Homicide Related (28 page)

They went to Beth's house where Beth made tea for herself and a sandwich for Dooley. They didn't talk much. There were a lot of times when they didn't talk much. That was one of the things Dooley liked about Beth. She didn't mind when things were quiet. She didn't mind that he just sat there and watched while she put the kettle on and put a tea bag in a mug, while she got out the bread and peanut butter, moving so gracefully even when all she was doing was pouring milk into her mug, her legs long and slim under her skirt, which was short but not hiked up as high as some of the girls who went to her school. She didn't mind that he watched every move she made, and when she caught him at it, she smiled. She put the sandwich down in front of him and sat across the table from him with her tea. She didn't ask him why, for the first time since they'd known each other, he had showed up unexpectedly at her school. He wondered about that. He wondered what she really thought. He got a hint when she looked down at the sandwich on his plate. He hadn't touched it. He wasn't hungry. She got up then and took his hand and led him down the hallway to her bedroom.

In her arms, he forgot about Lorraine. In her arms, he forgot about his uncle and Jeffie. In her arms, there was only softness and sweet smells and acceptance. In her arms, he was in a magical place where there was no Mr. Rektor, no school, no Kevin, no video store, no minimum-wage monkey-shit job, no twitchy reminders of how high it was possible to go, no crash-out-aw-shit-now-what moments at the come-down. In her arms, he could forget.

When he opened his eyes again, she was smiling up at him. She raised a hand and pushed the hair back off his forehead. Then she put both hands on his face and pulled him down and kissed him.

He said, “You make all the bullshit go away.”

She was still smiling, but he saw a tightness between her eyebrows. “Thanks,” she said. “I think.”

“What I meant was—”

A cell phone trilled.

His. Names flashed in his mind: Jeannie. Al Szabo. Annette Girondin.

“I better—”

“It's okay,” she said.

He groped for his jeans and pulled out the phone.

For a moment, he just stared at the display. This time he recognized the number.

It was Teresa.

She was hysterical.

“I don't have any money,” she said. “I didn't know anything about what he was doing. You have to believe me, Dooley.”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“I don't have any money,” she said again. “I—Oh my god, I think something's wrong.”

“What do you mean? What's wrong?”

“I'm bleeding. Something's wrong.” She was screaming now. He had to hold the phone away from his ear.

“Teresa, calm down.”

Beth sat up when he said Teresa's name. She looked at him.

“I think it's the baby, Dooley. Oh, shit.”

Jesus, why had she called him of all people? What was he supposed to do?

“Hang up the phone, Teresa. Call 9-1-1.”

“I think it's the baby,” she said. “I think I'm losing the baby.”

“Teresa, listen to me. Hang up the phone. Call 9-1-1.”

She was sobbing now. It was all he could hear.

“Teresa, where are you?” He recognized the number but didn't know if it was a cell phone or the cordless he had seen at the apartment. “Teresa?”

She was at home. Dooley could picture the place. What he couldn't remember was the street number. He had to coax it out of her while she sobbed.

“Hang up the phone, Teresa,” he said. “I'm going to call someone, okay? I'm going to call an ambulance. Just hang up the phone.”

She let out one last wail and then, just like that, Dooley was listening to dead air.

He punched in 9-1-1, gave her address, and described what he thought the problem was. When he'd finished, he reached for his clothes.

“Who's Teresa?” Beth said.

“She's this girl I know. I have to go.”

There it was again, that tightness between her eyebrows.

“Know her how?” Beth said. “What did you just say about a baby?”

“Beth—”

It was probably the phone call. No, it was probably a combination of the phone call and stealth. Maybe it was completely innocent. Maybe she had got off early. Or maybe it was planned. Maybe she was checking up on Beth, which, for sure, would explain why neither he nor Beth heard anything. Dooley was standing beside the bed in nothing but his underpants, holding his jeans out in front of him, getting ready to step into them. Beth was sitting up in the bed, her bare shoulders resting against a white pillow, her breasts covered by a white sheet, watching him. Then, boom, the door to Beth's bedroom opened and there was Beth's mother, looking at Dooley with cold, unwelcoming eyes. Yeah, Dooley thought later, she must have been checking up on Beth because, you know what, she didn't look the least bit surprised to see him there.

Fifteen

M
uch later that night, Dooley was downtown thinking how much had changed and how much was the same. He wished Jeffie was still around because that would make things easier. For one thing, he had always been able to trust Jeffie one hundred percent, not just on the fact of the sale but on the quality of the goods. Jeffie never screwed around with him. Jeffie always delivered. Some of the other guys he knew—okay, so they were guys he
used
to know—he wasn't as sure about. Yeah, they'd make the sale. No, they wouldn't set him up. But you had to be careful. You had to wonder what they were really selling. Back before, Dooley had never cared. Back before, it was, whatever, bring it on, the more the better, and there was no such thing as too much. But the fact that Jeffie wasn't there anymore, the fact that there was nobody he could trust the way he'd been able to trust Jeffie, didn't stop him from standing on the corner, eyes shifting this way and that, searching for a familiar face, his foot thrumming like Fred Astaire warming up. He was there because of everything that had happened after he had taken Teresa's call.

The first thing that had happened: Beth's mother had opened the bedroom door wide and had stood there and stared at him, and what else could he do? He pulled on his jeans and reached for his T-shirt. The whole time he was getting dressed, Beth was yelling at her mother to get out,
get the hell out.
When her mother didn't leave, Beth got out of bed, her naked body wrapped in that white sheet, ran to the door, and tried to push her mother out, which her mother didn't like. So then her mother started yelling, going on about how she had trusted Beth but that she should have known better; what kind of self-respecting girl would take up with a criminal? “For God's sake,” she said, “his uncle just murdered his mother.” Dooley had his jeans zipped up by that time—he kept thinking what would have happened if she'd showed up a couple of seconds earlier, while he was completely naked. Jesus, what a thought that was, Beth's mother seeing him that way. Or a couple of minutes before that, when he and Beth … He pulled on his T-shirt while Beth and her mother screamed at each other, Beth saying she was seventeen now, she was legal for sex, Beth's mother reacting to that word as if Beth had slapped her across the face, and Dooley, socks on now, sliding into his boots, realizing just how much he didn't know about girls and women.

He was dressed and in a hurry to get out of there, both for the original reason—Teresa—and for a new reason—Beth's mother. But they were blocking the door, mother and daughter. They were really going at it, and Dooley understood that although his presence had precipitated the fight, it had escalated way beyond him or anything to do with him. The mother had a litany of complaints: Beth's general lack of communication, her lack of gratitude (after all, there were plenty of other things her mother could be doing with the money she was spending, giving Beth the best education she could buy
and
her mother didn't insist she get a job and help with some of the expenses the way a lot of parents did), the fact that Beth didn't help out around the place, the fact that lately—and here Dooley was part of the grievance again, the mother throwing a dagger of a look his way—she had become insolent and talked back to her mother. Beth had a few grievances of her own: Her mother was controlling; her mother was over-protective; her mother disapproved of things she knew nothing about; her mother …

Dooley put a hand on Beth's hip—he loved that hip—to nudge her away from the door so that he could leave. She stepped aside without even looking at him; she was still ripping into her mother. But the mother noticed. She stiffened when she saw Dooley's hand on the sheet covering her daughter's hip, and Dooley knew with certainty that if the mother had had a cleaver handy, or an axe, any sharp edge, she would have hacked that hand off.

“I'll call you,” he whispered in Beth's ear. Then he'd had to squeeze by the mother, who at first didn't budge. She looked up at him, menace in her eyes. But Dooley was a lot taller than her and, to be honest, he was a little pissed with her, too, for barging in on them like that, for standing there and watching him dress, and then tearing into Beth, so, yeah, maybe he'd put a little menace on his face, too. He saw a startled look in the mother's eyes. She shrank back and let him pass.

The second thing that had happened: Half an hour after leaving Beth's, he was at the hospital closest to where Jeffie used to live and was asking at the information desk in the Emergency department if Teresa was there. He was directed to a screened-in cubicle. Teresa was lying on a bed. She looked like shit. Her face was pale, there were black smudges under her eyes from where her makeup had run, and her eyes were red from crying. One of her cheeks was swollen. Her lower lip was split open and in the process of scabbing over. There were bruises on her arms and tubes running out of them. Tears dribbled down her face. But when she saw him, she sat up and put her arms out, and, even though he didn't know her all that well, he let her hug him. She was bony with tiny little breasts that he could feel pressing against him.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I'm sorry. I don't have any money, Dooley. He didn't leave anything.”

“Jesus, Teresa, what happened?” he said.

The curtain around her bed opened and—uh-oh—in stepped a uniformed police officer. She was shorter than Dooley, a slight-looking woman, but with cop eyes and a don't-fuck-with-me cop expression on her face.

“And you are?” she said to Dooley.

Dooley identified himself.

“Step outside, please,” the woman cop said.

Dooley released Teresa gently and helped her lie back on the bed. “I'll be back,” he said.

Once he was outside the cubicle, the woman cop asked him to move out into the hall away from everyone.

“Name?” she said.

He told her.

“What's your relationship to the victim?”

“Victim?” Dooley said. “What happened to her?”

“I asked you a question,” the woman cop said in the same tone used by every cop Dooley had ever met—I'm doing the asking, I'm in charge here, and don't even think about trying to snow me. It was easier to go along and completely counter-productive to resist.

“I knew her boyfriend. She called me. She said she was afraid she was losing the baby. I'm the one who called 9-1-1. What happened to her?”

“She called you?” the woman cop said. “When?”

Dooley told her.

“What exactly did she tell you?”

“She said something was wrong. She said she thought she was losing the baby.”

Another uniform, a male cop, approached them. The woman cop filled him in and he walked away again, going to check on him, Dooley knew. He stood there with the woman cop and waited. A few minutes later the male cop came back. The woman stepped aside to listen to what he had to say. When she returned to Dooley, her partner had her back.

“What is your relationship with Teresa Delorme?” she said.

“I told you. I knew her boyfriend.”

“Jeffrey Eccles?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know that he was murdered recently?” she said.

“Yeah, I knew. Look, what happened to her?”

“What did she say happened to her?” the woman cop said.

Fucking cops. He hated their games.

“Did someone hit her?” Dooley said.

“Why do you think someone hit her?”

“Because that's what it looks like to me,” Dooley said. “Is that what happened?”

“She says she fell down the stairs,” the woman cop said, her tone and the way she was looking at Dooley making it clear she thought that was a crock.

Dooley supposed it was possible that was what had happened. Or maybe Teresa had thrown herself down the stairs. After all, the only person she could think of to call after Jeffie died was a waitress who used to go with Jeffie. And look who she'd called just now: Dooley—a guy she barely knew.

“Her boyfriend just died.”