Murder at Willow Slough (16 page)

Jamie stopped, turned around, squinted at the officer. The wind was-n’t doing Jamie’s contacts any good.

“There’s one thing I don’t get,” Kessler said, stopping a foot from him. Jamie could smell Right Guard. Big hands grasped his shoulders.

“What is it?”

“How do you… I mean, why?”

Jamie looked at the trooper blankly. “Why what?”

Kessler stared, incredulous. He twisted away like a Brooklyn Italian, then back, his chin three inches from Jamie’s nose. “Why do you do this?”

Jamie searched his files for the right answer, but all he came up with was, “Do what?”

Kessler let go, kicked a rock, made a fist and frowned, got back in Jamie’s face,grabbed his shoulders again. “You little jerk,I get paid to be a target. I got a badge, I got a gun, I got a whole team of people behind me if I get in trouble. What have you got? You ain’t got squat!”

Jamie looked right and left, trying to figure out the answer to an unknown question.

“Why?” Kessler shook him fiercely, Jamie’s neck in a little whiplash.

He got scared. This cop was turning violent and there was no one else around. His heart started to pound. He searched the trooper’s face.

Then the eyes told him—oh, that why. An old, quiet feeling replaced his fear. The man seemed to be caring about him.

Jamie’s face softened. He stepped away, his mouth opened, his hands moved to help him talk. “Kent, it’s because…” It felt good to say the man’s name,but he shook that off and began again.“It’s because of people fired from their jobs, bashers beating us to death with two-by-fours; 380,000 dead of AIDS while Reagan and Bush let us die so they could get the radical right off their backs. Now we’ve got this Yalie yahoo from Arkansas, who only talks a good game.

“It’s because of Karen Thompson, who had her lover stolen from her by the courts after the lover was almost killed by a drunk driver; two women in Pennsylvania on a camping trip and some guy shot one of them to death because they’re Lesbians. It’s because of all those scrub-faced Gay folks in the military with perfect records, getting their lives ruined because of their thoughts, their feelings, they don’t even have to do anything. It’s because of Olympic Park bombers who target our bars, emergency personnel and abortion clinics, killing offduty police officers. Turn on the TV, read the papers!”

“But you could be in danger.”

How to tell this ignoramus? “Kent, it’s because of Gay kids like me, who grow up in places like this—Nowhere, Indiana in Nowhere, USA—with no one their whole lives long to value them for just one minute for who they really are. Getting called queer in Little League before they even know what the word means.”

Kent looked befuddled.

Jamie tried this. “If you see a car wreck, you’re obligated to try to help the people, right?”

“Morally, yes. Not legally, but morally, darn right. No matter who you are, Jamie. Call 911.”

Jamie’s hands spread out, palms up. “That’s the only reason, Kent. Gay life can be a car wreck waiting to happen. Anti-Gay hatred kills people, worldwide, and it has for centuries—as everyone knows, but won’t admit. But nowadays some of us fight back, try to put an end to all this needless destruction. We’re stopping at the car wreck and trying to help.”

Kent heard all this for the first time in his life.

Jamie glanced away a second, struggling to articulate a volcano of emotions. “This killer isn’t just a wreck, he’s a multicar pileup, only he gets to drive away—and he’s still out on that highway, waiting to take out someone else. It’s my job to follow him. I know what others don’t, that he’s a killer. I have a moral obligation.”

“But what if he targets you?”

“Man, I don’t want to do this; I just don’t have a choice about it. I’m supposed to stop following a story because it’s inconvenient?”

Jamie stepped away for a final glare at the woodpile where Glenn Archer Ferguson, a young man with a lover and the world laid out before him, had been strangled, dumped and left to rot.

It filled Jamie with rage. There is no why, ultimately, only people to care about.

Still Kent looked at him. “It’s more than inconvenient. It’s dangerous. And you do have a choice now, Jamie. I’m on it. You always had a choice maybe.”

Jamie looked at the cop with the dark curly hair. All he could see was Riley Jones with dark curly hair, smiling in the photo, handsome with his mustache from the clone days. He disappeared from a club over the Indy 500 weekend, told his friends he’d catch a ride with someone he met there. His friends never saw him again. “Do you know how much trust that takes? ‘Well, Kent’s on it, so don’t worry about it?’ Shit. If ordinary cops could solve it we wouldn’t even be here. Mr. Ferguson would be at home with his lover, arguing over the phone bill.”

“Man, I respect what you’ve done.”

Jamie snorted. “In some abstract way, I suppose there always was a choice. But when I learn about a massive injustice, I tell the world. I wasn’t raised to walk away when someone’s in trouble. Not by my mother, not by my father, not by this town. In a place like this you take care of each other when there’s a crisis. My family was on the receiving end of it one cold December morning. My father totaled his car and his body, driving home in the fog. As soon as people found out, casseroles arrived every five minutes. You don’t think that stays with a ten-year-old at his Grandma’s house?

“It is the one fine thing about growing up in Nowhere, Indiana. The only fine thing—but a fine one indeed. I’m proud as hell to be from this fucking homophobic small-minded little town, where people still care.”

“Will you be my partner on these murders? Help me with them, so we can give these families some peace?”

“Families and friends,” Jamie insisted.

Kent touched Jamie’s shoulder. “Families and friends.”

“Glenn Ferguson had a lover who turned in a missing person report the minute your damn system would accept it. His lover is the first in line when it comes to bereavement. It makes no difference that he’s a man. He is the one you solve it for—not the parents, not the sister; the lover, the one Glenn Ferguson was in love with. Listen to your victim. He’ll tell you who’s important. He’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“Right,his lover.Okay,partner? I need you.Will you help me?”When Jamie didn’t answer, Kent gave Jamie’s shoulder another little rub. “I need you.”

So Jamie found himself co-opted again, an hour after he didn’t even want to be friends. He stopped kidding himself. “Sure, Commander. I’m here to help.” He strode off.

“Wait.” Jamie stopped, didn’t turn around, but cocked his head to listen. “It’s Baseball’s fault you can’t be open.”

Jamie turned, looked into warm brown eyes; and threw him a pretend popup. The centerfielder shagged it and tossed it back to his shortstop.

17  

Wave

They headed for State Line Road. Jamie was sorry to be leaving, he liked remembering his childhood. He gazed at the scenery dreamy-eyed. Suddenly he said, “Stop the car.”

Kent did. “What is it?”

“See this ditch over here? This stream?”

“Yeah. So what?”

Jamie got out. Kent followed. They walked to the stream. Jamie said, “We think we know that the killer picked Campsite 16, in the water behind the woodpile, deliberately. But look at all these other good spots.” He walked west along the streambank. “See, this flows under the road and into Illinois. The water is running fast. This stream probably meets up with the Kankakee at some point, and then goes into the Illinois River, Peoria and beyond. The Quincy Strangler has a history of dumping his bodies in water, but why go all the way back there?”

Kent thought about it. “If he just wanted to get off the main road, he could have…”

“It would have been just as easy. And the body could have ended up in another state if he worked it right. Illinois is thirty feet away.”

“So?”

“So you’re a serial killer. The more jurisdctions you involve, the less likely the local cops are to connect the murders. It’s called linkage blindness, Steve Helmreich coined the term. This killer’s taken advantage of it repeatedly. He knows cops don’t really share information, that all crime is local, reporting is voluntary. The Illinois cops have never heard of these murders. If you’re the killer, why not cross the road and send the body to Peoria? Why was he even here? Illinois would have been much better.”

“These roads are deserted. Why go into the park, find the woodpile at campsite 16? It’s a good question. But it doesn’t tell us anything yet.”

“We don’t have to know why a killer does what he does, but what it is he did.”

“And the fact is, he was here, he wasn’t in Illinois. Sometimes you get so caught up in why here, not there, that you…”

“Fail to notice what is here?” Jamie finished.

“It happens all the time.” Kent looked at the little guy. A bad feeling started in his gut.

“With all these options, how did he decide? Any one of them’s perfect. If he had a hard time deciding, maybe someone around here saw something. How much talking to the neighbors has been done?”

“Not much yet. Not with any results.”

Jamie watched a cardinal light on a tree, perch and stare at something.He turned back to the car. “Let’s go.Oh,wait a minute.I need pictures of you.”

“Okay. What for?”

Jamie got out his camera, touched his panic button slightly to improve the auto-focus. He got good shots, horizontal and vertical. “I would do this anyway, but you’re good-looking. It’s a Gay newspaper, you figure it out. You want tips, we’re going to use every edge we’ve got. Now off with the hat, please. It makes you look like Smokey the Bear.” He snapped half a roll, then stopped before he fell in love with photography.

“Can I ask you a question? Why do you wear a uniform? Detectives wear suits, not uniforms, it’s part of your higher status.”

Instant raw nerve. Kent was embarrassed, but finally smiled a little. “Ain’t been to the laundromat lately. All my dress shirts are dirty. Everybody at the post teases me about it. I ain’t much of a housekeeper.”

You’re single, then. “I’m not fond of laundry either.”

Finally avoidance stopped working. Kent leaned over the roof of the car, staring softly. “There is a reason why here, Jamie. Illinois would have been better. He didn’t want Illinois.”

Jamie’s gut turned over; he fiddled with his camera gear, put things back in his bag. “I know,” he admitted, not looking up. “That stupid, dramatic little kicker.”

Kent made State Line Road, put on his signal to head left. “Go right,” Jamie directed.

Kent paused at the park entrance. “Okay, but we’ve gotta get to Rensselaer. This is originally their case. If I’m up here, I should fill them in. The longer I wait, the more likely that Johnson will be called out.”

“All these roads lead to Rensselaer if you know where you’re going. Do we play trooper politics, or do we find a witness? At least talk to someone, so the neighbors know we’re interested. Screw the Rensselaer post, it’s not their case anymore. You’re the Commander. Command them to wipe their own butts.”

Kent smiled, steered the Crown Vic right. Soon the pavement ran out, as Jamie had remembered, and Kent slowed the car to adjust for gravel. They drove a mile or so past nothing. “What are we going to find here?”

“This is Hopkins Park, Illinois, not so much a town as a mindset. There will be a cluster of houses on the left, owned by Black folk for a hundred years. Farmers, most of them; others work in Momence or Kankakee. They’re surrounded by Whites. Very little money, some folks have more than others. They’ve been here as long as we have—Civil War or a little later, refugees from the South. Came up here looking for cheap land the same as we did, so they could raise their crops and feed themselves in the Land of Lincoln. The only thing any of us could afford was this old sloughland. Their culture is a lot like ours—but African-American too, so unique.”

“I had no idea this place existed. Look at how lush their fields are. That corn’s eight feet tall.”

“Such a luxurious green. Are you the Kent in Kentland?”

Kent bit his lip a second. “My Mom’s family.”

“She was a Tanqueray. My family used to eat at the Nu-Joy.”

“My great-great grandfather’s house. He was the Kent in Kentland.”

“These small towns must be deep in your bones.”

“They are. Welcome home, Jamie. Look at what you made of yourself, coming from this no-account swamp.”

Jamie chuckled. “What an odyssey. When I was eight, I promised myself I’d move to New York someday. And I did. Two decades later, I’m right back here.”

“Given the tragedy that took place, you’re the perfect guy to come back here and make justice.”

Jamie felt a wave of closeness, gratitude, respect; Kent supported him. “Let’s do it together.” The first houses appeared; some were rundown, others well-kept, with bright geraniums and ceramic geese arranged in the yard. There wasn’t much life around, though, no cars were parked in driveways.

Ahead of them rose a cloud of gravel dust. Kent slowed down, steered closer to the edge of the narrow road. A farmer, Black and aged, wearing a straw hat to protect himself from the sun, drove a tractor toward them. The two vehicles began to pass each other, and on impulse, Jamie waved big and slow to the farmer. Kent, cued, did it too.

The old man smiled and returned the big wave.

“Him,” Jamie pounced.

Kent looked in his rearview mirror. The farmer was turning down a lane on the Illinois side. Its ruts led to an old red barn; further south, well back from the road, was a large Victorian farmhouse, white with black shutters, sheltered by tall old maples and oaks. In the back was a huge willow tree.

Kent found an opening on the right, Parking Area 16, State of Indiana, pulled into it and turned around. He drove back to the farmer’s lane. The mailbox needed paint, but they made out the name WALKER. Kent eased the car over bumps and ruts, chose a wide spot to park.

Jamie jumped out of the car first. The farmer climbed down from the tractor, mopped his face with a faded red bandanna. He eyed Jamie and Kent. “Afternoon, Mr. Walker,” Jamie called, smiling, approaching slowly. Kent donned his trooper’s hat, then followed, hanging back a little, letting his partner lead.

“How ya doing, fellas?”

“I wonder if we could talk to you for a minute? My name is Jamie Foster. I’m from Morocco, and my relations have a farm outside Lake Village.” It was hot here again on the other side of the lake. Jamie deliberately employed Hoosiertalk.

“Foster?” Mr. Walker said, folding his handkerchief and stuffing it into the back pocket of his overalls.“I don’t rightly recall no Fosters.But then, I reckon I don’t get into town much. Or over to Lake Village neither. How much land they got?”

“A thousand acres. Corn, beans, hogs, and the Nowak Brothers’ Lime Service.”

“Nowak. Now lemme see.” He gazed at Jamie. “Yeah, I’ve run into Deed Nowak.”

“You’ve met my Unca Deed?” Jamie’s eyes shone.

“Nicest guy you could meet, heck of a farmer. I met his mama once, a fine lady.”

“She certainly was, sir,” Jamie choked. “She was my Grandmother.”

“And this here’s Deed’s nephew, don’t that beat all. What can I do for you boys?”

“Mr. Walker, we’re here on police business. This is Sergeant Kent Kessler of the Indiana State Police. We’re trying to find some information about a young White man who was killed over at the Slough. Found him not quite a week ago.”

“Yes, I remember that. Terrible. You boys thirsty? I shore am. Been out in that field since 6 o’clock this a.m.”

“That’d be real nice,” Kent smiled.

“Well, come on in, then,” Mr. Walker grinned. He turned toward the house. “Maw! Hey Maw! Comp’ny!”

They followed Mr. Walker up four well-trod back steps to the kitchen. Maw was a short, stoutish woman, gray hair neatly piled up on the back of her head, an old pair of dark-rimmed glasses slipping partway down her nose, a pink and yellow apron tied over a blue-print house dress. She smiled at the visitors, but it was her husband she talked to. “You ole hoss, I was wondering if you were ever coming out of that field. Child, you get over-heated, the next thing I know we’ll be finding you keelt over that old tractor and making me a widow. You best heed what the doctor told you now,old man.”To Kent, “You fellas want a cold drink?”

“With ice cubes!” Mr. Walker bellowed, heading for the bathroom.

“If it’s not too much trouble, ma’am,” Kent said, all teeth and smiley eyes. Jamie could see why he always got the Dillinger’s mother assignment. Mrs. Walker moved slowly to an old steel cabinet overhead, white-enameled, next to the sink. Her kitchen was immaculate. On an old white stove, a pot of fresh green beans simmered, smells mixing with the aroma of fatback. A beef roast was done to a turn. Huge red homegrown tomatoes were peeled, thick-sliced, juicy and piled high on a platter. Jamie briefly stared at them, his mouth watered. He smelled cornbread too.

He gave Mrs. Walker their names. Glancing over her shoulder, she nodded and smiled. She handed down glasses two at a time and put them on the counter. At the freezer, she pulled out a steel tray of ice, which she took to the sink. The tray had a handle on top, which she yanked up to free the cubes. The old tray looked like it wouldn’t budge, but she was stronger than it was. Jamie’s Grandma Clara had ice trays like that.

Mrs. Walker put big cubes into each glass, then returned to the refrigerator to find Pepsi-Colas. The refrigerator was so stuffed with her food, only an architect could have fit in more.

Mr. Walker re-entered; he’d washed his face and removed his outer shirt. Brown eyes, old and wise, surveyed Maw’s progress. “Sit down, boys, sit down,” he said, scraping out his chair at the steel and vinyl dinette in the middle of the room.

Mrs. Walker brought two glasses of cola, laid one in front of her husband and one in front of the police officer. She returned to her counter for the others.“Believe I’ll sit me down too, just for a minute.Now don’t mind me.” She sat down in her chair, but didn’t pull it up to the table with the men.

“Mrs. Walker, Mr. Walker, thank you for your hospitality. We’re sorry to intrude,” Jamie began. “I know you’ve got supper on the stove, ma’am, so we’ll just be a minute.”

“Land, child, don’t you never-mind. We’ve got plenty, and we’d be real happy if you could take a bite with us.”

“You’re very kind,” Jamie smiled. “I’m afraid we can’t, though. Sgt. Kessler has business in Rensselaer this evening. We’re going to have to miss that cornbread of yours. I hear it’s famous.”

She put her head back and chuckled. “Just ole cornbread, same as I’ve been making for sixty years. You’ve been talking again, ole man,” she teased her husband.

“Now Maw, they here on bidness,” Mr. Walker growled. “You heard the fella, this here’s police officers.”

“It is kind of you both to let us into your home,” Jamie said. “Ma’am, you keep a fine house.” Mrs. Walker smiled. Jamie took a sip of cola. “The reason we’re here has to do with a young White man whose body was found at the Slough a few days ago. Maybe you heard about it.”

Mrs. Walker folded her arms over her bosom, looked down, shook her head sadly. “Poor baby. Tsk-tsk-tsk. Lord have mercy on his poor suffering mama.”

The back door opened. A lithe young man in a white dress shirt, tie and gray dress slacks bounded into the room, suit jacket over his shoulder. He halted when he saw Kent and Jamie. “Mama? Daddy? What’s going on?”

“LeRoy, now, where are your manners? Who taught you to come into a room that way?” Mrs. Walker jumped up to make a drink for her son.

“Daddy? Is everything all right? What’s this about?” LeRoy hung his jacket on a hook next to the door, but he never took his eyes from the strangers.

“Now son, these officers is here concerning that young man was found over at the Slough a few days ago. They want to ask us some questions, now. You heard your Mama.”