Look Closer

Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat.

Why do feet smell and noses run?

You’re okay, Simon, you’re okay.

Getting close to four. You’ll need to answer the door. You’ll need to smile and hand out candy. You’ll need to be seen handing out candy, you want people to say, Yes, yes, Simon Dobias was home. Yes, he was home handing out candy, why? Why do you ask, Officer? You think Simon Dobias went over to Lauren Betancourt’s house and shot her in the head because she trampled over everything that mattered to him and laughed about it? Just walked away like he didn’t matter and laughed about it? Well no, Officer, no.

He was home handing out candy.

—

Upstairs, my legs shaking but I’ve made it upstairs.

It’s not four yet and I’m not sure yet if I can answer the door and go through with it, not sure I can smile and hand out candy and say, “Happy Halloween!” But I know I can. I can do this. I can do this. Of course I can do this, but I need to charge my phone, not the green phone but my normal phone, my iPhone, gotta charge it up by my nightstand. The drawer is ajar and I never leave the door ajar. I open it up and look inside the drawer—

Vicky’s wedding ring. The one she was wearing this morning.

The ring I once nervously slid on her finger.

She said no the first time I asked her.

—

“Happy Halloween! Go ahead and take a couple!”

“Thank you!”

“You’re welcome!” and wave to the parents with their umbrellas because it’s sprinkling, Hey, remember me, remember me I’m Simon Dobias if anyone asks whether I (a) was home handing out candy or (b) was over at Lauren’s house putting a bullet in her head because this time I couldn’t let it go. It isn’t over.

—

“Happy Halloween! Go ahead and take a bunch, here, take like five each!”

Five-thirty.

—

“Happy Halloween! Go ahead and take as many as you want!”

Six-fifteen.

—

I go upstairs and open my bedroom closet and look to the far right. Pull out the costume I bought last year but didn’t wear to a party I was supposed to attend. A Grim Reaper costume. All black, long robe, elongated hood. It’s never been worn. I decided not to go to the party. It was some student’s Halloween bash, and you have to be careful socializing with students, so I decided against it at the last minute.

I pick up my iPhone, still charging on the nightstand.

I pull up Netflix. I turn on House of Cards. I scroll through the synopses of season one and remind myself of the characters’ names—Frank, Claire, Zoe, Peter, Stamper—and the general plot. Then I turn on season one, episode one.

I get dressed. Blue suit and red tie. Put the Barack Obama mask over my head. I’m roughly the same build as the former president, so other than the obvious difference in skin pigment, it’s a pretty good look. I’m Barack Obama, the forty-fourth president of the United States.

I pull out a pillowcase and fill it with everything I need. The Grim Reaper costume makes it heavier and bulkier than I’d prefer. Nothing I can do about that.

I head out the back door, through the privacy of my backyard, into the alley.

I walk along Division, not wanting to arrive too soon. It’s cold and damp outside. I’m underdressed and I get a few comments in that regard from people I pass—“Love the costume! Aren’t you cold?”—but the cold is helping me now, not hindering.

Because now I’m doing it. The time for worrying, obsessing, debating, second-guessing, is over. It’s liberating, I must say, to be done with the conflict. Now I can focus.

By 6:45 p.m., I’m at Lathrow and Division in Grace Village. The number of trick-or-treaters has frittered down to just a handful, mostly older kids.

Lauren’s house is a block and a half to the south.

You shouldn’t have come back, Lauren.

THE DAYS AFTER HALLOWEEN

73 Jane

Sergeants Jane Burke and Andy Tate get out of their car and head into the West Suburban Major Crimes Task Force center in Forest Park. Jane was in the station by six this morning—Day 2 of the investigation—Andy, by six-thirty.

“Harsh, yes,” says Jane.

“Doesn’t get any harsher,” says Andy. “‘I don’t love you’? ‘I never did’? ‘I needed someone different after a bad marriage’? ‘You were my bridge, that’s all you were’? I mean, cruel doesn’t get any crueler. Can you imagine someone saying that to you?”

She gives him a sidelong glance. “No,” she says. “That’s my point. It feels . . . I don’t know, staged.”

“Oh, c’mon, Janey. You really like a woman for this? You really think Lauren’s boyfriend had a wife, and the wife did this?”