Little Mountain (28 page)

         Willie held up a pair of Sam’s shredded jockey shorts, and two or three pieces of buckshot clattered onto the pine floor. “Stainless steel balls in your underwear,” he said. “I always knew it. Smaller than mine, though.”

Trish was wonderful company for Sam--on the morning before Julie came home, they drove to Singing Beach on the North Shore. For hours they built a sand castle, splashed in the surf, and watched seawater fill up the impressions their feet made in the wet sand. The cotton-candy clouds and the hot inland breeze made for perfect beach weather. They came in at high tide, when the lifeguard said that the bluefish were feeding near the shore.

         He’d frequently thought of Julie during the week. Of Bin Chea, who threatened Sam’s family even in
death.
Of Viseth Kim. Why would he hurt Bin Chea, except for money?

         And then there was Fitchie, whose wife lingered on the edge of the abyss.

         Sam and Trish ate stripped clams and onion rings and hopped on the stove-hot sand. At noon, Sam drove home wearing a wet bathing suit that soaked through his slacks and onto the car seat. They laughed most of the way back to Lowell Hospital, where they picked up Julie. Then he drove them to his in-laws’ house, where Dottie seemed eager to renew her mothering skills for the afternoon.

         But Sam was anxious to get back to work. Courtney’s burial nagged at his brain.

Sam eased Julie onto a lawn chair on her parents’ deck, then lay down her crutch and opened up the umbrella. She was slim and beautiful in her two-piece bathing suit, but had an ugly bandage on her left thigh. Pinpoints of light filtered through the umbrella and dotted her pale skin. At Julie’s feet, Trish discussed ballet with Courtney Aspirin.

         Julie sat with her leg elevated. Potted geraniums basked in the sun on the deck’s wide railing. She brushed away mosquitoes from her face while Ginger, her parents’ Irish setter, sniffed at her bandage. Julie hadn’t smiled since Sam picked her up at the hospital, and she didn’t look ready to start now.

         The deck faced an acre of almost complete privacy. An open expanse of overgrown lawn was surrounded by tall shrubs and low-spreading maples that shielded them from the view of the neighbors in back. It wasn’t like Eric Nordstrom to let the grass go. On the other side of the trees was an old stone wall overrun with poison ivy that the old man refused to spray.
My green curtain,
he called it.
Keeps the little bastards out.

        
Except for Trish and her reincarnated doll.
Sam would bring her by more often if only Eric wouldn’t treat him like a leper.
Or if her grandfather drank less.

         Sam gestured at the yard. “This is what you gave up,” he said.

        
“For love.
I gave it up for love.” She still wasn’t smiling, was she being sarcastic? She’d also given up Richard Coeurdelion, who used to park his cream-white Jaguar in front of their apartment even after their breakup. The showoff didn’t even live in town anymore, but wanted to remind her of what she’d lost. His wheels impressed their neighbors, except for a Puerto Rican named Fuentes who used a key to sketch a sex act on the passenger door. Richard never came back to the neighborhood after that, and Fuentes went on to art school.

         “Are you sorry you left that fellow, the one with all the money?”

         “That fellow brought me flowers in the hospital, you know.” Julie paused; Sam was very intent now. “I said he should take them home to his mother. The posies you snitched from Mom’s garden are much nicer. Besides, life’s a lot more exciting around you.” She paused and cocked her ear. “Sam, did you hear that?”

         “No. What is it?”

         “I don’t know. Is the front door locked? Please go check it.”

         Totally unnecessary, but Sam went in to check. His feet made no sound on the Persian rug, and the grandfather clock ticked softly. The front door was open, but the screen door was locked. A copy of
The Watchtower
lay on the threshold. He locked the front door and returned, wondering if Armageddon lay at his doorstep. Or had Julie and Trish already faced it without him?

         “What if they come for us, Sam?” A soft, warm breeze blew across the deck, but she shivered.

         “They won’t. This person doesn’t know about your in-laws, and--”

         “How did he know about
us,
for God’s sake?” Her tone sounded accusing.

         “He could have looked us up in the phone book. We’ll get an unlisted number, like your parents.”

        
“For all the good that’ll do us now.
Whoever
killed that poor man--what’s his name again?”

        
“Bin Chea.”
Yes, the poor man. Sam never shared his doubts about Bin Chea with Julie. Why trouble her with his old demons? She would listen and try to understand, while he would feel as like he was asking for pity.

         “Whoever killed him nearly killed us. Sam, your
job
nearly got us killed.”

         “I know. I’m--” Sam didn’t know
what
he was. He didn’t know whether he bore any responsibility for Viseth’s attack or not, but he did know that he felt like shit.

         “If you had opened the door instead of me, that bastard would have killed you. He seemed so--
surprised
when I looked at him, as though he was at the wrong place.”

        
“Probably thought he’d see an Asian woman.”

         “And then I--and then I slammed the door and grabbed my baby. Oh God, he got me anyway. If he had hurt my
baby
--” She started to cry, and Sam stroked her hair. Sam was ashamed that he hadn’t been there, yet Julie was right. He tried not to think of his corpse lying under Katsios’ knife, his face--

         “I
wish
you’d get out of this job,” she said.

         “And do what? A cop is all I ever wanted to be.”

         Inside, the kitchen phone rang. Sam got up to answer it, and Julie took his hand. “Don’t,” she said. “My folks have an answering machine.” He sat down and pulled himself closer to her, his arm around her shoulders. Was the call for him?

         He kissed her behind the ear, where the scent of Ciara was gone. Her expression didn’t change. Thank God she was all right. The phone rang three times and stopped. Then he touched her arm and she drew it away, a sign it was time to leave her alone for a while. Maybe he should mow the lawn--show Julie’s dad there were no hard feelings, and pretend he was a homeowner at the same time.

         Sam laced up his old sneakers and took the Lawn Boy out of the back shed. He checked the gas, put in the clutch, and pulled the cord. The engine sputtered,
then
fired to life. Good. I’ll burn off a little steam.

         “Go in circles, Daddy,” Trish begged. She followed Sam on a path that looked like a plate of noodles. He made a winding path across the thick grass, and she laughed as she skipped along behind him past the rock garden. Then they looped back to the storage shed before wobbling toward the driveway. When the engine stalled, he looked back at the mess he’d left behind.

         Julie squinted through the brilliant sunlight. “Better straighten that out, Sam. Pop’s a little short on humor these days.”

         Now
there
was an understatement. He took a dead branch and unclogged the chunk of damp grass that had stopped the blade. This time he finished the job in straight, even rows. After a short break, he found a spring rake and mounded the clippings near the old stone wall on the property line.

         “Pop will appreciate your mowing, though.” No doubt Julie was right, but Sam knew that as gestures went, a short lawn didn’t go nearly far enough. The undercurrent of tension would always exist between him and his father-in-law: Sam would always be un-white, un-tall, un-rich, Richard’s opposite in every way. Sam was guilty of not being Richard.

         All of which was self-serving nonsense. No matter what his father-in-law’s other grudges, Sam knew he hadn’t kept his family out of jeopardy. Eric Nordstrom had a right to be angry.

         Ginger barked and dashed around to the front of the house, and Sam and Julie turned around to see Tommy Garibaldi from the station.

         Garibaldi raised his hands as Ginger leaped on him. She had giant paws she had not yet grown into, and she tried to sniff his hands. Julie called her off.

         “I guess the lieutenant’s been trying to reach you for the last hour,” Garibaldi said. He looked at Julie out of the corner of his eye and lowered his voice. “How’s your wife doing?”

         “It’s okay to speak to the patient, Tommy,” Julie said. “I’m fine.” Sam knew she liked Tommy, even if the guy had the brains of a pineapple.

         “Sam, they found a body in the Westford canal this afternoon. We think it’s your man Viseth Kim.”

         A wave of relief washed over Sam--maybe his family was out of danger now.

        
“The one who shot me?”
Julie’s mouth hung open.

         “He’s the one. Sam, we really need you at the station.”

         Julie frowned. “Is this from old More or Less, the man who told Fitchie ‘First things first, take care of your wife’?”

         Garibaldi turned his palms upward. “Don’t know about that,” he said.

         “I’ll call in and see what’s up,” Sam said.

         “Sam, Wilkins wants you to come in.”

At the station, Wilkins waved Sam into his office. As usual, the office smelled like stale Parodis. Sam was grateful for a door that would hold that smell where it belonged, in a tight cloud around Wilkins’ desk.

         “Found your man,” Wilkins said. Sam wished people would stop calling Viseth his man.
“Looks like he cut himself shaving and then went for a dip.”

         “Cut himself shaving,” Sam repeated.
Typical Wilkins, trivializing death.

         “He’s got this nick that runs from one ear, down across his Adam’s apple, and up to the other ear.
Seems he took a couple rounds in the legs, too.”
Wilkins took a Parodi out of a new package and sniffed the tobacco. “So revenge is sweet.”

         “What do you mean, Lieutenant?”

         “I mean somebody tracked him down real fast, and I’m thinking maybe it was you. How’d you know where he was?”

         “I didn’t!”

         “That’s hard to believe. You hunted him down, didn’t you? Did the night shift’s job, tracking him down like a dog,” Wilkins said. “Actually, I can’t blame you after what Viseth did to your old lady and your little girl. But even a cop can’t take the law into his own hands.”

         Sam’s face felt hot, and his damp shirt clung to his chest. “I can’t believe you’re saying this. There is no way I would go out and kill--”

         “Now I know you’re lying. If you
wouldn’t
go out and find the creep, you’re no kind of man. Besides, Specter saw you out walking the other night at about three A.M. in the goddamn rain. Outside your apartment you made like you were slicing your throat with your finger.”

         “You have no evidence of that, Lieutenant.”

         A veil of doubt fell over Wilkins’ eyes. “No, I don’t. What
were
you doing there?”

         “I told Specter already. After I left Julie, I went to my in-laws’ house. But I couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk.”

         “We could have bagged him for you. You could have waited, you know.”