CHAPTER 4
For a minute after the cops pulled away, I just kept watching the street from the living room window. Rain was still falling lightly, my apple trees drooping from the weight of the water. Not much more to see beyond that. Silhouettes of parked cars in front of houses still sleeping, and a darkness that was heavy and wide. Irvington has few streetlamps.
The house creaked, then went silent again. It was a new noise to me, and I had to think it through before deciding that it was nothing to be alarmed about. My home had been built in 1923 in what was called locally the Portland craft style, and which I supposed up in Seattle was referred to as the Seattle craft style. It was barely two stories, a portion of the attic having been converted into the master bedroom with a bath. There was another full bath on the ground floor, near the guest room, and then the kitchen and the living room, some pantry space. The basement had been finished when I purchased the place, and I’d left detailed instructions on how I wanted the space converted into a music room, but I didn’t know if the contractors had done as asked. I didn’t feel much like finding out.
I’d closed on the house only two weeks before the tour had begun, and since then had been home only three times, the longest for a stretch of seventy hours back in July. We’d returned for a show out at the Gorge, about ninety miles east of Portland, one of those multiband, all-day affairs hosted by the local alternarock station. The gig had sucked, but those radio-hosted megashows always do—too many bands all vying for the limelight, and never a chance to get a decent sound check, so you never know what you’re going to be stepping into. When you play live and loud, there are monitors set up on the stage—essentially small speakers—positioned so the musicians can hear themselves. Kinda crucial.
That day the monitor mix had been awful, and after the sixth song the jackass on the board still couldn’t get it right, and we had no idea how we were sounding, but each of us was pretty certain “awful” might come close. Van finally stormed off the stage after “Broken Nails,” giving the finger to everyone in the audience.
The crowd had loved us anyway. They’d have loved a mechanical monkey clapping cymbals.
But that had been almost four months ago, and between travel, setup, and the show, I’d been in my home only long enough to sleep and do laundry, and even that had been difficult, because the contractor and the electrician and the plumber all wanted to talk to me about the work I was having them do. I’d barely even seen my brother, spending most of my remaining time with Joan and Steven.
Which was what made me remember that Steven was dead. Not remember, really; more, bring back the reality of it, solidify the fact. Claimed by that modern classic, complications brought about by cancer of the throat and mouth.
I felt supersize guilt. I hadn’t talked to Joan since the day after he’d died, since I’d told her I wouldn’t make it to the funeral. I’d have to see her. I’d have to explain myself.
I already knew that I wouldn’t be able to.
The headache was still with me, though now I didn’t know if it was from the drunk, the lack of sleep, the pure terror of the truck ride, the frustration of the police, or all of the above.
The house creaked again.
Maybe it hadn’t been a big deal, maybe the cops were right, it was just a mugging gotten out of control, a criminal biting off more than he could chew, then not knowing what to do with the leftovers. A mistake, nothing more. Maybe the thought that I would be stalked at all was ludicrous. I wasn’t the one pouting and preening onstage, I wasn’t the public face of Tailhook. That was Van, always was, always would be. If anyone was looking to sniff a pair of panties, they’d go after hers, not mine.
I didn’t want to be alone.
I let the curtains drop back over the window and grabbed my coat off the bag still in the hall. It took me a minute to search the drawers in the kitchen before I located my car keys in the back of the knickknack drawer, along with my garage opener. I couldn’t remember where anything was, and that only made me feel all the more disconnected with the space, all the more anxious to get out.
The garage was off the side of the house, pushed back about twenty feet from the street, freestanding, and my Jeep was where I’d last left it. Mikel might have used it, but he had his own car, so I figured he’d left mine alone. I climbed in and tried the engine, and the battery was weak on the ignition, but it caught after a long crank. The tank read just below half. I backed down the drive, switched on wipers and lights, closed the garage door after me, and headed the twelve blocks to the Plaid Pantry on Broadway, telling myself I would get some cigarettes and that was all.
The lot was illuminated and mostly empty, and I parked right out front. The clerk behind the counter looked up at me from his reading as I came inside, eyes on me all the way to the wall of refrigeration. I spotted the beer and pulled at the handle, but the door didn’t budge, locked.
“Not until seven,” the clerk said.
I glared back at him and he shrugged and resumed his reading, and I gave the door another protest tug, then got myself a can of Coke, instead. Portland goes dry from two-thirty until seven in the morning, no alcohol can be sold, and trying to convince the clerk to make an exception wouldn’t work, no matter who I was. Portland PD is serious about its alcohol enforcement, if not about its stalker laws.
Paid for the soda and two packs of Spirits, and it took the clerk until he was handing me my change before he raised an eyebrow and asked if he knew me.
“Where’d you go to high school?” I asked.
“Grant. You go to Grant?”
“No, I was over in Hawthorne.”
“Huh.”
“Oh, well,” I said, and went back out to my car. I opened one of the packs of smokes and lit a cigarette, then decided I still wasn’t going to go home, so I got out of the car again and went to the pay phone next to the entrance, trying to decide who I should call. Joan was pretty much straight out. Foster mother dispensation would get me a lot, but the guilt payback would be brutal, and I couldn’t do that to her.
So I started dialing Mikel’s number, thinking that, at the very least, I could determine whether or not he was renting out my home to any of his more disreputable friends.
It took four trills before he answered.
“Mikel? It’s Mim,” I said.
“Mim?”
“Your sister.”
He cleared his throat, coughed, rustled. I imagined him switching on the lamp, wondered if he was sleeping alone, or if Jessica was in bed with him. “Jesus, it’s not six yet. What time zone are you in?”
“Your time zone. Listen, brother dearest, and understand I ask this only because the cops put it in my head, but do any of your dope-fiend buddies own a big Ford pickup, maybe green, maybe blue?”
“Cops?” he asked, immediately alarmed.
“Yes, they wear uniforms and carry guns and—”
“I know what a cop is.”
“And I’m very proud of you for that. Answer the question, Mikel.”
“I’m not sure what the question is.”
I spoke slowly. “Do any of your drug-taking, dope-dealing, party-all-night friends own a big Ford pickup?”
“No. Why the hell are you even asking?” He coughed again, then added, “Wait, did you say you’re in my time zone?”
“I’m at the Plaid Pantry on Broadway and Sixteenth. Cold, tired, in the rain, and frankly still scared out of my mind.”
“What happened?” The hint of annoyance that had crept into his voice disintegrated. “Mim, are you okay?”
“I got home tonight and some guy pointed a gun at me and he made me get in his truck and . . . and it’s fucked up, it’s seriously fucked up, and I called the police, and they didn’t believe a word I said—”
