by Nina Post
Shawn nodded. But no, he didn't know what John looked like, not really, and didn't know why John turned out the way he did. He didn't know a lot of things, and was going to a lot of effort to dig up the smallest truffle.
Dee continued chewing on the inside of her lip as she listened to another call and checked the rows on the card. "Big guy. Wasn't puffy, though. Lean." She put her finger up to her temple like she was saying 'Think about it,' but she traced the finger down her face. "Scar on his left cheek angling down from his temple. Brown eyes, but a real light color, like when you hold a bottle of beer up to the sky." She got a wistful expression. "I went to Cozumel in January."
"Sounds nice." He meant it sounded nice for her. He didn't like to travel, and he didn't like to be away from Comet for too long. For work, sometimes, when he was on an active case or, when he had the time, doing what he could on vault cases (some older then he was), he'd drive to a different city or state to track down a lead, talk to someone in person.
"His voice was soft," she said, describing John. "Made me think of Robert Mitchum. And he had a…I dunno, he had a tense energy."
"That's good, Dee."
She gave him a level gaze then shifted her eyes to the bingo caller. She put another pellet on a square and fixed her eyes on the numbers caller as he read the next pair. "Just two more squares," she muttered. "C'mon. I want that ham." With a fast glance at him, she said, defensively, "I haven't won a damn thing lately. It's starting to affect my confidence. Sometimes, all you need is to win a ham -- or hell, a meatloaf, to get through the week."
"It's the little things. Or the ham-sized things."
Dee shifted in her seat. "So what else d'you need to know?"
"Are you keeping the house?"
"I guess so. Should just sell the stupid thing."
"What does it mean to you?"
Dee looked up from the table, chin lowered. "The house?"
Shawn nodded once to spur her on.
"My brother," she snorted a breath, "was a screwed-up kid. Our dad was a piece of work who grew up into a screwed-up man, who raised, if you can call it that, a screwed-up kid." She laughed, a closed-mouth Hmm. Not really a laugh.
To his right, a woman said, "My college is just one big skank," and someone brayed a laugh.
"What's the funny part?" Shawn asked Dee.
"John's still a prisoner there, in that house." She tapped at her temple, but this time she meant something more along the lines of what Shawn was thinking the first time. "In his head." Dee squinted at him. "You know what I'm saying? My brother keeps him there, even though my brother, rest his fucked-up soul, is gone." She waved it off with a roll of her eyes.
Shawn leaned in. "Please take this as the compliment it's meant to be."
"Uh-oh."
"That was a pretty sophisticated insight."
Dee's lips curved up, but she kept a skeptical eye on him. "You think so?"
"Yeah, I think so."
She picked up his question from earlier. "I don't know why I hang on to that house. Guilt?"
Shawn tilted his head. "Guilt about what?"
"Maybe I could've done something to help him before he screwed up that kid." She scrunched up her face and thought about it. "Mm, fuck it. No good deed, and so on. Probably would've turned out the same." Dee took a swig from the cold Rolling Rock the server put on the table. "I don't have any psychological insights for why I own my brother's house for no good reason. Maybe you do."
Someone sitting up at the bar yelled "Bingo!" and won the ham.
"Balls," Dee said, wincing.
"There are plenty of hams in the world, Ms. Albert," Shawn said, not unkindly.
"But I wanted that one."
The caller went around and passed out fresh bingo cards.
"So you haven't been in touch with John since you last saw him three years ago?" He misspoke to see if she would correct him. She did.
"Five years ago, and no."
"Would you call me if he does contact you?" She nodded. After the guy called out another pair, he placed a wood pellet on his card, under her glare. "When he talked to you about the house, did he give you anything?" He placed another pellet with the next call.
"Ms. Albert?"
"I'm thinking!"
And another pellet. "Anything at all. A piece of paper. An object. A check. Anything."
The caller announced the last pair then called it. This time, Dee put the pellet on Shawn's card because he hadn't even heard the called pair, then smacked him lightly on the arm.
"Oh. Uh… bingo." His voice raised a little with surprise but not with the raw excitement the guy at the bar had. Dee smacked his arm lightly. "Speak up!" He cleared his throat and called out, "Bingo!" There was reluctant clapping from the bar patrons, and one of the waitresses brought him a wrapped whole ham. Shawn thanked her and set the ham on the table.
Dee looked like she was a second away from drawing a pistol on him. "You just come sauntering in here in your fancy suit and win my ham."
Shawn shook his head. "The ham was always yours, Ms. Albert."
She gave him a look. "Mine?"
He nudged the ham closer to her. She put her hands on it like she was a fortune teller who read hams, then tentatively pulled it in closer as though for a hug that she wasn't comfortable giving. "Thanks."
He got up to leave.
"Detective."
He turned. Dee looked at her beer and turned it around in circles. "John might've given me a check as a deposit on the house."
Shawn's eyes widened. "Brower gave you a check?"
"I told him I wasn't going to do nothing with it, but he practically forced it on me. Closed my hand around it."
His breath quickened. Handwriting comparison, people at the bank who might have seen Brower, talked to him. Maybe even an account…"Do you still have the check?"
Dee's mouth quirked. "What, you think I have one of those library card systems in my house? A card for every single thing?"
Shawn tried to look cute. He tried to look like Charlie the pug.
She sighed. "Stop by the Park Dinor tomorrow morning. I'll look for the check tonight."
He nodded, turned, then paused. "Thanks. Hey, would you mind if I searched the house?"
She shook her head. "I don't mind. Hell, you can look whenever you want." She dug in her purse, took out an astonishingly crammed pile of keychains, pulled off a key and gave it to him. "Don't know why anyone would."
***
Shawn went right to Brower's old house after he left the Worker's Bar. He parked his Acura in the driveway with a wince, because it wasn't so much a driveway as hardened dirt and unidentified flotsam that possibly included glass and rusty nails. There was no street parking, just a road with zero visibility that cut past the end of the driveway. He really didn't want to have to get a new tire, or have to fix a flat.
The temperature was in the forties, and the rain was steady. The front of the house was covered with squares of pink tarpaper. Armed with his .45 Glock, his backup in his ankle holster, and a flashlight, but not an umbrella, he hurried to the front door, worked the key around, then stepped in. Even though he knew the power wasn't connected, he ran his hand over the light switch just inside, and wasn't surprised when nothing happened.
The first room was a kitchen. The bedrooms were to the right, a living room to the left, and it already seemed like an imminent archaeological dig of melamine, amoeba-shaped ashtrays, and shabby secondhand furniture. Sarah would love to search this house.
Between the bedrooms was a door that he thought must lead to the basement. Shawn headed slowly down the creaking wood steps, flashlight shifting side to side. He pressed the side of his hand to his nose to stop a sneeze. It was cold and dusty and damp and smelled like wet concrete, animals, and other things he couldn't identify.
Toward the back, there was a full-size washer and dryer in avocado green. He opened both, pointed the light in. Sweeping the light, he checked for freezers or trunks, and
found a chest freezer to the right of the dryer, surrounded by Depression glass, old Coke bottles, black ice skates, and beer-themed dart boards. Shawn slowly raised the freezer lid. It was empty.
Hands shaking, he turned and slid down against the washer to the clammy floor. He broke one of the rules -- never go into someone else's house. He chuckled darkly and propped his elbows on his knees. Then in this dark, dank room underground, while on duty, he finally let himself grieve a little for his harrowing childhood, and, for the first time, what his father lost. Just a teenager, going through that kind of trauma, then having to carry it the rest of his life. He grieved for Jasper, too, and his body shook soundlessly until he began to calm, eyes burning.
This case.
He had to forgive his father as much as he could, which would probably never be all the way. But he figured that forgiving even a little, some unquantifiable small fraction of an amount, could result in a strange kind of alchemy. Maybe it could take some of the weight off.
He shouldn't stay in Erie. He was too close -- geographically speaking -- to his family, and it wasn't doing him any good. He'd have to work on a plan. First, he would have to suss out what Sarah thought of the idea. Would she go, or would she choose Erie and being close to her dad over him? Maybe he'd be willing to move, too?
Shawn got to his feet, brushed off the dust and detritus that had gleefully adhered to his clothes during his sojourn on the basement floor, then got back to work and looked for any hidden doors, pulley or otherwise. He found a canvas tool holder that contained two ice picks, one large and one medium-sized, but they were clean. Pretty much everyone whose parents were at least as old as his and who lived in the same town as their own parents had some ice picks, but he put it in a plastic bag to take with him.
Eventually, he had to concede that Darcy wasn't being kept in the house.
He went back upstairs, eager to leave the dark hole, and thoroughly checked the rest of the house, starting with what must have been John's parents' bedroom. The closet still had John's father's clothes. Shawn found a belt holder and thought immediately of his own father, who had taken a belt to him a few times.
One of the belts looked a little off, so he pulled it out from the rest and turned it around. Both sides were cracked, and there was an especially worn area near the buckle end. Shawn curled his hand over one end of the belt. It fit his hand almost exactly, a feeling so disconcerting he nearly threw it. The leather was warped into a wave there, and worn, like someone held it in the same place each time. Many times. Shawn held up the belt to get a closer look with the flashlight and flexed the leather. A dark red substance was caked into the cracks and fissures on both sides of the belt, near the end of it. He flicked at a piece of it with his fingernail and it flaked off. Dried blood?
On the plus side, blood was always dried before it got to the lab, anyway. More stable. And this blood looked like fish food. He dashed out to his car, got a gallon-sized sealable bag, ran back into the house through the now-insistent downpour, and bagged the belt.
It made him uncomfortable all the way to the lab.
Chapter 11
Monday night
John took his time in Paul's sad apartment, and was grateful for his own living arrangement. He chafed against it at times, but usually it was a soothing harbor, where no one raised their voices or fought beyond a good-natured disagreement. For the most part, they were all of the same mind about things and John appreciated how orderly and calm it was. He took some pleasure in his work there, too, which was solitary and detail-oriented and took him out of himself. They even complimented him for it. Complimented his preternatural focus and patience. They said he exemplified qualities they could all improve in themselves.
Would they say the same thing if they knew how good he was at killing? That took the same kind of focus, the same kind of patience. In both, he spent long periods of time in uncomfortable positions to get the job done.
But now he was with them, and though very few people would know about what he used to do (not unless they had a very high security clearance), he hoped they wouldn't ever know, because he was trying to be a different kind of man, and wanted to free himself of the other kind. The kind who had trained to kill. Who wanted to kill. It took such effort, every day, to become the kind of man he finally wanted to be, but it was incredibly hard. Almost impossible.
No, he told himself, looking around the apartment. Not impossible. And maybe it wouldn't be much longer. He didn't know how long he could keep this up.
How did Paul live in such squalor? John grimaced at the stark bluish glow emanating from the long fluorescent light fixture in the kitchen, doing no favors to the ugly fake wood cabinets, the chipped formica countertops stained from previous residents, the aluminum sink with its lowest-price faucet, and the scraped, stained linoleum floor. The cheap plastic dishes and glasses piled up in the sink. This was where small-time politics had gotten him? And he was still doing it?
John snorted. Paul would keep making the same obvious mistakes over and over again. His last big mistake was moving back to Erie. If Paul, the proverbial straw, had stayed away, then maybe he wouldn't be having this problem. And why would any of them want to live here again?
Shawn was one thing. Shawn was the best at repressing all the bad shit that happened. Mr. Self-Control. And he'd be just the guy to think there wasn't any point in going somewhere else. Yeah, sure, John thought -- but you were the same person far away from your family. From tangible reminders of your memories. You made new connections and associations with the things you saw. You gained psychological distance. There was something to be said for that. If you kept running into things that reminded you of something that caused you pain, why would you want to stay and keep dipping your hand in the pain box?
He laughed. He should talk. Look where he was. True, he had a very good reason, and it wasn't supposed to be for long. John figured Shawn didn't even know how attached to staying here he was. He probably rationalized it to death. Like he couldn't work somewhere else.
He, on the other hand -- he'd been everywhere. He'd been to places he hadn't known existed.
Paul's bedroom made John shudder. He had lived in some shitty places himself, had lived in jerry-rigged camps, had spent many nights outside in the cold or heat, but in the past few years, his surroundings were as clean as anyone could want. Paul's apartment was the opposite. Frameless stained futon on the lavender shag carpet with sheets askew, like Paul flopped around like a fish all night. No way he had a woman here.
Plastic crate for a nightstand. Clothes on the floor. A stale, dirty smell of laundry that needed getting done a long time ago. John looked up at the dated light fixture and the popcorn ceiling. "Paul, you sad sack. How do you stand it?" Paul wasn't nineteen. He wasn't in college. An adult man lived here, and if he weren't so oblivious to what was in store for him, Paul would be gone so fast he probably wouldn't take anything but the clothes on his back. But then again, what did Paul have to take? Nothing. And it wasn't a one robe, one bowl kind of thing. It wasn't Zen. Far from it.
John opened the closet. That was usually where they kept personal things. He rummaged through a few boxes until he found it. For now, he left it there.
Paul was different from the rest of them. Paul's parents engaged in some crazy tradecraft for screwing up a kid. John had learned a few things secondhand that served him well during his career, just from seeing Paul's tortured thought processes. And from his own old man.
He took that misery and used it for his own purposes.
The bathroom made him extremely uncomfortable: the cheap tub and fixtures were ringed with mold, and so was the plastic see-through shower curtain, cloudy with soap scum. There were products Paul probably got because they were in the drugstore bargain bin. He shuddered and left, thinking of the scrupulously clean bathrooms in the house. It was an old house, but they were on the city's sewer system, and it was a nice kind of old. It had character.
It was good to venture out a
nd gain some perspective, to renew his appreciation for his circumstances.
But he had to do it, too.
Back to the living room. John looked scornfully at the shabby brown wreck of a couch, the heavy old tube TV resting on cinderblocks, the lavender shag, the coffee table Paul must've taken from a curb on the street. It was even worse than the office where Paul "worked," trying in vain to re-insert himself back into local politics. Paul thought he'd claw his way up to mayor, and make it this time. John was doing him a favor. The guy was too damaged already, and went right back to doing the thing that had gotten him nothing in the first place. He should've stayed where he was (not moved back to this place, at least) and gotten a job in some other line of work.
John sifted through the paper detritus on Paul's desk. The electric bill was overdue, as was the cable -- he shouldn't have cable if he can't even pay for his electric, John thought. There was also a reminder about four overdue library books, all related to local politics and governance. And at the bottom of the pile, John found a receipt for a ticket to "The Road To Slammiversary World Tour" at the Tullio.
***
John found Paul Harmon at the arena easily enough. He was in the women's restroom, having sex in a stall. If there was another thing John was good at, it was blocking out what he didn't want to hear. He'd had to do it every single day growing up.
The woman walked unevenly out of the stall and primped her teased and sprayed bangs, still the style of choice for the Western Pennsylvania region. She was like most people -- trapped in her adolescence, afraid to change, afraid to move forward.
Paul exited the stall as the woman applied lip gloss at the mirror. She pursed her lips and kissed the air, gave him a flirtatious wave, then left. John drifted like a shadow out of the restroom.
It would be tonight, and he wouldn't get back until late.
He had perfected the craft of micro-naps during the day and was used to a brutal schedule, but he was older now, and this was starting to wear on him.
***
Shawn filled out a Request for Analysis Form and dropped the belt off in the secure locker area at the now-closed lab around one a.m. The lab closed at three p.m.
