Light from a Distant Star (25 page)

“Hey, hey, Boonie,” she whispered, staggering a little as he jumped against her. With his paws resting on her shoulders, she put her arms around his powerful head. “Hey, how’re ya doin?” They stared into each other’s eyes, and she could have sworn he looked like he was crying.

“Where you been?” Charlie asked, coming out of the kitchen. “Hey! Get! Get down!” he scolded, snapping a towel at Boone, though she assured him it was all right, Boone wasn’t doing anything wrong. “Goddamn dog,” he muttered as Boone retreated to a far corner, whimpering from the dusty shadows. “If it wasn’t for the goddamn Shelbys, he’d be long gone, believe me.”

She gave Charlie his bag of pill bottles and followed him into the small, cluttered kitchen. The cracked green flooring was sticky underfoot. Hard to believe her mother ever could have lived here. The metal topped table was covered with newspapers, as were the chairs. She cleared a seat and sat down. She figured she’d get right to the point. At
the counter Charlie was emptying half-filled bottles into the new ones. The rusty dish drainer next to the sink was stacked with what had to have been a week’s worth of clean dishes. Charlie probably just kept washing them until he either ran out of room or ran out of dishes. She asked if he’d heard from Max. Nope, was all he said.

She got up from the table and pulled the stiff dishtowel from the cabinet knob. She began drying his dishes and putting them into the cupboard.

“Leave ’em. Don’t bother,” Charlie said.

“That’s okay.” She continued drying. A couple of the plates were her mother’s. She set those aside, though she knew she couldn’t carry them back on her bike.

“Just don’t get old,” Charlie said, tossing the emptied bottles into the trash. “Cuz this is what it comes to.”

“Yeah, but you’re not that old.” She kept checking the flatware for food bits as she dried. Most went back into the sink for rewashing.

“What’re you after, my money?” Charlie peered at her, trying to scowl away a smile.

“Sure, if you got any!” She laughed.

“How much you want?”

“I don’t care, whatever you wanna give me.”

“Here,” he said, digging deep down into his pocket. He held out a dollar bill.

“No, no,” she immediately protested. “I was just kidding, that’s all.”

“No, you weren’t.”

This, she knew by his squint was some kind of test, one she was bound to fail.

“No, really.”

He studied her a moment before slipping the bill back into his pocket.

“You think he did it? Killed her?”

“I don’t know.” No one had asked her that. It was her most honest answer.

“But you were there. Right there with him the whole time, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“Pretty much what?”

“The whole time.”

“They keep asking when he left here. How the hell’m I s’posed to know?”

“He was late. He said you didn’t tell him till after fishing.” She hadn’t thought to tell the detective that.

“Well, that’s his story.”

“I know, but did you?”

He snorted. “Like it makes any difference?” Now his eyes narrowed to slits. “Maybe he did go before, ever think of that? Probably only takes a couple minutes to kill someone like that. Leave. Come back later.”

“I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. Though she’d never actually done the Japanese Strangle Hold, she knew there weren’t many steps involved. She wanted to leave. She’d come here expecting support as Max’s ally, but Charlie’s suspicions were too unsettling. Like hearing Max called a sex offender. In order for Max to be innocent, she needed him beyond everyone’s reach.

“Just doesn’t make sense, that’s all. Him and his dog, that’s all he cared about. Never even talked about a woman.”

She asked Charlie if he’d been to the jail to visit Max. He hadn’t, he said, but he’d thought about it. Well, if he did go visit, would he take her with him, she asked.

“You can’t go!” He looked surprised. “You’re the star witness.”

After she left Charlie’s, she rode her bike in the complete opposite direction from home. The Hillman County Jail was on the outskirts of town and she’d seen it plenty of times on their way to the lake. But never with someone she knew inside. The jail itself was a dark three-story building of reddish stone blocks and barred granite windows. A tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire surrounded everything. She slowed down, standing high on the pedals as she coasted past. She had this feeling that Max was staring through the bars at her, so she lifted one hand from the handlebar, but couldn’t do it. She couldn’t wave. And it was more than not giving him false hope. She was disappointed. Max had let her down. He was different from any adult she’d ever known. Like her father, Max was brave and decent and honest. But the one thing she couldn’t reconcile was him making her open that
door if he knew what was inside. He was the adult and she was the kid, and he’d dragged her into it. He shouldn’t have made her see that.

The next day she and Henry were walking downtown. He wore a baseball cap to hide his hair, or lack of it. His mother had cut it the night before, but with the trimmer on the wrong setting, way too short before she noticed, so she’d had to do his whole head like that. Everyone else in the family said he looked great, except for Nellie, who’d called him a skinhead, which made them all mad. He knew what he looked like, and besides, as she tried to explain, she’d want him to tell her if she looked strange.

“What’s the point of lying? It just makes him feel worse. And then when it’s true he won’t believe it.”

“Yeah,” Henry had leaped to her defense. “Like when your eye crosses, and they all pretend it’s not, I always tell you.”

Ruth had burst out laughing.

“Why? Is it now?” She had strained to see in the distant mirror.

“It’s not crossed,” her mother had insisted, glaring at Ruth. “It turns a little, that’s all. Just when you’re tired. Or you get too excited.”

Anyway, they’d already taken three detours through backyards and alleys to avoid kids Henry knew. Instead of being home alone all day, they’d been sent to the store to help their father. He gave them a few chores, sweeping and emptying wastebaskets, then retreated to his office, which had never been neater. All his research books had been packed into boxes. There were twenty or so brown accordion folders bulging with papers. While he wedged the folders into large plastic bins, Nellie wandered through the store, not really doing anything yet still managing to look busy, a skill she’d mastered in these last few weeks. Henry had found a box of old brass plumb bobs and had been carefully attaching them to the spools of linked chains on the back wall, apparently trying to see how many weights it would take to get the spools turning. Six on the larger links and four on the smaller links, because they both began spinning at once. As the spools of chain clattered to the floor, her father rushed out of the office.

“What’s going on? What happened?” Relieved to find no injuries and nothing broken, he cleared off the folding table next to the counter and gave them a worn deck of cards, each one stamped with the old
store logo from her grandfather’s time, a cartoonish woodpecker sitting on the “P” in a sign that read
PECK HARDWARE
. They could play rummy if they wanted, he suggested. They didn’t want to. Well, what did they want to do, he asked, looking perplexed. Henry said he was hungry. Her father gave them what money he had—eight dollars—to buy lunch, even though it was only ten in the morning. They walked around the corner to the coffee shop and each ordered a thick slice of chocolate cake and a large chocolate milk.

When they returned, her father was talking to someone. Mr. Andrew Cooper. He wore a pink-and-white striped tie and a pale green summer suit that had a kind of swampy sheen under the fluorescent lights. This was the first time she’d seen him since that day in the backyard. Her father called them over to the counter to say hello. He reminded Henry to remove his cap.

“Well, hello,” Mr. Cooper said in his mind-racing, wide-eyed way of trying to remember her name. She didn’t help him out. “Hello, sir,” was all she said. “And how’re you doing, big fella?” he said, knuckles rubbing Henry’s fuzzy crown. “Or should I say cue ball?” he added, laughing. Henry’s face reddened. Her father shot her a warning look. But in a million years she wouldn’t have had a comeback. She could barely think straight.

“Anyway, just give these here a look-see,” Mr. Cooper said, as he removed papers from his leather folder and fanned them out on the counter. “Any questions, I’m a phone call away—you or Sandy—I’m easy to get. We’re not as far off as you think. And remember what I said, Ben, any gap is bridgeable. Long as we keep talking. Dialogue, that’s what it’s all about.” They shook hands and she couldn’t help noticing how tired and worn and rumpled her father looked compared to Mr. Cooper. He followed him to the door.

Mr. Cooper turned on his way out. “You be sure and give Jessica a call now,” he said, looking back at Nellie. His long, cold stare cut right through her. He was telling her something. Ordering her.

“Course she will,” her father said with his hand on her shoulder. “Won’t you, Nell?”

She tried to smile.

“As a matter of fact,” Mr. Cooper said, “Jessica’s home right now. I
was just talking to Mrs. Cooper on my way here, and she said if I run into you, I should tell you you’re welcome anytime.”

“Oh.” She nodded.

“In fact, I’ve gotta make a quick stop home. I could drop you there right now.”

“That’s awfully nice of you, Andy.” Her father looked at her. “More fun than hanging out here, right?” One of those questions he did not want an answer to.

“Give Claudia a break,” Mr. Cooper agreed. “Tough duty tryna keep that one entertained.”

Nellie sensed her father’s uneasiness.
He’d
never be disloyal about one of his children.

“So Henry and I’ll start clearing out the storeroom,” he said, delivering her to the door where Mr. Cooper waited, folder tight under his arm. The back of her neck prickled, her fate now somehow contained in the papers her father had received from Mr. Cooper, who was already on his cell phone with his wife.

When she opened Mr. Cooper’s back door, he insisted she ride up front with him. At first he drove in silence. She stared out the side window. How about some music, he asked, turning on the radio. Jessica’s favorite station, he said. His slender fingers ticked the beat on the shiny steering wheel. She wondered if he could see how bug-eyed she was.

“So!” he announced over the music. “This’ll be your last year of middle school.”

She nodded.

“Hope you and Jessica stay good friends.” Fingers
tick, tick, ticking
.

Nodding, she hoped he didn’t notice her hard swallow.

“Like your dad and me. Known him since we were kids together.”

“I know.” Not really, not details anyway, but she couldn’t just keep nodding.

“Too bad, everything that’s going on right now. Lotta strain on everyone. On the family.” With a touch of a button on the steering wheel, he lowered the volume.

She nodded.

“Can’t be a very good feeling, I mean, something like that in your
own house.” He kept glancing at her. “Especially for you, being the first one in.” He wanted her to say something, but she couldn’t think what. “Must’ve been pretty awful, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed and hit the directional long before the corner. Its
click click click click click
beat in her sternum. When he did turn, he lifted his foot from the gas. The car crept along, with his voice. “Like being in shock, I guess, huh? The details, they must all run together, huh? Same thing happened to me once. Probably just about your age, too. I was in a car in the front seat and this man was driving; he was crazy mad out of his mind, and he just kept going faster and faster. Next thing I know the car’s flying through the air, and that’s all I remember. They said I was talking after, making perfect sense, or so everyone thought, but it was all messed up. All the details. I was telling things that happened weeks before like they’d just happened, that day, right before I got in the car.”

They’d come to a complete stop, in the middle of the cul de sac. “You know what I mean?” She could hear the scratch of his tie rising and falling on his starched shirt front at each little pant.

“I guess so.”

“Some things, they’re just not worth it, all that trouble and pain.” With a flick of a smile, he patted her arm. “You know what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir.” She didn’t dare move.

“You’re a good kid.” His hand felt hot. She wasn’t breathing. “So go ahead in.” He nodded toward the pretty house with its terraced front lawn and serpentine flower beds edged with white alyssum. “Jessica’s waiting for you. And remember!” He hit the unlock button and she jumped at the sound. “Things’re bound to get messed up. But that’s okay. That’s just the way it goes.”

She opened the door. “Actually, I remember everything,” she said with one foot on the ground.

“You mean, you think you do.”

“No, I do. I’m going to be the star witness.”

“Who told you that?”

“Detective Des La Forges,” she answered without hesitation.