Straw Men

by Martin J. Smith

  Milsevic’s gun hand was as steady as ever. Suddenly, he smiled his winning smile. “We all make mistakes. What matters is how you recover from them.”

  “You didn’t recover. You covered up.”

  “Thanks for the sermon.”

  “Brian, it’s over.”

  Milsevic stepped closer. “So true, Jim. So true.”

  With his free hand, Milsevic grabbed Christensen’s hair. He wrenched his head back and banged it on the windowsill behind the couch. Christensen felt the skin split at the same time he felt Milsevic wedge the heel of his tasseled loafer into his crotch and step down hard. The cop gently worked the wide barrel of the gun into Christensen’s left nostril. Milsevic’s eyes were two dark portals, empty and terrifying. Christensen knew there’d be no appeal.

  Then, the moment froze. Milsevic’s eyes shot open wide, an electric terror, and he eased himself back in stunned silence. Beyond the gun barrel and Milsevic’s steady grip, Christensen could see Teresa looming above them both, her hand outstretched as she pressed something to the base of Milsevic’s skull. She seemed calm, a vision of harnessed rage.

  “My turn,” she said.

  Chapter 49

  They were all connected now in a seething triangle, a macabre three-way death circuit. Christensen’s every nerve was tuned to its pulse, knowing the slightest ripple could set off a bloody chain reaction. His breaths came in short, violent bursts, but Teresa and Milsevic held their positions, breathing normally, functioning on something other than panic.

  “So here we are,” Milsevic said.

  “The end game,” Teresa replied. “I win.”

  Milsevic shoved his gun toward Christensen’s sinuses. Christensen drew a sharp breath as cold metal hit soft cartilage. At the same time, he felt Milsevic grind his heel deeper into his testicles. He clenched his eyes shut, trying to handle the pain in his gut.

  “Ever used one of these SIGs, Teresa?”

  Milsevic’s voice was like a specter in the room, eerily calm.

  “Finest handguns in the world, but this one…” he said. “I don’t know. It’s skittish as all hell. A flinch, a reflex. Wouldn’t take much.”

  Christensen looked up. Tiny beads of sweat had gathered on Milsevic’s forehead. If he had to guess, Teresa had upped the pressure pound for pound, pushing the barrel of her gun closer to Milsevic’s brain stem. Christensen adjusted his focus to Teresa’s uneven eyes. They clouded with doubt, but she blinked it away.

  “I still win,” she said.

  Milsevic smiled. “That’ll be a great comfort to his family.”

  Teresa’s resolve melted again. For the first time since the standoff began, she looked directly at Christensen. He could only return her pleading gaze. Then, suddenly, she cut her eyes toward the half-shuttered picture window behind him. In the mirror across the room, Christensen saw what she saw: a black-and-white police cruiser rolling slowly to a stop in the middle of Morningside Avenue. From Milsevic’s desperate glance, Christensen knew he’d seen it, too.

  A nondescript white Lincoln eased in behind the cruiser. Kiger. Who else could it be?

  Almost at the same time, car doors slammed in the alley out back where Christensen left the Explorer. Police backup? Teresa had come in the rear door, so her car was probably there, too. Kiger would know within seconds that he and Teresa were inside. By then, the chief would have noticed Milsevic’s car out front.

  A single bulb of sweat trickled to the corner of Milsevic’s right eyebrow. It hung there an endless moment, then fell onto Christensen’s chest just as the cell phone on his belt began to vibrate. Its hum was loud enough for Teresa and Milsevic to hear. It stopped after thirty long seconds, and Milsevic flinched at the silence.

  In the mirror, Christensen saw the police chief fold a phone and toss it through the Lincoln’s open door, then discreetly lift the back of his sports jacket. He tugged something from the small of his back, but kept his hand there as he and the patrol officer moved together toward Teresa’s front steps. To the rear, the unmistakable shuffle of heavy feet on Teresa’s wooden deck.

  Milsevic saw and heard it all. Another drop of sweat formed and fell.

  “Payback’s a bitch, Brian,” Teresa said.

  “Ain’t it, though.” His voice still strong, resolved.

  “You should have killed me when you had the chance.”

  “I tried,” Milsevic said. “Nothing personal.”

  Milsevic flinched at the hard rap on the front door, and again at Kiger’s basso profundo voice. “Y’all open this door,” he said.

  The end game.

  “Dead or alive, Brian,” Teresa said. “What’s it gonna be?”

  Milsevic didn’t answer, just leaned even closer to Christensen, close enough that his lips nearly touched Christensen’s ear.

  “Got to learn to live with what you can’t rise above,” he whispered. When he leaned back, he smiled his sugar-white smile. “Or not.”

  Christensen felt Milsevic’s gun hand tense and knew he had no choice. The man was cornered, stripped of all defense, set for a final act of apocalyptic revenge. In a single, instinctive motion, Christensen grabbed Milsevic’s forearm with his right hand and pushed hard to the left. At the same time, he jerked his head up and away from the gun’s barrel.

  A deafening flash scorched Christensen’s left ear as Milsevic’s body convulsed. They both rolled off the couch to the floor as jagged shards of glass rained from the wide window behind them. Christensen kept rolling, desperate for distance, aware of nothing more than the glorious sensation of being alive.

  “Cover!” Kiger’s voice, from somewhere just outside the shattered picture window. “Christamighty … Somebody in there better talk to me!”

  Christensen crashed against a television cabinet and scrambled to his knees, pressing his throbbing ear against his shoulder. It wasn’t over. Milsevic’s sideways roll put him on the floor, leaning back on his elbows and staring up at Teresa. His gun lay beside him like a fallen crow, a wisp of smoke curling from its barrel. Milsevic had managed to get his hand on top of it, but the gun was pointed harmlessly toward the ancient metal radiator at his back.

  Teresa stood over him like an avenging angel, sighting him down from five feet away. Slowly, using her gun’s muzzle, she traced an almost sensuous path from Milsevic’s forehead to his heart to his groin.

  “Give me an excuse,” she said.

  More commotion at the back door. “Talk to me!” Kiger shouted from the front porch. “The hell’s going on in there?”

  Christensen imagined a herd of uniforms storming the scene, the utter confusion. Would any of them survive a shoot-out in such close quarters? “Wait!” Christensen shouted. “Don’t come in! Please!”

  A pause. “Who’s that talkin’?”

  “Jim.”

  “Who all’s in there?”

  “Three of us.”

  Milsevic seethed as Teresa traced a playful circle between his legs. He was dangling between life and death on nothing more than the thread of her self-control. Christensen had no doubt she could pull the trigger. She was waiting. The next move was Milsevic’s—if he had the guts to make it.

  Christensen spoke softly. “Think about this, Teresa.”

  “Oh, I have.”

  “You have options,” he said.

  “So does he.” She nodded toward Milsevic’s right hand, which still covered the gun on the floor. Still waiting. “Dead or alive, Brian?”

  Milsevic’s face softened. “Teresa—”

  “Before you decide,” she interrupted, “there’s something I need to know.”

  Milsevic glared.

  “David,” she said. “He was part of it, the kill
ings, the attack on me, everything. But then something changed. Eight years he stuck by me. I want to know why.”

  That was the question that still haunted her, and Christensen understood the psychological importance of her asking it now. Eight years he stuck by me … Was the love she felt real, or another cruel illusion? Even from across the room, even in so twisted a moment of power and triumph, Christensen heard in Teresa’s words a sad, fragile plea.

  Milsevic closed his eyes. Time slowed as he sat helpless on the floor, considering his answer. Give her peace, Christensen thought. Do one decent thing … Then, eyes still closed, the son-of-a-bitch sneered.

  “Because David was weak.”

  Milsevic’s last conscious move was an invitation. His right hand tightened around the fallen gun. He worked a finger onto its trigger, and for a deliberate, crystalline moment he seemed to study the weapon in his hand. Then he dropped backward from his elbows, lifting the gun’s black barrel toward Teresa.

  She fired once.

  The slug sent Milsevic’s head and shoulders crashing into the radiator behind him, spattering its surface with a gory red-gray spray. The gun skittered from his hand and clanged against hollow metal. For a moment, his eyes stayed open beneath the dark pucker at the center of his forehead. Christensen braced for a second shot, but Teresa waited in tense, controlled silence. Finally, her tormentor’s body slumped forward and fell to one side. Only then did she lower her gun.

  “Talk to me!” Kiger shouted from outside. “Some­body?”

  Teresa stared down at the end of a nightmare. “Nothing personal,” she whispered.

  “Somebody?”

  When she finally answered, her voice was calm and certain.

  “All clear.”

  Chapter 50

  “I’m outta here.”

  Carmen DellaVecchio stood up, looking frail and dangerous at the same time, like broken glass. He wore elaborate new basketball shoes, a gift from Brenna, but he was otherwise an intimidating presence in his torn jeans and filthy Steelers jacket. Christensen checked the clock on the wall of his private counseling office. They’d all been together less than five minutes—just long enough for Teresa to offer an emotional apology and DellaVecchio to deliver his opinion of it in a reckless stream of obscenities.

  “Anything else, Carmen?” Brenna asked.

  “Maybe it’s best that he go,” Christensen said. He stood up too, a protective reflex, and turned to Teresa. “Anything you want to add before he goes?”

  Teresa shook her head and looked away. When her long ordeal ended six weeks before, she’d finally agreed to meet with DellaVecchio. Christensen watched her anxiety build as the date approached. Now he was worried that DellaVecchio’s wrath had further knotted her tangled emotions instead of giving her the closure she needed. DellaVecchio wouldn’t even shake her hand. His damaged brain left him incapable of understanding the complex conspiracy that had robbed him of eight years of freedom.

  “Antonio’s waiting downstairs,” DellaVecchio said, reaching for the door handle.

  “Your father?” Brenna said. “He didn’t … Carmen, he could have come up.”

  DellaVecchio ignored the comment. “I made him drive me, ’cause I gotta see the state lady after this. But he’s pretty pissed ’cause he’s missing work.”

  Brenna nodded. To Teresa she said, “The Pennsylvania Health Department is funding a statewide fetal-alcohol study. We arranged for Carmen to be included as a subject, in return for which he’ll be eligible for state-funded treatment and therapy.”

  “Waste of my time,” DellaVecchio said to Brenna.

  Christensen agreed. There’d be no redemption. No drugs or therapy could help him, any more than glasses could help a blind man see. The damage was organic, permanent, irreversible. But when the legal ordeal was over, when DellaVecchio was free without official supervision whatsoever, Brenna had done the right thing. For so long, his freedom had been her only goal. Having claimed that moral high ground, she began looking for ways to make sure her former client didn’t become the Scarecrow everyone expected him to be.

  As a study subject, DellaVecchio would be obligated to report twice a month for interviews and evaluation. If he ever seemed likely to act on his violent fantasies and impulses, a therapist might be able to predict his behavior. At the very least, there’d be a written record of where they could find him.

  “Carmen, you either participate, or you get a bill from me for being your lawyer for the past eight years,” Brenna said. “Your choice.”

  DellaVecchio shifted his weight from foot to foot. “I’m going. I fuckin’ told you that.”

  “Smart move.”

  Teresa watched the exchange without a word.

  “Later.” DellaVecchio turned and slouched toward the office door, his lagging left foot scuffing the carpet as he walked.

  Teresa stood up. “Wait.”

  Christensen stepped in front of her as she crossed the office toward DellaVecchio, but moved aside when he saw the fresh intensity in her eyes. She approached DellaVecchio without hesitation and gently touched his forearm. A simple gesture, but one requiring raw courage on Teresa’s part.

  “Don’t go just yet,” Teresa said. She turned to Brenna. “Where’s he have to go to meet the Health Department people?”

  Brenna sat forward. Christensen tried to interpret the look on her face. Uncertain? Curious? “The State Office Building, down by the Point. Twice a month.”

  Teresa turned back to DellaVecchio, who was staring hard at the spot on his arm where Teresa’s hand still rested.

  “I could drive you,” she said.

  DellaVecchio nodded toward the door. “Antonio’s here, like I said.”

  “Next time, then,” Teresa said. “I could help you get to your appointments so your dad wouldn’t have to miss work. I’d like to do that if you’ll let me.”

  Then DellaVecchio did something Christensen found astounding. He blushed. Whatever emotion was behind it bloomed in a splash of color on DellaVecchio’s pinched face. He opened his mouth, but was, for the moment, dumbstruck. And then he pulled his arm away like a man who’d been burned.

  “There’s buses,” he said.

  “I know. But I can help. I want to help.”

  DellaVecchio looked over at Brenna, who smiled and shrugged.

  “I don’t care how you get there, Carmen,” Brenna said. “I know you don’t want to go, but you’ve got to go. So the easier it is for you to get Downtown, the better off you’re going to be.”

  Teresa touched him again, looked into the black eyes of the man who once haunted her dreams. “I won’t push it. But if you get in a bind, I can help. Brenna’s got my number.”

  Teresa’s kindness seemed to panic DellaVecchio. Christensen saw in him an odd mix of emotions—confusion, embarrassment, gratitude. Teresa had reached out to him, and in that moment they all saw the impact something so simple could have on a man living life as a pariah.

  DellaVecchio nodded, then backed away. “Gotta go.”

  Teresa didn’t follow him, but stood her ground. “Just think about it, OK?”

  DellaVecchio looked to Brenna for affirmation, but got only a noncommittal shrug. He turned away and twisted the handle on the office door, his eyes fixed hard on his new shoes. He left them with a single word that floated into the office like a rising balloon:

  “Thanks.”

  Chapter 51

  Teresa backed her car from its parking slot and pulled away. Christensen watched from his office window as the Mercedes bumped onto Meyran Avenue, headed for the afternoon rush on Forbes. Brenna was watching too, standing beside him, and she slipped her hand into his as soon as the car was out of sight.

  “Yo
u can’t expect more,” she said. “You did what you could.”

  “I know.”

  “We both did. For her. For Carmen. Bottom line: It was a win-win.”

  Christensen touched the window pane, warmed by the spring sun. “That implies it’s over for them. You know it’s not, especially for her.”

  “Kiger’s already cleared her on the Milsevic shoot,” she said.

  “But not the Tidwell thing. I don’t see him backing off just because she owned up to what she did, do you? Not with his attitude toward drugs.”

  Brenna wrapped him in her arms when he turned around. “She need a good defense attorney?”

  Christensen shook his head. “Don’t even go there.”

  Brenna’s green eyes had regained the same shine they had before the concussion, and her hair had long since covered the scars on her scalp. Beyond the obvious, though, Christensen sensed an awareness in her that was missing before, a subtle shift in priorities. She was working less, laughing more. Appreciating the things that, to him, always gave life a precious balance. The day before, on Sunday afternoon, she’d sat cross-legged for an hour on Taylor’s bedroom floor, playing Crazy Eights with her son. The day before that, she’d joined Annie on the couch to watch Homeward Bound again, and they both cried when Shadow came home.

  “Now what?” he said.

  Brenna laid her head on his chest. “We move on.”

  “How?”

  “Together.”

  Christensen wanted to believe. He wanted to forget the way things were. He wanted to trust the changes he’d seen since the day he’d nearly lost her in Panther Hollow. But could he? How long would this last?

  “We’ve got visitors.” Brenna pointed through the window, at the silver Legend just then pulling into Teresa’s parking slot one floor below. Christensen did a double-take. They’d driven to his office together, in the Explorer.

  “Bren, who’s driving your car?”