Steve Hamilton - The Lock Artist

He thought about it for a minute.

“Still,” he said. “I mean, one more year until you graduate. Then you can go to art school, right? Maybe even come out to Wisconsin and join me? That would be cool, right?”

I shrugged. He stopped talking again for a while.

“I owe you one,” he finally said. “Okay? I’m totally serious. Anything you ever want. I totally owe you.”

I nodded again before I got out of the car and watched him drive away. I couldn’t help wondering if the visit had made him feel any better.

No, he’ll still feel just as guilty, I thought. Maybe more than ever. He’ll never be comfortable around me again. The only real friend I ever had. He’s going to leave town now, and I’ll never see him again.

I was right.

The next day, I drove over to the Marshes’ house. I knew being late would be Strike One, so I got there at eleven fifty-seven. It felt strange to be there at that same house again. It looked even bigger in daylight, the white paint so clean you needed sunglasses to look at it. I parked the car on the street, only a matter of yards from where I had parked just a few nights before. I walked to the front door, feeling the sun burning down on my head. I knocked on the door and waited.

Mr. Marsh opened the door. Instead of the perfect suit and tie, now he was wearing a white sleeveless workout shirt and a pair of tight blue compression shorts. He had a headband on to complete the effect.

“It’s you,” he said. “You’re here.”

Like I had a choice?

“Come this way.” He left the door open and turned away from me. I closed the door and followed him.

“We’ll have a little chat in my office,” he said. “After you see this.” He led me through the living room, where the aquarium had been replaced, and where the exact same fish were now swimming around as if nothing had happened. All of the other damage had apparently been fixed as well. There was no trace of the invasion.

“Twelve hundred dollars,” he said. “Between the new tank, the water damage on the rug and the furniture…”

He stood there and waited for me to react in some way. To acknowledge what he was saying.

“I should have waited to let you do it, but hell, that wouldn’t have made any sense. What were you going to do, glue the glass back together?”

Now you’re arguing with yourself, I thought. I’d better do something here. So I lifted both hands a few inches, then let them fall back to my sides.

“Yeah, sure. You’re damned right. What else is there to say?”

He turned and went to a door just past the stairs. He opened it and gestured for me to enter. It was a room I hadn’t seen the first time around. There was a bookcase of dark wood on one wall, a huge projection television screen on another wall. A large picture window looking out over the backyard on the third wall, and on the fourth, the biggest goddamned stuffed fish I’d ever seen. It was one of those huge blue marlins, at least eight feet long with another three feet of spear nose. It was stuffed and mounted and lacquered, looking so real you’d think it was still dripping wet.

“Have a seat.” He indicated the leather guest chairs in front of his desk. He sat behind the desk, the great fish just behind his head. He produced one of those little rubber exercise balls and started squeezing it. For a long time, he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and squeezed.

“I caught that damned thing off Key West,” he finally said, without actually looking up at the thing. “I fought it for three hours.”

He squeezed some more. He didn’t take his eyes off of me.

“Okay, I admit, I’m a little torn here. Part of me still wants to kill you right now.”

He paused and watched me, no doubt measuring the effect of his words.

“The other part of me just wants to hurt you really badly.”

This isn’t the way this was supposed to be going, I thought. Not according to my probation officer.

“Let me ask you this. Have you ever had your home broken into?”

I shook my head.

“Do you have any idea what it feels like?”

I shook my head again.

“It feels like you’ve been violated. Like someone has reached right into your guts…”

He held up his ball and squeezed it as hard as he could.

“Like someone has taken something away from you that you’ll never, ever get back. Your whole sense of security. Of being safe in your own goddamned home. Do you understand what I’m trying to say to you?”

I sat there and looked at him.

“What’s with the not speaking, anyway? What’s that all about?”

With his free hand, he reached over and picked up a framed photograph that had been facing away from me.

“I have a daughter who’s the same age as you,” he said. “Ever since the break-in… ever since the violation of this house…”

He turned the frame toward me. I saw her face.

“Things have been hard enough for her, is what I’m trying to say. Since her mother’s been gone.”

He stopped for a moment.

“Since her mother took her own life. A few years ago. I’m telling you that just so you know what she’s already been through, okay? Amelia’s been living in her own world ever since. Getting better, maybe. I don’t know. But now… fuck, with you breaking in here… I can’t even imagine how scared she must be. You have no idea, do you? You have no fucking idea.”

In the picture, she was wrapping herself up in a hooded sweatshirt, her hair whipped around by the wind off a lake in the background. She wasn’t smiling.

But she was beautiful.

“I hope to God you have kids someday. I hope you have a daughter like my Amelia. Then I hope you have a few cheap lowlife punks break into your house and terrorize her. So you get to feel what I’m feeling right now.”

Amelia. It was the first time I heard her name out loud. Amelia.

He turned the frame back away from me. I had a bad feeling in my stomach now, hollow and raw. I hated the idea of her being afraid in her own house. Someone who had been through at least some of the same things I had been. Someone who could draw those drawings I had seen in her bedroom.

“Now, my son… Adam…” He picked up the other picture on the desk. This picture was twice as big, which should have told me something right there.

“He’s on a full scholarship to Michigan State. My alma mater. He’s already up there for summer conditioning.”

He turned the frame so I could behold the full glory of his son. Adam was in his Lakeland uniform, kneeling on the ground with one hand on his helmet.

“I know what happened here,” he said. “I know why you guys broke into this place. Why you felt you had to put that banner in Adam’s bedroom. I mean, after four years of him beating your team up and down the field. Hell, it must have been pretty frustrating. I guess I can understand that part.”

He actually smiled at that point, for the first time. He put Adam’s picture back on the desk, carefully aligning it until it was in just the right place. Then he opened up a drawer in his desk and took out a small pad of paper and a golf pencil. He slid them over the desk until they were directly in front of me.

“So let me ask you something, Michael. You feel like writing some names down for me?”

He leaned back in his chair and began passing the exercise ball from one hand to the other.

“I know this didn’t come out in court. This is just between you and me, is what I’m saying. It doesn’t leave this room. I know that Brian Hauser was one of the gang who were with you that night. I mean, let’s not even pretend that he wasn’t here. Are we good so far?”

I sat there.

“That buddy of his, the quarterback… Trey Tollman? Who can’t even throw a ball forty yards? Are we talking about him, too?”