Day One (19 page)

I move to the side of the bed. I feel Susan behind me, a hovering vulture. Mitch’s red-rimmed eyes gaze out at me from dark orbital pits.

“How you doing, Mitch?”

“Jesus, Kadash, how the hell do you think I’m doing?” His voice is a hair past a whisper.

I smile, closed-lipped. “Yeah, not too good, I guess.” I see the bounce of a monitor on the far side of the bed, a steady rhythm. 93 ... 94 ... 92. His heart rate. There’s a plastic, straight-backed chair against the wall and I slide it over and sit down.

“Glad you came, Kadash.”

“No problem.” I pause. All I can do is to forge ahead. “But first I need to get some things out of the way. Then we can talk.”

He manages the faintest of smiles and a single quarter-inch nod. The pillow under his head crackles like paper.

“Lieutenant Mulvaney here is recording our conversation, okay? She tells me you’ve waived your right to counsel and are willing to talk to me on the record. If that’s true, I need you to say so.”

“I’ll talk to you. Now. Without a lawyer. But no promises once you’re gone.”

I look up at Susan. She nods, so I turn back to Mitch.

“Okay. So can you state your name for the record?”

“All formal, eh, Kadash? You sound like a cop.” He offers another half smile. “Thought you were retired.”

“Old habits, I guess.” His eyes close. “Mitch, you okay?”

His eyelids roll back, slowly, and for a moment his gaze is unfocused. I wonder if we’re going to have to end the interview before it even begins. But then he finds me and swallows. “Name’s Mitchell Bronstein. I’m father of Jason, stepfather to Danny ...” Blink. “... and helpless thrall to Luellen Granger Bronstein.”

He emits a raspy little chuckle. I sit back, feel my jaw start working. Susan shuffles her feet behind me. The heart monitor speeds up for a moment, 106 ... 108 ..., then settles back again to the mid-90s. I swallow and lean forward. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean. What do I mean. What do you think I mean, Kadash?”

“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on.”

He licks his lips, a gesture that for a moment makes him look like Susan. “I do whatever she tells me.”

“Do you know where she is?”

His eyes roll sideways, the shrug of a man fulla bullet holes. “Kadash, listen. When the cops start digging, they’re going to find something out.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m sleeping with an account executive at work, a woman named Lynn.”

Surprise, surprise. Mitch Bronstein is a dirtbag.

“Cops’ll think that explains something, but they’ll be wrong. They have no idea.”

“No idea about what?”

“Lu’s a good person, Kadash. She’s better than anyone I know, and I mean that.”

“And you show this by screwing some woman at work?” I’m trying to keep my tone neutral, but anger bleeds into my voice.

“You don’t understand. Lu and I, we’re married, but it’s—”

“Open? You have an arrangement?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I guess not.” My stomach shoves my thoughts around like a playground bully. The heart monitor picks up the pace and I feel the tension radiating off of Susan behind me. We haven’t learned anything of use yet.

“I’d do anything for Lu. I love her. That’s why today happened. Lynn is just ... she’s what I do to help me forget.”

“How about we talk about something other than you trying to make excuses—”

“Skin.” Susan puts a hand on my shoulder. She wants me to calm down. I’m not the right man for this and she knows it, but Mitch wasn’t thinking about my credentials or interview skills when he
asked to speak to me. He thought I was his friend, a fantasy he carefully constructed over the last two and a half years.

“Okay. Okay.” I sit back and draw a breath. “Mitch, here’s the thing. We need your help. We’re trying to find Lu, and we’re trying to figure out what’s going on with Danny.”

“You’ve been in the kitchen.”

I nod.

“I tried to tell her.”

I wait, but he doesn’t add anything. “What did you try to tell her?”

“We should’ve called a lawyer.”

“Why?”

“It was bigger than us. Couldn’t control it.”

“What’s bigger than you?”

“I know a guy, a lawyer who works with our firm. I said we should call him.” He tries to raise his hand, but a loop of IV tube tangled in the side rail restrains him. “I wanted to call him, but she wouldn’t ... she wouldn’t let me.”

He drifts off again, and this time I suspect it’s for good. His chest is still, his eyes closed. I know he’s still alive only by the silent hop on the heart monitor screen, a shallow rhythm in white phosphor. He seems to have gone to sleep, gone away, whatever. I’m sure Susan is disappointed, but maybe it’s just as well. He didn’t say anything of consequence, nothing that’s likely to fuck over the DA’s case. I turn to Susan, about to tell her we should go when I hear his voice again.

“She’s stronger than me, Kadash. She’s stronger than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Susan nods at me. She wants me to keep going. I turn around. Mitch is staring at me now, his eyes fixed on my own. I shift in the chair.

“I want to tell you about what happened on the porch.”

Stay off of the porch.
I smile, turn my hands over. “The thing is,
Mitch, everyone saw what happened on the porch. What we need to know is what happened in the kitchen.”

It takes him a minute. “I wasn’t there.”

“But you have to know—”

“Kadash, I shot the kid on purpose. I’m sorry now, but I did. That’s what I wanted to tell you.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know if I believe him. I think back to the moment when Mitch stepped out the front door, the piddly little gun in his hand. He looked scared, confused, like a man who went to sleep in a feather bed and woke up in a nest of spiders. I can’t believe he looked out at the scene before him, the cops, the barricades, the helicopters overhead, and even noticed Eager, let alone targeted him.

“Come on, man. Don’t be ridiculous—”

“I’m not.” The heart monitor is ticking up again, 105 ... 109 ... I can see his blood pressure fluttering too. Sweat glistens on his cheeks and forehead. “She loves him, Kadash. She doesn’t love me. She loves him.”

... kinda has a thing for my stepmom ...

“It’s always him she turns to. I’m never anything but part of her disguise. She loves that stupid kid. I’m just an afterthought.” 111 ... 114 ... His chest starts to jump.

I hear movement at the door, and I know Seres is on his way to shut me down. I need more. Stay off the porch.

Fuck it.

“Mitch, was Eager there earlier, before everything happened?”

“Not Eager. Not at first.”

“Who was there at first?”

“I don’t know who they were.”

“Danny’s grandfather? Can you tell me who he is?”

“I don’t know.”

126 ... 127 ... 132 ...

“But you’ve known Eager since before he tagged your door, haven’t you?”

His eyes look troubled for a moment, but then he nods.

“What did you want me to do when you asked me to look for the tagger?”

“Arrest him.”

I’m not a cop,
I almost say. His answer is nonsense, and he knows it.

“You wanted me to scare him off, something like that?”

He doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.

“Tell me about this morning.” Susan is at my back, her hand on the back of my chair. “How did Eager end up there?”

“She called him.”

“Luellen called him? On the phone? How?”

“On his cell.”

I find myself rubbing my eyes. “Where did Eager Gillespie get a cell phone?” Though I assume he stole it.

“She never tells me anything.”

Then Seres is next to me. “That’ll be enough. I need you both to leave now.”

I turn to him. “Wait, just a couple more questions—”

“I said now, and I mean it.” 140 ... 142 ...

Susan pulls me away. I can hear voices out in the corridor, but I can’t make them out. People in scrubs have clustered around Mitch’s bed—Seres, nurses. I can hear a sound now, beeping, the beeping of Mitch’s heart monitor. I’m not sure why I couldn’t hear it before, maybe it had to cross some threshold. Susan leads me out through the door. I almost walk through Jessup. She glares up at me, her eyes black. Moose and Frannie are there too, but they won’t look at me. “Skin, let’s talk this through.” Susan’s voice is a question, Jessup’s a reprimand. “I was rather hoping you wouldn’t fuck this up, Kadash.” Seres pushes through us, a nurse in his wake. Jessup
plants herself in front of me, arms across her chest, hip thrown out in pose I imagine she uses on stage. She opens her mouth, but I cut her off. “I don’t work for you anymore.” Then I spin away from all of them, head for the elevator. Susan is right behind me, still talking, but she’s little more than a buzzing in my ears. All I can hear is the beeping, 143 ... 145..., and the echo of Mitch’s voice. Mitch, my annoying, idiot neighbor.

She loves that stupid kid. I’m just an afterthought.

I stop at the elevator doors, punch the call button. Susan stops beside me. I look at her sideways, angry, frustrated. Feeling useless and empty. It was never about Jase, about one of those lopsided teenage relationships, younger kid looking up to the older. Jase was just an excuse, a reason for Eager to hang around. He put up with Jase so he could be near her.

I don’t look at her, speak into the elevator doors. “Susan, you think maybe you can put some effort into finding Eager now?”

November 14, Overnight

S
hadow paid no attention to the sleet. It had been unseasonably warm for the whole shallow depth of his recollection, a circumstance he also failed to note. Now, the cold and wet soaked him to the skin, but he ignored the bitter itch crawling up his biceps and thighs. He walked along a road in a county he couldn’t name, near a town he’d never heard of. The sky overhead was swirling and bright despite the late hour. A word came to mind, a word from the time before memory. Skyglow. Somewhere, somewhen, in a group of people whose faces eluded him a man spoke of the stars and skyglow. Skyglow hid the stars, the man’s voice said from beyond a curtain of mist. Tonight the clouds hid them too, clouds illuminated by skyglow. From behind the curtain the man’s voice spoke as if skyglow was something to dislike, but the sleet fell from a shiny mackerel sky, and Shadow smiled.

Skyglow, skyglow. “S-s-s ...” He could say it, he knew he could say it. But he didn’t need to. “S-s-s ...” Skyglow came from cities, the voice told him suddenly. He could say that too. “City.” A word swallowed by the sounds of sleet. The word surprised him, stumbling from his mouth so readily, but he didn’t know why.
Something was different about it. “S-s-s-see ... See city.” He blinked and walked and hummed a sing-song tune. “City see, see city, city city skyglow.”

Something.

He stopped. Stopped on the road and looked all around. The road was empty and long, with wide fields on either side. He remembered fields, fields not so flat as these. Fields of grain on rolling hills huddled below steep rises and mountain crags. Fields growing out the of mist. Far ahead, in the darkness beneath the glowing sky he saw a light. Not skyglow, not starlight. A yellow-gold gleam, a point of glowing silence in the night.

Shadow smiled and continued on his way, slogging through the sleet toward the light. His legs and arms itched. He was a moth in the night, moving toward and away from something. Sometimes the mist gave him a glimpse that meant nothing to him of where and who. A woman with dark hair. He saw her on the bike, spoke, called out of the darkness. But she shouted and snapped. Maybe she couldn’t see his smile. Wasn’t he smiling? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember the woman with dark hair.

Shouting? Snapping?

The images boiled in the darkness and made no sense. But the light drew him forward until he found himself standing in front of a house. Dark house under a bright sky, small round light glowing like the sun, a teeny-tiny sun, next to a door.

He slipped through the darkness, slipped through the door. It opened under his hand as though that was what a hand was for. The room beyond was a cavern of shadow, an extension of himself. He felt his way along, surprised by warmth. Shivering; he’d been shivering but now he felt snug. The room smelled salty. He ran his hands over countertops without knowing what they were, felt metal and plastic. A single spot of orange blinked in the darkness. He put his finger over it, hid the tiny light. It came from a pot on
the counter, surface warm. Not on the stove. He knew the word, stove, and this was something else. He felt with his hands, lifted the lid and heard the simmering sound. Salty steam flooded the room and his stomach spoke.

“S-s-starving.” He knew the word. “Starving.” He blinked. He could see, a little, here and there. Shapes formed in the shadows, extensions of himself. Canisters on the counter, a sack of bread. The pot simmering, filled with soup. “Soup.” He didn’t have a thought. He opened the sack and took a slice of bread, dipped it in the soup. Savored the salty broth. His stomach spoke and he smiled, swallowed stew-soaked bread. Saw the spoon, a long wooden spoon. “S-s-spoon.” He stirred the soup and sipped from the spoon, scooped and swallowed. Salt pork and string beans. He ate spoonful after spoonful, swallowed until his stomach stopped speaking, swallowed until he heard the sound.