Child of My Winter

by Andrew Lanh

  “What do you mean?” I sipped my tea.

  She thought about her words. “You don’t know what came before those conversations. Sounds to me like they’re the tail end of a long story between your friend and that sad boy.”

  “But the police…”

  “Rush to judgment.” Her words overlapped mine. “Let the boy have his say, Rick. Make sure of that.”

  I saluted her, smiling.

  She picked up the glossy flyer I’d been given by Dustin’s aunt. Crumpled now, lying on my coffee table. A good Catholic parishioner, faithful, even on Holy Days of Obligation, Gracie fingered the sheet. “What’s this nonsense, Rick? You trying to find God in all the wrong places? I told you what I think of that—huckster. Remember?”

  “I learned that Dustin’s mother goes to that mega church. Other Vietnamese.” I reached for the flyer but Gracie held it close to her eyes. “Ben Winslow’s symbol of evangelical fraud.”

  Gracie bit her lip. “Malarkey.”

  “People have a right to believe in what they want.”

  Her face tightened. “Who told you that?”

  “It’s America,” I said a little feebly, reaching again for the flyer.

  She handed it to me. “You’re talking to all the wrong people.” But she laughed now. “That’s because you come from a Communist country. You believe democracy covers all sins. Our politicians are Pied Pipers.”

  Standing up, walking to the front window, I stared down into the street. A peaceful Sunday—a young family hidden in bulky winter clothing walked along the sidewalk, headed home from the Congregational Church on the corner. A young boy danced around his parents. Noontime—the peeling of bells from the Catholic church one street over. The little boy paused, jumped up and down, one hand pointing to the distant bells.

  “A reading from the gospel of the Gospel of Wealth Ministry.” I deepened my voice as Gracie frowned at me. “The Reverend Simms’ sermon is on Ben Winslow tonight.” I pointed to the topic: ‘“The Enemy Within.’ A parable of the atheist who got what he deserved.” I shook my head slowly. “Beat a dead man when he’s down. A shame.” I folded the flyer. “I’m going. He’s mentioned Dustin on TV, said the boy did God’s chosen people a favor, so I want to see if he mentions him tonight.”

  Gracie took the flyer from my hand, stared at the print, holding it so close to her face I feared the colorful ink would smear her careful makeup.

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Gracie, there’s no need.”

  Her tone indignant. “Why do people deny me adventures? I traveled with Bob Hope in Korea, danced up a storm in the name of our country, and…”

  I held up my hand. “And the war lasted another two years.”

  “Smart mouth.” She grinned. “I can behave myself in public, you know.”

  “All right,” I surrendered. “Six o’clock.”

  ***

  A few minutes before six I knocked on her door and was mildly alarmed to discover Jimmy Gadowicz greeting me. “This calls for an experienced investigator.” His first words to me, an unlit cigar bobbing in his lips, though I detected a few cupcake crumbs and pinkish sugar frosting happily settled into the wrinkles of his chin.

  “Who are you again?” I asked. “This suit you stole from…”

  Because Jimmy, in fact, had changed off his usual attire: an XXL sweat shirt emblazoned with a Boston Red Sox logo riding up a tremendous belly and displaying remnants of his last pepperoni grinder. And bulky sweat pants with the same gastronomic evidence, sadly worn brown shoes he bought in Walmart. Now he wore a Dapper Dan suit reserved for funerals and court appearances, shiny in the elbow, but presentable. A Stackpole, Moore, Tryon necktie from that tony shop in downtown Hartford—a gift from a satisfied client. And, the frosting on the cake, a tired metaphor that came to mind given his obvious sweet fest, hair slicked back and glistening with some oily confection in the same family as Jiffy Lube motor oil.

  “I shine up real good,” he announced, stepping back.

  Gracie emerged from her bedroom and paused dramatically in the doorway. From her trunk of wonders—I admit I’d rarely seen her repeat an outfit, which seemed an impossibility given her constant surprises—she’d located a art-nouveau cocktail dress, flowing pastel chiffon, rows of bugle beads, cascading rivers of stitched sequins, a high lace collar. Dangerous high heels for the octogenarian. So many ribbons in her hair she could be a flower girl at a Polish country wedding.

  “I thought I’d dress down,” she hummed. “It is a church.”

  Jimmy was beaming. I’d be chauffeur for an evening of their idle flirtation with each other, both of whom would have been horrified if I dared suggested some sort of geriatric do-si-do was in evidence.

  “You gonna stand there with your mouth open,” Jimmy said to me, “or are you gonna get the car?”

  Gracie sized me up. My spiffy Brooks Brothers suit, my oxblood dress shoes, a burgundy necktie with matching handkerchief. A black overcoat draped over my arm. The middle-aged lawyer on Court TV.

  “He’s dressed like he’s going on a date,” Gracie chuckled. “Prowling for a wife.”

  I grinned. “I decided I want five children and a wife who’ll eat only the bowl of bran cereal I place in front of her.” Then I quoted Dustin’s curious remark: “Ong an cha ba an nem. I eat a hamburger and she eats bread.”

  “He’s speaking in tongues.” Jimmy pointed a finger at me.

  “Here we try to blend in with our surroundings,” Gracie went on, “and he blows our cover.”

  Jimmy laughed. “Our son was never properly disciplined.”

  “I tried,” she joked in a high whine. “Oh, how I tried.”

  “I turned out real good.” I danced a two-step.

  “No parent ever believes that hogwash.” Gracie shooed us along, waving her house key at me.

  ***

  Before I turned into the parking lot of the Gospel of Wealth Ministry, I cruised through the neighborhood. A pass in front of Dustin’s house in the projects and a slow drift by Uncle Binh’s apartment. Quiet, quiet. The shades down at Dustin’s. Uncle Binh’s eerily quiet with a flickering light switched on somewhere in the rooms, though the upstairs apartment was flooded with illumination as partiers crowded a front window decorated with multi-colored Christmas lights and a beaming plastic Santa Claus.

  A few stragglers were walking on the side roads, single file, headed to the church. I strained to see whether they were Vietnamese, impossible with their faces shielded from the cold. By the time I parked the car, most of the lot was full, bundled-up folks scurrying in. Waves of laughter, exchanged greetings, gleeful “Merry Christmas” yelled across snow banks and rusted fenders. Two greeters at the wide front doors—an old whiskered man who kept saying, “God loves you,” while an old woman, standing opposite him, intoned, “Have a good day.”

  Gracie frowned at her. “Some of us have made other plans.”

  “Gracie,” I said, “play nice.”

  As a crimson-robed choir began singing onstage, I scanned the crowd, half-rising from my seat. We were seated in back, along an aisle that inclined down toward the front, but off to the side was a small group of Vietnamese celebrants, clustered together. And there, sitting in the aisle was Uncle Binh in his wheelchair. To his right Aunt Suong. To her right Dustin’s mother Mai. They sat stiffly, eyes riveted to the stage, though Dustin’s mother’s hand waved hypnotically in the air. Two old women sitting behind them rocked back and forth.

  I pointed them out to Gracie and Jimmy. “Seekers after gold.”

  I watched them and tried to imagine Dustin in this vast hall. When had he accompanied his mother to these services, especially the visit that resulted in the Reverend Simms singling him out, learning his name—ultimately rejoicing publicly in the boy as assassin?

  A heavyset black woman in black flowing
robes appeared and demanded the congregation hold up Bibles. Gracie rolled her eyes and mouthed the words: You were supposed to remind me, Rick. “Repeat after me: Oh Lord, let my prayers reveal the key to the glorious riches God the Father has set aside for me. Show me the sign that tells me I’m ready for gold, dear Jesus. In the name of the Father. Amen.” The fevered chanting of parishioners swelled throughout the room, echoed off the rafters, punctuated by hallelujahs and amens.

  Immediately an usher materialized in each aisle with what resembled a farmer’s bushel basket, lifted in the air.

  “Show your love to Jesus,” the woman intoned.

  Across the room hands waved envelopes and cash in the air. Dollar bills, fives, tens, even twenties. As an usher moved up our aisle, I watched the Trang contingent tossing in cash. I wondered how much, but couldn’t see. When the usher approached the back row, Gracie pulled a five from a pocket.

  Jimmy nudged her, “You’ll get more bang for your buck at Popeye’s Chicken.”

  Suddenly the Reverend Simms appeared on a darkened stage, a beam of foggy light trailing him. He stopped center stage before a microphone, his hands raised above his head. In a choked, thick voice he bellowed, “Bless the souls who love Jesus.”

  Show time.

  His rambling sermon touched upon Judas, on the money changers—he seemed to be on their side—on Mary Mother of God, on angels we have heard on high, a chaotic mishmash that built with steady crescendo as congregants rose and roared and sang out. But nothing about the subject at hand—the heretic in the neighboring town. Ben Winslow.

  Of course, that was the climax—a heated and almost euphoric depiction of Ben Winslow as exemplum of Satan’s Godless power. “A man who took my name and God’s in vain.” “A man who maligned me and God in the press.” “A man who listened to the false gods of Baal.” Snippets of attack that finally resulted in a thunderous profile of Ben Winslow as agent provocateur of evil. “A teacher, and a Godless one. America’s children.” “But God has plans for all of us. If he guarantees us riches, he also guarantees us vengeance—which is His, sayeth…sayeth Himself.” Momentarily rattled by his own chaotic sentence structure, he paused, then burst out, “Murdered, that man. Yes, murder is wrong. But like the Crusaders who besieged the heathen Muslins of Jerusalem, death can be the sword of the believer. This Winslow was a minor character in God’s magnificent drama, but a man who chose to take on God.”

  He paused, withdrew a white handkerchief from a pocket and ran it over his face. Dressed in a white linen suit with a white vest that barely contained his rotund body, his foot tapped as if to a gospel tune echoing in his head.

  His voice suddenly became low, raspy, and confidential. “A teacher entrusted with the care of our youth.” His eyes drifted over the congregation. At that moment his eyes settled on the small Vietnamese contingent, and he hissed, “An innocent child of God touched by that predator. Touched. A boy. Sullied, stained, violated.”

  I froze—was he accusing Ben of molesting Dustin? The reason Dustin killed him? All the harsh and unforgiving language of sexual molestation, insinuation.

  Jimmy shot a glance at me and mumbled, “The man’s dangerous.”

  I whispered back. “What’s he trying to do?”

  My mind swam as I gripped the back of the seat before me. The congregation roared and yelled out: Monster. Sinner. Beast. Violator. Vermin. God’s wrath.

  A child of God, violated.

  A chorus that rose as the Reverend Simms kept saying “Amen, amen, amen.”

  Behind him the chorus began to clap wildly.

  I sensed movement down the aisle. Something was happening. Craning my neck, I spotted Uncle Binh rocking in his wheelchair while Aunt Suong kept patting his shoulder, whispering something, trying to calm down the frantic man. As I watched, an usher appeared and began rolling the old man up the aisle, meekly followed by Aunt Suong and Mai, both shuffling, heads bowed, Dustin’s mother hobbling with a cane. Suong’s face was trembling, but Binh was furious. He kept glancing over his shoulder at the stage where the Reverend Simms, oblivious, ranted on.

  I stepped into the aisle just as the three of them neared me.

  Uncle Binh spotted me. He let out a horrid gasp. Startled, Suong and Mai followed his gaze. Suong cried out in Vietnamese. “Ngung lai!” Stop! Then, a hand held up to my face, she sneered, “Nguoi my!” The American! A curse.

  But it was Uncle Binh’s face that alarmed me. What I saw there was raw fear.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning’s news cycle headlined the police release of the audiotapes, followed by a laconic statement by Chief of Police Jeffries that Dustin Trang, interrogated at the station for hours—the televised remarks showed a pause here as the chief amended his words—“an hour before being sent home.” The investigation continued. No arrests. And—no explanation of Ben’s volcanic statement to Dustin on the phone: You know where the body is.

  Newscasters got dizzy with the story.

  Reporters banged on his mother’s door, but were greeted by silence—and by a security guard for the projects who kept shooing them away in a melodious Jamaican accent.

  Media frenzy, the rest of the day. The college’s Facebook page crashed. Hundreds of comments, most nasty and inflammatory. Delirious students, hungry for information. The digital copy of the college newspaper had a banner headline: New Clues in Murder of Prof. A snapshot of Dustin being taken into custody. Students claimed they knew Dustin—had predicted the murder. A link to Brandon’s web page, also flooded with infantile commentary, Brandon fueling the fires with his cautionary tale of the dangers of scholarship boys wandering through the ivied gates of Farmington College. A Facebook page—ArrestDustinNow—that disappeared within the hour.

  A rising tide of innuendo and blatant lies. Someone on Tumblr began a succession of short, unfunny messages that were immediately picked up by an anonymous student who kept repeating: He killed my favorite professor. Comments about Ben on the Rate My Professor website went on for pages. Hank kept retweeting the annoying tweets that claimed to provide information from police headquarters. #DeadBodyDustin. #Wherethebodyis. #ArrestDustin.

  Liz alerted me to some quickly deleted Snapchat trolling of Dustin. Threats, warnings. Rapid-fire, in-the-moment blather. The complex web of social media exploded, judging, demanding, ultimately becoming a digital Circus Maximus. Millennial madness as fingers tapped on Smartphone keypads. And that YouTube cellphone video had thousands of likes, something that irked me. Likes?

  Late in the afternoon I sat with Jimmy in our office in Hartford and fiddled with end-of-year cases I wanted to wrap up: those mysteriously disappeared files at Cigna, a falsified personnel file at Hartford Hospital, a simple welfare fraud case for Department of Children and Families. Tedious, but they paid the light bill. Across from me, Jimmy scribbled on yellow pads, occasionally eyeing me as I flicked through the laptop keyboard. The Hartford Courant rested in his lap. Now and then his grunt reminded me that old-fashioned shoe leather was best. After all, his name was above mine on the door. In fact, it was Gaddy Associates. I was one of the associates.

  “This morning’s Courant.” Jimmy indicated the daily newspaper. “Your name is mentioned. They didn’t capitalize the ‘v’ in Van.”

  “I’m really Dutch.”

  Jimmy added, “Your boy seems to be placing himself in hotter and hotter water. I mean, those damn audiotapes. Sensationalism.” He ran his fingers down a column in the Courant. “But that boy’s got too many secrets. Rick, where is the body?”

  “I don’t know if there is one.”

  “Of course there is.”

  “You’re so sure?”

  “Don’t bullshit me, Rick. You know there is as well as I do.”

  I nodded. “How do I break through to Dustin?”

  “Maybe you can’t. Maybe the cops gotta do it.”

  I sh
ook my head. “Me or Hank. One of us. That boy has to trust someone in his life.”

  “That may be impossible.” He turned away.

  “I’m worried about Dustin.” I stood up. “I’ll catch you later.”

  Jimmy watched as I put on my overcoat. “Rick, what are you going to do?”

  I didn’t answer.

  A little crazed, I drove to Bristol, turned into the parking lot of the housing project on Jefferson Drive. Dustin’s home was dark, not even a front light switched on. A snow-packed front stoop, though a snow shovel rested against a railing. I rang the doorbell. Nothing. I waited. I banged on the door. I peered inside through the small window, focusing through the security bars that graced all the first floor apartments in the projects. A dead bolt on the door. Perhaps a police lock.

  Someone had spray-painted graffiti on the front door, and through the dim light of a nearby streetlight I could discern a jagged word. “KILLER.” Big block letters in red, though the paint trickled down, creating a waterfall effect. Blood spatter. I touched the paint. Fresh, sticky to the touch.

  I rang the doorbell again. Nothing. A glimmer of light at the back of the apartment.

  I got out my phone and scrolled my contacts, dialing Dustin’s cellphone.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s me, Dustin. Rick.”

  “I know. Caller ID.”

  “You’re home?”

  He didn’t answer. Then, “What do you want?”

  “I’m outside your door. I rang the bell. Let me in.”

  A long pause. “Why?”

  I yelled into the phone. “Just do it, dammit.”

  The line went dead. I waited. Finally, the door opened. Dustin stood in the shadows and stared at me. “What?”

  I pushed by him and found a light switch. “We have to talk.”

  He backed off. “No, we don’t.”

  I headed into the kitchen and snapped on a light. “Where’s your mother?”

  “Not home. Uncle Binh’s, I guess.”