“Psychology. I’m afraid to let my handwriting near you.”
“Most people are,” I said.
Joe turned a new page in his notebook and started sketching something.
“You don’t have to do that.”
He huddled over his page like a seventh grader preventing a classmate from cheating. “I want to. If you see something horrible, just—just break it to me gently.”
He turned the paper over and held it in front of his chest.
It read Will you have dinner with me next week?
My eyes darted quickly over the lines, closures, and the dot of his question mark, putting on the show he had probably wanted me to give for students: furrowed brow, finger tapping on chin. The show was, first, the show, because I had the feeling he wanted to see my consideration. But the show was also a cover. My thoughts scurried. I gave the page real attention while he gave me the chance.
But it was rude to meditate for too long over the particular slant of that question mark, when the question was still in the air. And—suddenly I wanted very much not to study the handwriting too closely, to do what other people would do. To stop thinking about flight, to stop thinking about the worst possible thing that could happen, to say yes instead of no.
When he stood to leave, he touched, very delicately, the top of my hand with a finger. Just an acknowledgment of my hand by his before he walked away.
“Ah, I almost forgot,” he said and came hurrying back to the table. “This is from Keller. Something you’re working on for him, I guess?”
He handed over a sturdy package that had been sealed expertly. It was heavy.
“Oh, sure,” I said. Actually, I’d imagined that this meeting with Jeffries was my penance with the sheriff for being nosy, but it looked as though I’d be doing as much work as he wanted me to.
I WALKED TO my truck admiring the way the sun threw anonymous shadows across my path, each its own small Rorschach test. The day had turned itself around so easily on the chance of a full sun, a cloudless sky. Nature’s own hocus-pocus, because where I had felt closed in last night, I now felt more free and alive and hopeful than I had been in years. The pieces of my life were drawing themselves, finally, along a straight line, like characters on a page.
I opened the driver’s side door and tossed the envelope onto the passenger seat and took a last look around the square. A couple stooped over a little boy dangled between them. A woman in pink jogging pants led a tiny dog across the street, talking to it with a high-pitched, smoosh-mouthed voice. On the low retaining wall around the courthouse green, a group of boys taunted and jeered and fought—
One of the boys was Joshua.
One boy tugged at Joshua’s shirt, nearly pulling it off his skinny back. I almost cried out, but stopped myself and looked feverishly around for Jeffries. He could put a stop to it.
But then the two boys broke apart and shook their stretched shirts back into place. They grinned and laughed, and drew back in for more.
Now I knew what I was seeing. Just boyhood in the wild. Like his video games, but in person, in the sunshine. Joshua wasn’t just on the receiving end of the attacks, either—he was in the fray. He leapt in the air, pretending to land on the feet of one of the other boys, slowly enough to let the kid pull back. The other retaliated with a slow-motion punch that landed in the air to the side of Joshua’s face. From this far away, I could only hear a few yipping words. They were like dogs let loose in a park.
Four or five boys, plus Joshua, wheezing with laughter. They moved around fast enough that I kept counting them, trying to make sense of all these friends—
One of them, Steve Ransey.
“Oh, no.” I slid behind the wheel.
These boys? Out of all the students in the local seventh grade, out of all the boys who played sports or played in a band or collected Japanese anime, he had to choose boys who hung around the square after school waiting to be old enough to talk someone into selling them beer? Joshua gave up precious video game time to hang out with members of the Future Criminals of America? With a baby thug? With—
An artistic talent, Sheriff Keller had said. An artistic talent. With a can of spray paint.
Across the street, Joshua and another boy tackled the smallest of the group with fake pummels. Steve sat on his haunches in the grass, hooting and slapping his leg. The leader, the follower, and the pudgy and reluctant mascot. Perhaps they were all in there, right now. And so, now, was Joshua.
Later, reporting back to Sherry on the phone, I gave in and said, “Do you sometimes wonder if you’re a bad mother?”
Sherry had been a little cold at the beginning of the conversation, still stung from the earlier insult. But she’d warmed up again—Sherry either couldn’t stay mad, or really liked taking reports from the field.
“When I gave Jamey his first bath in the tub, I dropped him,” she said. “He was so slippery. I still do something nearly every day that makes me wonder if I should have got a dog instead. Or a fish. Something that didn’t need me so much.”
“Just wait,” I said. “Just wait until they don’t need you at all.”
Chapter Sixteen
The next morning, Aidan’s suspicious gaze appeared in the Parks County Spectator again. He was a feature of the paper, like the sun-cloud-umbrella icons for weather in the top corner, or the box scores of all the high school sports played in the state the night before. Aidan Watch. If it had been television news, there might be some logo to ensure that everyone knew they were tuned to the right minute-by-minute coverage of the story.
I scanned for the updates. The forged credit card receipts were reported: the hotel, food charged at a grocery store (no diapers, the story reported grudgingly), a full tank of gas at the state border. Leely was out there spending her mother-in-law’s money, but it wouldn’t be long. I worried for her.
How had it happened that this family of trouble had become my trouble? First Aidan, then Leila, and now Steve.
When Joshua arrived home the night before as though he’d just gotten off the bus, I hadn’t said anything about Steve Ransey or the spray paint. I couldn’t think of the right thing to say. I couldn’t even think how to say that I’d seen him with the other boys. He’d never believe I’d been working on a project for the sheriff. He’d suspect me of recon.
I’d gone to bed early, but couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning and flipping over my pillow. Thinking of all the things I should have demanded he explain. The teacher-in-service—where had he been all day? Why was it a state secret that he had a day off school?
This morning, I was ready. I went for the paper early, then sat at the table in wait for him to come to life. He was slow this morning. Once, I went to make sure he was getting dressed. “You had better not be playing video games in there,” I said to the door.
I tapped my spoon against my mug and turned back to the paper. In lieu of real movement in the case, the news staff had adopted some gimmicks. A time line. Lapsed time: nine days and counting.
Nine days. I hadn’t realized.
The time line was sleek in the face of no facts. I focused on the pulled-out boxes that offered real-time notations for when Charity left the house (8:45 a.m.) and the discovery of the body (10:08 a.m.). On day three: Sheriff’s office consults local handwriting expert to study ransom note. Note confirmed to be written by Leila Ransey. Part of the public record again. How long before my name showed up?
Then: Sheriff’s office consults psychic to locate Aidan. Private sources say psychic provided information that could lead to Aidan’s body.
Aidan’s body?
A psychic?
It had to be a joke, a mistake. The paper had got it wrong, and Keller was on the phone with the editor right now, demanding a correction. Had to be.
The door to Joshua’s room opened, and he came down the hall with purpose, grabbing his backpack and reaching for the front door deadbolt almost before I registered his presence.
“Hey,” I said.
He stopped, hand still on the lock. “What?”
“I need to talk to you about some things. Important things.”
“I’m late for school already, Ma.”
I glanced toward the clock. “Why are you so late?”
“I gotta go.”
“Well, there are some things we need to talk about tonight, then, so you need to come home right after school. Or practice, I guess.”
His eyes shifted away. “Can’t we just talk over dinner, like normal?”
“Oh, when do you normally talk to me over the dinner table? I thought that you normally didn’t talk to me at all.”
He rolled his eyes. “Ma—”
I resisted the urge to ask him to call me something else. Anything else.
“If you’re missing your bus, I can drive you,” I said. “We need to talk about who you’re hanging out with these days.”
Joshua stared at me with eyes dark as holes. “Oh, yeah? Well, we also need to talk about who you’re hanging out with these days.” He flicked the deadbolt and reached for the doorknob.
“Wait,” I said. “What did you just say?” I couldn’t imagine who—the sheriff? Margaret? The Boosters? What hanging out had I even done?
He opened the door and stepped through it. The words he was using didn’t make any sense. I stood and started for the door, but it was already closing. “What are you—Joshua—”
“Mr. Jeffries. We need to have a referendum on that.” He pulled the door closed as my hand grazed the knob. His pounding footsteps receded down the hall and away while I stared at the closed door.
Downstairs, the tap of Margaret’s broom.
Cautiously, as though the door might explode inward, I stood back from it, returned back to the table, sat in my chair.
Who was that? That boy who had closed the door in my face didn’t remind me in the least of the boy I’d raised, the boy I had such hopes for. He seemed like an image of someone I’d once known, like the photo of Aidan, nine days into his disappearance: a face I recognized, but a boy I didn’t really know.
I looked around for distraction and saw the package Jeffries had delivered from Keller. I sliced it open and slid out the bundle of paper inside. Paging through, I found the same form, over and over. Each page was headed Evidence and divided into columns filled in by hand with times, dates, and signatures, begging for careful study.
I reached for my phone.
Sherry’s voice said on the other end, “Parks County Sheriff.”
“Hey, Sherry. It’s Anna,” I said, suddenly not sure what I was about to ask, or how. “Uh, Winger. Is the sheriff available?” I’d never called the sheriff before. He had always demanded my time. “I mean, I need to talk to the sheriff.”
“OK, yeah, he’s back there. Let me forward you. Hey!”
“What?”
“I thought maybe you might want to come over to our house on Sunday. We’re having a cookout.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. “What’s Sunday?”
“Just a Sunday. Friends, neighbors, some family. Bring Joshua, too.”
I couldn’t imagine it. “I’ll try.”
“You’ll try? Come on, say you’ll come. You have another offer?”
“Such flattery,” I said. “I’ll check Joshua’s football schedule and let you know.”
When Sherry forwarded the call, I heard a faint click and then a ring. Then another. I wondered if he would answer at all, if Sherry had announced me, and now his punishment for the other night was to let the phone go on and on.
Finally the sheriff answered with a sigh. “You’re talking to me, then?”
“Is that how you always answer your phone?” Immediately, I knew this was the wrong way to go. I tried again. “I owe you an apology. You were trying to help and I was—I was just scared, I guess. And I took it out on you. For that, I am truly sorry.”
Silence. I waited it out.
“‘For that,’ you’re sorry,” he said.
“I’m also sorry that I insinuated—no, let me say it right.” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry I said rather directly that you weren’t doing your job. That is not the case. You’re doing your job as well as anyone could. Aidan’s case, for instance—”
“I’m not patting myself on the back for that one.”
Aidan’s body. My nerves leapt. “What do you mean? Why not?”
“Ms. Winger, the little boy is still missing, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“You called for more than just plying me with half-assed apologies? Shoot.” I heard him let out a small puff of air and pictured him relaxing back in his chair, throwing his boots up on the corner of his desk.
“Did you actually hire a psychic to help find Aidan?”
“Aw, hell. Where did you—is that in the Spectator?”
“This morning,” I said. “Really? You did?”
“How did they ever . . .” Paper rustled in the background.
“It’s on page two, with the time line.”
“The time line? Oh, this is perfect. That’s what we need. By-the-minute recapping, in case you missed it on television, on the radio, in earlier issues of the paper.” He went silent. I let him read. “You’re in here.”
“Yes.”
“Is that OK?”
“I don’t know what I’d do about it if it weren’t.”
“Good attitude. Good,” he murmured. Still reading.
“So how is it that you don’t believe in what I do, but you believe in psychics?”
“Is that what’s bothering you? That your science has been mocked, but I’m willing to listen to what Madame Zonda has to say?”
“That’s not really her name, I hope.”
“It is not,” he said.
“But you hired her. You said you didn’t believe in my sort of—woo, wasn’t it? You didn’t believe in me, but you went ahead and hired someone who depends on vibrations—” I heard the strident screech creeping into my voice. “You said my work wasn’t real, but then you ask me to do more of it. I’m confused, I guess.”
I wished both that I could see his face right now—that I had gone over to do both the apology and the accusation in person—and that I had never called at all. What was the point? Why did I care so much? If he didn’t put any stock in what I did for a living, fine. He would stop calling. Except that he hadn’t stopped calling. There was something there, a little bit of his own methods, his manipulations, that I wanted to understand.
“Two things,” he said. I thought he was talking lower, or holding the phone closer to his mouth. I felt as though a hand had been placed on my arm; again, the calming, measured tones spared for me. I wondered what I must seem like to him. Recluse. Bitch. Wack job. He probably called me Madame Zonda behind my back. “I didn’t hire that psychic,” he said. “I never would. Never. I know some say they’ve had luck using them and all, but no.”
“Oh,” I said. “Who—”
“The Ranseys hired her. Mrs. Ransey.”
The older woman, the penitent believer in Sheriff Keller, believed in the other side, did she? My sense of rightness came flooding back. Of course—and I’d insulted his methods again. “I’m sorry I thought that you—never mind.”
“That’s what the time line says, right?”
I laughed, a weight lifting. “The media,” I said.
“Such as it is. Now the second thing?”
“Huh?” I’d forgotten his opening pronouncement. “Oh, yeah. What’s the second thing?”
“I said I didn’t put much stock into handwriting analysis,” he said. “But I happen to think we’re more than just the magic we believe in. I’m not saying I’m lining up to have my signature read or anything. That’s what you do. There’s more to me than what I do, though, so I expect the same of other people. And I never said that I didn’t believe in you.”
I sat, transfixed, trying not to breathe into the phone. I could prete
nd that I had already hung up, or that the line had broken while he spoke. More manipulation? Maybe this was just a prelude to asking his next favor?
He started laughing. “So you don’t take compliments well. It’s one more thing we both know about you. And you’re mad I sent you more handwriting, even if I don’t completely buy in?”
“Can we talk about that? What am I looking at here?”
“Those are copies of some chain of custody forms for our missing evidence,” he said. “Standard procedure, especially in a drug case, is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the drugs collected from the suspect upon arrest are the drugs in evidence. If the chain is broken, that’s reasonable doubt and my arrest walking out the door.”
I paged through the sheets. “I don’t see broken chains, but maybe I don’t know what I’m looking for.”
“I don’t know, either,” Keller said. “But the chains are definitely broken because the drugs are gone, replaced with useless powders. The good stuff goes up someone’s nose or veins. So the chain of custody can’t be right. You see?”
“And the person who signed in last isn’t your best suspect?”
“Well, but look closer. Each one is filed last by a different person. Can my entire command be on the take? The whole place? I don’t want to believe that,” he said. “Oh, man, I really can’t believe that. Now, I put a ringer in there for you, one sheet that’s different from all the others. That’s a sample you can go by or maybe it will help you see something I can’t see. I don’t know. Could you take a look and let me know if there’s anything—I don’t know—interesting or odd? Anything at all, doesn’t matter how small.”
After the call, long after, I was still thinking about what he’d said about belief. We are more than the magic we believe in. We are more.
It had never occurred to me to be more. My life had been chiseled down to the smallest portion. My own doing. I had only ever made plans to be less, to be nothing more than alive.
Chapter Seventeen
I worked all day on a stack of samples from candidates for an executive position at a giant international conglomerate. Another subcontract from Kent, ever the savior. The company sold enough dangerous products that its human resources department took special precautions when assigning away power. I didn’t want to know about this company, what they sold or made or built. I didn’t want to think about how many corporations there were like this one, or how few, and how much of the world they ran. I pictured myself taking the check for this job into the bank on the courthouse square, signing up for a college fund.
The Day I Died Page 13