Homicide My Own (14 page)

The chief, who had made himself wood, much like Odd had been trying to explain to me on the trip here, now showed signs of warping and cracking. I was getting a little bent out of shape myself. Kissing where?

“What would you say, Charles,” said Odd, “if I told you that Stacey was only using you, that she has a boyfriend her own age, that what she won’t do with you, she does with him, and that she isn’t a virgin at all?”

What color the broth had brought to Houser’s face now paled, and his hands started to shake, his teeth clamped down, and if he had not been weak and in bed I would swear that mild mannered Charles Houser, half-believer in God and Heaven and Hell, was capable of murder at that moment.

This false scenario Odd used to provoke Houser might have been clever had Houser been guilty of anything more than he’d already confessed, but the ploy was thirty years too late and exercised upon the wrong suspect. He let Houser off the hook, explaining that the scenario was hypothetical. Stacey was still the essence of innocence, he supposed.

When we left the room and descended the stairs, the chief said in his solid even way, “Take that man back to Spokane.” He was leading us down the stairs, first him, then Odd, then me, so we could not see his face. At the bottom of the stairs we formed a small circle and his face was the same.

We spoke in whispers. “It’s your call, Quinn,” said Odd.

I wanted nothing more than to get off that island, da frick. I looked outside to the porch and saw that the rain had come back, huge drops falling through the sunlight, and it looked so nice. It would be so nice to be driving through it, back to Spokane.

Odd needed to stay, I knew. If he went back to Spokane, took some vacation time, and returned, he might lose whatever was compelling him. We already had the cottage, we needed the rest. I decided there would be no harm in waiting until morning.

“He still has a fever,” I said, “and he doesn’t look all that great. I think a night’s rest all around is the ticket. We’ll take him back in the morning.”

“You’ll take him now,” said the chief. “The Tribal Constitution allows me to hold non-tribal suspects for twenty-four hours. We’ve already passed that.”

Any time a man cites the constitution, I wonder what he’s got to hide, but that’s me, I’m a cop. The chief never mentioned the twenty-four-hour rule before, and he didn’t seem all that intimidated by defying the county when we first met him. Granted, he was never enthusiastic about the case that had fallen into his jurisdiction, but he clearly wasn’t a guy focused on covering his ass. Or he would never have put the ailing felon in his own guest room. It’s possible that the vision of Houser and that little girl licking each other from noses to toeses torched off a decent man’s outrage and he simply wanted shed of him. It’s also possible that our questioning the Coyotes and then Karl Gutshall infringed on some real or imagined territory sensitive to the chief.

I looked at my watch. It was a little after four. “What’s another night?” I asked.

“That man is
your
prisoner,” said the chief. “If you want him, take him. Otherwise, I’m turning him over to county, within the hour. Take him or lose him.”

We took him.

Back up the stairs, this time just Odd and me. We had to wake up Houser. We helped him out of bed. He was in his boxer shorts, blue. We helped him into his clothes. He didn’t object or question us. He had a bag, he said, that was in his car. We found it in the closet.

“Any weapons in that bag?” I asked.

“No, ma’am.”

“Then you won’t mind if I look through it?”

“No.”

Just the usual stuff, clothes and toiletries. There was a CD player with two tiny attachable speakers and half a dozen CDs I didn’t bother to look at. My music is no music. I zipped up the bag and handed it to Odd. We marched him down the stairs between us. The chief and his wife were standing at the foot of the stairs.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Houser, “for your hospitality.”

She said nothing.

“You can catch the 4:45 ferry, if you hurry,” said the chief.

“Was it the smoke signals crack?” I asked, but the chief didn’t answer. All he wanted was rid of us.

We threw Houser’s bag in the trunk, and I took out a pair of cuffs. “Put your hands behind your back.” I cuffed him and we made him comfy in the back seat. “I suppose we should stop somewhere and put on our uniforms,” I said to Odd. He didn’t answer. He didn’t open up his door, even though the sky had darkened and it was starting to rain in earnest. “Ain’t?”

“I can’t go, Quinn,” he said.

“Get in the car, before you’re soaked.”

We got inside, but I didn’t start the engine.

“You can take him back alone,” said Odd. “This guy’s no risk. You drove all the way here, you can drive all the way back.”

“Yeah, I could do that. And the lieutenant would have a conniption, and you would be in the toilet, career-wise.”

“I’ll just have to deal with that.”

“Let’s say I spontaneously combust. Here’s a prisoner sitting on the side of I-90.”

“You’re not going to spontaneously combust.”

“Something bad, then. Same result. That’s why they send two, buddy. You can’t go over the hill on me. We got a responsibility in the backseat here?”

“If there’s anything I can do…” said Houser.

“Shaddup.”

“I’ve got to stay here,” said Odd. “This is bigger than me, or you, or this guy. How do I walk away and pretend it was…what?
Deja vu
?”

I looked back at the prisoner. He was leaning forward, the better to hear, and he was dying to ask.

That knot in my stomach took its first loop when the chief told us to take Houser. It looped again going back up the stairs, and pulled tighter still putting him into the car. Anything other than taking the prisoner right back to Spokane was indefensible.

“How do we do anything else?” I asked Odd. “Look, this other thing has been hanging for thirty-some years, you expect to settle it overnight?”

“At least give me that, overnight. We were supposed to have that long anyway, and it was fine with the lieutenant. Let’s stick to that.”

“That was before we were saddled with the custody of kissy-face here. You wanna shoot him and dump him in the Sound so we can solve a murder?”

“Not just a murder,
my
murder!”

“I beg your pardon?” said the prisoner.

“Shaddup!” said I.

“We have to go to Jeannie’s house. We have to talk to her parents. At least that much, we have to do. If nothing comes of that…if it doesn’t convince you…then, the hell with it.”

“Jeannie who?” asked Houser.

“Shut up, da frick!”

“Frick?”

“The lieutenant expects us to stay the night,” said Odd. “Didn’t he even tell you not to check in unless you had to? He doesn’t want to hear from us, all he wants is Houser when we bring him in, that’s all.”

“And what do we do with him in the meantime, take him to the Honeymoon Cottage, take him to Jeannie’s house?”

“Who’s Jeannie and why are we going to her house?”

“
He’s
Jeannie!” I screamed, jabbing a finger at Odd. “He’s Jeannie, all right? You understand now?”

Houser quietly slid back on the seat, as far away from me as he could get.

As we drove to the Tidewater Cottages I ran through my mind all the things that could go wrong, knowing they all would, and more besides, other things that I could not even anticipate. First of all, Frank and Angie. They see us leading a man in handcuffs into the Honeymoon Cottage and the whole island hears of the Spokane orgy. I drove past once, looking for them. The rain must have kept them indoors. It would also give us cover. I circled back and pulled up to our cottage, waited a moment for any welcome home committee, then turned off the ignition. Each of us grabbed a Houser elbow and hustled him up the porch and into the cottage.

Odd ran back to the car for Houser’s bag. I sat the rapist, or whatever he was now, roughly on a wicker rocker and went to the bathroom for a towel. I toweled my hair and looked around at our little cottage. A light had been left on, turned low. The Bee Gees were on the stereo. The bed was high and fluffy and just big enough for two. The davvy had a blue floral pattern. The walls were crowded with framed dried flowers or watercolors of lush live ones. The carpet was well worn.

“This is nice,” said Odd when he came back in and dropped Houser’s bag. He unlocked the cuffs and removed them, saying, “Can I do this? I mean, are you going to try anything funny?”

“Me…?”

“Because I will shoot you, and it will stand, believe me.”

“You don’t even have a gun.”

“I have a gun. It’s in the car.”

I sat on the cedar chest at the foot of the bed, the towel over my head. This one was a killer. I imagined I had steam rising from my hair, my cheeks were full of glowing embers. Rivers of sweat ran over my ribs. I pushed off one shoe with the other, unlaced that one, pulled off my black service socks. I expected them to be dripping with sweat. They weren’t, of course.

“…
I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes…and I fell out of bed, hurting my head, from things that I said…”

“So let’s see,” said Houser, “I make a run for it, and you run out to your car and get your gun, and now I’m, what, a hundred yards away…”

“I’ll catch you, I’m faster than you.”

“I’ve been sick.”

“And then I’ll shoot you.”

“
…til I finally died, which started the whole world living, oh, if I’d only seen , that the joke was on me…”

“You want to shoot me? Go ahead, I don’t care. My life is ruined anyway.”

“There’s always the next one.”

I threw off the towel. I might have said something, I might have screamed, I don’t remember. My sweat shirt and t-shirt were off and flying by the time I hit the porch. I yanked off my new Wranglers. I pulled off my bra and passed it into the end zone, pulled down my panties and drop-kicked them for the extra point. Then I ran, ran through the pouring rain, over some gravel and didn’t care, and into a stand of cedars.

Odd’s voice kept calling, “Quinn, Quinn, Quinn! Wait!” I ran. Under the cedars the soil was spongy with rotting vegetation. Then I was on the muddy beach, slowed down by the mud, which was sucking down my feet. I was panting heavily. I stopped finally, spread out my arms, lifted up my face into the rain. I fell back on the mud and let the cold rain wash me down. I opened up my legs to it, I opened up Little Sahara to the downpour, but still I was arid there and on fire outside. I rolled over to my hands and knees, Connors favorite position.

I could hear Odd’s voice in the distance, “Quinn! Quinn!” Some clams just below the surface spit up arcing streams of juice, like miniature fire boats trying to put out the fire that I had become.

On my feet, I ran into the frigid salt water. I swam as far as I could, then realized I would have to swim back. I turned back to the beach and saw Odd standing there, waving my jeans and t-shirt over his head.