A Long Way Down

by Randall Silvis

  She scraped the sole of her shoe back and forth over the concrete. “What keeps tripping me up is the two men,” she said. “I can buy a messed-up kid taking his sexual frustration out on Sammy, but what’s that have to do with Hufford and Brenner?”

  “That’s always been the question.”

  “Do you think there’s a chance Connor was selling drugs to them too?”

  “That or some other connection we just can’t see yet.”

  They were silent for a while. Then she said, “It’s strange how quiet everything is. No birds. No kids riding their bikes or playing ball in the street. Nobody mowing their yard.”

  “Ghosts,” DeMarco said. “Ghosts don’t make any noise.”

  When the sound of the locksmith’s truck reached their ears, everybody turned, smiled, and stood at attention. They could have been kids waiting for the ice cream truck. But no tinny melody emanated from the truck, only a rattle and screech as the vehicle nosed into the driveway and came to a stop.

  The driver took his time climbing out, then ambled toward Olcott with a bag of tools in hand. The man was at least eighty years old, DeMarco thought, out of another era. He wore baggy jeans and, despite the heat, a stained, too-small blue chambray shirt rolled to the elbows. He was short and barrel-chested, paunchy, bowlegged and stiff, his gray hair a mess of frizz and limp curls, his hands and forearms thick and hairy.

  “It’s Norman Mailer,” DeMarco said, and started toward the garage. “Let’s go get his autograph.”

  Jayme and the four men gathered around the old man as he worked, trying out one master key after another from his ring of a hundred or so. Be there, DeMarco kept thinking. Be there. Be there. Be there.

  When the lock clicked, the old man left the key in place and stepped back, allowing Olcott to swing the door open. DeMarco shifted position to peer over the detective’s shoulder, and saw orange. He blinked and stepped closer.

  The Dodge Charger was there, its orange body waxed and shining in the shaft of low light that flooded inside. Olcott allowed Jayme and DeMarco to join him inside, but suggested that they stand against the wall on either side of the door so as not to block the light. The two small windows near the roof were filmed with dust but allowed a soft suffusion of light to enter.

  A blue microfiber towel had been stuffed down into the driver’s door handle. The only dirt on the vehicle was the dried mud caked in the tire treads. The vehicle was locked, all windows up. An empty Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup standing upright on the passenger floor was the only discernible object inside.

  “Nobody touch anything,” Olcott said. He turned, saw Blanchard standing just outside the door, and tossed him his car keys. “Black Dragon gloves,” he said. “In the console. Bring the whole box. Plus some evidence bags.” He pulled out his cell phone, turned back to the vehicle, and clicked off a dozen photos, taken at various distances and angles.

  He then turned to Blanchard, who was now waiting with the gloves and evidence bags. Olcott removed a pair of the tight black nitrile gloves and pulled them on. Then removed the small towel from the door handle and placed it in an evidence bag, and passed the bag to Officer Simms.

  To the locksmith, Olcott said, “Trunk, please?”

  DeMarco kept trying to peer through the car windows, hands at his side. Twice he had to remind himself to take a breath. But nothing was visible on the front seats. Nothing on the rear seats.

  The trunk lock clicked, and the locksmith stepped away from the car. “That it?” he asked.

  “That’s everything, thanks,” Olcott said. “We’ll leave the interior for forensics.”

  The locksmith jangled his keys as he returned to his truck.

  Now Olcott stepped close to the trunk, slipped a gloved finger beneath the edge of the lid, and lifted it up. Jayme and DeMarco leaned closer. Be there, DeMarco thought. He wanted to see a folder, or a large envelope, anything that might hold Samantha’s missing pages.

  Instead, each time the camera’s flash illuminated the inside of the trunk, DeMarco saw something new.

  A folded gray blanket. A box of Saran wrap. An opened box of Curad latex gloves. A coil of yellow polypropylene rope. A plastic container of Pampers wet wipes. A roll of duct tape. A large Dick’s Sporting Goods shopping bag, with something inside.

  When Olcott finished taking photos, he turned, looked at both Jayme and DeMarco, then handed the phone to Jayme. He said, “Wait till I open up that shopping bag, then take as many as you think are necessary.”

  He leaned close to the Dick’s bag and carefully pulled the mouth open wide to expose a long black plastic box inside. Not until he had lifted the box out of the bag and set it atop the plastic was DeMarco able to see the thick yellow block lettering across the middle of the box. DeWALT.

  Olcott lifted his hands away from the box, took a step back, turned and looked at DeMarco, both men breathing quickly through their mouths now, eyes wide with surprise and recognition. For the next ten seconds, nothing could be heard but the sound of five people breathing.

  DeMarco felt weak and a little woozy. He knew that everyone in the garage felt the same. If the box still held its original contents…

  Olcott turned toward the open trunk again. Bent forward, clicked up the pair of plastic latches, one on each side of the box’s handle. He laid the lid back and stepped away again.

  A twenty-volt cordless reciprocating saw, the housing yellow, the handle and tip black. A battery recharger. An assortment of blades.

  In that instant, DeMarco envisioned every connection, the ideal scenario. Traces of blood on the Sawzall, all three victims’ blood. Connor’s DNA on the microfiber towel, the soft drink cup, his fingerprints and DNA on the saw handle and all through the vehicle. What he could not see was the why of it all. Why Hufford? Why Brenner? Why such a world where things like this could happen, and did happen, again and again and again?

  “Jayme,” Olcott said, his voice barely above a whisper. She came forward. The camera clicked. Nobody spoke. Only Jayme was not motionless, and her movements barely discernible, a half inch to this side, a quarter inch lower. When she finished, she too stood motionless, staring into the trunk. Then she lifted her gaze to Olcott, and their eyes met for several seconds. When she held the phone out to him, her hand was trembling. He took the phone, slipped it back into his pocket.

  Every movement seemed slow now, as if somehow restrained, underwater. Breaths were slow and deep, going in, going out.

  Olcott was the first to speak. “That’s it, then,” he said. “That appears to be it.”

  He turned to DeMarco. “No notebook paper,” he said. “Sorry.”

  DeMarco blinked, was still feeling dazed. “Murder weapon beats paper,” he answered, “any day of the week.”

  Olcott smiled, nodded.

  Jayme said, as if to herself, “I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

  Olcott looked at every face in turn, nodded, and smiled to each of them. Then returned his gaze to Jayme and DeMarco.

  “It’s been a long day,” he said. “All this has to be processed, and then we’ll get the vehicle towed out of here. There’s no need for you guys to hang around for that. Why don’t you go on home and have yourselves a glass of wine or two. You deserve to celebrate a little.”

  DeMarco said, “As long as we’re in town, how about if my partner and I pay another visit to Victoria McBride, just in case her prodigal son has returned?”

  “Blanchard and Simms will take care of that. Right, guys?” Olcott said. “Meantime I’ll contact the Vienna Center police department to follow up with the Lubiches. If we strike out there, I’ll put out an ATL. He can’t be far away if he’s on foot.”

  “For all we know,” said DeMarco, “he could have been watching us all this time. Might be watching us right now.”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “Jayme and I c
an do a house-to-house if you want.”

  “I’ll get some people here,” Olcott said.

  Jayme said, “How about calling Uber? See if any driver did a pickup or drop-off near here today.”

  Olcott nodded. “We’ll take care of it. Listen, you guys did great. You did all the heavy lifting. Leave the rest to us, okay? We’ll find him. Don’t worry.”

  DeMarco blew out a slow breath. Gave Olcott a slow nod. Then he turned to Jayme. “Call it a day?”

  “Yeah,” she said after a pause. “Let’s do that.”

  His knees felt stiff, legs weak as they walked to the car. The late-afternoon light seemed somehow strange now, so golden and soft and almost sad, like a candlelit silence. At the car they both paused to look back, saw the detective and the two officers standing there watching them, softly talking. Finally DeMarco clicked the remote to unlock the doors, and they climbed inside, into the stale and smothering heat.

  He slipped the key into the ignition, but did not turn the key. The light was coming straight through the windshield now, straight up the street and in through the bug-specked glass.

  He said, “Kind of anticlimactic, isn’t it?”

  She snapped the seat belt into place. “This is what we get for giving up the badge.”

  He nodded. “You miss it?”

  “At times like this I do.”

  He said nothing. Nodded to himself. After a while, she said, “You want to start the car? Or should I get out and push us home?”

  There was a quality to her voice that made him look her way, and a quality to the way he looked at her that made her say, “Don’t look at me like that, babe. I already feel like crying.”

  “About what?” he said.

  And she said, “I don’t even know.”

  Seventy-Eight

  It took DeMarco a long time to push the events of the day to the back of his brain, though he knew it was good and even necessary to do so. There wasn’t much they could accomplish until Connor was found. The police would visit Gillespie and Kaitlin and Griffin, take them in for questioning, see what stories they spun and how those stories held up over time. Olcott or maybe Ben would call on the university president to inform him of Gillespie’s activities with his students, and that thread of the story would take on its own importance, though probably a secretive one, considering how much the university had to lose with such bad publicity. In any case, what remained to do was out of DeMarco and Jayme’s hands now. The police would wrap things up.

  Thank God for Tom’s pages. There was no more effective distraction for DeMarco than to hear his friend’s thoughts. He always heard them delivered in Tom’s voice too, that rich, practiced baritone that knew just when to pause, inflect, when to quicken the pace or slow down and deepen.

  It was a poem that finally took DeMarco away from his own ruminations that night, and into the head and voice of his friend. The poem was titled “Thinking Twice,” and DeMarco read it three times, each time a bit more slowly, and feeling more certain each time that the poem had been written about him:

  Lying in my narrow bed with the transistor radio on.

  Listening to a game as Clemente belts a home run.

  Never thinking twice that no morning is guaranteed.

  Stretched out in the night grass, watching stars beside some girl.

  Touching. Exploring. Bragging about the ways we’ll leave our fingerprints on the world.

  Never thinking twice that dreams can be so easily undreamed.

  Grabbing food out of my mom’s refrigerator.

  Running out the door yelling, “Catch you later!”

  Never thinking twice about that door slamming shut.

  Tucking my babies into bed every night.

  Kissing their cheeks, whispering, “Sleep tight.”

  Never thinking twice that the kisses could dry up.

  Sleeping in the chair with the television on.

  Waking in a house with everybody gone.

  Listening to the dirt fall on a cold metal roof.

  Drowning in the darkness. Cursing the truth.

  Thinking twice.

  He thought about sharing the poem with Laraine…but then caught himself, abruptly, and felt a hot rush of guilt, followed by a shiver of recognition of the damage he might have done had he said that name aloud.

  It wasn’t the first time he had been reading and momentarily forgot that the woman beside him was not Laraine. He hadn’t read in bed like this since the first years of his marriage, when Laraine was doing her best to round off his rough edges with literature and drama and poetry. The lapse was always a brief one but jarring nonetheless, and he felt an urge to apologize to Jayme afterward, but had enough sense to keep his mouth shut.

  But now he started wondering how Laraine was doing, and if he had done the right thing by leaving her at the hospital. Should he call to speak with her doctor again? Surely somebody from the hospital was keeping tabs on her. Was she going to therapy, other than with a psychic? What kind of safeguards had been implemented so that she wouldn’t cut herself again? Drugs, probably. Always the easy choice. And DeMarco hated drugs. He would rather feel his pain, not to wallow in it but to know it better. Only when you knew your pain could you fight it effectively. It was always a two-stage battle. No, make that three-stage. Know your pain; know yourself; engage. And hope you would survive. Survival was the fourth and final stage. From there you eventually circled back to the beginning again, because there was always a new pain or the resurgence of an old one.

  That was the thing he and Tom both understood, the commonality that had brought them together. Both were ambivalent survivors. DeMarco was older, and his wounds, his amputations, were older too, but Tom was a better thinker, better at the kind of self-analysis that might someday yield salubrious results.

  That was why reading his reflections, random, fragmentary, and unpredictable as they sometimes were, brought DeMarco not only pleasure but relief. The pleasure of relief. DeMarco could take Tom’s thoughts and make them his own. Or at least pick them apart and find a nugget to clutch, to slip into his pocket, so to speak. And now that Tom was gone…

  His death had altered the balance somehow. Before, Tom had been the younger brother, brighter and handsomer and more successful, and DeMarco had felt a truly brotherly pride in him. But death had made Tom wiser. Older. Bestowed upon him, DeMarco imagined, a more panoramic view. If death couldn’t be counted on for that, what good was it?

  He was sitting with the back of his skull against the headboard, eyes on the far corner of the ceiling, where the light from his little reading lamp did not reach, when, out of the blue, Jayme startled him with a question. “Does it seem to you that we have a lot of sex?” she asked.

  He blinked. Rolled his head against the headboard. Tried to quickly make the adjustment, but her question had jarred him. “Where did that come from?” he asked.

  “This piece I just now read. This line in particular: ‘when I can no longer find that earthly ecstasy of joining my body with my lover’s.’”

  “And you think that can happen from too much sex?” he asked. “That it loses its, I don’t know, magic?”

  “Do you?”

  Oh God, he thought. It’s going to be one of those conversations. Watch out for the quicksand. “I guess it can if you let it,” he said. “Are you worried about that happening to us?”

  “Not necessarily. Statistically, though, most couples don’t have as much sex as we do.”

  “Are you saying we have too much?”

  “I’m asking what is too much. We have it almost every morning. Then almost every night.”

  “Is it a good thing or a bad thing that you’re keeping track?”

  “I want to be sure that you’re getting enough,” she said, “but not too much. Does that make sense? I want to keep you happy.”

 
“I am happy.”

  “Would more sex make you happier?”

  “Honestly?”

  “No, babe, lie to me. Of course honestly.”

  “All right then. There are times. Afternoons, especially. Sometimes I’d like to just reach over and touch you and…start taking your clothes off.”

  “Is this one of those times?”

  He thought for a moment. No way he could tell her he’d been thinking, if only momentarily, about Laraine. So what was the correct answer? “Sure,” he said. “I mean…I never lose the desire for you. I just don’t want you thinking that it’s, you know, all about the sex for me. The only reason I want the sex is because of our feelings for each other.”

  “So let’s say we don’t know each other,” she said. “We’ve never seen each other before. Then we happen to get on an elevator together. Just us. I’m wearing that short red skirt you like. And I lean up against you and whisper, ‘Please, mister. Take me right now, right here.’ Would you do it?”

  “That’s a trick question if I’ve ever heard one.”

  “Would you or wouldn’t you?”

  He thought for a moment, then asked, “How many floors?”

  She punched his arm. “See? You would! Under the right circumstances, you would have sex with me even if you’d never seen me before. Ergo, you’re an asshole.”

  He used his left hand to rub his arm. “I thought we were talking about frequency. What does that have to do with elevators?”

  She punched him again.

  He winced, tried to think of something funny to say, then decided to say nothing.

  She went back to reading, or at least pretending to, snapping the pages and holding them close to her face. And there was something about her pouty petulance that he found arousing, but the arousal made him feel like an oaf because he wanted to touch her again, wanted to lay his hand on her thigh and press his mouth to her neck.