Child of My Winter

by Andrew Lanh

  We wait. I wait. I don’t move.

  Then a flurry of craziness as the front door opens and a cadre of cops, state and local, escort someone out. I step near the TV, hoping to get a better look, though I know my behavior is foolish.

  Dustin Trang, taken in for questioning. “Routine,” the newscaster intones. A person of interest.

  Interesting. A person.

  Shooting from the sidewalk, a photographer zooms in crazily, off-angle, at first catching a Help Wanted sign in the window, then focusing on Dustin’s face—that tiny face magnified by those enormous glasses, a face now bewildered, his chin trembling. It’s a horrible sight, that boy jostled between the hustling cops.

  His mouth is moving, though we can’t hear what he is saying. But it’s clear to me, the old-time cop who spent years hauling off suspects who yelled the familiar refrain: I don’t understand. I didn’t do anything. Or, more authentic, I ain’t done nothing.

  Dustin, to his credit, speaks the president’s English—that is, some of our presidents.

  Then he stops, dips his head into his chest, as he is bounced into the back of a squad car.

  The newscaster tells us in a thick, funereal voice: “This young student made death threats against Professor Winslow.”

  That was news to me. But possible, of course—what did I know about this boy?

  Nestled on my sofa, my eyes riveted to the TV screen, my laptop opened to the college Facebook page, the comments piling up, I dropped into a stupor. So little sleep last night, nightmares plaguing my early morning nap. Though the TV droned on and the laptop slipped onto the floor, I found myself, drifting, nodding, assailed by a fierce headache. I was vaguely aware that TV stations had abandoned the sensational murder, and sensed rather than watched the canned laughter of Big Bang Theory reruns. The Barenaked Ladies’ theme music jolted me back and forth through history—and dropped me unceremoniously into the present. And then a flood of nightmare visions: a field in Vietnam, kilometers from Saigon, a hot scorched field, voices jeering, voices mocking, a boy crucified on a bamboo cross, a helmet so heavy every voice I hear echoes, the hot sun, taunts hurled my way—mau di di, the bastard boy—the sweat, the sunburn, the bugs crawling up my legs, the itching, crying…mau di di. Keep moving. Hurry up it’s late. Now now now.

  Now.

  I woke with a start, stunned to feel a draft and to see ice and snow collected on the outside of my windows. I expected tropical heat. The sun a garish red fireball in the sky. Sunburnt flesh, aching.

  The American boy. Lonely. Dust boy.

  The bittersweet taste of chocolate on my lips.

  I closed my eyes but fought with images of Dustin. Anh Ky. His hand touches the cold windowpane. Snowfall covers the whole world.

  Shivering, I found myself ignoring the phone, text buzzes, a Facebook alert doubtless from Hank, even the insistent but gentle rapping on my door. Maybe Gracie, concerned. Echoes: Rick Rick Rick.

  But the ten o’clock evening news stunned me—an on-the-spot interview with the Reverend Daniel Simms of the Gospel of Wealth Ministry. Caught as he hustled to a waiting Cadillac town car, a chauffeur with a ridiculous ribboned cap bowing him in, a reporter thrust a microphone into his face.

  The Reverend Simms actually grasped the microphone, his instinctive gesture, surprising the reporter. A short man, round as a bowling ball, a parchment face with Crayola crimson cheeks, a fur hat, a billowing Chesterfield overcoat, open to show his dark black suit and the gilded gold-speckled vest, he took a deep breath.

  What did he think of the murder of Professor Winslow, a man who’d criticized and mocked Simms’ mega church? About an upsurge in publicity the past few days with Winslow’s new book that perpetuated his stand against Simms’ evangelical religion. “What say you?” the reporter asked.

  Simms had issued a public statement condemning left-wing opportunist professors who were atheistic and communist. The added coup de grace: he’d called Winslow an unrepentant adulterer.

  “Yes, I said those things. I stand by them.” He pulled the microphone closer to his lips. “We see here the workings of a just but vengeful God.”

  “What, Reverend?”

  A sliver of a smile. “This is the work of God who smites the godless, the satanic, the workshop of Satan that we call higher education.”

  The reporter broke in: “They picked up a young student for questioning, Reverend. A Vietnamese lad named Anh Ky…”

  Simms held up his hand, a strange smile crossing his lips. “If he is the murderer, then he is the hand of Almighty God. Misguided perhaps, confused by the godless texts he’s forced to read, but an angel of the Lord.” He spoke into the camera. “I met this young man, you know. Dustin, he calls himself. He sat in my church, listened to me preach. He is one of my children of God…”

  The reporter broke off the interview, addressing the viewer—“That’s a revelation, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps we have just learned a motive for the killing. Thank you, Reverend.”

  The station broke for a commercial.

  I sat on the edge of the sofa and realized my mouth had gone slack.

  Dustin, a child of a sadistic God who totes a gun.

  I didn’t buy it.

  Chapter Seven

  On Saturday at five, the streets dark, we met at Zeke’s. It was Jimmy’s idea, true, a powwow, but something I was anxious to do. After a sequestered Friday, I spent an aimless Saturday morning helping Gracie shovel out. At twilight Gracie and I walked on the sanded sidewalk the few blocks to Zeke’s, my arm tucked under her elbow.

  “It’s this Dustin boy, right?” Gracie had whispered. ”And your poor friend. It bothers you.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t answer my simple questions, Rick.” She shook her head. “I had a husband who did the same thing. Stared right through me when I talked to him. Aggravating as all hell, let me tell you.”

  “I didn’t know I was doing that.”

  “Neither did he. Until I hammered home the idea.” She leaned her head into my shoulder. “All men are built the same.” Her fingertip pushed into my side. “Imperfect.”

  I tightened my grip on her elbow. “I got Ben on my mind. I got Dustin on my mind. A friend murdered—a boy I scarcely know maybe the murderer.”

  We joined Jimmy at a back table, and for a while we said little. “Marcie and Vinnie are stopping by later,” I told them. “The rest of my army.” We talked about the snowstorm—“It’s New England,” Gracie groaned, “why do we always talk about the weather?”—and the sloppy cleanup. We were waiting for Liz, who was late. Liz had told me earlier that Sophia, distraught and rambling, had been taken to John Dempsey Hospital. She had no family, at least in Connecticut, so Liz stayed at her side. Ben Winslow had been her romantic discovery after a messy divorce and an impulsive move from Kansas to Farmington—and she had tucked all her dreams into his life. Sophia lay in a hospital bed and wept.

  Gracie looked into my eyes. “Do you believe this—this Dustin boy is innocent? I mean, could he kill your friend?”

  I didn’t answer, though I sensed Jimmy’s disapproving glare.

  Gracie looked up. “Thank God. Liz is here.”

  Liz was shaking her head as she slipped into a seat opposite me. We waited as she signaled the waiter for a coffee, then Gracie reached over and patted the back of her wrist. “Tell us, Liz,” she said quietly, “are you all right?”

  Liz was surprised. “Me? Yes, Gracie. As well as I can be having left the bedside of a shattered woman.”

  Jimmy, fidgeting with a Bic lighter because he wanted a cigarette, muttered, “Why is it when someone we know—not somebody I know this time, but the rest of you—is murdered, Rick here is always ready to find the accused killer innocent?”

  “What, Jimmy? Nonsense.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “You don’t remember whe
n that little boy they called the Saigon Kid was accused of killing my old army friend Ralph?”

  “He was innocent.”

  “But you didn’t know that until you proved it.”

  I laughed out loud. “That’s why we’re investigators, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy sat back as he scratched his head, and the enormous sweatshirt rolled up his belly. “No, you investigate murder—and mayhem. I investigate simple insurance fraud in the Insurance Capital of the world. Cigna, Aetna. Travelers. You name it. Paper trails—not blood spatter. Embezzlement—not bloodletting.”

  Gracie was frowning at both of us. “Why are we sitting here then?”

  Jimmy smirked. “I came for the corned beef sandwich. The special of the day.”

  “There’s nothing special about it, Jimmy.”

  He shot her a withering look, which she ignored. “The truth of the matter is that this guy Ben Winslow got himself shot to death, and yeah, he was a friend of Rick’s”—he stared into my face, unblinking—“and Liz here, I guess, was his friend, and so I know exactly how the story is gonna play out.” He snapped his fingers at the waiter who scurried over. “Now add the missing ingredient—this Dustin Trang kid who’s all over TV. Is he innocent, Rick?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Liz was waiting to say something. “I don’t like the way the TV reporters condemned the boy. All that footage of him being taken in for questioning. Those horrible close-up shots of his face. He looked so—vulnerable. Frightened.”

  Gracie added, “Baby-faced folks kill people, Liz.”

  “Yes, they do. But local TV is so—intrusive. One reporter on Channel 3 actually called him an ‘angry student.’ Hardly objective. Another talked of the rash of school-related shootings across America.”

  A loud voice greeted us from the doorway as Hank joined us, taking off his coat and pulling up a chair. Out of uniform, off duty, he was dressed in a camouflage flannel shirt hanging loose over his khakis, a smallish diamond stud in his right ear, colorful plastic bands on one wrist.

  “Hey, folks.” He grinned at Jimmy. “Miss me?”

  Jimmy reached over and fingered the bands. “What cause are you representing today? Save the whales? Save the rain forest? Save your black bears?”

  Hank’s face lit up. “Save your breath.”

  “I think he looks very handsome,” Liz said, sending a teasing look Jimmy’s way.

  “You know,” Jimmy went on, “in the old days real men only got an earring when they crossed the equator.”

  Gracie drew her tongue into her cheek. “Well, you can head off now, Jimmy. There’s still time to stow away on a freighter.”

  Jimmy pulled at an ear lobe. “I don’t need decoration on my body.” He squinted at Hank, who was beaming at him. “We Nam veterans wear our Purple Hearts…”

  “Not quite on your sleeves.” From Gracie.

  “Anyway…” I pleaded.

  “Anyway,” Hank began, settling in, “I have something to say about Dustin Trang. I’m a little woozy from doing a double shift because of Storm Fred, but running over every news feed on my tablet made me realize that Dustin Trang is suspect numero uno. Tweets galore. Even a Snapchat alert from a kid in my seminar.” A dramatic pause. “Folks, Dustin Trang is innocent.”

  I sat up. “Tell us.”

  “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I gotta hear this.”

  Hank’s gaze took us all in. “Simple. The party that wasn’t. The Christmas get-together of the Asian-American Alliance that I was invited to, a special guest.” A half-bow.

  “Which,” I noted, “was cancelled.”

  “Yeah,” Hank agreed. “Exactly. So said the slightly ungrammatical cancellation email sent out to all from Brandon Vinh.” He made a half-bow. “Received, it seems, by everyone but little Anh Ky Trang.”

  “Meaning,” I pushed him, “what?”

  “It means, simply, that at exactly 7:15 p.m. I was on the phone with Dustin Trang.”

  “What? How?”

  Hank retrieved his iPhone from his pants pocket, switched it on, brought up his Call history, and there it was: “7:15 Dustin Trang.”

  Hank was smiling. “He wanted to know where everyone was. He was sitting in the lounge at The Silo waiting for the party to begin. He said he’d been there for some time. He drove over in the snow from the college.”

  “But it was cancelled.”

  “True, but no one—like Brandon—reached him. Probably because he didn’t have Dustin’s email address. Or phone.”

  “And he had your phone number?” Jimmy asked.

  He nodded. “I gave it to him. ‘Call me if you ever need anything.’” I started to say something but Hank held up his hand. “Hey, I was concerned about him. When I told him there was no party, he said, ‘You told me I had to come.’”

  Liz winked at Hank. “The authority of the state police. Especially in uniform.”

  Hank preened, a wide grin on his face. “I have super powers. He was afraid not to come.”

  “But how do we know what time he arrived?”

  Hank was ready with an answer. “I stopped at The Silo, minutes ago, talked to the manager on duty that night. The place was empty. They were getting ready to close for the night because of the storm. Dustin kept pacing the lounge. He remembered him.” He made a funny face. “And not because he had blood on his coat. Or traces on his face.”

  “But,” Gracie said, “he still could have shot this Ben fellow and rushed over.”

  I was thinking out loud. “Dismissed classes. My phone call to 9-1-1 was registered at 6:47. Ben was shot a minute or so before.”

  “Dustin could get to The Silo in a few minutes. It’s down the street.” Liz watched me closely.

  “But in the snow? Speeding? With a smoking gun?” I counted the questions with my fingers.

  Hank was shaking his head emphatically. “You know why? In our short conversation he was relaxed, even a little funny. He kept repeating that I told him to be there. I joked, ‘Do you listen to everything someone tells you to do?’ He said ‘Yes’ with an exclamation point. When I laughed, he sort of laughed back.” Hank sat back, arms folded. “Listen, gang, this was not the conversation of someone who just shot a teacher twice at point blank range.”

  “Unless he’s a sociological monster.” Jimmy was nodding.

  “Do you believe that?” I asked.

  “I don’t know the kid.”

  I concluded, “I agree with Hank. Dustin was not the killer.”

  “Which means,” Hank finished, holding my eye, “you and I have a job to do.”

  “Hank, there is a police force in town,” Jimmy said. “And the state police. Last I heard you were a state cop, notorious for pulling over speeders going one mile over the limit on I-84.”

  “I talked to my superiors,” Hank told us. “Yeah, I’m a little too close to all this. I know the suspected perp.” He emphasized the words by providing air quotation marks with his fingers. “The Vietnamese angle, I guess. But he said—what I do in my own time is my business.”

  Jimmy rolled his eyes. “How did I know we’d end up with this conclusion?”

  “You’re a mind reader,” Gracie joked.

  “So now, are we gonna eat or do I have to waste away in this dump while all of you yammer on and on?” He snapped his fingers at a waitress leaning against a counter.

  So we ordered, Jimmy relishing his corned beef, Hank and I with our cheeseburgers, Liz with her chicken Caesar salad, and Gracie the grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwich she always ordered. As expected, Jimmy remarked that grilled cheese was something you didn’t order in a restaurant—every fool could make one at home. Gracie ignored him, as she always did. They went back and forth with their familiar banter, which Hank once labeled “early-bird-special foreplay,” but we all knew that the senior-citizen flirtation was played
with intricate unspoken rules only Gracie and Jimmy understood—and savored.

  Vinnie and Marcie walked in as we lingered over coffee, none of us ready to leave. They stood in the doorway and peered into the dim room, finally spotting us. I waved them over.

  “We’re headed to the hospital to see Sophia.” From Marcie.

  Vinnie put his arm around her shoulder. “We still can’t believe what happened.”

  Liz commiserated, “Who can? Really.”

  “Do you two know this Dustin from the college?” Jimmy asked.

  Both shook their heads. “I’ve seen him around,” Vinnie said. “He sort of stands out. A loner, no?”

  I nodded.

  Marcie added, “Everybody seems to know him now. David Laramie has a lot to say about him.”

  That surprised me. “What are you talking about? I know he hates—hated—Ben.”

  “The professor everyone loves to hate. Sooner or later everyone on the faculty butts heads with him.”

  Marcie spoke over Vinnie’s words. “It turns out he’s Dustin’s advisor. Computer Science. But he’s a real showboater when it comes to the press.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “He told one reporter that Dustin made a death threat against Ben.”

  “So that’s where that came from.” I slammed my fist on the table. “Goddamn it.”

  Marcie went on. “But he’s walked back on that inflammatory statement.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We caught him on the local news before we got here. Now he’s saying Dustin implied a death threat. Sort of. As in—he really didn’t like Professor Winslow. Quote: ‘He did tell me in my office that Winslow could get in trouble the way he treats students.’ Unquote. Whatever that means.”