Page 20 of Confessions of the Dead

13

Matt

THE TATUM FAMILY LIVEDabout a third of the way down Morning Glory Road in a square white-sided house with black shutters that might have fit perfectly in a Hughes movie back in the eighties, but hadn’t been renovated in all those years and was in dire need of some work. Two shutters were missing from the front windows, another was hanging precariously, as if contemplating a fall. The lawn hadn’t been mowed in some time; weeds sprouted up at varying heights among what was left of the grass. A child’s bicycle was off to the side, most of the purple paint lost to brown rust.

Matt hadn’t even shut off the motor when Josh Tatum bolted from the front door, flew down the walk, and yanked at his door handle. His door was locked—a habit Ellie had beat into him within a week of putting on the uniform—and the locked door caused Josh’s face to go beet-red. He smacked the window with the back of his fist.

“Get the hell out of the car, Matt!”

There was a wild look to his eyes. Hysterical. Puffy and red.His pupils weren’t dilated, but his gaze was erratic. Jumping around everywhere. As far as Matt knew, Josh wasn’t a drug user, but the last time Matt had seen that look on someone’s face, it was a kid up for the weekend with his friends, and he’d tried meth for the first time.

“Step back from the car, Josh!”

Josh glared at him through the glass, and for a quick second, Matt thought Josh might put his fist through the window. He didn’t, though. He shook his head and took a couple of stumble-steps back.

Matt unlocked the door with a deliberate slowness, and when he climbed from the cruiser, he did so with one hand on his gun. He spoke in a calm, disarming tone, “Keep your hands at your sides, visible. No sudden movements, okay?”

Josh’s face corkscrewed from anger to confusion, then back again. “What the hell, Matt? You gonna shoot me?”

“Do you have any weapons on you?”

“What? No. Of course not!” Josh was trembling. He reached up and wiped snot from his nose with the back of his hand.

This wasn’t anger. He’d been crying.

“Tell me what’s going on.”

“It’s Lynn and the kids …” He tried to say more, but his words turned into a garbled mess. He choked them back and nearly tripped over the bicycle running back into the house.

Matt reached for the microphone clipped to his shoulder and pressed the Transmit button. “Sally, I’m at the Tatums’, going inside. You don’t hear from me in the next few minutes, send Ellie.”

“Copy.”

His hand still on the gun, ready to draw, he followed the stone walkway to the open front door.

Josh was standing in the middle of the living room, facing the staircase to the second floor.

The hair on the back of Matt’s neck stood up as he cautiously stepped inside, sweeping the empty room. The air was still, smelled stale. The windows were all closed, drapes drawn, no HVAC circulating. No voices. Eerily quiet. So quiet, Matt heard the refrigerator compressor kick on in the kitchen.

“Josh, where exactly are Lynn and the kids?”

At first, he didn’t move. When he finally did, his arm rose in a slow sweep, as if it weighed a thousand pounds. He pointed upstairs with a quivering finger.

14

Norman Heaton

EISA STIFFENED AS NORMANpressed up against her from behind. For once in forty-seven years of marriage, she finally stopped talking. At least for the handful of seconds it took for her to realize what he was doing.

The butter knife still in his hand, Norman reached around her to the window, gave it a good tap with the back of his fist in all four corners, then lifted. It fought, then rose with a thin squeal.

Eisa plucked the butter knife from his hand and dropped it into the soapy water with the other dirty dishes. Then she did something Norman didn’t expect; she backed up slightly and ground her butt against him. When he didn’t move, she let out a soft gasp and pressed harder.

Norman couldn’t remember the last time she’d done something like that and didn’t much care. Her breath smelled like denture paste and orange juice, and if he was happy about any part of this, it was the silence. Her not saying a single word. If he had to take one for the team to keep her quiet, so be it.

“Don’t speak,” he said softly. He whispered it right into her ear, like he used to do back in the days when their intimacy was as common as breathing, and heaven help him, he pressed into her the way he did back in the day, too. Her body responded to him as effortlessly as it did that very first time in the bed of his ’62 Ford pickup parked out at Hollows Bluff overlooking the valley—Norman knew that’s where her mind was—those two kids fumbling over each other’s bodies under the crisp night sky with nothing but a ratty old flannel quilt swiped from the Carmacks’ barn to keep them modest, knowing they had maybe an hour before someone came looking for them. Ray Charles had been on the radio, but for the life of him, Norman couldn’t remember the name of the song. “Don’t speak,” he had said back then, and he said it again now. “We don’t need no words.”

Norman eased his left arm around her waist and brought his other up around her neck, reached around until he was able to grip her left shoulder. He gave her a tender squeeze. This brought on another one of those gasps, and with that came the smell and Norman held his breath before too much of it found its way into his lungs. He looked down at the soapy water, thought of the butter knife somewhere in there. He didn’t really need it, did he? There were so many ways to keep her quiet, to keep her from ending the blessed silence.

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