“He didn’t even love her,” Jeremy says, shaking his head, looking up at the ceiling. “You know? He didn’t even love her. I love her.”
“Where is she?” I ask him again, and he doesn’t answer.
Another step and now I’m halfway up the flight of steps, almost within lunging distance of that damn rifle. I picture the physical motions—one last quick leap upward, push the suspect to the left with the force of my body, grab the rifle from under his body with my right hand. I don’t have a right hand.
“Where is she, Jeremy?”
“I told you. I told you I don’t know.”
“That’s not true.”
I’m trying to keep my voice even, be calm, be cool, let him know that he can trust me, but inside I am exploding with anger at this foolish child and his stupid useless violent love. A year and a half ago all of this would have been a postadolescent crush, a daydream about a buddy’s wife. But in Maia’s shadow it’s blossomed like nightshade, become a crazed obsession, a murderous plot.
He licks his lips, brings a hand up and rubs his face. I’m starting to get the very strong impression that the kid is high as a satellite, that he’s drifting somewhere out of radio’s reach.
“Martha?” I shout, loud, and get no reaction—not from Jeremy and not from some distant corner of the house, not from any closet or crawl space. “Martha, it’s Henry. I need you to yell if you can hear me.”
“Shut up,” Jeremy says sharply, suddenly, anger clouding his voice. He shifts on the steps and grabs the butt of the rifle. The scruff of a beard, the sad little-boy face. “She’s not here. I wish she was here, but she’s not.”
He says the words so quiet and soft, I wish she was here, but she’s not, and I get very cold, like my insides are an underwater cavern suddenly flooded with frozen sea.
“Is she dead now? Did you kill her, Jeremy?”
“No. I just wanted to talk to her.”
“You went to get her. This morning?”
“Yes.” He nods, mouth slack and open.
“What happened, Jeremy?”
“Nothing. She was gone.” He looks at me, helpless, confused. “There was some man there, I saw him—”
“Cortez. You attacked him. On the porch.”
“No… no, he was inside. Martha was gone. I didn’t understand. I left.”
“That’s not true, Jeremy.” I shake my head, speak gently, coaxing. “What did you do to her?”
“I told you, she wasn’t there.” He twitches and yelps, rising quickly, improbably, to his feet. “I told you. I love her.”
He stumbles toward me, the gun raised, and I take a step back on the stairs, putting up my one good hand in front of my face as if I could catch a bullet, like Superman, pluck it from the air and throw it back at him. A year and a half ago, I would have been a detective, interviewing suspects—except not even. I still would have been a patrolman, looping Loudon Road, picking up shoplifters and litterbugs.
“Jeremy—”
“No more,” he says, and I say, “No, please—” and he’s waving the thing in a wide arc as he comes down the steps, now the barrel is aimed at the wall, now at the floor, and then at me, right at my face.
My heart flutters and dives. I don’t want to die—I don’t—even now, I want to keep living.
“Wait, Jeremy,” I say. “Please.”
There’s a bang at the bottom of the stairs, as loud as a firework, and Jeremy’s eyes go wide and I whip around to see what he sees. The wind carried open the splintered door, flung it aside to reveal Houdini on the porch, staring stone-faced into the house, silent and cruel, eyes unwavering and teeth bared, sides flecked with ash and mud. The dog is lit from behind by the roaring furnace of the prison. Jeremy shrieks as the dog glares up at us, yellowed and ferocious and strange, and I leap up the three steps remaining and press my left forearm into Jeremy’s throat to pin him to the wall.
“Where is she?”
“I swear—” He’s struggling to breathe. Staring goggle eyed over my shoulder at the dog. “I swear, I don’t know.”
“Not true.” I tower over the kid. I’m leaning into his throat with the blunt object of my arm, and it’s killing him and I don’t care. “You saw Cortez coming and you smashed him with a shovel.”
He gasps, squeezes out words. “I don’t know who that is.” He struggles, breathes. “I would not hurt her.”
I stare at his terror-stricken eyes and try to think. She waved me away, Cortez had said, she treated him like a Jehovah’s Witness. Why did she do that, dismiss her protector? And she had a suitcase, he said, she was waiting for someone. Not Jeremy, surely—but who? I’m thinking about the timing of this—what day was Brett shot and when did Jeremy get back from shooting him and what time this morning did Martha tell Cortez to leave her be? The world is spinning, days and events spilling over one another like loose marbles in a bag.
“I’ll die,” Jeremy gasps, and I recover myself and I let him loose.
“No, you won’t.”
“You don’t understand,” he says. “I’m already dead.”
I can see it now, in his eyes, the welling sickness, the pupils tightening. Dammit.
“Come on,” I say, crouching, pulling on his left arm with my left arm. “Let’s get to the bathroom.”
He waves me off, slumps back against the bannister.
I roll him down the stairs, drag him to the bathroom, watching the black bruise take shape across his Adam’s apple where I attacked him. I don’t know when he took the pills, I don’t know how long he was sitting there before I showed up. If I can get him to the john I can bend him over the toilet, get those pills up. Clear whatever it is from his system. I can do that. His body can’t have metabolized much of the poison, not yet, it’s too soon.
“Jeremy?”
Laboriously I settle him on his knees in front of the toilet and he wobbles, body rolling forward and back. I clap my hands in front of his face. His head lists on his neck and his torso slides forward.
“Jeremy!” I throw the taps so I can splash cold water on his face, and of course nothing comes out. The flesh of his body is getting strangely warm, like he might begin to melt like a wax candle, turn from solid to liquid and drip away from my grasp.
I try one more time: “Where’s Martha, Jeremy?”
“You’ll find her,” he says, almost gently, encouragingly, like a coach—and you can really see it, with an overdose, you can watch the light dripping out of someone’s eyes. “I bet you can find anyone.”
Houdini and I look in every corner of that house. In every corner and under every bed and mattress, in the cheap wood pantry, overrun with roaches and water bugs, in the dark spiderwebbed corners of the basement.
My arm swells and radiates heat and pain. Sweat runs down my forehead and into my eyes. We look and look.
But it’s not that big a house, and I’m not looking for misplaced keys or a wayward pair of glasses. It’s a human being. My terrified friend, bound and trembling, or her body, hollow and staring. But we keep looking. There’s no attic; the second-floor bedrooms are arched and peaked, but I get up on a chair and bang on the plaster of the ceiling to eliminate the possibility of a hidey-hole or secret room where Martha might have been shoved, duct-taped and struggling. The closets, the kitchen, the closets again, tearing everything out, kicking against the beadboard for a false back or hidden chamber.
Houdini yelps and sniffs at the floorboards. I find a claw hammer in a tool chest in the pantry, and I use the claw to pry up the floor in the living room, board by board, my back aching against the strain of it. I ignore the stabs of pain and the waves of nausea, drag up the boards one at a time like peeling open a stubborn fruit, but beneath the floor is insulation and pipes and the view of the basement.