Red Light (20 page)

Sweating now, heart
pounding fast and hard, she went through his dresser, his bookshelves, his file
cabinets, his desk drawers. If he wrote Aubrey Whittaker, she might have
written back. Her affections. Her love. Her threats.

She found the little
box he'd offered her the night before, safe under his white athletic socks. She
opened it. A plain gold solitaire setting with a diamond, big as a pencil
eraser and much more beautiful. She closed it quickly, hoping this might make
her feel less loathsome. It didn't. She imagined a stain starting on her heart,
spreading out to the end of the universe and beyond.

Easy.
Easy now. There are explanations.

She found the little
bundle under the bed, in the gun safe contain the .357 Magnum Mike kept there
for home protection. He'd made memorize the combination in case she needed it
when he wasn't there:
4-4-5-7.
Over and over he'd made her repeat it,
4-4-5-7, 4-4-5-7,
now she used it to find his love letters from the whore.

Her heart was
thumping too hard and her brain was swimming with too much fury and guilt and
hurt to read them. She just slapped them open and scanned: ...
sooo cool of
you to write . . . how outrageous a cop to say those things to a girl like me .
. . I've felt those emotions toward
you, too . . . agree that friendship is one of God's sneaky little ways
of. . .
good man you
are ...
be all right to meet you for coffee
or walk on
the .. .
pretty huge
differences in the ways we live our… fondly, truly, respectfully yours, yours,
yours, yours . . . A. W., Aubrey Whittaker, WYW (you flatter me!) . . .

Damn me, she said.
Then said it again. The whore was in love with him. Slow now. Go slow and learn
what there is to know.

She checked the postmarks
and dates. The most recent was a typewritten letter dated December 4.

Dear
Mike, Dark Cloud, Detective-man, Major Dude,

I keep thinking about you
all the time, no matter what I'm doing or who I'm doing it to! It's like having
a friend with me all the time, glad you're not really there, though, a girl
needs privacy sometimes, right? Now, I agree with you totally that I need a
better way to make a living. Way down at the bottom of myself, the part of me
that hates me tells me to keep doing what I do, but I know I shouldn't. It's
just so . . . damned easy. And it also helps remind me what pigs men are, but
you know, I wish that wasn't true. Now that I know you, I'm thinking maybe it's
not.

But you know something?
I wonder when you'll do the cool thing and give me what I deserve. I've given
and given to you—never charged you a dime, ha, ha—but when are you going to
give something back? I get the fact you're ashamed of me. I'm just a whore. I
understand you can't be seen with

me, what would your mommy think? I even understand
you have another chick in your life. But Mike, if she makes you happy then why
are you so miserable all the damn time? I make you happy. I can see it on your
D. C. face! I think it's time for you to admit what I really am and admit what
you've done. Time to offer something back. Time to service your debt! I don't
ask for much. I get that no one can know about me, especially the people you
work with, but I wonder if that might be the best thing that could happen to
you—to have them know what you think of me, what you do with me, what we are.
Maybe telling them would be the best thing I could do for you. So how can I
change if you won't let me? Will I always just be Aubrey the professional joint
copper to you? Hey man, I'm thinking of going private!

I hope we have a
thousand hot nights to figure all this out!

Aubrey

P.S. I saw a painting in a book today—
Into the
World Came a Soul Named Ida.
It was the grossest painting I've ever seen—a
woman who's gotta be a hooker, just eaten alive by decay, a putrid, sad ruined
body all fucked up by time and men. You're ready for maggots to jump outta the
thing. It made me cry, and it made me think of what I never want to be. And to
think you called me a Wise Young Woman. Sometimes I could just die, but who'd
make the payments on my Caddy? Help! Help! Mr. Big Strong Policeman!

Merci bundled the
letters back up and returned them to the pistol case. Shut the top and heard
the lock click shut. Sat there for a minute on Mike's unmade bed and listened
to a car heading down the road away from the house.

What a strange
feeling. Surprise. Shock. It was like seeing herself in the world for the first
time. Like realizing she wasn't who she thought she was, never had been. She
had never felt so utterly fooled since the morning she got into her car and
felt the hands of the monster she was looking for lock over her face. Was there
no end to her stupidity' seemed limitless.

She
told herself there had to be an explanation.

And she remembered
what he had said:
I bought a silencer. I had dinner with her then iced her.
Arrest me.

Explain that, Deputy.

• • •

The garage was actually a
small barn, with two pads for cars, a workroom, and a storage area upstairs.

Merci stood by the
big workbench, looked at the toolboxes and cabinets, the yard tools hanging
neatly from brackets in the pegboard walls, the canisters of gasoline and motor
oil, the big bags of dog food Polly, Molly and Dolly went through like water,
the old freezer.

She could see her
breath, the dew in the corners of the windows, spiderwebs in the holly bush
outside still beaded with moisture.

On one far end of the
workbench were Mike's reloading tools, pulled away the plastic covers. Mike
reloaded ,45s for his Colts, .3 for his Smith, 20-gauge shotshells for his
Remington and ,30-'06 loads for his rifle. Merci looked at the red Meac
reloader. There was an open coffee can of .45 brass beside it, and the primers
still stacked in the long tube looked like .45’s to her.

She wished she could
know which of these shells had been fired through Mike's Colt. She could take
one, the lab could run it against empty that Lynda Coiner found in Aubrey
Whittaker's flower vase, all this foolishness would be over.

Over,
one way or another.

She
remembered that the .45 used on Aubrey would have to fire a subsonic round for
the silencer to work. Heavy bullet, light powder. She found the bullets in a
green cardboard box:: 255-grain Hornadys, round nosed, jacketed. The powder
canister on the Meac had a grains set on the neck, which she wrote down in her
blue notebook. She had no idea if Mike was making up heavy loads, light ones,
or something between. Timmerman, out at the sheriff's range, would know. The
other end of the bench had a belt-driven grinder and a band saw bolted in, a
row of big clamps screwed into the bench top, more toolboxes on top. Two small
fly-tying vices were fastened near the corner. Mike's fishing rods were hung
horizontally on the pegboard, neatly organized from shortest to longest. There
were three reel boxes, three more tackle boxes, then all the fly fishing
containers. She pulled them out one by one and looked through them.

The old pine box
caught her eye, because it used to be in the bedroom. Mike had made it in
woodshop, seventh grade, and the workmanship had survived the years. He'd
stuck a decal on the lid before varnishing it, a blue-and-white oval that read
Hooked Up!
with the silhouette of a fisherman holding a dramatically bowed
rod below the words. She knew it was where he kept his dry and wet flies, his
nymphs and terrestrials, many of them handmade, all of them collected over two
decades of enthusiasm for the sport. Now, it rested at the back of the bench,
between two big plastic tackle boxes. One of Mike's fishnets lay on top, almost
hiding it from sight. It was the
Hooked Up!
decal that she noticed
through the black mesh.

Something about the
box and the decal brought a lump to her throat, brought all of her shame and
guilt boiling up, let the voice inside her start haranguing again:
You
sneaking, distrustful, guilt-loving, dirt-hungry bitch, leave him alone while
you have the chance . . .

But she reached over
and worked out the pine box anyway, centering it on the bench in front of her.
The top tray held some of Mike's fly boxes and wallets—two aluminum, two
leather, two plastic. She pulled it out and set it down on the bench, where it
rested unevenly on the wood.

Below were the larger
boxes, each bristling inside with flies. She remembered him showing her all
these flies and naming them: mosquitoes and caddis, midges and buggers, blue
duns and black gnats, Quill Gordons and Lt. Cahills, Royal Wulffs and Royal
Trades.

More than she could
remember, plus designs of his own. Mike had actually named one for her—Blue
Merci—because she was mourning the loss of Hess and unhappy every waking hour.
Mike had caught a "more than satisfactory" German brown trout with it
up on the Walker that month. He considered it lucky.

She liked the Lt.
Cahill the best because it sounded like a cop.
Put them back, get out of
here, forget you ever did what you’re doing . . .

She did put them
back. She put the tray back on top. And that when she noticed the small bundle
of cloth taped to the bottom of it, the reason it hadn't sat flush on the
bench.

She held it up and
looked: white cotton rolled tight, held with duct tape. The size of a film
canister, maybe, but longer. Mike had fastened it to the bottom of the tray
with an elastic band and four thumbtacks.

The tacks were hard
to pry from the heavily varnished wood, got two off one end and the bundle
dropped into her palm. The tape rasped off. The white cotton unfurled quickly
and something heavy cold dropped to the bench. She recognized the packaging—a
pair of underpants she had allowed Mike to keep some months ago after a night
in bed that particularly pleased him. Against her better judgment. She’d felt
strange letting him have them, like it was evidence, something nobody should
see but her. He promised nobody would.

But it was nothing
compared to what was inside. She stared down at the heavy cylinder on the bench
top, a welded contraption with small holes all over it and something that
looked like steel wool packed down beneath the holes. The inside was smooth,
with more, bigger holes, end was flat, with an opening in the middle about the
size a .45 w need. The other was welded to a rectangular fitting lined with
gasket
material. There was a heavy band locked down by a screw so you could
loosen and tighten it. There were light black burns at the exit end.

She looked at it in
all its squat ugliness, its low purpose, its unaccountability. An object made
of steel, fashioned by hand to do a job.

No more.

She knew there was an
explanation, even if it was the one she’d never wanted.

Merci's hands were shaking
as she wrapped it and put it back, but the voice inside her was silent.

On her way out of Mike's
house, Merci was forced to speak with Mrs. Heath, the next door neighbor. She
was a rosy faced, overly sociable woman whom Merci found kind but intrusive.
She loved living near a detective. She had an envelope in one hand, a dog leash
in the other. Reggie, her Yorkie, bounced up and down at Merci's ankles like
something powered by fresh batteries. Merci realized what a problem this was,
but she was still shaking from what she found in the barn, and she couldn't
think a clear way out of it.

"I
got some of Mike's mail," Mrs. Heath said, holding out the envelope.
"I was just going to drop it in the box."

"I'll
do that." The box was on the porch railing, protruding out where the
postman could fill it without getting out of his little truck.

Mrs. Heath studied
her, then the house. "Mike's not home?"

"Just
left."

Merci
watched her to see if she'd look for her car, nowhere in sight. She didn't. If
Mrs. Heath had seen her walk up to the house, it was over. Either way, the
chances of this getting back to Mike were now running about eighty-twenty.

"I'm always
running late on Mondays," Merci offered.

"Beautiful,
after the storm," said Mrs. Heath. The Yorkie stopped bouncing, sat and
stared at Merci.

"It
was a whopper, wasn't it?" Her mind was racing to find a white lie to
cover herself, but Merci was never good at thinking on her feet unless it was
police business. She hit on something far-fetched, but it might play into Mrs.
Heath's romantic enthusiasms.

"Mrs.
Heath, can you help me keep a secret from Mike? His birthday's coming up in a
few weeks, and I came back here to hide a couple of things around the house
while he's gone. Little surprises."

"Like an Easter
egg hunt?"

"Exactly. Some
things for Danny, too."

"That's sweet. I
won't say a thing."

"For a few
weeks, anyway."

"You got it,
dearie."

"Well, I'll put
that letter in."

Mrs.
Heath looked puzzled. "How come you parked so far down the street?"

Merci blushed, then
ran interference with a smile. "Oh, he'd notice the tire tracks on the
drive. You know how those detectives are."