Orchard Grove

by Vincent Zandri

  I could almost feel my eyes go wide. I was sure he noticed them, since he was no doubt trained to notice such reactions. It was exactly the kind of involuntary response I needed to get under control if I was going to weather what was surly going to be a prolonged storm of police questioning over the course of the next few days and nights. That is, until Miller was convinced without an ounce of a doubt that Cattivo’s death from eating his piece had been an unfortunate accident. Or perhaps a fortunate one, depending upon whom you asked.

  “You want the truth?” I posed.

  “Like you said, I’m the cops. Downtown, on the State Street hill, the fat guys in the black robes locked inside the white marble building with the big pillars out front, those are the judges.”

  I sipped a little more Jack, thought about Susan in bed with Lana right this very second.

  “Okay, Miller,” I said. “Have it your way. Susan and I have seen better days. Feel better?”

  “And why are the better days behind you? She’s an awfully attractive woman, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  Miller, dancing, jabbing, provoking…

  “Do I have to tell you this stuff? What’s it got to do with Cattivo?”

  “Who said it has to have anything to do with it?”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here, interrupting what I hoped would be a week-long coma?”

  He nodded. “In part. You see… and you might appreciate this as script writer who’s written a few shoot ‘em-ups for the silver screen… but in order to get at a certain truth, a detective needs to more or less skirt around the issue, kind of like the Indians will circle the wagons, hoping to force someone or something out in the open.”

  “In this case, a truth or something directly related to the truth.”

  He slapped the table, shocking my system. “Exactly. Only in this case, the truth is not established. The truth is still a question. That question being, did John Cattivo really, truly, kill himself? Or was he somehow coerced or set up?”

  “I see,” I said, my beating heart inching its way back up into my throat.

  He drank the rest of his drink. I drank mine. He poured us two more.

  “Now,” he said, “why are you and the wife not getting on so well lately?”

  I stared into the golden brown booze, wishing I could drown in it. Since I had no choice but to sit there and take his jabs, I decided to play a little rope-a-dope and give him what he wanted. I’d stretch the truth just a little to maybe get his mind off me and me alone. Maybe if I spread around a little of the suspicion, all eyes wouldn’t be on me. After all, it was Susan who was sleeping with Lana right now. Not me. Not after what I’d done for the blonde beauty. Not after putting my life on the line. I was getting screwed over while Susan and Lana gladly screwed one another.

  “Why else do couples start to fight?” I said. “Money, or the lack of it. House in foreclosure. My work in the crapper. Not much to say to each other anymore that doesn’t end up in an argument. The wife screaming at me, hitting me, clawing at me, telling me I’m no good. Can’t even support her. All washed up. Useless. Telling me she’s gonna find someone else to give her multiple orgasms. You know, the usual shit.”

  He nodded like I’d gone all TMI on him.

  “My wife died on the operating table,” he said. “I wouldn’t know.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Don’t be. Because you’re not, and that’s okay. Why should you be? You didn’t know her. You don’t know me. You had nothing to do with it.”

  “Do I want to know you, Detective Miller?”

  “Like they say in law school, the question’s moot, ain’t it?”

  “Yeah, I suppose it’s beside the point anyway.”

  “Why so broke?” he asked, grinning through his teeth. “I thought writers who make movies do pretty good. I worked a case not long ago that involved a writer lives not far from here. Crime writer by the name of Reece Johnston. He also happens to be a pyromaniac in remission. Maybe you know him. He seems to do okay.”

  As a writer, even a script writer, I hated to be compared to other writers, especially when it came to success. I’m sure that as a detective, Miller could see the bitterness painted on my face at the direction this conversation was going. Never mind that I stood the chance of going to prison for John’s murder. When it came to my writing, my skin was thinner than Saran Wrap and just as transparent.

  “William Kennedy lives in Albany too. So did Herman Melville and Nathanial Hawthorne. So what? Sometimes writers do great, other times we don’t make squat. I happen to fall into the latter category these days. Satisfied? What’s your point in all this, Miller?”

  He sat back, exhaled.

  “Just trying to fill in some holes in my line of questioning is all,” he said. “Now then, Ethan, tell me, how long have you known the Cattivo’s exactly?”

  “Since they moved in, I guess. Early June. I didn’t get to know them at that time. I just knew of them.”

  “Almost two months,” he said. “It’s taken you and your wife all this time to get together with them socially?”

  “We bought a fence for a reason. Fences make real good neighbors.”

  “Now you didn’t write that line, Ethan, did you?”

  “I abide by it nonetheless.”

  “That why you’ve been spending your days lately looking over the fence at Mrs. Cattivo while she sunbathes?”

  I thought the floor was going to open up like one of those sink holes down in Florida, swallow me whole. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few sheets of standard copy stock that had been folded down the center. He opened it up, set it on the table so I could see it. The top sheet was a digital photograph of me staring out my master bedroom window, crutches planted under my armpits, my eyes staring intently out onto something which we both knew was a topless Lana. I went for the sheet directly underneath it, but then hesitated.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Be my guest.”

  Pulling the top sheet aside, I eyed the second image. It was a doozy. Lana and I locked in embrace on her back deck. It must have been taken from directly inside the Cattivo residence. Now I was wishing for the floor to drop out from under me. Laying that page on the typewriter, I checked out the third picture. It was snapped from outside the front living room window in the spot where Susan had eyed Lana and me sexing it up on the dining room table, which made for a damn nice photo. I put that aside and looked at the fourth and final shot. It showed me standing all alone inside John’s gunroom, where I’d just thumbed the clip release on the very same Colt .45 that blew his brains out.

  Miller sipped more whiskey.

  “Oh, Ethan,” he said, with all the casualness of someone discussing a recipe for apple pie, “and as for that last picture of you standing inside Cattivo’s private firearms collection room just this morning, we have a series of about two dozen pictures that prove you were not only interested in the now late detective’s guns, but interested in one gun in particular. The same Colt .45 Model 1911 that made his brains do spin art on the window behind the desk.”

  “The blood stain,” I exhaled.

  “I’m guessing that would explain that,” he said. “Seems to me there’s a bit of a contradiction in your testimony. After all, you never mentioned having previously visited the gunroom.”

  I stared at the photo hoping it would spontaneously dissolve right there on the table or that maybe I might suddenly wake up in my bed from this nightmare. But it was not to be.

  “How do you know I was there this morning?” I said. “Maybe those pictures were taken just prior to his committing suicide? At a time when he was willingly showing me his collection.”

  “Well for one thing, you’re wearing a different shirt. For two, we’ve already determined the blood on the floor to be more than six or seven hours old, if not more. For three, you can tell by the light coming in through that east-facing window that it’s morning, and for four, you can tell by the digital alarm clock
on John’s desk that it’s ten in the morning. On the dottimundo in fact.”

  Dottimundo…funny guy.

  I sat back in my chair, hard. Just a few minutes ago I was considering placing a call to the very detective who now sat before me, and spilling my guts. But now my defense mechanism was kicking in… my survival of the fittest… and I not only wanted to kick Miller out of my house, I wanted to kick him in his perfect white teeth.

  “So do I get to ask who exactly captured these pictures? Or is secrecy just another one the many police privileges?”

  “You can ask, Ethan. But I’m not sure what difference it would make. We’ll have the blood tested for DNA and for certain, it will have your blueprint on it.”

  Maybe the person I saw standing outside the picture window in my living room was my wife, Susan, but in my head, I suddenly saw a tall, well-built man, with a black goatee, and Ray Ban aviator sunglasses masking his eyes. After all, I’d never known Susan to go around carrying a camera. And I doubt very much that she pulled out her smartphone and started snapping away while Lana and I were locked in embrace on the dining room table. Carl, on the other hand, was trained in the art of surveillance. He was cop after all. A detective. He must have snapped the shot and then hid around the side of the house when Susan pulled onto Orchard Grove.

  “Try me,” I said.

  “Cattivo’s partner, Carl,” he said.

  Bingo…

  A slow burn began in my bum foot and quickly spread out throughout my entire body. I decided the time had come to go for broke.

  “You aware that your boy, Carl, is sleeping with Lana?” I said. “And that it’s possible John was so angry over it, he threatened Lana’s life?”

  “That so?” he said. “She tell you that? Aren’t you the nosy little neighbor. Not getting a lot of writing done these day, I guess.”

  “Lana told me she overheard John speaking to someone on the phone. According to John, Lana was going to pay for sleeping with his partner. He was going to wait until nightfall… tonight… to throw her down the basement stairs. Make it look like an accident.”

  “Now let me get this straight,” he said. “That’s your story or Lana’s story?”

  I stared down at the pics, mind spinning out of control. Had Lana lied to me about John’s threat?

  …Of course she did, you dumb son of a bitch… She saw you coming, Ethan, and snagged you hook, line, and fucking sinker…

  “Okay, I’m having a bit of an affair with Lana,” I said, raising my voice. “But it turns out I’m one of many, which also includes my wife. There, happy now?”

  He cocked his head, pursed his thin lips.

  “Happens all the time,” I went on, “all over this great country of ours. Christ, all over the planet. And John was crazy angry over it all. But it doesn’t mean I stood over him and pulled the trigger for him. He did a good job of that all on his own.”

  …In my head, I’m grabbing his hair, jamming the barrel into his mouth, breaking his teeth…

  “With a Colt .45 that you were interested in.”

  “Yes, I took a sneak peek at his guns this morning while having a friendly coffee with Lana. Again, so what? I’m thinking about writing a script about a detective who carries a Colt .45, Model 1911. Of course, I’m interested in it.” Running my hands down my perspiring face. “You know what, Miller? Maybe it’s time I got myself a lawyer.”

  He smiled the robotic smile once more, teeth grinding, cheeks concave. “Let’s just say this is one of those situations where we’re still circling the truth, only now, we’re closing in on the truth as it begins to expose its ugly head.” He stood up tall, seemingly unaffected in the least by the drinks. But then, quite suddenly, he trembled, like the frigid ghost of Detective Cattivo passed right through him. “God, sometimes I scare myself I’m so good.”

  Positioning my crutches, I pulled myself up, my head spinning. Turns out, I was a lightweight drinker compared to the homicide detective.

  “None of this means a thing, Miller,” I said, trying my best not to raise my voice a second time.

  “You’re right,” he said. “Doesn’t mean shit. That is, you had no reason not to want to see Cattivo dead.”

  …Cattivo, standing over Susan, a gun pointed at her skull…

  “As of this point, I don’t speak without a lawyer present.”

  “Sure you can afford one?” he said, lifting his glass, draining what was left. He leaned into me, not unlike the way he’d done it outside on the Cattivo back deck when he interviewed me earlier. “You’d have to move quite a bit of that pot back there to afford a damn good attorney, believe you me.” He burst out laughing, reached out and slapped me on the arm like we were old buddies. I nearly fell over onto my side, but managed to plant my hand on the tabletop. For a quick second, I thought he was John’s spirit, having taken over a different body. “Don’t sweat it, Ethan. I won’t tell anyone. Besides, I’m an officer of the law. Who else is there left to tell? Your mom?” He stepped back from the table. “But allow me to pass on a little advice. Go get that lawyer, no matter what the cost, and don’t leave town.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He straightened out the ball knot on his blue tie, then stuffed his hands in jacket pockets.

  “What it means, Mr. Forrester,” he said, “is that if you’re innocent, you have nothing to worry about. But if you’re guilty of a homicide, no matter the degree, no matter the motive…” He lifted up his hands, pressed his lips together, eyes wide. “Well then, due justice will take its course.”

  “We through?”

  “Thanks for the drink,” he said, turning for the front door. When he got there, he about-faced. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Mr. Forrester… Ethan… I’ll say it again. I like you. I really do. But it’s just that I have a job to do and quite possibly a crime to solve. Doesn’t matter that I thought Cattivo was an asshole and a reckless asshole at that who probably would have ended up shooting himself in the end anyway. It’s just that there have been some strange things going on here on Orchard Grove, and I aim to get to the bottom of them. It’s all a part of the serve and protect program you personally pay for with your tax dollars.”

  “That what you’re doing, Miller? Serving and protecting?”

  Bringing up his right hand, index finger high, he made a twisting motion with it.

  “Circling the wagons, my friend… Circling the wagons.”

  Opening the front door, the cop let himself out, the same way he’d let himself in.

  The whiskey bottle sat on the table, begging me to pour another shot.

  I obeyed.

  I drank it down fast, then poured another and drank that too. For a brief moment I felt like the entire world was spinning out of control.

  …Carl was there, the whole time. He saw everything. He knows everything. Maybe Susan was standing right beside him when he took that picture of Lana and me on the dining room table. Maybe he’s over there right now with Lana and my wife. Maybe he’s in bed with them…

  Sitting back in my chair I tried to sort all of this out in my mind. My eyes locked on the full color digital printouts of my image engaged in a whole lot of illicit activity with Lana. The new neighbors move in and my life turns upside down. I fall in love with a woman I don’t know and I can’t even function like a productive human being. That’s how obsessed I’d become. My wife falls for her too and decides to keep it a secret, as if she wants Lana all to herself. But she can’t have her all to herself. They need something from me. They need me to kill John so that the three of us can live happily ever after on the cop’s pension and insurance money. But then, I’m stupid… dumber than a box of rocks. The third man Lana and Susan had in mind isn’t me at all. It’s Carl. I’m along for the ride as the murderer.

  The killer.

  John wasn’t about to kill Lana. It was all a fabrication. A lie designed to lure me in for good. I’d already wanted John dead for what he did to Susan on our ba
ck deck. It wouldn’t take a whole lot more to get me to agree to Lana’s plan. Only the promise of her murder, and quite possibly my own, if I didn’t go through with it.

  I sat there shaking, shivering. Maybe from fear, maybe from anger. Maybe from I don’t know what? I wanted to ask myself, Why me? But the little voice inside my empty gut only laughed, lit up a smoke, and said,

  “Why not you, asshole? You see, Ethan, it’s like this: Lana, Susan, and Carl… they all needed John dead. That is, they wanted to enjoy a nice life together while you rotted away in prison or worse, faced lethal injection. Lana saw through you. Saw how in love you were with her. Obsessive love. Possessive love. Manic love. The kind of love that hurts worse than a heart attack. The kind of love you cheat and steal for. The kind of love you kill for. How gullible can you be, Ethan? How much of a chump? So yeah, why the hell not use your ass to take the fall for John’s murder? You’re so blind with love you can’t see past your own crooked nose.”

  Then, a sound coming from the kitchen.

  Water dripping from the leaky faucet into the metal sink.

  Drip, drip, drip…

  But that wasn’t it.

  I turned, saw a face in the picture window. A man standing out on the back deck.

  Carl.

  I bounded up, my crutches slipping from my grip. I lost my balance, went over hard onto my side.

  “You fucker!” I screamed, feeling a shot of pain shoot up my right leg. “I know what you’re doing!”

  I cocked my head, saw him in the window, smiling. Lifting up his right hand, he made a pretend pistol, shoved the barrel into his mouth, brought down the thumb, shouted, “Bang! Bang!”

  I rolled over onto my stomach, started crawling toward the sliding glass doors. When I came to the steps leading down into the playroom, I tried to pull myself up onto my feet. But my right foot was too tender, too swollen, too raw with pain. I dropped down, rolled down the steps.

  When I caught my breath, I once again looked out the window.

  Carl was gone.