Damaged Goods: A Jack McMorrow Mystery Read online

  “I’m okay,” she said, “but I’m not so sure about my daughter.”

  Clair said he knew how Sophie felt. We were on the deck, watching the swallows and bluebirds. It was a dark red sunset behind the trees. Roxanne was giving Sophie a bath, and Mary was finishing the dinner dishes.

  “Strange thing, good and evil,” he said. “An odd human invention.”

  “Do you think Wilton was pure evil?” I said.

  “I did, but I changed my mind,” Clair said. “Now I think he was just sick.”

  He watched the birds, sipped his drink.

  “How you doing?” I said.

  Clair smiled. “Gets harder every time,” he said. “I mean, the first one. Vietnam. That was tough. To take a life, see it end right there in front of you. And then, well, stuff’s flying and you’re just protecting your guys, trying to make it out of the chaos alive. Then you get good at it, it becomes a job.”

  “One shot in the field,” I said.

  “That guy. Wonder if he knew what he was getting into.”

  “Best not to think about it.”

  “Easier said.”

  We both were quiet for a moment.

  “I have no regrets,” I said. “You saved her.”

  “Mandi saved her,” Clair said. “I just pulled the trigger.”

  Sophie was up late, her clock still out of sync. We read books, played games. Candyland. Chutes and Ladders. She was intent and silent, moving her pieces across the board.

  Finally, after midnight, she fell asleep in my arms. We put her in the middle of the bed, climbed in ourselves. Our hands clasped.

  “How are you doing?” I said.

  “Better than this afternoon,” Roxanne said. “Which was better than this morning.” She looked at Sophie, her hands raised over her head.

  “She’s so precious,” Roxanne said. “She’s a gift.”

  “And so are you. Every moment.”

  “Will we ever be normal again, Jack?”

  “Sure. We just won’t be what we were before.”

  “Maybe we’ll be better,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “Maybe we will.”

  She was quiet, her fingers rubbing mine, both of us listening to Sophie’s miraculous breaths.

  “You can go see her, you know,” Roxanne said.

  “I know,” I said.

  “Why don’t you? Go in the morning.”

  “I know you didn’t want her—”

  “My gut,” she said.

  “I understand.”

  “But I turned out to be wrong.”

  “Nothing is black and white,” I said. “Is it?”

  I left at seven. It was raining softly and Roxanne and Sophie were asleep. The police were gone from the end of the road and I drove slowly, sipping tea from a travel mug. Over the ridge, down the roads that had once been trails through the woods. I saw two deer, a fox, an old woman picking up bottles from a ditch. And then the horizon to the east, glimpses of the bay shrouded in pale gray mist.

  And then I was running down the road to Galway. I sat at the light, punched in Mandi’s number again, the same number that had been in the paper. “Mandi. Personal Escort. Companionship.”

  I heard her voice. “Hi. This is Mandi. I can’t answer the phone right now . . . ”

  The bright-slickered summer people were up, walking from their cars to the café on the corner for coffee and the paper, their lifeline to the world. I drove past them and down the block to Mandi’s apartment. I pulled in and parked, looked up.

  Lulu was in the window. She looked down, as if she’d never seen me. I got out and tried the door. It opened and I walked up.

  There was a broom and mop and cleaning stuff in the hallway. A pail with some odds and ends of food. Tomatoes. Cheese in a plastic envelope. An open bottle of white wine. Half full.

  I knocked at the door. Nobody answered and I pushed it open. I stepped in. It looked like when I’d left it, with Roger and the gun, Mandi on the floor. Except it had been neatened up. There was a light on in the bathroom, the sound of water running. I walked across the room, knocked on the doorjamb.

  A guy appeared. Thirties, muscular, baseball hat. He was holding a sponge and the sponge was dripping.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Just looking for Mandi,” I said.

  “Flew the coop,” he said.

  “Huh. Looks like she didn’t take much with her.”

  “Hell, all this stuff goes with the place. I rent it furnished.”

  I looked behind me, the couch and pictures, magazines. Lulu jumped down from behind the window shade.

  “What about her cat?” I said.

  “Lulu?” he said. “Original owner was two tenants ago. She comes with the place, too.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “You know where she mighta gone?” the landlord said.

  He squeezed the sponge into the sink. Gave it a scrub.

  “Why?” I said. “She owe you money?”

  “No, she’s all paid up. I was just gonna see if she wanted the rest of her stuff. She left some behind.”

  He pointed back into the living room. I turned and saw a plastic bin. It was filled with papers and notebooks. On the top was a drawing of a woman with long flowing hair.

  When I came out, Raven was leaning on the hood of my truck, arms crossed.

  “Hey, there,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said, walking toward him. He straightened, held out his hand. I took it and we shook. He leaned back and looked up at the apartment windows.

  “Poof,” Raven said. “Gone.”

  “I just heard.”

  “Know where she’s headed?” He looked at me, watching my face. I shook my head. “District attorney wants to talk to her. Came by because she didn’t return my calls.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Not sure whether they’ll be able to go to grand jury, if they can’t talk to her again.”

  “Too bad,” I said.

  “Saved by the bell, huh?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Heard she sort of helped save your little girl.”

  “Not sort of. Did.”

  “Jumped Wilton or something?”

  “More like made herself a shield between him and Roxanne and Sophie.”

  “Dared him to shoot her? Is that right?”

  “More than once.”

  “Impressive,” Raven said. “You don’t see that.”

  “I think he was so surprised he wasn’t sure what to do. And then she ended up trying to tackle him.”

  “And your buddy took him out.”

  I hesitated, thinking of Clair. I nodded.

  “Good friend to have in that situation,” Raven said.

  “In most situations,” I said.

  He didn’t answer, just looked up at the window where Lulu had climbed back on the sill. “Aren’t people strange?” he said. “Turns out to be some sort of heroine or whatever. After everything else.” He turned to me, met my gaze, and held it. Then smiled. “We both know, don’t we?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you figure it out?”

  “Little things,” I said. “One thing led to another. You?”

  “Prints came back,” Raven said. “I guess you can’t really call that detective work.”

  I shrugged.

  “M.E.’s report said the deceased was pounded flat as a frog in the road.”

  “M.E. said that?”

  “Not the frog part,” Raven said. “But can you imagine? That little girl?”

  I shook my head. We stood, the tourists bustling past us.

  “Got a copy of the sentencing report. Know what they said she had?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Conduct disorder. No kidding. For that they get a hundred bucks an hour.”

  Raven smiled. I didn’t.

  “I have another theory I’m working on,” he said.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  �
�You know Marty Callahan worked in the same facility where she was incarcerated?”

  “I figured.”

  “But she didn’t like him. You said he scared the crap out of her.”

  “Beat the crap out of her, too,” I said.

  “Yeah, good riddance to bad rubbish. No tears here. But I’ve been picturing it. She’s in town. He happens to be here, has his summer house, paid for with money from some goddamn graft and corruption. And there she is, living under an assumed name. Doing what she does.”

  I waited.

  “So he says, ‘If you don’t want the whole town knowing you were a child murderer, a teenage psychopath, then you do what I say.’ I figure she was like his slave.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “No, that much I’m pretty sure of. It’s the ending I’m working on. It’s like the boat’s nine-tenths done.”

  I didn’t answer. He looked up at Lulu.

  “Guys like him, they don’t kill themselves. They’re too self-centered. Too domineering. Things get tough, they go beat somebody up so they can feel better. They like to win. And putting a forty-four to your head and pulling the trigger isn’t winning. That’s giving up.”

  “What about the Russian roulette?”

  “I can only see it if he’s playing with her head. No, I think Mandi, Sybill, Louise, she figured he was gonna rat her out anyway. Or maybe she just got sick of being pushed around.”

  I shrugged.

  “I think he got sloppy drunk, passed out with the gun in his hand, and she took it and put it to his head and kaboom. No more problem.”

  “What’d the M.E. say?” I asked.

  “Suicide.”

  “Blood on her?”

  “Coulda cleaned it up.”

  “Her prints on the gun?”

  “Nope.”

  “That’s that then,” I said.

  “Could be her second victim,” Raven said. “Maybe there’ve been others. Maybe she’s a goddamn serial killer.”

  “All I know is she saved my little girl.”

  “You’re gonna let a possible homicidal maniac walk ’cause of that?”

  I looked at him, then turned and walked to my truck. He watched as I backed out. When I drove past him, I waved. He didn’t.

  Chapter 42

  The car was backed into the woods at the side of the road. I glimpsed it as I passed, looked into the rearview mirror and saw it pull out and follow. I eased over and stopped and it pulled in behind me. Mandi got out, walked up to my truck, and got in.

  She was blonde now, hair cut in a bob that made her look even more like a 40s film star. She was wearing jeans and a black top and heeled sandals. She’d had her toenails done. Blood red.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hi,” Mandi said.

  “I’m glad to see you.”

  “Me, too.”

  “I went to the apartment.”

  “I moved.”

  “Where to?”

  Mandi shrugged. “A new place,” she said.

  I waited, said, “I like the hair.”

  “Do you?” she said. She flipped the visor down but there was no mirror. She flipped it back up. “I needed a change.”

  “Becomes you,” I said.

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you say so if you didn’t?”

  “Probably not,” I said.

  We sat. Yellow and black butterflies wafted around the flowers at the roadside. Mandi folded her hands in her lap. “So how is everybody?” she said.

  “Okay. Takes time.”

  “Sophie?”

  “Very quiet. But I want to thank you. You saved her—”

  She held up a hand to stop me.

  “No, what you did was—”

  The hand went over my mouth. “It was nothing, Jack. Nothing at all.”

  I pulled her hand off my mouth. She took mine in hers and held it tight.

  “You saved my family.”

  Mandi looked away. “I couldn’t let him—”

  “I owe you. I’ll always owe you.”

  She shook her head. The blonde hair gave a little shake and then was still.

  “What is it?” I said.

  I waited for her to speak. Waited some more.

  “Nobody owes me, Jack,” Mandi said, softly, the brightness gone. “Never will.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll never get back to even. Dug myself way too deep a hole.”

  We were quiet for a moment. She still held my hand. It was like Sophie, hanging on tight.

  “With Marty? Were you digging yourself out or in deeper?”

  She looked at me, then away. “He had a list, Jack. Girls from back there, from inside. He was looking them up one by one.”

  “Blackmailing them into—”

  “He told me who was next. If I didn’t work out. He knew she was a friend of mine. She used to write me letters. The only letters I ever got.”

  Amanda, I thought. “So you stopped him? Stopped him from preying on people?”

  Mandi looked down at our hands, clasped between us. “I don’t do things. They just happen.”

  She took a deep breath. “Do you ever wonder why we are who we are? Of all the people I could be, why am I this person? I mean, why not somebody else? Anybody else?”

  “No,” I said. “I guess I don’t.”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m just going to say this once. Never again.”

  She paused.

  “A big part of me wishes I was Roxanne. Living in a pretty house in the country. Having your babies.”

  Mandi smiled. “I even thought about it once, how I could take Roxanne’s place.”

  “I don’t think it can be done,” I said.

  “I know. I think crazy stuff sometimes. I know it’s not real, more like a dream. To have a life like that.”

  “You can.”

  She smiled, shook her head. “Yeah, well, I don’t think so.”

  We sat quietly, the oddest of pairs saying the longest of goodbyes.

  “You’re going?” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Coming back?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  “You want to come to the house?”

  “Thanks, Jack, but no.”

  She gave my hand a last squeeze, opened the door, and got out. I looked at her but she didn’t look back, just walked to her car, got in, started it, and did a U-turn in the road. I watched in the mirror until she disappeared from view. For a moment I could still hear the car motor, and then that was gone, too.

  Chapter 43

  It was two days later and Sophie still hadn’t spoken. She and I were in the woods, walking from the big pine to the pond. I had her on my shoulders and she ducked beneath the branches, her arms wrapped tightly around my neck. As we brushed underneath a maple, a beetle peeled off and landed on Sophie’s leg. It was black with red spots and it was moving toward her knee. I flicked it off.

  “That bug, he crawled on me,” Sophie said, her voice small and hesitant, like talking might hurt.

  I smiled at the words, pulled her tight. “Yes, he did,” I said. “But he didn’t hurt you.”

  I waited.

  “He was a nice bug, wasn’t he, Daddy?” she said.

  “Yes, honey, he was.”

  We kept walking, Sophie hanging on as I bent under branches. She leaned down and said, “Can we go see Mommy? I need to tell her.”

  “What do you want to tell her, Honey?” I said.

  “It was black. It had red spots. It crawled on me but it didn’t bite.”

  I turned, started back up the trail toward the field and the house. Sophie clung to my neck like a jockey.

  “When’s Twinnie coming home?” she said.

  “Soon,” I said. “I’ll call again today.”

  We walked. She was quiet.

  “He was a bad guy,” she whispere
d, like she knew.

  “Yes. He was very bad. But now he’s gone.”

  “Is Mandi gone?” Sophie said.

  “I don’t know, honey,” I said.

  “Mandi wasn’t bad,” she said. “Mandi was nice.”

  I pulled her closer.

  “I love Mandi,” my daughter said.

  We walked on through the dark woods, in the dappled shadows, the myriad shades of gray.