The Fever Kill

by Tom Piccirilli

  Teddy on her lap, her small hands petting the bear, hugging it tight. What he'd done so far, what was the point of any of it?

  Maybe it was Mimi's lost husband, longshoreman Lenny back there, who took off after the fourth or fifth kid, urging Crease to just cut loose and keep running. Skip out while he still could.

  Man, when you didn't have your cool left you really had nothing at all.

  Halfway to Hangtree, the window down and the breeze coursing through the car, rushing against him even as his forehead burned and the windshield fogged, he felt a wistful ache. It took him a minute to recognize the emotion for what it was. He wanted to check on Joan and Stevie.

  He hit a cheap motel along the highway, paid for the night, showered, settled in, and reached for the phone. It was almost midnight. Joan would be sleeping but she wouldn't be angry if he woke her. He wondered if there was anything he could do to make her furious. And if so—if he had found whatever it was in time—if it would've somehow saved their marriage.

  He called Joan. He wanted to hear her voice. Even if he didn't feel like saying much, she'd understand and do all the talking, trying to soothe him about things she didn't understand. When you got down to it, that's probably why his son hated him so much. Not for what Crease had done to Stevie, but what he'd done to the boy's mother. The kid had real pride and felt as great a sense of responsibility to protect her as Crease had felt about his father.

  Instead, Mimi answered. "Hello, who's that?"

  "Mimi, what are you doing there?"

  "Your back screen door has slipped out of the track. I tried to get it back in but it won't go, it's bent. You'll have to fix that. I don't want Freddy getting out. Your side gate doesn't close either, the little thing, what do you call it, the latch, you have to jiggle it so it'll lock, except it doesn't work."

  Crease tried to remember if Freddy was the kid with the beady eyes, or if it was the dog. He said, "But why are you there?"

  "I can't visit my sister?"

  "You never visit your sister.""I could if I wanted to, though. Anyway, my oven broke. I'm afraid of a gas leak, so I packed the kids in the car and brought them over here."

  He pictured her house. "Mimi, you've got an electric stove."

  "What?"

  "You have an electric stove, didn't you realize that?"

  "How do you know? All of a sudden you're a mister fix-it, you've got plumbing skills, you're a carpenter? You haven't even fixed your side gate or the screen door."

  "Your stove is electric. The coils turn red when they get hot. Somebody probably just knocked the plug out."

  "Yeah, and what if you're wrong? We could all suffocate in our sleep. The gas company's there right now, checking it out. The only time they show up is when you tell them there's a leak, then they come, even if it's eleven o'clock at night."

  He wasn't sure if Mimi was starting to become a serious attention-getter or if all the kids were driving her blood pressure up high enough to bake her brain. He'd seen it happen to guys on the force. Sharp, first-rate cops who, after having two or three children in short order, started falling asleep on the job, couldn't remember the call numbers, started cleaning their guns without checking to see if they were loaded.

  The tiny details, the proliferation of minor annoyances, those were the ones that clogged your arteries and got you in the end. He still didn't know if her brood helped put things into perspective or just knocked them farther out of whack. He'd always fully expected to sit down one day and make a concerted effort to figure it out.

  "Put Joan on," he said.

  "She had to go talk to Stevie's principal, about the fighting. I told you."

  "It's almost midnight."

  "It was parent-teacher night, and then the P.T.A. had to have a special assembly about the situation, and then they have coffee and donuts. To them teachers, this is a big night out."

  Crease said, "This the same thing or did he get in trouble again?"

  "Again. He's shoving kids around. He knocked a girl down in the playground."

  "A girl? Why?"

  "He says he didn't like the way she was looking at him. She was six, he's eight. The school considers that sort of thing to be a serious matter. It doesn't take much for them to be scared about a lawsuit. A little girl gets her tooth broken or a bloody nose and you'll have a fleet of lawyers on your back. The school has a zero tolerance policy about violence. He might have to transfer." Mimi had shifted gears, she was sharp again, in asskicking mode.

  "All kids get into fights."

  "He's big for his age and knocking the crap out of six-year-old girls doesn't endear him to the faculty, you know? This is the age of Columbine. What do you think, Crease? You think maybe he's got some problems that need to be worked out?"

  "Everyone does."

  "Don't get flippant. Not when it comes to your own son."

  "You're right, I shouldn't be. I'm sorry. I wanted to speak with him."

  "Then you shouldn't have called at twelve o'clock at night. He's asleep, or pretending to be. He might be at his bedroom door, listening in. He does that, if you didn't know. When the phone rings. He's trying to get an edge, taking it all in. Joan will be home in half an hour. Call back then."

  "I'll try."

  "You settling up what needs to be settled wherever you are?"

  "Little by little."

  "Work it out faster and come home."

  He hung up and a half hour later decided it would be a waste of time trying to talk to Joan or Stevie over the phone. Mimi had been right. He shouldn't have called so late, thinking he could just chat with his boy. He was in denial. Funny to realize it like this. In Hangtree he was maudlin as hell listening to Oldies with tears in his eyes, too scared to talk to his own kid and help him down the right road. He couldn't do it over the phone. Stevie would snarl and grunt and Joan would hum and sigh.

  She truly did love him. Like Sarah Burke had said, The truth of love is that you accept what's wrong and ugly and stupid and tainted in your lover. Joan could do that, and it drove Crease berserk.

  He really wanted to talk to longshoreman Lenny. He thought maybe Lenny had jumped in the East River just to throw everybody off his scent. He might be out there somewhere with a new name. He wanted to ask Lenny how his life had shaped up, if he'd done anything interesting with it. If he'd become a Hollywood stuntman, a missionary in Pago Pago, or an underwater demolitions expert. Or if he just had another wife somewhere with another brood of children. If he'd gotten it right the second time around. He could see Lenny in front of the tube with his eyes swirling, kids running in front of him, a dog barking, the new wife complaining about the broken dishwasher, wondering how the hell he'd been sucked into it again.

  He thought of Morena and wondered if she'd still want him after he'd killed Tucco—if he could kill Tucco. And want him as a husband and a father to the baby, or if they were better off on the sneak, the way things had been for the past two years.

  He drifted for a minute thinking about it. Seeing her so beautiful in the morning light that she cooled his burn, as she moved in front of the window with the view of the water, the breeze taking her hair, the skein of sweat dappling her naked skin, her brown skin shadowed by cloud cover. The way she looked when they were in a cab together, headed crosstown to catch a Truffaut revival. Her hair knotted back, her hand in his, discussing European cinema. The two of them chattering like college kids who'd just walked out of class. It gave him hope that there was a life beyond the life.

  Yeah, everybody had problems they needed to work out. Jesus.

  In the morning he checked out and saw a fifteen dollar charge for some X-rated flick. He vaguely remembered seeing skin on the tube. The bill said he'd ordered it at four a.m. He'd been on autopilot, feverish.

  The 'Stang was full of bodies. He felt them in the back seat staring at the back of his head. Thanking him, wishing him further pain, wanting him to hit a bridge. The ghosts piled up, and they still wanted a lot from you.

&
nbsp; He hit triple digits getting back to Hangtree, hoping the state patrol would fire up after him, but no cruiser did.

  He pulled up in front of Reb's place about noon. He had no idea why he was still staying with her. He should've gotten another motel room, gotten away from her, but there was something so familiar about the house and his connection to it that it grounded him despite all the distractions.

  The sad shape of the place, which had bothered him at first, was beginning to become appealing. The collapsed, swaying rain gutters beat out a slow rhythm in time with his pulse. The smell of oncoming rain was strong on the day. He could almost see himself creeping up to Reb's window again, slipping in and out of darkness. The tug of sorrow was still there, and he appreciated its depth.

  He was using Reb and a lingering shame had settled in his chest although he'd never made any promises. Even a bent cop didn't have to be bent all the time, in all things.

  He walked in and heard her cursing in the kitchen. The stink of ammonia burned his nostrils. She was mopping a floor that hadn't been cleaned in Christ knew how long. She'd kicked over the bucket. A black and yellow puddle of suds rippled against the tile and sluiced up to the baseboards. Dead insects and rat droppings floated along. She was playing house for him again, and doing about as good a job as she'd done with the steaks. He knew it was his own fault.

  She said, "If you're going to ask why I'm doing this, let me tell you."

  "I wasn't going to ask."

  "It's not for you. I'm going to sell this place. I'm going to leave. Maybe you could help out around here a little. Get a hammer and saw and some two by fours out of the shed and fix that hole in the porch, reinforce the stairs."

  "Sure."

  "There's a chainsaw in the garage you could use on that dead maple. Fix that screen door."

  Another broken screen door. Why were screen doors coming down all around him?

  "Okay," he said.

  "And don't get it in your head that I'm looking for a husband. I'm not. I already know your views on marriage anyway, right? If I did want a husband, it wouldn't be you, right?"

  "Right."

  She was mad he hadn't come back here last night. He could see it in her face. She'd put him up, fed him, and treated him well as an investment. His staying away all night was evidence that she wasn't going to earn out.

  He went out to the garage and got Reb's father's toolbox. He wasn't a carpenter, Mimi had been right about that, but maybe he could get the screen door on. He spent an hour straightening the frame, replacing stripped screws, tightening the spring, and hanging the door back up in place. It had a slight tilt and still didn't completely close, but he figured he'd done a pretty good job of it.

  There were three chainsaws under the workbench, but none had gas in them. He couldn't find a gas can anywhere. He drove into town, hit a station, bought a five-gallon jug, had it filled, and got to work filling all three chainsaws. It wasn't until he had them out side by side that he realized they were different sizes. Crease drew out the longest one, fired it up, and got to work on cutting up the maple. He didn't know what the hell he was doing. It took him twenty-five minutes to figure out how to cut v-wedges to keep the saw from getting stuck in the wood. There was sawdust everywhere.

  One of the neighbors was burning leaves. The smell grew stronger as the wind burst against his damp neck. The thick aroma drew some good memories forward from when he was a kid, watching his father work in the yard. Wanting to be like the man, like all men of Hangtree, standing tall with their adult mysteries, powerful arms, and faces like flint.

  A strange, cold feeling passed over him. His vision blurred for an instant and it took a second to refocus. If he'd married Reb, and moved in with her, and took over her old man's house after his death, and spent years battling the bottle and his own ineptness, he might have wound up here doing this very same thing anyway.

  He stacked the cordwood on the back stoop and thought it might be nice to have a fire tonight. He'd have to check the flue and see if it was clean enough to burn logs without smoking them out of the house.

  There was no way he could fix the hole in the porch, but he did manage to use some of the cut two by fours in the corner of the garage to reinforce the stairs. He stood there holding the hammer, nails in his teeth, wood chips and sawdust in his hair, and a small rush of pride went through him. Not because he'd managed to spend a few hours filling out Reb's father's shoes, but because he realized that this wasn't the life for him and he hadn't made a bad choice in the first place.

  Reb was at the screen door, trying it out. She looked at him and said, "It doesn't close right. I can't lock it."

  "Who are you trying to keep out?"

  "Jesus freaks and kids selling magazine subscriptions."

  "That's why I left the hole in the porch."

  She didn't laugh. She wore a face that said she'd never laugh again. "Why'd you stack the wood in back?"

  "It's getting cooler, feels like rain. I thought it might be nice to have a fire."

  "There's squirrel nests in the chimney. Come inside for lunch, if you're hungry."

  He put all the tools away and closed the garage and thought the home improvement chapter of his life had now been firmly shut. He walked inside and the cloying smell of detergent made him gag. He went around opening windows while she said behind him, "Is it bad? I didn't notice after the first half hour."

  "It's pretty bad."

  It took a while but eventually the smell thinned. The place was cleaned up and looked much better than before. Maybe she was serious about selling. Perhaps she could get a good price for the house. You never knew when something was really quaint and when it was tobacco road.

  She'd made a tuna salad and had set the dining room table again, but the candles weren't lit. They ate in silence. When he was almost finished he said, "Thank you," and wondered why he hadn't said it earlier.

  "What are you thinking about?" Reb asked.

  He hadn't been thinking of anything, but for some reason the name was on his lips. "Ellie Groell."

  "Ellie Groell? Her? Why?"

  "Her shadow was the last thing I saw of this town when I left it."

  "Jeez, that's creepy."

  No, it wasn't. It was pleasant. He'd been lonely and frightened and looking up at the Groell house had given him a sense of support. He didn't know why. It was getting a little ridiculous, the amount of things that he didn't quite understand.

  "She still lives with her grandmother," Reb said. "The two of them alone in that big house. At least I think the grandmother is still alive. I could be wrong, she might be dead."

  Reb cleared the table and when she sat down again she had a glass and one of Jimmy Devlin's stolen bottles of Jack Daniels in front of her. She didn't offer him any. Sipping the whiskey got her quietly moaning with a deep pleasure, her eyes closed. When she opened them, she focused on him and said, "Tell me what you've found out so far. About this thing that you came back here for. You discover that your old man didn't shoot the girl?"

  "That's never been an issue. I know he did it. He told me so himself with nearly his last breath."

  "Then why's any of the rest of it matter, really? I mean, if this is about your father."

  "Maybe it's not about him, or not entirely."

  "You been talking to your wife?"

  That seemed to be a switch in subjects, but maybe it wasn't. Since he'd been back, everything had become even more snarled together. "I've been keeping in touch with my sister-in-law."

  "The one with all the kids. Your kids. You talk to her but not your wife?"

  "I've called Joan, too, but she's never there."

  "Maybe she's got a new man. You said she deserved better."

  "She does, but it's not a man."

  "How can you be sure? You walked out and it's been a couple of years, right?"

  He thought of Joan with another man and, though it made sense, he just couldn't bring himself to believe it. She'd stuck by him through so much
already no matter how hard he tried to push her away. Her love was real, it had meaning even if he couldn't return it in full. He looked down at his hands and recalled, one instance after another, all the evil he had done with them, and knew he could never put them on Joan again without wanting to die.

  "What about the money? You find out where your father hid it yet?"

  She hadn't even asked if he'd figured out who'd kidnapped Mary Burke. The girl wasn't really a part of it, just the cash. She was even more bent than him. "I told you, if he'd taken the money, he wouldn't have snuffed it a drunk in the gutter. Somebody else nabbed it."

  "You still planning on killing Edwards?"

  "I don't think so. I had a chance the other day. He had one to kill me too, and he didn't."

  "Maybe you've both just got other things on your mind. Like you and the bad guy partner. A friend of mine saw you on Main Street with some characters. In a Rolls Royce." She couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice.

  "It was a Bentley."

  "That belong to your dealer buddy? Did he finally sniff you out all the way up here?"

  He didn't like the way she said it. "Would that friend be Jimmy Devlin?"

  "No," she said, "it was somebody else."

  So she was still working Jimmy, had maybe even set him on Crease again along with the other Jimmys. What did she think that would earn her? Did she hope he'd get hurt so she could nurse him the way he'd taken care of her? Tighten the bond between them. Was that her play? To win him over, take her back to New York with him?

  "Don't be too star-struck with fancy cars."

  "Why not?"

  "Police impound them all, sooner or later."

  "Then you just go get another one. Isn't that how it happens?"

  "The guys with two hundred grand in a briefcase under their beds are usually the cheapest sons of bitches there are. They're stressed all the time about spending the money. They're more worried about the IRS than they are the feds."

  "The smart ones figure their way around that, right?"