by Lisa Gardner
And heaven help her, she dug in her heels, preparing for a fight they’d both probably regret later. But that was then, and this was now, and she never could stand to be wrong.
“Since when do I have to account for my time to you?” she asked.
“Goddammit,” Mac exploded. “You think I don’t know? I’ve already been on the phone with Sal. Who, by the way, wants to talk to you about his visit to Tommy Mark Evans’s parents. You went to check things out, didn’t you, Kimberly? Couldn’t trust Sal to do the work. No, he’s only investigated fifty or sixty homicides in the past ten years, what the hell could he know about this kind of thing? Did you hit the bar scene? Go hooker shopping? Or did you stand on a street corner and call, ‘Here Mr. Freaky Scary Man. Come find fresh bait.’”
“I did no such thing! I drove around Alpharetta, checking out Ginny’s and Tommy’s respective homes. Nothing dangerous. Just sightseeing.”
“And your phone? Did it stay quiet?”
She thinned her lips mutinously, which was answer enough.
This time, Mac pounded the counter. “That’s it. As your husband, I have never laid down the law. But enough is enough. If you don’t have the good sense to see it, I certainly do. You’re off this case. Fini. Done. Let Sal handle it!”
“Please, it was just heavy breathing, obscene phone call one-oh-one. I’m not going to be chased off by a kid playing games, and you should be ashamed of yourself for even suggesting such a thing.”
“Kimberly, don’t you get it?”
“Get what?” she shouted back, honestly bewildered.
“It’s not about you anymore. It’s about our baby, the unborn child growing in your stomach. Who is already growing and experiencing the world, even from the womb. Our child has ears, you know. I checked that damn book you gave me. At the twenty-week mark, babies can hear. And what the hell did our baby get to listen to last night?”
It took her a second. Then the dots connected, and her hands went reflexively to her belly, cradling the gently rounded curve in a belated act of protection. She hadn’t thought, hadn’t realized…
But yes, she was past the twenty-week mark. When the fetus had ears and the really dedicated mothers started playing Mozart and Beethoven in order to develop neonatal geniuses. Except Kimberly didn’t have the time or patience for that nonsense. No, she just had her unborn child listen to the sound of a woman dying.
“I’m sure…” she started, then stopped, unable to continue.
Mac’s shoulders finally came down. Across the kitchen, his rage appeared to drain from him. He looked simply haunted instead. She should cross to him, she thought, slip her arms around his waist, rest her head upon his chest. Maybe if he felt the baby move the way she felt the baby move, he would understand that their child was doing fine, babies were resilient, blah, blah, blah.
But she couldn’t move.
She stood there. Her baby could hear. And what had she made her baby listen to last night?
Mac was right. Life had changed.
“Kimberly,” Mac ventured, softer this time, tired. “We’re going to get through this.”
“If I quit my job?” she asked quietly. “Stop being an agent, stop being a workaholic, stop being me?”
“You know I would never ask that of you.”
“But you are.”
“No, I’m not,” he insisted, voice rising again. “There’s a difference between not working at all and not working violent crimes. There’s a difference between asking you to stay home and asking you to reduce your hours to forty a week. There’s a difference between saying, hey, bail on all your assignments, and saying, Kimberly, please don’t take on a new case that’s not even FBI jurisdiction. I’m not asking for the sun, the moon, the stars at night. I’m just asking for common sense.”
“Common sense?”
“Maybe I could’ve said that better.”
“What’s different right now, Mac? You tell me, what’s really different?”
His turn to be confused. “The baby?”
“The pregnancy! We’re not dealing with a baby yet, we’re talking about my body. The exact same body I’ve taken to work the past four years and brought home safe again.”
“That’s not entirely true—”
“The hell it is! You want to talk trust? Common sense? Then trust me to take care of myself, and this body, the way I have for the past four years. I’m not walking into shoot-outs. I’m not serving high-risk warrants. I don’t even go to the firing range anymore, to avoid exposure to lead. Hell, I just spent six days at a crime scene and never even crossed over the yellow tape, just to be on the safe side. I’m taking my prenatals, avoiding alcohol, and watching my intake of fresh fish. Frankly, I’m doing a damn good job of tending myself and the baby, and yet the first time the phone rings, you’re ready to pull rank. ‘Hey, little lady, this is too tough for you, time to sit it out.’”
“I did not say that!”
“You might as well have!”
“What is wrong with you?” He was back to shouting now. “How can you be so damn stubborn? This is our baby. How can you not love it as much as I do?”
The second he said the words, she could tell he wanted them back. But of course, it was too late. He had gone and said it, the statement that had hung in the air between them from the moment she had first discovered her pregnancy. His fear. Her fear. She had thought it would hurt. It did.
“Kimberly—”
“I think we should call it a night.”
“You know I don’t mean that.”
“But you do, Mac. You do. Your mom stayed home with you. Your sisters are at home with their kids. For all of your talk, you’re still a traditionalist at heart. The husband works. The wife stays at home. And she should be happy to do it, assuming she loves her family.”
“You’re right, we should call it a night.”
“I already did.”
She turned, stomping down the hall toward their bedroom.
She expected him to follow. That was their pattern. She was hardheaded, proud, stubborn to a fault. But in the end, he could always talk her down, finagle a kiss, make her smile.
She needed him to talk her down. She needed him to put his arms around her and tell her she would be a good mother and she wasn’t as awful and selfish and self-destructive as she suddenly felt.
But Mac didn’t follow her down the hall. After a moment, she heard the front door open, shut, and then she was all alone.
FIFTEEN
BURGERMAN TOOK AWAY MY BIRTHDAY. SAID I DIDN’T need it anymore. We celebrated a new day, homecoming. The day I belonged to him.
On my fourth homecoming, he brought me a case of beer and a hooker.
“I don’t know,” the prostitute said. “He looks pretty young.”
“What the fuck do you care?” Burgerman asked. “I’m his father, and if I want to show my kid a good time, what’s it to you? You should be grateful to finally have some fresh cock, instead of the usual limp dick. Go on, fine-looking kid like that. Knock yourself out.”
Funny thing was, I was a decent-looking kid. My life had ended, but my body didn’t seem to know it. I grew. My shoulders broadened. My arms gained thin ropes of muscle. I even had the beginnings of facial hair.
I was getting old. Old enough that the Burgerman didn’t touch me so often anymore.
He had other uses for me now.
The girl stepped obediently forward. Burgerman got out the camera.
“Don’t be nervous, now,” the girl said. She touched my cheek. I flinched.
“Tell you what, honey, just block him from your mind. Just pretend he’s not even there. It’s just you and me. A good-looking boy, a pretty young girl.” She giggled, revealing two missing teeth. “Fine couple like us oughtta be able to have some fun.”
She took my hand, tucked it under her shirt, on top of her breasts. “How does that feel, honey? Nice, huh? Gotta say, T-n-A guys love me. I got all the right curves.”
I
thought she felt soft, flabby. I didn’t know what to do with my fingers. My face was burning crimson. I looked away, but still couldn’t stop the blush.
She moved closer to me now, her tongue licking her lips, her hands pressing my palm against her squishy breast. “Come on, baby, flick your fingers over my nipple. Knead it, work it, you can’t hurt me. Yeah, baby, that’s what it’s there for. Pretend I’m your mama, and you just wanna take a drink.”
I yanked my hand back, horrified. She was still licking her lips, her hips jutting out in a short black leather skirt, rolls of fat spilling over the waist.
Don’t make me, I wanted to yell. Oh God, get away from me.
“Fuck it,” Burgerman said. “You’re scaring the damn kid. Just get it done.”
Girl shrugged, got on her knees, and went to work on my pants. Before I had time to protest, she had yanked out my penis and plopped it into her mouth.
I recoiled, but she had both hands gripping my hips, holding on tight. Burgerman had moved closer, zooming in.
He reached over casually and smacked me upside of the head.
“Moan, you dipshit. Camera’s rolling. Make it look good.”
And finally, in that instant, his handprint red on my cheek, I could moan. I could make it look good. Those were my instructions and I knew how to function when doing what I was told. My body insisted on growing live flesh and blood, when in reality, I was nothing more than a robot. Obedient. Passive. Programmable.
The Burgerman seemed to realize this, too. He barked out more instructions and that speeded things along.
When it was done, the Burgerman was obviously fired up. I wondered if he would make me perform again, with the girl watching. I had been shamed in so many ways, it should hardly matter, and yet it bothered me. Maybe because she had been my first, and I wanted to seem like a man to her, even if she was nothing but a whore.
Burgerman didn’t touch me, though. He went after the hooker instead.
She protested. He hadn’t paid her enough, this wasn’t the deal. So he beat her on the head with the camera till she shut up. Then he did what he’d wanted to do all along while her eyes swelled up and her lip bled.
Later, he tossed some money at her, and I could tell she realized she was lucky to get that much. She grabbed her clothes and fled.
Even hookers are smarter than me.
Burgerman cracked open the first beer, handed it to me. Took a second for himself, and offered a toast.
“Nice fucking, son. Knew I’d done good choosing you. You’re gonna make me rich.”
He popped the tape out of the camera and, whistling, went into the closet, where he placed it in the safe with all the other dirty movies and home photos he’d started selling for boatloads of cash.
We smoked some joints. Drank more beers. Eventually, I passed out.
When I woke up, Burgerman was asleep on the sofa, snoring loudly.
The door was unlocked. I didn’t even think about it anymore.
I got up and went to bed.
I dreamed of my mother, but when I woke up, I couldn’t recall her face.
Dark hair, light hair, brown eyes like me?
I remember she liked to test spaghetti noodles by tossing them against the refrigerator. It made my brother and me giggle. I remember in the summertime, she would make pitchers of sangria and hang out by the pool.
I remember a long time ago, a lifetime ago, I sat on her lap with her arms around me and felt safe.
I can’t remember my mother’s face.
I haven’t decided yet if I will try again tomorrow.
SIXTEEN
“In most species, the egg sac is closely guarded by the female.”
FROM “SPIDER REARING,”
WWW.INSECTED.ARIZONA.EDU/SPIDERREAR.HTM
“TOMMY’S PARENTS ARE CONVINCED HE WAS KILLED by someone he knew,” Sal was saying. “Better yet, they think it might have been a lovers’ quarrel.”
“Tapped two times in the forehead by an ex-girlfriend? Cold.”
“They aren’t sure, but Tommy definitely had someone on the side his senior year. He started going out a lot, claiming to be catching up with the guys, but then the guys would call, looking for him. His mother questioned him once or twice, but he always finessed his way out of it. Oh, Otis called? Well, he wasn’t with Otis, he was with Kevin. Kevin called? Well sure, that’s because he was with Perrish. She didn’t worry about it much at the time. Everything else seemed on track—his grades, football, school. She figured when he was ready, he’d tell them what was going on. Of course, now she wishes she’d pressed him harder on the subject.”
Kimberly merely grunted in reply. She was sitting in Sal’s car, outside the Foxy Lady nightclub. The neon sign buzzed hot pink scrawl over Sal’s face every other second, flashing the emblem of a half-dressed woman doing the cancan on Sal’s nose.
“I don’t get it,” she said finally. “How do they go from Tommy had a mystery girlfriend to Tommy was shot dead by this same femme fatale?”
“Desperation. Lack of other answers. Something happened at the end of Tommy’s senior year. They don’t know what. He grew moody, withdrawn, stopped going out. The father thought his son might be getting nervous about graduation, the transition to Penn State, playing college football. His mom thought there’d been a girlfriend, and she and Tommy had broken up, not by Tommy’s choice. Part of this conjecture was that Tommy was definitely not dating his yearlong steady Darlene, and according to Mrs. Evans, it wasn’t like Tommy to go too long between girlfriends.”
“So maybe he was with Ginny Jones,” Kimberly mused. “Then in February, she vanished, leaving him crying in his coffee.”
“Possible. Something went down. Tommy sulked, then went away to college. He seemed better by the time he returned for Christmas. Had to sit out the season, his father confessed to me, but Tommy took it like a man. Father’s a bit crazy about football, let me tell you. Not sure Tommy would’ve led such a charmed life had he been, say, a chess champion.”
“Or then his father would’ve been into chess.”
Sal’s droll look told her what he thought of that idea. Four more girls were coming down the street now. Kimberly had never seen so many thigh-high black leather boots and fishnet stockings in one place. She felt like she was trapped in the beginning of the Pretty Woman movie. Now all they needed was Richard Gere pulling up in a Lotus Esprit. Which wouldn’t be out of the question. They’d already spotted three Porsches and a Noble.
So far, however, no sign of Delilah Rose.
“Night of the twenty-seventh,” Sal was saying, “Tommy got a call on his cell phone. Took it in his room, very hush-hush. When he came out, he announced he was off to meet a friend. He was practically bouncing, his mother said, grinning and rushing his way out the door. Her gut reaction at the time—definitely the friend was female and definitely he was excited to see her. Now, understand Tommy hadn’t been in town for four months. So if it was a female friend, most likely it would have to be a former acquaintance. Which made her wonder…”
“If it wasn’t the mystery girl from his senior year.”
“And,” Sal finished with gusto, “locals confirmed that the dirt road where Tommy died was Alpharetta’s version of lovers’ lane. Heavily wooded, lightly traveled. Perfect place for Tommy to rendezvous with la femme fatale.”
“Who then turned around and shot him?”
“Maybe absence had made her heart grow fonder. She was making a late quarter play. Tommy, on the other hand…Hey, a good-looking kid like that going off to college. I doubt he spent the fall sleeping alone.”
“So first our mystery chick dumps him, then when she can’t have him back, she kills him?”
“I agree,” Sal said. “Women don’t make any sense.”
“Oh please. Like men are such a walk in the park.” Kimberly finished the comment more bitterly than she intended, then returned to her moody study of the passenger’s side window.
Sal drifted into silence. Guy
seemed to only have two modes, eating and talking. At the moment, both were annoying the snot out of her.
She saw a girl exit the establishment, big blond hair, shockingly short skirt, sky-high heels. She had her arm hooked around the elbow of a man three times her age, with the requisite mustache and comb-over. Sonny Bono for the new millennium. The girl was giggling and cracking her gum as they sashayed away.
Guy like that you’d think could put out for a hotel room. Instead, he’d probably demand a blow job in the front seat of his Porsche, fulfilling many fantasies at once.
She’d once given Mac a hand job while they’d been driving down the interstate at night. He’d almost careened off the road and killed them—not quite how it played out in the Cosmo cover stories. Once they’d made it home, however, things had gone much better.
That had been in the early days, of course. When they’d both been young and flush with new love and not afraid to be reckless.
Did you ever get those days back? Or was this just it? They would hammer away at each other, finding fresh faults and old annoyances to govern their week to week. Until she gave up, or Mac gave up, and they joined the national statistics.
Her mother had never forgiven her father. Bethie had fallen in love with Quincy, married him, and borne his children. And still he hadn’t come home at night. She had never, ever gotten over the slight. And he had never, ever stopped feeling guilty.
How could death be more important than your family?
“What ya thinkin’?” Sal ventured.
Kimberly tore her glance away from the window.
“I’m thinking about fetal development,” she announced crisply. “I’m thinking that babies react to loud noises at eighteen weeks in the womb, but the inner, outer, and middle ears aren’t fully developed until twenty-six weeks. So at twenty-two weeks, just what level of hearing are we talking? The womb is a noisy place, heart beating, blood swishing, food digesting. Maybe the baby can’t hear at all. Or maybe she heard everything. Or maybe she just heard the loud parts, the really bad parts. Is that worse? I don’t know.”
