Happy Policeman (5 page)

Chapter Ten

THE HOUSE
smelled of baked chicken. Janet, her back to the door, was seated at the kitchen table, reading. When DeWitt stopped at her side, she didn’t turn. She didn’t say
hello, how’s your day,
didn’t utter any of the banal but comforting marital welcomes. DeWitt hesitated to touch her. His hand traced the air, following the indentation of her back to her waist, like someone longing to comfort a burn victim. When he bent to kiss her cheek, she pulled away.

“You’re late. You stink of Granger’s moonshine.” She slapped the book closed.
Auto Mechanics Made Easy,
the cover read.

His eyes followed her as she rose and went to the stove. With vicious jabs she spooned potatoes from a pan into a bowl.

“Something wrong with the Suburban?” he asked.

The counters were too tall for her. When she worked in the kitchen, she stood tiptoe. Janet was delicate, tiny, a woman of child-clothes and doll-shoes. DeWitt’s hands could span her waist.

“Janet? Did you hear me? Is the Suburban driving bad or something?”

Without taking her eyes from the pan, she said, “Needs a tune-up.”

“I’ll get Seresen . . .”

“I want to do it.”

“The Torku won’t mind. That’s what they’re there for. Why bother getting your hands dirty?”

“Why do you bother going to the police station? Why do you bother going to work, DeWitt? Why bother doing anything?”

In the back of the house the children were playing. DeWitt could hear Denny’s squeal, Linda’s fuss-budget tirade. A door slammed with a forty-five-caliber clap.

“It’s funny,” Janet said into the ensuing silence. “In an engine, everything means something, everything makes sense. You can fix what’s wrong. Completely. Not like housework, where . . .”

“Don’t worry about it, hon. I’ll take care of it. I’ll drive the Suburban down to the Mobil station next week and see what I can do.”

She whirled. “What are you, some kind of expert? All you know is how to change the oil, and you never do that anymore.”

He should have changed the oil. Now she would punish him for his inattention. There were traps in his marriage: land mines and pungee-stake snares. He stood in the warmth of the kitchen, not knowing which path to take.

“Tomorrow,” he said, desperate to make amends. “I’ll do it tomorrow. Is that soon enough? I’ll take the Suburban over, change the oil, and have Granger help me with a tune-up. We’ll lube it and check all the belts . . . “

The spoon made a plopping sound in the potatoes, a clink as it hit the glass of the bowl. “I already changed the oil. I lubed the car. That was Chapters One and Two.”

It was suddenly difficult to breathe. DeWitt noticed the curl of Janet’s blond hair around her narrow shoulders. Caught a heart-breaking sight of the small bones of her wrists. Her hands were perfect, like those of a porcelain figurine. “You
lubed
the
car?
What do you mean, you
lubed
the
car?
Christ almighty, Janet. What’d you do, jack it up in the driveway and crawl underneath?”

“I took it to the Mobil station. I put it on that thingy that goes up and down . . . “

DeWitt felt frantic, as if even now he were seeing her beneath the hydraulic lift, tons of metal above her fragile shoulders. “Don’t ever do that again! What if something went wrong? I didn’t know the oil needed changing. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I want to learn how.”

“Why don’t you stick to your hobbies? Isn’t it enough to pretend to sell makeup? And have people pretend to pay you? I had Seresen get you a knitting machine and you never use it. All that candle-making stuff is collecting dust.”

She faced him, spoon in hand.
“You’re
the one who thought I should have a knitting machine!
You
decided what hobbies I would like. That’s the problem with this marriage—you never listen. I tell you I want a Celica, and one Saturday you come home with a grin on your face driving that fat-assed Chevrolet! “

The profanity surprised him so much, he stepped back, banging his hip on the comer of the table. “I’ll tune the Suburban, Janet. I really want to do that for you. Won’t you let me tune your goddamned car?”

Her lips tightened. She started spooning again, her movements jerky and awkward. The bowl toppled, fell with a crash. A shard of milk-colored glass pirouetted across the linoleum and came to rest by his boot.

Janet bent over the counter with a reedy note of anguish. Her body shook with sobs.

DeWitt stood unmanned and inept, desperate to contain the storm, realizing he couldn’t. He didn’t know from which direction the gale had come.

“Janet.” He picked his way to her through the broken glass, the spilled food. “It’s okay. It’s all right, honey. I’ll clean it up.”

She pivoted from under his calming hand. In the charged air of the kitchen, DeWitt felt the wind shift. The tears left abruptly as they had come. Not a hurricane, then. A passing thunderhead. “Get ready for dinner.”

He went into the living room, unbuttoning his shirt.

“Where’ s your jacket?” she called after him.

He paused at the phone on the end table and dialed 911.

A Torku answered: “Emergency.”

“This is DeWitt Dawson. I left my jacket at the clinic. It’s a leather jacket with sheepskin lining. Make me another one.”

“The other is broken?”

“Don’t argue with me. Just make me a new one.”

Putting down the receiver, he continued his strip-and-walk, draping his shirt and wide leather belt on his arm. He showered and pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater.

Janet and her book. What were Chapters Eight and Nine? Replacing the Transmission? Rebuilding the Engine?

By the time he returned, the children were already seated around the kitchen table. Denny, face bright from a pre-dinner scrubbing, was playing war games with his utensils. The clashing of silverware annoyed Linda, DeWitt’s solemn middle child, and she schoolmarmishly told Denny to stop. Tammy, her lips a faint Avon pink, was seated next to Janet, a detail-perfect miniature of his miniature wife.

“Hi, Daddy,” Tammy said. “Is it true Mrs. Harper got murdered?”

“You see her?” Denny lay his silverware soldiers down.

“Of
course
he saw her.” Linda rolled her eyes. “Daddy’s the Chief of Police. That’s part of his job, looking at dead bodies and everything.”

Denny bounced on his chair. “Was she all gooshy? Did she have ants crawling out her eyes?”

“Not while we’re eating,” Linda said.

DeWitt sat. The roast chicken squatted spread-eagled and stiff in the middle of the table. Fighting a wave of nausea, he took a piece of bread, folded it, and filled the hollow with a buckshot load of green peas.

“Did you see Loretta at church last night?” DeWitt asked his wife.

She didn’t look up. “I don’t know. I got there late. We sat in the back.”

“No, we didn’t, Mommy,” Denny said.

Janet’s pink sweater matched the tender hue rising in her cheeks. A Summer. Janet would be a Summer. All shallow, pointless energy, hurting without ever realizing. Preordained to be a victim.

“You made your Avon deliveries last night,” Denny said. “Don’t you remember? You was going by Miss Wilson’s to bring her the toothpaste? And you were late coming home ‘cause she kept talking about being down in her back?”

“Oh.” A strained smile. “That’s right.”

DeWitt took a bite of his pea sandwich, found it difficult to swallow, returned the rest to his plate. He needed to escape from his next question. Removing the napkin from his lap, he stood.

Janet got to her feet. “Where are you going?”

“Out.” When he opened the door, a cool night breeze hit his face. Shivering, he made his way to his squad car.

“When will you be back?”

Janet was framed in the light of the doorway, her blond hair tangled by the wind. He had been married for twenty years, and knew her body better than he did his own: the silken skin at the inside of her elbows; the honey-brown mole on her thigh. Twenty years of sharing a bed, and he didn’t know her at all.

“I’ll be at Loretta’s. Go on back in the house.”

He climbed in his car as the kitchen door closed on the light.

DeWitt drove to the Mobil station. His hands were so unsteady, he dribbled gas on his alligator boots. When the tank was full, he drove east down Guadalupe Road.

It shouldn’t have surprised him that Loretta’s house was dark, but it did. He parked in the drive and trudged across the grass.

“Boys?” He stepped up on the porch. “Billy?”

The yard was aglow from the nearby Line. A fall breeze snuck through the oaks, rattling dead leaves, plucking at the collar of his sweater. “Billy?”

The door opened at his touch. Entering, he slid his hand along the inside wall. “Police.” He found the switch and flicked on the lights.

Loretta’s living room was uncompromisingly neat. A folded afghan lay on a striped sofa. A plate of potpourri on a gleaming end table scented the air with apples. Loretta’s trophies dominated one corner of the room. Next to a crystal bowl of worthless dollar bills and uncashed checks stood a line of knitted Homemaker-of-the-Month awards.

DeWitt’s house was never neat enough for the Homemaker Committee. Janet’s Avon came in a distant second to Loretta’s Mary Kay. The tally of dollars was a barometer not of wealth but of power. Janet, once head cheerleader, once Queen of the Senior Prom, had become an also-ran.

“Boys?”

There had been a welcome mat outside the door. Just inside was another, a last-chance warning. He wiped his feet and walked into the kitchen.

The back door stood open. Across the surface of the no-wax blue-and-white floor, up the matching wallpaper, and over the polished cabinets were splatters of red.

DeWitt found a pot crusted with spaghetti sauce on the floor on the other side of the cooking island. Bending, he touched a finger to one of the red splatters and brought it to his nose. It stank of old garlic and oregano.

A sound made him look out the doorway into the backyard. The noise came again, the ring of metal on metal.

Crouched, he made his way through the kitchen into a bedroom. Halting, he let his eyes adjust to the darkness. It was a boy’s room, he saw, a place Loretta hadn’t tamed. The floor was ankle-deep in dirty clothes, and the walls were festooned with rock posters. By the bed he found an aluminum bat, its handle wrapped with black electrical tape. Hefting it, he crept into the yard.

Three Torku were capping Loretta’s well in the light of the Line. The closest looked up as DeWitt emerged from the house. Instantly comprehending the threat of the bat, of DeWitt’s aggressive stance, he stopped working and stepped away.

The other two, shadowy boxes with legs in the semi-dark, paused to stare.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

A Torku on the other side of the well took a stick from his belt. “You will go away now.”

“No, damn it. I won’t go away. Where’s Kol Seresen and what are you doing?”

DeWitt took another step. With a startled jerk, the Torku aimed the stick. DeWitt dropped the bat.

“You will go away now. It is good for all that you will be going away,” the nearest Torku said in a hurried, inflectionless voice.

“Goddamn it, where’s Kol Seresen?”

“Danger here. There is danger here.”

“Danger? As in sickness? Is there disease in that water?”

“I do not understand.” The Torku went back to his work.

DeWitt watched as the metal cap was fastened down. “I’m ordering you to stop. You’re destroying evidence in a murder investigation.

“The Kol’s orders. Seresen’ s orders. You must speak to Seresen.”

“Where is he?”

“Soon,” the Torku with the stick said as he turned to help his co-workers.

DeWitt sat down on a stump. In a little while a white postal truck drove up. Seresen and two other Torku climbed out. Seresen handed DeWitt a bill of lading. When the paper was initialed, he gave him the new jacket.

“You’re capping the well. I wanted Doc to study the water,” DeWitt said, sniffing dubiously at the jacket before he put it on.”

“You should not be here,” the Kol said.

“This is part of my investigation into Loretta’s death.” DeWitt watched the Torku unload the white truck.

“Why should the doctor study the water? He has water in town to study.”

“Maybe the water here is different.”

“Why should it be different?”

The Torku, working in unison, were placing canisters around the foundation of the house. “You’d know best why it’d be different: Maybe that’s why you’re capping the well.”

“I do not understand. There is plenty of water for everyone.”

“What are your workers doing?”

“We will erase the house.”

DeWitt jumped to his feet. “Erase? You mean destroy?”

“Destroy in a clean manner, yes.”

“I can’t stand by and let you destroy more evidence. Something happened in there.”

Seresen walked away.

DeWitt followed, close enough to see the coffee-with-curdled-milk color of the Torku’s brindled skin. A Winter, he decided. The Torku were all Winters. “Are you afraid of what I’ll find?”

“I am not afraid of you,” Seresen said over his shoulder.

A chill wind worked its way inside DeWitt’s jacket. “This is the kids’ house now. You’re destroying private property.”

“Perhaps I will build them another in another place.”

“Far from the Line?”

The alien swiveled, his expression unreadable. “Perhaps.”

The Torku workers ran back for a whispered conversation with the Kol. When Seresen finished his instructions, which included gestures and a great deal of grunting Torku speech, he looked at DeWitt. “We are ready. It would be safe if you would go now. The light that is given off is harmful.”

“Why destroy the house?” DeWitt asked. “You need to tell me, because right now it looks like you’re covering up something. Don’t do this.”

“And you expect me to answer your why, because if I do not, you will suspect my silence, too?”

Startled, DeWitt said, “Yes.”

“Then learn to imagine things differently. Suspicion is what comes of linear thought.”