All For One

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  Instinct made him survey the other five. He recalled the pictures in the file, informal snapshots taken against the gray wall of some police interview room. Small, stony faces that could not hide the dread the moment had chiseled upon them. He compared the then with what he saw now.

  Joey. Paula Jean. Jeff. Michael. Bryce.

  Then was also now. The worry was there, in their eyes, and in the nervous twiddling of their thumbs.

  And who were they? Dooley asked himself. And who was Elena? Her mark had been left on the instrument of Guy Edmond’s demise, as had theirs. She was one of them.

  But she was also not. Not one of the junta. She was the outsider. The outsider who was inside. Invited or compelled?

  This was the one Joel had expected to talk. Dooley knew this without having to be told. And if he had expected her to talk...

  The final bell blared long and sharp, masking the clatter of twenty-odd sixth graders suddenly freed from invisible anchors. Mary finished with Elena and pointed to the assignment list on the far chalkboard. “States of matter tonight. Please remember.”

  Bodies trickled from the rows of desks, narrowing to a singular flow near the door and spilling down the stoop to a spreading wave behind the bungalows. Elena was second out the door, well ahead of the others.

  “She’s a troubled little girl,” Dooley commented when Mary was back at her desk. “Did she say anything?”

  “Detective Ashe, I am not on your side,” Mary declared. “You’ll have to find another informant.”

  She dropped into her chair and drew a stack of math papers onto her blotter, red pen hunting errors. When she cooled off a moment later and looked up the room was empty.

  * * *

  Joey, PJ, and Bryce were the first to round the corner to the ball field, eyes searching the crush pouring toward the main gate.

  “There she is,” Bryce said. He had picked Elena out, stuck behind a wall of fifth graders that, regardless of chronology, eclipsed her in every dimension.

  “Go talk to her,” Joey told PJ. Michael and Jeff came up as the suggestion was heeded.

  The vice president of room 18 sprang into a trot that put her alongside Elena in no time flat. PJ paced her in silence for a moment, then asked, “How are you?”

  Elena looked up at her friend and peeled away from the crowd, letting the masses pass while she slowed. PJ followed her lead. “I’m okay.”

  “We were worried about you yesterday.”

  “My parents kept me out.”

  “So everything is okay?” PJ glanced briefly back at the rest, then turned again to Elena. “Everything?”

  A circle of leaves crackled beneath the girls’ feet as they walked beneath the bare, gangling limbs of a maple tree. Elena stopped very near the trunk and faced PJ, looking beyond at the guys. “I didn’t tell. I know they want to know.”

  “You’re right,” PJ said. “They do. But I’m asking about you.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “That’s all right,” PJ reassured her. “Everything is going all right. No one’s in trouble. Just like we figured.”

  Elena watched a group of giggling third graders pass, and said, “My mom’s going to pick me up out front. It would be better if you didn’t walk all the way out with me.”

  PJ nodded. “I understand. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, tomorrow.” Elena’s eyes fled before she turned away. A minute later she was funneling through the main gate, and PJ had been joined under the tree.

  “She didn’t tell,” PJ said when her friends came alongside.

  “She says,” Jeff doubted coldly.

  “So help me, Bernstein,” PJ threatened, spinning toward Jeff. What she saw just beyond his cocky facade quashed any further recrimination. The others noticed PJ’s abrupt retreat into silence and turned.

  “Good afternoon,” Dooley said.

  Five distrustful glares were the only return greeting.

  Leave us alone, Joey silently urged, letting his stare now command the man who had come unwelcome into their world. He wanted so much to actually say the words, to tell this man all that he could tell him, to explain all that he knew he could explain. But that was not possible. He could say nothing. This man was their enemy. Silence was their friend.

  “We’ve gotta go,” Joey said, and showed the detective his back. PJ followed, then Jeff and Michael together. Bryce was the last to leave, backing away, unable to take his eyes off the man.

  “Bryce, c’mon,” Michael called to him. The class treasurer spun and ran toward his friend.

  Dooley stood quiet beneath the maple and listened to the wind wheeze through its naked limbs. He matched the tune, whistling as he walked toward the main office. When he got there Mrs. Nelson had a box waiting for him. It was brimming with files.

  Nine

  Thunkin’ pain, Dooley told himself as he tapped two aspirin into his palm and washed the tablets down with a swallow of water. That’s what his mother would have called it. The cause sat next to him on the small couch, a lopsided stack of files leaning toward him like a tawny cornice, threatening to avalanche against his left leg. He’d read through each at least three times, and the last one, which topped the mound and might as well have been stamped ‘Account Closed’, maybe five, or maybe six. He’d stopped counting.

  Dooley opened it gently where it lay once more, peeling the manila cover back slowly to reveal the face of Guy Edmond, the image captured in his school photo taken just weeks ago. Dooley stared at it, at Guy’s living face, his screaming crack of a smile, his Cimmerian eyes, the camera flash caught in their blackness like bolts of lightning.

  The aspirin sizzled in his stomach.

  Dooley let the file folder close. He put a pair of fingers to his left temple and kneaded circles into the flesh. His eyes were leaden and his neck hummed with a constant ache that dripped annoyingly from his head with each beat of his heart. A faucet suddenly leaking to the metronome rhythm in his chest, spitting liquid pain that sparked as it hissed off muscles pulled taut and nerves that smoldered.

  Dooley pushed the files into their box on the floor and sat back into the cushions. When he blinked, his eyes only reluctantly opened again. Sleep begged his company.

  He might have succumbed to its call had he not heard the tap of narrow heels on his porch, the latch turning, and the same cadence moving back toward the kitchen.

  “Hello, Karen.”

  The footsteps ceased briefly, then began again, slowly now, coming toward the den.

  Dooley moved not an inch as his ex came into view, though his eyes worked in their sockets admiring the short red number hugging her body. A cocktail dress, it was called. But he knew Karen. This was her Fuck Me dress. “You still have a key.”

  She dangled it between them. “I called earlier to see if you were in. You don’t answer your phone?”

  “Do you have a date?” Dooley inquired. There was no art in his probe, just an ambiguous jealousy that left him wanting purity in his emotion.

  Karen retraced part of her path and entered the kitchen. The fluorescent lights buzzed on. “I figured since you weren’t here you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Mind what?” Dooley asked. He heard glass clink against glass and saw the glow from the kitchen dissolve. Then those heels again, coming his way.

  “Mind me borrowing this bottle of Crescent Valley Pinot,” Karen said. She held the bottle out by it neck and cocked her head, a wanting innocence gracing her splendid face.

  “A ninety-two?” Dooley commented. “He must be special.”

  Karen hugged the bottle appreciatively and strolled to the window. “He might be. I’ll search high and low to replace it. I promise.”

  As she looked out over the dark water, moonlit whitecaps curling onto the shore, Dooley savored the subdued contours of her form. He found himself lost in remembrance of her skin, and how soft it was after a gentle toweling in the morning.

  “I miss the view, you know,” Karen said.

>   A repetition of the comment occurred to Dooley, but he knew it would sound crass. Hell, it was crass. “Karen?”

  She turned to see him coveting her shamelessly from across the room. “If you’d leered at me like that when were married we might have saved some money on lawyers.”

  “You look really good.”

  “Oh, God, Dooley. Don’t compliment me. Maul me with your eyes all you want, but don’t say nice things like that. I want to get lucky tonight, and there’s no way that’s going to happen if I’m thinking about how nice it was to hear you say what you said.” She took a few quick steps toward him and glanced at the bottle of Pinot nuzzled in her cleavage. “Do I let this decant?”

  “Ten minutes should be good.”

  Karen stood frozen in place and shape for a long moment, then rolled her eyes at the ceiling and spun completely around, her knees bending so she ended up in a crouch. Her dress strained to cover any thigh. “Don’t be so damned cute. We let this happen once before and it sucked afterward. Divorce means no sex. They should make you say vows when you split up, you know. ‘I promise to like, not speak ill of, and keep my genitalia from thee.’”

  “I’m just sitting here,” Dooley said, pleading his innocence.

  She scolded him with a look, and in doing so noticed the box of files on the floor next to him. She rose slowly. “What’s that?”

  Dooley glanced at the box. “Some files.”

  “You’re retired,” she reminded him obviously. Suspicion spilled into her expression and tone. “Since when do retired cops have a files?”

  “I’m helping out with something.”

  “You don’t need to work anymore,” Karen said.

  “I’m just...consulting.” It was a feeble lie and he knew that she knew it.

  “Dammit, Dooley, I divorced you before all that crap with Jimmy Vincent started because you couldn’t say no to anyone or anything, except me. I played at hating you for a while and that made it easier when you tried to give a big, permanent no to everybody.” She took the wine in one hand and, with the other, roughly grabbed one of his arms and turned the soft flesh of his wrist upward. Diagonal pink welts scarred the spot. “Wasn’t this enough punishment for saying yes all the time?”

  Dooley drew his arm away. “It wasn’t that.”

  “Oh?” Karen said doubtfully. “If you cut across the veins, you don’t want to die. A cry for help, maybe. Cut up and down you lay the veins wide open. You want to die.” She smiled curiously at him. “You did this angle kind of thing. What was that for? Hedging your bets, just in case you decided you deserved a little more pain. Is that what it is now? Time for another dose.”

  “That’s not it at all.”

  “Bull,” Karen countered. She shook her head slowly and said, “Six months ago I’m sitting in a hospital waiting room wondering if my ex husband is going to die, wondering if I should be there. I’ll always love you Dooley Ashe, but I can’t stand caring about you. Caring about you is second-hand anguish. I hate that you make me feel that way.”

  It wasn’t anything he didn’t already know, but hearing it come from her was like having a boil lanced. A good thing that hurt like hell. “I never meant to.”

  She pitied him with wondrous eyes. “Jimmy Vincent wasn’t worth it, Dooley. Is whatever you’re doing now worth it?”

  His wrist where she’d touched him tingled. He rubbed it, marveling at her. She saw through him as if his being were vapor, and she feared so much that a stiff, uncertain gust might wash him away. He remembered her face first when he woke up in the hospital, and recalled her removing the arm restraints and saying, ‘If you really want to die, do it. If I have to grieve, I can do that. But I can’t handle worrying about you forever.’

  It wasn’t until now that he realized her statement revealed a confidence in him, not a selfishness in her.

  “It’s about kids,” Dooley told her, noticing that she braced herself with a breath. “One or more of them killed another one.”

  Karen released a gulp of air, a peaked laugh trailing from it. “Even the same tune. Dooley, Jimmy Vincent deserved what he got. That bothered you, I know, but haven’t you beaten yourself up enough for just doing what you had to do?”

  He had no answer. He could have said something, anything. Crafted a clever response or blamed it all on the desire to seek justice no matter what might result. But she would have known what foundation lay beneath the house of rationalizations.

  “When does your penance end?” Karen asked him. She fell into the chair facing her ex. “God, I’m depressed now.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do you know how hard it is to get lucky on a downer like this?”

  “Sorry.”

  She shook her head and managed a queer little smile, part pity, part disgust. “You’re you. What am I supposed to expect?”

  Dooley nodded. His foot moved and pushed the box. The files rattled inside.

  Thoughts rattled in his head.

  “Kare, can I bounce something of you? Some things, actually.”

  She eyed the box suspiciously. “Things?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her head cocked a bit, eyes considering him sideways through the pause. “What things?”

  “About them.”

  “Them,” she parroted. “You mean the box.”

  He nodded quickly and her eyes burned at him. Burned long and angry and worried and tired, and flickered as the fire in them withered to something between submission and indifference, like the cold glow on the stub of a dying candle wick, wanting to flare again but spent of the thing that knew how to be flame.

  “Bounce away,” she said flatly. It might as well be her. At any point she could tell him he was being a fucking fool for doing this kind of thing again, and he’d know she was right. That trust was still there between them.

  “Six kids, all of—”

  “How old?”

  “Sixth graders. They’re eleven.”

  “Okay.”

  “All of these kids started together last year in the same class, same teacher. None of them stood out at the beginning of fifth grade. Some were average, some below. One little girl was as shy as a mouse. Another liked to use her fists. The president of the class now, back then he was heading nowhere. No motivation. And the others—same kind of stories. All of them had things that were holding them back. Life situations, personal problems, etcetera. You follow me?”

  “I follow you, Dooley,” Karen said tiredly.

  “Okay, fast forward to the end of fifth grade. All these kids, and all the other kids in the class, have left the averages in the dust. Their grades go up, way up, and they start showing improvement personally. Getting involved in things, school activities. The shy girl, the little mouse, well she’s singing in the school choir by then.”

  “That’s pretty remarkable. Who are these kids? Witnesses?”

  He shook his head. “These are the suspects.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  He related the story of the bat, and the fingerprints, and the ‘we just found him’ explanation. When he finished, Karen blinked slowly at the ceiling.

  “What about the kid who died?”

  “The kid who was murdered?” Dooley corrected. “Guy Edmond. He was older than them, bigger than them, and he came into their class this year like a hurricane. It was the same kids, same teacher; the school was keeping them together for two grades. Guy blows in at the beginning of this year and— I don’t know —upsets the flow.”

  Karen stared doubtfully at him. “You think these kids killed this other kid because he rocked the boat?”

  “He was a grade A bastard,” Dooley explained. “Trouble at school, trouble with the police. I met the kid’s family; they thought he was an angel.”

  Karen shook her head. “You described a bunch of good kids to me. Kids who were making it. After not making it. Are those the kind of kids who would kill a troublemaker? Something doesn’t sound right there, Dooley.” />
  “Then why are they lying?”

  “You’re sure they are?”

  “Their prints are on the murder weapon, Kare; no one else’s.”

  Karen’s head continued to shake slowly. “There’s got to be more to it.”

  Dooley’s jaw dropped a bit, a chuckle spilling out. “Really?”

  “What? You expected me to solve it? Right here and now?”

  “Could you?” Dooley joked. “Please?”

  Karen poked a finger thoughtfully under her chin. “Jealousy.”

  “Jealousy?”

  “Suuuure,” Karen said exaggeratedly. “The new kid showed up and got all the teacher’s attention. All troublemakers get more attention from the teacher. The squeaky wheel theory.”

  Dooley seized her offhanded expose and sat back against the couch’s downy cushions. “They can’t kill him because he’s a turd, but they can because they’re jealous?”

  “You’re the pro, hon.” Her expression mocked him. “The retired pro.”

  “Touche.”

  “Do I get one of those little plastic badges for trying?”

  “I’ll get you a shiny gold one from the anti-drug guy.”

  She rubbed her hands together expectantly, her toothy smile bright white against the red, red lips. Then her precocious expressions settled and she held her ex husband gently in her gaze. He was gone from this line of conversation, his thoughts dragged elsewhere. “You’re not bouncing.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re thinking.”

  He nodded.

  She’d only seen this flash of mental withdrawal a few times, but each time the spark was the same. “It’s Jimmy, isn’t it?”

  He nodded again, smiling a wisp at her powers of knowing. “You know, if he’d just been any other scumbag little wannabe killer who got his kicks doing drive-bys, I’d be out buying that boat I was always talking about right now. Maybe looking at some new tackle.” The possibility drew a coarse little laugh that drowned in the silence surrounding it after a few seconds. “But he wasn’t, Kare. When I was sitting there with him all those days, talking with him, playing stupid kid games, when I was doing that he was just any other kid. He didn’t act any different than any of your brother’s kids. I was nose to nose with him and I couldn’t see the evil inside. I knew he’d killed those little boys. Mutilated them.”