“Well, I don’t either,” Gary said in a funny voice. It was high-pitched and boyish. Not really his voice.
Missy gave him a strange look. “What is going on?” she demanded. “Will you two please let
me in on this?”
Gary looked at his wife. He was really angry at her, too. She was part of the trap and she knew it.
“My sales record with Atlantic really stinks this quarter,” Gary finally said, and shrugged. “Is that it, Marty?”
Marty frowned and looked down at his new Timberland boots. “Oh, it’s more than that, Gar.” Your sales record is almost nonexistent. What’s worse, what’s a lot worse, is that you have over thirty-three hundred dollars in advances outstanding. You’re in the red, Gary. You’re minus. I don’t want to say much more or I know I’ll regret it. I honestly don’t know how to address this situation. This is very difficult for me. Embarrassing. I’m so sorry, Missy. I hate this.”
Missy covered her face with both hands, and she began to cry. She cried quietly at first, not wanting to cry. Then the sobs became louder. Tears came into her brother’s eyes.
“That’s what I didn’t want. I’m sorry, Sis.” Marty was the one to reach out and comfort her.
“I’m all right.” Missy pulled away from her brother. She stared across the breakfast table at Gary. Her eyes seemed small and darker.
“Where have you been all of these months on the road, Gary? What have you been doing? Oh, Gary, Gary, sometimes I feel like I don’t even know you. Say something to make this a little better. Please say something, Gary.”
Gary thought about it carefully before he said a word. Then he said, “I love you so much, Missy. I love you and Roni more than I love my life itself.”
Gary lied, and knew it was a pretty good one. Extremely well told, well acted.
What he wanted to do was to laugh in their goddamn faces. What he wanted to do most was to kill all of them. That was the ticket to punch. Boom. Boom. Boom. Multiple-homicide time in Wilmington. Get his master plan rolling again.
Just then Roni came running back inside the house. A new movie cassette was clutched in her hands, and she was smiling like a Balloonhead.
“Look what Uncle Marty brought me.”
Gary held his head in both hands. He couldn’t stop the screaming inside his brain. I want to be somebody!
CHAPTER 30
LIFE AND DEATH went on in Southeast. Sampson and I were back on the Sanders and Turner murder cases. Not surprisingly, little progress had been made in solving the six homicides. Not surprisingly, nobody cared.
On Sunday, January 10 I knew it was time for a day of rest, my first day off-duty since the kidnapping had occurred.
I started off the morning feeling a touch sorry for myself, hanging in bed until around ten and nursing a bad head, the result of carousing with Sampson the night before. Most everything running through my head was nonproductive.
I was missing Maria like the plague for one thing, remembering how fine it had been when the two of us slept in late on a Sunday morning. I was still angry about how I’d been made a scapegoat down South. More important, I felt like shit that none of us had been able to help Maggie Rose Dunne. Early in the case, I’d drawn a parallel between the Dunne girl and my own kids. Every time I thought of her, probably dead now, my stomach involuntarily clenched up—which is not a good thing, especially on the morning after a night on the town.
I was mulling over staying in the sack until about six. Lose a whole day. I deserved it. I didn’t want to see Nana and hear her guff about where I was the night before. I didn’t even want to see my kids that particular morning.
I kept going back to Maria. Once upon a time, in another lifetime, she and I, and usually the kids, used to spend all of our Sundays together. Sometimes, we’d hang out in bed until noon, then we’d get dressed up and maybe go splurge for brunch. There wasn’t much that Maria and I didn’t do together. Every night I came home from work as early as I could manage. Maria did the same. There was nothing either one of us wanted to do more. She had gotten me over my wounds after I wasn’t widely accepted in private practice as a psychologist. She had nursed me back to some kind of balance after a couple of years of too much cutting up and catting around with Sampson and a few other single friends, including the fast crowd that played basketball with the Washington Bullets.
Maria pulled me back to some kind of sanity, and I treasured her for it. Maybe it would have gone on like that forever. Or maybe we would have split up by now. Who knows for certain? We never got the chance to find out.
One night she was late coming home from her social work job. I finally got the call, and rushed to Misericordia Hospital. Maria had been shot. She was in very bad shape was all they would tell me over the phone.
I arrived there a little past eight. A friend, a patrolman I knew, sat me down and told me that Maria was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. It had been a ride-by shooting outside the projects. No one knew why, or who could have done the shooting. We never got to say goodbye. There was no preparation, no warning at all, no explanation.
The pain inside was like a steel column that extended from the center of my chest all the way up into my forehead. I thought about Maria constantly, day and night. After three years, I was finally beginning to forget. I was learning how.
I was lying in bed, in a peaceful and resigned state, when Damon came in to the room as if his hair were on fire.
“Hey, Daddy. Hey, Daddy, you awake?”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, absolutely hating the sound of those words lately. “You look like you just saw Vanilla Ice on our front porch.”