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First Kill
By Michael Kronenwetter St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2005 Michael Kronenwetter
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-7971-3
CHAPTER 1
I SAW HER AGAIN
— The Mamas and the Papas
Harry was driving me crazy. It wasn't his fault — he was just being a kid — but I couldn't take much more without some real relief. Having a six-year-old around all the time can be hard to take, particularly when your home is also your office and there's no escape from it.
It wasn't that I disliked having Harry with me. Just the opposite. I looked forward to his visits and hated those weekends when Sarah kept him with her. But this time, it was more than a weekend. It had already been a week since Sarah left town, and it would probably be at least another week before she returned.
It was the relentlessness that was getting to me. All that energy tearing around the place, crayoning on the walls, jumping on the furniture, inventing ways to make noise with things that had never made sounds before. And, worst of all, the constant demands — demands for food, demands for drink, demands for toys, demands for Rugrats on TV.
What Harry was really demanding, I suppose, was love.
Well, I loved him all right, and I longed to give him that love in a form that he could use. The trouble was that I'd only been a father for six years out of several decades, and a weekend father for most of those. What did I know about making a kid feel loved?
I wondered how Sarah put up with it. She's a hotshot executive at Mueller's Cheese Company these days and not the kind of person you'd expect to tolerate crayoned walls and creative noise.
On that particular midweek afternoon, my ex-wife was in Paris, of all places. She was there to negotiate the importation of Mueller's new line of tavern cheeses into France. Mueller's makes some of the best cheese in Wisconsin, which means some of the best in the world. And that's not just my opinion, either. In fact, that's not my opinion at all. I hate cheese. That's the opinion of people who know about these things, the judges who give out blue ribbons at big-time cheese festivals. (And yes, Virginia, there are such things as big-time cheese festivals.)
If Sarah pulled it off, Mueller's would become the first American company to have its cheese mass-marketed in France since the 1890s. (I told you it was good.) But the negotiations would take another week or two, and while she was gone, I had Harry with me.
Sarah and I had been divorced for five years, which was slightly longer than we'd been married. By the time of the divorce, our marriage had settled into a kind of tired bitterness that I think surprised us both. But then, who marries expecting to be unhappy?
For Sarah, the bitterness was tinged with indignation. She'd already had one unhappy marriage, which she blamed on the fact that her husband had been a creep. No argument there. I'd met him. But now she was unhappy in her second marriage, so that had to be her husband's fault too. And maybe it was.
The divorce was inevitable, or so I told myself. But before it came, we had Harry.
I'd never pictured myself as a father. Yet there I was with a baby in my arms. Incredible! I actually enjoyed getting up when he cried in the middle of the night. I'd give him his bottle and rock him back to sleep. I even sang him lullabies. That was a kick. I can't carry a tune, but Harry never seemed to mind.
Then Sarah left and took Harry with her.
It made sense. I mean, how could I raise a kid on my own? I'm a working private detective, a one-man operation. My hours are unpredictable and I'm in and out all the time.
It made economic sense too. My income is spotty at best. Sarah was already on the fast track at Mueller's, and she could provide for Harry better than I could.
Besides, a young boy needs a mother in a way he doesn't need a father. At least, that's what people say.
The fact that it made sense didn't mean it didn't hurt. At first, it hurt a lot. It never stopped hurting altogether, but it wasn't long before I got comfortable living alone again. And why not? I'd lived alone for most of my life. So, while I always looked forward to Harry coming on the weekends, I always looked forward to him leaving, too. But now the easy and reassuring rhythm to his comings and goings was broken. I'd already had him longer than at any one time since the divorce, and it was wearing me down.
It was late afternoon Wednesday, and I was trying to get my expense records in order. If I didn't get the bills in the mail soon, the clients wouldn't get them before the weekend. That meant none of them would have a chance to put a check in the mail until the next week at the earliest, and my cash was getting even shorter than my credit.
Desperate, I'd sent the little dynamo out to play. That was great fun for him, but it turned out to be even worse for me. That was where I'd wanted him, of course, but once he was there I started to worry. Was six really old enough to be playing outside alone? You heard about kids who —
Relax, I told myself. This is Red Maple Street in Pinery Falls, Wisconsin, not some crack alley in the South Bronx. But the fact that this was Red Maple Street didn't mean that there weren't some real weirdos around. And it didn't mean there wasn't a lot of traffic a block away on Menard Avenue, either.
I went over to the front window. I was hoping to see Harry playing in the front yard, but the only thing out there was a beautiful fall afternoon. Most of the leaves in the park across the street had already turned and there was enough color to take your breath away. It was late afternoon, and the setting sun behind the trees gave the reds and yellows of the maples, the rust browns of the oaks, and the delicate golds of the birches a vivid chromatic glow.
Harry was probably out in back playing on the swing that I'd hung from a branch of the big basswood.
Probably.
But what if he wasn't? What if he'd wandered off and gotten lost? What if — A gut-wrenching screech of tires came from Menard Avenue. My stomach flipped over.
Harry!
I told myself not to worry. There was nothing unusual about screeching tires on Menard, which used to be a part of Old 51. There's a bypass around Pinery Falls these days, but Menard is still the business route through town. A lot of out-of-towners misjudge the quick stoplight on the corner of Menard and Red Maple. Fender benders are pretty frequent there.
But where the hell is Harry?
What do I do now? I asked myself. Shoud I get back to work, trusting that Harry had stayed in the yard as he had promised to do, or run outside and check that he's OK?
Was this a parental instinct or a neurotic guilt? I was still standing at the window trying to decide when a red Sable wagon pulled up to the curb in front of the house.
Elizabeth Kermanski got out.
My stomach flipped over again.
CHAPTER 2
HERE YOU COME AGAIN
— Dolly Parton
Looking back on it, I shouldn't have been surprised.
Elizabeth Kermanski was Elizabeth Drucker now. Her husband had recently been murdered, and, judging from the news reports, the police were getting nowhere with the case. I was a private detective who had once been friends with them both. All things considered, I should have been expecting her visit.
But I wasn't.
A hand-painted sign directs clients to the front door, but Liz was coming around to the side door that faces the driveway. That was the door she'd always used in the old days — back when we were young and this house was just the house that I grew up in and not a place of business.
She was wearing white slacks and a blue sweater, and her light brown hair glowed in the sun. When she looked up and saw me at the window, she smiled. Once upon a time, that smile had the power to addle my brains. Maybe it still did. She'd already climbed the steps to the porch before it occurred to me to go to the door and welcome her.
"You used to walk right in," I said when I opened the door.
"I'm sorry." They were the first words Liz had said to me in decades.
"No," I said foolishly. "I just meant — you know, old times."
We were standing awkwardly in the open doorway. It had been so long since we'd seen each other that we didn't know who we were to each other anymore. At least I didn't. Old feelings were stirring, not all of them pleasant.
"I was sorry to hear about Jack," I said. It sounded even emptier than such sentiments usually do, but she nodded and swallowed hard. Her eyes teared up, and her hands reached out like those of a blind woman searching for something familiar. Without thinking about it, I moved in so close that our bodies touched. We put our arms around each other and she clung to me.
Her body felt both strange and familiar against mine. She smelled of floral soap; I could feel her breathe. We stood that way for what seemed like a long time. Anyone walking by would have thought that we were lovers.
"I thought about going to the funeral," I told her. "But I got drunk instead."
"I understand, Hank." Her voice was muffled against my chest. "I know how you felt about Jack."
If so, she knew more than I did.
After a while, her body relaxed. After another moment, we let go of each other. She reached into a pocket of her slacks, pulled out a Kleenex, and dabbed it against her eyes and cheeks. Liz has the most incredible eyes I've ever seen. They're blue, but such a pale blue that they hardly seem to have any color at all. Like a cat's eyes, they catch the light so well that they almost seem to generate their own. They generate something else as well, a kind of intensity that grabs you and pulls you into them.
After the tears stopped coming, she managed a smile. "May I come in?" she asked.
I'd almost forgotten that we were still standing in the doorway. After all these years, I could still get lost in those eyes.
"Of course," I said. "The house is a little different now," I explained, ushering her into my small living room. I gestured toward an open door in the far wall. "My office is in through there."
As she started to walk by me, I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
"Did you see Harry out there?" I asked.
"Harry?" She sounded puzzled.
"My son."
"Your son?" she asked, as if surprised.
She didn't even know I had a son.
"A little guy," I explained. "Six years old. He's wearing a Packer windbreaker with a hood. He should be in the yard someplace."
She shook her head. "I didn't see anyone. Maybe he's in the back?"
"Oh, hell. Look, I need to find him. Could you go on into the office? It'll only take me a minute."
"Don't be silly," she said. "I'll help you look."
She followed me back to the porch, where I called out Harry's name. That was all it took. Like an eager terrier, a small figure in a green-and-gold jacket came bounding around the corner of the house yelling, "Da-deeeeee!" at the top of his lungs. He reminded me of the cartoons he watched on TV — a colorful blur of motion, ending in a little boy.
Bounding onto the porch, he flung himself up into my arms, totally confident that I would catch him. Which, of course, I did.
"Da-dee-da-dee-dadeedadeedadee," he chanted, clutching tight to me as if he'd been lost and I was home.
"Settle down, sport," I said. "We've got company."
"Com! Pan! Neee!" he proclaimed, squirming around to get a look at the unfamiliar lady standing beside us on the porch. "Whoooo?" he asked, making it into a cartoon owl sound.
"This is an old friend of mine," I told him. "Her name is Elizabeth Drucker. Liz, this is Harry. Harry, Liz."
"She is not!" he protested in mock indignation. "She's not hairy at all."
He exploded into giggles, and Liz laughed too.
Wriggling around in my arms, Harry pushed his hands against my chest to let me know he wanted down. Once firmly planted on the porch, he stood up straight and held out his right hand. "I'm pleased to meet you," he said with all the mustered solemnity of a little boy being polite. Sarah must have been teaching him manners.
"I'm pleased to meet you, too, Harry." Liz said, seeming as delighted by him as he was with her.
The formalities over, he turned to me. "Can I have a sandwich, Daddy? Please. I'm hunnngry."
Harry was always hunnngry. Or thirrrsty. Or both.
"Not right now," I told him. "Maybe later."
He was ready to argue, but I headed him off. "Listen, sport. Liz and I need to go inside and talk for a while. Can I count on you to stay in the yard until we're done?"
"Can I come, too?"
"No, you can't. This is grown-up stuff."
"'Cause you want to know why?" he went on, ignoring my answer. "'Cause I'll be really quiet. Honest, I will."
"No, Harry."
His face crumpled. Tears appeared in his eyes and inflated themselves like balloons. It was one of his best tricks.
"I know what," Liz put in brightly, squatting down so that her face was level with his. "Would you like someone to play with?"
His ravaged face morphed back to its usual shape. It even brightened. "Sure I would. You want to play with me?"
"Oh, I'm not much fun to play with," she responded. "But just you wait a minute."
She left the porch and took a few steps toward the front curb where the Sable was parked. Harry and I followed after her.
"Hey, Tommy!" she called, waving a hand in the air like a magician.
A head popped up in the backseat. The curbside rear door opened and the head emerged, followed by a young male body. "Yeah?"
"Come on over here and meet some people."
By his size, I figured him to be about twelve or thirteen. With his hands in the pockets of his baggy gangsta pants, he slouched through the leaves toward us. He moved sullenly, his eyes fixed on the ground in front of his feet, his body language resenting every step. But when he stopped in front of us and lifted his head, he was smiling pleasantly enough.
So, this was Liz's son.
And Jack's.
I'd seen Tommy around town a few times with one or the other of his parents, but always at a distance. I'd never met him, never heard him speak.
"This is my son, Tommy," she said, with obvious affection in her voice. "Tommy, this is Harry Berlin and his father, Hank."
"Hi, Tommy." I held out my hand. He took it with a grunting sound I took to be a greeting.
Liz suggested that Tommy entertain Harry while the adults talked.
"OK, sure," Tommy agreed. He wasn't exactly enthusiastic about it, but he wasn't grudging, either. He almost seemed to like the idea. "So, whatcha wanna do, Harry?"
"I know!" Harry exclaimed. "Let's us rake the leaves!" He made it sound like the world's most exciting recreational activity.
"OK. Sure," Tommy agreed. When Harry turned toward the backyard, Tommy looked toward his mother and shrugged.
Then the kids ran off around the house to look for rakes while the grown-ups went inside to talk about murder.
CHAPTER 3
IT SEEMS SO LONG AGO
— Leonard Cohen
"I want you to find out who killed Jack," she said. Liz was sitting in the smaller of the two client armchairs that face my desk. It's a comfortable chair, but she didn't look very comfortable in it. Her back was too straight, for one thing. Her arms were stretched out along the armrests, with her hands gripping the ends like those of a prisoner strapped into Old Sparky bracing for the jolt.
To tell you the truth, I didn't feel all that comfortable myself. There were ghosts in the room. Not just Jack's, but hers and mine as well — the ghosts of the people we'd been the last time we were in that room together.
That was near the end of the long, hot summer of 1968. Back before Canada. Back before a lot of things. This room hadn't been an office then but the living room of my family home. All three of us had been drinking beer and sharing fresh memories of our high school years and excitement about our immediate futures. We'd just graduated from high school that spring, and we'd be headed down to the university in Madison in the fall.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from First Kill by Michael Kronenwetter. Copyright © 2005 Michael Kronenwetter. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
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