“It’s always tougher when there isn’t a body.”
She laughed out loud at the innuendo. Willow flashed on shoving her against the living room wall and sticking his tongue down her throat. He wondered if she’d submit. How long would it take for her to push him away? Would it be a push? Or a kick in the balls? Maybe she’d do that thing ex-wives in the movies do and go limp in his arms while breathlessly muttering, We can’t—we can’t—it’s not fair—to Owen—please stop—don’t stop! . . .
“Like I said, Dubya: you don’t miss me. You miss the idea of me, the idea of us. Now go home, take a cold shower, and call your daughter. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you.”
He smiled, kissed her cheek and left.
* * *
• • •
The drive to New Baltimore took half an hour. He could have taken Armada Ridge to County Line Road but chose the southernmost route instead—29 Mile Road, then left on Avenue of the Waters—so he could pass directly through Saggerty Falls. (Visiting Adelaide had awakened something.) Since his return to Macomb he hadn’t made an expedition to the place where he and Addie once lived—let alone to the Rummers, a fact Willow found both understandable and strange, in light of the fateful decision on the part of his deputies to reopen the case. In New York, it was always his habit and instinct to visit the scene of a cold case crime, under the aegis of a ritualized mystical reconnoitering that for him was mandatory. But he’d stayed away from Ronnie and Elaine’s (even the path where Maya’s bicycle was found), a fact that suddenly seemed worse than disrespectful. It felt like some sort of sacrilege, some sort of travesty.
Willow shivered as he crossed the border of the village. He made the five-minute detour to Creekview Street, where the Rummers had that barbecue on the day the Earth stood still. He put on Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor for dramatic effect and it worked: as he entered the cul-de-sac, the large, Windsor-style home, painted in brighter hues than he remembered, hove outlandishly into view like the star of a movie doomed never to be released. The neighborhood hadn’t changed all that much. It looked like people were making more money now, which didn’t really make sense—making it how?—shiny new muscle cars and ATVs grandstanded in the driveways, and even the decorative accoutrements on the faces of the houses looked added on, as if for a promotional brochure.
A redheaded little girl in pigtails stopped to take in the stranger, straddling her bike as she eyed him. For a moment, he wondered if she were a hallucination but rejected the thought because he saw no blue mist, no Blue Death. He wondered who lived in the Rummers’ house now. He turned his car around in the bulb of the dead end and got back on Avenue of the Waters for the short ride to Roy’s.
He watched the girl in his rearview. She stared after him like an admonishment, and the old shame returned, the shame of leaving Pace behind.
* * *
• • •
Roy came to the door in a three-piece tweed suit and bare feet.
He gave Willow a bear hug and then, with comic swagger, ostentatiously waved an arm toward the dining table, where humble sandwiches and chips had been laid.
“You’ve won everything behind Door Number Three! And those, m’lord”—he showcased a bowl of gummy bears—“are for dessert: my favorites, may I add, the green ones, in honor of your visit. Took me an hour to do the sorting.”
He’d actually lit one of those fat fragrant candles, and that cracked Willow up.
It’s like a date!
Maybe Roy turned fag.
The detective acknowledged the brief bluish steam that rose from Roy’s chest before dismissing it as an aberration. Hadn’t the same kind of misperception occurred when he first took Lydia and Daniel to the Spirit Room?
It’d been eighteen years since they’d last seen each other, and nearly that long since Willow had even thought of him. Eakins looked remarkably young and vital—far healthier, thought Willow, than himself. (And Roy was much older.) Roy farcically snatched away the beer he’d set down when Willow informed that he was sober, replacing it with a Dr. Brown’s Diet Cream. His eccentric, guileless amiability was endearing; there was something so childlike about him that Willow felt like he’d stepped into Pee-wee’s Playhouse. He had always liked the man but the reality was they’d never had much contact, apart from the few open houses he attended at his daughter’s school.
“Man, I was jazzed to hear from you!” said Roy.
His ardent demeanor recalled Ronnie Rummer’s, and made Willow think loneliness must be going around. “It’s good to see you, Roy. And thanks for the awesome spread.”
“I had a marching band but I think they must’ve got stuck in traffic,” said Roy with an exaggerated frown.
“I’ll bet you did. It’s very welcoming and I appreciate it.”
They chitchatted awhile—it was a little tricky because Willow didn’t want to show his cards. (Not yet and maybe never.) Roy asked if Willow was still living in New York and he said no, he’d “moved back to the area,” to be closer to Pace. “I’ve already missed too much time with her.” He shifted things over to his host. “And what have you been up to all these years, my friend?”
“No good, I’m afraid,” said Roy, before growing serious. “After what happened with those kids—the bottom kind of fell out. You know what I mean. The Falls lost its charm. The media practically moved in! Too much attention, and all of it negative. I knew I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to teach. Not there, anyway. Not in the Falls. Bloom was off the rose. The rose was dead, quite literally, I’m afraid. Oh, I didn’t want to be the party pooper—that wouldn’t have been fair to the parents or my students—so I hung in for about a year. That year was a bummer. But it wasn’t about me. I had an obligation. As a quasi-educator, I had a duty, a responsibility to the community. I really felt that and still do. Did a lot of hand-holding, something that comes naturally to teachers, if they’re worth their salt. And then I moved on. Took me awhile to find my footing. I taught for a few years in public schools, in Flint, then Grosse Pointe—did a little private tutoring on the Gold Coast. Hedge-fund guys who took a shine to Amercan history! You know, rich captains of industry who wanted to add a little scholarly sex appeal to their fund-raiser dinner conversations. They paid very well, by the way. Oh, I was the go-to guy for a while! Socked away a lot of money. I’m still living off those savings.”
Roy was curious about Adelaide and, without being mean-spirited, made a passing reference to the cause célèbre of her remarriage. He asked after Pace as well, recalling what a wonderful student she was. “The best and the brightest,” he said.
“How’d you wind up here?” said Willow, friendly and open-faced. “In New Baltimore?”
“Sweet little community,” said Roy. “I like being close to the lake.” Willow was about to bring up the matter of the Collins boy being found in the local marsh when Roy beat him to it. “And now that poor kid gets dredged up off Anchor Bay. It just never stops, does it, Willow?”
“Doesn’t seem to.”
“The madness of the human species . . . makes you want to burn your membership card, doesn’t it? But I don’t feel like moving, not this time. It was different with Troy and Maya. I guess that’s because they were my students. My kids. It was personal.”
Suddenly Roy’s face grew rigid and cold, like an effigy of stone. Willow thought he must have been experiencing a wave of unanticipated grief, but it was something else that would remain unknown to the detective: for the first time, saying their names aloud, Roy Eakins realized with a shock that the Rummer children had returned, embodied in the eponymous landlords from the Meeting—and they had visited his very home! How was it possible he hadn’t realized who they were from the moment they appeared, by name, at the Meeting? But there were so many elisions . . . so many things he was only just beginning to remember. He was becoming awake, ever since he managed to be
come dominant over Dabba Doo.
A conundrum asserted itself, and he wondered: Do they know who I am?
“Hey,” said Willow, breaking into his reverie. “How’s your boy? How’s Grundy?”
“Doing remarkably well—the kid up and got married.”
“Is that right?” said Willow with genuine surprise and a measure of relief on Roy’s behalf.
“Oh yes he did, to an angel. And there’s wonderful news from the heavenly quarters.”
“Oh?”
“Mrs. Angel is gravid with young. She’s expecting.”
“Isn’t that something!” said Willow, masking dismay with delight. “Just fantastic. Congratulations.” He couldn’t process Grundy as a functioning human being, let alone a dad, but supposed the two weren’t mutually exclusive. “You know, I recently became a grandfather myself.”
“Did you now?” said Roy, beaming.
“He’ll be five in a few months. That’s another reason I wanted to move back.”
“It’s funny,” said Roy. “We worry and worry, and in the end they seem to turn out all right.”
He knocked on the wood table and then got up and did a slapstick jig, knocking any wood he could find.
“Does Grundy live nearby? Here in New Baltimore?”
“He lives up in Wolcott Mills—used some of that hedge-fund tutor money to buy him and Mrs. Angel a foreclosed farm. Now, Grundy, you’ll recall, had his share of problems. Did he ever! Thought I was going to lose him. For many, many years I thought that. Then he straightened up and flew right. Oh, he still crashes into windows now and then but he never broke his wings, and that took courage. I respect that. The kid hung in and came out the other side. We both did.”
“Here’s to coming out the other side,” said Willow, raising his Dr. Brown’s. “Well, I’d love to see him. And meet the wife and mom-to-be. I’m in Sterling Heights—that’s twenty minutes from Wolcott Mills.”
“Would that be an official visit?” said Roy hostilely. “Police business, Sergeant Friday?”
Willow’s gut flipped and his mouth went slack.
Roy clocked the reaction and burst out laughing. “What I’m saying is that there may still be a few open warrants on the boy from the bad old days—desecration of public property, public masturbation and the like. Oh, he was a handful!” Willow smiled in relief. “I’m afraid before I could make that visit happen, I might need a promise of full immunity.”
“Request granted.”
“Now, mind you, these were youthful crimes.”
“I’m sure the statute of limitations has run out.”
“Then a visit shall be duly granted, m’lord!”
When Roy asked if he’d retired, it appeared that he wasn’t aware of the recent task force hire. At the same time, he thought the query was likely a ploy, because the creation of the Cold Case unit had been all over the local news. Still, he couldn’t be sure. He decided it was best to play a game of his own, even though it could backfire.
“Almost there,” said Willow. “I’m counting the days.”
“Well, come over and count ’em with me. Anytime.”
“I just might do that.”
“Tell you one thing I was counting—the number of green gummy bears you ingested, which was nil. Which means there’s more for me. Which makes you my new best friend.”
He wrote down Grundy’s cell phone and handed it to Willow, nodding at the empty can of Dr. Brown’s. “One for the road?”
“I’m good. I would like to take a whiz before getting into traffic.”
“Always a good idea to drain the snake. Down the hall and hang a left.”
As Willow walked away, Roy took a step forward and yelled, “Hey!” He drew the detective’s attention to his bare foot and, like a magician doing a trick, slowly moved it aside to reveal the scrap of paper with his son’s number that Willow had somehow already managed to lose. Roy picked it up and put it in his hand.
“I don’t have athlete’s foot. I promise.”
Willow was about to enter the toilet when Roy sprinted forward, vigorously blocking his way. “Oops, forgot! Powder room’s out of commission—been waitin’ on a plumber for three days. Use the one by the washer.” Sarabeth’s bloody panties were in the sink, which wouldn’t necessarily have been a good thing for Roy.
Or Willow either.
2.
Annie had bad dreams.
To ban the nightmarish images, she dried her face and said the new mantra while looking in the mirror—the slogan that had involuntarily supplanted “More shall be revealed.” It reminded her of something in a Victorian children’s book:
“All will be most very well.”
And all would be most very well—for she had found her man, her Porter, and the children would be protected now, which was all that mattered. The tradition would be unbroken. More turbulence was expected, of course, more thunderclaps, marvels and wrinkles, but even with “haywire” factored in Annie knew in her depths that the Great Mystery compassed them and held them close. Considering the current messy state of affairs, such knowledge was grandly counterintuitive, but she’d long since learned to trust the unchallengeable feeling of serenity that thankfully had returned to engulf her. It was an old feeling and she was glad it’d come back again; she’d been without it for months now.
Her own apprenticeship had taken over a year, and was devoted to learning Jasper’s methods of preparing her for the profoundly disorienting things that Annie would encounter—now she had only weeks, if that, to tutor Willow Millard Wylde. At first, she feared he would never agree to come to the Meeting. Part of him was so distant and unbelieving, and there was an angry part too, that seemed, unthinkably, to be courting his own death. They were so different that way! There was much about him Annie didn’t understand nor felt it her business to. So when he accepted her invitation, she said to herself, We’re halfway there. We’re more than halfway . . .
She primped and got ready for her visitor.
Again, Annie looked in the mirror (the one beside the Murphy bed was full-length) at the doomed, blessed woman who stared back: hard-set, timelessly feminine features, bluish porcelain skin, delicate chain of the necklace that her mentor gave her subtly rising and falling to the artery’s faint pulse—then a rap on the door startled her.
She looked at her watch: only 6:30 P.M. . . . He’s half an hour early! Poor thing’s probably shaking in his boots. Lord, how terrified I was when Jasper brought me to my first Meeting. She remembered actually soiling her underwear when a landlord requested a hug, knowing it was a dead thing—and a dead child!—who’d been asking. It was funny now but it wasn’t then. She opened the door and her face froze.
It was Owen Caplan.
“Hello, Annie” was all he said.
She smiled back with warmth and confusion. They’d met a number of times because he was Nurse Adelaide’s husband but she didn’t really know him. He was the county sheriff, she knew that much.
“Owen, hello! What—what brings—?”
“Sorry to bust in on you like this but I couldn’t find a phone number.”
“Well, that might be because I haven’t a phone!” she said jovially. With flustered concern she asked, “Is something wrong? Is Adelaide all right?”
“She’s fine,” he said. “And forgive me again, but it’s a little urgent and I wasn’t sure when I’d see you.”
She was mindful that Willow was on his way but it was still early enough. “Come in!”
The SRO building was ramshackle but he noted the elegance she’d brought to the tiny, immaculate room. A lovely kilim carpet spanned most of the floor. Atop a low table was a dark stone vase of white roses.
“I don’t have a sitting room,” she said humbly. “Though I should say all I have is a sitting room—as you can see.”
“The reason I�
�m here is to ask about Renée Devonshire.”
Annie looked at him quizzically. “Who is that?”
“A student at Mount Clemens High. She killed a boy there on Thursday. You may have heard what happened.”
“Oh Lord. I didn’t—I haven’t. I’m afraid I’m not much of a newshound. But how awful, how terribly awful.”
“I came because we learned that Renée dropped in on some sort of meeting, in Detroit. At the Divine Child Parish on Lafayette Circle. Do you know it?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Your name is listed as the person who rents that space for an AA meeting at the hour Renée visited.”
“I did rent that space, but had to give it up.”
Annie already knew what she’d tell him. She had rehearsed the probability of such an encounter in her head for years. “It’s not AA, Owen. That must be some sort of clerical error. It’s where I teach—or taught—my class.”
“What sort of class, Annie? Do you mind me asking?”
“Not at all! You see—I’ve never even told Adelaide this—I teach creative writing. It’s a bit embarrassing,” she said, charmingly contrite. “But, well, I always wanted to write. And I did write—tried to, anyway. I think it’s safe to say that, over time, I became painfully aware that the public, not to mention the publishers, weren’t beating a pathway to my door. In fact, they were beating a pathway away from it! If it said ‘by Annie Ballendine,’ well, people just seemed to become . . . allergic. And I couldn’t blame them. I didn’t have the talent. But I found that I might have the talent to teach.”
“I’m sure you’re a wonderful teacher.”
“I’m not licensed, Owen. I don’t even have a degree, so I hope you’re not here to arrest me.”
He knew she was kidding but still wanted to allay any concern. “Of course not. What kind of writing is it, Annie?” he asked, more curious now than interrogatory.
“Oh, all sorts. Mostly poems and short stories but my kids have been doing a lot of memoir work, which is still very much in vogue. It’s actually a wonderful tool for self-discovery. But I encourage my students in whatever they feel drawn toward. They do write a disproportionate amount of stuff about childhood . . . People don’t seem to want to grow up!”
A Guide for Murdered Children Page 26
