Four Live Rounds (2 page)

“So I’m not gonna be an uncle? Why the hell
else would you ask me over this late?”

“Go ahead, Laura.”

She pressed play on the answering
machine.

They listened to the message, and when it
finished, Martin said, “Play it again.”

After the message ended, they sat in silence,
Martin with his brow furrowed, shaking his head.

He finally said, “I know you’re too much of a
cheap bastard to have caller ID or anything invented in the
twenty-first century, so did you star-sixty-nine it?”

“Tried, but Mom called literally the second I
picked up the phone.”

Martin undid the top two buttons of his navy
shirt, ran his fingers around the collar to loosen it.

“Could just be a prank,” he said. “Maybe
someone held the phone up to the television during a particular
scene in a movie.”

“If that’s what it is, I don’t recognize the
movie.”

Martin quickly redid the buttons on his
shirt, said, “What do you think you’ve got there?”

“I think someone’s phone got jiggled at the
worst possible moment, and we were on their speed dial.”

“You call nine-one-one?”

“Called you.”

Martin nodded. “There’s gotta be a way to
find that number. You know, something you dial other than
star-sixty-nine.”

Tim said, “Star-seventy?”

“I don’t know, something like that.”

“We tried to call the phone company a little
while ago, but they’re closed until eight a.m. tomorrow.”

Martin looked at Laura, said, “You okay,
sweetie? You don’t look so hot.”

Tim saw it, too—something about her had
changed, her face seasick yellow, hands trembling
imperceptibly.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You sure? You look like you’re about to blow
chunks all over your new carpet.”

“I said I’m fine.”

Martin stood. “I need to use the little
girl’s room.”

Laura watched him walk out of the room and
down the first-floor hallway, and only when the bathroom door had
closed, did she look back at Tim and whisper, “You see it?”

“See what?”

“When he unbuttoned his shirt a minute ago,
it exposed his white tee-shirt underneath.”

“So?”

“So I saw blood on it, and I think he saw me
looking at it, because he buttoned his shirt up again real
fast.”

Tim felt something constrict in his
stomach.

“Why does he have blood on his shirt,
Tim?”

The toilet flushed.

“Listen, when he comes back out, you say
since you aren’t feeling well, you’re going to bed.” The faucet
turned on. “Then go upstairs and wait several minutes. I’m gonna
offer Martin a drink. We’ll sit in the kitchen, and you sneak back
down and go outside, see if you can get into his squad car.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think he brought his cell phone
inside with him. He usually keeps it in a little pouch on his belt.
Probably left it in the car. Get it, and look back over the
outgoing history. If he called our house at nine-sixteen tonight,
we’ll know.”

“And then what?”

The bathroom faucet went quiet.

“I don’t know. This is my brother for
Chrissakes.”

Tim opened one of the high cabinets above the
sink and took down a bottle of whiskey.

“Old Grandad?” Martin asked.

“What, too low-shelf for you?”

“That’s what Dad used to pass out to. Let me
see that.” He grabbed the bottle out of Tim’s hands, unscrewed the
cap, inhaled a whiff. “Jesus, brings back memories.”

“You want ice or—”

“Naw, let’s just pass it back and forth like
old times in the field.”

They sat at the breakfast table, taking turns
with the fifth of Old Grandad. It had been several months since the
brothers had really talked. They’d been close in high school,
drifted in college, Martin only lasting three semesters. Tim had
come home two years ago when Dad’s liver finally yelled uncle,
found that something had wedged itself between him and his brother,
a nameless tension they’d never acknowledged outright.

And though all he could think about was the
message and Laura, he forced himself to broach the subject of
Mom—hostile territory—asked Martin if he thought she seemed to be
thriving in the wake of Dad’s passing.

“That’s a pretty fucked-up thing to say.”

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“No, you’re saying she’s better off without
him.”

Beyond the kitchen, Tim heard the middle step
of the staircase creak—Laura working her way down from the
bedroom—and he wondered if Martin had heard it. The last two steps
were noisy as well, and then came the front door you could hear
opening from Argentina. Nothing else to do but get him riled and
noisy.

“Yeah, Martin, I guess I am saying she’s
better off without him. What’d he do these last five years but
cause us all a lot of heartache? And what’d you do but step in as
Dad’s faithful apologist?”

Another creak.

“Ever heard of honor thy father, Tim?”
Martin’s cheeks had flushed with the whiskey and Tim wondered if
he’d intended to raise his voice like he had. His brother’s back
was to the archway between the kitchen and the living room, and as
Tim saw Laura enter the foyer and start toward the front door, he
tried to avert his eyes.

“You know he beat Mom.”

“Once, Tim. One fucking time. And it was a
total accident. He didn’t mean to shove her as hard as he did.”
Laura turning the deadbolt now. “And it tore him up that he did it.
You weren’t here when it happened. Didn’t see him crying like a
goddamn two-year-old, sitting in his own vomit, did you?” Tim could
hear the hinges creaking. “No,” Martin answered his own question as
the front door swung open, cold streaming in. “You were in
college.” Laura slipped outside, eased the door closed behind her.
“Becoming a teacher.” Any curiosity Tim had harbored concerning his
brother’s opinion of his chosen profession instantly wilted.

“You’re right,” Tim said. “Sorry. I just…part
of me’s still so pissed at him, you know?”

Martin lifted the bottle, took a long drink,
wiped his mouth.

“Of course I know.”

Tim pulled Old Grandad across the table,
wondering how long it would take Laura. If the cruiser was locked,
there’d be nothing she could do but come right back inside. If it
was open, might take her a minute or two of searching the front
seats to find the phone, another thirty seconds to figure out how
to work Martin’s cell, check his call history.

He sipped the whiskey, pushed the bottle back
to Martin.

“Wish you’d come over more,” Tim said. “Feel
like I don’t see you much these days.”

“See me every Sunday at Mom’s.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Tim wanted to ask Martin if he felt that
wedge between them, met his brother’s eyes across the table, but
couldn’t bring himself to say the words. They didn’t operate on
that frequency.

A frigid mist fogged Laura’s glasses, and
with the porchlight out, she took her time descending the steps,
the soles of her slippers holding a tenuous grip on the wet brick.
The fog had thickened since Martin’s arrival, the streetlamps
putting out a glow far dimmer and more diffused than their normal
sharp points of illumination—now just smudges of light in the
distance.

She hurried down the sidewalk that curved
from the house to the driveway.

Martin had parked his police cruiser behind
the old Honda Civic she’d had since her junior year of high school,
over 200,000 miles on the odometer and not a glimmer of
senility.

Laura walked around to the front door on the
passenger side, out of the sight-line of the living room windows.
She reached to open the front passenger door, wondering if Martin’s
cruiser carried an alarm. If so, she was about to wake up everyone
on the block, and had better prepare herself to explain to her
brother-in-law why she’d tried to break into his car.

The door opened. Interior lights blazing. No
screeching alarm. The front seat filthy—Chick-Fil-A wrappers and
crushed Cheerwine cans in the floorboards.

She leaned over the computer in the central
console, inspected the driver seat.

No phone.

Two minutes of leafing through the myriad
papers and napkins and straws and stray salt packets in the glove
compartment convinced her it wasn’t there either.

She glanced back through the partition that
separated the front seats from the back.

In the middle seat, on top of a Penthouse
magazine, lay Martin’s black leather cell phone case.

“Yeah, I was seeing this woman for a little
while.”

“But not anymore?”

Martin took another long pull from Old
Grandad, shook his head.

“What happened?”

“She wanted to domesticate me, as they
say.”

Tim forced a smile. “How so?”

“Tried to drag me to church and Sunday
school. Anytime we’d be out and I’d order an alcoholic beverage—her
term—she’d make this real restrained sigh, like her Southern
Baptist sensibility had been scandalized. And in bed…”

Laura opened the door behind the front
passenger seat and climbed into the back of the cruiser. Wary of
the interior lights exposing her, on the chance Martin happened to
glance outside, she pulled the door closed.

After a moment, the lights cut out.

She picked up the leather case, fished out
Martin’s cell phone, and flipped it open, the little screen glowing
in the dark.

“…I’d gotten my hopes up, figured she’s so
uptight about every other fucking thing, girl must be a psychopath
between the sheets. Like it has to balance out somewhere,
right?”

As he sipped the whiskey, Tim glanced around
Martin toward the front door.

“Sadly, not the case. When we finally did the
deed, she just laid there, absolutely motionless, making these
weird little noises. She was terrified of sex. I think she
approached it like scooping up dogshit. Damn, this whiskey’s
running through me.”

Martin got up from the table and left the
kitchen, Tim listening to his brother’s footsteps track down the
hallway.

The bathroom door opened and closed.

It grew suddenly quiet.

The clock above the kitchen sink showed
11:35.

Laura stared at the cell phone screen and
exhaled a long sigh. Martin’s last call had gone out at 4:21 p.m.
to Mary West, his and Tim’s mother.

She closed the cell, slipped it back into the
leather case, sat there for a moment in the dark car. She realized
she’d somehow known all along, and she wondered how she’d let Tim
know—maybe a shake of the head as she crept past the kitchen on her
way up the stairs. Better not to advertise to Martin that they’d
suspected him.

She searched for the door handle in the dark,
and kept searching and kept searching. At least on this side, there
didn’t seem to be one. She moved to the other door, slid her hand
across the vinyl. Nothing. Reaching forward, she touched the
partition of vinyl-coated metal that separated the front and back
seats, thinking, You’ve got to be kidding me.

Ten minutes later, flushed with
embarrassment, Laura broke down and dialed her home number on
Martin’s cell. Even from inside the car, she could hear their
telephone ringing through the living room windows. If she could get
Tim to come outside unnoticed and let her out, Martin would never
have to know about any of this.

The answering machine picked up, her voice
advising, “Tim and Laura aren’t here right now. You know the
drill.”

She closed Martin’s cell, opened it, hit
redial—five rings, then the machine again.

The moment she put the phone away, Martin’s
cell vibrated.

Laura opened the case, opened the phone—her
landline calling, figured Tim had star-sixty-nined her last
call.

Through the drawn shades of the living room
windows, she saw his profile, pressed talk.

“Tim?”

“Thank God, Laura.” Marty’s voice. “Someone’s
in the house.”

“What are you talking about? Where’s
Tim?”

“He ran out through the backyard. Where are
you?”

“I um…I’m outside. Went for a late walk.”

“You on your cell?”

“Yeah. I don’t understand what’s—”

“I’m coming out. Meet me at the roundabout
and we’ll—”

Martin’s cell beeped three times and
died.

The whiskey had made Tim thirsty, and Martin
was taking his sweet time in the bathroom.

Tim went over to the sink, held a glass of
water under the filter attached to the faucet.

He heard the creak of wood pressure—Marty
walking back into the kitchen—and still watching the water level
rise, Tim said, “Let me ask you something, Marty. You think whoever
left that message knows they left it?”

“Yeah, Tim, I think they might.”

Something in Martin’s voice spun Tim around,
and his first inclination was to laugh, because his brother did
look ridiculous, standing just a few feet away in a pair of white
socks, a shower cap hiding his short black hair, and the
inexplicable choice to don the yellow satin teddy Laura had been
wearing prior to his arrival.

“What the hell is this?” Tim asked, then
noticed tears trailing down Martin’s face.

“She’d gone to the movies with Tyler
Hodges.”

“Who are you talking—”

“Danielle.”

“Matson?”

“Yeah.”

“She’s a junior in high school, man.”

“You know what she did with Tyler after the
movie?”

“Marty—”

“She went to the Grove with him and they
parked and the windows were steamed up when I found them.”

“Look, you can have the tape from our
answering—”

“They’d trace the call,” Martin said. “If you
were to encourage them.”

“We wouldn’t.”

“I can see the wheels turning in your eyes,
but I’ve thought this through quite a bit more than you have.
Played out all the scenarios, and this is—”