Painting With Fire (12 page)

Chapter
24: “Goddamn Terrorists”

Kevin’s grandfather didn’t say anything when the men stumbled in and pushed Kevin down on the couch. He stared vacantly ahead with one hand on his walker, the walker he always refused to use. Sissies use walkers, he always said, but right now it had magically moved from back against the wall to his side. His cane was also close.

He looked shrunken and helpless. Kevin started to wonder if the man had had a stroke. Then he started to talk.

“My oh my, Molly,” he said in a raspy voice. “I think I would like some lemon cake. Would you boys like some lemon cake? Molly, get them some cake, please.” He continued to mumble.

“Grandpa, grandma’s dead,” Kevin said. “You know that. You ok?”

“I can’t serve you boys cake without my glasses. I need to find my glasses.” His grandfather stood up and pushed the walker slowly to his bedroom. “’Scuse me while I find my glasses. Secret recipe, lemon poppy seed cake.”

Kevin sat up on the floral print couch and looked at the two men. He pushed his eyebrows together and stared but he didn’t know them. One man looked vaguely familiar but he couldn’t place it. The only thing really familiar about them was their rotting brown teeth. They were wiry and muscular, almost reptilian in how their muscles connected to their jaws underneath scaly skin.

“Angel’s looking for you,” the first man spat at him. “And when Angel is looking for someone, we’re going to find ‘em. It don’t matter if it’s LA or fucking Des Moines. Our people are everywhere.”

“I told Angel I wouldn’t talk,” Kevin said. “I promised. I’
ve kept my promise, I swear to God. I ain’t a snitch.”

“Let’s ask Angel what to do with you, then. Let’s see if Angel believes you.” The man laughed.

Kevin felt abandoned. He could hear his grandfather rifling through drawers, pulling out boxes from his closet. He could hear him still talking in the other room.

“Where are my glasses, Molly,” he could hear him shouting through the thin door. “Where did you put my glasses?”

Kevin swallowed down the sinking feeling eating the bottom of his stomach. What good is a seventy-nine-year-old drunk in a situation like this, he wondered. What could an old man possibly do? His grandfather was losing it.

“Please leave my grandpa out of this,” he said softly.

He squinted his eyes shut and started to silently pray, while the second man called Angel on his cell phone.

“We found him,” the man said. “What do you want us to do with him? Hmm. Ok… No problem.”

“Who did you tell?” he said, after he hung up. The man gritted his brown teeth.              

“No one,” Kevin said, clutching the couch cushions with his fingers.

The second man pulled out a gun and pointed it at him.                           

“You told someone,” he said.

“I swear to God,” Kevin yelled, putting his hands in front of his face.

Then the door flew open and Kevin heard the shot and a yell.

“Goddamn terrorists!” His grandfather leveled the shotgun across his walker and took a second shot at the man with the gun. The other guy ran out the front door. Kevin’s grandfather’s hands shook as he reloaded and took aim at the man’s ass. He fired another shot, but it missed and hit the van instead.

The shot man lay there bleeding on the mold green carpet, clutching the red spot on his chest and gasping.

“We’ve got to call the police,” Kevin said.

“No shit, Sherlock,” his grandfather said. “That’s the first thing I did. They’re on their way.”

“Grandpa, I was worried about you there for a minute.”

“Shame on you,” his grandfather said. “You really don’t know me all that well, do you? You know what they used to call me in the military, kid?”

“No.”

“They used to call me the fox,” he said, clenching his shaking fingers into a tight fist. “I’m an old fox now, but I’m still a damn fox.”

Stan was leaning on his elbows and rubbing his temples behind the piles of paper on his desk, waiting for the phone call to come. When the call came, it was long distance and Sgt. Joha
nsen from St. Paul sounded irritated.

“I’ve got an old man here who nearly killed a guy, today. We’re waiting on charges. He says his grandson wants to talk about a murder in Chicago.”

“He better talk or I’ll shoot him, too!” the old man yelled in the background. “I recognized the goddamn gangbanging terrorist from the TV
, and they threatened my grandson!”

“Let me know what you find out,” Stan said and hung up the phone.

He cradled his phone against his ear and called Kevin’s mother.

“Janice, we found your son,” he said stiffly in a voicemail. “He and his grandfather are being questioned in St. Paul, after an attempted murder. Please call me back as soon as possible.”

Chapter
25: A Picture on a Bulletin Board

Claudia taped the flier with Kevin’s picture up on bulletin board at the police station. She waited for the receptionist to get off the phone, asked to speak with Stan and sat down in an orange, plastic seat.

She stared at a mix of bricks and glass panels, and shifted her weight uncomfortably. The room stank of bleach but somehow it still seemed dirty. The
’70s architecture was mostly to blame, combined with the rattle and hum of a decrepit air conditioning system. But it could also have a little to do with the people, unwashed and tired, sighing and huffing.

A man in sweatpants slouched next to her, with his head hanging back and mouth open. A grandmother across from them read a stack of community fliers through smudged glasses.

Then there was the parade of people coming in and pleading with the receptionist to get back their impounded cars, nervously thumbing through wallets and purses looking for proof of insurance and documentation to prove the car was really theirs. “Yes, the car title is under my boyfriend’s name. What do you mean he needs to be here to pick the car up himself? He can’t get off work.”

Stan buzzed Claudia in as the latest lady started yelling into her cell phone. The receptionist pointed at the notice on the wall behi
nd her and coughed ahem, loudly.

“C
ell phone use in the lobby is forbidden,” she said.

“What are you gonna do? Arrest me?” the lady said.

“Yes, ma’am,” the receptionist said. “If that’s what you want.”

The lady slapped her cell phone shut.

Stan took Claudia to a small room with dingy gray paint and a pile of cords hanging out of the wall. They sat at a small table and he sipped on his gas station Styrofoam cupful of coffee.

“I haven’t heard from Janice so I’m guessing there’s nothing new with Kevin,” she said. “But since I’m here, I might as well ask.”

“Well, I do have news,” Stan said. He reached forward across the table and pulled the fliers out of Claudia’s hands. He tossed them in the wastebasket with a heavy thunk. “No need for these anymore.

“You can stop walking up and down the street handing out fliers. We believe we know where he is. He’s staying with a relative in Minnesota.”

“Janice knows this?” she said.

“She’s been informed of his whereabouts.”

“Thank God he’s all right,” Claudia said.

“There’s more to it, isn’t there?” she said. “I like to think of you as my friend, Stan.” Claudia leaned her elbows on the table. “You can tell me.”

“I know,” he said. “But it’s not all good news. It might have been better for the boy if we hadn’t found him.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just a matter of time before we extradite him across state lines on murder charges.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.” Stan had on a neutral expression, like a judge in a courtroom. His eyebrows and mouth formed straight lines across his face.

“But why would he do that? Why would he kill that man, Stan? He’s just a kid.”

“You know, darling, I can’t read minds,” he said, shrugging. “He’s not talking. I really shouldn’t even be telling you this much, but a boy like that, running around with a gun, expelled out of school, you really surprised?” He lifted his palms up toward the ceiling. “We got a witness who says he confessed.”

“But why? What was his motive?” Claudia’s voice rose slightly.

“We think it was robbery,” Stan said, sitting back and fiddling with his wedding band. “Less than 24 bucks in the victim’s wallet. May have been gang-related.”

“But that’s so stupid. Why would anyone commit murder outside the place where they live?”

“Criminals aren’t the brightest people, my dear,” Stan said. “If they were, they wouldn’t be criminals. They’d be able to find a better line of work.”

And with that he swung open the door and walked her toward the exit. He buzzed her out, took a seat behind the glass counter and motion
ed to a lady sitting in the plastic seat in the lobby.

“Next,” he said, sighing.

“So I guess that’s it,” Claudia told Tom when she got home. “Mystery solved.”

Tom sat down and put his feet up on the coffee table.

“Are you supposed to be repeating that?” he said. “Isn’t that a special secret with your buddy? Murder charges are usually not something you brag about before you’ve got them.”

“He didn’t tell me not to tell anyone,” she said. She plopped down the couch next to him.

“Do you think Stan’s playing me?” she said, sitting back. “Do you think he wants me to tell people that Kevin’s a suspect so that the police can get the real suspect to relax?”

“Maybe we should just accept the good news
.
I think you’re over-thinking it,” Tom said. “Has Stan ever lied to you before? This isn’t some stupid CSI show. It’s not that complicated. The police have the guy figured out. Now we wait for the law. We wait for them to arrest him, charge him, extradite him, take him to trial and for a jury to decide whether or not they got the right guy.”

Claudia walked over to the window and stared out the dirty glass onto the street below.

“I know, I guess I just want to believe it wasn’t Kevin. I don’t know why, but I’ve seen him for so many years, since he was ten. I just don’t want to believe it was him, you know?”

He was a different kid back then, she thought. She could still see him smiling and waving as he
rode his bicycle out in the parking lot.

“Now we just have to wait for lady justice to decide,” Tom said. “We both know she moves at a snail’s pace.”

Chapter
26: A Crying Shame

Tom was at work and Claudia was deeply asleep on the couch when a loud knock on the door woke her up. She smoothed down her hair as she peeked out the peephole.

“Have you seen Janice?”
Alice burst into the living room as soon as the door swung open. “I just, I feel kind of hurt by the way she’s cut off all contact with me. I know she’s mad and she has a right to be, but now, she’s not answering the door when I stop by. She doesn’t answer my calls.”

“I know what you mean,” Claudia yawned. “They found Kevin and sh
e didn’t even bother to tell me.”

Alice nodded and leaned back against the couch. Her arms were crossed.

“It’s such a relief they found him,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “But after putting up hundreds of fliers, it’s not nice of her not to talk to us. She was mad at me anyway. But I guess she has bigger problems.”

“Yeah, like Kevin possibly being charged for murder.”

Alice gasped. “Really? I hadn’t heard that.”             

“It’s sad, but it’s such a relief knowing who it was,” Claudia said. “I was even starting to wonder about Tom.”

Alice laughed, but then went quiet.

“I just knew all along,” she said. “It’s such a shame when a boy that young ruins his life and for what?”

“$24 dollars.”

Alice breathed in.
“Really?”

“I know he told you he wanted to repent for something but how do you know for sure it wasn’t something else?” Claudia said. “What if he’s innocent and his crime was watching a murder and doing nothing to stop it?”

Alice stared down at the coffee table and didn’t answer.

“Just think. You see a murder and do nothing. You don’t call the cops,” Claudia said. “You don’t step outside. You don’t try to help the man, just leave him out in the snow. You’d feel pretty bad about that.”

Alice’s eyes narrowed. “That would be terrible.

“
I know you’d like to think that.” She shook her head. “And it speaks volumes about the kind of person you are, your kind, trusting nature, but the reality is that Kevin wasn’t talking about not calling the cops. He was talking about something much worse.”

Claudia thought back to the ten
-year-old kid who first moved in. He was quiet and respectful when his head wasn’t bowed down to a videogame screen.

“I’ve known Kevin for years,” Claudia said. “And his mom. How does a sweet child like that turn into a monster?”

“I just don’t know,” Alice said.