Alex’s eyes flashed to mine. It was true that I’d omitted to inform him that Dan was Katie’s godfather. But there were things Alex hadn’t told me either. I’d been such an idiot—instead of asking him about his police record, I’d focused on his friendship with Stella. I hadn’t wanted to make the same mistake twice. No, I’d just made a completely new mistake instead.
“It’s not your call, Dan,” I seethed quietly. “And Matthew will be hearing from my lawyers first thing on Monday morning.”
“What the hell are you doing still seeing him?” Dan rapped out, jabbing a finger toward Alex, his own temper rising as he ignored my words and glared. “After everything I told you!”
Alex took a sudden breath, his eyes darting between us.
“You didn’t tell me very much at all, Dan,” I pointed out furiously. “Alex told me himself about his issues with alcohol.”
“Is that what he told you? Is that all he told you?”
I swallowed, feeling on shaky ground. “I know about Charlotte, his ex-wife.”
“Jesus, Dawn! I didn’t want to do this, but I’ll spell it out for you.”
And he flipped open his notebook. My worried gaze turned to Alex, wondering how he was going to react, but there was a grim expression fixed to his face, something like determination, maybe even satisfaction. I couldn’t read him at all, and I shivered.
“Public Indecency,” Dan read out.
My mouth dropped open. That was not anything like what I’d expected to hear. I turned a startled face to Alex.
He was wearing a broad grin, which earned a furious glare from Dan.
“There was even an unconfirmed report that he owned a dangerous dog . . .”
“Stan?” I asked, bemused.
Alex laughed loudly, and I know I looked incredulous. Dan’s face reddened and he moved on quickly.
“And Disorderly Conduct . . .”
Alex frowned and shook his head, but I didn’t think he’d be capable of talking coherently again, not with Dan in the room. I wondered about finding Katie’s iPad so he could type out some sort of rebuttal.
But then I stopped, my brain finding a new serenity that I wouldn’t have thought possible under the present circumstances. It was so simple.
I realized that none of what Dan was saying had convinced me that Alex was a danger either to me or to Katie. I was still concerned, but not as gut-churningly scared as I had been.
“Come on, Dawn! Doesn’t this paint a picture for you?”
“Yes, it does,” I said calmly, despite my thundering heart. “And as soon as you’ve gone, Alex is going to tell me all about it. His words,” And I turned to gaze at Alex. “Aren’t you.”
He nodded, a tiny smile curving his lips.
Dan’s eyes bulged.
“I’m not leaving you here alone with . . . with a crazy guy!”
“He’s not crazy and this is my house, Dan,” I reminded him gently. “Thank you for everything you’ve said, and for caring about me and Katie, but I’ll call if I need you.”
Dan wasn’t happy, and we argued it back and forth for several minutes, but in the end I persuaded him to leave.
Alex was still standing, watching me carefully, his smile long gone when I returned to the living room.
I collapsed onto the sofa and closed my eyes.
He sat down next to me and took my hand, holding it between his warm palms.
“D-do you want me t-t-t-to go?”
I opened my eyes and tiredly peered up at him.
“No, but will you tell me the truth this time?”
His jaw clenched and his eyes darkened with anger.
“I didn’t l-lie to you.”
“Every time you had a chance to tell me the whole truth and didn’t, that was a lie.”
His nostrils flared, and he stood abruptly, pacing the length of the small room.
“And you told me everything, Dawn?”
I flinched. He was right. I was the queen of hypocrisy.
“You want to know everything?” he said through gritted teeth.
I nodded, uncertain that I really wanted that, but feeling that I should.
He took a deep breath and stood with his hands on his hips, staring out the window. Then he turned around and glared at me.
“Fine. You want to know everything? Let’s start with the day I learned that my brother had been killed by an IED in Afghanistan, and I came home from work to find my best friend fucking my wife. Would that be a good place to start, Dawn?”
I swallowed, blinked a couple of times, and nodded weakly.
Alex
I WAS TRYING to control my anger, but it wasn’t easy. Every time I hoped to put all the sadness, pain, humiliation and aching loss behind me, it got dragged out again.
Damn the fucking interfering asshole Police Officer!
I’d wanted a firmer bond between me and Dawn before I had to wade through this sea of shit with her.
Tough. I was out of time.
“Charlotte and Warren.” I shook my head, a sneer on my face. “My wife and so-called best friend. We’d all been together since college, so it never occurred to me that I couldn’t trust them. We were business partners for seven years. I don’t know how long they’d been having an affair. Maybe years—I never did get a straight answer on that. Certainly months. The day I caught them, I’d been working late on an important new contract: municipal offices in downtown Denver. It was a huge break for a small firm like ours.”
I closed my eyes, remembering that fucking awful evening.
“I’d been at my desk since 5AM finishing up some of the details, and I was still working 15 hours later, pretty much sitting in the same position, bloodshot eyes, pounding headache, and everyone else had left a couple of hours earlier. But then I looked up from my screen, surprised that anyone was still in the building. Walt, the security guard must have let them in. As soon as I saw the uniforms, two men in Dress Blues, I knew.
“I keep wondering if they went to the house first but didn’t get an answer. It’s a dumb thing to think about, but I can’t get it out of my mind . . .”
I shook my head.
“I’d been dreading this happening since I was 15 years old, when Carl first joined the Marines. I’ll never forget their words . . . ‘Sir, on behalf of the Secretary of the Army, I regret to inform you that your brother Sergeant Carlton Winters was killed in action yesterday in Helmand province by an IED’.”
I paused, feeling like it was just yesterday, the pain fresh, the aching loss.
“It didn’t make sense. The war was supposed to be over and Carl was guarding the US Embassy in Kabul. Why the hell was he out on patrol? No one would tell me and I still don’t know the answer to that. I asked if Carl suffered. I wanted him to say no, expected it, but he didn’t. He said he didn’t know the answer to that question.”
Dawn had her hand over her mouth, an expression of horror frozen on her face.
“I guess he didn’t want to lie to me, but I think about that, and I wish he had. Which is ironic, as lies almost destroyed me. Anyway, I didn’t want to tell Charlotte over the phone. I wanted to tell her in person . . . and you know how well that went. I left the house the same night and took Stan with me. I didn’t have anywhere to go except the office. I couldn’t go to my best friend’s place . . .
“Walt found me the next morning. I’d picked up a bottle of vodka on the way over and drank the whole thing. And then puked it up on the carpet in reception. I don’t remember much about that. I do remember that Stan had taken a shit on the floor because he hadn’t been able to wake me up to let him out.
“I don’t know what Charlotte expected. I think part of her assumed that I’d just be able to carry on and it would all be . . . civilized.”
I laughed bitterly.
“I didn’t feel like cooperating. The Marines sent their Casualty Affairs Officer to help me plan the funeral. I was in no shape, so he pretty much did the whole thing. Even got me washed up and i
nto a clean suit on the day. Stopped me falling in the grave because I was too drunk to stand.
“I went back to the office that afternoon and took out all of the petty cash from the safe—about $5,000. I gave it away to everyone on the street who had a dog, because I figured they were the only ones I could trust. Charlotte had already tossed all of my clothes into garbage bags but I didn’t care. I was checking out. I’d lost everything—family, friends, wife, business . . . maybe my sanity at some level, because things, objects, possessions . . . none of them meant anything to me. I couldn’t think about living until tomorrow, let alone the end of the week. So I gave away everything, and when I had nothing left, I started giving away what I was wearing. It felt incredibly freeing.”
Dawn raised her eyebrows.
“Yeah, in December,” I smiled. “It was fucking freezing. That’s when I got arrested—all that shit your Police Officer friend just told you about. The arresting officer was a woman, and she got mad when I dropped my pants and told her . . . uh, well . . . I told her she wouldn’t be needing them with me.”
Dawn looked as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I didn’t blame her—it was a crazy story.
“But the worst part was that they took Stan away from me while I sat in jail. They sent him back to Charlotte and that bitch took him straight to a high-kill dog pound. She’d found another way to get back at me for the stunt with the money. Or for humiliating her, she said. She’d have found a reason—take your pick. Stan was released to me the next day, but I’ll never forgive her for that.
“I smashed up the house and my office, and that gave her what she needed to get me kicked out of my own company because she had a restraining order put on me. I couldn’t go within 250 yards of her or some shit. I didn’t even want to, but it meant that I had nowhere to go, nowhere at all.
“I slept on the streets for a couple of weeks. I would have frozen to death if some of the other homeless people hadn’t helped me. I had money in bank accounts, but Charlotte had emptied our personal ones and had me frozen out of the business accounts. I think . . . I think I wanted to die.”
I’d gotten so lost in the memories that I hadn’t realized Dawn was crying.
I wanted to go to her, comfort her, but she needed to hear all of it. And now I’d started, I didn’t want to stop.
“I was drinking every day and taking a lot of street drugs—half of it, I couldn’t even tell you what it was. I started feeding any stray dog I came across, just two or three to start with, then a few more, and later, when the police became interested in me, there were nearly twenty.
“I began hearing word on the street about illegal dog fights, and when one of my pack didn’t turn up at the usual time, I found that he’d been killed. King Rollo I called him. He was a big guy, part Alsatian, but a real softy. He had his throat ripped out.”
“Oh no, that’s horrible! What did you do?” Dawn whispered.
“I got revenge.”
She swallowed, her face pale. I could see she wanted to ask me what I’d done. I hoped she didn’t, because I didn’t want to tell her the truth, that I’d burned down the building where the fight had happened. I’d felt bad after—it was wrong of me to have risked the lives of firefighters, and I’d decided I wouldn’t make that mistake again, but I wasn’t going to stop either.
She hesitated, wondering how much truth she dared to ask for. Her gaze dropped to her hands.
“Dan mentioned an ongoing investigation?
Somehow, I found the courage to continue.
“A few weeks after Rollo was killed, I saw this guy being dumped out of a limo—he’d had the crap beaten out of him. I didn’t see the beating, just the aftermath. It wasn’t enough to get a conviction . . . and the guy had connections.”
“You mean . . . ?”
“Yeah, mob connections . . . one of their top wise guys, I was told.”
“Oh, God!”
“It sounds bad, but in the end, when I took the stand, I was more useful to the defense.”
“But . . . about what Dan said?”
“I warned the prosecution lawyer that I’d make a shitty witness. I’d been wasted when I saw the limo and I wasn’t in a good place. I was drinking every day, Charlotte had the business and the house. I was living out of cheap motels, places that would take Stan . . . they put me on the stand anyway, and I was ripped to pieces. I was stuttering badly, and the defense lawyer wouldn’t let me finish a word, let alone a sentence. He was the one who started the St. Francis thing—making out like I was crazy, like I was on a mission. Maybe I was, maybe he was right, but he wanted me to sound completely nuts. The District Attorney and the police weren’t happy that they didn’t get their conviction—and I made a useful scapegoat.”
She shivered and closed her eyes.
“Coming here was a fresh start, but bad luck seemed to follow me. From the day I moved in, dead animals started turning up at the cabin.”
Her eyes popped open wide.
“Oh my God! The dead raccoon! Did the mob boss do that?”
I took her hand, holding it gently, and shook my head, hoping to calm her down.
“I considered that, but I don’t think it’s likely.”
“Why not? How can you be sure?”
“Well, for one thing, guys like him prefer the more direct approach—that sort of ‘warning’ . . . I don’t see it.”
Dawn looked terrified.
“But it could be him!”
“No, I’m more use to him alive and discredited, a joke, rather than dead and therefore interesting to the police.”
“This isn’t a game!” she snapped, tugging her hand free.
“I’m not playing any game,” I said sharply. “You wanted the truth, Dawn. This is what it looks like.”
She drew a sharp breath.
“That’s not fair! You’re twisting my words.”
I sighed.
“I’m not trying to, but the mob is the least of my worries. After the court case, they lost interest in me. But it did change things.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, slightly mollified.
“Afterwards, I thought the St. Francis gig might be a good idea, and I didn’t have anything else to do. I fed any stray I found. I used to go to all the parks and feed the birds, stealing food out of dumpsters to do it. People started to use the saint tag—someone told me that there was even a newspaper article about ‘The New St. Francis of Denver’. Most people thought I was just a crazy homeless guy—harmless, but a weirdo. It was just a coincidence that I found out that the same criminal I’d faced in court was the one organizing the dog fights. It was my extreme fucking pleasure to cause him maximum discomfort.”
“I’m afraid to ask . . .”
“I found ways of stopping the fights. It wasn’t entirely legal, so you’re better off not knowing.”
I relished the memories, smoking them out, taking them down one by one. I started small fires with damp rags—lots of smoke, very little heat.
“Didn’t the police help? Did you even ask them to?
“No. Who cares about a few stray dogs, right?”
“That’s why we have animal shelters, Alex.”
I shrugged.
“They’re all full or high-kill shelters. The cute little dogs get picked first. The ones like Stan, no one ever wants them.”
I could see the moment of awareness in her eyes.
“Stan was one of them? A fighting dog?”
“Yes, in Afghanistan. That’s what Carl saved him from.”
“I thought so . . . when I saw his scars. But I can’t imagine it—he’s so . . . he was so gentle.” She chewed her lip. “What about the other dog that you brought to me?”
I frowned. Remembering that failure hurt.
“Everything had gotten so crazy in Denver. I knew I’d end up dead if I carried on like that. Honestly, I wouldn’t have cared, but I couldn’t do that to Stan. So I checked myself into a rehab that accepted pets. When I w
as clean, I didn’t want to stay in the city. Charlotte and Warren had shoved me out of the business—had me declared incompetent or something. It’s all a bit hazy now. Basically, they bought me off for a fraction of what I should have got, but it was enough to pay for rehab and ultimately the cabin.
“It was strange being told that I’d had a breakdown. I thought I’d feel more, but I was numb. I literally had to be told to get out of bed in the mornings, had to be reminded to eat. My brain wasn’t functioning on any level. But there was Stan: always there, always happy to see me, didn’t judge me, didn’t care if I hadn’t washed or hadn’t spoken for ten days. He was just there, with me. Yeah, you could say he saved my life.”
“And that’s when you stopped shaving?”
“No. It was before that. I didn’t shave again after I was given the news . . . the news about Carl. Besides, having a beard keeps you warm in winter,” I said, unconsciously touching my jaw that was covered in two days of stubble. “But that wasn’t the reason—I just didn’t care about shaving, I wanted to hide, be someone else. I remember going to the dog park with Stan one day in April. One of the women who’d worked for my company for three years walked right past me and didn’t even recognize me. I felt invisible—only animals could see me, and I liked that feeling.”
I didn’t realize that I was running my fingers over my tattoo until Dawn placed her hand over mine, and turned it palm upwards to study the words inked into my skin.
“Is that when you had this done: We are all creatures of one family?”
I nodded.
“I began to think that I’d been saved to live this life with purpose, helping animals. Coming here, a new start, I wanted to feel like myself again. You made me want to feel. So . . . I stopped taking all the prescribed meds . . .”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah. I know it wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but I was tired of taking pills, and I’d started to think that they weren’t really helping, just making me . . . numb. It took a couple of weeks before I’d gotten all the drugs out of my system.”
I didn’t tell her that going cold turkey had nearly killed me. Detoxing too fast had really screwed up my system.