by Bob Avey
When Elliot met him outside his house that morning, Nick’s eyes had been red but Elliot didn’t say anything. It happened quite often, Nick and his old man getting into it. On days like that, he and Elliot didn’t talk much. Anyway, they came to the Dairy Mart where a group of older, more well-to-do boys were standing in a circle passing around a cigarette. Elliot heard them mumbling and laughing, but he didn’t let it bother him. Johnnie was the only rich kid he ever got along with. But Nick wasn’t in the mood for teasing. Elliot had started across the street, hoping Nick would follow him. He did, but they didn’t get away fast enough. Elliot heard the words white trash come from the circle, and before he could stop him Nick ripped off his coat and tore into one of the boys. Elliot ran back across the street to keep the others off him, but it wasn’t necessary. Nick was clearly getting the best of the fellow and his buddies wanted no part of it. In fact, Nick was on the verge of hurting the kid. It was all Elliot could do to pull him off. He’d never seen him like that. Nick tried to break free and go after the kid again, but Elliot held him, shaking his head and telling him to stop. It worked, but Nick still seethed with anger as they made their way to school. The Dairy Mart was gone now; it was just an empty building.
Still mired in thought halfway between past and present, Elliot continued to walk to the school. Once there he went to the ball field, where some kids were playing baseball. With both hands, he grasped the wire cage of the backstop, leaning face first against the fence, wishing he could transport himself back in time and be a part of it again. He felt the fence wiggle and turned. It was Carmen. “Hey,” he said.
She nodded.
“Where’s Wayne?”
She pointed to the field where the boy had already joined the other kids. Elliot felt a tinge of pride. “He’s a good boy. You’ve done a good job.”
“It hasn’t been easy,” she said. “He’s a lot like his father.”
“He’s lucky to have someone like you.”
The corners of her mouth curved into a smile.
“I saw you going into the municipal building. Is everything all right?”
She didn’t answer.
Elliot turned back to the ball field. “It used to be me out there, with Nick and Johnnie. In Tulsa it all seems so far away, but standing here with you, it doesn’t seem that way at all. I made a lot of bad choices, Carmen.”
“Yes,” she said, “you did.”
“I miss those days, the ones before Marcia. Things began to change after that, but maybe they would have anyway.”
“She had a lot of problems.”
Carmen’s reply piqued Elliot’s curiosity. He had always wondered why Marcia behaved the way she did, and more importantly, why the killer had been interested in her. “What kind of problems?”
“I want to blame her for everything,” Carmen said, “but I know it wasn’t entirely her fault. She was, I think, raised that way.”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head. “She was pretty. Everyone wanted her, even poor Nick. And she liked it that way.”
Carmen’s comment about Nick surprised Elliot “Oh come on. Nick mentioned her looks a couple of times, but other than that he never showed any interest.”
“He was crazy for her. You know how shy he is, but somehow he got the nerve to ask her out.”
This was news to Elliot. “What happened?”
“She laughed at him, called him a low-rent mechanic, a grease monkey.”
Elliot shook his head. “I had no idea. But as long as we’re on the subject of Nick, why do you suppose he lied to me about you not wanting to see me?”
“Nick’s a lonely person. It’s hard for him to make friends. After you left, he asked me out. I thought about it, but I could see what it meant to him and I didn’t want to lead him on. So I said no. It hurt him. We didn’t speak for awhile, but eventually he started to come around, wanting to be friends again. Don’t be too hard on him. It hurts to be lonely.” She paused then changed the subject. “Why did you do it, Kenny? Why did you go out with Marcia?”
“I wanted to wake Johnnie up, make him see what she was doing to him.”
Carmen looked at Elliot, her expression saying she wanted to believe that. “Why was that so important to you?”
“She was all he cared about. Our friendship was slipping away, and I didn’t like that.”
“Do you think Johnnie killed her?”
“No, I don’t.”
Carmen didn’t seem relieved by that. In fact, she looked concerned. “Do you know who did?”
“Not yet.”
Wayne came running over. The other kids were leaving. “My mom talked to the police. Thinks she saw somebody looking in the window.”
Carmen shot him a glare. “We don’t know that. It could be my imagination.”
“Maybe,” Elliot said, “but don’t take it too lightly. The world is full of reasons to be on your guard.”
She nodded. “Charlie said I wasn’t the only one. Several people have called in. He says it’s just a Peeping Tom and Gladys Smith got a good look at him. Charlie thinks he knows who it is. He said he would step up the drive-by patrols at night.”
“If it is a peeper,” Elliot said, “that should do the trick.”
Wayne tugged at Elliot’s arm. “Hey, mister, wanna play some catch?”
Elliot looked at Carmen, and when her stare locked onto his, her eyes were full of emotion. She mouthed, Okay.
Elliot went around to the front of the backstop, taking the catcher’s spot, but he remained standing.
“I don’t have an extra glove,” Wayne said.
“That’s okay. Just don’t burn them in too hard.”
Wayne trotted out several feet, about halfway to the pitcher’s mound. Elliot thought of Johnnie and the hundreds of times they’d played out the same ritual, on the same field. When Wayne threw the first ball, he eased it in, more like a lob than a pitch. “You can put a little more on it than that,” Elliot said.
He grinned and tossed one that snapped against the flesh of Elliot’s hands as he pulled it in. The kid had an arm on him.
“By the way,” he said, “I know who you are.”
Panic shot through Elliot. Had Carmen told him, or were enough rumors still going around for him to draw his own conclusions? He threw the ball back.
Wayne stepped into it, unafraid.
“Is that right?”
He hummed a fastball across the plate. Elliot caught it, taking the sting away by flexing with the ball’s momentum.
“My mom showed me your name on some trophies at school. I asked the coach about it.”
Elliot threw him a grounder.
He scooped it up with ease. “You’re Kenny Elliot.”
Elliot nodded. “What’s left of him.”
Wayne kept the ball, tossing it into his glove and retrieving it to repeat the process. “Most yards in a season. Most points scored in a single game. Hell, you’re a legend around here.”
“Watch your language.”
“Sorry. Anyway, your records still stand. Both of them.”
Elliot shrugged.
Wayne threw him a pretty decent curve ball. Elliot snatched it out of the air.
“So, can you teach me?”
“Teach you what?”
He frowned. “To play football.”
Elliot wanted to tell him he couldn’t think of anything that would make him happier. “Maybe,” he said. “But you’ll have to clear it with your mom.”
“How come you know my mom?”
This time Elliot held onto the ball. He wasn’t sure how to field the question. “We’re old friends,” he said. “I knew your mother when I was your age.”
He seemed to consider the answer. “Why haven’t I seen you before?”
He was intelligent, inquisitive. “I’ve been away.”
He nodded, but he was suspicious.
Elliot walked out to him, a catcher and pitcher conference. “Could I ask you some
thing?”
“Sure.”
“What do you know about the prowler your mom saw?”
Wayne glanced at Carmen, who still stood behind the backstop, watching. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never saw or heard anything. Sometimes I think she’s just nervous, or something.”
“What about Chief Johnson?”
He shook his head. “He’s like…going along with her. I guess he’s only trying to help, but I don’t know. He said something about Billy Smith’s mom seeing somebody too. Billy didn’t say anything about it, and he tells me everything.”
“I see,” Elliot said. “Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Chief Johnson knows his business.” He handed Wayne the ball. “I need to talk to your mom some more.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe we can do this again sometime?”
He tossed the ball into the air and caught it. “Sure.”
When Elliot was behind the backstop again, Carmen said, “He likes you.”
“I like him, too. And I’m concerned about both of you, with this prowler business.”
She smiled. “You shouldn’t worry. Charlie’s taking care of it.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“Is this a professional concern, or a personal one?”
“A little of both, I guess.”
After a brief silence, she said, “It happened early this morning. I was awakened by a sound, like someone hitting the side of the house with something heavy. I thought I’d dreamed it, but when a car drove by its lights cast a shadow of someone on the window shade. I screamed and Wayne came running into the room and turned on the lights. He looked but didn’t see anything. After he was back in bed, I got up to get a glass of water, and I saw someone walking past the kitchen window. A little later, I called Nick. He came over, but he saw no footprints or any indication that someone had been there.”
“That doesn’t sound like nothing to worry about,” Elliot said. “And you told all of this to Charlie?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see well enough to get any details?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was the prowler male or female, tall or short, thin or heavyset?”
“Tall and thin. Other than that, I don’t know. But I didn’t imagine it.”
“I have no doubt about that,” Elliot said. “Maybe you should consider staying with friends, or checking into a hotel for a few days.” He handed her one of his business cards, showing her his cell phone number on the back as he said, “If you need to get in touch with me.”
She took the card and turned it over in her hands a couple of times before putting it in her purse. “I should be going,” she said. She called for Wayne, and after saying good-bye they began walking away.
Elliot called after her. “Carmen?”
They both looked back.
At that moment, Elliot knew he wanted to again be part of her life, wanted it more than he’d ever wanted anything, but how could he tell her? “Maybe we could get together again, have dinner or something?”
She nodded, but kept walking.
22
Elliot watched Carmen and Wayne until they walked out of sight, then he headed back to Nick’s where he’d left his car. The place was still closed; no one was home at the small house behind the garage either. Elliot had an uneasy feeling about it. He was still trying to shake off the feeling as he climbed into his car and headed out of town. It was getting late and he had another stop to make on his way back to Tulsa.
A few minutes later, Elliot drove into the town of Coweta, where he pulled into a parking space in front of the local newspaper office. His conversation with Carmen had brought up Charlie Johnson’s sister, and it started him to thinking about Maggie Caldwell. He didn’t think everything she had said was nonsense. When first poured from the box, a jigsaw puzzle looks insurmountable, but after a few key pieces are put together the picture starts to fall into place. Once inside the building, Elliot saw no one but suspected Bob Crawley, who spent most of his time with the printing press, was around somewhere. Crawley had grown up in Porter, and more importantly, he knew just about everyone around the area. Elliot had met him once during a class field trip.
Elliot surveyed the interior of the old building. It held enough remnants of its past for him to make an educated guess as to its original function; he figured it had been an old dry goods store. After a few moments, Bob Crawley came from the back wearing a rubber apron that covered his shirt and trousers down to his knees, and a hat that looked like it’d been dropped into a vat of dull black shoe polish. He wiped his hands with a rag, but even after the effort he didn’t offer to shake hands. Elliot wasn’t offended; he knew Crawley did it out of courtesy, keeping the ink to himself. “Mr. Crawley,” Elliot said. “I don’t know if…”
“Porter Pirates, football star,” he said, nodding. “How could I forget? Not much football news since you left.”
The odor that came from Crawley’s clothes reminded Elliot of strong furniture polish.
“You’re Elliot,” he said. “Kenny Elliot.”
“Guilty as charged.”
He laughed. “What brings you to my little corner of the world?”
“I was hoping to get a little information.”
“Well you’ve come to the right place. Got plenty of that around here. Any particular flavor?”
“I understand you know Porter’s chief of police?”
“Charlie? I ought to. I went to school with him. How is the old cuss?”
“Mean as ever,” Elliot said, glancing around “Do you run this place by yourself?”
“Just about,” Crawley said. “My wife, Josie, comes in a couple of days a week and does the accounting. And I have a guy who comes in and helps me with the press when I need it.” Crawley’s face grew serious. “I reckon you know him pretty well yourself. What is it you want to know?”
“I heard he had a sister.”
“Cynthia? Sure, I know her.”
“Like you said, I know Charlie pretty well. In fact, he was almost like an uncle to me, but he never mentioned her.”
Crawley shrugged. “He doesn’t talk much about her.”
“Why’s that?”
“She married some fruitcake from Tulsa against his wishes. Old Charlie might get a little weird now and then, but he knows people, reads them pretty well. In his line of work, you have to. He didn’t like the guy, said he was a real bad apple. But she wouldn’t listen and married him anyway. As far as I know, Charlie hasn’t spoken to her since.” He paused. “This sounds a little like an interview. What’s going on?”
Elliot showed his badge. “I’m just checking some old leads.”
Crawley studied the badge then looked at Elliot. “Old Charlie’s not in any trouble, is he?”
“Nah, nothing like that. I’m just trying to untangle an old knot.”
He gave Elliot a curious look. “I think I know what you’re getting at,” he said, gesturing toward the back of the large room, while walking in that direction.
Elliot followed.
“Most everything’s stored off site now, but I keep a lot of the old stuff close by. Probably shouldn’t…fire hazard I reckon, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.” He went to an area, far in the back of the building, separated from the rest of the office by distance and a lack of decorating. A row of filing cabinets stood by the wall. Crawley inspected the tags on the cabinets then opened one of the drawers. “I figure you’ll find what you want right here.”
Elliot looked inside the drawer and thumbed through the old issues. Then he began to understand why Crawley had led him there. He correctly suspected Elliot had come to study the daily papers issued around the time of the murder of Johnnie and Marcia. It made a lot of sense, and showed Crawley’s intuition. But Elliot was worried about going through the articles, afraid of what he might find there. “Thanks, Mr. Crawley.”
He nodded. “Just between you and me, I never thought you h
ad anything to do with it. I know a lot of people did, but I always figured there was a lot more to that story than was being told.” He started toward the front again. “About time somebody looked into it. Good luck, son, you’re probably going to need it.”
Elliot pulled out a stack of papers and sat down at an old desk to look through them. Stories about the murder-suicide of Johnnie Alexander and Marcia Barnes accounted for the bulk of the daily news for over a week. Things like that just didn’t happen in places like Porter. The musty smell of the old newsprint almost soothed Elliot’s nerves, but the pungent content of what was written there wouldn’t allow it. The abrasive words, insinuating Elliot’s involvement, raked open old wounds and suddenly he had a near overpowering urge to find the nearest bar and go inside to dampen the pain.
The fight after the football game was described, recounting the hostility Johnnie and Elliot shared, and he remembered in startling detail the hollow and distant look on Johnnie’s face. Elliot had also gotten into a scuffle at the party, beating a kid up pretty badly, and saying, as Nick and Carmen dragged him out of there, that he was going to make Johnnie pay.
To make matters worse, someone had also reported seeing Carmen’s car at the Point later that night. Elliot had been with her, or at least someone who looked a lot like him.
Charlie Johnson had stood up for him, that much Elliot knew, but a lump formed in his throat as he read just how far out on a limb the chief of police had actually gone to save his hide. Charlie agreed that Elliot was at the party, and later with Carmen, but he insisted the boy had never gone to the Point that night. Elliot had been at the party all right, but he had left, and he began to wonder if Charlie and Coach Sims had gone to bat for him to defend his innocence or if in reality they’d pulled out all the stops only to save their favorite football star. He copied the articles, then put the papers away and went to find Bob Crawley again.