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  Elias said something muffled, and the woman said something back. Something that clearly sounded like “FBI”. Dixon froze in his cot, now listening to the conversation intensely. Glasses clinked together, and he realized the muffled comments had been toasts prior to downing the tequila. Elias had said something about history. The woman had said something about the FBI.

  That brain-dead, death-wishing motherfucker had brought the FBI agent back here.

  10

  Denise lay in bed looking at the cracks of light coming in through Elias’s blinds, her mind whirring. She was comfortable under the covers but her head hurt and she knew she wasn’t getting back to sleep, not with Elias kicking around. She had become used to sleeping alone, and though she didn’t always love the alone part, she had to admit the sleep was better.

  It must be about seven, dawn already, she thought. Oh God, I’m not drinking again for a long time. This is two mornings in a row now I have woken up with a pounding in my skull. I am going to pickle my liver like Uncle Mike. Coffee would be good. Aaaah, coffee. Maybe a tall cup of fresh coffee will make the skull pain stop. Or maybe it will just give me an acid stomach to accompany the pain.

  She wondered if Elias had a cafetière. He seemed like a cafetière kind of guy.

  Elias’s legs thrashed again and then went still. What was up with that? It was like he was having dreams about being a soccer player. He didn’t snore, but he did mumble, and when he had woken Denise in the middle of the night, mumbling, her first feeling was a rush of sympathy, as she imagined he was reliving the day he found out about his mother’s death. It was the only fact she knew about him, and it gave her a protective feeling towards him. She could attribute any aspect of his behavior to it, from the fact that he seemed to have no moral center, and an ability to justify anything he did with rehearsed history lessons and psychobabble, to his thrashing legs pounding her calves black and blue while she tried to sleep.

  The sex had been at least cathartic, like a good cry, and her back and shoulders felt relaxed, as if they had been massaged. She felt cleansed physically, but was also aware of a complete lack of connection. Elias wasn’t a bad lover, just distant. There was an impersonal aspect to his lovemaking, and Denise was reminded of her dentist, who overbooked his schedule and always got her name wrong when she went in for a checkup. In bed, Elias was the same way, always seemingly distracted by something that had nothing to do with her. She supposed she was reminded of the dentist because both a dental exam and sex required close physical contact, and to have the other person not focus on her made her feel slightly dehumanized. It was yet another characteristic she could overlook because of his mother’s death. She understood. If her own mother had been murdered, wouldn’t she also have developed some of those characteristics?

  She looked at Elias, who was seemingly uncomfortable even in sleep. Perhaps her protective feelings were triggered by the guilt she must be feeling for doing a background check on him, and finding out the fact in the first place. Then there was the guilt over the fact itself. Did the job have anything to do with it? Was her employment in the FBI – who had failed, like the LAPD, to solve the case – another source of internal guilt? Was she holding herself responsible for the failure to find Elias’s mother’s killer? Is that why she had gone to bed with him?

  Oh God, who cared. Her skull was pounding and she needed coffee.

  Elias sighed heavily and then rolled into his pillow, his face away from her, his body still. Denise gently lifted the covers, feeling the shock as the cool air rushed over her legs under the down comforter. She quickly dropped the comforter back down, the warmth settling over her legs again. That felt good. Her head hurt, but it was cold out in the world, and maybe it was best to lie there for a little while longer. She looked at Elias, breathing heavily, then his legs thrashed quickly, as if intentionally kicking her. She started, and checked his face to make sure he was actually asleep. He was.

  Elias thrashed again and she’d had enough. She quickly lifted the covers and got out of the bed, shivering, stepping lightly and quickly as she looked around the room for her clothes. It always amazed her how her clothing could become so randomly distributed by sex. Everything she had worn was always scattered, even when the sex wasn’t that passionate. She found her bra, panties and blouse, then noticed Elias was starting to stir, and she didn’t want any face to face contact with him, not yet. Actually, never again would be fine, too, but she hadn’t yet reached enough time and distance from the event to admit that to herself. So she quickly pulled on one of Elias’s shirts and picked up his slippers and the rest of her clothes, and tiptoed towards the door.

  Blood on the carpet. Denise noticed a white throw rug with bloodstains on it, not much blood, but enough to make her look twice. It reminded her of her training classes at Quantico, where they had described what blood looked like in each stage of drying, what each pattern indicated. She had loved that class. She had real energy and excitement about the FBI back then. This blood was days old. Almost wistfully, she leaned over to get a closer look, examining the pattern. It was a drip pattern. Someone with a slight wound had stood directly over the rug. Maybe Elias had been trying his hand at carpentry and paid the price. Carpentry? Elias? Probably not. Maybe he had cut himself on a pen cap. She shrugged and went downstairs to look for coffee.

  The kitchen, like the rest of the house, had unrealized potential, but Denise decided that the need for redecoration here was most pronounced. You could get away with 1960s furniture in the living room or dining room, but appliances needed to be changed out. It was clear that Elias changed things out only when the last possible drop of earthly use had been rung out of them, resulting in a shiny, buffed steel dishwasher with an electronic control panel crammed next to a garbage disposal from the 1970s with stained and yellowed buttons. In the laundry room she saw the same picture, an ultramodern dryer next to a dismal and decrepit washing machine. Despite last night’s moments of flamboyance with his hundred dollar bills, Elias, she decided, was not one to throw his money around.

  She opened the first cupboard and found bottles of wine. They all had discount stickers on them from the same wine store. Denise rolled her eyes. She opened the next cupboard, where she found the coffee, also a discount brand. Shit. He didn’t like to spend money on anything, and Denise liked high-end coffee. Sure enough, the filters she found were the recycled newspaper ones, a thousand for a dollar. She filled the coffee maker and looked for a spoon, where she found a wine tool with blood on it. So that was how he had cut himself. Definitely not carpentry.

  While she was waiting for the coffee to brew, she began to snoop around. Cautiously, in case anything like brooms and mopheads came spilling out, she opened the door to the pantry, and examined the stockpiles of canned food. Bored, she shut it and opened another door, this one to the basement. It was dark, but at the top of the steps she saw some shelves. There was just enough light to make out a pile of extension cords and a staple gun covered in rust. Next to them were four or five empty beer bottles. Bored again, she shut the door, picked a mug from the dish rack and poured herself a cup of coffee while the machine was still brewing.

  She went out onto the back deck, which was small but comfortable, and where the decades-old metal porch furniture seemed to gracefully blend with the timeless view of the overgrown yard and the fifty-foot maples. She sat down in a wrought-iron chair and sipped her coffee, taking in the view, enjoying the total silence of a weekend morning here in the boonies. She hoped Elias would not wake up until after she had gone. It would be nice to have a little alone time in his house, getting the full benefit of such a beautiful environment, which she imagined he either took for granted or had never appreciated. He seemed the type to find nature an annoyance, to focus on the acorns falling on his car rather than appreciate the tree.

  She doubted the alone time would happen, though. Unfortunately, men always seemed to feel some sense of obligation to wake up and make awkward conversation. But maybe he’d
be a late sleeper. She’d leave a nice note on his kitchen table, and began composing it in her head. Dear Elias. Should she spell his name right or wrong? An intentional misspelling was a nice subtle touch that she didn’t want to see him again. How could you misspell Elias? It was one of those names that spelt themselves. Any misspelling would make her look like an idiot.

  How about just . . . Elias? No dear. No, way too impersonal. Denise didn’t want to come off as bitchy. How about “Hey!” Sounded goofy. How about nothing, no note. Just take off?

  She heard a rustling and suddenly realized there was a person no more than fifteen feet from her, a young woman on the other side of the fence.

  “Hey, professor,” the girl called playfully. She parted the shrubs around the fence and peered through and saw Denise, sitting in a metal chair in her underwear, wearing one of Elias’s shirts. “Oh,” she said, disappointed. The shrubs came back together, and the girl walked off.

  This was too weird. Denise stood up, tossed the cheap, crappy coffee in the bushes, went inside, put on her skirt and blouse, quietly called a taxi on her cellphone, and left. She walked to the end of the street to wait for the cab. The note on the table said, “Bye”.

  * * *

  Just from looking through the cracks in the blinds, Elias could tell it was going to be a beautiful day. Already the sun was gleaming in streaks across the room, illuminating dust particles floating absently through space on their way to join the billions of others on his dresser. The streaks of sunlight reminded him that he needed a cleaning woman. Perhaps he’d put up a note on the bulletin board in the student union. Hire some freshman cutie for ten dollars an hour to finally get this old, decaying wood dusted. How about eight dollars an hour? Would anyone do it for eight?

  He caught a whiff of a woman’s perfume and snapped fully awake, remembering the night before and noticing for the first time Denise’s absence in the bed. He strained to hear the noise of the shower, or a clattering of cupboard doors in the kitchen, wondered if she was in the house, but it was stone quiet. The bitch had just left. Probably called a cab. He could smell coffee. He wondered if she had left any for him.

  He had a slight feeling of post-sex euphoria, which evaporated the instant he remembered Dixon was there. It was Sunday, and now he would probably have to manufacture a reason to go into the college. Today was the first day since Dixon had arrived that Elias wanted the house to himself, and he resented the man not as an armed intruder but as a room-mate. Today would be a good day to get the paper, have coffee on the back deck, and get some writing done.

  He still hadn’t heard from any of the journals that had received his article. How long did it take? In the end he had decided to take Ann’s advice and rewrite certain paragraphs, just to make it clearer that he didn’t agree with the National Socialist Party – he just understood how others could, given the era. Well, clearly a lot of them had, so wouldn’t it be a good idea to publish an article that examined why? Wouldn’t that make the world a better place, publishing an analysis of people getting caught up in war hysteria? He wished he could just walk around his house naked and write and daydream about getting published in the Historical Review, but he couldn’t, because Dixon was here.

  Elias got up, stretched, peed, and went downstairs in his undershorts. He opened the front door to let some air in, then went and opened the back door to get the air current running through the house. On his way through the kitchen, he noticed Denise’s empty coffee mug, rinsed, in the sink. He stood on the back deck for a moment, feeling the warmth of the sunlight, wondering where he’d left his sunglasses, when he heard a floorboard creak behind him.

  He spun around, startled, and saw Dixon not five feet away, shirt off, eyes cold and distant. He was holding a pipe wrench.

  Elias started instantly calculating how quickly he could get away from Dixon if the pipe wrench started to move up. He figured if he could get six or seven inches closer to the doorknob, he could slam the door while diving off the deck, giving him ample time to get up and run to the Covington house while Dixon was opening the door. But getting closer to the doorknob meant getting closer to Dixon. So it wasn’t going to happen.

  But if Dixon took another step, he’d be off running. And to hell with this whole situation, it wasn’t worth it. He’d run down the street screaming that he’d fucked Melissa. He’d tell everyone. He’d tell Melissa’s dad, that over-coiffed lawyer in his immaculate blue shirts who seemed incapable of parking entirely on his own property. He’d tell him right to his face, while his plastic-surgery victim of a wife wept openly through healing tear ducts. And then he’d give him the finger and move out of Tiburn for good. But he wasn’t going to get beaten to death on his back porch by a maniac just because he was keeping secrets.

  “There’s no way to hit someone with one of these and just make it hurt,” Dixon said.

  Elias didn’t move.

  “Three or four pound piece a’ cast iron,” Dixon said, tossing it like a horseshoe at Elias’s bare feet, where it clanked onto the porch and made him dance to avoid it. Elias looked reproachfully at Dixon, who was clearly aware that it might well have broken some bones in his foot. Dixon just stared back, then pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, stepped past Elias onto the deck, and lit one.

  “I realized that, when that woman opened the door to the basement. I was holding that pipe wrench, under the stairs, trying not to breathe,” Dixon said, staring off thoughtfully into the trees. “I thought, if she comes down the stairs, I’ll just knock her out. Then I’ll tie her up and get the fuck outta here.”

  He exhaled a long drag, and sat down in one of the metal chairs. “But then I thought, that’s really not what’s gonna happen. I’m gonna swing this at her head, and there’s gonna be that sound. Kind of like an egg breakin’. Know what I’m talking about?”

  Elias shook his head.

  “I saw it once. My first stint. There was this junkie, they’d just bought him in for, like, mugging or purse snatching or some shit. He knocked over some old lady, pushed her down some steps and fucked up her hip. Turned out she was the grandmother of one of the dudes doing a serious stretch. Three days later, in the machine shop, bam, right on his head with a hammer. Sounded like an egg breaking.”

  Elias nodded. Dixon had a way with a story, not weighing it down with detail. Where was this one heading? Not to a bashing, apparently, because Dixon had tossed the pipe wrench aside. Should he ask a question? Did Dixon want to talk?

  “I was helping clean out the freezer in the morgue when his family came in, day or two later. You wouldn’t a’ thought a junkie had so many people cared about him, you know? There was this one girl, like eighteen maybe, I figured it was his sister. Beautiful. Tall girl, long legs, wearing a flowery blue dress like you’d wear to church. The minute she saw the junkie dude laid out on the slab, she just sobbed. Howled like a fuckin’ coyote till they took her away.”

  Elias didn’t like this story. He had gotten laid last night and it was a beautiful morning and he had come downstairs in a good mood. He needed to get out of here and get to his office and not listen to anymore.

  “They had a viewing in the prison morgue?” he asked, trying to sound interested.

  “If that woman had come down the stairs,” Dixon said, ignoring him. “Bam.”

  There were a few beats of silence, enough time for an opening for a subject change. “Yeah. It might have been a little risky, now that I think about it. I won’t do that again, though,” He sighed. “Hey, I’ve gotta get to the office, got a lot of work to catch . . .”

  “I would have killed her,” Dixon said, looking right at Elias, his voice not raised at all to speak over him, almost as if he was talking to himself.

  Elias stopped talking.

  “It’s not just your life you’re fucking with.”

  “No, I understand that.” Elias nodded sheepishly like a fourth-grader in the principal’s office.

  “The family came in for the personal effects
. The effects room and the morgue were the same room. Just a coincidence,” Dixon said, and Elias realized he had heard him earlier. The man seemed to keep two things going on in his mind at the same time, an indicator of intelligence which, in this case, Elias found frightening. Depending on the individual, a skill which was generally associated with good grades could also be used, Elias thought, to chat amiably about the weather while examining a throat for slitting. Or a head for bashing. “What if I’d snored?”

  “What?”

  “What if I was asleep when she came downstairs, and I’d been snoring? What then? What if she’d noticed you don’t drink beer and took one of those beer bottles I leave at the top of the steps? Took it back to her lab and printed it? What then?”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Pipe wrench is no good.” Dixon was ignoring him again, listening to his own mind instead of Elias’s questions. “I don’t know how to use it. I want my gun back.” Dixon drew hard on the cigarette, then flicked it into the yard.

  Elias nodded. Oh shit. He couldn’t give the gun back. He remembered how terrified he had been of Dixon when Dixon had the gun. He wasn’t going back to that situation. He’d go to the cops. He should go to the cops today.

  “The gun’s at the office,” Elias said evenly. Dixon nodded. Elias wondered if Dixon had looked around the house for it, snooped through his things. He had stashed the gun under the spare tire in his car.

  “You understand why I want it back?” Dixon asked.

  “Yeah,” Elias said quickly, and he realized that his capitulation in this matter, in handing so much power back to him with so little argument, was making Dixon suspicious. “I mean, I’d rather keep it, but I understand.”