Bad People (45 page)

When no one answered after a minute, Tommy pointed to the manila envelope.

“Excellent work, Detective,” said Ethan. “You found a clue.”

“Pick it up, asshole,” said Tommy.

Ethan squatted and gripped the bottom of the envelope in both hands, trying to work it loose. “It’s lodged under there tight,” he said.

“As tight as your pussy?” said Tommy.

Ethan let go. He had only worked it about a third of the way out. “Tighter,” he said.

“Back the fuck up,” said Tommy. He bent over, bent from the waist, down as far as his belly would allow, somehow managed to get low enough to pinch the envelope between his plump thumb and index finger. He gave it a hard yank, and ripped the exposed third free.

“Or we could just shoot the lock off the door,” said Ethan.

Tommy ignored that, and pulled the torn leaves from the envelope. He looked at them quickly and showed the top one to Ethan. “Recognize that address?” said Tommy.

“For the sake of argument, let’s say I don’t.”

“That’s where she is. Back where it started.”

“So it is. I was just going to tell
you
that.” He kept up joking, but it was on his mind too, how obsessed for a time Tommy had been with the case and the woman. Tommy shouldn’t with his Swiss cheese memory have been able to instantly recognize the address of the house where Robb Hart died. Maybe he wasn’t even right. Ethan, for the life of him, couldn’t remember a detail like that of a months old case—though the address
did
put it in the right neighborhood. All right then, fuck it. And what else did they have to go on?

They left.

Tommy drove, and he seemed to know the way to the Wexler-Hart house by memory. Ethan commented on that, and Tommy shrugged it off. “You kids got your GSP and I got my grey matter.”

“So long as that is working for you,” said Ethan, passing up the opportunity to comment of Tommy’s mangling of
GPS
.

The drive didn’t take long that time of night.

Ethan still worried about how much trouble Tommy might be in about the gun he had returned illegally to Connie Wexler.

In all likelihood, the gun had not been used in the commission of a crime. Most guns weren’t. It would be sticky if it were, but not impossible to fix. A lot can be put off on bureaucracy, and human error. A sincere apology and an equally sincere promise to be more scrupulous about paperwork went a long way.

Ethan half-decided that was the way to go, claim confusion over the status of the gun—say it got mixed in with other property of the deceased, which Tommy had assumed there was no problem in returning to Wexler. The gun wasn’t a factor in the crime, if Ethan recalled correctly. Hart had been strangled. Now, if he had had the gun on him, the outcome might have been different for him.
Might
have been.

In Ethan’s experience it was a rare incidence when a gun in the hands of a civilian ever made anything better.

“This is it,” said Tommy, making a turn onto a darkened street. Ethan had heard about neighborhoods like this, streets, once filled with affluent, if overextended, families. Neighborhoods like this in the richer enclaves of southern California got lots of play on the financial news networks, but Seattle had its share of ghost neighborhoods too.

After the turn, Ethan could see that the street was not exactly empty. In fact, there were headlights and three cars centered around one house up ahead. “Good call,” he said to Tommy. One car, looked like a Prius, was parked normally, however a second car, a shitty little Datsun, behind the Prius was half up on the sidewalk. And there was a Jetta in the open garage. Its lights were on.

Nothing look right.

“Call it in,” said Tommy.

Tommy stopped his car at the foot of the driveway, front-end pointed toward the house. He pulled out the red light, and set it up on the roof of the car. He blipped the siren once, then opened his door and stepped out.

Ethan, called in,
officers requesting assistance
, while stepping out too.

They stood behind their respective doors. Ethan shielded his eyes from the flooding of the lights from the Jetta in the garage. One blinker was flashing, and the break lights were illuminated. The bare garage walls were lit up from the headlights. The driver’s side door of the Jetta was open. Ethan didn’t seen anyone in the vehicle or around it, at least not in the first instant, but Tommy must have. Ethan heard the unsnap of Tommy’s holster and the creak of the leather as he brought his hand to the butt of his service revolver. Ethan, unclasped his own holster.

Tommy called out, “Police officer! Hands behind your head! Come out slow!”. Only then did Ethan see the figure crouching and inching forward from the passenger side of the Jetta.

The figure rose up, and rushed forward.

Ethan pulled up his service weapon and he was going to, he intended to, go into a crouch behind the monstrous brown door of the caddy. That was the next thing he was going to do.

Instead there was a roar, like thunder, and a rain of buckshot from the shotgun in the figure’s hands.

He knew it was buckshot tearing into his flesh, there was no fooling him, not a thing else in the world it could be, which was too damn bad. Then he was falling backward.

He never felt the pavement, though, because by the time his still-warm body hit the cold wet ground, Ethan Starvold was already no more.

Chapter 51: Ardiss

Ardiss coughed liquid. Luke had gone in the house to find S/D.

Would he?

No he wouldn’t.

Deep down, she knew he wouldn’t hurt S/D, just a kid. No reason too. She had gotten S/D to promise not to call the cops, she had promised him she and Luke were going away. Luke would see that S/D was not in the kitchen and he would come back. He would not look upstairs. No reason to.

She couldn’t stand so she dragged herself to the Datsun.
Oh little red car, I’ve missed you so
.

Her car was the biggest thing she owned, and the thing she had had the longest.

She had to get to her car and start it up. She had to be ready when Luke came out. She would sit in the passenger seat and lay her head in his lap, and he would drive, and they would go away.

Los Angeles. Little red Datsun, will you take us to L.A? Too dark and glum here, and people were cold. But they could leave; they were free to leave and everything would be different. Luke would like L.A.; the sun and the vitamin D would make her happy and then she would be able to make him happy. Everything was different in L.A.; why had she never thought of it before?

She reached up and pulled on the handle of the passenger-side door. Locked. She despaired, but only for a moment. The door on the other side was surely open. She dragged herself around the front. Luke wouldn’t have locked her out of her own car; he wouldn’t do that.

The door was open. She was exhausted and burst into tears with relief. She pulled down the lever to pop the seat forward. She wanted to get into the back for now, and lay down in that half-a-back-seat area. Like a little bed.

She climbed in and shut the door and curled up like a little kitten on the little blanket that covered the ripped upholstery.

She only had to stay awake for a few minutes. Just until Luke came back. Then he would drive and she could sleep. She could sleep and he would drive, all the way to sun. He would take care of her, because he would see how he had hurt her, hurt not only her body, but worst of all her heart. When he understood that, and how bad she felt, and that she could yet forgive him and love him, he would understand her and love her again. Deep down, like everyone is, Luke was good. She petted the stiff dry carpet on the floor. Isn’t that so, little red car?

Chapter 52: S/D

Earlier.

S/D shivered. He turned, trying to get comfortable, but his bed was ridiculously hard, and he couldn’t find his covers, which me must have kicked off at some point. And for some reason he was trying to sleep while wearing his jacket. He opened his eyes reluctantly.

Not in bed. On the floor in the kitchen. The house was dark. He sat up, and his head rocked. Vision blurred. He felt nauseous and lay back on the floor. A girl was there. A hot girl. She screamed when he sat up, and stepped back. Who was she? He rolled over onto his stomach and stuck his arms under his chest to try and warm them. His head pounded. “Where’s all the furniture?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if he was asking the girl or what. In fact, until she responded, he wasn’t really so sure that he had spoke aloud at all.

“There isn’t any,” she said.

He became aware that his head was pounding in agony. He put his hand to it (reluctantly pulling it out from under himself) and found that his hair was wet. No wonder he was cold. Was he drunk? He didn’t remember drinking. He tried to remember the last thing he knew for sure.

“Are you okay?” said the girl.

“Yeah,” said S/D.

“You have to go, S/D. You have to get out and go.”

“What?” He needed to lie down somewhere soft. The floor was not nearly soft enough for sleep.

“Luke is coming. You don’t want to be here when he gets here. I-I talked to your Mom. You better call her back and tell her not to come here either, S/D. Did you hear what I said? Did you hear me? You need to leave before Luke gets here!”

Luke. S/D knew that name. He knew the girl too.

Ardiss. Beautiful Ardiss. But what was she doing at his house? A dream. “Hi Ardiss,” he said.

“Oh my god! S/D, focus! Listen to me!
You have to go! Now!
” Ardiss pulled on his sleeve, made him sit up.

His head wanted to explode like a pumpkin. He wanted it too. Like those old YouTube clips of Letterman dropping pumpkins on the pavement if only his head could do that, and free the pressure.

“I have to go to bed,” he told Ardiss.

He started to stand up.

“Oh thank god!” said Ardiss. She helped him. He started to walk, but she was pulling him in the other direction.

“No,” he said. “My bedroom is upstairs.”

“No! You have to go. Get in your car and go.”

His
car
? He wished. He was supposedly going to get on his birthday, assuming he kept his grades up. And passed the driver’s exam. “I can’t even drive,” he explained.

“No.” she said. “No of course not. Do you want to go upstairs?”

“Yeah,” he said. Was she offering to go with him?

“Okay, we’ll go upstairs. And then you have to call your mom, but don’t talk loud, okay.”

Why would he call her? He was mad at her. He wasn’t sure why. But she’d done something that pissed him off. Or did he dream that? No.

“Luke’s coming.”

“Yes.” She was helping him climb the stairs.

“Does my Dad know about Luke.”

“Your…? No. Not really. Come on, hurry,” she said. The stairs were hard to climb. He was so groggy. “Come on,” she pleaded. “Please, S/D, hurry.”

Upstairs, they felt around in the all-but-absolute dark. She opened the door to the first room in the hallway, but that wasn’t his room. She didn’t know the house like he did. He shook her off and went to his own room at the end of the hall. He knew the house.
His
house, the only house he knew. The house he grew up in. He missed this house. He had hated it, but now he missed it anyway. He turned to Ardiss.

He stopped cold and looked at her, the outline of her form barely discernable in starlight showing through the open door to the master bedroom, from the wide undraped windows within.

“What?” she said. “What now!”

“This all happened didn’t it?”

She didn’t say anything. But he knew. He hadn’t been dreaming. His dad was still dead, and nobody lived here any more. Luke was coming, and that was bad. Really bad. He knew why somewhere, but he didn’t remember. It had just come to him earlier, but it had floated away—no, it got knocked away when….

“You hit me with a shovel?”

Too dark in the unlit upstairs hallway for him to see any expression on Ardiss’s face, but her voice told him a lot. A kind of shame, and a kind of throatless choke of regret.

“Yeah, S/D. I did. But I’m sorry. And you have to believe me I don’t want anything to happen to you, or even your mom. I don’t want anything bad to happen to anyone, okay! I really don’t. I’m not a bad person S/D, I’m just so not.” She started crying. “I just want to leave, I just want to leave and I don’t want anything bad to happen. You believe me don’t you?”

“Sure,” he said. “I do.”

She rushed toward him, and he put out his arms. He thought she was going to rush into them, and they would kiss in the black hallway, and stay kissing forever. As long as they did
that
, he wanted to tell her, as long as they did that, then nothing bad would ever happen to her. He would promise. She didn’t rush into his arms, however, and she did not kiss him. She pressed his cell phone into his hand. “Please go in your room and don’t come out,” she said. “Not till you can tell we’re gone.”