Inside? Inside what? Most people did their reading inside, unless they were taking their books with them to the beach in the summertime.
“Yeah, this was good,” Rick said. “I found it kind of spiritual, if you know what I mean. Man, I can hardly believe I'm meeting some hot-shit writer.”
“Well, not that hot shit, actually. My other books have done only so-so. But that one, it did the best, and I'm finishing up a sequel to it now.”
Rick's eyes widened. “Are you kidding me? When I finished that book, I thought, Hey, what would happen next? Would the Earth guys suddenly get religion, or would they just be killed, you know, for not believing, or maybe back on Earth they'd send some more guys to see what happened to them, like in Planet of the Apes, you know, where they sent another astronaut after Charlton Heston found the Statue of Liberty on the beach there? Oh shit, I didn't spoil the ending for you, did I?”
“I've seen it.”
“Check this out,” he said, reaching into his back pocket and digging out a silver cigarette lighter featuring the Star Trek insignia, the rounded upside-down “V” that was the symbol for the Federation of Planets, on the side. “Like it?” he said, turning it so I could see the emblem more clearly. “Got it from a guy inside. I looked after him, and he knew I liked Star Trek, so he gave it to me.”
There was the word again. I was starting to get an idea of what it meant to be “inside.”
“Sort of like you giving me this Batmobile,” he said, patting his jacket pocket. “Now I'll do my best to look after your interests, too.”
I tried to smile.
“Now,” he said, getting back to the purpose of his visit, “how do you know Stefanie?” He put emphasis on the word “know.” “'Cause you don't really strike me as her type, though I could be wrong.”
“No no,” I said. “I don't know Stefanie at all.”
“Because I know she's been seeing somebody else lately. Maybe even a couple people, you know.”
“Not me.”
“Uh-huh.”
“No, you see, her mother's address? That was the only one I had for her. I did find something of hers, and I was just trying to return it, that's all.”
“And what would that be?”
“Her purse.”
“And why do you have her fucking purse?”
“I found it,” I said. “She'd dropped it at a store.”
Rick nodded knowingly. “Did you have a good look at what's inside that purse, Mr. Walker?”
“I looked at her license, so I could find a way to get in touch with her.”
Rick eyed me suspiciously. “I think you're giving me a load of bullshit, you know that?”
“No, really, I have it.” I was about to dig it out for him when the phone on my desk rang. We looked at each other, neither of us knowing whether I should answer it, and then it rang again. I leaned over and looked at the call-display feature. “It's my wife,” I said. “I better answer it.”
“I'm not here. Understand? Unless you'd like that phone cord wrapped around your neck.”
“Sure,” I said, unconsciously raising one hand to touch my neck while I reached for the receiver with the other. “Hello?”
“Me again,” said Sarah. “I tried the cell and when I didn't get you I figured you must be back home.”
“Yeah.”
“How'd the interview go? With Ms. Wilton?”
“Oh, you know. Okay. More or less. Not so good.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, he's not, he's, well, he could be working a little harder. That's pretty much the gist of it.” Rick was taking a model of the Millennium Falcon off my top shelf, examining it.
“There was nothing more?”
“Well, some, but I can tell you all about it when you get home. How's it going there?”
“Pretty quiet.”
“What about that story you mentioned to me earlier?”
“The body out our way? Still waiting for more details. Cops don't have a name or anything yet, but she was banged up pretty bad.”
“Hurry up,” Rick whispered.
“I'm worried about you,” Sarah said. “I think you need to take some time off. I've never seen you stressed out quite the way you were tonight.”
“I'm okay.”
“I was talking to Deb, you know, on Foreign? Her husband, he had the same problem, and he got that prescription? The little blue pill?”
“You were telling Deb about this?” I asked.
“No, not specifically. Just generally, you know?”
“Sort of like, I know this guy, but it's not necessarily my husband, who's got erectile dysfunction?”
Rick grinned, made a drooping finger.
“No, don't worry about it. You seem really touchy.”
“I'm sorry. Maybe I'm just a bit hungry.”
“You must be starving. Throw on the other steak, have something to eat.”
“Maybe so. Listen, I gotta go, I think I've got to do a pickup at the mall.”
“Oh yeah, did Angie get some money from you?”
“Yeah, she did.”
“Okay, look, I gotta go too, things are starting to heat up around here. Love ya.” And she hung up.
I replaced the receiver.
“Chatty broad,” Rick said. “What did she want?”
“Just to check in and say hi. She's at work.”
Rick nodded. “Let's have it.”
I swept away the instructions for the Seaview model, revealing the purse. “Here it is,” I said. “Just take it and get the hell out of my house and don't come back.”
Rick grabbed it from me, turned it upside down, and dumped the contents on the floor. “Where is it?” he asked. “It better fuckin' be here.”
“Here,” I said, bending down and grabbing the two thick white envelopes. I opened the flap of one of them and fanned my thumb across the fifties. “There's $150 missing. I'll give that to you.”
Rick stared at the cash, dumbfounded. “Jesus,” he said. “That's a shitload of money. Where the fuck did that come from?”
And I thought, not for the first time that night, that it was possible I did not have a firm grasp of what was really going on.
I heard the front door open. “Dad!” someone screamed.
Angie. Home from the mall.
17
it was unlike angie to call out my name upon arriving home.
It was unlike Angie, upon returning from an outing of any kind, to call out for me or her mother. It was rare for her to shout out so much as “Home!” When Angie came through the door, she tended to head into the kitchen for a snack or straight up to her room to phone somebody. More often than not, coming into the house was something both the kids conducted with the utmost stealth. They did not always want to advertise what time they returned home, and would open the front door like bomb deactivators, making sure the knob made no sudden latching sounds, moving through the hall without turning on the lights, creeping up the stairs and slipping into their rooms undetected. When Sarah or I awoke at midnight, wondering why we hadn't heard one of them come in, we'd get up and find them in bed, feigning sleep, in all likelihood fully dressed under the covers, pretending to have been there for at least an hour when they'd only been home ninety seconds.
So for Angie to shout out my name, that could not mean anything good.
My mind raced. Did Rick have an accomplice? And weren't things already going downhill fast enough with one bad guy in the house? How might things proceed with two?
I don't know quite how to explain what happened next. I think it was a primal thing. A father's instinct kicking in, I don't know. I just knew at that moment that I had to do whatever I could to protect my daughter. When Angie screamed, it caught Rick by surprise as it had me, and he turned away from me, looking to the study door, and at that moment—don't ask me the brain processes that went into this—I grabbed my Lost in Space Robot statue off the shelf and swung. Hard.
I'd picked
it up two years ago, in that store in New York, in the Village. A comic shop that had every SF model and souvenir you could think of. I hadn't much liked the sixties series, but as with a lot of crappy fantasy shows, I still loved the hardware. This was a solid resin model of Robot, the one who was always shouting “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!” and it stood a good foot high on its stand. It had a bit of weight to it, and it felt formidable in my hand as I grabbed it.
It crumbled into several pieces as it connected with the back of Rick's head, and I guess I was expecting him to whirl around and kill me right there, but darned if he didn't drop right to the floor. I stood over him, ready to club him a second time with the remnant of Robot that was still attached to the base, but he wasn't moving. “Jesus,” I said, under my breath, “I've killed him.”
“Daaad!”
I put the busted model back on my desk, threw the two envelopes and everything else Rick had dumped onto the floor back into the purse, came out of the study door and rounded the corner into the laundry room, where I stuffed the purse into the empty washing machine.
I arrived in the front hall sweat-soaked, my heart pounding, wondering who I'd have to hit in the head next.
Evidently, it was going to be Officer Greslow.
She was decked out once again in her deep blue uniform, hat, and broad black holster from which hung, among other things, what appeared to be a very large gun. A radio clipped to a strap across her chest crackled. How did they get here so fast? I wondered. How did they know I had a suspected killer in the house? Who cared? It was time to talk. Time to tell everything.
“God, Dad, thanks a lot,” Angie said upon seeing me. Her eyes were red; she'd been crying.
“Why, Mr. Walker,” Officer Greslow said. “Imagine running into you again.”
“Yes, hello,” I said, feeling a mixture of relief and anxiety. “Well, I can't believe you're here. Were you watching the house, was that it?”
“Uh, no, Mr. Walker, we weren't. Why would you think we'd be watching the house?”
“Uh, well . . .” Something was wrong here.
“Mr. Walker, is this your daughter, Angela Walker?”
“Yes. Yes, she's my daughter.” Come on, I thought, let's get past introductions so I can tell you about this guy in the study who I just killed, but it was totally self-defense. I understand that, in addition to investigating the murder of Samuel Spender, you may already be investigating another murder this evening, and this is the guy, you can wrap the whole thing up, no thanks necessary. Just want to do my part as a good citizen.
“Maybe we could sit down,” the officer said. I motioned her into the living room, as far away as possible from my study, and gestured toward the couch. We all sat down. I said, “I'm a bit confused.”
“It's the money you gave me!” Angie said.
“What are you talking about?”
The officer leaned forward, her leather belt creaking as she moved. “Mr. Walker, your daughter used three fifty-dollar bills this evening to make a purchase at the Groverdale Mall.”
“It was for pants,” Angie said.
“What was the problem?” I asked.
“Sir, the saleslady ran the fifties under their scanning machine and determined the bills were counterfeit.”
“Counterfeit?”
“So you still owe me $150,” Angie said.
“They called security, who in turn called us, sir. Had it just been the one counterfeit bill, they might not have held your daughter and called us, but having three did raise some suspicions. A closer examination showed that the bills all carried the same serial numbers.”
“Counterfeit?” I said again.
The officer ignored me. She continued: “Your daughter says that she obtained these bills from you. Is that correct, sir?”
“Uh, yes, that's true. I gave them to her tonight, before she left for the mall.”
“I can't believe you did this to me,” Angie said. “Like, about a hundred of my friends were in the mall and they all saw me being led out and put in a police car. I'm gonna have to change schools.”
“Mr. Walker, where did you get these fifties?”
Oh, let's see. From a purse I stole, which belonged to a murdered woman. Probably murdered by this guy in the study, who I just hit in the head, and who could probably use an ambulance, if it isn't already too late?
I said, “I guess from a bank machine.”
“A bank machine.”
“I suppose. I go to them all the time. Some of them, you know, if you're taking out as much as two hundred dollars, they dispense fifties. Instead of twenties.”
“Yes, sir. Which bank machine would that have been?”
Think think think think think. “I'm all over town. It could be any one of a dozen, I suppose. I, I really have no idea.”
“Could I see your bank card please, sir?”
“My bank card?”
“Yes, sir. I can take down the number, take it to the bank, track where you've been getting your money, and that will help us narrow down which branch these fifties might have come from.”
“Oh, sure.” I reached around into my back pocket and took out my wallet. “This is the one I use,” I said, sliding it out and handing it over to the officer. She wrote down the number in her notepad and handed it back.
“Is my daughter going to be charged?” I asked.
“No, sir. It looks to me like just one of those things, but we will be keeping the counterfeit bills.”
“You see?” Angie said. “You owe me that money. And I don't want it in fifties this time.”
“Sir, do you have any more fifties? From the same ATM?” the officer asked.
You might want to check the washing machine, I thought. You might find $19,850 worth.
“I don't think so,” I said.
“You mind my checking your wallet, Mr. Walker?” Officer Greslow asked. It wasn't really a request. She already had her hand out, waiting for me to hand it over. I did so. She looked where I keep my cash, and there was nothing there but a couple of small bills, and then she handed the wallet back to me.
For a moment, she didn't have any more questions. She was jotting down a few further notes. This was my last chance, I realized, to tell her everything. About the purse. About finding Stefanie Knight. About her probable killer coming to see me. About his body in the study.
“Okay then, Mr. Walker, we'll check this out, and in the meantime, you might want to give any fifties you come into possession of in the future a close look. Check for the lettering, it should feel a tiny bit raised. A lot of counterfeiters, what they're doing now is, they're using really top-notch photocopying machines. They're not actually forging and doing their own printing anymore, which is why this is becoming such a problem.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And let me give you my card, it has my name and badge number and where I can be reached in case you think of anything else, you can give me a call.”
“Thank you.”
“Nice to see you again,” she said, touched her fingers to the brim of her hat, and withdrew. As she left, my last chance of coming clean went with her.
Angie and I stood in silence for a moment. It wasn't every day the police brought your daughter home in a marked car for passing bogus bills. That you'd given her.
“Where's Mom? I need to talk to Mom.”
“She's at work, honey. Remember?”
“I'm going to call her.”
“No, don't do that. She called me earlier, and it's pretty wild there tonight. This would be a very, very bad time to call her.”
Angie started heading toward the kitchen, which would take her past my study. I blocked her way. “Just stay here for a minute,” I said, touching both her shoulders lightly.
“What? Can't I go to the kitchen?”
“Just stay here for a minute!”
My tone gave Angie a jolt. She stood still while I turned and ran to my study. I eased the door open. Maybe he wasn't dead, I thought.
Maybe I'd just knocked him cold. It used to happen to Mannix every week on TV. Somebody hit him in the head with a gun butt, he was back on his feet after the commercial, no harm done. Even if this guy was Stefanie's killer, I hadn't signed on to be his executioner.
“Oh man,” I said.
Rick was gone. I came back out of the study, bolted into the kitchen. The patio door was wide open. Evidently, I'd not killed him. And when he realized the police were in the house, he'd made a break for it. I slid the door shut, and when I returned to the study, I found Angie there, looking at the pieces of the Robot model all over the carpet, as well as a couple of makeup items from Stefanie's purse that I'd failed to scoop up.
“What happened here, Dad?” Angie asked. “Your robot thingy. It's all smashed.”
“I just had a little accident, that's all.”
“And what's Mom's makeup doing here?” She picked up an eyeliner, sneered. “Oooh. She doesn't even use this kind.”
“Angie, do you have any place you could go tonight?”
“Go?”
“A friend's, to sleep over.”
“You never let me go to sleepovers on a school night.”
“I know, but you know, it's your mom's birthday in a couple of days, and I think she's going to be able to get off shift soon, and I thought I'd surprise her when she gets home. Order in some food, put on some music, maybe—”
“Oh God, don't tell me any more. That's so gross. Yeah, I could probably go to Francine's. Her parents are in Europe, she'd like the company.”
“Why don't you go throw some things together and I'll drive you over.”
Angie shrugged, turned to go upstairs. “You still owe me $150,” she said.
“I'm sorry about what happened,” I said. “I didn't know that money was counterfeit.”
She shrugged. “It was kind of cool, actually. I never got to ride in the back of a cop car before.”
18
while angie packed an overnight bag, I called Paul's cell phone.
“Yeah?”
“It's me. You still at Andy's?” I could hear other young males goofing around in the background.
“Quiet, it's my dad!” he shouted. Then, more quietly, “Yeah, I'm here. I gotta come home already? You only dropped me off here like half an hour ago.”