but I didn’t like the taste.’
‘Could be you just tried the wrong kind.’
‘It was whisky,’ William said. ‘I don’t remember the name. I went to a bar. I thought that was what you were supposed to do, you know, when you got out. That’s what everyone else talked about doing.’
He sounds so young, Lonny thought. It’s like he froze mentally at fourteen, so that his body grew older while his consciousness stayed the same.
‘That’s what I did,’ said Lonny. ‘I thought it tasted good. Got me some pussy too.’
William blushed. ‘Gosh, Lonny,’ he said. ‘Gosh.’
You child, thought Lonny. You weak little boy.
‘What are they calling you now, William?’
‘Randall. Randall Haight. I don’t know why they chose that name. They just did. And you?’
‘Daniel Ross. I don’t know why they chose that either.’
‘It’s an okay name.’
‘Yes, it is. Let’s go inside, “Randall.” It’s cold.’
Side by side, they walked back to the house.
‘My momma’s out,’ said William. ‘She plays bingo at the American Legion every Friday. Before that, she has dinner at a restaurant and reads her magazines. I went with her a couple of times, but I think she preferred being alone.’ The house came into view. ‘I heard that your momma and poppa died,’ said William. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Yeah. Well, you know.’
Lonny trailed off. He didn’t want to talk about that. They were gone, and that was the end of it.
The inside of the house smelled of damp clothes and bad cooking. William took two cans of soda from the refrigerator, but Lonny had already found a bottle of vodka in one of the kitchen closets.
‘Thought you said you didn’t have anything stronger?’
‘That’s momma’s!’ said William. He sounded scandalized.
‘She won’t mind,’ said Lonny.
‘She will. It’s hers. She’ll know someone has been supping from it.’
‘She won’t, William. Trust me. I’ll make it right with her.’
‘No, you can’t be here when she gets back. She won’t like it.’
‘Why is that?’
William clammed up. This wasn’t a subject that he wanted to explore.
‘Because I’m the bad one, right? Because I made her little boy do a bad thing?’
William remained silent, but Lonny knew that it was true.
‘I know that’s what she thinks,’ continued Lonny. ‘I know, because that’s what everyone thinks.’
He found two glasses, poured a generous measure of vodka into each, then added Coke from one of the cans. He handed a glass to William.
‘Take it.’
‘I don’t want it.’
‘Take it, William, and drink it. Trust me. It’ll make things easier in the long run.’
William took the glass. He sipped at the drink, but didn’t like the taste. He started to cry.
‘Drink it, William.’
‘I’m sorry, Lonny,’ said William. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Lonny forced the glass back to his mouth and made him drink. When the glass was empty, he refilled it.
‘More.’
‘I don’t want any more.’
‘Just do it. For me.’
He clinked his own glass against William’s in a toast, then drank long. Already, William looked a little woozy. He held the glass in two hands and drank. This time he didn’t struggle so much with the liquor, but he was still crying. There was snot dripping from his nose, and a string of spittle linked his mouth to the glass.
‘You weren’t supposed to tell,’ said Lonny. ‘You were never supposed to tell.’
William just stared at the floor, his body jerking with the force of his sobs.
Lonny put his glass in the sink. He didn’t want to make a mess. A mess would make it more likely that he’d be caught. He took the rope from the pocket of his coat. He’d told himself that he was only going to use it to scare William, or tie him up if he had to, but it was a lie, just one of many lies he would be forced to tell, and to live.
‘I’m sorry, Lonny,’ William repeated, but his voice was different now. The sobbing suddenly ceased. ‘But you should be sorry too for what we did to Selina Day.’
He swallowed the last of the vodka and Coke, then turned and knelt on the floor, his back to Lonny. Lonny couldn’t move. He had expected arguments, or excuses, but not this: not this abject surrender.
‘Don’t hurt my momma,’ said William. ‘She’s a nice lady.’
It was those words that broke the spell on Lonny and set in motion all that was to follow. He flipped the rope over William’s neck, put his knee against his back, and slowly strangled him. And when William’s mother came home he did the same to her.
On that night William Lagenheimer ceased to exist, but Randall Haight did not.
At the kitchen table, the man who had once been Lonny Midas, then briefly Daniel Ross, and finally Randall Haight, pushed his spectacles farther up the bridge of his nose. He still didn’t need them, and the lenses were just clear glass, but they were a part of who he was, even down to that little tic. He’d seen William do it, and he’d absorbed it. After all, he hadn’t had a whole lot to work with, so he’d taken whatever of Randall Haight that he could. The scar he’d created with a razor, and it had hurt like a bitch. The rest he’d made up himself.
‘They blamed Lonny for everything,’ he said. ‘William was innocent, Lonny was guilty. Becoming William seemed the perfect solution.’
‘Where’s Anna Kore, Lonny?’
‘I told you already: I don’t know. Selina didn’t know either. If she was dead, Selina would have told me. She might even have brought her along to show me. The dead know the dead. But, dead or alive, I didn’t have anything to do with her disappearance.’
I heard a voice say, ‘I don’t believe you,’ but it wasn’t my own. I tried to move, but I was too slow. I caught a glimpse of three men as I rose, and then there was a shocking pain in my head as the first blow connected. Others followed, but after the first three or four I ceased to feel anything at all.
35
Kurt Allan pulled up a short distance from the entrance to the department building, and killed his engine. The department’s Explorer was parked up, which meant that Ken Foster, Allan’s senior officer, was inside. Knowing Foster, he probably already had a cup of coffee in his hand, and was scavenging for sweet foods. Allan was right. When he entered, Foster’s large ass was facing the door as he poked around in the closet beneath the coffee machine.
‘Quiet night?’ said Allan.
‘Hungry night,’ said Foster’s voice from inside the closet. ‘And the staties have cleaned us out. I think they even ate the bugs.’
‘Why didn’t you pack a sandwich?’
‘I did pack a sandwich. Then I left the sandwich on the kitchen table.’
Allan liked Foster. Hell, Allan had hired him, so he supposed that he must have known what he was doing. Foster wasn’t about to solve a great mystery anytime soon, but his heart was in the right place and he managed to combine an inability to take shit from anyone with a gentle hand, which was no mean trick. The big man emerged from his foraging and took a seat behind the empty reception area.
‘You’re out late,’ he said.
‘I find it hard to relax lately.’
‘Yeah, me too.’ Foster toyed with his coffee cup, and watched Allan take some papers from his in-box. ‘Detective Walsh left those,’ he said.
