Red House Blues Read online

  Chapter 7

  The side of her head hit the window as the train bucked to a halt. Can’t be Seattle already, thought Suzan. But it was. The other passengers were getting to their feet, grabbing coats and bags from the overheads. She pulled her pack down and wedged herself into the flow toward the car’s exit, her head still muzzy.

  Seattle’s King Street Station was a cave pungent with sweat, rancid popcorn and burnt coffee. Half of the waiting room was a web of scaffolding and torn-out plasterwork where workers were ripping out what looked like a fifties remodel of the original nineteenth century building. Suzan was glad to see the demolition of one example of the twentieth century’s ugliest periods. Still, it was disheartening, a thick film of white dust everywhere. It felt like falling into a bombed-out basement.

  She was at a loss where to go from the terminal lobby. Her fellow travelers milled around piles of baggage like Jerseys at an alfalfa bail. She flung her simple pack over her shoulder and picked her way through the throng toward tall swinging doors at the far side of the cavernous room.

  Outside, at the curb a rank of orange and white taxicabs lay wait for passengers bound for their hotels. Suzan approached the first one. The driver rolled down his window.

  “Excuse me, could you take me to the Sea Turtle Hostel?”

  “S’pose I could,” said the cabbie. “But it’d be a waste of my time and your buck. Walk two blocks toward the water, you’re there.”

  “Thanks,” she said, feeling like a total fool.

  First thing I do is get myself a city map, she vowed. She looked around for signs of the waterfront. Between two old brick buildings she made out a glint that had to be water. That was the direction. When she reached First Avenue she paused to get her bearings.

  First Avenue followed the curve of Elliott Bay. It was a narrow street lined with Victorian era brick buildings, two to six stories high, the ground floors of which were occupied by small art galleries, bars, a pawnshop, and a bookstore. Which would be the logical first stop, Suzan decided. Surely they’d have a city map.

  They had better than a map. They had Michelle at the cashier’s desk who knew right were Sea Turtle Hostel was and where to get cheap, good food. She told Suzan this area was called Pioneer Square, and they were on Seattle’s first real street (thus the name), that the street used to be called Front Street. Seems Michelle was a wealth of information Suzan didn’t feel she needed but it was nice to run into someone friendly right off the bat. She let Michelle talk until a customer snapped her back to her commercial duties.

  The Sea Turtle was a block west of the bookshop on Alaskan Way, around the corner from the Bread Of Life Mission. She imagined that “hostel” might be a euphemism for homeless shelter. Claire had gotten the name off the internet. But the place turned out to be clean enough and seemingly well run.

  To the left of the door was a whole rack of tourist flyers and maps, plus the expected information on how to find social services and public restrooms downtown. The guy at the desk had the moth-eaten look of a down at-the-heels panhandler coming off a weeklong drunk. But he was accommodating enough, signing her in and handing her the key for room Two-B. Which, he mentioned, she would be sharing with three German women traveling down the coast from Vancouver. They were out sightseeing so Suzan should have the room all to herself if she wanted to get settled. He didn’t offer to carry her pack. Self-sufficiency was what hostels were about.

  Two-B room was cell-like, the window wall sandblasted red brick with a small sash window flanked by two gunmetal gray bunk beds. She located her assigned bunk right away. It was the one without underwear and hiking socks drying on the rails. Home sweet home.

  There were four Army surplus-type metal lockers on the wall opposite the window. Suzan found an empty one and hung up her two shirts and spare pair of jeans, stacking her underwear on the top shelf. It somehow brought to mind Sean’s jail stay. Funny, how when Sean was in jail she had never spared a thought to what it must have been like for him, the tiny cells and regimented meals. At least he hadn’t had to walk down a long spooky hall to the toilet.

  As uncomfortable as the bunk appeared Suzan flopped onto its olive drab blanket, totally exhausted in spite of the nap she had taken on the train. Or maybe because of the nap. She hadn’t had time to think of that nasty dream. It probably meant nothing beyond being a rehash of whatever insecurities were fermenting in the back cupboards of her mind. But the whole thing had left a bad taste. She could still see Sean’s corpse floating toward her through a prism of green pond water. What would Claire think of the dream? Probably that it’s a warning to get my fanny back to Bellingham and stop chasing this particular ghost. Maybe she’s right that I haven’t thought this thing through but I’m here now.

  What to do first? Good question. How about something to eat and a look around the neighborhood. Then first thing in the morning march the grieving widow in to see the police.

  Suzan followed Michelle’s advice and treated herself to a mushroom burger at the J & M Cafe up the street. It ran to more than she wanted to spend but Michelle the bookshop guru assured her the cafe was one of the original businesses in Seattle and a “must see”. She reminded herself she wasn’t here on vacation. It would be so easy to get sidetracked into tourist mode, to forget her purpose in coming to Seattle. If only she could forget.

  The next morning she was disappointed to learn that Paula and Keith, the two police officers that had delivered the bad news in Bellingham were unavailable to meet with her.

  “You should have called,” said the woman at the desk, stating the obvious.

  “Is there anyone at all who might be free to talk to me about the investigation into my husband’s murder? I haven’t heard anything for months.” The oh-poor-me tactic seemed to hit the right nerve with the woman.

  “I’ll call around and see what I can find out,” she said, managing the hint of a sympathetic smile.

  She found an officer from homicide who was reasonably willing to share some information, after he checked out Suzan’s identification and made a few calls. Suzan imagined he called Paula and Keith. But after jumping through the hoops all she got of any use was affirmation that the 111 Fir Street address on the FedEx boxes had indeed been where Sean had lived.

  She was also given the name of the band Sean had been playing with when he died. Scalplock. Charming, thought Suzan. An Indi-Punk band, or so said the officer. Back in Bellingham Sean had gravitated more to the lyrical side of classic rock guitar. Sean was never a head-banger by any stretch, even when he was drugging. At least not when Suzan knew him. He was more into Dylan, Santana, Clapton, Hendrix. Acoustic mostly. Romantic, she thought. Then all of a sudden he’s in Seattle playing in a Punk band called Scalplock? There seemed to be quite a lot she hadn’t known about her husband.

  “Anything else we can help you with, Mrs. Pike?” said the officer, apparently eager to get back to his more promising homicide-related activities.

  “Do you know if any notebooks were found with my husband or in his room?”

  “Nothing here,” he said, ruffling through the file. “I can ask the detective in charge but your husband’s effects were cataloged into the evidence room, and there’s no notebook listed.”

  It had been a long shot anyway. Of course they could be holding back information during the investigation but chances were there had been no notebooks. The officer said Scalplock had been playing at Jax’s, a Punk bar on Fifth, the night Sean was killed. Suzan wasn’t ready to show up at the Fir Street house so Jax’s seemed like an obvious place to start.

  Chapter 8

  Seattle - 1930

  Martin missed the first step, barking his shin in the dark. Rosemary hadn’t seen fit to leave the back porch light on for him. But he did notice through a rotgut haze that the kitchen light was on. She was waiting up for him. Going to give him what for. Well, he wouldn’t stand for it. He was still the man of the house, no matter what she might think. Man didn’t have to give up being a
man when he was down on his luck. Didn’t he have the right to cut loose a little when he got a few dollars? Not right. Nobody else was working. She didn’t have any call to be so high and mighty all the time. She was taking in goddamn laundry from the goddamn bloodsuckers on First Hill, for chrissake.

  The kitchen door was unlocked as it always was. Rosemary was hunched over the rickety ironing board smoothing wrinkles from a damask table runner. She didn’t look up as her husband stumbled through the door.

  “Why are you wasting electricity up to all hours? Costs money, damn it,” he said.

  “Why are you wasting money drinking till all hours, Martin? At least my ironing puts food on the table.”

  “Here it comes. The goddamn ironing. Rub my nose in it every time you get the chance. I’m sick of it, Rosemary.” And sick of you, he thought to himself.

  “That’s fine with me, Martin,” she said. “Because I stayed up to tell you I’m leaving. Right after I deliver this basket of linens to Mrs. Phelps I’m packing up and going to live with my sister in Cincinnati. I’ve had all I can take. The bank called again today. They are foreclosing, Martin. They are taking this house and I can’t stop it. I don’t make enough to make up the back payments you didn’t make.”

  “Well, good riddance, I say. Ever since we moved into this damn house things have gone from bad to worse. Good riddance.” He sat down hard in the strait backed kitchen chair. “Run off to that rich bitch sister of yours. If she’d loaned us the money like I asked her, I could have paid the bank. As long as I had a good job at the mill, butter wouldn’t melt. Then the mill shut down and all of a sudden I’m poison. There’s loyalty for you. You deserve each other.”

  Rosemary put the iron down at the end of the board and saw her husband sitting there in the stiff oak chair, looking like he could topple out of it and onto the green linoleum any second. How small he seemed sitting there like that. Once, too long ago, he’d been confident, strong. The mill had been booming then and he had hopes of expanding down to Tacoma. They bought the old house on Fir and started fixing it up, adding a second bathroom and installing modern electrical wiring. Their dream home. People could afford a dream or two before the crash. She had loved him. Perhaps she still did, but it didn’t matter anymore.

  “Martin, it’s not about loyalty. There is nothing else I can do. Don’t you see, maybe you’ll be better off without me right now.”

  “Sure, and maybe I can just go down to Hooverville - find myself a nice cardboard box to live in. Is that your idea of better?”

  “There is still some work to be had, Martin. You’ll make do if you don’t have to worry about supporting the two of us. You could work a few hours here and there until things turn around. When you are working steady again I can come back. We can start over,” she said.

  “That’s your idea, Rosemary? I should scrounge food behind the soup kitchens? I should shine shoes and collect firewood on the tide flats like a bum? I ran the biggest mill in Seattle! I’d be a laughing stock. Is that what you want?” he said.

  “I’m not laughing. I don’t see a thing that’s funny here, Martin. You don’t want to collect firewood like a bum? Take a look at yourself. You are worse than a bum. Every dime you can put your hands on goes for bathtub booze in some speakeasy on First Avenue. You disgust me the way you are,” she said.

  How it happened he didn’t know but suddenly he was out of the chair, grabbing the iron off the end of the board. He just wanted her to stop talking. He couldn’t stand to see that look of pity on her face. He saw it in her eyes. He was a failure. Useless. She’d gone too far. He swung the iron at her mocking face.

  She fell sideways against the sink. There was a sound like a branch snapping in a storm. He didn’t understand what it was at first. Then Rosemary slid to the floor. It all happened so fast.

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her, lying there so still, blood flowing out over the floor beneath the sink. He knew there must be something he should do. He sat back down on the kitchen chair. He had to think what to do.

  He hadn’t meant to hurt her. He knew that. He’d never hit Rosemary before, ever. He wouldn’t ever hurt her. It wasn’t her fault. It was his own miserable bad luck. Like a curse. First the mill, then the house, now this. His stomach lurched and he wanted to be sick, as if that would help anything. If only he could vomit up all the bad luck like a bad batch of booze and everything would be set to rights again. It was like a sickness, this bad luck. He didn’t deserve it but now it was eating away everything he once was. And there is no way to fix it, no way to fix this. The police will come and they would know right away what happened. He killed his wife. He could say it was an accident. Maybe they’d believe that. But, no. She was hit with the iron before she fell. Anyone could see that. He’d go to jail at the very least. Maybe he would hang. He deserved to hang. He was a miserable, murdering drunken failure.

  Martin, sitting in the kitchen chair, looking at the corpse on the floor, did not feel the infinitesimal tremor that wormed its way up through the house’s foundation, through old-growth timber beams into the heavy fir flooring, up through lathe and plaster. The tremor was like incoming tide sliding in over the marsh flats. It was like a creeping fungus, its mycelium enveloping the wooden structure that encapsulated the man sitting in the oak chair. Even if he had not been buried in his own thoughts he might not have perceived so small a shiver, so gently did the house stir. It could not have been called an intelligence, no more than a virus, or a sudden electrical discharge from a cumulous cloud could be called an intelligence. Whatever its genesis, whether chemical reaction or some supernatural confluence, it existed because it existed in that particular place, within each cell and dust mote of the house on Fir Street. It functioned as it had always functioned from its inception and would always function.

  But Martin Childers knew nothing of this. Had he had an inkling of it he would have passed it off as the inevitable consequences of a night drinking up what little money he was able to pry from his wife. Or the onset of madness. For what else could he think but that he had gone crazy to do what he had done?

  It must have been two or three in the morning, he didn’t know. How long had he been sitting there? His hands were still shaking. The dark smears down the sink were dry. He got up, pulled the damask tablecloth from the ironing board and placed it over Rosemary’s ruined face. Even as he did it he knew it was a silly thing to do. But he couldn’t have her staring up at him like that. Didn’t want her seen like that when they came and found her.

  He went through the dining room and up the stairs to their bedroom off the first landing. There, he pulled the bedding off the bed and tore a sheet into strips. He knew knots. Hadn’t he put in his share of work with the fishing fleet when he first came to town? Back when there was a fishing fleet worth the name. Seemed like so long ago. Always a handy thing to know, knots. Who would have thought he still remembered. Never know when something a man learns will come in handy. His hands were not shaking quite so much now.

  He went back to the landing and tied things up good and tight, admiring anew how well the old house was built. They built to last in those days. Whoever put this thing together, really knew what he was doing, he thought. Then when everything was in place Martin climbed over the glossy walnut banister and let go.

  Chapter 9

  Her bunkmates at the Sea Turtle were eighteen-year-olds on the German equivalent of senior trip, intent on turning the entire night into one Wagnerian slumber party, complete with smuggled beer. Suzan was outnumbered and feeling like an ancient shipwreck. After pleading for quiet until her voice gave out she gathered up pillow and blankets and padded down the hall to the bathroom. It didn’t look too comfortable but it was quieter. She locked herself in one of the shower stalls, wrapped up in the blankets and curled up on the damp tile floor.

  One of the sinks was dripping, providing a sort of white noise over the residual racket from the Germans down the hall. Why hadn’t she packed earplugs? One summer
after high school she traveled across Europe, staying in hostels, backpacking. The trip was her graduation present from her father. The memories she cherished were of romantic Roman evenings and lazy Parisian mornings, illustrating the selective nature of memory. Only now, too late, did she remember why she once swore she would never book into a hostel ever, ever again.

  There was little chance of sleep. For one thing the ceiling lights were on for the benefit of people requiring late night trips to pee. And with the amount of beer the Germans were putting away it was likely there would be a steady parade to the toilets. Suzan hoped they were sufficiently hammered not to notice her through the frosted glass of the shower stall. The shower scene from Psycho sprang unpleasantly to mind. Still, if the Germans ran screaming from the building, she would have her bunk bed back. Which, compared to the shower stall, now seemed like the ultimate in luxury.

  The clammy shower stall smelled of mildew and bad drains. This is insanity. I should be home in my own bed. And I would be, if I had the sense of a gnat. What did this mindless journey prove except that she had some sort of perverted need to suffer? If Norman Bates showed up with cutlery at this moment, would even that be enough? What was she trying to prove? The one thing she couldn’t find release from was the conviction that she had utterly failed Sean in every imaginable way. It was a litany that had her by the throat and wouldn’t let go.