helpless and they’re angry at us for being the stronger sex. So they spend their lives trying to destroy us.”
When Danny looked doubtful, Hayes stepped up the pressure. “Just look at your own life. I’m betting there’s a woman there somewhere. Someone who used you, took your money, enjoyed her own life without a thought to getting a job, then left you when things got tough and you needed her. She walked away and manipulated the courts and the system to bleed you dry. Am I right?”
Danny had grown still and his eyes were far away. A silence descended. I could hear the clock on the wall ticking. I could hear Danny’s heart beating. The air had grown thin and every object in the room seemed to appear in ultra-relief. My hearing became acute. I could understand conversations on the other side of the room, I could hear the clink of pans in the kitchen.
It was as if the entire universe was swirling around the eye of a hurricane, and I sat right in the middle of that eye, watching a man weigh his soul. His very salvation balanced on the edge of a razor and the rest of his life depended on what he now chose.
“Detective Bonaventura?” Hayes asked, his voice sounding kind. “I apologize sincerely. Did I hit a nerve?”
Danny shook his head as if to free himself from the past. “No. I was just thinking.” He looked up at Hayes. “I think I have a way to find out when Bobby Daniels gets released from prison.”
“Excellent.” When Hayes smiled, a darkness descended over me. Danny had chosen. Danny was lost. “Absolutely excellent.”
Chapter 21
I spent the rest of the night outside the Hayes house, watching to see if he would go out in search of someone to take his frustrations out on. The next morning, I went in search of Danny, knowing that Alan Hayes would not hesitate to start using him. I had no success. He did not show up for work and I could not find him at any of the usual bars. I backtracked through my memory for every sorry dive we had ever sought refuge in and checked them out. No dice. And though he had been estranged from his family for years, I even stopped by the house where Danny’s ex-wife and his son still lived. The yard was in disarray and the house looked neglected. I knew Barbara was working two jobs to keep her and Danny Jr. afloat. I guess some things just had to slide.
It made me sad to see the deterioration of the yard, a once-tidy lawn where we had sat on summer nights, grilling steaks and raising beers to the future, boasting about our latest successes in solving a case. Danny’s life had slid into the bottle right before his divorce and drowned in it soon after. But I could not pinpoint exactly where it had all gone wrong for me, when my life had taken the last, irrevocable wrong turn. Somehow, when I was not looking, it just had. Perhaps that was just the way it was, that no one ever recognized a moment for what it was—and perhaps it was kinder that we were allowed to hold on to our illusions for just a little bit longer after the point of no return.
I know it had happened to Danny, too, that his life had slipped away from him when he wasn’t looking and that he drank to stave off the realization that it was now too late to get it back—and that nothing would turn out as he had planned. But now? It was one thing to give up on your own life. It was another to destroy the lives of others because you were angry about your own. Oh, it was far worse. Nothing good would come of this. Nothing.
I watched the empty house for a few hours, remembering what had been. A woodpecker lived high in a tree next door and kept flying down to test the tin pipe that dangled from the overflowing gutters to the ground. With a rat-tat-tat , he’d probe the metal, fly off indignantly, only to return and try again. I could not decide whether I admired his perseverance or thought he was the stupidest damn bird I had ever seen.
Eventually, I gave up and wandered over to the apartment complex where Danny had rented a unit after his wife kicked him out. Though no one was home, baby