Suspects (7 page)

“I'm in no position to hold back on myself,” Howland said, red-eyed, wet-cheeked, sneering bitterly at the ceiling. “Man, what this must look like!” He appealed to Moody. “It was just sex, believe me. This woman, she's married, and she didn't want a divorce any more than I did.”

Moody was holding his open notebook. “I really have to get the name. Things have gone too far, Larry. We'll find out anyway.”

Howland stared at him. “Where are my wife and daughter now? They have got to be given a decent burial.” He found a bright white handkerchief in an inside breast pocket and without undoing its crisp folds he blotted his wet eyes.

“It won't be much longer. I'll give the ME a call and find out when. Now let's have your friend's name.”

Howland sighed. “Do you know what would have happened if Donna found out? She didn't understand the first thing about any kind of sex, but—I mean, she knew it existed, but out in the world somehow, with people who had something wrong with them, and so on.”

Moody gestured with the notebook. “The lady's name is…?”

“Gina Bissonette. She lives over on Lowell Drive. She's my boss's wife. She's got nothing to do with this and doesn't deserve to get in trouble for it. If you could check with her when he isn't around, it would be the right thing.”

“You let us decide what's right, Larry,” LeBeau told him, coming across the room, staring him in the eye.

Howland did not look away. “I want to get my wife and child,” said he. “I don't care about myself, but I'm going to phone my lawyer now. You're not going to keep me away from my family.”

“What you could have done,” LeBeau said, “was call from just around the corner. You lied about calling from L.A. Maybe you're not telling the truth now about calling from the motel.” An instant later he added disingenuously, “Oh, I forgot: the call would show up on your bill, wouldn't it?”

“No,” said Howland. “I made it from the pay phone outside the office, there near the parking lot.”

Moody said, “Larry, we're going to ask you to come down to the bureau with us. I know you want to cooperate in every way you can. If I promise you that the bodies of your loved ones will be released as soon as possible—you have my solemn word on that—can you see your way clear to going along just a little while longer?”

He did not wait for an answer. He went to the front window and peeped out through the draperies that had been pulled shut so as to discourage TV cameramen, who were denied access to the lawn but might have been able to get a shadowy picture from the street, using the zoom.

Moody returned to Howland and used the situation to advantage. “We're not going to embarrass you in front of that pack out there. We'll have the officer lower the ribbon so we can pull right back into the driveway, and you can exit through the rear door. You'll be in the car before they get focused. You can put a raincoat over your head.”

Howland seemed grateful for Moody's kindness, having lost all energy. His nod was feeble.

Moody kept his promise, taking Howland out the kitchen door while LeBeau brought the car back, but the Kellers, the old retired couple whose property was just across the blacktop driveway on the west, had, for the excitement of it or perhaps even a fee, admitted some members of the electronic press to their side yard, and there was nothing the detectives could do about the cameras that were trained on them and their charge from close range. To the shouted questions, though, they could and did remain silent, and Moody advised Howland, his face swathed in the coat, not to be provoked by the raucous cries, “Didja kill your wife and child?”

Lloyd was awakened by the urgent need to urinate. In the aftermath of his monumental drinking spree of the day before—at least he assumed it was only one day earlier—he carried on his shoulders a head that felt as though encased in one of those old-fashioned diving helmets, the kind with a window behind a cage, offering only remote and fragmented visibility. He felt so dizzy that he had to take another few minutes of sleep, and it was during this period that he pissed the bed. After the briefest instant of wet warmth, he understood what was happening but went ahead anyway and emptied his bladder. Any attempt at self-discipline would have been useless at this point. It was not the first time, nor the tenth, that the malodorous, stained old mattress had been urinated on by someone, though
he
had never done so before. He would not anyway be sleeping on it again.

Lloyd's intent, when he could finally extricate himself from the slough of standing urine (which for some reason was not being absorbed), was to clean himself up soon as possible, leave town, and keep on going. It had been a mistake to come here in the first place. He had put himself under too much pressure while at the same time having no clear aim. How could anything good come of that combination?

Once he got to his feet he was not quite as weak of leg as he had anticipated, but his head throbbed with an aggressive pain, and his tongue was so sour that his teeth tingled from contact with it. At the corroded tap of the stained sink he made a drinking fountain of his hand, childhood-fashion, and swallowed water, which no matter how long it ran remained at the same tepid temperature as that from the hot-water faucet.

Had he single-handedly drunk the entire half gallon of scotch? But where was the empty bottle? And where had he emptied it? Instead of a memory of places and events, he retained only impressions, shadows, fragments of sound, textures, sensations, some unpleasant but not all.

Having gulped his fill of the water, rinsing with and spitting out the last mouthful, he raised his head to the mirror and saw the scabbed wound that extended on a long diagonal from the cheekbone to the edge of his upper lip. He had no immediate memory of its origin, but examining the nearby skin by eye and then by touch and, detecting only a faint shadow of beard, he supposed that at some time since the ruining of his electric shaver the morning before, he had found an edged razor somewhere and, using it, cut himself.

The matter sent him on a search of the medicine cabinet, some of the items in which had been left behind by former tenants. And there the implement lay, between an empty bottle that had once held rubbing alcohol and a plastic jar a quarter full of Vaseline. It was one of those disposable razors. Had he found it and used it before going to work, the day might have turned out differently.

If the water in the washstand was always warm, that which emerged from the showerhead, in the curtainless rusty-metal stall, was habitually unheated. Today it was as cold as ever, but in his current condition, with a body temperature that felt feverish, he derived some strength from the icy gush. In turning to clean his back, he encountered underfoot a soaked grayish cloth which when eventually retrieved and examined proved to be a T-shirt, presumably his own. The water had smudged but not washed away the streaks of red in its weave. He had apparently bled more from the facial cut than he would have thought.

Obviously the garment would not dry before he hit the road, so he took it to the kitchenette and stuffed it into the plastic bag he kept under the sink for refuse. There was no other garbage on hand because he had bought no food recently, except for the box of chocolate-covered doughnuts that was still in the half-refrigerator under the counter. It had probably been a long time since he had last eaten, but his sour stomach ruled out any thought of breakfast. He would leave the doughnuts behind for the obese super, who was the kind that pilfered from tenants anyway.

He stuffed his sparse supply of extra underwear into the old backpack he had found the year before among the junk Larry and Donna had gathered to contribute to a Goodwill bin.

“Don't tell me you're taking up the great outdoors,” Larry said in the joshing tone that was standard with his brother.

“And why not?” asked Donna, in gentle challenge. She was playing her habitual role of defender of each against the other. As happened so often, this served to make her Larry's target.

“Listen to who's talking,” he cried. “When did you ever haul your fat butt along a woodland trail?” He reared back, hands on hips. “I don't mean now. I mean way back when you were young, if you can remember that far back.”

Lloyd could have punched him, but Donna did not seem to mind. “Hey,” she said, laughing in the throaty manner, chin thrown up, which was at odds with her normal ladylike ways but never less than attractive. “If
you
remember, my backside wasn't fat in those days.”

Nor was it now, but it was not Lloyd's place to make such an immodest observation. He turned his head away, so she would not be further humiliated. He addressed his brother. “The pack might come in handy. I move around a lot.”

Larry rolled his eyes. “And you're not expecting to gather much moss, if that's supposed to hold it. That's for hikes, not real camping. Used to use it on picnics, in college days: couple bottles of wine cooler, going out. Coming back, it would be carrying another pair of panties for my extensive collection!”

Now Donna's reaction
was
negative. “Oh, Larry. What a way to talk in front of your brother.”

Larry laughed with a flash of extra-bright front teeth. “He's a grown-up, isn't he?” He grinned at Lloyd. “She makes you sound like some kinda sissy.”

“No she doesn't,” Lloyd said levelly, turning away before he would be tempted to go further and attract her disapproval from Larry to himself. “I can use the pack. Can I have it?”

The three of them stood at the open door of the garage. Larry toed the ex-liquor carton on the blacktop apron behind the car. “Anything else you want? I keep telling her if you call the Salvation Army to come pick up stuff, they give you a blank estimate form you fill out yourself for the IRS. But you don't get a deduction at the Goodwill bin: you're anonymous.”

“Look at this collection,” Donna said, gesturing with a flowerlike hand. “I wouldn't have the nerve to ask for a write-off.”

“That's because you don't have to pay the bills.” Larry tossed his big head to emphasize his exasperation. He sought support from his brother. “She never made any money even when she worked!” He winked. “She never made the most of the assets she has. I tell her it's still not too late, but it's not going to last forever.”

Lloyd certainly did not cooperate in this ugliness. He hung the pack on a shoulder and looked away.

Donna shrugged good-naturedly. She wore a loose gray sweatshirt over baggy white dungarees of the housepainter type. This was her trash cleanup outfit, and both garments were shapeless. She looked like a dream to Lloyd. He preferred her this way, without makeup, and not all fancied up, her natural coloring being what it was, and he preferred not to see much of her body, either in the form of bare shoulders and legs or snug-fitting apparel from the waist down. Larry on the other hand, in what had to be perverse in a husband, was always urging her to show more flesh, buy a strap bikini, wear miniskirts, and was capable, after a few drinks, of getting downright disgusting, at least in front of Lloyd, on the subject of underwear. “Black garter belt and mesh stockings! Put a little zing in your dull life!” He would shake his head at his brother. “But
no
, not Little Miss Muffet there, in her pantaloons.” Donna of course would have turned maroon by now. But on the few occasions when Lloyd protested against this treatment, it was she whom he offended, not Larry, who never took him seriously in any event, yet always urged him to drop around to the house.

It was while filling the backpack now that Lloyd consciously remembered the scene at the liquor store, and immediately thrust it back into the labyrinth of mind in which he stored such material. He had not committed the robbery nor done the mayhem, nor did he know either perpetrator or victim. He
had
shoplifted the whisky, but also he had reported the greater crime to 911. He had done the right thing when it was required. Maybe this was an odd pretext by which to feel a sense of accomplishment, and one perhaps too complex to explain to anyone else, but at least it was not another failure.

Afterward he must have gone home and drunk scotch until he passed out. Or so it seemed. What was hard to understand was why he could not find the big bottle this morning. Could he have thrown it out the window at some point? Perhaps in the direction of the barking dog that could be heard every early morning from somewhere beyond the trash-filled areaway on which his only window looked down. And at one point he had cut himself shaving. But why had he shaved in the midst of an orgy with the bottle?

The whole thing had begun when he realized he needed a drink before going to see Donna. It was absurd when you thought about it: he had required solace after a bad morning that began with the accident with the electric shaver, which in effect got him fired, and then with no money he could not buy liquor, so he stole the bottle, narrowly missing being either shot by the robber who had gunned down the clerk or arrested by the police, and when he finally got home after that ordeal he drank so much of the whisky as to lose consciousness, but revived, at least dimly, to shave and cut himself with the throwaway razor, only to collapse again and piss the bed before waking.

The longer he had been up, the more ill he felt. It was the kind of empty-stomach sickness that could not be relieved by puking. Something to eat and a cup of coffee would no doubt be the best medicine, but he was no less broke today than he had been yesterday. All the fight had gone out of him. He now regretted having gone to the supermarket to alienate his boss further. If he had apologized to the man, he might at least have been able to collect the wages due him. Maybe, if he had been pitiful enough, he would not even have been discharged, though that approach had never been known to work with a male superior. With women bosses, of whom he had had a couple thus far in life, counting an after-school job, it was effective if they were old enough to feel maternal. If one was near his own age, forget it: she was even worse than a man.