Deadlocked

Chapter 17

Mason hit the street. Waves of heat radiated off the sunbaked pavement, humidity rising in his path like a city swamp. He waded through it to his car parked around the corner a block away, his shirt sticking to his back like a poultice.

Three young black kids, barefoot, wearing shorts, no shirts, struggled with the plug on a fire hydrant, tiptoeing on the searing curb. An elderly black woman sat on her wooden stoop wearing a sun-faded flowered shift, begging shade from a bent tree. She fanned herself, watching the kids, a dog flat out on the brown grass next to her. The chrome doorhandle on his car sizzled, the leather steering wheel too hot to hold, air inside the car stiff. Mason was oblivious to the kids and the woman who stared at him as he passed.

He jerked the key in the ignition and banged on the gas. The car jumped out from the curb, windows down, hot air escaping as the air conditioner played catch-up. Heading east on Linwood toward Mary Kowalczyk's neighborhood, he tried to make sense of Claire's silence, deciding that Nick Byrnes had been right. Claire was trying to protect him from something.

Nick's parents had been murdered, the story of a car accident a thin cover for the brutal truth. There was no doubt Mason's parents had been killed when their car left the road. Was that it, then? Was his parents' accident not an accident at all? Did the person who left the rock on his parents' headstone do so out of guilt? Mason wouldn't let the questions go unanswered.

He called Mary again as he drove, hanging up on her answering machine, uneasy that she'd been gone all day. For a woman who, by her own admission, had few places to go, she'd been gone a long time. Mason pulled up in front of her house just as the temperature inside his car was approaching the no sweat zone.

Taking the steps two a time, he found no signs that Mary was at home. The curtains were drawn as they had been on his last visit. The house was silent, no footsteps answering when he rang the bell and rapped hard against the door. Her mailbox was mounted next to the door, the day's slim offerings still there-a catalog, an electric bill, and a sweepstakes offer.

Mason jiggled the doorknob but a deadlock bolt held it firm. Leaning into the picture window on the front of the house, he couldn't find a seam in the curtain to see inside. He dialed Mary's number again from his cell phone but her recorded voice repeated the instructions to leave a message.

He circled around to the back of the house where the gate on the chain link fence hung open on rusted hinges. A worn path led to a small screened-in porch, its door unlocked, the fine mesh black screen giving Mason cover as he tried the back door to the house, giving it his shoulder, the door yelping as the weak lock surrendered. Stepping into the kitchen, he called her name, softly at first, then loud. No one answered, the house was deaf.

He'd feel like a fool if she suddenly came home, trying to explain that he'd broken and entered because he was afraid that Whitney King might do her harm. He'd feel worse than a fool if he found her stuffed in a closet, his fears too real, his timing too late.

The house was small, the first floor cool, the second steamy, as she had said. The basement was dank and musty, the floor an unfinished slab, no signs of a freshly dug grave. Mason made fun of himself at the thought. The whole place was empty. It was clean and tidy, her clothes in closets and drawers. Her suitcase was under the bed and food for a week was in the refrigerator. It was the way she would have left everything if she was coming back.

Mason didn't know what else to do, so he sat in her front room and waited, searching the closets again when he got impatient, listening to her answering machine, his message the only one. He checked his voice mail for a message from Mary. Finding none, he paced in the small house until the sun retreated, then drew back the curtains and watched the street. An occasional car passed by; the street was quiet. The night wore on as Mason sat in the front room, kept company by the fish in the aquarium.

He turned off the lights and sat in the dark, thin illumination leaking in from the street. His eyes adjusted to the interior dusk, shapes and shadows visible in silhouette. He imagined Mary sleeping on the couch in the only cool room in the house, wondering how the poor people got by.

He thought about what she had done for Ryan. How she had given him life, then tried to save it and, when she couldn't, insisted on saving his memory. He thought about Elizabeth Byrnes and how she had saved Nick's life by covering him with a quilt and how he had honored his parents' memory by demanding justice for them. Last, he thought about his parents and their violent deaths. He had accepted their fate, demanding nothing, not even the truth. When he measured himself against Mary Kowalcyk and Nick Byrnes, he came up short.

The night passed as he took inventory of his life and those of his clients. The darkness didn't conceal a thing.

He held Mary's phone in his lap. It didn't ring. No one knocked at the door. She lived by herself. People left her alone. She was gone and no one would miss her. Except for him.