“Police! Anyone here? Hello!”
All three of us jumped as if we had stepped in unison onto a downed power line and received the shock of our lives. Victoria’s hand went up to her throat, and for an awful moment I was reminded of Greta’s tremulous hand clutching at the lapels of her robe. Carver went even whiter, his eyes darting around the room, making him look like a cornered rabbit desperate to find an escape.
Victoria recovered first.
“We’re up here. There are three of us. Lynn Hanson, Carver Ellis, and myself, Victoria Sears.”
A moment later a man in uniform stood in the doorway. His hand was resting on his holster. He looked like he would draw on us if we even sneezed.
The he relaxed—slightly but visibly—and dropped his hand.
“Miz Sears,” he said slowly. “I might have known.”
It was Deputy Allen.
The last time I had seen him was when Aliz Macrorie had died. He had tried to arrest Carver and....
“My, my,” he said, looked from one of us to the other. “What have we here?”
He smiled. It was a singularly discomfiting smile. It didn’t reach his eyes, which glared at each of us in turn, unblinking and cold.
“Interesting little tableaux we have, isn’t it? Looks mighty familiar to me.”
“Be that as it may, Deputy Allen,” Victoria said, rather stiffly it seemed. “What we have here is a young man who unfortunately passed away during the night.”
Allen moved across the room to stand at the head of the bed, next to Victoria. I noticed that he made no effort to avoid treading on the clothing and other detritus scattered on the floor. His boots came down hard on something lumpy under a dirty shirt, and the something cracked as if it had broken. Allen didn’t seem to hear, or if he did, he didn’t care.
I also noticed that Carver had slipped behind me and now stood on the opposite side of the bed, near the foot. It was as far from the deputy as he could reasonably get without drawing too much attention to himself.
Carver was still white, but now a faint pink flush was creeping up from his neck and his breathing had abruptly grown more rapid, noisy.
I wished heartily that Deputy Wroten, the officer in charge at the substation, had been the one to answer this call.
“His name,” Victoria said into the silence, “was Eric Johansson. He was....”
“Yeah, I know him. He’s been living with Miz Johansson for about a year now. Moved up here after his parents were killed in a plane crash. He’s been into the office to see us a couple of times. By our invitation,” he added pointedly.
“Ah. Anything...um...serious?” Victoria sounded diffident but I could tell that she was under some strain. “Greta...his grandmother, that is, is an old friend of mine. She never spoke of any particular...trouble.”
“No, she wouldn’t, would she. She’s not that kind. And no, there was nothing that serious. Mostly kid stuff.”
“Can you tell...?”
“No, ma’am, I can’t. And even if I could, I probably wouldn’t. You see, I don’t know what happened out here last night. All I know is that Miz Ellis just called to say that young Johansson here was dead and that his grandmother was at her house but the body was still over here. I took the call. Here I am.
“And I find you three clustered around the body like...well, clustered around the body. And I find it interesting that at least one of you has been a...ahem”—he cleared his throat, rather theatrically given the circumstances—“a person of interest in a previous mysterious death.”
Good grief! I thought. The man is enjoying this!
So far, not a question of any substance about the dead boy, just innuendos and nuanced comments directed at us.
I would have glanced at Carver to see how he was taking things but didn’t dare. The last thing Allen needed was any provocation to make him notice Carver.
But, of course, I didn’t have to offer one.
Allen’s eyes were already glaring across the bed, toward the foot, where Carver was standing.
“Where were you last night, Mr. Ellis.” Allen came down on Carver’s last name, stamping it with an unwarranted freight of suspicion.
“Wait a minute. You can’t....” Carver turned dead white again and backed up a step, as if proximity to the body might somehow infect him with...with what, with guilt?
“Nobody’s doing anything, son,” Allen said, his tone countering any sympathetic feelings the words might have spawned. “Just a simple question. Where were you?”
Carver glanced frantically at Victoria, as if she were the only bastion of hope in a hopeless world.
She nodded fractionally. And Allen caught the movement. I could almost hear his thoughts: That’s right, sonny-boy, check with the old lady since your own ma isn’t here. Get someone on your side before you come clean.
Carver swallowed hard.
“I was...I was just telling Miz Sears here that he...that Rick called me late last night to ask for a ride home from Land’s End.”
“And did you pick him up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Was he all right?”
“Well, he looked pretty beat up. Like you see him.”
“And you did nothing to help, what...improve his looks? You didn’t get in a lick or two?”
“No.” Carver’s voice angled up toward an adolescent pitch. He was frightened about something.
“You two were just the best of pals, then.”
“Yes...No...I mean, we....”
“Maybe you were both sniffing after the same girl. Maybe you had a few words and....”
“No. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Ri-i-ight. You don’t have a girlfriend, do you? She’s dead, isn’t she....”
Carver made as if to leap over the bed—body and all—to get at Allen. Victoria halted him with a gesture.
“Carver! Focus.”
She turned to face Allen, her hands on her hips in an imperious stance.
“And you...you come here with....”
“I have a few ideas about what happened here, Miz Sears, and....”
“I’ll just bet you have a few ideas.” Victoria’s voice was sharper than I had ever heard it.
“And you can just keep those few ideas to yourself until you get one more thing. One tiny little thing.”
“And what would that be, ma’am.” The sarcasm was so thick I could have cut it...if I’d had a knife.
“Proof.”
“Of what?”
“Of anything,” Victoria snapped back. “Right now, all you have is this poor boy’s body lying here on the bed and you are doing nothing at all to figure out what happened. Figure that out first. Then figure out who did it.”
Allen simply stared at her for a long while.
“You’re right,” he said finally. “First things first. Then”—he shot a glare at Carver that promised more pain and humiliation for the younger man—“then we’ll take care of the rest of the business.”
CHAPTER FIVE
On Deputy Allen’s instructions, the three of us went downstairs, leaving the body as we had found it. Even the hem of the T-shirt that Victoria had lifted to examine the abdomen had fallen precisely back to the came place, concealing the extent of Erik’s injuries. I don’t think Deputy Allen had seen the massive bruising...yet.
I was sure he would soon.
Even before we reached the landing, I heard Allen on his radio talking to someone—another deputy or the dispatcher at the substation. I only got his end of the conversation, but I figured out that he was calling for backup or something.
We reached the bottom of the stairs when the lights began—Flash! Flash! Flash!—spaced with a minute or so between. He was probably photographing the scene.
The death scene.
The crime scene.
It all felt so familiar, even though none of the details were.
“Carver,” Victoria said in a low voice, not quite a whisper but noticeably softer
than her usual speaking tone, “I want you to go on home now, be with Mrs. Johansson and your mother. You hear?”
He nodded.
“No where else. Just home. Tell them that the police are here and that everything is all right. Just that.”
He nodded again.
“No where else. Do I have to repeat that?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Cut across the fields. That should keep you out of sight from the house. Now hurry.”
“Yes, ma’am,” and he was halfway through the kitchen and then out the kitchen door. I noted that he opened the door carefully. I barely heard the creak of the half-rusted hinges.
There was no sound from upstairs to suggest that Allen had heard anything at all.
The flashes had stopped, or at least slowed, so he might be occupied looking around, poking in drawers and checking for...for whatever his imagination told him he would find to tie Carver to the death.
Because that was what he really wanted to do. I could tell by the look on his face and the sound of his voice that he wasn’t particularly interested in the details, as long as he could pin the death on Carver.
“Victoria,” I began.
“Shhh.” She held her finger over her lips and then gestured toward the armchair.
I sat down but she wandered around the room for a few moments, touching this or that knick-knack, picking up a photograph from the highboy and studying it, then wandering over to the window and looking out.
I wanted to interrupt the silence, to ask any number of questions.
Who was Eric Johansson and how did he fit into the world of Fox Creek as I had come to know it? He seemed alien, a stranger, even lying in death. His clothing, what I had heard of his attitude. Nothing really seemed to fit.
What was the relationship between Carver and Eric? If they were just casual neighbors, why was Carver the only one the other boy could ask for a ride when he was hurting and no doubt confused. Or worse.
Was it possible that Carver might have been involved in the beating? I knew that the boy had a bit of a temper, that he was apt to act on his emotions before he gave his reason a chance to intervene, but to beat another human being that savagely? I wasn’t sure I could believe that.
But then, I had only known Carver—and Victoria, for that matter—since the early weeks of summer, so perhaps there was more to him than I understood.
I sat and waited.
The stale smell in the house seemed to grow stronger as the minutes passed, and every now and then I heard a bump or scrape from upstairs, as if Allen were shoving the furniture around.
Looking for something.
It might have been ten minutes—or perhaps twenty—when we heard the clump of his boots on the stairs.
A moment later, he was standing in front of Victoria, holding out a plastic bag about a quarter full of some white powder.
I could guess what it might be but I didn’t want to.
“Found it,” he announced triumphantly, as if Victoria had challenged him to find it, or at least had argued that he never would.
“I so glad for you. Deputy Wroten will be proud.” I could hardly believe the sarcasm in her voice.
Apparently neither could Allen, because he all but visibly wilted. He thrust the bag into an inner pocket of his vest, muttering, “Evidence,” and turned his back on Victoria.
He glanced at me and started to say something, then whirled to face Victoria again.
“Where’s Ellis? Ellis!” he roared the latter, as if sheer volume would bring the boy out of whatever cubbyhole he had found to hide in.
“There’s no need to yell,” Victoria said. Her voice was more normal but there was still an edge to it that said that in spite of anything the officer might have found upstairs she still didn’t appreciate his attitude toward her, me, or Carver. “He’s not here.”
Allen’s hand went to his belt, where he started to yank at his radio.
“There’s no need for that, either. He’s just next door. I sent him over there to check on his mother and Mrs. Johansson.”
“You sent....” I’ve rarely heard a grown man sputter, but Deputy Allen sputtered. “You.... What do you think gives you the right to....”
“The right to treat a boy who has just had a huge shock like a human being and not like some animal to be ordered around? Was that what you were going to say?”
“You had best take care, Mrs. Sears”—he purposely dropped the Miz that most people in Fox Creek used when talking to older women, whether married or not, and substituted the precise, legal term to indicate her wedded state, even though she had been a widow for longer than he had been alive—“you best take care. You’re talking to a duly appointed officer of the law, and....”
“And if you behaved like an objective observer instead of judge, jury, and hangman, I’d speak to you as one.”
He stared at her, his jaw dropping slightly.
“And in any case, you said nothing about him—or any of us—remaining in this house. None of us are under arrest, and unless you have found something upstairs to indicate otherwise, none of us will be.
“I assume that the packet you found contains drugs.”
Nonplussed, he answered in spite of himself. “Yes, ma’am.”
Victoria could have that effect on people, I had discovered. Even people who didn’t particularly like her.
“Young Eric’s, I suppose. Pity. Pity.”
There was a long moment of silence. I think Deputy Allen was almost afraid to say anything.
Then he seemed to recover his aplomb.
“All right, you two follow me.”
Without checking to see if we were obeying his orders, he stalked into the kitchen and threw open the back door.
It squeaked hideously, as if to spite him. I think I saw him wince.
Victoria followed sedately, and I trailed after her.
“My vehicle,” Allen said curtly when we started toward my car.
Victoria stiffened again and I prepared myself for another confrontation. Then she apparently thought better of what she was going to say and instead smiled sweetly and said, “Oh, my! I’ve never ridden in a patrol car before,” making it sound as if Allen had politely invited her to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime-not-to-be-repeated invitation.
She walked over to the passenger door...and waited.
I didn’t want to interrupt anything she had in mind, so I stood back for a moment and watched.
Deputy Allen stood frozen by the driver’s door for a long moment, then said, rather icily, “In the back seat, ma’am.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Isn’t that where the criminals ride?”
He glared at her. By all rights she should have disintegrated on the spot and spiraled away in a tiny puff of dust.
Instead, she smiled even more sweetly.
“And doesn’t the gentleman usually open the door for the lady?”
Actually, I wasn’t sure whether to stare in disbelief at what she was doing or laugh my head off watching Deputy Allen trying to figure out what he would do.
What were his options, after all?
Arrest her for...well, for impudence unbecoming a senior citizen?
Order her to get in the back seat and then wonder what to do if she refused? I couldn’t quite see him manhandling a little old woman, especially not with a witness standing only a few feet away.
Argue with her, and thereby lose even more face than he had already.
Or just give in to the inevitable.
He chose the latter. Sighing heavily and re-setting his uniform hat more firmly on his head, he stalked around the car, made a grand display of opening the front door and, bowing slightly at the waist, inviting his tiny seventy-plus-year-old adversary to take her seat.
He did, however, refrain from taking her arm to help her in.
She got in, settled herself, buckled up, and turned to look at him as if to say, “Well, now that we have settled the question of who is in cha
rge here, let’s be off.”
All she said was, “Thank you, officer.”
Even I couldn’t hear the slightest hint of condescension in her voice.
I think that made him even angrier.
He stomped back to the driver’s side and without a word to me got in behind the wheel.
Half-afraid that he would take off without me, I slid into the back seat, not bothering to make any comments about my not being a criminal.
I wasn’t sure what Victoria was doing, but I was sure that she had something in mind. I knew that she wouldn’t just bait Deputy Allen for the fun of it. She had better things to do with her time.
No, she was seriously worried about something...perhaps Carver, and she wanted to be clear that she intended to be involved in whatever investigation was to follow.
I think things would have gone much more smoothly for the police if Deputy Wroten had been in the substation to take the call.
CHAPTER SIX
Allen peeled rubber backing out of the Johansson’s drive, whipped around the corner onto the county road, the rear of his car heading speeding away from the Ellis’ place, braked hard enough to rattle me in my seat, then laid rubber again as he jammed the gas pedal and the car leaped forward.
I’m surprised he didn’t have the entire row of bubble-gum lights on the top of the car flashing and blinking.
Almost immediately, he had to brake again for the turn into the Ellis place. This time he threw me forward, against the protective webbing of my seat belt.
Gravel flew from his tires as he sped down the driveway and squealed to a halt next to the kitchen door.
Through it all, not a word, not a sound of surprise or complaint from Victoria.
But she did wait in her seat until Allen—who by that time was out of the car and halfway to the kitchen door, hand outstretched for the door knob—realized that she wasn’t following, that she hadn’t even exited the patrol car yet, and finally made his way around the front bumper to open the passenger door and bow her out.
“Why thank you, officer,” she said, as unruffled as if she had just arrived at the opening cotillion of the Season at some high-class ballroom in the big city.
He didn’t answer.
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