Happy Policeman (2 page)

Chapter Two

NOBODY
was at Loretta’s, so DeWitt rode the four miles to Billy’s place. The remodeling was nearly finished; the roof was on; the siding nailed up. From inside the new game room came the screech of a saw.

DeWitt dismounted and walked the planks to the rectangular hole where the new front door would be. In the yard a few islands of spiky grass rose from an ocean of ankle-deep mud.

Inside, he paused. The house smelled of moist concrete, latex paint, and solvent. The ear-splitting whine of the saw ended abruptly.

DeWitt made his way down the hall and into the barren kitchen. Loretta’s whipcord-thin estranged husband, pencil in hand, was measuring a two-by-four laid across a pair of sawhorses.

“Billy.”

The man whirled. “Chief. You scared me.”

A forelock of lank hair fell into Billy’s eyes. He flicked it away like a girl. At his neck was a ponytail caught by a pink rubber band. Despite that, there was nothing feminine about Billy. Nothing masculine about him, either. He reminded DeWitt of his traumatic childhood glimpse of a weasel, gutted and skinned, its ropy muscles still oozing blood and its lips pulled back in a snarl from its needle teeth.

“Where’s your kids?” DeWitt’s question echoed across the unfinished concrete floor. The sheetrock was primed for paper, but the paper hadn’t been applied yet. The only color in the room was the red of Billy’s shirt and the faded blue of his jeans.

“Might ask Loretta.”

“Loretta’s dead.”

Billy’s hand froze reaching for a planer. He turned, fists clenched, veins and muscles standing out in relief along his forearms. Under his open shirt, his board-flat stomach rose and fell in a slow, regular rhythm. Either the news hadn’t sunk in yet, or the death wasn’t news at all.

DeWitt waited for Billy to speak. He’d never had a murder to solve, but over the years he’d had heart attacks and car wrecks to announce. The family always asked how, and then they asked where the person was, as though DeWitt could direct traffic to the afterlife.

Billy kept his mouth shut, and DeWitt, suspicions aroused, made the decision not to speak first. They waited, the silence getting bigger and bigger until it filled the raw corners of the room. Outside the unglazed windows, a bluejay squalled.

The black eyes shifted. “Dead?”

“That’s right.”

They played the waiting game some more; then, “Y’all want me to come identify the body or something?”

“We already identified it. Just wanted you to know.”

Billy nodded.

“Where were you last night?”

“Was asleep.”

“From when to when?”

“Soon as it was dark I went to sleep. Woke up at dawn.”

“You got any witnesses?”

“Nope.”

“Where’s your kids?”

“Don’t have no idea.”

“Aren’t you interested in how she died?”

Beneath the waterfall of greasy hair, Billy’s eyes shone with reflected light. “Already know. Sometimes I know stuff like that. Dream about it and all. Loretta done wrapped that titty-pink Regal of hers around a tree. Your fault, damn you, for letting her drive like a maniac. Should of let Bo put her in jail for speeding.”

Billy sounded so sure that DeWitt wondered, briefly, if he should go back to the crime scene and dig around in the dirt for the Buick.

Then he took a breath and actually said it: “She was murdered.”

There was no motion in the face, no lift of an eyebrow, no frown. The planer dropped to the concrete with a clang. “Who done it?”

“Don’t know that.”

“How’d they do it?”

“Don’t know that, either. Yet.” Nothing in Billy’s array of tools could have made that unique and puzzling wound; and if Billy were going to kill someone, he’d shoot a staple into the cranium. He’d shove a screwdriver into the eye. Billy was a practical sort of man.

“You best have a talk with Hubert Foster.”

“Why Foster?” DeWitt asked.

“Overheard her discussing him during one of her phone-in hen parties. She was whispering, so I couldn’t pick out more’n his name. You best talk to him. If I question that horny bastard, I’ll start out by molly-bolting his balls to a door.”

“Who was on the receiving end of that conversation?”

“Don’t have no idea. Could have been any of them Mary Kay church biddies she gossiped with. Don’t think about not telling me what you find out, now. Goddamn it, I’m holding you accountable. And if you know what’s good for you, you better see what Foster done with my kids.”

DeWitt started out the door, eerily aware of the man’s presence at his back. At bad news some people cried, and some became angry at the messenger. DeWitt thought of the planer on the floor, the nail gun on the bench. If it wouldn’t have looked ridiculous, he might have run for his life.

Chapter Three

KICKING THE MARE
into a gallop, DeWitt rode to the lake. At the
Drop On By Bait House
the screen door was standing open, the wooden porch empty.

Across the water, its surface smooth as glossy olive paper, rose a stand of pines. Beyond that was the Line, its paisley clashing with the sky’s powder-blue horizon.

DeWitt walked inside the convenience store and stopped. A yellow dog had dragged a family-sized bag of Lay’s potato chips from a shelf, had torn it open and was feasting. Golden flecks were stuck to the dog’s pink nose. The retriever looked up, still domesticated enough for guilt.

“Get!” DeWitt hissed.

The dog slunk out the door.

DeWitt walked the center aisle and picked up a pack of Twinkies. “Curtis?”

The counter was empty, the cash register open. “Curtis? You in back?” Down the next aisle DeWitt pulled a can of Coke from the cooler. He popped the top and took a long, burning gulp. The Coke was so cold, it made his sinuses ache. He tore open the edge of the Twinkies package with his teeth and took a bite of greasy cake. “Curtis?”

No one answered. DeWitt put down the Twinkie and walked across the yard to the house.

Curtis answered his knock. The mayor’s round face was puffy with sleep, and his receding hair stuck up in brown explosions. He was still in his bedclothes. Fighting a smile, DeWitt studied the pajamas. They were cotton and had faded blue sheep on them.

“Dog was in the stock. You got a mess back there.”

“Dog can have it.” Curtis walked into the kitchen.

DeWitt followed. “You seen Loretta’s kids today?”

“Nope.”

In Curtis’s sink dirty plates sprouted like Melmac fungus. Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon dishwater made a high-tide line on the stainless steel. “When’s the last time you seen ‘em?”

“Why?”

“Well, they hang around here a lot, don’t they? Fishing and all? You know of anything Hubert Foster could have had against Loretta?”

Curtis plucked a cracked mug from the sink and poured himself some coffee from a dented pot. “No. Want a cup?”

DeWitt’s mouth twitched. “Nuh-uh.”

“Why the third degree?”

This time the words came easier. “Loretta’s been murdered.”

Curtis spasmed, spilling coffee. “Jesus H. Christ on a crutch.” His eyes were so wide that the whites haloed the brown irises. He looked at DeWitt and then at the floor. It was hard to distinguish the new coffee stain from the historical. “You say murdered? Who the hell done it?”

“Don’t know yet.”

“Shit’s gonna hit the fan, DeWitt. Man. Oh, man. I need some.” Curtis looked up fast. “You want a little?”

The shit
was
going to hit the fan. And there was nothing DeWitt could do about it. “Hell, why not?” He slugged down the rest of his Coke and tagged after Curtis.

In the cramped bathroom, weak sunlight struggled to penetrate a high, dirty window. As Curtis locked the door, DeWitt perched in the meager glow at the edge of the tub.

Curtis dug his hand into a cracked ginger jar. “How’d they do it?”

“Huh?”

“How’d they kill her?”

“Don’t know that exactly, either. But she was naked. It was terrible.”

Curtis laughed, then clapped a censorious hand over his mouth. “Sorry. Poor Loretta was just butt-ugly.”

“Yeah, well . . . it was awful that way, too.”

Rolling a scrap of corn husk into a cylinder, Curtis picked up a greasy box of kitchen matches, lit the joint, and took a toke before passing it.

DeWitt sucked smoke, hitched it deep. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

It was an old joke, and Curtis ignored it. He lowered the seat of the commode and sat. The bathroom was so small that the two men’s knees touched. When they got to the end of the joint, Curtis lit another and handed it to DeWitt.

“How come you don’t know how they killed her?”

DeWitt inhaled the reply. “Weapon.”

Curtis studied the burning end of the joint critically before taking another drag. “I mean, was she stabbed or strangled or what?”

“Her throat was tom apart.”

Curtis nodded sagely. “Werewolves.”

A whoop of laughter. DeWitt slipped off the tub and onto the damp floor, where he got tangled in Curtis’s feet.

“Think about it, boy. That dog you seen in the store could have been one.”

The tile at DeWitt’s back felt clammy and chill. “No blood left in her body, either.” He pinched the dwindling roach from the mayor’s fingers.

“You just think about it, DeWitt. Do you know what these people around here do when the moon’s full?”

Upside down, Curtis’s face seemed less comical and more menacing. “You always like to scare me when I’m high.”

“I want you to think werewolves, DeWitt. I want you to think vampires. See, werewolves you can lock up in jail, but vampires—”

Tap.

At the soft knock, both men turned, DeWitt having to roll around on the littered floor.

Tap.

DeWitt and Curtis looked at each other. The joint was tweezered between Curtis’s thumb and middle fingernail. Suddenly his eyes widened. “Wittie? Did you order me a delivery?”

“Shit!”

Raising the commode lid, Curtis dropped the joint inside the bowl and flushed. DeWitt clambered to his feet and threw open the bathroom window. A fresh breeze and an anthem of sunlight burst through the close, hot room.

“Just a minute!” Curtis shouted. “I’ll be with you in just a minute!”

DeWitt waved his arms. Curtis flapped a towel.

“I’m fucking wasted,” Curtis said in a low, pained voice. “God, I’m so fucking wasted.”

Tap.

“Just a sec! Jesus Christ, Wittie. I look okay?”

DeWitt looked at the blue sheep and bit his lip to curb a laugh. Curtis unlocked the bathroom door and slipped into the hall. There was a muffled conversation.

“DeWitt.” The voice was Curtis’s. DeWitt stood, shoulders against the peeling wood.

“DeWitt. They know you’re here, and they want to talk.”

Opening the door, DeWitt eased around the jamb. Kol Seresen’s bulbous eyes, the hue of shrimp jelly on a blue plate, were trained on DeWitt’s face. The Torku leader’s hands swelled like balloons, then slowly deflated. His skin, a living mood ring, changed from mottled brown to beige.

DeWitt tried to straighten his uniform. Curtis stood next to him, his bare toes twitching on the hardwood floor.

The Torku gave silence as good as Billy did. Maybe better.

“How are you, Seresen?” DeWitt asked when he couldn’t take the tension anymore.

“There is gas.” The small alien pivoted and walked out the front door, his Banana Republic shirt flapping around him.

“He knows!” Curtis whispered urgently as the screen door banged shut. “He’s figured it out and he’s going after my stash!”

Padding hurriedly into the bathroom, slipping a little on the wet tiles, Curtis grabbed the ginger jar. He fled into the bedroom.

DeWitt trailed after. The mayor’s king-size waterbed was in magnificent disarray. The mayor himself was standing knee-deep in clutter, the jar clutched to his belly. “You’re a cop. What should I do?”

“Don’t act suspicious.”

Curtis dropped to the bed and, bobbing on its agitated, vinyl waves, curled himself around the jar. “I won’t let this go extinct the way cigarettes and booze did. I’m telling you right now, DeWitt, they’ll have to kill me.”

“You think somebody told them about the murder?”

“Look out the window!” Curtis hissed. “See if they’re in the garden.”

DeWitt peeked through the dusty blinds. No Torku were roaming the privacy-fenced rows of green plants. “Nope.”

“Go and talk to them, DeWitt. Make sure they’re not planning nothing. I got these thoughts of them with aerosol cans of Agent Orange.”

DeWitt walked outside. Four Torku were taking boxes from a brown UPS van and carrying them into the store, giving DeWitt’s grazing bay mare a wide berth.

Behind the wall of video machines, DeWitt found Seresen. The Kol had turned his normal brown again and was loading six packs of Cokes into the cooler.

“You may go fill your car now,” the alien said. “There is gas, as I told you.”

“Thanks.”

Seresen finished with the Cokes and began stacking Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits, the hot first and then the mild. Around the other end of the aisle, a Torku had found a broom and was sweeping up the remains of the dog’s impromptu snack.

“Is that all you wanted to talk to me about, Seresen? To tell me about the gas? There’s nothing else on your mind?”

The disorienting eyes, more a murky pink in the gloom than blue, stared holes through DeWitt. Suddenly Seresen lowered his gaze and continued stacking. “The gas seems important to you. You complain about it.”

Reaching past Seresen into the cool depths of the cardboard box, DeWitt took out a tuna fish sandwich. He stripped the plastic wrap from the end, extracted the soggy bread, took a bite and winced. The Torku imitations were exact: nothing was ever worse; and, certainly, nothing was ever better.

“The Bo is upset,” Seresen said.

Bread stuck in DeWitt’s throat. He choked. Seresen absently handed him a diet Dr Pepper.

“I don’t understand why. I thought you might explain it.”

The Dr Pepper was warm. When it hit DeWitt’s stomach, nerves nearly made it come up again. He belched wetly.

“Oh. Somebody died. He tell you that?”

The pink eyes dropped to a carton of Sara Lee brownies. “Yes.”

“Well. That’s all there is to it. Somebody died.”

The boneless fingers fondled the boxes in what the humans called “Torku foreplay.” DeWitt thought that perhaps Torku skin was different. It looked softer and thinner somehow, as though the nerves were exposed. When the Torku shook hands with humans, which they sometimes did, the hand would swell and the skin harden as if to protect themselves from the touch. DeWitt imagined that the aliens could sense more through their skin than other creatures could; that they could taste through it, and even smell out lies.

Seresen didn’t bother to look up from his unloading. “There is no use being upset about such things. It is harmful. You must warn the Bo about that.”