Last Song Sung. David A. Poulsen
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that night.
Now Marlon Kennedy, a black man — formerly Kendall Mark, Caucasian — wanted to meet Cobb and me to talk about … something. Cobb and I had spoken with him a couple of times since the night in the alley when he’d been close to dispensing justice on the wrong person. In part, our conversations with him were designed to gain his assurance that the kind of vigilante action that had nearly ended my life wouldn’t happen again. I was fairly certain our entreaties had fallen on deaf ears. Kennedy had grudgingly agreed that he’d at least let us know before he did anything drastic, an assurance I wasn’t convinced would hold up if he once again felt that he had the killer in his grasp.
Neither Cobb nor I said much at first. We drank coffee but decided to wait on ordering breakfast until Kennedy arrived.
“Any ideas?” I said after a few minutes.
“About?”
“What he wants to talk to us about.”
Cobb shook his head. “No clue. Maybe there’s something he wants us to check out that he can’t since he’s gone underground, or maybe he just wants to throw out some ideas, although I doubt that.… Mark isn’t a real team guy. I’m not sure he ever was. Or maybe he just wants to buy us breakfast because he likes our company. So, to repeat: I have not the faintest idea why he called us.”
I nodded, drank some coffee.
Cobb said, “You?”
I shook my head. “I mean I guess it’s possible he’s got something and your little pep talk about the evils of vigilantism has him wanting to play by the rules and involve us in the apprehension of the killer.”
“Yeah, not likely.”
“I know I’ve asked you before, but do you think he’s … I don’t know …”
“Unhinged?”
I set my coffee cup down. “Well … yeah.”
“I don’t know.” Cobb spoke slowly. “I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, so I can’t answer that. I’d say he’s damaged. This case did that to him, or at least it was the one that put him over the edge. But is being that consumed with finding a killer any stranger than being obsessed with making money and never thinking about anything else … or a guy wanting to reach some magic total on an Xbox game and spending twenty hours a day locked in a room playing the damn thing … or someone spending twelve or fourteen hours a day bodybuilding? Hell, if obsession equals crazy, then there’s a lot of wingnuts out there.”
“Actually there are a lot of wingnuts out there.”
Cobb held up his hands. “Fair enough. I’m just saying a lot of us have obsessive behaviours. I’m not sure that necessarily means we’re nuts.”
“So what’s your obsession?” I asked.
“Right now it’s breakfast. I hope he gets here pretty damn quick.”
“One more thing,” I said. “What the hell do we call him?”
“Tell you what, why don’t we ask him?”
On cue, Kendall Mark, a.k.a. Marlon Kennedy, walked into the restaurant. Without, it seemed to me, ever actually looking at us, he made his way slowly in our direction, his eyes taking in the room like there was actually a chance that Faith Unruh’s killer might be in here.
Habit, I guessed.
He sat down next to Cobb, which I found a bit strange. The two bigger men were sharing a space that clearly hadn’t been designed with people that size in mind. I guessed that, as with a lot of cops, current and former, journalists were not his favourite people, and he preferred a little discomfort to having to share space with a member of the fourth estate.
The waitress returned to our table with a coffee pot. Mark nodded at her, and she poured him a cup and topped up Cobb’s and mine.
“Ready to order, gentlemen?” she said.
“Yeah, I think so,” Cobb answered. “I’ll have the breakfast special, please — eggs over medium with rye toast.”
She looked at me.
“Pancakes, please,” I said. “With sausages, and I’ll have a small orange juice.”
She turned her attention to Mark.
“I’ll have what he said,” he aimed a thumb in Cobb’s direction, “but with whole wheat toast.”
The waitress moved off; no one spoke as we doctored our coffee.
Cobb broke the ice. “I’m guessing you’d prefer that we call you by your new name.”
“Yeah, I’d prefer that.”
I made the mental adjustment and nodded that I was onside. A minute or more passed before Marlon Kennedy spoke again. “Nine thousand days.”
I didn’t have an answer for that, and Cobb lifted an eyebrow as his response.
“In a month or so it’ll be nine thousand days that I’ve been watching Faith’s house and the place where they found her body. Nine thousand days that I’ve either been watching or checking tapes with the cameras working. Not one day off. Some milestone, huh? I’m thinkin’ that a lot of people — people like you — would think that’s some crazy shit.”
I thought it best not to mention that we’d just been having that very conversation. Kennedy took a swallow of coffee, and when neither of us answered, he went on: “A white guy takes oral medication and bombards his body with ultraviolet rays to change his skin to black, changes his name and stakes out a place for twenty-four years — what the hell’s crazy about that?”
It was a funny line, but there was no humour in either Marlon Kennedy’s voice or his face.
“Why’d you call this meeting?” Cobb said.
“Couple of reasons. First one is I need to be away for a few days.”
“And?”
“I need somebody to be there.”
“You’ve got your cameras and tape machines.”
Kennedy shook his head. “They need to be checked — make sure they’re working right. And I need somebody to look at the tapes, see what’s been happening at the two locations. And to be there … a pair of eyes when mine can’t be.”
The waitress arrived with the food, so the next couple of minutes were given over to distributing, passing, salting, and peppering. All three of us took a couple of bites before Kennedy set his fork down and looked first at Cobb, then at me.
“My ex-wife’s dying,” he said. “We split about a year and a half after Faith was killed. She just couldn’t take me anymore. She said I’d changed, and she was right. But it was never a hate thing between us. I never blamed her for leaving. In fact, she’s the only person, other than you two guys, who knows about … what I do.”
The eyes that were normally as intense as any I’d ever seen were softer as he spoke of his ex-wife.
“She moved to Nanaimo maybe ten years ago. Her sister called a couple of days ago. Meg hasn’t got long,” he said. “She kept it from me until now. But they told her it’s only days now until …” The voice trailed off, and the eyes looked down.
“I’m sorry, Marlon, I really am,” I said. “I know what you must be feeling.”
He raised his head, and the look he gave me was cold enough to force me to look away. “What the fuck do you know about —” A couple of heads turned our way.
That was as far as he got. Cobb leaned his elbow on Kennedy’s arm and pressed down. Kennedy tried to pull it free, but Cobb pressed harder and spoke in a low voice: “I don’t want you making a scene in here, Marlon, do you understand? And just for the record, Adam knows exactly what it’s like. Except