Nothing to Hide (A Roland March Mystery Book #3) (3 page)

Whoever he was, this man was strapped to a chair and tortured, was put through such agony that his young healthy heart finally gave out. What would he have thought if he’d known in those final moments that after a handful of days, I’d be consigning him to a cardboard filing box and preparing myself mentally to move on?

I take the elevator down to the secure garage, tracing the way back to where I left my car. Sliding between two vehicles, my foot catches on a drain grate and twists. The old pain, fading steadily every day since the night of my fall, stabs through me. I steady myself against the hood of a car and try to shake it off. It feels just like a knife, or maybe a surgeon’s scalpel. And then it dulls down to a throb. I take a step and it’s still there. There, but manageable.

Not so bad that I can’t function.

A pain I can live with.

When I’m not working,
I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. The house is too empty, too quiet with Charlotte gone. The first time she left—a weeklong stay on the East Coast—I’d find myself opening drawers and checking that her things were still there. An hour later, one of her silk slips would still be clutched in my hand, or a little piece of jewelry, and I’d be sitting in the dark thinking about . . . nothing.

“Go visit the Robbs,” Charlotte would say over the phone, sensing something wasn’t right, but not wanting to probe too deeply into what. Her new position made her happy, more than she’d ever anticipated, and by instinct she steered away from any conversation which might call the decision into question.

In front of the muted television I try calling Charlotte. She’s in London now for some kind of high-level negotiation meant to last through the weekend, after which her plan is to pick up her sister Ann, Bridger’s wife, who’s flying into Heathrow for a couple of days of sightseeing. It’s hard to imagine what the two sisters will do alone together in a foreign land. They can hardly get through dinner together without some kind of argument flaring up. My call goes to voicemail, but I don’t leave a message. She’ll get back to me when she can.

I check the time, then try to watch the History Channel for a while. Back when they ran Hitler documentaries all the time, I could tune out in front of the tube for hours. Now there are too many reality shows with only a tenuous connection to the past. I switch off the
TV
and go to the bookshelf, taking down the thick middle volume of Shelby Foote’s
The Civil War
, which I’ve been reading intermittently for about ten years, hoping to finish before I’m dead. Not tonight, though. After flipping a few pages, I put it back.

In the old days on nights like this, when I wanted desperately to shrug off the pressures of work, I’d end up in the parking lot of a bar called the Paragon, wondering what it would be like to take a drink. Sometimes I’d go inside and order one, then let the glass sweat untouched on the table, testing myself. But the place changed hands a few times and finally closed. Now there’s just a darkened storefront.

So I grab my car keys and the black gym bag I keep next to the gun safe. The weight feels good in my hand. In my new empty life, there is one way I’ve learned to forget everything. And it’s early enough in the evening for me to catch up.

———

On the way I stop over to see the Robbs. The couple who used to live in our garage apartment started looking for a bigger place once Gina’s pregnancy started to show. They took their time, hoping to find something large enough for a growing family but not so expensive that Carter couldn’t afford it on his ministry salary, since Gina hoped to quit teaching once the baby was born. He worked in Montrose at something called an “outreach center,” splitting his time between helping the destitute and proselytizing the heathens. In his off-hours he’d try proselytizing me, too, but it’s not so easy when the heathen has a badge.

With my wife’s help, the Robbs found a rental bungalow not far from Carter’s work, a tiny cottage of maybe nine hundred square feet, no garage, with a tear-down on one side and an incomplete glass-and-steel domicile on the other, the kind of place a
Miami Vice
drug lord would have been proud to call home. When the market tanked, the architect-builder went broke and left the site mothballed in temporary fencing and plastic wrap.

I’d gone over to see them a few times, bearing gifts, but without Charlotte things were never as smooth. Any day now, that baby would arrive, throwing their lives into rhapsodic turmoil. The thought makes me a little sad. I guess I’m starting to miss them.

Carter comes to the door in a T-shirt and shorts. He doesn’t look happy to see me.

“Is this a bad time? I was just passing through—”

He shakes his head. “No, come in. I could use the distraction.”

“I was heading over to Shooter’s Paradise. You should come some time.” Catching his expression, I pause. “What’s up, Carter?”

From the sidewalk I’d noticed a bluish glow from the front window. Carter nods his tousled head toward the living room, the source of the strange light. Stepping through the arched entryway, I find the furniture pushed into the corners, stacks of books and paper teetering on every available surface, making room for a bubble of empty space at the far side of the room, ringed by light boxes and a lithe and shadowy brunette hoisting a huge-lensed camera. Gina Robb, swathed in some kind of bedsheet, sits perched on a stool, arms and legs bare, frowning intently into the light.

She’s let her hair grow out a little, and tonight it hangs in self-conscious ringlets. I’m more accustomed to seeing it tucked behind a vintage barrette. Her ironic cat-eye glasses are gone, too. She looks beautiful, honestly, almost radiant, her hands on her belly in an earth goddess pose. I feel like I shouldn’t be here.

I give Carter a look and he shakes his head. I expect him to say something, but he lopes down the hall to the kitchen. Before I can follow, Gina squints my way and gives a nervous giggle.

“Oh boy,” she says. “This will take some explaining.”

The photographer introduces herself, shifting the camera so she can shake my hand. Long, cool fingers. Black-rimmed eyes. Gina tells me she’s some kind of artist, that the photos are for a “study,” whatever that is, and they met in one of her night classes at the University of Houston, where Gina’s been working on her master’s degree in English Lit off and on while teaching at a private school out in the suburbs. To prove her point, she indicates a stack of textbooks on the arm of the couch, then adjusts the draped fabric at her shoulder.

I glance at the books. “That’s a lot of reading.”

“It’s, like, crazy,” the photographer says.

“And you . . . paint pictures?” I ask.

“Something like that. I’m working on a series called ‘Madonna and Child.’”

“You’re starting early.”

She bites her lip, confused.

“I mean, the baby’s not here yet. You have a madonna, but no child. Never mind. Just an attempt at humor. I should stick with my strengths.”

Gina starts to get up, but the photographer waves her back into place. “No, no, I need a couple more. Don’t move.”

“Go ahead,” I say. “I’ll find Carter.”

While they snap photos, I find myself lingering near the couch. The first time I met Gina Robb, it took me two seconds to pigeonhole her, and she’s been surprising me ever since. Modeling for an artist during the countdown to having her first kid? I didn’t see that coming. Down the hall I can hear Carter moving around in the kitchen, closing the fridge, scooting things along the counter. I don’t know if it’s the bedsheet that makes him uncomfortable or the whole idea or just the thought of me walking in on the scene.

I find him in the crook of the counter, between the stove and the sink, downing a glass of some kind of sugary orange stuff, his eyebrows cocked upward in shock.

“You seem a little put out by all this,” I whisper. The camera clicks and the cold blue light barrels down the hallway, strobing over the kitchen appliances. “You shouldn’t be. It’s not so bad, having a wife who can still surprise you.”

“It’s not that,” he says. “It’s the artist. Gina’s doing this to try and help her, to be supportive. But she’s got some baggage. I think she’s bad news.”

“That’s funny, coming from you. You go out of your way to support people, right? It’s your job. So what’s the harm in her doing the same thing?”

“Yeah, I know.” He shakes his head. “It’s just . . . Ever since, you know, the baby . . . I just want to keep her safe. To look out for her.”

I put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, that makes two of us. But I think this will be all right. She’s having a good time with it. If it were Charlotte in there and I was sulking like this, I wouldn’t hear the end of it. Now come on, let’s go back in.”

He puts his glass in the sink and follows me.

“All done,” Gina calls to us, sashaying up the stairs holding the sheet at the back. In the living room the photographer is packing up her things. Carter puts on a smile and goes to her assistance. While they chat, I check my watch and survey the mess. I should get going, but I want to say hello to Gina first.

I’m going through her stack of schoolbooks when she returns wearing a knit dress that clings tight to her belly, both her hands on her hips for support. Her hair is clipped back and she makes a show of wiping sweat from her dry brow. “You’re still here,” she says. “I was afraid you were going to disappear on us.”

“I was just in the neighborhood and wanted to stop in and say hi. Make sure you guys aren’t missing the old garage apartment and want to move back.”

“Tempting,” she says. “In my condition, stairs aren’t a girl’s best friend.”

Carter and the photographer start carrying gear out to her car. Gina eases herself into an empty space on the couch, then starts moving books over so I can sit, too. The one on top is Dante’s
Inferno
, the Robert Pinsky translation. It’s dog-eared and sticky-noted and creased down the spine. Gina is nothing if not a good student.

“Let me do that.” I move the stack for her. “You like the Dante?”

“I’m only halfway through.”

“If that’s halfway, I don’t think the book is going to survive the experience.”

“You’ve read it?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” I say. “As a matter of fact, I haven’t. But I knew someone once . . .” My voice trails off. “Let’s just say, I have a special relationship with that thing.”

As I speak, the stack I’ve just moved topples of its own accord.

I lean over to straighten the books. One of them is an old paperback with a Norman knight on the cover. The nasal piece on his helmet juts out and he presses a curved horn to his lips. “Well, well. This looks like my kind of reading.”

She rolls her eyes. “
The Song of Roland
. Don’t get me started. That was the first one we had to read. If that’s chivalry, then you can have it. That book infuriates me.”

“Really.” I flip through the pages, many of which are underscored. I’m familiar with the story, of course, though I can’t recall having actually read the poem. In fact, before now I’m not sure I realized it
was
a poem, with all the stanzas and verses. “He’s supposed to blow the horn to signal the ambush, is that it?”

“He’s supposed to blow it if they need help. Only Roland’s too proud for that, so he waits and waits until everybody’s basically dead. Does that sound like heroism to you?”

“Actually, it kind of does.”

She snatches the book in mock outrage. “It’s not bravery, though. It’s stupidity.”

“Don’t let your professor hear you. That book’s a classic.”

“It’s all right,” she says. “We’re allowed not to like them. It’s even encouraged.”

I could sit and argue about books I haven’t read for hours. I want to stick up for my namesake, for the whole tradition of chivalry, for the stupid pride that would lead a man not to give his enemies the satisfaction of blowing the horn. At the back of my mind, some history stirs, something I saw on television or maybe read years ago in college.

“Sir Francis Drake,” I tell her, “when he was sailing into some Spanish port or other, and all their cannon started firing at his ship—or maybe it’s Walter Raleigh I’m thinking of. Anyway, when the Spanish artillery opened up, instead of shooting back, he got his trumpeters on deck and had them blow a note.”

“What?”

“That was his reply. His way of putting them in their place.”

“That sounds stupid, too.” She shakes her head at the ways of men. “If he was smart, he should have fired his guns at them. Unless those were really nasty trumpeters or something.”

“It was like he was saying, Your efforts are beneath my contempt. He was insulting them.”

She gives me an indulgent smile.

“Hey, I’m just saying, that stuff speaks to me. Don’t dismiss Sir Roland out of hand. You weren’t there.”

“Okay,” she says. “Just promise me you’re not going to follow his example.”

“You sound like Charlotte.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It
is
a compliment, kid.”

After the last of the gear is packed, the photographer leans down to touch Gina on the tummy and kiss her cheek. “New life,” she says under her breath. Gina beams up at her, a bookish, impish, argumentative and glowing earth mother at the height of her charms.

———

The uncle who raised me, after leaving the Houston Police Department on disability when a stray truck jackknifed his cruiser during a pursuit, used some settlement money to buy himself a modest gun shop on Richmond. He’d give his former colleagues deep discounts on their purchases, which ensured the place was always filled with cops. When I was a teen, I used to work with him behind the counter, learning everything there is to know about firearms. And every time a tropical storm blew through, dumping so much rain into the parking lot that we and the little jewelry shop next door would end up with an inch of standing water on the floor, it was me who mopped up the mess.

The Shooter’s Paradise on I-10 couldn’t be more different than my uncle’s establishment. Vast and brightly lit by shining fluorescents, its spotless glass cases are packed with an endless variety of pistols and revolvers, from entry-level Glocks and
SIG
s to exotic race guns with fancy anodized frames. If longarms are your preference, they have those, too, along with a selection of custom leather holsters that would normally require months of waiting to obtain. As I know too well. Every surface gleams, every item is displayed with the care of a museum exhibit. It’s a pistoleer’s boutique, a lifelong
NRA
member’s idea of what heaven will be like.

But the attraction for me is in back.

One of the managers recognizes me from behind the counter, motioning toward the double doors at the rear of the shop.

“They’ve already started,” he says, “so you better get moving.”

I nod my thanks.

An acquaintance on the
SWAT
team first tipped me off to the league, suggesting I might want to brush up my skills. The Shooter’s Paradise, in addition to the showroom, boasts a state-of-the-art pistol range with twenty lanes, excellent ventilation, and even a soundproof observation gallery so you can watch the action without having to wear ear protection. On Thursdays, a loosely organized club gets together, arranging a series of tactical targets and running one member after another through the course. At the end of the night, the shooters compare rankings and head over to the
taquería
next door.