Free Songs in the Key of Death by William Bankier Page A

“Funny you should say that, Annie. I need a divorce.”
    “So. What’s her name?”
    “Carmen Hopkins.”
    Anna turned her head.
    “Is that the fat little teenager I met the last time I came into the station? You must be joking.”
    “She’s a clever young woman.”
    “She’s a bloody genius if she’s trapped you.” Her face was pale, she looked her age. “Is she pregnant?”
    “Not that I’ve heard.”
    “She’s saving her trump card. Casey, listen to me, I’m about to do you a favor.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “No way will I ever grant you a divorce to marry that carnivorous high-school dropout. If you were to come to me with some mature, intelligent, decent woman —” She watched his face for a few minutes while he counted blooms on hollyhocks. Then she got up and carried the pitcher and her glass to the house. “Crazy,” she threw back at him. “Out of sight.”
    Dolan came in a few minutes later and heard the shower drumming. He wandered through rooms he had seen only once before. He used to believe, like a kid, that he and Anna in the house in Baytown were permanent because nothing else could ever contain their relationship. He was wrong. There was always another way.
    She joined him as he was exploring the bedroom. It was a new robe, soft towelling in a shade of blue he liked, and she smelled of the lilac soap she had brought into his life decades ago. She stood beside him; there was no place for his arm except across her hip. They slipped easily into a familiar embrace. As they kissed, she whispered, “I was hoping you hadn’t driven all this way just to argue.”
    “Seems I didn’t,” he said.
    In the next hour, the light in the room diminished slowly as afternoon became evening. Casey lay at ease with Anna tucked close against his side. The occasional things she said buzzed against his ear. He was falling asleep. The trip had solved nothing. All it proved was that he and Anna could still get it on, but that had never been in doubt. They could not live together, and she would never, clearly, release him to marry Carmen.
    “No divorce?”
    “No divorce.”
    “You’re a bitch,” he said.
    “I’m the best friend you ever had.”
    They ate something at nine o’clock. By then, he was outside unlocking the car, making his escape from boredom, the nagging that was beginning to emerge—not all hers, he was dishing out his share. The car smelled strange inside, but he cranked down the window, switched on, and began to roll. Then Alvin Hopkins got up off the floor behind the driver’s seat and put a knife against his neck.
    “Hey!” The car swerved before Casey got control and stepped on the brake, easing to a stop fifty yards from Anna’s house.
    “Keep driving.”
    “How the hell did you get in here?”
    “You shouldn’t have given Carmen your spare key. She doesn’t even have a license.”
    “She told me she does.”
    “She tells you lots of things. Like I was going to Montreal for a friend’s wedding.”
    “She made that up?’
    “That’s right. My sister is crazy, don’t you know that? After Pete crashed his truck and died, she went out of the house one night and put her head on the mainline track, waiting for the Toronto express. I think she knew I’d find her and bring her back but I’m not sure.”
    “So the whole story about she’d be alone in the house for a couple of days was to get me found there by you.”
    “She likes excitement.”
    They drove slowly in silence, down empty streets. At last Dolan said, “Where are we going?”
    “I’m going back to Baytown. By bus, the way I came.”
    Dolan felt, at last, the cold tide of fear. It filled his gut, loosened his muscles, his foot relaxed on the accelerator.
    “Don’t do anything crazy.”
    “Keep driving. Turn left at the corner.”
    They drove into an area with trees and shrubs on either side of the road. Streetlamps cast pools of brilliance which only emphasized the black distances beyond.
    “Slow