by John Inman
Staring at those stick figures on the filthy car window, I felt a burning begin at the back of my eyes. The embryo of a lump formed in my throat. I imagined I could feel the sorrow wafting off the house like billowing heat. As if sensing my sadness, and my overactive imagination, Chuck pressed his muzzle to the back of my head and whimpered.
I reached behind me to pat his fuzzy head as I circled the block and swung around for another pass. This time as I cruised slowly by, I spotted the woman in the backyard. She was sitting at a picnic table, her back slumped, chin in hand, staring into space as if lost in thought. A toddler was at her feet, all but ignored, playing in the grass, which answered the question about which child was gone. From the woman’s other hand, a tendril of smoke drifted up from a lit cigarette, which at the moment seemed to be as forgotten as the kid.
There was a carport behind her at the end of the driveway. Beneath the carport was a back door leading into the house, well hidden from the street. I had to assume that at night, the carport would be lit. Or maybe not. Either way, it would be my best avenue for gaining access to the house unseen.
I realized at that moment that I had decided to take the case. Or at least give this family the opportunity to tell me what had happened and listen to what they expected of me. Extermination jobs are not to be entered into lightly. I would need to be convinced. I would need to know that my way of solving the problem was the only option available. And most of all, I would need to know that the child’s death was not an accident but an act of malice on the part of the perpetrator.
I wasn’t an indiscriminate murderer, no matter what my past clients might think. I extinguished those lives only worthy of being extinguished. I killed only those who deserved to be erased.
Another whimper from the back seat told me either François or Chuck, or possibly both, had reached the limit of their patience. They wanted to go to the doggy park, and they wanted to go now. Clucking in sympathy at their pleading faces in the rearview mirror, I accelerated away from the curb and, with a final glance at the woman in the backyard, headed out into traffic.
Later, I perched on a rail fence in a patch of shade from a fat palm tree while François ran circles around a family of wiener dogs who didn’t seem to know what the hell to make of this bigass, nelly looking dog that had suddenly taken such an interest in their doings. Meanwhile, on the other side of the field, Chuck, always horny, was sniffing at the tail of a sexy little Pekingese who had caught his eye. I could see his poochy erection all the way from where I was sitting. God, Chuck might be old, but he was still a slut. I wondered if I’d be so lucky when I reached his age in people years.
The owner of the Pekingese snatched her prissy little mutt out of harm’s way just as Chuck was preparing to slide it home. At the same moment, I innocently whistled an airy tune and cast a glance skyward as if I’d just spotted a meteor, hoping she would think Chuck belonged to someone else. And that was when my cell phone buzzed and I dragged it out of my pocket.
“I wasn’t going to do this so soon,” Kenny said, the first words out of his mouth.
“You mean call?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m glad you did,” I said, smiling into the phone.
“Are you?”
“Yeah.”
Static took over while a strange but not entirely uncomfortable silence settled down around us. It was Kenny who ended it first.
“I enjoyed last night,” he said. “Zoo. Dinner. Your dick.”
I laughed. “So did I. Your dick, I mean. Not mine. Well, actually, I enjoyed mine too. But I enjoyed yours more.” I groped around for a semblance of sanity. “Truth is I enjoyed them both.”
It was his turn to laugh, and as soon as his laughter died down, the staticky silence settled in again. This time it was a little less comfortable, which I didn’t like at all.
Ever mindful of being a responsible dog owner, or at least giving the appearance of one, I scanned the park for my two wards. Off in the distance, Chuck had shifted targets and was now sniffing under the tail of an Irish setter, who didn’t seem to mind his attentions at all. Clearly a slut in her own right. François was over by the bathrooms, lying on his side in the grass, gnawing on his own foot. One of the wienie dogs was administering a friendly nibble to François’s ear, another was peeing on a bush three feet away, and yet another was tucked up against François’s belly, sound asleep. They all seemed to have struck up a rather synergetic relationship.
When the silence on the phone went on a beat too long, I quietly asked, “What’s wrong?”
Kenny perked up at that. He forced a laugh, but it didn’t fool me. I remembered how the night before he’d gone a little too far in telling me how hard it would be to date someone with a handicap such as his. I wondered if that was on his mind again today.
“In case you’re wondering,” I said. “I enjoyed being with you last night more than I’ve enjoyed being with anyone in a very long time.”
I could hear him clear his throat over the phone. “You don’t have to say that, you know.”
“Yes, I do. Because it’s true.”
He seemed to think things were getting too serious. I could sense him grabbing the next question out of his butt. Rather an enticing vision. “So is your hair still growing back?” he asked.
“I hope so,” I answered.
“Me too,” he said. And then, just as quickly, he backtracked. His next words came out in a flurry, like he had only a very few seconds to say everything he needed to say before the overtime buzzer went off and he’d be kicked off the team. “About the stuff I said last night. It’s all true, you know. Seeing someone like me isn’t easy.”
“Kenny, it’s only hard if you make it that way. I guess I’ll need another date to find out for sure.”
“You want another date?”
“You know I do.”
“I’m too short for you,” he said, apparently grabbing another string of words out of his butt.
“I thought we fit just right,” I answered, determined to stay cool. I knew what he was trying to do, but I wasn’t about to let him do it.
“We have nothing in common,” he ventured.
“In bed last night, we had a lot in common.”
“I only pretended to enjoy myself, you know.”
“No, you didn’t. Nobody can pretend that good.”
I could hear him gnawing on his lip. Finally, he tried again. “Our lives are on different trajectories.”
“Jesus, Kenny. What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not sure. I think I read it somewhere.”
Was that a smile I heard in his voice, or was it wishful thinking on my part?
I had to hold my breath to hear his next words, they came so softly over the line. “I can still feel your mouth on me,” he whispered. “I can still taste your come on my tongue.”
“Stop talking like that,” I said, “or I’ll be arrested for beating off on a fence in the doggy park and spend the rest of my life labeled a sex offender to humans and a menace to pets in general.”
He giggled. “That’s an enticing image. The beating off part, I mean.”
I giggled back. “Ain’t it?”
A short silence followed. “Larry?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t think we should see each other again.”
“In that case, I’ll pick you up at ten.”
He sighed, but it didn’t last long. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be ready at nine. Or maybe eight thirty. You know. In case you’re early. And you don’t have to pick me up. We can stay here at my place.”
“Cool.”
With that, I clicked off my phone before he changed his mind.
Chapter Eight
IT WAS another moonlit night, or would be as soon as darkness really settled in. I was parked outside the Craftsman home again, watching shadows move back and forth across what I presumed to be a kitchen window. Two shadows. Mom and pop. If the toddler was r
unning around as well, he was too short to block the light. Filtered through the shadows of evening, I could hear the faint strains of Ed Sheeran, sweetly singing about a lost love. I wasn’t entirely sure if good old Ed was coming from the Craftsman home or the house behind it.
I had done a bit of research online about the disaster that had befallen the family. It was a story that reeked not only of sadness, but of cold calculation and cruel duplicity. Still, before I made a final decision about whether or not I would take the case, I wanted to hear what the parents had to say.
It was after eight when the lights in the kitchen went off. Shadows stopped moving around in front of the windows. Apparently mom and pop had relocated to another part of the house. Probably the living room, where I could see more lights now. A Tiffany-style lamp on a table in front of a picture window flashed into glorious color, and I had just enough time to see a hand recede from beneath the shade after switching it on.
I had reached that familiar point in a stakeout when you begin to wonder why you didn’t bring a jar to pee in when movement caught my eye. The front door opened and a man stepped out onto the porch. It was fully dark now. He stood in the golden haze of a porch light long enough to look up and down the street, as if he were waiting for someone to show himself. Me, perhaps. As soon as he stepped back inside the house and the door closed behind him, the porch light went out. Seconds later, at the back of the house, the light in the carport also went out.
The only light left burning that I could see was the Tiffany lamp by the front window, and that was more for decoration than illumination. In fact, I wondered if they might not leave that light on every evening as sort of a night light.
The alarms are off, the note had said, and I suspected they were indeed.
I stepped quietly from the car and softly clicked the door closed behind me. I had parked among the low branches of an overhanging tree at the end of an adjacent alley. My car was off the street, tucked neatly away out of sight. Across the roadway, the same alley continued on, abutting the back of the carport where the dusty SUV now sat.
Pulling my trusty ski mask over my bald head, I adjusted the eyeholes so I could see out properly and quickly crossed the street to duck inside the carport like a wisp of shadow, or so I hoped. I trod carefully in the dark, trying not to trip over anything and make a racket. I pulled driving gloves from my jacket pocket and slipped them on. Fingerprints are not an exterminator’s best friend. Especially when he hasn’t scoped out his new clients yet to learn if they are worthy of his trust. Or his particular skills.
The occasional car passed along the street, but their headlights didn’t venture far enough my way to expose me to unwanted eyes. I moved stealthily to the back of the carport, squeezing around the dusty SUV, and eased open the back door leading into the house. It was a security screen door, and as promised, it was unlocked. Behind it, the inner solid door was closed also. Testing the knob, I realized the second door was unlocked as well, so I quietly pushed it open. When no preset alarm system exploded into clamorous caterwauling at my clandestine presence, I breathed a sigh of relief and stepped on through the door.
I was in the kitchen. It was spotless. No dishes in the sink. A light inside the oven cast enough illumination across the room for me to navigate by. I wondered if the oven light had been left on for that reason. Farther back in the house, I could hear the dulcet strains of Ed Sheeran again. This time he was crooning softly enough that I could neither catch the words nor recognize the tune. I only knew it was his voice. In the darkened house, with the grief all but dripping from the walls (at least in my ever-ready imagination), the music sounded plaintive and sad, and somehow the perfect backdrop for the business at hand.
I stepped through the kitchen door and entered a dining room. It was indirectly lit by the Tiffany lamp in the next room. The air smelled of furniture polish and a mound of apples sitting in a bowl on the table. Tendrils of orange flame flickered in the darkness ahead. Someone had lit the fireplace. The flames cast dancing shadows across a wall covered with framed photographs. Even from a distance, I could see the pictures told the progressive story of a family passing through time. It was a progression cut short for one family member by a senseless act of violence.
Moving soundlessly on kitty-cat feet, I passed through another door and found myself in the living room. On a leather settee next to the fireplace, their anxious faces lit by the fire, a young couple sat side by side. They were watching me.
“It’s you,” the woman said. “Isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s me.”
The man rose and moved toward me. His hand was out, and when he was close enough, I shook it. He didn’t speak a word but merely stepped back, then ushered me deeper into the room. He pointed to a leather chair across from the settee. I nodded a polite greeting to the woman and said I’d rather stand. I have an aversion to leaving trace evidence from my clothing on a client’s furniture. The man resumed his seat beside his wife, and at the same moment, she reached over and switched off a portable CD player parked on the end table at her elbow. Ed Sheeran clammed up like someone had slit his throat. The only sound remaining was the crackling of the fire.
“Can I get you anything?” the woman asked, and the husband stared at her like she had suddenly grown a second head. She blinked her surprise at his expression. “What?” she asked. “What did I say?”
He simply shook his head, so I answered for him. “No, I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
Only then did I notice the framed photograph in the woman’s hand. She rose and stepped close enough to hand the photo to me. The husband’s eyes never left the photo as it went from her hand to mine.
“That’s Tommy,” she said, and there was a hitch in her voice. She lowered herself back down to the settee, and her husband rested his hand in her lap. She clutched it with both of hers, watching me as I gazed at the picture.
I angled the picture frame toward the light of the fire in my gloved hand and studied the face of a young boy. He was reminiscent of the stick figure on the back window of the SUV outside. In the picture, the child was perhaps eight or nine. He was wearing a baseball cap and uniform and had a Louisville Slugger angled cockily over his shoulder. I half expected to see him scratch his balls and spit a wad of bubblegum juice at his feet. The kid looked happy. He was grinning from ear to ear, and one of his front teeth was missing, making him look carefree and mischievous as hell. I wondered if a line drive had caught him in the puss. Staring at his smiling face, I had to grin.
“Yes,” the father quietly said, reading my thoughts. “He was a happy child.”
They were the first words I had heard the man speak. And somehow I knew that while the death of the boy in the photo had torn at the heart of the woman in front of me, it had done more than that to the man beside her. The death of his son had ravaged him, and the pain of the loss still raged in his eyes. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the one who’d instigated contact with me.
He was the one who needed revenge.
“My name is—” the father began, but I held up my hand to gently silence him.
“I already know your names,” I said. “I did some research. From the clipping,” I added, when I saw the confusion on his face.
“Oh yes,” he said. “Of course.”
I seemed to have let the air out of his tires. He didn’t know where to go from there. His wife did.
“I think you know why we asked you here,” she said. The sadness I had seen on her face that afternoon as she sat in the yard had returned. Or maybe these days the sadness was always there. Her hands shook as she lit a cigarette, but there was a fierce determination in her eyes. Even her husband seemed to cower before it.
I realized then that my initial impressions were all wrong. Bringing me into the picture wasn’t the father’s idea. It was hers. She was the one who demanded revenge. She was the one who had sought me out. Her next words told me I was right.
“We w
ant you to kill the man who murdered our son. We spoke to one of your previous… clients. He didn’t give us your name, and we don’t need to know it. What you did for him is exactly what we want you to do for us. If you’re unwilling to do this service, or if for some reason we’ve made a mistake in contacting you, you can let us know now, and we’ll never need to meet again.”
I watched as she pulled smoke deep into her lungs. Her cigarettes were unfiltered, so she was no sissified nicotine addict. She was sucking on that cigarette hard enough to take everything away from it that it had to offer. I wondered if cancer would one day find her, and if it did, if it would kill her and release from her waking mind, once and for all, the agony of losing a son to murder.
“You were not wrong to contact me,” I said. “And I don’t need you to tell me anything more about your son’s death. I would like you to tell me everything you know about the man who caused it, however. I have time now. If you don’t, we can meet another day, or never, if you think you might be changing your mind. I’ll decide later whether or not to do what you want me to do.”
I clammed up then and waited patiently for one or both of them to make a decision. It didn’t take long. They shared a glance, and then the man leaned forward and began to speak.
“His name, as you probably already know, is John Allan Davis. He’s forty-two years old, attends court-decreed AA meetings once a week, and drinks on the sly every other day of the week. His license has long been revoked, but he drives anyway. He was driving drunk and without a license on the day he murdered our son. Tommy was coming home from a Little-League game. The ball field is only a few blocks away.”
The husband had picked up a throw pillow from the settee and placed it in his lap. The longer he spoke, the more he wrung the life out of that pillow. Finally, his wife reached over and gently tugged it from his hands. He seemed surprised to find he had been holding a pillow at all. He cleared his throat and focused once again on me. His eyes were agonizingly bright in the firelight. There was a heat of hatred in them that looked far hotter than the flames on the grate.
