Black Light
Page 17
“You know sometimes how a deal looks like it’s going to fall apart on you with all kinds of difficulties? But then something you did years ago, because you were smart and thought about it, clicks in, and it turns out just the way you figured.”
“Well, I can’t say I’ve had that exact pleasure.”
“Well, it feels great,” Red said.
He picked up the gun, popped the breech and dropped two more 7½s in.
“Pull,” he said, feeling wonderful. The birds shot upward and he killed them both.
16
He remembered it as somehow more beautiful. In his memory he saw a rolling green meadow mostly in shade from the stately black oak that stood nearby. The tombstones had a grandeur to them; it was like a parade of the honored dead, a mini-Arlington where an honor guard would keep eternal watch.
But if that Polk County veterans’ cemetery ever existed or if it was only an imaginary place, like an Oz for the dead, it was certainly not the bitter reality: blasted by sun, parched and treeless and very shabby and as flat and banal as a pancake, the cemetery stretched to the empty horizon. It wasn’t even really a veterans’ cemetery, it just had a veterans’ section in it, but beyond the crooked fence the civilians lay just as dead as the vets.
“You never came here?” Russ asked.
“Oh, a few times. When I was small. That was before my mother got what we called ‘sick,’ meaning drunk. She was better off not coming. I just remember her crying like a baby. Her sister had to drive us home. Then I came the night before I left for the Marine Corps. Drove myself. I came once more on liberty but by that time my mother was dead and there wasn’t much else to come back to. I never came when I got back from the war. I just stayed on that goddamned mountain.”
“Is it the same?”
“I remember more trees. Hell, though, I was just a kid. A bush looked like a tree.”
“Is this it, Mr. Swagger?” cried one of the gravediggers hired for the occasion.
“Well, let’s see.”
Bob walked over to the simple stone. It looked no different from the hundreds in here, the war dead of West Arkansas dating back to the Civil War. He bent and squinted in the sun and read off the corrupted limestone:
EARL SWAGGER
U.S.M.C.
ARKANSAS STATE POLICE
1910-1955
And then:
Husband, Father, Marine, Police Officer
UNCOMMON VALOR
“Yes sir, Mr. Coggins, that’s him. Now, if that damned doctor would just get here.” “We may as well get started,” said the old man.
“Why don’t you just.”
The crew—three black men, two young and the older Mr. Coggins—set to it with solid work. Bob watched them cut into the earth with their spades, slice the turf out and then really put their backs into it. Swiftly, the dirt mounded up on the tarpaulin they had set out for that purpose.
“Lot of dirt in a hole,” Bob said.
Russ, watching the black men dig, felt a bit uncomfortable. The whole thing was so matter-of-fact. Nobody at the cemetery office had seen anything remarkable about the paperwork served, but it seemed there were no records left, as the cemetery had changed administrations many times since 1955, and somewhere along the line, the record keeping had grown sloppy and the actual physical materials had somehow disappeared. But it was no big deal: Bob found it easy enough.
“I feel guilty with them doing all the work,” Russ said.
“They’re professionals. They’re doing a good job. Let them earn their pay. My father loved a job done well and by God them boys are doing it well.”
Through the morning the men dug, without much in the way of rest. Two in, one out, the shovels a steady machinelike attack against the ground, and the hole widened and deepened.
Bob just watched. He could be so still. Russ, bored, ambled around, trying to think of something to do that would be helpful but which wouldn’t require his actual presence. But then he thought: This is my party. I have to be here.
“You remember that cop?” Bob said.
“Yes.”
“You said to me there was something fishy about him, right?”
“Yes.”
“What? Be specific.”
“Ah—” Russ’s mind seemed to fill with light. Another test which he would fail. But then he remembered:
“Well, I’ve been around cops my whole life. My father, you know—”
“Go on. Get to it.”
“Well, here’s how a cop’s eyes work. He stares hard at you and makes a reading. Reads you up and down. It’s how a cop’s mind works. He’s comparing you to type. He’s got fifty types in his head, and three or four of them are dangerous. In his first few seconds, he eyeballs you to try you against type. But then if he determines you’re not dangerous, he loses interest. Then you’re just an irritating problem for him. He fills out the ticket, he gives you the directions, he takes the statement, whatever: but he’s not interested in you, he’s not really paying attention to you, he’s looking around for other threats.”
“Ummm,” said Bob, considering.
“This guy,” said Russ, “he kept eyeballing. Unusual cop behavior. Because any cop could tell in a second that a twenty-something yuppie in Reeboks and a polo shirt wasn’t dangerous. But I puzzled him. Odd.”
“Maybe he thought I was dangerous.”
“But he wasn’t looking at you. He was looking at me.”
“Well, we could ask him about it. He’s been staring at us from behind the trees for ten minutes. Now here he comes.”
“Jesus,” said Russ.
“And he drove by us three times while we were in that field yesterday.” Bob smiled at him. “You be cool, now.”
The deputy sauntered up, lanky and tawny, his big hands hooked on his belt, his hat low over his eyes, shades on, bright, reflective lenses that sealed the world out.
“Howdy there,” he called, smiling.
“Deputy Peck,” said Bob.
“Well, I see you boys are making good progress here on this thing.”
“We think we might learn a bit from the body. Though it grieves me to disturb the dead.”
“Well, sometimes you got to do what you got to do.”
“That’s true enough.”
“You know, Mr. Swagger, I done some thinking. I could help you. Like, fer instance, I could fish them old records out of the sheriff’s files from 1955. I don’t think nobody’s looked at them in years. Maybe I could help you find witnesses, and the like? There might be old-timers around from them days be of some help to you. I could help Sam. He don’t git around much; he might need an extra pair of legs. Be my pleasure.”
“Well, that’s damned nice of you, Deputy. Fact is, right now we’re just sort of grasping at straws. We don’t know if there’s enough here. Things change, people forget. Ain’t much of 1955 left. We may not be around much longer if we don’t get some better stuff.”
“Well, that’s how I could help,” said Peck. “You let me know you come up with something I can help you with. Meanwhile, I’ll pretty much look for them files and see what I can dig out.”
“That’d be great, Deputy Peck.”
“Call me Duane. Everybody does.”
“Duane, that’d be—”
“Excuse me.”
This came from a new voice, and Russ turned to see a bearded man, possibly fifty, in an open-collar shirt and a pair of slacks, holding a heavy leather satchel, which looked like a doctor’s bag. Wasn’t this growing into some big party?
“Would somebody here be Mr. Swagger?” the newcomer asked.
“I am,” said Bob.
“Hi, I’m Carl Phillips. Dr. Phillips. I teach forensic pathology up at Fayetteville in the medical school and I’m a board-certified forensic pathologist. I was called by Sam Vincent.”
“Yes sir.”
The doctor stepped up, gestured to the work party a few feet away.
“The remains, I assume?”
/> “Yes sir,” said Bob.
“All right, I arranged with Winslow’s Mortuary. They’re going to give us a workroom. You’ll have to pay them, I suppose.”
“Sure,” said Bob.
“And I assume all the county paperwork is in order? Sam said he’d take care of it.”
“Yes sir,” said Bob. “Here, you want to look?”
“Yes, I do. The state is very particular what can and cannot be done with remains. It has more to do with the funeral industry lobby than anything. For example, the remains must be transported via hearse, you’re aware of that?”
“Sam told us. I called and set one up. It should be here shortly.”
The doctor took the papers and made a quick appraisal of them. They seemed to satisfy him.
“All right, everything’s in order. I suppose you’ll want to go to the mortuary with me?”
“Yes sir. He was my father.”
“Look, let me be frank with you. I know you’re an experienced man, been in combat.”
“Some,” said Bob.
“So you’ve seen what high explosives and machine-gun fire can do to bodies?”
“Yes sir.”
“Well, there’s nothing that you’ve seen that can prepare you for the effects of time upon a cadaver. Forty years after the fact, what comes out of the ground is unrecognizable. That’s why it’s fine for you to come along, but I want you nowhere near the actual work. I can’t let what his body has become represent what your father is to you. When I do these private jobs, that’s my rule. It’s my neck of the woods. You let me do the navigating.”
“Sure, Doctor,” said Bob.
“Okay, we’re all set.”
“Mr. Swagger?”
It was Mr. Coggins, who stood by the grave, gleaming with sweat. He was wiping his forehead with a red bandanna.
“Mr. Swagger, we’re ready. He was a long way down.” The doctor went to the edge of the grave and looked into it.
“Mr. Coggins, you’ll rig the block and tackle next?” he asked.
“Yes sir,” said Coggins.
Bob and Russ went to look into the grave. The men had done an excellent job in the excavation; the grave’s walls were hard and straight and black, the dirt heaped in perfect mountains. Russ looked down, unnerved. But it was only a long wooden box, caked with mud, completely exposed, five long feet down.
The doctor turned to them.
“A cedar coffin? That’s very interesting. I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I have to check something out. Mr. Coggins, you help me down.”
The two young black men, gleaming with sweat as well, helped the doctor into the grave. There was just enough room for him at one end. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a surgical mask, which he donned. He asked the black men to leave the hole too.
Bob and Russ wandered away. They heard the sound of wood being pried.
“Mr. Swagger,” called Dr. Phillips.
“Yes sir.”
“I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”
Bob and Russ looked at each other.
“Yes sir?” said Bob.
“This man was killed by gunshot wound, I can see it clearly in the remains. But from what I can tell from the condition, it happened in around 1865.”
“Damn!” said Duane Peck. “Don’t that beat all?”
17
The old man was on a goddamned rampage. Where the hell was it?
Sam had torn his office apart in the morning and now he was at his home, tearing it apart.
Goddamned sonofabitching bastards had done it again on him!
They’d hidden something. They were doing it more and more these days. They’d sneak in, late, while he slept, and hide things, steal things, move things. They’d rearrange his drawers, so that one day his socks would be in the third one and the next in the top one. Sometimes his hairbrush and razor were on the left side of the sink and sometimes on the right.
The fury was like smoke, hot and bright, and it seemed to fill his veins so that a ropy blue Y stood out on his forehead and his temple throbbed strangely.
The other day they hid his pipe. His pipe, his meerschaum, picked up in Germany after the war, he’d smoked it every night for close to fifty years and it was gone. It had vanished. They changed the names of his grandchildren on him and they even mixed up two of his surviving daughters.
They moved his car when he drove to the store. They changed the stoplight on him as he accelerated through an intersection and then they honked or yelled rudely to him. Sometimes they confused him as to what side of the road he was supposed to drive on.
It was enough to make a man seriously angry, but this one, their last prank, was the worst.
For so long he had been such a methodical man. He was the kind of American who believed not in law and order but that order was law. Thus he carefully cataloged or recorded his materials, he took infinitely detailed notes, he went over testimony forward and backwards, he mastered evidence forward and backwards and he never, ever asked a question twice or to which he did not know the answer.
He had outargued them all, until these new invisible devils had come gunning for him.
But he wouldn’t let them win, or if, by chance, they won, if someone finally beat him, by God they’d know they’d been in a fight.
He looked around the carnage of his basement. Someone had literally dumped his files out of their cardboard boxes onto the floor in a frenzy. Who would do such a thing? Then he remembered: he had done such a thing. Just a few minutes ago.
What was I looking for?
Yes: a copy of the report to the coroner he had put together in 1955 on a wrongful death hearing in the case of Earl Swagger. He knew he had it. He had to have it. It was in here somewhere. But where?
The box marked 1955 was empty and he’d emptied 1953 to 1957 as well, in the thought that maybe sometime when he left office and was transferring these boxes to his home, he or one of his secretaries—he’d buried more secretaries than he could even remember—had misfiled it.
Or maybe he didn’t even have a copy. It was a report on an investigation, but it didn’t lead to a prosecution or a decision not to prosecute, but only to a dead end in the Coroner’s Office, so possibly even back then he didn’t file it with his regular case files but in some other file, some annex or something.
It wasn’t like he couldn’t remember now. It wasn’t his memory that was going. No sir, not him. It was instead a sense of fog drifting through his mind. The memory was still there. It was a vision problem: he still had all his books organized just so in the library of his mind, but for some reason he had trouble reading the names on the spines and he couldn’t get them out without groping. It made him furious!
He hated the idea of going to that smug kid Rusty or whatever his goddamned name was and saying, “You know, I can’t find that document. I told you I could, but I can’t. I must have misremembered.”
Rusty would look at him as a few of his grandchildren did: their eyes would behold a relic, a living fossil, something that belonged behind glass in a museum.
Well, goddamn him anyway! Sam felt an eruption of anger so intense it was physical; his knotty old hand formed into a fist and he imagined smashing Rusty or whatever his name was in the mouth. That would satisfy him so.
He bent, but discovered his back too stiff to allow him to stay in such a position. So he knelt, and began to scrape the files up, to try and get them into some semblance of order.
A name leaped out at him.
It was like a musical tone or something, soft and vague but oddly familiar. What was it? What did it connect with? What could it mean?
Nothing. He had it, it tantalized him, then it was gone.
Goddamn them, they were doing it to him again!
He got the files together and saw from the dates they were all 1955s, and so again he slipped through them one more time and by God no, no Earl Swagger anywhere. Where did it go? Where had it—
Parker!
Why was this important?
Yes, Earl’s last case. That day: July 23, 1955.
He opened the file and a picture greeted him: Shirelle at her eighth-grade graduation. He remembered some policeman had given it to him before the trial. He looked at it now and saw such a pretty girl, her eyes so lit up and full of hope. She was a colored child in the Arkansas of the fifties and she was full of hope! Now, wasn’t that something! She must have been a wonderful child, but he realized he had no evidence about her. He knew nothing about her, except the facts of the death, which are all that matter to a prosecutor. It doesn’t matter if they’re good, bad, wonderful or evil: if they’ve been killed you try and put the killers in the chair or at least in the house.
The next picture was more familiar. It was marked POLK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT PROPERTY, JULY 24, 1955—EVIDENCE. The crime scene. Shirelle, on her back on the hard shale wash of the hillside, her dress up, her privates violated, her face still and swollen, her eyes wide.
He put the photo down. He could not look at it.
I got him for you, Shirelle, he thought. Yes, I did. I got him for you and Earl. That was my job.
He remembered. It was so easy.
He’d gotten to the scene late the day after, having been devoured by the terrible mess of Earl Swagger’s death in the cornfield, by the grief and the rage and all the long and terrible ceremonies to go through.
Now, finally, at 4:00 P.M. on the twenty-fourth he arrived at Shirelle’s site. He could see in an instant that it had been hopelessly contaminated. Footprints scalloped the ground around her, the litter of candy bar wrappers and pop bottles lay everywhere, one lazy Polk County sheriff’s deputy lounged under a tree, smoking a cigarette.
“Has the state police forensics team been here?” Sam demanded.
“No sir. They ain’t a-coming, I hear. Too busy with Mr. Earl.”
Sam shook his head, but realized it didn’t really matter. There was no evidence left to be gotten here.
“It looks like the goddamned army’s been here.”