Violation

by Sally Spencer

  *

  Bobbie Hopgood’s house is near the end of Lee. The area must have been a quiet, pleasant suburb once – almost like living in the country. But now the neighborhood lies in the shadow of the Interstate overpass which – supported by huge concrete pillars – runs high above the rooftops.

  Some of the houses show signs of their owners fighting back. Double windows have been fitted to cut out some of the noise; fresh coats of paint have been applied to cover up the shit which drifts down from the speeding cars overhead. But there’s no evidence of resistance about Bobbie’s home. The front yard is choked with weeds and the clapboard is fading and peeling.

  I knock on the door. The woman who answers is around 50. A Lucky Strike hangs from the corner of her mouth. Her hair is in curlers, the strands wrapped in tight knots around the plastic cylinders. The face is pinched and pale and mean. Like the house, she seems to have thrown in the towel long ago.

  “Yeah?” she says.

  I flash my shield and hold up the warrant.

  “Is Bobbie at home, Mrs Hopgood?”

  “Are you the guy that called earlier?”

  “Yes.”

  “I told ya then, he’s at work.”

  “Can we come in?”

  She gives the warrant a cursory, apathetic glance.

  “I can’t stop ya, can I?” she asks.

  The lounge is non-designer gray: gray armchairs which look like they were bought at a low-grade garage sale; gray, threadbare carpet; gray ashtrays spilling over with cigarette butts; gray windows, covered with a thick layer of dust that cuts down the already minimal amount of sunlight that the Interstate allows to filter through to the house. Even the giant-screen TV – which is the focal point of the room and is a tuned in to an afternoon games show – seems closer to gray than it is to its original black.

  Only one thing seems out of place – a framed and polished photograph which hangs on the wall opposite the door. It is the picture of a young woman who isn’t exactly pretty, but has a good skin and optimistic blue eyes.

  I turn to face Mrs Hopgood, thirty years on from her portrait, her complexion kippered by a million Luckies, her eyes drained of hope.

  “Did you ever smoke Mustang?” I ask.

  “The cigarette that gives you a wild ride,” she chants. “Yeah, I smoked ’em when I could get ’em. Why do you ask?”

  “No particular reason,” I tell her.

  Except that with even a few customers like her, I don’t see how Mustang ever went broke.

  “Don’t you want to know why we’re looking for Bobbie?” Williams demands. “Aren’t you curious about what we think he’s done?”

  Mrs Hopgood shrugs. “Who’s to know what he’s done? Could have been anything. The kid’s an imbecile.”

  A look of dislike – and maybe even disgust – flashes across Williams’ face. This is the second time today she’s almost gone off the rails – first with the supermarket manager, and now with Mrs Hopgood.

  What’s happening to her? Showing hostility to John and Jane Citizen is definitely not departmental policy – and in Williams’ world, departmental policy is the voice of God.

  Mrs Hopgood catches my sergeant’s look, too.

  “Listen, lady,” she says, “you think that it’s easy bringing up a moron? He lost me my husband.”

  “Sure he did,” Williams says, hands on her hips.

  “You better believe it,” Mrs Hopgood tells her. “The kid got on Lew’s nerves, so one day he went out for a pack of butts and never came back.”

  Williams walks over to the photograph and for the first time I notice words printed under the bottom edge.

  “Morton Fullbright Theatrical Agency,” Williams reads. She turns to face Mrs Hopgood again.

  “Dancer?” she asks, in a tone which suggests she thinks it’s not likely, but, then again, maybe standards were a lot lower when the picture was taken.

  “Singer,” Mrs Hopgood says defiantly. “I was real good – did a show in Richmond once.” She reads the doubt in Williams’ eyes, and lowers her own. “Well, near Richmond, anyways,” she amends.

  “Then you had Bobbie, and that put an end to your chances of stardom,” Williams says. “Husband gone, career down the toilet – he’s got a lot to answer for, that moron.”

  What is it with Williams today? She got a career death-wish or something?

  “I could have put the cretin in an institution if I’d wanted, to,” Mrs Hopgood says. “But I didn’t, ’cos I knew what was right.”

  “Sure you did,” Williams says. “You knew what was right – and you knew exactly how much extra welfare it’d earn you!”

  Any second now, Williams is going to deck Mrs Hopgood. I step between them, my back to my sergeant.

  “We’d like to see Bobbie’s room,” I tell his mother.

  “Or his cage,” Williams says, over my shoulder.

  *

  After the rest of the house, Bobbie’s room comes as a shock. The walls are not gray, but bright yellow. And though the unevenness of the texture shows that the painter was no expert, it’s plain that he has tried. The bedclothes tell a similar story – they are tucked in clumsily but at least an effort has been made.

  I look at the shelf on the wall. Fourteen or fifteen fluffy toys, some of them quite new, stare back at me.

  “Did you give him these?” I ask Mrs Hopgood.

  She clears her throat and takes a deep drag on her cigarette.

  “No. He buys them himself, with what he’s got left of his wages when he’s paid for his keep. I got better things to do with my money.”

  “Like smoke yourself to death,” Williams says. “Yeah well, that’s almost a public service.”

  I step between the two women again.

  “We have to search the room,” I tell Mrs Hopgood.

  “So search,” she says.

  I wait until she gone back downstairs, then turn to Williams.

  “What the hell was that all about, Sergeant?” I demand.

  “What the hell was what about?” Williams asks. Then suddenly, she suddenly starts to look uncomfortable. “I had a little brother. He … he wasn’t too smart. Didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain. Didn’t know enough not to step in front of a truck.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know.”

  She shrugs, awkwardly.

  “All history now,’” she says, doing her best to imitate a normal person. “We’d better search the room.”

  We check the chest of drawers first.

  Underwear, socks.

  Washed, but not really clean.

  Almost neatly folded, but not quite making it.

  We take the cuddly toys off the shelf – rabbits, teddy bears, pandas – and shake them.

  We strip down the bed.

  I am kneeling down checking under the mattress, when Williams says, “If there’s anything at all, it’ll be in this room.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Why wouldn’t he bury it in the yard or hide it behind the garbage cans? That’d be a hell of a lot safer.”

  “He won’t think safe,” Williams says confidently, “he’ll think secure. This is his own little world, an escape from what’s going on out there. Anything that’s important to him, he’ll keep right here.”

  I realize two things simultaneously.

  One is that Williams is probably correct in what she says.

  The other is that she might yet have the makings of my kind of cop.

  We examine the mattress for signs of re-sewing. We feel at the back of the drawers to see if anything is taped there. We come up with nothing to connect the suspect with the attacks.

  So what do we have?

  – an anonymous letter which points the finger at Bobbie Hopgood, a guy with the mental age of a child;

  – the testimony of a supermarket manager that Bobbie disappeared around five times, on dates which may – or may not – have coincided with
the assaults;

  – a shelf full of fluffy toys!

  Yeah, with that kind of evidence, we can lock him up and throw away the key.

  “We’ve wasted enough time here,” I say, dejectedly. “Let’s get back to headquarters and see if anything new has broken.”

  A floorboard creaks under my foot. I press down and it creaks again. I walk across the room. No more noise, no sound of strain from any of the other boards.

  I get down on my knees and take a closer look. The boards were laid back in the days when the house was still a desirable residence. Quality maple, expertly slotted into place – except for the one board which has squeaked. At first, it looks like just all the others, but closer examination shows that tiny bits of the edges have been chipped away, like it’s been recently lifted.

  I go back into the living room. Mrs Hopgood is slouched in an armchair, watching a game show in which an over-eager contestant is calling ‘Higher’ and ‘Lower’ to the hostess with a permanent smile whose job is to turn over giant playing cards.

  “Do you have any tools?” I ask.

  “Wait a minute,” Mrs Hopgood says, her eyes fixed to the screen. “I gotta see this.”

  The last card is turned, the contestant punches the air triumphantly, and Mrs Hopgood sighs with relief.

  “So what d’ya want?” she asks.

  “Tools.”

  “What for?”

  “I’m going to take up one of the floorboards.”

  “Are you allowed to do that? I mean, does that piece of paper you showed me give you the right?”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “I’m gonna want paying for any damage.”

  “You will be,” I promise. “So where are your tools?”

  “Ain’t got none. When a job needs doing, the landlord sends a man round. Leastways, he does if he feels like it.”

  “Have you got anything else I could use?”

  Mrs Hopgood points apathetically towards the kitchen.

  “Take a knife or somethin’.”

  By the time I reach the kitchen door, a new contestant is shouting ‘Higher’ and Mrs Hopgood has been transported into another world.

  *

  A chisel would have been better, but a knife will have to do. I work at the job for around two minutes. When I’ve finished, the knife is ruined, and the board which I’ve lifted clear looks as if it has been attacked by a hoard of hungry termites. I put my hand into the gap and immediately come into contact with something soft. I take a careful grip of the object, and gently lift it out. It’s a pair of panties – little girl’s panties. From the small amount of dust on them, they can’t have been here long.

  “They found Annie Caughlin without her panties,” Williams says.

  I hand the garment to her. She holds it up to the light, then close to her nose. She sniffs.

  “Two sets of stains,” she says. “Blood and semen, I’d guess. The lab should be able to tell us if they were deposited simultaneously.”

  I hear the front door click, and a voice – which is more hopeful than expectant – say: “Mom, I’m home.”

  Williams’ face hardens, like she’s had a visor clamped over it. She drops the panties on the bed, pulls her .38 from its shoulder holster in one smooth movement, and steps out into the corridor.

  I follow her, and by the time we are half-way down the stairs, Bobbie has not even cleared the front door threshold.

  He stands there, framed against the outside light – a male Caucasian, age around 24, height about 6ft 1in, weight close to one-eighty-five. For a second he looks so normal than I can’t believe he’s our suspect. Then I notice the slackness of his mouth and the dull helplessness of his eyes.

  He sees us and freezes – like he can’t quite understand what these strange people are doing in his house, but is almost certain that they mean trouble.

  “Police!” Williams shouts.

  That tells Bobbie all he needs to know. He turns, bounds down the front porch steps and sprints across the yard. We follow, Williams in the lead, but me not far behind her.

  We are out in the open, dashing down the street. The few people who are around – an old black man with an old black dog, a couple of kids tuning a hog, a woman weighed down with groceries – stand open-mouthed, looking at us. For them, this must be better than the movies.

  We pound along the sidewalk. Williams is still slightly ahead. She has kicked off her pumps and is running barefoot, gun hand swinging by her side. Ahead of us, I can see that Bobbie is gaining ground. Another couple of blocks, and we’ll lose him.

  Williams stops running, takes up the firing position and shouts: “Freeze, Bobbie!”

  I think Bobbie hears, but he just keeps on going. Williams squints down the barrel of her S&W Airweight, taking aim. It doesn’t take her long to sight Bobbie, and her finger is already starting to squeeze on the trigger when I grab her arms and swing them into the air. The gun explodes loudly in my ear, the bullet shoots off harmlessly towards the sky.

  We both look up the street. Bobbie has reached the intersection and turned left. I let go of Williams’ arms and she moves away, giving me a clear view of her angry eyes and jutting, aggressive jaw.

  “What the fuck did you do that for?” she demands.

  “I didn’t want a stiff on our hands,” I tell her.

  “A stiff!” Williams repeats, like she can’t believe what she has just heard. “I wasn’t going to kill him – I was aiming to immobilize.”

  “And if you’d missed, and hit a vital organ?”

  “I wouldn’t have missed. I’m the best shot in the Department.”

  “Even if you had only winged him, what would have been the point?” I ask. “He won’t get far – not on foot.”

  “Suppose you’re wrong? Suppose he manages to hitch a lift across the state line?”

  “He won’t do that.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Would your brother have headed for the state line?”

  “Leave my brother out of this!” Williams screams. “It’s fine for you, Lieutenant. You screw up and you’ve got Mayor Pine to cover for you. But what about me? There’s thirty guys in the Department just waiting for me to make a wrong move. I’ve got to prove myself to them every time I step out on the street.”

  “It was my call, and I’ll take full responsibility for it, sergeant,” I say.

  “Yeah, sure you will,” Williams says. “Right up to the point where the shit really hits the fan – and somebody has to take the fall.”

  I should be insulted – and maybe I am. But I don’t say anything more to her, because I need the mental space to think about what just happened – and why I made it happen.

  I don’t really know why I stopped her firing at Bobbie. Maybe it’s because nobody – not even the best shot in the Department – can guarantee not to kill a moving target. But there’s more to it than that. I want the rapist behind bars real bad, but even now – before I’ve even had time to properly analyze the data – I can’t help feeling that we found the chain of evidence linking Bobbie Hopgood with the assaults just a little too easily.

  6

  From my perspective, the man on the plank bed is divided into three equal sections by the bars which separate him from the outside world. I take a step forward, and he is whole again, a lonely figure, head bent, sitting perfectly still.

  He doesn’t look up.

  I’m not even sure he knows that I’m there.

  “Bobbie, look at me,” I say.

  I speak softly so as not to frighten him, but it doesn’t work. His head bends lower and he makes a moaning sound.

  My hands grip the bars. The metal is icy cold against my fingers. I become aware that I’m craning forward, like a greedy thrill-seeker at a freak show – and a wave of revulsion washes over me.

  But there’s something else I feel too, a prickling at the back of my neck, like a heat rash – a prickling which always comes when something is not quite right. />
  And something is definitely not quite right here. Bobbie didn’t try to hitch a ride across the state line – he didn’t even try to leave the neighborhood! Instead he just kept running round and round his own patch until, five minutes later, one of the prowl cars picked him up.

  Another ten minutes and he’d been processed. Now, less than half an hour after he made his break, he’s already locked up in the holding cells.

  And this is this guy who was smart enough to get away with five rapes?

  “Have you seen a lawyer yet, Bobbie?” I say, even more gently this time.

  The prisoner lifts his head and looks directly at me. His eyes are big and soft and brown, like those of a dog which has done a dump on the carpet and expects to be punished.

  “He probably don’t even know what a lawyer is,” sniggers Malloy, the overweight khaki officer who is standing at my side. “You know what a lawyer is, boy?”

  Bobbie shakes his head, and for the first time I notice the discoloring around his cheekbone and puffiness of his left eye.

  “What happened to him?” I demand.

  “Must have fallen over,” Malloy says, sniggering again.

  I know exactly what to do in a situation like this.

  File a report.

  See to it that Malloy gets a black mark on his service sheet.

  “Go by the numbers, Kaleta,” my mind tells me.

  But my hands don’t listen. I watch them rising, grasping Malloy’s shirt and pulling upwards, so that he has to stand on tip-toe.

  “You don’t beat up on my prisoners,” I say. “Understand?”

  “What’s got inta ya, Lieutenant?” asks Malloy, who has started to breathe a little heavily. “So I hit him! The guy’s a pervert, for God’s sake!”

  I twist him round so that he can see the prisoner cowering against the wall – trying to make himself invisible.

  “Look at him!” I shout. “He’s got the mind of a child. And whatever he’s done, he’s got rights. Would you beat on your own kids like that, Malloy? Well – would you?”

  “He ain’t like my kids,” Malloy wheezes in his own defense. “He’s an animal.”