Empty Ever After (13 page)

 

I THINK I knew something was wrong even before I turned the car back onto Hanover Street. Sarah sensed it too. I could see it in her expression.

“Dad, what did you do with the security tape?”

“Oh, shit!”

Our worst fears were confirmed when we saw the flickering light through the otherwise opaque living room window. It was a bit of a blur from then on. I couldn’t remember putting the car in park or closing the car door behind me or putting the key in the front door lock. The first thing that stuck was the image of Katy laying face down in a sea of broken glass, blood oozing out of the gash on her forehead, the VCR remote clenched in her right fist.

“Dad! Dad!” Sarah was screaming. It didn’t register as screaming. Her panic reached me as a tiny voice at the end of a kid’s string and soup can telephone. “Dad, Mom took pills, lotsa pills.”

I think I said for her to grab the bottles. I was already carrying Katy to the car.

WHEN VANDERVOORT CAME
in, I jumped at him.

“This isn’t funny anymore, Pete,” I growled, pinning him to the wall. “This is attempted fuckin’ murder.”

If anyone in the emergency room waiting area hadn’t heard the first part of my rant, that second part surely got their attention. I must’ve been pretty scary, not because Vandervoort looked frightened—frankly, I was rage blind and couldn’t’ve described the sheriff’s expression—but because a steel hand clamped down on my right shoulder.

“You okay, Sheriff?” a deep voice wanted to know.

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking. He’s just a little upset is all.”

Deep Voice was unconvinced. “You sure?”

“Why don’t you go and sit back down,” Vandervoort said. “You look like you could use some help yourself. What the hell happened to you?”

“Had to lay my hog down when some asshole in a SUV ran the light at Blyden and Van Camp.”

The steel clamp eased off my shoulder and I turned. I regained the use of my right arm and my vision. Deep Voice was a big man, barrelchested with a beer keg belly to match. He had a thick neck and thicker arms that were covered in blood and tattoos. He had a young doughy face, but was no kid. His gray beard was braided like a pirate’s. It too was soaked with blood and the gash on his forehead was nastier than Katy’s.

“Don’t go anywhere. When I’m done with this gentleman,” Vandervoort said, nodding at me, “I want to talk about your accident. Maybe we can discuss why you weren’t wearing your helmet.”

“Okay, Sheriff.” Deep Voice was sheepish, touching his hand to the cut on his head. He went and found his seat.

I backed off Vandervoort and gave him the details as we walked outside.

“She was totally asleep when we went to Molly’s. I didn’t think—”

“Stop beating yourself up over it. You couldn’t know what she was going to do. Where’s your kid?”

“She’s in the treatment area with her mom.”

“So that guy on the videotape with the candy bar message, he—”

“—looks an awful lot like Patrick, but the tape’s so fuzzy. It would be impossible to make a positive ID from it.”

“Look, Moe, don’t take this the wrong way, but your ex-wife did try to … Well, she seems pretty convinced.”

“So you believe in ghosts now too?”

“Nope, I’m just saying …”

“I wasn’t kidding in there, Pete. This isn’t funny. If I catch that motherfucker, I’ll—”

“Watch what you say and do,” Vandervoort cut me off. “Maybe that’s what these folks want, the ones behind all this. Your ex-wife goes off the deep end, you end up killing somebody and get shitcanned for life. Your daughter, for all intents and purposes, winds up an orphan. I’d say that’s playing into their hands, wouldn’t you?”

“You’re right. You’re right. I know you’re right, but you shoulda seen Katy laying there on the broken coffee table glass. I thought she was dead, for chrissakes. Sarah was freaked.”

“How is she now?”

“Sarah? She seems all right, but it’s hard to know.”

“And Katy, what do the doctors—”

“She’ll be okay. They pumped her stomach. It’s a good thing we got back when we did or more of that crap might’ve gotten into her system. They’re keeping her here for observation.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said. “I’ll keep a man posted outside her door for the duration.”

“Thanks, but I doubt they’ll try anything here. Too many people around.”

“Let’s hope so. Listen, I better go talk to that biker in there, but don’t forget our appointment later this morning.”

“It’s a date.”

We shook hands. This time he gave my hand back promptly.

Sarah was waiting for me outside the treatment cubicle when I went back inside. She’d been strong through all of this, but now that the adrenaline was wearing off, the fear and exhaustion were showing through. She was white, her eyes shot red with blood. For the first time in her life, Sarah looked old.
Welcome to adulthood.

“Dad, you’re bleeding. Your shoulder.”

“Oh, that,” I said, pulling my shirt around to look. “No, that’s somebody else’s blood. A guy who had a motorcycle accident, put his hand on my shoulder.”

For some reason, that was the last straw. Sarah broke down. She fell into my arms and began sobbing.

“Shhhhh, kiddo. It’s okay. Everything will be okay. Shhhhh …”

When she was a little girl and would come crying about scraping her knee or some kid in her class making fun of her red hair, those words were magic. Now when I said them, she simply cried harder. Had she finally outgrown the magic, I wondered, or was it that the magic wouldn’t work if the magician no longer believed in his powers?

 

LATER THAT MORNING, I was quite amazed at how easily I rattled off the litany of secrets and sins to Sheriff Vandervoort. Yet, rattle them off I did. No hedging, no holding back, no compromising, no spin, just the raw, unvarnished facts. I suppose most of the people in my life knew some of the details of my involvement with the Maloneys, but drips and drabs of reality, no matter how sordid or saintly, never amount to the whole truth. And regardless of what people say, there is only ever one truth of things. There are different versions of reality, not of the truth.

Vandervoort now knew more about what had gone on between the Maloneys and me than anyone on the planet besides myself. By the look on his face, I wasn’t so sure he was happy to hold the honor. It was a tossup as to whether Pete seemed more horrified by the revelation that Francis had once raped and beaten a transvestite prostitute or that he had once encouraged Patrick to commit suicide.

“Christ … I’m not sure which I want to do more, throw up or take a shower,” he said. “Do Katy and Sarah know any of this?”

“Not the real details, no. I’ve carried this shit around with me for twenty-two years. It ruined my marriage and that’s where the damage has to stop.”

“I’ll do what I can. The thing is, I can see why someone might hate the father. And lord knows there’s plenty of people who hate fags—sorry, gays, but that doesn’t explain why this is going on. This has got to be about you,” he said.

“That’s the assumption I’ve been working under since it all started.”

“Any ideas?”

“Too many, unfortunately.”

“Anyone from around these parts?”

“Only the longest of long shots,” I said.

“Yeah, like who?”

I hemmed and hawed a little.

“Look, Moe, I’ve cut you way more slack than—”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Secret keeping becomes second nature.”

“Names.”

“There’s Katy’s first husband, Joey Hogan, for one. I’m going to see him right now. Unofficially, of course.”

“Of course. Who else?”

“Woman used to cut hair at the Head Shop, Theresa Hickey.”

“Hot blond, married to a city cop, right?” Vandervoort asked, already knowing the answer.

“That’s the one.”

“Forget her. My big sister Mary knew Theresa Hickey. She dumped the cop years ago and moved down to Jupiter, Florida, with some rich guy owns race horses. She hasn’t been back here since.”

“Tina Martell?”

Vandervoort smiled sadly at the mention of her name. “Sure I know Tina. She owns Henry’s Hog over—”

“I know the place. Outside of town, over the tracks, right?”

“That’s the one.”

“She owns it?” I asked.

“Her old man left it to her. What’s old Tina got to do with this?”

“Probably nothing,” I said, “but remember when I was telling you about how Patrick had gotten a few girls pregnant?”

“Tina?”

“Yeah, Tina.”

“Well, fuck me. I can’t quite picture old Tina and Patrick. You know, Moe, for a—for a gay guy, this kid got a lot of—”

“It’s testament to how hard it was for him to come to terms with who and what he was.”

“I guess.”

“I gotta get to the hospital. They’ve moved Katy into a room and I want to make sure all the bases are covered.”

“Room 402,” he said. “You’ll find a deputy outside her door.”

“Thanks, Pete.”

“Remember, Moe, keep me posted.”

 

JUST AS VANDERVOORT had promised, there was a deputy outside Katy’s door. It was Robby, the young deputy who had stood out in the
rain with me at the Maloney family gravesite. He smiled at noticing me and, I suppose, at the chance of conversation. There are aspects of police work that can be mind-numbingly dull. None duller than guard duty. The deputy assured me that everything had been quiet, that the only people to enter the room were nurses and doctors and not too many of them. As a matter of courtesy, I asked the deputy if I might not take a look myself. He liked that I asked.

Katy was asleep, but unnaturally still. I don’t know, maybe that was my brain talking and not my eyes. Her attempted suicide had changed everything. For all our years together, I had assumed Katy was a rock, that she could bear anything. Only once, when she miscarried, did she break down. Even then, I thought she recovered well and had gotten back to the business of life quicker than most. But now I wasn’t so sure I knew who my ex-wife had been all those years. Had she misled me or had I misled myself? Did I see who she wanted me to see or did I see who I wanted to see? Had she hidden the pain from me or had I blinded myself to it?

I thought about lifting the sheets to see if her wrists were restrained, considered consulting the attending psychiatrist to find out if Katy was sedated or if her sleep was a natural reaction to the trauma. I did neither. It was all I could do to swallow up the guilt I was already feeling. I knew I couldn’t handle anymore revelations about the myths of our marriage, not now, not yet. When I walked back past Robby, he called out to me. Something about last night’s Mets score, I think. For some reason it just made me angry, really angry, but not at him.

I started toward Joey Hogan’s house.
Joey, what kind of name is that for a grown man, for chrissakes?
Joey was Katy’s ex. Now, I suppose, first ex is more accurate. Not that I had anything against him. On the few occasions fate had thrown us together, he had been more than cordial, friendly really. He was a stand-up guy who cared so deeply for Katy that if another man made her happy, well then, that was okay with him. They had been high school sweethearts. Katy grew out of it, but Joey never did. As Katy said, she agreed to marry him for all the wrong reasons. He was loving. He was handsome. He was a good provider. It was time.

“You don’t marry a man because he scores well on some stupid test,” Katy had said many times. “Marriage isn’t about a checklist. It’s about passion.”

I wondered if she would still feel that way when she got out of the hospital and took stock of the last twenty years of her life. In any case, there wasn’t any passion left between Katy and Joey by the time they took their vows before Father Blaney. And moving into his parents’ house right after the wedding hadn’t exactly enhanced the chances of their rekindling any
dormant high school sparks. Their divorce had been relatively painless, at least for Katy, and had come as a relief for the both of them.

Francis Maloney loved to use Joey to get under my skin.

“He still loves my daughter, you know,” my father-in-law jabbed at a family barbecue, Katy and Joey chatting happily at the opposite end of the backyard. “All she’d have to do is say the word and that boy would take her back, no questions asked.”

“Except she’s never going to say the word.”

Then Francis would smile that smile at me, raising his glass of Irish. “Ah, don’t be so sure, lad. Do you believe in ghosts?”

He’d always find some excuse to ask me that fucking question. I never quite understood what he meant by it. I did now, of course. Back then, when I didn’t answer, Francis would have a private little laugh at my expense. It was a laugh with red fangs and talons.

“Are you laughing now, you prick?” I shouted out the window.

Joey Hogan’s impeccably restored Victorian put a lie to the adage about the contractor owning the worst house on the block. Man, with the spindle work, wrap-around porch, clapboards, rows and rows of fish scale and diamond siding, a lot of trees had given their lives to let that house live again. Between the turrets and gables, between the asymmetry and compound angles, there was enough visual noise to keep my eyes busy for a week. And forget about the color scheme. Only on a Victorian could you use twelve different colors—including lavender or purple—without getting arrested. But I guess maybe that’s why I liked Victorians. They could break all the modern rules and still look beautiful.

I halfway pulled into the driveway and stopped, the ass end of my car sticking out into the street. Around here you could get away with that without getting the rear of your car sheared off. Truthfully, I didn’t think Joey had a thing to do with what had happened at the gravesite or with torturing Katy. Even if he wasn’t as comfortable with another man having his ex-wife as he let on, I knew as surely as I knew anything that he could never hurt Katy. I guess it was possible that he might hurt me, but he wouldn’t use Katy to do it. Nor did I think he had much in the way of information that could shed light on who might actually be hurting my family, but based on proximity alone—his home was less than a quarter mile from the entrance to the cemetery—I had to talk to the man. Yet, for some reason, I couldn’t quite bring myself to pull all the way down the driveway.