by Jeff Crook
Jenny wasn’t the only person who had access to the house. That day when her air conditioner broke, dozens of people were in and out of the place, upstairs and down. Her doors were open to practically anybody who happened to wander by. She had invited me to live with her even though she barely knew me. Her social circle was enormous. For all I knew, it could have been Officer Lorio, Doris Dye, or Sheriff Stegall. For that matter, it could have been Deacon.
I watched a boat slowly drifting across the flat surface of the lake. The children in the woods had turned up and were having a regular pep rally. I walked out on the levee, hoping for another look at Sam, hoping he would appear, like the ghost of the king of Tyre or Denmark, to tell his astonished audience of his murder by a brother’s hand.
And if Virgil and Shakespeare offered no clues, why not seek the services of Marlowe and Holmes, private consulting detectives? Maybe I would see something I hadn’t seen before, some bloody thumbprint or claim check from a camera shop.
The levee was empty, but I spotted a dark shape crouched where Sam had fallen into the water. For a moment I thought it was the same doglike shadow that had led me to the graveyard in the woods. Then Officer Lorio stood up and shined his flashlight in my face.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Just going over things, one more time,” he said as he climbed the limestone boulders. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one entertaining fanciful thoughts.
I noticed he had something in his hand. “What’s that? A potato?”
“Just a rock.” He showed me a smooth cobble of river stone about the size of a grapefruit. “Found it down there.” He tossed it and shone his flashlight where it splashed at the water’s edge. “The lake is at least five feet low. I was just thinking, there’s probably some good noodling along this levee.”
“Noodling?”
“Hand fishing for catfish. You swim along the bank and feel for holes. When you find one, you stick your hand in and wait for a catfish to bite.”
“Bite what?”
“Your hand.”
I could think of more entertaining ways of catching dinner. “Then what?”
“You pull it out.”
The kids in the woods began to call to one another like coyotes. They were all over the woods, crying Ollie Ollie oxen free. There had to be fifty of them, and knowing that they were all ghosts made me wonder if they all died here. The history of the Stirling family went back almost two hundred years. This land had once been a plantation with dozens of slaves, and before that Chickasaw tribes lived and hunted here. But it had been my experience that the spirits of the dead rarely lingered more than a few decades, otherwise the world would be full of them. I’d often wondered what happened to the ancient dead—did they move on, in the Christian sense, to a better place? Maybe they just faded, like old Zuber wallpaper? If so, what had held these kids in this place for such a long time?
Lorio brought me back to the land of the living. “Sam and I used to noodle along here when the water was low. I’ve seen him pull forty-pound catfish out of the water with his bare hands. He was the best swimmer I knew. Sam and Jenny met in college at a swim meet. Sam coached Reece’s swim and softball team. Reece was captain of her school’s swim team, too. I watched that girl grow up. I loved her like she was my own daughter.” His voice broke at the end. Did he love her enough to kill his best friend?
But if he killed Sam, he wouldn’t be out here in the dark for the twentieth time looking for evidence. Unless he was looking for evidence of his own crime.
“What was Sam like after Reece died?”
“You can imagine. It nearly destroyed him.”
Lorio told me how he and Sam grew up together. Their daddies had been best friends, used to hunt deer and quail and go noodling for catfish all the time. When they grew up, he and Sam followed in their father’s footsteps. “Sam’s the only real friend I ever had,” he said as his eyes strayed once more to the noisy woods below. “I got friends, you know, but nobody was ever like Sam.”
Lorio shined his flashlight on his watch. “It’s kinda late for these kids to be out, don’t you think?”
I shrugged.
“I wonder who their parents are.”
“I don’t think they have parents.”
He laughed. “I know what you mean.”
But he didn’t.
“Sam stopped fishing after Reece drowned. When they found her clothes on the levee here, he searched and searched the bank for hours, but a body will do strange things underwater, drift away from where it went in. They found her the next day on the other side of the lake. Me and Sam went noodling one time after that, but he couldn’t do it anymore. He said he couldn’t put his hand in the hole. He was afraid of what he might find.”
The kids were really getting rowdy. I’d never heard them this noisy before. Lorio looked at his watch again and continued, “But he wasn’t suicidal. I’d bet you a hundred dollars he didn’t kill himself. And I know Sam couldn’t have fallen in and drowned. He was like Tarzan in the water.”
“I have my own reasons for believing you,” I said. “But a hundred bucks and your hunch won’t buy us lunch. We need more to go on if we’re going to question the local coroner.”
“Jenny can request an independent investigation by an outside party. She can authorize an exhumation.”
“If you can get her to agree to that, I have a friend who might do the exam.” I was thinking of Wiley, who wasn’t my friend at all. “But I’ll need your help.”
Out of the woods came a jerking, rusty-edged scream, as though some child were being torn apart in a hay baler. Lorio drew his piece and started down the hill. I caught his arm and said, “Don’t.”
“That kid is in trouble.”
“You won’t find anything.”
“How do you know?”
“Because they’re not real.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time, just stood with the beam of his light shining into the woods, too weak and too far away to illuminate anything. Finally he said, “Seriously?”
“They’re not there. I know. I’ve tried to find them. They’re just voices, left over from another time.”
Hilarious laughter erupted all along the edge of the woods, then gradually receded into silence. After a while, the crickets and frogs started up. Until that moment, I hadn’t noticed their absence.
“Well,” Lorio sighed shakily. He holstered his weapon. “It’s getting late.”
As we turned to leave, a girl’s voice cried out, “Mama, don’t leave me here!”
Lorio dropped his flashlight. It rolled down the levee, gathering momentum until its beam was thrashing and flailing like a living thing. Finally it struck a rock and the bulb broke.
I could see his face in the moonlight, pale and drawn, haunted. Terrified. His fingers dug painfully into my arm. “Jackie,” he hissed. “That was Reece.”
40
LORIO ARRIVED DURING BREAKFAST and of course Jenny made a plate for him, even though he had already eaten. He was a big guy. He always had room for more, especially home cooking, which he didn’t often get, being a bachelor. It was his day off, but he wore his uniform because if Jenny went along with our little scheme, we would need the access and cooperation his uniform would buy.
He had also brought an exhumation order. It was already filled out. All it needed was Jenny’s signature. She sat at the kitchen table with her face in her hands while Lorio told her why we wanted to dig up her husband. “Nothing else makes sense. The coroner said he didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. He hit his head and drowned. And I know he didn’t jump in the water.”
“Because Jackie saw him fall.” Her bottom lip had begun to tremble and no matter how hard she tugged, it wouldn’t stop.
“That’s right,” I said.
“Do I have to be there?” she asked.
“Absolutely not,” Lorio said.
She pushed herself to her feet, slid the chair back, wiped a s
tray hair from her face. I thought she was going to leave without giving an answer. She crossed the kitchen and opened a drawer, rummaged, pulled out an envelope of coupons and a roll of tape and set them aside and grabbed the ballpoint pen she’d been searching for.
“Where do I sign?”
* * *
Brilliant white marble statues of Truth and Justice presided in the sun on opposite sides of the grand Adams Street staircases to the Shelby County Courthouse in Memphis. We buttonholed Wiley on the Washington Street side slipping out a small side door, where cops waited in the shade, smoking cigarettes and shooting the shit between courtroom appearances. The old bastard spotted me and tried to pretend he hadn’t seen me as he hurried to the car parked at the curb. His office had told us he was in court.
“Dr. Wiley!” Lorio shouted, loud enough to hear him two streets away. Every cop and lawyer from Second to Third Street stopped to look.
Wiley’s shoulders fell and he turned slowly, glowering at me for a moment before turning his eyes on to Lorio. “Yes, Officer … Lorio, is it? Aren’t you outside your jurisdiction?”
“Dr. Wiley, I need your help. I was wondering if we could have a moment of your time.”
Wiley opened the door of his car, tossed his briefcase on the front seat, leaned back against the car with his elbows on the roof. He was a tall, ungainly bird of a man, with a thin wattle of skin dangling below his jutting chin. A few strands of long, unkempt gray hair floated in the heat rising off the asphalt. He shook his watch down to the end of his bony wrist and checked the time. “You can have five minutes of my lunch. I’m due back in court at two.”
It was only a little past twelve. I’d forgotten about the long, difficult hours put in by our dedicated public servants. Lorio explained the case to him in less than a minute, which just goes to show how little we had.
Wiley didn’t even work up a sweat. “I’ve already told Mrs. Lyons to contact the Fayette County coroner regarding this.”
“I have reason to believe the coroner’s report may be in error,” Lorio stated politically. Not that the coroner had lied. Not that he was covering up a crime. Just an error.
“That’s a pretty serious allegation, Officer…” Wiley ogled his badge again. “… Lorio. No doubt when I contact your supervisor, he will state you’ve already brought this matter to his attention.”
“Her, sir,” Lorio said, “and, no, she knows nothing about it. I’m here on behalf of Sam Loftin’s widow.”
“If this is a private matter and not an official investigation, then you shouldn’t be in uniform,” Wiley said. He stepped to the side and put his hand on top of the car door. “You should have handed this off to an unlicensed private investigator. I would have then told her, as I told her before, to take her suspicions to the Fayette County coroner.” I stepped off the curb and blocked Wiley from closing the door.
“Sir, I’m asking you, as a favor…” Lorio began.
“Son, I don’t know you from Adam’s off ox.” He gestured that I should move out of the way so he could close the door.
I pretended not to understand, dug out a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth. “Got a light?” Nothing had changed since the days when I was a vice cop for the Memphis Police Department. Sometimes the facts of a case were only useful insofar as they agreed with the story some powerful person wanted told. Anything that didn’t fit the narrative would be quietly gathered up, weighed down with a brick, and tossed like a bag of cats in a creek. Doctors, lawyers, judges, cops—they always protected each other. Wiley didn’t want to stick his nose into Fayette County business because he didn’t want Fayette County questioning his own findings.
Lorio thrust a piece of paper at Wiley. “What’s this?”
“It’s an exhumation order,” Lorio said. “Signed by the widow, Jennifer Loftin.”
Wiley shook his head and laughed at our hapless attempts to circumvent the law. “You know I can’t order an exhumation in Fayette County without the approval of a Fayette County judge.”
“If you please, sir,” Lorio patiently explained, “Sam Loftin is buried in Eads. That’s Shelby County.”
Wiley’s eyes darted to the paper in his hands. He scanned it and, after a minute or so, furrowed his liver-spotted brow. “Tell me again what happened.”
Lorio went through it one more time. “As you can see, we don’t have any proof, but Jackie and I both believe Sam Loftin was murdered. You can’t lightly dismiss the informed opinion of two police officers.”
“One,” Wiley reminded him, without neglecting to give me a vicious sneer.
“Unfortunately, any evidence of the crime was buried with Sam and, quite frankly, sir, you’re the only person we can go to about this. I’ve lived and worked in Malvern all my life and it’s a close, tight-knit community, if you know what I mean.”
“I believe I understand your meaning,” Wiley muttered.
“Sir, I know you don’t owe me anything. But I hope, if nothing else, you will want to see the truth revealed as much as we do. Sam Loftin was my friend.”
Wiley reached into his car, took out his briefcase, and opened it on the roof of the car. He slipped the exhumation order into one of the pockets. “I’m a very busy man, I hope you understand,” he said as he clicked it shut. I moved back to the sidewalk, nudged Lorio with an elbow and shot him a wink. “As soon as I have a free moment, I’ll forward this to the funeral director listed on the order and have the remains delivered to my office.”
“Thank you, sir.” Lorio reached out to shake the good doctor’s hand. Wiley stared at it for a moment without touching it, then walked around to the other side of his car and opened the door.
Before he ducked in, he said with a nod in my direction, “One more thing, son. You’d do well to find better company.” He started the engine and pulled away from the curb with a screech of tires, forcing a MATA bus to slam on its brakes.
When he was gone, Lorio turned to me. “I thought you said Wiley was your friend.”
I flicked my butt under the wheels of the bus as it rumbled by. “We had a falling-out. It’s a long story.”
41
IT HAD BEEN OVER A WEEK since I shot any of Deacon’s photos, so after Lorio dropped me off at the house, I grabbed my camera and headed out. If the sun was murder, the humidity was a mother drowning her children in a bathtub. I was glad to get under the trees, but even there the air was almost thick enough to swim through.
Deacon wasn’t at the house and the door was locked. I knocked on the door but no one answered. His truck was parked next to the scuppernong arbor. I circled the house once, shooting photos of the stained glass in the upstairs windows, then walked home through the silent, empty woods.
Something had changed. I could feel it in my bones. Day or night, I usually heard, at the very least, a titter of childish laughter whenever I walked that path. Now there was nothing, neither living nor dead. I wondered if, somehow, the trees and the weeds, the brambles and briars, had died with Mrs. Ruth. It was just a place now, not a forest or a woods; it was just a collection of sticks and ashes waiting for a bulldozer to push them down.
I opened the door of Jenny’s house to a sound I’d never heard before—Jenny shouting. “Your brother wants to go swimming!”
And Cassie. “I don’t want to!”
“Put on your bathing suit and get in the damn water with your brother!”
“No!”
“You’ll do as I say or I’ll…”
Cassie pounded up the stairs, shrieking “NO! NO! NO!” with her hands clapped over her ears. Then down the hall, footsteps thumping, rattling the pictures on the walls, and finally the slamming door.
I found Jenny in a chair by the window, staring out at the lake. Eli was sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in his Thomas the Tank Engine swimming trunks, pounding down Cheetos out of a family-sized bag. I looked out the window at the pool and saw a dead girl in a red one-piece bathing suit floating in the deep end. I grabbed a beer from the fridge
and another one for Jenny.
I popped the top and handed it to her. She glanced at the clock as she took the beer. “It’s not even three.”
“Jenny, don’t make her go in.”
“It’s just a swimming pool. She’s been in it a thousand times. She’s a great swimmer. First she won’t go in the deep end, then she won’t go underwater. Now she won’t even get in.”
“Trust me on this. When Cassie doesn’t want to get in the pool, don’t force her.”
She took a long, angry, savage pull at the beer, trying to kill it before the carbonated burn kicked in. She failed and set it down with a pained gasp. “Why the hell not?”
“She’s scared.”
“Of what?”
I didn’t say. I didn’t have to. She didn’t need to see the dead girl in the pool to know she was being unreasonable. She just needed a minute to get her head together.
It didn’t even take that long. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just … all this about Sam…” She turned and rested her forehead against the window pane. “What happened?”
“Wiley will do it.”
She was neither relieved nor grieved by this news. Her response was mechanical. “And you’re certain I don’t have to be there?” I told her the funeral home would handle everything. “And where will they put him … after they…”
“He’ll be returned to the funeral home.”
She sighed, her can of beer sweating, forgotten, on the arm of the chair. I finished mine and dropped the empty in the recycle bin. His fingers orange up to the second knuckle, Eli was finishing off the last of the Cheetos. “Did you eat that whole bag?” I asked.
“Un-uh,” he lied.
When I returned to the den, Jenny said, “Will you talk to Cassie?”
I suddenly felt ashamed for thinking Jenny might have killed Sam. If she had, she wouldn’t have agreed to his exhumation. She could have played the hysterical grieving widow, begged us not to defile his remains. Her grief was as real, and still as raw, as the day Sam died. She didn’t want him dug up, but she would have dug him up herself if she had to.
