CHAPTER FIVE
They all listened as Wally and Mimi returned. The two of them said nothing as they removed their jackets, put down the purse, put the car keys on a hook by the door. They went their separate ways after that. Mimi went to the downstairs bathroom, and although she tried to be quiet, the toys could hear her subdued sobs.
Wally went to his den, and when he came back he held a bottle of scotch. He thumped up the stairs and paused just outside Joey’s room.
Shit, Nightbeat thought. I forgot to open the door again. Hopefully he doesn’t notice.
Wally opened the door and shuffled into the room, casting his gaze around at all the toys on the floor. He stepped around them and sat on Joey’s bed. Angel was up there, and Wally picked him up, looking at him.
“God, Joey,” Wally whispered. He set Angel aside and popped the cork on the scotch. He took a long deep swallow and blew his breath out, grimacing. “What the fuck am I going to do? How could this have happened?”
He took another heavy drink and started to sob. His hands went to his eyes, covering them from no one.
“Joey,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry. I should have been there. Please. Please. Can you ever forgive me? I beg of you.”
Another swig of scotch. And again.
How long is he going to sit there? Nightbeat thought. He itched to move even at the cost of exposing himself to Wally. The investigation had him by the throat, and he knew he had to get working. The longer he stalled, the colder the case became. He had to find a way out of this.
It never occurred to him how nasty these thoughts were.
Mostly he hoped that Mimi would come up here. He didn’t know why. She had to be in a similar state, and she seemed to bear some animosity toward her husband due to Joey’s death. Maybe it was his quick acceptance of it, no matter how much grief they were both in.
An hour passed. Wally talked to his son not just like he was trying to conjure up his spirit, but as if he already had. For all Nightbeat thought, Joey’s specter probably hovered in front of his father’s pale and stricken face.
Wally drank more and more until he was three-quarters through the bottle. Then and only then did he set the bottle aside. He turned so he could lie down on the bed, his head on Joey’s pillow. He inhaled deeply as if trying to get some impression of his son. He closed his eyes, muttering to himself under his breath. In his sleep he kept saying Joey’s name over and over again.
Nightbeat thought it might be safe to move, but he didn’t dare do it. No matter how drunk Wally was, there was no telling when his eyes might inch open. Who knew what his reaction would be like upon this horrifying discovery that Joey’s toys were alive when his son wasn’t?
It turned out that this decision had been a solid one. Moments later, the door widened and Mimi stepped in. She took one look at her husband, and Nightbeat thought she might have been irritated with him or disgusted. Maybe she’d wanted to come up here to luxuriate in her memories of Joey, but instead she’d found this miserable fucking drunk in her son’s bed.
She retreated, and Nightbeat could hear her in the upstairs bathroom, unhooking the medicine cabinet. The rattle of pills. The faucet for just a moment. And, undoubtedly, bliss at having the pain taken away if only for a brief period.
Wally snored, and Nightbeat glanced up at him. He saw dark movement behind Wally, but he couldn’t tell what it was. It became apparent a moment later: Cat slithered out of the darkness and onto Wally. He lapped gently at Wally’s tears, grinning. The tears of the grieving must be very satisfying to that bastard.
Time passed, and Nightbeat knew both Wally and Mimi were deep in their self-medicated slumbers. He didn’t think he could hold back any longer. He needed to see the crime scene. He needed help, though. He crawled like a soldier under barbed wire until he found Angel. The vampire puppet played dead.
“Hey,” Nightbeat whispered.
“Go away,” Angel said. Though he took his booze through blood, he still stank of whiskey.
“I need your help,” Nightbeat said. “I need to see the crime scene.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Angel said. “You’d get caught.”
“Not with your help.”
“What do you mean?”
“Stand guard for me,” Nightbeat said. “All you gotta do is sit by the door. If you see Wally start to wake up, or you hear Mimi approaching, just make some kind of sound as a warning. I’ll take care of it from there.”
Angel finally moved, if only to glance at Nightbeat. “What if Wally notices I moved?”
“Come on,” Nightbeat said. “He drank almost an entire fifth. The guy has no tolerance. He’s a two-beer guy, and that’s only on Friday, maybe Saturday, too. He’s so plastered he wouldn’t know dick about it.”
Angel stared at the ceiling for a while, turning his head back and forth as if weighing the pros and cons. Finally: “Okay. I’ll stand watch. But that’s all, all right?”
“Deal,” Nightbeat said.
Both of them crept up to the door, and Angel took up his position. Nightbeat nodded to him as he carefully stepped out into the hallway. He looked back and forth and decided it was okay to stand. He knew which floorboards creaked, and though he was too small to set them off, he avoided them just to be safe.
Traversing the stairs was a bit difficult. Due to his height he had to lower himself down each step as quietly as he could. When he got to the bottom, he glanced around. It didn’t take him long to find the puddle of blood. No one had bothered to clean it up yet. Nightbeat saw that it had not been an arterial injury due to the lightness of the stain. No spray, just leakage. If it was an accident, it was very coincidental that Joey landed in just such a way that he would die instantly.
From this vantage point, he looked back up the stairs, seeking anything that might be out of place. Halfway down he saw a scuff mark that continued down each step. He thought it might have been made by Joey’s head. It implied in his mind that Joey had been thrown down the stairs and only hit halfway down. He wasn’t a forensic specialist, but it felt right in his detective’s heart.
Murder, sure enough. But who did it? Why?
“Hey!”
Nightbeat looked up the stairs. He recognized the whisper as Angel’s. That could only mean one thing. Nightbeat jumped to the side of the stairs and hid himself in the nook between the step and the wall.
Footsteps thumped on the stairs. They were labored and uneven. Nightbeat thought it had to be Wally. A moment later he saw Wally’s lean form stagger into the kitchen, probably looking for something to kill the hangover. Or maybe he was still drunk. Nightbeat thought now might be a good time to sneak up the stairs and play dead in Joey’s room.
Unfortunately, he had to jump to get onto each new step. It took a lot of energy out of him, and he was grateful when he finally rolled himself up over the top step. He lay on his back, staring exhausted at the ceiling.
“Uh . . .”
Nightbeat whipped his head up and saw Mimi staring at him. Oh shit. She had obviously seen him move. Was it too late to play dead?
She rubbed her eyes and shook her head, and Nightbeat thought she might believe she’d hallucinated. He stopped moving just as she looked back down at him. She stared for a while and then nudged him with her foot. Nightbeat didn’t move a centimeter.
“Huh,” she said to herself. She bent down to pick up Nightbeat, and she looked at him closely. “I must be fucked up.” She unceremoniously tossed Nightbeat into her son’s room. He landed flat on his back on the carpeted floor, no worse for the wear. He caught a glimpse of her moving down the stairs. He heard a distant conversation between husband and wife, but he couldn’t tell what they said.
“Did you find something out?” Angel whispered.
Nightbeat nodded. “I wasn’t entirely sure it was murder before. Now I know it’s murder.”
“Who do you think did it?”
“I don’t know. Yet. I’ll have to continue the interviews later. Why? You suddenly interested?”
Angel shrugged. “Just want to be in the know.”
Right. Nightbeat figured he’d done enough for today. He relaxed and let slumber take him. He had a big day planned for tomorrow.
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