The Euthanist (22 page)

Leland corrected. “We may decide to destroy you. But if we did, we wouldn’t do it like this.”

I walked downstairs with the Moons following me. If not aimed at my back, Tesmer’s gun was pointed vaguely in my direction from behind. The wood moaned with weight. I involuntarily shivered.

At one point, the Moon’s basement had been refinished as a family room. A couch and bookcases abutted shabby oak veneer walls. Its current state looked as if angry robots had gone wild. Holes ripped through the walls. The paneling had been punched by something toothy, possibly a hammer claw, exposing the studs. Dust settled on the furniture, and scraps of drywall and insulation scattered across the rug. Mildew spores clogged the air.

Up in the kitchen, dog toenails skittered across the linoleum. Apparently bored with Veda, Emmanuel ran to join us. He appeared at the top of the staircase, but he wouldn’t come down. Possibly it didn’t feel safe to him.

Leland gestured to the debris. “When Veda first went missing, we didn’t know what happened. He didn’t come home, and we thought he’d been hurt—maybe he’d wandered out with friends and there was an accident. But when enough time went by, we knew someone took him. I thought it was revenge. There had been someone I’d arrested, or someone Tesmer put away, and this was plain old vendetta. But if that were true, someone would have rubbed our faces in it. There was no ‘I gotcha’ note, no ransom demand. No contact of any kind. And that’s when we really started to worry.”

Tesmer picked up where her husband left off. “This was still early into the abduction. A couple of months in, our neighbors started looking at us funny. Our minister thought it would be a good idea if we took some time off from services.” She touched her husband’s arm. “Leland had problems at work.”

“Let’s not go there,” he said.

“No,” Tesmer corrected. “Let’s tell her everything. He had problems at work. Colleagues wondered about him—about both of us. Same with me. Friends stopped being friends.”

Leland said, “The agency eventually found a suspect. Guy in his early twenties who was a dog walker. He was sketchy, but he wasn’t the guy. When I got him alone, I was a little hard on him.” Knowing Leland, I guessed this was an understatement. At his most docile, I imagined a smashed nose, possibly a few bent fingers. “They didn’t let me alone with suspects for a while—any suspects, on any cases. I ended up taking a little time off. Paid time off, but humiliating just the same.”

Tesmer drove the message home. “We had a lot of time at home. Time we avoided going out. And we started wondering more seriously if we should be looking for a body. We knew other cases where they’d found the child’s body right in the house. So we started down here. Ripped the hell out of it. Take a good look.” Now I was compelled to peek into the walls to see how far they’d gotten. “When a child gets taken, the whole family goes down.”

I walked around the basement to observe how their shame and frustration had manifested in the destruction of their own home. Veda had been back for a long time. They could have cleaned this up, but they lacked either the desire or the money. They’d even painted the outside to keep up appearances, but vaulted the basement away. They didn’t even change all the lights. I counted two burned-out bulbs. They’d sealed off the place tight as the tombs in Luxor.

“I’d like to trade,” said Leland.

“I’m not killing Helena Mumm for you.” Down there in an intimate cluster with two armed adversaries, I felt threatened. But more than the threat, the pervading energy down there was death. Even if no body had been recovered, the room reeked with mortal corrosion. That repulsion from death made me defiant.

“This is a new trade.”

“Does it involve killing anyone?”

Tesmer shook her head, and Leland said, “It does not. If you make this trade, all will be forgiven. You can walk out of our lives with no recourse.”

“All will be forgiven,” Tesmer agreed. This implied that the Moons would pardon me, but that they had done nothing that might need forgiveness themselves. Kidnapping, torture, stalking, or threatening Jeffrey apparently did not necessitate forgiveness.

“This is a good deal for you,” Leland offered. “That sex offender record? Wiped clean.”

“I’m not a sex offender,” I reminded. “I don’t have a record.”

“Whatever,” he dismissed. “It will all be gone. You’ll be free.”

By now I’d gotten used to the dim lights down there. My boxing gym had the same shadowy corners. I didn’t want to be there, but I didn’t want to seem intimidated. I sauntered to the couch with the ripped cushions and sat down. “Whatever this is, it isn’t noble. You’re still extorting another human being for your own gain.”

Tesmer urged, “Take the trade. You won’t have a criminal record. You won’t go to jail.”

They had no clue how much this dehumanized me. So I decided to inflame them by trying out another argument. “Are you protecting yourselves by trying to use me, or is it that you just can’t do the job yourselves?”

This got to both of them. Leland said, “You think I lack the capacity?”

“Maybe the FBI’s not all it’s cracked up to be if you need to outsource.”

With hands on hips, Leland shook his head in irritation. “You think you have what it takes to get into
my
club? Do you know what the bureau requires?”

Tesmer tried to calm down her husband. “She’s trying to rile you.”

Too late. I kept pushing him. “The bureau requires high moral standards. Bunch of goody two-shoes.”

“We’re not as good as you think,” he said.

“Clearly. But you do have moral standards to live up to. And that means you can’t do whatever it is you want me to do to Helena Mumm.” For once, Leland had no response. Husband and wife traded frustrated looks. I’d stalemated them. “That also means that you weren’t supposed to handcuff me to your bed and torture me for a day.” That sounded ugly. Tesmer shot him a dirty glance—he probably hadn’t divulged the full details of what took place in Clayton. I would use that to pit them against each other.

“I didn’t torture you.”

“You pepper sprayed me.”

“You attacked me!” he steamed. Upstairs, boards creaked where Veda shifted his weight. Their son was listening to us.

“When you sent me to kill Helena Mumm, you talked about us reaching a détente. I think you said we’d be bonded together by mutually assured destruction, because we’d be equally culpable for the same crime.”

“But that crime never happened,” he said.

“But other crimes happened.” I flashed him my wrists. “I go into the bureau and shoot off my mouth, you’ll lose as much as me. Aside from the kidnapping—”

“Detainment—”

“You endangered me by sending me unarmed into the home of a convicted murderer, telling me she was your sister.”

For some reason he laughed. “How did you think that woman was my sister, anyway? That’s racist as hell! Do you really think we look anything alike? You put us together side by side, and we make the number ten.”

I refused to let him steer me off course. “If this goes any further, you’ll lose as much as me.”

“Not as much,” Tesmer said.

“Quite right,” Leland said. “Only one of the three of us would ever see the inside of prison. And for you, those are murder charges. Serious business. And if you press us, be sure we’ll press back. Because the two of us are as vengeful as the Old Testament.”

I thought back to how I felt chained to that bed. They had a point. Maybe my cockiness was unfounded. They weren’t going to let me walk out of there. Not without giving them something.

“I’m not killing Helena for you.”

“That’s not the trade. It wouldn’t involve killing anyone.” He and Tesmer traded a sidelong glance, appreciating each other. Knowing they had my ear. “Here’s the trade. Show me your world, and I’ll show you mine.”

“I don’t get it.”

“That’s the trade. We understand each other.”

“I still don’t get it. What do you want me to do?”

“Let’s not even call it a trade. Let’s call it a gentleman’s bet.” He threw up his hands like a coach trying to keep me from stealing a base. “You give me a day in your shoes. I’ll give you a day in mine.”

“A day in each other’s shoes.”

“I’ll
bet
if we do that, we’ll understand each other. And if we
understand
each other, you’ll want to help us. But if we spend that day and you still don’t want to help us, you’re off the hook.”

“What do you mean by a day in my shoes?”

“I come with you to see one of your patients.”

I reacted. “No fucking way. Absolutely not.”

“It’s a fair trade. Show me your work, and I’ll show you mine.”

“Why the hell would you want to do that?”

Tesmer looked curious as well. This might have been unscripted.
Ah, the delights of improv
.

He said, “Because we can’t do what we need to do without outside help. And the only shot at getting you on our side is for us to understand each other. This is me grasping, as a desperate parent.”

“But I told you I’m not going to kill Helena.”

“That’s not part of the plan. It never was.” I waited for him to explain more, but he didn’t. If I asked, it would only open us up to more dialogue, and I wanted this to end.

“You’re tied into the FBI. You must have a network of friends who could help.”

He pleaded with the weakness of a hungry man. “Didn’t you hear me? They didn’t trust me when Veda was taken.”

“But Veda came back.”

“And when he came back, they treated me like I was cursed. I may not have killed my boy, but something rotten clung to me, and no one else wanted anything to do with it, or us. This family is tainted.” He gritted his teeth. “No one at work is going to help.”

A thousand reasons might have prohibited me from bringing Leland to see a client. The most important was that I didn’t want him to make someone who was already suffering even more uncomfortable. But what I told him was, “You’d be an accomplice if you came with me.”

“I could live with that.”

“Honey,” Tesmer insisted, “This is a bad idea.” She had expected Leland to offer a different kind of trade.

Leland’s grandeur had diminished in a just a few minutes. Now deflated, he fought to keep me interested. Like they’d gone to everyone one else and finally came to me. I was his last chance. Leland might not have idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, but he lived with his own suffering, and my inclination to help those who suffered kept me from shutting down our conversation, even if I hated him.

“In return, you visit someone with me,” he said.

I asked, “Who would I have to visit?”

“I’ll tell you later.” A few weeks ago, this statement would have been a coy remark. Now he was trying not to scare me off. “But it will just be a visit. I won’t expect you to do anything other than accompany me. That I promise you.”

Not sure why this occurred to me, but after the spider package, I considered what else they might do to terrify me. “You’re not going to make me visit Gordon Ostrowski, are you? Because I’ll walk the fuck out right now, and you can decide whether you want to shoot me in the back.”

“No,” Leland insisted. “You won’t have to see Gordon.”

Alcohol streamed in my blood. I felt my jaw loosen up, my cheeks blushed the way they always do when I drink. Tesmer’s face, shaded under the basement lights, sagged sadly the same way Leland’s had. I’d railed against their bullying, and now they’d gotten to me with their hopelessness. All we were talking about was a trade—a visit for a visit. A day in each other’s shoes.

“What happens if I agree?” I asked.

“Afterward, if you still don’t want to help us, you’ll never see us again.”

“My sex offender profile?”

“Gone like you woke up from a bad dream. If, and only if, you see it through.”

Something moved into the doorway at the top of the stairs. Emmanuel’s collar jingled. Veda stood up there. From the couch, I could only see his shadow stretch down the staircase. But because of the way his parents looked up at him, I stood to glimpse whatever struck them.

“The walls are thin. I can hear you talking about me,” Veda said.

He wore a towel around his waist and nothing else. I saw more similarities between him and his father. The tight, wiry muscles imitated his father’s build, but seemed healthier on the younger Moon. Framed by the doorway, Veda reminded me of when Leland came out of the bathroom in Clayton, towel wrapped and freshly showered. For every compulsion I had to help this family, more things came up that repelled me.

I thought Veda might have been blacking out, standing there in some sort of waking sleep, but his face seemed to say that the show was intentional and meant for me. He ignored his parents and addressed me. “You want to know what you’re getting into? Take a look.”

He turned to show us his back. I’ll admit I shuddered. Not that it was profoundly worse than some of what I’d seen in the ambulance, but it surprised me. From his shoulders down to where the towel cloaked his waist, he was marred with the same punctures I’d seen on Cindy Coates. Sets of four dots in Braille. There had to be more than twenty sets on his trunk. The kitchen lights glossed his back so we could see them in full relief, like little mountain ranges dotting his back. After a few moments, he disappeared from the doorway and left us to continue our talk.