On the Loose

by Andrew Coburn

  Two days later, watching the start of a hard snowfall from a wide window, she phoned Gloria Eisner in Connecticut and said, "What if I told you I'm thinking of getting married?"

  There was a slight pause. "To your friend?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I'd say give it a lot more thought."

  She moved closer to the window. The snow was making packages of the evergreens. "I need a life," she said.

  "What's wrong with the one you've got?"

  "There's nothing in it."

  "Do you love him?" Gloria asked after a pause.

  "At our age, what does that have to do with it?"

  "As long as you're not going from nothing to nothing."

  "Who's to say, Gloria? Who's the hell to say?"

  Later she phoned Ben Sawhill at his office in Boston and told him what she was considering. Silent for a moment, he cleared his throat and said, "Sounds like a good deal for Harry. Is it for you?"

  "It's not a business deal, Ben. It's two human beings looking ahead. My concern is Bobby. Do you think he'll be a problem?"

  "Isn't he already one?"

  The wind sounded like a truck charging the house. Her face to the window, she saw snow gusting like heavy smoke. Much had fallen, reshaping shrubs, burdening trees, and cushioning a stone bench. "Really getting bad out there," she said. "Shouldn't you be starting home?"

  "I'm staying over. I booked a room at the Ritz."

  "Do you want company? I'll drive in."

  He was silent. She had known he would be.

  "Just joking, Ben." She turned from the window. "I called for advice. Yours means a lot to me."

  "Comes down to one thing," he said. "Can you survive another upheaval in your life?"

  "No sweat," she said in a reckless voice. "Things don't work out, I'll just say shazam and fly away."

  In February Amy White and Claudia MacLeod met with their lawyers at the registry of deeds in nearby Lawrence and swiftly passed papers on Mrs. Bullard's house. The lawyers, anxious to move on, snapped their briefcases shut and said good-bye. Pocketing a check, Amy turned to Claudia and said, "It's really yours now. I know you'll be happy in it. My aunt was."

  Claudia waited until the mild part of March to move in. Chief Morgan helped her. Standing outside together, they admired the little balcony over the front door. Claudia called it a fairybook house while ignoring the uncertain condition of the roof and the missing slats in one of the shutters. She opened the door for him, and he lugged in a box of her belongings. On the parlor walls were oblong patches where family pictures had hung. In the kitchen waterdrops twitched out of a leaky faucet. From the attic came the scurry of mice.

  "I know what you're thinking," she said.

  He placed the box on a chair. When he opened the cellar door, a draft flew up at him. The light cord was a string tied to a stub of chain. He pulled it and peered down the stairs, more narrow and warped than he'd remembered.

  Is that where she fell, James?"

  "That's where it happened," he said.

  Without telling her, he replaced the lock on the bulkhead with a heavy-duty one, the best Brody's Hardware had to offer, and placed the key on the kitchen table, a tag identifying it.

  "You worry too much," she said.

  He kissed her and undid a button on her blouse. When he brushed the back of his hand across the start of her breasts, she shuddered as if he had crept across her grave.

  "I do," he said, a chill inside his skull, as if memory, running ahead of itself, were recording what hadn't happened yet. They made love upright, against the cellar door, she with a knee hiked high.

  Afterward, he didn't want to let her go. "I wish we had more time," he whispered. "Why can't a second be a minute and a minute an hour? Why can't we hold our breath forever?"

  "My back hurts," she said.

  In April she hung new curtains in the parlor and gazed out at forsythia gushing into bloom while a naked magnolia tree waited to be clothed. In another window she shaded her eyes from the sun. The promise of daffodils spiked the gray earth of a garden that still looked wretched from winter. Holding her gaze, fascinating her, was the agile strength of a robin drawing up a worm from the packed ground, stringing it out whole, careful not to break it.

  One evening, at Morgan's request, Sergeant Avery arrived unannounced with a battered toolbox and fixed the dripping faucet in the kitchen. When she tried to pay him, he said, "No charge. Chief and I are buddies."

  Morgan arrived a little later with pizza and beer and a large smile. He immediately tested the faucet. "Not bad, huh?"

  She said, "Let me take care of myself, James."

  His feelings were visible on his face. "Don't shut me out."

  In May the garden vibrated with colors. Crimson tulips of an exotic variety danced with daffodils among lilies not yet in blossom. Irises floated high over their foliage of knives. Awaiting a wearer was a gown of flowering almond.

  In the early light of a Saturday morning the garden was tremulous, vaporous, colors riding over muted green. Claudia was on her knees weeding and listening to birdsong. The loudest was an elaborate trill from a cardinal whose mate was unresponsive. Then she heard a voice halfway between a man's and a child's.

  "I knew the lady who lived here before. You her daughter?"

  "No." Getting to her feet, she nearly scratched herself on a thorn.

  "Those are rose bushes."

  "I know," she said. He looked familiar and absurdly young for his size. "What's your name?"

  "Bobby," he said.

  Meg O'Brien fidgeted at her desk. Her oldest cat was incontinent and needed to be put away, which she could not bring herself to do. Chief Morgan, trying to be helpful, offered Sergeant Avery's services and immediately wished he hadn't. Her pony face tossed high, she said, "I'll take care of my own cat, thank you."

  Morgan retired to his office to watch baseball on a miniature TV set. Among the Red Sox players was Crack Alexander, who had bought a house in the Heights and was the town's celebrity. Morgan watched him line the ball to center field, where it was caught at the base of the bleacher wall. Morgan's groan joined that of the crowd.

  Meg peered in at him. "Matt just called in sick."

  Matt MacGregor, one of his youngest officers, worked the second shift. Without removing his eyes from the little screen, Morgan said, "No problem. I'll be around."

  "You got nothing better to do?"

  "That's right."

  Resettling himself behind his desk, Morgan piddled away an hour watching the Sox lose to the Orioles, the game never close, though Crack Alexander hit a solo home run in the final inning. Rising to stretch his legs, he heard a shrieking horn from a car circling the green. Teenagers. He heard Reverend Stottle ringing the church bell not for a service but for the early start of a bean supper, tickets available at the door. Then he noticed that Meg was back in the doorway.

  "Mrs. Perrault says she's been trying to reach Claudia all day. She wants you to go over and check on her."

  Morgan sighed. "She's either out in the garden or, more likely, not answering the phone. Her mother calls constantly, not to mention her aunts."

  "You're not going over?"

  "Send Eugene," he said and drew a frown. Hand on her hip, Meg awaited an explanation, as if she had the rights of an elder sister. He said, "We're not getting along so well."

  "What's the matter now, Jim?"

  "She thinks I'm too much in her face."

  "Are you?"

  "Probably. I know she cares for me, but I don't think she loves me."

  Meg stared intently. "Would you like a hard truth, Jim? A woman loves only once. After that it's pretense, reenactment, wishful thinking."

  He stared back. "How would you know that?"

  "I was young once, remember?"

  He half smiled. "Is it the same for a man?"

  "You tell me," she said and turned away.

  Coffee at his elbow, he scanned a newsletter from the Massachusetts Association
of Police Chiefs and, with slightly more interest, browsed a magazine article on urban crime. Then he heard Meg calling to him from her desk. The cadence went out of his stride when he stepped out of his office and saw her face. She stood with the telephone receiver down by her side.

  "It's Eugene," she said. "Get over there, Jim."

  CHAPTER THREE

  Trembling, Sergeant Avery said, "I'm sorry, Chief."

  Edging into the kitchen, Morgan felt the hair move on his head, and all of a sudden his breathing was choppy. Claudia MacLeod's final moment was frozen on her face.

  "You want me to call the state police?"

  Morgan lacked a voice, so he nodded. The blood on the floor seemed as much an arrangement as the crimson tulips on the table.

  The weapon, a carving knife from a rack near the sink lay near the body. He thought he heard a footfall, but it was phantom. Then he heard a real one. Returning, Sergeant Avery was careful where he stepped. The killer had tracked blood.

  "They're coming. You all right, Chief?"

  "Go question the neighbors, Eugene. I'll wait here."

  Standing alone, he let his mind glide to other things, to the day the old chief pinned a badge on him and gave him a gun, to the evening he and his mother spoke in hushed tones at his father's casket. Neither would have been surprised had his father, whose opinions had always come first, risen to interrupt them. Deeper in the murk of his thoughts was a school desk with a pair of initials dug into the varnish.

  He heard abrupt sounds in the house, as if a cover had been lifted and voices let out. An overlarge trooper in full regalia and a detective in mufti appeared and spoke to him. The detective asked a number of quick questions to which he gave automatic answers. Then they sidestepped him and ignored him.

  "She put up a fight," the detective said, crouching. "Defensive wounds on her hands."

  The trooper said, "Wonder whose broken glasses those are, hers or-"

  "Hers," Morgan said.

  Rising, the detective pointed here and there. "Those look like sneaker prints." He wore his responsibilities the way judges wear their robes. His gaze shifted. "Haven't touched anything, have you, Chief?"

  Morgan went outside, controlled his breathing, and wandered into the garden. A dragonfly-a wire with wings-hovered over a blue grape hyacinth. Slithering from a crowd of daffodils was a garter snake whose head suggested a small inquisitive mind. Its tongue flicked out like a struck match. Though afraid of snakes, Morgan stood his ground.

  "Chief!"

  Sergeant Avery was running toward him. A car dinal shot out of the magnolia tree, which seemed to stretch its limbs. Sergeant Avery was winded.

  "Two houses away. Mrs. Crabtree."

  Morgan waited.

  "She remembers seeing a kid sneaking through backyards. She thinks she knows who it was."

  Morgan, looking up at the sky, said, "Why? Y?

  The detective, whose name was Cleveland, sat with leg over leg in a wing chair in Harry Sawhill's house. Bobby Sawhill sat in a mahogany rocker and rocked. A stiff figure, Chief Morgan remained standing. Harry Sawhill, also on his feet, looked at his son and said, "Just tell the truth, Bobby. You've got nothing to hide."

  "I wasn't there," Bobby said, rocking nonchalantly.

  "Bobby, sit still."

  "But you were in the neighborhood," Cleveland said.

  Bobby shook his head, as if coming out of a half sleep. His blue eyes were lusterless. "I was at the library most of the time."

  "Did you take out a book?"

  "I was reading magazines."

  Cleveland smiled like an uncle. His features were bland, as if his face were an afterthought. He was buying time, waiting for a search warrant to be processed. His head turned. "What did you say, Chief?"

  Morgan had spoken in words too closely stitched together to be understood. He was staring at Bobby. He spoke again, spacing the words. "Did you know Mrs. Bullard?"

  "Who?"

  "Did you break into the house back in January when no one was living there?"

  "Why would I do that?"

  "Maybe you were tired," Morgan said. "Maybe you wanted to lie on her bed."

  Something shifted inside Harry Sawhill and deepened the gray look of his face. "What's he talking about, Bobby?"

  "Let's take one thing at a time," Cleveland said in a deadly calm voice. "All right, Chief?"

  Morgan's gaze did not leave Bobby. For a stunning moment he had a notion of taking him by the throat. He thought of hunters who throw the guts of their kill to their hounds. He said, "You have stains on your sneakers. Did you change your clothes but not your sneakers?"

  Cleveland raised a warning hand. "He's going to tell us all about it-,aren't you, Bobby?"

  "I think I'd better call my brother," Harry Sawhill said.

  "A lawyer would be better," said Morgan.

  Ben Sawhill arrived out of the dark of the night at the same time the overlarge trooper appeared with the search warrant, another trooper behind him. They dominated the room. "Do you think he did it?" Ben asked the chief in a whisper and received no answer. He glanced at his brother, who looked crushed, and went to his nephew.

  "Don't say anything more, Bobby."

  Bobby gave out an enigmatic smile. Cleveland had been interrogating him, each question, slowly asked, trailing tentacles. Bobby had said little.

  "Stay here ," Cleveland said to Morgan and signaled the second trooper to stay put. Harry Sawhill, with an air of inevitability preceding each step he took, led Cleveland and the big trooper out of the room.

  Ben placed a caring hand on his nephew's shoulder. "They're going up to your room, Bobby. Stay calm."

  The rocker moved gently. Nothing seemed to be touching Bobby, not even his uncle's hand. He was oblivious of Morgan's eyes, which had never left him. Then, as if by accident, their eyes met. Morgan took a step toward him.

  "Tell me why."

  "Leave him alone," Ben said evenly. "His lawyer's coming."

  The lawyer arrived within moments. Morgan knew of him. His name was Ogden, his office in Andover, near Rembrandt's. He was short and stout, with hair fuzzy blond and eyes points of blue. He conferred with Ben in whispers and then glanced at Morgan.

  "You shouldn't be here, Chief. This is too personal for you."

  "You're absolutely right," Morgan said without moving. He was no longer looking at Bobby but gazing through him, beyond him, as if he could see into another world. His wife was there, and Clau dia MacLeod in her best dress was just arriving.

  Ben said, "At least sit down."

  The others were coming down the stairs. The big trooper carried a plastic bag bearing tainted jeans and a sweatshirt. Harry Sawhill looked as if he wanted to cry. Cleveland nodded to Ogden and said, "I'm going to read him his rights."

  "Sure," Ogden said, "but remember he's just a kid."

  In a dream, James Morgan was a child again, but his mother was too old to care. His scraped knee went unnoticed, his crying ignored. Waking, he shivered through a vision of himself growing old, aging into uncertainties, losing control of his bladder, chained by memories he didn't want.

  By dawn he was showered and shaved and wearing shirt and tie and a dark suit not quite the fit it had once been. Viewing himself in a mirror, he was aware he hadn't made as much of himself as his father had hoped. Once that had mattered to him. Now it didn't.

  The telephone rang, jarring him. It was Meg O'Brien. She said, "I knew you'd be up."

  "I have to be," he said. "They're going to bury her today."

  "Don't come in. There's no need."

  "You're in charge, Meg. You always have been."

  "No," she said, "but it's nice of you to say so."

  He drove from his house to Pleasant Street and on up to Drinkwater's Funeral Home with no intention of going in. He hated the way embalmed faces of the dead hold no meaning. He parked at the curb and sat for several minutes with his eyes closed, his means of saying good-bye before the others. At the Blue Bonnet he
sat at the window table where, apparently out of respect, no one joined him. Then Reverend Stottle did. The menu, which never changed, was chalked on a blackboard screwed to the knotty-pine wall. Reverend Stottle ordered scrambled eggs. Morgan had a cup of coffee before him. He looked at his watch.

  "Plenty of time," the reverend said. "She's in no rush, nor should we be."

  A couple of town hall workers nodded to Morgan on their way out, and Orville Farnham, a selectman, did the same on his way in. Morgan said, "It's the separation that hurts the most."

  "But the dead don't stay dead," Reverend Stottle said. "They wander into our dreams."

  "Do you believe in heaven?"

  "I believe in dreams."

  "What about the soul?"

  "The soul is fashioned from sounds too distant to be heard. It's wound in light but free of time and has an echo we don't hear."

  The scrambled eggs arrived, and Reverend Stottle dug in, his appetite seldom affected by events. Morgan said, "Another question for you. What makes a kid a murderer? Is it a loose wire, a kink in the machinery, a chemical imbalance? Is it a matter of insanity or of cold rationality? Are we talking genetics, upbringing, or something else? Is it pure evil?"

  "It's not an easy question, but I will say that if God were Detroit he'd have to recall many of us. Human defects, physical and mental, are rampant."

  The waitress returned to the table. "Can't I get you something, Chief?"

  "An aspirin."

  An hour later he slipped into the Congregational Church, which had filled to standing room only, and poised himself behind a spuming wave of white-haired women. Reverend Stottle conducted the service, and the assistant principal at the regional high school delivered the eulogy, which assigned goodness and generosity to the memory of Claudia MacLeod. Then the church slowly emptied. All the waiting cars bore little funeral flags, except the chief's.

  Sergeant Avery stood on Burnham Road and directed the cortege into the timeless green of the cemetery. Much time was needed for the crowd to assemble at the gravesite. Morgan hanging back, seemed more an onlooker than a griever. He edged forward when the ritual was ending and approached Mrs. Perrault and her two sisters. They stood in fixed positions like people in a painting. Mrs. Perrault didn't speak, but her elder sister did.