“No.”
“I’ll find out if you did, Hubert. Don’t bother lying. I keep thinking that only murderers would believe life’s worthless.”
Foster’s eyes wavered, dropped. “I never said that.”
Chapter Eight
“WITHOUT FAITH,” Jimmy Schoen thundered, “good works are meaningless!”
He stopped, trapped by the eyes of the demons. Meaningless, he thought, his hand still upraised.
The demons’ eyes were a murky pink, with undertones of blue and hints of saffron—the color of chaos. Down one side of the small church they sat, shapeless hands in laps, their expressions intent.
Quickly, Schoen looked at the human half of his congregation. Dee Dee sat in the front row, prim and stiff and smiling, her gaze adrift. Daydreaming again, even though Schoen, by Biblical right, should be the appointed focus of her world.
At the unexpected silence, the others became restless. A few shifted in their seats. The Minister of Youth quietly, discreetly, coughed.
“Won’t you pick up that cross and follow?” Schoen pleaded.
At the rear of the church a child paged noisily through a hymnal while his mother checked the status of her nails.
“Won’t you follow?”
Why wouldn’t they listen? The head of the building committee was staring out the window into the parking lot. One of the Washed in the Blood Cake Sale members seemed to be counting ceiling tiles. If they didn’t follow his lead, he would never attain Glory. When Schoen entered Heaven, God expected him to bring his lambs along.
Glancing down at his sermon notes, Schoen realized he had lost his place.
He had been silent so long that an elderly deacon was now snoring. Schoen, too, was bone-weary, tired of it all. He could feel, as he could feel the boredom of his congregation, the succor of Heaven just out of reach.
In sudden impotent rage he sent his notes flying. The papers fluttered to the carpet, a flight of wan moths.
“AMEN! “ the demons cried.
Startled, Schoen looked at the left side of the church. The demons were on their feet, caught in a tide of ecstasy.
The Minister of Music, obviously perplexed by his pastor’s cues, hit an E-flat chord on the piano and the choir slid into the first verse of “Just As I Am.”
No, Schoen thought in horror. But wishing couldn’t stop the inevitable. Prayer had not helped, either. As they did each and every evening service, the demons were lining up to be saved.
Chapter Nine
DOC’S CLINIC DOOR was unlocked. DeWitt fumbled through the dark offices to a back examining room. There, on a gurney, he found Loretta, her body positioned under a surgical lamp like an actress in a tedious play.
The edges of the wound were dry and the torn skin sat up in frays. The laceration was so deep that he could have put his hand inside. There was not a drop of blood anywhere.
DeWitt tried but failed to imagine what weapon could have caused that destruction. Around the eye socket the soft tissues had been gouged out, laying the bone bare. The other eye was open and focused in surprise at something behind DeWitt’s back. He fought an urge to glance over his shoulder.
A soft belch from a shadowed corner made him flinch. Doc was sitting alone in the dark, sipping Granger’s moonshine from a Mason jar. There was a gold wastepaper basket next to him.
“Scare ya?”
DeWitt walked over and, still shaken, poured the cold contents of a coffee mug into the sink. Picking up a red-and-yellow gas can, he served himself some liquor. The batch, like the gold trash baskets, was one of Granger’s least successful attempts.
“Jesus,” DeWitt gasped. “What’d he use?”
“Canned peaches.”
DeWitt sniffed at the cup.
Doc was sitting on a swivel stool, his legs stretched in front of him. “You find Loretta’s kids?”
“No.”
“I finally remembered when I seen Loretta’s kids last. Funny thing. I kept trying to picture them running around like they always do. They had to be the worst pair of boys I ever knowed.” Doc held the Mason jar to the light. From where DeWitt was standing, he could see the murky impurities in the liquor. “Just flat-out mean kids.”
“So?”
Doc’s eyes were unfocused, myopic. He was drunk—on schedule.
“But when I seen them last, they wasn’t messing around like they usually do. I seen them professionally, DeWitt. They was sick.”
“When?”
“Couple of days ago, near as I can remember.”
“Where were they?”
“At the house. Loretta was with them, fussing over them like she usually done. Always was a poor mother. Ain’t like she hated her kids or nothing. Just loved them too damned much. Never made them mind, and they grew up spoiled. Not like Hattie and her boys. Not like Janet.”
DeWitt was glad the comer of the room was dark. He felt prickly warmth cross his face, and knew he was blushing.
“Get to the point.”
“Them boys was bad sick.” Doc’s eyes glittered in the overflow from Loretta’s spotlight. “Nausea, fever. I thought it was the flu. Now I ain’t so sure.”
“So?”
“They had cramps, a lot of pain. Maybe it was something they ate, I thought, but Loretta’s always careful about her food. Cleanest kitchen I ever seen. But you know that. You know all them Homemaker-of-the-Month awards she won from the ladies.” He took another sip of his drink, grimaced. “If it wasn’t Loretta’s cooking, maybe the Torku supplies ain’t as good an imitation as we think.”
“Yeah?”
Doc put his Mason jar down. “Maybe the Torku poisoned them.”
Air came into DeWitt’s lungs in an aborted hiccup.
“Think about it, DeWitt. Could be that they must made a mistake somewhere and didn’t want the rest of us to get panicky. Big corporations used to hide mistakes just as careful, just as thorough.”
“Sounds like a stupid idea.” DeWitt’s voice held a reedy note of horror. “The Torku have taken care of us so far. There’s no reason to believe they’d hurt us. I mean, I’ll consider it. I even interrogated Seresen because I’ve got to talk to everyone, but—”
“I’ll give you another scenario, then.”
DeWitt fell silent. Anxiety settled in, tickling the hairs at the back of his neck. Next to him, Doc was a lumpy blur in the dark. The room was hushed but for the whispery sounds of their breathing, the quiet slurp as Doc took another drink.
“Let me start by asking you a question,” Doc said.
“Okay.”
“When’s the last time you been sick? I don’t mean the bursitis in your knee. I mean sick, like with the flu or a cold?”
DeWitt felt his forehead knot. He couldn’t remember.
“Not after Bomb Day. I been checking my records. We been hurt in accidents, yes, but nobody’s been sick after Bomb Day. It’s been six years, DeWitt. Most of our antibodies are gone, if we’re living in a clean environment. I think we’re bubble babies.”
“So?”
“So, thinking back on it now, them kids was real febrile. Hundred and two, hundred and three fever. What if it wasn’t salmonella? What if it was cholera, instead?”
The silence became so heavy, so complete, that DeWitt could feel its press on his shoulders. “Cholera?”
“Think of where the house is. Right near the Line. What if there’s a civilization dying on the other side? Cholera’s the disease of disasters, and maybe the Line ain’t as good a filter as the Torku think. Maybe Loretta’s well got tainted. And if the boys was sick with cholera, the Torku would have to protect the rest of us, wouldn’t they?”
When DeWitt didn’t answer, Doc’s voice rose. “Wouldn’t they, DeWitt? The Torku take the kids away, only Loretta fights them. They kill her and then hide he
r body so it looks like one of us might have done it. Now they get two birds with one stone, Wittie.”
At the use of his childhood name, DeWitt felt his stomach twist. He wanted to be eleven again. He wanted to forget Hattie and his wife and the murder and go hide at the top of his favorite tree. From the tree all the adults had looked tiny; and all his problems small.
“They get to study how we deal with it,” Doc said.
Chapter Ten
THE HOUSE smelled of baked chicken. Janet, her back to the door, was seated at the kitchen table, reading. When DeWitt stopped at her side, she didn’t turn. She didn’t say hello, how’s your day, didn’t utter any of the banal but comforting marital welcomes. DeWitt hesitated to touch her. His hand traced the air, following the indentation of her back to her waist, like someone longing to comfort a burn victim. When he bent to kiss her cheek, she pulled away.
“You’re late. You stink of Granger’s moonshine.” She slapped the book closed. Auto Mechanics Made Easy, the cover read.
His eyes followed her as she rose and went to the stove. With vicious jabs she spooned potatoes from a pan into a bowl.
“Something wrong with the Suburban?” he asked.
The counters were too tall for her. When she worked in the kitchen, she stood tiptoe. Janet was delicate, tiny, a woman of child-clothes and doll-shoes. DeWitt’s hands could span her waist.
“Janet? Did you hear me? Is the Suburban driving bad or something?”
Without taking her eyes from the pan, she said, “Needs a tune-up.”
“I’ll get Seresen . . .”
“I want to do it.”
“The Torku won’t mind. That’s what they’re there for. Why bother getting your hands dirty?”
“Why do you bother going to the police station? Why do you bother going to work, DeWitt? Why bother doing anything?”
In the back of the house the children were playing. DeWitt could hear Denny’s squeal, Linda’s fuss-budget tirade. A door slammed with a forty-five-caliber clap.
“It’s funny,” Janet said into the ensuing silence. “In an engine, everything means something, everything makes sense. You can fix what’s wrong. Completely. Not like housework, where . . .”
“Don’t worry about it, hon. I’ll take care of it. I’ll drive the Suburban down to the Mobil station next week and see what I can do.”
She whirled. “What are you, some kind of expert? All you know is how to change the oil, and you never do that anymore.”
He should have changed the oil. Now she would punish him for his inattention. There were traps in his marriage: land mines and pungee-stake snares. He stood in the warmth of the kitchen, not knowing which path to take.
“Tomorrow,” he said, desperate to make amends. “I’ll do it tomorrow. Is that soon enough? I’ll take the Suburban over, change the oil, and have Granger help me with a tune-up. We’ll lube it and check all the belts . . . “
The spoon made a plopping sound in the potatoes, a clink as it hit the glass of the bowl. “I already changed the oil. I lubed the car. That was Chapters One and Two.”
It was suddenly difficult to breathe. DeWitt noticed the curl of Janet’s blond hair around her narrow shoulders. Caught a heart-breaking sight of the small bones of her wrists. Her hands were perfect, like those of a porcelain figurine. “You lubed the car? What do you mean, you lubed the car? Christ almighty, Janet. What’d you do, jack it up in the driveway and crawl underneath?”
“I took it to the Mobil station. I put it on that thingy that goes up and down . . . “
DeWitt felt frantic, as if even now he were seeing her beneath the hydraulic lift, tons of metal above her fragile shoulders. “Don’t ever do that again! What if something went wrong? I didn’t know the oil needed changing. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I want to learn how.”
“Why don’t you stick to your hobbies? Isn’t it enough to pretend to sell makeup? And have people pretend to pay you? I had Seresen get you a knitting machine and you never use it. All that candle-making stuff is collecting dust.”
She faced him, spoon in hand. “You’re the one who thought I should have a knitting machine! You decided what hobbies I would like. That’s the problem with this marriage—you never listen. I tell you I want a Celica, and one Saturday you come home with a grin on your face driving that fat-assed Chevrolet! “
The profanity surprised him so much, he stepped back, banging his hip on the comer of the table. “I’ll tune the Suburban, Janet. I really want to do that for you. Won’t you let me tune your goddamned car?”
Her lips tightened. She started spooning again, her movements jerky and awkward. The bowl toppled, fell with a crash. A shard of milk-colored glass pirouetted across the linoleum and came to rest by his boot.
Janet bent over the counter with a reedy note of anguish. Her body shook with sobs.
DeWitt stood unmanned and inept, desperate to contain the storm, realizing he couldn’t. He didn’t know from which direction the gale had come.
“Janet.” He picked his way to her through the broken glass, the spilled food. “It’s okay. It’s all right, honey. I’ll clean it up.”
She pivoted from under his calming hand. In the charged air of the kitchen, DeWitt felt the wind shift. The tears left abruptly as they had come. Not a hurricane, then. A passing thunderhead. “Get ready for dinner.”
He went into the living room, unbuttoning his shirt.
“Where’ s your jacket?” she called after him.
He paused at the phone on the end table and dialed 911.
A Torku answered: “Emergency.”
“This is DeWitt Dawson. I left my jacket at the clinic. It’s a leather jacket with sheepskin lining. Make me another one.”
“The other is broken?”
“Don’t argue with me. Just make me a new one.”
Putting down the receiver, he continued his strip-and-walk, draping his shirt and wide leather belt on his arm. He showered and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater.
Janet and her book. What were Chapters Eight and Nine? Replacing the Transmission? Rebuilding the Engine?
By the time he returned, the children were already seated around the kitchen table. Denny, face bright from a pre-dinner scrubbing, was playing war games with his utensils. The clashing of silverware annoyed Linda, DeWitt’s solemn middle child, and she schoolmarmishly told Denny to stop. Tammy, her lips a faint Avon pink, was seated next to Janet, a detail-perfect miniature of his miniature wife.
“Hi, Daddy,” Tammy said. “Is it true Mrs. Harper got murdered?”
“You see her?” Denny lay his silverware soldiers down.
“Of course he saw her.” Linda rolled her eyes. “Daddy’s the Chief of Police. That’s part of his job, looking at dead bodies and everything.”
Denny bounced on his chair. “Was she all gooshy? Did she have ants crawling out her eyes?”
“Not while we’re eating,” Linda said.
DeWitt sat. The roast chicken squatted spread-eagled and stiff in the middle of the table. Fighting a wave of nausea, he took a piece of bread, folded it, and filled the hollow with a buckshot load of green peas.
“Did you see Loretta at church last night?” DeWitt asked his wife.
She didn’t look up. “I don’t know. I got there late. We sat in the back.”
“No, we didn’t, Mommy,” Denny said.
Janet’s pink sweater matched the tender hue rising in her cheeks. A Summer. Janet would be a Summer. All shallow, pointless energy, hurting without ever realizing. Preordained to be a victim.
“You made your Avon deliveries last night,” Denny said. “Don’t you remember? You was going by Miss Wilson’s to bring her the toothpaste? And you were late coming home ‘cause she kept talking about being down in her back?”
“Oh.” A strained
smile. “That’s right.”
DeWitt took a bite of his pea sandwich, found it difficult to swallow, returned the rest to his plate. He needed to escape from his next question. Removing the napkin from his lap, he stood.
Janet got to her feet. “Where are you going?”
“Out.” When he opened the door, a cool night breeze hit his face. Shivering, he made his way to his squad car.
“When will you be back?”
Janet was framed in the light of the doorway, her blond hair tangled by the wind. He had been married for twenty years, and knew her body better than he did his own: the silken skin at the inside of her elbows; the honey-brown mole on her thigh. Twenty years of sharing a bed, and he didn’t know her at all.
“I’ll be at Loretta’s. Go on back in the house.”
He climbed in his car as the kitchen door closed on the light.
DeWitt drove to the Mobil station. His hands were so unsteady, he dribbled gas on his alligator boots. When the tank was full, he drove east down Guadalupe Road.
It shouldn’t have surprised him that Loretta’s house was dark, but it did. He parked in the drive and trudged across the grass.
“Boys?” He stepped up on the porch. “Billy?”
The yard was aglow from the nearby Line. A fall breeze snuck through the oaks, rattling dead leaves, plucking at the collar of his sweater. “Billy?”
The door opened at his touch. Entering, he slid his hand along the inside wall. “Police.” He found the switch and flicked on the lights.
Loretta’s living room was uncompromisingly neat. A folded afghan lay on a striped sofa. A plate of potpourri on a gleaming end table scented the air with apples. Loretta’s trophies dominated one corner of the room. Next to a crystal bowl of worthless dollar bills and uncashed checks stood a line of knitted Homemaker-of-the-Month awards.
DeWitt’s house was never neat enough for the Homemaker Committee. Janet’s Avon came in a distant second to Loretta’s Mary Kay. The tally of dollars was a barometer not of wealth but of power. Janet, once head cheerleader, once Queen of the Senior Prom, had become an also-ran.
Happy Policeman Page 4