“Sure, yeah. Everything’s fine.”
Sarah suddenly became very positive, like she was putting the best spin on a bad lab result. “It’s perfectly normal, you know. It happens. I wouldn’t worry at all. Like you say, you’ve had a lot on your mind, finishing up your book, and, you know, at your age, sometimes something like this is going to happen.”
“I don’t think this is an age thing.”
“I didn’t mean that. I’m just saying, that when you’re in your forties, and you’re tired, you know, this can happen.” But now her face was changing. Instead of worrying about me, she was thinking about herself. “Unless it’s me. Unless I don’t, I don’t know, please you the way I used to.”
“Believe me,” I said, “that is not the case. It’s what you said. I’m tired, and stressed out, and old. Very old.”
Sarah sat up on the edge of the bed. “I guess I was trying to sneak in a quickie because, well, there was another phone call.”
“What?” Oh God. Was this how it felt to jump out of a plane and then realize you’d forgotten your chute? Who could have called? Homicide investigators? The Mounties? The FBI? Agent Mulder?
“Work. I have to go in tonight.”
“You’re kidding.”
“The overnight assignment guy’s off sick. I’m going to have to cover it. I can’t believe it. If I’d known, I’d have had a nap as soon as I got home. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to stay awake.”
“What about tomorrow morning? You have to stay and do a double?”
“No, they’ll get someone else to do that. I’ll probably get home about 8 A.M., unless they can get someone to relieve me sooner, which I doubt. Don’t bother making me any coffee in the morning. I won’t want to stay awake then, I’ll just crash, sleep till noon or one, and I won’t have to go in the rest of the day.” She chuckled. “In a way, it’s like getting tomorrow off.”
“It’s a hard way to get it.”
She shrugged. Sarah had, some time ago, worked midnight shifts for five years on the city desk. This was after we’d had children, otherwise they might never have happened. But she had gotten used to it, so the odd night here and there wasn’t such a big deal to her.
She gave me a quick kiss. “I’ve gotta freshen up before I go in. But we’re going to talk more about this tomorrow. Maybe we need a dirty weekend. Get away for a couple of days. I think we owe that to ourselves.” Sarah disappeared into the bathroom. I zipped up, went downstairs and met Angie coming into the house. Just as I’d feared, I’d never heard her or Paul come back.
“Hey,” I said. “Two questions.”
“Shoot.”
“When’s Mom’s birthday?”
Angie rolled her eyes. “Day after tomorrow.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. There was still time, if I hadn’t been gunned down by then trying to evade arrest. “Okay. Number two. Did you know Kenny was gay?”
She’d been in his hobby shop a number of times, usually under protest if we happened to be running errands together, or if she was in there to pick up the obligatory birthday, Father’s Day, or Christmas gift. “Duh,” she said. “Only a retard couldn’t see that.” She was going to head for the kitchen, then reconsidered. “Mom said I should ask you for the money you guys owe me.”
“Later,” I said, and slipped into my study and closed the door.
I turned on my desk lamp, got the purse out from behind the box of papers, and set it down. I took out the wallet first. This was the only thing I’d really looked at, but not very carefully. Stefanie Knight carried three different Visa cards, a Master-Card, a bonus points card for a major drugstore chain, and, of course, the driver’s license I’d examined earlier. I withdrew other things from the purse, an item at a time. A brush with several blonde hairs caught in it. Half a dozen lipsticks and lip liners and various other lip things I didn’t know much about. Those tampons still in the paper wrapper. Some handfuls of coins that she’d obviously just thrown into her bag rather than slip into her change purse. VW and house keys, film canister, receipts from grocery stores, drugstores, self-serve gas stations, some dating back more than two years. Three ballpoint pens, one of which looked dried up, three nail files, half a dozen eyeliners. Two white letter-size envelopes, thick with papers. Real estate papers, I guessed. The flaps were tucked in, not sealed, so I decided to take a peek into one of them.
I felt as though someone had suddenly stomped on my chest.
Money. Lots and lots of money.
All fifties. Dozens and dozens of them in the first envelope. Dozens and dozens of them in the second envelope. Thousands of dollars. I couldn’t begin to guess how much.
I felt that what had quickly developed into a very bad situation was now a hell of a lot worse.
14
They were crisp, new fifties, and I emptied both envelopes and spread the money out on the desk next to my computer. I counted out the bills in stacks of twenty, for $1,000 each. It took about five minutes, and when I was done I had twenty piles, for a total of $20,000.
That would buy a lot of low-fat cookies.
I’d never seen this much cash in one place before. I wasn’t even sure I’d ever seen so much as a thousand dollars in cold, hard cash before. When I went to the grocery store, I was lucky to find six bucks in my wallet. Evidently, when Stefanie Knight went to pick up some bread and milk, it was a major event. She didn’t want to take any chances on running short.
In her wallet she’d had only $25 in bills. No fifties. But these two envelopes of cash were something else again. What was she doing with this kind of money? What would anyone be doing with this kind of cash? Normal, upstanding, regular law-abiding people did not walk around with $20,000 on them. Even people for whom $20,000 was lunch money. I doubted even Bill Gates walked around with $20,000 in his wallet. (You’d throw your back out, for one thing, when you sat on it.)
When you walked around with $20,000 in your purse, the chances were pretty good that you had done something bad. Even if the money had come from a legitimate source, a down payment in a real estate deal, for example, why wouldn’t Stefanie have deposited it someplace? Was she like Janet Leigh in Psycho, walking out of the office at the end of the day, deciding to start a new life with money from some eccentric home buyer who only dealt in cash?
It seemed time for a review.
I was a thief, possessed information about a murder that I had not passed on to the police, and now had $20,000 in possibly stolen money on my desk. And if that weren’t enough, my wife was under the impression that (a) two days from now, she was going to get the best birthday present ever, and (b) her husband was impotent.
But I could not bring myself to call the police. Now, a lawyer, that might be a good idea. I could tell him everything, let him advise me on the best course of action. The only problem was, the only lawyer I knew was the one who handled our house deal. A specialist in land-transfer taxes was not what I needed right now.
As I considered my options, I gathered up the stacks of bills and started stuffing them back into the two envelopes.
“Dad?”
I whirled around in my chair, and as I did, three of the fifties were swept off the desk and onto the carpet. Angie poked her head into my study.
“I’m going to the mall and I need some mo-”
Her eyes landed on the fifties as they fluttered to the floor. “Money,” she said. “It looks like my timing couldn’t have been better.”
I would have scooped up the three bills, but it seemed more important to cover up the hundreds of bills, and purse, and the rest of its contents that were spread across my desk. There was an instruction sheet for the Seaview submarine kit on the workbench end of my desk, big, like an unfolded highway map. I grabbed it with one hand, trying not to be so fast as to be obvious, and casually dragged it over the stuff I didn’t want Angie to see.
She was into the room and diving for the money like an owl on a mouse. She grabbed the three fifties and smiled.
>
“This is just what you owe me,” she said triumphantly.
“You can’t have that,” I said. “And besides, you already said we only owe you, what, $127?”
“Okay, so, like, this is a little more, but I also paid for my lunch all this week, and you usually help out with that, so you probably owe me more than $150, so you give me this and we’ll call it even. These are nice. You just print these up?”
“I need that money,” I said. “You can’t have that.”
“I’m going to the mall, Mom’s already leaving to go back to work and she doesn’t have any money, so why can’t I have this? You always do this to me. You owe me money and then you find all these excuses not to give it to me and that’s not fair.” She was already folding the bills and sliding them into the front pocket of her jeans.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “I got that from the money machine today and need it tomorrow and-”
“What’s that on your desk?” She had her head cocked at an angle, trying to peek under the instruction sheet.
“Nothing, just some stuff for my book,” I said.
“Is that a purse? Did you get Mom a purse for her birthday?”
This was not good. “Fine,” I said. “Take the money.”
She spun on her heel. “See ya.” She was out the door and I could hear her thick-soled shoes stomping toward the front door.
“Goodbye!” someone shouted. I thought it was Angie at first, then realized it was Sarah.
“Yeah!” I shouted. “Try to stay awake!”
“I’ll drop Angie off at the mall!” Sarah shouted. “I’ll take the Camry!”
“Okay!” I shouted back. If Sarah took the Toyota, I’d still be left with the Civic if I needed to take Paul someplace, pick Angie up at the mall later if she didn’t have a ride back with one of her friends, or meander over to another crime scene.
What I really wanted to do was go nowhere, to hide out in this bunker of a study, even though I knew I wasn’t safe here. I wasn’t safe anywhere as long as this purse and its contents were in my possession. I should just get rid of it. Put it in a garbage bag, drive to the far side of town, and toss it in a Dumpster behind an industrial complex. Money and all. Get rid of everything.
Take the credit cards and license and anything else that had Stefanie Knight’s name on it and chop them up, run them through the food processor, dump them in the sink and grind them up again in the garbage disposal. Take her house and car keys and drive downtown to the harbor district and throw them off the longest dock. I’d made a mistake, I’d done a stupid thing, but I hadn’t killed anyone. I’d never intended to hurt anyone, and I didn’t know, with any certainty, that I was in any way responsible for Stefanie Knight’s death. Maybe whoever killed her did so for reasons totally unrelated to her losing a purse filled with $20,000.
Sure. And the bombing of Pearl Harbor had nothing to do with America going to war with Japan.
I weighed the risks of coming forward, of calling the police, of turning this purse over to them. I had a wife, two children, a house, a so-so writing career. Wouldn’t doing the right thing-if it even was the right thing-put everything I’d worked for, our lives as we’d come to know them, in jeopardy? I couldn’t do anything now to save Stefanie Knight, but I could pull myself together, start thinking rationally, and at least save myself and my family from untold horrors and embarrassment.
Get a grip.
I had a book to finish. It was time to focus, to put these last couple of hours aside. Isn’t that what Clinton used to do? Hadn’t I read about how the former President compartmentalized his problems? How he could meet with the lawyers about the Monica Lewinsky problem, discuss testimony he’d have to give before the Starr inquiry that could potentially see him removed from office, then get up and walk down the hall and give his full attention to a discussion of the Mideast situation?
Sure. That was me. Clintonesque.
I took another deep breath. I shoveled everything of Stefanie Knight’s back into the purse, zipped it up, and put it back in the shoe bag. Maybe, with Angie gone to the mall, and Paul no doubt down in the basement with his friends playing video games, I would have a moment to start destroying evidence.
And maybe once I’d finished doing that, I could turn my attention to work.
Out of habit, I fired up the computer. Before I brought up the word-processing program where I stored the chapters of my novel, I thought I’d check and see whether I had any mail.
I clicked on the mailbox icon.
I had two messages. The first was from Tom Darling.
“Nd 2 tlk abt cvr art. Cll me tmrrw so we cn set up mtng wth art dpt.”
The business of books and editing and cover designs seemed awfully distant right about now. Like news from a past life. How long would it take to stop being haunted by what I’d seen tonight? Days? Weeks? Would I ever be able to forget the sight of Stefanie Knight’s head smashed in, a bloody shovel at her side?
I didn’t recognize the name of the sender of the second e-mail. It would have been pretty hard to. It was a string of numbers, followed by @hotmail.com. Every once in a while I got fan mail. Readers could find my address by doing an Internet search and linking up with the writers’ union website.
I opened it. It was a short note, with no name at the end, and it didn’t appear to be a fan letter. It read:
“Dear Mr. Walker: I’m looking for something I think you got. Don’t do something stupid and give it to some body else.”
15
I probably read the message a dozen times. It didn’t become any less scary the more I became familiar with it.
There’s a funny thing about e-mail. Even though it and the rest of the Internet exist somewhere out there in the ether, when something ominous appears on your screen, addressed to you, it feels as though the writer’s there in the room with you. You’ve suffered a home invasion without the duct tape. You want to lock the door, but it’s too late. There’s no place to go.
So someone had been to visit Stefanie’s mother and learned my e-mail address. Someone who was clearly not with the police. And that was no cause for celebration.
It was time to stop kidding myself about whether Stefanie Knight’s death and the $20,000 in her purse were related. Here’s how I figured it played out: Someone had gone to her house expecting to get that money, and when she didn’t have it, she was murdered. Then her killer started looking elsewhere, and showed up on her mother’s doorstep. But she didn’t have it, either. But hey, she said, there was a guy here earlier, said he had her driver’s license, was acting kind of funny. Here’s his name and e-mail address.
I read the note one more time: “Dear Mr. Walker: I’m looking for something I think you got. Don’t do something stupid and give it to some body else.”
Hadn’t I done enough stupid things already tonight? I certainly had no interest in doing any more.
It was the absence of any specific threat that made the note all the more chilling. It was implied. I already knew what this guy would do to someone who didn’t hand over something he wanted. I’d been in that garage. But then again, he didn’t know that I knew Stefanie Knight was dead. Maybe he intended his note to be more matter-of-fact. Maybe I was reading too much into it.
Earth to Zack. Wake the fuck up.
I clicked on “Reply” and wrote: “To Whom It May Concern: Regarding your e-mail about my possessing something you’re looking for, I’m afraid I simply have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I read it over twice, thought it sounded about right. Didn’t protest too much, just stated plainly that he had made some sort of a mistake. An incorrect assumption. A case of mistaken identity, perhaps.
I hit “Send.”
My study door opened. God, did Angie want more money? How much do you need, honey? Ten thou, fifteen?
Paul said, “Are you ready?”
I looked at him blankly. “Ready for what?”
“Jesus, you forgot? We have to
be there in ten minutes.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The interview. The parent-teacher thing. It’s been written on the fridge for weeks. At eight. I have to get my ass reamed out by the science teacher, and you’re supposed to be there for it. You and Mom said you were gonna go? And now she’s been called in to work and you have to do it solo.”
The air seemed to be thinning. “I can’t do it,” I said.
Paul did a combination rolling-of-the-eyes, sigh, and shoulder-rolling-head-slumping thing which, if it were an Olympic gymnastic move, would have earned him a 9.9. “You have to go. If you don’t show up for this, I’m dead. Ms. Wilton will kill me. She wants me dead already. She hates me. Maybe if she gets a chance to talk to you, she’ll let up on me a bit. You could tell her to stop giving me a hard time.”
“Maybe you need people giving you a hard time.”
Another eye-roll. “We have to be there in less than ten minutes.”
“Where are your friends?”
“They took off. We’re going to get together later at Andy’s house.”
“You don’t have any homework?”
“Nothing.”
“No science homework?”
“Look, are we going to go or what?”
I swallowed. “I’ll meet you at the front door in two minutes.” Paul vanished and I turned back to the computer. I was about to close the mail program, when the computer beeped.
“You have mail,” it said.
Shit. Was this guy sitting by his computer? The number guy from Hotmail was back. I opened the message. It read:
“Don’t jerk me around, asshole. There can’t be that many Z. Walkers in the phone book.”
And that was it.
“I’m ready!” Paul shouted from the front door. “Let’s roll!” I closed the letter, exited the mail program, and turned off the computer before grabbing my jacket and my cell. I flew past Paul on the way to the car, and he pulled the front door shut.
On the short drive over to the school, Paul said, “What’s with you tonight, anyway?”
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