The Last Good Day (17 page)

Not that he blamed her for wanting things they had. The Castleman kids, Bobby and Erica, looked like Kennedys. They played chess and took riding lessons. They had an old-fashioned player piano in the living room, a refrigerator that made its own ice cubes, a clay tennis court in the backyard. Everything in the house had that fresh new-catalog smell. He remembered going over there when he was eight and noticing the dirt under his fingernails and realizing he’d never heard of this science show
Nova
that Bobby kept talking about. Erica, who was a year younger than him, killed him at Scrabble with words like
franchise
and
gullible.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Paco, opening a Ziploc bag and blowing into it. “I get a little bit ahead on my support payments, I’m gonna put all that shit in my bathroom in Port Chester. My kids would love it, man. When we stayed with their grandparents in Florida, they’d spend all fuckin’ day in that Jacuzzi. I worried their little
cojones
were gonna get boiled …”

“Hey, as long as you’re sitting there, why don’t you try and see if you can snag a pubic hair from around the drain so we have some fibers to work with?”

Paco curled his lip in distaste as he pulled on his latex gloves. “But then who’s gonna get the sample of
his
pubes so we know what to compare it to?”

“Ask not what your supervisor can do for you; ask what you can do for your supervisor.”

Mike put the brush down for a minute and went to look out the door, making sure Jeff Lanier had left the bedroom.

“So, what do you think?” Paco asked sotto voce.

Mike listened for a moment, making sure he heard the husband talking to his kids downstairs. “I think I’m gonna take a look around their bedroom.”

He pissed in the Laniers’ toilet, flushed, and then stepped across the threshold and sniffed deeply. A red incense candle sat unlit on an Early American cherrywood chest of drawers. The white linen canopy sagged slightly over the four-poster bed with green wall sconces and a red-and-green Persian rug underneath. The ceilings were high, and the closets were big enough for Volkswagens. He turned his attention to the bookcase across the room and saw that its shelves were equally divided between Oprah choices and the kind of meaty World War Two volumes Dad always fell asleep with on his chest. But at the very end of the top row he spotted a familiar slim blue spine. The diary. Just sitting there like an eyeball staring back at him from the shelf.

“You know, I really like what they did with this room, man.” Paco moved into the doorway beside him. “It’s got a lot of light and space. And the wall sconces and window treatments really warm it up.”

“It’s all her.” Mike sniffed.

“Yeah, how do you know?”

He walked over to the cherry dresser and pretended to study the lacquered Japanese jewelry box on top.

“Hey, bro,” Paco said quietly, “we gotta tread lightly here. We don’t got a warrant. We’re just supposed to be collecting hair and fingerprint samples. Anything else we pick up this time is gonna get thrown out of court.”

“I know the law, Paco. You don’t have to school me.”

He turned and dropped down into a squat, as if what he really cared about was under the bed.

“Nice house, though,” Paco sighed, going to check out the valance and detail around the windows.

“Big, that’s for sure.”

The diary. He’d completely forgotten about it. He remembered asking her why she had to write everything down in the first place. Wasn’t she afraid her husband or somebody else would see it?
Who cares?
she’d said.
At least then I might get some attention.
At the time, he’d put it down to the usual bellyaching, never thinking she’d do any real damage with a pen. But now she had him spooked, and he realized that he might have to look for her laptop as well, just in case she didn’t delete all her old e-mails.

“The lady I’m hooked up with now, she’s after me to get a bigger place.” Paco yawned. “She got three kids of her own, almost grown. And they wild, man. They need a lot of space,
I
need a lot of space. We livin’ in two bedrooms, man, and I fuckin’ hate it. I got J.Lo and Christina Aguilera screeching in my ears at two in the morning. Fuck that shit, man. I want a garden. I want to grow roses and, whaddayacallem, rhododendrons big as fuckin’ water buffalo. I want an island in my kitchen the size of San Juan. Say, you gonna let me know if you see a head down there, won’t you?”

“I’ll try and mention it.”

Mike stood up and smoothed the wrinkles from his trousers, trying to guide his thoughts through the heavy traffic in his mind.

“So how you liking my boy downstairs?” Paco dropped his voice into a whisper.

“I’m liking him okay.”

“Gave his old lady the big house with the big kitchen, though.”

“And hardly anything in it. You notice that?” Mike listened, making sure he heard Lanier downstairs on the kitchen phone. That was at least one obstacle out of the way. “Except for this room and the kids’ rooms, the house is barely furnished. He’s got a great big sun-room downstairs that’s totally empty except for a card table. So, what does that tell you?”

“You think he got in over his head?”

“Wouldn’t be the first one. Lotta people living beyond their means these days. Big house, big problems.”

“He told me his company was doing okay down at the station.”

“Yeah, how about that?” Mike grinned. “Maybe we ought to check out his cash flow. See what else that leads to.”

Paco stayed by the window, a day’s worth of stubble grown out on his head.

“See that Benz four-by-four in the garage?” he said. “Man, that’s a sweet ride.”

“If you don’t mind emptying the kids’ college savings.”

Mike shook his head, trying to think of how to get his partner out of the room for a few minutes. A diary. Fuck. AND a laptop. Whatever happened to discretion? Whatever happened to just sucking it up and taking it? Why did everyone go around these days bursting to tell their secrets as if they were about to get booked on some talk show Freakfest.

“So let me ask you something, man.” Paco looked back at him, fingering his earring. “You said you went out with that little fox we saw on the porch.”

“Yeah, so?”

“And she’s like a friend of the lady who lived here?”

“Yeah, what’s your point, Paco?” Mike felt his back teeth come together, not liking where this was heading.

“So did you know our victim here too?”

“Yeah, sure.” Crown and enamel began to grind and scrape. “Didn’t Harold tell you that? We all knew one another in school.”

“Fuck, man. I didn’t know that. What’s up with that?”

“Are we having a problem here?” he asked, pausing and letting the silence between them become a weapon.

“Well, that’s fucked-up.” Paco’s goatee became a long V. “Your victim and your investigator knowing each other.”

A cartoon sycophant’s voice brayed, “
No, Your Blueness,
” downstairs.

“We’re in a small town,” Mike said slowly. “Less than twenty thousand people live here.”

“I understand, but
que le pasa?
Come on, how’s it going to look when we go to state court and …”

Mike held the Ice Man stare, allowing the silence to freeze and harden, even as he imagined the laptop screen starting to pulse a bright blue aura from somewhere in the room.

“Look, I’ve been with this department almost twenty years,” he said. “You’ve got a little over eighteen months. If you don’t like the way we do things, why don’t you just get the fuck out of here?”

“You guys almost done?” Jeff Lanier appeared in the doorway with a black mobile phone cradled to his ear.

The detectives shot each other recriminating looks, neither of them having heard him come back upstairs.

“Five minutes, sir.” Paco held up a rubber-gloved hand.

“I thought you were only looking in the bathroom.” Jeff’s eyes narrowed.

Both Paco and Mike gazed down at their shoes, like parents caught arguing by the children.

“We just stepped out to get some air for a second.” Mike glanced at the amber prescription bottle on the bedside table.

Jeff opened his mouth to protest, but his son called out from downstairs, asking his dad to come sit with him through the scary parts of the video, and he stalked off grumbling into the phone.

“Think he heard us talking before?” Paco looked out the door after him, making sure he was gone.

“I don’t know,” Mike muttered. “Let’s just wrap this up.”

It was taking more and more effort not to look over at the bookcase. Did she or didn’t she? He could just leave the diary there and see what happened once they got a warrant. But that would be a little like leaving in a brain tumor and seeing whether it turned out to be malignant. Once it got vouchered as evidence, it would be part of the official record, and there’d be no pulling it back.

“Hey, man,
lo siento.
” Paco raised a clenched fist to show solidarity. “I don’t wanna fight witchoo.
No vale la pena.
”

“Whatever.”

“We just have to learn to respect each other. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Without warning, Paco suddenly grabbed Mike’s right hand and snared his fingers in a soul shake, leaning forward to bump shoulders and clapping him heartily on the back with his free hand. Mike stiffened in the half-embrace, not wanting anyone this close right at the moment.

“Okay, we’re good, we’re good.” He pulled back from the newbie and straightened himself. “All for one, and one for all.”

“
Todo sigue bien.
”

“Look,” said Mike, “why don’t you go downstairs and ask him if we can get access to both their credit card records so we can track their movements and purchases over the last few days. I’ll be down in a minute to see if I can get the kids to talk to me while you have him occupied.”

“What do you think it’ll take for us to get real probable cause to give this place a good toss?”

“I’m not sure, but you’ll let me know if you see a hacksaw with blood all over it.”

“Yeah, right …”

He watched Paco leave the room, listened for the sound of his feet on the stairs going down, and then grabbed the diary off the shelf. He stuck it inside his jacket, zipped up the front, and started to look around for the laptop in earnest.

15

AS THE CAB
made the turn into the driveway on Grace Hill Road, Barry was unpleasantly surprised to see the mailbox lying on its side with its little silver door wide open like a sleeping man’s mouth. He cursed under his breath, remembering how he’d dug that hole deep in the dirt and pounded the post in with a sledgehammer. And then some suburban cretin knocks it down to impress his troglodyte friends. Brilliant. They couldn’t have done it just by leaning out a car window with a baseball bat. Some genius probably stopped the car, got out, and strained his back trying to uproot it.

He gave the driver seven dollars for bringing him up from the station and then climbed out and shoved the post back in, thinking he’d fix it properly over the weekend. He trudged up the driveway, pausing inside the gate to pick up the pair of sunglasses that had fallen off Slam the garden gnome. Then he looked at his house, considering the distance he’d traveled. Crickets were just coming out, and streaming lights from the dining room softened the evening. He watched his family go through their familiar movements without him, like figures in an antique music box. Clay chugging Diet Coke straight from a twenty-ounce bottle; Hannah carefully spooning out wheat germ onto whatever meatless dairy-free vegan meal she was eating, while Lynn moved around the table, carrying heaping bowls and blue glasses. He wondered if that first man he’d seen falling from the North Tower that morning, his tie flapping silently in the wind, had had such a vision right before he hit the ground.

Taking a deep breath, he put the shades back on the gnome, strode across the yard, and walked in through the front door, as if he was just coming back from a short practice.

“I have returned,” his voice rang out as he closed the door behind him, put down his briefcase, and opened his arms.

With a slight pang, he remembered how the Munchkins used to scurry out to greet their mayor when they were small. Now, only Stieglitz trotted over to jump up and hump his leg.

“All right, down.” He pushed the dog away. “Daddy doesn’t need that kind of love.”

They were arguing in the dining room just off the front hall. Hannah’s voice a high tense pizzicato against her mother’s low, patiently bowed counterpoint.

“You’re such a hypocrite,” his daughter was saying. “I haven’t done anything that you didn’t do when you were my age. I bet you went to the city every other weekend when you were a senior.”

“I certainly did not.”

“Hey, what’s going on?” Barry walked into the room, stripped off his jacket, and draped it carefully across the straight-backed chair at the head of the table.

“Mom’s being full of shit again.”

“Hey.” He rolled up his sleeve and drew back his hand, a halfhearted gesture toward Old World discipline. His father would’ve knocked him halfway across the room for talking to his mother that way.

“Your daughter wants to sleep over Saturday night in the city with some of her so-called friends,” Lynn explained, looking sallow and drawn. “But she can’t give me the phone number of the people she’s staying with so I can talk to the parents and make sure someone responsible is going to be there.”

“That’s not true,” Hannah said, flicking back her white streak. “I gave you Joanne’s mother’s office e-mail.”

“Which, strangely, she hasn’t responded to, even though I left her a message three hours ago.”

“Well,
she
works.”

“As opposed to?”

Barry gave a small groan, knowing there would be no peace once they got into the subject of work, the Bermuda Triangle of mother-child relationships.

“I think your mother’s just concerned about you going into the city with everything else that’s going on.” He came over and kissed Hannah on top of the head, remembering how she used to sit on his lap and let him read
Go, Dog. Go!
to her. “She just wants you to be safe.”