Damaged Goods (18 page)

Hershel watched Kyrellis come in and speak briefly to Carl before finding his way to the open office door. Kyrellis paused there before stepping inside, smoothing the silver along his temples with his thick hand. His face was aged with soft lines, and his eyes made him look perpetually remorseful. He took the chair opposite Hershel’s desk without waiting for an invitation, unbuttoning his coat as he sat.

“I heard on the police scanner there was a fight down at the migrant camp this morning. Looks like your man got the worst end of it.”

Hershel leaned back in his chair and bent a paper clip between his fingers. It figured that Kyrellis listened to a police scanner.

“I don’t mean to tell you how to run your business, but a loser like that will only cause trouble.”

“He’s been decent help,” Hershel said.

Kyrellis glanced over his shoulder into the warehouse and shrugged. “At least he’s white.”

“What do you want, Kyrellis?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Why so unfriendly?”

“I don’t like what you’re doing.”

Kyrellis dug through his coat pocket and dropped a photograph on Hershel’s desk.

Hershel stared down at the little girl in the picture, her hair in ponytails, wearing knee socks and nothing else. She lay back on a bed, legs spread. Too young even to have breasts. His stomach lurched. Her flat stare couldn’t hide her pain. He swiped up the picture and tore it into pieces.

“Hey!” Kyrellis came out of his seat. “That could’ve earned us both some money now.”

“You sick fucker! You want to exploit her. I want to protect her.”

“That’s very admirable of you,” Kyrellis said genuinely as he sat back again. “But a girl like that is too far gone to protect. You think you can undo what another man has done? Face it, Swift, she’s damaged goods.” He sighed heavily. “It’s okay that you tore that one up. I was planning to give it to you, anyway. I have others at home.”

“You bastard.”

“I’m losing my patience with you.” Kyrellis got to his feet again and stepped toward the door. “I know he’s a cop. There’s a badge on the dresser in one of the pictures. And I know she’s from Wyoming. It’s just a matter of time before I find the
right
cop.”

“And then what?”

“And then he’s going to pay me to keep these in a safe place. Unless you’d like to do that for him.”

“I’ll turn you in before I do that.”

“No, you won’t. If you turn me in I’ll hand over the evidence that you murdered Albert Darling.”

Hershel stared at Kyrellis, unable to find words for response.

“I thought you were just playing me, but I can see now that you really don’t remember. You don’t remember that you were coming back from disposing of his body the night you had your accident. The evidence is all over your car, which—” He looked solemnly at Hershel. “Which belongs to me.”

Hershel’s breath evacuated and his scar ached. He suffered a dark and fleeting image of the broad backs of hogs and mud. He could smell the stench. “That’s not true,” he said, completely unsure.

“Really? Then
you
tell
me
what happened that night? Where were you coming from?” Kyrellis waited for a response, but none came. “You’ll go to prison for the rest of your life. How will you protect her then?”

A few customers lingered in the dining room as Silvie wiped down the empty tables, preparing for the end of her shift. Her feet were on fire. She’d have to get more comfortable shoes, and she guessed that she had enough in tip money between the two days to buy a pair if she was frugal. She would ask Karen to recommend a place once Hershel had the car running.

She didn’t know why she’d seduced him. The first time she slept with Jacob, he’d been coming by the tavern to get her for nearly six weeks. He’d worked his way up to the big event. After the ice-cream cone that first day, he’d hinted that she might like to do something for him, but he didn’t say what exactly. On the second afternoon that he took her out, he asked her to take off her top as she sipped the root-beer float he’d bought her. They were parked at the reservoir on a cold spring day, but the sun felt warm through the windshield of his pickup. She understood that it wasn’t right. But what else could she do except comply with his wishes?

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, everything is going to be okay,” Jacob had told her, which confused her more than it comforted.

Kyrellis stood in the doorway and spied her, then surveyed the room, choosing a table in the corner near the window, where he chatted convivially with the next table. Silvie looked for Karen. Technically, her shift was over; she could pull her apron off and walk out. She peered through the service window into the kitchen.

“Got a new table out here,” Silvie said.

Karen set down a large bucket of bleach water and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked exhausted. “Can you stay a little longer and handle it?”

Silvie glanced back at the man, who was watching her from the corner of his eye as he recommended wineries. “Sure.”

“Afternoon, Silvie,” he said as she approached.

She pulled an order pad from her pocket. “What can I get you?”

“Just coffee.”

“Coming up.” She set a cup in front of him on the buttery wood, but her hand shook and she spilled the coffee. She leaned in to wipe up the mess and he took a napkin from her, calmly finishing the job. When he was done he smiled up at her, and had he not stolen the most relevant and damning thing to her in the entire world, she would have thought him to be a warm, engaging gentleman. He had a way about him, incongruent with what she knew.

“Please return them,” she said quietly.

“Who is he?”

“I’ll tell him who
you
are before I tell you that.”

“I know he’s a cop.” Kyrellis eyed the table next to him, but the couple were deep in conversation.

“What do you want?”

“I might be willing to trade some of them back to you for a favor or two,” he said. “I’m sure we can work something out.” His eyes slid across her shoulders and down her front.

She had hoped this man had a price, but being faced with the certainty of doing him favors made her stomach roll.

He turned his attention to the menu. “Certainly the idea isn’t that distasteful. Is it?”

“Tell me exactly what it would take. For all of them. Not
some
. All!”

“I’ll have to think about that.” He poured sugar into his coffee and stirred slowly. “I think your friend, whoever he is, will pay a high price. Tell me his name and I’ll give you back all the ones where we can tell it’s you.”

“He’ll kill me. He’ll hunt me down and kill me like a rat.”

The couple at the next table went silent, the man eyeing Silvie
and Kyrellis. Kyrellis smiled, as if to tell the man it was a joke, and he returned to his conversation.

“Then he’ll kill
you,
” she whispered.

“I don’t think your judgment is reliable in this matter. After all, you’re already sleeping with the most dangerous man you could possibly find.”

Silvie struggled to follow him.

“Ask your new friend Hershel where he was coming from the night of his accident.” Kyrellis lowered his voice. “Seems you have an appetite for murderers, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

Kyrellis stood and placed two dollars on the table. “That’s for the coffee.” He then pulled a twenty from his wallet and pressed it into her hand. “That’s for the service I think you’re capable of.”

She tossed it on the table, but he was already on his way out. When she turned away, the couple at the other table were staring again. Silvie bit her lip, whisked up the twenty, and shoved it into her apron.

Hershel stood in the middle of his wrecked office, his knuckles bleeding and his head throbbing. He kicked the upturned file cabinet. The drawers of his desk were broken, mingled with the shattered remnants of a coffee cup.

Kyrellis had gotten the best of him—sent him searching vainly for anything to put this man, Albert Darling, back in his brain, back into the context of his life. But Hershel had found nothing, and the harder he’d looked, the more frantic he’d become, until he’d suffered a fury so deep that he couldn’t stop himself. He had let loose three months of ineptitude, inability, lost identity.

Hershel slumped down in his office chair, spent and nauseated.

A knock at the door, and a muffled voice. “Boss? You okay?”

Hershel closed his eyes. This wasn’t the first attempt Carl had made. “Yeah,” he said.

There was a silence on the other side. Then Carl said, “You need anything?”

“No.” Hershel kicked at the pile of papers near his foot.

Carl swept the warehouse floor, preparing to lock up until Monday afternoon, when they would allow people in to preview the sale. The ad had run in the
Hillsboro Argus
the previous day, generating a slew of phone calls from dealers and collectors wanting specific details about the architectural items. Another would run in the Saturday
Oregonian
in the morning. It would be a good sale, with a big crowd, and he noticed that Hershel was assembling a long list of specific items in a particular order. Carl had found the list on Hershel’s desk that morning, grateful, and endeavored to organize the merchandise into a systematic pattern to match the order in which Hershel would call it up.

The front door creaked open and Silvie came in, shaking rain off her jacket.

“Afternoon,” Carl called.

She paused when she saw his face. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just got into a little scrape is all.” He hoped the swelling would be gone by the Tuesday-evening sale. He was tired of the attention it drew.

“I’ve got feet to match your face,” she said, taking a seat on a box near the door and pulling off one shoe. She peeled down her sock and exposed a red and oozing blister on her heel the size of a quarter.

He whistled. “That looks downright angry.”

She picked at the skin around it, scrunching her face against the pain. “I’m not used to waiting tables. And these shoes are terrible.”

Carl went into the concession stand and retrieved a small first-aid kit.

“Is Hershel here? I didn’t see his truck.”

He knelt down on the floor and unfolded a small wipe soaked in alcohol. “Went over to Les Schwab in Sherwood after some tires.”

Silvie sucked her breath in as he laid the alcohol pad on the blister. “That stings.”

“It’s good for it. Hold it there a sec. How’s your other foot?”

“Same as this one.”

He felt her eyes on him and glanced up. She looked away and began unlacing her other shoe.

“Where was Hershel coming from the night he had his accident?”

Carl took his time cleaning the blister and covering it with a bandage. He started swabbing the matching blister on her other foot, carefully weighing his response. “Why?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know. Something Kyrellis said.”

“When did you talk to Kyrellis?”

“He stopped at the South Store. A special visit just for me.”

“Hershel told me that he’s got something that belongs to you,” Carl said. When he saw her cheeks burn red, he wished he hadn’t brought it up. “Did you get it back?”