“That’s a terrible thing that happened,” he said, though still with a bit of the same remove as when telling the woman how to take care of her ticket.
I slapped the picture of Roy on the counter. “My brother was allegedly seen with this guy. We were hoping we could look through some of your mug-shot books to find any matches.”
Overton eyed the sketch. “Which detective gave you this?”
“It’s from our private investigator.”
“Well, you can’t just come in with a sketch and look through a mug-shot book. It doesn’t work like that.” He had a hint of a smirk, the closest he’d come to displaying an emotion. “You need to be working through a detective on a specific case.”
“This is a specific case.”
“I understand that. But we don’t let people just come in and match up pictures with mug shots. Are you a crime victim? An eyewitness?” I shook my head. “Right,” he said, shrugging. “Then you don’t get access to the mug-shot books.” He paused, moving his jaw in such a way, I wondered if he was chewing a stealth piece of gum. “Detective Blanchard is the lead on your brother’s case. But it’s Saturday. He’s not in.”
I recognized the name as one of the pale, mustached men who had spent days and days in our living room last August.
“You’re going to need to give him a call about this on Monday,” Overton said. “Or I can leave this for him.” He reached for Roy, but I grabbed the paper first, with a feeling of panicky disappointment. I didn’t want to hand Roy over. And I did not want to talk to Detective Blanchard on Monday. I was the doer here, not him. After the searches ended, we’d barely heard from the Larkgrove police again. I imagined they’d moved on to more pressing matters, like a cat in a tree or a spate of vicious eggings on neighborhood homes.
I felt myself slouching against David Nelson, envisioning the drive back home, the afternoon stretching before us as we tried to salvage something of it, halfheartedly studying or making strange conversation. Perhaps sensing my defeat, David stiffened beside me. Soon he cleared his throat.
“Are you familiar at all, Officer Overton,” he said in oral-report voice, all projection and enunciation, “with the Freedom of Information Act of 1963?” Overton did not answer, though he crossed his arms across his chest and blinked slowly. “I would imagine you’re familiar with the clauses pertaining to police records. All general records pertaining to criminals or potential criminals at large in the community are available to the members of that community upon reasonable request.’ This includes, obviously, mug shots.” He paused here, eyeing Overton. David Nelson looked taller than usual. “Listen,” he continued, his tone shifting, more chummy, “we just want to take a look. We won’t even ask you for names of the guys. If we find photos that seem like potential matches, we’ll leave that information for the detective, who can evaluate the situation on Monday.” He held up his hands at his sides. “No harm done.”
“What are you,” Overton said, the look on his face now as if he were about to laugh or spit, “legal counsel?”
“No, but my dad’s a lawyer.” David Nelson’s dad was in fact a mid level sales manager for a heating and cooling company. “And unlike your detectives, he doesn’t take Saturdays off. I can have him come down here on Ms. Pasternak’s behalf if you’d let me use your phone.” He leaned across the counter like he might just crawl over it to the shiny black phone sitting on the nearest desk. It was an impressive display. I tried to stifle a smile.
Overton stared at us. I felt a tickle rising from the back of my heels and up my legs. I pressed my arm against David’s. “Fine,” Overton finally said. “I’ll give you a half-hour. You come, you look, you leave. That’s it. No monkey business.”
The panic turned quickly to barely suppressed giddiness. I squeezed David’s wrist. He had the just-aced-an-exam, just-solved-a-nearly-impossible-differential-equation look, gloaty and Cheshire.
“I didn’t know you knew that stuff,” I whispered to him as Over-ton led us to a room as antiseptic and nondescript as the Fairfield police station, except this one had newer computers and a smell like someone had just made popcorn in the microwave.
“I don’t,” David whispered back. “Made it all up.” His grin spread even wider, like his jaw might unhinge from his face. I hadn’t thought David Nelson capable of such quick-thinking deception. I knocked my shoulder lightly into his as we walked. Both of us started giggling. When Overton turned to glare, we quieted, though the laugh lay just below the surface, like a ball we were secretly juggling, trying to keep aloft.
The mug books were thick, wide, heavy photo albums; you had to turn the pages carefully, since there was very little give along the overstuffed rings. It was like looking through the family album of the most downtrodden, unkempt, red-eyed family, all of whose members were alarmed by, bored with, or made tearful by the flash. Overton had sat us at a deeply nicked wooden worktable in side-by-side metal folding chairs. The picture of Roy sat between us as we paged in tandem through the albums. There were six books in all, each marked Male and dated from 1971 onward.
It was hard to match Roy with any of the men. In all the mug shots, they were too concrete, their faces too fixed, too all there. I had a sense that when I found the right fit, I would simply know. But no one even came close. Whenever anyone had the vaguest resemblance, sharing the squinty but heavily lashed eyes or the particular constellation of cheekbones and wrinkles, David would veto it.
“Nope,” he said, tapping the sketch. “Look at the axis of mouth to nose here. The nose isn’t centered. It’s way off to the right. You have to look for that asymmetry.” He pointed to Roy’s eyes. “These are uneven—look, the left one’s higher than the right. That’s a telltale characteristic. That’s not going to change. And this,” pointing to his chin. “His chin is weak. Though he could be fatter in a mug shot, so maybe we’ll see a double chin. And you can’t rely on the cheekbones in that case either. His cheeks could’ve easily been rounder under a few more pounds.” All of this came out in a low rush, David pitched forward in his chair, his eyes beady and focused. No one would take this as seriously as quickly and as unquestioningly as he did. I felt only a hint of proprietary chafing, not wanting him to suddenly be the expert on Roy or investigative techniques or whatnot. Mostly I was appreciative.
Overton seemed to have forgotten about us. A half-hour passed, and then a full hour. Every so often we would hear his voice from the front desk with that same tone of mild aggravation, and David and I would look at each other and let out a little peep of laughter.
David kept up a constant hum of noise, whistling softly or muttering, “Okay, okay, okay” or “ Umm-hmmm,” or simply making a breathy “Ah.” I found myself more than once on the cusp of telling him to knock it off, though there was something reassuring about all of his sounds, something deeply familiar, even if they were simultaneously inching their way under my skin and driving me half crazy. I took to jabbing him lightly with my elbow whenever he started doing his three-fingered drum solos against the table.
At one point a second officer—beer belly, buzz cut—came over and asked us, “You need anything, kids?” He had several red-and-white-wrapped mints cupped in his palm, and David and I looked at each other. It was unclear whether he was offering them to us or simply carrying them around. I told him we were fine. David grabbed one of the mints, told the man thank you, and proceeded to unwrap and suck on it loudly. I jabbed him again with my elbow. We looked and looked. What I would tell Denis about this was We spent several hours searching for potential suspects. We thought a great deal about the asymmetry and axis of the features in the composite in order to narrow the field of potential matches and assure ourselves of greater accuracy.
And slowly we amassed a smattering of possible Roys. I had a nagging sense that we were talking ourselves into the similarities, given that neither David nor I was the type to put forth all this effort with no work product to show for it. But there was, as David had predicted, a fattened
-up version of Roy; a couple of smooth-faced younger versions from the 1980s books; and finally one recent shot, the one I felt the strongest about, all hollowed out and ghostly pale in just the way I imagined Roy to be.
We’d been there more than an hour and a half when Overton stalked back and announced, “Time’s up, Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes. Let’s go.”
I handed him the four mug shots. I would, I imagined excitedly (I could feel my mouth actually watering, the saliva pooling beneath my tongue), call Denis and leave him a message to get in touch with Blanchard early next week for news on some potential leads I spent the weekend finding.
Back outside, David and I stood in the parking lot, coats open in the cold, already recounting the highlights of the day, energized from a job well done: the Freedom of Information Act, the mints, the matching pictures. This had always been one of our favorite activities, the nearly instant replay.
“That shirt’s weird,” he said after a while, pointing to the hummingbird. I laughed. It seemed funny now. “It looks good on you,” he quickly countered. “But it’s weird.”
“It is,” I said.
After a while, when both of us started bunching up dirty snowballs and throwing them against the sidewalk to watch them smash apart, it seemed we were just avoiding getting back in the car. I could feel my nose running. When I wiped it with the back of my glove, it left a long, glossy stream of snot along the fabric. David called me Little Miss Gross. He pretended to throw a snowball in my face but never released. We guessed which cruiser was Overton’s and made empty threats about smashing snowballs on its windshield.
David built a pyramid of snow in one of the empty parking spaces, crouching on his haunches, the collar of his jacket riding up to his ears. He told me about the book he was reading on medieval Russian history and the Rurik dynasty. There were, he said, people who didn’t even believe that the original Rurik really existed. I tried to think of something insightful to say, though I knew nothing about Rurik, so I offered a few interested huhs. He packed more snow onto his pyramid, smoothing the walls with the palms of his gloves. I told him about my book, how Nixon tried to rehabilitate his public image by publicly questioning Bush’s policy toward Yeltsin in ’92. I hoped David wouldn’t ask too many questions. I’d only read the intro.
“Do you want to do something tonight?” he said, peering up from the pyramid. It was a nice day we were having, David and I. The way he squinted into the sun as he waited for my answer, his eyes nearly closed, ears bright red, bottom lip shiny with spit, he reminded me of a little kid, reminded me of us being us from a long time ago, maybe from before we’d ever even met.
“Sorry,” I said, “I have plans.” His face clouded a tiny bit.
“With Lola,” he said, with a hint of the resignation and judgment you might hear from a mother pronouncing the name of her child’s deadbeat boyfriend, or perhaps a husband of his wife’s lover. It wasn’t a question, but I told him yes anyway. I made a joke about kicking Overton’s tires and David laughed, but I could tell something had already changed. I could see it in the stiff way he held his cheeks.
“Lola Pepper. Of course,” he said. “Of. Course.” He reached a fist into his pyramid, a Godzilla-like move that quickly gutted the thing. He packed a handful of the disemboweled snow hard in his hands, fashioning an ice ball. “Do you really like her?”
“She’s nice,” I said. “She’s really nice,” which was true. Part of me was tempted to say something terrible about her, to crouch next to him and make some sort of elaborate snow sculpture with him, our own Tower of London or Notre-Dame. We could do it. We could spend all afternoon doing it. I thought of how easily I had always forsaken all others for David Nelson. It had just come naturally. But something in me, though tempted, resisted now.
“I like her,” I said, feeling both strong and regretful as the words came out.
“The flag girls,” he said, in the high-pitched, screechy imitation we’d always reserved for those dumber or more popular than us, which had been nearly everyone. “What do you do with her? Cheer for teams together?” I got the feeling he’d been wanting to say this stuff for a while now.
“We do whatever,” I said quietly. I could have made some uncharitable comment about Adam, but it seemed pointless.
He gestured again to the shirt, and I felt stupidly nervous about what he would say, though it turned out he said nothing. Instead he stood, dropped the ice ball at his feet, and headed to his car. We were cordial enough on the ride home, soon talking a bit about bombings in Tel Aviv and sanctions against Cuba. We hit a string of red lights, though, one after another after another, a few of them senselessly long, the cross streets empty of cars. I made a joke about “arbitrary and capricious traffic-calming devices,” which David normally would’ve found at least nominally amusing. But he just grew increasingly frustrated, hitting the breaks harder at each stop, clapping his palm against the steering wheel. I told him, “Calm down,” then “Sorry,” then “Thanks,” none of which seemed to help.
It was hard, the first little while with Lola. Sitting perched on the edge of her bed while she got ready for the game, I felt infected by David Nelson. Just being in her room felt a bit unseemly. I had the urge to say mean things about the porcelain dolls arranged in a row along her dresser top or the oppressively cheery rainbow-themed comforter beneath me.
After I helped zip her into her uniform, she danced her routine in front of her full-length mirror, pantomiming the flag in two closed fists. She made unwavering eye contact with me. “Can I get an Apache cheer from the crowd?” she said, and I made a quiet whoop. She looked at me with mock disapproval, like You can do better than that, though I didn’t give it a second try. When she finished with the dance, she stood with her hands braced on her hips, still facing the mirror, asking if I’d French-braid her hair. She’d taught me how to weeks earlier.
“I’d rather not,” I said, and she tucked her chin to her neck, sucked in her bottom lip in a sulk. I added, “I’m not that good at it.”
“You’re fine. Come on.” She plopped herself between my legs, her body still warm from the exertion. “Please,” she said, waggling her hair on my legs, making it nearly impossible to say no. Her silky hair slid through my fingers as I tried to wind it over and through itself.
“Jerold’s coming to the game with Gregory and Kent,” she said. When I didn’t respond, she went on. “This is what you do. You act like you really want to talk to Kent so you can sit by them, and then you just give a little bit of attention to Jerold, but not too much. Keep him guessing, you know?”
“What am I supposed to say to Kent?”
“Anything. Talk about the game or whatever.” I could not imagine a conversation with Kent about the game. I could less imagine a conversation about whatever. Kent spent most of the time shouting uncreative insults to the opposing team (Your momma should’ve used birth control) and making fart noises with his hand in his armpit.
When I was done with the braid, I thought it looked funny, cockeyed atop her head, the pulled-back hair only drawing more at-tention to the lopsidedness of her freckles. But she told me perfect and gave an air kiss next to one of my cheeks.
“Let’s do you up now,” she said, clapping her hands softly together. She clamped my eyelashes in curler brushes and drew eyeliner across my lids, her breath warm on my face. It was hard to stay prickly in Lola’s world, pliant and fluffy as it was. Pulling her head back from mine, she gently rubbed blush onto my cheeks. “Mmmm, mmmm,” she said, like she could eat me up. I smiled at her. “Shut up,” I said, but nicely. She was psyched about the shirt. She kept rocking on her heels about it, clapping her hands together, telling me I was absolutely adorable.
At the game, I ended up a couple rows in front of Jerold and Kent and Gregory, Tip having cleared a spot for me between him and Michael Chemanski. Tip greeted me by chucking my shoulder lightly with his closed fist and passing me a nearly empty Pepsi bottle. The alcohol had sunk to the bottom and my
sip was a blunt, bracing mouthful of rum, which jostled my stomach momentarily and then spread a quiet warmth through me, which I tried to hang on to far longer than it could rightly last.
Players dribbled the ball and shot baskets and stumbled over each other as referees called fouls. Michael Chemanski went off on a long, and I assumed drunken, tangent about how he bet I could spell any word he could think of. He started out with ones like psychiatrist and bureaucracy and I felt a little like a trained monkey. His big joke was saying, “I don’t fucking know” once I’d given my answer, or “Sounds good to me.” When he said, “Supercalifragilistic-expialidocious,” I said, “You know that’s not a real word. That’s a Disney word.” He wanted to argue then about whether Cinderella was a real word. “Or what about the Matterhorn?” he said. Michael Chemanski used to come over and wrestle with Danny in the basement. One time they kicked a dent into the wall next to the old bookshelves and had to take off all the books and drag the shelf over to cover it up. When I told him that the Matterhorn was actually a mountain in the Alps, he said, with an inexplicable hint of bitterness, “Figures,” and shook his head.
I was aware of Jerold the whole time, driven more by curiosity than all-out interest. I found myself laughing too loudly and animating my face more than normal from the expectation of being watched. I found myself too turning to examine the banners that hung on the wall behind Jerold, the long feltlike panels that hailed our state championship in basketball in ’83 and track and field in ’79 and ’91. Jerold’s face blurred in the foreground—I was controlled enough not to stare right at him—but I could see his slightly open mouth as he watched the game, the swirl of hair that looked unbrushed at the top. Throughout the game, he and Kent Newman and Gregory Baron took part in playful roughhousing, shouldering each other in the sides and teetering in their seats.
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