Better now, she went downstairs to the tool drawer in the breezeway, to the garage, and took out a cordless screwdriver. On the move, enjoying the sensation of motion, she made sure a Phillips driver was in the head. On the way down the stairs to the basement she tested the battery.
Whirrrrr…
Shouldn’t have hit me, Keith.
Uh-uh.
So she stepped right up to the wall in Keith’s paneled den, under the indifferent glass eyes of the stuffed white-tail and the stuffed antelope. He’d left room up there between the deer for her, the stuffed trophy wife. She removed the screws that fastened the vertical slats of stained boxcar siding.
Time to get the “bricks.”
When she had yanked out six of the boards she could see the suitcase sitting in its nest of studs and sawdust. Compact square vinyl, the bag weighed almost fifty pounds. Twenny bricks Tony Sporta had said. That’s ten packs to a brick, that’s a hunnerd to a pack.
Tony talked like that, swallowing his consonants. Keith’s new partner.
That’s a hunnerd hunnerd dollar bills to a pack.
Give the bag to Phil, Keith’s old partner, and let him hand it over to the feds. Keith’ll love that.
She trundled it out into the den and carefully replaced the siding. A minute with the vacuum erased any evidence of sawdust on the shag carpet.
Caren, five nine and strong, dragged and bumped the case up the stairs and down the breezeway. She opened the garage door, and the bluish predawn air flooded in, pristine as a new beginning. With bent knees, she stooped and heaved the suitcase into the back of the Blazer.
She returned to the basement and entered the laundry room. There, between the washer and dryer and the water heater, the partition didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. An unfinished spot that Keith had masked with imitation planters.
She reached behind the dryer, pulled out a leather shoulder bag that contained a Panasonic video camera, and popped out the tape. She had warned Keith. If he wouldn’t do something. She would. He thought her threats were just more of her “blue room syndrome.” So…
Caren’s home movie featuring Keith Angland playing Faust, meeting with “Them.”
She’d just positioned the camera on top of the partition between the planters where it commanded a view of the whole den. She’d turned off the camera light, put in a thirty-minute tape, and when the time was right, just let it run. The thing was virtually soundless.
On her way to the garage she picked up an overnight bag she kept packed in the hall closet. Toiletries and a change of underwear. Just in case.
She tossed the bag in the car, turned and squared her shoulders. She craved a cigarette. Not a physical need, but a dramatic urge. There were no cigarettes in the house.
She went into the kitchen, opened a cupboard and picked at a bag of chocolate truffles. She took one bite from the candy and set the remaining half down on the counter.
Deep breath. As a girl, in Lutheran Sunday school, she’d been taught that God never tests you beyond your strength.
She shut her eyes, tried to remember. Corinthians something.
Too far away now.
Most people are tested in little ways. So they talk to friends.
If the test is moderate to serious, they may need a lawyer.
Real trouble, they call a cop.
C’mon God, who do you call if the trouble is your cop husband?
Not fair. Being tested this hard. Her jaw trembled with emotion, thinking; Dad must have felt like this when all those Germans came at him out of the black winter forest.
Because he didn’t run, he made a difference. A man wearing a VFW hat said that at the funeral.
Stay mad.
She jammed numbers into the kitchen phone. First ring. She shut her eyes. Her lips moved silently. Second ring.
“What,” Phil Broker’s voice, drugged from deep sleep.
“It’s me,” said Caren, and it was as if just a few feet separated them across a dark room. Despite the hour and the bruised pain, she lightly touched her hair with her fingertips.
Smiled. Which hurt. This was so crazy. She wondered if he ever thought of her. But his voice dispelled that fantasy quickly.
“Caren,” he said, flat, direct.
The new wife was younger, vital-shot people in Bosnia with machine guns for all she knew. They had the kid. God.
“I’m in trouble,” she said with a tone of rising alarm just ahead of a wall of tears.
“Calm down.” Concern in Phil’s voice sounded like a stallion stamping, impatient to be harnessed; moving him to old familiar ground, to the thing he loved most-a crisis.
She knew that about him and counted on it now.
Panic caught at her throat. She blurted: “I’m leaving him, Phil. He hit me.”
Broker asked, “Is he there with you?” She didn’t answer.
“Caren?”
“I’m here. He’s gone now.”
“Walk away. Get out. If you really want to pull the plug, call nine-one-one. Get some people around you.”
“Aw God, I’m so damn fucked up.”
“Just leave. Get in the car and drive.” She didn’t answer right away and his voice sped up. “You still there?”
And she finally said it. “Phil. It’s real trouble. I need help.
I need to get someplace safe. I need to talk to you about what to do.”
One second ticked. Two. He decided, “C’mon up.”
“You sure?” Some hope.
“Get moving. If you need some help getting out I can call-”
“No caveman stuff, okay?” Getting stronger.
“Okay. Just do it.”
She thought of the reporter, James. People had already been hurt. Gorski had been hurt dead. She didn’t want James on her conscience. Tried to picture him. A nebbish, in need of a haircut, with glasses, soft blue eyes, a soft mustache and his rumpled corduroy soul.
“I have one stop to make first. I might bring somebody.”
She hung up before he could respond and retrieved the card from her parka and punched in Tom James’s home phone number.
11
Broker stared at the telephone on the bedside table and tried to change the subject, which was difficult when you’re having a conversation with yourself.
Kit stood up in her crib, through the connecting doorway, hands on the rail, doing chubby knee bends. She watched him, smelling like cow pie. Big X-ray eyes. With her ears like radar dishes and a fresh new mind that absorbed everything.
Like him thinking-the first time he saw Caren she was standing in a Macalester College gym with a dozen other neighborhood women. Broker, the bad street cop, was there to teach a class in self-defense. To his hot young eyes she’d looked good enough to be in Hollywood. But she didn’t go to Hollywood. She stayed in Minnesota and kept marrying cops.
Broker rubbed his eyes. Zombie Daddy. He went to Kit, who had begun to cry, placed her on the changing table and changed a three-wipe pooper, dusted on powder, strapped on a dry Huggies and snapped her back into her sleeper.
Then he walked with his baby on his shoulder.
Thinking.
Caren. Coming here. Today. Into his new world of diapers, cleaning, cooking and folding baby clothes. Not to mention…
Nina, who watched him from a framed photo on the bedside table with her smiling Pict princess smile and her freckles like Scotch-Irish war paint under a fur cap. Camouflage fatigues, a flak vest and a pistol belt strapped around her waist. Black camouflage oak leaves fastened on her collar.
Major Mom.
Broker grimaced and said to his wife’s picture, “I said I’d give her a good listen. Okay?”
Then.
Keith, you idiot. Domestic assault. There’s that new law.
They’ll take your gun away, son-they’ll put you out to pasture answering phones and force you out of the job.