Cold in July (2 page)

I could see the flashlight beam playing across the living
room, flitting here and there like a moth trying to escape from a jar, and I
could hear shoes sliding gently across the carpet.

I tried to swallow the grapefruit in my throat as I inched forward
and stepped gingerly around the corner into the living room.

The burglar’s back was to me. The night-light in the
backyard shone through the glass door and framed the man. He was tall and thin,
wearing dark clothes and a dark wool cap. He was shining his light at a
painting on the wall, probably deciding if it was worth stealing or not.

It wasn’t. It was a cheapo landscape from the county fair.
Ann and I knew the artist and that was the reason we bought it. It covered that
part of the wall as well as a Picasso.

The burglar came to the same conclusion about its worth, or
lack of, because he turned from the painting, and as he did, his light fell on
me.

For a moment we both stood like fence posts, then his light
wavered and he reached to his belt with his free hand, and instinctively I knew
he was reaching for a gun. But I couldn’t move. It was as if concrete had been
p toe had bumped into my veins and pores and had instantly hardened.

He brought the gun out of his belt and fired. The bullet
snapped past my head and punched the wall behind me. Without really thinking
about it, I jerked up the .38 and pulled the trigger.

His head whipped back, then forward. The wool cap nodded to
one side but didn’t come off. He stepped back stiffly and sat down on the couch
as if very tired. His revolver fell to the floor, then the flashlight dropped
from the other hand.

I didn’t want to take my eyes off the man, but I found I was
tracking the progress of the flashlight as if hypnotized by it. It whirled
halfway across the floor toward me, stopped, rolled back a pace, quit moving,
its beam pooled at my feet like watery honey.

Suddenly I realized my ears were ringing with the sound of
gunfire, and that the concrete had gone out of me. I was shaking, still
pointing the gun in the direction of the burglar, who seemed to be doing
nothing more than lounging on the couch.

I took a deep breath and started forward.

“Is he dead?”

I damn near jumped a foot. It was Ann behind me.

“Goddamn,” I said. “I don’t know. Turn on the light.”

“You okay?”

“Except for shitting myself, fine. Turn on the light.”

Ann flicked the switch and I edged forward, holding the gun
in front of me, half-expecting him to jump off the couch and grab me.

But he didn’t move. He just sat there, looking very composed
and very alive.

Except for his right eye. That spoiled the lifelike effect.
The eye was gone. There was just a dark, wet hole where it used to be. Blood
welled at the corners, spilled out, and ran down his cheek like scarlet tears.

I found myself staring at his good eye. It was still shiny,
but going dull. It looked as soft and brown as a doe’s.

I glanced away, only to find something equally awful. On the
wall above the couch, partially splashed on the cheap landscape, I could see
squirts of blood, brains and little white fragments that might have been bone
splinters. I thought of what the exit wound at the back of the man’s head would
look like. I’d read somewhere that the bullet going out made a hole many times
bigger than the one it made going in. I wondered in a lightning flash of
insanity if I could stick my fist in there and stir it around.

It wasn’t something I really wanted to know.

I put the revolver in the pocket of my robe, wavered. The
room got hot, seemed to melt like wax and me with it. I went down and my hands
went out. I grabbed at the dead man’s knees so I wouldn’t go to the floor; I
could feel the fading warmth of his flesh through his pants.

“Don’t look at him,” Ann said.

“God, his goddamn brains are all over the fucking wall.”

Then Ann became sick. She fell down beside me, her arm
around my shoulders, and like monks before a shrine, we dipped our heads. But
instead of prayers flying out of our mouths, it was vomit, splattering the
carpet and the dead man’s shoes.

Jordan slept through it all.

2

The cops were nice. Real nice. There were ten of them. Six
in uniform, the others plainclothes detectives. The detectives weren’t anything
like the television cops I expected. No frumpy guys in open trench coats
dripping chili dogs down their ties. They even wore nice suits. No bad manners.
Very polite. No suspicions. They took in what had happened easily and surely.

The man in charge of the investigation was a lieutenant
named Price. He looked like a movie star. Must have been about thirty-five. Had
perfectly combed hair and bright blue eyes that matched his expensive suit. He
had such a shoe shine it jumped at you.

He came over and touched me on the arm. “You doing okay, Mr.
Dane?”

“Yeah,” I said, still tasting the aftereffects of the vomit.
“Peachy.”

“You couldn’t have done much else. He shot at you first.”

I nodded. I didn’t regret what I had done, just hated that I
had been forced to do it.

“I had to kill a man once,” Price said. “In the line of
duty. But it was tough getting over. To be honest, you never quite get over it.
If you’re human you shouldn’t. But you can’t blame yourself.”

“I don’t. But it doesn’t make me feel any better.”

Ann had gone into the bedroom with Jordan, who had finally
awakened to the sounds of the police poking around. She was keeping him in the
back so he wouldn’t have to see the dead man.

Dead man.

I glanced at the couch where the man had been sitting, at
what I imagined was the indentation his body had made, but knew truthfully was
a permanent impression formed by long wear and weak springs. There was a messy
swipe of blood on the cushions to mark his passing, and the stuff on the wall
and across the landscape looked in that odd moment like a wild abstract
painting.

I remembered how the justice of the peace had come in
looking sleepy-eyed, wearing a pajama top and jeans with one pants leg stuck
down in a cowboy boot, the other pulled over. He pronounced the man dead and
grumbled about how even small towns should have coroners. He went away then,
and the police checked the corpse over, took photographs, and two men from the
funeral home carted off the body.

I looked at the wall some more, and the blood mess no longer
looked like a painting, but like someone had tossed some rotten tomatoes
against it. That thought made me woozy, and I dry heaved because there was
nothing left inside me to throw up.

I took a deep breath, but that didn’t help. It contained the
sour aroma of stale vomit and the coppery smell of blood.

“Better sit down,” Price said.

“I’m all right,” I said.

“Sit down anyway.”

I guess my face had gone white. Price helped me to a chair
and squatted down beside me.

“Should I get you some water?” he asked. “Something?”

“I’m all right. Do you people know this man by any chance?”

“Quite well. Name is Freddy Russel. Small-time guy. Did
burglaries from time to time, mostly in this area, which is where he’s from,
I’m sorry to say. Been in and out of the joint, just like his old man. You did
the creep a favor.”

“Sure.”

“You’d be surprised. Sometimes guys like that get careless
on purpose, just hoping to get caught, get back to the joint where it’s easier
for them. Or maybe they hope for something a little more permanent. Like a
bullet.”

“He wasn’t trying to get killed when he took a shot at me.”

Price smiled. “Good point. So much for backyard psychology.”

“Thanks for trying to make me feel better. It’s decent of
you.”

“Like I said, I been through this. Listen, you think you
could come down to the station? Let me get a formal statement? Won’t take long.
Patrol car will take you and bring you back. We’ll leave a patrolman here with
your wife and boy. She can come in tomorrow sometime to make her statement.”

“All right,” I said. “Let me tell Ann and I’ll get dressed.”

3

It was easy. I told Price the same thing I told him at home,
except it was more detached now, as if it had happened to someone else and I
had witnessed it from a distance.

The room where he took my statement smelled of stale
cigarette smoke, but that was the only thing that fit my image of a police
station. The room looked more like an insurance company office. I had seen too
many damn television shows and movies, expected dust, cobwebs, empty coffee
cups, half-eaten pizza and too much light.

There wasn’t much in the room in the way of furniture or
decoration. Some citations on the wall, a file cabinet, a neat desk, a
typewriter, paper in the roller, and Price behind the keys. In fact, Price and
I were the only ones in the room.

It took twenty minutes for me to tell it again, top to
bottom.

“What now?” I asked.

“Not much,” Price said. “It’ll go to the grand jury. They’ll
look over your statement, your wife’s, mine, then they’ll No Bill you. You
won’t even have to go to court.”

“You’re sure?”

“Open-shut case of self-defense. He broke in with intent to
rob, took a shot at you. Your gun was legal. He’s a known crook, you’re an
upstanding citizen in the community. We haven’t any reason to suspect you of
anything. It’s over. Except for your gun. We’ll keep it a while, until you get
the No Bill, then we’ll return it. I’ll have an officer take you home.”

· · ·

When I got home the policeman who had stayed with Ann nodded
at me and went away with the other officer. I sank down in the living room
chair and looked at the couch. I didn’t think I could ever sit there again. I
determined that tomorrow I would have it carried off and buy a new one. I
wanted to get rid of that bloodied landscape too and have the wall repainted.
Christ, I felt like moving, and would have if I could have afforded it.

Ann sat on the edge of the chair and put her arm around me.
“You okay?”

“Okay as I get. Go to bed, honey. I’ll come along.”

“I’m going to clean up a little… before Jordan gets up.”

It occurred to me what she meant, the wall, couch and
painting. She just couldn’t put it into words.

“Is it all right if we do?” I asked. “Evidence and all.
Won’t the police mind?”

“The officer told me any time we wanted to clean up to go
ahead. They’ve taken photographs, done all they intend to do.”

“I’ll help.”

          
· · ·

We got a plastic bucket of warm, soapy water and rubbed the
couch down, threw the painting away, and wiped the wall as clean as we could
get it. The couch was ruined. The blood had soaked into it, turning it dark in
spots, giving the room a faint odor to remind us of what had happened.

We cleaned up the carpet and put baking soda down to get rid
of the smell of vomit, and it helped a little. When we were finished, I poured
the soapy water into the kitchen sink, watched it swirl darkly down the drain,
tossed away the rags we’d used and sprayed some air freshener about.

I don’t know why, but the freshener struck me as funny in a
grim kind of way. I kept imagining a commercial for air freshener where the
announcer was saying how it covered up not only the odor of fish and onions,
but blood, brains and vomit as well.

Ann showered and I washed up in the bathroom sink, feeling
like Lady Macbeth struggling with her damn spot, even though there wasn’t a
drop of blood on me.

Death in reality certainly wasn’t like television death.

It was nasty and it smelled and it clung to you like a bad
disease.

Self-defense or not, I didn’t feel like Dirty Harry. I just
felt bad, worse than I had ever felt in my life.

“Let’s go to bed,” Ann said. She was stepping out of the
shower and she looked good. Thirty-five years had been kind to her. Her breasts
sagged a little maybe, but the rest of her was nice and the breasts were
nothing to run me off. She was my woman and I loved her, and I knew she was
offering herself to me. I could tell by the way she moved as she pulled the
shower cap off and let her long blond hair fall like a shower of light onto her
shoulders, by the slightly exaggerated stretches and the way she slid the towel
slowly up her long legs and moved it seductively over her damp pubic hair.

She smiled at me. “We can snuggle, you know?”

“I’m not really sleepy,” I said stupidly.

“So, we can snuggle a lot. Sleep later.”

“We can try that,” I said. “Go ahead, and I’ll be to bed in
a moment. Got a few things to do yet.”

She finished drying, stepped into her panties, extending her
legs through them nicely. It was almost enough to excite me, even after what
had happened earlier. Almost.

She put on her robe, kissed me on the cheek and went out of
there with her soft soap scent lingering in the air.

I took a leak, showered, and brushed my teeth. I put on my
robe, went through the house testing locks on the doors leading outside. They
were all fine except for the jimmied door, of course. I checked the windows
too, and when I was finished in Jordan’s room, I stopped by his bed and put his
teddy bear back under the covers and tucked them around him. I felt like
dragging up a chair and watching him sleep, but I went out to the garage and
got some wire and pliers and rigged a sort of latch on the door Freddy Russel
had broken.

Then I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of
milk. The house felt strange to me, like it wasn’t mine anymore. It was no
longer sanctuary. It had been invaded. I felt like a rape victim. Violated. Our
house was no longer private, full of our spirits, thoughts, even our arguments.
It was nothing more than a thing of glass, wood and brick that any thug with a
crowbar or a screwdriver could bust open.