"I've felt better. I just hope I'm not coming down with the flu or something. The cold's bothering me today."
"I noticed the temperature has been falling all morning, but I haven't been outside. It looks raw.” He nodded, but she wasn't looking at him. “I was going uptown this afternoon.” Her inflection made it sound like a question.
"Better wait.” He took an opener from the drawer and snapped the cap from a bottle of beer. “It feels like it might snow. Wait till tomorrow or Saturday. That would be better.” She didn't drive and there was no bus. So unless he drove her, she had to walk. It was less than a mile, and she liked to walk, so she rarely asked him for a ride.
"I could do that, I suppose. My library books aren't due until Tuesday."
He sat at the small table by the kitchen window and drank some beer, beginning to feel better. He preferred the kitchen to the dining room for many reasons, not least of which was the view of the backyard. He watched a young black lab that belonged to the family next door. It sniffed around the woodpile for a while and then hoisted its back leg to pee on the peach tree.
She brought him a large bowl of thick yellow soup along with a dish of cut-up pickles and diced onion. The hearty aroma of the food made him feel weak inside; his hunger, whetted by the cold beer, rumbled through his stomach. He cut a slice of bread and began to eat. The soup was hot, burning the inside of his mouth, but it tasted wonderful. The sharp bite of the alcohol and hops nipped at his tongue, heightening the pleasure of the peas and ham.
"This is good. You haven't made it in a long time."
"I know. But we haven't had a ham in ages, and the soup needs a good bone."
He stopped for a moment, wanting the pleasure to last as long as possible.
"Have you decided what you want to do on Saturday night?"
She shook her head. “There's a new movie playing in Bridgeton. Or we could go to the bluegrass festival in Parsonsfield. Or just stay home."
He wondered why she suggested that. She rarely complained. But he knew that she had confided in her sister, in what his brother-in-law described as a wistful way, that they hardly ever went out.
"Whatever you want."
"Are you working on Saturday?"
"No. I'm going hunting. Last day of the season."
She served herself some soup and began to eat. She had a slow, delicate way of eating. She said it was healthier than the way he sometimes bolted down his food. He guessed she was right but couldn't help wishing she were a little less prissy.
"Don Hanson stopped by the station this morning.” Her face showed no recognition. “He's the game warden from Alton.” She nodded.
"Steve Woodman was shot this morning, over by the West Branch.” He ate more soup. She did not speak.
"He was hunting with three of his brothers from upstate. They were driving deer in a section of hemlock swamp. There was another group of hunters from Massachusetts, and one of them got excited and fired at some movement in the brush. Don thinks it was probably that shot; it got Steve in the back of the head."
He finished his beer in silence.
"Is he dead?” Her voice sounded light and far away.
"Never knew what hit him."
She looked troubled.
"Something wrong?” She didn't answer. She had never liked his going hunting. “You aren't worried about me, are you?” She still said nothing. “Well don't. I'm always careful as to who I hunt with and where I go. Nothing like that will ever happen to me. I didn't mean to upset you by talking about it."
She sat with her head down and nodded as if trying to indicate that she was all right.
"Oh, I forgot. You probably knew Steve pretty well."
"Why do you say that?” She looked up, her eyes round and bright.
"The library of course. Didn't he work there? You being such a reader and all. How could you help but know him."
She stood up, seemed to look around for a moment, and then hurried out of the room. She went upstairs to the bedroom. He continued to sit at the table staring straight ahead.
There hadn't really been any doubt. He had been sure. But if there had been, her eyes would have erased it. He turned his head and stared out the window.
After a while he filled and lit his pipe and sat gently puffing smoke into the silent air. The uneaten soup was cold and had begun to clump together in a thick yellow mass. He was no longer hungry.
He had intended to bring an extra sweatshirt back to work: protection for his back from the cold. But they were all in the bedroom dresser, and he didn't want to go up there, at least not now. He looked toward the stairs and felt empty. Everything seemed gray and hazy. He wished he could feel angry again. That had been better than the black despair he felt now; at least it made him feel alive.
He stood and walked to the door. When he opened it, the cold air struck his face like ice, but without bulk or substance. He walked over to the truck and lifted his deer rifle from behind the seat. Draping it over his arm, he carried it back inside. He would clean it later. Again unable to face climbing the stairs, he put it in the shed for the time being. An old flannel shirt hung from a nail in the wall, but when he put it on, he felt even colder.
Going back outside, he shut the door firmly. The air was raw. A police car pulled up behind his truck, its flashing blue light reflecting off the front of the house. A muffled figure emerged from the car. As he walked across the dooryard toward the car he could smell the snow. It would soon be falling.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Copyright © 2005 by Lawrence K. Furbish.
[Back to Table of Contents]
Block by Michael Z. Lewin
"What's the problem, Officer?"
This was an SUV and a guy alone driving it. Possible. Plenty of places for things to be hidden in something that size. I said, “I need to see your driver's license and vehicle registration, sir. Please take them out slowly and hold them up where I can get my light on them."
"What is this all about? I'm already late for a meeting. An important meeting, with a lot of money riding on—"
A lot of these guys think they can intimidate a woman. I gave him the fisheye and cut him off. “Then you're going to want to do what I told you to without further delay."
He sighed so loudly I could hear it even with everything else going on around us, and he looked like he was about to say something else—probably about how he had important friends—when Sandy came up behind me. “Any problems, Rose?"
"Any problems, sir?” I asked the guy in the SUV. I shined my light in his eyes. It wasn't dark yet, but the light is bright. Nice to see him squint. He reached into his jacket pocket. “Slowly I said, sir."
"Honestly!"
But he took his wallet out slowly. Sandy is about the size of a house. My badge scares most people. Sandy's size behind the badge scares everybody—everybody who doesn't know him.
"You want to check the vehicle, Sandy?” I said. “This very important man is in a god-awful hurry and we sure wouldn't want to slow him down any more than we have to."
"All I—” the guy began.
I gave him the light in the eyes again. “Hold your documents up higher, please, sir."
He held them higher and had to twist against his seat belt to make sure they were where I could see them clearly. Gee, I hope the guy wasn't uncomfortable.
The picture on the license was clearly the guy's, and the registration was in the same name. The address was in Hilltop Farm, one of the expensive parts of town. I said, “Where are you headed tonight, Mr. Tinmarsh?"
"I'm meeting clients at Westerlies."
"The roadhouse?"
"Yes. If I ever get there."
Sandy came toward me from the back of the SUV and shook his head. I turned back to Tinmarsh. “How tall are you, please, sir?"
"How tall?"
"Do you not understand the question, sir?” I watched while he balanced his impulse to give me more trouble against the certainty that doing so woul
d cost him more time. But he wouldn't have wanted to give me trouble. I can be very troublesome myself.
Good sense prevailed. He said, “I'm six foot two and a half."
"Thank you, sir. And what were you doing on The Island."
"I wasn't doing anything on it. I drove through it on my way to Westerlies."
"Uh-huh. And finally, sir, while you were on The Island, did you happen to notice a man walking who was wearing a full-length black coat? He'll have been shorter than you. Maybe five-eight, or even less."
"A man in a coat? Is that what this idiocy is about?"
"A man in a coat who robbed Jensen's with a shotgun about half an hour ago, sir."
"Jensen's the jewelry store?"
"I'm happy to chat into the night about it, sir, but even if you're not in a hurry anymore I think some of the cars behind you may be. Did you see—"
"I didn't see any man in a long black coat."
"Thank you, sir. You may go on your way now."
Tinmarsh gave me a look my momma would have said would curdle milk, and hit the accelerator.
But before I could wave the next car in my line forward, Lieutenant Bigger was beside me. “Guy alone, Rose? And you didn't make him get out?"
"He was too tall to match the description, sir.” I put as much ice in my tone as I could. It was a lot. I've had a lot of practice. There is no one on the force I hate more than Bigger. In fact, no one in the world.
"How do you know if you didn't make him get out?” Bigger looked in the direction Tinmarsh had driven. I could tell—just tell—he was deciding whether to send a police car off after the SUV. There was no one in creation who had less idea how to utilize manpower than Clayton Bigger.
"Number one, he looked too tall."
"Sitting in his car?"
"Number two, the height he told me matched the height given on his driver's license, and the picture was definitely him."
Silence.
"Plus, I checked his shoes with the flashlight. Nice shiny brown loafers. Not black boots."
"Yeah, all right,” Bigger said. “But from now on, every guy on his own, make him get out. You understand me?"
"Yes, sir.” I waved the next car forward. A woman in a hatchback with two kids in the backseat. “And what about her, sir? After all, the guy was in a long coat, and when I talked with the assistant she said she thought maybe the guy's beard was fake."
But Bigger pretended he didn't hear me. Or maybe he really didn't. Most men have to concentrate really hard to hear when a woman is talking to them.
Talking at them is something else. Sandy bent close to my ear and said, “What you want to be like that with Bigger for, Rose?"
"'Cause he's an idiot."
"Yeah, but he's the idiot who has to recommend us if we're ever going to make sergeant."
"He'd die before he ever approved my promotion."
"You don't know that."
But I did. Bigger had already blocked my promotion twice. So maybe I'd be stuck as a patrol officer for the rest of my twenty, but there was no way I was going to be quiet about it.
I beckoned the woman in the hatchback forward. She rolled down her window. “This won't take a minute, ma'am,” I said. “On your way through The Island did you happen to see a guy on the sidewalk who was wearing a long black coat, about all the way to the ground? He may have had a baseball cap on, and maybe a black beard too."
"A black beard?” she said. Her eyes were open wide. “Like the pirate?"
* * * *
When the call came through about the robbery at Jensen's I was the first officer on the scene. My car was already on The Island, in an alley where we've had a lot of complaints about underage drinkers. Not that many kids come out in the late afternoon, but the store owners and residents like to see a police car on patrol.
The Island is an island, in the sense that it's surrounded by water, even if on one side the water is only an old canal. But it has only three bridges, and that's why when the call came in so fast Bigger figured he had a chance to catch the man in the long black coat.
Doddy Rivers was the assistant in Jensen's during the robbery, and when she called 911, she told the operator that the robber had only just left. “He told me to wait half an hour before I called anybody,” she told me a few minutes later, “but I damn well wasn't gonna let him get away with that.” So she called as soon as the robber walked out of the store with a plastic shopping bag filled with gold and platinum and diamonds. Another thing that made Bigger think he had a chance was that the robber was walking.
"I went to the door,” Doddy told me, “and I saw him walking down the sidewalk, no car, not even a bike. How's a guy expect to get away like that?"
"It could be he left his car around the corner,” I said, but I was already on the radio to headquarters. And Clayton Bigger didn't waste any time. He mobilized every patrol car in town to seal off the bridges, and he backed us all up with state cops. We were told to check every car leaving The Island for the robber, the coat, his shotgun, and, of course, gold, platinum, and diamonds. We were to check pedestrians too, though there weren't many of those.
"And when The Island is sealed tighter than a drum,” Bigger broadcast to us all, “we'll sweep through the whole damn place. We'll search every house and car. No way is this jerk getting away with an armed robbery in broad daylight in my territory."
It was pretty audacious, to stick up Jensen's at four thirty in the afternoon, alone. And to walk away. The Island isn't a big area, but it's our only chic shopping area—small boutiques and stores, bijoux houses. Well, everywhere you turn on The Island you do overlook water, so it can't be very big, even if sometimes the water is only the canal.
I almost expected Bigger to declare this operation would be “search and destroy"—not that he was old enough to have been in Vietnam. But his dad was there, and still talks about it, every night, over every shot, in Santini's.
"I should have called 911 as soon as he came in, Rose,” Doddy told me as I tried to calm her down and get the facts. “I mean, what legitimate person wears coats like that anymore?"
"Coats like what, Doddy?"
"Straight, black, all the way down. What do they call them? Greatcoats?"
"I know what you mean,” I said. “All the way to the ground?"
"All the way. In fact it dragged a little."
"So the coat was too big?"
"A little.” Then, anticipating my next question, she said, “He was maybe five-eight. Not little, but smaller rather than taller, you know?"
Doddy was taller than me, near six feet, so she had an eye for how tall men were. “And his build?” I asked.
"Not heavy. But I didn't get a real good look at the face because of the beard."
"Describe it."
"Full beard, you know, like them Amish guys have."
"You think this guy was Amish?"
"No, no. But a thick beard. Black. Only now's I think about it maybe it was fake."
"You thought his beard was fake and you didn't call 911 right away?"
"I didn't think it was fake right away. Well, I was in the store on my own."
"I thought Lew is usually here in the afternoon."
"He is, but he left at four to visit his mom."
"Out in Greengrove?"
"The home there."
"So this robber was either lucky, or he knew Lew was away?"
Doddy squinted. “He didn't ask if I was alone."
"So he knew,” I said. “Sounds like not asking might just have been a mistake, eh?"
* * * *
When I told Bigger about that, he acted as if he put the deduction together that the robber might have local knowledge all by himself, instead of it being me that told him exactly that. “I'll have this sucker,” he said. “By God, I'll have him. We'll check every damn person who comes off The Island and then we'll check every damn house and every damn car. How many can there be? We'll have him by midnight."
How many propertie
s were there on The Island? Maybe fifty. A third of them commercial, not counting the two bed-and-breakfasts. How many cars did that mean?
But I don't like Bigger. I don't like the way he cavalierly walks over anybody near him. So I said, “All the cars, sir? Do you want to start with mine?"
He scowled at me while he thought about whether he could get away with slapping me. I could just tell it's what he wanted to do. But he said, “We'll damn well check your car too, Rose, if it's on The Island. Not—” His one concession. “—not that I think you're a man.” And he smirked because ... well, because I did sleep with him when he first came back. Just the once. Well, twice, but to my eternal regret. I just don't know what I was thinking.
He was saying, “Because—think about it—what would be a better place to hide stolen gear than in a cop's car?"
"How is this robber supposed to gain access to my car?” We lock them whenever we leave them. It's second nature.
But Bigger waded through that. “Not for us to speculate. All we can do is check. If we find a black coat in your trunk, then we'll work out how he got it in there."
I got my keys out. “Want to look now?” Because I knew damn well nobody had put any black coat in my trunk, because after the last time I'd had the trunk open I hadn't left the car.
"Get this roadblock established first,” Bigger said. “We'll work out the search later. And don't get careless. This damn guy has a shotgun, after all."
* * * *
In fact they found the black coat in a trash can about two blocks from Jensen's, but that was more than an hour after the roadblock was set up. The word came through on the radio. Sandy told me.
I was checking the car of a teenager who was with his girlfriend. Dime to a dollar they were headed for the old quarry. But the way they looked at each other, I'd rather have bet my dime that they wouldn't make it past the first dark side road.
"They found the coat,” Sandy said when he came up behind me.
"Hang on,” I told the boy, and I turned to Sandy. “They find anything else?"
"The hat, and a beard."
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