Invisible Boy (39 page)

Smart woman: now I knew what I was up against, below.

“You just be quiet, now,” said Donald. “I don’t want to have to hurt you.”

“I should think not.”

“We need to have a little talk, is all,” he said.

“We can certainly do
that
without any guns.”

“We will, soon as Dougie gets back. We’ll bring your friend downstairs and get everything straightened out. She’s not going
anywhere, and I’m not leaving
you
two alone.”

I had to get down the stairs before Dougie arrived, then, whoever he was. I wished to hell I had X-ray vision so I could approach
the kitchen when this Donald wasn’t looking.

I moved out of the bedroom and back into the hallway, crouching down beside the staircase.

How long did I have before there’d be two of these guys?

Get your ass down the damn stairs.

I crept forward, trying to peek at the kitchen through the banister, but the angle was all wrong. I could smell the chicken
soup now, perfuming the whole house.

I moved down three stairs, the Luger held straight out in front

of me.

I knew my way around guns but didn’t trust my aim left-handed. If I hadn’t had to stay so quiet, I would’ve shot the damn
cast off.

Mrs. Underhill spoke again. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind, Donald, while we’re waiting?”

“We need to talk over what you want to say in court, about Angela,” he said. “But that can wait.”

“Why is it any of your business?” she asked.

“It’s our business as much as yours.”

I climbed down three more steps, out in the open now if he looked up the hallway from the kitchen.

“It is
not
,” said Mrs. Underhill. “Not yours, not your brother’s.”

“We came up with Angela, since she was a baby. And you’re going to make certain she doesn’t have
this
baby while she’s inside, for real.”

“Of course I will,” said Mrs. Underhill. “I protect my family.”

I was on the bottom stair now, and hoped to hell she was lying about protecting Angela from jail time, the same as she had
about needing pills.

“We gonna make sure,” he said. “Be certain about
that
.”

I stepped onto the hallway carpet, gun steady, ready to storm the kitchen.

Behind me I heard the click of the front-door latch, and I spun around.

There wasn’t any window in the front door, so Dougie wouldn’t see me before I saw him, at least. I turned sideways with my
left arm out straight like an old-fashioned dueler, making a smaller target.

The door swung wide and I caught a flash of leather jacket and jeans. Dougie lifted his head and saw me, eyes narrowing.

He didn’t have time to raise his own pistol before I fired, nailing him straight in the chest, the first slug knocking him
back against the door frame.

The Luger ejected the spent cartridge, then chambered another round before I loosened my finger off its trigger.

I heard a woman’s guttural yell from the kitchen and the slopping noise of a splash.

Dougie’s eyes were still open. But he didn’t lift his gun.

I stepped closer.

Bang
.

And then Donald’s voice shrieked, higher and higher. “I’m burned, you fucking bitch. I’m fucking
burned.”

I held the pistol on Dougie as he twisted to one side and crumpled, leaving a smear of blood all down the flocked wallpaper
as he slid to the floor.

His eyes were shut now, but his gun hand twitched.

I stepped closer and pulled the trigger a third time.

Bang
.

Donald was still screaming, behind me. No words now, just incoherent whipped-dog shrieks and whines.

Blood bubbled out of Dougie’s mouth, and his fingers relaxed on the gun in his hand: a Glock.

I used my toe to move it away from his open hand, then kicked it into the living room, watching it spin under a sofa and out
of sight.

Turning away, I jogged toward the kitchen.

Cate and Mrs. Underhill stood over a writhing man I presumed was Donald, each of them armed with a large carving knife.

He rocked on the floor, moaning, surrounded by a still-steaming puddle of chicken soup, eyes swollen shut in his blistered
face.

So much for lunch.

Mrs. Underhill looked over at me, steady as a rock.

I nodded.

“Did Angela send you here?” She poked Donald in the ribs with the sharp toe of her little shoe.

He just moaned.

“Answer me, Donald,” she said. “Your brother’s lying shot dead in my front hall, and I can take you
right
out of this world the same way. Lord knows even your mama wouldn’t hold that against me, after what you boys tried here today.”

Donald started crying. “I’m burned so bad. I need a doctor.”

Mrs. Underhill was unmoved. “You tell me whose sorry idea this was, maybe you’ll get one.”

My rush of adrenaline was wearing off, and I started shaking.

“Who sent you here, Albert or Angela?” Mrs. Underhill motioned me over, then took the Luger from me and pointed it at his
face.

“I don’t know if you can see well enough to tell,” she said, “but I’ve got my husband’s pistol aimed straight at your sorry
forehead.”

Donald flinched.

The sight of his face was sickening, and the chicken-soup fumes seemed to be getting stronger.

Cate prodded him with her foot. “I think you’d better tell us,

Donald.”

As for me, I’m ashamed to say I took one more inhalation of soupy air and passed out cold, right in the kitchen doorway.

“Do you still want to talk about anything?” I asked Mrs. Underhill.

Cate and she had brought me into the living room and helped me lie down along the sofa after I came to.

The kitchen was full of cops and paramedics, with Skwarecki giving orders. I watched Donald getting wheeled down the front
hall handcuffed to a gurney.

Mrs. Underhill smiled at me. “Thank you, dear, but my mind is pretty clear on the matter, after today.”

“I’m sorry to be such a wuss,” I said. “I think I’m coming down with the flu.”

Mrs. Underhill gave me a knowing smile, the tiny gap between her front teeth exactly like Teddy’s. “You’ll be just fine, dear,
soon as you get a bite to eat. And I need you in court tomorrow morning, for when I testify.”

“Did he tell you whether it was Albert or Angela?” I asked.

“Shhhh,” she said, stroking my hair. “Close your eyes for a minute and get some rest. No need to worry about that now.”

“Mrs. Underhill, I’m so sorry about everything that’s happened.”

“You have absolutely nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “And I want you to call me Elsie.”

She patted my head one more time and told me to rest.

I closed my eyes, drifting off for a minute until Skwarecki’s voice brought me sharply back to the present.

“Yo, Dare,” she said, “you and me need to have a little talk.”

L
isten,” said Skwarecki, “we have to run you down to the station for a little while.”

I sat up on Mrs. Underhill’s sofa. “Figured you might.”

Someone had taken off my shoes, placing them neatly side by side under the coffee table. I reached down for them and got hit
by another wave of dizziness.

“You okay?” asked Skwarecki.

“Sure. Just give me a minute.” I took a deep breath and waited for the black spots to swim back out of my vision a little,
then got my feet into my shoes.

“You want a hand up?” asked Skwarecki.

“No, thanks. But you might want to look under the sofa. I kicked the dead guy’s Glock in there somewhere, before I passed
out.”

“You pick it up at all? Touch it?”

“No. Should be just his fingerprints. He pulled it on me when he came through the front door. I kicked it in here, after.”

“It was a righteous shoot. We know that.”

“Even so,” I said, “I’d feel better if I watched you bag the thing up personally, you know?”

I leaned down to tie my shoes as she pulled on a pair of gloves.

They had a couple of patrol guys take me down to the One-Oh-Three, where they swabbed me for gunshot residue and took my fingerprints.
I started feeling a little queasy again, replaying the day’s events in my head, and one of the guys got me a Coke to sip,
which helped a lot.

Two detectives I’d never seen before interviewed me, which wasn’t surprising. I hadn’t expected them to put me with Skwarecki,
since we knew each other outside work pretty well by this point.

It was all pretty low-key. They took me into a nice big interview room and their questions were gentle, all things considered.

The older cop even looked a little embarrassed when he asked me why I’d shot the dead guy three times.

He fiddled with his tie and looked down at the table between

us. “I understand about the heat of the moment, but we have to follow up.”

“Well, I guess the first two shots were because I’d never fired a Luger before. I didn’t know it was semiautomatic, so that
just kind of happened.”

The younger cop was still standing up, leaning against the wall to my left. “And the third time?” he asked.

“He twitched,” I said. “And his eyes were still open. So, you know… I guess I just wanted to make sure.”

“And then you took his gun?” asked the older guy.

“I kicked it away. Into the living room.”

“That was before you went into the kitchen?”

“I didn’t know the other guy was completely out of commission at that point. I wanted to make sure he didn’t have access to
another gun.”

“But you never picked it up?” asked the young guy.

“The Glock? No. Just moved it with my foot.”

“Why didn’t you take it with you?” he asked.

“I had a gun already. And I knew by that point that it worked pretty well. I didn’t think I needed another one.”

“And then you went into the kitchen,” said the older guy.

“Yeah. I mean, it all probably happened faster than I’m telling it, but it seemed pretty slow at the time.”

They both nodded.

“And what happened next?” asked the young guy.

“Well, I stepped into the kitchen doorway, and Mrs. Underhill took the Luger from me, and then I pretty much looked at the
burned guy’s face and fainted.”

I took another small sip of Coke, willing it to stay down.

“You okay?” asked the older guy, reaching his hand across the table toward mine.

“Not really,” I said.

“You did the right thing today,” he said. “Kept your head in an ugly situation.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

“Can we get you a ride home?” he asked. “I think we’re done here.”

“Is Skwarecki back yet? I’d like to talk with her a minute.”

“She was down at the hospital talking with the other guy,” said the younger detective. “Let me go check if she’s here.”

He left the room, and the older detective gave me an encouraging smile.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Why’d these guys even do this? I mean, run me down with a car, threaten me at work… then today, after I’d already testified?
Not to mention that all I had to say in court was that I found the little boy’s remains in the first place, back at Prospect.
It all seems pretty pointless.”

The guy looked me in the eye and shrugged. “Some people are just assholes.”

*   *   *   

Skwarecki gave me a ride home half an hour later. All I could think about was sleep by that point.

It was dark out, and snowing again. I watched her windshield wipers clearing the flakes off the glass as they melted, making
all the taillights ahead of us blur into scarlet stars and ribbons.

“You hanging in there?” she asked, slowing down for a stoplight.

The car fishtailed a little in the slush.

“I asked the other detective why this all happened,” I said.

“Brodsky?”

“The older guy.”

She nodded. “What’d he say?”

I told her, and his assholes comment made her laugh. “Yeah, got that right.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “What were they thinking?”

“Donald and Dougie?”

“No, Liddy and Haldeman. Of
course
Donald and Dougie. Was it really a gang thing?”

“Yeah,” said Skwarecki. “They were looking out for Albert

Williams.”

“Not Angela?”

“Her too,” she said. “But on Albert’s say-so.”

“I still don’t get what they thought they’d accomplish going

after me.”

The light turned green and Skwarecki hit the gas again, soldiering on through the slush.

“According to Donald,” she said, “it wasn’t about you as much as Mrs. Underhill. Albert didn’t want her to testify. You, they
didn’t care a lot.”

“They were harshing out on me to scare her vicariously?”

“She practically raised the two brothers, and Angela wouldn’t have wanted her hurt.”

“Did Angela know about any of this?”

“Donald said they kept her in the dark, but the rest of them knew you were spending time with the old lady.”

“So they fucked me up just to send a message?”

“Something like that.”