He’d decided he could do it without help, but the DTs had hit him hard. His body had quaked as if possessed, and he’d vomited again and again, uncontrollable projectile vomiting, until blood had come up. He’d ended up in the Emergency Room, feeling like he was dying, certain he was in his final moments of life, wondering who would care.
Now he confined his drinking to ice water, Diet Dr. Pepper, and the occasional sparkling mineral water. But a day did not pass without the cravings that puckered the inside of his mouth, when he could almost taste the cold vodka. They usually weren’t this bad, though.
He’d fallen into a bottle when his whole life had come to pieces six years ago. Everything had fallen apart.
Before that had happened, Reznick Security and Investigations had been a going concern, the biggest and most successful security and investigation firm in Shasta County. He’d had plush offices and several employees back then, located in the city of Redding, just ten miles north of the small town of Anderson, where he lived and worked now. Reznick had inherited the firm from his father, who had taught him everything he knew. He’d never been happier than he’d been while working there with his dad for those years. Then, after Dad had retired, then had been killed – that had been one of the things in his life that had gone so wrong and had contributed to his existence falling down all around him like a collapsing building – Reznick had the place to himself, and he’d promptly run it into the ground.
Starting over was slow going. He had that tiny one-room office between a beauty parlor and a small accounting firm. The beauty parlor – not a salon, but a parlor – was the old-fashioned kind, mostly pink, with blue-haired ladies wearing too much makeup sitting under hair dryers reading magazines. A few doors down was a barber shop with an old-fashioned barber’s pole spinning out front.
It was just Reznick now – he didn’t even have a secretary, and there would be no room for one in his office if he did. Just Reznick and two divorce cases, with both now finished. He would’ve taken neither case back in the old days – he would’ve given them to junior investigators. Back then, he’d taken on only the biggest and most interesting cases himself, along with his father. They’d taken only the cases that got the most publicity, and he and Dad had been in the paper and on the evening news a lot back then.
Back then. His whole life seemed to be back then, before it all had come to pieces and he’d ended up living in his car for a while.
Conan planted himself on the floor in front of Reznick’s chair and stared up at him with big, begging eyes.
“You just ate,” Reznick said.
The dog made a small, pleading sound in his throat.
“Oh, all right.” Reznick broke off a piece of thigh meat and held it down for the dog.
Conan snatched it from his fingers and happily chewed it up.
When he finished his chicken, Reznick wiped his hands and mouth on the paper towel, then leaned back in the recliner with the plate of bones on his lap. Conan hopped up on the arm of the recliner and settled down beside him. Reznick smoked a Winston, then, after awhile, he drifted off to sleep.
It seemed safe to sleep during the day. Somehow, the daylight held off the nightmares.
Two
In unit eight, Anna Dunfy set dinner before her sixteen-year-old daughter Kendra, who sat at the kitchen table. It was one of those tables with blue Formica on top and chrome edges and legs.
“There you go,” Anna said.
“Thank you, Mommy,” Kendra said.
Anna got her own meal and sat down at the table with Kendra.
Kendra’s favorite food was fish sticks. They ate them so often that Anna had developed a taste for them, herself. There was a specific brand she preferred, although Kendra was not particular – she liked them all.
“How was Vacation Bible School today?” Anna asked.
“Oh, it was lots of fun. It was over too fast.”
“Have you had any more trouble with that boy? What’s his name? Jake – “
”Jake Tibman?”
“Yeah, he’s the one.”
“No, Jake’s been nice to me since Miss Fisher had a talk with him. He can be nice, really.”
“Well, that’s good to know. He sure wasn’t nice to you at first.”
“He said he was sorry.”
“That was nice of him.”
Kendra’s eyebrows rose high as she said, “Well, I had to forgive him, right? ‘Cause that’s what Jesus would have done.”
“That’s right, that’s exactly what Jesus would have done.”
Vacation Bible School had been Anna’s mother’s idea. It proved that not all of her ideas were from outer space. Anna wanted Kendra to have a Christian upbringing. She couldn’t afford to send her to private school, but took her to Sunday school every weekend, and every summer, she went to Vacation Bible School. Anna did this even though she had problems with the church herself. Even in this day and age, she found there were still people whose faces puckered up with disapproval when they learned she was a single mother – not a divorcee or a widow, but a mother who never had married. To some people, it still smacked of scandal. So Anna did not go to church herself – she didn’t like the stares and whispers. She dropped Kendra off for Sunday school, then picked her up ninety minutes later.
She envied Kendra her faith. Kendra believed everything told her by her teachers, and her faith that there was a loving god was solid and unshakeable. Kendra was lucky – she would never reach a point in her life when she would be faced with serious questions and doubts about the faith of her youth.
Sometimes, Anna found it difficult to believe that god was there, and if he was, it seemed he wasn’t paying any attention to her anymore. Of course, she could hardly blame him – it had been a long time since she had uttered a prayer. She didn’t see the point. When she prayed, nothing happened. Bills piled up, but money failed to come in to keep up with them. If it weren’t for her night job, she feared she and Kendra would be living on the street. She thought that night job was probably part of the reason she’d stopped praying – thanks to that job, she was too ashamed to go before god and ask for anything.
She was signed up at a temp agency, which occasionally brought her some work, but it was always temporary. She had to be ready to drop everything at a moment’s notice when the temp agency called. She had to run Kendra over to her sister’s. Rose watched Kendra often and Anna was grateful that she was always so available and willing. Then she had to locate her temporary assignment. Being an outsider, she never fit in with the tight-knit group already installed at the businesses where she temped. They were all the same – they didn’t welcome outsiders with open arms, and Anna was always on her own. Like in life.
At night, she did something else, something she wanted to keep from Kendra at all costs, and something her sister Rose disapproved of deeply. It was a topic they avoided, but somehow it was always there, whether they talked about it or not.
“How would you like it if Kendra did that?” Rose had said one day. “God knows she’s got the looks and body for it. She should be on a calendar in a bikini.”
“Rose! What kind of thing is that to say?”
“Well, it’s true. Just look at her – she’s drop-dead gorgeous. You’re going to have to come to grips with something, Anna. Sooner or later – and probably sooner – Kendra is going to discover her own beauty, and she’s going to start noticing men’s reaction to it. She’s going to put two and two together and behave the way she knows men want her to behave, and she’s going to get herself into big trouble. Now, you need to have a good talk with her. You should have a few years ago. You don’t want her to find out the way we did, do you?” She laughed and ran a hand back through her short dark hair. “Can you imagine Mom or Dad having a sex talk with us? I don’t think either of them would get through it. We’d have to call an ambulance, they’d have to be hospitalized.”