The Day Trader (4 page)

During the drive downtown in Reggie’s unmarked cruiser it didn’t sink in that Melanie was actually dead. I had no reason to doubt Reggie’s information, delivered on my front stoop with all the tact of an infantry assault. I assumed he wouldn’t have told me that way if he wasn’t certain of her identity. However, the events of the past thirty-six hours had anesthetized me. I hadn’t yet fully grasped the notion that Melanie was divorcing me, so the idea of her death seemed even further from reality.

But seeing her stiff form sprawled on the silver gurney makes it sickeningly real. I realize there will be no divorce; no Frank Taylor invading the sanctity of my home. Now I face something much more terrible. The woman I always believed I would grow old with is dead.

I fleetingly touch Melanie’s cold fingers—hanging from beneath the sheet—then Reggie takes me to a small office where he leaves me alone to face my grief. It takes me thirty minutes to get myself together. When my mother died last Christmas I shed a few silent tears after her breathing stopped and I gently closed her eyelids. But by the time a nurse entered the room a few minutes later, I was back in control. Death seemed natural in my mother’s case, almost comforting. Not in Melanie’s.

An hour later Reggie and I are heading south back to my house in Springfield.

Reggie is a barrel-chested black man of about fifty who projects a no-nonsense, confident attitude. At five-ten he’s of average height, but he’s still a mammoth and forceful presence, weighing well over two hundred pounds. His beige sports jacket and plain blue shirt stretch tightly across his broad chest, his fingers are thick and stubby, and he has almost no neck. But his most intimidating feature is his head. It’s immense, like a bull’s, exuding power. His expansive forehead, with its receding hairline, juts far out over his eyes. His wide nostrils flare when he breathes, and his deeply set dark brown eyes seem to be in constant motion, taking in and cataloging everything around him.

“You okay, Augustus?” he asks after we’ve driven a few dark blocks in silence. It’s four in the morning and the city is still asleep.

“Yeah,” I mutter, taking a deep breath. “I just want to find the person who did this to Melanie. I want to see them get what they deserve.”

“Of course you do.” Reggie tries to use a comforting tone, but I can tell that’s tough for him because his voice and manner are naturally gruff. “We all do.” He hesitates. “And we will. Make no mistake,” he assures me confidently. “Justice will be served.”

I shake my head and close my eyes. “I can’t believe she’s gone. Why would someone do this?”

Melanie’s pocketbook sits on the seat between us, full of cash and credit cards. “Not for money,” Reggie says, tapping it. “That’s obvious.”

We lapse into silence until we reach I-395, a three-lane expressway that leads out of downtown. “Where was Melanie supposed to be last night?” Reggie asks, taking the exit ramp and accelerating onto the almost empty highway.

“Work. She’d been putting in a lot of overtime lately. Sometimes it was hard for us to make ends meet.”

“I can understand that. Times are tough. Where did she work?”

“At a law firm downtown,” I answer quietly, taking a quick glance at the speedometer. The posted limit here is fifty-five and there are no other cars on the road, but he isn’t even doing fifty. Reggie wants to talk. “The managing partner is a guy named Frank Taylor. Melanie was his executive assistant. Taylor does mostly divorce work.”

“Yeah, sure. That firm is over on Farragut Square. Never met Taylor, but I’ve heard about him. A real pit bull, people tell me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What time was Melanie supposed to be home last night?”

“She didn’t give me a specific time.” I speak deliberately so Reggie is certain to hear the growing irritation in my voice. I shouldn’t have to go through this right now. “She stayed at the office until one or two in the morning sometimes. It wasn’t something I was worried about, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Okay,” he says, as if he’s already thinking two or three questions ahead. “Had she called you to tell you what time she would be home?”

“No,” I answer curtly.

“Did she usually call when she was staying at work late?”

“Usually.”

He starts to ask another question but seems to think better of it. We say no more until the signs for Springfield appear and I give him directions through my neighborhood.

Reggie eases the car to a stop in front of my house. “There’s something I want you to understand, Augustus.”

Suddenly I’m exhausted. All I want to do is crawl into bed and try to escape the horror of what’s happened. Most of all, I don’t want to listen to this, but I feel like I have no choice. I don’t want him thinking I’m uncooperative. “What’s that?”

“My job is to solve murder cases. To find the guilty party.”

“Of course it is.”

“By using any means necessary. Any at all.”

“Uh-huh.”

“During that process I don’t allow myself to get close to any of the people involved. I’ve been around too long for that. I learned early on in my career that I have to remain completely objective to be as effective as possible.”

“I’m not sure what you’re driving at.”

“In thirty years on the force I’ve seen plenty, Augustus. People I thought were as gentle as lambs turned out to be ax murderers. People I could have sworn were guilty as sin were innocent. Maintaining a certain distance allows me to see things for what they really are. To see people for who they really are.” He hesitates. “We’ll be talking a lot over the next few weeks, and I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate what you’re going through. I do.”

I stare at him for a few moments through the gathering dawn, wondering what initial impressions he’s already formed of me. “What does that mean?”

“I may ask questions that make you uncomfortable or that you find offensive. I want you to remember that I’m just doing my job the best way I know how. Like you said, we all just want to find your wife’s killer.”

As the sun’s rays crawl over the horizon, I stagger up the short stone walkway to my house—clutching Melanie’s pocketbook—aware that Reggie hasn’t driven away. Aware that he’s watching me and that he’s already begun his investigation.

Melanie’s memorial service is a private affair, just as our wedding was. I had her body cremated, and now I’ve arranged this brief ceremony at a funeral home a few minutes from our house. The only people who attend are Melanie’s parents, her sister, an aunt who lives in southwestern Virginia, one of Melanie’s coworkers, and my friend Vincent Carlucci. No one from my family comes because there isn’t anyone. I’m an only child, both of my parents are dead, and my mother’s two sisters live in Atlanta. Too far for them to travel. Besides, like my mother, they never cared for Melanie. And I never knew any of my father’s relatives, so there wasn’t anyone from his side to invite.

Melanie attended early Sunday services at a Catholic church near our house almost every week while I slept late. She’d been going for years, but suddenly stopped a few months ago. She never told me why. I would have held the memorial service at the church, but, in a way, I was afraid to talk to Father Dale, the priest there. She’d made such an abrupt break with her faith I was worried I’d find out something bad. So I held the service at the funeral home where I felt I would receive compassion from the proprietor, not judgment by association.

I stand behind the lectern, a framed photograph of Melanie resting on an easel beside me. It was taken when she was in high school, and it’s amazing how little she’d changed. Her parents brought it today. It was the only one we had.

I try hard to control my emotions as I prepare to say a few words to the mourners. In the hushed room, I try to think of anything
but
the good times we shared in the first few years of our marriage. It’s just too painful to remember those days. I think about my own father. It’s strange where the mind takes you sometimes.

I’ve never known much about my father. I don’t know about his childhood, if he had brothers and sisters, or even where he originally came from. I tried to talk to him about all that once when I was twelve, but he told me to stop bothering him. He told me he just wanted to read his evening paper. He was a damn cold man who would leave home for two or three days every few months without even saying good-bye. My mother explained he had to travel for his job, but I have my doubts. He worked on an assembly line and I’ve never heard of any other factory workers who have to travel for their jobs. I finally asked Mother about all of that one Thanksgiving when I was home from college and we were alone in the kitchen together, but she had no answers. None she was willing to share with me anyway.

It was clear to me at a very early age that my father didn’t have much interest in my life. I tried hard to get his attention, but nothing ever worked. I played high school football, played it pretty well in fact, but he never came to a single game. He never even asked me how my team was doing. He’d sit at the dinner table and stare at his plate while Mom asked me questions. The moment he finished eating he would rise from the table without a word and go back to his bedroom, shoulders stooped, slippers shuffling across our bare hardwood floors. I say “his” bedroom because from the time I was eleven, my mother and father slept in separate rooms. They thought I didn’t understand, but I did, and that’s hard on a kid. Hard to think that they didn’t really care about each other anymore. That maybe everything was somehow my fault. I promised myself that my marriage would never come to be like that—but it did.

My father died in his sleep last October of a heart attack, and I never had a chance to say good-bye to him. I always held out hope that we’d connect with each other someday, but it didn’t work out that way. I guess we were destined never to know each other.

I look up from the lectern and see Melanie’s coworker sitting to my left, a vacant chair between her and Melanie’s family. She gazes at me sadly, tears in her eyes. I don’t know her name—she just showed up at the funeral. I don’t remember her from any of Frank Taylor’s Christmas parties, but what was I going to say? She seems nice—and genuinely grieving. I’m not going to deprive her of her chance to say a final good-bye to Melanie.

My eyes flicker to Melanie’s parents. Her mother is sobbing softly while her father sits stoically, his lips forming a tight, straight line. They were always kind to me and they helped us financially whenever they could. But, like my parents, they didn’t have much to give.

I’m not an eloquent man. When I’m speaking in front of people, my breathing quickly becomes choppy and loud, making the audience as uncomfortable as I am. So today I keep my remarks short. I tell them how wonderful Melanie was. How she always took care of me. How much I’ll miss her. How shocked I am at the terrible act of violence that stole her from the world, and how some things just don’t make sense. And I tell them that she’s gone to a better place because there is no way a woman as sweet as she could be kept from the glory of heaven. As I look out at their honest, sympathetic faces, it occurs to me that these people have no clue that Melanie asked me for a divorce the night before her death, and I won’t tell them. There’s no last word to be had here, no victory to be won. She’s gone and the only important thing now is that Melanie’s mother and father are left with fond memories of their daughter. When I’m finished, I bow my head and whisper, “Good-bye, Mel.”

CHAPTER 4

In the days following Melanie’s memorial service I remain mostly inside the house—except for one solitary day trip to the mountains—occasionally making halfhearted attempts at packing her things into brown cardboard boxes. The same boxes I might have used to pack
my
possessions. I don’t get very far though, managing only to remove some of the clothes from her closet.

One afternoon Father Dale stops by unexpectedly to offer words of encouragement. He’s a small man with thinning white hair, ruddy cheeks, dark eyes, and a compassionate manner. He says that he always liked seeing Melanie at Mass, and that I’m welcome to drop by his church anytime to talk. His visit lasts only a few minutes and, thankfully, he doesn’t bring up the fact that she stopped attending his Sunday services so abruptly.

The second Monday following the funeral is different. I wake up early, shower, shave, and dress in business casual—not the old jeans and T-shirts I’ve been living in for the past ten days. Over a full breakfast of coffee, eggs, and bacon I read the
Washington Post
from cover to cover for the first time in weeks.

Then, at nine sharp, I drive to the day trading firm of Bedford & Associates. It’s located in McLean, Virginia, fifteen miles west of downtown Washington and about a thirty-minute drive from my house. McLean is the center of the technology boom that has gripped northern Virginia since the mid-nineties.

Over the past six months I researched several of these day trading firms, and from what I could tell, Bedford offered exactly what I was looking for—the best research systems for the buck. And the firm has been extremely proactive about marketing to me, mailing me promotional information almost every week.

“Good morning. Welcome to Bedford and Associates,” Bedford’s receptionist says cordially. The nameplate in front of her reads Anna Ferrer. Anna has long black hair, honey-hued skin, and huge brown eyes. She’s a work of art and I feel a pang of guilt for noticing. I guess I should still be in mourning.

“Hello.” My voice sounds strange to me after weeks of not using it very much.

“What can I do for you?” she asks with a trace of a Spanish accent.

“I want to rent a desk here.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Augustus McKnight.”

“Please have a seat, Mr. McKnight.” She motions across the lobby toward a comfortable-looking sofa. “Someone will be with you in a moment.”

I’m sure I could have kept my old sales job if I’d gone to the human resources department and told them about Russell’s attempt to steal half my Unicom profits. But I realized that I was sick of doing what I
had
to do. It was time to do what I
wanted
. Of course, day trading is one of the riskiest things I could want to do—most people fail miserably in the first few months—but I know I’ll kick myself forever if I don’t give it a shot. I have no one to worry about now but myself, and I’ve saved up a decent amount of cash with my Unicom investment.