Darkness the Color of Snow (14 page)

“I thought ‘incipient crime waves' was John's job.”

“Then I'll help him out. Be back in a bit.”

“It'll be lonely without you.”

H
E REALLY HAS
no destination in mind. Partly, it's a good idea to just cruise around and let ­people see him. He does a lot of smiling and waving as he goes. ­People enjoy feeling that they know the police chief on a personal basis. He drives north a bit, then swings onto what was once the main street. His first stop is at the Stewart's, where he considers ice cream, then buys a one-­pound bag of Peanut M&M's. They're not frozen, but they'll do.

The town is decorated for Christmas and has been for a few weeks, though he hasn't been down this way since Bonita died. There are silver and red garlands strung up on the streetlights, most of which aren't working anymore. On the windows of the storefronts that are still occupied—­the card shop, the Country Goose Gift Shop, Royce's Hardware, and two antiques shops that sell occasionally to lost tourists, but mostly sell furniture from one Lydell family to another—­there are paintings on the shop windows, as there are every year, done by kids from the Warrentown Regional High School Art Club. Lots of snow scenes and holly branches, and the occasional Merry Christmas, scripted with lots of flourishes. Halfway down the block he can hear a scratchy recording of Mel Tormé singing his “Christmas Song” from speakers installed in the sixties.

Almost every storefront triggers a memory of some other store that failed years ago. By next Christmas, a third of these stores will be gone, replaced by something equally futile—­a homemade art gallery, folk sculptures of painted plywood, and God knows what else.

Beyond the stores and up about a quarter mile is the biggest ghost of all, the webbing factory that closed in 1993, now in Mexico or India, or someplace like that. He takes a handful of M&M's from the bag he holds between his legs. He wonders if they're still made in the United States, or imported from overseas as well.

A few ­people on the street wave, and he waves back, mouthing
Merry Christmas
though just the idea of the holiday is painful. One of his friends, Marty, a widower, too, refers to Christmas as “an emotional mugging.”

He swings north again, still eating the M&M's, until he gets to 417. He turns onto it. As long as he feels the pain, he might as well feel all of it. Less than a mile down the road, he passes the Einhorn house that burned down when a home meth lab exploded. Meth is not common around here, but he supposes that it will become so. It took this old building right to the foundation. He drives past the Citgo and then he is coming over the rise in the road at the accident scene. It's a terrible spot. Drivers going west are just starting to accelerate to sixty when they come over the rise with no sight line at all. As he crests the hill, he can see balloons and flowers piled around a utility pole a few feet from where Matt Laferiere died.

He has asked the town council several times to have the road regraded here so the hill is not so steep and oncoming drivers can see better what's ahead of them.

He stops at the utility pole, thinks to get out of the cruiser, then thinks better of it. Some hundred yards ahead, he can see something big at the side of the road.

He gets out, walks up to it, and sees that it's a deer, a good-­sized one, a doe, crumpled next to the road. It looks like it's been there for a ­couple of days. He doesn't remember anyone calling this in. It's been hit by a car. Small animals, maybe opossums and raccoons, probably a coyote, have been eating from the anus inward. There are bits of a headlight and some chrome trim scattered just in front of the deer.

He shakes his head. This will complicate things just a bit. Someone's going to need body work, and it will probably be called in, and they will have to come out and verify that it's not the hit-­and-­run vehicle they're looking for. And it's just a plain mess. A deer carcass rotting at the side of the road. What other bad impressions can Lydell make on drivers coming through? He gets back in the car and calls it in to Sue.

“We got a call yesterday,” Sue says. “I called Norbert, and he said he would get it out of there. Guess he hasn't yet.”

“Call him again,” Gordy says. “Tell him I want it gone now. Not tomorrow or the next day.” The anger in his voice surprises him.

H
E HAS JUST
stopped at the Stewart's for ice cream when his phone rings.

“Chief, Steve. I thought you'd want to know. We have a suicide.”

Gordy stops and feels his body go cold. Ronny. It would have to be Ronny.

“It's Ben Beacham. He's hung himself in his garage. I know you were friends.”

“When?”

“Call just came in. John's en route. Thought you might want to go since you know the family.”

“Right. I'm not far.” He pulls back out onto the road, heading for the Beachams'.

He pulls in to the curb, just beyond the driveway, as John pulls up to the front of the house. They meet at the front door.

“Steve call you?”

“Yeah.”

“I can handle this. Steve insisted that he should call you, but I know you've got a lot on your mind. You don't have to do this.”

“Yeah,” Gordy says. “I do. I'm a friend. Kay will need to see a familiar face.” He rings the doorbell. There's no answer. He tries the door, which swings open. Lydell has changed a lot in the last few years, but there are still ­people who don't lock their doors.

They walk through the house to the kitchen. They can hear the yelling from there and a steady bass beat. Through the door into the garage, from the warmth to the cold again, they stop and just watch. Ben Beacham hangs from a rafter in the uninsulated garage. His face is purple with trapped blood and his tongue protrudes. Kay stands next to him, a broken rake handle in her hands. She keeps swinging it, thumping it into the body, while she keeps up a steady stream of obscenities—­“Bastard, Whore, Fuck, Cunt, Asshole, Shithead, Cocksucker.”

Gordy times the swings of the rake handle, then as she launches in to the body once more, he jumps forward and grabs her with both arms, bringing her to him in a bear hug. “Kay, Kay. It's Gordy, Kay. You're all right. Just calm down. Take a deep breath.”

“Dickhead. Son of a bitch. Shitlicker. Pussy.”

He holds on to her and begins to rock her back and forth. “Kay, Kay, Kay. Ssshh. Come with me. Let's go into the house.”

She's sobbing now as if all of the energy she had has been expelled. Gordy can feel the wobble in her knees as he guides her through the door and into the kitchen. He looks at John and then nods toward the body. “Handle this like a crime scene, until we get full confirmation it's not.”

He gets her to the sofa in the living room and sits with her while she cries and while her breathing gets ragged as she tries to regain control. He keeps his arms around her, mumbling hollow reassurances into her hair. For a man who never had children, he has done far more consoling in his life than all the fathers he knows.

And then Kay cries herself to sleep. He puts an afghan over her and walks back out to the garage. Ben still hangs there. John is taking pictures of a knocked-­over fruit crate and the top of a workbench. “Called for a bus. We'll let them take him down. How's the missus?”

“She fell asleep. I think she wore herself out beating on him and swearing. I've never seen anything quite like it. Though while I was sitting with her, listening to her sob, I wanted to walk out here and take a few swings at him myself.”

“At least he didn't make a mess,” John says.

“Not one you can see,” Gordy agrees.

They hear the ambulance roll to a stop in the gravel between the yard and street. Gordy walks over and punches the door release button, then steps back as the door opener groans and lifts up the double door to the outside darkness.

The attendants open up the back of the ambulance and take the gurney out, shake the wheels down and locked, and come up the walkway and into the garage. “Oh, jeez,” the first one says. “I know him. He was a nice guy. A real nice guy.”

“Yeah,” Gordy says. “He was. He was.”

He watches them take the body, untying the knot that holds the rope to the rafter and slowly lowering Ben's body until one of the attendants can take it and lay it on the floor. Then they unfold and unzip the body bag and place it alongside Ben. Finally, they pick him up by shoulders and ankles and move him onto the body bag, which they gently arrange around him, then zip up.

“That's it,” one of the attendants says. “Sorry for your loss.”

Gordy starts to say that it isn't his loss, but thinks better of it. It's his loss, too, though dwarfed by Kay's. “Thanks,” he says.

He goes back into the house. Kay's up and in the kitchen, at the sink, pouring a glass of water.

“They're taking Ben now,” Gordy says.

Kay stares out the window, sipping on the water. She nods. “OK,” she says, still looking out the window.

“There's nothing more that needs doing tonight. They'll take him to Warrentown, and he will be released back to you sometime tomorrow. The funeral home will take care of all that.”

“OK.”

“Is there somewhere you can go tonight?”

“I'll stay here.”

“Can I call someone who can come over and stay with you?”

“I'll be all right.”

“Would you like me to stay? I can sleep on the couch.”

“No. Thanks, Gordy. I'll be all right. Gordy, how do we get along without them? I mean Bonita . . . How do you get through your day and everything?”

He walks over to her, puts his arm around her shoulder, and pulls her to him. “You do. You just do. It takes time, but you do. Someone should stay with you tonight. Do you have anyone you can call? Anyone who can come over for the night?”

“No.”

“Then I'm staying. I don't have to be anywhere. I'll just bunk down on the couch. I'll be right here if you need me. Otherwise, you won't even know I'm here.”

“Gordy, this isn't necessary.”

“It is. I'll be here if you need me.”

“I think I'm going to cry all night.”

“That's fine. Believe me, I know how that goes. I won't bother you. I'll just be here if you need me.”

Kay turns and shuffles out of the room, her slippers making soft noises along the floor.

He takes off his ser­vice belt, his boots, empties his pockets onto the coffee table, and unbuttons his shirt. He lies down on the sofa in his uniform pants and T-­shirt, hearing the sound of her slippers again as she comes back into the room and hands him a pillow and a quilt. She leans down, gives him a hug and a quick kiss on the forehead. “This is not necessary,” she says. “But thank you.”

“You'll be all right.”

She nods. “He's gone now, Gordy, but he had been leaving for a long time. I knew this was coming. I'll start getting used to it tonight.”

“OK.”

O
H
, B
EN
. B
EN
, you dumb fuck, he thinks. Then he immediately feels guilty and wants to take it back. He knows Ben struggled with the general failing of his health and from the effects of the alcohol that he used to try to forget it. He had somehow known that this was coming, not like Kay knew, but still, he knew. But it's a shock.

He feels his own life being stripped away from him. Bonita, now Ben, who may have once been his best friend. What an idea that is. Best friend. How do you choose? How do you decide? Then it comes to him that he doesn't have a best friend, hasn't had one since Bonita died. But maybe the line just moves up. Maybe Pete is his best friend now.

Snow is coming down in small light flakes that swirl in the porch light outside the window. Nothing substantial, he guesses. There's just a lot of it this early in the year. A lot of death, too. The snow of the dead.

Ben and Kay had been his and Bonita's closest friends in the nineties. They went out to dinner at least once a week and were generally at each other's houses on the weekend. They were both childless, and that gave them a certain bond, as well as considerable freedom. But the stronger bond was drinking. A typical get-­together involved several cocktails and, later, a ­couple of bottles of wine with dinner, their voices getting louder and louder, their laughter more raucous.

That had begun to change when Gordy and Bonita stopped drinking, partly for health reasons, partly for Gordy's job. They still saw each other, but less often, less joyously. Gordy couldn't help feeling that Ben, on some level, took Gordy's sobriety as an accusation of his own lack of it. Finally, they met by chance in stores and restaurants, greeted each other heartily, agreed to get together soon, then didn't.

He had heard that Ben's health was failing, and he had meant to be in touch. But their relationship became one of meaning to, but not following through. Kay looks considerably older. She was always small, and feisty. He guesses, if he thinks about it, her attack on Ben's body is not all that surprising. She was always quick to laugh, quick to anger. Still, he hopes never to see anything like that again.

He listens for a while and hears her soft sobbing then, later, her snoring. He drifts into sleep.

Gordy wakes in the dark. He has to pee. He swings his legs off the sofa, and they crash into something. He feels his way in the dark. He reaches for the doorknob to the bathroom and touches a smooth sheet of glass. He spreads his fingers and runs his hand over the smooth surface that seems to go on forever. Where is he? What is this? He moves to his right to find the light switch, though he has never needed it before. He finds, instead, an armchair. He stops and tries to orient himself. There's small ambient light from various sources, including a digital clock that reads 1:47. “Bonita?” He moves to his left and crashes into a hassock or ottoman.