The Detective's Garden (9 page)

“I love it here,” Dominick said.

“The ocean is so loud,” said King. “Did you know it was so
loud?”

“I’d forgotten about it,” Dominick said. He stood, stretched
his back, and brushed the sand from his pants. “Let’s go see
what Clarke’s doing,” he said.

“I know what he’s doing,” King said. “He’s poking the water
with a stick.”

“What’s he poking?” Dominick said. He pulled his daugh
ter up by a hand, hard but slow, so that she floated up above
the sand as though jumping in slow motion. Her mouth split
wide. She laughed. When he set her back down, she said, “Do
it again.”

Dominick sat by Clarke’s tide pool with King so close that her
side touched his leg. He could feel her breath. The clouds in the
sky had stretched out long and thin. Dominick didn’t say anything
to Clarke. He just sat. In the ocean water he watched dark seal
heads bobbing and disappearing. On a jut of rock sat a cormorant
with outstretched wings. A troop of pelicans took turns diving.

In a shallow tide pool, Clarke had discovered a juvenile lob
ster hiding beneath a rock. He had only a single claw. Domi
nick’s kids poked at the lobster with a stick. They wanted it
out in the open. They wanted to see how it would choose a
path through the clear water. They wanted it to come out from
beneath that stone shaped like a round of bread.

Finally, Clarke leaned back in the sand, resting on his el
bows. He had been thinking things through. He watched King
lean against their dad’s leg. “If they’re after us,” he said to his
father, “you better show us some things.”

“What kind of things?”

“Like how to take care of ourselves.”

“I’ll take care of you, Clarke,” he said.

“No, you won’t.”

Each day Clarisse invited the children to the main house
for lunch. She set the table with pastel linens. On the giant
butcher’s block that served as a kitchen island, she laid out
homemade bread and peanut butter and jelly and salami and
bologna and mustard and mayonnaise and tomato and apples
and pears and carrots. She said, “You go on. Fix it yourself.”

When they were about set to eat, she said, “I think I’ll have
something, too. I like bologna and a lot of butter. Which one
of you will make me a sandwich?”

Clarisse Parish was a kind woman. With her whole hand,
she often touched King on the shoulders but she only touched
Clarke on the forearm with her fingers. Her eyes, brown but
bright, reminded King of kindled wood. Clarisse didn’t any ask
questions about their father. When King came to lunch with
a hole in the knee of her jeans, Clarisse said, “Those pants are
failing you.”

“I fell,” King said.

“Where?” said Clarisse.

“On the rocks by the beach.”

“That’ll do it,” Clarisse said. “Take them off. We’ll patch
them.” She took a sewing kit from a cupboard and found a
square of denim and a needle and blue thread. King sat on a
stool in her white underpants. Clarke chewed on his second
salami sandwich. Clarisse pushed the thread through the eye of
the needle. She glanced up. She said, “You think I’ll get to meet
your mother?” and the children’s faces fell like the two halves of
a split log. “Oh,” she said, “what’s happened?”

She said, “You don’t want to talk about it?”

She said, “You know I’m a mother, too. A son and two
daughters. But they’ve grown up and moved away.”

She said, “I miss them fiercely.”

That evening, King and her father sat on the sand too close
to the water. Sea spray sprinkled their bare faces. Wind flapped
the clothes around their limbs. Foamy orange scum collect
ed along the surf line. There were a few birds. Seagulls, their
wings folded behind them, bobbing in the waves.

“What is it, King?” Dominick asked. “You look worried.”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“I’d like you to feel that you can talk to me,” Dominick said.
They lay back and an osprey rode an updraft overhead. Sand
pipers ran the shoreline in a frantic back-and-forth.

“I miss home,” King said. “I miss school. I want to see my
friends.” They watched as a few terns skimmed the deep water.

“I miss home, too.”

“I’m worried,” King said.

“Worried about what?” Dominick asked.

“Mom disappeared,” King said. “Are we going to disappear,
too?”

FROM HIS OFFICE
Charlie Basin dialed his son.
Oswell. An assistant district attorney in Baltimore. Tall and
stooped and too thoughtful for his own good. The secretary an
swered and Charlie asked to speak to his son. He hadn’t talked
to either of his children since Christmas.

“Dad,” Oswell answered. “I’m due in court in half an hour.”

“I’ve got you,” Charlie said. “I’ll be fast.”

“What do you need? Is it about Charlene?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, “it’s about Charlene.” He paused.
“Have you been talking to her? Has she been okay?”

“Before the hospital, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she’d been seeing somebody.”

“Dating somebody? That’s a problem?”

“No, well, that, too. But I mean she’d been seeing a psychol
ogist.”

“What for?” Charlie said.

“Depression,” said Oswell. “She’d missed classes. Some days
she didn’t get out of bed.”

“Does your mom know about this?”

“I don’t know. I presume so. I’ve only got a few minutes, Dad.”

“Have you talked to her in the hospital, Oz?”

“Twice.”

“How is she?”

“No good,” Oswell said. “She sounds drugged.”

“Your mom says she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Mom’s not talking to you?” Oswell said. “What’d you do?”

“Charlene,” Charlie said. “Charlene doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Oh. I think she’ll talk to you if you want her to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Charlie said.

“It means that you can call her, Dad. Ask her. See what she says.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “You have time to talk about
something else? Another subject?”

“What subject?”

“There’s this case that’s starting to get to me.”

“I’m not a therapist.”

“Good, ’cause I don’t need a therapist.”

“What kind of case is it?”

“A father running with his two kids. Killed a sheriff who
got in his way.”

“In front of his children?” Oswell said.

“I don’t think so,” Charlie said. “He’s an Iraq vet. Decorated.
Other Rangers I talk to say only good things. They ask if he’s
okay.”

“Is he okay?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Charlie said.

“What’s he running from?”

“His wife left him about a year ago,” Charlie said. “Then
she called in to the local police office and said she believed the
children were being abused.”

“Were they?”

“Child Welfare didn’t think so,” Charlie said. “Then, a few
months later, a deputy went out to ask him a few questions.
That deputy disappeared.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. We still haven’t found him.”

“Why’s this bother you, Dad?” Oswell said. “You’ve seen
worse.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie said. “Those two kids, I guess. It’s
my job to get him away from them.”

“There’s a lot of kids out there who need help,” Oswell said.

“Yeah?” Charlie said. “What if somebody had tried to take
you away from me?”

“You wouldn’t have let them.”

WHEN HIS SON
was born, the valley between his wife’s
legs had been as hot as a blast furnace. He’d had to stand there
in that frail V of flesh. Sarah Tower Sawyer. Her face like burled
wood. He’d just come back home.

After he’d finished basic combat training, he’d gone straight
to Ranger school, a brutal sixty-one-day combat course. He’d
been so excited. The course had four stages: Benning, mountain,
Florida, and desert, and he passed through without recycling,
without being sent back to try again. He could do hundreds
of push-ups. He could run five miles in under thirty minutes.
His body adapted so easily. In a few weeks, he would go back
to join the Third Ranger Battalion, Seventy-Fifth Ranger Reg
iment. He wasn’t nervous. He could follow orders. His body
never failed. He had never been this good at anything before.

But in the hospital with his wife, he didn’t know whether to
sit or to stand. The nurses bumped into him, their hips soft and
broad. Sarah’s gold wedding ring sat in the breast pocket of his
shirt. Her fingers were too swollen to keep it on. The doctor,
a squash-faced man dressed in white, leaned over her. “Push,”
he said, and she held her breath and strained and the veins rose
against the skin of her neck and face. “That’s good,” the doctor
said. Dominick looked at his sun-dark hands and the hooks
of grease beneath the nails and he thought, What’s good? He
stood there and watched the whole world open up. He thought,
We want things to be open? He thought, What comes next?
He thought, How far do we want to see? That round of head
slowly advanced and withdrew like the shuffle of heavy infan
try or like a great bass struggling against the line. He saw the
thatch of dark hair between her legs like river moss. A wrinkled
face. A warbling mouth and bluish lips and then a long quiver
ing wail. How could a young woman give birth to an old man?
A thing as wrinkled as used linen. It was slick and bloody and
sniveling and his wife was slick and bloody and sniveling, too.
But Dominick was sweatless and unbloodied and fairly calm.
He imagined it was just like this when you held someone while
they died. When the doctor passed the child into his hands, he
held it like he’d hold a fish and thought of gutting it or throw
ing it back.

“CLARKE,” KING SAID,
“you’re going to stay
with Dad and me, aren’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not going to leave?”

“I don’t believe the stuff he says,” Clarke said. “Do you?”

“Some of it’s true.”

“I don’t know, King,” Clarke said. He paused, picking his
words carefully. “Maybe he’s done something bad.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want you to leave me alone. No matter
what.”

“I won’t,” Clarke said.

“You promise?”

They lay in bed until their father woke and rose from the
couch. They yawned and stretched and brushed their teeth. By
late morning, they decided to head to the grocery store. In the
driveway, the neighbor in the dark robe stopped them as they
were about to get in the Ford. She came at them so that the sun
angled behind her. A cigarette dangled from her lip. Her hands
were in the robe’s pockets. She said, “I’m Roseanne Small,” and
her mouth wrinkled around the filter and the cigarette burned
orange. A paisley scarf covered her white hair.

Dominick said, “Nice to meet you.” He turned away from
her toward the truck.

She turned to the kids. “What’re your names?”

“I’m King,” said King. “My brother’s Clarke.”

“Howland,” Dominick cut in. “I’m Jon Howland.” The kids
turned to look at him.

“You look familiar,” Roseanne Small said. She coughed into
a closed fist.

“This is our first trip to Maine,” Dominick said.

“Will your wife be coming to stay?”

“No,” he said. The kids inched toward their truck.

“Why not?” she said.

“You always ask questions like this?” The collar of Domi
nick’s dark red vest was zipped tight to his neck.