Laura Lippman - The Last Place

Guilford Avenue? That was the day they visited the private mail service, where Eric Shivers had once kept a box. What was Mickey doing there? Baltimore was small enough for such a coincidence to be plausible, but Tess had assumed Mickey Pechter was the kind of suburban boy who never ventured downtown.

All she said was, “Got you thinking what?”

“That maybe you and he were fooling around and I should follow you and see if I could get the goods on you, blackmail you, fuck up your life the way you fucked up mine.”

“You thought Carl and I were having an affair? Don’t be ridiculous.”

He wasn’t listening, he was wound up in his own logic, illogical as it was.

“Then I thought it would be better just to scare you, make you feel unsafe all the time, vulnerable-like. I tried hang-up phone calls at your office-only I kept getting the machine. So then I started tracking you. I wanted you to see me following you. I wasn’t planning on doing anything more, but today, when I got here and saw the door open-”

Now even Mickey Pechter seemed to be having trouble understanding how his mind had worked, how he had reasoned himself into almost getting killed. Yet Tess knew. After all, it had happened to her. All I wanted to do was scare you, get you to stay away from teenage girls. I never set out to strip your clothes off and apply a depilatory.

She would have told him as much. Mickey Pechter, however, did not strike her as a man who would appreciate that irony.

Instead, she said, “So you came to my house with a baseball bat in hand-just to scare me.”

“I’m on a softball team. We had a game today. The bat was the only thing I had in my sister’s van. I was gonna come in, wave it around. I thought I’d pretend to be like, you know, some guy in one of those drug movies who’s looking for a stash but goes to the wrong house.”

“Sounds like a good way to get killed.”

“I didn’t know you had a gun. And I didn’t know this guy, your redheaded friend, was going to jump me from behind. He was trying to kill me, swear to God. I only swung at him to get him off me, and then he was so angry, I thought he really would kill me if he got the bat out of my hand. It was like I was outside my head. I couldn’t stop.”

Tess looked at Carl, who had struggled to a seated position with Crow’s help and had a dish towel of cracked ice pressed to his knee. His face was pale beneath his freckles. She wondered if he could go into shock from pain.

“Carl, you want to press charges against him?”

“God, no,” he said, his voice tough, if a bit faint.

“You sure?” She wouldn’t have minded Mickey Pechter facing his own felony assault charges. But this was the city, not the county. There was no Judge Halsey here, no time for such penny-ante antics. Besides, she didn’t want any official record of Pechter’s visit.

“Positive,” Carl said, between clenched teeth.

She waved her gun at Mickey, just for effect. She was suddenly aware of how bizarre she must look. Much of her hair had come loose from her braid and was flying around her head, her white shirt was crusted with dirt and dead leaves, her black linen skirt was still halfway up her hips, displaying the full glory of her now-ripped pantyhose, cut-rate DKNY purchased in bulk at Nordstrom Rack. The Preppie Avenger.

“I’m the one who almost killed someone today,” she said. The catch in her voice, almost a sob, caught her off guard. “Do you realize that? I almost shot you in my home, and no grand jury in the world would have indicted me, not under these circumstances. But it would have fucked up my life, just the same. You want to give me nightmares? You came damn close. Thing is, you would have been too dead to enjoy it.”

“I told you I didn’t know you had a gun,” Pechter stammered, afraid again.

“You never know who has a gun in this world. Or who has a concerned family friend who’s willing to wreck your life for the sheer fun of it. You can’t know anything about anyone. So you shouldn’t pick fights, because you may not win. Don’t flip people off in traffic, don’t pull macho shit in bars. We live in a world where people will kill you for one rude look. How can you not know that? Are you too busy trying to pick up underage girls to read the goddamn papers?”

“I know,” he said, “that you are one crazy fucked-up cunt.”

“Hey, watch your language.” But it was Carl who objected to Mickey’s rhetoric, not Tess. “You shouldn’t talk like that, not in front of a woman. Not in front of anybody.”

Mickey began to edge toward the door, unnerved by Carl’s intensity, although Carl couldn’t even stand, much less go after him. Tess blocked Mickey’s way.

“I’m calling my lawyer tomorrow and I’m filing for a restraining order against you,” she said. “If I ever see you again-in my rearview mirror, or standing outside my office-”

“I know,” Mickey Pechter said, sneering at her, “you’ll shoot me. Big talker.”

She put her gun on the floor and grabbed him by the collar of the windbreaker with both hands, bringing him nose to nose.

“I’ll burn something else off next time. Something that doesn’t grow back. Tell that to Judge Halsey if you like. Tell him any fucking thing you like. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t been angry enough up to now.”

She let go of him as suddenly as she had seized him and he staggered backward, hands shooting instinctively for his groin. Then he turned and ran for his van in a wobbling stride, hands still cupped in front of him. Tess was pretty sure it was the last she would see of Mickey Pechter.

“Of course, Mickey wasn’t the only one following me. Was he, Carl?”

Carl had moved to an upholstered mission-style chair, which had cost Tess the approximate bluebook value of her thirteen-year-old Toyota. His left leg was stretched out on a matching ottoman, a second dish towel balanced on his knee, where the first had left a dark wet spot. Tess had poured him a shot of Jack Daniel’s, feeling like some saloon proprietress tending to an injured cowboy. Now she replenished his glass and poured herself a little more white wine while she was up. She asked Crow if he wanted anything, but he just shook his head and went back to his obsessive cleaning.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been watching me too. I know it wasn’t coincidence that you stopped by today. Were you parked at the bottom of the hill so you could watch the entrance to my little street? Or have you been everywhere I’ve been today? The funeral, the cemetery?”

The only sound in the room was Crow’s dust mop going back and forth across the floor. Swish swish swish. Swish swish swish. Tess’s mother had given Crow this new kind of mop, a Swiffer, for Hanukkah, and he loved it, the way men often love things for their sheer novelty. He had the wet cloths for the kitchen and bathroom floors, the dry ones for the wide-planked pine floors that ran through the rest of the house. Their floors always gleamed.

“I wouldn’t say watching,” Carl said. “Checking in, from time to time. I’ve been worried about you.”

Tess knew there was good reason to be worried about her. But Carl didn’t, or shouldn’t. He didn’t know what Luisa O’Neal had told her.

“I saw the thing about Julie Carter in the paper,” he said, as if anticipating the question. “I remembered her from your original list. Let me guess. She was small, with light eyes and dark hair.”

“Yes.”

“Lucy. Tiffani. Mary Ann. He’s definitely got a type. Although I think Lucy was the prettiest. Even dead-” He did not finish the thought.

“Major Shields said you’re obsessed with Lucy.”

“It’s as good a word as any, I guess.” He sighed. “I liked to think of myself as Dana Andrews in Laura, only she never comes through the door in a raincoat, still alive. But when I dream about Lucy, she’s whole. In my dreams, her head is with her body. She’s not the way I found her.”