"Chickens in my neighborhood sleep until noon," I said. "I told the Highway Patrol I was on a mission for the sheriff of Phillips County. They were impressed as all hell and waved me through."
Ben snorted. Richie came in, two steaming mugs in one hand, a quart of milk and half a dozen sugar packets in the other. The coffee in one mug was pale, the other black. "You want milk, sugar, anything?" Richie asked me, giving Ben the light coffee, waving his offerings in my direction.
"No," I said. "Thanks." I took the mug he handed me. Phillips County coffee was the only good-tasting cop coffee I'd ever had.
Ben sipped from his mug, made a face.
"Oh, shit," said Richie. "Too sweet, huh? I'll get you another one."
"No, Richie, it's okay," Ben said.
"No, I can—"
"It's okay, Richie."
Richie stood for a moment, shifting from one foot to the other.
"Thanks, Richie," Ben said.
Richie grinned, lifted the milk at me again in case I'd changed my mind. When I shook my head he shrugged, turned, and left.
Ben sipped his coffee. "Three years a deputy," he said. "And every time that kid brings me coffee, it's too sweet." His chair creaked as he settled into it. Ben had put on some weight over the years, a comfortable guy in a comfortable place. "Listen, I wouldn't have called you—"
"—if you could've found someone who knew what he was doing, but you couldn't, up here in the middle of nowhere. I count on that to make a living. What's up?"
Ben drank his coffee, looked off over my shoulder for the words he wanted. "No," he said. "Really. When you hear… but I've got to do something here."
The two big windows in his office framed Main Street; beyond it, distant, the shore and the sea. Tourists in Jeep Cherokees and locals in rusted pickups rolled along; people walked the sidewalks in and out of the shade of the awnings at the hardware store, the beauty parlor.
"Little over a week ago, we had a kid killed," Ben said, sipping coffee, watching me. "Eight years old. Tom Rogers' son."
The cry of a gull floated in through the windows, answered by another, then a third. I shifted my gaze to the sky, tried to find them. This was what he'd meant, then, that he wouldn't have called me. In the long years since the navy, Ben and I had both married, and both had children. Ben and Alice's youngest son still lived with them in the big wooden house; their other two were grown and gone. My marriage had been wrong, and short, and the only good to come of it, our daughter, Annie, had died in a car crash when she was nine.
I lit a cigarette, shook out the match. I watched the sky a little longer, but it was empty. Ben knew about Annie. I didn't know what he wanted, but whatever it was, he wouldn't have called me if he'd thought he had another choice. "Killed?" I asked. "Killed how?"
"Drowned," Ben said steadily, eyes on me. I met his look. He went on. "Down at Gray's Cove. All the local kids hang out there. Looked like an accident at first." He drank his too-sweet coffee. "Still may have been. He was alive when we pulled him out of the water, died a few hours later. They did an autopsy, routine, because it's procedure in accidental death, not because we thought we'd find anything."
"But you did."
Ben nodded. "Sexual molestation." He pushed each syllable out of his mouth, drank some coffee afterward to clear the taste. "Recent."
I pulled on my cigarette. "The two could still be unrelated, Ben."
"I know. Just because someone messes with a kid, doesn't mean the kid doesn't go fishing, fall in the water. But it also could be someone threw him in, keep him quiet."
"It could."
"Tom Rogers thinks it does." Ben clunked his coffee mug onto his desk. "Never much of a father, Tom. He and Agnes drink. Their four kids raised themselves. This kid, Frankie, was their youngest." Outside, the sun glinted off the windows of a truck. Ben glanced that way. "Nice kid, Frankie. Always looking for someone to say a good word to him, that's all. Father's an asshole, doesn't mean the kid deserves—" Ben broke off, maybe worried about what he'd said. But what he'd said was true.
"He have an alibi?"
"Who, Tom? Listen, Tom's always been an asshole, but not like that. But," Ben shrugged, "I've always been a cop. So yeah, I checked. He went straight to Grogan's after work. Agnes was already there. They were still there at midnight when I went looking, to tell them about Frankie." Ben picked up his coffee, but he didn't drink. "Tom said I was a lying s.o.b., just trying to scare him into going home. When I said I wasn't he stared at me, sort of froze. Then he had another drink. Like he always does, anything happens. Like it ever works."
The truck pulled away. I watched a tourist couple stroll through the sunlight and shadows. "I still don't see why I'm here."
Ben nodded. "The problem's this. We got a guy here, out by the county line. Bob Hurst. Been living here three, four months. Did seven years in Maine State Correctional for sodomy and solicitation. We don't have a law here, these guys don't have to register, but I got a heads-up from the state when he got out."
"Underage victim?"
"Eight-year-old boy."
I picked up my coffee again.
Ben said, "And that's the conviction, Smith. Families of four other boys swearing out complaints, but the prosecutor didn't try to make those cases. And God knows how many others they never heard from."
"Sodomy and solicitation," I said. "Five complainants, none for assault, no other violence?"
"No," Ben said, reluctance in his voice. "But now Hurst's spent seven years in state, because some kid testified. Could be he doesn't want to go back."
"You talk to him? Hurst?" But of course he had; Ben knew his job.
"Three times. No idea what I'm talking about. Never saw the kid. He's through with all that. Rehabilitated. Has a job, reports to his parole officer, lives a quiet life."
"You believe him?"
Ben's eyes held mine. "I swear as I'm sitting here, Smith, he killed that boy."
The scent of the sea drifted back in on a changing breeze. Cars stopped for each other, moved again along Main Street.
"How do you see it?" I asked.
"Hurst works at Ralph's Auto Repair out on Route Three. We got a park out there across the road from Ralph's. Peewee League softball plays there. Frankie would have been out there two, three times a week all summer."
"Anyone see him and Hurst together?"
"No. But the thing about Frankie, Tom and Agnes could never be bothered to take him out there, pick him up, anything like that. Sometimes he'd hitch a ride with some other kid's mom, but mostly he rode his bike."
"And you're thinking a guy like Hurst would notice that."
"All summer, Smith. Game's over, this kid's alone. All summer."
I pushed out my cigarette. "Alibi?"
"The day this happened, Hurst told Ralph he had some business to take care of, left work early."
"How early?"
"Before the ballgame ended. He stopped for a drink at the Trap, his usual hole, like he told us, but later, at his usual time. He's got about an hour and a half unaccounted for."
"What does he say?"
"Went to the outlet mall on Twenty-seven and to Home Depot. We checked, but no one remembers him."
"Places like that, they don't remember anyone."
Ben nodded. "And if I wanted a bullshit alibi, that's a good one."
"What does he say he was buying?"
"Roofing nails, roll roofing, Tyvek. Get his place ready for winter."
"You see any of that stuff at his place?"
Ben nodded. "But nothing to say when it was bought. Says he didn't know he was going to need the damn receipts to show some damn cop."
"Okay. Anything else?"
"I got a witness saw a blue car like Hurst's at Gray's Cove, but she can't swear it was Hurst's. I got someone saw a blond kid on a bike there, but he can't swear it was Frankie."
Ben took out a blue bandanna, wiped sweat from his face. The day was hot, but with an openness to it, not the stifling heat of the city.
"One other thing, one reason I called you. I got a nut lives up there, Gray's Cove, name of Larry Crandall. Lost a son to that water, years back. Last time anyone drowned, up here." Ben paused. He could have been thinking of that time, or of the quiet years between. "Larry never got over it."
"Blames himself?"
Ben looked at me, maybe knowing why I asked that. "Shit, no. Everyone else."
"Everyone, who?"
"Well, me, for one. Thinks I didn't respond fast enough, when the call came in. And Richie, out there? He was a kid himself, twelve, thirteen. Swam out, pulled Larry's boy from the water, but too late. Everyone called him a big hero, but he wouldn't hear it. Said a hero would've saved the kid. That's why he joined the department. Still trying to make up for that, be that hero."
The same as everyone, I thought wearily. Trying to be that hero, now, too late.
"Anyway," Ben said, "Larry agrees. Thinks someone, Richie, me, the guy on the ambulance, someone should have saved that kid. What's really going on, he was supposed to be watching the kid and he wasn't. Nine years later, he still won't talk to us."
"Won't talk?"
"Larry was never the sharpest knife in the drawer, even before. Now, anyone in a uniform talks to him, even hello-how's-the-weather, he just stares through you, like he doesn't see you. Calls up here every now and then, though."
"Calls up? Why?"
"To remind us his boy is dead and it's our fault."
"Christ."
Ben shrugged. "It's hardest on Richie. Larry knows when it's him on the phone."
"What does he say? Richie?"
"Nothing. Rule is, don't talk, put Larry through to me. I just tell him I'm sorry. What else can I do?"
"God, Ben."
Ben looked into his coffee.
I asked, "You think he could have seen something?"
"He lives up there. Spends a lot of time on the beach, just sitting. Watching, I guess."
"And he might talk to me?"
"The state offered to send someone, but to Larry, a cop's a cop."
I looked beyond Main Street to the cliffs and the sea. "Who found him?" I asked.
"Frankie? We got a call. Man, wouldn't give his name, said there was a kid in the water at Gray's Cove. Richie and me were there in three minutes, pulled him out. Like I said, seemed he might live. Richie broke down and cried when he died."
Ben got up, looked at something out the window. He drank his coffee. I didn't ask him what he'd done when Frankie died.
"You get anything off the nine-one-one tape?"
"No. Could be just some tourist, doesn't want to screw up his vacation by getting involved." He turned, sat heavily again in the sheriff's chair. "I got nothing, Smith. But I'll tell you what I got: I got a guy who did this before, and if I can't stop him, he'll do it again, some other kid, some other time." He looked out the window again, to the street, the shore, the sea. "And I got a town, they find out who this guy is, someone's going to go out there and take care of the problem himself."
"They don't know?"
"I been hearing whispers around town lately, but I think no one knows for sure. I told my guys, keep it quiet."
"Why?"
"We got some hotheads out here. I guess I was more afraid of what they might do than what he might do. I thought…" He looked at me. I recognized the look in his eyes; I'd seen it in the mirror more than once. "It's a quiet town, Smith. It's been quiet, all these years."
To that I didn't say anything. What came to mind was,
It's not your fault
, but Ben didn't need that from me.
"What can I do?" I asked.
"I can't get a search warrant. I can't get anything. I need something, Smith."
"You want me to get you something that connects Hurst to the kid?"
He nodded. "And soon."
"How?"
"Drink with him. Break into his place. Hold a gun to his head. I don't care."
"You're kidding."
"You know me better. Shit, if I could do it myself, I would. If I could send Richie, one of the other guys, I would. But anything like that, we do it, it fucks up any case we make." He sighed. "And shit, Smith, I'm the law around here. Some of these kids" —he gestured to the door, to the rest of the building beyond the sheriff's private office— "they have enough trouble finding the line. It can't be me pushes them over it."
