by Stephen Frey
“What, Augustus?” she snaps, anticipating my question. But she’s going to make me say the words. “Am I what?”
Blood pounds in my brain and tiny spots flash before me. Iridescent spots that shoot across my retinas. I’m not certain I want to know the answer, but I can’t help myself. “Are you screwing Frank Taylor?”
For a long time she says nothing, then her eyes narrow. “Do you really care?”
“Yes,” I answer evenly. “I do.”
“Is everything all right, Melanie?”
Together, she and I look toward a narrow stone archway—the only entrance to the courtyard. Frank Taylor is standing there dressed in a gray suit and red tie.
“You okay?” he asks suspiciously, giving me a warning look.
She hurries to him and comfortably slips her arm into his, as though she’s done it many times before. “I’m fine, Frank.”
“Hello, Augustus,” he calls out in a trial-lawyer tone, like he’s about to cross-examine a hostile witness.
I’ve met Taylor several times at the Christmas parties he hosts for his employees and their spouses at his offices. Each year we’ve had nothing to say to each other after mumbling hello. It always irritated me the way he smiled at Melanie across the party every few minutes, even when he was talking to someone else.
“I told Augustus that he needs to hire an attorney,” Melanie informs him obediently.
Taylor pats her hand gently. “That’s right, Augustus,” he says, “get yourself a good lawyer. You’ll need one.”
“I made almost eighty thousand dollars in the stock market this morning,” I mutter, the lump in my throat suffocating my words.
They don’t hear me because they’re already walking away and my voice is so low. As I watch, Taylor’s hand comes to rest on the small of Melanie’s back, then slips lower just as they turn the corner and disappear.
“I thought you’d gone home.”
I look at Russell vacantly. I’ve been sitting at my desk for the last hour, staring at the wall, thinking about Frank Taylor’s hand on Melanie. The image is seared into my mind, and I’m still seething.
“I’m glad you’re still here.”
“What do you want?”
“I want my money,” Russell says calmly. “My share of the Unicom profits. The gain was almost eighty thousand, which means my share is forty grand.”
“Forget it.”
Russell steps into my office and slams the door. “I wasn’t kidding yesterday morning,” he hisses. “You pay me or I fire you. It’s as simple as that. You made that money using company assets on company time. You owe it to me.”
After taxes, my net proceeds from the Unicom trade should be about sixty thousand dollars, assuming I don’t hit it big on anything else this year and get pushed into a higher tax bracket. That’s a healthy chunk of change, and the thought of giving away so much of it makes me want to puke. I worked hard for that money, and now, like a hyena, he’s trying to scavenge my kill. “I’m not giving you one cent.”
“You damn well better!”
“Go to hell, you asshole.” God, that felt good. I’ve wanted to say that to him for so long.
If steam could actually rise from a man’s ears, it would be spewing from Russell’s as though from a hole in a high-pressure pipe. I’m sure he expected me to roll over on this thing to save my job. In fact, in his mind he’s probably already spent the money. But I’m not going to let him take advantage of me.
“I protected you this morning on that conference call with senior management!” he shouts. “Those pricks wanted to fire your ass, but I stuck up for you. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be out of a job right now.” He wags a finger at me. “Don’t be stupid, Augustus. Give me the money.”
I rise from my chair and move to where he stands, towering over him. I’m tempted to pick him up and throw him against the wall. It would be so easy and feel so good. “I quit,” I snarl, somehow keeping my clenched fists at my side.
I’m sitting at my kitchen table in just boxer shorts and a T-shirt. The windows are wide open to the darkness, but even now, at midnight, the heat is still brutal. The air conditioner was broken when I finally made it home. I tried to get a breeze circulating through the house, but July in Washington is hot and stiflingly humid, and opening all the windows hasn’t helped much.
One more time I check the charts and graphs spread out all over the kitchen table. I’m trying to decide what to do with the money I made off Unicom, but it’s hard to concentrate with the heat and everything that’s happened today. Finally I head into the living room to stretch out on the sofa. I’ve had enough day trading for one night.
The knock at the front door startles me from a fitful sleep on the sofa. An old movie is playing quietly on the television, and for a second I wonder if the knock was real or part of the film. I turned the television on to distract myself from thoughts of Melanie and Frank Taylor. I couldn’t stop wondering how far she had gone for him. I couldn’t stop wondering about his red silk tie and those purple bruises on her wrists.
The knock comes again. It’s more urgent this time and I sit up and rub my eyes. Definitely not part of the movie. I check my watch in the glare from the television. It’s almost two in the morning.
Standing on the front stoop are two men wearing plain slacks and sport coats, the top buttons of their shirts undone and their ties pulled down. Both of them are sweating in the intense heat, and one mops his forehead with a white handkerchief.
“Augustus McKnight?” the nearer one asks, pulling a gold badge from his jacket and flashing it at me. He’s the older of the two, and he has a look in his eyes like he’s incapable of being surprised by anything.
“Yes.” I gaze at the badge. “That’s me.”
“I’m Detective Reggie Dorsey of the Washington, D.C., police department. I’m sorry to inform you,” he says without emotion, “but your wife is dead.”
CHAPTER 3
Melanie’s body was discovered facedown in a trash-strewn alley in a crime-ridden section of Washington less than a mile from the Capitol. Her pocketbook lay a few feet away containing several hundred dollars and all of her credit cards, so Detective Reggie Dorsey ruled out robbery as a motive for her murder right away.
Despite having already matched the photograph on her driver’s license to her blood-spattered face, Reggie requested that I come downtown with him immediately to make a positive identification. He said he had to have it at some point, and that I might as well get it over with as soon as possible. He said the longer I waited, the harder it would be. I figured he knew what he was talking about, so I agreed.
So here I stand beside the stainless steel gurney supporting my wife’s naked body. I’m shivering in the morgue’s cold, the odors of formaldehyde and death filling my nostrils. The images of toe tags and ashen fingers dangling from beneath sheets are fresh in my mind after I walked all the way through the place to get to this room. As I watch, an elderly man dressed in a long white lab coat slowly pulls one end of the shroud covering Melanie’s body down from her forehead to her chin. He holds it tightly to the pale skin of her cheeks with latex-encased fingers so I won’t see the horror of the hastily sutured ear-to-ear throat wound that, Reggie thoughtfully informed me, almost decapitated her. When I can no longer bear to look at Melanie’s face, I nod at Reggie and bow my head. Then I cry. As an adult I’ve never cried in front of anyone, but I can’t help it now. The thought that Melanie is gone forever overwhelms me—and I crumble.
During the drive downtown in Reggie’s unmarked cruiser it didn’t sink in that Melanie was actually dead. I had no reason to doubt Reggie’s information, delivered on my front stoop with all the tact of an infantry assault. I assumed he wouldn’t have told me that way if he wasn’t certain of her identity. However, the events of the past thirty-six hours had anesthetized me. I hadn’t yet fully grasped the notion that Melanie was divorcing me, so the idea of her death seemed even further from reality.
But
seeing her stiff form sprawled on the silver gurney makes it sickeningly real. I realize there will be no divorce; no Frank Taylor invading the sanctity of my home. Now I face something much more terrible. The woman I always believed I would grow old with is dead.
I fleetingly touch Melanie’s cold fingers—hanging from beneath the sheet—then Reggie takes me to a small office where he leaves me alone to face my grief. It takes me thirty minutes to get myself together. When my mother died last Christmas I shed a few silent tears after her breathing stopped and I gently closed her eyelids. But by the time a nurse entered the room a few minutes later, I was back in control. Death seemed natural in my mother’s case, almost comforting. Not in Melanie’s.
An hour later Reggie and I are heading south back to my house in Springfield.
Reggie is a barrel-chested black man of about fifty who projects a no-nonsense, confident attitude. At five-ten he’s of average height, but he’s still a mammoth and forceful presence, weighing well over two hundred pounds. His beige sports jacket and plain blue shirt stretch tightly across his broad chest, his fingers are thick and stubby, and he has almost no neck. But his most intimidating feature is his head. It’s immense, like a bull’s, exuding power. His expansive forehead, with its receding hairline, juts far out over his eyes. His wide nostrils flare when he breathes, and his deeply set dark brown eyes seem to be in constant motion, taking in and cataloging everything around him.
“You okay, Augustus?” he asks after we’ve driven a few dark blocks in silence. It’s four in the morning and the city is still asleep.
“Yeah,” I mutter, taking a deep breath. “I just want to find the person who did this to Melanie. I want to see them get what they deserve.”
“Of course you do.” Reggie tries to use a comforting tone, but I can tell that’s tough for him because his voice and manner are naturally gruff. “We all do.” He hesitates. “And we will. Make no mistake,” he assures me confidently. “Justice will be served.”
I shake my head and close my eyes. “I can’t believe she’s gone. Why would someone do this?”
Melanie’s pocketbook sits on the seat between us, full of cash and credit cards. “Not for money,” Reggie says, tapping it. “That’s obvious.”
We lapse into silence until we reach I-395, a three-lane expressway that leads out of downtown. “Where was Melanie supposed to be last night?” Reggie asks, taking the exit ramp and accelerating onto the almost empty highway.
“Work. She’d been putting in a lot of overtime lately. Sometimes it was hard for us to make ends meet.”
“I can understand that. Times are tough. Where did she work?”
“At a law firm downtown,” I answer quietly, taking a quick glance at the speedometer. The posted limit here is fifty-five and there are no other cars on the road, but he isn’t even doing fifty. Reggie wants to talk. “The managing partner is a guy named Frank Taylor. Melanie was his executive assistant. Taylor does mostly divorce work.”
“Yeah, sure. That firm is over on Farragut Square. Never met Taylor, but I’ve heard about him. A real pit bull, people tell me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What time was Melanie supposed to be home last night?”
“She didn’t give me a specific time.” I speak deliberately so Reggie is certain to hear the growing irritation in my voice. I shouldn’t have to go through this right now. “She stayed at the office until one or two in the morning sometimes. It wasn’t something I was worried about, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“Okay,” he says, as if he’s already thinking two or three questions ahead. “Had she called you to tell you what time she would be home?”
“No,” I answer curtly.
“Did she usually call when she was staying at work late?”
“Usually.”
He starts to ask another question but seems to think better of it. We say no more until the signs for Springfield appear and I give him directions through my neighborhood.
Reggie eases the car to a stop in front of my house. “There’s something I want you to understand, Augustus.”
Suddenly I’m exhausted. All I want to do is crawl into bed and try to escape the horror of what’s happened. Most of all, I don’t want to listen to this, but I feel like I have no choice. I don’t want him thinking I’m uncooperative. “What’s that?”
“My job is to solve murder cases. To find the guilty party.”
“Of course it is.”
“By using any means necessary. Any at all.”
“Uh-huh.”
“During that process I don’t allow myself to get close to any of the people involved. I’ve been around too long for that. I learned early on in my career that I have to remain completely objective to be as effective as possible.”
“I’m not sure what you’re driving at.”
“In thirty years on the force I’ve seen plenty, Augustus. People I thought were as gentle as lambs turned out to be ax murderers. People I could have sworn were guilty as sin were innocent. Maintaining a certain distance allows me to see things for what they really are. To see people for who they really are.” He hesitates. “We’ll be talking a lot over the next few weeks, and I don’t want you to think I don’t appreciate what you’re going through. I do.”
I stare at him for a few moments through the gathering dawn, wondering what initial impressions he’s already formed of me. “What does that mean?”
“I may ask questions that make you uncomfortable or that you find offensive. I want you to remember that I’m just doing my job the best way I know how. Like you said, we all just want to find your wife’s killer.”
As the sun’s rays crawl over the horizon, I stagger up the short stone walkway to my house—clutching Melanie’s pocketbook—aware that Reggie hasn’t driven away. Aware that he’s watching me and that he’s already begun his investigation.
Melanie’s memorial service is a private affair, just as our wedding was. I had her body cremated, and now I’ve arranged this brief ceremony at a funeral home a few minutes from our house. The only people who attend are Melanie’s parents, her sister, an aunt who lives in southwestern Virginia, one of Melanie’s coworkers, and my friend Vincent Carlucci. No one from my family comes because there isn’t anyone. I’m an only child, both of my parents are dead, and my mother’s two sisters live in Atlanta. Too far for them to travel. Besides, like my mother, they never cared for Melanie. And I never knew any of my father’s relatives, so there wasn’t anyone from his side to invite.
Melanie attended early Sunday services at a Catholic church near our house almost every week while I slept late. She’d been going for years, but suddenly stopped a few months ago. She never told me why. I would have held the memorial service at the church, but, in a way, I was afraid to talk to Father Dale, the priest there. She’d made such an abrupt break with her faith I was worried I’d find out something bad. So I held the service at the funeral home where I felt I would receive compassion from the proprietor, not judgment by association.
I stand behind the lectern, a framed photograph of Melanie resting on an easel beside me. It was taken when she was in high school, and it’s amazing how little she’d changed. Her parents brought it today. It was the only one we had.
I try hard to control my emotions as I prepare to say a few words to the mourners. In the hushed room, I try to think of anything but the good times we shared in the first few years of our marriage. It’s just too painful to remember those days. I think about my own father. It’s strange where the mind takes you sometimes.
I’ve never known much about my father. I don’t know about his childhood, if he had brothers and sisters, or even where he originally came from. I tried to talk to him about all that once when I was twelve, but he told me to stop bothering him. He told me he just wanted to read his evening paper. He was a damn cold man who would leave home for two or three days every few months without even saying good-bye. My mother explained he had to travel for his job,
but I have my doubts. He worked on an assembly line and I’ve never heard of any other factory workers who have to travel for their jobs. I finally asked Mother about all of that one Thanksgiving when I was home from college and we were alone in the kitchen together, but she had no answers. None she was willing to share with me anyway.
It was clear to me at a very early age that my father didn’t have much interest in my life. I tried hard to get his attention, but nothing ever worked. I played high school football, played it pretty well in fact, but he never came to a single game. He never even asked me how my team was doing. He’d sit at the dinner table and stare at his plate while Mom asked me questions. The moment he finished eating he would rise from the table without a word and go back to his bedroom, shoulders stooped, slippers shuffling across our bare hardwood floors. I say “his” bedroom because from the time I was eleven, my mother and father slept in separate rooms. They thought I didn’t understand, but I did, and that’s hard on a kid. Hard to think that they didn’t really care about each other anymore. That maybe everything was somehow my fault. I promised myself that my marriage would never come to be like that—but it did.
My father died in his sleep last October of a heart attack, and I never had a chance to say good-bye to him. I always held out hope that we’d connect with each other someday, but it didn’t work out that way. I guess we were destined never to know each other.
I look up from the lectern and see Melanie’s coworker sitting to my left, a vacant chair between her and Melanie’s family. She gazes at me sadly, tears in her eyes. I don’t know her name—she just showed up at the funeral. I don’t remember her from any of Frank Taylor’s Christmas parties, but what was I going to say? She seems nice—and genuinely grieving. I’m not going to deprive her of her chance to say a final good-bye to Melanie.
My eyes flicker to Melanie’s parents. Her mother is sobbing softly while her father sits stoically, his lips forming a tight, straight line. They were always kind to me and they helped us financially whenever they could. But, like my parents, they didn’t have much to give.
