The Last Kind Words: A Novel Page 6

  Nothing they did was out of the ordinary, but it seemed exceptional to me. I saw the life I wanted, or the life I thought I wanted. The only part that was ugly was the creeper parked on the other side of the street, staring at them.

  Chub had put in only a half day. His clothes looked too clean and fresh for a grease monkey. Maybe he’d gone legit and let other mechanics work under the hoods and transoms at his garage, but I couldn’t see him stepping out of the game completely. He certainly hadn’t crawled under any soccer mom’s SUV today. So what else was he doing with his time? Paperwork? He’d still be known on the circuit. Crews and strings would still be coming to him for engine work and plotting getaway routes. Was he turning them away? Or did he just pick and choose more carefully now?

  I grabbed the door handle like I might climb out. And do what?

  I could step up their brick path and watch as Chub turned and saw me, hit his usual pose of cool, sort of locking his legs and leaning back. He’d invite me in and it would be awkward at first, Kimmy unsure of what to say or how to act, ill at ease that I was there at all because I’d be staring at her. I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. But soon things would loosen up. We’d act a little stupid, joke around, and share old stories. Nothing serious would be broached until later, after the beer bottles started to pile up. Chub would be thankful I’d deserted Kimmy. It had allowed him to step in. But he’d still resent me and consider my leaving a betrayal of our friendship if nothing else. His face would fall and that wounded expression would cross it inch by inch, starting with the frown lines in his forehead and down to his lower lip, which he’d be chewing on. Eventually he’d taste blood and stare at me for a lengthy time, steeling himself to either grab one of the bottle necks and crack me across the temple or let most of his anger slide and give me a hug.

  Kimmy wouldn’t have any of it. She would still hate me. She would always hate me. I didn’t blame her. I hated me too.

  Even as she said, It’s good to see you. How’ve you been? I’d know what was really moving through her heart. The real questions she wanted to ask, the honest indictments she would make. I’d left her alone to wallow through the misery of the miscarriage and our broken engagement. I’d left her to endure the onslaught of questions and insinuations by her family and friends as they snapped open the headlines and came at her, saying, This mass murderer, this sicko. He’s your boyfriend’s brother, isn’t he?

  All those bodies left behind in Collie’s wake, but the only one that meant anything to her would be ours, the one that hadn’t come to full term, which she’d lost without anyone knowing, without anyone to console her. Not even me.

  With a sharp tug I angled the rearview mirror so I could see them in it. See myself with them. I ran different scenarios. I saw other ways to impress myself upon the world. I could ease out of the car, move across the lawn as if it had been me who spent a thousand hours pushing the mower back and forth, using the edger to trim the borders, the way my father did, the way Chub did. Drop him with a shot to the kidneys. Kneel before the baby and hand her a teddy bear, get her to giggle, draw her into my arms. Lift her up and move to Kimmy, then press my forehead to hers, smell the loam, taste her life. Turn my back to Chub coughing in the grass and dream him gone. It’s what we all did when we wanted something badly enough. Let the irrational thoughts slip through, the idea that by sheer force of belief we could make things change, adjust, divert, back up. It’s what a thief does in the shadows, willing himself to vanish.

  Step inside with my family and put the baby in her crib and take Kimmy by the hand to the bedroom and love her the way I would’ve if I hadn’t run away in my weakness and fear. I clutched the door handle until my fingers were white and cramped. I forced myself to let go. I cocked the rearview mirror back to where it belonged. When I looked over again, the front lawn was empty except for one pink barrette and the plastic bowl, tilted on its side.

  The screw whose house I’d crept made me go through the same regimen as the day before. I spoke my true name. He led me to the small side room where I was frisked. He was a little rougher this time and clenched my nuts hard enough to make me grunt. Again I was politely asked if I would voluntarily succumb to a strip search.

  I thought, I know what your wife’s lingerie looks like. You drove to work today without a license, without any credit cards in case of an emergency.

  He repeated the question.

  I told him to fuck himself.

  Instead of telling me to leave, the screw moved me along.

  I was led to the visiting room full of long tables that Collie had pointed out to me yesterday, where we could talk face-to-face. It was rough enough talking to my brother on a phone with reinforced glass between us. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get so close to him.

  The screw held me in place with his palm against my chest. I could see Collie seated across from a woman who was talking animatedly. Pages of open books and legal pads in front of her flipped to and fro. She tapped them angrily. When she tossed her head a lash of glossy black hair whipped through the air. She wore a dark business suit with killer heels and glasses with thin black frames that accentuated the sharp Asian angles of her face. No matter how she turned I couldn’t see her eyes, only the glowing reflection of the ceiling lights in her lenses. Collie looked cowed, his chin down like he was a berated child. I thought, What in the fuck. I’d never seen my brother shrink like that before. It simultaneously elated and unnerved me.

  “Don’t shake his hand,” the screw told me. “Don’t pass him anything or take anything offered.”

  “Right.”

  Three minutes later the woman gathered up her belongings and packed them into a briefcase. She leaned in to say goodbye to him and their lips met briefly. She pushed her seat back and moved to the door. It opened and she walked past me. She stepped like a thief, her footsteps silent.

  I was ushered in. Collie stood and sort of jumped forward just to spook the screw. It worked. The tension thickened. Then Collie let loose with a laugh. The sound of the door slamming and the lock turning bothered me worse than it had yesterday.

  Collie gripped me in a bear hug.

  “We’re not supposed to touch,” I said.

  “I’m going to die in less than two weeks. If I want to hug my own brother I goddamn will.” He pushed me off, took me by the shoulders. “Thanks for coming back. I knew you would.”

  “Yeah, how?”

  “Because you’re a good man.”

  I didn’t know what the hell to say to that. He gestured to the visitor’s chair like we were about to have a beer and watch a ball game together.

  “Who was that woman?” I asked. “Your lawyer?”

  “That’s Lin. My wife.” He tried to grin but all it did was bring out the deep furrows in his face. “I got married a year ago. I didn’t tell the family about it, figured they wouldn’t want to know. In the beginning I just thought she was another one of these jailbird pen pals. I get boxes of mail a week. Everybody on death row does. It’s a weird cultural phenomenon, the way some women get turned on by—” He knew enough not to go on. “Well, anyway. But something in Lin’s letters reached me. She started visiting and one thing led to another.”

  I tried to process everything he’d just said. “One thing led to another?”

  “Yeah.”

  A demented lonely hearts reads about a mass murderer and decides this is her psycho soul mate, this is the man she’s been waiting for all her life? A guy who butchers children?

  I thought, Jesus Christ. What if he goes out with a bang and gets her pregnant? I could see the woman showing up on my parents’ porch, holding a half-Asian baby, going, Say hello to little Li, your grandson.

  My father wouldn’t even sigh. My mother would turn away, grit her teeth, steel herself, then smile and feed and welcome them. Later, perhaps years later, she would lock herself in the bathroom and fold herself up in the corner and cry silently until someone needed something from her.

  Collie let out
a chuckle. “Well, say something.”

  My tongue felt covered in moss. I fought not to glare. I pushed off my disgust. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What was she so angry about?”

  “We’ll get to that.”

  “All right.”

  He showed those teeth and I loathed his smile. It said that he had me in his hand, that he could make me come to him whenever he called. I’d thrown a hundred fists into that smile and I’d never hit it even once. Collie was faster than me, stronger than me. I could feel the superiority in him bleeding through even under these circumstances. I listed the things he might say that would force me to leave.

  If he mentions Kimmy, if he asks me to help pay for a new attorney, if he talks about my fucking tan again. I thought, The minute he opens his mouth I’m out of here. It took me another moment to realize that I didn’t have to be here. That I wanted to be here. That I needed to be here for some reason I didn’t understand but my brother did. Maybe I hated him. Maybe I wanted to see him die. Maybe I wanted to pull the switch.

  “You saw the family,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s it been?”

  “Fine. It’s been good.”

  “Everybody okay?”

  “They’re fine. They’re good.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not lying.”

  “You’re lying, Terry.”

  “So fucking what?”

  “Don’t break Ma’s heart again.”

  “I don’t take advice from dead men walking.”

  He was making me question myself again. I wondered how he managed to swing it so easily.

  His smile dropped and he ran a hand through his gray hair and a lot of my rage receded. He looked like an elderly man to me now. His manicure had dimmed, his nails had dirt under them. Then I realized they were paint chips. In the long night he probably scratched at the walls or the bars. What else was there for him to do? His freshest scars shone pink in the light. I wondered if he’d fought with other cons or the guards or both. For an instant it seemed to matter. I wanted to ask him who his enemies were. If the victims’ families ever tried to see him, if he ever spoke with them. If the rest of his mail was from people wishing him slow agony or a quick pop of city-grid voltage. I wanted to ask him about his nightmares. I knew he had them. I wondered if they were worse than mine.

  “Collie, you said you wanted me to save someone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know.” He muttered under his breath, like he was speaking to someone else in the room. “The next one.”

  “The next one?” I said. “The next one what?”

  “The next girl.”

  “What are we talking about?”

  “Rebecca Clarke.”

  The girl he’d strangled in Autauk Park a mile from the Elbow Room, where he’d been drinking, a couple miles from the trailer park where the mobile home had been parked. “I don’t understand. She’s already dead.”

  “Listen to me, Terry, this is important. I need you to do something for me—”

  “I need something from you first, Collie. I want you to tell me about that night.”

  The temperature in the room felt like it dipped twenty degrees. My flesh started to crawl. Our gazes caught and held. I had once loved him more than anyone else in the world. I had once feared him more than anyone else as well. Maybe I still did. We were too much alike. There are sibling rivalries that dissipate and others that become wars of wills and knives. I remembered all the faces of all the girls he’d stolen from me. I recalled their names, the taste of their lips, the feel of their bodies in my arms. I knew my brother wouldn’t recollect any of them. The nerves in my fingertips tingled. My tongue was too large for my mouth. My teeth were too sharp. I needed to know the answer.

  “You’ve already read about it,” he said. “You already know most of it.”

  “I want to hear about it from you.”

  “What’s that going to give you except nightmares? You remember how you used to wake up screaming as a kid?”

  I leaned forward. I thought, We could do it. We could cut loose and kill each other in less than a minute. The guards wouldn’t be able to get in here fast enough.

  “How about if the child-killer doesn’t fucking analyze me, huh?”

  “Hate me if you want but—”

  “What, you think I need your permission to hate you? You think this is something new?”

  “No.”

  A vacationing family of five shot to death in a mobile home, a gas-station attendant knifed in a men’s room, an old lady beat to death outside a convenience store, a young woman strangled in a park.

  “The little girl. Say her name, damn you.”

  “Susan Coleman.”

  “Suzy.”

  “Suzy Coleman.”

  “Say the rest.”

  “There’s no point to this, Terry.”

  “Say them or I’m out of here forever.”

  He spoke without expression. The words dropped from him like he was reading a baseball lineup. “Paul Coleman. Sarah Coleman. Tom Coleman. Neal Coleman. Suzy Coleman.”

  “The rest.”

  “Doug Schuller was the guy I knifed in the gas station. Mrs. Howard I pummeled with my fists. I hit her four, maybe five times.”

  No remorse. No scourging of conscience. It wasn’t hidden in the folds of his face, it wasn’t hovering beneath the surface of his calm. His eyes were the eyes of my brother, no different than they’d ever been.

  “None of them was robbed, Collie. You didn’t even take anything from the register at the gas station.”

  “No.”

  “Then why?”

  “There is no answer. I just did it.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I didn’t say it did.”

  Gramp Shepherd had called it going down into the underneath. That moment when desperation, rage, or momentary madness drove you out of your head and forced you to do something stupid and terrible. He’d always warned us. He told us to be aware of it, to watch for it, to know that when that trapped feeling hit, you couldn’t let it make you lose control.

  “What made it happen? What provoked you?”

  “There was no provocation, it just happened.”

  “You went mad dog for nothing?”

  “It just happened.”

  “Suzy Coleman. The girl in the mobile home—”

  “Why are you hung up on the girl? Not the old lady? Nobody else? Only the girl, huh?”

  Saying it like I should be ashamed.

  “You told me you were making ghosts. What’s that mean?”

  “Don’t talk about them. Don’t think about them. That’s not what you’re here for.”

  “Don’t think about them?”

  “No. It’ll just be distracting for you. There’s only one person you need to wonder about, that you need to ask about. Rebecca Clarke.”

  “Why only her?”

  “Because I didn’t kill her.”

  I rubbed my eyes. I made a scoffing sound.

  “So why didn’t you say anything about it before now?” I asked.

  Collie looked at me with a mischievous expression, almost wearing a sad grin. He said nothing.

  “What? You thought maybe you didn’t remember strangling a teenager?”

  He said, “I wasn’t sure.”

  “Then how can you be sure now?”

  “There have been more.”

  “More?”

  “More young women who look an awful lot like Rebecca Clarke have been killed.”

  I couldn’t look at him anymore. I stared over his shoulder at the wearisome white stone walls and tried to make sense of what he was saying. “How do you know that?”

  “Lin’s been doing research. There have been other women murdered in similar ways since I’ve been in here. And at least one that happened about six months before I
—”

  “Tell the cops.”

  “They don’t believe me.”

  “I don’t either.”

  He paused and the pause lengthened into a heavy silence, and finally he snapped his fingers to get my attention again. “I want you to look into it.”

  “Look into what?”

  “Becky’s murder. And the others.”

  “Becky?”

  He pursed his lips and turned away to say something to his audience. His stony eyes focused on me again. His tongue prodded the inside of his cheek. He cleared his throat.

  “Talk to Lin, she has notes for you. She’s been investigating.”

  “Oh, Christ, Collie.”

  He started getting excited. The jazzy bop rhythm worked back into his voice. “Young women strangled around the island. Some even near the park, like Becky was.”

  “Stop calling her Becky as if you were friends.”

  “There’s been at least three more since I’ve been in here.”

  “Collie, what the hell are you saying?”

  “Someone else murdered Rebecca Clarke. And it looks like he’s been snuffing others. As many as five in the last six or seven years, maybe more, I don’t know. But the others, they all looked like her. Brunettes, pretty.”

  I couldn’t hold back a bark of laughter. “That’s the description? Pretty brunettes? Someone’s killing pretty brunette teenagers?”

  “They weren’t all teenagers. But they all looked similar, from what they tell me.”

  “From what who tells you?”

  “Lin.”

  The new wife. The new psycho wife. If it was true and other women were being murdered, I figured that maybe she would be doing it. Trying to put the whole case in doubt. Strangling young girls because she’d always been turned on by the thought of murder. It was why she married a murderer. And now she had the perfect reason. She was killing for love.