Salvation Boulevard (25 page)

“I just see that on
24,
” he said, like he would never do anything like that either.

I put thoughts about Alvarez and Polasky aside for the moment and tried to think of other ways to approach the problem.

There was Gwen.

I was going to have to call her soon. I couldn't just disappear with Angie. But thinking about her twisted me up so much that none of the thoughts would come out straight.

Nicole Chandler.

I started with phone listings. I found two Nicoles and three N. Chandlers. A Web search turned the Ns into Norman, Nyella, and Nixon. The other Nicole was seventy-eight and living in a retirement home. That left Nicole D., who was twenty-three years old, worked at a pharmacy in the mall ten miles down the road from CTM, and lived in an apartment not far from both of them. She drove a Honda. She'd bought it from a used-car dealer and was still making payments.

I called her home. There was no answer, and her phone wouldn't take messages because it was full. I called the CVS where she worked. She wasn't there. I went into a sincere pitch about being her uncle, and her aunt was going into the hospital and wanted to talk to her, but we hadn't been able to reach her for days and days. She'd called in sick a couple of weeks ago and hadn't been there since.

That took it back to Gwen. She knew the girls in the choir and could get the gossip if she wanted to. But I still couldn't unravel how to deal with my wife.

There was the crime scene. I hadn't done it right. I was certain that it could tell me more. Provided it hadn't been cleaned yet. But I'd have to have a client, with a lawyer, to make a formal request to the court.

Or go back to Teresa. She had a right to get in.

Which made me think to call my office, and, yes, Teresa had called. She'd had sense enough, and was careful enough, to at least have left a businesslike message. She wanted to hire me to help recover her husband's missing manuscript.

But if I went to Teresa without getting straight with Gwen first, I'd end up in bed with her. Maybe it would just be sex. Maybe it would be
something more. She was quick, clever, and intense, educated, smart, and complex. I doubted she was nurturing, patient, and supportive. She was destructive, dangerous to herself and others.

I shook my head, like a dog trying to shake off the rain.

What I really wanted, what I needed, was to get things right with Gwen. If she had betrayed me, I wanted it to have been a slip of the tongue, an innocent accident. So I could go back to being in my happy home. So I would have a home for Angie. One that would stand up to whatever Jeanette might try to pull when she got out.

Besides, I loved Gwen, and she was my wife.

Everything about Gwen had always seemed simple and clear. Now it occurred to me that perhaps I didn't know her as well as I imagined I did.

She was an army brat.

Her father had been a staff sergeant in the Quartermaster Corps, sergeant first class, with an E–8 pay scale by the time he retired. He took orders from above, gave them to those below, and in both cases expected they would be carried out. A mostly practical man, he liked his beer and, when he'd had enough of it, told funny stories about military life and foreign adventures.

Her mother was a complacent woman and ran the house in a well-organized fashion.

They'd done a fair amount of moving around. But the changes in geography were just changes in scenery. The essence always remained the same: a rented house in a suburban neighborhood near lots of other military families, shopping at the PX, a public school, church on Sunday, strict, no-nonsense rules, and no talking back at home.

She'd been a tomboy and treated the army's obstacle course like a playground. She claimed that when she was ten she could have made it through basic training. She was still active and fit. She liked hiking, camping, and rafting. She loved to shoot and was as comfortable
around guns as most people are around cars, and she handled them with somewhat more confidence than she did pots and pans.

The first time she had sex was when she was sixteen. She got pregnant at seventeen. The boy was nineteen, a soldier on the base. When she missed her second period and told him, he immediately said he wanted to do the right thing. He loved her, he said, and she felt the same. Her father was less angry than she'd expected. He'd seen it happen enough other times. Her mother seemed sad, at least at first, but didn't scold very much or get hysterical, and when the wedding came a few weeks later, she shed happy tears.

Gwen miscarried in her fifth month.

Then came the first Gulf War. She and her husband decided to try for a baby before he got shipped out. By the time she was certain she'd conceived, he was in Saudi Arabia. She wrote to him, and they were both overjoyed.

Twelve days after he got the news, he was killed. Not in combat. It was one of those strange but horrifying accidents that could have happened anywhere. A Humvee tumbled off a loading ramp and crushed him.

Gwen miscarried again.

She turned to Jesus. He held her in his arms and helped her through the grief. She began to make the church the center of her life.

I met her a few years later. By then, most of the emotional trauma seemed to have healed. She appeared happy, healthy, and athletic. She was wonderfully uncomplicated. No hidden motives, no secret agendas. She was happy with her job, partly because she had no grandiose ambitions or bitter resentments, partly because she was serving a cause, happy to be a foot soldier in the army of the Lord.

The first time we kissed, I knew, too, that she loved sex. We could barely keep our hands off each other. But she wanted to wait until we got married. I did too. It would be a way to commit to a clean, fresh start. Which was something I needed in my life. I'd jumped into beds and backseats too quickly, too often, with too many unwanted consequences.

We talked, from time to time, about having children of our own. It was the only issue that made her uncertain and conflicted. Another miscarriage was the only thing in the world that I'd ever seen her fear.

We left it alone. We had Angie. That was enough for me, and it seemed to be for her too.

 

Where to catch up with her? I didn't want to go home. If someone was looking for me, it was the obvious place to wait.

It was already too late to intercept her on the way back from work. I thought of calling her and getting her to meet me somewhere. But I might just be setting myself up. Even if I spotted it, it would mean I wouldn't get to talk to her.

It made me angry that I had to plot and plan to speak to my own wife.

In the end, maybe because I'm just not clever enough, I decided to go straight on in.

 

The least I could do was try some misdirection.

I left a message that I'd be home late. I was going to take Angie out to dinner. Maybe even a movie. Yes, I knew it was a school night, but we were having such a great father-daughter thing that it was worth it. We wouldn't get home until eleven or twelve.

If someone was listening to our phones, or if Gwen was passing on information, that's when they'd expect me. But I planned to get there hours earlier.

They'd be looking for my car. I rented a black Chevy Impala.

I'd left the house in a jacket and tie. So I went to Marshall's and bought black sweatpants and a black sweatshirt with a hood and a pair of running shoes.

I crept into our subdivision just after dark. I did a slow drive by to check for any unfamiliar vehicles or unusual activity. Everything seemed normal.

I went away and made another pass half an hour later. It was still the same, just Gwen's Tercel in the driveway.

It was time. But I didn't want to announce my arrival by rolling up the driveway. There's a 7–11 about three-quarters of a mile away. I parked in the far corner of their lot.

You can't walk through a suburb unless you've got a baby carriage or a dog. But you can jog. I even saw a couple of other runners on my way, including a neighbor, and we exchanged waves. Perfectly natural, no big deal. The XL hoody gave no sign that I was wearing a shoulder holster with my HK .45 underneath.

When I got to the house, I trotted slowly across the lawn like I might have if I were coming home from a normal run. As I passed the windows, I peered in, searching for an extra face or even an extra shadow. I got in close to the house, moved along the side wall, opened the gate to the yard, and went around the rear.

I crept up to the kitchen window and peeked in.

It was dark and empty. There was that TV flicker of light coming through the door to the living room, so I figured she was in there. I put my key in the lock and let myself in as silently as I could. Gwen was watching a cooking show. I could hear the Barefoot Contessa explaining her endive, pear, and Roquefort salad.

I took the HK out of its holster with my right hand. I eased past the living room door, went down the hall, and checked the bedrooms. There was no one there. Looking around Angie's room in the dark, I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I got hold of myself and walked down the dark hallway into the living room.

“Carl, what are you doing?” Gwen asked, looking at me in black sweats with the .45 in my hand.

I stared at her. I didn't know where to begin.

“Angie! Where's Angie?” she asked.

“Safe,” I said. “She's safe.”

“What's going on?”

I glanced around the room. The drapes were closed. That was good. Nobody could shoot me through the window.

“You tell me,” I said.

The Barefoot Contessa was yapping about the Peppermate Peppermill, which she was selling for $35. I wanted to shoot the television. I stepped over and hit the power switch.

“Carl, what are you doing?”

I walked slowly around the room until I was behind the highbacked armchair she was sitting on. She twisted to look at me. I could barely look at her. I needed to control my rage. I put my hand on the top of her head and turned it so she was facing forward, unable to see me.

“You're scaring me, Carl.” She didn't sound frightened. Gwen is ridiculously fearless around guns or any kind of physical danger. She meant that she was worried that I was going around the bend.

I took a breath. “What happened today, Gwen?”

“Nothing.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Nothing happened. Nothing special.”

“Nicole Chandler,” I said. “Tell me about Nicole Chandler.”

“I didn't . . . ”

“Didn't what?”

“Didn't find out anything.”

“Did you talk to anyone about Nicole Chandler.”

“I . . . not really. I didn't get a chance.”

“I don't believe you,” I said. I couldn't see her face, but I could feel through my fingertips that she was lying.

She didn't say anything.

I said, “You told someone that I was looking for her. Who did you tell?”

Once again, she didn't reply, and I knew she'd set her lips in a tight line, the way she does when she's restraining herself. Or disapproving.

“Are you my wife?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said in a tight, dry, minimal way, nodding slightly.

“Do you love me?” I asked, but before she could answer, I said, “Do you love Angie? Do you care about Angie?”

“Oh, Lord, yes,” she said with far more enthusiasm and conviction than she'd displayed about being my wife. “You know I care about Angie. How can you ask that?”

“Alright,” I said and took my hand off of her.

She looked up at me as I walked out from behind her and went and sat down on the couch. “I'll tell you about my day,” I said. “Then we'll figure out who you are and what we are to each other. I was driving down the interstate. With Angie beside me. I noticed a car that seemed to be following, a car I'd seen before. So I pulled off at the next exit to see what they would do. They followed. I kept driving, and we got out on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, and they suddenly pulled up alongside, and the guy in the passenger seat pointed a gun at me. I slammed on the brakes and made a turn. They chased me across the desert. We had a gunfight. With Angie there. I managed to drive them off.”

“Carl, what have you gotten yourself into? How could you put Angie in danger like that? How could you?” she said, splattering accusations and disapproval like spittle.

“Gwen, don't make me any angrier than I am.”

“You're the one sitting there waving a gun around.”

“Did you tell someone that I was looking for Nicole Chandler?”

“Why, what does that matter?”

“Who did you tell?” I insisted. “What happened, Gwen?”

“What are
you
up to, Carl?” she spit out. “Why don't you tell me that?”

“What do you mean, what am I up to? How dare you ask me that?”

“How dare I? I ran into Jeremiah—”

“Ah,” I said. There it was. But she ignored me.

“I said, ‘Thank you very much, for sending Carl that job.' And of course he said, ‘What job? I didn't send him anything.' And then I, like an idiot, said, ‘You called Sunday night and . . . . ' And he's looking at me like, what a stupid woman I am, but then he very politely said, ‘I'm sorry, I didn't call him. Perhaps you're mistaken.' But I
wasn't. Then I realized who had really called. That woman again. And that's where you went.”

“Is that what you told Jerry?”

“And humiliate myself further? Thank you very much, no I didn't.”

“Then what happened?” I said, but I was calming down. I could see how it had unfolded, and it was my own damn fault.