Sue Grafton - L is for Lawless

I spent a few minutes in the bathroom and then followed Ray up. As it turned out, there wasn't much of anything else up there, either: a single bed with a wood frame and a sagging spring, a bed table with one short leg, and a lamp with a forty-watt bulb and a yellowing shade. I worried briefly about bugs and then realized it was too cold up here for anything to survive.

"You got everything you need?"

"This is fine," I said.

I sat gingerly on the bed while he clumped downstairs again. I couldn't sit up straight because the eaves of the house slanted so sharply above the bed. It was bitterly cold, and the room smelled of soot. As a form of insulation, someone had layered sheets of newspaper between the mattress and the springs, and I could hear them crackle every time I moved. I lifted one corner of the mattress and did a quick check of the date: August 5, 1962.

I slept in my clothes, wrapping myself in as many layers of blanket as I could manage. By curling myself into a fetal position, I conserved whatever body heat I had left. I turned out the lamp, though I was reluctant to surrender the meager warmth thrown off by the bulb. The pillow was flat and felt faintly damp. For some time, I was aware of light coming up the stairwell. I could hear noises – Ray pacing, a chair scraping back, an occasional fragment of laughter from the TV set. I'm not sure how I managed to fall asleep under the circumstances, but I must have. I woke once and turned the light on to check my watch: 2:00 a.m., and the lights downstairs were still on. I couldn't hear the television set, but the nighttime quiet was broken by occasional unidentifiable sounds. I wakened some time later to find the house dark and completely quiet. I was acutely aware of my bladder, but there was nothing for it except mind control.

I really don't know which is worse when you sleep in someone else's house – being cold with no access to additional blankets or having to pee with no access to the indoor plumbing. I suppose I could have tiptoed downstairs on both counts, but I was afraid Helen would think I was a burglar and Ray would think I was coming on to him, trying to creep into his bed.

I woke again at first light and lay there, feeling miserable. I closed my eyes for a while. The minute I heard someone stirring, I rolled out of bed and made a beeline for the stairs. Ray and his mother were both up. I made a detour to the bathroom, where, among other things, I brushed my teeth.

When I returned to the kitchen, Ray was reading the morning paper. He hadn't had a chance to shave, and his chin was prickly with white stubble and probably felt as rough as a sidewalk. I was so accustomed to his various facial bruises, I hardly noticed them. He'd covered his habitual white T-shirt with a denim workshirt that he wore loose. Despite his age he was in good shape, the definition in his upper body probably the result of hours lifting weights in prison.

"Have we heard from Gilbert?"

He shook his head.

I sat down at the kitchen table, which Helen had set at some point the night before. Ray passed me a section of the Courier-Journal One more day together and we'd have our routines down pat, like an old married couple living with his mother. Helen, for her part, limped around the kitchen, using the bat as a cane.

"Is your foot bothering you?" I asked.

"My hip. I got a bruise goes from here to here," she said with satisfaction.

"Let me know if I can help."

Coffee was soon perking, and Helen began to busy herself frying sausage. This time she outdid herself, fixing each of us a dish she called a one-eyed jack, in which an egg is fried in a hole cut in the middle of a piece of fried bread. Ray put ketchup on his, but I didn't have the nerve.

After breakfast I hit the phone, making a quick call to the five cemeteries we'd put on our list. Each time I claimed I was an amateur genealogist, tracking my family history in the area. Not that anybody cared. All were nondenominational facilities with burial plots available for purchase. On the fourth call, the woman in the sales office checked her records and found a Pelissaro. I got directions to the place and then tried the last cemetery on the off chance a second Pelissaro was buried in the area. There was only the one.

Ray and I exchanged a look. He said, "I hope you're right about this."

"Look at it this way. What else do we have?"

"Yeah."

I excused myself and headed for the shower. The phone rang while I was in the process of rinsing my hair. I could hear it through the wall, a shrill counterpoint to the drumming of the water, the last of the shampoo bubbles streaming down my frame. In the bedroom, Ray answered the phone and his voice rumbled briefly. I cut my routine short, turned the water off, dried myself, and threw my clothes on. At least I had no problems deciding what to wear. By the time I reached the kitchen, Ray was in motion, putting together an assortment of tools, some of which he brought in from a small shed in the backyard. He'd found a couple of shovels, a length of rope, a pair of tin snips, pliers, a bolt cutter, a hammer, a hasp, an ancient-looking hand drill, and two wrenches. "Gilbert's on his way over with Laura. I don't know what we're up against. We may have to dig up a coffin, so I thought we'd better be prepared." The Colt was sitting on the tin pull-out counter of the Eastlake. Ray picked it up in passing and tucked it in the waistband of his pants again. "What's that for?"

"He's not going to catch me off guard again." I wanted to protest, but I could see his point. My anxiety was rising. My chest felt tight and something in my stomach seemed to squeeze and release, sending little ripples of fear up and down my frame. I teetered precariously between the urge to flee and an inordinate curiosity about what would happen next. What was I thinking? That I could affect the end result? Perhaps. Mostly, having come this far, I had to see it through.

Gilbert and Laura arrived within the hour with the canvas duffel in tow, probably packed with the eight thousand dollars in cash. Gilbert was wearing his Stetson again, perhaps hoping to enhance his tough-guy image now that he'd been bested by an eighty-five-year-old blind woman. Laura was clearly exhausted. Her skin looked bleached, residual bruises casting pale green-and-yellow shadows along her jaw. Against the pallor of her complexion, her dark auburn hair seemed harsh and artificial, too stark a contrast to the drained look of her cheeks. I could see now that her eyes were the same hazel as Ray's, the dimple in her chin a match for his. Her clothes looked slept in. She was back in the outfit I'd first seen her wearing: oversize pale blue denim dress with short sleeves, a long-sleeved white T-shirt worn under it, red-and-white-striped tights, and high-topped red tennis shoes. The belly harness was gone and the effect was odd, as if she'd suddenly dropped weight in the wake of some devastating illness. Gilbert seemed tense. His face was still pock-marked with spots where Helen's birdshot had nicked him, and he wore a piece of adhesive tape across his earlobe. Aside from the evidence of first aid, his blue jeans looked pressed, his boots polished. He wore a clean white western-cut shirt with a leather vest and a bolo tie. The outfit was an affectation, as I guessed he'd been west of the Mississippi only once and that not much more than a week ago. At the sight of her grandmother, Laura started to cross the room, but Gilbert snapped his fingers and, like a dog, she heeled. He put his left hand on the back of her neck and murmured something in her ear. Laura looked miserable but offered no resistance. Gilbert's attention was diverted by the sight of his gun in the waistband of Ray's pants. "Hey, Ray. You want to give that back?"

"I want the keys first," Ray said.