“You like to fish, Robert?”
“Huh?”
“I said, you like to fish? You ever go up by the lake with the other kids?”
The kid shrugged. “Sometimes.”
The conversational gambit failed, but DeWitt had others. The one thing he didn’t want to do was scare the kids. He sat back again.
“What class did I get you out of?“
“Texas History.”
“Um. What are you learning about this week?”
“Calvin Coolidge at the Alamo.”
DeWitt wondered who was teaching the class this month. “I hated Texas History.”
The kid gave him a tentative, disbelieving smile.
“When I was about your age, the government came and gave polio shots to the kids in school. I got out of English. The shot was better than the class. Yeah. The Salk vaccine. We were the first:”
The memory of it came in a rush, down to the taste of the cheap cookies the school nurse gave out. There was a tray with two choices: vanilla with cream filling or chocolate with cream filling. It was only as an adult that DeWitt learned that some of the kids died from the shots. Had he known back then that they were dying, he would have said it was from those cookies.
“But I don’t have a shot for you. I just want to talk.”
The kid rolled his eyes. “I ain’t seen them two boys”
“Well. News travels fast.”
“And I don’t know nothing.”
DeWitt sighed, wondering how Bo had been handling the interrogations. Apparently more directly than DeWitt The kids DeWitt had talked to left the room as confused as they came in. “Maybe you do know something, only you think it’s not important. Were you friends with Billy Junior and Jason?”
The gimme cap, spinach-green and printed with the words JOHN DEERE, was pulled down low over the boy’s eyes. He raised his head to look at DeWitt. “Knew ‘em.”
The boy’s tone told volumes. “Didn’t like them? Why not?”
“They was mean. Lotsa kids would of killed them, I reckon. I would of killed ‘em, too, if I had the chance.” He made an automatic pistol of his finger and sprayed the room with rat-a-tatting fire.
DeWitt waited until the boy was finished. “We don’t know they were killed.”
“Bet they was killed like they mama.”
DeWitt had been patting the tip of one finger against his upper lip. He stopped. “Who told you about that?”
“B.J. He my cousin.”
“Uh-huh, So tell me about the Harper kids, about how they were mean.”
“Threw rocks. Used to get back in them trees and throw rocks while we was walking home from school. Used to yell things at us.”
“What things?”
“Nigger.”
DeWitt let out a pent breath. “I see.”
“Hit a Torku one time.”
“Who?”
“Junior and Jason. Hit a Torku with a rock while we was standing in the road crying. This Torku come up to see what was the matter and–bang–one of them got him right upside the head.”
DeWitt’s mouth went dry. “What did the Torku do?”
“Just looked surprised. He was bleeding a funny kind of blood. Was all over him.”
“He didn’t go after them?”
“Nope. Just stood there. Them Harper boys run off, laughing and all. And that Torku, he walk away, his head bleeding and him not even paying no attention or nothing.”
“You should have told me.”
The eyes darted at DeWitt in shame. If DeWitt waited long enough, people would give their sins to him. During a casual conversation the lead-heavy truth would drop from anxious tongues. “See? So you knew something after all. Little things are what we need to build a case.”
“Sir? You know their mama was gonna see that head Torku.”
“Seresen? Loretta talked to Seresen?”
“Wasn’t that she seen him. She just wanted to see him. Thursday at school I heard Justin tell another kid his mama went over there, but that head Torku, he wasn’t in.”
“You don’t know what she wanted?”
“No, sir. He didn’t say.” After a fretful silence the kid told him, “I know where them boys is, Chief.” His eyes and face were suddenly somber. It made him look like a pint-sized adult.
“Where?”
“Sucked up in the Line. Some of the kids seen ‘em.”
“Who saw them?”
“Donno. B.J. heard it from this sixth-grade white kid. They moan at night. That Line, it eat people.”
“Nobody’s been eaten before, Robert. There’s no reason to believe the Line isn’t safe.”
“It eat people up. There’s ghosts out there. They cry in the dark.”
“That’s the wind, son. Just the wind you hear. Out by the Line the wind makes strange sounds.”
The kid shook his head. It was obvious from his face what this boy’s nightmares were. “It eat people, Chief. And they cain’t never get out of that light.”
DeWitt let the kid go back to class. When he was alone with the dry scent of books and the moist smell of the rain, he rose and stretched. He walked down the scuffed linoleum hall, past a water fountain bulging urinal-level from the tile. Christmas, almost a month yet to arrive, hung in rectangles of Manila paper on the walls: tinseled trees piled high with presents; a stick-figure Santa Claus bearing gifts.
Downstairs, DeWitt found Tyler waiting. The huge black man was parked with his back against a mausoleum row of lockers, his beefy arms folded under his chest.
“You promised me you wouldn’t get the kids het up.” Tyler’s face was a rich medicine-bottle brown, with spills of pastille freckles.
DeWitt lifted a questioning eyebrow.
“Bo’s getting them riled,” Tyler said in his rolling bass. “Don’t want them riled before the holiday break.”
Around the gaps in the closed lunchroom door the smell of macaroni and cheese wafted, carrying with it the quiet tone of Bo’s voice.
“. . . about the last time you saw Jason and Billy Harper.”
A little girl’s reticent “I don’t know.”
“Just think back.” Distance did not cloak Bo’s frustration. “Friday? Did you see them Friday?”
Tyler’s clear brown eyes shifted to a crayon rendition of the angels and the shepherds. The angels in the drawing were stippled gray-brown. Torku color. “I got enough trouble without this. Three of my teachers didn’t show up. Classes are all bolluxed.'
From the lunchroom came the little girl’s, “I don’t know.”
DeWitt said, “Tell me about the Harper kids, Tyler.”
Tyler was a huge man, and his glower was larger than life. “Bad ones. Just plain bad. I’m telling you, DeWitt, Janet and your kids aside, those folks down at the Biblical Truth Church don’t teach life right.”
“Well . . .” Tyler was a Catholic. Even before Bomb Day, even before he left his cornfields to take over the vacant post of school principal, the man had looked askance at the fundamentalists.
“And what worries me is, the Torku are getting awful interested in what Pastor Jimmy’s saying.”
DeWitt’s breath hung like food caught in the gullet. “What do you mean?”
“He’s converting ‘em.”
The lunchroom door swung open. The little girl walked out, Bo a couple of steps behind. “You remember anything, you just phone me, okay?”
The child glanced over her shoulder and hurried on.
Tyler checked his watch. “‘Bout that time. Chief? You’re set to teach third-grade math for a month after Christmas break. Don’t you forget now. I already give Tammy your study books. You look ‘em over before class. I purely hate when my teachers fail in their class preparation.”
With that he was gone, hurrying back
to his office.
“You ready?” Bo asked.
DeWitt stared idiotically at Tyler’s retreating back.
“I said, you ready?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure.”
As they climbed into the squad car, Tyler rang the bell. There was a broken-drainpipe gush of kids from the school, a few teachers caught in the flood like flotsam. DeWitt searched the tiny faces. The kids, bundled in down parkas and mufflers, looked like brightly colored Michelin men. He didn’t see his son.
“Chief?” Bo prompted.
DeWitt roused himself. Keyed the ignition. And then he saw Denny, lunchbox banging his thigh as he ran in an awkward, swaddled gallop to the school bus. Relieved, DeWitt pulled away from the curb and drove down Guadalupe.
They found Doc in his spacious, threadbare office. He was talking to Granger. The men hurriedly broke off their conversation when DeWitt and Bo walked in. DeWitt could read contrition in their faces and wondered what they were hiding.
“Ah,” Doc said, recovering first. “The crimefighting odd couple.”
It was actually Doc and Granger who made the odd couple. Granger was a hulk of a man in a faded Farmer Brown coverall. As though aware his height was imposing, he always stood hunched.
Granger reached into his pocket and brought out a palm-sized wooden toy. “Duckies,” he explained, handing the toy to DeWitt. “See? He’s got a little string that makes his beak go up and down.”
“Clack-clack,” said the duck as Granger demonstrated. Its voice was the sound of Torku playing Monopoly.
“Got your name on it and all.”
“Thanks.” The duck was white and orange with a big green ribbon on its neck. An Autumn, that duck. DeWitt slipped it into his pocket.
Doc nailed him with a look. Early afternoon, and he was sober. “You find out about them kids?”
“I found out who saw them last and when.”
Bo swiveled in surprise. Evidently the officer with his direct interrogation hadn’t gotten past the I-don’t-knows.
“Jason spent Saturday night and all Sunday fishing with an Austin Berry. Austin saw him in school up through Thursday. Friday, Jason was out sick. Jason was afraid of his daddy. Said his daddy came over day and night. Woke them up shouting outside the house and wanting to move back in. His mama was scared.”
“You still think Billy did it?” Doc asked.
“I’m just looking for motives.”
“And you?” Doc peered at Bo.
“I think it was the Torku.”
Doc nodded. “I think you need to see something. Granger?”
The big man was Ieaning against a peeling cabinet, his hands in his pockets. “I been listening a lot.” Granger’s voice was a loud baritone, a voice for calling to neighbors across fences. There was a slight cast to the man’s left eye that caused DeWitt’s gaze to slide. He ended up staring at Granger’s ear.
The farmer pulled from his pocket not another duckie but a tiny transistor radio. He turned it on. Static hissed through the room.
“Over by the window you can get better reception,” Doc said.
Granger complied. He put the radio against the frame.
Music. They heard music. . .
It was so interspersed with white noise that you couldn’t tell what sort of music it was. It might have been country. It might have been classical. But between the explosions of static DeWitt caught two notes. Then another three.
“Lock onto the station,” Bo said.
“She’s locked on as she’ll ever be.”
DeWitt tore the radio from Granger and studied the numerals at the red marker. He didn’t recognize the station. Through the steam-kettle sputter, the notes were faint. Sketchy as memory.
“There’s the proof civilization’s back.” Doc eyed them one by one. “Now the Torku got to let us go.”
Chapter Fifteen
DeWitt parked by the modular building’s garden, where a Torku was knee-deep at work amid a riot of autumn flowers. The rain had departed, bequeathing to the air its dank hush. In the silence, the four men got out of the car. After a little badgering, Doc convinced the gardener to call Seresen. The Kol, when he emerged from the center a few minutes later, didn’t seem surprised to see them. Granger turned on his radio, and Seresen didn’t seem surprised by that, either.
“It’s music,” Doc said.
“If you say.”
“Goddamn, I do say! Don’t you hear? Don’t you understand what the hell this means?” Doc bounced on his heels. He was about the size of the small alien, and DeWitt was afraid Doc would take him on.
Seresen was unperturbed. “Tell me.”
“We know there was a nuclear war.” Doc ticked the points off on his fingers. “We know we’re on Earth. We know Loretta’s kids got cholera from their well, and we know you murdered her.”
“Doc,” DeWitt warned.
The physician was in Seresen’s face, the alien staring implacably back–an imminent head-on collision. “I demand to know why you’re keeping us trapped here! And where Loretta’s kids are!”
“There is no nuclear war. No war. No music.” Doc said, “Play it for him again, Granger.”
Granger stepped forward, towering over the tiny alien. “What do you mean, no nuclear war?” DeWitt’s throat closed, rusty-hinged, on old sorrow. “Pastor Jimmy himself told us Civil Defense called.”
DeWitt remembered Schoen flying out of the fire station and into the March drizzle, translucent raincoat flapping, its folds gathering the light. The man, disheveled and unearthly, had looked like a hysterical angel.
“Thermonuclear war is impossible,” the alien said.
DeWitt pushed Granger out of the way. “Why?”
“Atmospheric pressure keeps the radioactivity in the compound. Once the warhead reaches space, the neutrons are lost into the vacuum. When the warhead returns to the atmosphere, there is no radioactivity to explode.”
Hope inflated DeWitt’s chest like a balloon. But the next comment from Doc punctured him.
“That’s bullshit.”
The bulbous eyes shifted to the doctor. “We know all manner of things, and know them better than you.”
“Well, I know some of the satellites were nuclear-powered. They wouldn’t have worked if the radioactivity leaked out.”
“They tell you they are nuclear-powered. Perhaps they lie. If you believe the emergency was war, you will perhaps believe anything. None of us have told you it was war,” Seresen said with what DeWitt could have sworn was rage.
“I don’t believe a damned bit of it.” But Doc seemed doubtful now. “And I still want to know where the children are and why you murdered Loretta.”
“It has never been my intention to discourage your questions. But I understand I have only to answer to the chief of police.”
DeWitt could see where the conversation was headed. What if Seresen had witnessed Janet and Foster murdering Loretta? Suspicion was one thing; direct knowledge another. Maybe DeWitt really didn’t want to know.
Bo spoke before DeWitt could. “Will you answer DeWitt’s questions?”
“Yes.”
Too late. The four men waited for the alien to elaborate. Seresen didn’t.
“When?” Bo demanded.
“Now.” Seresen turned his clumsy body and walked into the warmth of the rec center, a reluctant DeWitt at his heels.
In a corner of the large game room two middle-school girls were playing Ping-Pong. When DeWitt and Seresen walked in, one girl missed a return. The white ball bounced over the green indoor/outdoor carpeting like a golf shot across a fairway.
Seresen took a seat at a card table, and DeWitt sat opposite, folding his hands on the Formica. The alien was so dwarfish, DeWitt felt he was interrogating children again.
He watched the girl retrieve the ball and
whack it back into play. “Where does the music come from, Seresen?”
“There is no music.”
“But I hear it.”
“Imagination.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
The Kol waved his boneless hand in dismissal. “Then perhaps what you hear is a return signal. Everything that goes up must come down. This is evident. Radio signals go a long way—eight years—but they eventually fall, too.”
“You want me to believe gravity affects radio waves.”
“This is what I say, yes.”
“Then we’re on Earth.”
“I did not say so.”
DeWitt slipped his hand into his jacket pocket and was surprised to touch the firm edges of Granger’s duck. “Six years up, six years down. You’re telling me it’s Earth music from the seventies.” He tried to remember what had been popular then. Disco? We’re being bombarded by disco?
The alien patted the table. The skin of his fingers puddled. “Space bends things. Things are refracted. The universe twirls like the hands of a clock. What goes up does not necessarily come down in the same place. We use this phenomenon when we travel. It is beyond your scope to comprehend.”
“I’ll try.”
“As the stars shift, so do families,” Seresen said, adroitly shifting subjects. “It is good to be concerned with the alteration of families. This has happened to one of you, but this is all that has happened. That is the reason the doctor and the Bo are upset.”
DeWitt played with the duck in his pocket. “No. It was the way the mother died, Seresen. She was murdered. That’s what upsets everybody.”
The motion of the alien’s hands on the table was so sensual that DeWitt stopped fondling the duck. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and laid it on the table.
“She made an appointment to see you. Do you know what she wanted?”
As if he had come to some decision, Seresen leaned forward and lowered his voice. “All right, then. Let us speak of this problem you imagine you have; but let us speak of it hypothetically. A man creates a car, let us say. And let us also say that perhaps the car drives into a tree and kills a family. The man is a murderer?”
“No.”
Happy Policeman Page 7
