by Jodi Compton
Beyond that, Aidan had made good on his early promise of height. At six feet, he’d easily outstripped his father, and I didn’t think Colm or Liam would catch up, either. His long blond hair was stringy and unwashed, and his cheeks were precipitously hollow. A leather cord, some kind of necklace, disappeared under the collar of his T-shirt.
“I wanted to make sure Hugh wasn’t home,” Aidan said. It was the first time I’d heard him speak since he’d said, It’s okay, Linch, back at the house. “I’d been around all day and some of the evening and I didn’t see him. But his car was in the garage.”
“What do you mean, you were ‘around’?” I said.
“I was watching the house,” Aidan said. “I was waiting for Hugh to go out, so I could come in and see Linch and the boys. When I kept on not seeing him, I thought he might be out of town. But I couldn’t be sure, so I kept out of sight, and later I tried to climb up to his bedroom, to make sure.”
“Well,” I said, “the fact that you were lurking around outside the house for hours doesn’t do much to defuse the fact that you climbed up the side of the house with a knife.” When Aidan didn’t speak, I went on. “In your covert surveillance of the house, who did you think I was?”
Aidan said, “I didn’t see you.”
“Really?” I said. “I was there for over an hour before we all went to bed.”
“I wasn’t around then,” Aidan said.
He didn’t back down easily. I retraced my steps. “So if you weren’t around when I arrived, where were you?”
“Trying to find something to eat,” Aidan said.
“Where?” I repeated.
“A neighbor’s garden,” Aidan said. “They were growing some green peppers and carrots.”
He had to be starving. I thought of the vending machines in the correction officers’ lunchroom, but I didn’t want to break the rhythm of my questioning. About some things, Gray Diaz was right.
“Tell me about the switchblade,” I said.
“Protection,” Aidan said.
“From who?”
“I’ve been on the road,” Aidan said. “Life out there can be dangerous. The knife was a good investment.”
His gaze was very even, unperturbed by my questioning. His eyes were the exact color of Marlinchen’s.
“ ‘Investment,’ ” I said. “Interesting choice of words. You’ve been on your own for a long time. What have you been doing for money?”
“You mean, have I been jacking people?” Aidan asked. “No.”
“When did you get into town?”
“This afternoon,” he said. “I got a ride in Fergus Falls.”
“So,” I said, “with all the time you’ve been away, what prompted you to come home? Why now?”
“I wanted to see my family,” he said, then quickly clarified, “My sister and brothers, I mean.”
He hadn’t needed to tell me how he felt about his father; I heard it every time Aidan called him Hugh, not Father or Dad.
“And maybe you wanted to tap your old man for money,” I suggested.
“No,” Aidan said, shaking his head for emphasis.
“What about Marlinchen’s cat?”
“Snowball?” he said. “What about her?”
I stayed quiet, waiting for him to betray nerves with some small gesture, or to fill an unbearable silence. But he did neither.
I paused, not sure whether there was anything else to throw at him. One thing came to mind.
“You know,” I said, “since realizing your father wasn’t at home, you’ve shown very little interest in where he actually is. Aren’t you curious at all about that?”
Aidan Hennessy shrugged. “Okay,” he said. “Where is he?”
“Your father’s in the hospital, recovering from a stroke,” I said.
Aidan’s blue eyes flicked to mine. I’d surprised him at last, but there was no sign of concern in his gaze. Finally I said, “Are you hungry?”
“I could eat,” he said.
***
The vending machines were poorly stocked. Behind the scratched plastic windows I saw a pillowy white bagel, jalapeño potato chips, pork rinds. The soda machine looked fully stocked, but sugar water was the last thing a hungry teenager needed on an empty stomach, when he wouldn’t get anything substantial until morning.
I walked away, still holding a few quarters in the palm of my hand, to pace under the cold fluorescent lights.
I didn’t like him climbing the trellis. I didn’t like the switchblade knife in his possession. And most of all, I didn’t like him hanging around outside the house at night, so soon after the ugly late-night death of Snowball. Marlinchen had quoted him as saying, years ago, Snowball is your pet, and you’re Dad’s pet.
If Aidan had come home full of anger, primed for a confrontation with his father, might he have taken out some of that anger on a smaller target? And wasn’t there a chance, with his father safely out of his reach in a nursing home, that Aidan would deflect his anger again, onto his siblings?
I took out the switchblade that I’d confiscated from him, sprang the blade. Carefully, I looked for small traces of dried blood at the base of the blade and the haft, found nothing.
Doesn’t mean he didn’t clean it up really well.
Yet when I’d fired the question about Snowball at him without preamble or explanation, he’d responded exactly as he should have: What about her? Guileless confusion is one of the hardest responses to fake. Moreover, I had no proof that, in climbing the trellis, Aidan hadn’t been doing exactly what he’d said he was: checking to see if his father was home. I couldn’t exactly blame him for that; the last time he’d come home unannounced, things had worked out pretty badly, to say the least.
I’d feel a lot more comfortable if I could leave him safely in the Juvenile Justice Center overnight. Then I could go home, get eight hours’ sleep, and take another crack at talking to him in the morning. But I hadn’t arrested Aidan, just taken him downtown for questioning. To keep him here, I needed to arrest him.
That was possible, of course: the switchblade was an illegal weapon. But according to my research, Aidan Hennessy had not yet been in trouble with the law. He had no criminal record. If I charged him with carrying an unlawful weapon, I’d stick him with one.
My head was starting to hurt. When Judge Henderson had given me the responsibility to look out for the Hennessys for a few weeks, neither of us had imagined that it would lead here, to making this kind of decision at the Juvenile Justice Center at three in the morning. Still, I’d taken on this burden; no setting it aside now. And while I had a responsibility to ensure that Marlinchen and her younger siblings stayed safe, didn’t I have a tangential responsibility to Aidan, as well? He was one of the Hennessy kids, too.
When I got back to the interrogation room, Aidan looked at my empty hands, then to my face.
“I’m taking you home,” I said.
23
It did not come as a surprise that Marlinchen wasn’t asleep when Aidan and I returned. She came out to wrap her arms around Aidan’s neck and embrace him for a long moment, until I had to turn away from the intimacy of their reunion.
She fixed him a meal in the kitchen, two warm tuna sandwiches with melted cheddar cheese and an oversized glass of milk, and made up a bed for him on the sofa, where he fell into an exhausted sleep. Only when he was asleep did she turn her attention to me.
“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for bringing him back here.”
“We need to talk about that,” I told Marlinchen. “Let’s go upstairs.”
In Hugh’s bedroom, I sat on the edge of the bed, and Marlinchen folded her legs gracefully to sit cross-legged on the floor. It was as though we’d rewound to an earlier point in the evening.
“Listen,” I told her, “I know Aidan’s your brother, and you’ve been carrying around a lot of guilt and a lot of anxiety where he’s concerned. But do you really know that person down there?” I nodded toward the open door, signifying
the stairway and the downstairs area that lay beyond it, where Aidan slept. “It’s like I said about the photo you showed me. Twelve to seventeen are some pretty important years. People change a lot, and Aidan’s been spending those years in circumstances that we don’t know a whole lot about.”
Marlinchen smiled at me, as though I were a child who didn’t understand the real world. “I don’t have to know where he’s been,” she said. “He’s all right.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know,” Marlinchen said. Her pupils, once again, were wide in the semidark. It made her look younger and more guileless than ever.
“I can’t operate based on someone else’s gut feelings,” I told her.
“What are you really saying?” she asked me.
“I’m going to spend a lot of time out here,” I said. I’d been thinking about it during the silent ride back here, with Aidan.
“That’s what you’ve been doing,” she said, confused.
“More than I have,” I said. “Even nights. I know that may seem strange to you kids; it does to me too. But the court gave me a responsibility for your safety. So until I feel better about this whole situation, I’m going to keep a close eye on things.”
Marlinchen smiled then, her natural and easy smile. “That’s all right,” she said. “Really, I like having you here, Sarah. But-”
“I know. You think I’m worrying about nothing,” I said. “Believe me, I hope I am.”
***
The next day, I was not at my best at work. There was a time when three hours of sleep would have sufficed for me, but those days were gone. On the brighter side, not much of interest happened at work. The nylon-mask bandits had been quiet for a little while. Maybe they’d gotten day jobs or won the lottery.
Late in the day, my phone rang.
“Sarah, it’s Chris Kilander,” the voice on the other end said.
“Kilander?” I said, straightening in my chair. We hadn’t crossed paths since the evening we’d done it so uncomfortably in the parking lot of Surdyk’s. “What’s going on?”
“I wondered if I could see you this evening,” he said.
“For what?”
“A little one-on-one,” he said. “You’re never at the courts anymore.”
Kilander been a power forward at Princeton. I was no one he’d look to for a challenging game of basketball. He wanted something else. The game was just a pretext.
“When?” I said.
***
Rain clouds were building overhead when I arrived at the courts, which were empty as I started stretching my quadriceps and hamstrings against the chain-link fence.
“Evening,” Kilander said, coming up behind me.
Although well muscled, his long legs looked quite pale in loose shorts, and I was reminded of the old days when slow-footed white guys dominated professional basketball teams. I wasn’t, however, deceived. He was going to be hard to beat.
“What are we playing to, twenty?” he said.
“Twenty’s fine.”
Kilander threw the ball more at me than to me, a hard chest pass. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said.
The answer was Not enough. Kilander drove to the basket again and again. When he was up ten points to my six, he asked me, “You played in high school, right? What were you, a guard?”
“Shooting guard first, then point guard,” I said, breathing hard.
“You play like a point guard. Conservative,” he said. Then he added, “A high school point guard.”
“You play like a lawyer,” I said, still dribbling in place, watching him. “I would have fouled you about four times by now if I weren’t afraid you’d sue.”
“I won’t sue,” Kilander said. “I grant you amnesty in advance.”
I pivoted and tried to dive around him to the basket. He blocked me and got the ball. A moment later, I grabbed his shirt as he was going up to score, and later I threw an elbow when he was crowding me. He just laughed, then demonstrated his moral superiority not only by refusing to respond in kind but by suggesting we go to thirty points when he beat me 20-14. We did, which allowed him to beat me 30-22.
“Thank you,” he said, oddly seriously, when we were done.
“For what?” I asked, trying to catch my breath.
“For not giving up on an impossible battle,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I said, hearing the compliment in what some would have considered an insult. “Thanks for not playing down to me.”
A sharp gust of wind swept across the court, forerunning rain. Kilander picked up his water bottle and walked over to the sidelines, taking a seat on a low stand of bleachers. I followed him, still holding the basketball. “What’s on your mind, Chris?” I asked.
“I want to say something,” Kilander said. “What I said the other day, about you not denying you killed Royce Stewart? I was wrong. I’ve thought about it since then, and I know you didn’t kill that man.”
“Thank you,” I said. Something felt lighter in my chest at his words. “That means a lot to me.”
Kilander nodded casually. “Listen, I don’t know much about Diaz’s investigation, and you know I couldn’t tell you if I did. But I can tell you a few things about him, in general.” He paused to think. “I wouldn’t say I know the guy well, but we have an acquaintance in common, who’s now on the bench in Rochester. Gray called me with some of the usual new-in-town questions: where’s a good place to eat and so on.”
Several cyclists raced past the city courts, tires hissing on the pavement.
“Diaz is an intense guy,” Kilander said. “He’s University of Texas, a criminal justice major. Got his first gray hair in his junior year in college; that’s where the nickname came from. He’d be working in the prosecutor’s office in Dallas or Houston if it weren’t for his father-in-law. His wife’s from Blue Earth, and they moved back so she could be closer to her father, who’s got a chronic heart condition.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“In several ways. The condition’s debilitating, but there’s no prediction for life expectancy, not like the bad cancers. So Gray may be down there for the long haul, and he’s not the kind of guy to stay challenged investigating the theft of farm equipment. In Faribault County, he probably feels like he’s on a treadmill stuck on ‘stroll.’ ” Kilander paused to set up his next words. “For him, nailing a big-city cop would be fun. It’s a challenge. Nothing personal.”
“Big-city cop?” I echoed. “That’s how he sees me?”
Kilander had discreetly left out the key word. Corrupt big-city cop was more likely how Diaz viewed me. I’d never been involved in departmental politics, and in fact I was the youngest and newest of the detective division. It was hard to realize others could see me so differently from how I saw myself.
I told Kilander, “The other day, a deputy came up to me privately. He all but congratulated me for ‘killing’ Stewart.”
Kilander nodded but didn’t speak.
“Chris… how many people do you think know about Diaz?”
“Well,” Kilander said, “if a young uniformed deputy knows, what does that suggest to you?”
Oh, God. The first raindrops were starting to fall, nearly as light as mist. “Everyone,” I said.
Kilander moved a little closer. “The young man who said that to you is a cretin,” he said. “Sarah, other people will come to the same conclusion I have about you. Their instinct will tell them so; your conduct will, too. And when Diaz’s investigation comes up short, your career will recover.”
I took a steadying breath. “Thanks,” I said. “I mean that.”
***
Only Liam was up when I reached the Hennessy house that night, studying late over a cup of decaffeinated coffee. I declined his offer to brew some for me. Instead we talked for a moment or two about Shakespeare; Othello, in particular, which he was writing a paper on.
Just before I left him, I asked, “Did anything happen today? Anyth
ing strange, or uncomfortable?”
Liam caught the trend of my question. “You mean, with Aidan?” he said. “No.”
“After he’s been gone so long, and everything that’s happened, are you comfortable having him here?” I pursued.
“It’s different now, having him back,” Liam said slowly. “Uncomfortable? No.” He paused, as if thinking, but his next words were quite simple. “I mean, he belongs here. He’s our brother.”
24
For the next few days, I stayed close to the Hennessy kids, spending nights at their home. What surprised me was how easily they accepted my presence. I’d forgotten what it was like to be a teenager, how easily any adult in your life becomes Authority. Parents, teachers, principals, coaches: kids so easily ceded their privacy to them, and apparently, to the Hennessy kids, I was one such figure.
They went about their lives, and in what seemed good spirits, too. A week from Friday was the last day of school outright for Donal; Colm, Liam, and Marlinchen had one more week of final exams after that at their high school. In their activity, their chatter in the mornings before school, I heard both their anxiety about impending tests and their exhilaration at the prospect of freedom to come.
It was Aidan, though, whom I paid closest attention to. After his first night back, exhausted and disheveled from the road, he’d metamorphosed into someone who looked strikingly different. Once washed, his hair was as gold as Marlinchen’s, and hung perfectly straight in a ponytail. In fact, if I’d been seeing him for the first time, that’s what I would have noticed about him, the clean straight lines, like a kinetic sculpture, from the blond hair to the long legs. I never saw him without his hair pulled back in a ponytail, or without his necklace of tigereyes on a leather cord riding against the collar of his T-shirt.
