Darkness the Color of Snow (19 page)

He walked the box over to Vanessa. “Dinnertime. Boss says eat while you work.” He watched while she stopped a car heading west and waved an eastbound through. She came back and opened up her Styrofoam box. It was all lettuce, tomato, and chicken with a clear plastic cup of dressing on the side. He took the plastic bag with the napkin and utensils from his pocket. “Silverware?”

She opened the cup of dressing and drizzled less than half of it over her salad. Then she got the fork out of the back and poked a piece of lettuce with it. “Fuck,” she said and ran out to stop a westbound pickup and wave a Honda through. He stood and watched her. He felt stupid just standing there watching her work, but he fought the impulse to turn around and walk back to the cruiser and his own dinner.

“Thanks,” she said when she came back. “For the dinner.”

“No problem.” Then, “I thought maybe you'd like a better dinner. I mean some other time. A real dinner.”

She forked more lettuce into her mouth and gave him a quizzical look. “You're asking me out?”

“Yeah. You know. Dinner. In a real restaurant. Plates and silverware.”

She squinted as if to get him into focus. “You still hang out with Matt Laferiere?”

“No. Not anymore. That was a long time ago.”

“Yeah.” She regarded him as though he were a used car in questionable shape. “Me, too. Yeah. I guess we could do that.”

“Great. This weekend? Saturday?”

She took more lettuce and shook her head. “No. Can't Saturday.”

“Sunday?”

She shook her head again. “This whole weekend is no good. Next?”

“Sure. Next Saturday?”

She took her phone from her back pocket. “What's your number?” She punched the numbers into her phone and in a second, his phone rang. “OK. You've got my number. Call me.”

“I will. For sure. Next Saturday.”

“Cool. Oh, shit.” She put down her salad, picked up her sign, and ran out to slow a speeding Ford Escort. He followed her and made a down motion with both hands to the driver, who slowed, then smiled weakly as she eased through the construction.

“I'll call you next week.”

“Right.”

H
E CALLED HER
the following week. They went to an Italian restaurant just outside Warrentown, Pete's recommendation. He watched what he drank, trying to relax and get comfortable, but fearing letting his guard down. They endured an overly attentive waiter and began telling their lives from the present forward.

“Right now I'm just general ed,” she said. “To start with. I'm going to transfer to the university when I graduate at the community college. I'm thinking business administration.”

“Wow. Cool.” He could think of nothing more to say.

“I don't know if it's cool. There should be some money in it and the chance to get out of Lydell and move up in some company.”

“Cool.” He nodded. “Why didn't you just start at the university, rather than the community college?”

“Money.” She shrugged.

“Money? But you're rich.”

Vanessa laughed. “Rich? Far from it. You think I'd be out working on road crews if I were rich? I mean, yeah, I'm getting a great tan, but it's pretty nasty work out there on the road every day.”

“Hmmm.” Her answer stymied him a little. He was poor, or had been poor. He understood that. But what was Vanessa if she wasn't rich? Middle class? Wasn't that a form of rich? Or was it just another shading of poor? “I'm going to college, too. I mean, kind of. Taking courses at night.”

“What are you majoring in?”

“Criminal justice. I've already taken a ­couple of classes. I'm only able to take a course or two because I have to do it on my own time. But Gordy has agreed that he'll schedule me around my classes. It'll take a long time. I know that. But I have a good job, and I know that when I graduate, I'll be able to get a better job.”

“Like what?”

“Not sure. Maybe stay with Lydell and work my way up—­sergeant, maybe even chief. Gordy's getting kind of old. Or move over to state police. There's a lot more room there to work your way up. I may even decide to go on to law school.” He stopped himself. He wanted to tell her that he felt like a rat in a maze, helplessly lost until he had suddenly turned a corner and seen a way out he hadn't seen before. And once he was out of the maze, there were an infinite number of ways he could go. He would be free, and he could be a success, something he had never even considered possible before Gordy put him on the force.

Vanessa lifted her glass again. “To future successes.” They clinked glasses.

“So,” he said. “You think you'll get out of Lydell?”

“Why not?” she asked. “What's in Lydell? It's dying. I mean, it's dead. It just doesn't know it yet.”

“I don't know. I don't think that's true. I mean, things are bad. No question about that. But they can get better.”

She shook her head. “In some ways, I really love Lydell. It was a good place to grow up in. But it hasn't stayed a good place. There's really no future in Lydell that I can see. Lots of past, but no future. The mills aren't going to reopen. The farms are all dead. If you look around the edges of town, it's all starting to get overgrown. Each year the forest gets closer in. One of these days, it's going to just take over, and there won't be a town anymore, just some deserted buildings in the middle of a forest. It's too bad, but that's what I think is happening.”

“So, after college, you're getting out.”

“I'm already out. My body's just stuck there for a while. You know, when I broke up with Matt, I think I broke up with the town, too. He's just like the town. He's got no future. He's just hanging out, waiting for the inevitable end, doing what he's always done, hanging on, getting by, never changing, not even to save himself. One day I looked at him and realized that the guy I thought was so cool was just sad. The forest is going to take him over, too. I mean it already has. He's doing what guys in Lydell do. He's cutting firewood now. And that's not a life. I want a life.”

“Me, too. And I know what you mean. I thought Matt was the coolest guy there was. I wanted to be like him. Him and Bobby and Paul. They're still riding around in the Cherokee, getting high and hanging out. It was fun while it was new, but, man, that got old fast.”

She smiled. “And you got out of that trap. Maybe you're getting out of Lydell, too.”

“I don't know about that. Part of me really wants to stay. Take over Gordy's job when he's ready to retire. Another part keeps telling me that there's more future somewhere else.”

“Anywhere else.”

“I don't know about anywhere else, but somewhere else. I don't know. I don't think I'd like to go down south. All rednecks and humidity.”

“You got both of those, right here, just not so many, I think. You know what place I think about? You're going to think this is silly.”

“No. No I won't.”

“Dallas. I think about Dallas. It seems like a really cool place to me. ­People think about Dallas, and they think about cattle.”

“And cheerleaders.”

She gave him a fake frown. “But it's not like that. I mean, I've never been there, but I've seen pictures. It's this big, beautiful city, with tall buildings. There's this one that's outlined in green lights at night. It's just amazing. It's a big city, and it's getting bigger. There are lots of jobs there. I think if I get to Dallas, I will have put Lydell completely behind me. I'd come back, of course. Sometimes. I think my parents are going to stay here, though maybe not. I think if they had grandkids somewhere, they'd move to be near them.”

“You want kids?”

“Of course. Not right away. I want to get myself settled and into a good job, a career, but, eventually, I want kids. Yeah. How about you?”

“Well, I guess I'd need a wife first.”

“Not absolutely necessary, but helpful, certainly.”

“No. I want a wife. I know that. And kids, too. I could give a kid the things I never had.”

“Like what?”

“Like a nice home. And parents. I mean I had parents, have parents. But neither of them is much in the way of parenting. My mother left us when I was twelve. My dad tried, but he didn't do a real good job. I think having a kid got in the way of his drinking. Not that he didn't have time to do plenty of it.” He pointed to her wineglass. “You want another glass?”

“Uh, sure. I'm having a good time.”

“Me, too.”

He called the waiter over and ordered another glass of the Chardonnay.

“You're not having another?”

He smiled. “You know how embarrassing it would be if I got pulled over for DUI? I'd, like, never live it down. Even if it didn't cost me my job.”

She smiled at him, nodded, and regarded him silently for a minute. He felt like he was being studied, and thought, maybe, he was doing all right.

A
FTER DINNER THEY
went to a movie in Warrentown. He hadn't known what movie to suggest. Action adventure seemed wrong, as did a horror film and an animated feature aimed at kids. That left the romantic comedy. The perfect choice. A chick flick. She wouldn't think of him as the macho cop. The seating was awkward and rife with high school conflicts. Put his arm around her, hold her hand? It all seemed way too obvious and gawky. So they sat quietly next to each other, occasionally sharing the popcorn.

On the way out of the theater, he guided her through the door and she quickly stepped away from his hand at the small of her back.

“What did you think?” he asked.

“Cute. No chemistry, though.”

That seemed clearly to be a comment on the movie, but it could have been more.

When they got to her apartment, they sat for a minute in the truck.

“This was nice,” she said. “You're nice.” Then she put her finger to his lips before he could respond. “No coffee or drink,” she said. “Sleep. Alone.”

He nodded. “Can I call you?”

She leaned over and kissed him. It was a good kiss, probably the best kiss he had ever had. It wasn't eager and sloppy, but still forceful enough that he felt a shudder go through his body. She leaned back, smiled a tight smile. “Yeah,” she said. “You can call me.”

W
ITHIN THREE WEEKS,
Ronny Forbert was as happy as he had been in his life. The vague dreams that he had barely allowed himself to dream had suddenly come true. He had a job that he liked, an apartment of his own, and he had a girlfriend. It was far too early to admit it to anyone, even himself, but he was in love, and he thought there was a chance, at least a possibility, that Vanessa was as well. The life that he had thought so distant, one of a kind of general prosperity and respectability, seemed to be right in front of him.

Not that he was prosperous. His pay was, he understood now, not very much. He wished that he had bought a cheaper truck, maybe even a used one. Dating itself was expensive. Dinner at Applebee's and a movie after was not so bad, but he had to keep buying clothes. Each date seemed to require a new shirt until he could build up a rotation of them. Once he had done that, he thought he would be able to stop shopping every midweek, though summer was coming to an end, and he would likely need sweaters and such. Vanessa was not demanding and didn't seem much concerned by what he wore, but she dressed well, and he didn't want to become an embarrassment to her.

He had credit cards, and as long as he could keep making the payments on the cards, he would be all right. And things looked better just ahead of him. In another six weeks, he would advance from probationary status to full patrolman. That would mean a raise in salary. And there were rent-­a-­cop opportunities that Pete knew about and was willing to share. Construction sites and events needed off-­duty police for hourly or daily work. And the money was pretty good.

And Vanessa was helpful. Often enough, she insisted on paying her own way—­splitting the dinner check or alternating paying, and paying her own way into the movies. And they had gone straight from dinner last week to her apartment, made love, and then gone to sleep. And Sunday they had lounged at her place, luxuriating in each other's bodies and presence, and then gone grocery shopping and ate dinner in. It was the best weekend of his life, and seemed like a template for much of the rest of their lives.

 

CHAPTER 6

P
ETE HANGS UP
the phone and walks into Gordy's office. “The Staties have a registration on the Lexus. Whoever stripped it missed a VIN number.”

Gordy looks up. “Great. Is it our car?”

Pete nods. “Looks like it. They found some cloth in the grille. Looks like denim. They're trying to match it to Laferiere's jeans. Even better, there's blood, human blood. Car's registered to a Marie Caplette in Waynesville. I have an address. You want me to check it out?”

“A woman,” Gordy says.

“A drunk,” Pete says. “Don't imagine gender has anything to do with it.”

“Do you want to ride to Warrentown?”

Pete shrugs. “It's OK by me. Your call.”

“Why don't I do it, then. I get itchy waiting to hear.”

“Fine. Don't forget you have a town council meeting in a ­couple of days.”

“I'll do the reports when I get back. No big deal. I'll go play cop, you can play chief.”

“You're the boss.”

T
HE
W
ARRENTOWN
P
OLICE
Department moved some years ago from the older part of town to one of the newer sections on the north end. It's a modern building, all brick and glass, certainly much better equipped than the Lydell department, but, Gordy thinks, lacking in some of the charm. Gordy checks in at the station, lets them know he's in town and prepared to question a resident, then drives south to the old section of town.

In some ways Waynesville, the old section of Warrentown, is as bad as most of Lydell. Waynesville had been the main mill town and the largest mill, the shoddy mill, operating through most of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth until it shut down at the end of the First World War as recycling old cloth gave way to new materials.

Shoddy was a type of cheap cloth, made by shredding old, used cloth and scraps from the textile mills that dotted the area. The new cloth that was woven from the scraps was low-­quality cloth, mainly used for packing and insulation. It was picked and sorted, shredded by machine, then, depending on the quality, woven or felted into new cloth. Sometimes new wool was added to the shoddy to make a better-­quality cloth called mungo, which was used in blankets, rugs, and coating.

The mills once supported whole towns, from the ragpickers, who bought used cloth from factories and homes, to the sorters in the mill, machine operators, weavers, and felters. A good deal of shoddy and mungo was surreptitiously sold as higher-­quality cloth. Because of the deception, shoddy gained a bad reputation, and laws were enacted against the sale of the material, and eventually, the industry faltered and fell.

Gordy thinks it odd that an age that embraced recycling had come around nearly a hundred years after shoddy had been done away with and existed in the language only as a word for something poorly made. Companies now spent millions of dollars on advertisements that crowed their use or manufacture of such material. The shoddy mills that had thrived in this countryside were mostly ruins, and the town they left behind existed more in name than in actuality.

T
HE RUINS OF
the mill are mostly overgrown, much of it torn down for someone to retrieve the bricks and timbers for the construction of new buildings they wanted to look old. There's a scattering of small businesses, garages and antiques stores, a Cumberland Farm, a drugstore, craft shops, head shops, and a storefront computer repair shop. He passes one small grocery store clearly on its last legs.

Marie Caplette's house must have been one of the finer buildings in Waynesville, though it's now falling down and, perhaps, beyond repair. He parks in front, goes through a rickety gate and up an overgrown stone walkway to the small portico with its crooked roof and rotting posts. Boxes of bottles and stacks of newspapers litter what is left of the portico.

His knock on the door is answered by a small woman, in her eighties, he guesses. She's dressed in a heavy coat over a sweater, and her thin white hair peeks out from under a red knitted cap. “Ms. Caplette? I'm Gordon Hawkins. Chief of police in Lydell.” She steps back from the door so he can come in.

The inside of the house is worse than the outside. There are newspapers and cardboard boxes stacked everywhere. There's a strong odor of cat urine, and the carpet is threadbare where it covers a worn linoleum floor. “Sit,” she says, taking a seat in an upholstered rocking chair covered with an antimacassar. He looks around. There's a sofa, also stacked with newspapers and magazines. There's a small color television with a digital converter box resting on a metal stand, turned so it faces the rocker. “Did you want to watch the television?”

“No, ma'am. I've come to ask about your car.”

“I don't have a car.”

“But there is one registered to you. A 1993 Lexus.”

“My grandson,” she says. “Sean. That's his car. I gave it to him.”

“Oh. All right. But it is registered to you, and the registration is current.”

“He doesn't have a lot of money. He's out of work. It's hard to find work. Even in the best of times.”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“And this isn't one of those.”

“What's that?”

“A best time. This is not a best time.”

“No. No, it certainly isn't. So you pay the registration on the car, but he drives it.”

“I haven't driven in years.”

“So you weren't driving it this week.”

“Of course not. Why are you interested in Sean's car?”

“Well, we think it was involved in an accident a few days ago. In Lydell, where I'm from.”

“Oh, dear. I hope he wasn't hurt.”

“Me, too. I hope so, too. Have you heard from him?”

A look came over her face that he couldn't quite read—­confusion, regret, despair?

“He's a quiet boy. He doesn't talk a lot. And he's very busy.”

“Yes,” he says. ­“People are very busy these days.”

“I don't know what it is they do. They have all of those things now. Things we never had.”

“It's an electronic world. Cell phones, iPods, computers. I don't understand a lot of it myself, but they do. It's their world now.”

“Would you like a cup of coffee?”

It's terrible coffee, old and reheated, bitter as regret. He tries not to look at the cup, which feels greasy. He takes a ­couple of sips to be polite and then sets it down on a stack of magazines on what appears to be an end table. “Do you have an address for Sean or a phone number?”

“No. I think he lives in Falls Village. With some other boys. Louise would know. She's his mother.”

“Would you have her number or address? I'd like to talk to him. She could put me in touch with him.”

“I do. It's in my phone book. Let me get it for you. He wasn't hurt?”

“No. No, we don't think so, but I would like to find out to be sure. I'm afraid the car is pretty badly damaged.”

“Oh, dear. Let me find my phone book.”

The phone book is an old metal case from the fifties or sixties, one that had a lever that went to the letter of the alphabet, then popped the case open to the page of addresses and phone numbers. He and Bonita had one like it years ago.

“I haven't seen one of those for a while.”

“I've probably had it too long. Lots of scratch-­outs and erasures. Here it is.” She hands him the address book and points. “Louise Texiera. She married a Portuguese man,” she says in something just louder than a whisper, as if she's afraid someone will overhear.

“And is that his name, too? Sean Texiera?”

“Oh, no. No. He's a Gross. She's been remarried.”

“I see. Sean Gross.”

“Yes. I hope he's not hurt or in trouble.”

“Right now, I just need to talk with him a little. Find out what happened.”

He leaves, depressed. It's a tough world for older ­people. The world keeps spinning faster and faster, and they can't keep up with it. They're frequently confused, living alone, surrounded by memories they can't hold on to. He thinks about Bonita in her last years. But that's stuff that he doesn't want to think about.

He's not sure about calling the mother. Or dropping by. If he calls the mother, she will likely call Sean, and he might rabbit. Or maybe bring himself in. But this case isn't moving forward, and he has a cop dangling by a thread while nothing happens. It's worth taking the chance that the kid would rabbit on him. At least he's moving forward with this.

The mother's house is a little north of the grandmother's. That makes it a little more upscale. When he gets there, there's a car parked in the middle of the front lawn, minus hood and engine, and the shingled house is in need of paint or stain, but the porch isn't buckled. It's what passes for upscale in these parts.

When he knocks on the door, a woman in green sweatpants and a blue Giants sweatshirt comes to the door.

“Mrs. Texiera?”

“Yeah.”

“Gordon Hawkins. Chief of police, Lydell. Is Sean Gross here?”

“Oh, God. What did he do?”

“I don't know. Maybe nothing. I just need to talk to him. Is he here?”

“He doesn't really live here. He just uses this as his address. You can leave a message and I'll have him call you when I see him, though I don't really see him that often.”

“Does he work? Is there a place I might likely find him? This is only to ask him a few questions.”

“I don't know if he's working or not. It's tough to find a job right now, you know? But he and some friends hang out at a house on Walton Avenue. He might be there.”

“You have an address?”

S
HE TURNS AND
leaves him there, feeling the heat of the house. It feels like the house is heated to eighty or ninety degrees. Where do these ­people get the money to burn through oil like that? She comes back then and hands him a slip of paper: 74 Walton Avenue.

“Thank you, Mrs. Texiera. I need to ask you just one more favor. Don't call him, please. Let me speak to him.”

“Why would I call him? He doesn't call me.”

Seventy-­Four Walton Avenue. He already passed Walton Avenue on the way over from the grandmother's house. He figures he has about five minutes to get there. It will be a race to get there before he rabbits after getting his mother's call, which Gordy's sure she is making right now.

He makes it in less than five minutes, driving the cruiser across the driveway to block two cars parked there. The house breaks the north–south paradigm for Waynesville—­poor south, richer north. It's north of the grandmother's place, but in far worse condition. He goes up to the door and knocks.

A man in his early twenties, jeans, hoodie, no shoes, opens the door.

“Sean Gross?”

“No, man.” The guy tries to push the door closed. Gordy gets a shoulder on it and holds it open, not exactly pushing his way in, but keeping his body in front of the door so that he can't close it.

“No. Seriously,” Gordy says. “Sean Gross. Where is he?”

“He's not here.”

“Well, when will he be back, do you think?”

“I don't know, man. Sometimes he's gone a long time.”

“Well, I need to talk to him. Can you get a message to him?”

“I can try.”

Gordy hears a door squeak open at the side of the house. “Hold on,” Gordy says. “I think I hear him now.” Gordy pushes off from the door and runs around the side of the house, clomping as well as he can through the crusted snow that gives way with each footfall. He sees another kid, dressed in jeans and hoodie, huffing through the snow, toward the back fence of the house. Oh, damn, he thinks. Not over the fence.

“Sean Gross,” he says. “Lydell Police. Stop. I need to ask you some questions.”

The kid turns and looks at him, then takes off again for the fence, stepping into a drift of hardened snow, and goes down. Gordy, running as hard as he can, lifting his knees high, goes after him. The kid struggles, gets upright, leaving one of his boots stuck in the snow, and heads for the fence again.

“Stop,” Gordy says. “Stop. Police. Don't go over the goddamned fence.” He's gaining on the kid, slowly, keeping his knees up high, struggling to stay upright in the snow. He has a small advantage now, since the kid has on only one boot. But he's already breathing really hard, and he's running out of gas fast. Briefly, he wishes he had left a few of the M&M's in the store.

He has almost caught up to the fleeing kid, when the kid catches ahold of the chain-­link fence and pulls himself up and pushes off, going headfirst over the fence, into another snowdrift on the other side. Gordy reaches the fence right after him, nearly going over, too, just from his own momentum. The kid is struggling to get himself out of the snowdrift when Gordy sees that the kid's jeans are snagged on the fence top. He grabs the kid's leg and holds it as tightly as he can, wrapping it up in both arms. He takes his cuffs, gets one around the kid's ankle, and locks the other one to the fence. The kid is still thrashing around in the snow, trying to get his head free.

“Let me go.”

Gordy leans against the fence, struggling to get his breath back. He looks back toward the house. All in all, he must have run twenty yards. It was through snow, but twenty yards? Jeez. He ought to be able to do more than twenty yards without being completely gassed.

“Let me up.”

“In a minute. I got to catch my breath. You Sean Gross?”

“Let me up.”

“You Sean Gross?”

“Let me go. I didn't do anything.”

“No. I'm not going to let you go until you talk to me. You made me run through all that snow. I want you to feel as miserable as I do, now. Tell me.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, what?”

“I'm Sean Gross.”