The Highly Effective Detective Crosses the Line Read online

  “Just got up,” Farrell said. “Want some coffee?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Cream and sugar.”

  “I know,” he said. He shuffled into the kitchen. It wasn’t a large apartment; he didn’t have to shuffle far. Isabella lit up another, sucking the smoke in deep, like she loved cigarettes. I slid into the chair in the little eating area next to the kitchen, about twelve feet away from the smoke, but not far enough; I stifled a cough.

  She wasn’t a bad-looking girl. She was just a not-bad-looking girl who wasn’t taking very good care of herself. A bit fleshy, but not unpleasantly so. Pale. Bags under the eyes. A touch of brattiness, something about her puffy lower lip and the slightly upturned nose. Nice eyes, though, big and brown and depthless. Somebody once said blue eyes you look at and brown you look into, but I couldn’t remember who.

  “This is bullshit,” she said, glaring at her father’s back as he poured the coffee.

  Farrell didn’t say anything. He prepped our coffees and brought them to the table and then he sat down in the empty chair across from me and we drank without looking at her.

  “Just a week,” he said finally.

  “I don’t need a fucking baby-sitter,” she said.

  “Bodyguard,” he said. “Think of it that way.”

  “He ain’t gonna do anything,” she said. “He’s done with me.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Shut up,” she said. “You shut the fuck up.”

  “Hey,” Farrell said. “Don’t talk to Ruzak that way. He’s my friend.”

  “I don’t give a shit.” Her chin had a way of coming up when she talked. When she paused to drag on the cigarette, her chin came down again. “I don’t even know this guy, Farrell. How do I know he’s not going to try something when you’re gone?”

  Farrell didn’t come to my defense, so I said, “I won’t stay. I mean in here. I’ll hang around outside. There’s only one way in, right?” I sipped my coffee. Not enough cream, too much sugar.

  “What’s it gonna hurt, Izzy?” Farrell asked reasonably.

  “I am a grown-up,” she answered in a harsh staccato. “And don’t call me Izzy. I hate that.”

  “It’s your name.”

  “Isabella is my name, farty.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “And what’s your name again?” she asked me. “Rusty?”

  “Ruzak,” I said.

  “I’m calling you Rusty.”

  “I’d rather be Ruzak.”

  “And you’re supposed to protect me.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You don’t look that tough to me. You look soft.”

  “It’s a cover,” I said. “To fool the bad guys.”

  “You have a gun?”

  “I do.” I showed her my .44. She gave a mock whistle.

  “Big gun, Rusty. You must have a tiny dick.”

  Farrell gave her a look. She said, smirking, “What?”

  “Ruzak didn’t have to do this,” he said.

  “I don’t want him to do it. There’s no reason for him to do it. I should call the cops and have you both arrested for trespassing and kidnapping.”

  “I pay for this place,” Farrell said quietly. His manner was resigned. He was used to her. “And you can leave whenever you want, Isabella. Nobody’s gonna stop you.”

  She ignored him. She had a habit of rolling the cigarette between her thumb and index finger. The smoke zigzagged upward from the glowing red tip.

  “How do you know?” I asked her.

  “How do I know what?”

  “That he won’t try anything.”

  “It’s over,” she said. “I ain’t talked to him in over three months. He don’t call; he don’t send me any e-mails. I told him I never wanted anything more to do with him and that’s it. It’s over.”

  “For you. What about him?”

  “I’m the one who put him away for three years, dumbass.”

  “That’s my point, baby,” Farrell said.

  “Don’t call me baby.”

  He pressed on. “You don’t know what he might do. What you do know is what he did to get locked up for three years.”

  She blew a lungful of smoke in his general direction and said, “He was high. He never hit me when he was straight, and he’s been straight for three years now.”

  “Don’t mean he won’t get high now that he’s out,” Farrell said.

  “You don’t even know him.”

  “I know what he did.”

  “Doesn’t mean he’ll do it again.”

  “Doesn’t mean he won’t.”

  “So what am I supposed to do, Farrell? Huh? I’m supposed to what, like go into the witness protection program or something? I’m supposed to be a prisoner the rest of my life?”

  He sighed. “Can’t you just humor the old man for a couple of weeks?”

  I stood up. It broke their connection. She said, “Where are you going?”

  “Outside,” I said. “Walk around a little. What kind of car does he drive?”

  “A white Ford F-one fifty,” Farrell said.

  “Or his mom’s car,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Or maybe one he stole, since he’s such a fucking desperado.”

  I stepped onto the balcony and eased the door closed behind me, like you would in a hospital. The walkway between the building and the trees lay deep in late-afternoon shadow. I made a circuit around the building but didn’t see any white F-150s. I hiked several yards into the woods, stepping carefully through the tangled underbrush, watching out for poison ivy. I couldn’t see how far back the woods went and there were no trails I could make out. The ground was strewn with pine needles and garbage—plastic cups and empty beer cans and fast-food bags. The interstate hummed out of sight to my left, but other than the steady thrum of traffic, there was no sound, not even a cricket or a bird or a squirrel. I turned around and looked at her building. This stank. This was awful. Back at the door, I knocked softly before stepping inside, like you would in a hospital. Farrell was sitting where I left him, but Isabella was gone.

  “I can’t do anything with her,” he said, as if he owed me an explanation.

  “She can’t stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “The woods, they practically come right up to her door.”

  He nodded. “I told her she should stay with me. She won’t listen. My own kid.”

  “Kids usually don’t. Or pretend they don’t. Your place isn’t much better; he probably knows where you live or could find out easily enough.”

  He nodded. “I think she’s lying to me, Ruzak.”

  “She knows where he is?”

  “She’s got a thing for him still. I don’t believe it’s been three months since they talked.”

  “Well, Farrell. In the end, there’s only so much you can do. She’s your kid, but she’s also a grown-up. Where’d she go?”

  He jerked his head toward the hallway. “Shower. She only got up about an hour ago.”

  “She doesn’t work?”

  “Takes a couple classes at Pellissippi State. She hasn’t had a job since last November. What am I gonna do, Teddy? She’s all I got.”

  And that’s not much, I thought. It was too ugly to say aloud. There had to be a viable alternative to camping outside her door all night, watching the woods. The obvious solution wasn’t very attractive, especially after meeting her, so I didn’t bring it up right away. Instead, I suggested a hotel, one of those extended-stay places with the reasonable weekly rates.

  “First thing I tried,” he said. “Then I tried her aunt in Chattanooga. Wouldn’t go for it. Not Izzy, my sister.”

  “One thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Why the protective order?”

  “She did that just to shut me up about it.”

  “But she didn’t refuse. So there’s a part of her that’s just as scared as you. Maybe because she really hasn’t heard from him in three months. Maybe because she has no idea where he is o
r what his plans are.”

  “Or maybe the opposite,” he said. “Maybe she knows both, and that’s why she agreed to the order.”

  “But why would she lie about it?” I asked, meaning her relationship to lover boy.

  “She’s afraid.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “No, afraid of both of us. Him and me. She’s afraid of what he might do to her and she’s afraid of what I might do to him.”

  “Is that why nobody seems to know where he is?”

  “You mean he’s laying low because he’s afraid of me?” He shook his head. “I don’t think he’s afraid of me or anyone else. I don’t think there’s anyone or anything on God’s green earth Quinton Stiles is afraid of.”

  6:13 p.m.

  “The thing is,” I said to Dr. Fredericks, “most people aren’t blatant liars. Unless you’re talking about someone borderline or antisocial or sociopathic. Most people like to think of themselves as basically decent, kindhearted, and honest. So most lies aren’t what we normally think of when we think of them. Like ‘I climbed Everest on my summer vacation.’ Or ‘I swear to God I never look at other women.’ The vast majority of lies are insidious and stealthy. Lies in spirit. Of spirit. And, of course, a little self-serving.”

  “Can you give me an example?” she asked.

  “You bet I can. A recent one. She brought up the possibility of my seeking professional help, and my response, although not literally a lie, was not entirely honest, because I didn’t tell her I was, but sort of gave the impression—intentionally—that I wasn’t.”

  “Having a relationship doesn’t abrogate your right to privacy,” she said after a pause.

  “Heck no. I was talking about lies. The essence of a lie, to be a lie in the first place, is the intent to deceive. You can’t lie by accident. Most people understand that, at least intuitively, so we cover our asses by hiding the intent from ourselves.”

  “We lie to deceive ourselves about the fact that we’re lying.”

  “We deny we have the intent. That’s probably the most common species of lie.”

  She turned to a fresh page in her notepad.

  “Were you afraid she might judge you?”

  “I didn’t want her to think I was messed up.”

  “You said you were discussing personality disorders. As they might relate to you.”

  “Okay. Overly messed up.”

  “That she might think negatively of you frightens you.”

  “Well, it’s mostly fear that makes us lie, don’t you think? Fear of rejection. Fear of intimacy. Fear of punishment.”

  “So which is it?”

  “Which is what?”

  “Which is it specifically, with Felicia?”

  “You’re asking me why I lied to Felicia about seeing a therapist?”

  She didn’t answer. She watched me over her half-glasses and said not a word. Dr. Fredericks bore a slight resemblance to my eleventh-grade English teacher, Ms. Cohen, tall, dark-haired, kind of severe, the way Hollywood always portrayed spinsters who kept boardinghouses back in the heyday of movies with spinsters keeping boardinghouses. The rumor around school was that Ms. Cohen was a lesbian. Dr. Fredericks wore a wedding ring and there was a picture of her and a man and three kids on her credenza, so she probably wasn’t a lesbian like Ms. Cohen, if Ms. Cohen was one. I considered myself a fairly open-minded person, but lesbianism bothered me, much more so than male homosexuality, maybe because it was more threatening to me as a straight male (I couldn’t imagine a more psychologically devastating scenario than my lover leaving me for someone of the same sex).

  “Do you want me to repeat the question?” she asked.

  “I have this avoidance mechanism,” I said. “When someone puts me on the spot, my mind tends to spin off into an unrelated tangent.”

  “Maybe it’s not.”

  “Maybe what’s not?”

  “Unrelated. What was the tangent?”

  I shifted in my chair. It was very soft, like my brain. I remembered Isabella’s contemptuous observation and thought now I had done it, right in the middle of a discussion of honesty!

  I took a deep breath and said, “Lesbianism.”

  “You’re right,” she said, not without a smile. “It does seem unrelated.”

  “It’s like Odysseus with the Sirens, only there’s no crew to tie me to the mast. There’s not even a mast. I just fall into these things hook, line and sinker.”

  “Tangents?”

  I nodded. “Maybe that’s what I need. Strategies to develop a little self-discipline.”

  “We have strayed a little,” she said.

  “That’s my point.”

  “We were talking about why you might hide things from Felicia.”

  “Right. Because who is she to me? I guess you could say we’re friends. Practically the only one I have, if you don’t include my dog, and despite the press, you probably shouldn’t include any quadrupeds; that’s a sort of one-way relationship, DC as opposed to AC. So why would I lie by omission? Rejection—she won’t be my friend anymore if she knows I’m seeing a head doctor? Intimacy—she might stay my friend but know too much about me? Punishment—she might become even more patronizing than she already is?” It occurred to me the first letters of each word spelled out R.I.P.

  “She patronizes you?”

  “Sometimes she talks to me like she’s my mother.”

  “Ah,” she said.

  “Maybe I should say like a mother, not my specific mother.”

  She consulted her notes and said, “Who’s dead.”

  “Okay, the last thing I want to do here is leap into the deep end of a Freudian pool.”

  “Is that something you would tell your mother? That you were going to therapy?”

  “Not in a million years.”

  “Because she would judge you as inadequate?”

  “Because she wouldn’t understand. She was a boomer, but she didn’t come with all the self-indulgent baggage. Mom didn’t believe there was any problem you couldn’t solve with a little willpower and prayer.”

  “And therefore, if you told her, she would judge you as lacking in one and neglectful of the other.”

  “I don’t have Mommy issues,” I said firmly. “Here’s what I think it is: guilt.”

  “You’re a failure because you need help working through your problems?”

  “No, I’ve failed to keep our most sacred compact, the bedrock of our relationship, the promise I made when I hired her: to keep our personal lives personal.”

  She didn’t say anything at first. I couldn’t read her because I wasn’t looking at her. I was looking at the tips of my slightly scuffed shoes.

  She said softly, “It’s all right to say it, Teddy.”

  So I said it. “I think I’m in love with her.”

  9:53 p.m.

  I drove slowly through the complex before parking at the southeast corner of Isabella’s building. No white F-150s and no Chevy Impalas (his mother’s car, according to the DMV). A single streetlamp burned at the head of the walkway; its light petered to nothing by the time it reached the stairwell. I hooked Archie’s leash to his collar and he bounded out of the car and made straight for the woods, pulling me along, and my shoes scraped on the pavement. As he marked a tree, I stood with my right hand in my jacket pocket, peering fruitlessly into the dark woods. He sniffed around the pine needles for a few minutes until he located a wadded-up fast-food bag and commenced shredding it to pieces before I could pull it out of his mouth. I dragged him up the stairs to her door (stairs frightened him, for some reason) with all the enthusiasm of a man mounting the gallows. Farrell opened the door as my left fist came up to knock. I almost rapped him on the forehead. He was wearing his uniform and sported a makeshift bandage of toilet paper on his freshly shaven chin.

  “All right, you’re here,” he said with relief, as if some important milestone had been reached. “What’s this?” he asked, looking at Archie, who was trying to sh
ove his nose under Farrell’s hand.

  “This is my dog, Archie.”

  “Is he vicious?”

  “Only if you’re a squirrel.”

  He turned and hollered down the hallway, “Hey, Izzy!”

  “Hey, shut up!” she yelled back.

  “She just got up,” he said. He looked at his watch. “I gotta go. You want some coffee?”

  “No thanks. Well, maybe half a cup. It’s all right; I can get it if you need to head out. She was asleep?”

  “Three things she does. Eat, sleep, and text. You got my number?”

  I nodded. “The second one I’ll dial, after nine one one.”

  “Hey, Ruzak. I owe you big-time.”

  He looked at his watch again. He didn’t seem comfortable with the handoff.

  “Feels kind of like Iraq, doesn’t it?” I asked. “No exit strategy.”

  “I’d feel a lot better if I knew where the little son of a bitch was.”

  “Felicia’s working on that.”

  “Might try working on that one a little,” he said with a nod toward the hall. “She knows more than she’s telling.”

  He patted me on the arm, Archie on the head, and stepped outside. I closed the door, threw the dead bolt, and headed into the kitchen for the cup of coffee he forgot to pour. Archie stayed right with me, sneezing midway; maybe it was the secondhand smoke. Taped to the refrigerator door was a picture of a little kitten hanging from a tree branch, with a caption scrawled by, I assumed, Isabella: Fucked. I couldn’t find any creamer, so I topped off my coffee with a dollop of milk. Isabella emerged from her room and said, “That’s a dog.”

  Archie whipped around at the sound of her voice and scampered over to her. When she ignored him, he sat at her feet (Look at me! I’m a good boy!) and gazed up soulfully into her face.

  “Archie,” I said. “You ready?”

  “I told him and I’m telling you, Rusty. I’m not leaving.”

  “Best if you did.”

  “In fact, I’m going out.”

  “Where?”

  “That’s none of your fucking business.”

  “Best if you didn’t.”

  “Best if you shut the fuck up. You know, I could call the cops and have you arrested for illegal trespass and kidnapping.”