Killer Year Read online

  I made up the bed, humming to myself. That’s when I found the hair. It was his, there was no question about it. I must have had too much to drink last night. He’d slept in the bed with me, and I didn’t even remember. Perhaps that was the cause of his silence. Things hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped?

  It’s hard to explain, but he does come to me, in the night. I let him, mostly because it’s my duty to perform, but also in remembrance of a time when I welcomed him without thought, joyful that he’d chosen to be with me. It wasn’t that long ago, after all.

  Bed made, I showered and dressed in khaki slacks and a long-sleeved Polo shirt. I threw a button-down over my shoulders in case it was still cool out. Layers for my comfort, layers for their perception of how I should look when I walked into the club. The official dress code was undiluted preppy.

  He was gone when I passed the study on my way to the front foyer.

  It was not meant to be my morning. My Jag wouldn’t start. And Marie-Cecile was nowhere to be found, so I didn’t have a ride. We lived on the golf course though, so I detoured through the fourteenth fairway and wandered up the cart path on the eighteenth. We’re not supposed to do that, but I timed it well—after the ladies’ group had finished and before the seniors’ group made the first turn.

  I arrived at the front doors a little breathless, more from the chill than the exercise. I’m in good shape. As his wife, I have to be. It’s expected. Not much of a challenge for me, I’m naturally tall and willowy, but I still work with a trainer three times a week. Like I said, it’s expected.

  My friends and I have a standing luncheon on Tuesdays and Thursdays. After our round, we gather in the Grill Room, settle our bets, eat some salad, and gossip. Some of the older ladies play bridge. I’ve always wanted to learn, I just haven’t gotten around to it. There is something so lonely about them, sitting in their Lilly Pulitzer capris, their visors still pulled low, shading their eyes from the glare of the multitudes of sixty-watt bulbs. Sad.

  My usual foursome was sitting along the back wall today. Bunny (that’s actually her name, I’ve seen the birth certificate) had the farthest spot, the place of honor. Back to the wall, viewable by the whole room. My spot. She lounged against the arm of the chair, her feet propped on the empty seat facing the window. My punishment for missing the round this morning, I suppose. Bunny glistened with the faint flush of exertion. She always looked like she’d just rolled out of bed, freshly plucked and glowing. No wonder there, she was sleeping with half the married men in the club, as well as most of the tennis and golf pros. Probably a couple of the high school caddies and college kids, too.

  Tally and Kim rounded out the threesome, both looking a little peaked. Tally was short and brunette, a striking contrast to Bunny’s wholesome blondness. Kim was blond, a little dishwater, but since she’d moved to Bunny’s hairdresser, she’d been getting some subtle highlights that worked for her complexion. Kim was fiddling with her scorecard, probably erasing a couple of shots. We all knew she cheated. We let her.

  Tally sat with her back barely touching the chair, ramrod straight. Uncharacteristic for her, she usually slouched and sprawled like the rest of us. The chairs were suede-lined and double width for our comfort, and they served their purpose well.

  I approached the table, expecting Bunny to see me and drop her feet off my newly assigned chair. Instead, she was talking about me. I stopped, indignant. They hadn’t even noticed I came in. She was so caught up with whatever maliciousness she’d intended for the day that she didn’t realize I was standing barely five feet away. I could hear her clearly. Talking about me. Gossiping about me. That little bitch. I started for her, then stopped. Maybe I’d eavesdrop a little more, see what I could use against them later.

  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not naive enough to think that a group of women friends aren’t going to talk to one another about the missing person. But there’s a big difference between talking about a friend who’s absent and publicly dissecting that friend’s life. We’re all somebody, the four of us. Which means that there are multitudes of fodder, plenty of grist for the communal mill. There are some things that are sacred, though, and an open discussion of my disastrous marriage is one of them. You just don’t do that.

  I started toward the table again, ready to give Miss Bunny a walloping with the side of my tongue. A short frizzled blonde with mismatched socks beat me. Damn. Shirley.

  Shirley was one of those people. You know the ones I mean. Not to be mean, but they drift around the periphery of any tight-knit group, waiting like a dog for the table scraps. Shirley wanted to be a part of our group, but that would never happen. She was just too annoying. Yet Bunny’s face lit up when she saw the diminutive disaster headed to the table. She swung her feet off the chair, rose like Amphitrite from the depths, and hugged Shirley. Physical contact with a barnacle? That was well known to be strictly forbidden. What in the hell was going on today?

  I had become persona non grata without a clue as to why. No one would look at me, each woman kept her eyes from mine. Busboys and waiters wandered right past me, no one asking to help me, no one offering me a refreshment. After my long walk to the clubhouse, I could have used a nice Chardonnay. That was it. It was time I let my presence be known to my so-called friends.

  I glided to the table, mouth slightly open, deciding which opening I’d use. Hello girls, waiting for me? You lousy bitches, how dare you speak about me behind my back? Bunny, you look divine today—whose sperm are you carrying? Kim, I think you need a quick trip to Alberto’s. And Tally, darling, do try to sit back, you look like you’ve got a pole stuck up your ass.

  But all my words died in my throat when I saw what Shirley had brought as an offering to my group of friends. The newspaper unfurled, bearing a special edition logo, the headline seventy point. GUILTY, it screamed.

  I stormed through the house, looking. How dare he. How could he do it? What was he thinking?

  I wasn’t finding what I was looking for. I needed to stop and think. I was in a black rage, I couldn’t even see straight when I was this worked up. So I sat on the bottom step and took a few breaths. That helped.

  My husband was not a foolish man. He wouldn’t have left a trail, or a bunch of clues. I had all night to search. The rest of my life, if it was necessary. I’d start in the obvious place. The basement.

  I’d had a very difficult time reading the article Shirley had brought to my friends in gleeful attribution. She was a lawyer, one of the few women in our circle that actually worked for a living. A prosecutor, at that. Assistant District Attorney Shirley Kleebel. She paid her dues, if you know what I mean. She wasn’t married to or aligned with a man of the club. She was the member, one of the few singles to join. That’s part of the reason she’d never make it into the right circles. We had nothing to gain by being around her. Really, even meek and mild Tally had her signature on the checking account of the largest footwear mogul in the country. Shirley had nothing, except her name.

  So I’d been a bit skeptical when I’d read the article. If I’m being totally honest, I didn’t believe it. Not that it was outside the realm of possibility. My husband could be vicious when he chose.

  It lauded Shirley as a genius, having resurrected a trial that was not only lost before it began, but achieving a guilty plea from the jury. I ran the article over and over in my head as I searched. According to the reporter, this had been done already. Several fruitless times, in fact.

  But it’s a big house. There are places no one would think to look simply because they wouldn’t know they were there. Passages between floors with unseen staircases, a tunnel in the basement that accessed the freestanding garage. Escape routes. I thought them charming when we’d bought the house, then put them out of my mind. Now, I needed to comb through them, because I knew I’d find the truth in one of those dark, dank places.

  Either way, he won’t be coming home tonight. There won’t be any more arguments, no broken coffee cups, no unmade beds. The bed. He
’d slept in the bed last night. And he’d cried. I remember that now. He sobbed winningly, and told me how sorry he was. That he’d never meant for it to go so far. That he loved me, he truly did. He’d cried himself to sleep, then gotten up in the middle of the night and wandered away. I hadn’t understood last night. Now, I think I did. But I’d have to see for myself.

  The basement reeked pleasantly of cool and damp. I sensed nothing unusual, no odors, no sights that gave me cause for alarm. I crept around the corner, slipping silently through the gloom. If what the article said were true, if my friends’ gossip was accurate, I’d have ages to find all of the little passageways in this house. I think there’s one that goes all the way up to the clubhouse, but I’ve never found it.

  The one I did know about was just ahead. A false wall, easily misleading without the exact knowledge of where it should be. If you looked closely, you could see a crack in the foundation, like the floor was settling. The fracture ran up the wall, and if you pushed just the right brick …

  There, the wall swung open to reveal a small passageway. When the house was built, over two hundred years ago, the original owner wanted to be buried in the house. That’s right, in the house. The crypt was the logical place to look.

  I couldn’t describe the emotions I felt when I saw it. It had been a sloppy job. He knew no one would ever find their way in here by accident. He thought he was safe.

  So pale. I’d always loved my hands, long-fingered, smooth-skinned. Sticking up out of the dirt, though, they didn’t look quite as nice.

  The article said it was Marie-Cecile that testified against him. She’d seen it all. Seen his hands around my throat. I wonder why I didn’t remember that part.

  Son of a bitch. I hope he rots in jail.

  Maybe I’ll go visit him.

  The Only Word I Know in Spanish

  by Patry Francis

  When I read Patry Francis’s debut novel, Liar’s Diary, last year, I knew that this was a book worth savoring, and a writer worth my absolute attention. Now she writes a very different story, about violence and young men and what guilt can do to a boy when he thinks too long and hard on what he’s done. Once again, Ms. Francis demonstrates that she’s one of those rare writers who not only knows how to tell a story, she knows how to tunnel deep into our emotions.

  —Tess Gerritsen, author of The Bone Garden

  It all started with a crime I didn’t commit. But could have. I mean, I’ve done similar shit in the past; I just never got caught. But that’s irrelevant, right? This time, when the cops dragged me and a couple of my friends in and beat the crap out of us, I was totally innocent. From what I hear, a bunch of kids lost it on some old guy who was trying to make a living selling Puerto Rican food on the street. You know—chicken and rice. That crispy flatfish they eat. I’ve had it before myself; it tastes like their cooking grease, but otherwise it’s not bad. Okay, maybe I was in the vicinity. But my friends and me, we were what you call innocent bystanders. Spectators. Kind of like those people who used to hang out at the Coliseum waiting for the show.

  At first, they just called him a few names, told him to take his grease wagon elsewhere. Then they circled the block, giving him a chance to disappear. They’d had a few beers by then. Probably some other stuff, too. When they came back and found he was still there—a skinny old man folded over his little flame … Well, that’s when they got seriously pissed. It wasn’t anything personal; they just wanted him off their streets, out of their sight. But no matter how loud they got, the old man just ignored them. It was like they didn’t even exist. The next thing you know, they had kicked over his stupid little cart. And then they were kicking him, too.

  I was standing a couple of rows back, but somehow the old man on the sidewalk found me and looked right into my eyes like he knew me. Like he’d always known me and always would. I can’t describe it, but there was so much sorrow in those eyes, it went right through me. Not hate, not even pain—just sorrow. “Let’s get out of here,” I said to my friend, O’Toole. I mean, why was the guy looking at me? Out of all the people on that street, he has to stare at me?

  I was down on Station Avenue, shooting hoops with O‘Toole and Ryan Dawson when the cruiser showed up. From nowhere, the cops are all over us. Talking about this guy—this Mr. Reyes. According to the cops, the guy was down at City Hospital getting his head X-rayed as we spoke. And the worst part about it, this pig who’s slamming us into walls, calling us project scum and shit like that, has family in the Heights himself. Officer Monahan, his name tag said. My brother, Chip, actually used to hang out with this Officer Monahan’s cousin. They’re Irish like me and O’Toole, probably with something else mixed in, the way everyone is these days. But still, there ought to be some loyalty.

  That’s what Ma says anyway; she remembers the days and all that. I stared up at that name tag from the floor, thinking that if you changed a few letters, his name was the same as mine: Moran. I know it was a funny thing to be thinking about at a moment like that, but after you take a few good kicks to the head, you start getting a lot of strange shit jumping around in your head.

  It was all over pretty fast. A few hours later, they put us in the lineup, and the street vendor—that Mr. Reyes the pigs kept yelling at us about—said we were the wrong kids. Monahan was practically screaming at the old man by the time he got through with him. We could hear him from the other room where they were holding us just in case Mr. Reyes wanted to take another look. “The kind of beating you took, and you’re going to let these kids walk?” he said, like he wanted to whip the old man’s ass himself. “You mean to say you’re going to let these punks get away with it?”

  The old man’s voice was so low that even with his ear against the wall, O’Toole couldn’t hear a thing. But I heard it clear as could be, even with the accent. “Can I go home now?” the old man said over and over, like he was the one locked up instead of us. For some reason, I was desperate to get a look at the old man’s face. To make sure he was okay. But I never did. Still, when I think about him, the way I do sometimes right before I go to sleep, I can see his face perfectly. Especially those eyes. Los ojos. I don’t know why, but it’s the only word I remember from Spanish class.

  Anyway, if it weren’t for my mother, that would have been it. Three kids get knocked around a little down at the station, and then tossed back out on the street. Kind of thing happens every day; that’s what Dawson said. Afterward, we went out and got ourselves totally wasted, figuring we deserved it. And that should have been the end of it. But not with good old Ma around. You’d have to know my mother to understand. It’s like the lady sits around her whole life just waiting for a chance to get even. With who or for what—it doesn’t really matter, as long as she gets even. Naturally, when she saw my face in the bright light of the kitchen, there was no way she was going to let it drop. Mrs. O’Toole and Ryan’s foster parents? They looked at their kids’ bruises, shook their heads, and went back to their beers. Probably figured they could use a beating or two whether they needed it or not. But not Ma.

  I spent most of the weekend avoiding her, passed out on someone’s living room floor. The kid’s name was Dougie and I guess Ryan knew his sister. Anyway, his mother was over at her boyfriend’s house or something, so we had the apartment to ourselves all weekend. When I woke up Monday morning, it took me a few minutes to remember where I was.

  Picture it: there I am laying on someone’s dirty rug, picking dog hairs off my T-shirt, feeling like shit, and I’m trying to come up with some story to tell my mother. Even though half the time she doesn’t bother to ask. Sometimes when I hear her talking to the other mothers out in the parking lot, she says she’s been through all this shit with Chip before, and he used up all the good stories. I couldn’t come up with anything original if I tried.

  But this time, when the only thing I really want in the whole world is to be left alone, Ma practically comes running down the walk to meet me. “Where the hell have you been?” she’s screami
ng right in front of this whole pack of little kids who are lined up waiting for the ice cream truck. Course, kids in our neighborhood are so used to people yelling, they don’t even bother to look. Not unless the blood starts flowing. My mother takes my face in her hands like it’s some kind of specimen, turning it this way and that, poking at the bruises, the cut on my lip. I push her hand away.

  “I’m tired, Ma,” I tell her.

  But of course, Ma’s having none of that. “I bet you’re tired,” she says, her touch turning rough. “How do you think I feel? I haven’t had a moment’s sleep all weekend.”

  I was about to ask her why the hell not, maybe mention that I’m gone almost every weekend, and she usually sleeps just fine. But instead, I duck into the room I used to share with Chip. It’s all mine now—ever since Chip’s girlfriend had a kid and they decided to get a place together. All I want is a chance to bury myself in sleep. With luck, I can sleep till three o’clock when Ma leaves for her job at the nursing home. And by the time she gets home at eleven, I’ll be out again.

  Most of the time it’s an arrangement that works pretty well for both of us. But as soon as I hit my room, I see my clothes laying across my bed. A pair of khakis and a white shirt I haven’t seen since I made my Confirmation.

  “What—are we going to church?” I say to Ma who has followed me into my room, and is standing there with her arms folded across her massive chest. “Is it a Holy Day of Obligation or something?” It’s a joke, because neither Ma nor I have set foot in the church since the day of Confirmation. After pushing church on us all those years, Ma all of a sudden decides the place is full of phonies, and the priests are all perverts anyway. She says they’re just lucky none of them ever laid a hand on Chip or me when we were altar boys, or you can bet she would have made them pay.