Tempest (Playing the Fool #3)

by Lisa Henry

  “Good. I’ll take a sappy dream over a lifetime of shitty reality.”

  He reached down and slid Great Expectations out from under the other books. There was a small piece of paper between pages 146 and 147. He scanned the lines and saw that the number 146 had been circled and Barnard had been underlined in the text.

  He crossed the room to the dresser and stuck his hand under it until he found the key to his drawer.

  He opened it and looked inside.

  A couple of smooth stones Viola had found for him in the garden of St. Albinus last year. The card she had given him on their thirteenth birthday that she’d made herself. A collection of old Taming of the Shrew engravings from Remy—almost certainly stolen. A photo of them at an ice-cream place a couple of blocks from the corner where they’d worked. Remy’s ripped shirt that Henry had worn as a disguise in Altona when he and Mac had hidden at the cabin. A note from Stacy that said, BE BACK LATER. Henry didn’t remember when she’d left it or why—he just liked stupid stuff like that. People’s handwriting. The ordinary moments they preserved unthinkingly.

  And there was the ring his mother had given him from the dispenser at the Chinese restaurant. That he’d held on to all these years.

  That matched Viola’s.

  He slipped the ring into his pocket.

  He shut the drawer and locked it. Shoved the key back under the dresser and went out into the hall. It hurt too much to think about checking all of the rooms. Didn’t want to see Jo’s abandoned costumes or Gerald’s art magazines. Didn’t even want to see Carson’s mess of cigarette butts. He took out his phone and tried Stacy, but no luck.

  Outside, Doorbell had quieted.

  He glanced around the living room. Went to the dartboard on the wall and looked at the FBI recruiting poster the Court members had taped over it years ago.

  He ripped the poster down, tearing it in half. Then he went to the kitchen and threw it in the trash can.

  “All right,” he whispered, clenching his hands to stop them from shaking. “All right.”

  He left the Court.

  Mac was working through a thing of onion rings when Henry arrived at the food court. He froze as Henry approached, thinking he’d been caught. But Henry didn’t even comment on what he was eating, just snagged an onion ring and said, “We have to go to Barnard Street.”

  “Why? Where’s Remy?”

  “Hopefully on Barnard Street,” Henry said impatiently. “Let’s go.”

  “He wasn’t at the Court?”

  Henry sighed. “No, Mac, he wasn’t at the Court. He left me a note, and we’re going to 146 Barnard Street.”

  Mac stood. Thought about trying to take the onion rings. Decided to leave them.

  He followed Henry out of the mall and to the car. Henry walked so fast he could barely keep up.

  “So what’s on Barnard Street?” he asked as they drove.

  “Hell if I know.”

  “It’s not a significant location for you two?”

  “Is that not implied by ‘Hell if I know’?”

  “What’s up your ass?”

  Henry lolled his head toward the window. “Your people found the Court.”

  “What?”

  “The FBI raided the Court. I was there; I was under the bed. I saw Calvin, and—”

  “You were under the bed?”

  “Yes, would you just listen?”

  “Okay.”

  “Calvin and Val were there. And Janice Bixler was leading the charge. Calvin saw me and didn’t say anything. Val said she was doing everything in her power to make sure Bixler doesn’t railroad you, but you need to come up with a way to clear your name fast.”

  “She said that to you?”

  “No! Can you—just—I don’t know, focus? I didn’t talk to Val. I only saw Calvin, and he didn’t say anything.”

  “What’d he do?” Mac asked.

  “Nothing. He looked surprised, then he just stood up. And Val must have known he saw me, because she said that shit about you. Then they all left.”

  “Was anyone else there? Any of your gang?”

  Henry shook his head. “Empty.”

  “And did the FBI take anything?”

  “I didn’t see.”

  “Fuck.” He tightened his grip on the wheel. “Fuck, they really want us, huh? Not just me—you too. I mean you guys had that hideout for how long?”

  “Six years,” Henry said bitterly.

  Mac tried to muster some sympathy, but it was hard. Tried to tell himself the Court had meant a lot to Henry. But he couldn’t help being glad to see it quashed.

  “Six years, and the FBI never found it. You go missing for two days, suddenly—”

  “Well, the feds never had much reason to look,” Henry snapped.

  Mac glanced at him. “You think we don’t have any of your friends on our lists?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Come on. Give me names. I’ll bet we’ve been looking for some of you.”

  “I’m not giving you names. You’re still a fed. Even if you are disgraced and on the run.”

  “I’m just saying, they figured out where to look awfully fast.”

  “And what’s your point?”

  “My point is Remy better have something good for us,” Mac said. “Otherwise we’re kind of fucked.” Unless Frank pulls off a miracle.

  He found parking on a side street, and they walked to Barnard. Number 146 was an old apartment building. The front door was propped open with a brick. Mac and Henry stepped inside and looked around the rundown foyer.

  “Shit.” Henry stared at the wall of mailboxes. “There are thirty-eight apartments.”

  Mac’s stomach tightened. “Apartment 21.”

  A piece of tattered cardboard had been taped over the original little brass nameplate, a name scrawled on it in black marker: L. Harris. Lonny Harris. The man whose body had been found in an alley, a bullet in his head and a bullet in his heart, just like all of Jimmy Rasnick’s victims. The man who had made the complaint against Mac to the OPR. The man Remy claimed had been paid to set Mac up.

  They headed up the stairs, and Mac wished to hell he’d brought his firearm.

  He kept his arm out to prevent Henry from pushing past him. At the second floor, he turned and caught him. “Wait here.”

  “No.” Henry shook his head. He was breathing heavily. “He won’t— He won’t answer the door to a fed.”

  “Wait here,” he repeated, but Henry was right behind him as he approached apartment 21. He knocked on the door. “Remy? It’s Mac. We talked on the phone.”

  No answer, and no sound of anyone moving around in the apartment either.

  Why the hell would Remy have sent them to Lonny Harris’s apartment? Was this where Lonny had stashed the recordings that could apparently prove Mac’s innocence?

  “Remy?” He knocked again. Turned the door handle, and the mechanism clicked. He pushed the door open. “Stay here, Henry!”

  The apartment was small and dark. Mac flicked the light on as he stepped into the small living room. Henry darted past him and headed farther into the apartment.

  “Henry! I told you to—” Mac barreled into him where he’d stopped in the doorway of the bedroom. Grabbed him and hauled him back, before he even registered the look of horror on Henry’s face. Before he saw what Henry had seen.

  A dead boy lying on the bloody bedroom carpet.

  “Remy?” Henry couldn’t hear himself over the rush of blood to his head. It was a roar. It deafened him. It drowned him. A tidal surge. Unreality crashing in waves inside his skull. Sound and fury, except they were signifying fucking everything. “Remy?”

  He tried to push past Mac, but Mac caught him. He dropped to his knees, and Mac grunted in surprise. Henry dived through his legs.

  “Remy!” He could see the blood but couldn’t process it. Too much blood, just like with Vi. He needed to keep him warm, to call an ambulance, to stroke his hand and tell him he’d be okay.
r />   Mac caught him by the belt and pulled him back. “Don’t touch him, Henry!”

  “Mac, he’s hurt. Remy’s hurt!”

  “Henry!” Mac hauled him to his feet and crowded him against the wall, blocking him from getting past. “Henry, he’s dead. He’s dead.”

  He lashed out, striking Mac on the shoulder. “Let me go!” he screamed. “Fucking let me go!” He hit Mac again, and Mac caught his wrist.

  “Henry.”

  “That’s not my name! Get the fuck off me!” He struck blindly, finally landing a blow that got Mac to ease his grip. He ducked under Mac’s arm and dropped to his knees next to Remy.

  Remy was still, staring at the ceiling. A dark hole between his eyes, and a bloom of blood across the front of his shirt.

  “Hey, Rem,” he whispered, his throat clogged and rough. “Hey?” His voice wouldn’t go any louder. He reached out to touch Remy’s arm, then jolted back. It was cool, but somehow it burned.

  His vision blurred, and he couldn’t get enough air to sob.

  He tried to say Mac’s name. Finally gasped out a mangled sound and bent forward, letting his chin fall against his chest and shutting his eyes. With Vi there’d been so much blood, and he’d thought she was dead, but she wasn’t. He had been able to feel her breath against his cheek when he’d leaned over her. He needed to check and see if Remy was still breathing.

  But he didn’t want to open his eyes. If he kept them closed long enough, maybe the image of Remy’s blank face and the hole between his eyes would vanish.

  He choked again.

  Mac helped him up. He started to struggle—flailed against Mac until he couldn’t anymore, until Mac’s arms were tight around him, crushing him. He pushed hard on Mac’s chest, twisting, then went still. Stood there shaking, not sure he was in control of his own body. Not sure anything was keeping him upright but Mac.

  “Okay,” Mac whispered. “Okay, I know. I know.”

  He wanted to tell Mac he didn’t know. Mac, with his farm in Altona and his quiet, supportive dad and his apron-wearing mom couldn’t possibly know. But he didn’t have the energy to say that, and part of him hoped Mac did know. Mac saw the horrible things people did to each other. It was his job to see those horrible things, and to see people come apart from loss and fear and grief, and to know how to help them.

  But Mac didn’t say anything else. He held Henry for a moment more, then kept an arm around him and led him from the room. Sat him on the tweed couch. The middle cushion had a large rip in it; foam spilled out. Henry clamped his shaking hands between his knees.

  We have to call an ambulance.

  He’d watched the EMTs put Vi on the gurney, but he hadn’t been allowed to ride to the hospital with her. Like an idiot, he’d told the mustached EMT, the friendly one, his real age. No one under eighteen allowed in the ambulance.

  His mother had been passed out in the back room, and the mustached EMT had tried to wake her while his partner loaded Vi into the ambulance. Henry had yelled at his mother to wake up. Had shaken her and shouted, because she was the only way he could get to the hospital. He didn’t have his license or a car. J.J. had bailed. He knew his mother was in no state to drive even if she did get up. Knew that he’d have to tell her what had happened, would have to tell her it was his fault.

  Then the EMT had to go. He’d told Henry the police were on their way, and maybe they could give him a ride to the hospital.

  Henry had held on to the guy’s sleeve. Had demanded to know if Vi would be all right.

  Weak. Crying instead of helping her.

  But he hadn’t known where the blood was coming from, or how to stop it.

  He’d held her hand and waited for the ambulance.

  Should have lied. Should have told them I was eighteen.

  He’d gotten so good at lying, after that.

  He shouldn’t have let Viola be alone for a second.

  Should have forced them to take me.

  Viola’s face. Eyes closed. Her breath faint against his cheek.

  There was a sound at the edges of the memory, muffled, like Henry was hearing it under water.

  Mac was talking to him.

  “Henry? Can you hear me?”

  He shook his head, even though he could.

  “Listen to me.” Mac touched his shoulder tentatively. “I have to check the body. I have to see if there’s any . . . any evidence, all right? But I want you to stay here. Please? Promise me you’ll stay right here.”

  He nodded.

  Mac didn’t know. Didn’t know Remy, except what Henry had told him.

  “He’s, um, probably even more fucked up than me.”

  Mac knew Remy was an addict. That Remy had taught Henry three-card monte. That he’d been a rentboy. That he’d left Viola alone when he was supposed to be taking care of her. Mac had heard Henry tell Remy he hoped he died with a fucking needle in his arm.

  The memory of that made him clamp his hands tighter between his knees, until he could feel bones shift, until the pain made him sick.

  I didn’t mean that. I didn’t mean any of that.

  In the bedroom, the floor creaked under Mac’s feet.

  Mac? Don’t judge me for loving him. He’s not a body you have to check for evidence. He was my friend.

  And he loved me.

  Remy had loved him unconditionally. And he’d never been able to return that love as fully as Remy had wanted.

  Maybe I thought I was too good for him. Maybe I liked him because no matter how fucked up I was, he was worse.

  Henry stifled a series of sobs that wrenched his body.

  I’m more fucked up than he ever was.

  If he didn’t get out, he was going to vomit. He was going to smash his fucking head against the wall until he couldn’t feel or remember anything else.

  He needed to find Stacy. Needed to make sure she and the others were safe. Needed to know when she’d last seen Remy, and if Remy had said anything about where he was going, or if he was meeting anyone.

  He needed to find out who’d done this, and he needed to make sure they fucking paid.

  He stood. Glanced at the bedroom, at Mac’s shadow on the open door.

  Sorry, Mac.

  He moved quickly across the room, to the apartment’s entrance. The door squeaked when he opened it, and he shut it too loudly behind him.

  “Henry!” he heard Mac call.

  He was already halfway down the stairs.

  “Henry!”

  The door opened above him. Mac pounded down the steps after him.

  Henry moved faster. Into the foyer, past the mailboxes. Out onto the street.

  He picked a direction and ran.

  “Henry!”

  Shit.

  Mac paused on the stairwell. Looked down, then back up toward the open door of Lonny’s apartment, then back down again. Heard the front entrance to the building open and shut.

  This was bad.

  And that was the understatement of the fucking year.

  He slowly made his way back into the apartment.

  Goddamn it.

  God-fucking-damn it.

  There was a body on the floor, Henry had bolted like a scalded cat, and they’d probably both left their fingerprints all over the goddamn apartment. Which would be just great when Mac tried to claim he had no idea who Lonny Harris was; he’d just happened to wander into his apartment and find a dead boy.

  A boy who, just like Lonny, was now incapable of telling OPR that Mac was being set up.

  Easier to think of Remy that way—as a holder of information, a piece of the puzzle—than as a person. Henry’s friend.

  His chest tightened as he looked down at Remy. He could still hear Henry’s screams, still feel him struggling against him. He swallowed, and it hurt. He wasn’t usually affected by crime scenes like this, and he’d seen enough of them. But Henry had been so raw with grief, so broken, that Mac wanted to touch Remy too, to gather him up in his arms and beg him to come back. To make i
t stop hurting.

  Just a kid with purple streaks in his hair and a ring in his bottom lip. It didn’t seem fair that he had the power over Henry to shatter his world just by leaving it; the echo of that power fell heavily on Mac.

  He jammed his hands in his pockets to resist the urge to brush Remy’s hair away from his forehead. To straighten his shirt.

  He swallowed again, and forced himself to take a mental step back.

  Shot in the head and in the heart, just like Lonny Harris. Just like Jimmy Rasnick’s victims. Except Rasnick was dead, so who the hell was using his signature?

  “I’m sorry, Remy.”

  Sorry you got mixed up in this. Sorry for your shit life. Sorry you had to die like this and break Henry’s heart.

  “That’s not my name! Get the fuck off me!”

  Sebastian. Break Sebastian’s heart.

  Mac went to Lonny Harris’s cramped little kitchen. Holding his shirt over his hand, he opened the cupboards and dug through them until he found what he was looking for: plastic sandwich bags. He put them over his hands, and returned to Remy.

  A piece of a puzzle, that was all. It didn’t have to ache when he dug his fingers inside the pocket of Remy’s jeans and pulled out the sad little remnants of his sad little life. A twist of foil that Mac didn’t unwrap. A capped syringe. A bus ticket. Two condoms. A twenty dollar bill and about three dollars in change. Half a pack of gum.

  Mac put everything back where he found it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again, and Remy stared sightlessly up at him.

  He left the apartment. On his way toward the stairs, a woman opened her door and squinted at him suspiciously.

  “Call the police.” Mac kept his face turned away.

  He hurried down the stairs and pushed his way back through the busted front door into the sunlight.

  There was no sign of Henry outside. Mac hadn’t expected him to be hanging around. He walked back to the truck, hoping against hope that Henry was waiting for him there. He wasn’t. Of course he wasn’t.

  He fumbled in his pocket for the burner phone. Realized he didn’t have Henry’s number in it.

  He had his real phone on him—still carried it out of habit. But the second he slid the battery back in and the phone gave off a signal, the FBI—or more specifically, OPR—would know exactly where he was. And he didn’t want them to track him to Lonny Harris’s apartment, and to Remy’s body. Sooner or later the fingerprints and DNA would point them toward him anyway, but he preferred it to be later.