3 a.m. (Henry Bins 1) (16 page)

My parents’ house—I still
had a problem calling it
my
house
—was built on the westernmost bluff
overlooking Puget Sound. It was too steep to build anywhere near
the house, so there wasn’t anything within a quarter mile in either
direction. The main concern was landslides. The wet soil building
up over time; the vegetation slowly losing its tenacity in the soft
earth. It was a miracle the house hadn’t slipped into the Sound
years ago. As many of its brethren had.

The house was built in 1964. It was a
monolith then. A work of art. But then, so once was the Coliseum.
When my parents bought it, they began a slow overhaul, gutting it
from the inside. There had been plans for a total facelift, a new
kitchen, hardwood floors, upgraded plumbing. But my parents never
got around to it. Then it was too late.

The cabbie pulled up alongside the expansive
wrought iron fence surrounding the large estate. He wished me a
happy Thanksgiving and I tipped him an extra twenty. When I’d said
I’d packed a bag, I failed to mention I’d packed only a small
carry-on of the essentials: contact solution, shampoo, conditioner,
mouthwash, and a couple other things, all of which had been red
flagged at airport security because some science wizard had decided
three ounces was the magic number. Apparently three ounces of acid,
anthrax, or whatever these zealots make in their caves wasn’t going
to harm anyone, but four ounces—

So basically I had the clothes on my back—my
favorite pair of jeans and a black T-shirt over a long-sleeve
thermal—a rarely used cell phone, and my wallet.

I pushed through the rusted gate and ambled
up the long drive. The once neatly manicured yard was overgrown
with weeds and other debris. Dark vegetation sprung from every
crack and fissure of the dilapidated drive. As for the house, the
wet Pacific climate and harsh ocean air hadn’t been kind in my
absence. The five thousand-square-foot Victorian was a combination
of rust and sodium-lime deposits. Brown meets green. Almost as if
some pesky kids had unloaded on the house with a barrage of aged
avocados. Thick foliage had attacked the house from every angle,
crawling up, around, and through the gray brick.

Vines spider-webbed across the front door
like organic crime scene tape. I cut these away with my keys. The
door had warped to the frame, so I had to literally kick it in. It
gave on the second try and a wave of musty air washed over me.

I took a step inside the foyer and stopped.
I hadn’t touched anything in the wake of my parents’ death. I’d
just left. Fled. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt where people
wash their clothes, get sick from drinking the water, get bit by
snakes, get eaten by hippos, contract malaria, west Nile, or
worse.

There was a small table to my immediate
left. A pink vase was at its center, the remnants of a paper-thin
stem silently listing over the porcelain edge. I ran my finger over
the table, the years of dust coloring my finger a thick black.

I left the front door open and entered a
small hallway. I took two steps, my shoes sinking into the
inch-long shag. Lowering down to my haunches, I dug my fingers into
the long green tendrils. The carpet was reminiscent of the second
cut at Augusta and when I was young, my father and I would take
turns setting up golf holes throughout the house. Grab our nine
irons, a putter, and a couple of those white plastic golf balls and
proceed to drive my mom about insane. I stood up, the popping of my
knees masking my deep exhale.

 
Walking forward, I
traced my fingers against the eggshell brown walls, which had been
an eggshell white last I remembered. I came to a set of two doors,
one leading to the basement, the other to a bathroom. I poked my
head into the bathroom and flipped the light. The two seventy-watt
bulbs were clouded with dust and barely illuminated the small room.
Evidently, someone—or some financial entity—was keeping up on the
bills. The floral wallpaper had begun to peel in many places, its
glue well into its late thirties. I heard a soft noise and peered
down at the small sink. Water slowly beaded around the head of the
faucet before giving way to a single tear.

I shook my head. Those tears could have
filled a swimming pool over the course of eight years.

I turned the faucet on. After five seconds,
a loud rattle shook the foundation of the large house. The pipes
screamed and the house shuddered. I held onto the door frame.

It would be slightly ironic if I’d left for
eight years, come back for less than an hour, and the house slid
into Puget Sound. Or would that just be a terrible coincidence? Or
just unfortunate?

The rattling slowly began to subside and
after what seemed like a full minute, water spurted from the
faucet. It was brown. I turned the water off.

I spent the next half hour
reacquainting myself with the old house. Pick your cliché.
I took a ride down memory lane. Home is where you
hang your hat. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. You can’t put
toothpaste back in the tube.
Even a blind
squirrel finds an acorn every once in a while. Too many chiefs and
not enough Indians.

Okay, so maybe those last few weren’t
exactly relevant, but you get my drift.

I made my way into the kitchen. There were a
couple cardboard boxes strewn about the linoleum. A roll of
packaging tape and a black Sharpie rested on the island centering
the small kitchen. Just above the stove was a round clock. I’d
bought it for my parents for Christmas three years before they’d
died. It was from Brookstone. Kinetic. The hour hand was halfway
between the four and the five. Let’s see here, plane landed at just
after three, half hour drive, hour or so poking around. Yep, I’d
say that was the best thirty bucks I ever spent.

I pulled open the refrigerator, picked up
the milk, and read the expiration date: 13APR02. It was green and
it said, “Where ya been, Thomas?”

I’m lying, of course. The fridge was
empty.

I rummaged through the cabinets. There was a
lot of canned stuff, lots of nonperishables, and lots of other
things you see in those Thanksgiving donation barrels. I picked up
a can of beets and pondered the irony of the situation.

Anyhow, I pulled my cell phone from my
pocket and turned it on. There were only a handful of people—and by
handful I mean less than five—who had my cell phone number. I
believe the last call I’d made was to my dean at the university
telling him I wouldn’t be returning to work the following semester.
That call had been sometime in early June. In the months since, I’d
had all of five missed calls and three voice mails. I scrolled
through the five calls. They were all from Alex. Two calls were in
October, two in early November, and the last, just hours earlier.
Being that I was once a detective—albeit a second-rate one—I
deduced the messages were also from Alex.

Still got it.

As for Alex, I wasn’t sure
if I wanted to hear what she had to say. As much as I loved her—and
I still did—I could never take a girl back who’d dumped me. It’s a
pride thing. But maybe that isn’t why she’d called. Maybe she
wanted her
Fried Green Tomatoes
DVD back.

I picked up the black marker off the center
island and wrote on my palm, “She dumped you for a fucking
stockbroker.” Underneath this I scribbled, “toothpaste” and
“contact solution.”

I located one of the old phone books and
after a couple unsuccessful attempts, found a pizza joint still in
service. I inquired if I was the only person to order a pizza on
Thanksgiving. The guy informed me that there were a couple
others.

At five the pizza came.

I grabbed a slice and headed out to the
narrow balcony off the kitchen.The sky was a deep gray, from which
a light drizzle steadily dripped. The sun was preparing for its
descent in my right viewfinder, undressing layers of pinks and
oranges behind the clouds’ satin curtain. A distant island was
thinly traced into the horizon on the far left and I remember my
father telling me it was Japan. I’m still not sure if it was or
wasn’t. Straight down was a thicket of tall, windswept madronas,
then black rock, then rippling Sound. It was all very melancholy if
you ask me.

I rested my elbows on the
railing, ate pizza, and watched the sun lower its landing gear.
There was a port a half mile south and I watched as a colossal
freighter made its lackluster final stretch. It rode high on the
black water, inching across the gray horizon. The ship had traveled
thousands of miles and here I was witnessing its last steps. Such
is life. I spent the next couple minutes thinking deep
philosophical thoughts brought on by a stupid boat. The
SS Aristotle.
I thought
about where the
SS Prescott
was in its voyage. And what freight it would
carry. How it got here and where it was going. I thought about
Alex. Was she cargo? Or was she one of these rogue waves I kept
hearing about?

A vibration in my pocket
startled me out of my rumination. Staring at the screen, I fought
the urge to flip the phone open. It pulsed four times then relaxed,
then pulsed again two minutes later, notifying me I had a new
message. Must be some message. But then again, Alex
loved
Kathy
Bates.

I stared at the phone for a solid minute,
then reared back and hucked it at the setting sun. For a brief
moment I thought it would reach the rippling black water. But it
lost velocity, splattering against the rocky shore, its ashes
quickly swept away by the incoming tide.

Bye, Alex.

I rubbed my right shoulder and peered over
the edge of the balcony, then I leaned down and squinted hard.
Something was floating in the water. It would hit the black rocks
then be sucked back into the channel with each ebb and flow. The
white water receded into the black rocks, and I was granted a quick
glimpse of arms and long black hair.

It was a woman.

Chapter 3

I should mention that in another life I’d
been a homicide detective. So I’d seen my fair share of dead
bodies. In fact, I’d seen most people’s fair share of dead bodies.
For the last four years of my career I’d been a Special Contract
Agent to the FBI’s Violent Crime Unit. In a nutshell, I outsourced
my skills, instincts, cleverness, and good looks to the Federal
Bureau of Investigation. Half the time I was working hand in hand
with the FBI—Fruitdicks, Backstabbers, and Impersonators—the other
half I was getting yelled at by them.

Then I went and got killed. But as you can
see, I’m not dead—thanks to some stubborn doctors, a couple of
electricity-charged paddles, and eight pints of somebody else’s
blood.

I bought a quiet house in
Maine—wheelchair accessible, of course—and opted for early
retirement. I kept myself peripherally related to the world of law
enforcement by teaching an intro-level criminology class at the
local university. But I’d lost my passion for this as well. I’d
lived my life by the age-old axiom, “Those who can do. Those who
can’t teach.” But all I wanted
to
do
was sit on my couch.
Without the job, I wasn’t really sure who I was. I was defined
by
the job
. I
think this may have contributed to Alex leaving me for a day
trader, but then again, I might just be Monday morning
relationshipping.

 
But now, here I was,
and the last thing I wanted to see was exactly what was staring me
in the face this very second. A dead woman washed up on a piece of
remote coastline that just happened to make up my
backyard.

For Pete’s sake.

There were two routes to
the water. Route A was a straight shot down four hundred vertical
feet. If you did it right, you could get to the water in about five
minutes, but one missed step and you were shark bait. Route
B
had you walking a half mile south to a
scenic overlook. One of those places where they have binocular
posts bolted to the ground. Most afternoons a decent crowd of
tourists could be seen patiently awaiting their turn to drop fifty
cents into one of the binoculars for their chance to catch a
glimpse of a whale tail or a bald eagle through the foggy lenses.
Enough people had made the trek from the viewing platform to the
rocks below that a trail had formed, which would eventually lead to
the crescent shaped cove directly beneath my house.

I decided on route A. I braced myself
against two trees and started down. If I could go back and do it
all over again, I would have done a few things differently. One, I
wouldn’t have turned off that football game. Two, I’d have thrown a
sinker instead of a fastball. And three, I would have taken route
B.

As I continued down the
treacherous path to the water, I contemplated a couple possible
scenarios. People died on the water frequently. In the two years I
lived in Maine, there were nine separate occurrences when someone
died in the water. Or at the hands of it. Things were a bit
different here on the Sound, where there weren’t quite as many
recreational boaters. The main concern here being fishing boats and
ferries, with your occasional scuba diver. Now the Sound isn’t
exactly the Bering Sea, but it is
connected
to the Bering Sea, and the
water temperature was still in the mid-forties. This means if you
did happen to fall off a boat—or get pushed for that matter—you had
about seven minutes to get your ass out of the water. So, logic
told us the woman died by accident or in some other benign fashion.
But, logic is overrated.