by John Farrow
“When I was a patrolman I didn’t eat too many doughnuts. Hardly any, although they are a quick way to take the edge off your appetite. I’m a religious man. I attend mass regularly.”
“You’re not a cliché,” Caroline surmises from all that. She gets his point now.
“I like to think I’m not. I drink whiskey. Sure. Many cops do. Others don’t. Lots more people who aren’t policemen also drink whiskey. I’m willing to do what other people do, and enjoy what other people enjoy. None of that makes me them or them me. We’re all different. I’m different. Whiskey, yes, doughnuts, no. The God thing is a total surprise to most people in this day and age.”
“Inexplicable, I’d say,” Caroline attests. She supports an elbow on a kneecap, her chin on top of a loosely curled fist. “Frankly, Uncle Émile, no offense, but it’s intellectually unsustainable.” More sheepishly, she adds, “In this day and age.”
“Someday we’ll talk about it and I’ll convert you.”
“Not damn likely. Excuse my language, but that’s just a fact.”
“I agree with you.”
“Huh?”
“The point is, what is unsustainable for you isn’t for me. We’re different. We’re all the same, yet we’re all unique. Not all detectives drink whiskey. This one does. And no, I won’t try to convert you. In my universe, everybody crosses paths with God in their own way. They may, or may not, use different language and different identifiers and call the experience by another name. Like I said, another day. I’m having a sandwich, by the way, as well as my nightcap. Interested?”
“Depends on the sandwich,” Caro says, which is not true. Grief and weeping have made her hungry, and prompted as well this need for company.
The three eat while standing in the kitchen, and everyone sips whiskey. They think about things, and remember Addie and Sandra’s mother. Émile knows that Caroline will be the next to speak, as he sees her glancing at him and forming her thoughts. Her ideas take time to meld.
“What more can we do?” she asks him. “More than what we talked about before. We’ll do that, too. Keep our ears open, our noses on the floor.” She peers at him with deliberate intent, indicating that she will not be put off or easily mollified. “I know you don’t want us interfering, and you have a point. We shouldn’t interfere. That could wreck things. On the other hand, we need to help. Me and my friends. Keep our ears open, okay, you said that. We can do that. Find out what other people have seen and heard. I’m not belittling that. It’s a good idea. We’ll do it. But what else? I just feel in my bones that there’s more ways for us to help.”
“Allow the police to do their job,” Émile confirms.
“I’m not talking about that. I mean, it’s not good enough that we just report on what people say,” she insists. “There must be something concrete. You’re here to guide us. Something … I don’t know, detectivey.”
“That’s not a word.”
“It is now.”
Émile has an idea, but he’s uncertain of its wisdom. He’ll let it go if she backs off on the intensity of her gaze for a second.
Caroline does not relent.
“All right,” he concedes. “There is one thing that we can consider. I don’t want to use an actual photograph, as that will be viewed in a negative light, as interference, by the police. Are any of your friends good at drawing?”
Kali is the artistic talent among them, apparently.
“Draw what, though?” Caro asks. “She’s more landscape and objects. Not portraits.”
“Not faces,” Émile interrupts. “Earlier I received an e-mail on my phone from Chief Till, with a photograph of the necklace that Addie was wearing. Now, you and your friends could show the photo around, but that deprives Addie of her privacy, I think. Because it means showing her neck. People will be more fixated on the fact that she was strangled and not on what we want them to see. Do you think Kali could draw the necklace, just by itself, so we’d have that rather than the photograph?”
Caroline is certain she could.
“If Kali can draw a likeness of the necklace, the three of you can distribute the drawing on social media—you know more about that aspect than I do. Ask if it’s familiar to anyone. If we can get that ball rolling, it could lead to a clue. The necklace is about all we have to go on right now. Let’s see if the people in your world—in your cyberspace world—can help.”
Caroline welcomes the chance. “We’ll get on it.”
“In the morning,” Émile stipulates. “There’s a lot of sadness in this house tonight. We’ll all be quiet and go to sleep. That’s what we need more than anything. Sleep.”
Caroline recognizes that he’s referring to Sandra in particular, and perhaps himself, and consents without further discussion. She’s excited though, and will be on it first thing in the morning.
Émile finishes his drink, then goes up well behind the others. He finds his wife sitting in bed in ambient light. She smiles as he removes his watch and empties his pockets before unbuttoning his shirt. “Émile? You’re on this case?”
“Just,” he says, then doesn’t quite know how to finish, “poking around the bushes. Seeing what flies out.”
“You’re on this case,” Sandra tells him. She holds out her hand, which Émile accepts, sits down beside her. They hear Caroline and her mother whispering in the adjacent room that they’ve confiscated for themselves. To the tune of the extraneous voices the couple kisses. Émile stands to continue preparing for bed, and once he’s in from the bathroom, having brushed his teeth and taken his pills, he gets under the covers and wraps his arms around his grieving wife. He holds her close. They both feel sad, their breathing irregular. Entwined in that way, Sandra will fall asleep, while Émile stares at the ceiling half the night through.
PART 3
FOURTEEN
Breakfast becomes a solemn gathering. Hardly a word is spoken before coffee. Sandra, her niece Caroline, and her sister Charlotte, inhabit a deeper rung of grief after sleeping, while Émile slips into a funk of his own. Revived by caffeine he emerges from it, and guides Caro into reciting the names of the dead girl’s friends and acquaintances as he writes them down. She stumbles over one person, a lady professor by the name of Shedden. When he questions her hesitation, Caro explains that the professor and Addie seemed to have been friends for a while, though not of late. They may have had a falling-out.
“A falling-out,” Cinq-Mars repeats.
Caro is uncomfortable. “They used to hang off campus. Seemed a bit creepy to me. Then it stopped. Addie never said why. She didn’t want to talk about it.”
“Creepy,” her uncle notes. He tries to keep his inflection casual.
“You know what I mean,” Caro says. “Addie was bi. So she said, anyway. Okay? But, you know, with a prof, who’s older … that’s what’s creepy. But I don’t know for sure. No one does. Addie talked way too much about her boyfriends. She had too many of them, too. Women, only a few. She said virtually nothing about them. That’s how it was with her. Always. Embarrassed, maybe. I don’t know.”
“That’s what you didn’t want to talk about in front of me yesterday, but you told the police.”
“You know. You’re my uncle.”
“So’s Bob.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing. Poor joke. It’s early.”
The arrival of State Trooper Hammond at the farmhouse doesn’t lighten anyone’s mood, but at least the officer arouses their curiosity.
Émile steps outside to greet him and the women follow, taking up positions along the front porch where they hope to eavesdrop. Caroline once dubbed the front porch the family swamp, a place to swat mosquitoes and complain about the weather. While it serves those purposes well, it’s also an observation post when unexpected visitors show up, usually to buy a horse or to book riding lessons. The trooper is not interested in such activities, and as he extends his hand Émile is surprised that he remembers the man’s name. “Trooper Hammond. Good morning.
”
The return salutation sounds terse to his ear: “Mr. Cinq-Mars.” Émile senses that he won’t welcome the man’s purpose in being here.
“What’s up?” he asks the visitor.
“We need to talk.”
“This early in the morning?” He does his best to come across as friendly. “You might find me grumpy, sir, but sure thing. How can I help? Would you like to go inside? Have a coffee?”
The officer adjusts his Smoky the Bear and examines the house. He notices Sandra and the young woman he interviewed yesterday observing him.
“I think I can say what needs to be said out here,” the trooper decides.
“Is there a problem?” Cinq-Mars inquires.
“Doesn’t need to be,” the trooper reflects. “Shouldn’t be a problem as long as we can both agree that you’re it.”
“It? I’m the problem?” He’s not entirely surprised. He didn’t take to this man from the outset. The trooper crosses his arms as though to demonstrate that he will brook no challenge.
“You’re a retired cop,” the trooper points out.
Cinq-Mars flashes a smile. “Since when is that a crime? Or anybody’s problem?”
Hammond ignores him. He looks over at the horses in the paddocks, then back again. “Emphasis on the word retired.”
“A fact of life,” Émile points out to him. He knows where this is headed. “I’m told it beats the alternative.”
“Stop muddling.”
Surely, Émile thinks, the word he means to say is meddling. While English is second nature to him now, he still encounters a gap or two, given that French is his first language. Perhaps both words fit. “Who’s muddling? Or meddling, do you mean?”
“I’m not going to excuse you, a man with your credentials. You know better. Last night you were out to the scene of two different murders, not to mention worming your way onto the crime scene yesterday A.M. This might come as a shock to your system, sir, you’re not needed here. Neither are you invited. Big surprise, we can manage without you.”
“I wouldn’t worry about any shocks to my system, Trooper Hammond. Good of you, though, to drive out here to let me know.”
“It goes beyond that.”
“Sure hope so.”
“Not only are you not needed, you’re not wanted, either.”
“That’s clear.”
“I’ll make this easy on you.”
“Just don’t shock my system.”
“Don’t be flip with me, sir.”
“Don’t call me ‘sir.’”
“What?”
“You didn’t hear me?”
“It’s a term of respect.”
“Only when said respectfully.”
The trooper has unfurled his arms now, and moves his feet around and rotates his waist. He puts his hands on his hips. In another time, in another situation, without three women watching him, he might have been inclined to throw a punch, and still might do in this circumstance if Émile were two decades younger. “I’m not going to hit an old man,” he whispers.
“Speak up. I can’t hear you. Neither can my witnesses.”
“Stay away from this investigation. Don’t talk to anybody involved. You don’t visit any crime scenes and you don’t discuss the matter with Chief Till. That man’s going to be in his own cesspool of trouble if he doesn’t put his ass under a microscope. Are we clear on that? Is any of this too complicated for you? Go back to being retired. You’re not on the job anymore and you never were around here. My advice? Invest in a magnifying glass to study your belly button instead. Otherwise, I’m placing you under arrest for obstruction of justice if there’s even one more incident, I don’t care how minor. Just so you know. Are we clear?”
“I don’t know why people ask that question.”
The trooper is baffled a moment. “What question?”
“Are we clear? Do you think it comes from that movie?”
The words are almost on Hammond’s lips, “What movie?” before he rethinks their conversation.
“You’ve been warned,” Hammond tells him. “That’s out of respect for you being on the job in your time. This is not your time, sir. Or mister. Or whatever you want to be called. Old man. It won’t be detective. This is not your time and it’s not your country. It’s not your case and your interference will not be tolerated.”
Cinq-Mars knows that the trooper wants to be able to say it once more—is that clear?—but he declines, and gets back in his car.
As he drives off, Émile watches him go, then returns to the house. The women appear dispirited. Even contrite, as though they’re taking blame upon themselves. He’s had his knuckles rapped.
He stops before the porch and looks up at them.
“Sorry about that,” Caroline commiserates. She now believes that any contribution to the investigation of her friend’s murder that he might have made has been short-circuited. “I guess maybe we got you into trouble.”
“Trouble? What? Him?” Émile fires back. “He’s not trouble. Don’t ever pay attention to a man like that. Three murders on his watch and what is he concerned about? Who might be stepping on a crack in his sidewalk. That’s his main bugaboo. That tells me he’s lost, without a prayer. Maybe he can whistle Dixie but he can’t solve a major crime. Now then,” he says to Caroline in particular.
“What?” she answers back, still confused.
“Why the heck are you hanging around here? If you’re planning to lend a hand, do you have time to dilly-dally? Get a move on.”
In a twinkling, her attitude turns, her mother and aunt grin, and the young woman is suddenly eager and focused. She beats it back into the house to get a few things together, then commandeers her grandmother’s old Ford. Émile, for his part, will head into town as well. He has work to do, too. Let Hammond try and stop him. Aware of his defiance, Sandra grins. She’s even laughing a little behind her tears.
“What?” A vague snarl.
She puts her hands up to simulate compliance. She knows he’s royally ticked off.
* * *
The morning sun scales the mountains and ascends into a familiar sky, yet the village is sleepy as Émile wends his way into Hanover. He’s decided that he likes it here. The quality of the sensory experience is one that he has previously tried to assess—what is it that makes an American town feel American? It’s not only the flags. In affluent New England, the respect for architecture is generally more prevalent than it is back home in Canada, although European villages are artful in preserving the past, and tidier, so that’s not it, at least not in its entirety. As people move through their routines, there’s a feeling of relaxation particular to these Main Streets that he finds less evident in the rest of the world. Émile begs to differ with those Americans who might think they are the hard workers and the go-getters of the universe. He detects an atmosphere quite different in the morning air of small Yankee towns. People seem to believe that everything is right with the world and they’re at ease with that. What might occur on any given day is only what everyone expects. Even on this rare morning, a troubling time in the aftermath of three murders, folks chat, perhaps more intently than usual, yet they drop into the post office, grab a cup of coffee from a shop, greet friends, juggle their purses and newspapers, adjust their backpacks, and somehow look and feel gifted with the art of living. A provenance is built into their confidence, a daily ratification that this is the moment that’s been awaited, it’s been foretold, this is the time that is and the time that has always been ordained. It’s not the future nor even the mythic past. Our time is the present, they’re saying, or thinking, or just living as if that’s the case, which is what makes a place fine and livable, if not wholly perfect. That’s the essence of what’s different, Émile concludes. These pristine New England towns seem perpetually aware of their own pageantry, and whether it’s in the architecture or in the tone of personal exchanges, citizens feel obliged to inhabit and inhale an atmosphere, one they both celebrate and rely upo
n to sustain them. As if they are standing in as icons on a postcard, or see themselves as the nostalgic relics of a future age, for is this not the only moment that counts? The present is not only now, it’s here and it’s forever and it’s American, thank God. These folks don’t do panic or consternation, Émile attests, or don’t do it well, nor do they suffer threats to their well-being with dramatic concern. As long as the sun shines upon the shade trees, and the children skip, and the old folks nod from their park benches, and the coffee shops are open, and a Mercedes can pull in behind a jalopy and a cop can smudge both cars’ tires with chalk, then the disposition of the people on the streets is congenial, all is well, and all will remain well today, a fine day that is bound to fold gently into tomorrow.
Storm-free.
Émile is less certain of that, of course, perhaps because he’s not American, yet he finds the general temperament appealing, even if he tends to feel that he’s treading through an alternate universe.
He ponders, also—and this is a more difficult notion to grapple—the stillness that persists as sunlight shines upon American towns. He’s not experienced it elsewhere. In a meditative moment of his own, he wonders, not for the first time, if it’s him. That is, if the stillness that he detects does not occupy a space inside him where previously his mind merrily computed away, ringing up calculations. An aging thing, perhaps. Is it that his focus is less intent than before, less geared to the task at hand? Is that why he was slow to get off the seat of his pants this morning? Chief Till is younger. He’ll check him out. Perhaps he can hold him to a standard he’s no longer able to fully attain himself.
Hell, he thinks. I’m retired. I’m allowed to hang back. Yet to continue in such a vein will only prove Hammond right, that he ought to keep his nose out of things. Once that conclusion snaps to mind he knows he won’t allow it.
He parks near the police station and tramps inside.
Cinq-Mars is interested in taking the chief of police by surprise, to observe how he starts his day after being subjected to the darkest crimes of his career. Émile is aware that he’s feeling the need for friends in high places, and while he’s inclined to believe that Till is an honest cop and probably a half-decent example of one, he’s anxious to find out how he conducts himself when circumstances demand more of him than what’s been required previously. His counterpart among the troopers failed his first test, knotting his colon over nothing more than jurisdiction. Till may also fail. The man’s a worry because he knuckled under rather quickly to the New Hampshire state trooper, managing only a passive-aggressive counterpunch in soliciting Émile’s help. As well, Till’s remarks indicated that he’s had difficulty in the past being respected. He admitted that he once required an old lady—Émile’s mother-in-law—to run interference for him to help keep his job. Those could be benign experiences, or they could be warning signs, and Émile needs to assess him further before placing his trust in the man. The first thing he must find out: does Chief Till respond to a crisis by sleeping in after a late night, then by taking a two-hour breakfast to think things over, or is he on the job at the crack of dawn as he ought to be?