Darkness the Color of Snow

by Thomas Cobb

  Pete shrugs. “It’s OK by me. Your call.”

  “Why don’t I do it, then. I get itchy waiting to hear.”

  “Fine. Don’t forget you have a town council meeting in a ­couple of days.”

  “I’ll do the reports when I get back. No big deal. I’ll go play cop, you can play chief.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  THE WARRENTOWN POLICE Department moved some years ago from the older part of town to one of the newer sections on the north end. It’s a modern building, all brick and glass, certainly much better equipped than the Lydell department, but, Gordy thinks, lacking in some of the charm. Gordy checks in at the station, lets them know he’s in town and prepared to question a resident, then drives south to the old section of town.

  In some ways Waynesville, the old section of Warrentown, is as bad as most of Lydell. Waynesville had been the main mill town and the largest mill, the shoddy mill, operating through most of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth until it shut down at the end of the First World War as recycling old cloth gave way to new materials.

  Shoddy was a type of cheap cloth, made by shredding old, used cloth and scraps from the textile mills that dotted the area. The new cloth that was woven from the scraps was low-­quality cloth, mainly used for packing and insulation. It was picked and sorted, shredded by machine, then, depending on the quality, woven or felted into new cloth. Sometimes new wool was added to the shoddy to make a better-­quality cloth called mungo, which was used in blankets, rugs, and coating.

  The mills once supported whole towns, from the ragpickers, who bought used cloth from factories and homes, to the sorters in the mill, machine operators, weavers, and felters. A good deal of shoddy and mungo was surreptitiously sold as higher-­quality cloth. Because of the deception, shoddy gained a bad reputation, and laws were enacted against the sale of the material, and eventually, the industry faltered and fell.

  Gordy thinks it odd that an age that embraced recycling had come around nearly a hundred years after shoddy had been done away with and existed in the language only as a word for something poorly made. Companies now spent millions of dollars on advertisements that crowed their use or manufacture of such material. The shoddy mills that had thrived in this countryside were mostly ruins, and the town they left behind existed more in name than in actuality.

  THE RUINS OF the mill are mostly overgrown, much of it torn down for someone to retrieve the bricks and timbers for the construction of new buildings they wanted to look old. There’s a scattering of small businesses, garages and antiques stores, a Cumberland Farm, a drugstore, craft shops, head shops, and a storefront computer repair shop. He passes one small grocery store clearly on its last legs.

  Marie Caplette’s house must have been one of the finer buildings in Waynesville, though it’s now falling down and, perhaps, beyond repair. He parks in front, goes through a rickety gate and up an overgrown stone walkway to the small portico with its crooked roof and rotting posts. Boxes of bottles and stacks of newspapers litter what is left of the portico.

  His knock on the door is answered by a small woman, in her eighties, he guesses. She’s dressed in a heavy coat over a sweater, and her thin white hair peeks out from under a red knitted cap. “Ms. Caplette? I’m Gordon Hawkins. Chief of police in Lydell.” She steps back from the door so he can come in.

  The inside of the house is worse than the outside. There are newspapers and cardboard boxes stacked everywhere. There’s a strong odor of cat urine, and the carpet is threadbare where it covers a worn linoleum floor. “Sit,” she says, taking a seat in an upholstered rocking chair covered with an antimacassar. He looks around. There’s a sofa, also stacked with newspapers and magazines. There’s a small color television with a digital converter box resting on a metal stand, turned so it faces the rocker. “Did you want to watch the television?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve come to ask about your car.”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “But there is one registered to you. A 1993 Lexus.”

  “My grandson,” she says. “Sean. That’s his car. I gave it to him.”

  “Oh. All right. But it is registered to you, and the registration is current.”

  “He doesn’t have a lot of money. He’s out of work. It’s hard to find work. Even in the best of times.”

  “Yes. Yes it is.”

  “And this isn’t one of those.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A best time. This is not a best time.”

  “No. No, it certainly isn’t. So you pay the registration on the car, but he drives it.”

  “I haven’t driven in years.”

  “So you weren’t driving it this week.”

  “Of course not. Why are you interested in Sean’s car?”

  “Well, we think it was involved in an accident a few days ago. In Lydell, where I’m from.”

  “Oh, dear. I hope he wasn’t hurt.”

  “Me, too. I hope so, too. Have you heard from him?”

  A look came over her face that he couldn’t quite read—­confusion, regret, despair?

  “He’s a quiet boy. He doesn’t talk a lot. And he’s very busy.”

  “Yes,” he says. ­“People are very busy these days.”

  “I don’t know what it is they do. They have all of those things now. Things we never had.”

  “It’s an electronic world. Cell phones, iPods, computers. I don’t understand a lot of it myself, but they do. It’s their world now.”

  “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  It’s terrible coffee, old and reheated, bitter as regret. He tries not to look at the cup, which feels greasy. He takes a ­couple of sips to be polite and then sets it down on a stack of magazines on what appears to be an end table. “Do you have an address for Sean or a phone number?”

  “No. I think he lives in Falls Village. With some other boys. Louise would know. She’s his mother.”

  “Would you have her number or address? I’d like to talk to him. She could put me in touch with him.”

  “I do. It’s in my phone book. Let me get it for you. He wasn’t hurt?”

  “No. No, we don’t think so, but I would like to find out to be sure. I’m afraid the car is pretty badly damaged.”

  “Oh, dear. Let me find my phone book.”

  The phone book is an old metal case from the fifties or sixties, one that had a lever that went to the letter of the alphabet, then popped the case open to the page of addresses and phone numbers. He and Bonita had one like it years ago.

  “I haven’t seen one of those for a while.”

  “I’ve probably had it too long. Lots of scratch-­outs and erasures. Here it is.” She hands him the address book and points. “Louise Texiera. She married a Portuguese man,” she says in something just louder than a whisper, as if she’s afraid someone will overhear.

  “And is that his name, too? Sean Texiera?”

  “Oh, no. No. He’s a Gross. She’s been remarried.”

  “I see. Sean Gross.”

  “Yes. I hope he’s not hurt or in trouble.”

  “Right now, I just need to talk with him a little. Find out what happened.”

  He leaves, depressed. It’s a tough world for older ­people. The world keeps spinning faster and faster, and they can’t keep up with it. They’re frequently confused, living alone, surrounded by memories they can’t hold on to. He thinks about Bonita in her last years. But that’s stuff that he doesn’t want to think about.

  He’s not sure about calling the mother. Or dropping by. If he calls the mother, she will likely call Sean, and he might rabbit. Or maybe bring himself in. But this case isn’t moving forward, and he has a cop dangling by a thread while nothing happens. It’s worth taking the chance that the kid would rabbit on him. At least he’s moving forward with this.

 
The mother’s house is a little north of the grandmother’s. That makes it a little more upscale. When he gets there, there’s a car parked in the middle of the front lawn, minus hood and engine, and the shingled house is in need of paint or stain, but the porch isn’t buckled. It’s what passes for upscale in these parts.

  When he knocks on the door, a woman in green sweatpants and a blue Giants sweatshirt comes to the door.

  “Mrs. Texiera?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Gordon Hawkins. Chief of police, Lydell. Is Sean Gross here?”

  “Oh, God. What did he do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe nothing. I just need to talk to him. Is he here?”

  “He doesn’t really live here. He just uses this as his address. You can leave a message and I’ll have him call you when I see him, though I don’t really see him that often.”

  “Does he work? Is there a place I might likely find him? This is only to ask him a few questions.”

  “I don’t know if he’s working or not. It’s tough to find a job right now, you know? But he and some friends hang out at a house on Walton Avenue. He might be there.”

  “You have an address?”

  SHE TURNS AND leaves him there, feeling the heat of the house. It feels like the house is heated to eighty or ninety degrees. Where do these ­people get the money to burn through oil like that? She comes back then and hands him a slip of paper: 74 Walton Avenue.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Texiera. I need to ask you just one more favor. Don’t call him, please. Let me speak to him.”

  “Why would I call him? He doesn’t call me.”

  Seventy-­Four Walton Avenue. He already passed Walton Avenue on the way over from the grandmother’s house. He figures he has about five minutes to get there. It will be a race to get there before he rabbits after getting his mother’s call, which Gordy’s sure she is making right now.

  He makes it in less than five minutes, driving the cruiser across the driveway to block two cars parked there. The house breaks the north–south paradigm for Waynesville—­poor south, richer north. It’s north of the grandmother’s place, but in far worse condition. He goes up to the door and knocks.

  A man in his early twenties, jeans, hoodie, no shoes, opens the door.

  “Sean Gross?”

  “No, man.” The guy tries to push the door closed. Gordy gets a shoulder on it and holds it open, not exactly pushing his way in, but keeping his body in front of the door so that he can’t close it.

  “No. Seriously,” Gordy says. “Sean Gross. Where is he?”

  “He’s not here.”

  “Well, when will he be back, do you think?”

  “I don’t know, man. Sometimes he’s gone a long time.”

  “Well, I need to talk to him. Can you get a message to him?”

  “I can try.”

  Gordy hears a door squeak open at the side of the house. “Hold on,” Gordy says. “I think I hear him now.” Gordy pushes off from the door and runs around the side of the house, clomping as well as he can through the crusted snow that gives way with each footfall. He sees another kid, dressed in jeans and hoodie, huffing through the snow, toward the back fence of the house. Oh, damn, he thinks. Not over the fence.

  “Sean Gross,” he says. “Lydell Police. Stop. I need to ask you some questions.”

  The kid turns and looks at him, then takes off again for the fence, stepping into a drift of hardened snow, and goes down. Gordy, running as hard as he can, lifting his knees high, goes after him. The kid struggles, gets upright, leaving one of his boots stuck in the snow, and heads for the fence again.

  “Stop,” Gordy says. “Stop. Police. Don’t go over the goddamned fence.” He’s gaining on the kid, slowly, keeping his knees up high, struggling to stay upright in the snow. He has a small advantage now, since the kid has on only one boot. But he’s already breathing really hard, and he’s running out of gas fast. Briefly, he wishes he had left a few of the M&M’s in the store.

  He has almost caught up to the fleeing kid, when the kid catches ahold of the chain-­link fence and pulls himself up and pushes off, going headfirst over the fence, into another snowdrift on the other side. Gordy reaches the fence right after him, nearly going over, too, just from his own momentum. The kid is struggling to get himself out of the snowdrift when Gordy sees that the kid’s jeans are snagged on the fence top. He grabs the kid’s leg and holds it as tightly as he can, wrapping it up in both arms. He takes his cuffs, gets one around the kid’s ankle, and locks the other one to the fence. The kid is still thrashing around in the snow, trying to get his head free.

  “Let me go.”

  Gordy leans against the fence, struggling to get his breath back. He looks back toward the house. All in all, he must have run twenty yards. It was through snow, but twenty yards? Jeez. He ought to be able to do more than twenty yards without being completely gassed.

  “Let me up.”

  “In a minute. I got to catch my breath. You Sean Gross?”

  “Let me up.”

  “You Sean Gross?”

  “Let me go. I didn’t do anything.”

  “No. I’m not going to let you go until you talk to me. You made me run through all that snow. I want you to feel as miserable as I do, now. Tell me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, what?”

  “I’m Sean Gross.”

  “Thank you, Sean. Let me put a ­couple of things straight for you here. We found your car.”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “I know that, too. We found your grandmother’s car. The car you’ve been driving. The car you were driving the night you hit Matthew Laferiere on Route 417.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, yeah, you do. Car’s at the state lab right now. They’re tying you to that car so many ways you’ll never get away. You’re going to be dragging that beater Lexus to your grave. I won’t lie to you, and I would appreciate it if you didn’t lie to me. You’re in a lot of trouble. There’s no question about that. And if you keep lying to me, you’re going to be in even more trouble. Right now, I need answers, and I’ll do what I can for you if you give them to me.”

  The kid put his face down in the snow. Gordy could see his shoulders start to heave. “I know you didn’t mean to hit him. That was an accident, wasn’t it?”

  The kid tries to nod in the snow, then turns his face, slick with tears that are already starting to freeze, and says, “Yeah. An accident.”

  Gross pushes at his face with the sleeve of his sweatshirt, trying to dry it. “Will you let me up?”

  “Will you run?”

  “No,” the kid says. “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “Give me your hand. Other hand.” Gordy takes Gross’s hand, unlocks the cuff from the fence and puts it around his wrist, so that he is held, hand-­to-­foot. “This will get better. Be patient.” He helps Gross get to his feet, then unlocks the cuff from his ankle and locks it on his own wrist. “OK. Come back over the fence.”

  They do a complicated dance with Gordy pulling Sean by his belt and sweatshirt as the kid struggles to get back over the fence without cutting himself up on the twisted wire at the top. Clothing gets snagged and torn, including the sleeve of Gordy’s jacket. “Are you all right?” he asks when the kid has made it over the fence and back on solid ground.

  Sean Gross nods, and Gordy plucks at his jacket sleeve, which is already starting to disgorge white filling. “Shit,” he says. “These things cost three hundred bucks.”

  The kid looks at the sleeve and says, in complete seriousness, “You can stitch that back up. It’s not bad.”

  Gordy walks Gross back to the cruiser. “You’re not under arrest,” he tells him again. “I just need to ask you some questions. We’re going to the car because it’s warm in there and out of the
way of traffic. You understand that?”

  The kid nods. He’s starting to shiver.

  Gordy gets Gross into the backseat, then sits in the front seat, passenger’s side, so he can turn to face him.

  “Why’d you run when I came to the door?”

  “Can I have a cigarette?”

  “I don’t have any. Can’t smoke in the car anyway.”

  “I have some in my pocket. We could open the door.”

  “Which pocket?” Gross turns his head and looks at his front shirt pocket. Gordy reaches back, unbuttons the pocket, and takes out a box of Newports. “You got matches? A lighter?” The kid pushes himself up from the backseat and holds himself horizontal. “Right front pocket.” Gordy looks at the kid for a minute, shakes his head, and asks, “Anything sharp in there? Anything going to hurt me?” The kid shakes his head, and Gordy reaches two fingers into his pants pocket until he finds the lighter and takes it out.

  He opens the box of cigarettes, takes one out, and puts it up to the kid’s lips, then lights it. “Thanks,” Gross says. “You can have one if you want it.”

  Gordy starts to say no, then shakes another out of the box and lights it. “If I uncuff you, you going to try anything stupid?”

  The kid shakes his head.

  “Turn your back to me.” When he does, Gordy unlocks one of the cuffs. “Bring your hands to the front.” When Gross does, Gordy recuffs his hands in front of him. “Again. You’re not under arrest. You’re cuffed for purposes of safety. Why’d you run?”

  “I was scared.” Gross reaches up, takes the cigarette from his mouth, and exhales.

  “Of what?”

  “You. Of what you’d do to me.”

  “Why are you afraid of me?”

  “Because I hit that kid. Killed him.”

  “All right. Now you’re under arrest.” Gordy reads him his rights. “Do you understand? Everything you say can and will be used against you.”

  Gross nods.

  “Do you want a lawyer?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Do you have a lawyer?”

  “No. I want one, though.”

  Gordy exhales the smoke from the cigarette. He’s already starting to feel light-­headed. It has been, many, many years since he has smoked. It isn’t very good, and the Newport is much stronger than he remembers cigarettes being.