“You never thought about contacting your dad for money?”
Aidan’s eyes flicked toward the building, where Hugh was secreted behind the glare off the big plate-glass window. “I didn’t want anything from him,” he said. He didn’t elaborate, not sure what I knew.
“It’s okay,” I said carefully, knowing it was a sensitive area. “Marlinchen told me about Hugh. About how things were before you were sent away.”
“It was a long time ago,” Aidan said, looking out at the waters of the pond. “I try not to think about it.”
We were silent a moment. I decided not to push things further than we’d already gone, but Aidan surprised me by speaking again. “You wanted to know, the other night, about why I decided to come home.” It was half a statement, half a question.
“Yeah,” I said, half responding, half prompting.
“There was no big thing that made me leave the farm in Georgia,” he said. “Pete was okay, but he wasn’t my family, and we never really warmed up to each other. I finally decided that the farm was his problem, not mine. So I split.”
“And you didn’t want to come home, because of Hugh,” I said.
“Yeah,” Aidan said. “I thought I’d go to California and start over. So I did. I made some friends, guys who’d watch my back if I watched theirs. Met some girls, had some times. But I didn’t stay there, I came home because”- Aidan hesitated-“it’s not that easy to explain.”
“You don’t have to tell me,” I said.
“It was just something that happened on the beach one night.” A wisp of dandelion fluff landed on Aidan’s arm, and he brushed it away. “When I said before that I was ‘mostly’ law-abiding, well, I was, but I did some drugs.” He looked at me, making sure I was okay with that before moving on. “So one night, I was wired on crystal and sitting up smoking, because I knew I was never going to get to sleep. I don’t know why, but at some point I started thinking about Minnesota, and all of a sudden I realized I didn’t even remember what Donal looked like.” He shrugged. “I don’t know why it bothered me so much, but it did. And I realized that I’d been trying to tell myself that the people I’d met out in Cali were my new brothers and sisters, but that was bullshit. They weren’t and never would be. Some people in your life you just can’t substitute for. They aren’t replaceable.”
In its low-key way, it was a story of extraordinary emotional largesse, but my radar for bullshit was quiet. I sensed he meant everything he said.
Then Aidan focused on something beyond me. I turned too, to see what it was. Marlinchen and her brothers were approaching. They were done visiting.
“Dad’s making a lot of progress,” Marlinchen said, sounding pleased, when she reached us. “He said my name. Well, the short version.”
Aidan said nothing.
“That’s great,” I managed, a second or two belatedly.
25
“I talked to Gray Diaz,” Genevieve said, over the long-distance wires.
It was Sunday, and I had taken a little time for myself, going home to clean out the mailbox and check my messages. The house had that stillness that you feel after an absence, the once-wet dishrag hardened to a stiff fossil over the faucet, papers lying museumlike where I’d left them. Also awaiting me was a bag of tomatoes on the back step, the gift of my neighbor Mrs. Muzio, and a message on the machine. From Genevieve.
“Well, we knew he’d want to talk to you,” I told her. “You’re my ex-partner and the person I went to visit after my alleged crime.”
“That’s not the point,” Genevieve said. “Sarah, this guy really thinks you did it.”
“We knew that too, didn’t we?”
“This is different,” she said. “I was a cop for nearly twenty years. I spent those years listening to cops talk about their cases, their suspects, and their gut feelings. I know when they’re just trying on theories for size, and I know when they’ve got religion. This guy has got religion, Sarah. He believes you killed Stewart.”
I hadn’t told her about the Nova and the tests the BCA was running for Diaz. Certainly I couldn’t say anything now; she’d only worry more.
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” I said.
“I could come back.”
“No,” I said firmly. She meant come back and confess. This was exactly what I didn’t want. “Think about what you’re offering to do. There’d be no turning back from it.”
She was quiet on the other end, and I knew she was internalizing the possibility of a life sentence. I pressed my advantage. “We’ve come this far, Gen. Too far to panic and tear it all down with our own hands.”
My neighbor’s scrawny Siamese cat stalked past the back door, looking for a handout. I stayed silent, letting my words sink in. Genevieve would see the logic in it. She’d always been logical, just as I’d always been intuitive.
Finally, Genevieve said, “When all this is over, you’re coming to see me, right?”
“Absolutely,” I said, relieved.
When we’d hung up, I got up from my place on the floor, went into the kitchen, and opened a can of tuna, scraping it onto an old, chipped plate.
The examination of the car was probably the worst of Diaz’s investigation. What else was there for him to do, a search of the house? Diaz was a perceptive guy. Surely he’d recognize that I wasn’t the sort of person to keep a diary, and if I did, I wouldn’t write down explicitly incriminating things in it: Dear Diary, I sure am glad I got away with killing Royce Stewart, and torching his place, too! No, Diaz knew better.
I forced open the back screen door- it was really getting stiff- and set down the plate of tuna on the back step. From his prowls in the grass, the Siamese glared as though I were trying to poison him, but I knew he’d approach and eat after I was gone.
I didn’t go back into the house, but down into the basement, instead, where the little.25, which Genevieve’s sister had pressed on me, rested in the toolbox. I’d never used it; in fact, as far as I knew it had never been used in any crime. But I didn’t feel comfortable having it around. Regardless of how unlikely it was that Diaz would get a warrant for the house, it was time for the little gun to go. The river would take it off my hands. One short walk out to the bridge, and the gun would scud gently along the riverbed until it got hung up on some natural impediment, to lie unseen and untouched for some small eternity.
It was when I was back in the house, watching the Siamese eat in that both dainty and ravenous way cats do, that I realized I knew somebody who needed the.25 a little more than the waters of the Mississippi.
The dinner hour was over, but the pleasant smell of cooking hung in the air of Cicero ’s hallway. The door at the end of the hall was open, and I waved at the shaven-headed boy standing in it as I approached. He made a half nod in return, chin thrust in the air.
I shifted the brown paper bag in my arms and knocked at Cicero ’s door. No one answered.
Could he be sleeping? It was too early for that. I knocked again.
“Shorty looking for ya,” the boy in the doorway said to someone inside. I turned and saw the boy moving aside, heard Cicero making his goodbyes to the other people he’d been visiting inside the apartment.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been called Shorty before,” I said when Cicero was at my side. He opened the door to his apartment, which was unlocked.
“It means ‘girlfriend,’ ” he said.
“I know what it means,” I said, and left it at that. He couldn’t have known why it gave me a little chill to be called that, Royce Stewart’s nickname. “Anyway,” I said, “I brought you some things. From what you’d call the informal economy. You like tomatoes, right?”