The Cold Spot

Lila tried hard to keep from smiling but couldn’t entirely manage it. She grinned, her chin dimpling, her eyes on him but not looking into his. A rush of warmth brimmed inside him and he thought, Maybe this is how you beat the cold spot, this is how you stay out of that place.

He said, “It was about as worthy a score as knocking over Bookatee’s Emporium was.”

“Don’t you tell her that though.”

So they walked through town toward the police station, and he found himself rambling about how the last three years had gone, saying nothing of Jonah, nothing of his mother’s murder or his old man’s suicide. People waved to Lila and she waved back with her free hand, the snub jutting into his side every once in a while, mostly hidden by her purse. Chase smiled and waved too.

“Judge Kelton didn’t show much mercy on your friends.”

“I told you, they weren’t my friends.”

“Your former crew?”

“Hardly. When thieves working together aren’t all that tight we call it a string. Those idiots weren’t even that.”

“You probably shouldn’t have gotten involved with them then, a stand-up professional villain like yourself.”

“I know it. I needed some quick money.”

“It’s only an assumption on my part,” Lila said, the “my” coming out mostly as “ma,” “but I’m guessing that’s what every thief says just about every time he’s doing any thieving.”

It wasn’t true, but he liked listening to her.

When they got to the police station she marched him up the front steps to the door. A couple of deputies moved in and out. Chase really hoped he hadn’t misread the whole situation, because if he had, he was going to have to cut and run now, and probably take a bullet in the spine.

He turned and faced her, pressing her back against the brick building. Now the snub was in his belly. He almost went in for a kiss, but veered off at the last second. She’d flattened her lips, still trying to read him and figure out what she was dealing with. It was good to know he wasn’t the only one who was confused.

“This is a helluva dangerous way to woo a girl,” Lila said.

“Yeah, but is it effective?”

“I’ve had worse dates,” she told him.

“Yeah?”

“You don’t want to hear about them and I don’t want to relive ’em.”

“No, I suppose not. Well, here we are at the halls of justice.”

“Yeah,” she said, showing just a flash of teeth.

“Time for your just reward.”

The gun in his guts didn’t hurt that much, but the smile-like a knife in the heart.

5

A few days later, while they lay in bed in a rough-and-tumble spot called the Skeeter Motel-these people just didn’t think their names through down here-Lila asked him about his parents, how he’d wound up such a young outlaw. He was starting to like it when she called him that.

Chase had already told her a lot about Jonah, but this was different. He did what he’d trained himself to do, separating himself from his emotions and keeping memories of his childhood as blunt as possible, letting the words drop from him like stones.

He lit a cigarette and took a couple of deep drags. His voice took on the hollow ring he expected, and he smoked and listened to the person speaking as if it was somebody familiar whom he hadn’t heard from in a long time. The man spoke fast.

“Nine years ago my mother was murdered, shot through the head in our kitchen. She was eight months pregnant.”

“Sweet Jesus-did you…?”

“No, I didn’t see it. I was at school. So was my father. He was a college professor who taught world literature. After her funeral, we’d visit her grave every day. He was wrecked. It was a bad winter, but we’d go out there and stand in the snow, sometimes for hours. Even back then I knew it was at least a little crazy.”

“He was grief-struck,” Lila said.

“There are only so many prayers you can say. He was out of his head and stayed there. He’d recite poetry and scenes from Greek plays. He was soft.”

“He was doing the best he could.”

“Sometimes that’s enough and sometimes it’s not,” Chase said. “He’d get drunk on whiskey. So would I. It was all we had to keep us warm out there in the cemetery. He used to sink to his knees and hold on to me while he wept. Sometimes he’d pass out from exhaustion or just because he was bombed. I’d stand there with ice in my hair, loaded on scotch, and try to keep him from freezing to death.”

Not exactly the best postcoital topic of conversation, but he knew Lila was the one, and he was glad she’d asked. He had his arm around her and raised his hand to brush the hair from her face.

She reached for his cigarette and took a few puffs, handed it back to him. “And you’re angry with your father for that?”

“I guess I sound like it, don’t I?”

“Because he acted weak in front of you. Because you were so young, and he put all of that responsibility on your shoulders. So you hated him.”

“Not about that so much as what came next,” Chase admitted. “After the cops hit a brick wall with their investigation, my father asked a newscaster if he could go on television and appeal to the killer. The newscaster said he thought that instead of my dad doing the pleading, I should do it instead. Maybe I’d warm the murderer’s heart. Like he’d suddenly crack and give himself up.”

A tiny groan drifted from the back of Lila’s throat. “And I said that thing to you about your being struck with a case of conscience and turning yourself in.” She gently pressed her lips to his neck. “I’m sorry for that.”

“When you said it, it was funny.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“But what they wanted me to do, it was stupid, just a ratings ploy. But I was a kid and had no say. They put cameras and lights on me and instructed me on what to do. When my eyes didn’t look wet enough they made me repeat my performance. When they still weren’t wet enough, they used glycerin on my cheeks. There was a makeup woman and somebody kept coming over and brushing my hair. It was like a movie set. Me doing twelve takes begging the man who killed my mother to give it up. Looking left, then right, then straight on while they decided which was my best side.”

“I like ’em both.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Now that the mustache is gone, anyways.”

“They put mascara on me to thicken my eyelashes.”

“It was callous and cruel,” Lila said, “that’s for sure, but still, it’s understandable. If they had no hard evidence or suspects after the first few days, the police would’ve been willing to try damn near anything. They wanted to get the killer.”

“That’s the logical, adult way of thinking about it. But my head is still wrapped up in what I saw and felt back then. That afternoon, my old man, he looked like he’d swallowed rat poison. Later, my father and I watched the news together. He sat around waiting, like the killer might phone him up and apologize. My dad was already mostly out of his head but now he went even further. I knew he was going to kill himself, and there was nothing I could do about it.”

“You were just a little boy.”