Reznick had gone to the address that night, which had been in Happy Valley. It was right off Happy Valley Road – a long gravel driveway led to the house, with glowing windows some distance from the road. There were several cars parked around the house in a big clot. Reznick did not turn down the driveway. He went on and pulled over on a narrow shoulder. He got out of his car, locked it, and crossed the road. He started down the long driveway.
Halfway there, he was accosted by an ugly, familiar smell – a smell like someone painting a car. It was the smell of a meth lab in operation.
“Holy shit,” Reznick muttered.
Reznick was not a coward, and he was willing to take a risk now and then when it was necessary. But he was no idiot. He did not mess with people who had meth labs. He did not mess with the meth freaks.
He turned around and found himself looking down the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun.
“Who the fuck’re you?” the dark figure holding the gun said. That’s all he was, a dark figure with what looked like long straight hair, broad shoulders – and that gun somehow sticking out of the dark, vivid in front of Reznick’s face.
“Marcus Reznick, private investigator. I’m looking for a young man named Rodney Pope. I was told he might be here. His parents want him to come home. I’m not here to make trouble.”
“You a fuckin’ cop?”
“No, not at all, I’m a private investigator, I’m not affiliated with law enforcement in any way. In fact, I usually have an adversarial relationship with them.”
“Stand right where you are.”
“All right.”
The tall shadow moved around him, then poked him in the back with the shotgun. Reznick started walking.
“You get the fuck outta here, you hear me?” the man said.
“Yep.”
“You come back here, I’m gonna be the first one to find ya, and I’m gonna blow you in half, you unnerstand me?”
“I understand perfectly.”
The man moved his face close to Reznick’s ear and said quietly, “I mean it – right the fuck in half.” His breath smelled of garlic.
“You’ll never see me around here again,” Reznick had said.
“You just keep walkin’.”
He’d never walked faster.
Meth-heads were utterly unreasonable and dangerously violent, usually psychotic. Reznick had no intention of getting near any again, and if he suspected he might, he would turn the case down, no matter how much he needed the money.
Rather be poor than dead, he thought.
“Where in Happy Valley?” Reznick said.
“Right off Happy Valley Road.”
Reznick nodded. “A lot of people live right off Happy Valley Road.”
The warm, tangy aroma of the barbecue filled the office. But there was something else – Reznick could smell the baked beans, too. Not as strong as the barbecue, but it was there. It was making his stomach growl its head off.
“Have you had lunch, Mr. Carey?”
“Matter of fact,” Carey said, “I haven’t. This is my lunch hour, but I’m skippin’ it to see you. Is that barbecue you’ve got in that bag?”
“It sure is.”
“‘Cause it’s makin’ me crazy.”
Reznick laughed and said, “Yeah, me, too.” He quickly cleared away most of the top of his desk, then reached into the bag and brought out two dinner rolls wrapped in plastic, the Styrofoam cartons and the foil-wrapped ribs. Also in the bag were napkins, a plastic fork, toothpicks in plastic and a chocolate mint. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “This is a pretty generous order for one.”
Reznick got up and went to the cupboards, got a couple plates, a couple forks, a couple paper towels, and returned to his desk. A few minutes later, the only sound in the office was that of two men eating – teeth tearing meat, lips smacking, forks clacking against plates.
Finally, Reznick said, “Is this the best barbecue you’ve ever had?”
“It’s fuckin’ delicious, if you’ll pardon my French,” Carey said. “Where’d you get it?”
“Two doors down, Uncle Leroy’s Homemade Barbecue. There’s a stack of business cards. When your hands are clean, take a few and pass them out to friends. Stop and get some, take it home for the wife so she doesn’t have to cook.”
“Don’t worry, she probably won’t be around long enough to cook.”
“What’s the problem, Mr. Carey?”
“Oh, you can call me Mo.”
“I’m Marc.”
As they discussed Carey’s problem, they continued to eat.
“The last year or so, see,” Carey said, “my wife Alicia’s been goin’ out with her girlfriends.”
“What do you mean by that?” Reznick said. “Where do they go?”
“Well, she always told me they’d go out to a bar, or maybe to the Win-River Casino. A concert once in a while. Always drinkin’, they always go to a bar or club and drink.”
“Do you have children?”
“We have a little four-year-old girl.”
“Really? And your wife still goes out – how often?”
“Well, that’s the thing, see. At first, it was once every month. Then pretty soon, it started to be once every couple weeks. Then once a week. Now it’s a couple, three times a week, sometimes more.”
“Have you told her you don’t like this?” Reznick said. “Does she know how you feel?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve tried. That never goes over well. It always turns into a fight.”
“What’s her argument?”
“Her argument? She says we married real young, and we did. Just outta high school, Melanie got pregnant, and we got married. The baby was stillborn. We waited a long time before tryin’ again. I thought the marriage – that we – I thought everything was great, y’know? But somethin’s wrong if she’s doin’ this two-three times a week. I’m afraid she might be gettin’ herself a drinkin’ problem. Mention that to her and she flies into a rage. I think she might be takin’ drugs.”
“Was this sudden,” Reznick said, “or were there warning signs? Can you look back now and see things happening that might have led up to this?”
Carey’s eyebrows were pretty bushy, and they huddled together thickly in the middle of his frown. “Y’know, there have been things, and I’ve noticed all of ‘em, and I’ve even brought a couple up to her, but it was always a mistake.”
“What kind of things?”
“Well… “
Carey was hesitating because that was private stuff, and he was reluctant to discuss it with a stranger.
Reznick’s head bobbed up and down and he said, “I’m sorry, I should’ve pointed out to you by now that everything you say in this office is absolutely confidential. Everything you say stays within these walls. So you shouldn’t be afraid to say anything.”
Carey nodded. “Okay, I’ll buy that. It’s just that – see, these days, most people’re real eager to go on TV and talk about how crazy their families are, y’know? But that’s not the way I was raised. I was raised to keep my dirty laundry off the outdoor line, where it didn’t belong in the first place.”
“That’s very respectable, Mo.”
“Thanks. Course, it ain’t gettin’ me nowhere with my wife.”
“What about your wife, Mo?” Reznick said. “What do you want me to do?”
Carey dipped his roll in the baked beans and took a big bite. He chewed for a while, then said, “Last week, I’m sittin’ at home with our daughter, watchin’ a rerun a some dumb show I didn’t like the first time I saw it, when I realized, why should I do nothin’ while she’s out kickin’ up her heels?”
As Reznick listened, he ate his last rib, and forced himself not to groan happily at the flavor of the barbecue.
“I know all the husbands and boyfriends of her girlfriends, see,” Carey went on. “I figured I’d call ‘em over and we could play poker, or play video games on the X-Box, or somethin’ – anything besides wastin’ another second on television, for cryin’ out loud. So I call the first one – name’s Ted Haker. Him and me went to high school together. We even dabbled in college together over at Shasta College. It wasn’t for me, but Ted went off and got himself a business degree. Now he owns a small chain of electronics stores here in northern California. Ted’s always fulla good stories. He’s dealt with a lot of strange people over the years, and he’s fulla real funny stories. So he’s always fun to have around. So I call Ted. I ask him if he wants to come over and do somethin’. Ted acts kinda funny, and he says, ‘Tonight?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, tonight.’ And after awhile, he says, ‘Okay, yeah, I guess so. What’s Melanie gonna be doin’?’ I thought that was a funny thing for him to ask, and I said, ‘Huh?’ And he said, ‘What’s Melanie gonna be doin’ while we’re playin’ video games?’ And I said, ‘What the hell you talkin’ about, she’s out with your wife and the others.’ And Ted chuckled and said, ‘My wife’s right here with me.’ That’s when I got this cold feelin’ inside. I called the other husbands and chatted, found out their wives were home, too. That feelin’ got worse. That helpless feelin’ you get when you realize something important to you is out of your hands, beyond your control, y’know? Somethin’ that’s not really lost, but that maybe you never had. It’s like bein’ in a earthquake. Ever been in a earthquake, Marc?”