Too Close to Home

  Or maybe not.

  He couldn’t believe Penny’s parents might not let her out for the evening. He was absolutely aching for her to come over. He thought, maybe take something from Mrs. Langley’s lingerie drawer, whack off, take the edge off, be ready to go again by the time Penny got over.

  Okay, Derek thought, maybe there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. He could watch some TV, take his mind off things. So he returned to the basement, in pretty much total darkness now, and turned on the set. Flipped through some channels, hardly settling on anything for more than a second. He couldn’t relax, even though he had this house to sneak into for the next seven days. It was a seventeen-year-old boy’s dream. A place to bring his girl as often as he wanted.

  Better than a car. Didn’t have to worry about some cop tapping on a steamed-up window.

  But it was starting to feel wrong. The Langleys had always been good to him. Well, Adam’s mom, for sure. His dad always made you feel like you were intruding, like he wanted the house to himself when he wasn’t at the office, defending people, getting them off, whatever the hell it was he did. Derek had known Adam, what, nearly ten years now? Been here for sleepovers, gone on short trips with the family.

  What would they think of him if they ever found out? Jesus, Adam’s dad was a lawyer. Could he sue him? Would he sue a kid he knew? Or worse, would he call the po—

  His cell buzzed. He glanced at, recognized Penny’s number. “Yeah?” he said. And before Penny could say a word, he lost the signal.

  Sitting in the basement, he figured. Too much interference or something. He reached over to the end table and grabbed the extension phone, punched in Penny’s cell.

  “I can’t come,” Penny said. She was whispering. “I’m grounded.”

  “Shit,” Derek said. “Shit shit shit.”

  “Look, I gotta go. We can get together later in the week, maybe tomorrow, okay? I gotta go.” And she ended the call.

  Derek hung up the phone. The perfect plan, fucked. God, the blueballs he was going to have. The thing was, he didn’t just want to mess around with Penny. He wanted to be with her. He wanted to hang out in that empty house and talk with her, for long stretches without anyone interrupting or walking in, about what he wanted to do with his life. His parents figured he was some lazy fuck without dreams or ambition, but that wasn’t true. He could tell Penny. About wanting to be a software designer, maybe invent new games, shit like that. If he told his dad about wanting to design games, he’d tell him, “Hey, I wanted to turn my passion into a career too, but sometimes you have to be realistic.”

  Derek flipped through the channels, popped in Adam’s Halo game for a while, watched some MTV, dozed off for a bit during Justin Timberlake. It was kind of cool, just hanging out here, even if he was alone. No one to bug him about anything.

  But it was getting late. Time to get the hell out of here, he figured.

  That was when he heard a noise from outside. Tires crunching on gravel.

  He grabbed the remote, killed the TV. The basement had windows, the kind that came down about a foot from the ceiling. He jumped up on the couch so he could see outside.

  It was the Saab. The Langleys’ SUV.

  “Shit!” he said under his breath. “Shit!”

  He had to get out. He had to get out fast. He ran up the stairs to the back door, was about to open it when he realized that if he did, the house alarm would probably be set off. He’d have to enter the code first, but the keypad was by the front door.

  He started running down the hall, thinking maybe he could get to the front hall and enter the code before anyone came through the door, then run back through the house and out the back door.

  But then he saw shadows beyond the front door. It was Adam, with his mother right behind him.

  Derek stopped, turned, ran back for the basement. He could hear the front door opening, voices, Donna Langley saying, “I said I was sorry. You think I wanted to ruin everyone’s vacation?”

  He dropped to the floor in front of the crawlspace opening and was about to slide the door open when the basement lights went on. He knew there was a switch at the top of the stairs, which meant someone was coming down. Derek scurried into the narrow space between the back of the couch and the wall, figuring he was pretty well covered, but Jesus, what if someone came down and decided to watch TV?

  Someone did come down the stairs right then. Derek heard the beer fridge open, a couple of things get put into it, then Adam, shouting upstairs, “Should I refreeze the ice packs?”

  Derek wondered whether to get his attention, fess up, enlist Adam’s help in getting him out of the house. Adam might be pissed, but there was no way he’d tell. His parents would find a way to blame him. But before he could make up his mind what to do, Adam was going back upstairs. But the light stayed on. Derek thought maybe he’d come back. Derek could make out some of the conversations upstairs.

  Mr. Langley: “Honey, just go to bed. We’ll unpack.”

  Mrs. Langley: “Maybe, in the morning, I’ll feel better.”

  Mr. Langley: “Yeah, well, whatever. Maybe Adam and I will go up, you can join us when you’re feeling better. Honestly, your timing.”

  Mrs. Langley: “For Christ’s sake, you think I wanted to get sick?”

  Mr. Langley: “I’ll be up in a minute.”

  Okay, so if they went to bed, the only one to worry about was Adam. And if he went to bed, Derek would wait till they were all asleep, sneak upstairs, enter the code, get out the back door. So long as Penny didn’t change her mind, sneak out of her own house and come over, Jesus, let’s hope that didn’t happen—

  Mr. Langley: “Who the hell’s that?”

  Derek thought, Shit, is he talking about me? How could he know Derek was down here, how could he see—

  No, someone outside, tires crunching on gravel, then stopping. The sound of a car door closing.

  Christ, no. Not drop-in company this time of night.

  Adam: “I don’t know who it is, Dad.”

  Derek thought he could hear footsteps outside, then Albert Langley saying something, probably with the door open.

  It sounded as though someone else, maybe two people, he wasn’t sure, had come into the house.

  Some muffled talk. Mr. Langley saying, “Who did you say you are?”

  A new voice. Just snippets of sentences. Then one word, really clear: “Shame.” And then: “Son of a bitch.”

  That was when Derek heard the first shot. Then Adam, screaming. “Dad! Dad!”

  Mrs. Langley, sounded like from up on the second floor: “Albert! Albert! What’s going on?”

  And then Adam: “Mom! Don’t come—”

  That was when Derek heard the second shot. The sound of something—someone—falling down some stairs.

  Then, footsteps running through the house. At least two sets, frantic running, from the front of the house to the back. Only lasting a second or two.

  Derek heard a third shot, then someone tumbling down the half flight of stairs toward the back door.

  After that, it was very quiet.

  Derek realized he was trembling. His teeth were nearly chattering. He heard more footsteps going through the house, slower now, calm steps, measured steps. They came down the half flight of stairs, paused, turned, came all the way down to the basement. Couldn’t hear the person walking around that well now, not on the basement broadloom, which was laid over cement. But he could sense someone in the room. The person who had fired the shots. A killer. A few feet away, on the other side of the couch. Derek could hear shallow, rapid breathing.

  He clamped his jaw tight together, determined to stop the chattering. He wondered if the killer could hear the blood pulsing in his temple.

  Then the person went back up the stairs, turned out the light. The front door opened and closed, then a car door, same thing. Open, then slamming shut. A moment later, tires rolling away on gravel.

  Derek waited about five minutes, slithered his way
back out from behind the couch, crossed the rec room, and went up the stairs to the landing at the back door, just enough moonlight streaming through the window to show Adam lying there, his legs still splayed across the stairs, his head in a pool of black blood.

  Derek delicately stepped over him, his hand shaking as he turned back the deadbolt, opened the door, and ran off into the night.

  ONE

  THE NIGHT THEY KILLED our neighbors, the Langleys, we never heard a thing.

  It was warm and humid that evening, so we’d closed all the windows and had the air conditioner cranked up as high as it would go. Even at that, we couldn’t get the temperature in the house much below 76. This was late July, and we’d been suffering through a heat wave the last week, the thermometer hitting mid-90s pretty much every day, except for Wednesday, when it hit 100. Even some rain early in the week had failed to break it. It wasn’t getting much below the mid-80s even after the sun went down.

  Normally, it being a Friday night, I might have stayed up a little later, even have been up when it happened, but I had to work Saturday. That rain had set me back with all the customers I do yard work for. So Ellen and I had packed it in pretty early, nine-thirty or so. Even if we’d been up, we’d probably have been watching TV, so it’s pretty unlikely we’d have heard anything.

  It’s not like the Langleys’ place is right next door. It’s the first house in off the highway along our shared driveway. Once you pass their place, it’s still another fifty or sixty yards or so before you get to our house. You can’t see our place from the highway. Homes out here on the outskirts of Promise Falls in upstate New York have some space between them. You can see the Langleys’ house up the lane, through the trees, but we never heard their parties, and if the racket I make tuning up lawn mowers ever bothered them, they never said anything about it.

  I was up around six-thirty Saturday morning. Ellen, who didn’t have to go into her job up at the college, stirred as I moved into a sitting position on the side of the bed.

  “Sleep in,” I said. “You don’t have to get up.” I stood up, wandered down to the foot of the bed, saw that the book Ellen had been reading before she’d turned out the light had fallen to the floor. It was just one of a stack of books on her bedside table. You have to do a lot of reading when you organize a college literary festival.

  “It’s okay,” she mumbled resignedly, turning her face into the pillow and pulling the covers tighter. “I’ll put some coffee on. You’re just going to wake me up getting dressed anyway.”

  “Well,” I said, “if you’re already getting up, some eggs would be nice.” Ellen said something into the pillow I couldn’t hear, but it didn’t sound friendly. I continued, “If I heard you correctly, that it’s no trouble, does that mean you could fry up some bacon, too?”

  She turned her head. “Is there a union for slaves? I want to sign up.”

  I got up and walked to the window, flipped open the blinds to let the early morning sun in.

  “Oh God, make it go away,” Ellen said. “Jesus, Jim, shut those.”

  “Looks like another hot one,” I said, leaving the blinds open. “I was kind of hoping it might rain, then I’d have an excuse not to work today.”

  “Would it kill those people if their grass missed getting cut one week?” Ellen asked.

  “They pay for a weekly service, hon,” I said. “I’d rather work a Saturday than have to give them refunds.”

  Ellen had no comeback for that. We weren’t quite living hand-to-mouth, but neither were we willing to throw money away. And a lawn service, especially in this part of the country, was definitely a seasonal business. You made your living from spring to fall, unless you diversified by putting a blade on the front of your pickup and clearing driveways in the winter. I’d been hunting for a used blade. The winters around here could be fierce. Couple of years back, over in Oswego, they had snow up to the first-floor roofs.

  I’d only been running a lawn service for a couple of summers now, and I needed to find ways to make more money. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, and it certainly wasn’t what I wanted for myself when I was a young guy starting out, but it beat what I’d most recently left behind.

  Ellen took a breath, let out a long sigh, and threw back the covers. She reached, reflexively, as she did occasionally, for where her pack of smokes used to be on the bedside table, but she’d quit the habit years ago, and there was nothing there. “Breakfast is coming, Your Majesty,” she said. She reached down for the book on the floor and said, “I can’t believe this was a bestseller. Hard to believe a novel about wheat isn’t gripping. There’s a reason they set a lot of books in cities, you know. There are people there. Characters.”

  I took a couple of steps toward the bathroom, winced, put my hand on my lower back.

  “You okay?” Ellen asked.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. I did something to myself yesterday, I was holding the weed whacker and turned funny or something.”

  “You’re an old man in a young man’s game, Jim,” Ellen said, putting on her slippers and throwing on a housecoat.

  “Thanks for reminding me,” I said.

  “I don’t have to remind you. You’ve got your aching back for that.” She shuffled out of the bedroom as I went into the bathroom to shave.

  I took a look at myself in the mirror. I had some sunburn on my whiskered face. I’d been trying to remember to use sunscreen, wear a hat with a visor, but the day before, it got so hot I threw the hat in the truck at one point, and must have sweated the sunscreen clean off. I still didn’t look too bad for forty-two, and as tired as I felt, I was probably in better shape than two years ago, when I spent most of my day sitting in an air-conditioned Grand Marquis, driving around Promise Falls, opening doors for an asshole, being a glorified gofer without an ounce of self-respect. Since then, I’d lost thirty pounds, I was gaining back upper-body strength I’d lost over the last decade, and I’d never slept better in my entire life. Coming home every night dead tired had a lot to do with that. Getting up in the morning, though, that could be a challenge. Like today.

  By the time I came downstairs to the kitchen, the smell of bacon was wafting through the house and Ellen was pouring two cups of coffee. The Saturday edition of the Promise Falls Standard was on the kitchen table, rubber band already removed, so I could see the main headline.

  “Your old friend’s at it again,” Ellen said, cracking some eggs into a bowl.

  The headline read, “Mayor Rants at Single Moms’ Home.” And a drop headline, “Vows next time to ‘bring cookies, not toss them.’”

  “Oh Jesus,” I said. “The guy never stops.” I picked up the paper, read the first few paragraphs. Promise Falls’s mayor, Randall Finley, had burst in unannounced Thursday night at a city-funded home where unwed moms can find support as they adjust to lives with newborns but no husbands. It was something the previous mayor fought for and got, and which Finley had always seen as a waste of taxpayer money. Although to be fair, Finley viewed almost everything as a waste of taxpayer money, except for his car and driver. And that was pretty much a necessity, given his talent for drinking to excess, and a DUI conviction a few years back.

  Finley, the story suggested, had been touring around the city, dropping into a couple of bars after a city council meeting, and while passing the home ordered his driver—I was guessing that would be Lance Garrick, but the story didn’t actually say—to stop. Finley walked up to the door and kept banging on it until the home supervisor, Gillian Metcalfe, opened up. She attempted to keep him out but the mayor forced his way in and started shouting, “Maybe if you girls had exercised a little restraint, you wouldn’t be in the mess you are now!”

  And then, according to reports from the young women living at the home, he threw up in the front hall.

  “Even for Finley,” I said to Ellen, “that’s pretty impressive.”

  “You’re feeling nostalgic,” Ellen said. “You think he’d take you back?”

  I was too tired
to fire something back at her. I took a sip of my coffee and read further into the story. When reports began to circulate Friday morning about the mayor’s behavior, he at first denied everything. It wasn’t clear whether he was lying, or simply didn’t remember. But by the afternoon, when presented with all the evidence against him, including the vomit-splattered front hall carpet runner that Gillian Metcalfe had taken down to city hall and left on the front steps, the mayor decided to revise his statement.

  “I deeply regret,” he said in a written release, not eager to face any media representatives in person, “my behavior last night at the Swanson House.” It was named in honor of Helen Swanson, a late city councillor who had championed feminist causes. “I had had a particularly stressful session of council and may have had more refreshments afterwards than was prudent. I remain a strong supporter of Swanson House and offer my sincerest apologies. Next time I would hope to bring cookies rather than toss them.”

  “Pure Randy,” I said. “Close with a joke. At least he didn’t stick with trying to pretend it didn’t happen. Must have been too many witnesses.”

  Ellen had three plates out, put three bacon strips and two fried eggs and a couple slices of toast on two of them, and brought them over to the kitchen table. I sat down and shoved some bacon into my mouth. It was salty and greasy and wonderfully delicious. “Mmmm,” I said.

  “This is why you keep me, isn’t it?” she said. “For the breakfasts.”

  “Dinners are good, too,” I said.

  She reached over the paper, pulled out the lifestyles section. I took a sip of coffee, forkful of egg, bite of bacon, bite of toast. I had a good system going.

  “You going to have to do a full day?” Ellen asked.

  “I think we can be done a little after noon. The rain delayed everybody a day, but by the end of yesterday we were starting to catch up.” We usually did seven to eight properties between eight in the morning and five in the afternoon and squeezed in the odd landscaping job when one came along. Ellen made more than I did with her job at the college, but we wouldn’t have gotten by without my business. “Why?” I asked. “You got something in mind?”