The Barbed-Wire Kiss (7 page)

“That was the summer my cousin had gotten me a job in the public works department in Long Branch, landscaping, picking up trash. That next day I was out with a crew, down at Seven Presidents Park on the beach. We’d quit for lunch, were just sitting around, and I saw the old man’s pickup pull up. I tried to put up a fight. It didn’t help. He put a pretty good beating on me before the others pulled him off.”

“That black eye you had….”

“That was the least of it. I had two cracked ribs too.”

“You told me you got it at some bar in Asbury.”

“Like I said, I was lying a lot in those days.”

“I guess you were. What happened then?”

“He took her back to Ohio with him. She finally managed to get a letter to me after a few weeks. There was a doctor he knew out there that he took her to, some hack. She said she was still bleeding from it three days later.”

“Christ.”

The wind began to whistle around the poles. The boat dipped, steadied.

“I never told anybody,” Harry said. “Not you. Not Melissa.”

“And you never saw her again?”

Harry shook his head.

“That’s rough,” Bobby said.

“For a while, I thought about heading out there, trying to track her down. I used to fantasize about kicking her old man’s ass, bringing her back. But I never did. Three years later, I met Melissa.”

“Eighteen years,” Bobby said. “And all that time you never had any contact with her?”

“Not since that letter. Not until yesterday.”

“Un-fucking-believable. You have any other long-lost secrets you want to share with me?”

Harry smiled, shook his head, sipped beer.

“It was a long time ago,” he said.

Bobby set his beer on the transom, peered off at the horizon. Low thunder boomed in the distance and the wind began to snap around them, a coolness in it now.

“Getting gray out there,” Bobby said. The boat pitched beneath them and Bobby’s beer hit the deck, rolled, spewing foam. Harry scooped it up, lurched to the other side of the cockpit. Rain began to dimple the water and spot the salt-crusted windshield. He poured the dregs over the side, then shuffled back to the cooler, opened the lid, and dropped the empty can in.

“Looks like it’s time to call it a day,” Bobby said. “Haul these two sorry-ass fish home. I’ll get the anchor.”

He caught the handholds on the lip of the cockpit, hopped lightly onto the gunwale, and started toward the front of the boat, crouched over, holding the grab rails. Harry set his beer can on the port engine cover, reeled in the two lines, carefully stripped the squid pieces off the hooks and tossed them over the side. He secured the hooks and stowed the rods on the gunwale rack.

Bobby swung back onto the deck, went to the wheel. He looked back at the horizon and, almost on cue, there was a flicker of lightning in the clouds. He turned the key to start the engines, inched the throttles forward. The twin diesels chugged, smoked, and the wake began to churn up behind them. Harry held on to the gunwale as Bobby brought the boat around, aimed it at the headland.

“Just in time,” Bobby said. With a crack of thunder, the rain began to sheet down around them. Harry moved under the cockpit for cover, listening to the heavy drops sound on the wood above him. Bobby turned on the wipers, pushed the throttles open. The engines coughed, roared throatily, and the boat plunged and bit into the water, spray lashing the side windows.

“Take the helm,” he said.

Harry put his beer in a cupholder on the cockpit wall, gripped the smooth wooden spokes of the wheel. Bobby ducked down into the cabin and emerged a minute later, wearing a sweatshirt and carrying a windbreaker.

“Here,” he said. Harry moved aside to let him take the wheel again. He pulled the thin jacket on over his T-shirt, zipped it.

“So tell me something,” Bobby said.

“What?” Harry reclaimed his beer.

“You were with the state police what, ten years?”

“Twelve.”

The houses on the shore were looming larger now. Bobby throttled back slightly, turned the wheel so they were running parallel to the beach. Rain washed the deck, ran out through the scuppers.

“You ever miss it?” Bobby said.

“Not much. Not lately.”

“You never thought about going back?”

“No.”

The bow rose and crashed back down. Harry spread his feet to keep his balance. They were cutting across the waves at an angle, Bobby steering for the channel markers. The long, bare beach of Sandy Hook stretched out to their left.

“They never found out who those people were, did they?” Bobby said. “The ones who shot you.”

Harry shook his head. “They found the car in Virginia two days later. Abandoned. No sign of the driver. The only prints they managed to lift belonged to the owner. He’d reported it stolen earlier that week. It was a dead end.”

Bobby shook his head slowly.

“It was my fault,” Harry said.

Bobby looked at him.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was too soon after Melissa. I thought going back to work quickly would help. But it was a mistake. I was careless.”

Bobby didn’t respond. They were rounding the tip of the Hook now, steering clear of the shallows. Harry moved out onto the deck, the wind flapping the sides of his jacket, the rain whipping against him. He looked back the way they’d come. Out there the sky was a gun-metal gray, lit by distant flashes of lightning. He watched the storm for a while, feeling the coldness of the rain, the bite of the wind through the thin jacket.

When he finally moved back under the shelter of the cockpit, Bobby glanced at him but said nothing. They headed into the bay, the water calmer now, and Bobby slowed the engines, flipped on the running lights. The early night was on them.

They looked toward the land, the open ocean at their back, and headed home.

The storm blew through the night. In the bedroom, with the wind and rain rattling the windows, he lay sleepless in the tangled sheets. Whenever he closed his eyes, the memory came back to him unbidden.

It had been a gray December afternoon, nearly two months to the day after Melissa’s death, the clouds heavy with the threat of snow. He’d spent the day at the federal building in Newark, meeting with an assistant Essex County prosecutor to compare notes on an extortion indictment that was headed nowhere fast. He’d felt distracted, restless. As he headed home on the Garden State Parkway, driving the unmarked Chevy Caprice he’d gotten from the pool, the first flakes of snow had begun to fall.

He’d been halfway home, just past Exit 135, when he saw the brown Nova. It was moving fast in the passing lane, doing seventy-five at least. He could see a man at the wheel, a woman beside him and, in the back, the unmistakable outline of a child’s car seat.

It had been years since he’d made a motor vehicle stop, but the sight of the car seat made him angry. They were doing almost twenty miles an hour above the speed limit in bad weather with a small child in the backseat.

He’d stepped on the gas, felt the Caprice’s big engine respond. He was on the Nova in seconds, saw the Jersey plates and the dented and gaping trunk held shut with an elastic cord. He switched on the red and blue flashers hidden inside the Caprice’s grille, gave a two-second burst on the siren, saw their brake lights go on, then the blinker.

The snow was heavier now, the road slick, the overcast afternoon slipping into true dark. He watched the Nova glide onto the shoulder and come to a stop, blinker still flashing.

He’d slowed, felt gravel beneath the tires as he steered onto the shoulder. To the right was a guardrail, then a deep, wooded gully. He stopped twelve feet behind the Nova, the Caprice angled slightly to the left as a shield against passing traffic. He could see the couple facing each other, arguing. He took the heavy black aluminum flashlight from the seat beside him, opened the door.

Three steps from the Caprice, he’d realized he hadn’t called in the plate. It was standard practice, never deviated from, the first thing they learned in road training. He stopped, considered going back. Instead, he lifted the flashlight, flicked it on, and let the beam play though the rear window of the Nova. Snow swirled in the light. The two stopped arguing, swiveled to look back at him. Light flashed from the woman’s eyes. She was Hispanic, in her twenties, long black hair tied back. The driver was older, darker. Harry moved closer, saw that the car seat was empty. The angry expression on the woman’s face grew into a faint, nervous smile that he couldn’t help but return.

The driver rolled down his window, but Harry went up on the passenger side instead, saw the woman turning to face him. She was pretty, with high cheekbones, wearing a brown Western shirt with pearl snaps. He let the flashlight beam drop slightly so as not to blind her. When he reached the window, he saw the folded jacket on her lap, shined the light inside.

When the window exploded, he stepped back quickly, instinctively, and then he was falling, his breath gone. He sat down hard on wet gravel. The flashlight hit the ground, rolled, and ended up pointing at the Nova’s right front tire. He tried to draw in breath, couldn’t, and then the pain began to bloom in his stomach. He brought his right hand to his shirt, felt the warmth and wetness there, and then the realization came:
I’ve been shot. Mother of Christ, I’ve been shot
.

They were shouting at each other in the car now, their voices loud, panicked. Cubes of safety glass glittered like diamonds around him. He heard the passenger side door unlock, the latch pop.

Coming out
, he thought,
to finish the job
.

His hand went to the Heckler & Koch in the belt holster beneath his overcoat. He drew it, his hand slick with blood, thumbed off the safety. A jolt of pain hit like a kick drum in his stomach, filled his body.
I’m dying
, he thought.
Whatever happens now doesn’t matter, because I’m already dying
.

The door opened wide. A pair of booted feet swung out, touched gravel. He raised the H&K, but it seemed to weigh too much. It was like holding a cinder block at arm’s length. The squat, square barrel wavered, swayed.

Broken glass crunched under the boots. The woman stepped out from behind the door. At first he couldn’t see the weapon—her right hand was empty. Then he saw the short-barreled revolver in her left, the dull metal finish of it. A small gun, he thought, watching it come up. Almost a toy.

She thumbed the hammer back with her right hand—a solid metallic click—and then he was looking into the darkness of the muzzle. She was taking aim with both hands, a look of concentration on her face, but he felt no fear, no alarm. A great calmness had come over him. When the woman leveled the gun at him, he carefully shot her twice in the chest.

She stepped back abruptly, as if trying to climb into the Nova butt first, without turning. Her gun went off and a bullet whined over his head into the trees. He fired again, saw the black spot blossom above her right eyebrow. She slumped back into the car, and then the tires squealed and her body jolted out, fell onto its side. The Nova lurched away, spraying gravel. He fired at it, heard the round puncture metal. The car fishtailed out onto the highway, the passenger door swinging wide and then thumping back shut. He watched the taillights grow smaller, the directional still flashing.

He lowered the H&K, looked at the woman. She was on her right side, facing him, brown eyes shining wetly. He looked into them, into the emptiness beyond, and then she rolled slowly, facedown onto the gravel.

He pressed the palm of his left hand over his wound, felt the warmth flowing out between his fingers. The crotch of his pants was soaked with it, as if he’d wet himself. Two cars flew past without slowing. The lights in the grille of the Caprice were still flashing, like some miniature carnival ride. He could hear the crackle of the radio inside.

The H&K was suddenly too heavy to hold, so he set it down. The snow blew around him, filled the air, but he couldn’t feel it. Even the pain in his stomach was easing.

He tried to lower himself back slowly, felt hard ground beneath his head. He looked up into the gray sky, watched the snow spiraling down around him.

Melissa
, he thought.
Look what I did. Look at how stupid I was. How did I let this happen?

He felt her presence suddenly, like a warmth in the air beside him. The scent of her perfume. It made him smile. And then there was nothing but grayness and drifting snow, and all the pain was gone.

There was a framed photograph on the wall behind Ray Washington’s desk. Harry moved closer to look at it.

It had been taken at the State Police Academy in Sea Girt during their training: two ranks of cadets in fatigue jackets and caps, standing at parade rest on a cold morning, the barracks looming behind them. He remembered the day. It had marked the midway point of their five months at the academy. They’d survived ten weeks of physical and mental abuse and were proud of it. Ray stood front and center, one of only six black faces in the group of ninety. Harry was in the second row, his cap partially obscuring his face. They both looked impossibly young.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Ray said as he came back into the room. “Young and stupid. Ready to eat up the world.”

“It feels like another life.”

“It was.”

Harry turned to face him. Ray wore a tailored gray suit, but his tie was loose, the jacket unbuttoned. He looked like a lawyer at the end of a hard day in court. His head was shaved close and his scalp gleamed, and though he’d put on more than fifty pounds since the photo had been taken, his posture was still military erect, his arms and shoulders thick with muscle.

He dropped a wide manila envelope onto the desk. “Thought you’d want to see these right away,” he said. “They’re just Xeroxes, but the guy who gave them to me would have his ass in a sling if anybody found out. He owed me a favor. Now I owe him one. Don’t ask me his name, because I won’t tell you.”

“He with Major Crimes?”

“Yeah, what’s left of it. I think he’s looking to get out, though. Tired of the politics.”