Double Indemnity (5 page)

Not forever. Fuck. There was always a chance Tim would emerge from his wasted body, one day. Six years was a long time, though. He couldn't believe it had been almost six years.

Sam worked quickly. Once he'd stowed his tools, he jogged to the front door, planning to remind Emma about her outstanding bill. Usually he and Yuri didn't mind so much about immediate payment with regular customers, but it had been a couple of months since they'd gotten a check from the Walkers. Sam rang the bell. It broadcast his presence with a three-part chime that brought up bad childhood memories of church.

When Emma opened the door, the words of greeting poised at the tip of Sam's tongue died there. She looked like she'd been crying. Her red-rimmed eyes starkly contrasted with her pale, freckled cheeks. Sam hadn't seen her since he'd gone to the station the previous week to ask about the autopsy. She gave him a tight smile.

“Can I help you, Sam?”

“Actually, I was just heading out, but I thought I'd stop by and see about the check for June and July.”

“Oh, right. Of course.” She shook her head and held the door open. “Come in.”

While Emma rummaged through a hallway drawer for her checkbook, Sam looked around. He'd only been in the house a couple of times, but the clean tidiness impressed him. They must have a service. With a car like Nathan's and a house like this, they had to be loaded or mortgaged to the hilt.

Tasteful, substantial pieces furnished the house. An overstuffed leather sectional dominated the living room to his left and complimented its companion, an oak coffee table with a neat spread of magazines. Evidence of Emma's green thumb was everywhere in potted plants that gave the place a lived-in feel. At least fifteen types of orchids with blooms of various colors and sizes were arranged near the eastern-facing windows at the front of the house. Emma had shown him how to care for them once, before she and Nathan had gone on vacation.

“Five hundred, right?” Emma asked.

“Yep. Make it out to Manella's.”

Sam peered toward the kitchen beyond the foyer, surprised to see an overturned carton of eggs on the floor. Most had smashed and now formed a pool of viscous liquid on the stone tile.

Emma cleared her throat, and Sam flushed at being caught looking.

“The doorbell startled me,” she explained.

“Sorry.”

She passed him the check and he took it, folded it carefully, and slipped it into his back pocket. “I don't mean to bother you, but did you ever find out about those stomach contents?”

“I talked to the chief yesterday, but I'm sorry, no. I don't have any information for you.” Emma considered Sam for a moment. “You want a drink?”

Sam shrugged. “Sure.” He thought she meant water or, like last time, iced tea, but she pulled two beers from the fridge, and then stepped around the broken eggs like they weren't even there.

Sam cracked both bottles with the opener on his keychain and took a swig, then handed Emma's over. He couldn't help being disappointed the Feldman story seemed DOA, which meant the blog post he'd never actually started was too. After a morning of hot, uncomfortable work, the cold brew went down smoothly, but the strange look on Emma's face concerned him. She seemed lost in her own thoughts.

“You ever think about quitting, Sam?”

“What, you mean give all this up?” He didn't mind the work, though the load had increased since he'd become a partner.

“Yeah.” She smiled. “I'm curious if this is what you always wanted to do?”

“I wanted to go to New York when I was younger. I had an internship lined up after college.”

“And you didn't do it?”

“I had to stay and take care of family.” He said the words without bitterness or malice. He had never once regretted the decision.

“If you didn't have any obligations, if you could go anywhere, do anything, what would you do?”

Sam thought as he drank his beer. It had been a long time since he indulged in any sort of fantasies regarding life goals.

“I guess I'd like to write. Travel. I've always wanted to go abroad.” All of those things cost money, though, and the insurance letter sat heavy in his pocket. “What's with all the questions?”

“I don't know. I guess I've just been thinking a lot about my life lately, the choices I've made. Do we ever really know someone? A friend, a lover? Do we ever get close enough to anyone to
really
know them, or is there some part that's always hidden away?”

Her eyes grew bright again, and she wiped at her face. He wondered if she was talking about Nathan.

“I don't know.” His mind drifted back to Yuri's confession and to Tim lying in his ergonomic bed. “I guess there're some things you're better off not knowing, you know? I think people have a right to privacy.” He took another sip of his beer and put it down, irritated with himself at how hard it was to leave the bottle unfinished. It wouldn't do to drink more, because then he'd want another—and he had to visit Tim.

“But what if you trusted someone.” She stared at the floor, where the cracked eggs slowly drained from their shells. “If you ever found out you weren't right about someone. That you didn't know that person, after all. What if they did something terrible? Could you ever forgive them?”

“I don't know. I guess it depends on what they did.” He didn't know why he said it or even if it was a lie. This wasn't exactly the time to debate the relative severity of particular crimes, though. And fuck, he wasn't good at this, but he reached out and touched her shoulder anyway. She seemed so delicate, so unlike the confident woman he knew. For some reason, he liked seeing this more vulnerable side. Maybe he could talk to her about Tim.

“Thank you,” she finally said, sniffing. “I'm sorry. You must be busy. I'll see you out.”

They walked to the front door without speaking. The tick of the clock in the living room seemed almost loud as he reached for the door handle.

“Are you okay, Emma?” he asked before he left, thinking of the eggs she hadn't even mentioned or bothered to clean up.

“Yes, of course.” She smiled, and this time it seemed genuine. “Thank you for all of your hard work, keeping the yard beautiful. I know it isn't easy.”

“It's my pleasure.”

 

 

T
HE
CONVERSATION
with Emma faded from his mind on the drive to Shady Brook, and a new kind of worry replaced it, making his stomach sick.

The letter he'd received a couple of weeks before wasn't exactly news. Tim's long-term care had surpassed the cap the previous year. Since then, Sam had paid the excess with the residual life insurance from his parents' deaths, but that money was running low too. Both of his still-living grandparents had retired on a fixed income to Florida, and the business didn't bring in enough money to support both Sam and the ever-increasing medical tab. He could only imagine what would happen once the funds dried up. And imagination would become reality in six short months unless something changed, and soon.

“I'm going to think of something. I promise,” Sam told his brother. Tim stared at the ceiling and breathed in and out, in and out.

Shady Brook couldn't exactly put Tim out on the street, but Sam had nightmares about state-run care facilities for the poor. He couldn't let Tim wind up as just another lump in a bed, ignored by people who didn't get paid enough to care about who lived or died. He wouldn't. There had to be a way. Not for the first time, he contemplated bank robbery. Maybe he could sell drugs on the street. Lord knew there was enough money floating around in Stonebridge for that kind of thing. Just a week before, another bust at a warehouse down by the docks had taken in millions of dollars of product. Of course those were all fantasies and not very good ones. Sam needed a miracle.

“I won't let anything happen to you, bud.” He patted his brother's arm and stood, wondering how long he could keep lying.

Later that evening Sam stretched out on his bed and flipped on the television. He rubbed his hand over his stomach and thought about the book he'd been reading to Tim,
The Road
by Cormac McCarthy. Depressing as hell, but something about it resonated with Sam. People did a lot of crazy shit when times got desperate enough.

Heading down to the Star for a nightcap was tempting, but his eyelids grew heavy as a commercial break announced cash for unwanted gold jewelry at the highest prices in years. He was on the verge of sleep when the local newscast returned. Two reporters, both of whom looked as though they'd been dressed and styled sometime in the late nineties, stared steadily at the camera. The older one spoke.

“An alleged break-in this evening has left one person dead. The victim was thirty-year-old Emma Walker, an officer with the Stonebridge Police Department. Police arrived on the scene when the victim failed to report for duty. Suspects are at large and all area residents are urged to stay in their homes and report suspicious activity.”

“Ah, yes. It's a sad night indeed for—” The younger reporter droned on, but Sam had stopped listening. His body went numb as the picture they'd shown of Emma faded from the screen.

It couldn't be. This had to be someone's sick idea of a joke.

Sam grabbed his laptop and performed a quick search, only to find a brief mention of the robbery on several local pages with no more information than what had been offered on the news. Suspected break-in. Victim dead at the scene. Bile rose in his throat, and he hurried to the bathroom before his last meal made an appearance, barely in time to heave into the toilet. He retched his guts out even as he thought it couldn't be true. He'd seen wrong. He was dreaming.

He rinsed his mouth and waited for the nausea to subside, but it didn't. Hot tears pricked his eyes, and his stomach clenched again, an aching hollow. The floor was solid and comforting, and he allowed himself a moment to rest on it to stop his head from spinning. But every time he blinked, he saw Emma.

Some time later, another thought wormed its way into his head and made him shiver. He might have been the last person to see her alive. The check she wrote…. Was it the last thing she'd ever done? Sweat broke out on his brow.

Maybe he'd go have a drink after all.

 

 

B
EFORE
S
AM
could even grab his wallet and keys, a harsh knock sounded on the door. The cops who waited outside didn't cuff him but requested he come down to the station for questioning, all the same.

The Stonebridge Police Department hadn't been renovated since the late eighties, and whenever he visited, Sam always got the impression he'd stumbled onto the set of
Lethal Weapon
. Unfortunately, however, the detective interviewing him wasn't Mel Gibson. Of course, it was Petersen. Of course.

Sam leaned back and sipped the tepid coffee they'd brought as a token assurance he wasn't a suspect. It tasted like burned cat hair. He grimaced, his empty stomach churning, and set the cup back down. The corner of Petersen's fishlike mouth turned up in a smirk from across the table. Even though he had nothing to hide, Sam's blood chilled when he considered the possibility they'd analyze the cup for his prints. They sat in a little dingy brown room with uncomfortable folding chairs. It was an interrogation room, but they'd propped the dull metal door open to give Sam the illusion he could walk away from this interview.

“You don't like the coffee?” Petersen asked. “I made it myself.”

“Explains why it tastes like piss.”

Petersen clucked disapproval, and his double chin wobbled. “Sam Flynn. You never change, do you? Have you given up on being a fake reporter? I haven't seen you around here much lately.”

“I thank God every day for small favors.”

“I take it you two know each other?” Chief Sheldon raised his bushy eyebrows as he breezed through the open door and closed it firmly behind him. He had the bluest eyes Sam had ever seen and was handsome in a grandfatherly, old Paul Newman way. But those eyebrows. Sam had never encountered such impressive specimens. He'd often marveled at them as a child when he'd seen the chief at holidays or the occasional dinner parties his parents held.

“I'd like to say no,” said Sam. “I really would. But I can't.”

“So you've picked up murder as a hobby. I thought you only
wrote
about dead people.”

“That's enough, Petersen,” said Chief Sheldon. “Sam came in on a voluntary basis, and he's not a suspect.”

“Not yet.”

“Aw, still sore I wouldn't suck your dick after gym class?” said Sam. True story, but the chief didn't catch on.

Petersen blanched. “I always knew there was something off about you, Flynn. Besides the obvious. Watch what you say around him, Chief, or you'll wind up on his stupid blog. Not that anyone reads it.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Do I have to put up with this?”