Mission Flats

29

Friday morning. At seven-thirty there was a polite, brushy knock at the door, and Caroline came in, carrying a shopping bag. ‘Good morning,’ she said. Surprised to see her father, she made a face. ‘Sorry to wake you.’

‘No, no,’ I said.

‘How’s the cabeza?’ She made a shampooing motion at the back of her head.

‘I’m okay.’

I scrunched the blanket in my lap to cover a daybreak hard-on, which threatened to poke its head out of the sheets like a squirrel. The tumescence was less a matter of sexual excitement than simple hydraulics, the usual wind-sock action of sleeping men. But it triggered memories of Caroline’s body, which only made things worse. I studied her outfit, tried to see through it. She was wearing another vaguely bohemian skirt suit, this one with a five-button jacket open at the throat. There was nothing provocative or revealing about it. The skirt was hemmed an inch below the knees. The jacket revealed just a narrow V of skin with tiny, lovely freckles.

Caroline started unpacking some new clothes from the shopping bag. There was a halting quality in her movements, as if she did not want to be here, as if the whole errand was distasteful to her.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ I said.

‘I didn’t expect to be here.’

‘But you had a change of heart?’

‘No,’ she sniffed. ‘It seems you have a new friend.’

‘Oh?’

‘Harold Braxton is asking for you.’

‘What?’

‘We picked him up last night. He won’t talk. He says he wants you, and if you won’t come, he wants Max Beck.’

‘But Lowery told me I was off the case.’

‘You are off the case.’ She crossed her arms, tipped her head forward, and eyed me from beneath her brow, the stern-mother look. ‘Are you saying you don’t want to do it?’

‘No, it’s just… I’m surprised you’re asking.’

‘Look, Ben, this isn’t exactly the way we’d want to do it. But we don’t have enough to hold him, so we don’t have much choice. If bringing you in to do the interrogation gets Braxton to talk, then that’s what we have to do.’

‘Even though I’m a suspect too.’

‘We’ll be listening. To both of you.’

‘Why should I help you?’

‘If you get anything out of him, it could only be to your benefit.’

‘And if I don’t?’

She did not answer.

I asked John Kelly what he thought.

‘It has to be your decision, Ben. If you decided to stay out of it, no one could blame you.’

‘I guess it’s already too late for that, isn’t it?’

‘Good,’ Caroline said decisively. ‘Kurth is waiting outside to drive us.’ She tossed me a shirt from the little pile she’d made. It was a conservative white button-down oxford. ‘Your shirt was all bloody. I got this for you.’

‘Thank you. What do I owe you?’

‘You get Braxton to talk, we’ll call it even.’

Her tone was mechanical, unfamiliar, cool.

‘Caroline, can we talk for a minute?’

‘We have nothing to talk about.’

John Kelly began to excuse himself, but his daughter told him to stay put.

‘Alright then,’ I said. ‘Okay Thank you for the shirt.’

She pinched out a little half smile that was pained and sardonic in equal measure. ‘Usually,’ she observed, ‘it’s the defense lawyer who puts the murderer in a clean shirt.’