Sympathy Between Humans Part 20

I saw something else, too. He wasn't just under 21; he was clearly under 18.

"Are you all right?" I said. "Can you hear me?"

His eyes focused in on my face. "Oh no," he said in a tone of resigned dread. "Oh no. Police."

How do they always know? I thought. I was wearing nothing remotely official: mid-calf-length leggings, a T-s.h.i.+rt, and a hooded jacket. I thought. I was wearing nothing remotely official: mid-calf-length leggings, a T-s.h.i.+rt, and a hooded jacket.

"Can you stand up?" I asked.

"I don' want to go to juvie," he said in the same tone. There was no accent in his voice, marking him clearly as second-generation American.

"I'm not arresting you," I said.

"I hate it at juvie," he moaned.

"One, I doubt you've ever been," I said, hooking a hand around his upper arm and pulling. "Two, you're not under arrest. Stand up."

"No, no, no," he said, refusing to yield to my pressure. He wasn't heavy, but I couldn't get him up without his cooperation.

"Kid," I told him, "you've got something in your sleeve that might someday be a bicep. There's got to be enough muscle in your quadriceps to get you on your feet."

"I don' want to go to juvie," he said, still droning lifelessly.

"Up," I said. I said.

When we got to my car, I put him in the backseat. He was only five-eight or so, and thin, but it'd still be safer there in case he got squirrelly on the ride to wherever we were going. Sometimes drunks who couldn't even get coordinated enough to walk properly suddenly recovered enough to become violent. I fastened the seat belt around him.

As I got behind the wheel, he said once again, "I don't want to go in, I don't want to go to juvie," and fell bonelessly sideways to lie down, head to hipbone, on the backseat.

"Kid," I said, "how many police officers have you seen that patrol while wearing workout clothes and driving an old car that smells like superglue fumes?"

His lips dropped slightly apart. Too many concepts at once; I'd blown his mind.

"Let me ask you something easier," I said. "What's your name?"

"Special K."

Of course. "No, your government name," I said. "No, your government name," I said.

"Kelvin," he said.

"Okay, Kelvin, where do you live?"

The address he slurred was becoming very familiar. I started the car, pulled away from the curb.

"It smells funny in here," he said, ending with a slushy word that could have been Officer. Officer.

"Yeah, that's the superglue I mentioned."

"Is making me sick," he said, and he didn't sound good.

"Do you think alcohol might have something to do with that?"

"Real sick," he said. sick," he said.

"Kelvin," I said, glancing in the rearview mirror, "if you throw up in my car, I'm going to ask the prosecutor for special circ.u.mstances."

Special K, cowed by the thought of a vomiting-in-an-official-vehicle enhancement to whatever charge he believed he was facing, kept it together until we arrived at the towers. cowed by the thought of a vomiting-in-an-official-vehicle enhancement to whatever charge he believed he was facing, kept it together until we arrived at the towers.

I helped him out of the car, but as soon as I let go, he stumbled and nearly fell, sinking to his knees. He looked up, squinting, at the south tower.

"Home?" he asked, blinking.

"I told you that I wasn't arresting you," I reminded him.

"Oh good," Kelvin said. Then his gaze clouded, his attention focused inward like a newscaster receiving breaking news through his earpiece, and he doubled over to vomit on my running shoes.

"You broke my streak," I said.

An older sister, almost heartbreakingly beautiful in a cheap sateen robe, took in the sight of Kelvin with a disapproving thinning of the lips that told me this wasn't the first time he'd been delivered home in such a state. "Thank you," she whispered, and then, looking at my shoes, "Sorry."

When I was outside again, my eyes strayed involuntarily upward, at the north tower.

Oh, why not? You're here already.

In the confines of the little elevator, the odor of the vomit I'd mostly sc.r.a.ped off my shoes was unmistakable. I couldn't go visiting like this. On the 26th floor, I detoured back from the elevator to the stairs, and took my shoes off on the landing, behind the stairwell door. There was no worry that they would tempt thieves. I took off my socks as well. There's a dignity to bare feet that stocking feet just don't have.

When Cicero answered the door, I said, "I was just in the neighborhood. I'll leave if I'm interrupting something."

"Where are your shoes?"

"They're in the stairwell," I said.

"I see," Cicero said, as though this were completely reasonable. "Every time I consider asking you more about your personal life, something like this happens, and I realize how much more fascinating it is not to know." He rolled backward in the doorway, admitting me.

I declined anything to eat, but Cicero made us both tea, and we went into his bedroom.

"Who's this?" I said.

"Who?" Cicero asked.

I was looking at the photos on the low bookcase in his bedroom. "Him," I said, tapping what looked like the oldest of the photos, in weathered black-and-white.

It was a young man on a horse. The man, a teenage boy, really, wore a broad-brimmed hat and what might have been his nicest clothes, dark trousers and a cream-colored collarless s.h.i.+rt. The horse was beautiful: obviously nearly as young as the boy, with a dark-brown or black coat that gleamed even in an old photo, neck arched with impatience at being reined in long enough for the photo to be taken.

"That's my grandfather," Cicero said. "In Guatemala."

"How old is he, in the photo?"

"Eighteen," Cicero said. "I never knew him; he died not long after I was born. But I'm told that he loved that horse. Back then, a fast horse was your five-liter. I guess it wasn't really his, it was the family's. But he thought of the horse as his, until one day he came home to find his father had sold it to pay for his sister's wedding dress."

"No s.h.i.+t?" I said, amused.

"Oh, yes. He was just beside himself," Cicero said. "At least, that's how the story goes."

"Were you born there?" I asked.

"In Guatemala? No," Cicero said. "Here in America. My parents wouldn't even let Ulises and me learn Spanish until we were well grounded in English."

"You know," I said, "we were going to get back to the story of your brother, and we never did."

Cicero picked up an unrelated photo on his bookcase, one in which he seemed to be hiking with a female friend, and set it back down. "There's not much to tell," he said.

His pointless action with the photo told me differently, and I waited for the rest.

"Ulises moved here with a girlfriend," Cicero went on. "She quit him eventually, but he liked it here, so he stayed. They sent me up here to live with him about four years ago, after rehab, and he died a year after that."

It wasn't the end; in fact, it was a prologue.

"Ulises was a baker," Cicero said. "He had screwy hours, starting work at two in the morning, at a little bakery in St. Paul."

Immediately I knew the story Cicero was going to tell.

"The neighborhood wasn't the best. There was some drug activity there," Cicero said. "One night, as Ulises was going to work, there was an APB in Ramsey County for a drug suspect who'd taken a shot at some cops. Ulises drove a car similar to the one they were looking for. A couple of plainclothes Narcotics officers saw him parking behind the bakery and they braced him as he got out of the car."

"And they shot him," I said. You didn't have to be a cop to have heard about it.

Cicero nodded. "They said afterward that he ignored commands to raise his hands and reached for a weapon instead. Both of them opened fire. They hit him seven times and killed him."

"I remember," I said. "It was awful."

"I believe them when they say he was reaching into his jacket. Ulises was probably reaching for his wallet. They were in street clothes, in a bad neighborhood, at two in the morning, pointing guns at him. Ulises probably thought he was being robbed. There was even a newspaper columnist who floated that theory, but the police never lent it any credence at all."

Oh, yes they did, I thought, I thought, just never in public forums. just never in public forums. I remembered the days of heated debate that had gone on in locker rooms and shooting ranges, anywhere cops talked among themselves. I remembered the days of heated debate that had gone on in locker rooms and shooting ranges, anywhere cops talked among themselves.

"They also suggested, early on, that Ulises had ignored their commands because his English wasn't good enough. They had to back down from that idea. English was his first language, just like it was mine, and everyone who knew him knew that." He paused. "Naturally, the review board found no fault with the officers. They went back to work, and a week or so later, I had to move up here."

"I'm so sorry," I said.

"Don't be," Cicero said. "It's not your fault."

"Cicero," I said, "I probably should tell you something."

My lie of omission- about being a cop- no longer rested lightly on my shoulders. I looked over at the photos, found the one of a younger Cicero and his brother. There was something lighter in Ulises's expression. A physician's seriousness informed Cicero's face, even at rest; Ulises looked more easygoing.

"I'm right here," Cicero said patiently.

Come on, Sarah, it's not that hard. Three little words: I'm a cop.

Then we both heard it, the m.u.f.fled shrill sound that was my cell phone ringing in the depths of my shoulder bag. I turned from the photos on the table, shot Cicero an apologetic look, and dug the phone from the bag.

"Sarah?" It was Marlinchen. "I'm sorry to bother you, but-"

"What is it?" I asked, antenna up.

"I think someone's outside the house. Liam heard noises earlier, when he went out to take a break from studying, and I just heard something outside the bathroom window while I was brus.h.i.+ng my teeth. They don't sound like animal noises to me."

I could easily have told her to call the police in her area, but noises outside a house weren't likely to be a top priority, and ten at night wasn't a peak time for staffing at most smaller departments. The Hennessys would likely get a ten-minute visit, sometime in the next two hours. I couldn't leave it at that. The Hennessy kids were my responsibility.

"I'll come over," I said.

Despite her disclaimer- her disclaimer-They don't sound like animal noises to me- I thought that Marlinchen had probably heard whatever had killed s...o...b..ll. If it had hunted on their grounds before, there was no reason it wouldn't come back. But it was quite dark as I got close to the Hennessy home, and I didn't blame Marlinchen for being afraid.

She met me at the door, Colm and Liam not far behind her. "Thank you for coming out," she said quickly.

"You're welcome. I'm going to make a quick check of the house, then the grounds," I told her.

"The house?" Marlinchen said, startled. "The noises were outside."

"Are you sure all the doors have been locked all night long?"

"I think... I guess... ," Marlinchen tried to answer, but she wasn't quite sure, and her two brothers remained silent.

"Better to check," I said. "Where's Donal, by the way?"

"Sleeping," Marlinchen said. "I sent him to bed a half hour ago."

I checked on him first, and his chest rose and fell evenly in the light that spilled across his bed when I opened the door. Moving inside, I checked the closets as quietly as possible, and under both the beds. Nothing.

I went through the darkened upstairs rooms, then the downstairs. A door in the kitchen led down to a bas.e.m.e.nt, and I shone my flashlight into its shadowy corners. There was some old furniture stored down there, and two mattresses. A smell of dust and concrete hung in the air. It wasn't orderly, but I found nothing that suggested a recent intruder.

When I'd finished with the house, I went out into the garage, where Hugh's Suburban stood. There was no one hiding under it, and the closets held only canned food and camping equipment, and a few dusty old bottles of wine.

Outside, I went to the broad back porch and dropped to my hands and knees, looking between a wide gap in the boards through which a human might easily have squeezed. Underneath was nothing but an expanse of dust and small nondescript rocks. I walked out to the fence line on either side of the house, poked around the bushes at the property's edge, looked under the small wooden dock at the lake's edge. No broken branches, no footprints to be seen. The only thing that was out of place was the little rise of overturned-and-smoothed soil near the willow tree, the resting place of the late s...o...b..ll.

Last, I went to the detached garage. The door was unlocked. Stepping inside, I pointed the flashlight beam into the darkness, and jumped.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h," I whispered. At first glance, it had looked like a body hanging from the rafters: a heavy bag. To the right of it was a weight bench. Colm's gym, as the other kids called it.

The rest of the building was taken up by a car, an early-eighties BMW. Underneath a layer of dust, the paint seemed to be a deep bottle green. Its windows were likewise filmed with dust, like a corpse's eyes, and all four tires were flat. It wasn't damaged in any other way, but it had clearly been years since it was driven. I pointed the flashlight at a window, and the beam pierced the light layer of dust to show nothing out of the ordinary: pale-brown leather seats, all empty. Spiders had gotten inside, their webs threaded across the bars of the headrests and dangled loosely from the ceiling handgrips.

"Everything looks fine," I told Marlinchen when she answered my knock at the door. "I think you probably heard an animal of some kind."

Marlinchen looked sheepish. "Maybe what happened to s...o...b..ll has me on edge," she said.