Ryan Jahn - The Last Tomorrow

She closes her eyes, tells herself not to cry. When she opens them again she sees two men walking toward her. They’re not uniformed officers but they’re both clearly cops. They have that cop walk. They’re both wearing suits and fedoras, but they remove their hats as they approach, one revealing wavy black hair, the other thinning gray hair.

The older of the two puts out his hand and says, ‘Detective Bachman, ma’am. I’m very sorry for your loss. This is my partner, Detective Friedman.’

Candice shakes his hand. He has a firm grip, but his palm is sweaty.

‘I understand your son was home when it happened.’

‘He was asleep.’

‘I’d like to speak with him, if I may.’

‘He doesn’t know anything.’

‘Just the same, I’d like a few words with him.’

‘What for?’

‘Ma’am, I understand your loss, I understand you being angry, but I’m trying to find out who killed your husband. I think speaking with your son might get me closer to that end. May I speak with him?’

Candice believes him when he says he understands her loss. It’s in his eyes. Though his face is expressionless the eyes are red and rheumy with sadness. He looks directly at her without blinking.

After a long moment she nods.

‘He’s inside.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

The two detectives, whose names she’s already forgotten, step through the front door and into the house.

She follows them in.

3

Carl believes someone in this house knows what happened. He believes someone in this house is responsible for what happened. He isn’t sure why he believes that, but he does. Maybe it’s the fact that most murders are done by people who know the victim, or maybe he instinctively understood some piece of evidence he isn’t even aware he saw, but his gut tells him the answer is right in front of him, and he’s a man who pays attention to his gut. Always has been. He’s already told Friedman he should wander away as soon as possible, look around the house, see what he can see. Carl will talk to the boy, watch how the mother reacts to the exchange. Between the two of them they should find at least one loose thread worth pulling on.

As the two men step through the front door Carl sees a wallet on the floor next to a table. It shouldn’t be here. If the man was killed in the street, killed on his way home from a bar, killed before his feet passed over the threshold, it shouldn’t be here. It should be in his hip pocket, or his inside coat pocket. Carl can imagine the dead man drunkenly walking through the front door, tossing his keys onto the table and his wallet, only his wallet misses and falls to the floor. He had to be alive for that to happen. So how did he end up back outside — and dead?

Carl turns to look at the blonde woman, the decedent’s wife. He wonders if she was the one who pulled the trigger. Goodbye, bad marriage. He wonders if her friend is simply covering for her, giving her an alibi. It’s possible.

‘You told my captain that your husband left the nightclub about an hour and a half before you did.’

She nods.

‘People at work can confirm this?’

‘Of course.’

‘Did he, by chance, get free drinks?’

‘Nobody got free drinks, why?’

Carl shrugs noncommittally, turns back to the living room, sees a small boy sitting on a couch, hugging himself defensively. A pale boy with freckles dotting his cheeks. His lips are chapped. His eyes are large and glistening with fear.

Carl walks toward him, says, ‘Mind if we talk a minute?’

The boy licks his lips. ‘Okay.’

‘Maybe at the dinner table?’

The boy nods and pushes himself off the couch. He walks to the dinner table, feet dragging on the carpet, pulls out a chair, sits down. He puts his hands on the table and clasps them, then pulls them apart and puts them in his lap.

He looks sick.

Carl wonders what’s happening behind the eyes.

Then Friedman touches his shoulder and nods toward the floor behind the couch. Two dents in the carpet where the couch was sitting prior to its recently being moved. Maybe it has nothing to do with the murder victim outside, or maybe the couch was pushed forward to cover something. Coincidences that look like evidence happen, of course, but not as often as you’d think. He nods.

Walks to the dinner table. Sits across from the boy.

The boy’s mother sits down as well.

The other woman stands by the door, looking in, silent.

Friedman wanders off, meandering toward the hallway before silently disappearing into it. No one else seems to have noticed.

Carl looks toward the boy and says, ‘This must be hard for you.’

The boy nods.

‘Were you and your stepfather close?’

‘They weren’t real close, but they got along okay.’

‘Ma’am,’ Carl says, glancing toward the boy’s mother, ‘I don’t mind if you sit here, but I need your son to answer the questions himself.’

For a moment it looks as though the woman will protest. Something flickers behind her eyes and she opens her mouth to speak. But before any words get out she closes her mouth once more and nods. But she’s tough. If she hadn’t just lost her husband, if she was fully herself, he doesn’t think he’d be sitting here at all, much less telling her how the conversation would go — not without a fight.

She’s tough like his wife was tough.

But now’s not the time to think about such things.

He looks to the boy.

‘Son?’

‘I don’t think he liked me.’

‘Why not?’

The boy shrugs.

‘A shrug isn’t an answer.’

‘He was mean.’

‘All the time?’

‘Most of the time.’

‘Then you must have tried to avoid him whenever you could.’

‘I guess.’

‘I bet your spent a lot of time alone in your room just so you wouldn’t get in his way.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘How was dinnertime?’

The boy licks his chapped lips. ‘It made me feel sick.’

‘Because you didn’t know what might set him off.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Because if you chewed too loud, he might hit you. Or if your knife scraped the plate wrong. Or if he just didn’t like your posture.’

‘Yes, sir.’ His eyes are moist with tears.

Carl glances at the mother, sees that the boy’s emotion has put a crease into the center of her forehead. She hadn’t known how bad it was for him, what turmoil it created within him. All she knew was that after her husband walked out she was alone with a mortgage payment and a son, struggling to make ends meet. All she knew was that there was a fellow with a job and an engagement ring who was willing to lighten her burden if she said I do, and she said I do. And all she saw in his behavior was a man trying to be a father to her son, and her son didn’t have a father.

People see what they want to see, or what they need to see. Sometimes they’re the same thing.

‘Was he meanest when he was drunk?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So you must have really paid attention if he’d been hitting the bottle.’

The boy nods.

‘But you didn’t hear anything when he came home?’

‘I was asleep.’

‘That’s what your mother said. But I had a father like your stepfather when I was growing up, and I think I would have woken up if I heard the car pull up. I would have woken up and listened, made sure he wasn’t on a rampage, made sure he wasn’t looking for someone to take something out on, made sure I didn’t have to hide in the closet or crawl out the window. I was a light sleeper when I was a boy, listened for any hints that trouble might be near. I noticed your bedroom screen was missing. Do you sometimes sneak out the window like I used to do?’

‘He was killed outside, detective,’ the boy’s mother says. ‘I don’t like where these questions are going.’