by Atticus Lish
After some time, his eyes turned towards the kitchen window. A breeze was coming through the screen.
He opened the window, climbed out, walked down to the marsh and stepped off into the water.
Under his weight, stalks of grass cracked and popped, the roots broke, snapped, gave way, and he sank in to his knees. He lurched. The mud sucked at his shoe. He yanked his leg free and stepped on something sharp. The brine stank. Leaves and insects were sticking, biting, tickling. He waded further in. He sank to his waist, plunged forward, slipping, sinking down to his chest. Clawing at the bank, feeling the firm ground with a hand, he reassured himself, if he had to, he could do a chin-up and drag himself out of the soaking, sucking muck. He crouched down in the reeds and plowed around with his hands, feeling inside the thicket of sharp snapping stalks. Something was crawling on him and he knocked a spider off his neck. When he crouched again, his shin touched something. He felt in the water with his hands. There was something down there. He grabbed his father’s bag and heaved it up on the bank—soaking wet, immensely heavy and gushing water.
He climbed up after it onto the slimy grass, carried the bag back to his house and set it in the middle of the floor. The zipper was rusted shut. He pulled it open with a pair of pliers. The inside of the bag glimmered. He could see the knives in the dark water, rusted together.
As the sun came up, he sat on the futon, making the cushion wet, staring at the bag.
* * *
—
Corey went to the police station and waited at the window.
“I have evidence that could be evidence of something serious.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a bag with knives and handcuffs, a nightstick and a bunch of uniforms.”
“What’s it in reference to?”
“That’s going to take me a long time to explain.”
The officer picked up the phone, reconsidered, said to leave it in the lobby. Someone would collect it. Corey wanted to give it to someone personally; it was important. The policeman said they didn’t just take things from people who said they had evidence; there was a chain of custody.
“That’s why I don’t want to just leave it on the floor. How will anyone know what it is?”
When the officer ignored him, Corey said, “This might involve a murder.”
The man ordered him to leave his evidence where he was told. Corey didn’t want to. He turned around and left. The cop came outside with another officer and a detective. One said, “You can be held if we deem you to have evidence pursuant to a crime. Where’s the bag?”
Corey told them it was in the trunk of his car. They went over to his mother’s hatchback.
“Are there going to be any surprises in that trunk?”
“Absolutely not.”
They had him take his car keys and open it himself.
“Is that the bag? Why’s it wet?”
“It was in the marsh behind my house.”
They took it from him.
“You’ve got to test it for DNA,” he said. They said they would, not to worry.
“I know you think I’m a kook.”
The first cop said, “You must be a fuckin’ mind reader.”
“What are we supposed to do with this bag?” the detective asked. “What’s in here anyway? How did it come to be in your possession? How do we know it’s your father’s? You come in off the street and tell us all this—you see the problem?”
“I do.”
“We’ll make sure it gets to the right people. Don’t worry, we know who you are. We’ll be talking to you again. The reason you’re here, maybe it’s because you feel guilty. That happens sometimes. Maybe you’ve got a whole lot more to tell us.”
“I do have more to tell you.”
Corey let himself be guided back into the police station. But because the Springfield detectives were unable to make it today and the Quincy detective had an urgent call, he ended up going home.
* * *
—
He called Joan and told her what he’d done. He got her voicemail. On the recording, he denounced the cops for unprofessionalism, for giving him a hard time when he was trying to do the right thing, was on the side of the angels, was trying to help them do their job. His mother had been drugged unconscious and no one cared. But that was fine. He had other methods at his disposal.
32
Polar Bear Swim
The weather remained pleasant after Labor Day, but the sky lost its richly saturated blueness due to the changing angle of the sun. They spent September pulling the boats out of the water with a Hostar hydraulic lift. The operator was crane-certified. A three-man crew made four with Ian. Corey was the helper. They brought the boats on land and set them on tripodal jack stands, then took out the docks and stacked the sections. The banks of the river were going to freeze. To winterize a boat they bent a long narrow rib of wood from bow to stern and stretched a skin of plastic over it.
* * *
—
Joan and Corey spoke again that month. He heard something in her voice.
“You’re upset with me. What is it?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m upset about anything.”
“You are. I hear the anger.”
She recalled Corey’s mentioning of an individual from MIT who wore a cup at all times, last year in his kitchen. “So you did know the kid who killed her. And you did tell Leonard about her.”
“I never said I didn’t.”
“I wonder what you said to him. I guess we’ll never know.”
“Joan, what are you saying?”
She said it was a damn shame Tom wasn’t alive. She’d never known his daughter, but Joan was sure she’d been a nice girl who hadn’t wanted to lose her life.
“You weren’t honest with me,” Joan declared.
“Well, I’m being honest now.”
“You didn’t invite me to your mother’s funeral. You should have.”
“It was out of my control.”
“I guess I didn’t know you.”
* * *
—
They finished winterizing the marina in October. Corey told Ian he hoped to see him in the spring. Ian said he was dreading it already.
“Then again, I might not be seeing you. I might be in court.”
The rigger listened, curly head lowered, chin to chest, looking at his belly, iron-claw hands at his sides, as Corey talked:
“They think I killed a girl. She was my friend. I didn’t do it.”
“I don’t know what to think of you.”
“I understand. I hope you don’t regret knowing me.”
“It takes all kinds,” Ian said and went back to work without inviting Corey to help him.
They parted.
* * *
—
Corey got a new job at a business that made kitchen countertops off Commercial Street in Weymouth. The stone came in by flatbed, the slabs leaning together like books on a library shelf separated by wooden spacers. The driver unstrapped it and they picked it up by forklift and drove it into the warehouse. Maneuvering granite was based on tilting, rocking and lifting together. Corey stayed off to the side. The men didn’t know him. They cut marble with a circular saw and used water to wash away the slurry.
In his dreams at night he saw the murder.
Gray days, winter ahead. His depression returned. He turned nineteen. He went to work without enthusiasm. He waited for anything to happen—even to hear from the police.
* * *
—
On November 12, he was summoned to the office of the Suffolk County prosecutor, who was reviewing the Hibbard case because the alleged killer had gone to MIT, which was in his jurisdiction. Corey took the train to Government Center—that open stadium which looks like a massi
ve skate park. There was a courthouse faced in marble with Egyptian friezes, clean, sparkling granite, new, bright, smooth, silent, sealed with green glass, running silent silver elevators. The prosecutor was around the corner in a structure without character, a narrow high-rise that could have been an apartment tower, scaffolding around the entrance.
A woman behind a bulletproof barricade buzzed him in. The prosecutor was a trim, short, white-haired man in his seventies wearing a charcoal suit. He was talking to a police detective in a belted leather jacket when Corey entered. The detective eased to the back of the room and everybody sat. Gold-framed oil paintings of Washington and Lafayette hung on the walls, these tall figures seeming powdered white and spot-lit against their dark backgrounds. Under the feet of Corey’s chair, there was a woven rug adorned with fleur-de-lis.
The prosecutor looked at Corey from across his massive antique desk. “So here you are,” he said. “On paper you don’t look so good.” He glanced at a folder on his desk top. “Vandalism. Harassment. Assault—that was dropped. Theft. Restitution. A restraining order. Did you deal drugs in high school? Never mind. I see you thinking about your answer. And now a suspect in a murder. How old are you?”
“Nineteen.”
“And you’re a high school dropout. That fits. Any idea what you’ve got planned for the next nineteen years? Want to spend it in MCI?”
“What’s MCI?”
“Massachusetts Correctional Institutions.”
“No, I don’t.”
“If you lie to me, that is exactly where you will go. Have you been advised of your right to counsel? You don’t have to talk to me. You can walk out that door, but if you do, you’re not getting back in. Now I’m going to ask you some questions and, so help me God, you better tell me the truth. Who killed Molly Hibbard?”
“I think Adrian did. He called me and admitted it.”
“You and Adrian were friends.”
“At one time but not when this happened.”
“Did you plan it with him?”
“No. Molly was my friend.”
“Did you go with him to see her?”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Why do we have this letter where it says you want to rape somebody to know what it feels like?”
“Those are not my words. Adrian wrote that.”
“Your father is Leonard—how do you say his name?—Agoglia. Security guard at MIT. Gives us the letter. Says he’s worried about you. Wants you to get some help. You were in family court?”
“Yes. He was phone-harassing our house.”
“What’s his role in this?”
“I don’t know. I think he planned it.”
“He says you, you say him.”
“I say him, yes. I don’t know how else Adrian would know Molly existed. I think my father told him to hurt her. I’m convinced of that. I believe that in my heart.”
“So you gave—what do we have here?—pots and pans, knives—to the Quincy police and said they belonged to your father?”
“They did belong to him. That was his bag—I stole it—I admit it—and threw it in the marsh.”
“Did he use these things in a crime?”
“I have no knowledge that he did. I just felt it was possible, based on knowing him. Did the police test them?”
“Test them for what?”
“DNA.”
“I don’t know why they would do that. Your father’s not a suspect in a crime.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“No, I haven’t because I don’t need to.” The prosecutor raised his voice. “If I feel like talking to him, I’ll get around to it. Right now, I’m talking to you. Problem?”
“No problem.”
“Just answer his questions,” the detective said from the back of the room.
“Fella, if you give me a hard time, I’ll chase you out of here so fast your head’ll spin.”
“I understand,” said Corey. “I’m not giving you a hard time.”
“What happened in Cambridge?”
“Are you talking about Molly’s dad?”
“I’m talking about Molly’s dad and Adrian Reinhardt, who wound up dead of a collision. I want to know how that happened.”
“I went over to Molly’s house to see Tom. We got in the truck and started driving. I told him I knew where Adrian lived and we drove there. And Adrian was outside. I said, ‘That’s him.’ Tom told me to get out of his truck and I did. I got back on the train and went home. I heard about it the next day.”
“Did you know Tom was going to run over Mr. Reinhardt?”
“I didn’t know what he was going to do.”
“Did you talk about it?”
“It was in the air.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing was said out loud. But I don’t have a problem with the fact that Adrian got killed.”
“That’s not an intelligent thing to say to a prosecutor.”
“I’m just telling you the truth.”
The prosecutor looked at the detective, who said, “Just stick to what he asks you.”
“You did or didn’t know what Molly’s dad was going to do before he did it?” resumed the prosecutor.
“I didn’t know.”
“Did you have a reason to want to see Mr. Reinhardt killed?”
“Yeah. He killed Molly, didn’t he? Shouldn’t he pay for that?”
“Do you have a problem containing yourself?”
“Sometimes.”
“That’s not a compliment.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What do you think of Mr. Goltz, Detective?”
“I’d like to see him take a polygraph.”
“So would I.”
“I’ll gladly take one,” Corey said.
* * *
—
He took the polygraph on November 22 in an interview room at the Quincy police station.
The day after he took it—Sunday—he woke up early and walked into town as the sun was rising. Everything was silent. The church bells hadn’t rung yet. Orange light was flooding Walter Hannon Parkway.
In the plaza next to Star, he came upon a deep, first-floor warehouse behind a glass storefront. The door was open, but the lights were off; the place was strangely empty. The room was filled with iron barbells.
He moved through the silent field of weights. There was a heavy bag in back. A set of mismatched boxing gloves lay on the floor, one of them pink—a woman’s. He put them on and tapped it with a jab.
After a minute, he began working around the bag—little patty-pat punches, as if he were tapping you on the shoulder, saying, “Hi, remember me?”—until the first light perspiration broke out on his head—then every fourth punch had a crack to it. A minute of this went by, then he pounded the bag five times in a row. The dam broke and he started beating the heavy leather methodically, burying his knuckles in it with every punch he landed, leaving fist holes in the stuffing—sweat from his face wetting his gloves, flying off in spray. He thudded and swatted the bag in violent furious mathematical-sounding bursts, which ended with a shin kick. His shin kicks detonated. The bag jerked and swung. The chains jangled like a tambourine accompaniment to his drum solo.
Drenched in sweat, he went to the parking lot, sat down in the cold sun with the rocky pavement under his haunches and the sun shining through the thin barrier of his eyelids, filling his head with light.
After a time, he went into Star and bought steak and charcoal and went back home and grilled it in the yard, the smoke billowing up in his face, his eyes on the flames, watching their little story unfold, the rich charcoal smell of the steak, the liveliness of this chemical process, the hot steak in his fingers and teeth—sucking up the blood-coal-juice-oil-salt, standing there in his wint
er coat as the grill died, the bone in his hand, black on his fingers, the sun in the sky, the slow fullness as the meat broke down in his stomach’s hydrochloric acid and filtered fats and acids out into his bloodstream, his satisfied settled state.
And now to drink some water, something sweet, some soda.
* * *
—
He wondered what the prosecutor would decide and if he would end up going to prison.
He had always thought he was going to get back in the cage. A Brazilian jiujitsu school called Trifecta Martial Arts had opened above the Family Dollar. There was a basement boxing gym across the street, below an African hair-braiding stylist. He’d always figured he’d get back to training, eventually get back to Bestway and impress his old coach with a better, stronger version of himself.
But now, as he thought about Molly, he felt he had to do something bigger—something of which prizefighting was merely a subcomponent: warfare at its highest level—expeditionary, total, encompassing the realms of sea, air, land—even space—something so great it could kill him, forcing him to overcome with finality the inner weakness and self-regard that had allowed him to fail everyone around him—a path to honor, invincibility, pride and moral purity—where his father had indulged in scandal, obscenity and dysfunction.
* * *
—
The weeks passed—he went on cutting stone in Weymouth—then, a few days before Christmas when it was gray after a snow, he found his way to a back alley on an asphalt cliff above Star Market, above a loading dock protected by a rusted iron railing, where there was a single-story building like a postal substation with a poster on the door of young people in uniform gazing up at jets wreathed in the Stars and Stripes. He went inside and down a hallway, passing a roomful of men in faded camouflage fatigues and tan jump boots, all burned red, a shock of color in the barren whiteness of the office, evidently here from somewhere hot—Marines—and at the end of the corridor found the Navy.
