Chapter Twelve
“Jimmy?” Dee Dee called.
Schoen disentangled himself from the covers. “Jimmy, honey? What is it?”
He sat on the side of the bed, the carpet tickling his toes.
In the cobalt rectangle of the window he could see, framed between the trees, a swatch of starry sky.
“Honey. Don’t let the Torku worry you like that. Them coming up at altar call. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
But nothing was meaningless in God’s world. Not a sparrow falls . . . Everything was ordered, everything preordained. The hairs on his head were as numbered as his days.
“Tonight in church you weren’t looking at me. You’re supposed to look at me during the sermon. Did you hear a word I said?”
“Well, honey, of course I did. I always listen, you know that. I was thinking, that’s all.”
“Don’t think! The congregation sees you looking around like you’re wondering what to make for dinner. God has called you as my helpmate. We’re married for a reason. I can’t save the town by myself.”
A creak of bedsprings as she sat up. “Oh now, Jimmy. I help. Don’t I help? I run the cake sales. I organize the visiting. I—”
“And what in God’s name have you done with your hair?”
Dee Dee was a black, silent form next to him. He couldn’t tell whether she was shocked wordless or simply confused.
“Oh, this?” she asked from the dark. “The frosting? Mary Dixon did it for me. She colors her hair, and she always looks so good. She said it makes me look sophisticated. Isn’t that just the nicest thing you’ve ever heard? When I looked in the mirror, I thought I looked really sophisticated too, like I was from New York or something.”
“Vanity is woman’s trap. Rinse it out tomorrow. Do whatever you have to do to look like yourself again.”
“Oh honey, don’t you get tired of the same things over and over again? Always Grape-Nuts and dry toast for breakfast. Roast every Sunday. Steak every Saturday night. And you never want to try a new salad dressing. French. Every supper, we have to have French. I could buy creamy garlic or ranch. Wouldn’t creamy garlic be fun? And I’d like to change the curtains. Get some pretty throw pillows. It’d be nice to have some bright colors–“
“Be thankful for what you have. God puts a roof over your head. Food on the table.”
“Well, I get food from the store really, and of course it does come from the Torku, even though I figure, well, God would have to have a hand in it somehow, wouldn’t He? I could make curtains. Terra cotta and turquoise, don’t you think? I think turquoise and terra cotta are just the most sophisticated colors. Mary Dixon says if we don’t change, we get old too quick. And it seems to me she’s right. Why, all the old people I know–“
“Don’t raise your voice with me.” He got to his feet.
“Jimmy?”
“Be quiet. You’ll wake the children.”
He strode to the living room and opened the front door, for the night air to clear his mind. For the wind to tell him why, after fifteen years of marriage, his wife wouldn’t obey him anymore.
Shivering, he walked across the porch to his telescope and peered through the eyepiece. Hubert Foster’s bedroom window came into sharp focus. The room was dark.
Schoen straightened and sighed. Pulling a lawn chair up to the telescope, he sat down, his vigilant eyes scanning the neighborhood at the bottom of the hill.
Granger was in his workshop. Doc was drinking again in his study. The Albertsons were sitting down to a late-night snack of chocolate cake.
The night was still and hushed, most sin abed. Distance was containable. It was a soothing perspective–seeing things at arm’s length, the way God sees. He felt as though the figures in the telescope lay cupped in his sheltering hand.
Chapter Thirteen
Rain was coming down in a mist. Outside Bo’s cedar-shadowed cottage the garden had been mulched and bronze mums planted along the gravel drive. Bo answered DeWitt’s knock. Television voices and the smell of bacon wafted from the doorway.
Without the concealing sunglasses, there was a softness about Bo’s face. The round blue eyes betrayed him, displaying a vulnerability so acute that bar owners asked for proof of age, and women mothered rather than seduced.
“We need to talk,” DeWitt said.
Bo opened the door wider. DeWitt wiped his feet on the mat and walked in.
The house was spare and elegant in the manner of someone accustomed to solitude. Bo’s charcoal-and-salmon sofa precisely matched the drapes. The miniblinds were opened in tidy gaps to let in a precise amount of morning light. DeWitt shifted nervously on his feet. He felt more at home in Curtis’s squalor; in Doc’s absentminded clutter. Even in Hubert Foster’s tie-dyed and beaded disarray.
On a salmon-colored TV table a plate of eggs and bacon and toast sat cooling. “What do you want?” Bo walked to the sofa, took a seat before his breakfast.
DeWitt looked at the TV. Tom Brokaw looked back.
“. . . returned to the Soviet Union today,” Brokaw was saying, “amid rumors that Chernenko has died.”
The videotape of the final NBC Nightly News. DeWitt felt the urge to reach through the TV, through time, and hand the anchor a scrawled note: Run for your lives. Suddenly Brokaw fell silent, mouth open in what looked like mild astonishment. The picture on the screen jiggled, was bisected by tracking lines. Bo lowered the remote control.
Aware of the dampness of his clothes, DeWitt hesitated to take a seat on the wingback chair. “I know since Bomb Day we’ve worked alone, but I think now we should join forces.”
Bo’s smile was brief and as unattractive as a facial tic. “Why? To keep an eye on me?”
The lie was so easy. “You know better than that.”
“People hate me,” Bo said.
A flabbergasted pause. “You give out all those parking tickets, don’t you see? If you’d loosen up, maybe they’d take more of a shine.”
“I can’t loosen up, DeWitt. The law’s the law. It’s all that separates us from the animals. I always figured society worked like a big machine, and you and I were the oil. We can’t let people get away with things. We can’t let them do whatever they have a mind to. First it’ll be illegal parking, and before you know it, we’ll have . . . ”
A murder.
“I went to the clinic.” Bo took a bite of his scrambled eggs. “Doc forgot that the best way to estimate the time of death is by stomach contents. Spaghetti.”
DeWitt sat down in the armchair.
Bo picked up a slice of bacon. “The spaghetti had held its shape, so she ate no more than an hour before death. If I’m right about the time of onset of rigor, the spaghetti was probably ingested about five, five-thirty. Where’s Loretta’s car? Did you search the house yet?”
The bronze mums lining the drive were dying suns in the gloom. “The Torku destroyed the house.”
A sharp clink made DeWitt turn: Bo had dropped his fork. “That about clinches it, doesn’t it?”
“I’m not sure. And we have to find the kids, Bo.”
“Yeah. First things first.”
“So I’m going up to the school.”
Bo lowered his eyes to his plate, as if he were seeing prerecorded tragedy in the remains of his breakfast. “I can’t help you. “
“Why not?”
Bo buttered a slice of toast. “I have the feeling you’ll do anything to protect the Torku. Including casting suspicion on someone else. I’m not that kind of cop.”
“And I am?” DeWitt swallowed his anger. “Look. It would be stupid to run two separate investigations, don’t you think? A waste of time.”
The toast crunched as Bo bit into it.
“I have to interview the people at the church. I have a bunch of kids need talking to. Come on, Bo. I hired you wh
en no one else would. You owe me.”
Bo got to his feet. “I can’t believe you’d bring that up.”
“This is a murder investigation. Everybody’s nerves are bound to get strained. What if your temper gets out of hand again? What if—? Where are you going?”
“The bathroom.”
When the officer left, DeWitt went to a nearby table. Incongruous clutter was piled next to a Norfolk Island pine: an incense holder and a blue bead necklace. A necklace appropriate for a Winter.
Footsteps clicked on the polished hardwood floor. DeWitt quickly sat again.
Bo was rubbing his hands together. “Okay. All right, DeWitt. I’ll help you, but then the slate’s clean.”
“Agreed.”
Bo turned off the TV. They walked out of the house and across the lawn. When they climbed into the squad car, Bo took his sunglasses from his pocket.
“Leave the glasses off. If we’re going to work together, I want to see your eyes. I want to be able to tell what you’re thinking.”
Slowly, Bo put back the glasses.
“When we get to the school, you take half the kids.” DeWitt fastened his seatbelt. “I want to know if anybody saw Billy Junior and . . . and . . .”
“Jason,” Bo said in a tight voice.
“Yeah. Jason.”
DeWitt accelerated up a hill. When he crested the rise, his eyes widened. Speeding head-on toward them was a huge shape. A dented grille; the round, alarmed eyes of headlights; holes where a car emblem had once been.
DeWitt wrenched the wheel right, stood on the brakes. Tires squealed as the squad car slewed and came to a stop at a ninety-degree angle to the road. The pickup nosed into a roadside ditch with a crunch of foliage. The door opened, and Curtis emerged, laughing.
Bo got out and marched across the asphalt. “License and registration!”
“Hey, Bo. How’s it going?”
An icy, clipped reply: “Hands on the hood! Spread ‘em!”
Curtis leaned over the Dodge’s hood. Bo kicked his legs back farther and ran his palms over Curtis’s jeans, groping the top of the inseam so resolutely that DeWitt, in sympathy, winced.
Curtis went tiptoe. “Whoa! Kiss me first!”
“Where’d you throw it?” Bo demanded, stepping back. “I saw you throw something down. Where’d you throw the dope?”
“I wouldn’t throw no dope away,” Curtis said. “Ask DeWitt if I would.”
On the dotted line in the center of the road, DeWitt halted, pinned by Bo’s accusing glare.
“Mr. Mayor,” Bo said, “I’m arresting you for driving without a license, for reckless endangerment, and for suspicion of DWI. Chief, search the vehicle for any controlled substances.”
After a moment’s exasperation, DeWitt obeyed. The Dodge’s rusted door shrieked as it opened. Glancing into the cab, he saw that the floorboard was awash with Bo’s pink traffic violations. “Found something.”
“What?” The triumph in Bos voice was like trumpets.
“Inspection sticker’s six years out of date.” “Everybody’s sticker’s six years out of date.”
“Now you get the picture.”
Bo frowned.
Curtis asked, “Where you all headed, anyways?”
“We’re investigating the murder,” DeWitt told him.
Curtis clapped his palm to his forehead. “Oh! That’s why I was looking for you! I couldn’t find Loretta’s road.”
“Why did you want to go to Loretta’s?” Bo’s voice was thick with suspicion.
But Curtis was oblivious. “Wasn’t going to Loretta’s, just by Loretta’s. And then I seen the Torku done peeled up her road. They already planted grass and everything. Come on and look. You ain’t gonna believe it.”
Curtis walked to the squad car. With stereo sighs DeWitt and Bo followed.
“I want the siren.” Curtis planted his elbows on the back of the front seat.
“No siren,” DeWitt said.
Curtis reached so far into the front that he nearly fell in Bo’s lap. He turned on the bubble lights and sat back. A few minutes later DeWitt was stunned to smell the burning-alfalfa odor of marijuana. “Want a joint, DeWitt?”
DeWitt pointedly rolled down his window. “No.”
“You, Bo?”
Bo’s no was, brittle.
An uncomfortable silence settled in the car. “I got a good crop this year. DeWitt? Tell the man what he’s missing. DeWitt and me got stoned after the murder, didn’t we, DeWitt? And I put him up a whole trash bag of dope. Primo stuff, Bo. Mellow you out some, know what I mean?”
“Shut up, Curtis.” Out of the corner of his eye DeWitt saw Bo’s cold appraisal.
“Passed it,” Curtis said.
“Huh?”
“Passed the road, Wittie. Turn around.”
DeWitt slowed the car, negotiated a three-point turn and drove back. When he found a clear spot on the shoulder, he pulled over and parked.
“I don’t see anything,” DeWitt said.
“‘Course you don’t,” Curtis told him with exaggerated patience. “They done took up the road, like I told you.”
Curtis started to get out, but DeWitt stopped him with a sharp look. “Get rid of that joint. The Torku might see.”
“Oh yeah. Sure. I’ll finish it and catch up with you.”
The two officers got out and walked across the dead winter grass.
“He’s stoned,” Bo said. “We’re wasting time here. Let’s go on to the school.”
DeWitt gave the ground a few experimental kicks.
“You know, DeWitt? Long-term marijuana use causes personality changes. A listlessness.”
DeWitt chuckled. “That’s Curtis.”
There was resentment in Bo’s Little-Boy-Blue eyes. “I meant you.”
Curtis trotted to them. “You see it?” He darted off through the trees. “Come on. It’s neat.”
The two officers followed, walking in tandem.
“I remember when you first put on the badge,” Bo said. “I was twelve years old, and your daddy was Little League coach then, remember? You came out to where we were playing. You looked so—” Bo paused, searching for the right word, and came up with the uncomfortable choice of “Good. You looked so good in that uniform. You’re why I wanted to be a cop in the first place. You’re the reason I came home when everything in Dallas turned to shit. Christ, DeWitt. What’s happened to you? I used to think you were the best police officer I knew.”
Before DeWitt could overcome his astonishment, Curtis shouted, “Look!”
Beyond a screen of pines was the Line, rose-trellised today, like old wallpaper. In front of the Line was a glade. In the middle of the clearing, neatly trimmed boxwoods made a square perimeter around a flat expanse of grass. Loretta’s spindly redbud tree, the one she could never get to bloom, still stood near one comer.
“Ain’t it something?” Curtis asked proudly. “Ain’t it a hoot?”
Bo lunged forward, reaching the back corner of the boxwoods at a run. He halted and looked around, as though he had dropped something. Then, on his long, slender legs, he paced toward the Line. After eight steps he fell to his knees, rummaged in his pocket, took out a pocketknife, and started to dig.
A lopsided smile quirked one corner of DeWitt’s lips. Bo looked like a uniformed Sherlock Holmes.
The best police officer Bo had ever known. No, it was DeWitt’s daddy who had been the best cop. He remembered looking up at his daddy: tall and straight, night stick and gun on his belt. Guardian of the peace.
“Goddamn it, Curtis. Don’t ever talk about dope again in front of Bo. He could arrest you, you fool.”
“Aw, you was there and all. He ain’t gonna arrest me with you being there.”
“What goes on between you and me is nobody’s business. Not the
town’s, not Bo’s. Don’t ever, ever try to implicate me.”
Curtis’s face fell. “I didn’t mean nothing.”
“You nearly killed us, you airhead asshole. That’s what grass does to you. A little recreational grass is one thing, but you—”
“I wasn’t stoned, Wittie.” Curtis sounded pathetic. “When I’m stoned I drive real slow, like fifteen miles an hour, and think I got her up to seventy.”
Biting his lip, DeWitt looked away, wondering what changes the dope had made in himself.
“Got it!” Bo cried.
The pair flinched.
“I hit metal. Listen.” As Curtis and DeWitt approached, Bo jabbed the blade in the hole he’d made, producing a clang. “This must have been the well.’ He stood, brushing dirt from his twill pants. His voice was grim, his eyes narrow. “It’s the Torku, DeWitt. They killed her. Nobody destroys evidence unless they have something to hide.”
Chapter Fourteen
The last child DeWitt had to interview was a black kid with a gimme cap and a Michael Jackson T-shirt.
“What’s your name, son?” He was tired. The hard plastic backrest poked at his kidneys. His thighs ached where the Lilliputian seat ended.
“Robert.” On the T-shirt was a cherry Kool-Aid stain shaped like the state of Illinois.
“Sit down, Robert. I won’t bite.”
The boy plopped into the opposite chair and began to swing a leg in feigned boredom. His boot tapped a water-torture rhythm against the table.
DeWitt watched the kid watch him. The library was quiet and scented with winter and children: wet woolen mittens, peanut butter, and furniture oil. Then the boy’s eyes fell on DeWitt’s badge with what DeWitt recognized as worry.
Most people were uncomfortable around the badge. Priests, DeWitt thought, must get the same reaction.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I coveted my neighbor’s wife twice. I parked illegally five times this month.
Planting his elbows on the table, DeWitt leaned forward. The boy immediately leaned back.
Happy Policeman Page 6