A Child's Garden of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  “Monday about eight,” Lyon said and put an arm on the morose chief’s shoulder.

  “Damn it all, Lyon. Just think about it.”

  “I know you’ll do all that can be done.”

  “Which won’t be much.”

  Lyon walked toward the small red Datsun parked beyond the police cruisers, his pace becoming quite brisk as from the corner of his eye he saw a group of officers coming down the hill carrying large rubber bags.

  He was compelled to turn. Two officers carried each bag, except for the smallest bag, held by the youngest officer—carried away from his body as if he were afraid of defilement.

  In the car he turned the ignition too violently. The starter engine buzzed and the car stalled. Sitting back in the seat he breathed deeply and then slowly started the engine again. Turning the wheels abruptly he pulled away from the line of cruisers and accelerated quickly down the country road. The late afternoon sun spreckled through overhanging trees and cast rapidly changing patterns across his face, and he jammed the gear into fourth and felt the car jerk forward with gained momentum.

  He thought again of his relationship with the large police officer. Initially a natural bond of interest between intelligence officer and ranger captain; a needed thing in a combat zone. Later, the discovery that they were both Nutmeggers, and finally R and R leave in Japan and Lyon’s introduction, by the captain, into strange and erotic rites with dimpled young Japanese women.

  Chief Rocco Herbert, at one time the youngest chief in the state. Still certainly the largest in physical size. The man’s sheer mass aided his innate gentleness and usually precluded the necessity for him to utilize violent methods. A man who during his Army career wanted to be division food officer, and by order of senior command stayed on as ranger captain, delegated to carry out the most dangerous and necessary missions of the division.

  Rocco Herbert, professional police officer whose greatest desire was election to town clerk—keeper of documents, neat and dusty volumes of deeds and mortgages—an incongruous man in a vault of records. And yet Lyon remembered his last visit to the Chief’s house, a vivid picture of a man holding a small kitten in his hamlike hands, with a Colt Trooper MKV magnum revolver clipped to his belt.

  They had been discharged from service almost simultaneously and their friendship had continued. Rocco, already married and a father, as the returning war hero had been unanimously offered the position of town police chief, a Bronze Star for bravery and his large size seeming to be his greatest assets.

  Lyon had gone to Yale for graduate work, and even then the friendship had continued. It had been Rocco who had read the first draft of Lyon’s thesis on violence in Victorian children’s literature, and it was Rocco who had pointed out in clear fashion new insights that allowed Lyon to finish his work with a firm and unique slant.

  The relationship continued over the years as Lyon taught English and Rocco, in an initial burst of ambition, studied law and criminology. The police chief, with his natural affinity for children and animals, was often the first reader of Lyon’s books, while Lyon would listen to Rocco’s enthusiastic reports of his ongoing education, an enthusiasm that began to wane over the years with the killing drudgery of mundane duties and boredom. Over the years the relationship had changed both of them; perhaps in light of what had happened to their lives, had saved each of them.

  No, Lyon thought, friendship stopped at the brink of immersion into violence and death. No way. He wrenched the car violently into the fast lane of the Interstate and accelerated the sports car to eighty.

  The honking car pulled alongside and broke Lyon’s reverie. The state trooper, his cruiser parallel to Lyon’s car, waved, and Lyon waved back. With whining siren the trooper pulled ahead of the Datsun to make quick movements in and out in front of the small car.

  A glance at the speedometer showed Lyon that both cars were doing over eighty, and it suddenly occurred to him that the trooper’s gestures were not a friendly salutation but an order to pull off the highway. The small car slowed with a drift onto the emergency lane and came to a halt on the shoulder. The police cruiser pulled up a few yards behind him. The trooper, shaking his head, left his car and approached Lyon’s.

  “I’ve been following you for a mile, sir. Didn’t you see my lights?”

  “No, officer. I didn’t notice until you pulled alongside.”

  “You were doing over eighty.”

  “Yes, this thing really moves along, doesn’t it?”

  The trooper shook his head. “Yes, sir. May I see your license and registration? Please take them out of your wallet and hand them to me.”

  “I don’t seem to have my wallet with me.”

  “The registration. Look in the glove compartment.”

  “No, I keep it in my wallet also.”

  “Are you the owner of this vehicle?”

  “Yes. My name is Lyon Wentworth.”

  “Just a moment, please.” The trooper went back to the cruiser, and Lyon could see him talking into the microphone of his radio. Lyon was annoyed at the delay and momentarily considered pulling off the shoulder, back onto the highway, but then again, he supposed that would annoy the trooper.

  In a few minutes the officer was back at the car. “Your name is Wentworth, and you say you own this car.”

  “Of course.”

  “Any identification?”

  “I told you, I must have left my wallet at home.”

  “Get out of the car.”

  “What?”

  The revolver pointed directly at Lyon’s nose. With his free hand the trooper opened the car door. “Get out.” All friendliness and politeness were gone from his voice. “Out!”

  Lyon slowly stepped from the car; the trooper stepped back, revolver still pointing. “What is this?” Lyon asked.

  “Around. Brace.” The trooper’s free hand grasped Lyon’s elbow and spun him toward the car. “Hands on the roof.”

  Lyon placed his palms on the roof of the car and leaned forward. He felt the trooper’s brisk hands run across his body. My God! He was frisking him. He turned. “What in hell is this?”

  “Back around.” Lyon turned back to the roof of the car. “Connecticut marker number DC 7120 is registered to a Mr. Antony Horton of Saybrook.”

  “That’s crazy. This is my car.”

  “A man of your age jumping a sports car. That’s kid stuff.”

  On the small rear seat of the car Lyon could see several leather camera cases, light meters and several parcels that definitely weren’t his. He had the wrong car. Simultaneously he and the trooper half-turned as a line of four Murphysville cruisers braked to a stop in front of the sports car. Chief Rocco Herbert unwound from the rear car and walked slowly back toward Lyon.

  “Need help?” the Chief asked the trooper.

  “A hot car, Chief. But he’s clean. I’ll book him at the Middle-town Barracks.”

  “A forty-year-old man jumping a sports car. That’s kid stuff,” Rocco said.

  “That’s what I told him, sir. He must be a sickie.”

  “No doubt about it.”

  “Damn it all, Rocco. Tell this joker who I am.”

  “Brace, mister.” The young trooper shoved him against the side of the car.

  “Is that your car?” Rocco asked.

  “Well, no. But it looks like mine.”

  “Grand Theft—Auto will get you two to five,” Rocco said, and Lyon could see the twitch of one cheek as the Chief bit his lip. “However,” he continued, “I might make a deal.”

  “Damn it all, Rocco, no deal, no blackmail.”

  The trooper clacked a handcuff around Lyon’s right wrist and reached for the other wrist. Lyon heard the snuff of retained laughter from the circle of police officers surrounding him, and then the cackle of Rocco Herbert as he leaned against the car in a paroxysm of gargantuan giggles.

  Lyon’s car pulled to a stop between the cruisers, and a very irate police photographer rushed over to examine his car. />
  “I know him,” the Chief said to the trooper. “He’s nuts, but harmless. Wrong car—mistake.”

  “He was, speeding, sir.”

  “Write him on that. He’s a menace on the highways,” Rocco said.

  “Very funny,” Lyon said as the trooper undid the handcuff and the photographer handed him his car key. “Terribly funny.”

  “I thought so,” Rocco said as he went back to his cruiser. “See you Monday.”

  Nutmeg Hill was built in 1780, some said by a Black Irishman who had made his fortune in the Triangle Trade. For 150 years after the death of its builder the house had been the home of a farming family who scrabbled a living from the marginal soil until younger heads left the land to make rifles and cannons in the Connecticut arms factories.

  Lyon and Beatrice found it accidentally, the land overgrown, the house deathlike in its vacancy, only a few years from utter devastation by the elements and adventuresome young boys. With the first book royalties and an inheritance from Beatrice’s father, they had bought the house and its adjoining hundred acres. The restoration had been expensive, and Lyon mentally visualized each room as completely consuming the royalties of a book. The study was labeled the “Monster on the Mantel,” and consequently housed, on the mantel, several of the large Wobbly dolls caricatured by a famous toymaker after the monster of the book.

  The car spewed gravel from its rear wheels as he braked hastily in front of the house. Menace on the highways, he thought angrily to himself as he slammed the car door and stomped up the stairs. Grand Theft—Auto, that overgrown fuzz … he lurched even more angrily into his study and poured a triple finger of dry sack sherry.

  The warming glow of sherry made him smile at himself. He poured another and contemplated the sacrilege of drinking good wine in hasty fashion, and then he laughed. He laughed at Rocco and he laughed at himself.

  Sitting at the desk with his third sherry, he looked down at the partially completed manuscript of “Cat in the Capitol.” The work seemed far away, the wiles and ways of feline protagonists very distant and at this bleak moment much too fey.

  The desk faced the window, and through the large, multipaned glass he could see the winding Connecticut River below the house. At this point the river was wooded on both shores, heading toward Old Saybrook and Long Island Sound. Over the hill and across the river, beyond the ridge, not too distant as a bird flies … was the grave site.

  He wouldn’t think about it. After all, in a certain sense the view from the window housed many long-forgotten graves. Indians, Colonials, hardworking farmers. Countless lives had disappeared into the hard New England soil and traprock ridges of this land.

  He thought that the Jewish myth of the seven just men was an excellent concept. Seven men of each generation bore the sufferings of mankind. A lovely thought allowing for a survival and compartmentalization. It was impossible to assimilate the suffering of mankind throughout the world. The mere bulk led to initial indignation which dissipated to lethargy. He had always imagined that Rocco Herbert had a capacity for indignation in sufficient quantity to allow him to view each case as a personal cause, as a vendetta against transgressors; and this constellation allowed a somewhat gentle man to operate successfully throughout most of his life in a milieu of potential violence. And how Rocco fought to hide these qualities.

  Lyon Wentworth swiveled his chair and visually caressed the Wobblies on the mantel. The Wobblies, terrible of visage, were a cross between Gothic gargoyle and yeti. Their menace, by some miracle of toymaking, was gentle, as if they spoke to children with a quiet voice that said, “See, I’m not so terrible, and if I’m not, then perhaps the other monsters of life aren’t.” He was fascinated with his monsters, and wondered about the toymaker who created them.

  The bottle of sherry across the room shimmered and he deliberated momentarily on the possibility of becoming pleasantly sloshed. The few he’d just had would make it difficult to work effectively.… Rocco, it’s your fault, he thought. He should never have made the trip to the grave.

  It was time to pull the room around him in a protective mantle, roll the rock against the cave entrance and immerse himself in the half-completed cat character. The phone rang. He had meant to shut it off.

  “Hello, Wentworth here.”

  “WHERE THE HELL YOU BEEN, LYON? BEEN TRYING TO GET YOU HALF THE DAY.”

  Over the past two years his wife Beatrice had been slowly going deaf, and as sometimes happens with hearing impairments she compensated incorrectly by raising her voice. He would really have to convince her that she did have a slight problem—not fatal to her career, but disconcerting. He held the phone several inches from his ear. “Hi, Bea. Thought you’d be on your way home now.”

  “THAT’S WHY I’M CALLING,” she bellowed, and he moved the phone a little farther away. In the background he could hear the clatter of voices in the Capitol corridors and knew she was probably calling from the Party caucus room, Connecticut probably being one of the few states in the Union whose legislators did not have private offices. “Going to be late,” she continued.

  “I’ll wait and eat with you,” he said.

  “No, never mind. I’ll grab something here. Have a very important meeting tonight with the welfare mothers. Watch it on TV.”

  “I’ll turn it on.”

  “How’s the work coming?” she asked.

  “Terrible, that’s why I went out and got laid this afternoon.”

  “That’s nice,” she yelled in return. “Keep it going.”

  She was engaged in conversation with a fellow legislator before the phone hit the cradle, and he felt a twinge of guilt for the small and slightly cruel practical joke he’d played on his wife. He considered her his tentacle to life, the outward one, the practical one with an oar dipped in midstream while he immersed himself in his study to create benign monsters. They both knew that friends and enemies often referred to them as Mutt and Jeff. They didn’t care and were comfortable in their relationship.

  Lyon also knew that his wife was becoming a political power in the state. She was a spokesperson (as she said) for welfare groups, feminists, and oddly enough some strange anti-tax groups. It was a juggling of ideals and political awareness that she somehow seemed to be able to keep going without fault and which had resulted in her election to two terms in the State House and one in the State Senate. They were considering her for Lieutenant-Governor in the next election—at least that’s what some of the columnists said—but, knowing his wife, Lyon felt that she would probably take some strong stand on an issue before the convention and alienate herself from supporters.

  It was dark, and he turned on the desk lamp with the realization that he hadn’t eaten. He drank another sherry and made a chicken sandwich in the kitchen before returning to his desk to reread his notes.

  With ivory glow they danced with the Wobblies, and he didn’t know who they were.

  Wobblies—monsters large and reminiscent of Rocco Herbert—grinned through whiskered snouts and danced in short leaps, while two porcelain figures, translucent and shining in the soft glow of the desk lamp, danced with delicate feet and grinned vacantly at him. The bonehand of the smallest stretched outward with invitation and command. He recoiled from the gesture and threw himself backwards in the chair.

  Wobblies grinned again and joined furry hands with the jubilant chorus of dancing bones.

  Lyon’s hands gripped the chair arms in refusal of the beckoning invitation to join the figures.

  He willed the Wobblies back to the mantel. Willed them and they reluctantly returned to their habitat. But they stood with curled feet and shook joyfully with malevolent grins as the knocking dance of the boned figures continued.

  Room gone. His daughter stood before him—her first bike held firmly with that look of wonderment children have. “I can already ride a two-wheeler,” she said. “I don’t need training wheels.”

  He watched as she rode down the drive, and then turned to go into the house at the
Green and distantly heard the ringing of the bell.

  They were ringing the telephone in strange sequences. He awoke, his head bent forward over the desk, his neck cricked, the half-eaten sandwich in the plate before him. He picked up the phone.

  “Lyon,” Rocco’s quiet voice said.

  “Rocco, you Goddamn son-of-a-bitchin’ fat pig, go to hell!” He slammed the phone back on the receiver and caught his thumb. He grimaced and sucked on the hurt fingernail as the phone rang again.

  “What do you have?” Lyon asked as he sucked on his nail again.

  “Hardly anything. One male, height at a probable five three, weight one hundred and four. One mature female, height five feet, weight one oh five. Both adults in the early or mid-thirties. One female child, age eight, weight sixty pounds. As we figured, they’d been in that pit thirty years. No other usable evidence from the site. Negative on the doll and missing persons.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Odd dental work on the adult male. I’ll try and have something more on that tomorrow.”

  “That could help.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks, Lyon. ’Preciate it.” The Chief hung up.

  Lyon Wentworth stared down at the silent phone as his wife’s car drove quickly up the graveled drive. Turning to meet her he saw that the boned dream figures had disappeared and the Wobblies sat in silent contemplation on the mantel, and he shook his head in resignation.

  Two

  Beatrice Wentworth glared at her husband as she entered the barn. Her look indicated less malice than a frowning puzzlement that transmitted itself to an impatient kick. She was a tallish, slight woman with close-cropped hair and darting energetic eyes. Her trim figure, now in tight slacks and fitted shirt, was slender and well proportioned.