by Tom Bouman
“Nothing’s gone,” he said, “and nothing’s here. Nothing but clear light.” He opened his eyes and gazed into my face until I looked away, then started toward his car, backed into the trees by the side of the shop. His car, I should say Penny’s, now rusted to a fare-thee-well.
SET BACK from a quiet road behind a weeping willow and a grove of larches, there is a boarded-up trailer that once belonged to a man named Leslie Skaggs. Why it’s abandoned is, ten years back Les won a hundred thousand dollars in the lottery. The very next day he quit work as an excavator and landscaper. From there he proceeded to spend it all on food and drink, losing his legs to diabetes and his life to a heart attack. Skaggs put no further money into the place, reasoning, I guess, that he’d worked since boyhood and didn’t want to miss his chance to sit around. A distant relative auctioned off what was worth selling and left the trailer, several derelict vehicles and heavy machines, and a rusted shed. Now that relative, who had been unable to unload the land at the price he’d wanted, stood to collect gas royalties from afar if they drilled. Good old Les. You can’t take it with you, and you can leave it any way you want.
The midmorning sun caught a black van as it turned onto the dirt driveway. A black Suburban followed. Sheriff Dally and I stood behind the trailer in our own trucks, watching the motorcade push aside briars and tree limbs as it crawled up the track.
“You think this is going to be anything?” I asked Dally.
The sheriff spat. “Going to be a waste.”
Sleight descended from his truck. With Deputy Hanluain’s assistance, the prisoner hopped out of the van. He was dressed in plain clothes and manacled. He rotated his head, cracking vertebrae, took a deep breath, and looked around. Confronted by Hanluain’s stony face, he scowled.
“You want to,” he said, shaking the cord connecting his wrists and ankles. “Stop breathing on me.”
From the Suburban, Detectives Mason and Riva emerged, skeptical and bored.
Tod turned a full revolution in place. I watched him. We took in the same air, the same swim of time. He stretched his body as far as his restraints allowed. Thought and memory passed across his face, and I had the feeling that the greenery around us was allowing him to blossom. He revolved once more, contemplating the hills. I stepped back and quickly picked a couple strawberries from the grass at my feet. This was a mistake.
“Hey,” Tod called. “I’ll take some.”
I peered down at the crushed little berries in my hand, then up at him. “No.”
The killer shrugged and sat down on the grass.
“What,” said Hanluain.
Sleight hustled over and took a knee by the prisoner, all concern.
“It doesn’t seem like that much to ask,” Tod said to me.
“What do you mean?” I said, my voice shaking. “It’s everything.” I threw the berries to the ground and walked away. Behind me, the killer laughed angrily and said something I didn’t catch.
Sleight was already sweating through his dress shirt. I moved off and tried not to listen as he soothed Tod, stitching up the delicate mood I’d torn into. Before long, the lieutenant made his way to my side. Meeting my eye, he gave me an almost imperceptible wink. With a big hand on my shoulder, he spoke so only I could hear.
“I need to look like I’m ripping you one. Nod your head.”
I nodded.
“In medieval times we’d have wound this guy’s guts around a spit. I used to think about that. I wanted him to suffer. Now I’m too tired. I’d just put a bullet in his head and leave him where he falls. He doesn’t deserve the effort. Get me?”
I nodded.
“I understand how you feel. I feel it. For the job, I put it away. Of course, you can’t do what I’m doing. I wouldn’t want that. I just need you to understand that he’s not worth the effort.”
Once more, I nodded.
“There’s a way to tell him no and not give a fuck. That’s where you need to be. Be smarter than him.” Raising his voice and turning abruptly, he said, “Fucking strawberries.”
I followed the lieutenant to the edge of the small group gathering in the overgrown yard, and tried to be invisible. It was no good. Tod called out.
“Officer?” Silence fell. “Officer? You.” I looked up. He pointed to an eastern hillside of scrub and saplings leading to a wall of green forest beyond. “That way,” he said, and smiled.
In a procession slowed by Tod’s chains, we moved up the hill and into the woods. I’d never known what was back there; like everyone else I probably thought it was a junk heap, known only to marauding boys. Skaggs’s land extended farther back than I’d imagined, over a wooded hill sprinkled with tires and beer cans, beside a ravine that was dry and rocky. The creek had washed away earth around a huge maple’s roots, leaving a tangle of archways and tunnels. After a gentle turn north and a rise, a column of sunlight reached the trail, marking the entrance to a clearing. In a field full of saplings and purple-topped bergamot stalks, a barn stood two stories high.
Tod waited at the edge of the meadow, as alone as any man can be who has an armed cop on either side of him. “I don’t know,” he said. Sleight waved us off and moved to the prisoner’s side. You had to strain to make out their words.
“What don’t you know, Coleman?”
“I just don’t know, man. I don’t know.”
“Coleman—”
Tod’s voice raised in pitch and speed. “Because you’ve been telling me my interests are being looked after here. And all along I’ve been trying to, to do what you’ve asked—”
“No, you haven’t.”
“Yes, I have, I’ve tried, without any, any material demonstration that what I’ve asked for, you’re going to give me. So . . .”
“Coleman.”
Tod looked at his feet.
“Coleman, what have I always said? There are no guarantees. We can’t give you everything you want. There are things we can do, and we have done them.”
“No—”
“Whether you want to say it or not, we have done them. We handled the family in Elmira. We haven’t slipped since.”
“Yeah, but that one time—”
“What are we doing?”
“That one time—”
“What have we been doing since we met, Coleman? Talking. With our words, with our ideas about the way the world is. Getting to know each other. Building trust. We needed to build that trust, we all did. But now we’re here. And it’s time for more than talk.” Sleight gripped the prisoner’s shoulder with a heavy hand and kneaded it. “Not another package, not another dead end. We need a forward step.”
Tod shook his head and stared at his feet. “I don’t need to be here. I could go to prison. Just quietly.”
Sleight cocked his head to look straight into the killer’s eyes. “No, you couldn’t,” he said. “Not quietly.” A look of horror passed over Tod’s face. Sleight continued. “You know what I see here? I see a man who wants credit for owning up to what he did, a man with some sense of honor. I also see a man who won’t own up. What do you always say about morality, that it’s a convenient fiction? That it’s useful in inverse proportion to your position in life? If that’s really, really how you feel, what do you care what we find here? But just for the sake of argument, what if that isn’t how you feel? Then hear this: you know and I know there’s families that need relief. You can give it to them.”
“I don’t know.”
We all stood there, looking elsewhere, pretending not to listen.
“We could dig this entire place up,” Sleight said. “If you don’t help us here, we probably will. But you need to help. Here’s why: The conversation we’re having? It has moved beyond words. The next statement you need to make is an action. You know what that action is.”
Tod exhaled. All around us, green. He shuffled forward.
As we moved through the field, bobolinks lifted into the air, their bouncing songs taking on more urgency, luring us away from their yo
ung. I was touched by their bravery. Polygamous, bobolinks, did you know? The vegetation had an itch to it, too much pollen, to0 many things hooking on to you, causing some in our party too wipe watery eyes and sneeze.
I put the barn’s age at about one hundred and sixty, modified English style. Seams of sunlight escaped the decayed siding. Otherwise, it was in plumb and sturdy. I had the insane, fleeting thought that Ed should take it, and then recollected myself. The prisoner stood before the frame of a massive door at ground level. Tilting my head back to look at the gable, I felt a pulse from within: the structure gave the impression of a memorial, like a headstone washed away by centuries of rain or a lesser pyramid half buried in sand. Sweeping aside some tall grass with his leg, Riva seized the rusted handle and pulled. The door jerked along the track, obstructed by stones and weeds on the ground, until he’d made a four-foot opening. At the opposite end, the southern end, another such sliding door had fallen off its track, framing a bright square of green beyond.
“Yeah,” said Tod. “I remember this.” He turned to Sleight. “Tell them to let me be for a minute. Please.”
Sleight gave a nod and the two ID Services detectives stepped back. Tod slid his feet forward into the barn, making parallel tracks on the dirt floor. His presence dislodged about twenty barn swallows from their tight, muddy nests, and they swirled about him in a cloud, squeaking. He moved on.
With hand signals, Dally sent Hanluain trotting around the outside corner of the barn to post up at the far door. Probably unnecessary, but we had no reason to take chances. In a stage whisper, Mason said to Sleight, “Francis, that’s far enough!” The lieutenant held out a silencing hand.
Tod called over his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter. This is the place.”
Quiet, Mason said, “It does matter.”
Tod turned and shuffled into the dark depths of the farthest bay, and there dropped to his knees.
“Okay,” said Sleight. Duffels thumped to the ground, and the detectives pulled white jumpsuits out of them.
As the team broke out their tools and taped off the area, Sleight helped Tod to his feet and led him outside. “Thank you, Coleman,” he said. “Thank you, son.”
The body we found buried in the barn floor was a man’s. The skeletal structure was clear to the field experts. Wrapped in a blue tarp, flesh melted away with lye, the bones were all that was left. There was blood in the soil. A lot. Sprays, distant from where his body became earth. I hate telling you about this, it makes me sick.
ONE MIDMORNING on Saturday, as Ed Brennan and his crew stripped shingles from a barn roof outside Susquehanna, a purple thunderhead rolled over the western hills and lay about itself with lightning and dime-sized hail. Kevin O’Keeffe was there, working. In haste to get off the roof, one of the fatter gentlemen forgot to walk on the rafters, and put a leg through the decking. It took some pulling to get him free, and afterward the crew ran for their cars or roughed it in the barn itself. The storm blew over and disappeared, and so did Kevin.
Days passed. Then I got a call late night about a prowler. As I had turned my radio off in an effort to help Julie sleep a little better, the dispatcher had had to use my landline. So much for sleep. The address was Swales’s, so I called him to make absolutely sure I couldn’t just go back to bed.
“It’s O’Keeffe down in the woods,” the lawyer said. “I told him to leave.”
“Did he threaten you?”
“Not with words. Look, if someone doesn’t get him the fuck out of here I’m pressing charges.” Swales hung up.
Julie watched as I got dressed, then headed downstairs to put on the kettle. I kissed her and got on my way.
There were no vehicles to explain Kevin’s arrival to the ridge above the lake. The ground where the trailer had once stood was bare and streaked with black. The dead spot gave way to open space and a slope of hay washed in silver starlight, and deep forest beyond. O’Keeffe wasn’t trying to cover his trail, and I followed a swath through the tall grass, clicked off the Maglite, held aside a branch, and was in there with him, in the dark.
A smell of the woods in summer, strong in old places, of decay giving way to new life. Damp, green, and secret. There’s a species of lichen called British Redcoat, ever see it out in the wild? The brightest red caps atop the palest aqua-blue stalks. It—they, the lichen and its partner, a photobiotic algae—can live in extremely tough places, much more so than these woods. It takes them years to grow a millimeter. In this forest, they had grown several inches tall on melting tree trunks, glowing plain as the moon. A deer snuffed alarm and bounded away unseen. Thinking I heard something man-sized and furtive to my right, I called out in that direction. No answer. Stones clicked as I crossed a streambed.
I came to a flat expanse where the forest floor was covered with a wisp of grass, shin-high and swooning back to the earth. Broken light glanced off something bright in the green. I got closer and found what appeared to be a circle of apple-sized white stones, non-native, smooth and crystalline. Several steps brought me to the edge of the ring, probably six feet in diameter. Some stones were partially covered in leaves and dead grass, some in bird shit. And sitting cross-legged in the middle of the ring was Kevin O’Keeffe.
“I don’t mean to intrude,” I said.
“What do you mean, then?”
“We got a call.”
“Swales?”
“Right,” I said. “So you’ll move it along now.”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“And what is that?”
“Take a seat, I’ll tell you.”
“I’m not . . . it’s time to go. Or he’ll press charges, he says.”
“You lost your wife,” Kevin said. “Is she gone completely, or can you still feel her with you sometimes?”
I squatted. “You know the answer, or you wouldn’t have asked. Not that she’s your business.”
“So my business is yours, but yours isn’t mine,” he said.
“Glad we’re clear on that.”
“Are we?”
“Okay, buddy,” I said, standing and gesturing for him to get up.
“It’s not time yet.” Whatever small light reached Kevin’s eyes made a kind of film over them, a gleam. I couldn’t get through it. “Penny made this place. I know it. But I can’t feel her out here.”
“I’ll drag you,” I said, “time or not. Or we can have dignity. We can get up together and walk out like gentlemen.”
“I guess it’s all the same. You might tell Andy this place isn’t his any more than it’s mine. What a fool he is.” Kevin inhaled sharply and stood. “Where does he think I’ve been spending my nights?”
THURSDAY, JULIE and I had an invitation to join Ed and Liz and their kids for supper. After cleaning off with peppermint soap in the pond, we sat down to spicy basil tofu and noodles with sugar snaps from their garden. Liz and Julie carried much of the table talk, while the kids rattled on at me and each other. Out under the stars with our instruments, we ran through the Country Slippers songs without really sinking into the music. Something was keeping us apart. Now and then I’d catch Julie, under her breath, add a wavering harmony vocal to Liz’s voice.
I hadn’t told Miss Julie about Coleman Tod’s presence in the county. I couldn’t. The investigation was ongoing and sensitive as they get, I just couldn’t say even if I’d wanted to. But I wondered if the secret had added drag somewhere. I could already get lost in a spiral of worry, almost to the boiling point, about my history with Shelly Bray and what could happen when it got exposed. Julie had to know I went somewhere when I thought about things like that, but she rarely asked me.
Once Ed had begun his drooping journey toward a drunken six hours in the sack, Julie and I drove to her place and went to bed too, leaving plenty unsaid.
Had I been able to tell her everything, I’d have said that the DNA profile of the corpse buried in the barn matched Marcus Quade, the black man from Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn who’d gone to Bingham
ton and never returned home. This discovery confirmed Dizzy’s information, unfortunately: Coleman Tod operated within Binghamton’s hometown trafficking structure as a killer, and the Brooklyn man was an early victim. We had Quade’s record: possession, sales, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, assault. But when we asked Tod who Quade had been and how his death had come about, Tod simply said, “He was the first. The admission ticket.”
Sleight took Tod to mean that there had been more than one source feeding the Triple Cities. Whoever Tod worked for had made a deal with one of the suppliers, and thus not the other. This Quade had either been a rival or an upstart with a package, time on his hands, and the wrong idea about Binghamton. Whoever he had been in life, in death he kept Coleman Tod out of prison and in our company that much longer. And since the day of the body’s discovery, Tod had taken a special interest in me.
Under the hemlocks by the shore of Maiden’s Grove Lake a few days later, Tod announced, “I need someone new to talk to. I’m going to talk to my friend . . .”
“Officer Farrell,” I said.
“Farrell.” He gestured for me to sit. I glanced at Sleight but he was no help. I sat. Sleight hovered nearby. “You can go,” the prisoner told him. “Old man. You should go.” Sleight moved off, and the prisoner and I sat without speaking some time. “You from here, from this county?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know this place?”
“Yes.”
“Not as well as you thought.” Tod tilted his narrow face to the sky. “I’m not from here. I bet you’re wondering how I found it. Any of my places. Simple: I see a road that’s closed and I take it. I see a trail, and I wonder, and I take it.” He leaned over to me. “I see a girl—or whoever—and I take her. Farrell, I did what I did and it’s done. These hills aren’t yours anymore.”
I heard Mason call out.
“What?” said Riva.
“Let’s tape the place off.”
Tod looked me straight in the eyes. “I wonder what she found. I bet it’s nothing,” he said. We watched the cops gather and converge on a single point. “While we’re waiting, let me tell you about a girl I took one time. The girl in Elmira.”