Binds that tie, p.7
Binds That Tie, page 7
She removed the grill on the stove and furiously worked at six months of cooked-on food with a scouring pad. How hard is it to not over-boil milk? She smiled at the thought. Smiled! And it felt good. The marble countertops had a film on them, substance unknown. An organic base layer was covered in bills, junk mail, coupons, flyers, and hospital paperwork—the detritus of six months of life.
When she stopped, searching for something else to do, the kitchen sparkled. She took a deep breath, pride filling her lungs. She realized her pajama top was soaked and went upstairs to get dressed. She checked the clock—twelve thirty. Was that all? Overcome with the urge to see Chris, to show him the kitchen, she called his office. It went to voice mail. Go see him. Leave the house? She’d done it a few times. Not recently, though.
Driving felt foreign, a language in which she was no longer fluent, and she braked too hard at stop signs or too late in traffic. When she pulled into the parking lot at Carmichael Construction, she barely noticed the two cars in front of Chris’s trailer. Later, when she replayed the morning on an endless loop, she would recall the two vehicles with acrid clarity.
She opened the door with a resounding creak and called, “Chris!”
Maggie had heard people say they “couldn’t believe their eyes,” but for the first time in her life, she understood what that meant. Her first thought at the scene in front of her was that it was an elaborate practical joke, a skit put on just for her, and they would all crack up in you should have seen your face laughter. Tracy straddled Chris, half-standing and topless, her breasts hanging low and pendulous like some National Geographic special. Her cutoff jeans were pushed down on her hips—thank God she still had them on—accentuating a soft bubble of belly fat.
They had turned to gape at her. His mouth hung open, covered in the trashiest shade of fuchsia lipstick Maggie had ever seen. Tracy made no move to cover herself, and the three of them stood frozen in some French farce. Maggie laughed then, covering her mouth. She wasn’t supposed to laugh at finding her husband with a half-naked woman, but her gut feeling was one of superiority. Come on. Tracy? Would it kill her to bleach her roots before they reached her ears? She drove a Camaro.
“Maggie, why are you here?” That was Chris’s solitary sentence. It wasn’t even a protest; it was an accusation. At her.
For what? Interrupting them?
“Oh, did I disturb you? Then by all means, please, carry on. Use protection.” She left them, closing the door.
She hesitated on the unfinished wooden step of his trailer for ten minutes, waiting for him to come after her. But he didn’t. When she couldn’t wait anymore, she walked back to her car, wondering where she would go. Everything was gone. On the way, she picked up a solid steel rod that had been lying on the ground. It was heavy, about four feet long, maybe an inch in diameter. With calm precision, she raised it over her head and brought it down on the windshield of the Camaro. The glass splintered but did not shatter, no matter how many times she hit it. And no one came out to stop her.
She hadn’t thought about that day in a while. She crept downstairs and paused in the doorway. Chris crouched with his back to her, studying the floor. A suds-filled bucket sat next to him.
“Blood?” she asked.
He turned to face her, and she was startled by the lines on his face, etched seemingly overnight.
“I think I got it all. But it’s a hardwood floor, so… I guess you never know.”
She bent down behind him. The floor glistened, and the smell of Murphy Oil Soap stung her nostrils. She saw nothing. She inspected the mantel. It was freshly scrubbed without a trace of blood. She realized the room looked as though the night before had never happened.
She tucked her face into the hollow of Chris’s back, replacing the citronella odor with his smell—the earthy, musky, familiar scent of his skin. He made no move to return the gesture, and after a moment, he stood. He motioned for her to follow him. They walked outside and inspected the truck, the garage, and the front porch. Maggie didn’t see a drop of blood or a single knickknack out of place.
“Coffee?” she asked and wandered into the kitchen. Her stomach rumbled, although the thought of food made her sick. The digital display on the microwave blinked three thirty. She’d slept most of the day, and Chris had worked.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Chris replied.
Maggie gasped. “Chris! Your clothes! My pajamas!”
Her pajama shirt had been spattered with Logan’s blood. After Chris left, she had balled up her pajamas and shoved them in the trash can, just needing it all to be over. She showered under water as hot as she could stand it, scrubbing until her skin was raw.
“It’s all in the river.” He didn’t turn around, but he raised his hand in the no more questions gesture of exhaustion. He really had thought of everything.
Maggie took a deep breath. Maybe we’ll be okay.
When Chris disappeared upstairs, she retrieved the back of her cell phone, which was still sitting in a Tupperware of kitty litter. She located the memory card and picked it out. It was about the size of her pinkie fingernail, and that amazed her. All her secrets in that tiny device. She tiptoed to the downstairs powder room and flushed the tiny electronic device. Good-bye, secrets. She snuck back to the kitchen, listening for the telltale creak of the shower shutting off. Minutes later, she heard Chris’s footsteps on the stairs.
When he appeared in the kitchen doorway, for the first time, he looked scared. “This will be okay, right?”
His need was so uncharacteristic, so foreign, that she didn’t know what to say. She feared that anything she said would drive him further into himself. Between the night before and that morning, she’d grown accustomed to his assurance. She needed his confidence. His fear gripped her, a tight clawing around her throat. She couldn’t be the rock. She nodded slowly. She had no idea if that was true, but the lie felt convincing, even to her.
The doorbell rang, jarring only in its normality. Their doorbell rang regularly with kids selling things or Jehovah’s Witnesses. She met Chris’s eyes and knew he felt the same rising panic she did. He loped across the living room and parted the curtains. Time seemed to stand still. Maggie knew what he would say before he turned around. Before she saw his face, ashen and wild-eyed.
“The police are here.”
Chapter Eight
Chris
“Do you have a second to speak to us, Mr. Stevens?”
Two uniformed officers stood on the porch, one behind the other. The one in front was tall and had a barrel chest that tapered down to a narrow waist. He had a close-cropped marine cut and the jutting jaw to match. He carried a cup of coffee and a manila folder tucked under his arm.
The second cop was a wiry wisp of a man with round, wire-rimmed glasses and cherubic cheeks. He was probably told he had a baby face all the time, and he probably hated it. The second cop gave him a friendly smile. Chris pushed aside the oppressive dread, opened the door wide, and tried to make his face impassive. Cooperate and they’ll leave.
He cocked his head to the side. “Sure, can you tell me what this is about?”
“I think we should just come in. It shouldn’t take long.” The big guy did the talking.
Chris motioned them into the living room and gestured toward the couch. Chris sank into the recliner, but when the two cops remained standing, he popped up again. His palms were damp, and he wiped them on his jeans until he caught himself fidgeting. He dropped them to his side as the first cop pulled two photographs from the file and held them out.
“We’re looking for this man. Have you seen him?”
For a quick second, Chris allowed himself the delusion that the visit had nothing to do with the dead man. That they were looking for someone else—a neighborhood drifter, a suspect in a rash of break-ins—anyone else. Chris took the pictures and studied them individually. The first one was a snapshot of a man at a picnic table, grinning widely with his hands folded in front of him. The second picture was a blurry close-up of his face in profile, his eyebrows knitted together in anger. Both pictures showed the same man, a man Chris recognized as being dead on his living room floor a mere twelve hours earlier.
Chris studied the pictures, flipping back and forth between the two, his eyebrows knit in concentration. “I don’t think so. Should I? Who is he?”
“Is your wife at home, Mr. Stevens?”
“She is, but she’s been up all night with the stomach flu. She’s sick as a dog, in bed. You can call me Chris, by the way.”
The cops glanced at each other, their expressions unreadable.
“I can go get her if it’s important…” His instinct was to talk, to fill the silence with enough words to make them go away. From television, crime shows, he knew that was purposeful. He’d watched a ton of that stuff, and he knew the drill, whether it was real or not. Yet there he was, falling into the same traps. Just stay cool and shut the hell up.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He wanted them to sit. If he could get them all on the same level, maybe he could say the right things. With everyone standing around, he didn’t know what to do with his hands, and his arms felt too big for his body. Beads of sweat popped on his forehead, but he knew enough not to wipe them away.
“We have it on more than one authority that he was coming to your house last night,” the first cop said, maintaining eye contact.
Chris glanced at his name tag, a flat, rectangular strip of metal with DAVIS engraved on it. He realized then that the cops hadn’t introduced themselves. Weren’t they supposed to do that? If they were there out of courtesy or friendliness, they would have given their names. Chris pretended to study the pictures again. Whose authority? “I’m sorry, officers, I don’t know this man. I have no idea why he’d come to my house.”
The second cop’s eyes scanned the room and paused on the mantel. Chris’s heart pounded as the cop ambled across the room. He plucked a framed photograph from the mantel. Maggie and Chris were on their honeymoon, sitting against the stern of a boat with open smiles and endless amounts of hope. They had just returned from a day of snorkeling, their hair still damp and faces shining. Chris loved that picture. If he’d had the opportunity to return to any moment in his life, he might have picked that one. Maggie’s hands rested on his right thigh, and he remembered the way she had pressed her body into his, her skin cool from the water. He heard her laugh as the shutter snapped.
“Pretty girl. St. Barts?” the cop asked, tapping the picture and leaving a fingerprint in the thin layer of dust.
Chris shifted subtly to read his name tag. Lupikino. Chris nodded.
“Odd coincidence. Us too. In fact, on that same charter. It’s the only way I knew.”
“Yeah, well, most popular charter on the island.” Chris waved dismissively. Stop being an asshole to someone with the power to put you in jail. Again.
The cop replaced the picture facing in the wrong direction—toward the window instead of toward the center of the room. He picked up the frame next to it. “Is this the same woman?”
Chris felt impatient. Was he going to have to explain every picture in the living room? “Yeah, Maggie was going through some kind of phase. She dyed her hair dark for our wedding and honeymoon.” He shrugged.
The picture the cop was looking at had been taken the previous Christmas in front of the mantel, prior to a night out with Mika and her new boyfriend. Chris and Maggie stood side by side, smiling and happy. Chris didn’t have to see the picture. On nights when Maggie had gone to bed early, leaving Chris to drink beer in the blue glow of the television alone, he’d sometimes studied it. Maggie’s smile had looked impossibly genuine, wide, almost laughing, and he could never figure out if it was real.
“This was taken here, in this house, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, like Christmas or something. Not that long ago,” Chris said.
“December twentieth?” Lupikino read the date stamp, framed as a question. He studied it, tilting the picture back and forth. He placed it back on the mantel.
Chris resisted the urge to adjust it.
“Mr. Stevens?” Davis jumped in. “Do you know the name Logan May?”
Chris’s attention snapped back to Officer Davis as he turned the name over in his mind. The name meant nothing to him, but he knew with sinking dread who he was. Chris had never wanted to know his name. He’d avoided looking at that line on the driver’s license or the mail on the front seat of the car. A man without a name stayed buried with greater ease, of that he was sure. Chris shook his head.
“Have you ever heard your wife mention him?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Chris cleared his throat. “So what’s this about? Why was he coming here, to our house?”
“We were hoping you could tell us, Mr. Stevens. Last night, May got in a physical altercation with a patron in the parking lot of the Tiki Hut. He’s looking at assault and battery. The other man is in Harrisburg Hospital in stable condition, but he’s pressing charges.”
“Then I guess I’m glad he didn’t come here,” Chris joked, but neither officer laughed. His smile felt pasted on.
“Well, the problem is, we can’t find May, either.”
Chris shrugged. “If I beat up a man in a bar parking lot, I might hide out for a while too.”
“Is that what you did, Mr. Stevens?” Lupikino had a soft voice, unassuming. He was still studying the mantel and the pictures on it when he asked the question.
It took Chris a minute to comprehend. They know about Derek. What else do they know? “I’m sorry?”
The cops exchanged glances.
“When you had your little altercation, what, fifteen years ago? Is that what you did?” Lupikino repeated the question, each word dropped like carefully considered pebble.
“No, I didn’t hide.” Chris squared his shoulders, stood up straight, and pushed out his jaw. “I did my time for that, and I can’t justify it for the rest of my life.” That came out more obstinate than he intended.
The second cop raised his eyebrows, tilting his head. “No, I don’t imagine you can. But our issue is that two different witnesses claimed May was on his way here. And they don’t know each other. So now we have what we call a substantiated story. You see how that works?” The softness of his voice belied the condescension.
Chris had the distinct impression he was in a trap, but he couldn’t see it. He felt the familiar anger bubble up. They think I’m stupid. Except if he was smart, wouldn’t he be able to see what they were doing? Maybe they weren’t actually doing anything. That thought was a balm to his fear. They hadn’t actually accused him of anything.
“Yeah, I see that. But I have no idea who he is or why he would come here.” Chris’s voice sounded weak and whiney, even to his own ears. He took a deep breath.
“Mr. Stevens, do you have a bathroom I can use?” Davis asked, shaking his empty coffee cup. He gave Chris a friendly smile, which looked out of place and sinister on his militant face. “We’ve been out for a few hours, tracking down May, and I, uh, had a coffee.”
“Yeah, sure. You can call me Chris.”
He led Davis through the kitchen, running a mental inventory of the countertops and table. He noticed nothing suspicious or out of order. As they passed the island, Davis lightly tossed the folder on the marble top. Chris pointed him toward the powder room. When the door clicked shut, he inched over to the island and gently opened the folder. The pictures of Logan sat on top. He pushed them aside, trying to touch only the edges. Underneath, a picture of a blond man was clipped to a stack of paperwork. The sound of a cough came from the living room, and Chris jumped back, blood rushing in his ears.
He pivoted and skip-stepped back to the living room. Lupikino was still standing next to the mantel, but he was hunched over, looking down the mantel from the side. When he saw Chris, he straightened.
“What happened to the vase?” He lightly rapped the mantel with his knuckle where the vase used to be.
Chris felt his throat close. “Vase?” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. Fear skimmed across his back. His shoulder blades tensed as though pulled taut with a string.
“In the picture from December, there was a vase on this mantel. What happened to it?”
“Oh, uh… Maggie broke it cleaning one day, I think? She was upset about it. It was a wedding present from her friend. I think it was expensive.” He was babbling, but he couldn’t seem to control his mouth. “Maybe I should wake her.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. She’s sick and all.” Lupikino waved him off, suddenly flippant. “I think we got what we came for. As soon as Davis is done.”
“I’m done, I’m done,” Davis said from the doorway.
Chris turned, startled.
“The phone?” Davis asked, gesturing toward the kitchen. “In the kitty litter? Have you tried it yet? Did it work?”
“Uh, I’m not sure. Maggie dropped it in the toilet, and that’s what they told her to do. She got a new one, but we haven’t decided what to do with it yet.” Chris babbled and felt his control slipping and wiped his palms on his jeans. Jesus Christ, just get the fuck out. He was being potshotted from all sides—no single blow hurt, but the effect was exhausting.
