The Midnight Road Read online

  “You’re a naturally cautious person, and you’re even more sensitized because of your wife and because of what’s been happening to you. You don’t trust me. That’s all right, I can accept that. I’m not after a wedding band. I just thought I could comfort you. I thought we could have something…distinctive.”

  It was a good word. Distinctive. It bestowed no emotional content except what someone was willing to give it. He still didn’t think he was entirely on her radar. He might never quite make it even if he did get her into bed. The train pulled in and out of tunnels and Jessie Gray slumbered contentedly against Flynn. His gun pressed against her, but she seemed to find it comforting. Eventually she fell asleep. He turned his face to her hair and stared out the window at the Queens townships rolling by.

  On the floor, seated between his feet, Zero looked up and said, “You’re never going to figure this out. It’s going to keep happening until someone walks up behind you, taps you on the shoulder and stabs you in the eyes with an ice pick.”

  Flynn thought it might be true.

  When the train pulled into his station he gently awoke Jessie Gray and they disembarked among the rushing yups. He looked out over the parking lot and saw the rental car. He was having a little trouble remembering the early part of the day. It took him a second to get back to it—Jessie had met him at his apartment and they’d driven to the train station less than a mile away together. He held her close while they walked down the stairs to the lot.

  “You’re worried about me,” she said.

  “I’m worried about everybody.”

  “I mean, you’re bothered. You’re ill at ease. I came on too strong for you. It’s all right, I do that sometimes with certain men. I chased my first husband around the university campus for almost two years. We met as freshmen in a journalism class, and even though he didn’t like me much, I eventually wore him down. I have a habit of doing that. I told you I’m compulsive. I’m very self-aware. My therapist has reams of notes on the subject; but for some reason, despite my understanding, I fall back into the same pattern.”

  “It’s what makes us who we are,” Flynn said. “Our habits and methods. Our ruts. The ineradicable flaws in our character.”

  “You remember me saying that.”

  “Yeah.”

  He unlocked the car door for her. She didn’t want to get in, she wanted to talk. “And this relationship is already tangled enough.”

  Is that what they had? Did they skip into a relationship on the first date? A date that could be considered some what tainted, what with a murder occurring in the middle of it.

  “What’d you do to your second husband?”

  “Ran after him too. I got pregnant a couple of dates in. We shotgunned it. I lost the baby a few months later, and him a few months after that. I missed the baby more, even though I’d make a terrible mother. I know that. I shouldn’t have children. But I probably will, isn’t that awful? Of course it is, you see that all day long.”

  She slid into the seat and he closed the door, got in, started it up and waited for the heat to get going. She got up close to him again and he turned his face to her, went in for another kiss. It was sweet and friendly and altogether meaningless. She drew away and smiled at him.

  “You don’t really want me, do you?” she asked.

  He didn’t know how to answer, which was an answer itself. She seemed to take it in stride. She must’ve expected it. It was part of her rut. She liked men who turned her down. It fired her obsessiveness. He should say he loved her and watch her run for it.

  The complexity of his own emotions had never been quite so obvious to him before. He wondered if he’d always been like this, even with Marianne.

  “It’s going to snow again, I think,” Jessie said. “They’re going on and on about how it’s the worst New York winter in thirty years. I’m friends with the Channel Two weatherman, the guy who does it at eleven o’clock, and he says people aren’t paying enough attention. Cases of frostbite are way up. The homeless are freezing in the streets. You don’t hear about it much.”

  Flynn drove back to his apartment. She got out with out a word but gave him an expressive look.

  He didn’t know what the expression was supposed to mean, but thought his own face might mirror it. Interested, excited, a little wary. She came in close for a last kiss, and he turned his face to her, his lips parted. She drew away and left him like that, got into her car, started it up, and hauled out of there.

  Flynn had to be honest. He was glad she was gone. He wanted to work on the Charger some more before the next snow came. Driving the rental weakened him. He needed to get back his horsepower.

  That night he called Sierra and told her everything that had happened. He laid it out with more detail than he meant to and was startled to hear himself discussing Jessie Gray’s kisses.

  Sierra made gagging noises on the line. “You couldn’t listen to me. I told you to knock wood, right? Didn’t I tell you?”

  He didn’t pick up on it. He thought it was a sexual reference. “You told me to knock wood?”

  “When you talked about whoever making another move.”

  He remembered. “Yeah, you did. You told me not to call down the whirlwind, but it’s here anyway.”

  “And she was a friend of yours, this lady.”

  “Yeah. Feels like he’s getting closer.”

  “He’s been close. He could’ve aced you either time. But don’t worry about me. He tries to get close to me or my crew and I’ll put a bullet in his ass.”

  “I think the proper street slang is cap.”

  “Cap? Where the hell have you been for the last fifteen years?”

  “Okay, so what is it now?”

  “How the fuck should I know? You think I stand on street corners talking about shooting people?” She covered the phone and shouted something to one of the kids. He thought it was late for them to be up. She called Kelly’s name and said something about putting on pajamas. “The media been hounding you again?”

  “They keep calling, but not so many this time. Jessie broke the story. It’s already out of their hands. I also kind of think they care less because the victim was an old lady this time.”

  “Warms the cockles of my heart to hear that.”

  “Have you been taking Kelly to see her father?”

  “Once. It was enough for her. She didn’t cry, but the image of Shepard with tubes going into his chest, the machinery damn near devouring him, was enough. It gives her nightmares. I hear her. She doesn’t say anything.”

  With the volume way down, the television whispered about the latest celebrity breakups and hookups, our overseas successes and failures. Jessie’s weatherman friend said little about the snow. No wonder people were freezing. Flynn waited to see what they covered on Florence’s murder.

  “What are you carrying?” he asked.

  “A .45.”

  “You know how to use it?”

  “Who in the hell do you think you’re talking to anyway?”

  “My mistake. I revoke the question.”

  “The bigger stuff is out in the garage locked up. A twelve-gauge, a little wussy derringer, a Luger and a Mauser without firing pins and I think there’s even a broken-down Remington too. One of my exes was a gun nut, as if you couldn’t guess.”

  “I could guess.”

  “He robbed a bank with the Remington, him and three of his friends, all of them wearing dusters and ten-gallon hats, hooting and hollering like old-time outlaws, can you imagine?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “They got caught twenty minutes later and he tried to get rid of the gun in Ronkonkoma Lake. He went away for eight years, then stabbed a guy in prison and got another five tacked on. He’s still got a while to go. The police gave the rusted parts back to me and I locked them up with the rest. I wonder if I should pawn it.”

  “A piece used in a bank robbery? I’d say no.” He wondered how good she could be with a .45, which could break your a
rm if you didn’t hold it right. “So you can nail a beer bottle at fifty yards with that pistol of yours?”

  “No, but I can blow somebody’s head off. It’s got a kick but I’m not exactly delicate. You should seriously consider vacationing in Bora Bora.”

  “Don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind.”

  The soft hiss of her breath streaming through the corner of her mouth filled his ear. He heard the subtle movements of the plastics in her reconstructed face as she grinned over the line. “But you don’t want to run.”

  “No.”

  “You want to stay close and try to catch the guy. Now it’s a matter of pride with you.”

  “Call it what you want.”

  “I’ll call it what it is. I can hear it in your voice right now. You want to pop this guy. Cap him. Ice him. Ace him. What do they say in film noir? Plug him. Better yet, you want to do it with your hands, if you can.”

  He thought he could. He thought he could get the job done, whatever it cost. Someone had to make it happen, and soon.

  “You don’t have to admit it out loud,” she said. “I know it. You need to quit feeding that beast. Even if it makes you feel righteous. You have to turn your back on it, Flynn, do you understand me? The more you feel like you deserve to take someone’s life, the more you forfeit your own. I’ve been there.”

  “I know you have,” he said.

  “No, you don’t, you just think you know. There are things I’ve never told you. Things I’m still not going to tell you. But trust me on this one.”

  The story was on Channel 2. They were holding back the fact that Florence had been tasered to death, if that’s what had happened. They said she’d been bludgeoned, which was a word you didn’t hear much anymore. They were going to weed out the confession nuts. It wasn’t going to matter. The killer wasn’t going to call the cops or the news stations, but Flynn held out a little hope that maybe the spook might give him a ring.

  “Are you still there?” Sierra asked.

  “Yeah,” Flynn said. “Do me a favor and run a check on the name Emma Waltz. I tried but got nothing. You’re better at digging up info than I am. She’s about forty now.”

  Sierra waited for a moment. “That’s it? That’s all the information you have?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you after her?”

  “I think she’s part of my personal journey.”

  Sierra’s hiss shot out the corner of her mouth again. “Please tell me you didn’t just say that. Please. Did you just say ‘personal journey’?”

  “I did,” he admitted.

  “You’ve been watching too many daytime psychologists, that’s what you’ve been doing. Don’t you know some of those guys don’t even have degrees? They just know how to work the audience and the camera. Don’t get hooked into that. What personal journey are you talking about?”

  “I’m not quite sure.”

  “You talk, I’ll listen.”

  He lit a cigarette and stared at the burning end of it for a moment. She already knew about the day Danny died, but he’d never gone in depth with her.

  He went further than he’d ever gone before, surprised at himself for saying so much. The details of his brother’s death, which he’d run through his head ten thousand times, sounded foreign to him in his own voice. What he recalled embarrassed him.

  The Candyland board, Camus’ The Stranger. His preoccupation with Patricia’s belly, Danny’s small smile of simplicity, their mother’s smile, their father’s smile. Danny having no control over his foot whenever the baby was mentioned, the blood on Patricia’s lips. The way his brother told him, “Good boy.” The tilt of Danny’s neck. Emma Waltz glancing back at him.

  “And you think she has something to do with what’s been going on?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then what’s it about?”

  “I’m not sure.” Maybe if he could put it into words and explain it to her, he could understand it himself.

  Flynn got up and started pacing around the room. Zero sat in the center of the floor watching him, his head cocked.

  “She’s a piece of my life that got away. She went through the same loss as me, the same depth and width and size and scope of it, on the same day. Saw her older sister crap out of the game…the person she was going to be someday. We don’t grow into our parents, we grow into our older siblings. I’ve become my brother. All I have to do is look in the mirror to remind me. I’m who he would’ve become. I’m older than him now. I’m more of a father to him than our father was.” It was heaving up from him too quickly, he was losing control of what he was trying to tell her. “She watched her sister die bleeding on a beach. I bet she can’t look at the ocean anymore without thinking of that last run toward the water…a failed run, a last run that never even made it off the sand. It stays with you, it carries on. It has with me.” He hoped to Christ he didn’t start talking about Zero or Danny under the ice waving him in. But it felt like he might. “I keep thinking that, somehow, we’re connected in a way that can’t be explained. That we always have been.” He waited for Emma Waltz to get in his face again, but she was nowhere in sight. He missed her. It was true, he needed her. He had to find her. He’d come back for a reason. He knew his name but he still didn’t know his purpose. Maybe this was it. “That if we can get back to each other maybe it’ll clear my head, give me back what I’ve been missing.”

  Sierra waited a full ten count and said, “You seen Mooney yet?”

  It took him a second to find his voice. “That’s what you have to say to me?”

  “That’s what I have to say to you. Have you seen him?”

  “You know I haven’t.”

  “That’s right, I know you haven’t. Get it done. You need to talk with a professional. Don’t listen to the guys on television, all right? This has been bottled up inside you for too long. You need to do something about it. Or do you disagree?”

  “I don’t disagree. But—”

  “There is no but. There’s never any but. You think you’re wasting time and that you should be out there sleuthing, detecting, being the Continental Op, Sam Spade, all those guys from your favorite films. That’s a bad road to go down. Your head’s stuffed with black and white.”

  “All right, I’ll go see the pain in the ass.”

  Sierra pulled the phone closer to her mouth, so her words, spoken plainly and quietly but with real muscle, would get through. “I don’t think you’re going into this with an open mind.”

  “I’ll go see him,” Flynn said and hung up.

  Zero turned in circles before finally settling on the throw rug. He rested his chin on his booted front paws. “This guy any good? You need a competent psychiatrist. I think you might be starting to come a little unglued.”

  THIRTEEN

  Flynn did everything he could on his own for the Charger, replacing parts, banging out dents. There was still more to do. The insurance companies were still thrashing it out. Until the case was settled, all he had in the clear was his rental. The rest came out of his pocket. He got the Charger towed to a friend’s garage and cut a pretty good deal that still drained most of his savings account. The mechanics got it cleaned up and running, but that wasn’t good enough. He needed it tuned, refined, perfect. He didn’t have the money for it and had to sell some of his collectibles. His friend took it as a personal challenge and made it his priority.

  A few days later he went to the hospital and sat in on Shepard. The man lay there wired to machinery, catheters and shunts and tubes leading to bags all around the bed. His breathing was regular, his face full of healthy pink. Flynn thought he appeared to be pleasantly sleeping like a man who’d earned himself a good long rest.

  Flynn said Shepard’s name twice, first quietly, then much louder. Flynn started talking but wasn’t fully aware of what he was saying even while he said it. He seemed to be apologizing to the man. Flynn suspected that he owed Shepard his life. If the guy hadn’t walked in when he had, his
wife Christina would’ve blasted Flynn out of his shoes and dumped him in the Sound anyway.

  It started snowing on the drive back to his apartment. He got home and took up station at the window. He kept a watch on the lot, eyeing the cars growing white as the snow swept the area. He was backlit. A sniper could nail him. He half hoped somebody would try. The snow and the window might be enough to throw off the shot. He might see the muzzle flash and make a move, get on the run, find a clue he could follow. He didn’t move for hours.

  Sierra phoned him at nearly midnight and said, “She likes the bad boys.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  It came out wrong. There’d been a barb in his voice. Sierra went silent and he could feel the mood chilling over the phone. His ear started to freeze. She was going to take it as a wiseass comment about her own love life. He really had to watch what the hell he was saying.

  “Is that a crack?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “I asked you, is that a crack?”

  “No, I’m sorry if you took it that way.”

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “It wasn’t a crack at you! Even Betty Grable liked the bad boys. She dated George Raft. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were getting sensitive.”

  “Things aren’t so great at home,” she said.

  He asked, “Does it have to do with Nuddin or Kelly?”

  “No. My oldest, Trevor. I told you about him. I think Nuddin’s been keeping him up at night. They play video games too late. And they’re always on that damn computer. Or out in the garage fixing up my old clunker. Trevor hasn’t been sleeping, and those early hours, they can be killer. He helps me get the kids ready, makes breakfast. I think he’s fixating on his parents. He’s actually been writing to them, trying to reestablish contact. He’s backsliding. His therapy sessions aren’t going so good.”

  “He’s not seeing Mooney, is he?”

  “No, and stop insulting the guy. Maybe I’m giving Trevor too much responsibility too early, but it seemed to be good for him.”

  “You said he might be picking up on Nuddin’s damage.”