Head Case

by Michael Wiley

Frida didn’t hear it. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ He peeled her hands off and opened the door.

  Sue Ellen sat on the carpet at one end of the room. She was struggling to position Payday and Painter’s Lane in front of her. Between her and the far wall, she’d set up a straight two-lane course made out of soup cans, bed covers, and most of Kelson’s shirts. At the end of the lanes, there were two plates, each with a slice of salami. Payday mewled as Sue Ellen grappled with her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Cat drag racing,’ she said. ‘I saw it on YouTube.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Kelson said.

  Frida laughed. ‘That’s the greatest thing – ever.’

  For the next hour, Sue Ellen and Frida raced cats. Kelson lay on his bed and rocked. Then he went to the kitchen and got more salami for the finish line.

  A little after eleven p.m. Kelson and Frida drove Sue Ellen back to Nancy’s house.

  ‘Cool kid,’ Frida said as Sue Ellen disappeared inside the house.

  ‘The best,’ Kelson said.

  He drove Frida to her apartment in a courtyard complex in the Edgewater neighborhood. At the curb, he said, ‘That didn’t work out how I expected.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Frida said. ‘It was pretty great.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Come in?’

  ‘What about Napoleon?’

  ‘Screw Napoleon,’ she said.

  Kelson went in.

  Napoleon peed on the couch all night long.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Kelson and Rodman drove to Fort Wayne the next morning. Overnight, the wind rose, and now the sky hung thick with clouds. The radio said snow would start falling by mid-afternoon, up to a foot before it stopped.

  ‘Frida,’ Kelson said to his friend.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just saying.’

  As they crossed the border from Illinois to Indiana, Kelson called Josh Templeton’s mother. He got no answer – not even a recording.

  ‘Could be love,’ he said when he hung up.

  ‘Frida?’ Rodman said.

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Or could be good sex,’ Rodman said.

  ‘Sure was. She makes me look level-headed.’

  ‘Careful, or you’ll hurt yourself.’

  ‘What she said too.’

  Thirty miles later, Kelson tried calling again. No answer. No recording.

  ‘Could be a waste of a trip,’ Rodman said.

  ‘If she isn’t home, we’ll look for her at her job at Lutheran Center.’

  ‘Could be we get trapped there when the snow starts,’ Rodman said. ‘Like in The Shining.’

  ‘No one I’d rather have by my side if Jack Nicholson comes after me with an axe.’

  ‘Except Frida?’

  ‘Take out the axe part, and then OK.’

  ‘You fall hard, man.’

  ‘I’m not falling – I’m flying.’

  ‘Watch out you don’t get too high.’

  ‘What she said.’

  When Kelson stopped outside Deneesa Smithson’s little pink house, Rodman gazed at the bare lot around it and the surrounding little houses on their bare lots. ‘Worth keeping in mind when I think I’ve got it tough.’

  ‘This isn’t so bad,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Yeah, you could tear down the houses and then there’d be nothing.’

  They went up the path and Kelson knocked.

  No one answered.

  Rodman knocked – harder.

  Silence.

  ‘Lutheran?’ Rodman said.

  Kelson stared at the door. ‘Last time I came, there was a dog.’

  ‘Another Maltese?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Kelson stepped off the side of the concrete porch, went to a window, and peered in.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Rodman said.

  Kelson stepped back on to the porch and tried the door handle.

  Locked.

  He kicked the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Rodman said.

  ‘Stronger than it looks.’ Kelson kicked again.

  ‘Why the—?’

  ‘Kick it in, will you?’

  ‘No – what do you—?’

  ‘Just kick the damn door,’ Kelson said. ‘Please.’

  Whatever Rodman saw in Kelson’s face was enough to persuade him. ‘OK, man.’ He kicked it. The door broke into the house, splintering from the top hinge.

  Kelson stepped inside, Rodman behind him.

  In a little front room, on a little gray couch, Deneesa Smithson sat with her skirt pulled up to her waist. A syringe stuck out from her thigh. Three empty vials of fentanyl lay on the floor. She was dead – Kelson and Rodman didn’t need to feel for a pulse to know that. The room was unnaturally warm, as if she’d turned the heat high before shooting up. On a round wooden table by the couch, there was a shrine to her son – Josh’s baby photos, school awards, a high-school diploma, a pack of playing cards, a pair of toddler-sized gym shoes, a king-size pack of Reese’s peanut butter cups.

  Rodman went to the dead woman. He held his enormous hands above her, as if he could make her rise. He said, ‘I would’ve preferred Jack Nicholson with an axe.’ He plucked the syringe from her thigh and threw it across the room.

  ‘Don’t touch her,’ Kelson said. ‘Don’t …’

  Rodman pulled her skirt down over her legs.

  ‘Don’t touch anything,’ Kelson said.

  ‘It’s indecent,’ Rodman said.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘You have me kick in her door and then you’d leave her like that?’

  ‘From outside I thought she might be alive,’ Kelson said.

  ‘You thought wrong.’

  Kelson picked up the syringe. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to be irresponsible.’ He wiped Rodman’s prints off with his sleeve and set the syringe on the couch by the dead woman. ‘Jesus.’

  They searched the rest of the house, keeping their fingers to themselves. In the kitchen, there were two empty glasses in the sink. Kelson smelled them. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  There were two bedrooms. Josh’s had a skinny bed, a banged-up dresser, and a set of shelves. On the shelves there were old schoolbooks, a stack of DC comics, sports trophies, and a strip of picture-booth photos of Josh and his girlfriend Melanie dressed for prom. In Deneesa Smithson’s room, the bed was made neatly with a threadbare cover. There was a polished wooden bureau and a matching bench where a person could sit while getting dressed. The bathroom was as neat as the bedroom, with a single towel creased over a towel bar.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kelson said.

  The door at the end of the hall was open a couple inches. Kelson nudged it with an elbow.

  The room smelled like a combination of laundry and kennel. A stacked washer and dryer stood against one wall. The other walls were marked with divots and scars from a dog scratching and chewing. A plastic water bowl and an empty food dish rested on the floor by a back door.

  ‘Where’s the dog?’ Rodman said.

  Using his sleeve again, Kelson opened the back door.

  In the yard, there was a dog chain linked to a metal post. But there was no dog.

  ‘I guess we should call the cops,’ Kelson said.

  ‘And tell them what? We kicked in the lady’s door, fixed her skirt, and toured the premises? I don’t know how that goes for white guys, but I call it asking for trouble. Let’s phone it in from the road.’

  ‘You’ve got inconsistent ideas about decency.’

  They went back through the house. When they reached the front door, Kelson glanced into the front room again.

  ‘Huh,’ he said.

  Josh’s alabaster-skinned girlfriend, Melanie, in white leggings and a white down coat, stood staring at Deneesa Smithson. She was reaching to touch the woman’s face when she heard Kelson and Rodman. She glanced at Kelson, stepped back from the body involuntarily, and said, ‘What did you do to her?’

 
THIRTY-TWO

  Kelson and Rodman spent the next two hours explaining to the Fort Wayne police why they came to Deneesa Smithson’s house, why they kicked in the door, why Rodman adjusted the woman’s skirt, why they touched evidence and wiped it down afterward. The Fort Wayne police didn’t like it.

  ‘At least you stuck around,’ said Judy Blanchard, the lead detective. ‘Good choice.’

  ‘Not really,’ Kelson said. ‘We were skipping out when we got caught.’

  She gave him a look that might mean twenty-to-life.

  ‘Call Venus Johnson or Dan Peters at the CPD. They’ll vouch for us.’

  Blanchard made the call, stepping out in the cold to talk. When she came back, she told Kelson, ‘Venus Johnson vouches that you’re a screwball. And you’ – she meant Rodman – ‘she knows you mostly by reputation.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Academy dropout. Street hustler. Suborner of justice. Suborner is her word – I don’t talk so fancy. Borderline criminal. Does that about describe you?’

  ‘Depends on what you mean by justice and criminal,’ he said.

  ‘She also says you’re all right – if I’m willing to ignore all the other stuff. Should I ignore all the other stuff?’

  ‘Depends on what you mean by justice and criminal,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll have to think about that,’ she said. ‘Meantime, both of you can put your hands behind your backs.’

  She handcuffed them and seated them at the kitchen table while the Fort Wayne Police worked the scene.

  ‘What do you make of it?’ Rodman asked Kelson when they were alone.

  The twist of Kelson’s arms tugged at his stitches. ‘I’m willing to bet the next inventory check at Clement Memorial shows a bunch of missing fentanyl.’

  ‘The Jacobsons, right?’

  ‘Maybe, but which one? Why would any of them kill these people?’

  ‘We’ve got to talk to Scott,’ Rodman said. ‘Patricia Ruddig saw him run over his mother. Everything else must tie to him.’

  A uniformed cop came into the kitchen and went to the sink.

  ‘You’ll want to bag those glasses before you turn it on,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Shut the hell up,’ the cop said. But he left without touching the faucet, and an evidence technician came in and bagged them.

  Kelson said, ‘Check them for Rohypnol.’

  ‘Shut the hell up,’ the tech said.

  Then Detective Blanchard came in and sat at the table. ‘The only question now is what we do with you.’

  ‘I like catch and release,’ Kelson said. ‘Humane.’

  ‘I like get out of town by midnight,’ Rodman said. ‘Or else.’

  ‘Because this is funny?’ she said. ‘I like breaking and entry. Two to eight years.’

  ‘We broke in because we thought we could save her,’ Rodman said.

  ‘And you waited to call nine-one-one until you were sneaking out, because …?’ she said.

  ‘Because we didn’t want to deal with a tight-ass like you,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Sam …’ Rodman said.

  Blanchard stood up. ‘Just to show you how tight-assed I am, I’m going to let you go for now. This is a bad, sad situation, but I see no criminal intent. So, get out of town by midnight, or’ – she glanced at her wristwatch – ‘maybe you could manage it by six o’clock.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rodman said.

  ‘Do you have any sense who did it?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘Yeah, a pretty good one,’ she said. ‘Most likely accidental. Could be suicide.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Not again,’ Kelson said. ‘Maybe you aren’t a tight-ass. Maybe you’re just stupid.’

  Rodman shook his head.

  Blanchard said, ‘The woman’s son died a month ago. She’s got mega-dose Xanax in the medicine cabinet. She was hurting.’

  ‘Her death looks exactly the same as the death of a doctor in Chicago two nights ago,’ Kelson said. ‘It isn’t suicide, and it sure isn’t accidental.’

  ‘You know how many overdoses we had in this county last year?’

  ‘You don’t get what I’m saying …’

  She poked her finger at his chest. ‘Nine hundred eighty-eight. Don’t tell me about a dead doctor two days ago in Chicago. I see this right here three times a day.’

  ‘You don’t get it.’

  She leaned to the hallway and called to a cop by the front room. ‘Hey, cut these two clowns loose. If I spend another minute with them, I might go rogue.’

  Just before Plymouth, Indiana, Kelson and Rodman drove head-on into a blizzard. One moment they were barreling through dark bare fields, and the next they hit a wall of falling snow.

  ‘Holy crap,’ Rodman said, though his voice was calm.

  Kelson took his foot from the accelerator. He tapped the brakes – once, twice. The car slipped to the side. He took his foot from the brakes. He steered out of the slide, and for several moments the car seemed to glide through an airy space between the tires and the road.

  As the car slowed, it touched down, and Kelson tapped the brakes again – once, twice – and the wheels gripped pavement. They drove at twenty miles an hour through a white vortex. They passed the off- and on-ramps for Plymouth, the glimmer of a Days Inn, an ice-blasted sign thanking drivers for visiting Plymouth and encouraging them to return soon.

  ‘Just goes to show,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Sure,’ Rodman said, and he eased his eyes shut, ‘just goes to show.’

  The next ninety miles back into the city took three hours. When Kelson dropped Rodman off in Bronzeville, the big man stepped through drifts to his building. Kelson cut back to the interstate and followed a snowplow to the northside.

  He went up to his apartment and fed Payday and Painter’s Lane a late dinner. He boiled a pot of frozen ravioli for himself. As he spooned a second helping on to his plate, he remained silent. The wind-blown snow seemed to have whirled in his head as well as the air outside, confusing his thoughts, making them unspeakable. ‘Just goes to show – what?’ he said to Painter’s Lane.

  She cocked her head, as if she thought he would offer her a ravioli.

  ‘Which just goes to show.’ He took his plate into the kitchenette, scraped it.

  Payday came into the kitchenette, rubbing against the door molding. She meowed at him.

  ‘You’re right,’ he told her. ‘Love the one you’re with.’

  What would Frida be serving to the few customers who fought through the storm to reach Club Richelieu? He got his phone and texted her one word. Tomorrow?

  Then he dialed Nancy’s number. When she picked up, he said, ‘Love the one you’re with.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Not that I still love you,’ he said, ‘which isn’t to say I don’t. But that isn’t why I’m calling – which is only partly true.’

  ‘Why are you calling, Sam?’ she said.

  ‘To make sure you and Sue Ellen got home safe in the storm.’

  ‘First, we were both home when the snow started. Second, you don’t need to check up on me now that we’re apart.’

  ‘How about Sue Ellen? Do I get to check on her?’

  ‘Sue Ellen’s fine,’ she said. ‘Goodnight, Sam.’ She hung up.

  Kelson held the phone to his ear. ‘Me too. Home safe.’

  THIRTY-THREE

  Kelson fell asleep with his phone by his ear. When it rang the next morning, he jolted from a dream in which his therapist, Dr P, was shaking him by the shoulders and refusing to stop.

  He grabbed the phone, read the time – 5:24 a.m. – and answered. ‘Cut it out.’

  ‘Mr Kelson?’ The voice was shaky.

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘This is Jeremy Jacobson – from Clement Memorial—’

  ‘A call from a doctor at five in the morning – always bad news. Like cops knocking on the door in the middle of the night.’

  ‘I’m afraid I need y
our help. I learned about a situation twenty minutes ago. It’s urgent.’

  ‘A situation?’

  ‘Yes.’ Nothing more.

  ‘Meet you at your office?’

  ‘If you could come to my house …’

  ‘Hold on a second.’ Kelson got out of bed, went to the window, and stared down through the dark. Snow was still falling, but a plow had come through, and under the streetlights the street looked passable. ‘Eight o’clock?’

  ‘Sooner, if you can, please.’ Jacobson gave him an address on North Orchard.

  ‘I’ll be there around seven.’

  Kelson showered and shaved. He fried an egg. Payday jumped on the counter and watched him. ‘Yeah, what the hell,’ he said. He slid the egg from the pan to a plate, tore a strip of egg white, laid it on the counter for the cat, and ate standing by the sink.

  As he rinsed his plate, his phone rang again. Caller ID said Jose Feliciano. Kelson answered, ‘Howdy, partner.’

  ‘They busted her,’ Jose said, his voice as shaky as Jacobson’s.

  ‘What? Who busted who?’

  ‘The cops came two hours ago. They arrested Wendy. You’ve got to help, man.’

  ‘Why? What did she do?’

  ‘She didn’t do anything.’

  ‘What did the cops say she did?’

  ‘They told her her rights like that, and they put her in the squad car. They didn’t tell me anything. Wendy needs your help.’

  ‘You have a pen and paper?’ Kelson gave him his lawyer’s contact information. ‘Ed can find out what’s up as fast as anyone in the city. If there’s a way to get her out, he’ll do that too.’

  ‘You’ve got to come over here,’ Jose said. ‘I need to show you – it’s messed up, man.’

  ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

  ‘You’ve got to see it. It doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘Give me an address. I’ll be there at nine or ten.’

  Jose gave him the address in South Lawndale, where he and Wendy lived. ‘Hurry, my friend.’

  ‘Nine or ten,’ Kelson said.

  The morning sky was still dark, the snow falling gently, when he left his building. He trudged to the parking lot and wiped the car windows.

  As he sat, warming the engine, his phone rang again.

  He answered, ‘On my way.’

  But a woman’s voice spoke. ‘I need to see you.’ It was Caroline Difley, who got fired along with Aleksandar Kovacic when Kelson revealed their leaks to Jacobson.