Happy Policeman (8 page)

Chapter Fifteen

DeWitt parked by the modular building’s garden, where a Torku was knee-deep at work amid a riot of autumn flowers. The rain had departed, bequeathing to the air its dank hush. In the silence, the four men got out of the car. After a little badgering, Doc convinced the gardener to call Seresen. The Kol, when he emerged from the center a few minutes later, didn’t seem surprised to see them. Granger turned on his radio, and Seresen didn’t seem surprised by that, either.

“It’s music,” Doc said.

“If you say.”

“Goddamn, I do say! Don’t you hear? Don’t you understand what the hell this means?” Doc bounced on his heels. He was about the size of the small alien, and DeWitt was afraid Doc would take him on.

Seresen was unperturbed. “Tell me.”

“We know there was a nuclear war.” Doc ticked the points off on his fingers. “We know we’re on Earth. We know Loretta’s kids got cholera from their well, and we know you murdered her.”

“Doc,” DeWitt warned.

The physician was in Seresen’s face, the alien staring implacably back–an imminent head-on collision. “I demand to know why you’re keeping us trapped here! And where Loretta’s kids are!”

“There is no nuclear war. No war. No music.” Doc said, “Play it for him again, Granger.”

Granger stepped forward, towering over the tiny alien. “What do you mean, no nuclear war?” DeWitt’s throat closed, rusty-hinged, on old sorrow. “Pastor Jimmy himself told us Civil Defense called.”

DeWitt remembered Schoen flying out of the fire station and into the March drizzle, translucent raincoat flapping, its folds gathering the light. The man, disheveled and unearthly, had looked like a hysterical angel.

“Thermonuclear war is impossible,” the alien said.

DeWitt pushed Granger out of the way. “Why?”

“Atmospheric pressure keeps the radioactivity in the compound. Once the warhead reaches space, the neutrons are lost into the vacuum. When the warhead returns to the atmosphere, there is no radioactivity to explode.”

Hope inflated DeWitt’s chest like a balloon. But the next comment from Doc punctured him.

“That’s bullshit.”

The bulbous eyes shifted to the doctor. “We know all manner of things, and know them better than you.”

“Well, I know some of the satellites were nuclear-powered. They wouldn’t have worked if the radioactivity leaked out.”

“They tell you they are nuclear-powered. Perhaps they lie. If you believe the emergency was war, you will perhaps believe anything. None of us have told you it was war,” Seresen said with what DeWitt could have sworn was rage.

“I don’t believe a damned bit of it.” But Doc seemed doubtful now. “And I still want to know where the children are and why you murdered Loretta.”

“It has never been my intention to discourage your questions. But I understand I have only to answer to the chief of police.”

DeWitt could see where the conversation was headed. What if Seresen had witnessed Janet and Foster murdering Loretta? Suspicion was one thing; direct knowledge another. Maybe DeWitt really didn’t want to know.

Bo spoke before DeWitt could. “Will you answer DeWitt’s questions?”

“Yes.”

Too late. The four men waited for the alien to elaborate. Seresen didn’t.

“When?” Bo demanded.

“Now.” Seresen turned his clumsy body and walked into the warmth of the rec center, a reluctant DeWitt at his heels.

In a corner of the large game room two middle-school girls were playing Ping-Pong. When DeWitt and Seresen walked in, one girl missed a return. The white ball bounced over the green indoor/outdoor carpeting like a golf shot across a fairway.

Seresen took a seat at a card table, and DeWitt sat opposite, folding his hands on the Formica. The alien was so dwarfish, DeWitt felt he was interrogating children again.

He watched the girl retrieve the ball and whack it back into play. “Where does the music come from, Seresen?”

“There is no music.”

“But I hear it.”

“Imagination.”

“No. I don’t think so.”

The Kol waved his boneless hand in dismissal. “Then perhaps what you hear is a return signal. Everything that goes up must come down. This is evident. Radio signals go a long way—eight years—but they eventually fall, too.”

“You want me to believe gravity affects radio waves.”

“This is what I say, yes.”

“Then we’re on Earth.”

“I did not say so.”

DeWitt slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and was surprised to touch the firm edges of Granger’s duck. “Six years up, six years down. You’re telling me it’s Earth music from the seventies.” He tried to remember what had been popular then.
Disco? We’re being bombarded by disco?

The alien patted the table. The skin of his fingers puddled. “Space bends things. Things are refracted. The universe twirls like the hands of a clock. What goes up does not necessarily come down in the same place. We use this phenomenon when we travel. It is beyond your scope to comprehend.”

“I’ll try.”

“As the stars shift, so do families,” Seresen said, adroitly shifting subjects. “It is good to be concerned with the alteration of families. This has happened to one of you, but this is all that has happened. That is the reason the doctor and the Bo are upset.”

DeWitt played with the duck in his pocket. “No. It was the way the mother died, Seresen. She was murdered. That’s what upsets everybody.”

The motion of the alien’s hands on the table was so sensual that DeWitt stopped fondling the duck. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and laid it on the table.

“She made an appointment to see you. Do you know what she wanted?”

As if he had come to some decision, Seresen leaned forward and lowered his voice. “All right, then. Let us speak of this problem you imagine you have; but let us speak of it hypothetically. A man creates a car, let us say. And let us also say that perhaps the car drives into a tree and kills a family. The man is a murderer?”

“No.”

“But perhaps the man does poor work on the car. He does not pay attention to the steering mechanism. Is he not a murderer, then?”

“Let me explain how it is.” Next to DeWitt lay a stack of xeroxed announcements weighted by a chunk of granite. He picked up the stone. “A man bashes in the head of another man with a rock.” DeWitt brought the granite down on the table harder than he intended. The crack resounded through the room, halting the Ping-Pong game, “That’s murder. Now a man throws a rock for whatever reason. Just for the hell of it, let’s say. And let’s say there’s a man over in the trees that the rock-thrower never saw. The rock hits and kills him. That’s an accident.”

Seresen turned to watch the girls. They had resumed play and were volleying easily to each other.

“One of the Harper kids hit a Torku with a rock,” DeWitt said.

“Accident or murder?”

DeWitt’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you saying the Torku died?”

“Never. I would never tell you such a thing. Thought is the same as act. I meant only to demonstrate the absurdity of your logic.”

“Look, Seresen. A. Torku was hurt. And Loretta wanted to talk to you before she died. I’m covering for you right now, but it’s looking more and more like you were the one who murdered Loretta. If you killed her for revenge, that’s understandable. We can work that out. I need to know the truth.”

Seresen eyed him. “Your family is important to you.”

It was as though the alien had slapped all breath, all warmth from his body, Numb, DeWitt watched as Seresen reached into a fold of his voluminous shirt and pulled out a small stack of photographs.

With cold hands, DeWitt took them.

Not Janet, not Foster. Three Torku. They stood at rigid attention before a mountain scene. The Torku at each end were tall; the one in the middle was shorter. The poses were so stiff that the picture seemed to have been shot with dummies.

“My family,” Seresen said.

DeWitt turned the photos over. KODAK was printed across white backing. He leafed through the snapshots again. They were identical.

“We sympathize with family.”

No, the pictures weren’t quite the same. And the Torku in them were real. It was the lighting that was funny.

DeWitt recognized Seresen by the mottled pattern above his right eye. In the first shot the Kol had his hand draped over the younger Torku’s shoulders. In the second the hand was touching what must have been the wife. In the third the wife was looking slightly to her left, away from Seresen and the child, as if something had caught her attention. In the fourth and fifth the shorter Torku had shifted his body. DeWitt leafed through them quickly, hurriedly, again. There was a pine branch above the trio. The shadows on the branch didn’t match the shadows on the Torku.

“A beautiful wife, don’t you agree?”

The artificiality of the pictures scared DeWitt to death. “Yes.”

“And a handsome son.” Seresen held his hand out. DeWitt placed the snapshots in the alien’s soft palm. “So take care to speak gently. It is a dangerous thing to speak of murder. Discuss it, and acts are set in motion. Are there any other questions?”

DeWitt opened his mouth to speak, but couldn’t.
Jesus God. Are you threatening me? What do you know about my wife?

Seresen rose. “It has been nice talking with you again. And I rely on you to explain the prudence of silence to the others.”

With that, Seresen walked away, disappearing through the steel door to the Torku side of the center. When DeWitt could postpone the moment no longer, he stood and walked out to the yard.

Chapter Sixteen

“What’d he say?” Doc asked.

DeWitt took a deep breath, readying for the burden of deception. “That, as usual, he relies on me to deal with the problem. He hopes I’ll find the killer soon.” DeWitt looked to Granger for support, but the canted eye lured his gaze to the man’s cheek.

Doc gave an astonished chihuahua bark. “What?”

“Said he—”

“”I heard what you said. Just thought if I asked again, you’d tell me the truth.”

DeWitt glowered. “Get in the goddamned car. I’ll drive you back to your office.”

“I’d rather walk.” Doc strode off. Granger hesitated as if considering the seven-block hike, then trudged after him.

Bo tapped DeWitt’s arm. “I’d like to go back to the place we found the body. Maybe there’s something you overlooked.”

DeWitt thought of Janet’s muddy sneakers, the possibility of footprints. “If you want.”

They got into the squad car, and DeWitt drove slowly toward the west end of town.

“Did Seresen tell you why he destroyed the house?”

DeWitt remembered the arterial splatters of spaghetti sauce. What had upset Loretta enough to make her dirty her kitchen? What had prevented her from cleaning it? “Seresen said . . .” DeWitt cleared his throat. “ . . . that she was haunting it.”

A dry, “Did he really?”

DeWitt took his eyes off the road for a second and gave Bo a furious glare. “I’m not in the mood to be questioned.”

“Doc’s right. You’re lying.”

DeWitt stepped on the brake. With an angry tug at the wheel, he pulled over and parked. To their left, out past a barbed wire fence, a small herd of Brangus steers raised their heads at the unexpected visitors. “What have you been saying behind my back?”

“Nothing. Not yet. But you’re lying, DeWitt. Makes me wonder,” Bo said without meeting DeWitt’s challenging stare, “if you’re involved with the Torku in the murder.”

DeWitt hissed, “Get out of the car.”

Bo didn’t flinch. He was so still, he didn’t seem to be breathing. “The law’s the law, Wittie. If you helped them, you’re an accessory.”

DeWitt sat back in the seat. The car, he noticed, stank of stale marijuana smoke. “You tight-assed prick.”

Bo’s pupils were emotionless dots in the ice-blue of his irises. DeWitt wondered if those eyes were so cold that fatal night in Dallas.

“You asked me to join your investigation to keep tabs on me, to protect the Torku. Don’t think I haven’t figured it out. You don’t like me, and that’s fine. Nobody in this goddamned town likes me much. But listen, DeWitt. Justice isn’t comfortable. The law has edges. Tell me the truth, or I’ll go after you.”

It was instinctive: DeWitt would always protect Janet. He would defend her against any threat: against Bo; against the truth; against the law. And if it came to it, he would pay for her freedom with his own life. Or Seresen’s.

Suddenly he wanted a cigarette more than he wanted a solution to the murder. If Bo hadn’t been in the car, he’d have rolled himself a joint.

“All right. Okay.”

While DeWitt talked, Bo sat looking at the dripping trees and the watercolor gray horizon.

“So if the Harper kid killed a Torku, we’ve got even more of a motive.”

“If. If. We don’t know the Torku is dead. I wouldn’t be sure the Torku’d died if Seresen came right out and told me. He lies about everything, and not just to cover up, either.”

“There’s always a reason for lying.”

“Is there? Maybe the aliens don’t lie the same way we do. Maybe to them lying isn’t wrong.”

“Damn it, Wittie. I know you’re a better cop than this. Why do you have to defend them?”

DeWitt punched the steering wheel. “Because the Torku are the only order we have left!”

“And you’d kiss ass to preserve order. Seresen’s got you by the balls.”

Seresen held DeWitt by more than that. He held him by his wife.

“I can handle the Torku.” With a vicious twist of the wheel, DeWitt pulled the car off the shoulder and drove on.

“Where are you going? Sparrow Point’s south of here.”

“To Billy’s place. Whoever killed Loretta had a truck and gas. Billy’s got a portable generator. Seems to me he’d have spare gas for that.”

“I made a cast of the tire treads. Dunlops,” Bo said. “The Torku use Dunlops on their UPS vans.”

Janet’s Suburban had Dunlops.

When they arrived at the construction site, DeWitt escaped from the car and walked the planks to the open door.

“Billy?” His voice echoed back from the plastered walls. Bo joined him. Together they walked into the garage. Against a naked sheetrock wall DeWitt found twelve gas cans. Five of them were full.

“See?” DeWitt clung to hope so desperately that his voice quavered.

“Doesn’t mean much.”

Next to the cans was a pile of yellowing magazines. DeWitt knelt, picked one up, and leafed through it. His gaze fell on the picture of a woman chained to a bed. “You think Billy was into stuff like this?”

“It s just a magazine, Wittie. There’s all kinds of pictures in there. Let’s go.”

“Not yet.”

DeWitt left the garage, trying doors as he went. In a shadowy corridor he stopped dead.

“This door’s locked.”

“Let’s go ask Curtis for a search warrant.”

“Involve Curtis? You’ve got to be kidding.” Taking a penknife from his pocket, DeWitt slipped the end of it into the lock. With two fingers he gave the knife an expert twist. The mechanism clicked, the knob turned.

Billy had made himself a French whorehouse. Across the thick, red carpet stood an ornate fireplace. Smoked mirrors were suspended above a dark four-poster bed. More pornographic magazines were strewn across the tousled covers, women’s underthings scattered among them. The panties were pink and white and blue and yellow.

“It’s a one-handed love nest,” DeWitt laughed.

Bo shot him a look. “What we’re doing is illegal.”

Bending over the bed, DeWitt used the penknife to sift through the undergarments, Billy hadn’t been choosy. Some were big, some small, some medium-sized. Under a magazine DeWitt found a red lace see-through bra, size B half cups, with white appliqued hearts. His chest emptied.

“Come on, Wittie. We’re breaking and entering. We’re violating the man’s rights.” Bo fumbled for his arm. DeWitt pulled away.

The bra was dotted with yellow stains and some of the hearts were rubbed off. “It’s Janet’s.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. You know that. He stole it. Remember those B&Es before Bomb Day? You remember? Nothing looked like it was stolen, but the locks were forced?”

“But that’s Janet’s
bra.”
A tremor went through DeWitt like shockwaves in water.

Bo’s voice was as soft as his eyes. “I know.”