Sour Candy (3 page)

“
Don’t,” was all the
self-defense he could muster.

“
Yours now,” the woman said,
though her split lip made it
Yoursh
now
, her voice the sound of a rake through
dead leaves, each word forcing the rent in her chin to widen like
some strange vertical second mouth. Blood spattered her feet and
speckled Phil’s shoes.

“
What is?” he asked, and
flinched as she held out her fist as if she were indicating
solidarity, and then opened it.

Something fell into his lap and he
grimaced, aware only that whatever it was, it was covered in her
blood. It appeared to be one of her teeth.

When next he looked up, she had
wandered away from him, off through the crowd to the
intersection.

The paramedics and the police arrived
within minutes of each other. Any relief Phil might have felt at
escaping a more violent encounter with the woman—assuming the
accident itself had not been violent enough—fled a few moments
later when a shrill scream erupted from the crowd. He heard people
yelling, a car horn, and then a thump and the prolonged screech of
tires as a vehicle struggled to stop after colliding with
something. Phil could not see what happened, his view blocked by
the immobilized vehicles and the crowd that had filled the spaces
between them. The screaming intensified as the police hurried
through the crowd and out into the intersection. A moment later
their radios crackled and Phil learned that the woman from the
store, the woman who had rammed her car into his at high speed, had
walked out into traffic where a taxi had ended her
suffering.

“
I…I almost had her,”
someone said, and Phil knew by the haunted tone of their voice that
whoever it was would also not be sleeping soundly for a
while.

“
Jesus,” said the paramedic,
who had just dropped to his haunches before Phil with the intention
of attending to him. “Will you be okay here for a few
minutes?”

Phil nodded, convinced now more than
ever that none of this was really happening, that it was in fact a
bizarre dream.

“
Thanks, buddy.” The
paramedic hurried away.

Phil looked down at himself and
plucked the bloodied object from the crease of his jeans. Blinking
away the tears from the smoke and the pain, he turned the thing
over in his fingers and found to his considerable relief that it
was not at all a tooth. No, it was much too soft, much too rough
for that.

It was a piece of sour
candy.

3. Acquisition

They removed the body, leaving Phil
mired in a chaos of questions he did not think himself fit enough
to answer. The paramedics gave him a thorough once over and
concluded that his injuries were not life-threatening, mostly
bruises and mild abrasions, though his cracked ribs would need
monitoring for the next month or so. Relieved that he wouldn’t have
to add a trip to the hospital to the calamity his day had become,
he found that the police were not nearly so eager to dismiss
him.

About half an hour after the woman
apparently committed suicide-by-taxi, a pair of detectives showed
up on the scene. A male and a female, they seemed predisposed to
find Phil guilty of something, and while it was not unusual for him
to feel intimidated in the company of police, he had never
experienced such barely veiled hostility on top of it.

“
You were driving the
Chevy?” the woman, Detective Marsh, asked. Though attractive, she
looked like the very definition of severity. Tall and slender,
dressed in gray slacks and jacket, her auburn hair swept up and
pinned into a bun, she regarded Phil with a coldness he was sure he
hadn’t earned.

“
Yes, I was.”

“
And you say the driver of
the Toyota hit you from behind?”

“
Yes.”

She scribbled this down in her
notepad, though he had already told them the circumstances
surrounding the accident twice already.

Her partner, Detective Cortez, a
bullish man with small eyes, badly pockmarked skin and yellow
teeth, inspected the crash site for the tenth time and shook his
head before looking back at Phil. “And you say you know the
deceased?”

“
Not exactly.”

“
Not exactly?”

“
I mean, I don’t know her
name or—”

“
Alice Bennings,” Cortez
said.

Phil nodded. He hadn’t
needed to know her name. Hadn’t wanted to, and now that it had been
given to him, it somehow made it worse. A line from a book he’d
read in highschool popped into his mind:
The nameless are easier to bury.

“
Mr. Pendleton?”

“
I didn’t know her. I saw
her for the first time at the store earlier. Her kid was causing a
bit of fuss.”

The detectives exchanged glances. Phil
tried to read the look but it was lost on him.

“
She had a kid?”

“
Yes. That’s what I tried to
tell the other policeman. She had a kid with her at the grocery
store. He was throwing a fit. I thought of him when I realized she
was who had crashed into me. Thought the kid might have been
hurt.”

“
There was nobody else in
the car.”

“
No. I guess she must have
dropped him off somewhere after the store.”

Cortez looked at his notebook. “Mrs.
Bennings doesn’t have any children, Mr. Pendleton.”

“
Well then it was probably a
relative or a friend’s kid or something, I don’t know, but if it
wasn’t her kid and he clearly wasn’t here, why are you asking me
about him?”

“
Because if Mrs. Bennings
was acting as oddly as you claim she was, we need to be sure she
didn’t hurt anyone else, the child included. Now, can you describe
him for us?”

Despite the headache that made it feel
as if someone was trying to drive a nail into the top of his head,
the recollection came easy.

“
About six or seven, I’d
say. I don’t know that for sure. I’m not good with ages. Sandy
blond hair, blue eyes. He looked healthy.”

Marsh scribbled; Cortez stared. “What
was he wearing?”

“
Black pants with
suspenders. White shirt and a black jacket. I remember thinking he
was dressed strangely.”

“
Strange how?” asked
Cortez.

“
Old-fashioned. Kinda Amish,
I guess.”

Marsh looked up from her notebook.
“You find the Amish strange?”

“
No, no, that’s not what I
meant.”

“
Can you clarify what
you
did
mean?”

“
Just…I mean it would have
made more sense if an Amish family had been
with
him is all. But he was with the
woman and she looked normal. Well, she was dressed normal. Ms.
Bennings, I mean.”

“
Mrs. Bennings,” Cortez
corrected.

“
Sorry, Mrs.”

“
Although,” Marsh offered,
“I suppose it hardly matters what you call her now that she’s
dead.”

Phil didn’t know what to say to that,
so he said nothing.

Detective Marsh finished her
scribbling, closed her notebook, and sighed. “Cortez, can you give
me a moment alone with Mr. Pendleton?”

“
Sure,” he said, his dark
eyes boring holes in Phil’s face before he blinked and walked
away.

“
Did I do something wrong?”
Phil asked. “I mean, I’m sorry that lady is dead and all but I was
the one she rammed her car into and I can’t shake the feeling that
you’re blaming me for something here.”

“
I’m not blaming you for
anything, Mr. Pendleton. I’m just not clear on a couple of things,
that’s all. I’m hoping you can help me with that.”

Marsh fished a pack of Newports from
her pocket, lit one and took a draw. She exhaled smoke as if she’d
never tasted anything quite so wondrous in her life. Then she
offered the pack to Phil, which he declined.

The detective pocketed the cigarettes.
“The paramedics gave you the all-clear, right?”

“
Yeah, aside from a few
cracked ribs, I should be fine.”

“
No concussion, no
disorientation, no memory loss or anything?”

“
No, none. At least, not
that I’m aware of. Why?”

“
You described to Officer
Burns the child you saw at the store earlier, right?”

“
Yes.”

“
And you sent a young man
over to Mrs. Bennings’ car to make sure the kid wasn’t in
there?”

“
I did. I wasn’t aware
concern was a crime now.”

“
It isn’t.”

“
Then for Christ’s sake, why
are you making me feel as if it is?”

“
As per your request, we
sent a patrol car to your address to inform your friend...” She
consulted her notebook. “…Lori Watkins, about your
accident.”

“
And?”

“
And she wasn’t
there.”

“
Well, she’s probably on her
way here.”

“
Seems unlikely. That was an
hour ago. It’s a ten minute drive with traffic. Have you tried to
call her since then?”

“
No. My phone died. That’s
why I asked the officer to send a patrol car over there. Didn’t
realize I’d be kept here this long and I figured she’d be
worried.”

“
And your address is 160
Grady Avenue?”

“
Yes.”

“
In Delaware?”

“
Yes, for the umpteenth
time, yes. Jesus. Why are you asking me all this?”

Marsh studied him as one might a
particularly exotic species of insect. “I’m asking you all of this,
Mr. Pendleton, because when the officers went to your house, the
child you just described seeing with Mrs. Bennings is the one who
opened the door.”

4. Possession

“There has to be some kind of mistake,”
Phil told the detectives as they drove him home. “Why would she
drop him at my house? I mean, how would she even know where I
live?”

The daylight had faded in
time with all logic and sense, so much so that the back of the
detectives’ car felt like a padded room in an insane asylum. As
absurd as it was, he kept expecting to find that he was merely the
victim of one of the most elaborate pranks he’d ever seen. Any
minute now the cops would break character and reveal that he’d been
had.
You’re a good
sport
, they’d say, right before they let
him out into an audience of their coconspirators. Lori would be
there, laughing and apologizing for being in on the game, for maybe
being the source of it. But such reasoning faltered at the notion
that anyone would think almost killing him and destroying his car
would be good for a laugh.

“
Assuming you’re right,”
Cortez asked, with no more warmth in his tone than before. “How
would the kid get in?”

“
I don’t know, but I’m
guessing if she went to the trouble of finding out where I live,
then she wouldn’t stop at just dropping him outside. Did your men
check for signs of a break-in?”

“
Our
men?
” Marsh asked. “One of
those
men
was
Officer Patricia Velasquez.”

“
Oh for fuck sake, you know
I didn’t mean it like that.”

“
Then you should have put it
differently.”

“
And watch your language,”
Cortez added.

“
Sorry, sorry.” One arm
cradling his injured ribs, he hissed air through his teeth, afraid
to take as deep a breath as the situation demanded. Clarity would
come, he knew. He just needed to maintain control. No matter how
bizarre the situation seemed in that moment, he knew the truth and
could prove it. A chance encounter with an insane woman had knocked
his world off-kilter, but if he kept his cool and didn’t antagonize
the detectives any further, he could get them to see
sense.

“
Any word from your
girlfriend?” Cortez asked.

They had allowed him to use the car
charger to juice up his phone long enough to turn it on for a few
minutes, but there were no missed calls and no texts from Lori,
only another reminder from Verizon that his phone bill was due. His
attempts to call her had gone straight to voicemail.

“
No.”

“
Is that
unusual?”

“
Very. I left her at home
and she knew I’d been in an accident. She would have waited there
or at least tried to call me back. Maybe she panicked when I didn’t
answer and checked out the hospitals or the police
station.”

They passed the gaudy neon lights of
Ming’s Chinese Restaurant, a favorite haunt of Phil and Lori’s.
They had eaten there the night before last.

“
If she’d gone to the
station,” Cortez said, “we’d know by now, so rule that out. And if
you weren’t at the hospital, she’d have come back home to see if
you were there, right?”

“
Right.”