The Orchard

by Charles L. Grant

  “For god’s sake, Dad, when the hell are you gonna ease up?” He had clenched his fists, and he looked ready to cry. “She’s right, you know. She really is. I ought to get a place of my own where I could at least have some peace.”

  “Who’s right? Who are you talking about?”

  “None of your business,” Les snapped. “Just leave me alone.”

  The outburst had been a shock, and the “she” could only be Evelyn Zayer.

  This morning, Les had gone to school early, without saying goodbye.

  Yeah, he thought, the Foreign Legion sounds great. Sand and camels and no kids to figure out.

  Pushing away from the desk, daring those who passed his office to come in and annoy him, he rubbed his forehead with the heel of one hand, trying to drive off a headache that had lodged there since he’d wakened. It felt like someone had tied an iron clamp around his head and now, in malicious delight, was trying to crush his skull without crushing his brain.

  “Gilman,” he said to the beaded glass on the door, “you are in bad shape. Real bad shape.”

  The telephone rang three times before he picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, and returned it to the cradle.

  “Please, God,” he said as he reached for his sport jacket, “please, let it be a simple breaking and entering, with lots of fingerprints and footprints and the guy’s wallet at the scene. C’mon, God, how about it?”

  He didn’t need a car. He crossed Chancellor Avenue, hurried past the Mariner Cove, and cut through the parking lot to a small blacktopped area behind the Regency Theater. Two patrolmen were standing near the building’s corner, keeping a handful of people from going in back; a third met him as he approached.

  “What is it, Nick?” he said, already feeling his stomach tighten, his throat begin to dry.

  Officer Lonrow, his face blotched and his hands quivering, only pointed behind him.

  The theater’s back wall was unbroken by any doors, and in its center squatted a large green dumpster whose lid had been thrown up against the brick. Brett started for it, and hesitated when he saw a hand dangling over the side. A young hand. One silver band. A silver bracelet. A thread of dried blood from the hump of one knuckle.

  He stopped for a moment and drew his lips between his teeth with a hiss, took several deep breaths, and listened to a woman moaning, a man’s voice raised in excited curiosity, a car grinding gears as it turned a far corner.

  Then he took a look inside, blinked, and turned away as slowly as he could. Lonrow joined him, and they studied the thick line of trees that separated the theater from the houses behind.

  “How did you find her?” he asked.

  “Just doing my rounds, as usual,” the younger man said between harsh clearings of his throat. “I saw the lid up and was going to close it when I saw … the hand. I called you right away.”

  “Do you know who she is?”

  Lonrow shook his head. “Do you?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Evelyn Zayer. She’s … she was a friend of my son’s.”

  “Oh, boy,” the man said, but Brett made no comment, only poked into the trees and held his breath when he saw indentations that might have been footprints. He knelt, frowned and squinted, and could find only two, with maybe a third. They were clearly not made by shoes or bare feet, and faint as they were on the hard ground and fallen needles, they could have been made by anything from a dog to a prowling cat. He wasn’t surprised; why the hell should things get easy now?

  He stood with a groan and waited for the forensic crew to get to work. As soon as he was no longer needed, he let a patrol car take him to the hospital, to the morgue in the basement, where he saw Evelyn’s body on a polished metal table. There was a wound in the center of her chest, wide and passing completely through to the spine. He had already heard all the theories on possible weapons after the first girl had died—a sword, an ice pick, a dowel, a stump of wood. But he kept them to himself while he spoke with the girl’s parents, forcing himself to remain calm while the mother wailed and the father railed and he saw in their eyes Leslie’s name flashing with unmentioned suspicion.

  When at last he returned to his office, he slammed the door loudly enough to tell the others he wasn’t to be disturbed. But he could still hear the sounds, still see the shadows that passed down the hall. Several times he told himself to get up, get his coat, and go home. It was well after five; there was nothing more he could do here, not today, He had already called Callum Davidson, the theater’s manager, and was told that the last of the previous evening’s trash had been put in the dumpster just after midnight. There had been no one in the parking lot, no one on the streets.

  And he stared at the desk until his eyes began to blur, and all he could think of was Les’s temper the night before.

  An hour later, he started and cursed when the telephone rang, snapped an angry “Hello,” and slumped back in his chair when he heard Denise’s voice.

  “Sorry,” he said wearily. “It’s been lousy today.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I heard.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you okay?”

  His smile was halfhearted. “That seems to be your favorite question these days.”

  “What’s your answer this time?”

  “Rotten,” he admitted.

  “Have you … what does Les say?”

  Suddenly there was heat climbing fast to his cheeks, heat on his palm when he slapped the desk and stood up, heat that blurred through his vision and made him reach blindly for the back of his chair.

  “What the hell does Les … Jesus, it must be all over town, right? Cop’s son suspected of double murder?”

  “Brett, wait—”

  “Christ Almighty!” He knew he was yelling, and he couldn’t lower his voice. “Why the hell isn’t anyone talking about a teacher, for god’s sake, or whatshisname up at the luncheonette? They see these kids every day too, you know. You think these girls are nuns or something? You think Les is the only kid in the world who takes them out?”

  “Brett, please!”

  He took the receiver from his ear and cradled it gently, his arm rigid with the need to slam it down instead. Then he stalked out of the office, and got as far as the front desk when a voice turned him around.

  “You’ll have to talk with your boy,” Stockton told him quietly, looking as if he wished he were anywhere but here.

  Brett clenched his fists, but could do nothing else but nod.

  The chief scratched his neck thoughtfully, took a breath, and spat dryly. “I don’t want you to think I think the boy did it, Brett. But he might’ve seen something, heard something. You know that as well as me.”

  “Right,” he said flatly, knowing he should be relieved, angry that he wasn’t.

  “You want someone else to do it?”

  “No. No, I can … I’ll do it, don’t worry.”

  “Then do it home,” Stockton said as he headed back to his office. “No sense making it worse than it is.”

  He watched the door close silently, stood there in silence until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He hurried outside, paused at the top of the steps and stared blindly at the traffic, not feeling the day’s heat snake itself around him.

  A hand touched his arm gently.

  “You feeling all right?” Vicky asked. She was in street clothes, a pants suit practical and cool that somehow managed to disguise her figure. Her hair was tied back; there was perspiration on her brow.

  “Fine,” he said, smiling wanly and shoving his fingers hard through his hair. “Tell me something,” he said then, looking at the street, looking at the houses. “Have you ever wished you were back on the farm?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Don’t you wish sometimes you could get the hell out of here and go back to Vermont?”

  “Not on your life.” She grinned, lifted her right arm, and flexed the biceps. “The only thing I’d get there is more brawn than I’d know what to do
with. Thank you, but no. Coming to this place was the best thing I ever did in my life.” The grin broadened. “Next, of course, to meeting you.”

  She winked.

  He winked back and hoped she wouldn’t see the blush he knew had to be crawling all over his face.

  “You off?” she asked then.

  He nodded.

  “So am I, as of now. You like to join me for a drink? Call it a bracer if you think people will talk.”

  He laughed and held her arm, half turned and waved with his free hand when a car drove by and the driver honked twice. It was Denise, and she honked again as she turned the corner, a hand arched over the roof and waving.

  “I don’t think I’d better,” he said, and chuckled when he saw the look on Vicky’s face. “No, not because of her. I don’t want to have … I want to be clear-headed when I talk to Les. This heat—one drink and I’ll be swinging home through the trees.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Just stop being a stranger from now on, all right? I don’t bite, y’know.”

  His smile was warm. “Okay. That’s a promise.”

  She turned to leave, turned back. “And thanks for holding my hand yesterday. I really appreciate it. It was nice.”

  He waited until she’d gone before taking the rest of the steps slowly, pulling off his tie and jamming it into his jacket pocket, taking off his jacket and holding it by the collar.

  Grateful to the chief for not pressing the issue, he kept his mind a careful blank as he took the long way home, concentrating instead on the rainbows of flowers he saw in the gardens, the late blossoms on some fruit trees that were whitening the lawns, watched a cat stalk a fat robin until he clapped his hands to scare the bird, stuck out his tongue when the cat looked at him and glared.

  Marvelous hero of the downtrodden, he thought with a grin, and had a sudden feeling he’d get a call from Denise tonight, casual, and nosey.

  And when he reached the house at last, Amy Niles was waiting at the gate. She wore vivid green shorts and a cutoff t-shirt, and the books she held against her chest made her seem almost naked.

  He smiled pleasantly, nodded a greeting, and let the smile fade as she backed away from his approach, watching him blankly, her deep-set eyes not shifting, not blinking until he had turned up the walk.

  “Mr. Gilman?”

  He looked over his shoulder, and stopped.

  “Would you tell Les that I tried to call him last night?”

  “He wasn’t home, Amy,” he said, puzzled at the way she kept looking at him. As if he wasn’t there. As if he were only a shimmer of heat she was trying to give form.

  “I know. Would you tell him I called?”

  He nodded automatically and she walked away, in and out of the shade, her long legs pale, dark, pale, until a tall hedge intervened and she was gone.

  Those legs, however, and the bare midriff, the ribbon of back, were little more than glimpses when he stopped again and cocked his head.

  Gone now, unseen, and for the briefest of moments all he heard were her footsteps. Quiet, quick, and muffled. The way they had been in Saturday’s fog.

  Good god, he thought, and waved away the notion as he climbed heavily to the porch. It was obvious to a blind man she was jealous of whoever went out with Les, but she certainly wasn’t crazy enough to follow the son’s father as well.

  “Nuts,” he said as he opened the door. “You’re nuts, Gilman. She didn’t follow you then, she didn’t follow you ever, and she sure as hell didn’t kill either of those poor girls.”

  The house was empty, but there were signs Les had been there—his school jacket had been tossed on the couch, and his books were on the dining room table. The upstairs rooms, though, were empty, and so, when he looked, was the backyard. There was no note.

  The car was still in the garage, and he was ashamed that he had checked.

  For a while, he stood in the middle of the driveway, trying to make up his mind what to do next. He could wait for Les to show himself, or he could return to the station and face Stockton with the news that the boy was gone. But waiting would kill him; and Stockton only had so much patience to go around. Frustrated, he rolled up his shirtsleeves and considered mowing the lawn, raking the yard, cleaning out the garage, washing the car. And when he was finished stalling, he found himself staring at the fence and thinking of Amy.

  He told himself he was crazy, that according to his son and Denise, the girl hadn’t been quite the same since her boyfriend had died. On the other hand, it wouldn’t be too farfetched for her to latch onto Les because he had helped her; she could hold him, as a lifeline, and feel threatened, unnerved, whenever he saw someone else. Like Evelyn Zayer.

  There have been less substantial motives, he thought. A lot less. And for the time being, it was better than the nothing he already had; it was far better than thinking his own boy was a killer.

  Forcing down the guilty protests that began instantly to surface, he went inside and checked the telephone book for her address, then changed into jeans and an open-necked shirt. When Les still hadn’t arrived by the time he was ready, he told himself Amy was probably having supper with her family—a good time to catch her home, a bad time for questions. So he forced himself to sit down, have a sandwich he barely tasted and a glass of milk he thought sour. A note, then, for Les, apologizing for not being home and asking the boy to forage for his own supper.

  Amy wasn’t home. No one was.

  He stood for a moment at their door, then wandered over to Chancellor Avenue, trying to decide where best to find her, or get hold of Les. He had started for the luncheonette when he saw her heading for Mainland Road.

  An impulse to call out was denied, and he followed instead, hands loose in his pockets. He was strolling, nothing more, as the last of the sun glared hard in his eyes and the heat broke drops of perspiration along the line of his hair. This was the way she’d gone when he’d seen her with Les, and he wondered if the field, the deserted Armstrong farm, was a meeting place for kids. He’d heard no word of it, believing that the local lovers’ lanes were confined to the valley on the other side of the tracks.

  She paused at the corner before crossing over, down into the drainage ditch, up through the brambles.

  A truck hurtled by, and he turned away from the blast of hot air that made his cheeks feel dry and cracked.

  Dumb, he thought, and sprinted over, scrambling up the slope, squinting as the light shot red into his eyes, obscuring everything but the points of thorns quivering near his face. He waited, catching his breath, then slipped sideways along the hedge until he found a gap he could push through.

  A pale curling mist was lifting from the field, drifting out of the trees north and south of him to wind through the weeds. He stretched his neck, rubbed his shoulders, picked up a stick and started walking. Westward, but not directly. Peering down into the dead high grass, switching aside browning stalks, watching a pair of grasshoppers whirr like cracked paper away from his shoes.

  Out for a stroll.

  Shading his eyes against the sun now caged behind the trees, the air difficult to breathe, his chest growing tight, locusts in the trees buzzing louder than the traffic. Stumbling over a hidden burrow that nearly turned his ankle. Kicking a branch to one side and ducking away from a swarm of spinning gnats he snorted from his nostrils, scratched out of his ears. Watching burrs cling to his legs and wobble with his motion.

  Then he heard his name—a whisper, a calling—and she was standing by the near edge of the orchard, the dead and burned trees sharp and more lifeless as the day shaded faintly gold.

  She smiled shyly when he reached her, still switching the weeds, once in a while taking the stick lightly to his leg. “Are you following me again, Mr. Gilman?”

  He laughed. “No. I have been looking for you, though.”

  She frowned briefly. “Why?”

  He looked behind her, at the few blades of green that poked through the hardened ash, at the gnarled and blackened branches,
at the green fields beyond, where a flock of sparrows rose and settled, rose again and circled. It was a dismal place, and he couldn’t help shaking as if he were cold, couldn’t help wondering why anyone would want to even look at this place.

  “Good lord, Amy,” he said, still smiling, “do you come out here a lot?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “It’s like a graveyard, for Pete’s sake. Aren’t there better places to go, prettier ones?”

  She reached behind her and pulled at a charred twig. “Mike was here. We had … a bunch of us had a picnic, Mr. Gilman, and he wanted me to marry him.”

  He kept his silence; he tossed the stick away.

  She knelt and used her twig to poke at the ground, at an anthill that seemed as dead as the orchard. Her free hand slapped at her hair to drive off a fly. “I used to think, you know, about knights and things? Shining armor and all that.” A look up. “Is that silly?”

  “No,” he said honestly. “Not at all.”

  “Miss Quarell doesn’t think so, either. She says that as long as there are people like me, there’s hope for the world.” Her laugh was quick, light, and scattered by the wind. “I wanted, when I was a little girl, to put my head in a unicorn’s lap, or have a prince climb a tower and save me, or have some movie star come up and take me away in his limousine.” Another laugh, cold and without mirth. “Miss Quarell says I have to be careful what I dream.”

  “And what do your parents say?”

  She stood, took a deep breath, and lifted her arms languidly over her head, and he couldn’t avoid looking at the flat of her tanned stomach, the lower slopes of her small breasts gleaming as if oiled.

  “Get good grades, graduate, and get a good job.”

  “Not bad advice, Amy,” he said uneasily, when she took a step toward him and he didn’t back away. “Practical.”