"Yeah," Buscetti nodded. "I know how it is."
Paul faked a smile, moved pseudo-casually into the other room, luring the detective away. Buscetti glanced again at the lock, then followed him. Paul set the toolbox down in the living room, which had improved greatly, holes patched, drywall up and neatly plastered. Open cans of paint sat on drop cloths, a tray and roller nearby. "S’cuse the mess," he said, gesturing around. "I was painting just before you came."
"Thought you were working on the boiler…"
"That, too," Paul said, covering, silently cursing himself. Paul picked up one of the cans, poured it into the tray. Buscetti noticed a skin on the latex, which slid into the tray and disappeared in an expanding pool of blue. Paul dipped the roller, wetting it. "So…" he said conversationally. "This a personal call, or business?"
"Personal," Buscetti answered.
Paul nodded. "How’re Angela and Dana Jean?"
"Angela’s great," Buscetti replied. "And DeeJay’s the best." Buscetti paused, suddenly awkward. Paul waved it off.
"It’s okay, Stevie. I’m happy for you." He paused, smiled. "Dee-Jay?"
Buscetti blushed. "That’s what we call her now. She’s a really great kid. Wouldn’t believe how big she is." He reached into his back pocket and withdrew an immensely fat wallet, flipped it open to a glassine accordion sleeve stuffed with baby pictures. He held it out to Paul, who whistled appreciatively.
"Jesus, dude, how do you sit?"
"With great difficulty." Buscetti grinned. For a moment, it seemed almost like the old days. Paul admired the photos.
"She’s beautiful," he told him. Buscetti beamed with pride, stuffed the wallet back in his pants. "How ‘bout you, man?" he said. "How’s Julie?"
"She’s good," Paul said, but his eyes said something else. Just like that, the good feeling fizzled. Paul didn’t elaborate, instead dipped the roller, painted a pale blue swath across the wall. "So…" he said. "Any breaks in the case?"
Buscetti shrugged. "Sadly, no," he replied. "Wish there were. We’re doing everything we can, but you know how it is." He paused. "I’m beginning to wonder if he might have run into foul play."
He watched Paul for a reaction; Paul didn’t turn, didn’t flinch, didn’t break his rhythm. "Foul play?" he remarked. "How Agatha Christie of you…" He turned to the detective, his face a mask of composure. "Are you serious?" Buscetti shrugged. "What kind of ‘foul play’?"
"Dunno," Buscetti replied. He sighed. "It’s probably nothing. People disappear all the time. He can run, but he can’t hide, not forever. We’ll get him eventually."
He watched Paul for a reaction, was quietly shocked to see that Paul had none. "Speaking of Wells…" Buscetti segued, "I heard about your little encounter with the dad."
"Yeah," Paul ruefully concurred. "You and the rest of the world. Fucking reporters."
"Yeah. Pretty ironic stuff, though," Buscetti ventured. "I mean, what are the odds of you and Wells being on the same road at the same hour, just as he cracks up his car."
"Such is life," Paul dipped the roller, nonchalantly kept painting. "I ever mention, this was going to be Kyra’s house one day? After she finished college, I mean." He rolled another swath. "Now I guess we’ll just sell it." The blue patch grew with every sweep. "She always loved this color, though. I feel like I should finish it the way she would have wanted, first." He dipped and rolled again, covering. "How’s that for ironic?"
"Yeah," Buscetti sighed, choosing his next words carefully. "I guess if anything ever happened to DeeJay… if anyone ever did anything… I don’t know what I’d do." He paused for effect, verbally stalking him. "Easy to see how something like that could drive someone to do things he otherwise would never have dreamed of."
"I guess," Paul said, noncommittal, rolling the paint just a little bit thicker. "But we can’t control what happens to us. We can only control what we do about it. Right?"
"Right." Buscetti looked around the room, taking it in. "So you don’t have a problem with the thing with Wells? I mean, him being the kid’s dad and you saving his life and all…"
Paul shook his head. "It’s what I do, remember?" He looked at Buscetti like he was nuts, then softened. "Was it weird? Yeah, in all honesty, it was. But it was nothing personal. Just taking care of business."
The conversation died. Paul dipped his roller, went back to work. "So, Stevie, it’s good to see you and all, but I kinda got a lot of work to do. S’there anything else you wanted to talk about?"
Buscetti looked at him, sizing him up. "Nah…" he replied. "I better get. Like I said, I was just in the neighborhood. Wanted to see how you’re doing."
"Catch ya later, then?"
Buscetti nodded. "Catch ya later."
He started to make his way out, heading back through the kitchen. Paul paused in his busy work to watch. Buscetti moved through the kitchen, heading for the back door. He stopped at the basement, gave the doorknob a little twist. It was locked.
Just then Paul stuck his head around the corner. Buscetti let go of the knob as their eyes met. "Stevie?" he said.
"Yeah?"
"Give Angela and Dee-Jay my love."
"Will do," he said. Paul smiled the coldest replica of a smile the detective had ever seen. Then went back to his busy work.
He wasn’t the only one.
~ * ~
That night found Will on his hands on knees, feverishly working at the loosened bolt. He had waited patiently on his bunk for what felt like hours, lying in perfect, still repose, until the timer which Paul had installed clicked the lights off. The moment darkness descended, Will was up and off the bunk, scrabbling to the leg of the chair.
He could not see his hand in front of his face, the darkness was so complete. Will felt for the bolt head, one of four anchoring each leg to its mounting plate. Will twisted it between his fingers, Paul’s words echoed in his mind: "I built this. The walls are two inches thick. The chair? Built that, too. Anchor bolts are three inches long. You could beat on it ‘til the cows come home; it ain’t going anywhere. And neither are you."
"We’ll see about that," Will hissed, and continued working the bolt. It squeaked and rose, thread by thread, gradually rising from its mooring… a half inch… an inch… with each successive turn, Will’s hopes grew brighter.
And then, halfway up, it stopped.
"No…" Will panicked. "Oh no no no no…" He tried twisting it again; the bolt would go down but would not rise further. Was it bent? Stuck?
"Fuck! C’mon, you piece of shit…" Will hissed, heart pounding, breath frantic. "c’mon c’mon c’mon…" He clawed at the bolt head until his fingertips were bloody, desperate to the point of madness. But just when he thought there was no hope, the bolt suddenly tweaked and twisted free, the threads lubricated by his blood.
"Yes!" Will fought to keep his voice down, on the off chance his captor might be outside somewhere, listening. The bolt creaked and rose… two inches… two and a half… three… then suddenly wobbled, tipping into his hands and clattering to the floor. Will felt around in the blackness, until he found it, directly under the chair. He picked it up and clutched it in awe. Will’s fingers traced almost lovingly down the wide, spiralled threads, three solid inches of 5/8ths inch steel, narrowing to a sharp and lethal point.
It was beautiful.
Will sat back, elated, and used the tip to tear a strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt. He wound the shred of fabric around the bolt’s hexagonal head, fashioning it into a crude but serviceable weapon, then wrapped his fingers around it, made a fist. The bolt jutted between his middle and ring fingers, a deadly spike.
"The way this works," he said mockingly, "is that you insert this end until it hits the blockage, and then you crank it." Will practiced punching the air, coming up from behind his back in a murderous roundhouse thrust; he imagined it arcing up from out of nowhere, embedding in Paul Kelly’s unsuspecting throat. No, his forehead. His eye…
Maybe all three, Will thought. Why d
icker when you can have it all?
Will pulled the drawstring out from the inside of his baggy sweats, tied the bolt to one end of the cord, then tucked it back in. The bolt tapped against his leg reassuringly. Will climbed back onto his bunk, tucking his hands behind his head. His hair was starting to grow out, prickled stubble coarse against his palms. One more reason, as if he needed it.
Fuck it, he decided. Who gives a shit anyway? It would grow back soon enough, and that was fine by him. Provided Paul Kelly not be alive to see it.
At long last, Will had the means.
Now all he needed was the moment.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Stephen Buscetti was not a happy detective. The visit with Paul had bothered him severely… indeed, it had only served to confirm the gnawing feeling that something was seriously wrong. He didn’t know, and couldn’t begin to say, what Paul should be feeling or how he should be acting after all he had gone through… but whatever it was, what he saw today wasn’t it.
I practically told him the case had gone stone cold, Buscetti thought, and he didn’t even blink. It was so out of character, even lately… especially lately… that it crept him out, big time. And that smile…
Buscetti frowned. As a cop, he had long ago learned that if you really wanted to know what was going on inside someone’s head, you had to lock on their eyes. Faces could lie, gestures could lie, even body language could be tricked and trained to obscure the truth. It was why lie detectors were the stuff of fiction, even when real life investigators used them -- pulse and respiration and even tensile response could be controlled, through Zen or zoning out or simply buying deep enough into your own bullshit. But the eyes… unless the perp was crazy, psycho, or sociopathic, the eyes didn’t lie.
Which was perhaps why Detective Buscetti found himself pulling up to the Gaslight Tavern, off duty and after hours, nursing an acid reflux the size of the Super Bowl and a feeling of genuine dread… and not simply because the words perp, crazy, psycho and sociopath were popping into his head in such close proximity to Paul’s name. But also because, while Paul’s mouth curled upward in the appropriate manner, his eyes glinted darkly, devoid of feeling. And if what Buscetti didn’t want to think about was true, then Paul Kelly was in some very, very deep shit indeed.
They all were.
Buscetti parked and climbed out of his car. He scanned the parking lot instinctively: Paul’s truck was not there, but Dondi’s Trans Am was. Good. Dondi had agreed to meet him, away from the job and with little explanation, on little more than the cryptic tone of Buscetti’s voice and the suggestion that they might need to have a talk about Paul. Dondi hadn’t asked for any more information, and Buscetti hadn’t offered, but his instincts told him that they both wanted essentially the same thing: to speak as one friend to another, on behalf of another, mutual friend.
Buscetti hoped like hell it would end there.
~ * ~
Dondi sat at the Rescue One crew’s regular booth, pouring from a pitcher of Michelob. He filled the detective’s glass first, then his own; as he set the pitcher down the two men raised their mugs in mirthless cheer. Dondi took a hefty swig, put down the mug, absently tracing a finger around the rim.
"So you first, or me?" he said. It was not a small concern: for Dondi, it felt like ratting out a friend, for Buscetti, like starting an investigation.
"I’ll go," the detective replied.
"No." Dondi shook his head. "Let me…"
He took a deep breath, chased it with another quick swig. "First," he began, "I love Paul to death. He’s like a fuckin’ brother to me." Buscetti nodded; he knew. Dondi continued. "But I’m talking to Connie today — usual husband-wife shit, blah blah blah, no big deal -- when she turns around and asks how Paul’s taking it. I just looked at her like, taking what? And she says, ‘Julie leaving him’."
"What?" Buscetti’s eyes widened.
"My feelings exactly," Dondi said. "Except I can’t say, what the fuck are you talking about, because she assumes I already know, except I don’t know, ‘cuz Paul didn’t tell me. He didn’t tell any of us."
"You talked to the other guys?"
Dondi nodded. "Not a fuckin’ word."
Buscetti looked troubled. "I saw Paul this afternoon," he said after a pause, "and I asked him how Julie was doing."
"What did he say?"
"He said she was good."
Dondi snorted. "Yeah, well, unless he’s got his own personal psychic friends network that would be a tough call, since she’s down at her parents’ place, and according to Connie, she’s not talking to him."
"Since when?"
"Since before Thanksgiving," Dondi said.
"Whoa," Buscetti murmured. He flashed to Paul’s Thanksgiving Day surprise visit at the station: that made twice that Paul had answered a question with an answer that technically might not be a lie, but might as well be. His cop hackles started to rise. "That’s over a week now…"
"Ding," Dondi said. "Give that man a see-gar. You see what I mean? He’s acting really fucking weird."
Buscetti looked even more troubled than he already was. "How’s he on the job?"
"I dunno…even when he’s there, it feels like he’s someplace else." Dondi took another swig. "He punched Joli’s lights out on a job a few weeks back. Broke his nose." Buscetti’s eyebrows arched; Dondi continued. "I just figured it was, you know, on account of Kyra… but now I’m startin’ to wonder."
Buscetti nodded. There were plenty of things that didn’t mesh or track, all of which had been covered by friendship, or loyalty, or the simple cutting of slack. "He could be in denial…" he ventured.
"Yeah," Dondi countered, "and I could be Princess Di, except she’s dead…" Dondi drained his beer. "I’m telling ya, Stevie, all is not well in Oz. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."
Buscetti’s leathery features went cloudy, as if a shadow were passing over his thoughts. Dondi picked up on it.
"What?" he said.
"I dunno. Maybe nothing." Buscetti explained. "It’s the Wells thing… the accident… skid marks indicate that his wasn’t the only vehicle involved." It was Dondi’s turn to look shocked.
"What was the other vehicle?"
"Dunno," Buscetti replied. "Truck of some kind, we can’t get a definitive read on it yet. But it had dualies on the back…"
"Jesus…" Dondi groaned.
Buscetti nodded grimly, adding, "…and word is at the hospital Paul was real friendly with Kathryn Wells."
"What?" Dondi sputtered, aghast. "How ‘friendly’… ?"
"Friendly enough," Buscetti said. "Definitely on speaking terms."
"Aw, man…" Dondi ran a hand through wiry hair. "This is fucked… this is so fucked I don’t even know what to fucking tell ya…" Buscetti nodded; he knew from experience that Dondi’s use of the f-word was on a direct sliding scale to his anxiety. It made him a rotten liar; the stress of mendacity turned Dondi into a Tourette’s syndrome poster boy. Whereas Paul…
Paul Kelly. Polite. Decent. An all-around great guy. It suddenly struck Buscetti like a kidney punch to the conscience, that while Dondi was a lousy liar, Paul might be a very, very good one.
The two men stared at their beers. Suddenly Dondi looked up. "Where’d you say you saw him today?" he asked.
"On Marley Street," Buscetti told him. "Working on the house. Why?"
"I don’t know," Dondi shook his head. "I used to work on it with him all the time. Now he wants to do it all alone. He spends all his fucking time there."
Buscetti took it in. "When you were working with Paul on the house," he asked, "did you put in new locks?"
"No," Dondi said. "But after the break-in, I told him he oughta get some. Why?"
Buscetti shrugged; he wasn’t sure. "There’s a double key deadbolt on the basement door now. A Shrade. Big sucker."
Dondi looked perplexed. "I don’t get it," he said. "Why the fuck would he put a double-key lock on the basement? I mean, a single key, sure, he s
tores his tools in the basement. But a double key? You could get trapped down there, and nobody’d even know it." He paused, flummoxed. "What the hell would he do that for?"
Buscetti shook his head. He didn’t know. The men went silent.
As much as the meeting was a personal comparing of notes, it was also a bit like poker: each holding something back from the other, each upping the ante with every shared fact. Buscetti didn’t tell Dondi about the missing documents: the grisly photos, the autopsy report, the copy of Will’s arrest file. And Dondi didn’t tell Buscetti about the house’s secret stash, their illicit medical inventory… the tranquilizers, antibiotics, and assorted sedatives…or that quite a few were now missing.
Cop and firefighter faced off miserably; each holding a piece of the puzzle, both afraid to put them together. But the pieces were starting to fill in anyway.
~ * ~
Julie entered the chapel, a small rosary clutched in her hands. A basin of holy water stood by the entrance; she touched fingers to its placid surface, genuflected humbly.
The church was old and decrepit, so quiet that the silence itself seemed a presence. Distant shore traffic hummed outside; inside, high plaster walls extended into beamed and vaulted space. The plaster was water-stained and flaking, neglected.
A row of confessionals lined the right side, all mahogany and mystery; as she watched an old woman emerged, silver hair wrapped in black shawl. The door creaked shut as the woman shuffled away; as she did, Julie heard the faint rustle of pigeons nesting in the eaves. Wings flapped high above. Julie looked up to see a shadow pass overhead. Then nothing.
To her left was a narrow dais, upon which were stacked rows of small votive candles, of which all but one were lit. Their light twinkled comfortingly, a table full of prayers. It all felt familiar, though she was sure she had never been there before.
Julie approached the dais, took a thin stick from a holder on the side. "Hail Mary, full of grace," she whispered haltingly, fingers kneading the rosary. "Blessed art thou, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…"
She touched the stick to one of the lit candles. Julie continued. "Look down upon us sinners in this, the hour of our need…" She held the stick to the unlit candle, touched flame to wick. The candle lit, its own small flame glowing bright. Suddenly the flame flared, hissing, then sputtered and guttered out. A thin plume of smoke wafted up as a small voice sounded behind her.
A Question of Will Page 26
