Homicide Related

by Norah McClintock

  Dooley’s uncle didn’t say anything.

  Another woman, this one thin and hard, with a voice corroded by too much of something—cigarettes? booze? drugs?—approached Dooley and said, “You’re her son.” Dooley must have looked surprised, because then she said, “Lorraine showed me a picture. She was doing so well.”

  Dooley couldn’t imagine it.

  The guy who did the service—Dooley supposed he was some kind of clergyman—obviously didn’t know Lorraine. Dooley wondered where his uncle had found him. Maybe he was part of some cut-rate cremation special deal. He called Lorraine the devoted (devoted!) mother of Ryan and beloved (uh-huh) younger sister of Gary. He talked about her struggle with drugs and alcohol (the drugs and alcohol part was right, but Dooley had never witnessed any struggle; what he’d seen had been more like a love affair) and said that she had recently made progress in that area. (Who had told him that? The same person who had told the cops?)

  And that was it.

  The clergyman (assuming that’s what he was) finished talking and left the front of the room. Dooley’s uncle stood up and left the room altogether. By the time Dooley caught up with him, he was out in the parking lot, his overcoat on, loosening his tie and looking—Dooley had no trouble reading the expression on his face—like he needed a drink.

  “Is that it?” Dooley said.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” his uncle said.

  Dooley wanted to shake him and say, “She was your sister. Didn’t you want to say anything?” But he kept his mouth shut. If his uncle had had something to say, he would have said it. There would have been no stopping him.

  “You should go to school,” his uncle said, putting it to him as if that was what everyone was expected to do right after they’d paid their last respects to their mother.

  “You’re kidding, right?” Dooley said.

  His uncle fixed him with his flinty cop eyes.

  “You going to tell me you’re too broken up to concentrate?”

  Jesus. Dooley knew his uncle was a hard-ass, but this took it to a whole new level.

  “What about you?” Dooley said. “Are you going to work?”

  His uncle gave him a look, like, what else?

  After his uncle left, Dooley went back into the funeral home. Most of the people who had been at the service were still there, clustered in small groups outside the room where the casket was. One of the groups, consisting of four women, turned and looked at him. Then three of the women glanced at the fourth—slender, with a tired but friendly face—who stepped away from them and came toward Dooley. She was better dressed than the others, like she belonged in an office and kept up on the fashion trends. She smelled good, too, like soap and shampoo and toothpaste. Clean.

  “You must be Ryan,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Lorraine was very proud of you.”

  He stared at the woman. She looked normal, but it was almost impossible for Dooley to imagine a normal person saying that with a straight face.

  “I’m Gloria Thomas,” she said. “I was Lorraine’s sponsor.”

  “Sponsor?” Did she mean what he thought she meant? “What group?”

  “Narcotics Anonymous.”

  He almost laughed.

  “Well, she died of a drug overdose, so …”

  “I know,” Gloria Thomas said. “I’m sorry.” She had blue-green eyes that never let go of his. “She called me the night she died.”

  “Yeah?” Dooley could just picture it: Lorraine crying on her sponsor’s shoulder: I’m so tempted; help me, stop me. Or maybe she’d called after she was already fucked up: I’m so bad. I said I would stop, and now look what I’ve done. Looking for absolution. “What did she say?”

  “I was out.” That seemed to bother her. “It must have been important, though, because she tried both my home number and my cell, but it was turned off. I was at a movie.” Yeah, it bothered her, all right. The look on her face told Dooley that she felt she had failed Lorraine. Dooley hoped she would get over that idea. She seemed like an okay person; she just didn’t understand Lorraine.

  “She left a message. She said she’d try me again later.”

  “And?”

  “She never called back. I wish I’d been home or that I’d had my cell phone on. Maybe if I’d talked to her …”

  If that was the way she felt: “You could have called her back,” Dooley said.

  “I tried. She wasn’t at home, and she doesn’t have a cell phone. I star sixty-nined her, just in case, and tried that number. But all I got was a recorded message that said that the phone I was calling wasn’t equipped for incoming calls. The police told me it was a pay phone.”

  “You talked to the police about her?”

  “I called them when I heard how she died. I couldn’t believe it. She’d been really trying, you know?”

  Dooley could honestly say that he didn’t.

  Gloria Thomas drew in a deep breath. “I have something that I know she would have wanted you to have. I would have brought it with me, but, to be honest, I wasn’t sure you would be here.”

  She was right to wonder about that, but Dooley couldn’t help being offended. The only way she could have known about his ambivalence—okay, maybe hostility was a better word, or resentment—was if Lorraine had said something to her, as if she had a right to talk about him at all. But what had she said? Had she confessed to her failings as a mother? Maybe. But it was just as easy—no, it was easier—to imagine that she had painted him as a difficult and ungrateful son: He didn’t understand what I was going through. He was never home. He was always getting into trouble. He was unmanageable. He almost killed a woman… Dooley got that feeling again, the one that made him want to grab hold of whatever would promise the quickest and longest-lasting oblivion. And whose fault was that?

  “I could drop it off for you,” Gloria Thomas said.

  Dooley shook his head. Whatever she had, he wasn’t interested.

  Gloria Thomas looked deep into his eyes, as if she thought she could read him the way she probably imagined that she could read Lorraine. Be my guest, Dooley thought.

  “Here’s my contact information,” she said at last. She handed him a business card. Dooley glanced at it. It turned out Gloria Thomas was an executive secretary for the vice-president of marketing for a major chain of grocery stores, which told Dooley that anyone could fall and, based on the card, anyone could get up again, maybe even Lorraine, although—and there it was, that bitterness again—he doubted it. “In case you change your mind,” she said. “Or if you ever want to talk.”

  Talk? About what?

  The cops were waiting for Dooley when he came out of the funeral home for the second time. Maybe they’d been there before and he just hadn’t noticed. They were the same two cops he’d seen coming down the porch steps the night he’d found out about Lorraine.

  “Ryan Dooley?” the taller and younger of the two said.

  Dooley nodded.

  “Detective Randall,” the cop said, flashing his ID. “We’d like to talk to you about your mother.”

  Just like Dooley’s uncle had predicted.

  “I have to get to school,” Dooley said. He couldn’t believe how glad he was of the excuse.

  “We’ll drive you there,” Randall said. “After we talk.” He glanced up the street. “How about we buy you a cup of coffee?”

  Dooley knew he didn’t have to talk to them. He knew he could walk away. He knew that was his right. He also knew how it would look if he didn’t talk to them. He nodded and walked with the two cops to a coffee shop a couple of doors up from the funeral home. He let them pick the table and order—coffee all around. He watched while they opened their notebooks.

  “What can you tell us about your mother, Ryan?” Randall said.

  “Not much. We weren’t close,” Dooley said.

  “Did she use drugs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what kind of drugs?”

  “W
hat have you got?” Dooley said, realizing too late that it sounded like he didn’t care and, because of that, was probably setting the detectives’ cop antennae all aquiver. Randall was looking directly at him, that flat cop expression on his face so Dooley couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “When was the last time you spoke to your mother, Ryan?”

  Spoke to her, as in had a real honest-to-God conversation?

  “It’s been a couple of years.”

  “How many years?” Randall said, registering no surprise that Dooley could see. But then, in Dooley’s experience, cops usually tried not to show surprise when they were dealing with civilians, even when they’d been bowled over by something that had never occurred to them. Besides, Dooley bet that Randall, a homicide cop, had a pretty grim view of human nature. He bet Randall thought that nothing could surprise him. He also bet that either Randall or his partner had already asked his uncle the same question.

  “Two, maybe a little more than that,” Dooley said.

  “Your uncle tells us she was at the house a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Oh?” Dooley tried to be as expert as Randall at hiding his surprise.

  “Two weeks ago Friday, in the evening.” Randall glanced at his notes. “Nine o’clock. Did you see her then?” Another question that Dooley was pretty sure the detective had already asked his uncle. He probably had the answer written down right there in his notebook.

  “I was working,” Dooley said. “Four to midnight.”

  “Where do you work?”

  Dooley told him. He also told him, because Randall asked, the exact time he had walked through the front door that night. He was pretty sure his uncle remembered to the minute. He made it his business to keep on top of Dooley’s whereabouts.

  “So you didn’t see her that night?”

  “No,” Dooley said, looking Randall right in the eye.

  “What did your uncle tell you about her visit?”

  “Nothing. He didn’t mention it.”

  “He didn’t tell you that she’d dropped by?”

  “No.” His uncle hadn’t said a word about it.

  “He didn’t tell you what the two of them talked about, whether they argued, anything like that?”

  Dooley shook his head. He wondered what his uncle had told the two cops.

  “Does that strike you as unusual, Ryan?”

  “What?”

  “You say you hadn’t spoken to your mother in two years. Then she shows up at your uncle’s house and he doesn’t even mention that to you. You don’t think that’s odd?”

  “No,” Dooley said. “Like I said, Lorraine and I weren’t close. My uncle knows that.”

  “Right.” Randall took a sip of his coffee. “You’ve had some trouble with the law, haven’t you, Ryan?”

  Here we go, Dooley thought.

  “Yes.”

  “You want to tell us about that?”

  No, he didn’t. But he knew if he didn’t, they would find out anyway and wonder why Dooley didn’t just own up to it, seeing that they knew that Dooley knew they’d have no trouble checking him out, if they hadn’t already, which they probably had. Dooley gave them the two-minute rundown.

  “Didn’t your mother visit you?” Randall said.

  “No.” What were they fishing for?

  Randall stared at him for a few moments, probably to see if he would squirm or say something to try to fill the silence. Dooley did neither.

  “Where were you the night your mother died, Ryan?”

  Dooley tried not to take the question personally. His uncle had warned him the cops would want to talk to him. This was a death investigation. There were procedures. Still: “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened to her.”

  Randall glanced at his partner. They both stared at Dooley. Jesus, cops.

  “I went to the library,” Dooley said. “The one downtown.”

  Randall looked amused. “You like to go to the library, Ryan?”

  “I’m in school. I have homework.”

  “You go with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “I don’t know. A while. I was working on a homework assignment.”

  Randall grinned, as if he were picturing Dooley reading a picture book or taking notes in crayon.

  “What about after you left the library? Where did you go?”

  “Home.”

  “Yeah? What time did you get there?”

  “Eleven. Look, why are you asking all these questions?”

  “We’re just trying to get a picture of what happened. Can anyone verify what time you got home?”

  Finally, his chance to shake Randall loose.

  “I called my uncle as soon as I got in. He keeps track of me. I’m on a supervision order. He’s got call display on his cell. He can tell you when I called and where I called from.”

  “Did you go out again that night?”

  “No.” Jesus, why was he asking that?

  “Can anyone back you up on that?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  Randall didn’t press the point. Instead, he said, “Where was your uncle that night?”

  “Playing poker with some cop friends.”

  “When did he get home?”

  “I don’t know. It must have been late. I didn’t hear him come in.”

  “So you have no idea when he got home?”

  “No.”

  That seemed to be that. Both cops closed their notebooks. Randall’s partner went to pay for the coffee. Dooley headed for the door.

  “We can give you a lift,” Randall said.

  “No, thanks,” Dooley said. No way was he going to arrive at school in a cop car, not even an unmarked one.

  Dooley thought about school as he walked. He’d gone every single day since he’d moved in with his uncle. Well, almost every single day. He’d never been absent without a good excuse. But his mother had just died. If you couldn’t be excused for skipping school then, when could you be?

  The answer, of course, at least for Dooley, was never. Because if he skipped, Mr. Rektor would call his uncle. That was the deal. Dooley, apparently, was not to be trusted. Any and all absenteeism was to be immediately reported to his uncle. And then his uncle, who had more or less ordered Dooley to school and who was already in a pissy mood, would get even pissier, and Dooley would have to live with that on top of everything else. It wasn’t worth it. So he went to school, and after that, he went to work. Besides, Jeffie was supposed to show up with his money. Dooley didn’t want to give him any excuse to mess that up. The day had sucked enough. The very least he deserved was to get his money back.

  “You okay?” Linelle said around six o’clock when there were just the two of them in the store and hardly any customers. Monday nights were always slow, and Kevin was on his supper break. “You look a little out of it.”

  Dooley liked Linelle. Nothing ever fazed her. She had been working part-time at the store for a couple of years now, all through high school. She’d graduated last spring and was now going to cosmetology school.

  “Rough day,” he said.

  “Same as every other day, right?” She was perched on a stool behind the counter and was emptying the drop box, scanning the titles back into the computer, blip, blip, blip, and putting the cases on a cart for re-shelving. Dooley liked to watch her work. She was slow and efficient, both at the same time, and he could never figure out how she managed to handle the scanner, the DVD cases, the cash, and the change, all with two-inch acrylic nails glued over her own fingernails. But she did. She had agreed to cover for him dozens of times and had never asked why. How could he not like her? She was looking at him now, like for once she actually expected an answer, like it wasn’t just one of those lame how-’ya-doin’ questions.

  “It is the same as every other day, right, Dooley?” She was frowning now. “God, don’t tell me you broke up with Wonder Girl.”

  “No,” Dooley said.
Jesus, where had that come from? Did Linelle know something he didn’t?

  “The way you look, it’s either that or someone died,” Linelle said.

  She looked at him again, like she actually cared, which must have been why Dooley said, “My mother.”

  Linelle stopped sweeping the scanner across the bar codes.

  “Your mother what?”

  “She died. My mother died.” Linelle was the first person he had told.

  “I didn’t even know you had a mother, Dooley.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “Shit,” she said. “That was a dumb thing to say. I’m sorry. It’s just that you never mentioned her. What happened?”

  “She just died. The funeral was today.”

  “Today?” She shook her head, like she couldn’t believe it. “You should have called in. You should have taken the day off. Bereavement leave. You’re entitled. It’s in the manual.” The employee manual, she meant. Dooley was surprised that she’d read it.

  The electronic bell over the door sounded and they both turned. It was Kevin, back from his break and eyeballing the smattering of customers in the store, looking for furtive or suspicious behavior, before checking on the employees to make sure they were doing something productive. Linelle stared directly at him as she passed the scanner over one DVD case, then another, then another, blip, blip, blip.

  “I don’t like to talk about her,” Dooley said quietly. “Forget I said anything.”

  Linelle glanced at him, a question in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. She just kept waving the scanner over the DVD cases.

  Twenty minutes later, Dooley’s cell phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pocket to read the display. From halfway down an aisle, Kevin noticed and looked pointedly from Dooley to his cell phone. The store had a rule: No personal calls during work hours. Dooley glanced at the phone’s display—Jeffie—then shoved the phone back into his pocket. It vibrated again a minute later. Then again and again—a total of five calls in less than ten minutes—until Dooley started to feel like he had a vibrator in his pants. The next time it went off, Dooley clocked the aisles. Kevin was nowhere in sight. He pulled out the phone, checked the display, flipped it open and said, “You’d better not be calling to tell me you don’t have the money. I’m expecting to see you at nine o’clock. You got that, Jeffie?” He ended the call, returned the phone to his pocket, and turned to find Kevin watching him again. Dooley retreated to the front of the store before Kevin could tell him off.