by Scott Frost
I tested the doorknob and it moved, and then I pushed it open. It was a small bedroom. On a chest by the window a hamster was on a treadmill going round and round. Harrison held his weapon on it for a second and then smiled.
“Bed’s been slept in.”
Harrison walked over and opened the closet door.
“Nothing here,” he said. “I’ll clear the other bedroom. ”
I took one last look around the room and noticed something under the bed.
“What’s that?” I said.
Harrison stopped, knelt down, and lifted the bedspread to get a better view. He looked for a moment, then reached under and pulled out a large kitchen knife.
“There’re at least half a dozen under here.”
He handed the first one to me, a large carving knife with a long thin blade. I walked over to the window, which was tied shut like the others.
“Windows tied shut, knives under a bed. What does this look like to you?” I asked.
“Fear.”
“Of what?”
“Everything, or everyone.”
We looked at each other for a moment, playing it out in our heads.
“Someone who spends every waking hour looking over his shoulder—my father.”
From the back of the house we heard what sounded like a gasp and then a voice.
“What the hell . . .”
We stepped out of the bedroom and down the hall to the living room. Standing by the forced door was a blond woman in her mid-thirties, holding a bag of groceries.
I motioned Harrison to stay out of sight and I stepped out so she could see me.
“I’m a police officer,” I said.
Startled, she dropped the groceries and started inching back out the door.
“Show me your ID,” she said.
I held it up. “We’re looking for someone who is staying here.”
“What happened to my door?”
“Are you Jenny Lowe?
She nodded.
“I’m looking for a man named Brooks.”
She started to answer, then turned and sprinted out the door. Before I could say anything Harrison was out the front door and cutting her off. I followed them around the corner, where Harrison had her down on the ground and was about to cuff her.
“You can let her up,” I said.
He helped her up; her face was flushed from adrenaline.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I didn’t think you were really police,” she said. “He thought he was being followed.”
“Brooks?”
She nodded.
“Tell me about him,” I said.
“He told me if I saw anyone suspicious I should run. I wasn’t sure I believed him, and then you were inside my house.”
“Did he say who was following him or why?”
She shook her head. “He just seemed consumed with personal security issues. I guess I thought something bad must have happened to him once. What’s going on here?”
Some neighbors walking by were beginning to take notice.
“Can we talk inside?”
She nodded and we went back into the house.
We began picking up the groceries that had spilled out of the bag. Then she saw the ropes securing the windows shut.
“What the hell’s been going on?”
“You haven’t been staying here?”
She shook her head. “I was here for a few nights when he came. I’ve been with a friend since. I told him he could stay until the show closed, then he had another gig in Denver, I think. He lost everything in the fire.”
“There was no fire,” I said.
“Of course there was a . . .” As the words sank in, an entirely new reality appeared in her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“Has he threatened you in any way?” I asked.
“Threatened me . . . This is crazy.”
“Has he touched you, or made inappropriate advances?” Harrison asked.
She looked at me in surprise, and I saw there wasn’t a hint of a lie in her words, but something in the question gave her pause.
“No. Why would you ask me if he touched me?”
I showed her the copy of my father’s driver’s license.
“Is this the man you know as Brooks?”
She looked at the picture for a moment and as she began to nod, she realized there was another name on the license.
“Powell . . . That’s not his name.”
“Why have you missed the last two performances?”
“I got pissed off with the director. It has nothing to do with . . . What has he done?”
“We just want to talk to him.”
“You always break down doors when you want to just talk with someone?” She looked down at the lengths of rope on the floor. “One of the actresses said he touched her during a rehearsal. . . . He apologized, said it was an accident, and that was the end of it.”
“When was the last time you saw him?” Harrison asked.
“Two nights ago at the theater.”
She started shaking her head. “This doesn’t make sense. The man you watch on stage isn’t someone who would do what you’re suggesting. Everyone at the theater can’t figure out why he isn’t a big star.”
“His voice was just a little too high,” I said. “And he looked a little too much like Richard Widmark.”
“You know him,” she said.
I nodded.
“We met once a long time ago,” I said.
She sighed heavily, then sat down on the couch.
“I suddenly don’t feel very good,” she said.
I sat down next to her.
“I was here two nights with him in the extra bedroom. ”
She looked down the hallway, retrieving or replaying something in her mind. “The second night I woke up and he was standing at my door, watching me. I just pretended to be asleep and rolled over.”
Lowe turned and looked at me. “I thought I heard footsteps walk toward my bed, but nothing happened, and when I finally rolled back over and opened my eyes he was gone. I told myself it was just a dream.”
“You moved to your friend’s the next day.”
She nodded. “I was going to anyway. I didn’t want rumors to start at the theater.”
“It may be too late for that.”
“That’s how you found me?”
I nodded.
“I wondered why I got that call.”
“What call?”
“An agent looking for an actor named Powell. They described him to a T. I thought it was a mistake.”
Harrison looked at me. “Could have been Hazzard. ”
I looked back at Lowe. “Do you know where we can find him?”
She glanced at her watch. “The theater. It’s the last performance this afternoon.”
“The show closes today?” I asked.
“Yes. We always end runs with matinees.”
“You said something about him going to Denver next.”
Lowe nodded.
My heart began to race, pressing against my cracked ribs, which I had almost forgotten about.
“Did he tell you when he was leaving town?” I asked.
“Right after the curtain. That’s why I came home.”
“He’s not coming back here?” Harrison asked.
Lowe shook her head. I looked at my watch. It was a few minutes before six.
“How much time do we have before the show ends?”
“Almost none.”
47
It was only a few miles to the theater as the crow flies. What should have been a five-minute drive stretched to six and then seven minutes. With each passing second I could feel him slipping away, as if he were stepping back into the grainy black-and-white image on the TV screen.
We turned the corner onto Venice. Two cars had collided in the center lane, and traffic was stopped in both directions. At the end of the block I c
ould see the theater, which had been built out of an old warehouse. The sidewalk in front was empty. The play had either already ended and I had missed him or he was still inside.
“We won’t get there like this,” Harrison said.
He pulled over and I began running past storefronts and taco stands, silently telling myself I hadn’t let him slip away. Halfway there the pain began to spread across my rib cage. As we reached the theater I took a breath and doubled over.
“You knocked a rib loose,” Harrison said.
I eased a breath into my lungs, then straightened and walked over to the glass doors of the theater. The sound of applause began to drift out from inside.
“He’s still here,” I said, staring into the lobby.
My father was certainly guilty of the rape of Candice Fleming, and possibly the two River Killer murders, but Hazzard’s cover-up had all but destroyed any chance of prosecution. Whatever I had to do inside, it was no longer just police work. Whatever I said, or didn’t say, to him would be between father and daughter, as if that relationship even applied to the history between the man inside this theater and myself.
I looked at Harrison for a moment.
“Would you see if there’s a stage door in the back and watch it?” I said.
Harrison looked into my eyes as if making certain of my resolve, then nodded and started around the side of the building. I watched him walk away, wanting to tell him to stop, but instead I turned and stared through the doors into the lobby.
Go, just go . . . he’s waiting.
I stepped through the doors as the applause from the auditorium rose in pitch and fever. The lobby curved around in a U shape from left to right. Swinging doors led into the auditorium. I pushed them open and started up a dark ramp that led to the seats and the faint glow of the stage lights. I stepped into the theater itself and stopped to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. The stage was a thrust, surrounded by seats on three sides. I was standing in the center section; a dozen rows of seats were between me and the stage; the rest rose behind me in a long slope. Every seat appeared to be occupied.
A young man and woman were standing on the stage hand in hand acknowledging applause. The set looked like a living room from a 1960s ranch house like the one I grew up in.
The actors blew kisses to the audience and walked off, leaving the stage empty for a moment. I stared into the darkness of the wings, then another figure stepped out onto the set and walked to center stage, thirty feet from me. I didn’t recognize him as any of the men in the driver’s license pictures from around the country that Hazzard had collected. He could have been any man in those pictures, an ordinary man. But I knew the man in front of me was not just any man. His eyes were as black as coal. He commanded the space around him on the stage, and every eye in the theater was on him.
He bowed deeply, then rose, his face catching the light of a spot as the audience began to rise to their feet and clap. My father’s eyes moved across the audience, and a faint smile appeared on his lips. He looked left and bowed, and as he swung to the right he hesitated and looked in my direction. I couldn’t have been more than a dull shape in the darkness, but his eyes held on me longer than anywhere else in the auditorium, and the smile on his lips vanished.
My knees buckled ever so slightly and I heard my mother’s voice in my head, Don’t make a sound.
The applause rose as more of the audience stood. My knees held and I stepped into the center of the aisle leading to the stage where he stood.
It’s our secret, she whispered again.
I stepped down a row and then another toward the stage.
Be a good girl.
The voice in my head fell silent. He finished his bow and stood absolutely still, staring into the darkness where I was standing, then turned and walked briskly off the stage into the wings.
I took a breath as the applause died and the auditorium lights came up. It felt like the aftermath of a storm. Before I could move, the rows of patrons began to empty into the aisle heading for the lobby. Behind me someone said, “Brooks,” and then I heard his name again and again from the crowd in different directions. People were nodding their heads, taking deep breaths as if they hadn’t breathed for the last ninety minutes. A few had tears in their eyes. Someone said very softly, “He had me.”
An usher passed me and I reached out and touched his arm.
“Where are the dressing rooms?” I asked.
“Back into the lobby and to the left.”
I looked at the crush of people heading for the exits.
“Can I reach them from the stage?”
He started to shake his head and I showed him my badge.
“Back of stage left.” He pointed.
I waited for people to pass, then rushed down the aisle and up the steps to the stage. As I started to cross the make-believe world of the living room, I heard my father’s voice jump from the past.
Where is she? Where’d you put her?
I tried to push it away but the memories came regardless of how much I tried to stop them.
Bitch, he yelled. Where’s my little girl?
A lamp was smashed, a chair leg snapped and then the dull sound of my mother’s small frame hitting the wall.
“Can I help you?”
A stage manager was standing a few feet from me, a headset around his neck. The lights had dimmed so that the set appeared to be in twilight.
“Dressing rooms,” I said.
He pointed toward the back and I rushed through the darkened wings into a bright, wide hallway that curved behind the stage. The sound of a heavy door opening somewhere was followed by laughter. I heard footsteps that sounded like someone running.
The two actors I had seen taking a curtain call came around the corner laughing and I passed them in a full run. Around the turn the scene and costume shops were on the left. Twenty feet farther on, two doors on the right were marked DRESSING ROOMS.
I stepped up to the first door and pulled it open. An actress was standing in the center of the room buttoning her blouse. She turned and looked at me, holding a hand over her chest.
I stepped back out and over to the second door. As I reached for it, a stagehand dropped a ladder at the end of the hallway by the exit, then walked out of sight. I looked back at the door for a moment, letting my hand slip down to the Glock. My fingers closed briefly on the handle, then I released it and pulled open the door and stepped inside.
The scent of makeup, sweat, and cigarettes hung in the air. A row of dressing tables ran along the right side of the room. The clothes I’d seen my father wearing on stage were draped over a chair. From the back of the room came the sound of a shower. I crossed the room to a closed door that led to the sound of the shower.
I pulled open the door but didn’t go in. The room was L-shaped. The sound of the shower was coming from around the corner in the back.
“Step out,” I said.
The water continued to flow.
“Thomas Manning.”
There was no change. I listened for the sound of the water’s flow being interrupted by a hand or arm passing across it, but it was steady. I stepped onto the tile floor and walked past the sinks and stalls to the far corner. The shower was empty, just a stream of water pouring onto the white tiles and swirling down the drain.
“No,” I whispered, rushing back out. I couldn’t have missed him; it had only been a matter of minutes.
As I passed the dressing table where my father’s costume was draped over the back of a chair, I stopped. On the table next to a makeup kit was my father’s driver’s license from New York and a small envelope with my name written on it in graceful, old-fashioned penmanship. I picked it up and opened it. A thick gold wedding ring slipped out into the palm of my hand. I remembered it. I knew the cool feel of it as his hand closed around my thin, five-year-old wrist or touched the side of my face. I remembered the small crescent bruise it left on my mother’s skin again and again. My hand began to tremble and I
set the ring down.
Also in the envelope was a small folded note card like you would use if sending flowers. I pulled it out and opened it.
I’m sorry, my father had written.
I put the driver’s license, ring, and note into my pocket and rushed out of the dressing room and into the hallway. A light had been turned off at the far end. A small red exit sign glowed in the darkness.
I took a cautious step, listening for any sound that might reveal where he had gone. Nothing. I crossed the darkness at the end of the hallway at a run. The latch of the door hit my hip heavily, but the door gave way and I tumbled out into the dull gray coastal light. Before I could turn, I saw movement on my left. I tried to swing toward it, but a hand caught my arm, and another came toward my face, and I tried to spin away from the blow.
“Don’t—” I started to say.
The hand gently touched my neck. “Alex.”
I stared into his face for a moment before I fully realized it was Harrison.
“He didn’t come this way?” I asked.
Harrison shook his head.
“He’s going out the front door with the crowd,” I said, already moving back toward the exit I had just come out.
Harrison raced down the alley to the theater’s entrance as I stepped back into the hallway and ran past the dressing rooms and the stage, all the way to the far end. At the entrance to the lobby I flung open the door and stepped in.
Several hundred people filled the space from wall to wall, wineglasses in their hands, their voices engaged in as many different conversations. I tried to work through the crush of people but they were packed in tight. Some laughter erupted somewhere, then a short burst of applause. I scanned the faces closest to me, then across the lobby, and saw a figure moving and stopping, moving and stopping, as if he were shaking hands.
Someone in the crowd yelled “Brooks” and the figure turned and looked in my direction. For a moment all that was visible were pieces of a face, a flick of dark hair, a flash of a smile as he shook a hand. And then he stepped into view as if he’d known all along right where I was standing.
He reached up and removed the glasses he was wearing, looked at me, and for just an instant the hundreds of voices in the room seemed to fall silent. He reached up and rubbed his eyes, then slipped the glasses back on. The voices in the room returned and then he vanished into the crowd.
