“You want to discuss him,” she said.
I turned and looked at her face in silhouette. “Christ, no.”
“I think you do. It seems to be what matters most to you right now. That much is obvious, Terry.” Her voice rose a bit with a tinge of anger. I wasn’t sure if it was for me or Collie. “You’re thinking about it right now. Anybody can see the pressure you’re under.”
“He’s not what matters most.”
“Then what does? I’d like to hear.”
I thought I might talk about Kimmy and Scooter. I thought about telling her to interview Cara Clarke again, because there was a girl who had a lot of pain to purge.
Eve said, “Why did you feel the need to visit him a second time?”
It had to come back to my brother. “He asked me to.”
“And that was all you needed to prompt you.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Will you see Collie again?”
I turned and snapped, “Who the hell are you to use his name?”
She relaxed and fell back in her seat, opened her purse, drew out a cigarette, and lit up off my car lighter, the way Kimmy used to do. I almost wanted to put my arm around her. “You’re protective of him.”
“I just don’t like to hear his name.”
She was in shadows, the smoke catching the light and drifting across my face. “Did he tell you why he killed those eight people?”
I thought, Seven. He says it was only seven. But I don’t know. How the hell am I supposed to know?
Already there were several accidents on the road. Late dark night, wet country roads, you had vehicles wiping out into one another like they were playing bumper cars. Cops in their rain gear directed traffic. The flares left flaming streaks across my vision as we passed by.
“That’s not how this is going to work,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not going to get anything out of me because I have nothing to give, Eve.”
By the burning red glare I watched as she nibbled at her bottom lip with her front teeth, held on for an instant, then slowly let out a small sound that wasn’t quite a sigh. “I want your perspective.”
“I can’t give that either,” I said. “I’m too close. What do you really expect me to say? I have no more insight into Collie than anybody else does. I’m at even more of a loss, right? Because I never expected this to have ever happened. So I’m worthless to you. But you’re not to me.”
She kicked off her shoes, shifted in her seat, got more relaxed. I turned the heater up and opened the vent onto the floor so she wouldn’t get cold.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll listen. What can I help you with?”
“Did you interview the families?” I asked.
“The victims’ families? Yes, of course.”
“All of them?”
“Yes.”
“Anything to connect them?”
“The police say no.”
“I know what the police say, Eve. What do you say?”
“I say no.”
The same images scuttled through my head. The little girl, twisting away from the barrel of his gun. The old woman, meeting my brother on the sidewalk, passing him without a word, fearful of such a large man, and Collie spinning the full force of his strength on her with his fists. Her breathless grunts beneath the awful sounds of her bones snapping, screams choked in the center of her flailed chest. I held on to the steering wheel at ten and two, a conscientious driver. I was worried that the images were already losing some of their power over me. Another accident was coming up. I rolled down my window partway and the rain sluiced in and wet the side of my face.
“Give me something I can use,” I said.
“To what end?”
“To the only end, the very end. I need to know if he did them all or not.”
She drew her knis up and angled closer to me. Her breath warmed my neck. “I think you should just accept that he’s guilty of killing them all. It would be easier for you.”
“Maybe, but I’m not sure.”
“Your father is still robbing houses,” she said.
It took me so off guard that I nearly missed a bend in the road. Shining reflectors appeared across the dark expanse of a guardrail. I eased my foot off the gas and maneuvered into a tight turn. “How do you know?”
“He was detained three months ago for breaking in to a home.”
“Whose home?” I asked, and my voice was sharper than I intended.
She looked aside at the wet empty woods flashing past as if she had to think hard to come up with the name. She was deciding whether to tell me or squeeze me for another angle at the story. Our attraction for each other was secondary to a night of murder and the continuing fallout. She glanced at the side of my face. I turned and she read something in my eyes, despite having nothing more than the dashboard light to read them by.
“The Wright family. Do you know them?”
I didn’t let my expression change. My scalp prickled with sweat, and a sliver of ice worked itself into the small of my back. My father had crept Chub and Kimmy’s house. I imagined him parking in the same spot where I had parked in front of their place. Watching them as I had watched. Seeing Scooter race by on the front lawn. My old man that close to her. I watched him popping out a screen window and sliding through, wandering the house in the darkness while Kimmy and Chub slept. Or made love. My old man listening. The fuck was going on?
“You said detained. He wasn’t arrested?”
“No, Terry. But it’s on record.”
Had Gilmore shown up to talk Kimmy or Chub out of pressing charges? Had she or Chub simply shown mercy? I wondered at the fear in her face, awakening in the night to see her ex-boyfriend’s father at the foot of her bed. My hands tightened on the steering wheel, and a muscle spasm made me tug right, then left, the tires chirping on the wet road.
“Who was the cop on scene?” I asked.
Eve reached for my knee in a show of concern. The rain sprayed my temple. I was driving sharp but fast. I wanted to go faster. I wanted to take the next right and head back home and confront my father. I thought, This means something, this will paint your old man in a way you have never seen before. My stomach twisted. I’d never been angry at my father, not even when he’d torn my rib through my flesh. But now I was chewing my tongue and tasting blood.
“I don’t remember,” Eve said. “Is it important? Who are the Wrights?”
“What did he take?”
“Nothing.”
“Then he wasn’t robbing the house.”
“So what else could he have been doing there?”
The stink of burning flares continued to fill my nostrils. I glanced at Eve. She was watching me intensely. She said, “Terry… please, slow down.” This whole scene might turn up on page three. The way I folded under questioning, how I sweated and barked. My mother would want to break Grey’s ass for putting me in this position. My sister would think I was a dunce. Lin would pass word back coto Collie that I had been wooed. I didn’t know what my father would think. It seemed a little pathetic that I wouldn’t know what my father would think.
We got to Head of the Harbor and she directed me along a series of back roads to her isolated neighborhood. She looked at me like she knew I had boosted a lot of TV sets out of houses like these, but it wasn’t true. There were too many private security forces and it wasn’t worth the risk.
She lived in a beautiful home that wasn’t more than five years old but had been built in the Victorian style. Three floors with arched windows set in squared-off bays. The front door was centered in an elaborate porch, and the roof featured gabled ends edged in a decorative carved timber.
