Free Window of Guilt by Jennie Spallone Page A

can’t make a positive ID, all else is moot.”
    “What if the pickup truck is missing?”
    “One thing at a time.” Officer Gomez replaced the receiver. It was going to be a long day.
    *
    Ryan stood in the darkened kitchen of his Lincoln Park home, swatting at Rocky as the dog inched towards the remainder of his son’s Dairy Queen vanilla milkshake. “After you peed in the car on the way home from Wisconsin? I don’t think so.”
    Tomorrow he’d bring Rocky to the vet and find out what the hell was wrong with the dog’s bladder. They’d only been home for three hours and already the house was beginning to smell like a dirty urinal. Reaching into his pants pocket, Ryan scattered a handful of dog biscuits several feet from the dog. The little dog raced across the ceramic tiles, his rabies tag clanging through the silence. Ryan paid no attention. His focus was elsewhere.
    Ryan assumed that once his family returned home to Chicago, Todd Gray’s death would resemble a cavity whose decay had been drilled out and replaced by a new porcelain crown, all sparkling and white. Yet he was consumed by the nagging certainty that his moral fiber had been drilled away along with the decay.
    Moral chaos swirled inside him. As a recovering heart attack patient, he didn’t need this stress. The worst part was that he’d brought this misery upon himself. Ninety-nine percent of the population would have called the police upon finding a dead body on their property. Why did he have to belong to the one percent who chose an alternate path?
    Initially, Ryan had planned on depositing the wheelbarrow’s contents farther down the block, but when he’d discovered the drapes drawn across the picture window of his nemesis, he’d felt giddy with pleasure. If anyone deserved to have a dead body dumped on her driveway, it was Helga Beckermann. Each morning, the Nazi stared out at him as he made his way down to the beach. Her disapproving frowns and grimaces were enough to make even the most stoic man develop hardening of the arteries.
    When it came to making bad choices, Ryan was no virgin. He could enumerate them, one by one: quit company, harbor secrets from wife, download Department of Insurance fraud form, then fail to fill it out, neglect to notify police about dead body on property, and transport dead body to neighbor’s driveway. He’d even torn up the Greyhound ticket receipt he’d found mashed in the young man’s pocket. And he’d tossed the empty canteen in a Chicago dumpster when he and Laurie had returned home from summer vacation. You’re a real prince , he castigated himself with such fury that Rocky cocked his leg on the kitchen cabinet.
    “No!” Ryan hissed, not wanting to awaken his family. The dog scooted into the dining room, his tail between his legs. Ryan dabbed a wet paper towel with dishwater detergent and commenced to wipe down the offending site. Although he’d done his best to shield his family, it was just a matter of time before the veil would be lifted and his wife would see him for who he really was. A piece of shit.
    Ryan suddenly felt his heart pounding, his breathing getting shallow. A whimpering Rocky edged towards him. Roughly pushing his dog away, he glanced at the neon framed kitchen dock. I am not going under again. But dread was already clawing its way into his innards, shutting the faucet of reason. One o’clock a.m. His breath was coming short and fast now. Sweat poured from his body like a tsunami.
    Phone nine-one-one. Sinister memories of being attached to an intravenous unit and strapped to a gurney while ambulance sirens blared him into oblivion. No way was he entering Round Two.
    His ribs pinched his chest like a walnut chopper. Panic infiltrated each breath. Who to call? He wasn’t planting a land mine at the exit of his dad’s sweet dreams. He racked his brain. No buddies from grammar school dotted his path to manhood. No fraternity brothers he’d kept in touch with after the fuzz of