Curtis and the Conciliatory Kill

“Of everything I’ve regretted over the past 30 years — and you know just how many — I regret most that I couldn’t have given you the one thing you begged me for when you needed me the most. I’ll live with that for the rest of my life, and even if you could forgive the rest, I know you’ll never forgive my leaving you in your pain. I just can’t face you — I’m the same weak man, the same coward you’ve always known me to be. I couldn’t give you the death you deserved. I’m so sorry.”

It was his style — a miserable, tiny, meaningless “man” with delusions of a poetic, tortured soul and romanticized rationalizations to cushion every failure and betrayal.

It was a mystery — a mystery with a shitty Z-grade plot and a pathetically transparent solution you sussed out in the lead paragraph. Until you read between the scrawled Bic-blue lines and reshuffled the puzzle pieces — put the sky at the top, the grass where gravity dictated, and the tragic, tawdry details and truths in context, center-stage, popping ultimately and stunningly out of the blues and greens.

It was a punch to the gut. No, a knife through the ribcage, blade snapped off in the accumulated scar tissue and atrophied nerves and pain sensors.

It was a call.

**

Every cop could or crows that they could write a book on domestic dynamics, explosions and implosions, the routine interactional physics of anger, ego, will, and, oh, yeah, dumb blind-and-deaf stupidity.

Curtis imagined his own tome, Central Illinois Success Stories, as a $1.99 Kindle pick somehow still overpriced for the non-existent market. “Central Illinois success story,” he grunted over the morning Keurig.

Most of the pieces ended about the same, with somebody bleeding out on the cheap furnishings or the municipal concrete or marinating in their folly in a cell downtown. The twist was in the journey rather than the destination. Who’d guess a Super Bowl trailer party or a succulent Thanksgiving Butterball or a simple matter of bad timing at a four-way at University and the Beltway or an innocent dick-swinging game of wannabe gangsters and players or an energetic exchange of fluids would lead to this Point B?

“Looks like we got a real Central Illinois Success Story here,” Chris suggested, waggling a plastic bag. About 20 years too young for the office wife, but Curtis’ ‘stache tweaked warmly nonetheless.

“How so?” the detective murmured, staring at the middle-aged guy starting to spoil on the dining room tiles. Sweats and sneakers.

The forensic tech jerked her cyanotic blonde hair toward the broken window pane behind him and the twisted metal plate in the plastic ziploc on the scarred oak table. “Check the basement door.”

Which was wide open to a dark railed and carpeted stairwell. Curtis immediately spotted the splintered, perforated rectangle in the right-side jamb where the strike plate had ripped free. The corresponding latch button and cylinder were half-ripped from the hollow door.

“Rage and centrifugal force,” Chris sang behind his shoulder. “Demeter had to be fucking ‘roidal to do this.”

Curtis glanced down at the lean, saggy man in the XL sweatpants – hemorrhoidal at best. He examined the blood and brains on the Big Lots 1985 Big Lots Collection table, then tugged Warren Demeter’s lower lip with a gloved pinkie, and straightened with a grunt after finding no meth dentistry. “Something pissed him off so bad he nearly yanked the door off its hinges-- Hold up. I have to assume you were eventually gonna ask me what was missing here. Like any kind of lock or lock button on either side of the knob. So this dude yanks an unlocked door hard enough to pull out the hardware.”

Chris grinned – the ordeal of childbirth and post-partum responsibility hadn’t dulled her enthusiasm. “My guess is somebody was waiting in the basement or trying to escape downstairs, which if any slasherpunk film teaches us…”

“I don’t think that’s a word, but point taken. There was a confrontation, an argument, and Demeter’s guest or an intruder—“

“I’m betting intruder. You notice that Culver’s cup in the other room, the TV room? Butterscotch, totally melted, permanent water stain on the TV stand. The Culver’s is two blocks over, on Prairie. Warren goes goes out to grab a shake, and when he comes home finds a burglar. TV room patio slider’s still latched and blocked, so that leaves the front door off the main room. Which leads here, and then into the dead-end TV room.”

“So that puts Demeter in the living room. He doesn’t leave the shake in the fridge over thee. Or on a coaster or placemat here. Maybe he was gonna literally chill with some Drew Barrymore, but that’s where he runs into the burglar, or he’d have put the shake on the coffee table in front of the couch, right? Even if he’d heard something in another room.

“So Demeter and the theoretical prowler get into it, and instead of beating the living shit out of our man here, Burglar Guy makes a run for the exit. But then, Dumbass decides to head for the safety of the basement instead. Warren tries to catch him instead of getting the fuck out of the house and calling 9-1-1. Burglar Dude grabs the knob from the inside, and they start tug-of-warring, again so Warren can, what, kick the shit out of him?”

“Then, Burglar Man slips or just lets go, and that centrifugal force you were talking about causes Demeter to snap back against the table and bust his skull open. But wasn’t he yanking and twisting the knob? Shouldn’t the door just have flung open without ripping the jamb apart? And shouldn’t Burglar Guy be lying at the bottom of the stairs with a broken neck?”

“Not necessarily,” Chris offered, plucking the second evidence bag from the table. “But this was.”

Curtis sighed as he took in the shiny metal bolt. A half-inch screw was anchored into the hollow cylinder. It felt like a corner piece, possibly from a different puzzle than the one laid before him.

Chris was waiting at the top of the stairs, waving a creased envelope. Or maybe, Curtis reflected a few minutes later, somebody’d just dumped the entire rec room into the same puzzle box.

**

“Fucker’s dead, huh?” Elise LaPierre grunted. Smiling. Curtis smiled back, because rapport and all that jazz.

“I take it it wasn’t an amicable parting,” he suggested.

LaPierre grinned for the first time, a 250-pound hyena hovering over a road-kill puppy. “Things were passable before the effing cancer, though the fucking girl put us through Hell from Day One. Haven’t seen her in like 10 years. You know, we’d shacked up for like 20 years before Warren finally popped the question after the St. Mark quacks finally found the mass. You know I’m a fucking miracle, right?”

Curtis paused for her to illuminate.

“See, my fucking incompetent gynie doctor thought this was some kind of cyst or some such shit —“ LaPierre slapped her left breast, or its former location. “By the time she and the hospital asswipes pulled their heads out, the thing had started met—, metasturba—“

“Metastasizing,” Curtis murmured. “Shit.”

“No shit,” LaPierre laughed. “I had ‘em lop off both of ‘em and pump me full of poison and radiation. Pain like a motherfucker, and I got down to my original girly figure, well, with a couple major exceptions.”

“Anyway, when they put me in hospice, he just bolted. Couldn’t take any more, and, shit, Warren was Warren. The girl had crossed me off years ago. And then, what do you fucking know? I went into remission, for which that roller who’d married us tried to take credit. ‘God’s divine mercy.’”

“Well,” Curtis began.

“I wasn’t going to just roll over,” Elise snorted. Then the lights dimmed. “’Sides, I look like I deserve mercy?”

Det. Mead mentally added some Jim Beam to the grocery list as he touched the outline of the envelope in his jacket pocket.

**

Warren and Elise had kindled the flames cooling their heels outside the Millington Circuit Court, bonding over the adrenalized terror of serious second-strike DUI time and the exhilarating release of a combined 15 years’ license suspension. Kismet.

Love flourished over acrid coffee and Kroger cookies in church basements. The daily Millington Transit Blue Ride offered the rich opportunity for interpersonal exploration (Warren hadn’t known, for example, that Elise had an avid interest in opioids adjunct to her first DUI).

Curtis assumed a leap of faith in dollar store condoms had played a pivotal role in Dana LaPierre’s blessed arrival, and “the girl” was a walking, pooping threat to sobriety from the get-go. Dana’s first-grade teacher had attempted to explain learning disabilities to the folks, and it sounded like a lavish indulgence of time and energy.

Eighth grade health class became superfluous after Dana and her BFF’s big brother misgauged the Blue Ride’s ETA one Wednesday night. Bad timing, it turned out, was an ineffective defense against statutory rape, and Big Bro disappeared into the Central Illinois Men’s Pantheon of Achievement, up in Pontiac. Dana built herself an impressive portfolio with the MPD, the county, and the Millington District School Corporation, seemingly bent on a state title.

By 16, she and the district parted company, and soon after Elise’ oncologist started the clock running on her mom 10 years later, Dana blew town after some hazy substance-related venture left a cousin in the St. Mark’s ICU and Warren and Elise’s little girl once again miraculously in the clear. Along with everything portable and marketable Warren had left behind.

As was the custom, Anton himself slid Curtis’ double ends/tips plate onto one of the pair aluminum picnic table he hauled to corporate stops. A knot of programmers, fabricators, and clericals tossed a few resentful looks at the cop.

“So you were saying,” the lanky entrepreneur/smokemaster grinned. Curtis pulled the letter from his Men’s Warehouse blazer and smoothed it flat on the metal surface. 

“Remember Aunt Tia?” Anton finally asked. “You know near the end, she asked Shawn to ask the home care lady to slip him a hot shot of morphine? Naw, he wouldn’t, and know what, not sure I could, either.”

Curtis tossed his tie over his shoulder. “Know where you’re going, and I thought so too ‘til I talked to the U.S.S. Elise. She doesn’t strike me as the type to go down quiet. And, I should point out, she lived, so what was there to apologize for? So what did she ask Warren that was so awful he ran for the hills?”

“You know, you got a second question, too. ‘I couldn’t give you the death you deserved.’ Deserved. Doesn’t sound like an act of mercy – more like our boy was saying this LaPierre had it coming. Which doesn’t fit the overall tone of the thing, you know? This some kind of AA thing? You know, the tying loose ends part?”

Curtis grinned. “Making amends, I think you mean. Cept we don’t even know when he might have written the thing.”

“Which raises another question. You say it’s definitely the man’s handwriting. So why’s he got it? I mean, cancellation stamp on the envelope says he sent it. You got one of those, oh, shit, the Elvis thing?”

“Return to sender? Nope.” Curtis leaned back from his doubled-up plate. “I doubt Old Elise has left her recliner much since the last chemo treatment, so how’d Warren get the letter back?”

“And why? The ex, wouldn’t she have just ripped the thing up years ago?” Anton tapped the letter. “See, to these two prizewinners, this was an apology, too little too late. But in a way, it’s—“

“A confession. And not just Warren’s.”

“Uh huh.” Anton’s victory lap stalled as he turned at a flapping sound and glanced to the rear of the ALBoS truck. “Yo, Jackson! You forgot to bunge the screen door again! I’ll fix the lock tonight, but I don’t want the Health Department folks up in here in the meantime.”

Curtis’s jaws paused on a plug of beef. 

**

The custodial fairies hadn’t waved any wands over Demeter’s hovel in the intervening three days, but Curtis added a new touch to the basement door after exchanging formalities.

“Cat door latch,” Curtis explained, tugging at the anchored white plastic strip. “Stopped at PetSmart on the way over. Idea is, you loop it on the doorknob like a Motel Six ‘Do Not Disturb,’ and it lets you leave the door open four or five inches. Enough for Tabby to get into the laundry room or the basement, wherever you put the catbox, but too tight for Rover to access the turds du jour.”

“Yeah,” Chris nodded exuberantly.

“This peg, the tail screw at the end here, you can move it to any of the holes along the strip to make the door gap wider or narrower…” Curtis bent the plastic strip around the door, and smiled as the bolt – a twin to the piece Chris’d found at the base of the cellar stairs -- clicked into the latch hole. He tugged, and the door stopped after a solid five inches. “You check for that trace?”

“Negative for feline or canine DNA. Pure 100 percent human, mainly Demeter’s, but two familial samples as well. As for that breakdown you wanted, victim’s DNA was in every room, but I found one donor’s DNA only in the TV room, and the other familial donor’s trace in the living room, the TV room, and the basement. Specifically, the basement john.”

“So, here’s your riddle,” Curtis offered. “The front door leads into the living room, and you’ll find the TV room just beyond the dining room, which is off the living room. You have to cross through the living room to get to the TV room. But, what, one of our donors teleported directly into the TV room? Or maybe, did he or she get there another way? Give you three guesses.”

Chris smirked knowingly. “How insulting. The first donor carried the second through the living room and set him or her in front of the TV.”

“Her,” Curtis supplied. “Checked the area birth records.”

“And I checked the most recent watched on the Roku stick. Sweatpants Guy seem like a Peppa Pig type?”

**

It was the Lincoln Memorial. The reflecting pool was nearly complete, a guide to the azure sky taking shape above. Decapitated Abe peeked serenely into the chasm of wood veneer between. A palsied old woman struggled to lock the tip of Lincoln’s beard into place.

“Dana LaPierre-Demeter?” Curtis murmured.

The nurse was maybe 30 pounds up on the mugshot in Dana’s 2016 possession-with-intent file. Her palm left the ancient resident’s shoulder as her blue eyes first widened, then faded.

“I’m a CNA, nurse assistant,” Dana noted as she set a tumble of pale iced tea before the detective. The Prairie House’s dining room was empty save the old woman, whose current universe was a patch of D.C. real estate. “Don’t have great hopes for ever getting an LPN, but at least the weekly testing helps me keep clean.”

It was with the booty she’d lifted after they’d declared Elise the living dead, but she hadn’t discovered it tucked in the box of romances until about her eighth month, and hadn’t reasoned it out until Sada was about ready for soft food.

“Mom was too selfish to kill herself, and Dad didn’t have the cojones to help her do it. Then I thought about Cousin Gary, what he was doing at my meet with my supplier, why he had a gun. At first, I thought he was there to ‘protect’ me, but shit, we’d only seen each other at a couple of family things, and all he did was try to feel me up. Then Gary points the gun at me, and Trey blasts him before he can get off a shot and tells me to get the fuck out. So it came down as a drug thing, though I know he was gonna kill me. Maybe because I wouldn’t come across, or maybe it was a hit. So I got the fuck out of Dodge and got clean. After a while. But after I read Dad’s lameass apology, it hit me who’d put out the hit. Mom’d told me like a million times I’d only caused her misery, I’d probably caused her cancer, that everybody’d be better off if I’d just fucking die. What a fucking monster, right?”

Warren was the weak link, but then again, he’d never warned his own daughter or anything. His weakness and guilt gave her a way in. He stated bawling when Dana told him she’d been back in town for a couple years, that she was clean, that she wanted Sada to meet her grandpa. Sada loved that idiot pig cartoon, and Dana didn’t want her in the room for what she had planned for Dear Old Grandpa.

Then Warren pops up does anybody want a milkshake, Dana assumes because the reunion’s getting uncomfortable AF. Then, just like eighth grade, he gets back quicker than expected, and he starts screaming when he finds Sada unattended and his druggie daughter nowhere in sight. When he realizes where she’s gone, he yells even louder, and when he can’t open the basement door, Dad goes apeshit, and threatens to kick the door in and do what he should’ve years ago. Dana remembers the safety strip – cheaper than some fancy child protection gizmo -- and hustles up the stairs to release the latch...

“I try to be a good mom,” Dana insisted. “I didn’t want to leave Sada alone, but he was going to be home any minute, and I was scared.”

“So you hid in the basement?”

“I was scared I was going to lose my nerve. I needed some, you know, courage.”