Rain Will Come

by Holgate, Thomas

TWENTY-THREE

  The Middlesex Diner was located about three miles from Miriam Manor in the town of Little Stockholm, thus named because of the large number of Swedish immigrants who settled the area in the mid-1800s.

  The diner was founded in the 1950s and hadn’t changed much since. But what appeared to outsiders as quaintness was in reality smartly packaged frugality. Only cash was accepted and nobody complained—which said as much about the clientele as one needed to know. The countertop was Formica, the mugs thick porcelain, and the slowly rotating pie display fully stocked with a dozen different flavors.

  Czarcik sat alone. The mini jukebox in each booth played songs for a quarter. At the time of their actual release, they would have cost a nickel. Tommy James and the Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover,” Looking Glass’s “Brandy,” and Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” which, as far as Czarcik was concerned, was timeless.

  A wise-cracking, gum-snapping waitress in her midforties approached. “Can I start you off with some coffee, sugar?”

  “Please.”

  “How you take it?”

  “Black—”

  “—Black.”

  She answered for him, at the same time. He wasn’t remotely amused. “One of my many talents. I can tell what someone is going to order before they even open their mouth. You’re a black-coffee man if I ever saw one.”

  “That’s pretty good,” he admitted, friendly enough to placate her but with a hint of aloofness. If she could read people as well as she claimed, she would know he wanted to be left alone. She went off to fetch the coffeepot as he lit up a cigarette.

  As she walked away, Czarcik’s gaze traveled from her polyester-clad posterior to the handful of other patrons in the diner. A grizzled regular at the counter, nails and teeth yellow as fresh honey, was reading a newspaper. A middle-aged man, gaunt and tired, with jet-black hair poking out from under a trucker’s cap, sat at the other end of the counter, opposite the old-timer. He wore a shirt covered in a coat of grease that didn’t look as if it was coming off with a single wash. A few booths behind Czarcik, two long-haul truckers were arguing about politics.

  The bell above the door to the diner jingled. In walked Chloe. Sunglasses on, her hair done up, she looked like the lead in some old film noir. All eyes momentarily turned to her, then turned back to their food. Their papers. Their problems.

  The waitress was about to tell Chloe to sit wherever she wanted. Then she caught her looking at Czarcik.

  Chloe slipped into the booth. Czarcik didn’t rise to greet her. She took off her sunglasses. He was surprised to see how tired she looked.

  “I heard about it on the radio. Absolutely awful.” Czarcik nodded and studied the contours of her face, like a cartographer who’d just come into possession of an old map. “But that’s not why you called me out here. You could have told me it was Daniel over the phone.”

  He slid his pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket and tapped one into his palm.

  “I didn’t realize you smoked,” she said. He offered her the pack by way of a response. She seemed to consider it before declining.

  “You lied to me,” he said as he fiddled with the unlit cigarette, rolling it between his fingers.

  She hesitated slightly. “That may be true, but unless you tell me what you’re talking about, what I’m supposed to have lied about, I can’t give you an explanation.”

  He believed her. She didn’t know what he was talking about. In fact, he was absolutely certain that she assumed her plan had worked to perfection. And with a lesser man, it might have. “When we first met, toward the end of the conversation, I asked you why you had come to me. Do you remember what you said?”

  “I said, ‘Because it was the right thing to do.’ Or something along those lines. And I still believe that.”

  “Only a liar would remember that. You know why? Because only a liar would take the time to conceive it.”

  Chloe picked up her sunglasses, threw her purse over her shoulder angrily, and stood up. “I don’t need to stay here and listen to this.”

  He reached out and grabbed her wrist. “Sit down.”

  She complied.

  Finally, he spoke. “You don’t want your husband to commit suicide.”

  “Of course I don’t. But that was his choice. If he wanted to go out on his own terms, I wasn’t about to stand in his way. I owed him that. And if you’re trying to make me regret it, I came to terms with my guilt a long time ago.”

  “But that’s not why you came here.”

  “Enlighten me,” she said angrily.

  He was curious to see how long she would continue to deny it, how long she would continue the charade.

  “The one constant of almost every life insurance policy is a clause that voids it if the policyholder commits suicide. It’s drafted not so much to prevent suicide—insurance companies are soulless beasts—but to discourage fraud. So, as you well know, if the medical examiner rules Daniel’s death a suicide, you get nothing.” He studied her reaction. She sat sphinxlike, neither confirming nor denying his claim. “Now, as crazy as it seems,” he continued, “if Daniel is killed—even if it’s in the middle of a homicidal spree, the insurance company is compelled to pay out. And if he’s captured alive, we both know he’d never live long enough to ever make it to prison. But even if he dies while incarcerated, you still get the money. This is why you need him stopped. You need him”—he searched for the right word—“. . . preserved.”

  Czarcik thought he knew Chloe well enough to gauge her response. He expected her to protest or obfuscate.

  Instead, she looked away like a petulant child. When she turned back to him, her eyes were rolling storm clouds. “Fuck you, Paul,” she spat. The third word cut him the deepest.

  Chloe stormed out of the diner. This time, Czarcik didn’t attempt to grab her wrist. The bell jingled in her wake, punctuating her departure. The waitress looked over at Czarcik. He held up a single finger, as if to say, “I’ll be right back.”

  Chloe was standing next to her Jeep as he stepped out into the blinding late-morning sunshine. He approached her, uncertain whether she would respond with anger, diffidence, a heartfelt apology—Slap!

  Her wedding ring caught his bottom lip, and a metallic taste filled his mouth. Concurrently, something in his trousers stirred. He touched the back of his fingers to his lip and came away with blood. Chloe lit into him.

  “Who the fuck do you think you are to question my motives? I come to you, by my own volition, as a private citizen trying to do the right thing. If it wasn’t for me, you and your idiot colleagues would be standing around with your dicks in your hands.”

  Czarcik was taken aback by her vehemence. He had clearly touched a nerve.

  “And what if I do want the money? Whose business is that? Certainly not yours. And why shouldn’t I? Isn’t that why people take out insurance in the first place? For the unthinkable. Would you rather he leave me destitute? I sacrificed my entire life for him. Went happily wherever his work took us. Put my own dreams on hold. You’re goddamned right I want my money.”

  Czarcik had been moving closer and closer, almost gliding, as her righteous indignation reached a fevered pitch.

  “The sheer nerve of you—”

  He kissed her. Or she kissed him. Either way, their lips met. It was brief. The blood from his lip that transferred to hers was the only evidence it occurred.

  Chloe pulled away. She looked afraid, conflicted. He stared at her, defiant.

  She shook her head and then got into her car. A few seconds later, Czarcik was left standing in a cloud of dust.

  As he watched her Jeep disappear over a ridge, he realized two things. One, he was falling for her, as inappropriate as that might be. And two, she was still lying to him.

  Almost as soon as the insurance explanation had come to him, once he had a moment to think it over, he realized it was faulty.

  If Corrine’s information was accurate, and Corrine’s informa
tion was always accurate, then Chloe Langdon didn’t need the money from a life insurance policy. She had more than enough to get her comfortably through life, provided of course she didn’t suddenly begin living like the Rockefellers.

  But he had wanted to see what happened when he accused her of having a financial interest in locating her husband. Why had she allowed him to go on thinking she was a money-grubbing soon-to-be widow? Why hadn’t she told him she had plenty of money?

  What was she hiding?

  The bells over the door jingled as he walked back into the diner. He approached the waitress who was standing behind the counter, organizing the pies on the plastic turntable. “I’ll take my check now.”

  She cracked her gum, an especially annoying habit. “She took a piece out of you, huh?” Czarcik was confused. She pointed to his lip, which he had forgotten was bleeding.

  “Just the check.” The waitress nodded. Before she could go retrieve it from a stack of other checks next to the cash register, the gaunt man in the trucker’s hat caught her attention and handed her his check with some cash. “Keep it. Thanks.”

  The waitress fixed him with a smile and walked over to the register, taking a brief detour to leave menus in front of a couple who had just sat down at the counter.

  The man tipped his trucker’s hat to Czarcik on his way out and pointed to his lip. “I feel for you, friend. I had a woman like that once.”

  “Get the hell away from me,” Czarcik replied without looking up. The man just snorted and walked away. A few seconds later the bells jingled as he left the diner.

  A moment later, a scream ripped through the diner, a scream of unbridled excitement.

  The waitress stood in front of the register, looking at the bills in her hand as if they had just materialized out of thin air. She was joined by another waitress and one of the cooks, both of whom looked stunned as well, as she babbled incoherently through tears of joy.

  Czarcik could glean the main points: before he left the diner, the gaunt man in the trucker’s hat had given her a thousand-dollar tip.

  For a man who had seen so much wanton cruelty, Czarcik had also witnessed his share of random acts of kindness. The widow leaving her fortune to the mailman. An anonymous gift to keep the soup kitchen stocked through the holidays. Nice for the people affected, but small acts of charity didn’t leave him with that warm and fuzzy feeling about humanity. This poor sap was probably just some guy trying to impress—

  I had a woman like that once . . .

  Czarcik spun toward the door so quickly that the wind he generated blew the menus off the countertop. He raced toward the exit. No one paid him any attention.

  The bells didn’t jingle and jangle, but whipped up one hundred and eighty degrees, smashing into the top of the door.

  Czarcik exploded into the bright sunshine. He sprinted over to the road that ran in front of the diner, looking frantically both ways as his eyes adjusted to the brightness. There wasn’t a single vehicle in sight. No trace of the man in the trucker’s hat. The highway was a straight line for miles in each direction, giving Czarcik a 50 percent chance of catching him if he was to get in the Crown Vic and burn rubber.

  Those were fool’s odds. And Czarcik was no fool.

  But he knew who else was on the highway, and he knew which way she was heading.

  Czarcik jumped into the Crown Vic, threw it into reverse, and fishtailed onto the blacktop. He jammed his foot on the gas as soon as the car straightened out and shot forward, hugging the double yellow line down the middle of the highway.

  A truck coming from the opposite direction thought he cut it a little too close and laid on the horn. Czarcik was too focused to even give him the finger.

  He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white, as the speedometer’s red needle rose past one hundred. Three minutes later he saw the familiar square body of the Jeep Cherokee as the highway curled around a bend. After making sure there was no oncoming traffic, Czarcik swerved across the solid yellow lines, going the wrong way on the two-lane highway, and pulled up next to Chloe.

  She was staring straight ahead, lips tight, still angry, concentrating on the road, oblivious to the man next to her frantically gesturing for her to pull over. She finally caught movement out of the corner of her eye, motioned for him to pass, then realized who it was.

  She saw the look on his face. She rolled down the window.

  “Pull over, now!” he screamed at her.

  She did immediately. Once she was safely on the shoulder, she craned her neck out and looked behind her. He was already out of his car and charging over. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she asked. He was pale, breathing fast. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Close enough,” he replied, his elbow resting on the open window. As he tried to catch his breath, he looked up and down the highway, on the off chance that a gaunt man in a trucker’s hat might whiz by. But all he could see were the dark outlines of enormous wind turbines, their arms flailing in the distance like spastic giants.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Holiday Inn Lockport looked like every other midwestern Holiday Inn. And every other Clarion Inn, Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, and Sleep Inn.

  The folks in the respective marketing departments were the only ones who could spot the differences, and only because it justified their jobs. For everyone else, besides the different complimentary breakfasts—watery eggs and turkey sausage instead of Canadian bacon and stale muffins—there was nothing to distinguish one midscale hotel chain from the next.

  This was exactly what Czarcik wanted. Conformity and anonymity.

  It was sweltering inside the domed room that housed the indoor pool and looked down upon the atrium. The curved-glass windows appeared to be sweating.

  But the hotel was busy, and this was the only area where they had any privacy. The only person in the pool was an old man in a bathing cap—his loose flesh riddled with malignant-looking moles—swimming so slowly it was amazing he remained afloat. Plus, the noise from the Jacuzzi drowned out their conversation.

  The two sat on uncomfortable metal pool chairs with no cushions, around a small matching metal table. Chloe’s back was to the windows. Czarcik wanted it this way. Through the condensation, he could make sure they weren’t being watched.

  “I still don’t understand how you can be so sure it was him.” She thrust her phone at Czarcik, a picture of Daniel showing. “Is this what he looked like?”

  He shook his head and waved off the phone without even glancing at the picture. “I told you, I didn’t get a good look at him. Other than his hair. Jet black. At least from what I could see under his cap.”

  “Daniel has light hair. Dirty blond.”

  He didn’t find it necessary to point out the possibility of hair dye. Or a wig. “He hasn’t attempted to contact you?” he asked.

  “Don’t you think I would have told you that?” He raised his eyebrows. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “I just want to make sure you’re being completely honest with me. If you’re not, and I find out, it’s not Daniel who’s going to be in trouble.”

  She averted her eyes, pretending to be insulted. Or maybe she was insulted. “Well, I am.”

  “I hope so.” He watched as the old man climbed up the ladder and out of the pool, went over to his reclining beach chair, and began to dry off, using the towel between his legs like a lumberjack sawing wood.

  The old man called out to them. “You get in now while the water’s warm. Have it all to yourselves.”

  Czarcik raised a hand, thanking him, but also letting him know they were in no mood for small talk. The man stuck his fingers in his ears a few times, forcing out the water, then left the pool area.

  Czarcik turned back to Chloe. “Are you sure that Daniel didn’t take his phone with him?”

  “It’s still at home. I’m positive. I can get it for you if you want. But I’ve already looked through his call log, and there’s nothing out of th
e ordinary. Not even any numbers I don’t recognize.”

  “Maybe . . .” Czarcik pondered.

  “Plus, if Daniel really wanted to disappear, why would he bring it with him? With his background, he knew how easily you could trace a call. There’d be no reason to take the risk. If he needed a phone for anything, I’m guessing he just picked up one of those disposable ones they sell at 7-Eleven.”

  “Hmm . . . I don’t know.”

  “You know what else I can’t figure out,” she said, suddenly chatty. “The one thing Daniel wants is to be left alone. To be allowed to complete his . . .” She struggled for the word before choosing “destiny.” “It’s the one unspoken thing he’s asked of me. If what you say is true, and you really did see him, why would he risk that?”

  Czarcik thought for a moment, watching the tiny ripples throw abstract shadows onto the tiled walls just below the glass. He remembered Daniel sitting on the edge of the bed, taunting him, still their own little secret. How he could have used any disguise. A balaclava. A woman’s stocking. But he chose Groucho Marx. Ho, ho, ho.

  “Because he’s fucking with me,” he finally admitted.

  Chloe looked at him, bemused. She knew Czarcik was a selfish, self-centered man—that much was obvious from their first meeting—but it was the height of narcissism for him to believe he was anything but an unwitting pawn in Daniel’s grand plan. She knew her husband, she knew his faults. They were grandiose in nature. He hadn’t left his deathbed, left the love of his life, only to play an existential game of chicken with some nothing cop—excuse me, detective—from the city. “I really don’t think he’d bother with that. You’re . . . incidental.”

  She waited to see whether the detective was offended. And while she waited, she thought of something else.

  “If he knows about you, then he knows about me.” Quietly she said, “He knows I’ve gone to the police. Betrayed him.”

  “Then you’re not safe,” Czarcik told her.

  The color rose in her cheeks. “He would never hurt me. Not in a million years.”