A Shiver of Wonder (20 page)

David bit his lip. It was
not
what he
had wanted to hear come out of Bill’s mouth, not in the least.
“Why?” he choked out.

Bill closed his own eyes for a second.
“Because,” he answered, and his voice was edged with toughness.
“Because they deserved it, that’s why.”

“How can you…” But David couldn’t finish the
question. He shook his head, stymied by both his physical
discomfort, and the unwillingness to face the fact that Bill Lopes,
his friend and drinking buddy, was a double murderer.

“Heck was a louse,” stated Bill. “I hated
that no-good piece of shit from the first time I laid eyes on
him.”

David could see the anger rippling through
Bill’s thoughts, spreading its power through his physical being as
well.

“I didn’t know he was hittin’ her, but I
shoulda,” he went on. “She couldn’t hide it no more that one day,
but I’d figgered it out by then. I could just tell, the way he
always swaggered in and treated her like a trash can or a mop.
That’s why I busted on him a few months ago. The door wasn’t closed
all the way, and I heard her cry out. So I just went right on in
and broke it up.”

David’s eyebrows had risen to the sky.

“She didn’t tell ya, huh?”

But his expression had answered for him.
David eked out a “No,” but Bill was already speaking again.

“He’d been grippin’ her arms so tight they
was turnin’ purple. Holdin’ her with her face down on the kitchen
counter. ‘Why not? Why not?’ he kept yellin’ at her over and over
again. Well, I showed ’im why not. I kicked his legs out from under
’im, and got ’im right down on the floor ’imself, my knees stuck up
in his back. ‘Don’t you ever hit her again!’ I told ’im. And I told
’im again and again, givin’ his stupid-ass head a good knock on the
floor each time so he’d learn the message good.”

David was almost petrified, imagining the
hulking, furious Bill Lopes beating the crap out of Heck Vance
while a terrified Janice Templeton looked on.

“And don’t think I’m stupid,” added Bill. “I
told ’im that it would stay between us, what I did to ’im. No
police, no nobody. I wasn’t gonna rat on Heck, but I also didn’t
want ’im gettin’ some of his asshole buddies together and comin’
after me for shamin’ ’im.” One of Bill’s hands flew into the air to
wave the idea away. “Course, I also told ’im not to lay another
hand on Janice, ’n you and me both know he didn’t keep
that
promise. Man like him, he couldn’t. No way.”

David understood. The Heck Vances of this
world never could learn a useful lesson, no matter how well it had
been taught.

“That day, he waltzed on by ’bout eleven
thirty, jus’ like I said. I was out front, mowin’ the lawn. Janice,
she’d been botherin’ me to get at this leak under her kitchen sink
for a while, but I’d been puttin’ it off. So a bit later, as I was
headin’ back on in here, I hear him yell after me: ‘Hey! Fix-it
man. Ya wanna get in here and fix this Goddamn sink?’ I turn to
look at him, and there he is, just standin’ there glarin’ at me
from her door like he was gonna come beat on me if I didn’t jump to
do his business. But I kept my cool and said sure, I’d be back in a
couple minutes or so.”

Bill had begun to grip the arm of his chair.
His eyes were focused, his voice was taut. “I got my toolbox out,
just pissed as hell. I ain’t no servant, and if I was gonna be
anybody’s servant, I sure as hell wasn’t gonna be his! But on my
way past the fountain, I had an idea. I’d drained it before I did
the mowin’, cuz it’s easier to clean up when it’s empty ’n dry, and
one of them stone pieces that hides the pump motor was sittin’ on
the ground, right in my way. I hoisted it, and slipped it into my
toolbox.”

David was rapt, knowing full well where this
was headed. Bill wasn’t speaking to him anymore; he was telling his
tale to the room, or to himself. He didn’t need David as an
audience to continue.

“So I go on in to Janice’s apartment, no way
was I gonna knock politely on the door. And there’s Heck, waitin’
for me in the kitchen with his arms crossed and this shit-eatin’
grin on his puss. I woulda belted him right there, but kept it
steady. ‘Where’s the leak?’ I asked him. ‘Under the sink,’ he said.
‘What are ya, stupid?’ So I get down on my knees and look, but
pretend I can’t see none of the water that sure ’nuff is drippin’
ever’where in there. I stand back up and say, ‘Show me.’ And he
gets all pissed off, ’n starts insultin’ me again. But he’s gotta
prove his point, so down he goes. And by the time he’s halfway up,
still calling me a stupid, blind old man, I’d laid into him with
the stone I’d picked up.” Bill displayed what was almost a smile.
“One smack probably took care of the job, but I gave ’im a few
more, just to be sure.”

And David could easily imagine Bill giving
that chore his all, ensuring that at least
this
boyfriend of
Janice’s would never hit her again.

“It’s been harder than the other time,” Bill
said, his voice lower and pensive. “Maybe it’s age. Or maybe I just
ain’t as sure of myself as I was then.”

David didn’t know if he should respond. He
certainly didn’t
want
to. But Bill was once again looking at
him, seeking, perhaps, some sort of reaction, condemning or not.
“Did the other guys get blamed?” he asked hesitantly. “For Jim
Frisk? Had they been there at all?”

A chuckle escaped as Bill leaned toward him.
“Oh, they’d been there, all right. They’d done a good number on old
Jim. I found him lying there, I wasn’t gonna let
that
opportunity go to waste. I finished ’im, went a quarter mile out
back to bury the cookin’ pot I did it with, and then ran back home
and called the police.”

“Like you had Janice do when she came home
in the middle of the night.”

“Yuh. I was actually hopin’ she’d be comin’
back the next day, but it worked out. Just ever’one lost a night’s
sleep, and we got that Ormsky all up in our faces.”

David found himself unable to withhold his
own chuckle. “Did they arrest or catch the guys who’d come after
Jim Frisk?”

Bill shook his head. “Nope. Same deal, they
skipped town. My Mum, she had her suspicions ’bout me, ’cause she
knew how I could never stand ’im. But I was eighteen, and ready to
get outta the nest anyways. I left a few weeks later. Saw her a few
times more before she died, but she never asked. Probably shoulda
told her, she at least woulda known I cared.”

Another soft chuckle emerged from David. It
was almost funny, sitting here and listening as Bill described how
he’d offed two men, some forty-odd years apart. He had come to the
cottage angry, worked up and furious for having been lied to and
duped, and yet now he was closing in on calm, his still-heightened
breathing aside. All he needed was a cold can of Miller Genuine
Draft in his hand, and it could have been any evening of the week,
with a game about to come on, and Bill and he shooting the
shit.

“What did you do with the stone?” David
asked aloud. The ache in his head was dissipating, slowly, slowly
lifting away.

“Stone?” Bill seemed bewildered.

“From the fountain. The one you used
to…”

“Oh. That.” He almost looked embarrassed. “I
cleaned it. That afternoon, when I worked on the fountain. I had
hosed it down some right after, but then got to worryin’ that some
of the stuff had dripped off as I headed back here. It was when I
was checkin’ the common area that those two thugs showed up ’n
began bangin’ on the door, hollerin’ for Heck to come out.”

“So it’s in the fountain now. Where it’s
been all along.”

“Yuh. Nice and tidy, clean as a
whistle.”

David was pleased for some reason that Bill
had stated this without a hint of pride in his actions.

“Bill,” he said quietly.

“Yeah?” Bill had reclined in his chair, but
now sat up again. He didn’t look anxious so much as resigned.

“What about Clair?”

The bewilderment surfaced again. Clearly, it
wasn’t a question he’d anticipated. “What about ’er?”

But after he’d spoken, David caught just a
shadow of the guarded wariness that Bill had demonstrated with
Ormsby. “Did she… have anything to do with this?” he asked.

Bill’s hand shot up again. He looked angry
as he practically threw himself backwards. “They gave notice.
Standard thirty days. Gotta start showin’ the place again. You know
anyone lookin’, send ’em my way.”

But David smelled the diversion, and it
stank. “What did she say to you?”

Bill snorted. “That woman? That they’d be
out by the end of the day. Broke the lease, but the owners’ll nick
the deposit.”

“No. Bill. What did Clair say to you?” But
David felt ill once more. The possibility of never seeing Clair
again was worse than disturbing, for as much as he didn’t know who
or what she was, he felt an overwhelming desire to understand her,
to understand how such strange profundities could keep emerging
from the mouth of a little girl.

Bill’s eyes had been plying the ratty
woodwork above one of the windows, but they gradually lowered to
meet David’s gaze. “How’d ya know?” he asked gruffly.

“I just did. What did she say?”

But Bill didn’t want to tell. He studied the
television, the curtains, the floor, the piles of magazines that
looked as though they hadn’t been riffled through in decades, an
unopened can of Miller Genuine Draft that had somehow escaped him
before.

And then, yet again, he looked at David.
“Fine,” he said. “It don’t make no sense, no how.” His fingers,
though, were working over the arm of his chair once more. “Ya know
how I saw ’er take your hand the other day?” he asked.

David nodded.

“Well, she did that to me, too. A week ago.
It’s why I… why I was so curious about what she said to you.”

“Oh. That makes sense.” And it did. Bill had
actually been pushy – for Bill – that day, but David got it. He’d
felt the same determined need to know what Clair had said to
Bill!

“I was comin’ toward the courtyard after
gettin’ the mail, and she was comin’ out. Or so it looked – I never
heard the gate shut. I stepped back so she could pass, but the next
thing I know, she’d taken ahold of me like she did you.” He lifted
his hand and stared at it. “Her fingers – they were hot, like
they’d been in an oven or somethin’. It was like a power that
flowed through her, and I couldn’t move. I couldn’t let go, even
though it just seemed wrong, me standin’ there holdin’ this girl’s
hand in full sight of anyone that came by.” Bill’s arm sank to his
chair again. “And then she said it. ‘If you do it again, the same
thing’ll happen.’ It was screwy. And when I asked what the hell she
meant by it, that was when she smiled. ‘You’ll know, Bill. You’ll
know when,’ she said. ‘Everything’ll be okay, just like before.’
And then she let go of me, and ran on upstairs to ’er
apartment.”

David was riveted. Clair
had
arranged
everything! She had done nothing wrong, she’d taken no physical
part in anything, but her prints were all over
everything
that had occurred at the Rainbow Arms the previous Wednesday. Once
again, he felt both awe and fear regarding the first grader from
Apartment 2B. Once again, the stilted phrases that she had spoken
to him while holding his own hand began to roam his thoughts.

Four things that you love, you will
lose.

And if
that
wasn’t a completely
screwy statement, he didn’t know what was.

But one of them could be yours again. And I
hope for that, David, I do.

Combine all of that with her pronouncement
that he would know himself, and David could probably book a
psychiatrist for the next ten
years
just to explore the
endless possibilities to which her utterances could lead.

Bill gently cleared his throat. David
returned to the cottage.

“So…” began Bill, and then he looked down at
the floor again. “I guess… I should ask…”

“It’s not going anywhere, Bill,” David
stated simply. He had spoken quietly not only because he didn’t
want his headache to rebound, but also because it was a subject
best addressed discreetly. “That’s a promise.”

Bill swallowed once more, and almost looked
as if he were going to cry. “And I promise you, David. I’ll never
do anything like that again. Ever. Never.”

As a tear actually stole its way onto Bill’s
grizzled face, David couldn’t help a gibe. “Better not,” he
replied. “If you continue your pattern, you’ll be well over a
hundred the next time. I’d be seventy-something, but I’d still have
to turn you over to Detective Ormsby.”

A wet guffaw shook Bill’s entire body. “He’s
actually next on my list,” he said before stifling what could have
been either a cough or a laugh.

“Not if I get there first,” was David’s
response. “And on my list, he’s number one through ten right
now.”

Bill closed his eyes as the tears flooded
in, running in streams down his cheeks, spilling in great drops
onto his pants.

“I’m going to go now, Bill,” David said. He
stood, and cautiously made his way toward his friend, grateful to
find the dizziness gone, his control over his body restored. He
placed a hand on Bill’s quivering shoulder. “I’m not going to say
you did the right thing. But I also don’t believe you did the wrong
thing. Either time.” He gave his shoulder a firm squeeze. “I’ll see
ya. Later this week. Beers are on me.”

And then he turned toward the door of the
cottage without looking back. And he let himself out.

David stood for a few minutes in front of
Bill’s door, unwilling to return just yet to the claustrophobic
confines of his apartment. Johnson would no doubt be more than
eager to go out, but the idea of meandering the avenues of Shady
Grove while he mulled over all that he had just learned was about
as appealing as revisiting his college years, knowing all that he
knew as an adult.