Holy Death Read online

  Mrs. Hoeck took her time, and the staff waited her out. It took Ginny a while to settle down after visits from her mother. They’d explained to her mother over and over, “She’s very anxious after your visits.”

  But her mother always said the same thing. “I’ll pray with her. That should make everything all right.”

  It never did. Made it much worse. Made her daughter believe wishes might come true. And so Ginny would wander the room, waiting up all night for the man who would never come. No use telling her mother, though. It was almost as if she wanted Ginny to stay this way instead of helping her get better. Maybe it was why Mrs. Hoeck kept reminding Ginny about her suicide attempts, about Ginny’s own daughter, Savannah, asking about Mommy, and the news about “that man,” the one she would never call by name, as if keeping him alive in Ginny’s restless mind was supposed to be healthy. The nurses thought she did it to keep her hooks in.

  When the doctor finally confronted Mrs. Hoeck about it, she said, “He’s a demon. The moment she forgets he’s there, torturing her spirit, is the moment he wins.”

  Jesus Christ indeed. But as long as the insurance kept paying to keep her, the doctors and nurses would do their best to undo the damage while Ginny’s mother would come rip their stitches out the next afternoon.

  But the one thing Mrs. Hoeck had never told Ginny, the one thing she had forbidden the staff to tell her about under threat of lawsuit and pulling her daughter from the facility, was that her son, Hamilton Lafitte, had died. A ten-year-old boy, killed in a prison riot in North Dakota. As far as Mrs. Hoeck was concerned, regardless of how much it held back her progress, that information would never, ever be given to Ginny.

  The funny thing was, Ginny had forgotten she had a boy at all.

  So another visit, another three hours of nearly wordless Ginny, listening to her mother ramble on, judgmental, sarcastic, indignant, as she kept Ginny up to date on the family, the church, and the awful state of America thanks to “President” Obama. It’s not that Ginny wouldn’t talk. She would, sometimes. She answered questions during the day. Simple things—what she wanted to eat, what she wanted to watch on TV, what music she wanted to listen to—but not much else. Never on her own initiative. Only yeses and nos, nods and shakes. But to Mrs. Hoeck, it was as if she was carrying on a full conversation with Ginny, never stopping for a response. The woman must have imagined her daughter was talking to her, making more than a few nurses wonder if they were taking care of the wrong family member.

  After all, Mrs. Hoeck was the one who had watched her grandson die in a cold, soulless prison. She was the one who had been nearly raped by an inmate. She was the one who had been forced to escape through a hole in the wall and climb a fence topped with razor wire during a blizzard. She was the one who cradled Ham’s broken head in her lap as they raced to the hospital, far too late.

  Who could blame her for having a screw loose? Who could blame her for embracing the Old Testament’s God of vengeance rather than the Jesus she wouldn’t shut up about?

  Who could blame her for passing along her hate and despair to her only daughter now that Lafitte had been responsible for the death of her son, her grandson, and her daughter’s sanity? Ginny’s father had shut himself down, married to his wife in name only. The only reason he stuck around was because he was too old to divorce her, and because he wanted to help raise Savannah, somehow shield her from her grandmother’s influence.

  After another marathon visit, the nurse waiting at the station reading Rachael Ray’s magazine until the frigid Jesus-bitch passed by, not even a “thank you” or a “good night,” the nurse counted to ten and then walked down to Ginny’s room. She found her as expected, in her cozy chair, wrapped tight in her satin robe, wide-eyed and rocking.

  “Saw your mom today?”

  Ginny nodded. Didn’t look at the nurse.

  “Did you have a nice visit?”

  “Yeah.”

  The nurse gathered the wrapping paper from the floor. Always wrapping paper, always gifts. Slippers and magazines, gospel CDs, Christian novels, ones Ginny never read. They had told Mrs. Hoeck to stop bringing so much stuff. But she kept on, and the nurse kept collecting it all, adding it to the box in the closet.

  “Are you tired? Need a nap?”

  Nothing. The nurse had her back to Ginny, though. She looked back over her shoulder. “I said, are you tired?”

  Eyes closed tight. Ginny shook her head. She had petulant little-girl face.

  Great, another long night. “That’s okay, hon. That’s okay. Whenever you’re ready.” The nurse was forty-two, a single mother of a twenty-year-old son with two DUIs already, a maxed-out credit card with another one getting fuller by the month, and she hadn’t had any sex she could remember in two years—and only one time she couldn’t remember, but it must not have been any good, from the look of him the next morning.

  So fine, another night of pretending to be Ginny Lafitte’s best pal, all the while hoping she would fall asleep, because having to talk to her like she was a helpless child was the top indignity in a job full of indignities. Even more so than cleaning up piss, poop, puke, and jizz. At least those sorts of duties were expected. But something about Ginny...always on the verge of attempting to end her life unless everyone tip-toed, and even that didn’t always help. It was exhausting. The nurse wanted to ask her, “If I hand you the knife, will you do it right this time?” And Ginny would surely nod, eager. But she’d never get it right. She didn’t really want to. She wanted to throw a tantrum and make a mess.

  What a bitch.

  Instead, the nurse sat on the stool opposite Ginny and asked, “Any music today? Your mom brought a new CD.”

  Ginny shook her head, a little grin. Her way of saying, I hate the CDs Mother brings.

  Not even a thank you. Day after day. The nurse let out a sigh and said, “Okay. I’ll drop by later. You know how to buzz me.”

  Back to the station. Back to the rotation. She had a handful of other patients to check on before she could get back to her magazine. There was nothing in it she cared about, but it gave her something to do to keep her out of trouble. There was a patient, a nice man, maybe close to fifty, still with all his hair, thick, dyed-brown. He flirted with her, even though he was in for some sort of alcoholic psychosis episode. Nothing would ever happen. She didn’t want it to happen, and was ninety-seven percent positive she could will her way out of it happening, but she could still fantasize about it. She could still...

  The nurse continued her rounds after Ginny’s room. Around the corner. She passed a delivery man. She was off in her own world, not even thinking about him, but she shook herself out of it and turned. “Excuse me?”

  He stopped.

  “It’s just me right now. I’ll take it.”

  He nodded. Grinned. Walked back over and handed her the envelope.

  “Do I need to sign for it?”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  “Thank you.” Big big smile. A mouthbreather. She checked the label. The envelope was for another department. Idiot. She looked up, but he was already gone.

  Fuck it. She’d wait until Loretta was on shift to take it down herself. If she’d given it back to this one, the damned thing might’ve ended up in Mexico. She tucked it under her arm and headed off to get her nightly dose of compliments and innuendo.

  *

  People tended to overlook delivery men. It didn’t matter if the uniform said UPS or Muscle Max. Didn’t matter how secure the unit was supposed to be. Lafitte was a delivery man with a padded envelope. Another thing about delivery men. Everyone assumed someone else had already cleared them. Otherwise, why would they be in the building at all?

  Especially a sweaty, stinking man covered in road dust. Of course someone had let him in. Ah, the working class. The doctor in the elevator with Lafitte, a resident in scrubs, glanced over from his phone for only a couple of seconds, probably looking forward to the day when he felt less like the delivery man and more like his boss
es.

  It was probably a good thing Lafitte had passed off the envelope to the nurse already. She wouldn’t expect to see him again. He had waited until he saw his ex-mother-in-law leave the building. He had figured out Ginny’s almost-daily routine weeks ago—a few phone calls, a few lies. That was all it took. People wanted to tell you things they shouldn’t. People loved to. They really did. They believed any story you told them. And in case someone did, hang up on them, then call back later when someone else was working.

  The letters helped, too. Those fucking letters she sent him.

  In fact, it was very likely the nurse he had passed the envelope along to was the one who had told him about Ginny’s day-to-day life, mostly so she could have someone to vent about Mrs. Hoeck to. The nurse’s name was probably Tabitha. Or Loretta. One of those.

  Billy Lafitte had laughed and told her, whichever one it was, “I know. I’ve met her, too.”

  Ginny hadn’t haunted his dreams in a long time. He hadn’t seen a picture of her in, fuck, six, seven years? He hoped she was as mute as they said so she wouldn’t scream. Would she even recognize him?

  This was the door, open barely a smidge. Only the dimmest light coming from behind it. He looked left, right, and stepped inside, starting his mental stopwatch. Someone would notice. He didn’t have long. The room was lit only by a nightlight, and the shades kept out most of the sun. Lafitte searched quickly, found the camera, and did his damnedest to keep out of its sight. He pulled out the bottle of spray paint he’d picked up at a store along the interstate, hopped up in front of the plastic square high on the wall, and sprayed once. Another hop, sprayed twice. Enough to block out the camera.

  Only then did he dare turn around.

  Ginny was sitting in her chair, a slightly pouting sort of look. Her frizzy dark hair was much shorter, peppered with too much gray. Her face was lined and pale and tired. She was sad, sunken, and, in his eyes, beautiful. “Billy Lafitte, you’re very, very late.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’ve been waiting, you know.”

  He started towards her, some of her letters crumpled in his hand. He fell to his knees and buried his head in her lap, shaking violently to hold back tears. She took off his cap and stroked his hair.

  “I’ve been waiting a long time.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The tiny bar was in a tiny restaurant in Beaver Bay, Minnesota. It was a two-story prefab building, a vinyl-sided block with three shops. The restaurant had a small sign above the door announcing “Lemon Wolf Café”, flanked with two carved wood sculptures—one bear, one wolf. Across the highway was Lake Superior, right behind a couple of “antique” (junk) shops and the town post office. He liked it here because it was quiet, only three chairs at the bar, no one bothering him, and instead of a bartender, one of the waitresses would stop and refill his shot glass with bourbon, hand him a new bottle of beer, one of those small-craft IPAs that tasted so bad it was hard to get drunk on them.

  But Franklin Rome drank it anyway, each bottle tasting better than the last. He’d usually eat the restaurant’s catch of the day—Lake Trout, most of the time—after downing eight, nine, shots, and five, six beers. He got quiet when he was drunk. Not melancholy. No, melancholy was every day. “Quiet” meant “barely functional”.

  Most of the time, he was the only black person around for at least a good square mile, he thought. Sometimes the only person of color, period, including Indians. He’d been up here on the North Shore since after the jailbreak, after Colleen had fucked up so bad at the prison. She had been good to her word, though, and left him out of it. Some agents had come to talk with him in Minneapolis, and he had lied his ass off about the price on Lafitte’s head, Colleen’s part in all this, and the eighteen grand up for bounty. As soon as he’d heard about the jailbreak, he got online and scattered the money all over, ten times over. Stock trades and PayPal and offshore internet gambling accounts and more. Shit, the original account wasn’t even in his name. He’d found it going through his wife’s papers, a small savings account in her maiden name she must’ve opened as a child or teenager, but which had been forgotten along the way. Happened all the time. Grandparents put a hundred bucks into it and then ten years later, everyone has moved on. Out of sight, out of mind.

  So he scattered the money, lied to the Feds, and quietly retired—although he’d pretty much been out of service for three years already, acting as a “paid consultant”. In the end, he had to leave Colleen twisting in the wind. He’d told her if it all went bad, he would do what he could for her. But in the end, it came down to nothing. He had no pull, no weight, and honestly, he didn’t give enough of a shit about what happened to her to even try.

  Eight years in prison. She had a chance at parole in a few. If she got it, Rome would be ready for her. Plenty of guns in his cabin. Maybe the HIV she’d caught from the gangsta would kill her first.

  The white ladies who ran Lemon Wolf were polite enough to Rome. He’d been coming here for about four months. They had never gotten past small talk with him, though. In fact, he was pretty sure they didn’t know his name. He wasn’t sure he’d ever told them. It was a place to drink that wasn’t his cabin. Some food that wasn’t from a microwave. It wasn’t the sports bar up the hill from his cabin, a bar full of “bros”, white ones, and their bitches and a bunch of noise. Occasionally, retired white people staying at the lodge next door would wander into the sports bar, too, and listening to their conversations drove Rome up the wall—boring talk about boring things from boring people. None of them were ever rude to him, not directly, but no one ever tried to really talk to him.

  He didn’t blame them.

  *

  When the Lemon Wolf was ready to shut down for the evening, he stood from his seat at the bar and waited for the world to stop spinning. It took a couple minutes, always did. The ladies always told him “Good night.” They never asked if they could call him a cab—if there even were cabs in Beaver Bay—or get him a ride, even though he was obviously extremely inebriated. Perhaps they wished he would glide gracefully off Highway 61 into the depths of Superior, never to be heard from again. Not one worry in the world about the money they would lose—he was drinking a bottle of their bourbon per week alongside countless craft beers at a steep mark-up, especially in the off-season—as long as the lonely black gentleman no longer haunted their small café night after night.

  Once he felt up to walking, hands still braced on the short wood bar that looked as if it was made by one of the lady’s husbands in a garage, he fought down a burp and, as usual, gave the place one last look. In between tables were wooden dividers, each hung with local art for sale. None of it was much good. Lots of owls and bears and shit. But he liked the colors. He liked that someone was trying, for fuck’s sake.

  Out the door, a little stumble here, there, until his hands were on the hood of his Jeep Grand Cherokee. A lease. He kept hoping to hit a deer with it, but he hadn’t been so lucky yet. The next burp, he lost the fight. It came up loud and full of acid and he hated himself. This was his life now. His wife, Desiree, dead by Lafitte’s gun. His attempt at revenge, all fucked to hell and back. He had now made a new enemy in Colleen, who had been his closest ally in hating Lafitte. Whatever power he had as an FBI agent had evaporated, all favors revoked. No friends left, almost. The few who remained, he’d pushed away. No one had his new cell phone number. No one knew where his cabin was. No one.

  Or so he had thought, because as he somehow made it the couple miles back to his cabin, easing down the hill, ready to accelerate if a goddamned buck wanted to step up to the challenge, he found a car parked out front. A Chevy Malibu. Sitting on the trunk, an old friend. Wyatt had risen higher in the ranks of the State Police to Captain, but tonight he was just an older man in jeans and a plaid short-sleeved button-up. Rome didn’t want to see him, since, you know, he couldn’t think of Wyatt without thinking of what happened to Desiree in that hotel stairwell.

  Rome parked beside the Chevy
, got out, shook Wyatt’s hand, hugged him. “You found me.”

  “You made it easy.”

  “I didn’t mean to. Come on in.”

  They went inside the cabin, which was pretty ritzy by cabin-standards. Seriously, Rome had sold almost everything that was worth anything to make sure he had enough for this place—three hundred thousand and change—and a modest retirement account for booze and microwave dinners, newspapers and wi-fi, a lease on a Jeep Grand Cherokee he hoped might one day be the end of him.

  Cozy, faux-wood cabin styling, one big living area, a bar separating it from the kitchenette, a loft for his bed, and a Jacuzzi tub in the far corner. Windows all around, a to-die-for view of the lake. The lake was Plan B if he never hit a buck. He hadn’t quite decided between drowning out there sometime this coming fall, right before it turned to ice, or simply drifting off to eternal sleep after a handful of pills, a bottle of Four Roses, and a recording of Desiree’s voice playing in the background, those voicemails he kept and listened to in the late hours almost every night.

  Rome offered Wyatt a beer, but the trooper turned it down, said, “A bottle of water?”

  “I don’t do bottles of water. Tap?”

  “That’s okay.”

  Rome sighed, filled a glass with water, no ice, and brought it over. He led the way to the leather couch and armchair, flicked on the lamp, very soft light. He took the chair, and Wyatt eased onto the couch.

  “Nice place.”

  “The last one I’ll ever own.”

  “You’re too young to think like this, you know. Hell, even I’m too young to think that way.”

  Rome grinned. “You know what I mean.”