Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [85]
Leave him, Slink would plead wordlessly. Go. Scram. You don’t need to be doing this.
He revisited seven-year-old Annie. He watched himself leaning against the Brewster’s kitchen door, pushing his cap back on his head and chatting with Annie’s mother. He watched Annie sitting at the kitchen table in front of a cereal bowl, her legs dangling above the floor. He watched as he winked at her and as she giggled, the legs swinging faster, back and forth and back and forth …
Leave him. C’mon, kid. For Christ’s sake, I forgive you already, okay?
And finally, she did just that. She left him. Dead on the living room floor on a crisp October morning. He was wearing one of those sweaters with the blond hairs on it. And he was wearing a lump the size of a lacrosse ball on the back of his head. Annie had worried that the bottle would break, but it didn’t. He’d been down on one knee, tying his shoelace. She had no idea where the strength came from to swing the bottle with such force. At breakfast that morning, he had pointed out an article in the Sun It had to do with the tenth anniversary of the unsolved murder of Cindi Blake. Annie remembered the photograph of the girl from back when the murder had occurred. She’d been a senior herself. Same age as Cindi Blake.
“I did that,” Paul had said casually, poking his finger into the photograph. “I picked her up, beat her with a shovel, and buried her. Stupid-ass cops. It’s a piece of cake to kill someone in this country.”
Then he stuffed a toothpick into his mouth and gave her a big uncharming smile.
The bottle didn’t break. It landed with a satisfying crack, and Paul slumped to the floor. Annie stood over him and watched to see if he moved. He didn’t. But to be sure, she went into the kitchen and returned with the largest knife she could find and planted it directly between his shoulder blades. The strength in her arms weakened and she ended up placing her foot against the handle and shoving the knife the rest of the way in with her foot.
She went back into the kitchen and fetched the newspaper. She circled the article with a marker, then returned to the living room and dropped the paper on her dead husband. It fluttered down onto him like a sheet.
I did that,” she said.
She left the house, wearing only a thin sweater for warmth. She picked her way through the woods to Lake Roland and down to the edge of the water. Finally, she stepped out of her shoes, then hugged herself tightly, watching a pair of mallards as they scuttled across the water. She felt enormously calm. Tranquil. It was a stupid little life, she thought. It didn’t really work.
Annie dove awkwardly into the water and began paddling toward the middle of the lake. Slink was watching. As always, he could see that she was a lousy swimmer. In fact, she was no swimmer at all. It was a dog paddle, and a lousy dog paddle at that. Her arms lost their strength well before she even reached the middle of the lake. As always.
She paused. Her arms slapped the surface of the water a few times, and then she went under. Silence, and then one final splash as an arm groped from the water. It looked almost like she was waving. The arm disappeared and concentric circles grew from the spot, wider and wider, until they too were gone.
Slink bowed his head. A wind blew and the trees around the lake released their leaves. They cascaded down like a rain of canaries.
THE HOMECOMING
BY JIM FUSILLI
Camden Yards
He felt his stomach clench as he approached the Fort McHenry Tunnel, and already he had a pounding headache, a growing tightness in his throat. But then Tess spotted the towering cranes in the harbor, said, “Giraffe skeletons,” and laughed aloud as flatbed containers swung across the graying sky. He saw her smile through the rearview mirror; sitting back there among