by John Oakes
“You into a little pepper flakage.”
“I’ll check.”
Heather returned after a minute in the back. Her hair was tied back and her face looked as if she’d splashed water on it. Apart from looking a little paler, she seemed okay. She then set to eating with surprising ease.
After a quiet moment, she even tried to tell Winton everything she’d learned at the Spencers, little information Winton hadn’t gathered himself. Ryan had done his deed in the bathtub, but not noted by Detective Plimpton, he’d done it in the master bath, the one used by his sister.
“The master bath?” Winton asked. “Sure?”
Heather sighed and bit a lip. “I suppose he wanted to be found before too long.”
“I guess,” Winton said, losing himself in thought.
Thankfully Julius’s interest in all things Heather kept the conversation flowing on lighter topics like her work in Alaska, her international travels and the children’s charities she was involved with. Winton finished his dinner quickly, thanked his cousin for cooking and slinked back to the guest room again, where he dialed the Medical Examiner’s office.
Again impersonating his brother again, Winton asked about any toxicity screens. A woman with a heavy twang listed off stomach contents, then blood alcohol. “Only .04. Not that high,” she said. “Then I dunno if this is a mistake or what, but he came back for levels of methaqualone I ain’t seen since the eighties.”
“Meth?”
“Nah, honey. Not meth. Methaqualone is a trippy sedative. What’d us kids call it back in the day? Well, I guess we called it ludes or soaps. But it went away. Never was very popular down in these parts anyhow.”
“Ludes?” Winton asked. He thought he’d heard of the drug before but had no idea what it did.
“But you know,” the woman said, “I feel like I’ve seen this recently. Some guy came in after a solo DUI crash. His levels weren’t high like this Spencer boy, but it was definitely in his system.”
“Anything else odd about the body?”
“That’s all.”
Winton thanked the woman and hung up. He returned to the dining room and chewed on his knuckle until a lull in the conversation. “So, Heather, was Ryan seeing a therapist?”
She folded her hands beneath her chin. “I didn’t ask anything so pointed. Bea wasn’t doing so well. But I think he’d seen one before.”
“Poor thing,” Julius said. “Anything else we can do to help her out?”
“Her parents are gone. I guess friends just gotta step in and be family.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Julius reached to pat Heather’s hand, and she turned it over to hold his for a second before getting up to clear the dishes.
As Heather turned her back to them, putting dishes in the sink, Julius jabbed Winton with an elbow and they took their beers outside. “Yo,” he whispered. “Did you see that?”
Winton sniffed, torn from his thoughts. “Huh? What happened?
“I got some hot hand on hand action,” Julius said. “We’re talking palm-to-palm.”
Winton cleared his throat. “Come on, dude. Really?”
Julius squared up to Winton and leaned in. “Your boy Julius ain’t been doing so hot in the lady department this last year. All work and no play is making J a dull boy.”
“And you gotta break your celibacy streak with my cousin?”
“Those thighs, man. Melon-breakers. I’m telling you.”
Winton rolled his eyes.
“Hey, why I gotta be the bad guy because I’m trying to have fun on this shitty vacation?”
Winton didn’t answer.
“Are you obsessing with this suicide because you think something is fishy?” Julius asked. “Or just because you’re such a melancholy mother fucker?”
“Maybe both. Eighty percent the latter.”
“Listen, that thing with Maroulis?” Julius inclined his head. “I mean… hey man, sometimes a suicide is just a suicide. Tragic and nothing else.”
“True. I know.”
“Then again,” Julius peered in through the window at Heather. “It could be more complicated.”
“Are you saying you’re hoping Ryan was murdered so we can find the killer so you can be the hero and get laid?”
“Winton,” Julius said, “I think you know I’m putting it out there as a possibility.”
Lightning flashed over the rolling waves, glinting off the surface of the water farther out to sea. Then another bolt of purple lightning flashed to the east, drawing their attention to a bedraggled figure stepping up onto the deck, a woman moving in shuffling steps, holding her side and bleeding from her mouth.
“Is that?” Winton asked. “Bea?” Winton rushed forward and put an arm around her. “What happened?”
Bea didn’t or couldn’t answer, but seemed intent on getting inside.
“Beatrice!” Heather yelped when they came through the door. She took leaping strides and pulled her friend inside then searched her face and body for wounds.
Beatrice let out a soft whimper. “They came into my house.” She’d been fully made-up before her attack. Between blows to her face, the blood, tears, and rain, she looked like multi-colored hell.
“What happened, girl?” Heather asked.
“Someone came into my house when you left,” Beatrice said through sobs. “I thought it was you coming back inside, but then I turned the corner and there was this man.”
“What’d he do?”
“He threw me around a bit and then ransacked the place.”
“Did you call the cops?”
“My phone was in my room. He was between me and it.”
“Winton, call the cops,” Heather said.
Before he could pull his phone out, Beatrice reached out. “No!”
“Huh?” Julius asked.
“We need to call the cops,” Heather said.
“It’s already done,” Beatrice said. “Getting the cops involved is just asking for trouble.”
Julius and Winton exchanged a glance. They’d been in Beatrice’s shoes before.
“What was taken?” Heather asked. “Did he touch you?”
“I don’t know. No. Nothing like that. Just so big he threw me into a wall like I was nothing.”
“What’d he look like?” Winton asked.
“He was pasty and bald, like six-foot-four maybe.” Bea sniffed. “He was built and had this droopy eye on one side. He wore overalls like a mechanic.”
“Bea,” Winton said, approaching her. “You remember me?”
“‘Course I do.”
“Can I look at your face?”
Beatrice allowed him to look her over. She was bleeding from the nose but it wasn’t broken. Her eyes weren’t bloodshot or bruised, but Winton noted that her pupils were dilated. They slowly bent and unbent her limbs and got her to walk around until assured she hadn’t broken anything. Heather took her into her master bathroom to clean her up, and Winton poured himself a drink from the liquor cabinet.
Winton had spent enough time around Julius to read his body language and passed him the glass and poured another for himself.
“Well…” Julius said in a rising tone, staring off at the water. “I suppose things just got curious.”
Winton turned and looked in the same direction. “Yup.”
They tipped their drinks back in unison.
FIVE
To Winton, every funeral was the same, but with some unique attribute. Ryan Spencer’s funeral was somber, as per usual, but held a frisson of judgment in the air, the particular form saved for the dead who took their own lives.
Winton felt only sympathy for Ryan, knowing full well the agony that life could become for even well-intentioned and strong humans. Yet, he felt a trembling of judgment within himself, as if unable to avoid picking it up from the room. Ryan was to be buried in the family plot in McKinney, where he and his family were from, after his real funeral. This was a memorial service, technically, one that the
few people who knew and cared about Ryan in Galveston had insisted on having. And yet, there it was, the uncomfortable judgment, even toward a friend.
A robed minister checked his watch in the front pew, then stood at the altar and looked out over the small number of mourners, only twenty or so. He began his prayers and recitations, while Winton considered the strange attitudes the living have toward the dead.
The taboo, the different, and the “other” had occupied a presence in Winton’s psyche since the day he admitted to himself he was different than the other kids. Society sent constant signals of normalcy and expectation that caused other kids to adopt certain styles of dress or manners of speech, demands Winton couldn’t keep up with in reality. These standards were so much further from Winton’s reach than that of the dopiest normal-sized boy in his grade. So he began to hear society’s demands for what they were: signals that he was not made for this world or at least for the people in it. Society told him he was outside and would never be allowed in with both feet. It told him he was taboo, that his mere existence — living a life that would horrify the average person — made everyone else uncomfortable. Like licking a key or a penny, he tasted that twang of discomfort in the air again. And the preacher softly scolded Ryan for killing himself with his words about tragedy and the influence of the devil, as if the audience didn’t know that suicide was to be avoided.
For a dark time in his early teens, Winton had reveled in his difference, obsessing with his feelings of ostracization, wondering over the power it gave a person to reject society’s norms, to rebel. This had been part of the allure of suicide. It was the most taboo act of all. To take one’s own life was an act of rebellion, maybe even revenge. For a time, Winton had wondered if it was an act of power, one final action to reach into the void and say, “no more.” Even if he did still harbor some of those feelings, that didn’t make the topic any less sad. In fact, it was all the more so that people could be brought to that point only through years of suffering.
Apart from the heavy pall of suicide hanging over the memorial, the other main difference was the soundtrack. Ryan had been into music, and the only lure strong enough to pull him out of the house had been the chance to deejay at local nightclubs and bars. According to Heather, who’d seen him deejay many times, he’d aspired to move to bigger venues in Vegas, Miami or LA.
A young man with an unruly mess of hair that covered his eyes took the dais when the preacher finished and said, “This was Ry’s best track that we’re about to play. We didn’t know you were hurting that bad inside, bud. Safe travels to the other side.” He pointed to the sound booth, and base started pumping from the meager sound system of Faith Memorial Church. The trilling sounds of electronic dance music filled the sanctuary with the blood-quickening rhythms of a party, making a cacophony seemingly at odds with the cross and the silk banners edging the sanctuary.
Messy hair and three other young men in dark clothing put hands around each other’s shoulders bobbing their heads in reverence to Ryan’s memory and, Winton assumed, his sick beats.
The gently horrified look of the minister standing in the wings was too enjoyable, lifting Winton’s soul out of darkness and into the light. Winton winked up at the cross, wondering for the thousandth time if Jesus ever laughed.
When the service ended, most of the younger mourners left without waiting in the line to hug Beatrice or say a kind word, possibly with no idea Ryan had a sister. Winton and Julius stayed to one side of the sanctuary, while Heather and another female friend stood to either side of Beatrice in support, as she met with friends and the minister’s wife.
Two men waited to greet Beatrice, standing out because of the quality of their suits and being older than the younger attendees. One man was East Indian by appearance, thin, with good shoulders and handsome face with a fine nose and chin, bright eyes and expertly cut facial hair as if it’d been air-brushed onto his face. The other man was caucasian with thick sandy hair, glasses, and a fleshy but not ugly face, and was rounding in the belly and hips with the onset of middle age.
The two men talked quietly. They kept their voices low, but appeared to be having a mild disagreement. The Indian fellow departed the Church, while the white man stepped in to pay his respects to Beatrice. Winton heard him say, “I’m so sorry for your loss. We’re both are. So sorry. If you need help, we’re always here for you.” His voice was firm and his tone sympathetic.
Beatrice grabbed him by an arm and pulled him away from Heather and the others still milling about. She mostly disappeared behind him, as they conversed. Their conversation finished with the man stepping back, palms up. He pressed his hands toward her in a calming, reassuring motion. She set her jaw, looking displeased, but held her tongue further. The man walked down the center aisle and out of the church.
Winton sidled between the pews and closer to his cousin who was asking Beatrice, “Who was that man? Why did you pull him away?”
“He was one of Ryan’s doctors, his therapist.”
“Oh,” Heather said. “That’s nice of him to come.”
Beatrice didn’t respond. She looked weary, her eyes growing unfocused.
“Maybe we should get some lunch in her,” Winton said to his cousin.
“I’ll take her back,” Heather said. “You mind grabbing food from the Vietnamese place down the street? It’s her favorite.”
South Texas had a strong Vietnamese cuisine game because of the wave of immigrants after the Vietnam War. It’d been a while since Winton had sampled it, so he gladly agreed, especially since providing food for the bereaved was about all he useful for in that department.
Julius offered to help look after the girls, so Winton walked alone down the street. He caught the last glimpse of the sandy-haired man getting into the passenger seat of a BMW and being driven away by the Indian man. He watched them speed down the street, mentally cataloging their presence at the funeral as “in need of explanation” if not “outright suspicious.”
Inside the restaurant, Winton’s senses were delighted with the decor and the scent of broth and lemon grass. As he took in the art on the walls and on the takeout menu, he noticed someone pointing at him. This itself wasn’t rare, but the black sleeve on the arm pointing at him drew his attention. Four young men huddled around a table, including the one who’d played Ryan out with the delightfully horrid EDM music. Winton walked over to them, enjoying their looks of growing consternation. Instead of chiding them for their poor manners, he said, “Sorry about your friend.”
There was a pause, the release of inhaled breaths, then nods and thanks. “Did you know Ryan?” the hairy one asked.
“Yeah. When we were young, we came out here to my aunt and uncle’s place just a few doors down the beach from the Spencers’ place. I was ten years older than him, but we all knew each other.”
“Cool, man.”
“I liked his music,” Winton said with a smile.
“His stuff was pretty legit,” one young man said, wearing a flat-billed black ball cap. “He coulda gone places.”
Winton nodded and motioned over the table. “Were you guys his closest friends? I guess I expected more people to show.”
“Ry-dog kept to himself a lot,” the hairy one said. “We’re his buds, though. We had his back. And he had ours.”
“Was this as shocking to you guys as it was to me?”
They nodded somberly.
“I guess that’s the way it goes with the artistic ones,” the guy by the wall said.
“Did anything happen to upset him? Girl break up with him?”
The hairy one shook his head. “Nah, man. It was just a regular Thursday.”
A waitress arrived with their food. Winton raised a hand in salute and backed away to the order counter. He waited for his food at an empty table, searching for any new articles about Ryan’s death, not finding anything useful. When his order came, he took the two plastic sacks off the counter and trudged toward the door.
“Hey, dude.
Hey, little dude.” Winton stopped, halfway through the door facing the other direction. The hairy one jogged up and said, “Hey, sorry. We’re gonna have a bonfire tonight for Ry-dog near the Sunny Beach access. You should come, if you want.”
“That’s very kind. I just might do that.” Winton nodded and slid out the door.
SIX
Winton ate his pho and his spring rolls at the table with Julius, then lazed on the couch, arm over his eyes, dozing on the edge of consciousness. He tried to stay awake in the hopes that Beatrice would come out of the bedroom and say something to Heather that would answer some of his questions and connect the disparate data points he’d observed.
The most Winton got from his passive snoozing was a healthy rest, as Beatrice spent most of her time in Heather’s room. He heard a shriek and the crash of glass breaking. He bolted up, just as Julius looked up from a jigsaw puzzle he was working on. Heather stood from the table and called, “Bea, honey?” She hurried to the back. Sobs echoed down the hallway from Beatrice. The door to Heather’s room closed, muffling whatever was said.
Winton walked over and placed his chin on the back of a dining chair. “Julius, I’m beginning to think this really might not be the fun getaway we envisioned.”
“What makes you say that?” he asked derisively. Julius sighed and motioned down at his puzzle, an incomplete picture of some Mediterranean marina. “Yeah, nothing against boat puzzles, but uh, yeah…”
“I got invited to a bonfire by some of Ryan’s friends. May not be our crowd exactly, but this house is a little too depressing.”
“The rain’s letting up, I suppose. Can we leave if it sucks?”
Winton chuckled. “A man after my own heart.”
Winton and Julius changed into casual but warm clothes, as there was still a breeze, and drove away from town to the Sunny Beach access. Two of the young men Winton had met before were preparing a charcoal grill and a fire pit. The kid with the flab-billed ball cap was Tony and the other was Pablo. Winton passed out some beers they’d picked up and warmed himself near the campfire. The hairy fellow arrived soon after concealing a bottle of vodka under a hooded sweatshirt. He introduced himself as Will and the fourth friend as Ian.
