Everything Burns Read online

  I feel the hair on the back of my neck rise up. I stuff my right hand in my pants pocket, finger the Bic lighter.

  He asks me where Lisa is. I tell him and he writes the answer down in a small notepad. He asks me if I live here, and I tell him not technically. “But I do stay here a lot.”

  “You have a key to the place?”

  “Of course.”

  He writes that down.

  “Children?”

  “One girl. Eight years old.”

  “Name?”

  “Anna.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “With her grandmother.”

  “You and the missus . . . how long you been seeing one another again?”

  “Two months, give or take a day or three.”

  “Love interests prior to this one?”

  “Why do you need to know that?”

  “Suspect elimination,” he says. “See? I told you you needed a lesson on cop procedure. You’d already know why I needed to ask that question if you were Michael Connelly.”

  Sad thing about it is, he’s probably right. I think over his question anyway. Naturally, David Bourenhem comes to mind. The bloody lip I gave him when I kicked his door in. I think of someone else too.

  “I was involved with an artist for three years,” I say. “Lisa had a relationship with another writer for almost the entire time we were apart.”

  He asks me their names and I give them to him. I even offer up their respective home addresses.

  “Your wife Lisa saw Bourenhem for the entire time you were apart?” he goes on. “Excuse me for asking, but had they been conducting an affair prior to your breakup?”

  I feel the electric shock of his question inside my spine. I recall Lisa talking a lot about David during the last year or so of our marriage. Back before Anna was born and then shortly after that, until I left a couple of months later. She used to speak about getting reacquainted with him through Facebook. How magical the digital age could be. She talked incessantly about a new book he was writing back when I couldn’t manage a single decent sentence. She claims to have invited him to the house for me to look at his work, which I still have no recollection of. Maybe I just learned how to block him out of my mind.

  “No,” I say, “I don’t think they were cheating on me.” But when I say it, I feel that familiar pit form in my chest and I can see them. An evil image flashes into my brain. The two of them in bed, me gawking at them. But the image is fleeting, the endless, cruel working of a fiction writer’s imagination.

  “Did it hurt?” Miller presses.

  “Did what hurt?”

  “Your ex-wife going out with another writer? She couldn’t have hooked up with a high school teacher? Or a carpenter?”

  “It might have hurt Bourenhem more,” I say, fingering the lighter in my pocket. “He never got to publish anything, while my career took off after Lisa and I split. He’d probably give his left nut for a book contract.”

  “He hate you now that you’re back with his girl?”

  . . . his girl . . .

  “He claims to be a fan of mine.”

  “A fan?” He squints like it helps him compute my answer better. “Strange, isn’t it? A wannabe writer goes after your ex like that. Almost like he wanted to put himself in your shoes. Your bed. Your muse. As if the experience would have some kind of magical effect on him. Make him as successful as you.”

  “I told you. I wasn’t a success until after Lisa and I split.”

  My fingers wrap around the lighter.

  He nods. “Still seems odd to me,” he says.

  “You done with this?”

  “Done with what, Mr. Johnston?”

  “This line of questioning? Or are these questions Michael Connelly would be better at answering?”

  He laughs. “Sorry about all this,” Miller says. “I’m just guessing it has to hurt a little, imagining a would-be writer sleeping with your ex and present love interest. Strikes me as strange, is all. It’s certainly nothing I’ve ever encountered in all my years as a cop.”

  “I’m sure it does seems strange, Miller. But you know us writers. On the outside, we might appear to be a close-knit community, but on the inside we all secretly hate one another’s guts and successes.”

  He stares at me for a minute, like he’s sizing me up. And he is. “Tell you what,” he says. “For one, I know you’ve been drinking. I can smell it on your breath.”

  I wonder if he can also make out the sudden redness in my face from the blood that now fills it.

  “And for two,” he goes on, “I gotta take a shit, so if you don’t mind my using your bathroom, we can take five and get back to some questions of a different nature.”

  I pull out the cigarettes from my bush jacket.

  “Mind if I smoke?” I say.

  “Quit for ten years,” he says. “But by all means, burn one for me, Mr. J.”

  Chapter 28

  Two cigarettes later, I’m back inside the living room while the two uniformed cops stand shoulder to shoulder in the vestibule by the front door, their protective green evidence booties still covering their black cop shoes. Miller comes back in from the can, waving his right hand in the air.

  “I were you, I wouldn’t go in there for at least an hour,” he says, his cell phone in his hand and a big, satisfied smile on his face. “So where were we?”

  “Hatred, jealousy, writers, fucking one another’s women.”

  “Ah yes,” he says while pocketing the phone. “Speaking of jealousy and fucking one another’s women, I do have another question for you, Mr. Johnston.” He gives the edge of his hairline a scratch with the thumbnail on the hand that also holds a ballpoint pen, just like Columbo used to do every Sunday night in the 1970s. “You don’t by chance own a handgun, do you?”

  In my head I see the unlicensed 9mm sitting in the glove compartment of the Escape. The gun was a gift from a fan. A very illegal gift. But it seemed silly to report it to the police when I could use it to protect myself and my family.

  I look Miller in his steely-blue eyes. “No gun,” I lie. I feel the blood fill my face when I say it. Feel the warmth.

  I sense Miller knows I’m lying through my teeth, since he shoots me one of those ray-gun stares. Fumbling around the pockets of his trench coat, he pulls out a second pad of paper. He reaches into his chest pocket, pulls out a second pen, hands me both.

  “Seems silly of me to request this of you,” he says, a smirk planted on his face, “but I’m going to have to ask you for a writing sample, Mr. Johnston.”

  Digging once more into his pocket, he pulls out the dust jacket photograph of me that was tacked to Lisa’s corkboard. The one with the writing on the back calling me a “posthumous bestseller.” Since taking the photo into custody, he’s slid it inside a clear plastic evidence baggy. He stares down at it for a minute before returning it to his pocket.

  Then, glancing over his shoulder, he stares up at the chalkboard drawing of my head getting blown off.

  He says, “I’m also going to have to ask you to draw something for me too.”

  “Draw what?”

  He cocks his head. “Anything. A face. A bird. A burning casket . . . that gun you claim you don’t own . . . I don’t care.” He shoots me a wink.

  I nod, knowing exactly where this is going. “And what would you like me to write?”

  “A single sentence will suffice. How about the opening line to your new novel? That should do it.”

  I peer down at the pen and paper gripped in my hands. “I have a choice in the matter?”

  “Sure,” he says. “You can refuse and we can all take a ride downtown right now.”

  “I see.”

  I move to the dining room table, careful to step over the strewn-about shards of china and glass, and sit in front
of my laptop, the words THE BESTSELLER IS A HERETIC AND LIKE ALL HERETICS HE WILL BURN FOR HIS SINS still visible on the screen. Placing pen to paper, I try to think of something to write. Like I said, I haven’t been blocked in years, but with a detective standing over me and two burly cops planted by the front door, it’s not easy being creative.

  I take the easy route, write, “The bestseller is a heretic and like all heretics he will burn for his sins.”

  I hand it to the dick. He reads it, smiles.

  “Reminds me of The Damned,” he says.

  “Very good,” I say.

  “Don’t forget to draw me something,” he adds in a patronizing, singsong voice, like he’s my sixth-grade homeroom teacher.

  I just want to burst up out of my chair and ball my fist in his mouth. But since that would land me behind bars faster than I can say “police brutality,” I draw a stick figure, complete with cowboy hat, six-guns, and kerchief wrapped around the neck. I stand up and hand it to him.

  He looks at it and giggles. “Nice work,” he says, shoving it inside his pocket. “I’d stick to words, I were you.”

  “Thanks,” I say, feeling a wave of relief wash over me. “Now, if you’re through here, Detective Miller, would you mind not letting the door slam you in the backside on the way out? I’d really like to check in on my daughter’s mother. It’s been one of those days.”

  A cell phone chimes. It’s Miller’s. He pulls the phone back out of his pocket, glances at what’s obviously a text message, then shoots a look across the living room at the cops.

  “Slight change of plans, guys,” he says.

  “Yes, sir,” Burly Cop answers.

  “Okay, good.” Then, his eyes back on me, “You can call Anna’s mom from the squad car.”

  The warm relief in my veins is suddenly replaced by ice-cold water. “Why would I do that?”

  “I need you to accompany me downtown in order that you be fingerprinted and photographed.”

  “Am I under arrest for something, Detective Miller?”

  “Let’s just say I need a little more information from you, given the present circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  He shows me his phone and the text message, which is too far away for me to read. He helps me out: “Under circumstances I was just made aware of now that Mr. David Bourenhem of Troy, New York, has filed a complaint of assault and battery against you with the Troy Police Department.”

  Chapter 29

  I’m led into a concrete room with no windows and very little ventilation to exhaust the heavy smell of ink and disinfectant. Burly Cop hasn’t left my side since we arrived at the downtown South Pearl Street headquarters of the APD ten minutes ago. There’s a pad of ink set out on a metal table. Beside that is a pad of paper, the topmost sheet of which contains thick square boxes that will soon be tattooed with my prints.

  I’m a little confused, because although I haven’t been officially arrested, or read my rights, or even handcuffed, I’m still being printed. My guess is they want to compare the prints they lifted off Lisa’s place to my own. I suppose I could protest, call in a lawyer, scream harassment, but my gut tells me that would just make matters more complicated. Besides, what the hell do I have to hide?

  “Thought you guys were fingerprinting electronically now?” I say. It’s my attempt at showing off at least some knowledge of the twenty-first-century police department.

  “Computer printing devices cost a lot of money,” he says, scratching his nearly bald head. “We’re always running in the red. Or so they tell me.”

  Burly Cop takes hold of my right hand with his left, tells me to extend my thumb. Then, talking hold of said thumb with the opposing digits on his right hand, he presses the thumb pad onto the ink pad. When the thumb pad is sufficiently blackened with ink, he presses it onto the fingerprint form in the square space provided.

  “Don’t resist me,” he insists.

  His grip is tight and for a brief second or two, I feel like he’s going to tear my thumb off. When it’s done he points to a sink in the corner of the room.

  “You can wash up there,” he says mechanically. “Careful of the water. It’s scalding hot sometimes.”

  The hot water doesn’t seem to bother me. Allowing the steaming water to run onto my hands, I shoot Burly Cop a smile. But he just shakes his head like he’s witnessing the actions of a crazy man. If he only knew.

  Miller, the homicide-slash-criminal-investigations detective, is sitting behind his desk. He’s taken his jacket off and hung it on the rack behind him along with his trench coat. His shoulder holster and the automatic it houses are plainly visible. If I were to describe the scene for one of my novels, I’d write, The gun rested heavily against his left rib cage, close to his broken, but still-beating heart. That sort of thing.

  He’s busy reading something when I enter the office. From the looks of it, it’s a legal document of some kind.

  “Shut the door behind you, please, Mr. Johnston,” he says without pulling his eyes away from the document.

  I shut it.

  “Take a seat.”

  “You telling or asking?”

  “I’m very busy, Mr. Johnston,” he says, clearly not in the mood.

  There’s a single wood chair set in front of his desk. It looks like the kind of chair a prisoner of war might be interrogated in inside a windowless concrete cell that’s dripping of damp, blood, and lies. With the only light available in the cramped square office provided by a single desk lamp, I half expect him to turn the light directly onto my face before barking out questions and lobbing accusations.

  “Where were you on the morning of October 10?”

  But he stops reading and sets the short stack of papers back down on his desk. Then he looks up at me and smiles. “You comfortable, Mr. Johnston? Can I get you anything? Cup of Albany PD burnt coffee or something? Might even be a Dunkin’ Donut left over from this morning.”

  I peer down at my still somewhat ink-stained thumb resting in my lap. “I’d like to get the hell out of here so I can go see my girlfriend,” I say. “She had surgery today and her house is ransacked.”

  “Your ex-wife,” he says.

  “Yes, you know that already.”

  “Yes I do.” Shaking his head. “Still trying to get that shit to sink in. How does a man get back together with his ex-wife after all that pain? All that suffering? All the fights? All the bad memories?” Then, smirking, “No wonder you drink during the day.”

  “You learn to look beyond the old pain and begin anew,” I say. Then, “Look, is this why you pulled me in here and printed me? To talk about my complicated love life, Detective?”

  He smiles again.

  “Not at all. My wife died on the operating table a few years ago. I don’t even have a girlfriend these days, so I can’t help but be curious.”

  “Sorry to hear about your wife.”

  He nods. “Thanks.” He lifts the document back up off his desk. “Back to your love life. You now have to contend with Lisa’s ex-boyfriend who, at present, seems to be a thorn in your side.”

  I feel him taunting me, trying to make me feel uncomfortable. He’s succeeding.

  “Listen,” I say, “he made an unannounced visit to Lisa’s house this morning. He brought her flowers. He’s been calling her too, and texting. He’s obsessed with her.”

  “So naturally you assumed he was the one to break in and smash all that good wedding china and to write that nasty note on your computer and to do that crazy drawing on the chalkboard wall. It must have enraged you, knowing he went through Lisa’s underwear.”

  “Detective Miller,” I say, my hands now fisted, “are you trying to get a rise out of me?”

  “Not really,” he says, once more setting down the paper, sitting back in his swivel chair. “I’m trying to get to the botto
m of why you would choose to confront him in his own home, and why you let it get physical. You realize he has every right to have you busted on numerous counts, assault with malicious intent being one of them?”

  “Whoever said I hit him, much less went to his apartment?”

  “He does and I do.”

  “But he isn’t pressing charges, is he?”

  “No, but he is requiring you to stay away from him. Now, are we going to stay away from him or do I send this document to the court for a judge to issue the necessary order?”

  “Don’t know about you, but I would prefer never to see him again.”

  “I would prefer it that way too.”

  Silence ensues. It’s as heavy and as stale as the air inside the office.

  I make like I’m about to get up. “So can I leave now?”

  He sits up in his swivel chair, gestures with his right hand for me to remain seated.

  “In a minute.” He fumbles through the thin stack of paper once more, sliding out two more sheets. “Did you know that we keep meticulous records here at the APD? Even before everything went digital, generations of good cops have managed to maintain a shipshape records department.”

  “Good for you.”

  “No. Good for you and Johnny Q. Public. That’s your tax dollars hard at work. Or, in your case, royalties.”

  “I can sleep better now. So why are you telling me this?”

  “Because if it weren’t for those meticulous records, I might never have known that your ex-wife and current girlfriend, Lisa, also slapped a restraining order on your ass eight years ago.”

  My heart drops. Before the words come out of his mouth, I know what he’s about to say next. And then he says it.

  “You really try and get away with burning Lisa’s house down with her, Bourenhem, and your daughter inside it?”