by Jan Burke
“I will.”
“He’s with LPPD Homicide, right?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. Bring him by sometime. I’d like to meet him. By the way — that was cool about throwing the monitor and all, but don’t break anything on my shift, okay?”
“I’ll try not to.”
A thorough search of the building next door did reveal that the office I had indicated had been broken into, although it did not appear that anything had been taken.
There was no sign of Parrish. It hadn’t been easy to look for him in every nook and cranny of the Box, but no one on the Las Piernas Police force acted put out by the effort they had exerted. That doesn’t mean they weren’t irritated — but better trained than Leonard, they didn’t threaten to shoot me.
When I came in to work the next shift on Thursday, there was a note stuck to the screen of my computer monitor:
Kelly, please do try to work one shift without bringing the cops in here.
John
I saved it to show to Frank the next time he asked me to let him hover over my desk.
Stinger was true to his word. On Thursday night, Jerry and Livy joined me to watch the landing, and were duly impressed. They then went downstairs to give Leonard a chance to take a look.
While we were waiting for the young man whom Stinger had (sight unseen) dubbed “Leonardo DaGung-ho,” I asked them to show me what was done to sabotage the helicopters up in the mountains.
Stinger showed me the drain plug.
“Why do helicopters have something like this on them?” I asked.
“In the normal course of a day,” he said, “moist air gets inside the fuel tank. The tank is made of metal, right? So as the metal in the tank cools, the water in the air condenses and drops into the fuel. Because water is heavier than the fuel, the water then goes to the bottom of the tank.”
“If water is in your tank,” Travis said, “and it gets mixed in with your fuel, it causes problems. When you start up and try to run, your engines might not run smoothly — they might misfire.”
“So you open the valve and let the water drain out of the tank before you start up?” I asked.
“Right.”
“So if it hadn’t been raining, the Forest Service crew might have smelled all the fuel leaking out of the helicopters that night in the mountains?”
“Might have,” Stinger agreed. “But what could they have done about it anyway? The person who sabotaged those helicopters walked off with the drain plugs.”
“So the rangers couldn’t have refilled the tanks without replacements.”
“Right. The Forest Service and the cops have had metal detectors out, trying to find those plugs. I think whoever sabotaged them still has his souvenirs.”
“They’re small enough to carry in a pocket,” I said.
“Yes, they are. You find those drain plugs, you’ve got Parrish’s helper.”
Leonard was bouncing with excitement when he met Stinger and Travis. “Wait here, man, wait here!” He hurried over to one of the rooftop buildings. A few minutes later, the helicopter pad was illuminated by a series of lights set into the roof itself.
He strutted back, hiking his pants again. “I’ll show Irene where the switch is,” he said. “You can land in style.”
They thanked him, and stayed a few minutes more. Just before they took off, Leonard asked Travis, “How old are you?”
When Travis told him, his eyes widened, and he said, “Dude! Not much older than me.”
He stood watching the helicopter long after they had taken off. “Thinking of giving up law enforcement?” I asked.
“No way. Air patrol!” He looked around the roof and said, “They said they’re coming back tomorrow. I’m going to fix it so you can relax up here.” He smiled. “Jerry’s up here smoking all the time, so we’ll make a nonsmoking section.”
He showed me where the lights for the landing pad were, and then we walked back to the access door. I forced myself to look up at the Box. The window where I had seen the burglar was dark tonight.
“Too bad they didn’t catch him,” Leonard said, following my gaze.
“The burglar?”
“Parrish,” he said.
“Maybe he wasn’t there.”
“He was there,” he said authoritatively. “But don’t you worry — I’m not going to let him come into the Wrigley Building — no way.”
This from a guy who nearly shot me. But I thanked him, and then thanked him again a little later, when he sneaked us on to one of the executive-level floors and into the elevator.
Better yet, he let me on it again for the trip up to the roof on Friday. Nearly bursting with pride, he took me to “Café Kelly,” as he referred to a cluster of four plastic chairs and a metal table borrowed from the cafeteria. “Don’t worry, I got permission,” he said. “These were in storage by the kitchen. They were glad to have the room.” At his own expense, he had also purchased a cooler. He opened it to show me a six-pack of spring water.
“See? I even noticed your brand.” He nodded. “I’m a trained observer.”
“Leonard, this is very kind — but you didn’t need to go to all this effort.”
“Well, I like you. I like helping people. And maybe someday you might put in a good word about me, maybe have someone come by and meet me or something.”
I smiled. “Oh, so it’s a bribe to meet Frank.”
He protested quickly and vehemently, until I told him that I was just teasing.
“Oh.”
He still seemed offended. I made a big show of sitting in one of the chairs and opening a bottle of water and exclaiming over how great it was to have such a nice setup. He seemed pleased by all of this, and was soon back in his usual good humor. He heard the helicopter and turned on the landing pad lights, then stood entranced as the chopper blew dirt and dust all over Café Kelly. Afterward, he must have asked Travis a dozen times if the lights had helped him land “that baby.”
His radio crackled, and he knocked his plastic chair over standing up to answer it. “This is Unit One.”
“Unit One, this is Central,” Jerry’s voice said. “You ever going to give me a turn up there? I’m dying for a smoke.”
“You should quit that filthy habit,” he said, but excused himself and left.
I talked to Stinger and Travis for a while, learning that Travis had decided to buy the house he had looked at. He told me that he was taking Stinger to meet my eighty-year-old great-aunt, Mary Kelly. “She wants us to stay there for a few days.”
“I think you and Mary will get along fine,” I said to Stinger.
Stinger grinned. “Travis tells me she’s full of piss and vinegar.”
“She is,” I agreed. “She’ll give you a run for your money, Mr. Dalton.”
“She’s already asked him about helicopters,” Travis said.
“She wants a ride?”
“Yeah, but I mean, she wants to fly them, too.”
“God help us.”
Jerry came upstairs for his smoke, and Stinger and Travis soon left. They hovered, shining a bright light down on the roof, watching my progress to the access door the way someone might watch to make sure his date got safely inside the house. I waved to them and headed back down to the newsroom, reflecting on how much more tolerable this shift was because of their visits, outrageous as some might deem their method of arrival.
They helped me to get through this sentence Wrigley had passed on me, even allowed me to secretly thumb my nose at him. If Travis felt reassured that I was safe by checking up on me in this way, I could live with it.
The truth was, I did feel less vulnerable. Yes, I now parked close to the building and Jerry — on his own initiative — escorted me to and from the van. But these precautions were becoming routine. And each night as I passed the Box, I was becoming more and more certain that it had only been a burglar after all, and not Parrish.
The drive home at the end of these late shifts was always virt
ually free of traffic, but, like the newsroom, a little too shadowy and quiet. This night, fog had started to roll in, and as I drove down dark and empty, misty streets, I found myself thinking of science fiction shows where the protagonist somehow is the sole survivor of a neutron bomb attack or annihilation by aliens. He has the town to himself, but no one to share it with.
Well, I thought, I have someone to share it with — I should call Frank. But I knew that just hearing the phone ring would be enough to make him feel a few moments of fear that I was in trouble, so I decided to wait. I was only ten minutes from home.
I kept hearing a soft, intermittent thumping sound from the rear of the van, and worried that the LPPD had damaged it somehow when they towed it to the impound yard. The exact location of the noise was elusive; I couldn’t quite figure out what might be causing it.
I turned the radio on. A talk show was in progress. I listened to a so-called therapist berate a caller, who responded with masochistic groveling. It made me appreciate Jo Robinson. I switched to a jazz station.
I breathed a sigh of relief as I pulled into the driveway. I turned the radio off and was unplugging the cell phone from its dashboard charger when I noticed that its display showed that I had voice mail.
Shit! I should have checked it sooner — I pressed the button that retrieves messages, wondering if Wrigley had called to check up on me after all.
There were two messages. This did not bode well.
“First message,” the automated voice of the phone service said. “Sent today at 12:11 A.M.”
Not Wrigley, but John. Good news, actually. His message was that Wrigley had agreed to change my schedule to a solid week of late shifts, Monday through Friday. I would still only work part-time, but I didn’t have to try to get myself out of bed on three hours’ sleep to go in on Saturday morning. I would have the weekend off.
I listened to the overly pleasant recorded voice on the service saying, “To repeat this message, press one. To delete this message, press two. To save this message . . .”
I pressed two.
“Second message. Sent today at 12:16 A.M.”
Expecting that the second one would be John trying again, I wasn’t ready for what I heard.
Parrish’s voice.
“It has been so long since we’ve talked, my dear. I really have missed you, but we’ve both been busy, haven’t we? Tell me, is your phone cellular or digital? I did leave a digital message for you . . .” He gave a soft laugh.
“I wonder if you’ve taken a good look at yourself lately? You’re looking a little tired. Not getting enough sleep? Careful, you’ll wear yourself to the bone.”
More laughter. I opened the door and got out of the van and stumbled toward the house.
“Now, even though you locked your doors like a good girl this time, I do need to let you know that locks won’t stop me. I’ve left something a little perishable — or should I say, ‘Parrishable’? — for you in the van.”
I turned back toward the van and shouted for Frank.
“I think Ben Sheridan will enjoy it,” Parrish went on. “Tell him I did. And tell him that I’m about to take you out of his reach.”
There was a click. After a slight pause, the pleasant recorded voice on the voice mail service said, “To repeat this message, press one. To delete this message, press two. To save this message . . .”
But pleasant voices were beyond my hearing at that moment. I tossed the phone on the lawn as if I had suddenly found myself handling a snake; I hurried to open the sliding side door on the van.
Frank ran out of the house with Deke and Dunk. “Irene?” he asked frantically. “What’s wrong?”
I pointed toward the phone as I crawled into the van and saw him go to pick it up.
“Irene, no!” he shouted, as I opened the refrigerator.
Too late.
A little light went on inside the tiny, aquamarine-colored space.
A human skull stared back at me.
50
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2:45 A.M.
Las Piernas
I’ve tried, but even now I cannot remember most of what happened in the first few minutes immediately after I saw it. I vaguely recall that at some point Frank held me tightly by the shoulders and shouted at me, angry in his fear for my safety, his terror over imagining what trap I might have sprung by responding so unthinkingly to Parrish’s taunting.
He was right, of course — I never should have touched it.
He tells me I responded to his ranting by calmly saying, “I thought he only cut off her fingers and toes. I didn’t know she was decapitated.”
“He didn’t decapitate her! That’s how we knew her hair and eye color!”
Suddenly unable to stand, I sat down on the porch steps.
He closed the van door, then sat next to me, keeping an arm around me as he called the police. Cody, my cat, came outside and sat on my lap. Deke and Dunk had our feet covered.
To some degree, the arrival of the detectives and the crime scene unit roused me from my cocoon of numbness, so that by the time they left I was feeling more myself. I had told them what I could — that Parrish had probably dialed my number at work, and the call had been forwarded; that the van had been locked; that yes, there were security cameras on the parking lot at the Express, but they were notoriously inadequate.
The officers called the paper, and learned that three weeks earlier, Leonard had dutifully reported that the camera that covers the parking lot had been vandalized. Wrigley’s response had been to post a larger sign that said, PARK AT YOUR OWN RISK. OWNER OF LOT ASSUMES NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR LOSS OR DAMAGE TO VEHICLES OR THEIR CONTENTS. Nor for additions to their contents, evidently.
The next morning — technically, the same morning, but after we had been asleep — we found ourselves a little shy of each other; Frank for losing his temper, me for losing my mind. All the same we never moved far from each other, nor were we out of each other’s sight for more than a few moments at a time. Gradually, feeling safer than I had at three in the morning, I began to relax, we began to talk, and by the end of the day, something like balance returned.
“I wish Rachel were in town,” he said on Saturday night.
He wasn’t longing for another woman — he wanted to hire a bodyguard. His partner’s wife was a retired homicide detective and completely capable of kicking ass if need be. But Rachel’s work as a private eye had taken her out of state that week.
Though there was a patrol car in front of our house, Frank wasn’t just worried about my safety. “I don’t want you to feel scared,” he said. “You should have company.”
I didn’t object, which, as far as he was concerned, was probably the most worrisome thing that had happened that day.
On Sunday morning, I awoke to see him putting on his suit. “Sorry — I was trying to let you get a little more sleep. I have to go in. But Ben’s going to come over with Bingle — okay?”
I told him that I’d enjoy seeing both Ben and his dog.
I thought I was telling him the truth, but while Bingle would have been welcomed to stay, by midday, I was ready to send Ben packing.
It was around one o’clock when I ventured to ask him if he was the one who was trying to make the identification on the skull.
“Yes, I am,” he snapped at me, “and no, I don’t know whose skull it is. I’d rather not guess. Especially not in front of a reporter.”
“Go home,” I said.
“What?”
“Go home. I am barely holding it together here, buster, and you keep making rude remarks. At least two dozen today, and I don’t see any end to the supply you seem to have so handy. So get lost.”
He frowned, and said, “If I’ve offended you, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you very much. Very sincerely said. Good-bye.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not. Stop being childish.”
“Get the hell out of her
e!”
“If it were just for your sake, believe me, I’d go. But I promised Frank I would stay with you.”
“If you don’t get out of here, you won’t have to worry about Parrish killing me. By the end of the day, I’ll want to kill myself!”
“That’s a horrible thing to say!”
“You’re right, it is. And I accept that as the highest plaudit from the Master of Horrible Things to Say! Excuse me while I go to make a note of it in my special Horrible Ben Sheridan Diary! I keep it in our special Make Tribute to Ben Sheridan Shrine Room! Be right back — maybe!”
I stomped off into the bathroom and shut the door with a bang. I locked it and turned around.
Someday, when I am very wealthy, I am going to build a house with a bathroom that will allow a person to have a snit fit in it in true comfort. I wasn’t wealthy that day.
In fact, everywhere I looked, there was some change we had made to accommodate Ben’s disability when he stayed with us. My hands itched to pull it all apart.
I looked in the bathroom cabinet for something that I could break without feeling bad. Nothing. Not even a computer monitor. I sat down on the edge of the tub, head in hands.
I heard him walking quickly down the hall. His gait sounded odd to me, as if he was favoring his right leg. I forgot about that when I heard him take hold of the doorknob and try to turn it.
“Don’t you dare try to come into this room!” I shouted.
“Come out of there now!”
I took hold of a towel, stuffed it in my mouth, and screamed into it.
“Are you screaming into a towel?”
It almost struck me as funny. Almost.
“Open this door,” he said.
I didn’t answer.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Don’t ask me if I’m all right, you insincere bastard,” I said. “You don’t really give a shit. I’m tired of taking crap from you. I’m tired of everything!”
I heard him walk off, then walk back. He was definitely limping.
Suddenly there was a loud bang, and the middle panel of the three-panel bathroom door splintered into pieces as Frank’s long-handled flashlight came crashing through it. Outside, all three dogs were barking.
