Happy Policeman (9 page)

Chapter Seventeen

Schoen stormed into the living room and turned off the TV with a flourish, silencing the Roadrunner mid-beep. “I’m trying to wo
rk,
“ he announced.

Dee Dee and his children, up to their elbows in color, paused in their fingerpainting. His three-year-old daughter clapped a hand over her mouth.

“Daddy’s very, very busy. I have my daily sermon to write. My morning prayers. God speaks in a still, small voice. He’d have to shout to be heard over you.”

Marsha dropped her hand. Around her lips was the imprint of five small green fingers.

He said, “Dee Dee, there’s no sense in turning the house upside-down to keep them entertained. Can’t you read them a Bible story?”

“Well, I could. But they’ve heard them so many times—”

“Children can’t have enough of Bible instruction. And I thought you were going to do something with your hair.”

She was already capping the paints, sponging clean the sheet of plastic they knelt on. “Now, you know? I’ve been meaning to do that. I really have. But with . . .”

The doorbell rang.

“Tomorrow, Dee Dee,” he ordered as he went to answer. Doc was standing on the porch. A whiff of agnosticism and drunkenness came off the man like the overly ripe odor of rotting food.

“Got to talk to you.”

Recovering from his shock, Schoen led him to his front study, skirting the children and the dirty living room. On November 21, he had watched in his telescope as Doc played
The Exorcist
on his VCR. And when Doc taught at the high school in October, he confused the children with tales of evolution.

“Civilization’s back.” The physician sat in Schoen’s favorite chair. “Granger’s picking up music on his radio.”

Schoen shut the door to childish giggles and Dee Dee’s incessant prattle. His gaze fell on his bookshelves, and a collection of sermons by Jonathan Edwards. Doc read godless books full of dark anarchy, books by Dean Koontz and Stephen King.

“You listening to me?” Doc asked.

“Yes.”

“The Torku killed Loretta. I’m sure of it. Killed her boys, too. Time to do something, don’t you think? Ain’t it time we fought back? Listen. Most of the town’s pig-happy with the easy situation we got. But if they know the Torku are guilty of Loretta’s murder, they’ll turn against them.”

Schoen’s gaze slid to the Bible on the desk.

“So. You with us or against us?”

Flipping open the New Concordance at random, Schoen found he had turned to the story of Moses. Coomey had been lost in the desert for six years, thirty-four years less than the Israelites. And deserts were known for their temptations.

“What sort of music?” Schoen asked.

“What sort? Hell, I don’t know. You can’t hear much. A note here; a note there. The Line must be filtering most of it out.”

Schoen nodded. It was obvious to him now what was happening. Granger had tuned to the choraling of Seraphim.

“Count me in.” He turned, the Bible in his hand.

God was showing him the road to salvation. Schoen would loose a plague on their captors. A sign in blood must be written on each door. The tribes of Israel had been lost to chaos too, until Moses handed down the Law.

“Good. I’m glad you’ll join us.”

Not join you.
Doc wanted a temporal solution; Schoen wanted more. From a distance there was serenity. But God’s eyes, like His servant’s, were keen. Schoen could see past flesh, past bone, down to the cramped burrow where the soul hid in shuddering awe of its Maker.

God had given Schoen the power to make this small man tremble.
No,
he thought.
Not join you at all.

Chapter Eighteen

The bra smoldered. Smoke rose from the trash can in feathery spirals until, at the mouth, a chill breeze whipped it away.

“We never had a break-in.” Out of the comer of his eye DeWitt saw Bo watching with cautious sympathy.

“He might have picked it off a clothesline. He could have stolen it from the laundromat, too.”

DeWitt stirred the flames with a stick.

“I’ll lock the door, so he won’t know we were here,” Bo said.

“No. I want to throw him off-stride. If he comes to complain, we’ll know he’s innocent.”

“You know that’s not fair. He won’t complain, he’s got too much to hide.” Shivering, Bo flapped his arms and stomped around the litter of the yard: the odd planks, flecks of dried paint, balls of concrete.

“At least we know what he was hiding,” Bo said. “Why he looked guilty when you went to tell him about Loretta’s murder. He probably thought you’d come to arrest him for burglary.”

“I should.”

Bo stood hunched, back to the wind, like a steer in rain. “No, Wittie. Just let it be.”

In the trash barrel, an appliqued heart curled like a fist.

“I’d like to talk to Loretta’s neighbors,” Bo told him. “Maybe we could run out there before dark.”

DeWitt jabbed the stick hard into the can. The condom. Evidence that Janet’s lover was a careful man. The pill gave her migraines; she couldn’t tolerate IUDs. Billy wasn’t careful. But Foster was.

“—think?”

DeWitt glanced up. “What?”

“I said, maybe they saw something, you think?”

“Who?”

“Loretta’s neighbors. Put the stick down, Wittie. It’s all burned up now.”

DeWitt looked into the can, where gray ashes swirled. “All right.”

“I’ll drive.” Bo pried the keys from his fingers.

On the way through town, DeWitt made Bo stop at the Mobil station. Bo went in and got Cokes for them both. DeWitt walked to the payphone. He jiggled the receiver, got a dial tone, called his house. The phone rang. He wasn’t sure what he’d say.

The phone rang again.

Janet would be hurrying in from the yard, her golden hair down, her cheeks high-colored and Summery from her run. Her face would be pink and tender, like a flower in a field of wheat. Janet had a small face, just the size to cup in his hands.

Hi,
he’d say.

And there would be a long, startled pause. DeWitt didn’t call during the day unless something was very wrong.

Just thinking about you,
he’d tell her, like a note on a Hallmark card. He might sleep with Hattie, but he was always thinking of Janet.

The phone rang again.

Nothing he did, nothing he said, seemed to satisfy her any more. The bra had been an anniversary present, bought at a Victoria’s Secret in Dallas before Bomb Day. He couldn’t recall what she’d given him that year.

He’d made sure of the bra’s size, had taken the time to check her dresser drawers. He’d wanted everything to be perfect. And when he saw it in the store, the red lace and tiny white hearts seemed so much like her.

She hated the gift. He saw in her face that it was too vulgar or embarrassing or something. When the kids tried to peek into the package, she hid it from them.

Only Billy had gotten use out of it.

He roused himself from his reverie and banged the receiver into the cradle. The phone had gone unanswered too long.

If Bo hadn’t been with him, DeWitt would have driven to Hattie’s, even though Hattie couldn’t make up for the pink and gold perfection he’d lost. DeWitt had loved Janet from the time he was seventeen. Yet when he was home with her, he felt he was trapped in a cut-throat game with an invisible ball.

As he walked away, the phone rang. He walked back and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Checking to see if there is damage,” a Torku voice said. “You abused the phone. Damage can result if you abuse the phone.”

“I’ll remember that.” DeWitt slammed the receiver home with such force that the cradle snapped.

Chapter Nineteen

“You all right, Wittie?”

DeWitt glanced up from his brooding scrutiny of the dash. Bo had parked in a rutted clay drive before a white clapboard house.

“You coming, or what?” Bo’s door was open, one long twill-uniformed leg outside the car.

Disoriented, DeWitt looked around. Behind the house was a long chicken coop, its awning half-closed to the wind.

“Yeah.” He zipped up his jacket and got out.

“Miz Wilson?” Bo called as they reached the porch.

DeWitt knocked on the chipped front door. “Police, Miz Wilson.”

The house was churchyard quiet. Bo stepped back a couple of paces, his boots loud against the wood. “Etta Wilson!”

Etta Wilson—Janet’s dubious alibi. “Maybe she’s out at the barn.” DeWitt walked to the end of the porch and peeked around the house.

“You don’t think . . .” Bo began.

In the window to his right DeWitt caught a flicker of movement. He retreated, his rear colliding with the porch railing.

“What?” Bo whispered.

“I don’t know.”

The two men stood uncertainly. Bo’s heel made a nervous staccato on the old boards. Then white lace curtains parted with a jerk and a pallid face swam out of the gloom of the parlor.

“Go away.’ The elderly woman’s voice came faintly through the glass. The curtains closed again.

DeWitt knocked on the pane. “Miz Wilson? We got to talk to you now. Come on, Miz Wilson. If s the police.”

As though forming of ectoplasm, the face reappeared. “What do you want?”

“Just want to talk, Miz Wilson. You all right?”

“Stay out there, DeWitt. We can talk just fine.”

“Ma’am?” DeWitt put his ear to the window, but she rapped on the pane. Deafened, he reeled back.

“Don’t get so damned close. Ain’t you heard about the cholera?”

“What’s she saying?” Bo asked.

DeWitt’s ear still rang. “Cholera.”

Bo took his place at the window, “Miz Wilson? Cholera can’t spread by droplet.”

“By what?”

“Through the air, Miz Wilson!” Bo was screaming. Even without the barrier of the glass, the old woman was a bit deaf. “It doesn’t spread like flu! It breeds in feces!”

“In what’!” She squinted.

“Feces!”

“—what?”

Bo’s mouth worked in indecision. He looked to DeWitt for help.

“Bodily fluids!” DeWitt shouted.

“Oh.”

“We need to ask you about the murder,” Bo continued.

“I ain’t killed her.”

“We know that!” Bo was losing his temper. His cheeks were a furious red. “But maybe you
saw something!”

The face vanished. The curtains slowly undulated as they came to rest. When the front door opened and the two men walked inside, Miz Wilson maced them with Lysol.

DeWitt threw his arms up, but he was too late. His eyes streamed. Bo bent double coughing.

“I ain’t seen much of anything. Don’t know as how I’ll do you much good.” The old woman sprayed a layer of disinfectant on her sofa. “Now you boys just sit down.”

They collapsed on the sofa.

“Y’all want coffee?” she asked.

“No, we don’t have time, thank you.” Bo wiped his eyes and coughed again. “Just wanted to know if you saw anything strange Sunday.”

“Nothing. You mind if I have myself a cup?”

“Go right ahead,” Bo said before DeWitt had the chance to ask if she had visitors on Sunday.

Miz Wilson walked into the next room, still talking. “Loretta tore out of her place in an all-fired hurry, though.”

Bo sat up as though he’d been hit with a cattle prod. “What time?”

From the kitchen came a clatter of china. “Around five-thirty.”

“You sure it was Loretta?”

A cabinet door opened with a squeal and closed with a bang. “It was Loretta’s car.”

“Did you see it come back?”

“Didn’t notice.”

Bo said to DeWitt, “The car. I knew it. The car’s the answer. Where’d Loretta go? And, more to the point, where’s the car now?”

Miz Wilson came back, balancing a cup of coffee and a plate of homemade chocolate-chip cookies. Bo turned to her so fast that she nearly dropped her load. “You didn’t see who was driving, then?”

The woman hovered above an overstuffed chair, then sat as decorously as her age allowed. “Didn’t have my glasses.”

“Miz Wilson?” DeWitt asked. “Were you home Sunday’?”

“All day.”

“Anybody come over? For a visit, maybe. Anybody who can verify your whereabouts?” He steeled himself for the answer.

“Nope. I need witnesses and all?”

DeWitt quickly changed the subject. “What do you know about Billy?”

She leaned forward. “They was having them marital problems. He never was no good. Have yourself a cookie, Bodeen.”

Bo placed the platter out of DeWitt’s reach. “How’ve you been feeling?”

She bit into a cookie. “Got the arthritis real bad in my knee. Been down in my back . . .”

“When?” Miz Wilson must have gotten her days confused. Janet had come over Sunday. They both had a laugh when Janet admitted she’d forgotten the old woman’s toothpaste.

“Couple of weeks ago. Sometimes it don’t even pay to get out of bed no more.”

“Uh-huh,” Bo said. “No stomach upset or anything?”

“Used to love that Mexican food. Can’t eat it now.”

“Nothing else?” Bo asked.

She considered the question; considered her cookie. “Get the palpitations sometimes.”

“What about the Torku?” Bo asked.

Miz Wilson, like Seresen, was a good conversation shifter. “They put up a roadblock the other night.”

DeWitt stared dejectedly at the plate of cookies.

“Roadblock?”

“Yeah. With flares and them orange traffic cones. That was the day her road up and disappeared. Oh! And I got one of them little skin cancers about three weeks ago. Doc burned it off for me.” She held her arm toward Bo. There was a brown spot on the crepe skin.

“That’s the only time you saw any Torku?”

Miz Wilson was delicately sucking the chocolate off her fingers. “I imagine.”

“And you didn’t see who was driving Loretta’s car?”

“Nope.”

“Could it have been a Torku?”

DeWitt tried to remember the last time Janet had made Toll-house cookies. Six years ago. Before she began her affair.

“Might have. Did I tell you about the palpitations?”

“Pass the cookies, Bo,” DeWitt said.

“No.” Turning to Miz Wilson, he explained, “I’m trying to make him watch his weight.”

Miz Wilson tittered and threw DeWitt an embarrassingly flirtatious glance. “Oh, now. He don’t look near fat enough to me.”

“Have you seen any activity at all at Loretta’s?” Bo had taken a small notebook from his pocket and was scribbling.

“Just that blue flash when they up and made her house disappear.”

“I see. Thank you.” Bo got to his feet and stuck his notebook in his pocket. “You might want to start boiling your water, Miz Wilson. Just as a precaution.”

As DeWitt rose, his gaze dropped to the cookies, and comprehension hit.

A pale hand flew to Miz Wilson’s generous chest. “Oh, Lord. You think them Torku pushed them boys down in that well, don’t you. And them bodily fluids is in that water.”

“Just as a precaution.”

She jumped up, her arthritis forgotten. “You think them bodily fluids is down there percolating around.”

“There’s no reason to . . .”

But with a flutter of her skirts, Miz Wilson darted out the front door.

DeWitt turned to his officer. Without the sunglasses, Bo looked no older than eighteen—as young as the boy he killed. For an instant DeWitt felt he could tell him anything. But his urge to confess broke against the granite of Bo’s jaw.

“Bo? You ever wondered about the gas? Why it’s the one thing the Torku don’t deliver on time?”

“That’s because you don’t remind them. You can’t see the level in the tanks, so I suppose it slips your mind.”

DeWitt was irked that Bo guessed correctly. “So where did you get yours yesterday?”

“I hoard it. Like Doc. Like a few others. Anyway, the motorcycle uses less.”

DeWitt nodded. Cost—the reason Curtis and the city council made Bo a motorcycle cop in the first place. “Who was out on the street yesterday?”

“B.J. But then he only uses the three-wheeler when his and his daddy’s trucks are dry.”

And Janet. DeWitt always made sure the Suburban had gas, even when his squad car didn’t.

“Bo? I can’t see Loretta hauling gas cans around.”

“Shit, of course. You’re right. It had to be a Torku driving. “

DeWitt bit his lip. That hadn’t been the conclusion DeWitt wanted Bo to reach at all.

A door banged. The two men walked onto the porch. DeWitt took a deep breath. The air outside the house smelled bland without the Lysol.

In the side yard Miz Wilson was loading chickens into her Dodge station wagon. The Rhode Island reds had been startled into nesting posture. They sat—small, neat boxes of sorrel feathers–motionless but for the deft, anxious jerks of their heads. She plopped a pair of hens on the back seat and ran for more. When she came out, a chicken under each arm, Bo tried to stop her. She pushed past him without breaking stride. Two more trips, and she was done.

“There’s no reason to panic,” Bo said.

Miz Wilson got in the car and slammed it into reverse. The Dodge tore backward down the rutted drive, its windows turning rust-colored as the motion alarmed the hens into flight.