“Maybe nothing,” Joel said. “But you may want to know. Do you want to hear about this or not?”
Not. Not. Not! “Go ahead.”
“I’ll give you the condensed version,” Joel said. “The first article is from The Chaplin Register, June eleventh, nineteen-seventy-four. The heading is ‘Tragedy Strikes Local Veteran’. It says that Joseph Austin, retired Marine Corps corporal and recipient of the blah blah blah for blah blah in Vietnam, was killed yesterday when the pickup truck he was driving ran a stop sign near the county dump and was broadsided by a county sanitation vehicle. Police say blah blah blah and can’t explain why Austin had a loaded shotgun in his vehicle at the time of the accident. Blah blah blah. He leaves behind a wife, Jean Louise, and two daughters, Mary and Julie.” Paper shuffled over the line. “Got that?”
“Her father was killed,” Dooley said. “She told me he was dead.”
“Remember the gun in the truck,” Joel said. “Okay, here’s the next hit. From the next day, June twelfth. The heading on this one is ‘Tragedy Deepens For Dead Veteran’s Family’. Police revealed today that Joseph Austin, killed in blah blah blah, was likely on his way to Corcoran Elementary School to do harm to teacher Franklin Bannister, this after learning from his eight year old daughter, Mary, a student of Bannister’s, that her teacher had been molesting her throughout the school year.”
“What?” Dooley asked, low and mostly in a gasp.
“Yeah,” Joel said. “Now listen to this. This is from the June twenty-first edition. ‘Accused Molester Found Hanged’. Franklin Bannister, arrested June fourteenth and charged with forced oral copulation and numerous other sex crimes alleged by now reluctant victim and witness Mary Austin, eight, of blah blah blah, was found hanged in the shower area in the county jail last evening. Guards surmise that, because of extensive bruising and other trauma, Bannister was likely beaten and lynched by fellow inmates.”
“Jesus,” Dooley said.
“Jailhouse justice,” Joel commented.
Dooley put a hand to his head and pushed it through his hair.
“She didn’t tell you any of this, I take it.”
“No. No, she didn’t.”
“Do you think it means anything?”
“I’m sure it does to her,” Dooley said.
“To the case?” Joel pressed.
“How could it?”
Joel was quiet for a moment. “Reluctant witness. That’s what it said, Dooley.”
“And?”
“Maybe it’s hard for her to talk about things.”
“Because of what happened twenty-two years ago?!”
“Easy.”
“What do you want? You want me to lay this out to her. Bring it up in conversation and ask her if this is why she hasn’t been able to give us much help? Is that what you want me to do?”
Joel breathed loudly. “You’re mad at me.”
Dooley clicked off the phone and dropped it into its holder. He stood and walked to the wall where the pictures of Mary’s family were hung. Pictures of her past. Her father.
Dead now. Dead because of righteous anger.
Dooley turned away from the photos and went to the piano. He leaned on its blunt end, his thoughts afire. Hate raged in him, hate for a person long dead now. A person who had hurt Mary.
“Would you expect her to be happy about telling the story?” Dooley asked the room in Joel’s absence. “About testifying?”
Shit, no. Joseph Austin had the right idea, Dooley thought, his policeman’s civic concern gone now. He had it right. Take care of the bastard himself.
‘...they’re quite capable of handling their own problems.’
Dooley’s eyes came up as that recollection surfaced.
So, she had said that. Was that a bad thing? You sure thought it was.
He shook off the thought and went to the business end of the piano and sat at the keyboard. His heart was in his throat, and thumping away pretty good. He was sucking air through his nose in long, hissing breaths.
Shit, he thought, hating Joel, really hating him for saying what he’d said. For connecting some stupid comment from a two decade old dirtwater daily with Mary and who she was now. Reluctant witness! His head shook.
He would have to ask her. “Dammit!”
One finger stabbed at the keyboard, lifting a low, flat, sour note.
“You knew I’d have to ask,” Dooley said as he stared at alternating colors of the ivories. “You knew if you told me I’d have to.” His fingers began pecking at the instrument, making ugly sounds. “Fuck you, Joel. Fuck you!”
His hands moved along the keyboard, the thick index fingers on each stabbing away, banging caustic notes from the big instrument’s offended innards. This was what Mary did to relax, and he certainly needed that right now, so why not? It surely didn’t sound as good as the melodies she could craft, but what did sound matter? What did sound matter at a—
Dooley’s hands stumbled over each other at the low notes. At the lack of sound from one particular note. He didn’t know music very well, but as his finger tapped the key again and got only a dull thud in response he guessed that it was a low A.
He stabbed the key again and again and got only dead notes for his trouble.
A dead note.
His eyes bugged.
The striker wasn’t hitting anything. Wasn’t hitting a string. A string that was really a wire.
No.
Dooley stood slowly and went to the side of the piano. He lifted its shiny black lid and propped it up like a car’s hood with the stick designed for that purpose. He bent forward, leaning over the guts of the instrument, and walked his fingers over the strings, the wires, each one an unseen center fiber wrapped by a tightly wound metallic coil. Just like a cable.
No, dear God, please.
His fingers felt along the humming landscape of wires until they came to a space where none should be. A hole.
He reached with one hand and tapped the key.
The striker thumped against his probing fingers.
“Oh my God, Mary,” Dooley said aloud as he backed out of the instrument. He felt pieces of his person cracking and breaking away. “What have you done?”
* * *
Mary stood at the coffee maker in the nearly empty dining hall and held her cup under the spigot. She moved the lever in short bursts, afraid that the cup might move away and leave her hand beneath the flow of scalding liquid. She was fearing shadows now. The shadows of old things come back.
Her cup less than half full, Mary turned to see a pair of camp workers pushing wide brooms across the polished plank floor. Little dust billows swirled in their wakes.
She moved her eyes warily left, slow, and right, slow, and sipped at her coffee.
hotenoughMARY
The cup teetered in her grip and tumbled to the floor, splashing the hot contents against the legs of her jeans. She jumped back and let out a small, frightened shriek. The camp workers stopped pushing their brooms and looked at her.
“I’m sorry,” Mary apologized. Her words sounded thin in the cavernous hall. “I’m sorry. I’ll clean it up.”
letstalkMARYletstalk
No!
“Don’t worry, ma’am,” one of the workers said genuinely, pleasantly. “We’ll get it.”
comeonMARYletstalknowokayMARYletstalk
“GO AWAY!” Mary shouted, giving her resistance voice by accident. Or was it...
The worker’s pleasant face receded and he turned away and began pushing his broom again.
Mary, too, turned away, facing the dining hall’s picture-covered front wall. You made me say that, Mary accused in thought now.
icanmakeyoudoworsethanthatMARY
ialreadyhave
Mary’s hands came to her chest, fingers clawing at the slick letters screened to the front of her TOTY sweatshirt.
talktomenowMARYoriwillMAKE YOU FUCKING REGRET YOU WERE EVER BORN!
No. Her feet began to slide backward on the pla
nk floor. Back toward the door.
youcantRUN FROM ME YOU COCKSUCKING SLUT!
I’m not running.
yourmistake
And Mary felt herself propelled backward, fast and hard at the double doors, her feet shuffling furiously to keep up with the momentum, trying in vain to keep her upright.
Her back slammed into the dining hall’s twin doors and she fell through as they swung out, landing on her butt.
The two workers inside gawked out the screen windows, and one of them ran to the door to see if the lady who’d lost her balance in the weirdest way he’d ever seen needed any help. But when he got through the still flapping doors she was gone, on her feet fast and jogging up one of the trails into the woods.
* * *
He left the room with the piano, wanting to give the hulking instrument a sharp kick but resisting. It was just a thing. An inanimate thing.
Like a wire. Like a wire used to strangle.
Hands played the piano, hands pulled the wire taut around a neck.
Hands he knew? Her hands? Hands that had touched him?
Dooley squatted low in the living room and hung his head over his knees.
Why? Give me one reason why? he demanded of himself. Why would she do it? Why would she kill Bryce?
Why would Michael? Dooley volleyed back to himself.
Because he thought Bryce was going to spill the beans. Give up the terrible secret.
Why would she?
He didn’t have to think long. The same reason?
His head came slowly up as the answer became a possibility, a reason, a scenario. A recollection of recent events sputtered into his train of thought. Screaming dreams? Elena had screaming dreams like the one Mary had. Elena was molested by Guy. Mary was molested herself.
My God, was that it? Did Mary know?
Did she...
Dooley sprang up on his feet and stared straight ahead, through the hallway and into her bedroom. Before he knew it he was in there, looking left and right, scanning the corners and the furniture, looking for what he did not know. For something. Evidence.
He was a cop again, instantly, as if someone had thrown a switch. Only he technically wasn’t a cop anymore. That was fine, too, especially when he made it his purpose to start going through her drawers without a warrant.
He pulled the top drawers out and dumped them. Underwear and tee shirts fell in a lopsided pile on the floor. The next drawers down. Socks, shorts, a couple nightgowns, and some brightly colored knit clothing, the kind that looked homemade and too damn obvious to wear in public. All those things were added to the pile by the time Dooley started asking himself if there was something specific he was in search of. The piano wire, a.k.a. the murder weapon? Maybe. What else? he pondered, dumping jeans and long pants from one of the bottom drawers. What else? he pressed himself as the last drawer slid out.
He dropped to his knees before the last drawer and thought he might have what he was looking for.
Drawings. Hundreds of them. All signed like the ones on the refrigerator by Mandy Fine, and all dated...dated...
...dated 1974. These were all dated 1974.
The year she’d been molested.
The year her father had died.
Her bad year. Her very bad year.
Dooley took a handful of the pictures and looked through them. There were drawings of the same little girl whose crayon incarnation he’d seen on the fridge. And drawings of her with the little boy, though in these, older images his hair was black, not orange.
Chester ambled into the room and mewed loud at Dooley’s prying.
“I’ll punt you, cat,” Dooley warned. “Shut up.”
The tabby flopped to its side and watched Dooley with deadpan eyes.
He moved through the childish art quickly now, seeing images of the little girl standing very close to a bigger man. An adult. Her dress was up, and his pants were down.
“Jesus Christ,” Dooley commented.
There were many more like that, and some of the little girl standing next to a long box topped with flowers. A casket.
“Your father,” Dooley said aloud.
And on through the drawings, the little girl skipping in one, knees high in the air, her dress flopping inappropriately up to reveal nothing underneath. More like that, more with the big man, the man Dooley had decided was Bannister. More with him and his pants down. More with—
Dooley stopped on one drawing, not adding it to the scattered pile at his knees. There was a little girl in this one, but it was not the same one. The hair was darker, and the features were smaller. And drawn next to this other girl was a bigger man, though very thin and not as big as the man depicted previously. This thin man was smiling, a crazy smile Dooley thought, and he had the little girl’s dress up and his hand between her legs.
They were standing near a building. Near steps leading into a building. Steps leading to a door into the building. There was a number on the door. The number was 18.
Dooley looked quickly to the bottom of the drawing. It was signed by Mandy Fine, and dated this year.
His breath leaked slowly out as he slid that picture from the pile in his hands and looked at the next one.
The thin man was there, but in close-up now, glaring wildly at the little girl. And beyond them there were five little heads, mouths wide like O’s. Four boys and one girl. And above the thin man’s head there was something coming down, motion streaks drawn to show this. Fat at one end and thin at the other where anonymous hands gripped it. The bat.
It was Guy and Elena, Dooley knew. And Joey and PJ and Jeff and Bryce and Michael. And someone holding the bat. Someone swinging it down at Guy Edmond’s head. Someone.
One tear rolled down Dooley’s cheek as he looked away.
* * *
Jeff wiped his eyes and went through it again. “Bryce finally gave in and said he’d talk to Mike, so Mike was going over there to sneak in and when he got through Bigfoot Woods he saw Miss Austin coming out of Bryce’s window. She ran away, and when he went in he found Bryce. He was dead.”
“Why would...” PJ held Elena tight and searched for the words. The questions to ask that would make this all clear. That would make everything make sense. But what words were there to make sense of this?
“Mike said that Bryce didn’t think he’d be able to keep the secret anymore.” Jeff sniffled and wiped it on his sling. “Right after that he went to talk to Miss Austin to get help on some work he missed. Bryce must have told her what he told Mike.”
“Why would she kill him?” PJ demanded calmly. “Why?”
“To keep him from telling,” Jeff said. It was obvious.
“But people think Mike did it,” PJ said. “She wouldn’t let that happen.”
“She is,” Jeff told her. “That’s exactly what she’s doing. That and getting real friendly with that cop. I heard them on the phone. He’s staying at her house.”
PJ looked to Joey. “This can’t be right, Joey. It can’t. It can’t.”
Joey thought for a moment. Actually he’d been thinking about it every second since Jeff had told him, all the way through a nearly sleepless night. He’d dreamed of that bat. That damned bat, and them all holding it because of...him. Because he had had the idea. It was him. He was responsible for this. He had gotten them into it, and they had trusted him. Believed in him.
When he looked at PJ, her eyes begged him silently for an answer.
Actually, he had come up with one before the sun ever rose. “Who believes Mike?”
“I do,” Jeff said without hesitation.
PJ swallowed hard, then added her ‘yes’ with a nod.
“Elena?” Joey prompted. This felt so familiar. The beginning, now the end. Her hesitancy here again. “Do you believe Mike?”
Her head bobbed against the jacket PJ wore. Joey’s jacket.
“All right then,” Joey said. “This is what we have to do.”
Forty Seven
After seeing the
drawings, he knew there was one place he had to go before any other. One person he had to talk to. One little person who had to know the whole story.
Dooley found Jack Prentiss standing outside the garage of his house, polishing the rear of his beautiful Corvette.
A FOR SALE sign lay slanted in the back window.
“I need to talk to your son,” Dooley said, but Jack Prentiss put a boot on the back stoop to block him.
“You’ve got nerve.”
“If you love your son, you’ll let me see him. I want to help him.”
Jack Prentiss worked a chamois between his hands and looked at his car. The car that would have been his son’s. “You know, if you want to help him, how about buying my Vette? How about that? Lawyers cost money, you know, so help out that way. Otherwise, get the hell off of my property.”
Dooley stepped closer to Jack Prentiss, close enough to feel hot breath when the man turned to face him. “Your son didn’t kill his friend.”
“I know that.”
“I know that now, too. But unless he talks to me he’s going to get sucked deeper into this.”
“Into what?”
“Do you want your son back, Jack? Do you?”
Michael’s father studied the detective sideways, his chin rising. “So help me, if this is a...”
“Take me to him,” Dooley ordered. “Now!”
Michael sat on his bed paging through the new Sports Illustrated, and looked up only when he realized that the feet just come into his room were not his father’s.
“Hello, Mike,” Dooley said. He took off his coat and tossed it over a chair shaped like a fielder’s glove. The chair spun away from the impact.
“What do you want?”
Dooley sat on the bed, close to Michael, invading his space, and fixed a stare on him that seemed the precursor to an attack. He didn’t have time to make this child like him. Didn’t have time to get to like this child, either. He needed to make him talk, and talk fast.
He needed to be the bad cop for this one. A real bad cop.
“You didn’t kill Bryce.”
“I told you all that from the start.”
“Yeah, but you lied about one little thing.”
Michael looked down at the magazine. Dooley ripped it from his hands and flung it noisily across the room. He put his face close to Michael’s. Very close, cocking it to see into his downcast eyes.
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