Head Case

by Michael Wiley

  Rick stopped. ‘Not any more, we aren’t.’

  Kelson backed toward the door. ‘You know it’s only starting. The cops will come soon enough. They take longer than we do – they want to make sure they line everything right before moving against a family like yours – but they’ll figure it out and they’ll come. You can talk to us now, and we’ll listen and maybe we can make things a little better, or—’

  ‘Out,’ Rick said, and he went after Kelson.

  ‘OK,’ Rodman said, stepping in front of him. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Too late to clean up,’ Kelson said. ‘Too late to buy your way out of this.’

  Rodman took him by the arm and guided him from the office, past the receptionist, past the cafeteria, to the elevator bank.

  When they got on, instead of heading back to the parking garage, Kelson touched the button for the floor above the ICU. ‘Start at the bottom and work our way up,’ he said.

  Jeremy Jacobson was at his desk when Kelson knocked on his office door. The doctor told him to come in, then looked past him to Rodman – seemingly more curious than concerned about the big man.

  ‘Did Rick tell you we were here?’ Kelson asked.

  The doctor looked confused. ‘Did Rick tell me what?’

  ‘No?’ Kelson said. ‘And that’s interesting.’

  The doctor looked more confused. ‘I’m sorry – what is?’

  ‘Rick,’ Kelson said. ‘And you. You and Rick – and Scott. The whole Jacobson family. Interesting.’

  The doctor tried a smile. ‘I’m glad you think so. What can I do for you?’

  ‘Tell us about the day Scott killed your wife.’

  Jacobson recoiled as if Kelson had slapped him. ‘Jesus …’

  ‘It must’ve been terrible,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Yes – terrible.’

  ‘Your wife dead. Your son trying to off himself. I can only imagine what—’

  ‘Why are you saying this?’ The doctor looked stricken. ‘What could possibly—’

  ‘I can only imagine what you’d be willing to do to try to put it all back together again.’

  The doctor ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘There was no putting it together.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Kelson said. ‘When I got shot in the head, I told the doctors I wanted everything back the way it was before. It was a bad joke, though I didn’t know it then. Some things don’t go back together. But d’you know what they said? They said, “We’ll do the best we can.” Sometimes that’s all you can do – the best you can.’

  Jeremy Jacobson stared at him, dumbfounded.

  Rodman put a hand on Kelson’s shoulder. ‘What Sam’s saying, I think, is it’s understandable – whatever’s going on. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s understandable.’

  The doctor looked from Kelson to Rodman and back. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Tell us about the day Scott killed your wife,’ Kelson said again.

  ‘No,’ the doctor said. ‘No. Why would I? Why would you want—?’

  ‘What were they arguing about? We’ve heard she was on the driveway, talking to you on the phone. What was she telling you? Where were you? When you found out that Scott drove away after running her over, what did you do? What about when you found out he tried to kill himself? Did you talk to the police first – or your lawyer?’

  The doctor started to cry.

  ‘Oh, don’t do that,’ Kelson said.

  Rodman said, ‘How’d you work out the deal to put Scott in treatment instead of the lockup? I’m truly curious, because a guy who looks like me, it’s straight to the joint. Hell, I don’t have to kill my mom to get there – I can have a broken tail light.’

  Tears shone in the doctor’s eyes. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  Kelson breathed out. ‘You really don’t know?’

  ‘I know that one day I had a family and the next I didn’t. I know I’ve tried to heal myself and my sons—’

  ‘On that part,’ Rodman said, ‘you’ve come up short.’

  The doctor looked from him to Kelson and back. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You’d better figure it out quick,’ Kelson said. ‘The truth hasn’t always worked out so well for me, but you might want to try it.’

  ‘I’m not sure I even know what the truth is,’ the doctor said.

  ‘That never stops me,’ Kelson said. ‘Talk with Rick. For Christ’s sake, talk with Scott. Whatever happened – why ever it happened – you all are going to be owning it real soon.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Back in the Dodge Challenger, Kelson said, ‘Go see Venus Johnson and Dan Peters?’

  Rodman sank in the seat. ‘You know I don’t like going to the station.’

  ‘Face your fears,’ Kelson said.

  ‘No fear,’ Rodman said. ‘I just hate the smell of that place.’

  ‘You know how I wanted you with me here in case Rick Jacobson started playing Floyd Mayweather? I’m pretty sure Venus Johnson’s been fantasizing about gut punching me too.’

  ‘Ah, you’re just trying to make me feel needed. Look, if you tell Johnson and Peters what this professor guy told you, what’re they going to do with it? You’ve got a homeless man who talks crap. He’s a crazy dude, and even he thinks Daryl Vaughn’s stories about the Jacobsons were schizophrenic delusions. On the other side, you’ve got a big-name doctor in charge of an ICU – and his son, who runs a security unit. Who’re they going to believe?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘A pest with a brain injury telling a story about an insane man’s memory of another insane man’s dream. Sorry, but you know better than that.’

  ‘You saw how Rick Jacobson acted when we talked to him.’

  ‘Sure, but we surprised him. Now the surprise is gone. The moment the cops walk in, he’ll tell a good tale – or he’ll shut his mouth and call a lawyer.’

  So Kelson dropped Rodman back in Bronzeville, then re-crossed the city and parked by his office. After spending the night with Frida and the morning searching subterranean streets for the professor and holding a flame to Rick Jacobson, he was exhausted. He bought lunch from Ricky’s Red Hots, rode up to his floor, and laid the food out on his desk. ‘Energy,’ he told the French fries, then unwrapped the waxed paper from the hotdog. ‘She’s a little wild for me, isn’t she?’ he said. He drew a mouthful of Coke. ‘Wild seems the only kind who’ll tolerate me.’

  He ate, then spent the next two hours on the phone.

  He got Fort Wayne homicide detective Judy Blanchard to tell him that one of the drinking glasses in the sink at Deneesa Smithson’s house tested positive for Rohypnol.

  He bugged Dan Peters to tell him if Suzanne Madani’s blood also tested positive, and though Peters hung up on him, he never denied Madani was knocked out by the date-rape drug before taking a fatal hit of fentanyl.

  Jose needed twenty minutes of calming down before he would answer Kelson’s questions about Scott Jacobson and Wendy. ‘No,’ he said, ‘why would he want to hurt her? No.’

  Frida said she had a great time last night. She was working again at eight p.m. – did he want to pick her up at three when she got off?

  ‘I’m so wiped out, I’m getting sloppy,’ Kelson said.

  She said, ‘Sloppy is fun.’

  He said, ‘See you at three.’

  When he told Nancy he thought he might be falling in love, she said, ‘Congratulations – why are you calling to tell me this?’

  ‘I thought you’d be happy for me,’ he said, ‘since you broke my heart.’

  ‘Uh-uh,’ she said. ‘Divorcing you meant I didn’t have to be happy, or sad – or feel any way about you at all. But good for you, Sam. Good for you.’

  Venus Johnson wasn’t interested in his love life, so he force-fed her an account of his talks with Rick and Jeremy Jacobson and asked if she’d drop the charges against Wendy. ‘Um … no,’ Johnson said.

  Kelson said, ‘Show some feeling. You’ve got a
bull rider freaking out about his fiancée.’

  Johnson hung up.

  In the middle of the afternoon, he turned off the office light, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes.

  His mind raced – Rick Jacobson punching him in the jaw, Jeremy Jacobson crying silently at his desk, Frida doing that thing she did with her tongue. ‘Screw it,’ he said. He put on his coat, locked the office, and rode the elevator down to the lobby.

  He drove halfway back to his apartment before he spotted the green Land Rover behind him.

  ‘Sloppy,’ he said.

  He slowed until the Land Rover came close behind. Scott Jacobson was driving it. He looked serene, out for an afternoon cruise.

  Kelson waved at him.

  Scott waved back.

  ‘Asshole,’ Kelson said.

  Scott waved some more.

  Kelson drove to his apartment and parked in the lot. Scott parked beside him, and they got out of their cars together.

  ‘What?’ Kelson said.

  Scott drew a pistol from inside his coat.

  ‘Oh, that,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Let’s go inside,’ Scott said.

  ‘What’ll the neighbors think?’ Kelson walked to the building entrance, and Scott slipped the pistol into his coat pocket, leaving a hand on it. When they got on the elevator, he slipped it back out.

  ‘What I want to know,’ Kelson said, ‘is why Josh Templeton? Why his mom?’

  ‘Who?’ Scott said.

  ‘Yeah, right. What did you and your mom argue about on the day you killed her?’

  Scott held the barrel of the pistol against Kelson’s ribs. ‘Please be quiet.’

  ‘If you know anything about me at all, you know that’s impossible – especially when I’m nervous.’

  ‘Do your best.’

  The doors opened at Kelson’s floor. ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ he said. ‘Because I should warn you – others have tried, and it didn’t work out for them. A seventeen-year-old drug dealer named Bicho – dead. A car thief named Gary Renshaw – dead.’

  ‘Please,’ Scott said, ‘shut up.’

  At his apartment, Kelson got out his key. ‘So, what’s the plan? Will you hold the gun against my head and stick me in the leg with fentanyl?’

  Scott said nothing.

  ‘Oh,’ Kelson said.

  He turned the key in the door lock and stepped inside.

  He stopped. ‘Huh,’ he said.

  Alex Kovacic sat at the dining table. He held a revolver. He aimed it at Kelson and Scott Jacobson.

  FORTY-TWO

  ‘You don’t get enough thrills walking in the cemetery, you’ve got to break into my apartment?’ Kelson said.

  But Kovacic had his eyes on Scott Jacobson’s gun. ‘Drop it.’

  Scott aimed at Kovacic’s chest. ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I’ve got to say I’m with Scott on this one,’ Kelson said. ‘You have the Bosnian thug act going, but you look jittery. Have you turned the safety off?’

  ‘Shut up,’ Kovacic said. He signaled Scott to lower his gun. ‘Go on.’

  ‘You might as well,’ Kelson told Scott. ‘He doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing, but he seems committed, and he might get lucky.’ Then to Kovacic, ‘Where are my cats? I swear to God I’ll—’

  ‘I locked them in the bathroom,’ Kovacic said. ‘I have an allergy.’

  ‘A thug with a cat allergy?’

  Kovacic glared at Scott – who gave no sign he’d lower his gun but also none that he meant to shoot it – then said to Kelson, ‘Why’d you tell Caroline about me?’

  ‘Ha, is that why you’re here?’ Kelson walked toward the dining table. Kovacic and Scott swung their guns and, fingers on the triggers, aimed at him. ‘Whoa,’ he said – and to Kovacic, ‘You know, don’t you, that she’s into you? You pissed her off with your Bosnian refugee lies, but she likes you. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be so pissed off.’

  ‘Why’d you tell her?’ The accent was gone.

  ‘She Googled you, you idiot. How long did you think you’d get away with this?’

  ‘She thinks I drugged and killed those people.’

  ‘Ah, so that’s why you’re here. Well, breaking into a man’s home is a great way to show your innocence.’ Kelson went to the bathroom door and opened it. ‘Do you mind?’ Payday and Painter’s Lane came out, and Payday went straight to Kovacic and rubbed against his legs.

  ‘Look,’ Kelson said, ‘you’re in love with her, right?’

  Kovacic shrugged.

  ‘Tell her,’ Kelson said. ‘Come clean. Be honest with her – maybe she’ll go for it. Even if she doesn’t, she’ll think you’re just a pathetic schmuck instead of a murderer. And don’t break into any more apartments.’ He made ntching noises to draw Payday from the other man, but she seemed happy where she was.

  Kovacic, his eyes watering, waved his revolver at Payday to shoo her away.

  ‘Careful,’ Kelson said, and moved toward him.

  Kovacic yanked the revolver up and aimed at him.

  So Payday hissed at the man.

  Kovacic aimed at her again, and Kelson yelled and rushed him.

  A gun blasted. Once. Not Kovacic’s. Scott Jacobson shot a bullet into the ceiling. A chunk of plaster fell to the carpet. A look crossed his face – no one was more surprised or scared by the gunshot than Scott himself, except Payday and Painter’s Lane, who disappeared under Kelson’s bed.

  In the stunned silence after the blast, Kelson looked from Scott to Kovacic. ‘Amazing,’ he said.

  Kovacic got up and drifted toward the door. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean it to turn into this – I can’t be here …’ He went out into the corridor.

  When he was gone, Kelson said to Scott, ‘How about you? Are you going to stick around? This isn’t the best building, but gunshots upset the neighbors. If you’re staying, you should figure out what you’re going to tell the cops when they come. If I tell it, I’ll tell the truth, and that won’t look so good for you.’

  ‘I just want to talk to you,’ Scott said. ‘I need to explain—’

  ‘Unless the neighbors all went deaf, in about five minutes you can explain to a bunch of nice cops. Maybe a SWAT team.’

  Scott edged toward the door. ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘You aren’t going to kill me?’

  ‘You’ve got me wrong.’

  ‘I doubt that. Stick around and tell me.’

  Scott stepped into the corridor. ‘Meet me at your office in an hour.’ He closed the door behind him.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Kelson said. Then, after waiting enough time for Scott to clear out, he left the apartment too. The police could pound on his door. They could break it down or get the building super to let them in. They could bag the bullet casing and the plaster chunk. They could do all that without Kelson’s help.

  ‘’Cause I’m gone,’ he said, and ran down the corridor to the elevator. ‘Gone, gone, gone.’

  FORTY-THREE

  By gone, Kelson meant south through the city to Bronzeville, where he climbed two flights of stairs and knocked on Rodman’s door.

  Marty LeCoeur answered. He was wearing skinny jeans and a red sleeveless T-shirt with the word GUCCI in gold across the front. He pointed the stump of his missing arm at Kelson and said, ‘I know what you’re thinking.’

  Kelson stepped inside. ‘I don’t even know what I’m thinking. If I did, I’d say it.’

  ‘You’re thinking, why would I spend four hundred ninety bucks on this T-shirt?’

  ‘You paid four hundred ninety for that?’

  ‘Don’t start. Janet busted my balls about it this morning. So I walked out. Then I’m outside in the fucking cold. I knock so Janet’ll let me back inside. She says, not unless I apologize. Fucking cute, right? I came here again. A shelter in a storm is what this is.’

  ‘So why’d you pay four hundred ninety bucks for it?’

  He gave Kelson a look like he was measurin
g his neck to knock his head off. ‘I bought it ’cause I fucking could. Why are you here?’

  ‘Shelter from a storm.’

  The answer seemed to calm Marty. ‘DeMarcus and Cindi went out. What’s your storm?’

  Kelson told him about Scott Jacobson confronting him with a gun in the parking lot and then Kovacic greeting him with another gun in his apartment.

  When he finished, Marty said, ‘Kovacic’s a jackass, but sounds like Scott’s a real fuckwad.’

  ‘He thinks I’m meeting him at my office in about ten minutes. If I read him right, he does bad things when someone upsets him – he runs over his mom, maybe shoots people up with killer doses of drugs.’

  ‘You want me to beat him up?’ At five feet tall and missing an arm, Marty got a lot of laughs when he talked that way. But Kelson had seen the damage he could do, and Rodman told hard-to-believe stories of Marty’s outrageous violence, swearing they were true.

  Kelson said, ‘I was thinking I’d hide here for the evening and hope Scott doesn’t burn down my office when I don’t show up.’

  ‘Sure, if you want to be a coward.’

  ‘You’re the second man to call me that today.’

  ‘First one must’ve been smart.’

  ‘His friends call him Professor.’

  ‘Doesn’t surprise me.’

  Kelson lay down on the couch under the portraits of Malcolm X, Cindi, and Martin Luther King Jr, and soon he slept. He dreamed of a dozen men holding guns to his head. Only six of those men were Scott Jacobson.

  When Marty started doing one-armed push-ups on the living-room floor, Kelson woke and buried his face in the couch cushions. He woke again – sort of – when Rodman and Cindi came in laughing like they’d figured out that the whole universe was a crazy joke. He drifted off and then opened his eyes again when Marty and Rodman left the apartment together. He slept and woke once more at midnight.

  He sat up on the couch, suddenly alert.

  Rodman and Marty were still gone.

  Cindi was sleeping in the bedroom.

  He went into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee, then opened a couple cabinets and found a jar of peanuts and a box of Cheerios. He was standing at the counter, chewing, when Cindi came in. Her hair looked like she’d been sleeping hard.