by Torsten Krol
“No.”
“Of course she does. They can do miracles in this place, it’s the best in town. Look at her skin, look at her hair, it’s so real I could swear she’s breathing.”
“Uhuh.”
Bree was the deadest-looking person I ever saw. She even looked deader than Anfer Sheen back in Yoder, and he had a blue face he’s so dead. But Lorraine didn’t want to hear that. “She looks real peaceful,” I said, “like she’s resting or something.”
“Doesn’t she. Poor Bree, she deserved better than what Dean dished out. That’s just a disgrace what he did to her. Preacher Bob got that right. He’ll get the death penalty when they pick him up, there’d be a public outcry if he didn’t, especially if he goes ahead and kills Senator Ketchum. My own brother, and he’s gone and done these terrible things . . .”
“It’s not good,” I agreed, wanting to get on the right side of her.
She put her hand on my arm and I got those electric tingles again. This woman has definitely gotten under my skin. “Thank you, Odell. I need someone to lean on a little bit right now. Ordinarily I don’t, but for right now it’s a burden.”
“My pleasure.”
“I don’t think that’s right, Odell. It’s not a pleasure to take care of someone in their time of need, it’s a duty.”
“Okay.”
“Especially when there’s murder and terrorism all mixed up in it. Where’s there any room for pleasure?”
“Excuse me, I meant duty.”
“Okay, take me to lunch.”
She made us go in her car even if it’s so small I had a hard time squeezing inside and had to put the seat way back. She won’t get in the truck because it’s Dean’s truck and she is very down on Dean at the moment, also she doesn’t want to be seen inside of a lawnmowing truck that has still got the lawn-mowers in back and Dean’s evil name on the door. Lorraine drove very fast and I kept wondering if maybe Chief Webb wouldn’t pick us up for speeding and spoil my day again, but we made it to the restaurant all right without getting a ticket. It’s the same place she went to with Cole Connors the other night, she says, and the food here is just great.
We had to wait a little while for a table this place is so popular, Caprice, it’s called, just that with no Café or Restaurant added on to explain what it is. Finally we got sat down and this girl dressed very pretty comes and handed us menus to read from. Well, I had not heard of anything they had there apart from the salad. All the other stuff might just as well have been wrote in another language, which it turns out half of it was, namely French. So this is a French Restaurant without the Restaurant part. I had heard about these places and how good the food is, but when I sneaked a peek at what folks are eating at the other tables there’s nothing recognizable on their plates, but the little rolls in the little baskets were bread, I knew that much.
Lorraine asked what I liked the look of, which was a hard question. I asked her, “Have they got fries?”
“No they don’t.”
“But it’s a French restaurant, they must have French fries.”
“Well, they don’t, so pick something else.”
That was harder, picking out what something on the menu might be, and about then the girl comes back to take the order. Lorraine rattled off something or other, most likely the same thing she had the other night with Cole Connors so she’s familiar with it, but I just couldn’t make up my mind between this mystery food and that mystery food, until Lorraine got mad and tells the girl I’ll have the something-or-other, which after the girl has gone she says is potatoes done different, since I wanted fries so bad. I could tell I had not handled the situation right and went quiet from that experience, which put Lorraine in a worse mood than she already is. She says, “Can’t you make conversation while we wait?”
“Okay.”
She waited, then rolls her eyes and asked me in this sarcastic voice if I read any good books lately. This was a big relief when she asked that, because it so happens I did read a good book lately. “The Yearling,” I said, “that’s a real good book.”
“The Yearling? That’s the one about the kid and the dog?”
“No, it’s a fawn. He kind of adopts it after its mother gets shot and —”
“Yeah, I remember it, we had to read it in school and do a book report. What I liked about it, it wasn’t very long. I didn’t say that in my report, though.”
“That book they give to schoolkids,” I explained, “it’s not the whole book. That’s a shortened book for kids. The whole book is twice as long and much better with no parts missed out. It’s a Pulitzer Prize book. That’s the book I read lately. Well, I’m halfway through right now. There’s been a lot of distraction in my life this last week or so.”
“When things calm down around here maybe you can finish it,” she says, looking around at the other people eating or waiting for their food to be cooked up.
“I finished it before,” I said.
“You’re reading the same book twice?”
“Sixteen times.”
I was proud of that. I bet nobody else ever read The Yearling sixteen times, that’s some kind of a record, maybe one they can put in the Guinness Book of Records. I should ask somebody about that, then my name could be in the Guinness Book of Records as well as in the newspaper. That would be something to make Lorraine proud.
“Sixteen times?”
“Uhuh. It’s the best book I ever read.”
“Sounds like the only book you ever read.”
“No, I tried two other ones but didn’t like them.”
She looked at me a long time then down at the tabletop another long time. “Odell,” she says, “when you go out to the prison and interview with Cole, don’t go telling him you read a book sixteen times, okay?”
“Why not?”
“Because it sounds peculiar. They don’t want peculiar people guarding inmates, it’s too important of a job. The inmates are the peculiar ones, that’s the way it’s always been in prisons, so don’t go rocking the boat. You look exactly right for the job being tall and big like you are. You look good in that shirt by the way.”
“It’s my best one,” I said and it was, with big curlicues stitched over the pockets fancy style. If I had worn this shirt back in Kit Carson High they would have called me a Roper for sure, so back then I only wore the checked kind, which gets you called a Roper anyway, but the curlicued kind of shirt gets you called a Roper On Saturday Night, which I did not want.
“So it might be best if you tell Cole you don’t read books at all. He’ll be more comfortable with that. But tell him you read magazines. To get the job you have to be able to read. They’ve got this test. Do you do okay with tests?”
“I passed my driver’s license test on just the second try. I missed out on the question about how far do you park from the curb, plus a couple others.”
“You’ll do just fine. When you get the job there’ll be a little bonus in it for me.”
“Bonus?” I’m thinking the bonus is that Lorraine and me will work in the same place and get to see each other all day, that would be a big bonus.
“Two hundred fifty dollars, that’s what they give you if you bring in someone reliable that you can vouch for and they turn out fine, after the three-month probationary period that is. I think it should be more than that, say five hundred if the guy works out. Finding the right people isn’t as easy as you might think. Anyway, don’t tell about the sixteen times.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“All right then, now what else can we talk about?”
It so happened I had a topic of conversation on my mind that I wanted to converse about so now was my chance to do that. “Is the cat okay?”
“Cat?”
“The neighbor’s cat that knocked something over the other night.”
“What neighbor’s cat? My neighbor’s got a parakeet.”
“You said it was a cat.”
Her face changed all of a sudden from lookin
g annoyed to this big smile. “And a cat too, that’s right, only the cat keeps trying to eat the parakeet, like Sylvester and Tweety Pie, so yeah, he asked me to look after the cat. But he’ll have to take it back when I move out to Bree’s place.”
That made my ears prick up. “When are you gonna do that?”
“Oh, soon as the will gets probated and the place is officially mine and Dean’s, only I don’t think Dean’ll be moving back there anytime soon.”
If only she knew it, Dean has moved in permanent and forever.
“What about me?” I asked her.
“Well, what about you?”
“Do I get to stay there?”
“I already said I need someone out there taking care of the place, keeping away vandals and souvenir hunters now that Dean’s got so famous. You might want to watch out for that kind sneaking around.”
“I mean after you move in. I could be the lodger, kind of.”
“That’s weeks and weeks down the line, Odell. One thing I’ve learned, you take it one step at a time whatever the plan, that way you don’t get all backed up with timetables and schedules and expectations that don’t work out the way you intended. Easy does it and see how it goes. Just relax and enjoy being out there paying no rent and pocketing the lawn-mowing profits like I let you do, that’s plenty for right now.”
She made it sound like I have got it good, which I guess I have, anyway I run out of conversation momentarily and just listened while Lorraine talks about the funeral service next Monday which I’ll be expected to be there with a rented suit for the right appearances and the best place for that is the prom rental store downtown, although she’s wondering if they’ll have something my size.
Then the food come and we ate it. She told me it’s potatoes but I only believed it because I love her, anyway I ate it but will not order that dish again whatever it’s called. I was not so impressed by French cooking as expected by what everyone always says, but did not say this to Lorraine who ate everything up regardless. There was wine too that I didn’t like the taste of, too sharp, not mellow like beer or with a tang to it like Captain Morgan, but Lorraine says it’s great so I drunk a couple glasses of it to please her. That is what being in love is all about, pleasing the one you love, so I did that. At least I was not expected to make more conversation while we ate, which Lorraine did like she has been starving herself. At the end she says to go pay the cashier while she uses the bathroom, and you would not believe how much that little bit of food and bottle of wine come to in payment for it, a very big shock to me but I paid because it’s my treat. Lorraine dropped me back at the funeral place to get the truck. She said I should go to the police station and wait and she’ll be there to come in with me for what she calls moral support. So I did that, drove the truck over to the police station and parked outside, and pretty soon she drove up alongside and we went in together and she says to the guy at the desk, “Where’s the Chief?” which right at that exact time Andy Webb comes out of his office and looks at us.
“What are you doing here?” he says. “
You told me to,” I said, but he’s talking to Lorraine.
“Any reason I can’t be here?” she asks, and the Chief only shrugged.
He pointed down the corridor. “Second on the left, Odell,” he says, sounding friendly, not like when he pulled me over before. To Lorraine he says, “Are you his lawyer?”
“Well, I don’t think so, do you?”
“Just asking. He can have his lawyer present but nobody else.”
“He hasn’t got one.”
“That’s okay, he just needs to waive that part and we can proceed.”
“Odell, you don’t have to do anything without a lawyer present.”
“That’s okay, I don’t need a lawyer. I didn’t do anything.”
They both looked at me, then Andy says, “What’s it gonna be? Getting a lawyer on a Saturday afternoon, how easy’s that gonna be?”
“You don’t have to, Odell,” Lorraine said again.
I started walking down the corridor to show them I am a man that knows his own mind and can do without advice which I don’t need anyway. That wine I drunk was making my head swirl some, so it’s more strong than you might think from the taste of it. Andy come along behind me and I went in this room which has got a little table and some chairs and a video camera set up ready with the same young cop as this morning standing ready to run it.
“You already met Officer Dayton,” says Andy, which I did but he never told me his name at the time. We nodded to each other and I went and sat in the chair in front of the camera. The chair had got a machine sitting next to it on a trolley cart with wires and so forth so I figured it’s some kind of old-fashioned tape recorder to back up the video they’re making of me. Then another guy comes in the room, an older guy with a cigarette hanging off his lip like it was superglued there. He’s got his sleeves rolled up and did not look like a cop on account of no uniform. “No smoking,” says Andy, and this guy gives him a look I would not call friendly and flips the butt over in the corner because there is no ashtrays in a room with a No Smoking rule. It surprised me the way he did that, though. Then he lifts up this cover on the machine and I see a roll of paper there with little metal arms coming down to touch the paper. That’s when I recognized what it is – an earthquake recorder.
“What’s that there for?” I asked Andy.
“Just routine,” he said back to me.
“Lean forward,” says the other guy, and after I did it he wrapped these elastic band things with wires around my chest, and that’s when I knew this was not an earthquake machine, it’s a lie-detecting machine. Andy had not said to me anything about this, only about the video statement, so now I’m confused about what’s happening here.
“That’s a lie-detecting machine,” I said, just to let them know I was not fooled.
“Better not tell any lies then,” said Andy with a little smile.
“Well, I wasn’t going to.”
“That’s good. Truthfulness is always best, isn’t it, Dannyboy. Odell, this is Dan Oberst, kind of a specialist we brung in today just for you, so be aware you’re getting special treatment here.”
“Afternoon,” I said to him and Dan just grunted, really pissed off about something, maybe he didn’t want to work on a Saturday same as Officer Dayton said he didn’t this morning out at Dean’s place. I bet I was the only one in that room that isn’t grumpy about this being Saturday, but sitting to get videoed is easier work than lawnmowing any day of the week. Dan Oberst put one of those blood pressure cuffs around my arm and stuck a couple little plastic gizmos on the palm of my hand.
“All set,” says Dan. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions which you will answer without hesitation either Yes or No. Do not answer my question any other way, just Yes or No, you understand that?”
“Yes,” I said, and laughed because it’s a pretty good joke, but they didn’t get it.
He switched on the machine and the paper started scrolling through real slow, then he stopped it because he’s only testing that it works, which it did, so then he rolled the trolley back behind me and sits himself on a metal chair next to it.
“Face the front, Odell,” Andy told me, meaning the camera, where Officer Dayton gave a nod that he’s rolling too. The lie machine started up again and from behind me Dan says slow and careful, “Is your name Odell Deefus?”
It was real tempting to say No and see if the machine beeped or whatever, but everyone is so serious in there I didn’t do that. “Yes,” I said, very firm and serious too if that’s how they want me to be.
“Your date of birth is November 21 1985?”
“Yes.”
He asked other stuff with obvious answers. If the quiz shows on TV were this easy I’d be a billionaire, I’m thinking.
“You are an associate of Dean Leonard Lowry?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have knowledge of his current whereabouts?”
&
nbsp; Well, of course I did, he’s buried in the back yard. I knew if I lied about that the machine will know, so I said Yes. I felt safe about that because they can’t ask me where he is because that’s not a Yes or No question.
Andy butted in then, saying “You know where he is?”
Dan hissed and says, “Chief, do you mind? Now we have to start over.”
“Well, that question has got to be addressed directly,” said Andy, getting pissed. “If he knows where the guy is, we need to know that right now. Odell, where’s Dean?”
“In America,” I said, which is a perfectly truthful answer.
“Where in America?”
Dan switched off the machine. “If I get any further interference I’m going to have to clear the room of anyone not directly involved in questioning or taping, do I make myself clear?”
“The question should’ve been put different,” says Andy.
“You had the opportunity to check the list,” says Dan. “Don’t blame me if you didn’t bother doing that beforehand. Now we have to start again.”
He started in doing stuff to the lie machine. Officer Dayton asked Andy, “Should I keep shooting?”
“Keep shooting.”
By now I had figured out that they were going to try and trick me into telling things I knew and they didn’t, which means incriminating things like where Dean is, so it was a good thing Andy screwed up the questioning like he did because I know now what to do. I had heard that the only way to beat a lie-detecting machine is not to be yourself. What that means is you have to think about things that have got nothing to do with the questions they ask, so the answers you give will tell the machine you’re lying even if the question they asked is something like Is today Saturday? Which you say Yes to, only you’re thinking about the day your dog got run over or the day your daddy slapped you in front of folks for no reason because he’s an asshole, stuff like that. This makes you sweat and your heartbeat goes faster, so the machine says you’re a liar about something perfectly straightforward like What day is today, which means it can’t be trusted to get the right reaction from all those other questions either, so the test is a washout.
