The Ashes of an Oak

by Bradbury, Chris

  How far to drag the knife? Six inches? Ear lobe to ear lobe? The further the distance and the longer it took, the less chance he had to succeed. His first thought would be: Suppose the old man fights back because I was too slow?

  How deep? You couldn’t just fairy skate across it, you had to bury that blade and make sure you got to the arteries and veins and the windpipe. Then you had to listen to the gurgle, hear that final wind rush from him like a spirit sprung from a cage and stand over that spastic, jerking frame as life ebbed like a final tide from his body.

  So, if the killer was, say thirty now and he killed his old man when he was, for convenience sake, sixteen, that would make it fourteen years ago. Allow for error, and say three years either way, then he would have to look at the files from between eleven and seventeen years ago.

  A span of six years. Six years’ worth of files.

  He got a clean glass ashtray and laid his cigarettes and lighter out next to it, then put a jug of water and a glass next to them. Coleman said he would send out for sandwiches at twelve.

  Frank looked at his watch. Nine-fifteen.

  He set the portrait Benoît had done out in front of him, then pulled the top file from a whole pile of files and began to look at photos.

  ‘Hey.’

  Frank looked up to see Steve Wayt, leaning against the bannister, looking at him from the stairs.

  Frank looked at his watch. It was twelve-ten. Time had gone by quickly. The ashtray was half full, the water half gone. The basement suddenly felt very stuffy. One quarter of the pile of photos had moved to the other side of the desk. Frank reckoned he must have looked at around four thousand of them.

  ‘Hey yourself, Steve. Those my sandwiches in your hand?’

  Steve held up a bag. ‘They are. You want them down here?’

  ‘No. I need some air. Hold on there. I’ll come up.’

  Frank grabbed his jacket and smokes and headed up.

  He and Steve walked outside and sat on a wall. It was bright. He felt like he’d been in a cave for a year.

  Steve gave him the bag and a take-out coffee.

  Frank sipped the coffee and winced. ‘Hot,’ he said. ‘How’s your day?’

  Steve shrugged. ‘Circular. I seem to be meeting myself on the way back. I’ve been to every hospital and almost every family doctor in this city and I’m damned if I can find one diabetic, never mind one with a harelip.’

  Frank laughed. ‘It’s always the last one. You know that.’

  ‘So what are you doing?’

  ‘Just looking at mug shots. Trying to put names to faces. I got bored and asked the boss if I could do something useful. He’s got me in the basement.’ Frank took out a sandwich and started to eat. He raised his eyebrows in approval at the tuna and mayo. ‘I can’t sit at home, not knowing Mary’s killer’s out there.’

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘You hear about the steel?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Got pictures circulating, people going round hardware stores. Not sure what we’ll be able to do about it, but at least it’s something. You found it?’

  Frank shook his head. ‘Informant of mine. I asked him to keep ears and eyes to the ground. James Cowdell. You know James. You met him on that stripper case last year. The twitchy kid.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, sure. I remember. Where’d he find it? At the scene?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Frank between chews. ‘He saw some kids playing with it, saw the blood on it and took it off them.’

  ‘That’s a stroke of luck,’ said Steve.

  ‘Yes it is.’

  Steve lit a cigarette and waved at a passing uniform. ‘You believe him?’

  ‘How? In what way?’

  ‘That he found it. Do you believe that he found it?’

  Frank stopped eating and looked at Steve. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘It didn’t occur to you that he never found it? That he might have had it all along? His fingerprints on the weapon? Come on. It’s the oldest trick in the book, Frank. Hide in the open. Put your prints on the weapon. Make up a story and no one will suspect you.’

  Frank swallowed. ‘Get the fuck out of here, Steve. What? You think that he killed that girl then pulled off some sort of double bluff, thinking that we’re too stupid to catch on? You think he’d risk prison for a hundred bucks?’ He took another bite of the sandwich. ‘You’re crazy.’

  ‘It’s just an idea. That’s all.’ Steve took off his jacket and laid it out on the wall, then started to roll up his sleeves. ‘You asked him to do this for you when?’

  ‘Thursday.’

  ‘And the next day, this morning, by coincidence, he just happens to find some kids near the crime scene playing with the murder weapon?’

  Frank took a sip of coffee and lit a cigarette. They were directly in the path of the high sun. It was hot, remorseless and sapped at his energy.

  ‘Take a step back there, Steve. I know this kid. He’s a good kid. Always trying to please, you know?’

  ‘And?’

  Frank realised that he may have talked himself into a corner. ‘What? Because he’s trying to please makes him a murderer? Bullshit! No way could he have been involved.’

  Steve crossed his arms and gazed nonchalantly across the street.

  ‘If it had been anybody else, Frank, what would you say?’

  Frank walked a few feet and threw the bag in the bin. He took another sip of coffee, frowned in disgust and binned that too.

  ‘I would say bring him in,’ he said. ‘But I know this guy.’

  ‘Frank, we have two murders unaccounted for,’ reasoned Steve. ‘The guy’s a freak. He’s jumpier than a cricket in heat and has everything to prove. How many jobs has he had in the past two years? Five? Six? I know you like the guy, Frank, but he’s wired wrong. His way of thinking? I’ll tell you. Copycat murders and make a few bucks.’

  ‘It’s not a copycat. The psych said that,’ insisted Frank.

  ‘Or it could be a really shit one,’ said Steve. ‘Come on, Frank. He’s a fucking retard. He couldn’t copy a straight line.’

  Frank wanted to argue, but it was hot and he was losing patience. ‘Let me think about it, would you?’

  ‘It’s a lead, Frank and there’s a fucking great guilty dog tugging on the end of it.’

  ‘Just leave it with me. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Steve. ‘I’ll leave it until you’ve looked through those pictures. End of the day. The guy’s a perfect match up, Frank. Simple, no direction, desperate to please. He’s got a fucking arrow on his head saying, ‘pick me’.’

  ‘I went to him, remember?’

  ‘So you did, Frank. So you did.’ Steve threw his cigarette into the gutter. ‘Maybe that’s the problem. No distance, Frank. No distance.’

  Frank took his hat off and fanned his face. He felt like he was going to pass out.

  ‘Okay, Steve. Do what you must. I think you’re wrong, but I can understand why you think like you do.’

  Steve put a hand on Frank’s shoulder. ‘Thanks, Frank. I’ll let you know.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go. Listen, you think you’ll be staying on now? No more retirement talk?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Steve.’

  ‘Yeah but, with Mary gone and you getting back to health…’

  ‘Mary dying just makes me want to clear out twice as much.’ Frank put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. ‘She wasn’t my passport out of here, Steve, she was my motivation. Now I’m just sick to the stomach of the place, of the people, of the whole fucking sewer. If I go now, it’s not because of Mary, it’s because I don’t have Mary. I need out more than ever now. I just don’t have the motivation anymore.’

  ‘Sure you do.’

  ‘Sure I don’t,’ retorted Frank flatly.

  ‘Okay,’ said Steve. ‘I’d better go. Sorry about the kid, Frank. I have to take action. You know that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Frank. ‘I know it.’

  He just wa
nted to get away now. Steve was beginning to annoy him – Steve and the heat.

  At four-thirty Frank found him. It was the second to last volume of photos. He had become resigned to failure. Each face had begun to blend into the next.

  Then he thought for a second that his heart would actually stop. He doubted himself, completely and without boundary, he doubted himself. He rubbed his eyes, thought it was too much smoke, tiredness, the residue of the anaesthetic, worn out old eyes. He thought it could be anything but the truth.

  He looked at Benoît’s sketch and then back at the photo. The more he looked the more different the two became until they had nothing in common but the placement of the eyes, nose and mouth. They became the Generic Man, the faded face, the same thin lips, the hard, flared nostrils, the depthless stare, the one we all recognise and yet have no idea why.

  He turned away, closed his eyes and cleared his mind, took another look and saw the likeness all over again. He saw the truth.

  He picked up the volume and carried it to records, the page laid bare, a psalter of sinners, a book of revelation, and dropped it down in front of the desk clerk.

  He stabbed a finger down on the photo. ‘Find me him, Joe.’

  Joe lifted his unflappable, hooded eyes towards Frank. ‘You look like you mean business, Frank.’

  ‘Like never before.’

  Joe swivelled the photo album round and made a note of number below the picture. ‘Consider it done,’ he said.

  Chapter 30

  Preston Jenkins was thirty-eight at the time of his death in 1961. He was murdered, said the file, by his wife, Laura. She had killed him because she had taken one too many beatings, one too many humiliations, one too many moments of terror.

  Her son had been upstairs when she had done it and had therefore not witnessed the horror. He was fifteen at the time.

  Laura Jenkins had not been jailed. She had been given six years’ probation and ordered to have therapy. The world, it seemed, had tremendous sympathy for her. All those cherry-black eyes and blueberry-bruised arms, all those berry-fat lips and plum marks on her neck, had been but a promise of things to come, a downpayment on her death, but she had survived. Now the world cared. Now someone gave a damn. All those silent screams were now heard.

  Too late, the damage was done.

  Preston Jenkins himself had never been destined for greatness, but his outcome had been predestined. His life mirrored the generations before, every father a prelude to every son, every son an echo of his father.

  It was only going to be a matter of time before the madness, the anger, the frustration, the genetic forces, peaked in a perfect storm and was let loose upon the world in savage revenge for the simple act of birth.

  Laura had held onto her son and she and Lonny had grown up together united by their survival and the secret they shared.

  Of course, none of this was known. As far as that unhearing, care-blind world was concerned, Laura had killed Preston and that was an end to it. She had saved the taxpayer the price of a hanging or an expensive lifetime in jail.

  The world had moved on.

  Now, seventeen years later, the sins of the father had come full circle and the son, unable to resist his ghostly calls, had reached that frenzied, perfected peak of insanity and began to take bites out of the world.

  Frank closed the file and lit a cigarette.

  He felt flat and unfulfilled. The times he had thought about this moment and now, when he got there, there was none of the elation he had hoped for.

  If Lonny Jenkins had not been born, Mary would still be alive. Whatever the connection between the two, Mary would still have been alive. So would Mrs Dybek and George Curtis. So would Mrs Curtis, God rest her soul. Those ripples spread far, down the generations like a polluted, poisoned waterfall, killing everything in its path.

  He closed the file and looked at his watch. Six-thirty. He’d been here all that time.

  He would go upstairs and give Emmet the good news. At least it would please him. He knew this kind of stuff ate away at him, dealing with pressure from upstairs and from the press.

  He heard the door to the basement open and footsteps down the stairs. They were tired steps, steps empty of good-news-lightness, heavy with the day.

  ‘Frank.’

  Frank turned and saw Emmet. Even in the difficult lighting of the basement, his friend looked exhausted.

  ‘I found him, Emmet. I found our guy.’

  Emmet came over and pulled up a chair. ‘You did? Oh, Frank, you’ve made my year, you old dog. Who is it?’

  ‘Lonny Jenkins.’ He opened the file and showed Emmet the picture of Preston Jenkins. ‘That’s his old man. Look at the drawing, Emmet. It’s incredible. Twins.’

  Emmet picked up the portrait and put it next to the photo. ‘My God.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘My God. Who’d’ve thought it?’

  ‘Not me,’ said Frank. ‘Never me.’

  ‘Do we know where the boy is?’

  ‘That won’t take long. We’ll have a picture of him and an address in no time. I’d like to bring him in, Emmet. Can I do that? Can I bring him in?’

  ‘You can go with Mike and Bob and bring him in. Tell them from me, you’re the one to put the cuffs on him.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll go and round them up.’

  Frank got up and started to put his jacket on.

  Emmet grabbed the empty sleeve and stopped him. ‘Sit down a minute, Frank. I have to talk to you.’

  ‘Sure.’ Frank hooked the jacket over the back of the chair.

  Emmet wrung his hands.

  ‘What’s up, Em? Come on.’ He slapped Emmet’s knee. ‘This is a good moment. Don’t bring me down.’

  Emmet looked up at the ceiling as if in hope of inspiration, then lowered his eyes slowly to Frank. ‘James Cowdell is dead, Frank.’

  Frank felt tears come to his eyes immediately. ‘What?’

  ‘James is dead. I’m sorry.’

  Frank slumped back in his chair. ‘How? Why?’

  Emmet wavered, his hands and arms unable to find a comfortable place to rest. ‘Steve went to question him. He told you he was going to. I okayed it. I had to. Once Steve was inside the apartment, James pulled a gun. Steve had no choice. He had to put him down.’

  ‘Put him down?’ cried Frank. ‘He wasn’t a fucking dog, Em. He wasn’t fucking rabid. He didn’t own a gun. He wouldn’t know one end from the other. He wouldn’t have hurt a fly…’

  Emmet put a hand on Frank’s arm and squeezed. ‘We found Mary, Frank.’ Tears balanced on the rims of Emmet’s eyes. ‘We found Mary’s…’ He almost choked on the words. ‘We found her head and we found the murder weapon. He killed her with an ice-pick, Frank, right in the back of her head. We found a saw too, Frank. We found a saw. And the finger of Charlene Astle. There’s no way round it, Frank. The boy did it. The boy did it.’

  Frank leaned on the desk and put his face in his hands. His shoulders quaked with grief.

  Chapter 31

  Lonny Jenkins lived in a pleasant but slightly run-down single storey house on a street that had seen better days. He lived with his mother, who must have been in her early to mid-fifties by now.

  It was dusk. The sound of traffic hummed in the distance while the constant rattle of people in their homes, shouting and laughing, screaming at each other or watching the TV turned up way too loud, listening to music – Latino, disco, classical and crooners - carried onto the sidewalk.

  A smell of food pervaded the air – fried chicken, spices, barbecued steak, a hint of garlic. It mingled with the new smell of night and stimulated the memory and the salivary glands.

  They were the smells and sounds of a still-decent neighbourhood settling, the creaks and groans that came with the setting sun, the world cooling down, much as an old wooden house ticked away come the end of day.

  The police turned up in force, took the front door out and subdued Lonny Jenkins immediately. He made no attempt to run. He simply put his cof
fee cup on the table in front of him, put up his hands and carried on watching the TV. It was a programme about sharks.

  The place was a mess. There were newspapers and magazines everywhere and the floor was littered with discarded cans and empty boxes of food. There were ashtrays full to overflowing with cigarette ends and skinny joints. A layer of ash covered the table and everything upon it and made it look like the aftermath of a pyroclastic flow. As the police moved across the floor, their feet crunched beneath them as they trod upon spilled cereals and stale, hard bread.

  There was a stench of sweat and urine and, behind this smell, was another, sweeter, cloying, rotten odour, which was becoming familiar to Frank Matto.

  Once Lonny was secured, Frank went around the house and quickly found the source of the smell.

  Laura Jenkins’ body was in her bed. She had probably been dead for three weeks. Flies had made her a source of food and a place to lay their eggs.

  The curtains were closed, but they were thin and dirty yellow and the light came in and tinged the room with a sickly, mustard sheen. Frank leaned against the door jamb with a handkerchief over his mouth. Every few seconds he would lift his hand and let a bit of the smell in and, after a minute or so, he became used to it enough to put the handkerchief away. He lit a cigarette and saturated the room in as much of the smell of tobacco as he could.

  Well, he thought, you don’t need a psych for this. Call it displacement or call it what you like; Mommy’s dead and the boy couldn’t hack it.

  She, the waxen, decaying, stinking remnant in the bed, was the bullet for his gun, the straw for his fragile back.

  He called back over his shoulder. ‘Mike. Bob. You’ll want to see this.’

  The two detectives came to the door.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Mike.

  Bob turned on his heel and went outside.

  Mike walked to the other side of the room, between the bed and the window. ‘Looks like the ME’s got some homework. What do you reckon, Frank? Two or three weeks?’