He remembered Robbins’s words: and speaking of trophies, I’ll bet he’s kept something of hers from that night, besides the flowers. He thinks he loved her. According to his definition, maybe he did. Something besides Ann’s red shoe, he thought. Something else. Something more. Something personal.
But the desk offered him nothing. Neither did the closets, the dresser drawers, the guest rooms, the living room, the kitchen, or the garage. He sat for a moment at the dining room table, looking in the fading light at the china cabinet to his left, then the sofa, the curtained window that opened out to a small patio. She was my angel, and finally, my anguish. It was 4:50.
Jim tried to concentrate. The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. A skylight above him admitted the kind of light that illuminates dreams. What does a man do, he wondered, who claims he is being framed?
He searches for the planted evidence.
When he’s “found” it?
He destroys it.
No. He hides it. He can’t destroy it because it frames the framer — so he believes. He keeps it for that alleged purpose, for the day he will prove his innocence.
But I know there’s another reason you keep it, David, you keep it because there is no frame, other than the one you hung on a kid named Horton Goins. You keep it because you want to be close to her. So much that you’d risk having her things. Something you can smell, touch, behold. Somewhere safe, but easy to get to.
He combed through the kitchen drawers and cupboards, took out the pots and pans and put them back, checked the cabinet above the refrigerator, behind the cereal, took out the boxes of extra wineglasses, dug his way down into the appliance cupboard around the blender, popcorn maker, espresso machine, juicer. He looked in the freezer, the vegetable bin, under the sink, inside the trash compactor and dishwasher, put his gloved hand into the garbage disposal, stood on a chair and looked inside the light fixture.
Then into the living room, the same frantic attention to detail, sweat dripping down into his eyes: inside the big Chinese vase in one corner, under the sofa cushions, beneath the sphagnum moss in the fern pot, everywhere he could think to look, everywhere he could see, every angle that would accommodate an arm, a hand, a line of sight.
He climbed the stairs again two at a time, checking his watch: 5:00.
It was more of an attack than a search: both dressers, the desk again, the bathroom, the enclosed patio, the closets — up on the top shelves through the boxes and folded sweaters; down on the bottom through the shoes — under the bed and under the pillows, his eyes burning, his shirt clinging with sweat, his hands scalding inside the latex gloves. And everything, to the best of his ability, back the way he had found it.
He stood in the middle of the room, breathing hard, looking again at the bed where Ann had spent her stolen hours, where she had unwittingly conspired to bring her life to its sudden brutal end.
Where?
Here, but not here, he thought. On the property, but not on his property. He checked his watch again: 5:10. A car pulled up in the alley and Jim peeped from behind the blind. Looking down, he could see the light bar, the PacifiCo emblem on the driver’s side door, the shotgun upright against the dash. It stopped. Weir could see the guard gazing casually toward the garage, then lift his face for a look at the second story. Tough old face, he thought: retired cop. Jim watched as the guard got out, shut the door, and walked toward the house.
Idea: Cantrell uses. He used Ann. He used Goins. Always someone else. Who else would he use? Someone close. His wife.
Christy.
Christy’s footlocker.
It was 5:14.
He moved across the room, away from the window, and found the key in the desk drawer. Outside, the security car still idled. Jim went to the window and looked out again. The guard was back in his car. On the radio? Hard to tell. Writing down something? Lighting a smoke?
Weir ran downstairs, through the kitchen and into the garage. He could hear the engine of the security car just twenty feet away, the proficient idle and the hiss of the air conditioner. Raymond would cruise by in another two minutes.
Christy’s big trunk sat on the floor beside a heavy steel tool chest. The lock was rusty and the key went in with a rasp that continued through Jim’s fingers and up his arms. Scrapbooks, stuffed animals, dried flowers, and photo albums were all arranged neatly in the top tray. Jim pried through them, then lifted out the section and set it on the floor beside him. He heard the car door open again, then saw the dark shoe soles of the guard as he walked the length of the garage door. Weir wiped his face against the shoulder of his shirt, and started emptying the chest. The shoes moved back the other direction, stopped, then came again.
Did he call in?
The goons are back in place by now. They won’t make contact with this guy. Where’s Ray?
Be cool. It’s here. It’s here. You will find it...
A bright orange ember hit the asphalt just beyond the door. Jim watched the shoe snuff it, then disappear. The car door opened and shut. He heard another car approach, surely Raymond’s. Voices outside now: the old man and Raymond in a “them and us” chitchat. Get rid of the old bastard — but not for another minute or two.
He didn’t find it until the trunk was completely empty. It was the last thing there, in the last place he looked — as all things are — sitting in the far bottom corner, under fifty pounds of a woman’s memorabilia. He lifted it, retrieved the wallet, and flipped past the credit cards to the driver’s license — the unflattering DMV mug that made her look like someone being booked on a felony rap. Ann’s purse. Ann’s wallet. Ann’s picture. It was a dressy little thing, made out of white satin, with a gold chain. The satin was splattered with blood; the chain was clogged with it. It looked like it had just been born. The twelfth rose was worked through one of the links of the chain.
He filmed it atop the newspaper, date visible, the rubber eyepiece slick against his eye. When he had put it back into the trunk, he loaded in the rest of the things, then set the latch in place and locked it shut.
He sat back against the wall and listened to the idling of the security car. His body ached anew and he closed his eyes for a moment and saw himself hanging from the ceiling of the deserted building, looking up at his boots inside the hangman’s noose. His ears were ringing and he could smell his own sour breath.
Then one of the cars outside clunked into gear and Jim heard the tires moving on the asphalt. Raymond said goodbye, have a nice evening. A shadow crossed the space beneath the door, then was gone.
He ran back into the house, up the stairs, and returned the key to Christy’s footlocker to its place in Cantrell’s desk. It was 5:20.
For a moment, he stood in the living room, trying to imagine anything he’d left undone, anything he’d left out of place.
Mackie Ruffs voice shot through the door, “The homeless shall not be denied!” The goons were talking back.
In the entryway, he spliced the alarm wires back together and shoved them back inside the plastic housing. “You can tell that God loves the poor because he made so many of us!”