear. “Good,” she said. Keller lived a few blocks from the ocean in a low-slung, flat-roofed cinderblock house in Carolina Beach. The house was undistinguished except for the huge live oak tree in the front yard. As Keller pulled up next to it, an SUV roared by on the beach road, rap music pounding from inside. A white teenaged boy leaned half out of the window and whooped drunkenly at them. Keller and Marie looked at each other and smiled, a little sadly. Young and dumb and full of come, Keller thought.

Marie spoke up as if completing his thought. “Must be nice,” she said.

They were just inside the door when Keller turned and took her in his arms. She responded eagerly, her lips soft and yielding at first, then more demanding. She pulled his shirt out of his waistband, then her hands were everywhere on his back and torso, tracing the muscles with her fingertips, then pulling him harder against her. She broke the kiss and looked into his eyes as she slid one hand down to the front of his blue jeans. He groaned out loud as she began stroking him through the rough fabric. She smiled at that and began pulling his zipper down.

“Make love to me, Jack,” she whispered hoarsely as she slid to her knees. He closed his eyes and savored the sensation of her lips moving on him for a few moments, then pulled her to her feet and kissed her. “Bedroom,” was all he could say.

They began slowly, their hands exploring each other’s bodies, each of them searching for the places that would make the other groan out loud, smiling when
they found them. Then, suddenly, their lovemaking took on a desperate urgency. They clung to each other as if they were trying to save each other from drowning. Marie had cried out twice in orgasm before Keller felt his own climax approaching. “Please,” Marie gasped. “With me…please…”

Keller felt as if the edges of himself were blurring, that he was expanding, dissipating, and then he was shouting, she was screaming, and he lost all sense of himself as they exploded together.

Afterwards they lay together for a long time, sweaty limbs tangled. They moved languidly, their hands still exploring each other, but gently, without haste. Finally, Marie raised her head and kissed him.

“Wow,” she said, her voice rough.

“Wow,” he said.

“It keeps getting better,” she said.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Think of how good it’s going to be ten years from now.” She smiled. “Or twenty.” She slapped him lightly on the hip. “Let me up,” she said, “I’ve gotta pee.”

He rolled away and she slid out of bed. He stared at the ceiling. Ten years, he thought, twenty years…Christ, I never expected to live that long. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He rubbed his face with his hands. He got up, found his jeans, and pulled them on. He found his belt. His cell phone lay nearby where it had fallen from the belt clip. He stared at it for a moment, then flipped it open and hit the speed dial. The phone rang several times before Oscar Sanchez answered. “H & H Bail Bonds,” he said.

“Oscar,” Keller said. “It’s Jack Keller. Have you found out anything on this Randle guy?”

“I found an address for him,” Sanchez said. “And the fact that this man Randle has changed his name. He was bom Roy Dean Clement, in Warsaw. Not the one in Poland, the one in North Carolina. He filed a legal name change in 1983.”

“Anything else on the girl?”

“No,” Sanchez said. “There was a juvenile court counselor who remembered the name. Also a Social Service lady at the courthouse…”

“But the records are sealed and they couldn’t tell you anything.”

“Correct.”

“Okay, thanks, Oscar.”

“When are you going there?”

Keller heard running water in the bathroom. “Maybe tonight.”

There was confusion evident in Sanchez’s voice. “But you are in Fayetteville…with Marie…”

“I’ll call you,” he said.

“I have the night shift,” Oscar replied. “I will be here.”

Keller closed the phone as Marie came out of the bathroom. She had found one of Keller’s T-shirts and pulled it on. It barely covered the tops of her legs.

“Oh, good,” she said. “You’re more dressed than I am. Will you get my suitcase out of your trunk?”

“Sure,” Keller said. He walked outside and fetched the case from the trunk. The night air was turning cool. It was getting late but the traffic on the beach road was still heavy. He looked out into the night. There was a jumper out there, waiting for the takedown. The knowledge nagged at him like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He sighed and took the bag back inside.