by Sara Reinke
It was almost quarter after six, with dawn upon the horizon, but he hadn’t thought about the possibility of bumping into her upon his return from Brenda’s house. Susan Vey had been the furthest thing from his mind, in fact, as he had been otherwise preoccupied by a maelstrom of emotions and worries. He’d been gone all night, a fact that wasn’t going to be lost upon his daughters, and he felt shitty and ashamed. He’d spent the night with Brenda, and they had made love over and over again in the upstairs bedroom―a feat of resilience and vigor that still astonished Paul. He hadn’t enjoyed lovemaking like that in forever, in twenty years at least. They had exhausted each other, dozing in between bouts, tucked in each other’s arms only to stir again after an hour or two of sleep for another round. It was as if they had felt somehow sheltered by the night, as if the reality of what they were doing hadn’t mattered without the light of the sun to lend it impact or meaning.
He’d awoke less than an hour ago to find himself alone in the bed. He’d smelled coffee, and after dressing, had followed the wondrous aroma downstairs to Brenda’s kitchen. He’d stood in the doorway, lingering uncertainly, watching her sit at a small breakfast table beneath a window, cradling a steaming mug between her hands.
“I need to think about this,” she’d told him, without looking at him. She’d gazed out the window, distracted and distant. “I…I need to think about what happened last night, what it means. How I feel about it.” She’d glanced in his direction, then away again. “I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t know how I feel about anything right now. I…I just…I need to think about it.”
He’d left, returning home, and the last person he’d been thinking about along the way was Susan. He blinked at her as she approached, and he could tell by the curious way she was looking at him that she had figured out that he wasn’t just up and about very early.
“Hey,” he said clumsily, because it would have been really rude to just duck and dash into the building without acknowledging her. “Hey, uh, Susan…hey. Funny running into you.”
“Yeah,” she replied, still visibly puzzled. “It’s a small world.”
Still getting smaller every day, he thought.
“So, you coming or going?” she asked, her eyes cutting downward, taking into account his rumpled shirt, his bluejeans.
“Oh, uh, coming,” he said. “Coming back, I mean. I had…an emergency pop up last night. Something with work. I had to run into the office late.”
“That case you mentioned to me? My scoop?”
“Yeah,” he replied, feeling like a shit heel, even though it wasn’t exactly lying. He had gone over to Brenda’s under the original pretense of examining a case file related to Melanie Geary’s. He’d had every good intention of making the visit completely work-related. “How about you? Coming or going?”
She laughed. “Coming back, too, as a matter of fact. I got an early start this morning. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” She was putting on a good show, polite affectations for his benefit, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. He felt as though she knew somehow where he’d been, what he had been doing, as if it was written in black magic-marker across his forehead. She smiled, but her eyes seemed sad and disappointed. “Well, I…I’ll see you. I need to go check on David.”
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I should go peek in on the girls.”
“See you,” she said again, turning and walking away, waggling her fingers briefly in farewell.
“See you,” he murmured, foregoing any more courtesy and opting for his original plan―ducking and dashing into the building.
He walked quietly into his apartment and paused outside the spare bedroom. The door was closed, and he opened it slowly, turning the knob carefully, soundlessly. He peeked into the shadow-draped room beyond the threshold and saw the silhouetted outlines of his daughters’ forms, tucked beneath the blankets, sleeping side by side in the bed. Satisfied that he hadn’t disturbed them, that his all-night absence had escaped their notice, he eased the door shut once more.
He went into his bedroom, stripping off his shirt and unbuttoning his jeans. He could still smell Brenda’s fragrance in his clothes, the sweet hint of her perfume, the scent of her hair. He could smell her against his skin, still taste her in his mouth, filling his mind with pleasant recollection. It amazed him that in one night, he had come to feel like himself again, like all of the nightmares and worries and troublesome thoughts that had plagued his mind recently were all gone and long forgotten. He had come to feel in his mind and heart as he had felt in his body in the months since Jay had resurrected him―young again, whole once more, healed, the ghosts of past abuses behind him.
He shucked down to his boxers and started across the hall for the bathroom. The phone rang, startling him, and he hurried for the kitchen to answer it before the shrill ring woke M.K. and Bethany.
“Hello?” he asked, foregoing the cordless unit and snatching the corded handset off the wall cradle by the refrigerator.
“Hi, Paul, it’s Jo.”
“Well, hey,” he said, blinking in surprise. “You’re up early. Everything okay?”
“I don’t know,” Jo replied. “You tell me. Has Jay left there yet?”
Paul blinked again. “What?”
“Jay,” she said again. “Has he left yet? We got a phone call last night from Bethany, and―”
“Bethany?” Paul said, frowning. “What are you talking about?”
Jo was quiet for a moment. “You…you don’t know? Isn’t Jay there? Didn’t the girls tell you?”
“Tell me what?” Paul asked, walking out of the kitchen and across the hall to the spare room. The phone cord stretched tautly behind him as he opened the bedroom door. “The girls are right here. They’re sleeping…”
His voice faltered. Outside, day was breaking, the shadows of dawn dissipating with muted sunlight. It was brighter in the room now than it had been only awhile earlier, when he’d first peered inside, and he realized how stupid he’d been. Oh, Christ.
“Hang on, Jo.”
He set the phone on the floor and marched to the bed. He jerked aside the covers. Jesus Christ, he thought, staring in dismay at the two matching piles of pillows tucked beneath. Jesus Christ on a pony, I fell for the oldest trick in the goddamn book.
He went back to the phone, snatching it in hand. “Tell me what happened.”
Jo told him, and with every word, with each new revelation, the knot that had twisted in his stomach at the sight of those pillows, that had begun seeping outward in the precious few moments since, reaching for his balls, tightened.
“What time did you say this was?” he asked.
“Jay left here around three,” Jo said. “I’ve been trying to call him, but his phone is turned off. It keeps going straight to voice mail. Bethany called us from her cell, but every time I try, I don’t get an answer there, either.” Her voice trembled slightly. “Paul, what’s going on? I’m worried.”
Christ, I am, too.
“I mean, this isn’t like Jay at all, not to call and let me know what’s going on,” Jo continued. “I don’t know where this place, Snake Eyes, is for sure, but I―”
“What?” Paul said, the knot in his gut and groin suddenly seizing his throat, choking the breath from him. He felt his face go ashen and he stumbled. Oh, God.
“Snake Eyes,” she said again, and Paul sat down hard in the corridor. “That’s the name of the nightclub Bethany said they were at. That’s where Jay went to pick―”
“Jo, I’m going to go look for them,” Paul said. “You stay put, okay? Call me if you hear from him―as soon as Jay calls you.”
“I want to go with you.” Jo had never been the sort to play the damsel-in-distress, and from the tone of her voice, she wasn’t about to start now.
“No, Jo, you stay there with Emma,” he said. He rose to his feet, forking his fingers through his hair. “Look, if I know Jay, he probably took the girls to one of those all-night waffle places to try
and sober them up so I wouldn’t wring their necks too badly. He’s probably sitting there with them now, telling them all kinds of stories about how he and I used to try and pull shit like this, too, when we were kids―and how we never got away with it, either.”
God, I hope so, anyway, he thought. Please let that be true.
But he knew in his heart, in that knotted pit that had become his stomach and balls, that it wasn’t.
“I’ll find them,” he told Jo. “Trust me, if there’s one thing any veteran cop knows in this city, it’s where every all-night waffle joint is.”
He hadn’t hung up from her for a full minute before the phone rang again. He had only just turned to go back to his room, to dress again, and he snatched the corded handset off the wall again. “You heard from him?” he said instead of any greeting, assuming it was Jo calling back, and―he desperately hoped―bearing good news.
“Uh…Paul?” his partner said sounding startled and bewildered. “It’s Jason. You…you okay?”
Paul sighed, shoving his fingers through his hair and gritting his teeth. “I’m fine,” he said, his voice tense and clipped. “Look, Jason, right now is really not―”
“Paul, wait, before you hang up on me, there’s something I really think you ought to know,” Jason said in a single, harried breath. The urgency in his tone drew Paul’s momentary, quiet attention. “I found something online. I was doing some research, trying to find something, any kind of link between the whole Kewick-Milton-and-the-mayor business and the Melanie Geary case…”
Paul grinded his teeth together all the more. “Jason, I keep telling you,” he said. “There is no Melanie Geary case. We―”
“Just listen,” Jason snapped, his sharp tone startling Paul. “I didn’t find anything there, not from that angle, anyway, but I did find something else. Susan Vey had a restraining order out against Melanie Geary.”
Paul’s eyes flew wide and his breath stilled. “Susan Vey?”
“The new reported with Channel 11,” Jason said. “The little brunette, the one who’s been acting all friendly with you lately. I figured you―”
“I know who she is,” Paul said. “What…why in the hell did she have an order out against Melanie Geary?”
“Some incident about a month ago, over at the Liberty Heights development. Susan was out there covering the protests and claims Melanie Geary attacked her, swinging and punching, spitting and cussing her on the air.”
It was cancelled, Susan had told him of her recent live shot at that very same location. Something came up. It’s just as well. Last time I did a live shot there, one of the protestors decided to spit in my face on camera. They were up there picketing, trying to stop them from tearing down the sanitarium.
“Jesus,” Paul whispered.
“Yeah, well, get this,” Jason said. “There’s more to the story than that. Seems Melanie Geary and Susan Vey have a history together that goes back about two years, to Chesterfield College.”
“That’s where Melanie’s father worked…” Paul said.
“Daniel Geary, Head of the English department, yeah,” Jason said. “Turns out, that’s where Susan Vey went to school, too. With a double major in broadcast journalism and English.”
Paul blinked in surprise.
“She was sleeping with him, Paul,” Jason said. “Looks like Susan Vey has a thing for older guys. She and Geary carried on a big, hot and heavy affair that damn near cost him his job when the school caught wind of it. It made all the papers up there in Chesterfield. It was quite the scandal de jour for awhile. Geary’s wife left him over it, even though he ended the fling with Susan and tried to patch things up with her. Apparently, there was no love lost between Susan and his daughter, either.”
“Holy shit,” Paul said.
“Yeah, and it gets even better,” Jason said. “Turns out, Melanie Geary filed a counter restraining order against Susan Vey. Melanie claimed that Susan had been harassing her after her father had dumped Susan, that Susan blamed her for the break-up. Melanie said Susan had followed her here from Chesterfield to continue the harassment.”
“Holy shit,” Paul said again, too startled to say anything else.
“Yeah,” Jason agreed. “Sounds like Susan has some anger management issues. Not to mention an Elektra complex.”
“Elektra?” Paul asked.
“You know, the Freudian theory,” Jason said. “The one that talks about how girls are secretly in love with their fathers, or how they’ll look for mates who remind them of their fathers, or something like that. It’s from Greek mythology. Elektra killed people for revenge over the death of her father.”
Paul shook his head. “Look, Jason,” he said. “This is all well and good, and I really appreciate you digging it up. Maybe we can do something with it later. I don’t know. Right now, what I do know is that Susan Vey didn’t kill Melanie Geary. And I also know I don’t have time to discuss this with you. I gotta go.”
“But, wait,” Jason said. “There’s―”
“I gotta go,” Paul said again, hanging up on the younger man. He hurried down the hall back to his bedroom and grabbed his clothes from the floor. As he was drawing his jeans up over his hip, he heard his cell phone start to ring inside the front hip pocket. Goddamn it, Jason, just because I said I needed to go doesn’t mean you can bug me on my cell phone, he thought, as he pulled it out and flipped it open. “I appreciate your help, kid, but I―” he began.
“Daddy?” M.K. whimpered through the phone, her voice choked and tremulous with tears.
“M.K.?” Paul gasped, his heart, breath and mind all shuddering to a sudden, icy halt. “M.K., sweetheart, where―?”
“Daddy, help us!” M.K. cried hoarsely, bursting into tears. There was static on the line, poor reception, and her words kept fading in and out, breaking up. “Oh, God, he…please, Daddy, Uncle Jay is hurt! He’s hurt real bad! You…you have to help us! Oh, God, please…!”
Her voice was shrill and cracked with terror, and it cleaved Paul’s heart, staggering him. “Where are you?” he asked. “M.K., honey, listen to me. You’re breaking up. Calm down and tell me where you are.”
“I don’t know!” she screamed. “I don’t know! I can’t get out! Uncle Jay said to run away, to find someplace where the phone would work, but there’s nothing but rooms! Rooms and walls and busted windows! Daddy, please, I’m scared! I can’t―”
A huge burst of static hissed in Paul’s ear, and he grimaced, jerking the phone back momentarily. “M.K.?” he said, drawing it hesitantly to his head again. There was nothing but silence, a smooth, dead line, and he felt his heart twist in sudden horror. “M.K.? Oh, God―Mary Kate! Mary Kate―answer me!”
He checked the display screen on his phone. She was calling from Jay’s cell. He frantically tried to redial, but kept hitting a recording that told him the cellular customer he was trying to reach was out of the service area.
“Goddamn it!” Paul cried after the fifth such attempt. He hurled the phone across the room and shoved his hands against his temples, forking his fingers through his hair. “Goddamn it!” he yelled again, and then his voice broke, an anguished choking sound escaping him. He sat down heavily against the foot of his bed and pressed his palms over his eyes.
Think, goddamn it, think! he told himself. You know where they are.
“No,” he whispered, gritting his teeth, his voice seeping through in a hiss.
Yes, you do. You’ve seen it before, more times than you can count
“I didn’t do this,” he breathed.
It’s where you brought Melanie Geary.
“No…”
where you brough Aimee Chesshire
“No, I didn’t…I didn’t…” Paul whispered.
You see it every time you close your goddamn eyes
“I didn’t do this!” he cried, throwing his head back and shouting at the ceiling. “I didn’t do this, I didn’t―goddamn it, I would never hurt my children!”
And then he
realized. He froze, his entire body stiffening, his breath bated, his eyes widening. He lowered his hands slowly from his face. “It wasn’t me,” he whispered. “It…it wasn’t me.”
I was at Brenda’s last night. I was with Brenda all night long.
Jo had told him that Bethany had called Jay around three o’clock in the morning. Snake Eyes was in the heart of downtown; it would have taken Jay a half-hour to forty-five minutes, depending on traffic to reach them. Which meant whatever had happened to them had occurred sometime roughly after three-thirty in the morning.
And I was with Brenda.
Paul got up and went to the far corner of the room, where he’d thrown his phone. He picked it up and dialed Brenda’s number. “Brenda, about last night―” he began.
“Paul, I’m really not ready to talk about this right now,” she said. “I just…I told you, I need some time to think about things and try to sort them out in my head. I can’t―”
“Was I there all last night?” he asked, cutting her off, startling her into silence.
“What?” she asked after a moment.
“The whole night through―was I there, Brenda? Was I with you?”
Again, momentary silence. And then, “Is this some kind of joke, Paul? What, are you trying to pretend it didn’t happen now?”
“No,” Paul said, shaking his head. “No, you don’t understand. Last night was phenomenal. It…it was the most amazing night I’ve had in ages―Christ, my whole life through, in fact. It’s just…I’ve been seeing these things inside my head, having nightmares about shit―Melanie Geary and Aimee Chesshire, and I…” He was trembling, and laughed suddenly, dazedly, humorlessly. “I thought I had killed them.”
“What?” Brenda asked. “Paul, I don’t―”
“But I couldn’t have,” he said. “I couldn’t have, not even with the sleepwalking, because I was with you last night. I was with you.”
“Paul, what are you talking about?” She sounded more than confused now; Brenda sounded frightened. He was scaring her.
That makes two of us, sweetheart.
He stormed out of the bedroom, hurrying toward his computer desk. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll tell you later. I’ll explain everything, I swear to God. I just…right now I have to go.”
