The Last Kid Left

by Rosecrans Baldwin

  “We know exactly where she was on the night. The TV queue.”

  “Please. Based on what? An IP address? I can get you an IP address by three o’clock this afternoon. How about an eyewitness, Martin? How about some corroboration?”

  “But you really think—”

  Then Brenner laughs, and coughs hard, which makes her laugh harder. She stares him down, hand over mouth. The coughs go away. He doesn’t know which way to turn.

  “So you’re saying—”

  “Martin—”

  “Hold on,” he says gruffly. “You honestly wanted me to barge in on her life, ruin her relationship with this woman”—can’t he at least get points for sensitivity?—“all because the girlfriend, reportedly, once upon a time—”

  “Her name is Sneakers,” Brenner says, and laughs all over again.

  He’s about to start up when she interrupts, “Jersey, quit. I’m busting your balls. I’m sorry, this is how I let off steam. Look, the daughter, the girlfriend—I mean, I wish there was something there, but frankly, without a smoking gun … It’s not like murder is even a solid revenge tactic in this scenario, right? For two chicks with no form? And then what about the double play? I.e., why kill the mom? No, it’s a dead end. I’m just messing with you because we’ve got nothing else.”

  She says a second later, now seriously, “Let’s face facts. We’re no further than when we started. I’m not holding that against you. The little piece of shit confessed. End of story.”

  Martin chomps a pickle and stares at his plate.

  “The biggest single fact in this case,” Brenner says, “is that we’re screwed.”

  She calls for the check. Whether or not Martin likes it, she’s right, faultlessly. Reading between the lines had led him to a couple interesting suspicions, but nothing more. Nothing to call a solid lead. When no other evidence turned out to be more than circumstantial? Questions like, how’d Nick move the Ashburns? Why kill them in the first place? He’d talked to Nick’s coworkers, employers, got zilch to build context. Not that it would’ve mattered much anyway, with a confession on the table. Nothing matters without additional witnesses, tests, anything close to hard evidence. Something to prove that the kid’s story, that he’d stuck to thus far, was a lie.

  “Look, you’re nice,” Brenner says. “You’re unusually dedicated for a cop.”

  “What a compliment.”

  “But I have plenty of cases where the conviction’s not handed over on a silver platter.” She looks angry for a moment, utterly recognizable to Martin as someone who’s also frustrated and upset and disappointed and perplexed, then she swallows it down. She adds, “No matter how many holes I poke through his story, believe me, the DA’s going to eat exactly what’s on the plate.”

  “That boy’s innocent,” he says. “We know that.”

  Brenner laughs. “Who cares? What are you, twelve?”

  He says vehemently, “He shouldn’t have to deal.”

  “Oh, give me a break. Have you lost your mind? Who is this about, really?” This time Brenner doesn’t laugh. She leans in angrily. “You put him on trial, he gets life. Or maybe worse. Jesus. Maybe you really still are a cop.” She adds a moment later, “Let’s say Nick changes his story tomorrow. Retracts the whole thing. What does that say? She’ll burn him to the ground. Why did he wait so long to retract? What’s he lying about this time? Even in our best-case scenario, we’re still screwed.”

  Two hours later, after a long nap at the hotel, his alarm wakes him from a dreamless snooze. He splashes water on his face, drives to the doctor’s house. He’s mechanically functioning, and the thought cheers him up, that at least he’s still functioning. But he needs to be, he needs to straighten himself out. The rest of the day’s schedule is nearly full. An hour later, he’ll see the girl, Emily, like he’d promised. Also, that morning he’d received a call from the mom, Mrs. Suzanne Toussaint. A request that he stop by that evening. Until now, she’d been dealing exclusively with Brenner. But she heard about him, wants to meet him. For some reason she asked him not to tell Brenner that she called.

  The Ashburns’ house is creepily silent. He climbs the doctor’s stairs to the second floor. Quickly aggravated, struck again by the lack of family photographs on the walls. Knowing the daughter now, it newly offends him and gets the best of his emotions. Focus on the job. The afternoon light shines through the windows, heavy and brown. Around the corner is the master bedroom. There’s a shelf on one wall of lopsided clay pots. The comforter’s still imprinted. The wife had lay there reading, prior to attack. A paperback’s undisturbed on the comforter, cover-side up. He wonders about the couple’s love life. Could the doctor still seduce his wife? What kind of sex did they like? He stares at the clay pots, recalls the potter’s wheel out in the garage.

  A year before, Lillian bugged him to take a pottery class with her, at the new Arts Center in Eagle Mount. He’d refused once, twice. So she turned to painting.

  He pokes through the dressers. This time he finds a vibrator, he missed it last time. Does it mean anything? It wobbles diminutively when he flicks the switch. Purpose lacking: he knows what purpose lacking feels like. Then a phone rings from the bedside table. It yanks him out of his imagination. He’s about to pick up the telephone and answer when something stops him.

  On the third ring, he notes a distant sound. The kitchen phone.

  Which is to say, none closer.

  He bangs heavily down the stairs.

  A telephone base station rests on a side table in the hall, stationed below a round mirror. The light on the charging base glows green. It’s plugged in. The screen lights up when he presses the speaker button. But there’s no dial tone.

  Martin crouches down and peers beneath the table.

  * * *

  “So tell me again, what you used to strangle the wife.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Nick, please.”

  “No. I’m sick of this shit.”

  “Really? What are you sick of?”

  “This!”

  “You wrote in your confession you used a rope.”

  “It was a rope.”

  “And you’re sure about that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Except it wasn’t. It was something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “First, I’m asking you, is that a possibility?”

  “Dude, what are you even talking about?”

  “Just the option that it wasn’t a rope. And if it wasn’t, what might it have been?”

  “It was a rope!”

  “You go around with a rope in your pocket.”

  “No, I tie it around my nutsack.”

  “Where’d the rope come from, Nick?”

  “I thought you were on my side of things. You’re supposed to be helping me.”

  “That’s what I’m doing. But you need to tell me the truth.”

  “Bullshit. No one’s helping me.”

  “Nick, listen to me, we are doing everything possible.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “So this rope,” Martin wheezes. “It was something else, wasn’t it?”

  “Screw you. I’m done.”

  “You know, I saw Emily. Like you asked.”

  “What? You did?”

  “Just now. Before I came over.”

  “How is she? How’s she doing?”

  “So the rope, Nick. What if it was a telephone cord?”

  “Tell me about Emily.”

  “Say it was a phone cord. Maybe you didn’t have it on you. Maybe it came from the phone in the hall. The cord’s missing from that telephone. It looked to me like someone yanked it out.”

  “I want to know about Emily.”

  “You rip out the cord. Or someone else does, I don’t know. To use it like a rope. Except it’s more expedient, a phone cord, more impulsive, to use what’s at hand. We’re talking about a crime of spontaneity. A sudden compulsion. Not something planned. And for some reason no
thing to involve a knife, for example. Which we believe is on hand.”

  “Either tell me what Emily said or shut up.”

  “Fine, Nick. We’ll do a trade. You level with me, I’ll tell you about Emily.

  “Nick, Jesus, give me a break. Work with me here.

  “Nick, look at me, I get it. You’re scared. You don’t know who to trust. You’re all by yourself, your girlfriend’s out there. My point is, tell me this one thing, I’ll work with you.

  “Okay, here’s what’s up, Nick. I’ll help you, okay? But you have to help me first. Because I want to help you. But I’m locked in place. I’m in jail so to speak. I can’t do anything until someone else does something. See what I mean? Here’s what I know. You’re innocent. Of this whole mess. And you’re in big trouble. But right now you’ve got the next move. You hold the key.

  “Talk to me, Nick, and I’ll tell you what Emily said.

  “Nick, please, enough.

  “Fine. Emily’s doing okay, she’s fine. You know, sad, frightened. What do you expect? I went to the store, I introduced myself. She had a couple questions. I would’ve stayed longer but she had to get back to her customers. Mostly she just wanted me to pass you a letter. You hear that, Nick? I’ve got something for you. So what do you have for me?

  “Nick, please.

  “Nick, you have to stop this.

  “So you’re just going to sit there. Then tell you what, I give up. At least say you’re happy about that, you stupid kid. Just keep screwing yourself, Nick, screw over everybody you care about. Here’s the letter. You happy? Honestly, that’s all you’ll have from now on, from her, once you’re in jail. And that’s assuming she doesn’t get sick of you, the boyfriend in prison. The way you’re going, you’re going to rot behind bars the rest of your life. Or be killed.

  “Look, we’ve got a shot. Nick, I believe that, honestly, or I wouldn’t be here. But I need your help. Help me help you.

  “Nick, please, help me.”

  * * *

  The first piano lesson was an instant failure. Emily didn’t actually care about piano. But she tried to pretend. Nick’s mom was solicitous. She ushered her in, put a lesson book on the stand. They sat together on the bench while Suzanne explained about the keyboard’s layout and the instrument’s anatomy. She demonstrated some simple fingerings, played a minute of something pretty. Her fingers lifted off the keys like they were riding breaths of air.

  She stopped a moment later.

  “You don’t really want to learn piano.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Nick’s mother lit a cigarette, got up and walked slowly around the room. Emily watched. Every movement was an unfolding, hair swept to the side. Beautiful, majestic, she was probably the strangest adult she’d ever met. Emily felt herself intimidated by the little things. The decisive command of her voice. The considered pauses between gestures. Suzanne wore a long dress that day that swept the floor, more like a man’s robe, dark gray, stitched with flowers along the hem. But she wasn’t a hippie, she was too angry for that, with an air of disgrace, or simple sadness that Emily recognized even if she couldn’t put it into words, that she also felt. She was in awe.

  “Believe it or not, I teach piano to connect people to the joy of it. The music. At least I try,” Suzanne said knowingly, and laughed. But nothing was funny from the look on her face. “You know, our families go back a long way in this town, yours and mine,” she added a moment later. “Not on the best terms.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I doubt that. Your father’s quite aware. I’m honestly surprised…” Suzanne didn’t finish her sentence, turned to the hallway instead. “Nicky? Come in here. We’re going to listen to some music.”

  He walked in with an agitated look and sat next to her on the piano bench.

  “How’s it going?” he whispered.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  His mom was hunched over in a corner. She pulled out a CD from a wooden crate on the floor. “We have forty-five minutes until the lesson’s over. I’m going to lie down here, and the only rule is that until the music stops, neither of you can leave this room. Emily, will you close the curtain, please?”

  And so began her weekly education in classical music.

  Afterward, Suzanne would disappear for about an hour, leave them free to be in Nick’s room. But for that forty-five minutes, once a week, she’d sit with her boyfriend in the smoky, brown indoor darkness. Where she learned little, academically, and many times she fell asleep. But sometimes her whole body would shiver from the music. She felt things she’d never felt before. How lucky was Nick to have Suzanne for a parent? And she, to be inducted into this family? It made her even more angry at her own life. She’d glance at Suzanne occasionally when she thought she wasn’t noticed. Nick’s mom seemed to always be staring at the ceiling, eyes wide open, except for when she’d turn her head to the side and blow smoke and stare at her with an open question in her eyes.

  * * *

  Barely a mile out of town, the main street goes up and up, starts to climb through dark switchbacks, faithfully going west and north into the mountains, toward something, though Martin has no idea what that something might be. It’s late. The streetlights stopped a while ago. At first, down low, he’d passed farms, cemeteries, shuttered gas stations, and small shops, then came cabins and trailers set back from the road, driveways, fenced fields. After a couple more miles, it was nothing but darkness and trees, a damp atmosphere from the rain. His tires hiss on the road. He drives forward on trust, the trust he’s placed in the possibility that the kid’s mom is right, that her story makes sense, and that something useful awaits him in the woods.

  Trust that Suzanne Toussaint, who gave him two names earlier that evening, was right when she said she knew exactly where he should look next for clues in the case: Ben Barrett and the Purple Panther. So he must trust that a rural titty bar, supposedly located out in the middle of desolate nowhere, will adhere to the case in some magnetic fashion.

  He almost blows past it. The address he found matches a personal storage facility around a bend, on a hillside plateau. He backs up, points his headlights at a field. Self-storage units, premises ringed by barbed-wire fencing, a faded metal sign, BARRETT’S EXTRA STORAGE SPACE.

  An artificial haze of yellow light hovers above the facility. There must be at least a hundred lockers. A parking lot with two vehicles. Nearly a dozen variations on BEWARE OF DOG and NO TRESPASSING signs.

  He parks on the road. The office looks closed. Six long strides get him through an open metal fence. He assertively walks up a wide gravel lane, past rolled-down garage doors numbered with stenciled paint. No dogs so far. He turns right at the end of the path, left after the next one. And then, around a corner, there’s another parking lot, set half a mile back into the woods, surrounded by tall trees. But this one’s full of motorcycles and pickup trucks. A semicircle group of trailers is lit up by strings of lights and a neon sign, the outline of a panther that glows with a dull purple glare.

  “Who are you?” Nick’s mom had asked when he’d shown up on her porch.

  “Martin Krug.”

  “And so?”

  He’d laughed.

  “Well,” he said, “you called me.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  Her lipstick was brightly red, almost a fiery orange. Her eyes were slightly wet. Nerves overstrained, hair unkempt. Barefoot and distressed. The mother of a boy locked in jail.

  “I don’t know, to be honest,” he’d said softly. “Mrs. Toussaint, may I come in, please?”

  She led him into the living room. It was the size of three rooms, with dark curtains, oil paintings. It was like a mausoleum. There was a houseplant so big it belonged outdoors. In one corner was a grand piano. Oriental rugs overlapped, picture frames were hung densely. A bar cart was full of nearly empty bottles, two filled ashtrays. And through the kitchen door, he spied cereal bo
wls on the floor, more ashtrays overflowing, towers of pots and pans in the sink.

  She sat on a window seat and stretched out two long legs in dark denim. She was tall. Attractive. Bone-dry in an aristocratic way. He couldn’t tell if she was thirty-five or fifty-five. Her hair was in a bun. She moved unhurriedly to light a cigarette. The smoke made her look even older. She’d definitely had a couple drinks. Was she a drunk? He could see where the kid got his cheekbones, and the beaten dog’s disposition.

  “Mrs. Toussaint.”

  “Suzanne. Do you want something?”

  “I’m fine. Listen, almost anything you can tell me could be useful.”

  “Why don’t you give me an example.”

  He’d already decided he wouldn’t mention his visit with Nick.

  “You said you wanted to talk to me without Ms. Brenner around. Why is that?”

  “People never really know what they know, don’t you think?”

  “How about you tell me something I should know.”

  “My son’s innocent. That appears to be news to some people. Including Ms. Brenner, if you ask me.”

  A telephone thrummed somewhere. She glanced at the bar cart.

  “Do you want me to fix you something?” he said.

  “Thank you. Vodka rocks. The ice is in the bucket.”

  He made the drink, staring at all the photos on the walls. Ancestors back to wagon days. While he was stirring, he asked about her family, pre-crime. “Just give me an idea of what your and Nick’s lives were like.” She seemed to think about it, but said nothing. He tried to picture the boy there, in the smoke. What painstaking routes he’d need to use to navigate such a woman. Then she coughed and it all came rolling out, the missing husband, current existence, lack of funds. Then even more: miserable town, miserable existence. Miserable parents who, prior to dying, had burned through whatever remained of the old family cash. Miserable husband who’d left, who’d gone awol, who wasn’t kicking in for shit. He’d been the drifter type, she said, who finally got sick of a settled life, ergo a bum. By the time he’d ditched completely, she and the boy weren’t surprised, she said, just sad.