by Ronald Malfi
I was halfway through my beer when a man in an embroidered western button-down shirt and glasses perched on the bridge of his blade-thin nose came over to the booth. He was bald except for a tight wreath of graying hair at his temples. He looked more like an accountant than a former police detective. “Aaron Decker?” he said.
“Mr. Sloane.” I stood, shook his hand. “Thanks so much for your time.”
“Go ahead, sit down.” He sat opposite me in the booth. He was maybe in his sixties, in good shape, and with a relaxed air about him. He removed his glasses and set them on the table. “Full disclosure,” he said, his hands spread wide to suggest he had nothing to hide. “My wife thinks this is a bad idea.”
“You mean meeting with me? How come?”
“High blood pressure. She thinks I handle stress poorly.” He tipped me a wink.
“You were a police detective for twenty years,” I said, recalling the bio in the newspaper article.
He held up two fingers in a V. “Twenty-two years,” he corrected. “And I tell her, it’s not work-related, the high blood pressure. It’s genetic. My old man had high blood pressure. His old man had high blood pressure. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, she doesn’t listen to me. I’m retired but I still answer to the boss, if you know what I mean.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“You hungry?” He raised a hand and waved at the waitress with the sprout of purple hair. She sidled over and Sloane ordered a pitcher of beer and a plate of cheeseburger sliders. When she left, he folded his hands on the table and said, “So you’re who now?”
“My wife was Allison Thompson. Her sister Carol was murdered in Woodvine, Pennsylvania, in 2004. She was strangled to death and found in a river. According to what I’ve read, you were the lead detective on the case.”
“Carol Thompson, yeah,” he said, and for a brief moment his easygoing expression fled from his face, replaced by something dark and haunting. “Haven’t forgotten that one. I’ve seen some stuff, but that was, hands down, the single worst thing that happened while I was in Woodvine. She was seventeen at the time, I think. Just brutal, what happened to her. You said your wife is her sister?”
“She was, yeah. My wife died back in December.”
“Is that right? Hell, I’m sorry to hear that. What happened to her, if you don’t mind me asking?”
I glanced down at my hands, which were tapping nervously on the tabletop. “She was killed in a shooting at a shopping mall just before Christmas. Back in Maryland, where we live. Lived. Live.” I was suddenly nervous.
“Annapolis,” Sloane said, his face expressionless. “Gunman was some shitbag in his twenties. Parents had money.”
“That’s right,” I said, astonished that he was familiar with the incident. “Most people don’t remember it.”
“It was just a few months ago,” Sloane said.
“This country has a short memory,” I said.
“It happens too often,” Sloane added. “People get numb. I don’t think it’s callousness or even a short memory, although maybe you’re right.”
“Then what do you think it is?”
“Fear,” he said. “Used to be something like this happened, it was an anomaly. It didn’t fit in with the fabric of the world, and so people could afford to be horrified not only by the violence and terror of it, but by the sheer absurdity, the impossibility of it. That kid in Texas takes potshots from the university observation deck, kills over a dozen people, and the country is petrified not just by horror but by disbelief. That was in the sixties. Back then, something like that, people could watch it and still not relate to it. Something like that would never happen to them, right? But now, it’s like every week there’s something on the news. People are no longer exempt. It’s no longer an absurdity. So what do they do? They try to erase it from the public consciousness as quickly as possible. None of us are just spectators anymore. We’ve all got a stake in the game.”
“That just sounds so bleak.”
“Bleak, yeah. And dangerous. You keep turning away from stuff like this, it allows it to grow and fester in the dark.” His lips tightened, and he said, “I’m sorry about your wife, Aaron. It’s a terrible thing.”
I nodded and found, in that moment, I could not say anything more about it.
“I got a memory of her being just a kid, your wife,” Sloane said, his voice a bit more cheery now. “She was a smart kid. Bold, you know? In a way a lot of kids aren’t. I’m glad to hear she got out of that town. Places like that are like a prison sentence for someone as smart and bold as your wife. You ever been?”
“To Woodvine? No, I haven’t. My wife never talked about it all that much. I guess there was a lot of heartache for her there.”
“It’s a quiet, isolated little town. Very evangelical, with a church on every corner. A place where everyone knows everyone else. A safe place, though not without its”—he seemed to hunt for the word—“its idiosyncrasies, shall we say? Most people, they spend their entire lives living in a place like that. They’re born there, they eke out an existence there, they die there. Few people ever get out. And when they do, they very rarely ever come back. It’s like breaking free from a trap you didn’t know you were caught in.”
“You got out,” I said.
Peter Sloane grinned, and thumbed at the cleft in his chin. “Well, I’m the exception to the rule, and not just because I got out but also because I wasn’t born there. I got in, you might say. Wife and I are from Philly. I had a heart attack in my early forties—early forties, how about that, right?—and Dottie, my wife, she thought the pace would be slower in the sticks. Mostly, it was.” He set both his hands down on the tabletop. “But you didn’t come here to get my bio, did you?”
“I did not,” I said, and offered him a tired smile. “Like I said, Allison never talked about where she grew up. She mentioned her sister only a handful of times. She told me Carol had drowned when she was a teenager. I’ve only recently learned the truth about what happened to Carol since Allison died.”
Sloane nodded, as if this was the most basic thing in the known world.
“I called the Woodvine PD but they weren’t very helpful,” I added.
“Well, technically,” he said, “it’s still an open investigation. They can’t tell you much.”
“I’m hoping you can,” I said, cutting to the chase.
He spread his hands open on the table and made a face that suggested something akin to regret. “Nothing more I can really tell you, Aaron, other than what you probably already know from looking into it on your own. It was in all the papers for a while. The town took it real hard, and of course everyone was frightened for a time. We never caught the guy.”
“Was there ever a suspect?” I asked.
I watched as Peter Sloane’s mouth tightened the slightest bit. Something in his eyes turned hard, but it was a fleeting observation, quick as a minnow darting through shallow surf—there and then gone.
The waitress arrived with our pitcher of beer. She poured two glasses then told us our cheeseburgers would be out shortly. Peter Sloane waited for her to depart before talking again.
“You ever have the good fortune to meet your wife’s mother?” Sloane asked, and I could easily discern the sarcasm in his voice.
“No, sir.”
“Lynn Thompson was what you might charitably call ‘colorful.’ She was an alcoholic, and when she wasn’t drunk, she sleepwalked through an eight-hour shift as a receptionist at the local refinery to earn a paycheck. The girls’ father had been a long-haul trucker who was killed in a highway incident when the girls were little, so there’d never really been a father in that house. Rumor had it Keith Thompson had practiced the same recreational activities as his wife, and that he’d had a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit when he drove his semi through a guardrail and down a ravine somewhere in Colorado. Maybe you already know this.”
“I knew her father had been killed in an automobile accident when she w
as young. That was it.”
“Anyway, I’m sure being widowed with two young kids isn’t generally a recipe for success, but Lynn Thompson took a nosedive and never looked back. Her manager at the refinery kept her on for a while because he felt sorry for her, but he could only do that for so long. The same day she got fired just happened to be the same day the railing on a two-story set of metal stairs came loose, and down went Lynn. Dislocated her hip, broke her leg, whatever else. Coincidence? You tell me. But as you might guess, it’s the mental anguish that really rattled her. She threatened a lawsuit but settled for what was probably a modest payout from AstroOil, the parent company.
“The girls fended for themselves for the most part. A few neighbors and some of the local churches occasionally stepped in to help where they could, but depending on what state of inebriation Lynn was in at the time, she responded to these charities with either a cold thanklessness or outright contempt for anyone who dared insert themselves into their lives.
“As you can imagine, she wasn’t too discerning when it came to her love life, either. I’ll spare Lynn Thompson the indecency of any detail here, Aaron, but you seem like a fellow who’s capable of using his imagination.”
“I never knew it was like that. Allison had said that her mother was an alcoholic, that she basically drank herself to death, but she said it was because of her sister’s death. She never talked about any of this stuff.”
“Worst part was when Carol began to emulate her mother. Most natural thing in the world, but here we got a smart, attractive, outgoing teenage girl who’s got no other role model and can’t help but begin to mimic her mother’s behavior. It’s all she ever knew, right? She got into drinking, some casual drug use, was fooling around with boys when she was at an age that was just young enough to be cringeworthy.”
This statement made me think of Gabrielle Colson-Howe, and how Bobbi Negri had mentioned that Gabrielle had been sexually active since she was twelve years old. Hearing your sister described in such a similar fashion disheartened me, Allison. There existed such a clearly visible blueprint for misery—particularly for teenage girls—yet everyone always seemed to ignore it.
“Carol had been grabbed for drinking with friends in the school-yard on a number of occasions,” Sloane went on. “You try to impress upon them that they’re headed in the wrong direction, that the path they’re choosing to take will only lead to problems in the long run. And sometimes you even start to get through to one or two of them. But then they go home and find Mom or Dad passed out on the sofa, empty bottles scattered around like bowling pins, maybe a joint smoldering in an ashtray, and then what hope do they really have?”
A woman in a paisley blouse and sensible shoes marshaled over to our booth. I recognized her stern, birdlike features from the photo in the newspaper article about Sloane and his wife.
“Mr. Aaron Decker,” she said, proffering a hand. There was a smile on her face but it did not appear to be wholly welcoming. “Dorothy Sloane. We spoke on the phone.”
“This is Dottie, my wife,” Sloane said.
I shook her hand and thanked her for passing along my message to her husband. I started to say how much I appreciated their time and what a wonderful little place they had here, but she cut me off without ceremony.
“This whole thing happens under one condition,” she said. “My husband does not need to play police detective, Mr. Decker. He’s retired from that business. Now, he runs a fairly successful bar where our crab cakes will rival any you’ve ever had.”
“Well,” I said, “I’m from Maryland, so that’s a pretty bold statement.”
“We got a plate of sliders coming,” Sloane groused at his wife.
“Forget it,” said Dottie. “I’m bringing Mr. Decker the crab cake.” Then she leveled a finger at my face. An impressive diamond gleamed from her knuckle. “For the record, I think this is a bad idea. He’s got a bum ticker.”
“Christ, Dot,” Sloane said.
“Promise me you won’t get him all worked up,” Dottie said, ignoring her husband and not taking her eyes from me.
“I promise,” I said, and crossed my heart.
“Yeah, well,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“I’m trustworthy,” I assured her.
“Yeah, well,” she said again, but with a bit more emphasis, then tipped her glance at her husband. That index finger swiveled over to him. “Twenty minutes,” she said. “No more.”
“Okay, boss,” Sloane said, and saluted her.
“You know your limitations, Peter. Don’t be obtuse.”
“I get it, I get it,” he said, flapping a hand at her. “You’re eating into my time.”
Her face softened then. Her smile reappeared, more genuine this time. She touched the back of her husband’s head, then marched over to the stage to consort with the stoned musician who was still trying to tune his guitar.
“She thinks running a business is less stressful than being a cop,” Sloane said. “Anyway, do I look like I’m ready to roll over dead?”
“She’s just worried about you.”
“I don’t golf, I don’t bowl. Give me a break, right?”
I laughed. But then it occurred to me that when I reached Peter Sloane’s age, there would be no you there to worry about me. No gentle hand grazing the back of my head. I would be alone.
“Enter James de Campo,” Sloane said. He had lowered his voice, but that did not mask the disdain in it. “You asked if there was ever a suspect? Good old Jimmy. This guy was the latest in Lynn Thompson’s sordid parade of men. A real piece of work, and just the type of guy you could imagine someone like Lynn Thompson ending up with. It’s like goddamn science, the way bad elements gravitate toward each other.”
“So he was a drunk, too,” I said.
“He was the raging storm cloud in an already overcast sky, if you’ll forgive the poetic license,” Sloane said. “Lynn Thompson didn’t just pop up around town half in the bag anymore; now she was sporting some, ah, ocular discoloration, if you catch my meaning.” He motioned around one eye with his index finger. “Neighbors complained about the fighting and we were always dispatching officers out to their place on Cane Road. They lived in a shitty little A-frame a ways off the main road, tucked behind some trees and a distance from some of the other neighbors, so you can imagine how loud they must’ve been.
“Of course, Lynn never pressed charges. They never do. I had a good sit-down with her at one point, too, told her she was setting a poor example for the girls, letting this kind of thing go on under her roof. It didn’t do any good.”
“What about Carol and Allison?” I asked. “They obviously had witnessed the abuse.”
“They didn’t just witness it,” Sloane said, picking up his beer. He brought it halfway to his lips but did not close the distance. “They were subjected to it. They were victimized. James de Campo terrorized that household.”
“I can’t believe this,” I said. “This sounds like someone else’s life. Why would she not say anything about this to me? Why keep it a secret?”
Sloane sipped his beer then set it back down on the table. “I don’t have an answer for that. Maybe it’s better to pretend things like that never happened in the first place in order to move beyond them. Maybe she had to lie to herself to do it, and that meant lying to you.”
“I wish I’d known.”
“Wouldn’t have changed anything.”
He was right—it wouldn’t have changed anything. Except that it would have been a large and vulnerable part of you that I could have shared, and maybe helped you cope with, helped you carry that weight.
—You’re wrong, argued other-Aaron. That was not Allison. She was the last person who needed some Prince Charming to swoop in and tell her everything would be all right. She would have been disappointed in you had you tried. And what would you have done, anyway? Knowing this would have just made you feel helpless and futile. She was always stronger than you.
“He brok
e your wife’s leg, you know,” said Peter Sloane.
It was my turn to pause with my beer halfway to my lips. “What?”
“The story was she fell down the stairs. I never bought it. She went down those stairs, all right, but I’d bet dollars to donuts James de Campo was standing at the top of those stairs when it happened.”
“She had metal pins in her leg,” I said, rubbing my own left leg beneath the table as if to feel your phantom scar, as I had so often done when we’d lain in bed together. “She said she’d fallen out of a tree when she was a kid and broke it.”
“Yeah, well,” Sloane said, and drank some more of his beer. “I talked with Allison, tried to get her to tell me what really happened. She was, I don’t know, maybe thirteen or fourteen at the time. And even at that age she was the smartest one living in that house. I thought she’d tell me, because even though I could tell she was afraid of de Campo, I knew she also hated him, and hate can be one hell of a motivator. But in the end she stuck to the story—she’d been carrying a load of laundry and took a header down the stairs.
“Again, I went to Lynn, told her you gotta press charges. This shit will keep happening and that drunk fool might even wind up killing someone if she didn’t use her head and tell him to hit the bricks. But again, it was like talking to a doorknob. Something about Lynn Thompson, when you told her something she didn’t want to hear, you could actually see doors and windows shutting up inside her. Like the way you’d close up a ship in preparation for a storm? Batten the hatches. That was Lynn Thompson—always battening the hatches.”
“What about de Campo? Did you confront him about it?”
“I did. I told him I knew he’d hurt that kid and that he needed to leave Lynn Thompson and her girls alone. But he just laughed it off and told me to get off his girlfriend’s property. Heck, I think he proposed to Lynn just to spite me, because it all happened around the same time.”
