At night, his eyes in the ceiling, he would stare back at those ice doll eyes, that porcelain face, and, underneath them, a blue-and-white locket, a cameo. Wedgwood.
FIVE
Shauna Boggs was daddy’s little girl. Even though he called her plumpish and sometimes ignored her altogether, she was still his one and only. She knew.
She knew it just like she knew, the day her mom took off, that she was now the lady of the house. It was up to her. She would do the cooking and she would do the cleaning and she would press his shirts and make his Maker’s Mark just how he liked it, not too much ice, but not too little either.
She held her position with honor and grace from seven to ten to twelve to fourteen. She held her position as the lady of the house with the seriousness of a librarian.
And when Mr. Boggs came home one night, too late from the Jewel Box, and swooped her up from her bed and carried her into his bed and treated her like the lady of the house . . . she held that position too.
SIX
A police description can look like this: “Body was found at approximately 7:15 AM on March 13, 1978, off Route 31, two miles south of the corner of Pioneers and the Route 31 interchange. There were numerous lacerations to the neck, shoulders, face. Heavy bruising around the wrists and ankles. Blunt force trauma to the skull. Possible death: strangulation.”
A police description cannot look like this: “I couldn’t see it. I didn’t want to see it. How young! How desecrated! How beaten! And then tossed by the side of the road. Discarded trash. A disposable bag. This could’ve been my daughter, my wife, my niece. Who are they? I will find them. I will find them and I will kill them.”
It could say: “Lacerations around the hands and shoulders, defensive wounds, red marks around the wrists and neck, blunt force trauma, possible strangulation.”
It could not say: “I have seen that throat in chapel choir, those vocal chords, now silenced, singing in a soprano voice, a voice, quite literally, just like the cliché, like an angel. But how can you not think it? A voice, yes, like an angel, in the chapel choir. There, on the altar, singing ‘Ave Maria.’ A soprano voice, a stunning voice, singing ‘Look Homeward Angel,’ singing ‘Dona Nobis Pacem,’ singing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ and even, on a lighter day, ‘Southern Cross.’ ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ A child’s voice. A child’s face. A doll face.”
It could say: “Body, half-clothed, facing ground. Dress, torn. Remnants of a sweater. Necklace. A Wedgwood cameo.”
It could not say: “I have seen her in that sweater on the way to school, on the way to St. John’s, in the line at the Farmer Jack, in the line at the Community Shores. I have seen that sweet thinning baby blue sweater with the butterfly, or was it a flower, on the collar. I have seen that robin’s egg sweater as Beth Krause walked with her father, Lt. Colonel Charles Krause, a war hero, by the shore of the lake. I have seen her clutch that Wedgwood locket, a self-conscious shrug, at school, at choir, at Hope.”
It was these thoughts, all of these thoughts, that tumbled, rattling through the head like pickaxes, of Samuel Christopher Barnett, Detective Barnett, not yet five years on the force. A decent man. A kind man. Tried to be kind anyway.
Oh, believe me, there were a million other things his pulse was urging him to do other than write down little words in little boxes, checks and more checks, here and there, on forms and more forms. A traffic ticket for a corpse.
There were a million terrorizing, shocking, blindsiding impulses but no . . . there he was, pen in paper, Detective Samuel Barnett. Brown mouse hair. Skinny no matter what. Old-timey Keystone Cop face. No one looked like that anymore. And he would’ve done them, every million of them, had he not had to, what is it, “keep a brave face,” “stand tall,” for the cameras.
And there were cameras. You betcha. For a band the length of a football stadium, up and down the sliver of that Michigan lakeshore stretch, there were little white boxes with tires on them, barely visible in the snow. Camouflaged. And out of each of these boxes came one, usually a lady, in a smart, snappy getup, with a black penis stick in her hand you were supposed to talk into. A microphone. Careful what you say. Easy now.
That little stick and those batting eyes can get a lot out of you but you better be careful. Brace yourself as the first one comes barreling forward, and then another and another. An army of smart-dressed swine.
Brace yourself. Easy there, Sammy.
“Detective, is the victim a local? Is the victim female or male? What age? Do you consider foul play? Is there a suspect? Do you have a motive? Is the—”
An army of swine. A murder of crows.
Peck peck peck.
What did they want from him? Hadn’t they had enough? They had a blood-red slab of girl-meat in the snow. Wasn’t that enough? Brisk. Brisk. Be brisk. Don’t let them know.
“The body is yet to be identified. No further questions.”
But then, in the back, a yelp. “Here’s the snow plower! Here’s the guy who found her! I got him! I got him!”
And then, the parade goes thataway and Detective Barnett stands still in the snow, abandoned. Put your feet in the snow, look up to the sky. Ask the trees to wonder why.
SEVEN
Shauna Boggs played a game on Beth Krause once that wasn’t a game at all. Shauna knew the game, though, she’d learned it well. She’d had it played on her.
It was an after-school sort of game that started with playing dress-up. When Shauna first learned to play this game she was in the seventh grade and didn’t mind looking in the mirror and playing dress-up in Mommy’s clothing ’cause Daddy said it was okay. Encouraged her even.
“Here,” he would say. “Try this.”
And she would try this, and she would giggle and say, “Oh, no, not me” or “Oh, maybe . . . someday.” If it was something fancy. Something fancy from Mommy, before she left. Before she died? No . . . she didn’t die, Shauna. She left. She left because of you.
Her mom, before she left, had a menagerie of looks, from sophisticated to prim to downright slutty Too many clothes for that little closet. Too many clothes for that little house. Guess that’s why she left.
Her mom, Shauna’s mom, was from Niagara Falls. The good part. The part up above the falls with long stretches of houses and even longer stretches of lawn. Why she’d ever married Troy Boggs was beyond anyone, including her, which is why, one day, looking around at the pale lead house, which could’ve used a coat of paint, and almost could’ve been the home sweet home she thought she’d been looking for, she simply made a calculation. It was a math problem. What times what makes me stay? Versus . . . what times what makes me go? What is my opportunity cost? Of course, there’s the girl. Well, I can’t take her with me now, can I? Then I really wouldn’t have a chance.
(What kind of fella’s gonna grab up a pretty lady and a kid? I’ll tell you what kind. A loser. That’s what kind.)
No, Shauna’s mother had no intention of landing herself a loser. Another one, anyway. Once was enough. Although. Troy had been cute, sexy in a sinister sort of way. She liked the way he fucked her at least. That was one thing he could do. About the only one.
A math problem. Yes, there were some unknowns. Some variables. But still . . . that’s what variables were for, wasn’t it? The unknown. It was inevitable, really. The minute she’d walked down the aisle, she knew it. Not having her family there. And that tuxedo!
No, Troy Boggs was not the end of the line for her. She’d made a mistake. That’s all. Wrong answer. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. And she did fix it. She did. How easy. Easy as putting one delicate foot in front of the other and making her way, tippy-toe tippy-toe, out the door and nevermore.
“Here,” Troy Boggs said to his daughter. “Try this.”
And this was a dress Shauna Boggs dare not try on. Are you kidding?
“No,” she said, pleading. “I can’t.”
Seeing in her eyes that scared little girl he wanted to protect punch kill fuck,
he grabbed her closer, tucked into his arm. “It’s okay, honey. Daddy’s here. Daddy wants you to.”
And so there she goes, little Shauna, out the door and some crumpling and crinkling until, finally, there she emerges from the closet, what a sweet little thing, what a delicate little thing, what a warm, white thing to sink your teeth into.
There she is, little Miss Shauna Boggs, the plump little brunette Michigan beauty standing there, fumbling, not proud or pretty, fumbling silly pig . . . in her mother’s oh-so-sophisticated wispy white wedding dress.
She’d left it behind. That bitch. She’d left it behind just as she’d left Shauna behind and she’d left Troy behind. Trash. Trash Boggs. That’s a better name for you.
But he’ll show the bitch, that la-di-da bitch from Niagara fucking Falls, he’ll show her ’cause Troy Boggs gets the last laugh here ’cause Troy Trash Boggs gets the last laugh now by lifting up his daughter’s skirt, your daughter’s skirt, in your oh-so-pretty wispy white dress.
EIGHT
Detective Samuel Barnett had had enough of these goddamn interviews. Every two seconds it seemed that black stick was in front of him, asking him questions, that glass circle with cameraman attached, asking now more questions, questions about his questions. Interviews about his interviews.
Already he’d had the family, the church, the classmates, the Green Mill Inn staff, the hotel guests, some union guys, the entire chapel choir and now, this, finally, inevitably, the best friend.
Walking down that gray slit of a path, that patch of a lawn, to that paint-peeled farmhouse, he was dreading the interaction. He’d left all interaction with his own girls to his wife, years ago. Lady stuff. He didn’t know how to, nor did he want to know how to, talk to young girls. Just leave them be. Somehow, he thought, that was all you could do.
He hadn’t expected the little girl to answer anyway. Even his knock was unwilling. Too bad for him, his knuckles made it to the door, the door concurred and opened.
Dammit. But no. Not out loud.
Keep it professional.
She is tiny like Beth. She is Beth’s age. She is shaking somehow.
“Excuse me, Miss, I am looking for Shauna Boggs . . . is that you?”
Silence.
“Yessir.”
“Well, okay, then. My name’s Detective Barnett. I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”
“DA-AD!”
The screen door can fly at you if you’re not used to getting it slammed in your face. Step back. Step back. Easy there. Take things slow. The girl’s probably traumatized.
Troy Boggs. Yes, I know him. Just like I knew it was you, Shauna. It’s okay. I know your mama left. Everyone in town knows that dirge. Poor thing.
“It’s okay, Miss Boggs . . . Shauna…I’m just here to ask a few quick things. Won’t take a minute.”
The way Troy Boggs shades his way into sight, you’d think he was there all along, just idling. Like the light changed and there he was.
“Sir.”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Boggs. Sorry to bother you. I just have to ask a few questions. Routine. About the . . . incident. I’d like to ask your daughter. If that’s all right with you.”
Quiet house. Empty house. No-mom house.
“Officer, we’d be happy to help. Anything. I just wish I had something more to offer you, something to drink maybe? Some saltines maybe?”
Open the screen door goes and now the little cluster moves inside. It’s a pale-yellow kitchen, what could be the sweetest of kitchens, but not anymore.
It’s a card table in the middle and some metal chairs, one plastic. Troy Boggs dusts off the head chair for the officer, sits down his daughter and takes a seat beside her, concerned.
“Shauna, do you remember the last time you saw Beth Krause?”
Silence.
That little brunette sure knows how to stare at the ground.
“Approximately?”
“Yes. I saw her on her way to work. She was coming back from practice at St. John’s. I tried to get into that choir but, I guess I didn’t have the voice, so . . . ”
“So, she was coming back from choir practice, back from St. John’s Presbyterian?”
“Yessir.”
“Do you remember where, exactly?”
“On Spring Street, past the Farmer Jack.”
“Okay, good. That’s good, Shauna.”
It was funny looking at this girl. What was she . . . eighteen, nineteen, twenty, maybe twenty-one? It was like she was locked in time. Strange. You would never take her for more than fifteen. Even her gestures were childlike. Flinching. Samuel thought about his two middle-school girls bounding down the stairs, buzzing, stampeding toward their dinner, snickering, talking about God-knows-what. But this girl. This girl made of glass. A reed ready to snap.
And poor Troy. There next to her, troubled. A tear in his eye. You could tell he was shook up, too. Well, hell, why wouldn’t he be? If it were my daughter’s best friend I’d have them both put in a tower by now. Lock ’em up and throw away the key.
“She was real rushed, you know. Said she was on her way to work.”
“At the Green Mill Inn . . . is that right?”
“Yessir.”
“And did she call you or did you hear anything from her since, from the Green Mill Inn?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
Now she is putting her head down and her father is putting his hand on her shoulder. Oh, God, please don’t break down in front of me, Troy Boggs. You’re a grown man!
Shauna looks up from the bottom of the world.
“Mister. She was the sweetest girl I know. Just real kind. She didn’t deserve this.”
Detective Barnett knows his lines well.
“Miss Boggs, no one knows why or how any of this happened but you can rest assured of one thing. We’ll find who’s to blame.”
“That’s right, honey.” Troy Boggs holds his daughter square on the shoulders. Such a good man. Such a good father. What with his wife leaving him and all.
NINE
You could make a funeral here today. With the sky bright blue for miles, the rolling green lawn, on and on, never mind the tombstones. You couldn’t have picked a better day.
It’s a hole in the ground. Nine by four. Around it are the tops of people’s heads. Black hats. The chapel choir is there, too. At the service, back at St. John’s, they’d sung “Walk with Me Lord” and “Dona Nobis Pacem.” Now, here on the lawn, Beth Krause sang at her own funeral. The conductor from the chapel choir dutifully quietly, pressed PLAY on the tape recorder and there she was.
Even when she was alive, the timbre of that voice, the pale white-haired girl bellowing out the “Ave Maria” to such great heights, even then, it had been hard for the stoniest of hearts to “keep a grip,” to “maintain” as it were. Such a thrilling voice from such a shy, tepid girl. A girl in a baby blue sweater with, what was that? A bow? A butterfly? A tiny little piece, a minuscule piece, of vanity. Maybe it was a dragonfly. A cameo behind it.
But now, here, with the chapel choir standing to the side and the service over, with Lt. Colonel Charles Krause and his wife, Dotsy, the two of them standing there, stoic, the voice coming out of the tape recorder, Beth Krause singing at her own funeral, might as well have been made of tears. The girls, Shauna and her friends, were shaking uncontrollably, sobbing themselves into convulsions. Even Troy Boggs had to stand them straight. Please, girls, please. Oh Lord. Stand still.
The chapel choir, twenty-six of them, simply stood stooped in tears, a row of weeping willows, unabashed.
It was a wonder to think, looking on that little hill in Muskegon, Michigan, on that big blue day in mid-winter that the hill itself wouldn’t cleft itself somehow from the land around it and float downstream on a river of tears, down to the Ohio, and then the mighty Mississippi, down to the warmer climes where there is no snow to find a girl.
It was a wonder, t
oo, to think as the “Ave Maria” split the sky in twain and the hearts and faces off the gathering of what must’ve been the entire town, that the only two faces laid blank, laid bare, were that of Lt. Colonel Charles Krause and his handsome wife, Dorothy.
PART II
ONE
What would it all mean, that Technicolor rush, that parade of technology, a mad dash into the future, ahead of what, exactly? What was being kicked into the past backward, impatient to drink, what future? And then, that sunny sunny morning, that dirty killing plane, that towering cloud of dust. Then the second, its mean little twin, flying willful, a fire wrath, a great gasping horror, an innocence felled. What would become of it? Who would succeed, who would collapse, and who would follow? What world would we have to save now? Two thousand three and the cards had been dealt but the hand had yet to be played.
And now, this new breed. Born after Star Wars. A litter of consumers, giddy-grasping.
But some of them were not so simple. Look at Katy She had joined Spring Youth in the summer of 2002, mostly for the skiing. There were two trips to Mammoth, Colorado. One in fall. One in spring. Never mind that it was a Christian group. That wasn’t the point. The point was that it was the only way to get to those powdery Colorado slopes from Muskegon, Michigan, twice a winter for next to nothing.
Yes, they sang Christian songs at the meetings. She actually liked that part. She especially liked “Southern Cross.”
“When you see the Southern Cross for the first time . . . ”
Those folksy lyrics, the guitar twang. It didn’t seem harmful, sinister, or any of the other things her sister rolled her eyes about. Who cares about God. Katy never thought about it. Although sometimes she wondered where He had been that crisp sunny morning in September, two years earlier. No one knew what to make of it. And, to be quite honest, she did think some of the lessons from the Bible-study book were good lessons. Love thy neighbor. Well, you couldn’t argue with that, now, could you?
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