“What exactly did the ad say?”
“Something like, ‘Mature, reliable, and honest, we will do your dirty jobs and resolve your biggest problems for a fee. If you want it done right, hire a woman.’”
“How the heck are our customers supposed to know we want to bump off their enemies from that?”
“Several scary ads said something similar. Look, this customer knew what we meant.”
The kitchen was silent for several moments. One of the cats stretched, then jumped onto the table and lay across the gas port. Sophie scratched its ears.
Finally, Lois said, “I killed deer and geese when I was a kid on my grandma’s farm. In Nam I killed at least two of the enemy. But I don’t think I could stand it if the bad guys employ us to go after the good guys. There’s a difference for me when I consider the things I shoot as meat for dinner or as the enemy.”
Sophie passed the paper to Lois. “Well, take a look at least.”
Lois read, then looked up. “This is a lot of money.”
Sophie grabbed a paper towel and began working on spots of gun oil that shone on the checkered tablecloth.
Lois said, “I need a new spring and a cleaning kit before I can use this weapon again.”
“Should we order from the Internet?”
“Don’t think so. They’d have to mail the stuff to this address. A gun show’s coming up in Rockford. No one would trace the stuff I need from there. I’ll see what I can get. I’ll need cash though.”
Sophie pulled the gas port from beneath the indignant cat. “You know, pipe cleaners might work for this—they come in fairly large sizes.”
Lois stood and crossed the kitchen to the sink, where she filled an empty Tupperware pitcher with cool water.
Sophie said, “You’ve been thinking about Ruby again, haven’t you?”
Lois nodded. “I sometimes wonder what her life would have been like if I’d left her in Vietnam.”
“The war went on for several more years. She wouldn’t have survived.”
“I told Nghuy Tran I’d give her a good life. Maybe death would have been better than the way things turned out here.”
Sophie stood behind Lois and lightly massaged the back of her neck. “You gave her the opportunity to have a good life. She threw it away.”
Lois sighed and turned around. They embraced, and Lois said into Sophie’s shoulder, “Will you ever forgive her?”
The kitchen was quiet again. The refrigerator motor kicked on. Finally Sophie said, “I don’t know.”
Lois pulled away and went to the back door. A leather leash was looped over a coat hook near the mudroom and the basement steps. She pushed the back door open and said, almost as an afterthought, “I’m going to give Daisy some water and walk her before it starts to rain.”
As it turned out, thanks to word-of-mouth, they got another ex-husband job in Indiana, up north in Muncie, before they met the woman who contacted them through Dirty Work for Hire.
Chapter Five
Morgan Holiday’s pager went off at four fifteen in the morning. The room was cold and dark except for narrow strips from the streetlight that fell through the slats in the plantation shutters. Still half-asleep, she shut off the pager, nestled down under the blanket, and closed her eyes again. It seemed like only a few seconds had passed when the thing went off again. She rolled to a sitting position, placed both feet on the cold hardwood floor, fumbled for the lamp switch, and grabbed the pager. As she tried to focus on the number, she realized she could hear the telephone in the kitchen ringing. She stood. Two pages and the telephone; this couldn’t be good.
In the kitchen, squinting at the harsh overhead light, she picked up the phone. “What?”
Henry’s voice was raspy. “You awake?”
“No.”
“Night-shift dispatcher just woke me. They got an officer out on a call. He needs Homicide.”
Morgan ran her tongue over her dry lips. Nestling the receiver between her ear and her shoulder, she pulled a juice glass from the dish drainer, filled it with tap water, and gulped it down. “Wait a minute,” she said. “I need to find something to write on.”
*
The sky in the east was turning gray by the time Morgan unlocked her car door and slid behind the wheel. As she turned the key, she hit the windshield wipers to remove the condensation. Then the loud rhythmic beat of the stereo filled the little red Saturn. She quickly turned it down.
A kid she’d babysat years ago had given her the CD, ironically titled Ready to Die, before what turned out to be his last tour in Afghanistan—his last tour anywhere. “Get past the profanity and listen to the lyrics,” he’d told her. “This guy was a poet.”
Morgan remembered that day clearly. It had been his last day home and her first day home. She hadn’t even unpacked her things in her old room yet. Her father’s broken leg had left him helpless, and so many things needed doing. Her mother couldn’t take care of him alone. But she started to suspect, when she walked into the house, that things with her mother weren’t right.
Morgan had attended the kid’s going-away party the day before he left. Tragically, as if their futures were already written, the boy never came home and she never left her parents’ house.
Instead of toward town, Morgan headed the opposite direction. There’d been a shooting in the county, at one of the parks. The music of Notorious B.I.G. (the kids today simply called him Biggie) kept her company as her car sped through early morning gray and empty streets toward the river road.
She could see the flashing lights from the entrance to the park, so she tossed the directions she’d written in red pencil on a paper plate into the backseat with the rest of the trash and followed the winding road toward the riverbank.
Looking old and tired, Henry stood next to his car waiting. He started talking without formality. “Body’s down near the edge of the water. Two kids parked over there”—he pointed toward the parking-lot entrance—“decided to take a moonlight stroll. Found him.”
“How long’s he been dead?”
Henry shrugged. “Don’t know. Crime-scene tech is waiting on you.”
“Me? Aren’t you the primary?” She looked at him more carefully now. Had he been drinking? His eyes were puffy and he needed a shave, but other than that, he seemed okay.
“Not me. You’ll know why when you see him.”
She started walking toward the riverbank. The wet grass abruptly ended, and the muddy bank dropped about eight or ten feet down and leveled out at the edge of the river. She cursed, then stepped off the bank and climbed and slid downward. She was thankful for the mud, really. It was the only thing that kept her from losing her footing. Maybe she was primary because Henry couldn’t make the climb down. It was all right with her. But he’d have to take the next two dead bodies, no matter where they were.
The body was facedown and shirtless, with jeans and underwear gathered around its ankles. As she moved closer, the lab technician—the new girl who got all the crappy assignments—stepped backward.
“What we got here, Rachel?”
“Looks like he fell from up there.” Rachel pointed.
“Then why did the first-on-the-scene call Homicide?”
“Sorry,” the girl stammered. “I wasn’t clear. I think he was shot up there and, as he fell, he rolled down here.”
“Any ID?”
“I checked his pockets. They’re empty.”
“So maybe he was robbed”
“I don’t think so. Take a closer look at the entry wound.”
Morgan knelt. The toes of her shoes were covered with mud—great. She looked closer at the body, then said, “Well, it’s pretty damn big. Are you sure this isn’t the exit?” The wound, just below the left ear, had caused quite a bit of damage. No stippling. Not a close shot. Something seemed familiar.
“It looks like the entrance wound of an assault rifle,” Rachel said. “I haven’t seen anything like this since that guy on the west end a couple of month
s ago. Irving, wasn’t it?”
“Ingram.” Morgan’s voice was flat. Now she knew why she was the primary. Kneeling beside the body, she patted her pants pockets. Next to her, the slow-moving water reflected the gold of the early morning sunlight. Flies circled and landed on the open wound. “You have any extra gloves?”
Rachel turned to her kit and rummaged around. She passed the rubber gloves to Morgan, who snapped them on. “You have all the photos?”
Rachel nodded.
“Then give me a hand, let’s roll him over.”
There was mud on his face, what was left of it. He was exposed from the waist down.
“How you doin’ down there?” Henry called from above.
Morgan shaded her eyes and squinted up at him. “Did anyone look for a casing?”
“Aw, they’ve searched up here and got nothing. I didn’t want to push it because the ground is so soft, they could mess up our evidence.”
“Good thinking. What about the kids?”
“I talked to them—got IDs. They didn’t see nothing. Just the guy’s ass shining up at them.”
“Were they down here?”
“They told the uniform they weren’t.”
“Get someone busy making casts of the footprints we can find—all of them.”
Henry nodded, then pointed downriver. “See that over there? It’s a boat dock, with a bait shop beyond that.”
“You think the shot came from that direction?”
Henry sighed. “He would have been silhouetted in the light from behind. Would make an easier target.”
“We’ll need help getting him back up there.” Morgan turned to Rachel and asked if she’d called body pickup.
“Waiting for you.”
“Go ahead then.”
Rachel ripped off her rubber gloves and pulled her cell phone off her belt.
Morgan heard male voices and looked up again. A uniform was talking to Henry. She called to him, “What’s up?”
Henry turned her direction and said, “We’ve found the guy’s shirt and his wallet. He wasn’t robbed. Money’s still there—a hundred and thirty-three dollars.”
“Any ID?”
“Yeah, just a minute.” Henry turned and said something to the uniform. Then he called down to her. “Looks like his name is Jon Woods. Calumet City, Illinois.”
“What the hell is he doing here?” Morgan asked.
The question was rhetorical, but Henry shrugged and shook his head. “We also got blood spatter up here.”
So the tech had been right. He would have been standing with his back to the river, his shirt off, and his pants down—that is, if the shooter had been up on high ground too. She looked downstream. She could see the boat dock. A shooter could have gotten him in his sights from there. In fact, the exit wound, large as it was, might indicate that the shooter was positioned below the vic. Morgan called to Henry, “Is anybody running the name?”
“Working on it.”
Morgan turned to Rachel and said, “Stay with him until body pickup gets here.”
“That’s my job.”
“I’ll make sure a couple of uniforms stick around to help get the body up the bank.”
“I think we’ll manage, but thanks.”
“Anything else?
“There’s some lividity and rigor has started. Probably happened over two hours ago. I’ll know more when we get him back to the morgue.”
Morgan nodded. She could hear Henry in the distance as she started walking downstream toward the bait shop and the dock that jutted out over the glistening water.
*
With gray cement-block walls and a smooth concrete floor that had been swept and mopped to a shine, the crowded, brightly lit room contained a marriage of bad odors. The most prominent were cooked cabbage, cigarette smoke, and stale sweat—and of course the random dirty diaper. People sat at cheap red picnic tables, some in silence and others talking quietly. This day two babies were crying. Usually at least one baby screamed through the whole hour. About a half-dozen dark-skinned children ran between the red tables laughing and shouting. Ruby lit her third cigarette off the end of her second as she sat alone at a table, watched the locked door, and waited.
Sophie was half-an-hour late. Ruby had convinced herself that Sophie wasn’t coming, and she felt like a fool sitting alone. In the seven years Ruby had been incarcerated, her mother hadn’t as much as sent a Christmas card, but Sophie, though she’d never visited, had written several times, and she sometimes sent a little money.
In all this time, Ruby’s only communication had been with her ex-boyfriend and her ex-cellmate. Brian had called often when he first got paroled. Then he met another girl on the outside and that was the end of that. Tia Johnson, who’d shared a cell with Ruby for almost three years, wrote and called her several times for fifteen months after she earned parole. Tia had to use the name of Ruby’s mother when she contacted Ruby. Ex-cellmates were forbidden contact.
In the beginning, Ruby had planned to throw in with Tia. They’d get a little two-bedroom apartment and go to AA Meetings and work, and they’d take more classes at City College. Ruby was proud of the fifteen college hours she’d earned in the prison’s education program, but over the years funding had been cut, and the prison no longer offered enough classes to make up a two-year degree. Ruby had also enrolled in Gateway, the drug-rehabilitation program, several months ago; she’d started this to look good to the parole board. But something had snared her, and now she planned to keep going to meetings after she was released.
However, lately, as Tia Johnson had become more invested in things on the outside and less interested in things on the inside, her calls had grown shorter and further apart. Then the last time Tia called, she’d been strung out. She denied it, but Ruby could tell. Women who went back to drugs eventually resumed the crimes that accompanied drug use. Ruby had often seen inmates return to prison despite their best intentions.
The security door buzzed, then a tall, slender woman came inside. Her short pewter-colored hair was, as always, curled in a ruthless perm. She looked around the room as her eyes adjusted to the bright lights. Ruby waved, and Sophie walked toward her.
Sophie awkwardly climbed over the red bench that was attached to the picnic table and sat down.
Ruby said, “They have some coffee if you want some.”
Sophie shook her head. “I see you’re still smoking.”
Ruby looked at the cigarette between her fingers as if she was surprised it was there. Had she written to Sophie that she intended to quit? She couldn’t remember. What she did remember was the last time she saw her mother and Sophie. They’d told her they would testify against her. She’d stolen their joint-savings passbook, forged a signature, and disappeared with roughly sixteen thousand dollars. The state could send a
handwriting expert from its own forensic lab to testify against her. In the end, with the help of the public defender, she’d negotiated a plea. Due to mandatory sentencing she received fifteen years, including the time she’d already served in jail. It had been heroin that time.
Ruby shrugged. “Everybody said they were quitting when the price went up last time, but I suppose this is better than the other shit I’ve put in my body.”
Sophie placed both elbows on the table and stared at her. “You look older.”
“I am over forty, now.”
After an uncomfortable silence, Sophie asked, “What do you want, Ruby? What can’t you put in a letter?”
As if the absurdity of the whole thing suddenly hit Ruby, she stammered, “I guess I wanted you to see that I’ve changed.”
Sophie snorted.
“I’m in a program now. I really want to stay sober. I have a thousand plans—”
“Is one of those plans to pay your mother and me back for draining our savings? Or how about the TV—jewelry—or, for that matter, anything of value that we owned?”
Ruby put her head in her hands. At length she said, “You guys are al
l I’ve got.”
“And what, pray tell, makes you think you’ve got us?”
The space between them seemed vast, yet when Ruby answered, it was in a whisper. “Family is a place where you go, and no matter what, they always have to let you in.” Hot tears seared her cheeks. The trouble with sobriety was she felt everything.
Sophie reached into her purse and passed a tissue across the table.
“Thanks.” Ruby blew her nose and said, “Maybe this was a bad idea.”
Sophie sighed. “So you’re getting out soon?”
Ruby nodded, the soaked tissue wadded in her hand. “I’m up for parole in three months. I need a place to go to start out.”
“What about a halfway house or something?”
“I did that last time, remember? I had a friend, a cellmate, who went to one last year. We were planning to get a little place together and try to live right. But she’s using again, and I’m afraid if I take that path I’ll be doomed,” Ruby said. “I’ve been going to college here, and I want to keep on. I’m in the Gateway Program, and I want to stay sober. I want to find a job. You guys will be the first people I pay back—I want it that way. I really mean it this time.”
“You didn’t mean it last time?”
Ruby shook her head, then met Sophie’s eyes. “No. I don’t think I did.”
“How do I know this isn’t another one of those times?”
“You don’t, I guess.”
People were starting to gather their things and leave. The visiting hour was over.
Sophie said, “I’ll have to think about this. And, of course, I’ll have to talk to your mother—although I think that should be your job.”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“I know.” Without ceremony Sophie stood and, holding on to the picnic table, she awkwardly climbed over the attached bench.
Ruby said, “Can I get a hug?”
Sophie seemed to stiffen, but at length she held out her arms.
Ruby wrapped her arms around the old woman’s neck and squeezed. She could feel Sophie’s rigidity, but it didn’t matter. She smelled the familiar soft-powdered scent and remembered how fiercely she loved her. She couldn’t recall a time in her childhood when Sophie hadn’t been there playing good cop to her mother’s bad cop. Now here she was counting on that again.
Retirement Plan Page 6
