son.
When I got around back I was going to use the key, but the door was open here too. T he grill and the alarm had n’t done a damn thing to stop him.
I cocked the board back and stepped inside. The air-conditioning hit me like a blue norther, and the sunlight had been so harsh outside, my vision was affected. Standing there, half-blind, I felt as if I had put my balls in a vise and was waiting for someone to turn the crank.
But nothing happened. My eyes adjusted and I saw the living room was empty and so was what I could see of the kitchen. I checked out the rest of the kitchen and went out in the enclosed garage and found the shotgun. I had remembered wrong. It was put together. The shells were with it. I loaded it and went looking through the rest of the house. I looked Jordan’s room over extra hard. No one was under the bed or in the closet or hiding behind a Mickey Mouse curtain.
I tried the hall bathroom, half expecting, half hoping, Russel would come out from behind the shower curtain after me. I wanted an excuse to kill him. It wasn’t that I had acquired a taste for blood, but right then I was a little crazy and I just wanted to end things between him and me, and I wanted the end to be final.
Using the barrel of the shotgun, I swept the curtain back, but he wasn’t waiting for me in the tub. I went on into the master bedroom.
On the bed was the shoe box that had been in the closet and had held the gun the night of the burglary. Price still had the gun, but there had been some shells in the box, and they had been poured onto the bed and the shoe box had been ripped to shreds.
Jordan’s favorite teddy bear lay there among the pieces.
13
“It doesn’t take a fucking mental giant to know he’s been here,” I said.
We were in the kitchen, at the table. The police had escorted Ann and Jordan home. Jordan was in the living room watching a Casper the Friendly Ghost videotape, and the uniform cops and detectives were going over the house like starving mice looking for crumbs. So far all they had was a torn shoe box and some. 38 shells he might have touched. But I doubted he’d been that stupid. The guy was a pro. You could tell that from the way he’d handled the locks and alarms.
“We know someone has been here,” Price said. “We don’t know it was Russel.”
Ann looked at Price. “Are you for real? I guess it was Goldilocks. There’s a bear and a bed involved and if you guys can find a broken chair and some spilled porridge, you can wrap this case right up.”
“Price,” I said, “you know as well as I do that it was Russel. He found that shoe box with the cartridges and the gun oil stain and he put two and two together. He tore that box up and put Jordan’s teddy bear on our bed as a threat. He was just showing us he can get in and get to Jordan anytime he wants.”
“You’re right, I think it’s Russel, but I can’t prove it. Since I do suspect him, we can have tabs put on him and we can watch your house. I can get official protection without any problem now. But he may be too clever for anything that obvious and we might be able to surprise him.”
“Are you suggesting something?”
“We could put some obvious protection around the house for a couple of days, then pretend to be satisfied that things are normal and withdraw it-or seem to. Your son would have to start back to school then, and you and Mrs. Dane would have to return to work. Then, when he makes his move, we’ll be waiting.”
I looked at Ann. She got up and went over to the kitchen sink and looked out the window. I followed and put my arm around her waist.
“What do we do, Ann?”
She continued to look out the window. Finally she said, “Let’s nail the bastard.”
14
The uniform cop they left with us was built like an industrial water heater and was a decorated Vietnam vet and a black belt in jujitsu. He was ugly too. I don’t know why, but that kisser of his made me feel better. He didn’t look like the sort to worry about his native good looks if it came down to serious business, and I figured it would take someone like him to handle Russel, even if Russel was in the ballpark of sixty years or so.
The cop’s name was Kevin and they put him in a chair in the hallway, then the rest of them went outside to make their watch. The plan was simple. They would do this obvious watch for a couple of days. Not laying in the yard or anything, but staying in the woods behind the house, and patrolling regularly, posting a man in the ditch that ran to the far right of our property. They would not be overly sloppy about it, but they’d do things in such a way that if an old pro like Russel were around, he’d spot them. Then, when the couple of days were passed, they would leave. Except Kevin. He would remain in the house, having never revealed himself to the outside; he would remain and wait. Close surveillance would be maintained where we worked and where Jordan went to school. Police officers in unmarked cars would be waiting to follow us in the mornings at a safe distance and in the afternoons when we returned. Weekends, police would be hidden in the woods surrounding the house, only this time with the intent of not being seen. “Very organized, and very safe,” Price said.
So we started that night. The police went away except for the few who were supposed to be in the woods behind the house and the man in the ditch. Inside, we turned on the alarms and pulled the grills in place. Considering how easily Russel had gone through them before, I felt almost silly bothering with them.
The cop had food and a coffee thermos next to his chair in the hallway. Except to go to the bathroom, he didn’t plan to move. In fact, he didn’t look like he could be moved; he looked as solid as a stone gargoyle.
Price called about ten. They hadn’t seen Russel, but they had found his car. It was not far from our house, parked on a little dirt road that wound into the woods and ended at a dead end of trees and garbage that some of our less environmentally conscious citizens had tossed out. It seemed likely that Russel was somewhere in the area. Maybe creeping up on the house at the very moment. If Russel saw the cops and went away, more cops would be waiting at his car. If he abandoned the car, we still had our old plan. Wait a few days, make things look easy for him, then surprise him. We just had all kinds of plans.
I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I was more tired than I thought; worry had gnawed me down. As I was drifting off, I tried once again to imagine Russel with little Freddy, but nothing came of it. I thought then of my own father, Herman Dane. I missed him. I didn’t know exactly why. He had never spent much time with me. He went hunting and fishing a lot and took me only once. He worked the rest of the time just to put food on the table. My mother called him names at night when I was supposed to be asleep. I think he loved me, but he always looked at me with a kind of astonishment, as if I had been landed in his house by aliens. I’ve been told I look just like him.
When I was twelve he took his beautiful Winchester rifle from the closet and loaded it in his station wagon with his rods and reels, and said he was going on a fishing trip. He let me walk him out to the car. He got down on one knee and told me he loved me and held me. That’s the only time I remember such a thing. He drove away and I never saw him again. They found him in a fishing camp with the Winchester barrel in his mouth, his naked toe on the trigger. The top of his head was gone. There was talk of too many bills and another man my mother loved. I never knew for sure. I didn’t go to the funeral.
My Uncle Ned, dad’s brother, used to say, “He was a man of honor and integrity.” I didn’t understand what he meant then, but as I grew older and heard more about my dad from others, I came to understand what my Uncle Ned meant. He lived by his word and had a simple code of justice. I suppose it could have been called a Hemingway code, or some such thing. He didn’t bother people and he didn’t allow himself to be bothered. He stood up for himself and didn’t expect others to do it. And I guess he shot himself because my mother’s infidelity was just too much. Maybe being an honorable man living in a dishonorable situation was more than he could stand.
After the suicide, my mother went into a blue funk and went away, leaving me to live with my grandfather and grandmother. Two years later we heard she had died in what was then called a tourist court just outside of
