Every second seemed a minute long. Too many hospitals, DeMarco complained to himself as he waited for the elevator. Ever since Kentucky. He’d returned from his and Jayme’s first road trip in the RV because his estranged wife, Laraine, was in the hospital following a suicide attempt. Then Jayme landed in one. Then Amber Sullivan, the poetry girl. Then himself and Flores and now Flores again.
He gave up waiting for the elevator and looked around, spotted the stairwell sign, strode to it and took the stairs two at a time. Didn’t know if he was winded because of the stress or the bad lung and didn’t much care which, just didn’t want to be in a hospital again. Didn’t like the way they smelled, didn’t like the fluorescent lighting, didn’t like the concrete walls or the tiled floors and what the hell had Flores done to get herself hurt again? He pushed through the double metal doors at the top of the second-floor landing and thought, if this is what it’s like being a father, I don’t like it much.
When Jayme received DeMarco’s call alerting her to Flores’s hospitalization, she had been canvassing the shops around Mercer’s courthouse square, pretending to be a long-lost cousin of Linda Szabo researching the family tree. She had jumped into her car and sped onto Route 58 north, a quiet two-lane country road, and arrived at the imaging facility a full ten minutes before DeMarco, who seemed to hit every red light between Farrell and Greenville. He spotted Jayme standing on the threshold of the waiting room, looking his way.
Immediately she hurried up to him and laid a hand on his chest. “Don’t be angry,” she told him. “She’s terrified that you’re going to rip her head off. And it already has sixteen staples in it.”
“What the hell happened?”
“She got a tip that Szabo was staying in a little place out on Fredonia Road.”
“And she went there on her own?” His voice was louder than he wanted it to be, but that too seemed out of his control for now.
“Baby, calm down. She’s going to be okay.”
“Jesus fu—” he started, then turned and, muttering and walking away from her, spoke to the empty hallway. “Jesus on a crutch!”
She followed. Laid a hand on his arm. “I know,” she said. “I know.”
He turned. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
“So she found the place and went up and knocked on the door. And the guy you arrested with Szabo back in the day? He’s the one who came to the door.”
He thought back. Hard to see into the past through a fog of anger and worry. But okay, yep, there it was. “Miklos?” he said. He had forgotten all about him. Meek and invisible. Not cut from the same cloth as Szabo. “Eugene Miklos?”
Jayme nodded. “And Dani stepped inside, and bam. Somebody whacked her from behind.”
“Miklos did that?” he asked.
“No, somebody else. She never caught a glimpse of him. But yeah, it was Szabo.”
“And you know that how?”
“It was Miklos who called the ambulance for her. He didn’t run. Szabo did. In Dani’s car apparently.”
“Great,” DeMarco said.
“The Greenville police turned the house upside down looking for some clue as to where he might be. They took some hairs and fibers but there was no scrapbook of his favorite places, unfortunately. They have an ATL out on him.”
“And Miklos?”
“They’re just holding him for now. I told them you’ll be there ASAP.”
“Okay,” he said, nodding. “That’s good. Good.”
“Maybe you should go there straightaway.”
“And not see Dani? What do you think I’m going to say to her?”
“She’s really torn up, baby. She thinks she failed you again. She thinks you’re going to think she’s nothing but a screwup.”
He frowned, shook his head. “Where is she?”
“How about if I go back first and let her know you’re not angry?”
“How about you tell me where she is.”
She held her gaze steady on his eyes, her hand on his chest now, atop his racing heart.
He said, “Give me a little credit, okay?”
She nodded. Smiled. “She’s in recovery room 3. They’re basically just keeping her until her BP and heart rate come down a little more. Plus she’s thrown up a couple of times from the concussion. I told her I’ll drive her home when she’s ready.”
“The scan came out okay?”
“Thank God. No intracranial bleeding.”
He nodded. Said, “I won’t be long,” and headed down the hallway to the recovery rooms.
Flores, fully dressed and seated in a chair against the wall, her feet pressed together, jerked when he eased open the door and peeked inside. “Hey,” he said.
Tears welled up in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He went to her and stood beside the chair and pulled her head to his chest. He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head, careful to avoid the gauze and the injury underneath, and told her, “I’m going to catch him and bring him to you, Dani. I’ll give you fifteen minutes alone with him to do whatever you want. Nobody hurts one of my people and gets away with it.”
She pulled away a little and looked up at him and said, “I’m going to need at least an hour with him.”
“Done,” he said, and pulled her close again.
Sixty-Eight
The poetry of the prosaic
Sergeant Moore of the Greenville police had placed Eugene “Poindexter” Miklos in a small interview room, gave him a mug of hot tea and a PayDay candy bar and left him alone with his thoughts and an empty chair. He was in the process of folding the candy bar wrapper into a tight little square with its corners tucked into each other when the door swung open and DeMarco came in smiling.
“Well, well, well,” DeMarco said, and eased himself down onto the chair facing Miklos. “Aren’t you a blast from the past?”
“Yes, sir,” Miklos answered, and tucked the square of crinkly paper into his shirt pocket. He had dressed for the occasion in a red-and-black-checkered short-sleeve shirt, a pair of neatly pressed tan chinos and a pair of clean white sneakers from Walmart.
“Do you remember me?” DeMarco asked.
“Yes, sir,” Miklos said. The empty tea mug—cream-colored ceramic, not paper, with the Greenville Police emblem printed on one side—sat on the floor, wedged into the corner behind Miklos’s chair. The boy is neat, DeMarco remembered. Excessively so. Asperger’s.
“It’s nice to see you again, Eugene. You’re looking well.”
“Thank you.”
“And how has life been treating you?”
“Good. Quiet. Until recently.”
DeMarco nodded. “We’ll get to that in a minute. So what have you been doing with yourself these past months since you’ve been out?”
“I build computers,” Miklos said.
“You mean, like, from kits?”
“No, sir. From scratch. I purchase all of the necessary components online and build them to the customer’s specifications. I specialize in see-through.”
“See-through computers?”
“Yes, sir. The walls of the tower are made of shatterproof glass. Tinted, if requested. I prefer them clear myself.”
“And that keeps you busy?”
“Yes, sir. I currently have a five-month waiting list.”
“Good for you,” DeMarco said. “And how about Benny? Does he build computers too?”
“Ha!” Miklos said, an awkward, involuntary laugh.
“No?” said DeMarco. “Then why was he at your house today?”
“He was…uninvited,” Miklos said. “A temporary guest.”
“For how long?”
“He arrived on the evening of April 12. 7:12 p.m.”
And DeMarco thought, The day after Emma’s murder. “7:12 p.m. That’s fairly specific.”<
br />
“I had a dozen Pillsbury peanut butter cookies in the oven. I was watching the clock. Even if you line the cookie sheet with parchment paper, as is suggested in the instructions, and I use a double layer, the cookies can burn. Because my oven is electric. Dry heat. I would prefer a gas range but the house is all electric.”
“Gotcha,” DeMarco said. “So you didn’t invite him, yet there he was.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you want him staying in your house?”
“I would have preferred not. I prefer to be alone.”
“Just as you didn’t want to participate in those robberies several years back?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And that’s why you stayed in the house today when he took off with Ms. Flores’s car?”
“Yes, sir. I ran outside first and hid behind the house.”
“You mean after you saw him strike Ms. Flores and knock her unconscious?”
“Yes, sir. I went back inside when he drove off.”
“And called the ambulance for Ms. Flores.”
“Yes, sir. Her head was bleeding. I applied a folded towel to the wound to diminish the blood loss.”
“Right,” said DeMarco, nodding. “I got all that from Sergeant Moore. But here’s what I’m wondering, Eugene. I’m wondering about your conversations with Benny. Did you know about his trip to Michigan before he came to stay with you?”
“To Michigan? Why would he go to Michigan?”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“I do not know very much about Michigan. I know where it is. I know that Lansing is the state capital. I know the volume of Lake Michigan in cubic kilometers. Four thousand, nine hundred, and…twenty! And I know that only Lake Superior’s volume is greater. Although Lake Huron has a larger surface area than Lake Michigan.”
“Okay,” DeMarco said. There was a kind of sad poetry to the way Miklos thought. Just as there was to Flores’s limp. And the knife scar along Jayme’s breast. He wished he had Huston’s gift for words so that he could express that sadness better, if only to himself.
He said, “What do you know about where Benny has been living since he was released, Eugene? And who he’s been associating with since then.”
“Nothing, sir. I do not know anything about any of that.”
“You and Benny didn’t converse during the past few days?”
“He watches TV in the living room. I build computers in my workroom.”
“That’s it?”
“I make the meals. He eats them. I clean up. He doesn’t.”
“Interesting. So tell me this, Eugene. Did you get the feeling, while he was staying with you, that he might have been hiding from something or somebody?”
“I did not think about it, sir.”
“You mean you tried not to think about it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that even possible? To not think about something that is staring you right in the face?”
“I learned to do it in prison. The trick is to build picture stories in the head. I build picture stories of a superhero I call Equilibrium. He can balance on a one-centimeter pebble, if need be. His supernatural equilibrium is his only superpower, yet it allows him to do wondrous things.”
“Right,” DeMarco said. “Okay.”
“Would you like to hear of some of his adventures? The one I like best takes place on a distant planet I call Little Tenninger. There is also a Greater Tenninger but the gravity there is too oppressive for humans.”
“Maybe some other time, Eugene.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I can see how a facility for building picture stories could come in handy in prison.”
“I would have died otherwise.”
“Figuratively, of course.”
“Yes, sir. And also literally. My death was imminent on numerous occasions.”
“In what way?”
“Every way possible.”
“I understand.” He had forgotten how pathetic Miklos had been at his earlier trial. His lawyer had pleaded for no jail time, had painted Eugene as a young man incapable of protecting himself. “If you send him to prison,” the lawyer had told the jury, “you are sending him to his death. He won’t survive.” The jury hadn’t bought it. And, despite how hellish those years must have been for Miklos, there he was, visibly well. But at what cost? DeMarco wondered.
Miklos said, “May I ask you a question, sir?”
“She’s okay,” DeMarco answered. “She needed staples and she has a concussion, but she’ll be okay. You did a very good thing, Eugene, when you chose to stay there with her and call the ambulance.”
“I was afraid.”
“I understand.”
“Not for her. For me.”
“It’s all right. I’ve never served time and I never want to. Sometimes fear can be a great motivator. You took care of her nonetheless, whatever your reasons.”
“I try to feel empathy sometimes but usually I can’t. Only for myself.”
“We are what we are, right? We try to improve what we can, we accept what can’t be improved.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have just one more question for you, Eugene. And then I will ask one of the officers to drive you home. Okay? You ready for one more?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you have any idea where Benny might be now?”
“I haven’t thought about it. I will if you want me to.”
“I would appreciate it very much. But in the meantime, you have no idea at all about where he might have gone?”
“I do not. I don’t know where other people go to hide. I go inside myself.”
DeMarco nodded. Smiled. “Probably the safest place there is,” he said. He took a business card from his credit card case and handed it to Miklos. “You call me if you think of anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Miklos said, but he kept staring at the card. Then he looked at DeMarco again, and extended the card to him. “It says Private Investigations, not Pennsylvania State Police.”
“I retired from the state police. I’m self-employed now, like you.”
“There is no health insurance,” Miklos said.
“Well, yeah, there is. But I hear what you’re saying.”
“I worry that I might get sick.”
“We all do. It’s a very common fear among the living.”
Miklos cocked his head, then smiled. He had caught the joke. “The dead don’t have to worry about getting sick.”
“That’s right. All they have to worry about is getting sent back to this…this you-know-what.”
“This trou à merde,” Miklos said, and blushed. “I learned that in prison.”
DeMarco nodded. “A useful phrase.”
“My cellmate sang it to the tune of ‘Frère Jacques.’ First thing every morning.”
“Well,” DeMarco said, and stood, “at least you had that, Eugene.”
“Yes, sir. But it wasn’t enough. Songs are never enough.”
So true, DeMarco thought, and nodded again, then turned to the door. There he remembered something else, and looked back. “When you get back home, Eugene,” he said, “you’re going to find your place in a bit of a mess. The police had to search it. Things won’t be the way you left them. Are you going to be able to handle that?”
“How bad is it?” Miklos asked.
“For you, it’s going to look bad. But just remember that you can put everything back in place again. And when you finish, nobody will even know how messy it was.”
“I will, though.”
“Yes, I know you will. Just try not to think about it.”
“I will build a picture story.”
“Excellent idea, Eugene. You might want to start building one now.”
&n
bsp; Sixty-Nine
Sometimes an inspiration
On the drive home the tension of failure tightened like a steel band around DeMarco’s skull. It was late afternoon now, or maybe early evening, he wasn’t sure of the demarcation, only that the sun was low and the shadows long. He had failed Emma, had failed Flores, had maybe lost Szabo for good now, and with him any chance of nailing whomever had paid Szabo to silence Emma and her grandmother. He knew that he shouldn’t hold himself responsible for Miklos’s misery either, but he did.
You’re reverting to old habits, he told himself. Start practicing what you preach or you will drive yourself off the deep end again.
So he tried. Instead of focusing on Flores and Emma he paid attention to his surroundings, let his gaze move about as freely as possible along the winding country roads. He looked at the houses, the farms, the woods and passing fields, and he isolated certain details that he found attractive or interesting, the yellow glow on window glass, a gray cat poised to pounce on a field mouse. He glanced up at the sky, the thick white clouds layered like trifle. There was a softness to all that he saw, a trick of the golden light and the stillness and the openness of the land and sky. Soon he found himself slowing and enjoying the slowness, taking note of all the sights that pleased him. He lowered the window so that he could smell the clean country air, the scents of leaves and fertile soil and grass. Then he thought about Jayme and how she, if beside him in the car, would be watching out her side window and softly smiling at the beauty of this ordinary moment. He remembered too that she had asked him a while back, during one of those ordinary moments, to write another poem for her. He had written only one so far, almost a year ago. He was not a good poet by even his unschooled standards, too literal for the literati, too self-conscious, and he had an outdated tendency to rhyme that would make real poets sneer. But maybe he could put something simple together for Jayme now, something spontaneous and raw that would make her happy when she heard it, and she would know that he had been thinking of her at this very moment, and that he always thought of her whenever they were apart.
When he came to a pull off along the side of the road, adjacent to a cornfield covered with stubble, he parked and got out and walked out into the stubble while holding his cell phone to his mouth, the voice recorder on as he talked softly into the phone, glad nobody was listening.
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