Caesar looks at me. “It was self-defense,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “And it is much appreciated. But you have a record.” I crouch down and pick up the brick that Caesar dropped. “So when the cops come, I’m the one who hit him.” I look down at Donny, lying still on the concrete, his skull crushed. I think I see his eye twitch. I can’t be sure.
Caesar frowns. “They’ll be able to tell that you didn’t—”
I raise the brick and bring it down hard onto Donny’s head. The impact shocks my arm up to the shoulder and I drop the brick, but now Donny’s blood is on my hand, and there’s another gash in the back of his skull, and his eye is definitely not twitching now.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The following night is Saturday, and I’m sitting at home, stitched up like the creature in Frankenstein and watching Saving Private Ryan, when my phone rings. I pause the film and see who’s calling this time—Frankie, or my uncle, or Johnny Shaw, or Detective Panko, who has already left a message about meeting first thing tomorrow morning to talk about Sam Bridges and Donny Wharton. When I see it’s my sister, I answer and say, “I’m watching your most favorite war movie.”
“Bitch,” Susannah says at the other end.
I smile. “You moved in okay?” She’s living in a halfway house near Birchwood for now. Baby steps.
“I’m all good,” she says. “How’s your neighbor?”
Tony was less than thrilled that Donny had stolen his BMW and locked my sister inside it, and when he was certain the police no longer needed access to it for evidence, he was going to sell it and get a new Tesla. But mostly he was glad that we were alive and okay.
“Tony and Gene brought me cookies and wine,” I say. “I think they’re a little excited from their brush with real-life crime, although they’ll never say so. I thanked Tony for keeping roadside flares in the trunk of his car.”
“Glad they weren’t hurt. Hey, I think I left a bag over there—can you look around for it later?”
“I’m not bringing your stuff to you. I’m recovering.”
“Okay, Gimpy. Dinner next week?”
“Only if you’re buying,” I say.
We hang up, and I automatically look over at Wilson’s bed to see if he needs to go outside. Then I remember, just as I have a dozen times every day since, and a terrible sadness punches me in the heart. Wilson has vanished with no sign. I’ve combed the neighborhood, walked the woods behind my house, even looked in the storm sewers. It’s as if Donny Wharton spirited him away, one last fuck you from beyond the grave.
I sit there for a few moments, letting the sadness wash over me, and when it recedes a little I pick up the remote and continue watching the movie, although now it’s not distracting me as much as it was before.
* * *
DETECTIVES PANKO AND Klingman look dour when I arrive for our meeting downtown, but I’m curiously unconcerned. Maybe escaping death at the hands of Donny Wharton has made me feel invulnerable. Or maybe I’m just done feeling anxious about something I know I didn’t do. Johnny Shaw sits next to me in his gray seersucker suit but doesn’t say much other than to restate my constitutional right to have a lawyer present.
Panko and Klingman both hammer away at me about talking to Bridges at the monastery and then my online meeting with Gardner. Of course, they especially want to hear about Donny. I rest my injured hand, wrapped in gauze and an Ace bandage, on the table between us like a piece of evidence. We go over Bridges and Gardner and Donny again and again, and I tell the truth about everything except Marisa’s phone and how Caesar really hit Donny in the back of the head, not me. It’s essentially a long oral quiz, and just as boring.
The only interesting bit comes near the end of our interview, when Klingman stretches and grudgingly asks me if I’d like some coffee. When I decline, he grunts. “What I’m still surprised by,” he says, “is how you knew to talk to Gardner and Bridges in the first place.”
“Marisa mentioned their names at some point,” I say. “I put two and two together.”
Panko raises an eyebrow. “That’s some good math.”
I shrug. “Google is a fabulous thing.”
I know at this point, based on what Caesar said before, that the police must have access to Marisa’s phone records and have in all likelihood read her texts to me. Once again I am thankful that I never replied to her.
“It’s a funny thing,” Panko says, looking at me. “We never did find Marisa’s phone.”
I say nothing. Johnny Shaw looks like he’s taking a nap.
“Can’t locate it through apps or cell towers, either,” Panko continues. “My guess is somebody destroyed it.”
I look straight back at him. “That is weird.”
We look at each other for another moment, long enough for Shaw to open an eye and gaze at us, and then Klingman has a few more questions to ask.
As Klingman is stacking his notes and closing file folders, I say, “So Donny Wharton killed Marisa and Sam Bridges.”
Klingman pauses. I notice he has on the same tie he wore when we first met, although the stain is gone. Klingman glances at Panko before saying, “I can’t speak to anything specific connected to an ongoing investigation.”
We shake hands, and Johnny Shaw and I take the elevator down to street level and walk outside. The downtown streets are busy, cars crawling around a lane blocked due to a county crew repaving, the stink of asphalt hanging in the air.
“What happened with the DNA test?” I ask Shaw. “I walked in thinking there’d be a lab tech waiting to swab my cheek.”
“They don’t need it anymore,” Shaw says. “They found other evidence.”
“What did they find?”
Shaw shakes his head. “Don’t worry about it.” He squints at the traffic, looking for a cab—Gus is on vacation this week, and Shaw doesn’t trust ridesharing. I rode MARTA here, but instead of walking to the station, I hesitate.
“What Klingman was saying in there,” I say to Shaw. “When I asked if Donny killed them both. What did you think about his answer?”
Shaw blows his nose and tucks his handkerchief back into his pocket. “Officially, it’s boilerplate that keeps him from having to share anything,” he says. “Unofficially?” He looks at me pointedly. “Donny Wharton killed them both.” He raises his hand, conjuring a taxi to the curb.
* * *
I MEET COLEMAN at a Starbucks near my house, and we find a table among half a dozen patrons wearing earbuds and staring at their laptops. Coleman is horrified and fascinated in equal measure by my injured hand. I tell him I fought with a home intruder and it’s all okay now. “How’s Sarah?” I ask. “Is she still in the hospital?”
Coleman smiles. “Went home two days ago, as a matter of fact. She’s okay.”
I close my eyes and sigh with relief. “That’s good,” I say. And it is. Guilt still batters away at my heart, but at least Sarah’s okay. I take a breath. “I need to tell you about Marisa,” I say.
I tell him the abbreviated version of me and Marisa, how she became infatuated with me and stirred up my past. I gloss over Donny and Bridges as much as I can, but I do reveal that Donny was the one who caused my stitches. I say nothing about her phone.
When I stop talking, Coleman is floored. “So this Donny character, he killed Marisa?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
Coleman lets out a low whistle. “Are you all right?” he asks.
“I’m thinking about resigning, actually.” Just saying the words feels like a stone rolling over my heart.
Coleman raises his eyebrows. “Why?” he asks.
Now I stare at him. “The students must think I’m some sort of stalker creep,” I say. “I can only imagine what their parents must think. And Byron and Teri can’t be comfortable with me teaching there anymore.”
Coleman pulls out his phone, swipes at his screen a few times, and then holds the phone up. “You ought to see this.”
I peer at his screen to see a p
icture of what looks like a poster board with my name in the center, surrounded by handwritten notes—We love you, Mr. Faulkner! English teacher extraordinaire! Thou are the nonpareil!—and a cloud of signatures, including Mark Mitchell and Sarah Solomon. That stone I felt in my chest rolls away as if from the mouth of a cave, letting in sunlight. “What is this?” I ask.
“It’s from your AP English class,” Coleman says. “Sarah wanted them to sign a card in support of you. They had to get a poster board.” Coleman smiles down at the picture. “I saw Sarah just before she was discharged from the hospital. She’d already figured out that it was Marisa Devereaux on Twitter. ‘I knew it wasn’t Mr. Faulkner,’ she said.”
The image of the picture on his phone blurs, and I wipe tears away with my good hand. I’m a high school English teacher who likes poetry, I often tell people—I cry at everything. But hearing what Sarah said makes me want to sob. “That’s really nice,” I manage to say.
Coleman nods. “I think you’ll find Byron and Teri are willing to welcome you back to school,” he says. “If you want to come back.”
I laugh at that, a short bark through my tears. “What, back to that place? With those kids? Good God.” I wipe my eyes again. “But … I have to resign. Don’t I? I mean, I was having sex with Marisa at school. She manipulated students to get me a teaching award. She got murdered because she got wrapped up in my shit.”
Coleman thinks for a moment, brows knit together. “I can understand having mixed feelings about the Faculty Award,” he says. “Which, I have to tell you, is going to be awarded to Betsy Bales instead. And having sex with another teacher at school is probably not compatible with the highest principles of workplace behavior. But this Donny character killed Marisa, not you. And everyone’s figured out Marisa Devereaux was manipulative and tried to ruin your career. Unless the police are going to arrest you for her murder, I don’t see the school having a problem.” He puts a meaty hand on my shoulder. “As a priest, I talk to a lot of people who feel guilty. If you feel guilty about something, don’t try to make up for it by punishing yourself in some other way, like quitting your job.” He squeezes my shoulder, then smiles gently. “That’s not how it works.”
* * *
CAESAR IS SITTING up in his hospital bed and talking with Frankie when I walk into the room. “Hey,” Frankie says, hugging me. “Man, you got cut up, güero. You okay?”
I hold up my bandaged hand. “Another inch and he would have sliced open my radial artery. The doctors assure me that would have been bad.” I step over to the bed, where Caesar looks faintly ridiculous in a hospital gown. His head and left eye are swathed in gauze, as is his abdomen. According to the police, Donny waited outside my house until Caesar took Wilson out to pee. Frankie already told me that Donny clocked Caesar in the face with a paver from the yard, breaking his eye socket, and then Donny still had to stab Caesar three times, once in the liver, before he could get through him and into the house. Caesar is lucky he didn’t bleed to death.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
“Aside from the fact that they won’t let me have coffee, and the food is revolting, and they wake you up in the dead of night to give you a sleeping pill, I’m fabulous,” Caesar says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Caesar grunts, closing his right eye. “I’m the one who got jumped and didn’t protect your sister.” He cracks his eye open. “I’m sorry about your dog.”
I nod. Donny had beaten and stabbed Caesar nearly to death and then gone into the house to grab Susannah, who had been asleep, so neither of them saw what happened to Wilson. I’m about to make some dumb joke to lighten the mood, because I don’t want to start weeping about Wilson again, when Caesar grabs my right hand. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t protect your sister.”
“Hey,” I say, “it’s okay; you were—”
He pulls me toward him, his grip like iron. “I mean it,” he says. “And thank you, for what you did. With the brick.”
Frankie hovers behind me. “Take it easy,” he says to me. “He needs to rest.”
“He has an orbital fracture and a lacerated liver, and I’m pretty sure he could still kick my ass,” I say.
“Damn straight,” Caesar says. “Now listen to Frankie and get out so I can get some rest.” He releases my hand and leans back, closing his eye. I flex my hand to make sure it’s still working, shooting a look at Frankie to make sure he sees.
“Yes, my boyfriend is a badass,” Frankie says.
I nod and walk out the door, but not before I see Caesar, his eye still closed, slowly smile.
I’m at the elevators when I hear Frankie call my name, and I turn around to see him walking down the hall. “What’s wrong?” I say when he reaches me.
“Nothing,” Frankie says. “I just … I wanted to tell you—about me and Caesar.”
The elevator dings and the door opens, and two nurses step off the elevator, then stop because we’re blocking them. I usher Frankie to the side to let them pass and find myself standing by a window that looks out onto a ventilation shaft. “Okay,” I say to Frankie.
“You know he saved my life,” Frankie says. “And when he did that, I immediately wondered what he wanted. Everybody in prison wants something. But he just seemed to want to do what he thought was the right thing, helping me. And we became friends, got close. But that’s all we were, in there. It wasn’t until we both got out …” He trails off and looks at me hopefully.
“Yeah,” I say, nodding. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he says. “So, he got out first, right? A month before I did, turns out. And when he was gone, I was so …” He looks out the window, as if the words he is searching for will be hovering right outside in the ventilation shaft. “I wasn’t just lonely. It was like part of me had walked away with him. It felt—it felt like I was dying inside, you know?” He wipes his face with his hands and looks back at me. “And when I walked out of that place, there he was, leaning up against this Cadillac he’d rented, waiting for me. And when he opened his arms to give me a hug, I just walked straight through that hug and kissed him. We stood there in front of God and everybody, kissing in the prison parking lot.” He laughs, then glances at me to see my reaction. I smile back at him, nodding, and he grins a little. “He said, ‘Are you sure?’ Like asking me if I’d ordered what I really wanted off the menu or whatever. And I was. I was sure.” Frankie lowers his head a little, eyes still on me. “I’d never felt that before. I didn’t lie to you when we were growing up. I wasn’t hiding anything. Hell, I don’t even know if I am gay. I mean, I still find women attractive. But the only man—the only person—I feel this way about is him. And I’m good with that.”
I reach my uninjured hand out and grip his shoulder. “You don’t owe me an explanation,” I say. “And you don’t need my blessing or anything. But you have it.”
Frankie grips my shoulder in return, and then he pulls me into a hug, pounding me firmly on the back. “You’re such an asshole, Ethan,” he says in my ear, and then laughs, like a long-held dread unspooling.
We stand there locked in an embrace like long-lost comrades, reunited at last.
* * *
THAT EVENING I’M trying to make spaghetti with my good hand when the phone rings, and I answer and put it on speaker. “Hello?” I say, stirring the marinara.
“Mr. Faulkner?” a man says.
“Speaking.” I lift the lid on the stockpot, but the water for the pasta isn’t boiling yet.
“Mr. Faulkner, my name is Steven, and I am calling on behalf of Mr. Jackson Devereaux,” the man says.
I nearly drop the lid. “Marisa’s father?”
“Exactly,” Steven says. Now I recognize his voice from when I first called Marisa’s house. “He would like to know if it is possible for you to meet with him tomorrow afternoon,” he continues. “Say three o’clock?”
“May I ask what this is regarding?” I say, mostly keeping my voice steady.
“I believe he
would like to share some private information with you, sir. That’s really all I can say.”
I stare at the unopened box of spaghetti on the counter. “That would be fine,” I say.
“Excellent. Shall I text the address to this number?”
“Perfect.”
“Tomorrow at three, then. Good evening.”
I hang up and stand in my kitchen, looking blankly at my sink, until the water finally starts to boil.
* * *
THE HOUSE ON Habersham Road is a brick mansion that would look right at home in Gatsby’s neighborhood, set on a hill of manicured lawn with rosebushes that I have no doubt are tended by a host of gardeners. I roll up the cobblestone drive in my Corolla and park out front, conscious that my car needs a wash. I am wearing a blazer and slacks but decided in the end to forgo a tie.
Steven answers the door, an ageless butler-secretary type in a light-gray suit and salmon-pink tie. He ushers me inside to a foyer with a marble floor wide enough for dancing, leads me through the foyer and past a sitting room or two, turns left, and stops outside an oak door. He knocks and cracks the door enough to insert his head and murmur my name, then opens the door wide and gestures for me to enter. Behind the door is an oak-paneled office with leather furniture and a desk that is far neater than my uncle’s. A man stands from his chair behind the desk, silvering hair brushed into place, a strong jaw, broad chest and trim waist fitted into a navy-blue suit, no tie, the white shirt unbuttoned at the collar. “Mr. Faulkner,” the man says. He moves around the desk and shakes my hand. “Jackson Devereaux. Thank you for coming. Can Steven get you anything? Water, juice, coffee?”
“No, thank you.”
Devereaux looks over my shoulder. “Thank you, Steven,” he says, and I hear the door shut behind me with a discreet click. Devereaux returns behind his desk and sits, and I lower myself into a leather club chair.
“Mr. Devereaux, please let me say first that I am so very sorry for your loss,” I say.
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