Warped Page 6

  “Did something happen?”

  “Mr. Sproul,” she said gravely. “Put your clothes on. I’m afraid we may have found your wife.”

  From the set of her thick eyebrows, Hatcher understood instantly. “You mean a body.”

  “A body.” She didn’t disagree.

  “Where?”

  “Put your clothes on, Mr. Sproul. We’re waiting for you down here.”

  #

  By the time they arrived at the city buildings, there was a hint of pink dawn at the edge of the sky. Hatcher trembled in the back seat. In front, neither officer had anything to say. The Polack asked him if he wanted more air, then turned it up anyway when Hatcher didn’t answer.

  Distractedly he noted that the morgue was right behind the police station. He never knew it was there, despite having driven past here hundreds of times. If anything, he assumed the squat, windowless wing was some sort of power plant or something.

  Hatcher felt the nausea rise in his throat as they wheeled the stretcher out. It wasn’t like the cop shows; the sheets were crisp and white and pristine, as though Rosalee were on her way in for lipo or something.

  Drowning, though, that scared him. He’d seen the purple-black-crusted bodies on CSI. As the attendant drew down the sheet, he was enormously relieved to see that Rosalee looked more or less like herself—on a bad hair day.

  Instead of vomiting he started to cry, large tears sliding down his face as he gulped for air. He touched a neat fold in the sheet and whispered her name.

  “Why’d they go and kill her?” he wondered out loud. “I’d have paid.”

  The officers exchanged glances.

  #

  It was the woman detective alone who took him away to talk. The room was pleasant enough, with a conference table and extra chairs against the wall and a window. The window was the surprise. He thought all the rooms in a police station would be window-free, to intimidate people and keep everyone focused on their work.

  The detective brought her own drink, a pink can of Tab. Hatcher was surprised at that too—didn’t they quit making that stuff decades ago? He sipped at the coffee in a desultory fashion—he needed the caffeine, though it was watery and unsatisfying.

  She flashed him a smile; it didn’t look right on her. For one thing, her gums were prominent. Hatcher briefly wondered if she had gotten teased in grade school and adopted her perpetual scowl to hide her gums.

  “Did you talk to Collette?” Hatcher asked. It had been ten or fifteen minutes since they left the morgue, long enough for him to start working on forgetting how Rosalee looked on the cart, without her makeup, without her clothes. He’d already decided on the image he planned to keep closest: the way she looked in the posed photo with the children from last Thanksgiving. She’d worn her hair pulled back with a smooth silver barrette, and a soft, fuzzy cardigan. Rosalee hated the picture because she said she looked like Betty Crocker.

  For some reason, he liked her that way.

  “Colette was here. She spoke with us.”

  “But it—it checked out, right? What she said about leaving to pick up her kids?”

  The detective didn’t blink. “Do you have some reason to think it might not have?”

  Hatcher shook his head. No need to describe his embarrassing advances last night. Make that two nights ago. God, he was tired.

  “Just—Rosalee and Collette weren’t, you know, close friends.”

  “So it was unusual for them to spend an afternoon together?”

  “Yeah. I mean no. Rosalee was always going off with one of them or another, she practically lived at the spa. I mean, not that one specifically.”

  “She went to other hotel spas also, you mean?”

  Hatcher shrugged, mildly irritated. “Well, yeah. I mean, I guess so. It takes a hell of a lot of upkeep to look like her.”

  A woman’s mysterious ways went without saying, he figured, but maybe not for a woman like Detective Wood. She wasn’t ugly, exactly, but she could have used a little more attention. Some hair color for starters; the gray was coming in strong around the hairline, in contrast to the long hanks of reddish brown. And those brows. Christ, he had a few hairs yanked out himself nowadays; it didn’t exactly feel good, but you did what you had to do.

  “We’re talking to the cosmetologists. Your wife had an aromatherapy massage and a manicure and pedicure with a hot paraffin treatment.” Wood read the words from her notebook then glanced up at him. “Any idea what that would be?”

  Hatcher shrugged—he had no idea. But the detective’s frank query unnerved him a little. It wasn’t his job to know; he was the husband, the audience for these preening rituals. Suddenly he wondered whether the detective had a boyfriend. Or a husband, though she wore no ring; maybe she didn’t like to have it on in the line of duty.

  “The bartender says your wife was there when he went off shift at six. The night bartender remembers her but says she was with a man. They sat together at a table, but it was a dark area of the lounge, and when business picked up he says he only went over when the man asked for another round.”

  “Rosalee was drinking with him? With the kidnapper?”

  “We don’t know if he was involved with the phone call you received,” Wood said. “She could have left this man’s company and then come in contact with him.”

  She pushed a piece of paper across the table. It had the quality of an old mimeograph, disjointed lines sketching an outline of a nondescript looking man.

  “Here’s the best the bartender could do.”

  “But he doesn’t look like anyone,” Hatcher protested.

  Wood nodded slightly. “He didn’t give us much to work with. He estimated the guy at five foot eleven, medium build, no specific eye color, not certain of hair color. Blond or brown. Button down shirt.”

  The disquiet in Hatcher’s gut roiled. He realized he should have taken the bagel that one of the staff offered him; on an empty stomach he was twice as likely to end up retching in the trashcan. “But that’s no help! It could be anyone!”

  Wood squared her palms flat on the table. “What we have on the call: it came to your house at 7:58pm. The bartender thinks your wife and this man left about an hour into his shift, or seven pm. He doesn’t know if they left together.”

  “What about the other people at the bar?”

  “Mr. Sproul, we are looking into credit card receipts now. But several customers paid their tab in cash. Including your wife’s…companion. These people are business travelers. There’s no telling where they are now.”

  “But you get them all back, don’t you? To talk to?”

  The detective’s phone went off, and she murmured an apology before leaving him alone in the room with his cooling coffee.

  #

  Tom thought Kate was unnecessarily tough on Skip Lennert, the man who was keeping company with Mrs. Sproul in the hours before she died. After all, when Lennert stumbled down to the lobby for coffee and saw all the cops and paramedics, he came over to Tom and the others right away.

  “The woman? You found her in the hot tub?” he demanded, his face ashen. Tom could smell the hangover on him; he figured it for a heck of a bender.

  Lennert kept repeating that Mrs. Sproul had been alive when he left her, his voice growing increasingly shrill. At first he said they had just been talking, first in the bar and then in the hot tub, but when Kate arrived Lennert told them everything. He ran his hands through his hair over and over, hard, like he was trying to pull it out. Tom figured it for an expensive haircut; no matter how the guy went at it, it kept falling back into razor-cut precision.

  “Why did you leave her there? You knew she was drunk.” Kate glared; between him and the bartender they’d figured out she’d had five or six glasses of Sauvignon Blanc, though she’d taken a Courvoisier with her to the hot tub.

  “She wouldn’t come out.”

  “But you could have stayed with her, sobered her up a little…”

  Lennert shook his head ada
mantly. “I would have, but I had to get back to the room. I have to call my wife by eleven.”

  Kate fixed him with her unblinking stare. “You had your cell phone right there. You’d used it to call Mr. Sproul.”

  At this, the guy looked like he was going to cry. Or vomit. He twisted his wedding ring and stared at the floor. “Caller ID. We have a deal—I have to call from the room. She doesn’t trust me since…a few times…”

  Tom made a noise in his throat. He didn’t want to make the guy say it. Unlike Kate, he felt sure Lennert was telling the truth that the bogus threat had been the woman’s idea. A joke, a little prank to make a point. Women could be like that, vindictive and irrational when they felt ill-used. Tom made a mental note to do something nice for his wife: flowers, maybe, and take the kid tonight when he got up in the middle of the night.

  Kate didn’t blink. “But you had just been intimate with Mrs. Sproul. This was in the spa.” A statement, not a question.

  “Yes, but…” He looked, if possible, even more miserable. “Not, you know, all the way.”

  He raised his eyes and looked at them in turn, almost beseeching. “I’d had a lot to drink. After a while, it seemed obvious that I wasn’t, uh, going to be able to finish and she said—she said, you know, go ahead and stop.”

  He jammed his fingers in his hair again and added quietly, “She was damn nice about it, too.”

  #

  In the end, Collette couldn’t bring herself to blame Hatcher, any more than she blamed herself. They were both guilty of inattention. Beyond that, it was no one’s fault that Rosalee hit her head on the tiled edge of the hot tub as she was getting out.

  She fixed her husband’s tie before they headed out to the viewing—he was an orthodontist and rarely wore them, and Collette had been tying his ties for fifteen years—and got the twins into their Easter outfits. She had made a somewhat complicated terrine to take over to Hatcher’s later, and she peeked under the plastic wrap before they left to make sure it had gelled properly.

  Frank glanced over at her on the way to the mortuary. Collette had been fiddling with her bracelet, not saying much.

  “Don’t keep going over it, honey,” he said gently, placing his hand on the same knee Hatcher had recently fondled. “You know how stubborn Rosalee was. Even if you’d tried to get her to leave with you, she wouldn’t have.”

  Collette looked at Frank’s hand. It was clean and neat, unseemly so, she’d always thought. A man should have calluses, hangnails. Character. Although he did make his living putting his hands in other people’s mouths.

  “You’re right,” was all she said.

  At the viewing Hatcher was flanked by two women, his sister and mother, Collette assumed. His skin looked terrible, as though it had swollen and then deflated and was slightly too big for him. When she kissed his cheek, he barely responded.

  As they made their way through the crowd, it occurred to Collette that it was the first time since she’d known Hatcher that he didn’t check out her ass as she walked away.

  ##

  FIVE WAYS YOUR MOM WAS WORSE THAN YOU’LL EVER BE

  One

  Start with an easy one: you were nine.

  You were nine and Trey had been gone for a couple of weeks. Tom, Rafferty, Trey, that was how your mother spent 2003—and then it was December and other families were putting up Christmas trees and your mom called you to come into the bathroom where she was zipping up her jeans, and she pointed at the toilet all casual, like she was showing you a spot on the counter that you missed with the Windex and what were you looking at? What was that, blood blood blood and you got all froze up scared—

  And your mom said Think about that when you’re old enough to fuck around, and It’s no picnic, believe me and Who do you think ends up paying for it?

  And Flush when you’re done looking is what she said when she went to find her cigarettes. She spent a day in bed smoking and watching TV and you made her a sandwich on a tray and she looked at it like you were offering her a plate of dirt and said get it the hell away from her, what the fuck did she want with that.

  Two

  Number two is that box you found in the back of the closet. Not sure how old you were. Seven? Eight?

  She had gone out. Just for cigarettes, but that could take hours, you usually woke up on the couch with Lass sweaty and sticky next to you—that was before Gomez came and took Lass away. You always waited as long as you could before you fell asleep, you lay on the couch and the TV was on and Lass would cry and eat her Cheerios from a bowl on the floor and crawl around—but mostly she would cry—but you watched the door. You waited as long as you could, falling asleep where you lay and Lass would get up there on the couch with you too.

  But that night she went out early and you snuck in her room. The room smelled like her. Sweat, hairspray. She never made the bed, you liked to get in there in the sheets, pull them up over you around you, pretend you were her, look around the room, see what she saw. Sometimes you liked to look in the closet where her shoes were in a pile on the floor, heels sticking up in the air, jumbled up, like a puzzle to find the ones that went with the other ones.

  But this time when you looked there was a box. Inside was clothes. Little girl clothes, pink and yellow and white, with matching hats and socks with lace, flowers and butterflies and buttons. Jackets with pockets in the shapes of hearts. Brand new almost, clean and folded nice.

  When she got home you had the clothes all laid out on the floor, like a row of little people, matching up dresses with tights, pants with tops, hats where the head would be.

  Are these for Lass, you asked fast, you knew you were in trouble.

  She made you strip down to nothing and stand outside on the balcony. Cars went by on the street below, maybe no one could see you up there, it was dark, but you could feel the cold wind on your body, on your private places as you watched her through the glass. She folded everything back up and put it back in the box, and once she caught you looking she came over to the sliding door. She slapped it with her hand, slapped the glass where your face was and made you jump.

  She sold junk on eBay, and someone from work must have given her those clothes, she probably asked for them and said they were for her girls, she could say anything and make you think she was telling you the honest truth.

  When she finally let you come inside, she smacked you hard with the TV remote and held up one of the prettiest outfits—white pants, yellow top, lace bow…you can still remember it—and said You think I’d waste this on you?

  But your baby will have pretty things. They get donations here all the time, ladies drop them off at the front desk, sometimes the clothes still have tags on them. Malia likes you, she lets you help her sort through and pick out the nicest ones.

  Three

  Speaking of Lass:

  When you were fourteen you looked her up, you found her. It wasn’t hard, because Gomez had been his last name not his first name, and all you had to do was go through all the Gomezes. First you called all the ones in town and then you tried Red Springs and finally Homan, and sure enough that’s where he was living. A boy answered, but he said hang on a minute and then it was Lass on the phone, Lass who was ten by now and talking and she knew who you were right away, Kaylee she said why are you calling? What do you want?

  And she sounded scared and who could blame her and you tried to tell her, Hey don’t worry she doesn’t know I’m calling. You said it was okay, you just wanted to talk. Maybe you could figure out a way to meet, you knew there was a bus that went out to Homan. You were thinking there would be a diner like in the movies, a place where you would sit in a booth across from each other and you would pay, you had enough money to buy whatever she might want to order, and you would say So how have you been? Wow, I can’t believe how big you are. And even while you were thinking of all of this, picturing it in your mind, Lass says to you, this Lass who sounds nothing like the baby who used to scream and crawl up on the couch with you, Don’t
call here no more.

  But Wait, wait you say and your heart is going fast. She’s your sister, your half-sister anyway, as close as you’re ever going to get. She doesn’t hang up and for a minute you hear her breathing, it’s turning into little cries, soft snuffling crying.

  I remember, she finally whispers. You take a deep breath and say I know it’s hard, she never meant to do the things she did, because it’s what you always tell yourself, the way you get through it. And then she says, No not her. I remember what you did.

  And hangs up on you.

  And you don’t know what she’s talking about except then you’re remembering the day Gomez came for her. Your mother screaming at him ‘Don’t you take her don’t take my baby, and Gomez’s silent cousin holding your mother’s arms and she was kicking, spitting, trying to bite him, as Gomez picked Lass up in his arms, because Lass was his baby too. And Gomez pointing to the marks, black and blue on her arms her legs her chubby thighs, and yelling at your mom and then they were gone, Gomez’s cousin pushing her down. She was on her knees when the door slammed shut.

  She screamed into the floor with her face on the carpet and you remembered like slipping underwater, yes, yes, sometimes you had to pinch Lass, had to squeeze her but only to keep her quiet. Only so your mother wouldn’t get mad. Only to protect her.

  Four

  You know how to say you’re sorry. You would say you were sorry to Lass if you could ever see her again.

  Your mom said sorry only one time, it was just last year and you’d stayed over at Larelle’s, except Larelle told her folks she was at your house and really you were out at the trailers. You stayed out at the trailers all night and Larelle never did come out of the back room in the morning. You woke up on the floor in the living room, halfway under the coffee table with a guy’s jacket over you, and a girl was lying on the couch above you, asleep with her own vomit on her neck. Somebody gave you a ride home and you hung your hair out the window as he drove, hoping the cold air would take the smell out. Navarro had been arrested again and you thought your mom was taking it okay, but when you got home—you were living in Navarro’s dead mom’s house on Garret Street—it was a Sunday morning and the preacher shows were on loud and your mom was staring at the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. She’d taken the claw end of the hammer to it and managed to get the frame off the door and hacked away at the drywall. There was dust and pieces of the wall everywhere and your mom was staring at the mess like she didn’t know who did it. Sorry she said and then she went in their room and didn’t come out the rest of the day. You got duct tape and plastic and that’s how it stayed for the next six months, but the whole time you were working and cleaning you were thinking how that sounded coming from your mom, that Sorry and then it finally occurred to you, she wasn’t even talking to you.