The Debt Collector (6 page)

She went to one knee and hugged him. He did not smell very good. His worn red bandanna was gone. He had probably taken it off and eaten it. It was his way.

She was immediately inundated with the look, smell, and overwhelmingly depressing feel of a dirty, sticky kitchen. Pork roast on the cutting board, rice still stuck to the bottom of a pot on the stove, a mound of lettuce leaves, tomato ends, mushroom bits, onion skins in the sink, beneath the bits of pork, rice, and bread the children had dumped from their plates.

The kitchen window was wide open, blinds hanging down to the sill, rippling with the breeze.

The men who had brutalized Joy Stinnet and her family had come in through the kitchen.

Sonora shut the window, locked it. Saw the milk spilled on the counter, the napkins on the floor, shredded by Clampett. She looked at the dishes, the open bottle of catsup. The numbness cleared, like headlights in a fog, and she felt a surge of happiness. Her world was still intact.

Outside, a horn honked. What the hell was Sam thinking, at this time of night?

Sonora washed her hands, lemon-smelling Palmolive dishwashing liquid in her palms making soft white bubbles that spattered atop the food leavings clogging the sink, adding a clean smell to the scent of vegetables and cooked meat.

She ripped three paper towels from the dispenser, much too hard, and the roll kept coming, paper towels rippling over the countertop and settling in a pile on the floor. A pink and blue picture of a cottage with a heart that said
Bless Our Happy Home
. Heather had picked it out. She was into paper towels, and she favored the expensive brands.

Sonora scooped up the pile of paper towels, opened the cabinet under the sink, and tossed them into the trash can.

Something leaped out at her and Sonora screamed, fell backward, lost her balance, and hit the floor. The mouse, a big one by mouse standards, took off across the kitchen floor, with Clampett in pursuit.

Sonora stayed on the floor, letting her heartbeat slow. Remembered the rustling noise in the garage.

With any luck it was just the one mouse, and Clampett would take care of it.

She stood up, shoved the garbage can back under the sink, did not stop to look into the dark caverns behind but headed down the hallway to check the kids.

The house was quiet, except for Clampett, who had run headfirst into the couch and was now crouched, waiting.

Sonora checked Tim's door. Locked. Heather's too, the brats. She took the bobby pin she kept in the bathroom door, picked the lock, opened both doors in seconds.

Tim was sprawled across a bare mattress in a room as aromatic as a school gym. His hubcap collection was growing. He always told her he found them by the side of the road, but she was beginning to worry. She closed the door, moved on to Heather's room, found her daughter asleep in a tangle of blankets, a Hanson CD—evidently set on repeat—playing softly.

Happy music.

She stood in the hallway, saw that a dark stain had rubbed off the bottom of her Reeboks and streaked the carpet. Blood.

Sonora peeled the shirt off and balled it up to throw away. Scrubbed her stomach with a washrag. The bra was bloodstained too. She took it off and threw it over the shirt. Dammit. She found another bra hanging from the closet door, put on another white cotton shirt. She threw the washrag into the pile of bloody clothes, felt a tingle of something like anticipation or, God forgive her, excitement at the base of her spine. She was the good guys. It was good to be the good guys.

Sonora closed her bedroom door to inhibit wandering mice, wondered when she would get back home again, took what cash she had and put it in the emergency money box. She filled Clampett's water bowl. He accepted a pat on the head but stayed by the couch, hunting the mouse.

Sonora took one last look around the house. Locked the doors, headed down the driveway to Sam, on his cell phone, probably talking to his wife.

He stuck his head out the window. He had slid across the seat to the driver's side. “Took you long enough. You stop to make a meat loaf or something?”

Sonora shook her head. “There are fifty-seven frozen Lean Cuisines in the freezer—this time I'm prepared.”

“I heard you yelling.”

“I have a mouse.” Sonora got into the car. Closed the door softly.

Sam fiddled with the seat adjustment, going ostentatiously forward and backward, a pained look on his face. He looked at her across the driver's seat. “I got news for you, Sonora. It's not an
it.
”

“I don't care if it's a boy mouse or a girl mouse.”

“That's not the point. They don't travel alone, Sonora. You don't have a mouse. You have mice.”

“It was only one, Sam.”

He did not contradict her but he laughed, which was worse.

11

It spoke to Sonora, that the closest living relative Joy Stinnet had was a great-uncle who lived way out in Indian Hill. As a child she had taken the spread of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins for granted. The Fourth of July and Memorial Day picnics were semiduty, semifun.

Her family was scattered now, her mother and brother dead, grandparents hardly a memory. She worried about Tim and Heather, growing up with only her.

And Clampett of course. The world's best dog.

“Do you see your family much?” Sonora asked Sam. She knew that he did, she just wanted to get him talking about it.

He squinted through the windshield, and she knew that look, the look of a man who would rather die than admit that he was lost.

“My
family
much? Don't I go home every night?”

“No, like aunts and grandparents and cousins and stuff.”

“Every major holiday of my life.”

“Hard to imagine, all those pickup trucks in one place.”

Sam squinted his eyes at her. “You have been in a bad mood for seven months.”

“My record is a year and a half.”

“Yeah, Sonora, but don't you get the significance? Didn't you meet that guy seven months ago?”

“The Jerk? So? I'm done with him. Sam, you missed the turn.”

“That wasn't our turn. I think we were supposed to turn back at that T section. Did it say Cricket Lane?”

“How the hell should I know, it's dark outside.”

“You ever hear from him?”

“No.”

“You call him?”

“No. You think I should?”

Sam stopped, backed the car sideways, started out the other way. “No, don't do that, you'll break Gruber's heart.”

“Gruber? If he has a thing for anybody it's Sanders.”

“I didn't say he had a thing for you, Sonora. He won the pool, that's all.”

Sam rolled his window down, looked sideways. Seemed to come to a decision. “Right or left?” he asked her.

“Left.”

He went right.

“What pool?”

“He picked August for when you'd be done with that guy. I would have taken July, myself. And Sanders thought you would get married.”

“Sanders was in on this?”

“She wouldn't bet in the pool, no, she said it was tacky, and you would kill her if you found out, but her opinion was that you'd get married.”

“You guys had a pool on the Jerk, like the one you had guessing when Molliter's wife was going to have her baby?”

Sam was nodding.

“You were actually betting on when it would be over with my boyfriend?” They had been betting while she had been crying?

“Actually it was more complicated. Would you dump him, or be dumped, were you—”

“Were I what?”

“Nothing.”

“Dammit, Sam.”

“Don't get mad at me, I didn't have any money in the pot.”

“Thank you for that, at least.”

“They wouldn't
let
me in, figured since I was your partner I'd have inside information.”

“So Gruber won?”

“Hundred eighty dollars.”

“I
hate
you guys.”

“Not me.”

“You especially. Dammit. You went right by that turn again.”

“It's a gravel road.”

“So? That's against the law, living on a gravel road?”

“It's not usual.”

“If you were out in the country as much as I am, Sam, you would not be surprised by a little bit of gravel road.”

“You know, ever since you got that horse, you act like some kind of hotshot farm girl.” Sam slowed the Taurus, scattered rock crackling under the tires, announcing their presence to anyone within five square miles.

“I may be learning late in life, Sam, but I am learning.”

“Do you ever get to ride him?”

“Not much. He scares me and I never have time.”

“Get rid of him.”

“No way, I happen to love that horse. And I like hanging out in feed stores, and I now even concede the value of a pickup.”

“Will wonders never cease.”

12

Joy Stinnet's great-uncle lived on one of those strange little properties that started life as a moderate home in the country. But as the city stretched ever onward and the urbans sprawled, the land around this small place became a haven for people who wanted to spend their money on property that was close to the city proper with the advantages of the countryside. The best or the worst of all worlds, depending upon your viewpoint.

Sam stopped the Taurus about a hundred feet from the house. The driveway was lined on the right by a sagging wire fence, on the left by trees.

The house was small. White clapboard.

Sonora followed Sam across the weedy grass, stepping on squares of crumbling red brick that someone had laid down as stepping stones in happy years gone by. The porch light was on, a yellow sixty-watt bulb in a black metal socket over a heavy wood door that was a faded country green.

The concrete steps led to a small porch that had pulled six inches from the house, leaving a leaf-filled gap that was likely a haven for things Sonora did not want to think about.

“No lights on in the house,” Sonora said. She felt embarrassed. What if they had the wrong house? It had happened before.

“Probably gone to bed.” Sam gave her a sideways look. He knocked on the door.

A dog barked and howled, a sort of choky, panicked sound, as if the animal had been woken from a sound sleep, napping on the job.

Sam and Sonora waited. The front of the yard was screened in by trees, evergreens, oaks, a Japanese maple. Plenty of places for someone to hide, Sonora thought, but shady and cool in the summer.

The dog quieted. Sam knocked again.

“No one home?” Sonora asked him.

“You wish.”

A light went on in a window on the left side of the house. A bedroom. They waited.

There were noises, suddenly, on the other side of the door. A dead bolt, unlatching. The door sticking, a noise of suction, then it swung open.

The man who stood in the doorway was six feet six inches tall, by Sonora's guess, and anywhere from eighty to eight hundred. He wore yellow and brown flannel pajamas that someone had ironed, and a heavy brown velour bathrobe belted tightly around his waist. He had brown leather house slippers on feet that could easily have been size thirteen and a half. The bones of his shoulders were prominent, his face thin, and though his frame could easily handle another fifty or more pounds, he was not gaunt or wasted. He looked like a man who'd been fit and active most of his life.

He wore glasses, wire frames curling over his ears, which stuck out from the closely razored white-and-gray-flecked hair.

“Who is disturbing me at this time of night?”

The voice aged him.

A basset hound stood quietly by the man's leg. The dog's eyes were red-rimmed and droopy. He had clearly been woken from a sound sleep.

Sam offered his ID. “Sir, I'm Detective Delarosa. This is my partner, Detective Blair. We're police officers, sir, Cincinnati Police Department, looking for a Mr. Franklin Ward.”

“That would be me. I'm Franklin Ward.” The man licked his lips, focused on the identification Sam offered, took it between both of his hands and held it at a distance. Farsighted. His fingers trembled. There were age spots on the backs of his hands.

The man took his time. Cleaned his glasses on the sash of his bathrobe, put them back on, and read Sam's ID word for word, lips moving in an inaudible mutter.

It was something of a wait. The man's hands, like cold engines, did not seem to cooperate.

“Is something the matter?” Ward asked them. “I have a clean conscience myself.”

“Yes, sir, no question of that. I'm afraid we have bad news.” Sam left it at that, voice steady, reassuring.

“You best come on in, then. Don't mind the dog, she's not going to hurt you.”

The biggest danger from the basset hound, Sonora thought, was that she might fall asleep on your foot.

The man waved them to a couch that was covered in an old tasseled gold bedspread, clearly the dog's favorite spot from the thick layer of hair coating the gold spread. Franklin Ward sat down in an old brown recliner, the vinyl repaired with duct tape on the right armrest. He sat with his back straight, large hands resting on his knees.

He reminded Sonora of her grandfather. He had died when she was two, but she remembered a tall lean man with glasses and a flannel shirt throwing her up into the air, making her stomach flutter, catching her. Calling her his little cupcake.

Franklin Ward's quiet, trembling cooperation caught her more than the tears and hysteria of similar visits to other people, victims of mayhem. The wait to be told would be agony for him. He anticipated the blow. Waited for it. For once she was going to let Sam do it.

“Mr. Ward, is there someone you can call to be with you?”

He nodded. Went to the phone, an old clunky black one with a rotary dial. His fingers shook and he dialed heavily, slowly. Looked up at Sonora. “My niece, you know, m'great-niece. She looks after me. Here all the time with her babies. I keep her horse for her … hello, Joy? Joy?” He listened. “Oh, it's the machine.” He frowned. “Let me dial it again, she should be home this time of night.”