The Man from Primrose Lane: A Novel

by James Renner

  David stood at the front, on a riser of spotty red carpeting, next to his best man, Wally, whom he’d known since grade school but seldom saw much of anymore, and the minister, a plump woman in a flower-print gown. The congregation rose on some cue David had missed and suddenly Chip, a raggedy-haired man he’d met at summer camp ten years ago, was playing the “Imperial March” from The Empire Strikes Back on a synth he’d set up in the corner. Elizabeth stepped through the doors. As soon as Chip saw her, he dutifully switched to “Here Comes the Bride.” The joke wasn’t funny anymore, because the woman in that dress was not simply radiant or fetching, as those who were there would later claim; she was not glamorous or even lovely, as his father would tell him at her funeral—the woman in that dress was magical, and in an instant every last person in that little room knew and understood this, and more than a couple were moved beyond admiration into fear.

  The dress was secondhand, from Once Upon a Bride. It was plain, straight, and had no train. It wasn’t even white, really, but eggshell. But it fit as if it had been designed for her by a third-generation dressmaker at the end of a long career. The faux-satin fabric lay upon her form like a suggestion of a dress, slipping over her skinny tomboy hips, down her long slender legs. It slung around her breasts in a way that suggested the gentle firmness David knew, and wrapped around her freckled shoulders in thin strips of ribbon. Her hair, that wispy red hair he so loved to trace his fingers through, that hair was twisted up in a windy-do that revealed her milky-pale neck, her tiny ears. She wore no makeup. Her cheeks blushed with wonderful insecurity, her eyes sparkled in the flashes of ten disposable cameras as she walked, alone, to David.

  He took her hand as she came to him and when she clasped to him he could feel her shaking. She felt like living lightning.

  When it came time for his vows, he pulled the crinkled paper from his pocket with a shaky hand.

  “I don’t know why I love you but I do,” he said, looking at her, at her eyes. “When I saw you that first day of classes it was like I had been waiting all my life just to meet you. It was like I finally understood my purpose. I will spend the rest of my life protecting you, Elizabeth, protecting you from all the randomness you see in the world, against all those probabilities. I swear I will never let anything happen to you or to us. Not as long as I’m alive.”

  “David,” she said. “I’ve wondered a lot about whether I love you, because I never thought I could really truly love anyone. What they don’t tell you is that love is faith and, well, faith is unpredictable. It has its own rules that I don’t understand. I do love you, David. I know I do. I love you because in spite of the odds against any real happiness in this world, I believe we can be happy. You made me believe. Because you made me happy.”

  * * *

  Besides the ill timing of a furry convention on the other side of the Holiday Inn Express off I-77 in Canton, the reception was a fine party. There was plenty of prime rib and chicken cordon bleu and a cookie cake and an open bar with middle-shelf liquor both dark and clear. By sundown David was buzzing on wine. He watched a line of nervous young men joking to each other as they awaited a turn with the bride for the dollar dance.

  “I’m happy for you,” someone said, from just behind him.

  David turned to find his uncle Ira, an older man with wispy white hair and a long face. “Thank you.”

  “I got you a little something, kiddo,” he said, handing David an unwrapped book.

  It was a thin moleskin, filled with patient lines of thin-lettered handwriting.

  “When I was young, I was in love with words. Copied down my favorite bits. Poetry, mostly,” Ira said, his voice a powerful wind of whiskey. “Lots of Williams in there. He uncovered the rhythm of life, the balance of it. How reality is understood through imagery. The forms behind things. The light and the darkness there. If you’re going to be a writer, you have to know this man.”

  David smiled, though he was unsure what exactly his uncle was trying to say.

  He thumbed through it as Ira walked away, reading snippets about plums and red wheelbarrows. He waved a thanks at the old man, but Uncle Ira was already lost in some low conversation with David’s mother across the dance floor. So he tucked it inside his tux and waited for his turn to dance with his wife again. He wondered if they might have kids one day and, if so, what they would look like. He thought of growing old with her, what sort of adventure that might be. He thought of all the vacations and long Sundays he had to look forward to and felt the warmth around him, the warmth of the wine and the friends and the immediacy of the moment and all the promises of the future.

  * * *

  He hadn’t spoken to Jason Parker in several months, even though David kept the young man on salary. He thought of Jason as his “Sherlock ruffian.” He was to David as the local beggar kids had been to Sherlock Holmes: a source of unbiased information, a trusted ally, a proxy when needed. A writer’s life, even the life of a writer in retirement, requires a couple close associates. When he needed someone to run to the drugstore to refill his psych meds, he called Jason, who didn’t judge and wouldn’t gossip. When he needed weed, he called Jason, who had friends who grew that sort of thing. Jason read and answered the emails that came in through the website and politely declined requests for interviews with David. Twice a week he picked the mail up from the post office and sorted through it, pitching everything David didn’t need to know about. Sometimes threatening letters came in the mail and David would ask Jason to have his people look into it. Sometimes that meant background checks, which he was good at, and occasionally that meant showing up at the letter-writer’s door late at night, which he was great at.

  Sherlock ruffians are hard to come by. David had met his at a Black Keys concert at the Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland. It was his first journey out since the accident. He had wanted to clear his head, fill it up with music. Halfway through their set, a rode-hard hipster had tried to pick a fight with him, but then some Herculean blond-haired man had stepped between them and pulled David out the back door. “Bad press, man, punching a douchebag in a bar,” the man had said. “I’d hate to have my sister see that on the news. She’s a big fan.” He had walked David back to his car and had handed him a business card (it read: Jason Parker: Cowboy, Astronaut). The next day, David mailed him a signed copy of his book for his sister. She wrote back. In her letter, she talked about her brother, who had moved in with her after her MS progressed. She casually mentioned he needed a job. David hired him immediately, dispatching him on errands at times created just to give him something to do. And when Jason’s sister died a year later, David paid for the funeral.

  The morning after he met Katy, David called Jason.

  “Hiya, boss,” said Jason. “What can I do you for?”

  “Met a girl last night said she was my friend on Facebook.”

  “Ahuh.”

  “Are you using my Facebook to pick up girls?”

  “Fuck, man. I didn’t mean to do anything wrong. Look, they know I’m your assistant and not, you know, you, before I hook up with them. And it’s not like it happens every day. It’s a very rare thing. Like ten times I did it or something.”

  “I’m not mad,” said David, though, to tell the truth, he was, a little. His intern was using David’s profile to mostly promote his dick and not the book. But why not? What was David doing with either his dick or his book these days?

  “I’d be mad. It’s a really shitty thing to do,” said Jason.

  “And you let them know you’re you right away?”

  “Oh, yeah. Right away. Right off the … whatever. You know, from the first email they know. Then, sometimes, they want to talk about what you’re really like and because I know you they think I know what you’re like so we start talking. I never tell them anything important, of course. Then after a couple more emails I’m usually like, ‘Just come over and have a beer,’ and sometimes they do.”

  “Do you remember a girl named Katy?”

&n
bsp; “Fuck, yeah, I do. Redhead. Kinda goth. Or maybe new wave synth. She wants your junk, bad. I didn’t get with her, though.”

  “Did she ever say anything weird? Anything about being on the news or anything?”

  “Uh, just that the police wanted to talk to her father and he told them to fuck off. He’s a contractor. A big redneck. Why you so interested? Should I get in touch and arrange something?”

  “No,” said David. “Actually, you should probably just let me work the site again. This is the kind of thing blogs—or, God help me, Gawker—would love to blow out of proportion if they got wind of your game.”

  “Coolio,” said Jason, though David could tell he’d hurt the young man’s feelings. “Gotta warn you about something, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Not all of the emails that come in are positive.”

  “It’s okay. I’m used to bad reviews.”

  “Nah, man. Dark stuff. Especially lately. I think this one woman who is a witch or Wiccan or whatthefuck put a spell on you. Said she sent a demon after you. Oh, and you get gay stuff, too. A lot of English professors would like to polish off your knob. I get rid of that shit. Delete. Delete. Delete.”

  “Thanks, Jason.”

  “You got it. Anything else I can get for you?”

  “Not right now. But soon enough, I think.”

  * * *

  The detective bureau of the Akron Police Department was located within the crowded confines of the municipal building on High Street, a boxy brown office tower that appeared claustrophobic even on the outside. The bureau occupied the back corner of the sixth floor. It was painted a nauseating orange and beige that for some reason reminded David of corned beef.

  “I’m here to see Detective Sackett,” he said to the woman seated at the desk below the orange-as-a-plastic-tangerine counter.

  “Take a seat,” she replied, without looking up.

  Detective Tom Sackett, David had learned, was the only police officer assigned to the Joseph Howard King homicide. A rookie. The youngest detective on the force. Obviously, he was someone the department could dump the case onto and still pretend they were doing something. Sackett was also the spokesperson for the case. Both the communications director for the Akron PD and the chief had passed the buck to young Sackett when David had phoned them earlier in the day. “Talk to Sackett,” Chief Gareau, who had also been promoted since the original Beacon articles ran, had said. “He’s your man. That’s his case. Knows it better than any of us.”

  Doubtful, David thought.

  When he got Sackett on the horn, the detective had sounded really eager to talk. And that was a plus. If he couldn’t get any comment from the chief, at least he could get a lot of comment from the detective, even if it did turn out to be a bunch of Keystone Kops hyperbole. That had potential for good characterization.

  Sackett had said he was available right away, if David wanted. So he had called Michelle, who readily agreed to another last-minute afternoon of babysitting—she was saving up for some kind of phone called an Android and a couple more shifts would put her over the top. Tanner had thrown a conniption when she arrived, one of those five-alarm screamers where his face turned blue and the world waited for him to breathe. It was David’s fault, of course. He spent so much time with the boy, even these brief departures were wearing on his son, making the boy lethargic and slightly paranoid. Eventually, though, he had brokered a truce with Tanner in which he promised to build him a fort out of couch pillows and blankets if he would stop screaming. He had even told Michelle that Tanner could eat supper in there if he wanted—which he did. Duh.

  A steel door beside David opened and Detective Sackett stepped out. He was dressed in a plain blue polo shirt tucked into blue jeans. On his left hip rested his sidearm, a weapon out of place on his boyish body, and his badge. On the other hip, his walkie-talkie and cell phone. If he was older than David, it wasn’t by much. He didn’t smile when he saw David, but David had a hunch he wanted to and only chose to remain stoic because he thought that was a part of his job that he wanted to experience.

  “Mr. Neff?” he asked.

  David stuck out his hand, which Sackett accepted. “David,” he said.

  Sackett nodded and introduced himself to the writer. “Nice bag,” he said, motioning toward the large leather satchel slung over David’s shoulder. It was wrinkled, beat-up, and a little dirty. “It’s seen some action.”

  In fact, it had saved his life on one occasion, but that was a story for another day. Its weight was a comfort to him, like having his father’s hand on his shoulder.

  “Follow me,” Sackett said, ushering David into the detective bureau.

  Down a long, windowless, beige, and undecorated hallway, through a dingy wooden door, was the bureau: a square brown and orange container of a room with four empty desks piled high with paperwork and framed pictures of family. This room smelled of gun grease and old hot dogs. There were no windows.

  Sackett sank into the chair beside a desk less cluttered than the others. Two pictures were tacked to a corkboard above his head. One, a picture of a slender woman with dark hair sitting with a pigtailed baby girl on a city park swing: the detective’s wife and daughter, David assumed. The other, a school picture, slightly outdated, of a redhead beauty with soft cheeks and a galaxy of freckles tracing the bridge of her nose like a half mask. Katy, he thought. She looked about eleven, but he could see her adult self in the sharp set of her jaw and the Cheshire grin that twisted first up, and then down at the ends. Obviously, the detective believed she was a vital clue to the identity of the Man from Primrose Lane.

  “So…” David began, digging into his bag and pulling out a reporter’s notepad and a blue Bic.

  “Wait up a second,” said Sackett. “I just want to say that I’ve never done this before, spoken to a reporter or writer or whatever. Normally they don’t let us do this. I’m open to sharing information with you because I think our leads have dried up and maybe getting some stuff out in the papers might generate something new. But there’s some things I obviously can’t talk about.”

  “Sure.”

  “And I haven’t read your book, either. I hope you don’t take offense. I’m not much of a reader. But my wife read your book when it came out and she loved it, so I’m sort of doing this for her. Against my better judgment.”

  “Okay.”

  “Also, I did some background on you. Asked around. Talked to the Medina County Sheriff’s Department, who didn’t have the best things to say about what you do.”

  “They wouldn’t,” said David. “They executed the wrong guy when they executed Ronil Brune.”

  “And now Ohio doesn’t have capital punishment and so when we catch the real bad guys these days, we can’t sentence them to death. Because of your book.”

  The Serial Killer’s Protégé had set off a chain of events that had ultimately led to the overturning of capital punishment in the state. It was a fact that he actually took great pride in. “You’re still calling him Joseph Howard King?” he asked, pressing on.

  “I don’t know what else to call him until we find his real name.”

  “Some people call him the Man from Primrose Lane.”

  “Well, I always called him the Man with a Thousand Mittens,” said Sackett. “But what I wanted to tell you was, while those sheriff’s deputies kind of despise you for what you did, they also have a great deal of respect for you, at least the lieutenant out there. He told me you should have been a detective instead of a reporter. He said you would have been a good one. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

  David was surprised by this sentiment. Since the publication of The Serial Killer’s Protégé, he had specifically avoided driving through Medina County, afraid of being pulled over for a burned-out taillight and winding up in some small-town gulag for the rest of his life. One retired deputy who had invested a lot of time in putting Brune away had written him a letter in which he had called David a “media who
re” and promised to “rearrange” David’s facial features if he ever saw him in town.

  “So what do you want to know?” asked Sackett.

  “Well, first of all, you gotta tell me why you call him the Man with a Thousand Mittens,” he said. “Then tell me about the day you found the body.”

  Sackett reached into his desk and pulled a cigarette from a pack of Camels. He lit it, took a long drag, and expelled the noxious smoke into the air, where it hovered, undisturbed, at the ceiling. He pointed to David’s shirt pocket, where his traveled pack of Marlboros peeked out. “You can smoke, too, if you want,” he said. “Promise not to give you a ticket.”

  It would take too long to explain his mental cigarette habit, so David just shook his head.

  “All right,” Sackett said. “Here goes.”

  For the next half hour, Sackett recounted his discovery of the dead body inside the house on Primrose Lane, how he had found hundreds of mittens in the closet, how he’d discovered the trail of blood leading to the blender, how the maggots sounded as they plopped out of the hole in the dead man’s chest, how Billy Beachum had bolted in the kitchen. As he talked, he kept a steady chain of coffin nails in the corner of his mouth, such that, by the time he had finished, the room was a cloud and David’s clothes were forever infused with the essence of cheap tobacco. Finally, Sackett flipped a switch on the wall and a fan turned on somewhere in the bowels of the building, sucking the fumes into ceiling vents, slowly clearing the air and replacing it with that odd fragrance of boiled hot dogs. David’s notebook was half full of his blue-inked shorthand, a mishmash of cursive, print, and hieroglyphics. This, of course, was only a start and, David suspected, information that was no longer as relevant as it must have seemed to Sackett four years ago, in 2008.

  “I’ve got a bazillion questions for you,” said David.

  “Shoot.”

  “What was Beachum delivering that day?” he asked.

  “Some incidentals,” said Sackett. “And a Geiger counter.”