Dennis Lehane - Gone, Baby, Gone

Broussard unscrewed the back of the TV, and I helped slide it off. We peered in.

“Anything?” Poole said.

“Cables, wires, internal speakers, a motor, picture tube,” Broussard said.

We slid the casing back on.

“Shoot me,” Angie said. “It wasn’t the worst idea of the day.”

“Oh, no.” Poole held up his hands.

“Wasn’t the best, either,” Broussard said out of the side of his mouth.

“What?” Angie said.

Broussard flashed his million-dollar smile at her. “Hmm?”

“Could you turn it back on?” Helene said.

Poole narrowed his eyes in her direction, shook his head. “Patrick?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s a backyard behind here. Could you take Miss McCready out there while we finish up in here?”

“What about the show?” Helene said.

“I’ll fill in the blanks,” I said. “Ho’,” I said. “You dirty dog,” I said. “Bleep,” I said.

Helene looked up at me as I offered her my hand. “You don’t make sense a lot.”

“Whoo-whoo,” I said.

As we approached the kitchen, Poole said, “Close your eyes, Miss McCready.”

“What?” Helene reared back from him a bit.

“You don’t want to see what’s in here.”

Before either of us could stop her, Helene leaned forward and craned her head over his shoulder.

Poole ’s face sagged and he stepped aside.

Helene entered the kitchen and stopped. I stood behind her, waited for her to scream or faint or fall to her knees or run back into the living room.

“They dead?” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Very.”

She moved into the kitchen, headed for the back door. I looked at Poole. He raised an eyebrow.

As Helene passed Wee Dave, she paused to look at his chest.

“It’s like in that movie,” she said.

“Which?”

“The one with all the aliens who pop out of people’s chests, bleed acid. What was it called?”

“Alien,” I said.

“Right. They came out of your chest. But what was the movie called?”

Angie made a run to the local Dunkin’ Donuts and joined Helene and me out in the backyard a few minutes later, while Poole and Broussard went through the house with notebooks and cameras.

The yard was barely a yard. The closet in my bedroom was bigger. Wee Dave and Kimmie had placed a rusted metal table and chairs out there, and we sat and listened to the sounds of the neighborhood as the day bled into midafternoon and the air chilled-mothers calling for children, the construction crew using mortar drills on the other side of the house, a whiffle-ball game in progress a couple of blocks over.

Helene sipped her Coke through a straw. “Too bad. They seemed like nice people.”

I took a sip of coffee. “How many times did you meet them?”

“Just that one time.”

Angie asked, “You remember anything special about that night?”

Helene sucked some more Coke through the straw as she thought about it. “All those cats. They were, like, everywhere. One of them scratched Amanda’s hand, the little bitch.” She smiled at us. “The cat, I mean.”

“So Amanda was in the house with you.”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “Sure.”

“Because earlier you weren’t sure if you’d left her behind in the car.”

She shrugged again, and I resisted an urge to reach out with both hands and slap her shoulders back down. “Did I? Well, till I remembered the cat scratching her, I wasn’t sure. No, she was in the house.”

“Anything else you remember?” Angie’s fingers drummed the tabletop.

“She was nice.”

“Who, Kimmie?”

She pointed a finger at me, smiled. “Yeah. That was her name: Kimmie. She was cool. She took me and Amanda in her bedroom, showed us pictures of her trip to Disney World. Amanda was, like, psyched. Everything on the ride home was, ‘Mommy, can we go see Mickey and Minnie? Can we go to Disney World?’” She snorted. “Kids. Like I had the money.”

“You had two hundred thousand dollars when you entered that house.”

“But that was Ray’s deal. I mean, I wouldn’t rip off a nut job like Cheese Olamon on my own. Ray said he’d cut me in at some point. He’d never lied to me before, so I figured it’s his deal, his problem if Cheese finds out.” Another shrug.

“Me and Cheese go way back,” I said.

“That right?”

I nodded. “Chris Mullen, too. We all played Babe Ruth together, hung on the corner, et cetera.”

She raised her eyebrows. “No shit?”

I held up a hand. “Swear to God. And Cheese. Helene, you know what he’d do if he thought someone had ripped him off?”

She picked up her soda cup, placed it back down again. “Look, I told you, it was Ray. I didn’t do nothing but walk into that motel room with-”

“Cheese-and this was when we were kids, fifteen maybe-he saw his girlfriend glance at another guy one night? Cheese shattered a beer bottle against a streetlight and slashed her face with it. Tore her nose off, Helene. That was Cheese at fifteen. What do you think he’s like now?”

She sucked on her straw until the air rattled the ice at the bottom. “It was Ray’s-”

“You think he’ll lose any sleep killing your daughter?” Angie said. “Helene.” She reached across the table and grasped Helene’s bony wrist. “Do you?”

“Cheese?” Helene said, and her voice cracked. “You think he had something to do with Amanda’s disappearance?”

Angie stared at her for a full thirty seconds before she shook her head and dropped Helene’s wrist. “Helene, let me ask you something.”

Helene rubbed her wrist and looked at her soda cup again. “Yeah?”

“What fucking planet are you from exactly?”

Helene didn’t say anything for a while after that.

Autumn died in technicolor all around us. Bright yellows and reds afire, burnished oranges and rusty greens painted the leaves that floated from the branches, collected in the grass. That vibrant odor of dying things, so particular to fall, creased the blades of air that cut through our clothing and made us tense our muscles and widen our eyes. Nowhere does death occur so spectacularly, so proudly, as it does in New England in October. The sun, broken free of the storm clouds that had threatened this morning, turned windowpanes into hard squares of white light and washed the brick row houses that surrounded the tiny yard in a smoked tint that matched the darker leaves.

Death, I thought, is not this. Death is directly behind us. Death is the grungy kitchen of Wee David and Kimmie. Death is black blood and disloyal cats who feed on anything.

“Helene,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“While you were in the room with Kimmie looking at pictures of Disney World, where were Wee David and Ray?”

Her mouth opened slightly.

“Quick,” I said. “Off the top of your head. Don’t think.”

“The backyard,” she said.

“The backyard.” Angie pointed at the ground. “Here.”

She nodded.

“Could you see the backyard from Kimmie’s bedroom?” I asked.

“No. The shades were drawn.”

“Then how’d you know they were out here?” I asked.

“Ray’s shoes were filthy when we left,” she said slowly. “Ray is a slob in a lot of ways.” She reached out and touched my arm as if she were about to share a deeply personal secret with me. “But, man, he takes care of his shoes.”

GTwo Hundred + Composure = Child

“Gee two hundred?” Angie said.

“Two hundred grand,” Broussard said quietly.

“Where’d you find that note?” I said.

He looked over his shoulder at the house. “Curled up tight and stuck in the waistband of Kimmie’s lacy Underalls. An attention grabber, I think.”