A Smudge of Gray: A Novel Read online

  “Dad?” Katie said as she peered from the top step, but then she screamed at the sight of her fallen mother and ran back into her bedroom.

  “Jonathan!” Brian yelled.

  “Dad? What are you doing?” Jonathan asked wearing basketball-patterned pajamas. He ran down the steps.

  “Is Trevor here?”

  “What?”

  “Trevor, the kids’ dad. Is he here?”

  “No. He’s not here.”

  “Are you alright, tiger?” Brian asked in a voice not of a detective, but of a concerned father. Brian held his son’s shoulders and studied his innocent nine-year-old.

  “Yeah, we stayed up late playing Nintendo.” Jonathan looked at the collapsed woman. “What happened to Kevin’s mom?”

  “Call 911. Tell them a woman has had some head trauma at Five Twenty-Nine Placid Road,” Brian instructed.

  Jonathan scurried back upstairs.

  Brian left Laura’s side and turned back into the detective. He ran upstairs and down the hall on the plush brown carpet. The light from the hallway shined into the master bedroom. Brian entered. He stopped just past the door and stood in the darkness. The smell of coconut hit him as he fumbled for the light switch, but he did not care to search for the origin of the fruit. Finally, Brian found the panel. It was not a traditional control, but one with a dimmer. He pummeled it until the room filled with light. Brian looked around his surroundings. A king-size bed sat in the middle of the master bedroom, nearly double the size of his. The covers on the right side of the bed were crumpled, but the left side remained flawless—the resting place for the king of the house. Two huge walk-in closets filled both sides of the room.

  Brian continued toward the closet on the same side as the made bed. He entered the room filled with suits. Over thirty brown, navy, gray, and black suits lined the racks. Some had pinstripes, some were double breasted, but above all, the color black dominated the collection. Brian looked down at a rack of ten pairs of shoes. They were neatly tucked under the suits with shoeboxes stacked on the sides forming a mini castle.

  “Shoe polish,” Brian mouthed to himself. The detective tossed shoes aside. Then, he shuffled through some shoeboxes.

  “They’re on their way, Dad,” Jonathan said.

  “Good. Hey, I need to take you home. Go grab your stuff,” Brian said as a father, feeling his son’s soft hair.

  “Kevin and Katie are scared.”

  “I know, son. They will be okay. Everything will be okay.”

  Jonathan followed his father’s instructions.

  Brian checked each shoebox. He flung a pair of Burberry loafers to the side, the same loafers from Trevor’s mall purchase. As Brian dug deeper, he came across the color yellow buried underneath the castle. It was five yellow tins. Brian grabbed one and read the top, “Fatto in Italia.”

  The Italian words made Brian’s pores open. He knew he had his man, now he had to find him. Brian shoved the tin into his pocket and noticed a business card on the nightstand. He took one and saw “Trevor Malloy – President – Malloy Consulting Service.” Brian ran from the room as Jonathan met him in the hall.

  “Ready?” Brian asked.

  Jonathan nodded. As Brian and his son clumped down the stairs, they saw Laura still lying unconscious.

  “Is she dead?” Jonathan asked.

  The sound of an ambulance entered the house.

  “No. She’ll be okay. The paramedics are here.”

  Brian looked at the auburn hair of the woman lying on the floor, the woman married to a monster. Part of him felt bad, but another part felt free. He and Jonathan poured into the night air as the ambulance stopped in the driveway. Two sturdy men stepped out. Brian flashed his badge.

  “Detective Boise. There’s been an accident. The woman hit her head. She’s still breathing, just knocked out. Here’s my card. I’m tracking a murder suspect,” Brian said as he handed the older of the two men his police card.

  Both men looked at him, dazed. Brian helped Jonathan into his SUV.

  “Dad?” Jonathan said.

  “Yeah, tiger.”

  “What’s a murder suspect?”

  “A very bad person. Don’t worry about it. Let’s get out of here.”

  Brian jumped inside his SUV and propelled the vehicle from its spot, destined back to the city.

  The paramedics breached the home and saw Laura sitting on the bottom step, her hands rubbing her temples.

  “Ma’am, are you okay?” the younger paramedic asked.

  “Where are my kids?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Kevin? Katie?” Laura yelled as she stood up.

  “Take it easy, ma’am,” the older paramedic said.

  Kevin and Katie crept from the hallway.

  “Mom?” they said in tandem.

  “Are you guys okay?” she asked, holding them.

  “There was a crazy man in the house. I thought it was Dad, but it must’ve been Jonathan’s dad,” Kevin said.

  “I thought you died,” Katie added as she began to cry.

  “I’m okay. I’m okay,” she replied, hugging her kids. “Where is he?” Laura asked the older paramedic.

  “Why don’t you let us evaluate you?”

  “I said, where is he!?” she continued.

  “He’s a detective,” the older paramedic said as he waved Brian’s business card.

  Laura snatched it as she read his name aloud, “Detective Brian Boise.” She stormed up the stairs, her kids at her side. Laura entered her room and saw the mess of shoes and boxes. She moved to the phone and dialed Brian’s number.

  As Brian raced through the early morning, he answered the call. “This is Detective Boise.”

  “How dare you come into my house!?”

  “Where is Trevor?” Brian asked.

  “Who do you think you are? I ought to call the police,” Laura said, the whites of her eyes roaring.

  “I am the police!” Brian lashed back. “I said, where is Trevor?”

  “He had to go out of town because of an early business meeting,” Laura said, tightening her robe.

  “Is that normal for him?”

  “He travels a lot. It’s nothing unusual. What the hell is going on!?”

  “Your husband, he’s not exactly the person you think he is.”

  “How so?” Laura responded with a glare that no one saw, her kids now frightened back to their rooms, the paramedics evaluating them.

  “I don’t have time to explain. But your husband is now a murder suspect.”

  Laura’s one hundred twenty pounds wavered. The demeanor in her eyes changed from stress to distress. The skin on her forehead screamed adding a decade of pain to her thirty-six years. She finally received an answer from the ignorant detective, an answer that she didn’t want to hear.

  “Oh my God. You must be mistaken. That’s impossible,” Laura replied as she covered her mouth.

  “Do you have any idea where he is right now?”

  “What?” Laura asked as if she had just awoken from a coma.

  “Where is he now!?”

  “I don’t know. I just have his cell phone number and—”

  “That’s his cell phone on his business card?” Brian queried as he grabbed the business card from his pocket.

  “Yes. But, what are you going to do?” Her eyes filled with tears built up from years of holding them back.

  “I suggest you stay put with your kids and wait until we pick him up. I’ll send a black and white over. And please do not contact your husband,” Brian ordered.

  “Fuck you!” Laura roared as she threw the phone at the loafers on the floor.

  Laura sat on the side of the bed that her husband normally slept on. She picked up the phone as her instincts told her to call the individual who was her crutch, the one person she always turned to when she didn’t know where to turn—her husband. But the intruder inside her million dollar home, the father of her son’s friend, the detective, had toyed with her i
nstinct. She wanted to dial her husband’s cell phone, yet she couldn’t. Laura stood from her spot on the bed and stepped into the closet. She stared at the shoes covering the floor, the shoeboxes sprawled out like the aftermath of a burglary, and to a certain degree, it was. Laura saw four cans of canary yellow underneath the mess. She walked to them as the dial tone still emitted from the phone on the floor. The cans rested not on the tan carpet, but on the color chocolate. She reached down and grabbed a briefcase buried underneath them all.

  It was heavy like the briefcase inside Trevor’s office. She slid the locks to open it, but they failed to budge. Her instincts changed, as she now wanted nothing more than to see the inside of the case. There were three-digit dials on each side, which prevented entry from an unauthorized individual. There were one thousand choices for the first lock coupled with one thousand choices for the second. Together this offered one million combinations for a random user to attempt. But Laura was no random user, she held privileged information on the man who had selected the lock codes, because she was his wife.

  A picture on the nightstand caught her attention, a picture of the bond she shared with her husband—their two kids. Laura spun both dials to “512” and flipped the locks, but they remained impenetrable. “512” was the birthday of her twins, May 12. She took a moment to think. Then, she flipped the dials to “620,” her birthday. Again, she tried the locks, but they didn’t budge. Laura grabbed the phone as she realized she was crazy. She needed to talk to her husband, to talk to the keystone of the family. She was his wife and she knew that she had taken a vow to support him until death did they part. But as Laura rested her finger on the first number representing Trevor’s cell, something told her to try one last combination. She changed the right combo to her birthday and the left to her kids’. She pressed the locks again with her dainty fingers. The nail on her right index finger split in half. Laura switched to her middle finger and pressed harder. The case opened.

  The dial tone on the phone changed to an abrasive buzz, which tormented the room. But Laura didn’t care. She opened the case, letting the contents breathe the filtered air inside the house. Over ten black & white photographs stared at her. They were of three polished individuals, a classy woman with black hair, a yuppie “Clark Kent,” and a middle-aged Hispanic man with an unforgettable smile. Beneath the photographs was a manila folder filled with stock charts. In the mix, Laura read a sheet labeled “Stock Gain/Loss Statement.” Plastered in bold letters was “Client: Trevor Malloy – Stock Loss: ($121,897.12).” The contents baffled her as her mind filled with images of a side of her husband that she never knew, a side hidden away and protected by a lock. Laura realized there was still something weighing down the case. She lifted all of the papers and beheld two boxes of bullets to a pistol.

  Laura dropped the briefcase without looking any further. She stepped back from the confusion in front of her. Laura wanted to escape from the moment, a moment that was like a wakeless dream. She suddenly felt like a stranger in her own house as the man with whom she had shared her bed, had shared her life, was someone gravely different from the man she knew.

  Tears flowed from her eyes. The photograph of her twins consumed her focus again as her objective through the chaos became clear; she needed to protect her children. Laura ran from the room draining the life from it except for the buzz spewing from the phone. The noise seemed to grow in strength, yelling like the sound of a heart monitor attached to a lifeless heart.

  Chapter 21

  A bolt of electricity filled Jonathan’s room. Anne Marie winced from the shock she received from the metal on the light switch. The static electricity had been building as she paced her apartment, wondering what to do, where to go. Her world seemed to be collapsing. She was all alone in her apartment, all alone in her life. At that moment, she craved the only living being that made her heart beat—her son.

  Anne Marie did her best to hold back the tears, but her cheeks were already drenched. She sat on her son’s bed and pressed the covers. They were cold, lifeless. The tightly woven thread seemed to expel a chill that flowed through her skin and into her soul. With her fingertip, she outlined a basketball imprinted on the sheets. As she finished the circle, the color of the ball seemed to change from orange to red—blood red. She rubbed her temples as she felt her heart pounding through her veins. Anne Marie was overwhelmed with thoughts, not knowing what to do, but she knew that she had to take action. She wiped her cheeks and took a deep breath. It wasn’t a breath of fear, but rather, a breath of anger.

  She stormed to her room. Anne Marie clutched the bedside phone and dialed the number ingrained in her mind. She waited as silence encircled her.

  “This is Detective Brian Boise. Sorry that I missed your call, but—”

  She slammed the receiver down, picked it up, and then dialed the number again. She wanted to hear a ring, but all she received was her husband’s contrived voice.

  “Where are you, Brian?”

  Anne Marie ran into the kitchen. The light punched her face. She checked the top of a pile of papers on the counter and saw the cable bill. She rummaged through a grocery list, the power bill, and piles of shopping receipts. She looked at the bare whiteboard on the fridge, and then saw the picture on the table face down. She paused her search for the paper written by her son. She remembered him giving it to her just as he left, and then placing it on top of the papers, but it wasn’t there anymore. It was as if some force had removed it. As her mind hurt, a beep blasted from the microwave. The word “Done” displayed instead of the clock. The sight scared her. She wondered what was inside the cold, dark microwave, and more importantly, who had put it there. As Anne Marie walked toward it, a piece of paper under the table caught her eye.

  The paper showed the phone number of the place where her son was staying the night, and the place where her husband had his sight. Anne Marie ran to the phone and dialed the number. This time she heard a fast busy signal. She cycled the phone, and then tried again, holding each digit an extra second in case the phone was dumb. Again, she heard the busy signal.

  Anne Marie slammed the device down. “God, please help me.”

  No phone, no computer, no plea could help her now. She was a prisoner inside her home. Anne Marie stared through the kitchen window at the sadness of night. Smoke swirled around her window, clouding her view of the moon. She wondered whether the smoke was some sort of demon, ogling her from outside.

  She knew action was required, but action was something she didn’t take, because Brian always did. She wondered what he would do right now; the answer was right in front of her through that window.

  Five minutes later, the door opened from one of the oldest apartment buildings in the city. A woman dressed in sweatpants and a sweatshirt marched into the night clutching a paper. She had brown hair, and if it had been daylight, a creature on the street would have seen its true color—cherry brown. But there were few creatures at this hour, and the creatures that were out could care less about the woman’s hair.

  Anne Marie reached the curb and hunted for a cab. She looked down the sidewalk as a woman in heels slinked her way. On the other side, a man in a trench coat approached. Across the street, the red and blue lights of a cop car reflected off her eyes. She stepped into the street and searched the headlights. A cab slowed. Anne Marie hopped in without looking back.

  “Where to?” the white-haired cabby asked.

  “529 Placid Road,” she read from the paper.

  As the cab pulled out, Anne Marie looked at the police car across the street. Sitting on the curb and handcuffed, a scrawny man covered in tattoos locked eyes with her. He looked into her and gripped her body with his sin. Anne Marie looked away, wishing the disturbing image had never entered her mind.

  The night was at its darkest as Anne Marie sat in the backseat. She didn’t speak to the driver; she didn’t even look at him. But if she had, she would have seen his eyes watching her in the rear-view, watching her fidget in the seat.
The cabby had seen it all working the graveyard shift, the beaten call girl traveling back to her pimp, the drunken sailor looking for his ship, the gays kissing in the backseat going to fuck. But the woman in his backseat did not fit any of those categories. It was as if she fit into a category of her own.

  All Anne Marie did was sit there and observe the worms crawling in the dark. As the cab neared a stale green traffic light, a man with a beard vomited at the corner. The sight disgusted her. She wondered how Brian could work at night. This was his office, the place where he spent his time slaving for the city. She couldn’t fathom the darkness hidden inside her husband’s mind. This was a time when she was normally off in a dream sculpted by her subconscious. But as she sat there, she wondered whether this too was all a dream.

  After holding her breath for ten minutes, the downtown scrap transformed into rows of homes that were only in her dreams. Anne Marie knew she was close, but she didn’t know what she would do or what she would say. All she cared about was finding her son.

  The cab turned down Placid Road. The homes seemed dormant, protected from the anger of night. They were all dark except for one with white siding and black shutters. All of its lights illuminated the street unnaturally. It looked as if the house were under duress, beaconing for help. Anne Marie wondered who lived in that home, but as the cab slowed in front of it, she knew exactly who did.