J. Black - The Shop

They parked outside room nine. Everyone was gone now. They couldn’t go in, but that didn’t seem to bother Maddy. They sat in the car, and the two of them stared at the yellow tape stretched across the open doorway. On the way over, Maddy’d told her she’d been driving around since she heard the news from her husband’s second in command early this morning. Jolie asked her where she went, but Maddy couldn’t remember all the places. “I just drove,” she said. Meridian Beach, Port St. Joe, up to Wewahitchka and back. She turned off her phone because she didn’t want to hear from reporters.

Jolie didn’t push her. She knew Maddy wouldn’t need any prodding to unburden herself. Pushing might even cause her to pull away. The woman had questions of her own. Did anyone hear anything? Was he found right away? Who found him? Who would do this? All the questions an innocent victim of a senseless crime would ask as they tried to get their arms around the enormity of the death. As if the details would help them. Some questions Jolie could answer, which she did.

They both knew it was all prelude.

Maddy Akers stared at the windshield. “I just don’t understand how he could—” She stopped herself.

Jolie waited, then asked, “Could what?”

Maddy swiped at her eyes under the dark glasses. “How he could let someone just walk up on him like that.”

Jolie stayed quiet.

“I don’t understand why he was here at all. Why would he come to a place like this? It wasn’t like him. People will say it was some woman . I don’t believe it.”

“I don’t either.” Which was the truth.

“How could he do this to himself?”

“Do what?”

Maddy stared at her. “What do you mean?”

“You said, ‘How could he do this to himself?’”

Maddy covered her mouth.

“How could he do what?”

Maddy turned in her seat and stared at Jolie. “You wanted us to stop here, didn’t you?” She bent her head down, swiped at her eyes again. Bunched her fist and hit her thigh, twice, hard. “I can’t do this,” she said through a blur of tears. “I tried. I just wanted to—oh, shit. I couldn’t let them—” She stopped, staring at Jolie clear-eyed. “I think you’re getting the wrong impression here. Either that, or you’re trying to put words in my mouth.”

Jolie put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking space.

“Where are we going?” Maddy demanded.

“I need to take your statement.”

“That’s it? That’s all?”

Jolie said, “What else is there?”

8 LANDRY

ARCADIA, CALIFORNIA

Landry turned onto his street, which looked like every other street in the housing division in which he lived. The division was called Orchard Commons, although there were no orchards, and he didn’t know what a “commons” was. But Orchard Commons was ten minutes on the 210 from Santa Anita, one of the reasons he bought in here.

Landry felt dispossessed. His wife Cindi was out of town with her sister. Two days ago he’d dropped his kid off at camp near Lake Arrowhead. She’d be gone for two weeks.

Cindi would be back in three days, but Landry missed her already.

They had been childhood sweethearts. They grew up together. He had been away for most of their marriage. Bosnia in the nineties, two deployments in Afghanistan, three more deployments in Iraq, and eight months working security for Kellogg, Root & Brown. But in the last few years, he’d made sure he stayed home as much as possible, making up for the time they were apart. Even on overnight trips, he missed her. It was a physical ache that centered just under his navel, and if it could be given a name, that word would be “longing.”

This was worse by far. He had never been the one left behind before.

It was comforting to drive through the maze of houses in the flat, hot, California sunlight. The place was familiar in its sameness, every house looking like every other house, with the exception of the cars parked out front and the configurations of the bushes and trees. Every house had a two-car garage. Every house had a peaked roof. All the houses were tan stucco. Nice and neat, no surprises, their shadows falling the same way on the same white concrete driveways lining up to the same clean black asphalt.

There were people who would call this subdivision “cookie-cutter.” But Landry prized order. It was an American thing, miles and miles of houses that looked the same. Like McDonald’s. When he thought of his country, he thought of McDonald’s, shopping malls, and subdivisions like this, all of them uniquely American. It was the new way. It was the twenty-first century.

He parked out front and went inside. Cold—Cindi kept the air conditioner cranked up.

Shutting the door on the hot California light, Landry experienced a brief twinge of futility. It happened more and more as he got older, the feeling that he was dispossessed. Life didn’t have much purpose other than the purpose he gave it—his family, the racetrack, his job. It was that feeling that had caused him to go back to Iraq.

Landry was good at one thing—he was a warrior.

With Cindi and Kristal gone and the house empty, the feeling came back in spades. He set his keys and wallet and change on the dresser and walked to the kitchen. Not having his girls with him made him restless. He took out the orange juice and drank it right from the carton.

Orange juice was starting to give him heartburn, but he ignored it. The same reason he wouldn’t go to a doctor for any ache or pain or even the flu. Doctors only look for trouble, and when they find it, before you know it they put you in a hospital where a cold can turn into pneumonia and you’re on life support.

Of course in his job, he had regular checkups. He didn’t comply, he’d be out, and the only thing he loved more than his wife, his daughter, and the ponies was his job.

He did things for his government that no one talked about. The only difference, as far as Landry could see, was that in this job he’d never been face-to-face with his employer. In fact, he didn’t even know the name of the company. Some operations, he knew, needed to be outsourced. But the job was the same: to protect and defend the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Landry couldn’t stand being in this empty house. He decided to go to his brother’s barn at Hollywood Park and check on their Derby hopeful, see if the quarter crack on his foot was any better. He headed back to the bedroom to get his wallet and keys, stopping by the open doorway to Kristal’s room.

Cool air came from inside, scented with strawberries. His daughter’s lair. A Keep Out sign had been tacked to the door, but she left it open all the time—mixed signals. Kids, he found, wanted their parents to interfere. They craved structure. They knew that life was hard and scary and treacherous, so they wanted someone to protect them. Even when Kristal protested, it was halfhearted.

Landry rarely crossed the threshold into her room, however, because he trusted her. She knew damn well she’d better do the right thing, and therein lay the trust.

He was about to start down the hallway again, but his eye caught the poster on Kristal’s wall.

Brienne Cross.

He’d glanced at the poster a few times on his trips down the hallway to the bedroom, even though he didn’t like the way it made him feel.

But this time, he found himself unable to turn away.

It was as if he were in a forest, and something caught his eye, and he’d looked away and then back again, and saw an exotic bird in the branches where none existed before. He thought Kristal had taken the poster down. It had been well over a month since Brienne Cross died. He’d read Kristal’s raw grief on Facebook, the childlike grief of losing an idol, but he’d thought that was over.