Homicide Related (23 page)

T
hey sat down on the cold bench again, and Beth listened. She didn't interrupt him, not even once. Her eyes never left his. Her expression, one of rapt concentration, never changed. He kept talking, even though there were plenty of times when he wanted to stop, when the voice in his head whispered,
What will she think if you tell her that?
He said, “I'm pretty sure she didn't plan on getting pregnant.” He said, “She was really young—our age.” He said, “She was the kind of person who got antsy unless she was out having fun.” He said, “She liked to be the center of attention, you now?” He'd already told her about the drugs—that Lorraine had used them and so had he—so that part wasn't as hard to talk about. But the men … they came and they went and there were times—he told her because he'd promised to tell her everything—there were times when there would be a steady stream of men in and out of the apartment, at all hours of the night, some of them drunk, some of them ripped, some of them mean, some of them so noisy that one or some of the neighbors would call the cops. A couple of the guys she went with ended up in jail—for assault, for drunk and disorderly, for drug trafficking—and Dooley would think, thank God. But who did those guys come and check in on again the minute they were out? “That's the way she was,” he said to Beth. He talked until it was completely dark and she was shivering, but still she listened, her eyes on his, never once interrupting.

And then he ran out of words.

He'd said it all.

It was all out there. She knew everything there was to know about him. Well, almost everything.

She was still looking into his eyes. She was still quiet.

“Pretty fucked up, huh?” Dooley said. He'd felt it stronger and stronger as he talked, as he laid it all out. He even caught himself thinking, well, no wonder I turned out the way I did. Look at my role models. Then he heard Dr. Calvin's voice in his ear:
Up to a certain point, Dooley
(Dr. Calvin was one of the few adult authority figures in his life who was relaxed about calling him Dooley),
you are well within your rights to lay part of the blame on your parents. But after that…
After that, you had to play the hand you were dealt. You couldn't stack the deck; you couldn't take someone else's cards; you couldn't deal from the bottom; you couldn't palm cards; you couldn't resort to that kind of bullshit and then try to lay the blame off on someone else when you got caught. Dooley knew that. He was out of that now. He was clean, wasn't he? He was going to school, wasn't he? He was holding down a job, wasn't he? But he wasn't driving a Jag. He wasn't going to private school. He was never going to be welcomed by Beth's mother. Maybe he wasn't even going to be welcomed by Beth—not after everything she knew about him.

Beth slid closer to him and put her arms around him again. They sat like that for a few minutes, Dooley clinging to her as if she were the only thing keeping him afloat. A lot of days—that was exactly how he felt.

“Are you in trouble?” Beth said, her voice muffled by the collar of his jacket.

“I didn't do anything,” he said, which wasn't strictly speaking an answer to her question.

“Why did they ask me about Tuesday night?”

Dooley told her.

“What about the night your mother died? Why did they ask me about that?”

“It's their job. And they're Homicide cops, so they're naturally suspicious. At least half the people who are murdered are killed by someone they know. So they have to check that stuff out.”

“I told them I saw her at your school that day.”

“Well, you did,” Dooley said. “So it's right you told them.”

“They don't think you had anything to do with it, do they, Dooley?”

He pulled back from her so that he could look her in the eyes.

“I don't know what they think,” he said. “But I don't think they think I killed her.” The timing was off. Lorraine had been alive at ten—she'd left a message for Gloria Thomas. Her body had been found all the way across town. They had Dooley at Beth's apartment building. They also had him home at eleven. There was no way they could think he'd done it, not directly, anyway. “I'm not so sure about Jeffie, though. They asked me a lot of questions about him. They're going to double-check everything I said. But they haven't arrested me, so I guess that's something.” At least, it was so far. “Come on, I'd better get you home before your mom calls the cops and they pick me up for kidnapping or something.”

She was reluctant to let go of him, reluctant to get up, reluctant to go home—and he loved her for that.

Beth's mother was waiting for her in the lobby of the apartment building. She scowled at Dooley. Beth saw it, too. She looked directly at her mother before pulling Dooley close to her. She went up on tiptoes and pressed her lips against his. Then, with her mother watching, she wrapped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth. At first Dooley didn't know what to do—but only at first.

Annette Girondin was coming down the porch steps when Dooley got home.

“Is everything okay?” Dooley asked her.

“You should talk to your uncle,” she said.

Dooley went inside. His uncle and Jeannie were sitting at the dining room table. There were a couple of cardboard bankers' boxes with the lids off in front of them. His uncle had his reading glasses on and was talking to Jeannie as he thumbed through a stack of paper. It sounded like he was explaining them to her. He didn't look up when Dooley entered the room.

“What's going on?” Dooley said after a few moments.

“I'm just filling Jeannie in on some things,” Dooley's uncle said. He still didn't look at Dooley.

Dooley approached the table so that he could get a better look at the papers.

“What kind of things?” he said.

“Things that don't concern you,” his uncle grouched. Jeannie laid a hand on his arm.

“Gary,” she said in a soft voice—a caution.

Dooley's uncle put down the papers he was holding and took off his reading glasses. He glanced at her. She stood up.

“I'm going to pick up some groceries,” she said. “I'm going to make you something special tonight.” She bent down and kissed Dooley's uncle on the cheek. One of her hands lingered for a moment on his shoulder. The expression on her face was one that Dooley had never seen there before; she was worried. Dooley's uncle followed her with his eyes as she crossed into the hall, slipped on her coat, picked up her purse, rummaged for her car keys. Just before she turned for the door, she looked at him. They held each other's eyes for so long that it seemed to Dooley that they were trying to memorize each other's faces, as if they were afraid that something might happen that would make them forget. “I'll be back as soon as I can,” she said.

The door closed behind her. Dooley's uncle turned to him and said, “Sit down, Ryan.” Something in his tone chilled Dooley. He pulled out a chair.

“I saw Annette leaving,” he said.

His uncle nodded.

“What's going on?” Dooley said for the second time.

His uncle leaned back in his chair. “I'm showing Jeannie the ropes. She's got a good head for business. She's going to keep an eye on things for me.”

“Keep an eye on things?”

“On the stores.” He meant his two dry-cleaning stores. “Wilf can do the books and Tessie”—Tessie Abramowicz, who managed the old store while his uncle built up the business at the second, newer store—“can probably run both places, but someone has to keep an eye on them for me. Jeannie's going to see if she can manage, at least for the short term.”

For the short term?

“What about you?” Dooley said.

“What about me?”

“They're
your
stores. Why can't you keep an eye on them?”

“Jeannie has also agreed to take you on until we know how it's going to go. Annette is going to talk to probation services—”

“Whoa!” Dooley said. “What the hell are you talking about? Where are you going to be?”

“Lorraine has one of those relatively rare blood types, which they matched right off the bat to a blood stain they found in my car,” his uncle said. “I don't have the same blood type. As soon as they found that out, they put a rush on DNA. Bumped it right to the top of the list.”

Dooley felt his stomach churn. “So?” he said.

“So what they're going to find out is it's her blood. And when they do, they're probably going to arrest me.”

Thirteen

T
here was blood in your car that came from Lorraine?” Dooley said, incredulous.

“That's right,” his uncle said. It was all he said. Okay.

“How did it get there?”

His uncle stiffened a little in his chair. “She was in my car.”

“When?”

“That night.”

“The night you were supposed to be at the poker game?” Dooley said.

“Yes.”

“What was Lorraine doing in your car?”

“We were talking.”

His uncle answered questions like a cop in the witness box. Don't volunteer any information, don't ramble, don't embellish, just answer the question you've been asked as simply and as directly as possible. Well, okay, here's one:

“How did her blood get in your car?”

“She had a cut on her hand.”

“A cut?”

“She said from peeling vegetables.”

“Vegetables?” The whole time Dooley had known Lorraine, vegetables had meant French fries, but she'd never had to peel them because they came ready-peeled and cut. Most of the time they also came ready-cooked, too, in little red cardboard containers with a big golden M on them.

“Yeah, that's what
I
said,” his uncle said. “She said she was into that now. She said she was trying to eat right. She also said she was learning to cook. Maybe it had something to do with the medication she was taking.”

“She was taking medication?”

“I saw a pill bottle in her purse. Anti-depressants.”

“She was depressed?”

“That's why people take anti-depressants, Ryan.”

“Did you ask her about it?”

“No, I didn't.”

“What did you talk to her about? Why was she in your car?”

“That's none of your business.”

“Lorraine's in your car, bleeding all over the seat, then she turns up dead, and it's none of my business?” Dooley tried to fight back the rage he was feeling. “Why didn't you tell me you'd seen her?”

His uncle looked him in the eye but didn't answer. Did he think it was none of Dooley's business? Or was he hiding something?

“So she told you she'd cut her hand peeling vegetables?”

“That's what she said.”

It occurred to Dooley for the first time that, for all he knew, his uncle could be lying to him. Up until recently, Dooley had believed every word that came out of his uncle's mouth. Up until recently, he'd had no reason to doubt him about anything. But now … He looked at his uncle and wondered how much effort he was making. Everyone who lies makes some kind of effort. For example, when Dooley told a lie, he made sure to look directly at the person he was lying to and to keep it up until that person finally broke eye contact. Sometimes he was so conscious of doing it that he was sure it must be obvious. He wondered if his uncle felt the same way.

“If that's what she said and if there was a cut on her hand, there should be no problem, right?” Dooley said.

“It depends,” his uncle said.

“On what?”

“On what they found in her apartment.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, did they find anything that would corroborate that she cut her hand peeling vegetables? Maybe a towel with some blood on it. Better would be some vegetable peelings with traces of blood. Something like that.”