A Visible Darkness - By Jonathon King Page 0,56

then when his grip loosens, steal what he has. Eddie wasn’t stupid.

“I do not know,” he said to the doctor.

“Eddie, there’s a problem,” Marshack said, patting the big man’s hand again. But the hand stayed.

“What? I did my job. I need my money,” Eddie said. “I did what we said. I need what’s mine.”

The psychiatrist was quiet, thinking over the possibilities that might be running through his former patient’s head.

“The woman’s not dead, Eddie. She’s still here. The old man’s gone but Ms. Thompson is still alive. The police came, Eddie. She isn’t dead.”

Eddies first reaction was to think “liar.” They always lied to him. But his second reaction was to replay the night in his head. The pillow on Ms. Thompson’s face. The old man coming out of the bathroom. Eddie’s hand on his throat, feeling the bones fold. He’d made sure, damn sure, that the old guy was gone and then laid him out on the bed. Ms. Thompson did not move. She was gone, too. He was trying to see it in his head. No one could lay that still, that quiet, specially the old ladies.

He could feel the doctor’s eyes on him.

“I do not know,” he finally said. “But I need my money, Mr. Harold.”

The doctor could feel the pressure on his arm. The big man’s grip tightening with tension.

“OK, Eddie, sure. It was a mistake. We’re still friends, right?” He worked his free hand into his jacket pocket and came out with his wallet. He opened the fold and riffled the bills inside with his thumb. In the dim light Eddie could see the corners of twenties flashing.

“Hundreds,” Eddie said, his tone gone flat. “I got to have hundreds.”

The big man’s hand tightened again when he said it. His blunt fingertips had found the artery running under Marshack’s biceps. They cut off the flow of blood, and the doctor was losing feeling down in his hand.

“Sure, Eddie. Sure. What was I thinking? In the glove box, the envelope, like always.”

Marshack tried to move his arm, to reach for the passenger side. Eddie let his grip loose and the doctor reached over and twisted the lock.

24

I found Richards’s house, rolled slowly past and pulled a U-turn at the intersection and parked across the street. It was a quiet neighborhood of small bungalow-style homes built back in the ’40s in what was then a small southern town growing up at the mouth of a river to the ocean. The older houses were mostly wood clapboard with enclosed screen porches and they all sat up on short pilings to get them up off the moist ground. I could smell the oleander in the air and could make out the shapes of live oak canopies backlit by moonlight.

It was almost eleven. I’d been here before. I’d convinced her I was a restaurant idiot and taken her to dinner, her choice. We’d gone to movies she suggested. There was the one with the kid who sees ghosts. The ending had made her quiet afterward. Finally, while we were sitting in a coffee shop afterward, she asked if I believed in such things. “Everybody’s got ghosts,” I’d said. Brilliant, Freeman. When I’d dropped her off her good-bye caught in her throat.

A few weeks after I’d been late making it in from the river and we’d missed the start of a show she had tickets for. But she didn’t seem to mind and we ended up sitting here on the back porch, talking about the past. The cop stuff was inevitable, but she avoided the subject of her husband and I stayed away from my family. Part of the wall was mine. Part was hers.

I rapped lightly on the screen door and waited. Nothing. I knocked a bit harder but it sounded like a hammer in the quiet. Through a window I could see soft light in a back room, so I stepped off the porch and found the wooden gate to the yard. I flipped the metal latch to make some noise and followed a path of flagstones. I could see the glow of aqua light before rounding the corner, and then her silhouette against the light of the pool. She was running an aluminum pole with a net on the end over the surface and was wearing shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt.

“A little late for maintenance,” I said.

My voice made her jump, but only a little.

“I thought you’d stood me up, Freeman,” she said, turning her head but keeping a