A tight-fisted pressure had risen up inside him. An overheating boiler. About to explode. He realized just how close he had come to dying and what he would have been leaving behind. He had a sudden flash of feeling totally alone. He wasn’t sure who to call or what to do.
Steve patted him on the shoulder. “Go home. I’m glad you’re okay, Ty. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
Hauck took the detective’s advice and went out to his car. The chill in the air felt good. The wind beating against his face. A light rain had begun to fall. He stepped around the corner and leaned against the concrete wall, his legs starting to weaken, what strength he still had starting to bleed way.
He lowered himself to the ground. He drew in a long, cooling breath of precious air. It felt good, cleansing, just to be alive. The wind from the sound on his face. The rain. The whoosh of the thruway off in the distance.
Grateful tears filled up Hauck’s eyes.
He sniffed them back, took out his cell, and found a number on the speed dial. His heart racing, he waited for the line to pick up.
Jessie answered on the second ring. “Hey, Daddy-o, what’s going on? It’s a Saturday night…”
“Nothing’s going on, hon.” He blew out his cheeks. “I know it’s a Saturday. I just wanted to hear your voice. What’s going on with you?”
“A bunch of us are over at Kellie’s and we’re watching a movie. Ten Things I Hate About You. Have you seen it, Dad?”
“No.”
“You’d like it. It’s not just a dumb teen flick. It’s based on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew.”
“No kidding, babe…” He sat, tears starting to roll down his cheeks. He moved the phone away and pressed it tightly against his sweatshirt, imagining the horror if this had all had a different outcome. What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Ty? “That’s great, hon.”
Jessie paused. “Dad, are you okay?”
“Sure, honey, I’m okay. It’s just… Go back to your friends. You have a fun night. I just wanted to say I love you. That’s all.”
“Dad, you’re sounding a little strange. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“Everything’s fine, hon.” He wiped the tears off his cheeks. “Scout’s honor.”
“You never were a scout, Dad.”
“Right,” he said, chuckling. “Then how about, ‘cross my heart and hope to die’!”
Jessie waited for a second. There was some high-pitched girl chatter in the background. “I love you too, Daddy.”
He clicked off the line and continued to sit against the wall. His fists were coiled in anger-maybe in relief. He sucked a cooling breath into his chest. He felt ready to take them on. The man with the tattoo, the one who had killed April. He was still out there. Hauck was sure this one, at the rink, hadn’t acted alone. He was going to get him; that he would bet his life on. For himself. For April.
He just had no idea who it was.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Y ou have to learn to relax more, Ty.” April grinned, tapping his hand with her nail. “You seem like you’re itching for a fight.”
It had become a regular thing between them now. Lingering over a coffee up the block from the doctor’s after their sessions. Before Hauck headed back to Queens and April to Connecticut. Occasionally, she stayed in town and went to dinner or a business function with Marc. Today they walked through Madison Square Park.
“I just feel like I’m going a little crazy,” Hauck said. “Stir crazy,” he pointed out with a smile.
“Glad you clarified that!” April said.
“It’s just that it’s time to get back to work. Figure out what’s next.”
Businessmen were sunning themselves at lunch. The cafés around the perimeter were busy. He got a soda and she got a chai at a local Asian market. They sat on a bench.
“See, I told you, you were just passing through…”
“You know, I sorta missed you,” he said, taking a sip of Diet Coke. She hadn’t been there for a couple of weeks. He missed their talks. He’d begun to think of her as a new friend, and his others, some choosing to rally behind Beth in the breakup, some just not a part of what he was going through, he no longer wanted to be around. “You guys were away?”
“No.” She played with a string of brown pearls around her neck. “Just some things going on.”
He stared at her, waiting to see if she was comfortable explaining.
“Nothing you want to know, Ty.”
“Actually, I thought that’s what this was all about. Marc…?”
“No.” She shook her head and smiled, as if with amusement. She cupped her hands around her tea and took a breath. “Okay. You asked for it. Agoraphobia. You know it?”
“Fear of going out?” Hauck said.
“Fear of going out. Fear of attachment. Fear of abandonment. Fear of fucking fear.” She looked at him, hesitating, almost as if she was afraid she had disappointed him. “It’s not that I’m fearful of the world. It’s not like that with me. It’s part of the depression thing. Sometimes it’s like there’s just this weight that pushes on me. I don’t feel connected to anything. I have to force myself just to go out. Just to take my daughter to school.”
“Tell me.”
She pushed her long, sandy hair out of her eyes. “You’re sure you’re into this?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
She exhaled. “Okay. It goes back. I grew up in a small town in Virginia. Where I got my accent from, in case you hadn’t noticed. Actually grew up riding a horse. Did competitions. My dad, who was a local lawyer, taught me how to shoot a shotgun before I knew how to braid my hair. I loved my dad,” she said, eyes beaming. “He was like Atticus Finch to me, Ty. You know what I mean? Everyone in town looked up to him.
“My mom-maybe at one time she was a capable person, but by the time I remember she was simply a country-club drunk. Everything was always an effort for her. Parties. Why she couldn’t make it to my riding events. Just getting dinner on the table. My dad, he was the glue that held everything together. Everything.”
“I know what you mean,” Hauck said, though his own dad, who worked for the Greenwich Department of Water for thirty years, was a million miles away from that.
“Do you?” April said. “When I was sixteen, I pulled my VW into the garage, grabbed my books from the passenger seat, and saw my father lying there…” Her jaw grew tight. “Sitting there against the wall, like he was wondering what shirt to wear, except there was this bright red pattern sprayed against the plaster behind his head. His shotgun was in his lap. Like he wanted me to find him there.”
Hauck reached for her hand. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to go back over-”
“You wanted to know, right? You wanted to know what makes me tick. Anyway, that’s not it. That was a long time ago. Just backstory, as they say. Bank fraud,” she said in response to Hauck’s questioning eyes. “He’d been receiving kickbacks from a local bank where he was directing business. During the big S and L crisis. The thing was ripe with fraud and my father was a part of it.” She chuckled bitterly. “Atticus Finch…I guess you can add fear of being let down to the list as well. Anyway, I ended up at UVA. I majored in art. Did a year of grad school at NYU. You ever hear of the Minimalist movement?”
He shook his head. “Can’t say I have.”
“Sol LeWitt. He did these amazing wall drawings. Richard Tuttle. That was my thing. I studied under Richard Dunn, who was the big cheese in that world. Sort of studied under him. More like I ended up perpetually under him. He was forty-two. I was twenty-three. I always was attracted to older guys. You getting the picture? Anyway, Richard”-April shook her head-“whatever scant trust or faith in myself had managed to make it through to that point, well, he took care of the rest. He was a pompous, spiteful bastard, but he had a long ponytail and everyone in the art world bowed down to him. I spent three years with him. I think he was screwing anyone who knew Rembrandt was Dutch.”