Stone Rain

It hadn’t occurred to me then that she might actually have called someone right after leaving the house. That she might have called someone who would need thirty minutes or more to get here.

Finally, around 2:45, there was a hard knock at the door.

“Down here!” I shouted.

Another knock.

“Hey!” I shouted. “In the basement!”

I thought I heard the door open, and then a voice, tentatively, called out, “Hello?”

I think, of all the people Trixie could have called, Sarah would definitely have been my last choice.

I went to say something but the words caught in my throat for a moment. I guess, for a fleeting instant, for nothing more than a millisecond, I must have thought I could keep Sarah from finding me handcuffed in Trixie’s basement only a few feet away from a dead guy strapped to a cross with his throat cut open. But it only took the briefest of moments to realize there was no way out for me that didn’t include immense dollops of shame and mortification.

“Sarah!” I shouted.

“Zack?” Sarah sounded scared. “Zack! Where are you?”

“Just listen to me first, okay? Okay? Just stop and listen!”

“Zack, what’s happened? Are you okay? Where are you?”

“Sarah, stop! Are you stopped?”

A pause from upstairs. “Okay, yes. I’m not moving. Zack, Trixie phoned. She told me to come out here, that something had happened and-”

“Sarah! Listen to me!”

“Okay.”

“First of all, I’m okay. I’m going to need your help, but before you come downstairs, I have to prepare you for what you’re going to see.”

“Oh my God. Don’t tell me you’re trapped in some sort of leather thing. You’ve been coming to Trixie, paying her to-”

“No, Sarah. Please just listen and don’t interrupt. I’m not hurt, but I am handcuffed to the stair railing and I need you to get the keys.”

Even from where I stood, I could hear her intake of breath upstairs.

“But Sarah, what I have to tell you is, I’m not exactly alone down here.” I took a breath of my own. “I’m down here in the midst of a…I’m in a crime scene, Sarah.”

“A crime scene.”

“A man has been killed, he’s been murdered, and I’m down here with his body.” I paused. “It’s very, very… bad.”

From Sarah, almost a whisper: “Who is it, Zack?”

“Martin Benson. The reporter from the Suburban. Somebody’s…oh man.”

“Tell me you’re okay.”

“I’m okay. Are you ready?”

Sarah paused a second before she said, “I’m ready.”

And then she appeared at the doorway at the top of the stairs, assessing my situation in a glance. She came down the steps slowly, and as she was able to see more of the room, she saw Benson at the far end of it.

“Dear God,” she said. She stayed on the last step, next to me, as if putting a foot on the floor would be an admission that what she was seeing was really true.

“The keys are right there,” I said softly, nodding at the table a few feet away. “If you give them to me, I can get these off and call the police.”

“Zack, his throat’s been slit clear across.”

“I know. The keys. Hand me the keys.”

She was holding it together fairly well, considering. She’d been a police reporter back in her early days and had seen the odd corpse here and there. Usually after the police had arrived.

She looked at the keys on the table. She’d have to put both feet on the floor to get there. As if she were putting her toe into icy cold water, she came down the last step and approached the table hesitantly. She delicately picked up the keys in her fingers, turned, and handed them to me.

“Your wrists are bruised,” she said as I struggled to work the keys into the openings. It took a minute or more for me to get the cuffs off my wrists. I didn’t bother to remove them from the railings. Perhaps, if they stayed there, it would bolster my version of events when the police arrived.

“Come on,” I said, leading Sarah up the stairs. “Let’s get out of here.”

I took her into the kitchen, where sunlight was streaming through the blinds and down through a skylight. Sarah slipped her arms around me and hugged me tight.

“I didn’t know what to think,” she said, starting to cry. “Trixie called, all mysterious, said you were in some trouble at her house, that she’d had to take your car, that she was very sorry, but that I should get out here as fast as possible.”

I put my arms around my wife, held her tight.

“I’m glad she called you. And I’m sorry you had to see what’s happened here.”

She pulled back, looked into my face, put a hand on each of my cheeks. “What’s going on, Zack? What’s happened?”

And then something caught her eye, something on my lip, and then she moved her left thumb over and rubbed at the corner of my mouth, then glanced at her thumb.

She stared at it for a moment, as though transfixed, then looked at me and said, “The police. You better call the police.” Then she turned and walked away.

I realized then what she’d found on her thumb was lipstick.

13

TWO BLUE AND WHITE CARS with uniformed officers arrived first. Sarah and I were waiting outside, leaning on her Camry. I had the keys to Trixie’s German sedan in my pocket, as well as the copy of the Suburban from the kitchen counter that had her picture in it. Sarah had her arms folded in front of her, and whenever I shifted my butt along the fender toward her, she moved away.

“I know what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong,” I said.

“Stay away from me,” Sarah said quietly.

The uniforms, as I suspected, kept their interrogations to a minimum and set about making sure the crime scene was secure, well aware that the more senior detectives would be along shortly to conduct the investigation.

An unmarked car parked at the end of the drive and a short, squat man in his late fifties, dressed in a dark suit and black fedora, got out. Who the hell wore fedoras anymore? And then I recalled that I knew at least one detective who did, and that was Detective Flint, from the Oakwood Police Department, whom I knew from my earlier troubles in this neighborhood.

Halfway up the drive he stopped, looked at Trixie’s house, then scanned two doors over to take in the house Sarah and I and the kids once lived in. Even with his eyes narrowing, it was possible to read them. I’ve been here before, he was thinking.

And then he looked at me and smiled to himself, as if everything was starting to make sense. “Well, well,” he said. “Mr. Walker. We meet again.”

“Detective Flint,” I said, trying to smile but not quite pulling it off.

“And you would be?” he said, turning to Sarah. I noticed that when I introduced her as my wife she hardly swelled with pride.

“Hello, Mrs. Walker. I’m going to want to talk to both of you, but individually.” He called over one of the uniforms. “Why don’t you show Mr. and Mrs. Walker to separate cars so that they can rest comfortably while I check things out in there.”