by M. A Wallace
Around the town walked the area's usual transients. A man with a scraggly gray beard, a stained red jacket, and a backpack that carried everything he owned in the world struggled his way through the rain, keeping his head down except to look at the passing traffic. He ignored the electronic box when it showed a green figure of a man walking just as he ignored it when it showed a hand held out, palm first. He only paid attention to the traffic, for no one had ticketed anyone for jaywalking in Carlisle. Though there was talk that this might change—as some boroughs were fining people for failing to remove snow from sidewalks—the homeless man who divided his time between his secret sleeping places and the local soup kitchens suspected that jaywalking would never be enforced. There were too many lawyers and law offices in Carlisle. Writing more fines would only increase the number of contested cases brought before magistrates; even he knew that.
The Salvation Army soup kitchen opened at 1:30 p.m., a time he had always thought odd. The church where he went for breakfast every morning served meals from 7 to 8:30. That left him, at best, a whole five hours for hunger to gnaw away at him while he snacked on stale bagels, stale slices of bread, ziplock bags full of strange-tasting potato chips, and glazed doughnuts. None of these foods filled him up the way a good, hot meal did. The best that he had ever been able to say was that eating so many grains gave him the calories he needed.
For him, the cold rain was a curse. He hadn't minded the snow through the previous week, no matter how much it had fallen. He had simply walked through it, taking his time as he always did, to the same fenced-in property, down the same sloping driveway, into the same dining room with uncomfortable chairs and dirty silverware. The snow had not been as much of a problem as the rain, for the rain soaked his faded blue and orange Gulf baseball cap through. He had been obliged to take it off, tuck it into his backpack as best he could—an object which itself was become soaked.
There were days such as this messy Saturday when he did not know why he stayed alive at all. He enjoyed being able to laugh with the regulars at the food kitchen, many of whom complained about their circumstances as though the entire world was to blame for their conditions. Though he'd suffered so many blisters on his feet that the skin of the bottom of his feet had turned to something resembling rough leather, though he had a persistent cough that came with smoking cigarettes when he could get them, though he felt his energy decreasing every year, though he knew that the time was fast approaching when he would be placed in an unmarked grave at the cheapest expense possible, he never saw any reason to blame anyone or anything else for his circumstances. Perhaps he could have made better choices in his life. With the years sprawling out behind him, merging together in soup of memories, both visual and audible, he had trouble remembering all the steps he had taken on his slow yet inevitable decline from a nice apartment with a good job to trespassing everywhere he went just so he could find a place to sleep.
He had gone in and out of the region's homeless shelters, all of whom had strict policies about how long a resident could stay. He needed the stability that came with a roof over his head and a working shower. That would at least have given him enough opportunity to go out looking for work sure that he was as clean and presentable as he could be, instead of having the stains of the road upon him while he smelled strongly of garbage juice. He distinctly remembered a time when he had been living at the very same Salvation Army shelter where he went to get his meals. They had let him stay there so long as he volunteered in the kitchen or with the clothing. Though he did not like working for free, he had put up with it just to have a very small room in which to sleep—one he had to share with a recovering alcoholic whom he had no doubt would hit the bottle hard as soon as he could manage it.
That had come to an end when, after finding a part-time job for minimum wage at a failing gas station, a mix-up in the office resulted in his few possessions being put into a black plastic garbage bag. By the time he got back from his four-hour shift, his room had already been given to someone else. He was left working before the public without a shower and without a place to sleep. He had told the boss of this development the next day, but the boss, a short old man who was old enough to be a great-grandfather, just clicked his tongue inside his mouth like he always did, a sign of his anger. No home, no job. That was the way of the way of the world.
All that remained to him was a lively interest in the doings of other people. Instead of television, he had the drama of an entire town laid out before him—a town with drugs, with homeless people like himself, with welfare kings and queens living the high life as a result of their disabilities, either real or perceived. Over time, he had become disconcerted with the welfare system. Though he applied to subsidized housing multiple times, because he was a single man, he was continually told that he would have to be on the waiting list for four years before he would be accepted. Though he'd managed to get a food stamp card by walking a total of seven hours one day to a remote location well away from the center of town, he was unable to store groceries for the long-term, save in his backpack. That meant going into the grocery store over and over where he received dirty looks from the managers and cashiers, all of whom knew nothing about what it was to be unable to afford deodorant or shampoo. Though he wanted to go late at night so he would have to deal with fewer store employees, it would have meant buckling down on someone's property to sleep during the day.
No matter which way he turned the central problem of his life over in his mind, he found it impossible to make a substantial difference. It wasn't the economy, the area, or a lack of effort on his part. It simply came down to how things were. He could either accept it, or he could throw his life into the void that he suspected awaited him after death. He had chosen to accept it, carrying within him the smallest hope that one day, things would change. The economy would get better. Some rich man with money to burn would open up a new homeless shelter, one where he could sleep and shower and brush his teeth, albeit without toothpaste. Someday, things might change. He had always thought this when his desperation felt especially strong. There had to be some reason why he continued living. His life had to amount to more than being a drain on public resources. He just didn't know what the reason was, or if a reason existed at all. He hoped that there was, but often doubted it.
Had it not been for the rain, he would not have taken shelter under the eaves that hung in front of a pizzeria. He knew that though businesses did not like to have him outside their establishments, he had to stop both to catch his breath and to shake as much water off as he could.
3
The pizzeria had belonged to a man named Donald Hedfield. He had named his business Donnie's in an attempt to make his operation seem as Italian as possible, in spite of the fact that he had been born the son of a plumber from Pittsburgh. Stenciled on to the building's windows, those which faced the street, was a caricature of Donald himself—his fat face, bald head and smiling mouth all colored white. Next to the face was the company logo and the store's phone number, both in red and green colors. Despite the many pictures of famous people that hung all over the interior of the pizzeria, few people in town had known Donald. His passing some years ago had evoked no response from the community, for those who did happen across his little shop on High Street, across from a mostly unused movie theater, thought that he still ran the show from behind the scenes. His daughter, who had inherited the business, often had to say that Donald had gone to his eternal rest years before.
The daughter, Rosaline Hedfield, had been at the cash register when she saw the homeless man hanging out in front of the store once again. She had told him and told him not to loiter there. She had even put up a large sign with orange letters which said NO LOITERING. However, as she was not sure that he could read, she made a point of telling him to move along. On that Saturday, she was in a particularly foul mood. Two calls off on the same day by people she had just hired within the last month had forced her to come in on the weekend when she had tried as much as
she could to train up the store's three managers so that she could enjoy her weekends off. Though she found her managers competent enough, it didn't amount to anything if there was no one to run the register.
She had set two people to run the register at Saturday between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., the busiest hours of the day. Both those people had called off. It was not the first time they had, nor was it the first weekend she'd had to come in to cover for people who did not want to work. She wanted to fire them at once, but that meant even more work on her part minding the store in addition to holding interviews for new openings. It had not taken her long owning the business her father had made before she came to understand why fast food restaurants were always hiring, no matter how many people they had.
The majority of her business for the day had been pickups. People called over the phone for what they wanted then came to pick it up. That, she had observed, often came with inclement weather. Without a delivery service, the pizzeria had to rely on people coming directly to it, and though she had kept the store the way it had been during her father's day with its wide, comfortable seats and a jukebox with a vast selection of Kenny Rogers songs, people just did not like to stay and eat during bad weather. She suspected that they were pulled by two contrary desires: the desire to stay inside through the storm and the desire for the hot, tasty—if not altogether healthy—food Donnie's made. Often, the desire for food won out.
By 1:15 p.m., though, the patronage had slowed down enough so that Rosaline Hedfield felt it safe to leave the register for a few moments. She stepped outside, bracing herself against the cold. Despite the rain, she felt sure that it was below freezing outside. She wondered why there was no snow; there had certainly been enough of it in the past week. She let the door close behind her, not wanting the customers inside—all four of them—to be bothered by the chilly breeze.
The man standing in front of the store looked bad and smelled worse. His clothes bore stains of several different kinds. The large red jacket he wore had holes through its pockets, so that when he stuck his hands into them, his fingers protruded through the other side. His sneakers had visible holes in the sides and over his big toes. A mat of gray, thin hair clung to his head while his limp, wet beard hung against his chest. A scent emanated from him that she guessed was derived from several different sources at once, she guessed from polluted seawater, old garbage, and rotting produce.
She raised the broom she had brought at him. He flinched away, surprised. She said, “I've told you and told you, no loitering. Clear on out of here.”
The man gave her a piteous look that failed to move her. She thought, if he were really sorry, he could try taking a bath first. He said, “But I'm watching.”
On most days, she would have just dismissed his statement as nothing more than the fantasy of a deranged, unbalanced mind. But when he pointed, she turned to look out of instinct. She saw a white Range Rover with blue and red lights attached to its hood. On its side were the words Shippensburg University Police. Rosaline, who knew nothing about Dickinson University only two blocks away, stared for a moment. She did not know that universities had their own police departments.
She said, “Now what are you watching, Harold?”
The man shook his arm as he pointed. He said, “There's a man in the theater, see? A police man. Only he's wearing a poncho. I can't see. Maybe it's a man. But see that? He laid his briefcase down on the bench by the window. See there?”
Rosaline did see a briefcase sitting in the front window of the movie theater. She could not recall if one had been there before. She said, “You've got five minutes to clear out of here. If you're not gone by then, I'm calling the police.”
The man perked up when she said this. Though she expected his eyes to be wild and unfocused, when he looked directly at her, she saw that he was calm, even rational. In that moment, he did not look like a homeless man, much less one who made a nuisance of himself while she tried to operate her business.
Rosaline decided to go back inside and leave the stench where it was. She feared that she had picked up some of his scent just by standing close to him. While she went to the restroom and used Febreze spray on her clothes, she missed seeing the campus police officer leave without his suitcase. She missed seeing the man that came immediately afterward to pick it up.
4
Being the duty judge during weekends is a job that no judge wants to take if it can be avoided at all. Officers called more on late Friday and Saturday nights than at any other time. Judge Norbert Russo attributed this to a rise in drunk driving and domestic violence. Too many defendants who came through his docket in Carlisle, Pennsylvania had arrived there as a result of abusing alcohol. For this reason, he had often advocated that the state should prohibit the sale and consumption of alcohol altogether. It was not enough to keep all the wine, rum, and whiskey in the state-operated wine and spirit shops; if people could not responsibly manage the consumption of anything, particularly something as dangerous as alcohol, that thing needed to be taken away until they learned better. That no one listened to him, that even the most conservative bible-thumping representatives in the state congress dismissed him with a distant politeness only served to make him more irate over time. He became a judge who was quick to anger, though not always slow to understanding.
When two search warrants came to his desk on a late Saturday afternoon, he understood from the description why the two detectives were in such haste. The crime had taken place on campus. The majority of students were gone from campus. As such, if evidence remained to be found on campus, they would have to move fast. It often happened that killers who paid great attention to detail got sloppy in one moment of forgetfulness when they left a key item at home, or left a bloodstain in a place where blood wasn't supposed to be. Sometimes it was nothing more than a loose button. From what Norbert read in the requests signed by Detective Michael Ross, it was a flashlight. The flashlight had presumably been on Officer Bailey's person when he was shot. Find the flashlight and find the killer.
Though he knew Ross waited on him, he decided to take his time. He leaned back in his large office chair and considered the portrait of the man who had worked on the same bench before him. That man had been Roosevelt Sturgess, a veteran judge who had served until he was ninety-one years old. The legends spoken about him said that he remained sharp as a tack until his final days. He had died in his sleep while in the middle of a small probate hearing that had not been expected to bring any money to anybody, but which had been brought to court due to the long-standing animosity two brothers shared for each other. They had used the courtroom as a means to see who could bankrupt the other first. Sturgess had been amused through the whole trial. He would have been within his rights to throw it out, except that he found it all so amusing—a fact which he had not attempted to hide from anyone.
Russo remembered those days when he had been coming up as a paralegal working for a seedy personal injury firm that, on more than one occasion, chased ambulances all the way to the hospital. He remembered those days as simple times when a man could go walk a courtroom and know that he was dealing with shysters and crooks. Then, the worst of the worst kept themselves out of the public eye as much as they could in order to avoid scrutiny. Now, as he considered the two requests for search warrants, he reflected that the crooks had gotten bolder. They came out into broad daylight. They acted with impunity, as if they knew that all the dockets were full to bursting, that all the prisons in the country in the state were overflowing, and that the system was slowly beginning to collapse under the weight of the steady increase in crime.
He sighed and pressed a button on top of his desk that sent a signal to the guard post down the hall. The guard on duty, a bailiff working for the state, received the signal on his computer. Soon after that, the judge heard footsteps come down the hall, slow and measured—the footsteps of a detective. Lawyers, he had found, always walked as fast as possible. Detectives, those he had known, conserved their energy, fo
r they were often doing fieldwork for as long as twelve hours a day. Many of them also had a strong sense of self that crossed the line into arrogance.
In the three previous times he had dealt with the man, Detective Ross had struck him as exactly that kind of person. Every single time he had walked into the judge's chambers, he had done so in the belief that his requests would be granted. He sat there with a calm self-assurance that most detectives did not possess. In his long career as a judge for Cumberland County, Judge Russo had seen a lot of police officers and prosecutors come into his chambers. He felt at ease when they came hat in hand, ready to listen, unwilling to contradict what he said. Ross was an unusual man, one the judge had trouble figuring out when he troubled himself to do so. Throughout his years as an attorney, he had always understood that the judge's chamber was a place where one had to be on their best behavior. Everyone else he had met in his career acted this way, too, except for Detective Michael Ross.
He knocked once, and the judge said, “Come in.”
When Ross entered, the judge saw that he had not bothered to straighten his tie. He had buttoned up his shirt wrong so that one end was a little longer than the other. Though he had bothered to tuck it, the judge could tell from the crooked collar that Ross did not take the meeting seriously. The judge motioned to one of two wooden chairs across from this desk. He knew the chairs were uncomfortable to sit in for longer than ten minutes; that had been the very reason why he acquired them when he had been looking to replace the old leather chairs in his chambers that had been there since 1934. No one was supposed to be comfortable in a judge's chambers except for the judge. That was the point.
Ross sat down in the chair the judge indicated and said, “Thank you for seeing me, Judge.”
