| |
Tommy understood the irony of it: a cop, two hands anxiously gripping the wheel, trying through a haze of alcohol to focus on the road. He meant to only eat a burger and some cheese fries, but then he ordered a beer. And another. And another. He wasn’t proud of it. Or rather, he didn’t think he would be in the morning.
He might not be over the legal limit, he reasoned with himself, and he wouldn’t be going far. All excuses he’d heard a million times from a million different tourists. Somehow, they seemed truer when he told them to himself. He’d never had a drinking problem, but the day had stolen his resolve. It happened sometimes. He was only human.
He didn’t know why he drove there, but as he pulled his Crown Vic along the curb and stared at Stacy’s house, he regretted the decision. What did he expect from her? He couldn’t hang his worries in this place. She couldn’t handle the weight. But she told him to keep an eye on Emma, and now he had new information.
Across the street, someone rummaged in the back of a truck.
“Well if it isn’t Newt Goodreaux!” Tommy exclaimed as he stumbled out of the car, internally assessing whether he’d come across as a little too excited. Tommy Wallace was a jolly drunk.
Newt stood up quickly, banging his head against the steel cross bar of his fishing pole rack. The clang echoed through the neighborhood.
“T-T-Tommy.”
Did Newt have a stutter? Tommy couldn’t remember him ever having a stutter before.
“Finally cleanin’ up this old piece of crap?” Tommy asked.
Newt rubbed the back of his head, a sour expression on his face. He glanced down at a bottle of bleach in his hand and forced a smile. “Yessir. Need some extra money. Gonna rent it out.”
Tommy nodded his approval. “Good plan.”
He crossed in front of his car and started down the walkway to the familiar blue door, barely noticing that Newt practically ran inside. Tommy’s knocks fell muted on the door, dispersing into silence almost as quickly as he made them.
While waiting for Stacy to answer, he tried to compose himself. She’d seen Joe come home drunk and wild-eyed far too many times. Tommy couldn’t be that way with her. He imagined himself a rock, steadfast and unmoving. A place where Stacy could lean until she caught her breath.
No answer. He cupped his hand above his eyes and peered into the elongated window next to the door. Everything looked normal, in its place. Neat and clean, as always. Lights shone throughout the house.
A glance towards the driveway revealed Stacy’s car, so signs pointed away from her being out on errands. Not that she left on errands very often anymore.
He knocked again.
Tommy looked at his watch this time, willing himself to focus. After a full minute with no answer, he tried the handle, twisting it open and parting the door. He peered through the foyer and into the living room, trying to make sure every little thing stood in place. He shook his head and told himself the alcohol was just making him paranoid. She might just be in the shower. Still, it seemed atypical for her to keep the door unlocked.
Creeping inside, he turned down the hallway, taking note of the half-empty glass of tea on the end table in the living room. Stacy kept things tidy; he’d never known her to leave glasses lying around.
By the time he made it to the first bedroom, the unnerving silence goaded him into drawing his gun, but he tucked it back into the holster almost immediately. With it out, he’d only scare Stacy when he found her.
Each step made Tommy feel more uneasy. Everything seemed so normal. Like she’d vanished in the middle of a typical evening at home.
“Stacy?” he hollered for the first time, realizing that he should have led with that.
No answer.
Tommy picked up his pace, moving past the spare bathroom into the master bedroom. He flipped on the light. Nothing out of the ordinary. The quilt lay stretched across the queen-sized bed with military-like precision. The master bathroom was empty, too, though water droplets clung to the sides of the garden tub. Tommy squeezed the towel on the rack. Still wet.
Tommy considered that she might be outside, tending to the yard, but that job had largely fallen to him in recent months, so he doubted it. With no reason to suspect anything strange, Tommy felt foolish, but then wondered if maybe he’d finally developed the “gut” so many other cops talked about. He felt it in his bones. Stacy needed help.
With the haze of the alcohol starting to evaporate, Tommy moved faster through the house, the backyard, the front, his dreadful suspicions hardening. Outside, he peered down the street in both directions just in case she’d gone for a walk.
He stopped in the driveway and considered his options. Reporting her missing felt premature, and even if he did, he’d catch the case anyway. All matters related to the Hamptons fell to Tommy — an unspoken understanding between him and the chief.
A flash of light caught his eye, bouncing through narrow slits of the boarded-up windows across the street. Tommy stalked across the narrow stretch of pavement. Maybe Newt knew where Stacy had gone.
He didn’t bother knocking before pulling back the screen and stepping into the house through the already-open door. Cloaked in shadow, the room was mostly empty. The late afternoon light silhouetted a few chairs, some beer bottles on the kitchen-adjacent counter, and a baseball bat leaning against the hearth of the fireplace. The caustic smell of bleach assaulted his nostrils.
A flashlight shone into the room from a door on his right. Tommy moved his hand to the butt of his gun.
“Tommy,” Newt said, his eyes wide and alert in the dim light. “Careful there. I’m cleanin’ the carpets.”
Tommy took a step back, glancing down to see his footprint outlined in the white carpet. It seemed a strange color choice, but as he widened his field of view, he realized the white was localized to the area directly in front of the door.
“With bleach?” Tommy asked.
Newt didn’t answer, but his eyes stayed carefully trained on Tommy. Newt Goodreaux could often be described as energetic, but he seemed nervous and defensive now.
“You ok, Newt?”
Newt finally dropped his eyes and nodded, the light bouncing up and down across the living room. “Yessir. Just, uh, the bleach gettin’ to me, I guess. Been working on it a while.”
Tommy wished for his own flashlight, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with Newt being the only source of clarity.
“Why you using bleach to clean carpets, Newt?”
“So much work to do.” Newt changed the subject. “I underestimated how much work there was. Why you here again, Tommy?”
The question stung, reminding Tommy that he had come to find Stacy. Newt being too damn stupid to know how to properly clean carpets hardly seemed important. “Looking for Stacy. Thought maybe she’d come over here to visit. Or maybe you saw her leave?”
Newt inflated, almost imperceptibly, to take up more of the doorway into the bedroom. “Uh. N-no. I ain’t seen her. Maybe she went down to the store.”
Tommy cocked his head towards the door. “Her car’s in the drive.”
“Oh,” Newt said before trailing off. “Well, she ain’t here. I need to get back to my cleanin’, if you don’t mind.”
Tommy felt the distinct impression that Newt wanted him gone. Newt was a slimy asshole, sure, taking advantage of tourists when he could, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Yet, Tommy still felt like he’d latched on to the very end of a thread that led somewhere significant.
“Newt. Listen. What’s got you all riled up, man? What are you not telling me?”
Tommy could see Newt’s Adams apple bob up and down as he swallowed hard. Time slowed as the two men eyed each other in the wan light.
“Sorry, Tommy,” Newt said finally. “I just... I still feel bad about that kid, ya know. I know it wasn’t my fault, and these things just happen, but I feel so bad about it. I didn’t mean for nobody to get hurt.”
Tommy didn’t expect that answer. He’d talked to Newt after Tanner’s disappearance and come up with no reason to hold Newt responsible. Even then, Newt hadn’t expressed the regret that he did now.
Newt continued before Tommy could reply. “Just trying to keep busy. I know it don’t make no sense.” He ran the flashlight across the living room. “This gives me something to do, ya know?”
As the light washed across the room, Tommy’s peripheral vision caught stains along the wood-grain of the baseball bat leaning against the hearth. Streaks of red. Paint? Maybe, but the drops and splatters looked much more like a crime scene.
Like blood.
Tommy jerked the gun from its holster and pointed it straight at Newt, knowing that his actions might be premature. Newt jumped and threw his hands in the air, losing his grip on the flashlight and dropping it on the wet carpet.
“Jesus, Tommy! What’re ya doin’?”
Tommy nodded down to the flashlight. “Kick that over here.”
Newt hesitated at first, then nudged the flashlight toward him. Tommy kept his gun pointed at Newt as he knelt to pick up the flashlight with his left hand and shone it directly on Newt’s frightened, worried face.
“What’s going on, Newt?”
Newt protested, “I told you. Just cleanin’ the house up.”
“What’s with the bat?”
Newt turned his head to look towards the fireplace, causing Tommy to tighten his grip on the handle of the gun. The rattle of the gun seemed threatening and loud, even to Tommy. Newt didn’t answer the question. He hung his head, closed his eyes and pivoted one of his feet back, taking up less of the doorway. Tommy braced for sudden movements but forced himself to give Newt the benefit of the doubt. His hands still up, Newt cocked his head into the bedroom.
“Back up. Against the wall over there,” Tommy said as he motioned to the back of the room.
Newt complied and Tommy followed into the room.
“I swear to God, Tommy,” Newt blubbered. “I didn’t do it. I wasn’t even here, I tell ya. I promise. It wasn’t me.”
Tommy swept the flashlight across the room, taking in the white splotches where Newt had already bleached the carpet ... as well as other dark stains he hadn’t gotten to yet.
Then, he saw the bed, where a blue-and-white comforter lay stained with what Tommy immediately assumed to be blood.
“Please, Tommy—”
Noticing his gun had drifted, Tommy centered it back on Newt’s chest. “Shut up, Newt.”
Handcuffs dangled from the headboard. Tommy tried to piece the scene back together in his head. Someone tied up to the bed. Beaten. Bloodied. Worse?
Tommy spun towards Newt, bringing his flashlight-hand up to help support the gun. Newt crossed his hands in front of his face. “What did you do to Stacy, Newt?” Tommy yelled.
He could see one of Newt’s big brown eyes through a slit in his fingers. “I told ya, Tommy. I didn’t do nothin’. I wasn’t even here.”
Tommy took a step forward and rattled his gun, going against all his training to remain at a safe distance from a potential threat. Newt jumped again and Tommy very nearly pulled the trigger. As his finger tensed, he realized that he’d been compromised; that he couldn’t trust himself to make rational choices.
“I swear it. It’s true,” Newt whimpered.
“Is she even alive?” Tommy asked.
Newt lowered his hands and nodded into the blinding light. “Yessir. I think so. I think she is.”
“Where is she?”
“I-I dunno.”
“Turn around,” Tommy demanded.
Newt turned around and put his hands behind his back, resigned to his fate. Feeling along his belt, Tommy remembered that he’d thrown his cuffs into the backseat of the Crown Vic when he went off duty. With no restraints, he grabbed hard onto one of Newt’s wrists and twisted his hand back, ignoring Newt’s yelp of pain.
Tommy leaned over to Newt’s ear to make sure that the bastard could hear him clearly.
“Newt Goodreaux. You’re under arrest.”
