Head Case

by Michael Wiley

FIFTY-FOUR

  ‘You were the intended target,’ Venus Johnson said.

  Kelson sat in the back of an ambulance on the parking lot outside his building. When the paramedics came, they guided him over and strapped an oxygen mask to his face.

  ‘Breathe,’ the EMT woman said. ‘Breeeathe.’

  He breathed.

  Now the oxygen mask lay on the bench next to him, and Johnson said, ‘Your apartment. Your job. Your background. No reason anyone would pick on the girl, right? Must’ve been you.’

  ‘One bullet,’ Kelson said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Dumb luck?’ Johnson said.

  The police combed the parking lot, the street, the pathways around nearby buildings. They found no bullet casing.

  ‘This can’t be true,’ Kelson said.

  ‘Easy now,’ Johnson said.

  ‘Scott Jacobson’s in jail. It doesn’t work this way.’

  Johnson touched his arm, as if to reassure him he was solid.

  ‘Christ,’ Kelson said.

  ‘You want that oxygen again?’

  When Kelson refused to go to the hospital, the paramedics kicked him out of the ambulance. Now he sat in his Dodge Challenger with the door open, his eyes on the white heap where Frida lay under a body sheet.

  Someone must’ve called Rodman. When he arrived, he climbed in on the passenger side and for a long time said nothing. Then he said, ‘It’s a bastard.’

  Kelson’s mind was empty, cold.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rodman said.

  Uniformed officers, detectives, and evidence technicians moved across the parking lot or stood waiting for orders, exhaling steam into the freezing afternoon. It seemed nothing could come of such methodical slowness.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kelson said.

  Already the bright afternoon was darkening as the sun bent toward the high building tops.

  ‘Who?’ Rodman said.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Of course it does. It’s all that matters.’

  A half-hour later, four men put Frida’s body in the back of a white van, and she was gone. Still, the officers and detectives swarmed, ringing buzzers of apartments with windows facing the parking lot, measuring possible angles of incidence for the gunshot. Still, everyone moved with maddening slowness.

  An icy wind blew across the lot, and the sky went black.

  ‘Let’s go in,’ Rodman said.

  They went in. Kelson lay down on his bed. Payday leaped on to the mattress and kneaded his belly. He swatted her off the mattress. ‘Jesus,’ he said, as guilt flooded him.

  Rodman went into the kitchen. He made coffee, poured a cup, drank it, and poured another, as if it would prepare him to do what needed to be done.

  He stood next to Kelson’s bed. ‘How?’ he said. ‘Can’t be Scott Jacobson.’

  ‘Stating the obvious.’ As if anger at his friend could ease the guilt – as if he hadn’t said the same to Venus Johnson.

  ‘What did you miss?’ Rodman said.

  ‘Me.’

  ‘What did …?’ The big man could tear other men apart but mostly kept that ferocity inside, like a personal heat. ‘Get up.’ He said it gently.

  Kelson didn’t move.

  Rodman said, ‘The thing is—’

  Kelson’s phone rang in his pocket.

  He let it ring.

  ‘The thing is,’ Rodman said, ‘it’s happening now. If Johnson’s right and you were the target, whoever did this is stumbling, trying to regroup. That gives us an opening.’

  Kelson barely breathed.

  ‘If we take it,’ Rodman said.

  Kelson’s eyes were unblinking.

  ‘If we move fast – before whoever did this tries to kill you again.’

  Kelson sat up on the bed.

  Rodman stared at him.

  Kelson stood up next to the bed.

  ‘Thatta boy,’ Rodman said, and watched as if Kelson might fall.

  Payday approached and leaned against Kelson’s leg. She seemed to have no fear he would fall.

  He swept her into his arms and held her to his chest. She purred.

  His tears came then – hard and hot. He clutched the cat and cried.

  ‘Yeah,’ Rodman said, ‘that’s right. Do that for a while.’

  Later, they sat at the dining table.

  ‘Not Scott Jacobson?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Looks that way,’ Rodman said. ‘Or Scott Jacobson and a partner. Or someone picked up where he left off.’

  ‘Most likely not him.’

  ‘Looks that way.’

  Kelson’s phone rang in his pocket again. He fished it out and checked caller ID.

  Unidentified.

  He answered. No one responded to his voice. ‘Hello?’ he said again – and again. ‘Hello?’

  Silence.

  He hung up and checked his call history. The call he’d ignored while lying on his bed also came from an unidentified number. ‘Same thing’s happening to Caroline Difley.’

  ‘Could mean nothing,’ Rodman said.

  Kelson felt an impulse to shrink inward. Tears pressed against his eyes.

  Rodman said, ‘Maybe we should—’

  The phone rang.

  Kelson snatched it, answered, ‘What the hell?’

  ‘You’re on TV again.’ Sue Ellen’s voice had none of its usual bounce.

  ‘I’m sorry, kiddo.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘No,’ he told her, ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said.

  Nancy took the phone from her. ‘Sam?’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘At least you could reassure her. Tell her a lie.’

  ‘I wish. Tell her what you want – whatever you think is best.’

  ‘I think it would be best if you learned some common sense.’

  ‘Thanks for the concern,’ he said.

  ‘What good would it do?’

  They hung up.

  Rodman let him stare at the phone, then said, ‘Maybe we should check on Kovacic and Caroline Difley.’

  Kelson got up and went into the bathroom. He turned on the water and stared at the mirror. He watched himself breathe – deep in, hard out, a man struggling for air. He willed himself to cry again, but the face staring back at him was strange and dry-eyed. ‘Rip myself to pieces,’ he said, then turned off the water and went back out to Rodman. ‘We should check on Jose and Wendy too,’ he said.

  They put on their coats and rode the elevator down. In the lobby, Kelson hesitated before the glass door.

  ‘Hold on,’ Rodman said, and went outside alone. A minute later, his van pulled up at the building entrance.

  Kelson went out and ran to the passenger side.

  ‘Back to the rodeo,’ Rodman said quietly when Kelson settled low in his seat. As the big man steered into the evening dark, Kelson’s phone rang and rang.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  When Kelson and Rodman arrived at the apartment, Kovacic opened the door with a bottle of Bacardi Limón in his hand, black boxer shorts on his tattooed body, and the heat in his apartment dialed high. Caroline lay on the couch in a pink terrycloth robe, smoking a joint.

  ‘Can’t afford Miami right now, so we’re doing the best we can,’ Kovacic said, and offered Kelson the bottle.

  Kelson stepped past it. ‘Are you watching the news?’

  ‘We’re on vacation,’ Caroline said from the couch. ‘Nothing but tropical drinks and delivery from Royal Caribbean Jerk. Want a hit?’

  Rodman told Kovacic, ‘Scott Jacobson didn’t do it – at least not alone.’

  Like a cold wind through the room. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Frida’s dead,’ Kelson said. ‘Shot outside my building.’

  ‘Ah shit,’ Kovacic said.

  Caroline looked stricken. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  Rodman asked her, ‘Are you still getting calls? Do you still think someone’s following you?’

  She looked as if she would be sick. ‘We came str
aight here last night after the party. We wanted to take a couple days for ourselves. I turned off my phone.’

  ‘Check it,’ Rodman said.

  She crushed the joint and went into another room, returned with the phone. ‘Four calls since last night. Unidentified. No messages.’

  ‘Stay inside if you can,’ Rodman said. ‘Keep away from windows.’ He asked Kovacic, ‘Still got the revolver?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Keep it loaded. Keep it close.’

  As Rodman and Kelson drove through the dark from Kovacic’s apartment to Jose Feliciano’s house, Rodman called Marty and said, ‘I might need that firepower you took out the back of the Jacobsons’ house.’

  ‘I saw on TV,’ Marty said. ‘The fuck happened?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out.’

  ‘If it gets bad, I’m ready. How’s Kelson?’

  Rodman said to Kelson, ‘Marty wants to know how you are.’

  ‘Hurting. Hurting real bad.’

  Rodman told Marty.

  ‘And pissed off,’ Kelson said.

  Rodman told Marty that too.

  ‘Fucking right,’ Marty said. ‘Tell him that shit about him being a coward was just shit.’

  ‘He’ll appreciate that.’

  ‘It might even be true.’

  When Kelson rang Jose and Wendy’s doorbell, light showed through the front shades from a deeper room. No one answered, and the house was silent.

  Rodman tried the knob.

  Locked.

  ‘Go in anyway?’ he asked.

  Kelson pulled out his phone and dialed Jose. The call bounced to voicemail. ‘We’ve got a problem,’ he said to the recording.

  Rodman drew his arm back, as if he would punch the door off its frame.

  ‘No,’ Kelson said.

  He went down off the porch and around the side of the house, Rodman limping after him through the snow.

  In the back, Kelson tried the screen door.

  It opened stiffly.

  He tried the wooden door inside it.

  Locked, snug in its frame.

  Rodman went to a back window and peered in. ‘Not good,’ he said.

  Kelson joined him and looked. The kitchen table and chairs were tumbled on their sides. The cabinet doors were open, the contents swept from the shelves. The drawers were yanked off their tracks.

  ‘That’s more than a search job,’ Kelson said. ‘That’s fury.’

  Rodman went to the back porch, cocked his arm, and broke the door off its hinges.

  The furniture throughout the house was knocked over, the drawers, cabinets, and closets emptied.

  But there was no sign of Jose or Wendy, no evidence they were present or hurt when the house was wrecked.

  ‘The doors were locked, though,’ Kelson said. ‘Jose or Wendy let in whoever did this, or the person had a key.’

  He and Rodman stepped through the mess of broken plates, the tossed silverware, the plastic, metal, and broken glass. ‘What’s it tell you?’ Rodman asked.

  ‘Nothing,’ Kelson said, ‘and more nothing.’

  ‘Someone wanted to destroy them,’ Rodman said, and went to the front door. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He opened the door – as Wendy walked up the front path.

  She was smiling until she saw the big man in her house.

  ‘What …?’ she started.

  Rodman stepped backward into the room. ‘We didn’t do this,’ he said. ‘Except the back door – sorry.’

  ‘Where’s Jose?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘No one was here,’ Rodman said. ‘The doors were locked. Where were you?’

  ‘Northwestern Medical – training for the last six hours.’

  Rodman glanced at the mess. ‘Would Jose have any reason to …?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. We were going to go out tonight – because of the new job.’ She looked frightened. She pulled out her phone, dialed.

  ‘He’s not answering,’ Kelson said.

  She let it ring anyway.

  ‘This was a smashup,’ Rodman said. ‘If someone was searching for something, what would it be?’

  She went to the bedroom. She picked up clothes from the floor and piled them on the bed. She stood in the middle of the room and stared at the rest of the wreckage. She tried a couple of the half-open drawers. She said, ‘The notes Ed Davies told me to keep are gone.’

  ‘What notes?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘About wrongful termination. Harassment.’

  ‘Who did you name in them?’ he asked.

  ‘Everybody. My supervisor fired me without cause. Dr Jacobson approved the firing. Rick Jacobson always treated me like I was guilty of something.’

  ‘Did any of them know you were keeping the notes?’ Rodman asked.

  ‘I didn’t hide it. They deserved to worry. I wanted them to know.’ She gazed around the room. ‘I wrote plenty. I used to love that hospital. But the people who run it are too close to each other. Much too close.’

  ‘You need to report this,’ Kelson said.

  She nudged a yanked-out drawer with the toe of her shoe. ‘Uh-uh. Jose would never forgive me. You know how he is. Cops either arrest us or hassle us like they want us out of the city.’

  Kelson and Rodman helped her pick up the worst of the mess. They nailed the back door into its frame and promised to replace it as soon as they got clear of the confusion and chaos.

  They stepped out into the dark at 10:30, and Rodman drove back to Kelson’s apartment building. Kelson dashed from the van to the entrance door and ducked inside. He stood for a long time in the lobby, listening to the sounds of the building. Then he rode up to his floor and stood outside the elevator – listening again.

  He went down the hall and stopped at his door.

  A cat meowed from the other side.

  Kelson felt a charge of fear. ‘Christ,’ he said. He slipped his key into the lock and went in.

  The quiet in the room felt like a human presence. ‘Like Frida,’ he said, and though he thought again that he should cry, he felt only anger.

  Payday and Painter’s Lane meowed together.

  Kelson fed them. He eyed the windows, eyed the bullet-pocked ceiling. Then he pulled back his blanket and climbed under. ‘Stupid,’ he said. ‘Always stupid. A step behind. A minute late. Eyes closed when they should be open.’

  He closed his eyes, opened them. Closed and opened them again. After an hour of that, he slept.

  FIFTY-SIX

  In the morning, Kelson made two false starts from his building, then ran out, climbed into his car, and drove to the Harrison Street police station. He asked to talk to Venus Johnson and got sent to the homicide room.

  She was sitting back-to-back with Dan Peters in their cubicle. They stared at him like he was a wandering war refugee.

  ‘I’m sorry about your girlfriend,’ Johnson said.

  ‘About everything,’ Peters said.

  ‘Do you know anything new?’ Kelson asked.

  ‘It’s early,’ Peters said,

  Johnson gave her partner a look. ‘Based on the wound, we think the shooter was street level – maybe a drive-by.’

  ‘That’s more than she should tell you,’ Peters said. ‘Did you see anything?’

  Kelson shook his head. ‘I had my eyes on Frida.’

  ‘We’re reviewing security video from the buildings around yours,’ Johnson said. ‘So far, nothing. None of the neighbors saw anything.’

  ‘There’s got to be something,’ Kelson said.

  ‘We recovered the bullet,’ Johnson said.

  ‘It’s early,’ Peters said, this time to her.

  ‘Yeah, it’s early,’ she said, ‘but it looks like it matches the ones we found in the Lincoln Avenue alley. We put a rush on, but it’ll take some time.’

  Kelson suffered fewer headaches lately than he did in the first months after he got shot above his eye, but the connection between the shootings jabbed him like a needle.

  ‘Y
ou all right?’ Peters said.

  Kelson fought it. ‘What’s the latest on Scott Jacobson?’

  Again, Johnson and Peters exchanged a look.

  Peters sighed. ‘He tried to hang himself last night.’

  ‘Didn’t get very far,’ Johnson said. ‘A guard cut him down. We have him in a suicide smock now. But there’s more—’

  Now Peters warned her. ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘We got records from the place where Scott Jacobson was put after his mother’s death. They gave us something we shouldn’t technically have.’

  ‘Not legally,’ Peters said.

  ‘Nothing that’ll ever go in front of a jury, but maybe it helps. Seems, when Scott was a kid, someone maybe abused him.’

  ‘Who?’ Kelson said.

  ‘Records didn’t say. This was in a note on an assessment the place did before they released him. It said the abuser was “immediate family.” No way they’ll tell us more. No way we’ll ask.’

  ‘We won’t even admit we got the information,’ Peters said. ‘It could make everything from the facility inadmissible.’

  The needle jabbed deeper – and twisted. Kelson squeezed his eyes. ‘If Rick or Jeremy abused him and his mom found out, that might tie to her death.’

  ‘It might tie to a lot of things,’ Johnson said. ‘Whatever else, it would’ve screwed him up bad.’

  ‘How about you?’ Peters said to Kelson. ‘Can you tell us anything we can use?’

  Kelson told them about the ransacking of Jose Feliciano and Wendy Thomas’s house – and Jose going missing – about how Wendy wouldn’t report the break-in because talking to the police would betray Jose, even though Jose might be in danger. As he talked, the needle seemed to pull out of his head, millimeter by millimeter.

  Johnson said, ‘D’you think we have the wrong guy in jail?’

  ‘As you say, Scott Jacobson’s screwed up,’ Kelson said. ‘I don’t see how he’s not involved. But whoever’s out there now is cranking it up.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Johnson said, ‘and playing it dumb. With Scott in jail, the smart thing would be to lie low, let things cool. The latest stuff is emotional. Whoever’s doing it is angry or scared – or both. My guess is this person’ll try to get you again, no matter the risk. You need to stay out of sight.’

  ‘I’m OK,’ he said.

  She considered him and didn’t seem impressed. ‘What part of you can take care of yourself?’