The Last Kind Words (29 page)

“Well, when you get out there, try to talk your father into it.”

I went out and around to the garage. The side door was ajar. I stepped into the huge work area where my grandfather and his brothers had done most of the woodwork for the house’s secret rooms. JFK heard me and clambered to his feet and moseyed over.

I was expecting rebuilt classic cars. My old man hadn’t been much of a car thief, but he had taught me how to boost the muscle speedsters of his teenage years. I thought he might be looking to the past and trying to get back in touch with his youth.

It wasn’t a car.

My father was spraying glass cleaner and wiping down an enormous display case with six lengthy glass shelves and mini-track interior lighting.

He glanced over his shoulder and said, “Hello, Terry. So what do you think?”

“Well … it’s not porn.”

Inside were figurines. I estimated there to be at least a hundred pieces. Most of them were of Asian men and women and children, pulling rickshaws, feeding barnyard animals, playing with dogs. I didn’t find them beautiful. I didn’t think them ugly. I forced myself not to frown. I made myself keep my hands at my sides instead of reaching up to scratch my head. My father opened the case and started spraying the inside of the glass door with no-streak cleaner.

I said, “Can I touch them?”

“Sure.”

I picked one up. It was hollow and very light. It felt cheap to me. There wasn’t a speck of dust on it. I turned it over. I was surprised to see the words “Made in Occupied Japan.”

“Why these?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” my father said. “Gramp had a couple of them around when I was a kid. They caught my attention somehow. I’d snatch one every now and again from some house, kept them in a cache hole in one of the crawl spaces. For the last couple of years I’ve been hunting through antiques shops. Gives me something to do with myself.”

“Why keep them out here? Why not bring them into the house?”

He shrugged. “They’re not really for show. They’re just for me. I like looking at them. They’re something delicate made during a terrible time.”

He sounded a little embarrassed, like he expected me to think less of him.

“Tell me about them,” I said.

“Nothing too interesting to tell. They were produced by U.S. forces from ’45 to around early ’52, at the end of the occupation. It was a short production period so these pieces are fairly scarce. The bisque figures are less common than the porcelain, and usually they’re of higher quality. You saw the import stamp on the bottom. They were all required to have the ‘Made in Occupied Japan’ or just ‘Occupied Japan’ mark.”

“How valuable are they?” I asked.

“Depends on the individual piece,” he said. “Piano babies can range from twenty-five to a hundred dollars. Toby mugs from, say, ten to maybe eighty-five dollars. There’s a couple of shops out in Southampton that really try to gouge you. Salt-and-pepper shakers list for up to maybe forty dollars a pair.”

I didn’t know what a piano baby or a Toby mug might be, but my father was actually excited to be talking about the figurines, so I let him go on. I’d imagined they must be expensive antiques worth in the thousands. To hear him price them at ten or twenty bucks really stunned me.

He went on about the salt-and-pepper shakers, poodles, boy with begging dog, boy with fish on line, girl holding flower, and how thousands of pieces had been copied in European styles. I wasn’t really listening. I was watching him. He looked happy and animated. There wasn’t much in the world for him to be buoyant about, so I was glad he had this.

My father was too short to wipe down the top few inches of the case, so I did it for him. When I was finished I stared at my reflection and watched the man behind me. It was the only way I could meet his eyes.

“Dad,” I said.

There was something in my voice that warned him. I turned and watched as his shoulders hitched. He cocked his head slightly. I knew his body language like I knew my own. He was setting his resolve, waiting for the pain. I waited too, for the confidence to ask the question. It took time to find it.

“Why did you boost Kimmy’s place?”

“I didn’t boost it,” he said.

“You went there.”

“Yes.”

“And you were caught.”

He almost smiled. “Yeah.”

My old man rarely did anything that got under my skin, but that smile did it. I threw down the dust rag. I took a step toward him. My blood surged and I got up close, in his face, thinking, Am I about to hit my father? Is it possible I can do that? If I can do that, then he could watch me making love to a woman through her window.

“You had to have wanted to be caught. You’re too good otherwise.”

His lips slid into a self-effacing grin. It only masked the truth. “I’m getting old.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Do you really want one, Terry?” he asked.

“For Christ’s sake, yes.”

The grin dropped. His eyes filled with emotion. It was something I wasn’t quite prepared to see. A quiver of fear went through me and I was suddenly sorry I’d decided to face him at all.

His shoulders slumped again, and he walked to the worktable and sat heavily on the stool there. “I heard Kimmy had a baby. I wanted to see her.”

“Why?”

His face tightened. “I’ve got to explain everything to you?” There
was a hint of anger in his voice. When I was a kid, that used to terrify me. Now it was even worse. “You leaving us … and Collie about to die … it’s got me … I’ve been … been—”

He couldn’t put it into words. He hit the wall. It had been so long since he’d opened up about anything that I could see the confusion and fear in his expression as he tried to talk. His eyes shifted back to his figurines as if they helped to ground him.

I wanted to put a hand on his shoulder, perhaps even hug him. But that would be too much. It would overpower him. It would suffocate him. I waited in silence with him, and when the silence got to be too much I said, “Go on, Dad.”

“I always thought I’d have grandkids. I’ve been thinking about that some lately. Kimmy … I thought when she got pregnant that …” He drifted to a close, his thumbs brushing across his fingertips like he was getting ready to jug a safe.

“You knew about that?” I asked.

“How stupid do you think we are? Of course we knew. She was family. The baby—” He regained some composure. “Anyway, I’d been thinking about her and the kid she and Chub had. I just wanted to see her.”

“You could’ve knocked on the door.”

“No, I couldn’t have. Anyway, the little girl kicked off her blanket. I pulled it back over her. Stood there a few seconds too long, Chub caught me in the room. He was understandably … uh, irritated and called the cops. Kimmy tried to talk him out of it but it was too late. So I got hauled in. Chub dropped the charges an hour later. I played like I was getting senile and walked in to the wrong house. It was an easy sell, what with Gramp. So there it is.”

He hadn’t told me because I’d asked, I knew. It had been something inside him that needed out. Now that it was, he didn’t look angry or indignant. He hadn’t been looking for any kind of forgiveness or absolution from me. He’d only explained himself because he’d wanted to.

I did put my hand on his shoulder then, for an instant, and then walked back into the house.

I helped my mother feed my grandfather his lunch. I’d just managed
to get the last forkful of chicken salad down his throat when a news flash broke in on his cartoons. Instead of his chin dropping, he lifted his head a little higher, his eyes dark and alert. Vicky was on the scene at the park. She looked gorgeous and smiled endearingly.

Cara Clarke’s body had been discovered hanging from a tree in the same location where her sister Rebecca’s strangled corpse had been found five years earlier.

They put up a photo of Collie. We looked like twins.

The
crime scene was a quiet bedlam. Hundreds of people had turned out to stand behind the police lines and watch the cops working the scene for evidence and taking photos of Cara Clarke’s body. Some were on their knees weeping. A lot of them were praying. Flowers were already on display. They’d stack them up on the spot for years to come.

Vicky and her film crew were still covering the story. I made sure she didn’t spot me, or she would have beelined for me. Gilmore walked past twice, looking angry and in command. I tried to get his attention. We had to talk.

The heat was going to come down on me now. After five years away, I return home, visit my brother twice in prison, and now the sister of one of the women he’d been convicted of murdering was dead in almost the same way.

I tried to imagine what could have happened. The reports said she’d been hanged. They were playing up the fact that she was on antidepressants, and they hadn’t even found her extra stash or the stolen scrips yet. A lot of trauma victims tended to revisit the scene where they’d lost a loved one to commit suicide. Psychiatrists were on camera, discussing the rise in teen suicide.

I stepped up to one of the uniforms standing guard around the scene. I said, “Tell Gilmore that Terry Rand is here.”

“Detective Gilmore is extremely busy right now, sir.”

“I have information he’ll want to hear.”

The guy actually sighed. I didn’t blame him. They were going to be getting hundreds of tips an hour from all over the place. “Of course, sir. We’ll be happy to take your statement. Simply line up to the left, please. Someone will be with you shortly.”

“It’s important and it’s real.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Seriously, don’t brush me off. He needs to hear this, and he needs to hear it now.”

“Line up to the left. Or you’re welcome to come down to the station, sir.”

I slipped under the crime-scene tape. It was a bold move. Five cops descended on me in an instant. They wrestled me back, saying, “Sir, sir, please, you are not allowed on this side of the tape!”

“Let me talk to Gilmore. My name is Terry Rand. He’ll want to hear this.”

The disturbance caught Gilmore’s attention. He came over. The other police officers dispersed. He shook his head at me. “Terrier, today you’re just being a pain in the ass. If this is about that nonsense with your brother, I’m going to give profound consideration to running you in.”

“Is this your case?”

“For the moment it’s everybody’s case.”

“Let me spill what I know. Then you decide.”

“Okay, but make it fast.”

I told him the truth. All of it. Starting with me watching the Clarke house, creeping the place, getting caught by Cara, staring down the .45. If I caught another beating for it, that was fine by me. I was used to pissing blood. I was less accustomed to murder.

He listened intently. His little grin dropped from his face, but his lips were still busy, curling and uncurling. He looked at me and his expression shifted into earnest worry. I knew what he was thinking. That maybe I had snuffed Cara in order to help my brother. That this was my confession. I held his gaze. I thought he might arrest me on the spot. I was ready to lie on my belly again and put my hands behind my head.

“Let’s go talk in my car,” he said. “I want to hear you repeat everything you just told me. Everything.”

“In your car?”

“In my car. Come on, Terry.”

He should’ve dragged me to the precinct and gotten me on video. He was cutting me some slack, but he should’ve known better. We marched over to where his car was parked on the lawn. I didn’t want to see Cara’s corpse, but I couldn’t help staring. Forensics was still working on her, so they couldn’t cover her up yet. Her face had gone an ashen gray, and her protruding tongue looked exceptionally pink against her darkened chin. Her eyes were only half open but had bulged forward from the sockets. I stifled a groan. I was probably acting very suspicious. I was probably sealing my own doom.

He said, “In back.” We both got in the back, and I kept looking at the police crawling all over the area. Forensics was working on the tree limb, taking photos, checking the scuffs on the bark. Cara Clarke had been tall, nearly six foot, the branch was fairly low. It wouldn’t have been difficult for a strong man to heft her up and make it look like she had hanged herself. I couldn’t spot anything that Cara might have leaped from, but she could have conceivably climbed onto the branch herself.

“How was she done?” I asked.

“Hanged.”

“They said that on the news. But how?”

“Terry, I can’t talk about that with you.”

“I might be able to help.”

A squall filled Gilmore’s face. “How in the hell are you going to do that?”

I saw several thoughts whip through his eyes. He thought about grilling me. He thought about giving me friendly advice to get out of town. He thought about raiding the Rand house and seeing if there might be something around to implicate me in the girl’s murder. He was an almost-bent cop. That meant he picked and chose when he’d cross the line and when he wouldn’t. You never knew when he might go by the book and when he might not.

Surprisingly, he settled on simply answering my original question. “A nylon cord, the kind used to tie dock cushions and bumpers to the sides of boats.”