Beyond Suspicion

43

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Saturday was moving day for Jack and Cindy. Theo was supposed to have dropped by at noon to help with the big stuff, but by one o’clock he was looking like a no-show.

Jack was hauling boxes up the front steps of their new rental house when his cell phone rang. He was pretty sure it was Theo, but the caller’s voice was drowned out by loud rap music playing in the background. It was one of the few forms of artistic expression that Jack just didn’t get. The lyrics, especially. Junkies in the gutter all better off dead, Blow-Job Betty sure gives good head-rhymes for the sake of rhymes, as if the next line might as well be I like to drive barefoot like my Stone Age friend Fred.

“Can you turn the music down, please?” Jack shouted into the telephone.

The noise cut off, and Theo’s one-word response confirmed that it was indeed him on the other end of the line. “Turkey.”

“How can you listen to that stuff?”

“Because I like it.”

“I understand that you like it. The implicit part of my question is why do you like it?”

“And the implicit part of my answer is what the fuck’s it to you? Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good.”

“So,” said Jack. “What’s up?”

“What do you mean, what’s up? You called me.”

“No. I’m quite certain-oh, what does it matter? When you getting your butt over here?”

“Not today, man. Gotta work. I was just calling to tell you about my meeting with the folks from Viatical Solutions.”

“What?”

“After our meeting with Katrina the Snitch, we both agreed that the only way to find out who might have killed Jessie Merrill is to find out who the money people are behind the company. So I met with them.”

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Just a little digging, that’s all.”

“Theo, I mean this. I don’t want you messing around with these people.”

“Too late. I gotta do it, man. You got me off death row. I can’t go around owing you forever.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

The rap music was back on, even louder than before. Theo shouted, “What did you say?”

“I said, you don’t owe-”

Gonna find that motha’ an’ pump him full a’ lead.

“Sorry, Jacko, can’t hear you, man.”

Jack tried once more, but the music was gone, and so was Theo. “Damn it, Theo,” he said as he hung up the phone. “Sometimes you help too much.”

Jack went back inside the house. The rental furniture was stacked in the middle of the living room, and it was up to him and his own aching back to rearrange things the way Cindy wanted them. “And sometimes you help too little,” he said, still thinking of Theo.

“What?” asked Cindy.

“Nothing. Just a little sole-practitioner syndrome.”

“Huh?”

“Talking to myself.”

She gave him a funny look. “Oooo-kay. How long has that been going on?”

“Long enough for me to think it’s normal.”

“We should get out more.” Cindy gave him a little smile, then returned to her unpacking in the kitchen.

The move was actually quite manageable. The old Swyteck residence was still a crime scene, and the prosecutor had released only limited portions of it, which basically meant that Jack and Cindy could take to their new house only those things that the forensic team had determined were irrelevant to their investigation of Jessie’s death. They’d been able to take a few things with them to Cindy’s mother’s. Earlier that day, a police officer had met Jack at their old house and told him exactly what more he could take. It amounted to an additional thirty-seven boxes, a television set, some clothes, a few small appliances, and their stereo, all of which Jack had packed into a U-Haul van and hauled out by his lonesome. Cindy just didn’t want to go back there, and the prosecutor had refused to allow more than one person inside the house anyway.

Jack was up to box twenty-two on the unloading end, moving at a fairly good clip. But Cindy was falling way behind him on the unpacking, still working on the first wave of boxes they’d brought from her mother’s. Jack flopped on the rented sofa and closed his eyes, more tired than he’d realized. He was almost asleep when he heard a shrill cry from Cindy.

“Jack!”

He sat bolt upright, but he was still only half-awake.

“Jack, come here!”

He got his bearings and ran to the kitchen. She was seated at the counter surrounded by open boxes and scattered packing material.

“What is it?”

“Look,” she said. “Our wedding album.”

Photo albums, home videos, and the like were among the things they’d taken from their house long ago in the first wave of personal possessions that the prosecutor had released from the crime scene. Jack glanced over her shoulder, and the sight sickened him. “What the hell?”

Cindy flipped from the first page to the second, and then the next. The bride and groom at the altar, Jack and Cindy getting into the white limousine, the two of them stuffing cake into each other’s mouths. All were in the same condition: sliced diagonally from the top left corner to the lower right by a very sharp knife.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

“I don’t know. This is the first I noticed it.”

“Did you check it before we took it from the house?”

“No… I don’t know. I don’t remember. I can’t believe she did this,” said Cindy, her voice quaking.

“I can.”

She looked up and asked, “What should we do?”

“Put it down, gently.”

She laid it on the table.

“Don’t touch another page,” said Jack. “Our wedding album has just become Exhibit A.”

“As evidence of what?”

His eyes locked on the slashed photograph before him. He was beginning to think that perhaps Rosa was right, that Jessie had killed herself. Or that at the very least she’d been driven to suicide.

Or that somebody had done an awfully convincing job of making it look like suicide.

“I wish I knew,” he said.