On the Loose

by Andrew Coburn

  "We blame you, Chief. You should've stopped her from buying that house."

  He stared at Mrs. Perrault, who seemed to have no thoughts, as if her skull were an egg sucked dry.

  The other sister said, "Not now, Ida. It isn't the time."

  Morgan carried the blame back to the station, where he felt it belonged. Reading sympathy in Meg O'Brien's eyes he looked pointedly away and glimpsed someone in his office, the head of a man half buried in a newspaper held high. "It's that state police detective," Meg said in a near whisper. "I told him you probably wouldn't be back, but he waited anyway."

  Cleveland lowered the paper as Morgan stepped past him, and he cast it aside when Morgan settled in behind the desk. They regarded each other through grainy light. "This is a courtesy call, Chief. To bring you up to date."

  "Good of you," Morgan said.

  "I know she was a friend of yours."

  "More than a friend."

  "I know that too." Cleveland draped an arm over the back of his metal chair. "We matched the kid's sneakers to the prints at the scene, we even got his fingerprints there, and we got a blood match off his jeans. We got everything, Chief, except a confession. I've never seen a kid so cool. Kinda scary. He admits to nothing."

  "He's responsible for two deaths."

  "Even if what you say is true, I don't think we can prove it. We got him on this one for sure."

  Morgan tightened. "I want to know the motive. I want to know why he did one and then the other. I want to know if the house had any significance. I need answers, Cleveland. I need reasons."

  "The kid's in a cloud. We may never know."

  "But I have to," Morgan said.

  Harry Sawhill and Trish Becker were alone together at a rear room at his brother's house. It was a room of heavy drapes, wainscoted walls, and club chairs. Harry was at the liquor cabinet, though Trish had told him to stay away from it. His brother had no vodka, only bourbon. He took a belt of it and then another for good measure. Turning, he said, "I don't know my own son. He's a stranger."

  Immobile in a club chair, Trish said nothing. Since the murder, the macabre overshadowed the ordinary.

  "I don't know anything, Trish, not even myself." He moved toward her and looked down at her. "Are we still going to get married?"

  "One thing at a time," she said in a voice that barely carried.

  "Stick by me, please. Don't leave me."

  Since his son's arrest, she had scarcely left his side, her shock as great as his. His sprang from the horror of it all, hers from an unanswerable question, to which she now gave voice. "If he was going to kill anyone, Harry, why didn't he kill me?" "Don't say that. We don't know he did."

  "Yes, we do."

  Ben Sawhill entered the room quietly and dropped into a heavy chair beyond Trish's. Fatigue had cut into his face, but his voice was clear. "It doesn't look good," he said. "They have enough evidence to charge him."

  Harry teetered. "They're not going to let him go?"

  "Didn't you hear me? They're charging him with murder."

  "What are you doing for him?"

  "Everything I can, Harry." Ben glanced fleetingly at Trish, who seemed inattentive. His voice lifted. "For the time being he's in a holding cell at the state police barracks in Andover. The odd thing is he seems to be enjoying it."

  "That's not my Bobby," Harry said forcefully.

  "My question is do we know who Bobby is? He's scheduled for psychological evaluation."

  "I know my son. He's not a killer." Harry returned to the liquor cabinet. "What's the most we can hope for, Ben?"

  "That he won't be tried as an adult."

  His first morning at the new place, a whole new world to him, he submitted to a physical examination. He didn't mind the doctor peering into his eyes and ears and down his throat, but he disliked the rest. A nurse who seemed to have more authority than the doctor gave him orders. Standing on a rubber mat, he felt pink and foolish with his clothes off. Staring at him, the nurse's eyes turned beady.

  "You sure you're only thirteen?" she asked.

  "I'll be fourteen soon."

  He lifted his arms while the doctor palpated him and relayed his observations to the nurse, who transcribed them on a yellow sheet of paper fas tened to a clipboard. When he stepped on the scale, the nurse adjusted the weights. He looked for a tender light in her eyes but found none.

  "Get dressed," she said.

  A man in hospital whites took him away.

  In the afternoon they wanted to measure the electrical activity of his brain, but he turned stubborn and wouldn't let them. A different doctor wanted to discuss his dreams, but he wouldn't do that either. The room was bare except for a table and the chairs he and the doctor occupied. The chalk-blue walls held no pictures on which he could rest his eyes.

  "Is this a prison or a hospital?"

  The doctor smiled out of an unblemished complexion. "Neither, Bobby. It's a facility."

  "I've been read my rights."

  "They don't apply here. Here there's nothing to worry about. What's your earliest memory?"

  He could remember far back in his life. He could remember his thumb in his mouth. He could remember being lifted off the potty. What he couldn't remember was the warmth of the womb, but curled up in bed at night, snuggled into the covers, he could reenact his beginnings.

  "Come on, Bobby. Give me an answer."

  "I don't have one."

  "Tell me about your mother."

  When the doctor lowered his head, Bobby saw thin places in his hair. "She's dead."

  "I know, but tell me about her anyway. Do you miss her?"

  He missed coloring books, bedtime stories, toys in his bath. He missed playing store with his mother. Money was Necco candy wafers, which they later ate, thumbprints and all. He missed his mother's smell, her lap. Most of all, he missed knowing she was there.

  "Sometimes," he said.

  "Some people say that when you lose your mother you lose the world. Do you believe that?"

  "I don't know."

  "What bothers you the most, Bobby?"

  "About what?"

  "Anything. Everything."

  He didn't like flowers. Red roses were funerals, cemeteries, and white ones were clumps of nothing, the scent of each jumbling living with dying, one no better than the other.

  "Nothing," he said.

  The doctor tried to bully him with a look. "Are you sure? Do you hate anyone? Yourself, perhaps?"

  "No."

  "Do you like girls?"

  "My cousins are girls."

  "You like them?"

  "They're OK."

  "Do you like women?"

  guess so."

  The doctor went silent. He consulted his notes and then returned his gaze to Bobby. A moment passed as each seemed to reappraise the other. Dropping back in his chair, the doctor said, "I think I know exactly what you're doing, Bobby."

  "What am I doing?" He was interested. He wanted to know.

  "You're playing an intellectual game with me. You think you're pretty clever. The fact of the matter is you're in trouble. Deep trouble. Aren't you a little scared?"

  "What have I got to be scared about?"

  "They got the goods on you. That's my understanding."

  He said nothing. He felt he didn't have to. His thoughts and the doctor's would meet and mesh in the air. The doctor's stare pressed upon him.

  "Some crimes leave no margin for mercy. Yours, could be one of them."

  Curiosity livened his face. "Am I going to do hard time?"

  "I certainly hope so." The doctor gathered his notes, rose from the chair, and stood tall. "But I doubt it."

  Chief Morgan was not a welcome visitor, but after a pause Ben Sawhill let him in and led him into a room off the foyer. Open windows let in mild breezes of the evening. Seating himself under a lamp that cast a weak light, Morgan said, "I need your help."

  Ben, torn, shook his head. "I can't give it to you. It shouldn't be this way, bu
t we're on opposite sides. Nothing I can do about it."

  "Your nephew has killed twice."

  Ben hurled up a hand. He didn't want to hear. "I know what you're getting at, and I don't believe it."

  "Perhaps you don't want to believe it."

  "Look, Chief, I've known you a long time, I respect you, but don't you know what this has done to my brother, not to mention me and my family?"

  Morgan spoke in his quietest voice. "Don't you know what this has done to Claudia MacLeod's mother?"

  "What exactly do you want?"

  "I don't think Bobby should get away with anything. It would be a terrible mistake."

  Ben, who had remained on his feet, moved to a window. Restrained and tense, he said, "Are you after justice or revenge?"

  "Either one will do," Morgan said, "but it goes beyond that. I know you have influence. I know you and your lawyer are trying to work up a deal with the D.A."

  A telephone was ringing somewhere in the house. Then it stopped. Ben, drawing a hand over his forehead, said, "There's no death penalty in Massachusetts, but is that what you want?"

  "No," Morgan said softly. "I've never been able to take another person's life. Even in Nam I couldn't."

  "Then, for Christ's sake, what do you want?"

  "I want him put away for a long time. Not just till he's twenty-one."

  Belle Sawhill appeared suddenly in the doorway. Her face was as restrained and tense as her husband's. "It's Trish Becker, Ben. I think you should talk to her."

  Ben left. Belle remained. She was not a native of the town, but Morgan considered her one because she was married to a Sawhill and stood apart from other women living in the Heights, as if she were equally at home in both worlds.

  "Don't," she said when he started to rise, and he sank back. Her voice, rich and warm, made him comfortable. The black of her hair, clipped short, brought forth the white of her face and the appeal of her features.

  "I didn't mean to intrude on your evening," he said.

  "It's perfectly understandable." She moved into the room with a silent tread and stood in partial shadow. "Miss MacLeod meant a great deal to you, didn't she?"

  He nodded.

  "I'm so sorry, Chief. When people we love die, it's always a question of who takes the bigger hitthem or us."

  It was a question with two answers, both correct, neither of which he cared to think about. He watched her step from the shadow to make more of herself. Her face reached out.

  "I'm worried about my girls. About myself. The truth is, Chief, I'm scared to death."

  "Me too," Morgan said.

  He'd have said more and laid out his anguish if Ben Sawhill had not returned. Ben looked down at him and said, "I think you'd better leave."

  Returning from Harry Sawhill's house, Trish Becker was glad to be home, though she felt no peace of mind. She turned on music, which be came too loud. She ran a bath, bubbled it, and soaked for a long time. After draping herself in a heavy towel, she stepped on a scale and quarreled with her body. Clothing herself, sucking in to get the zipper up, she faulted the breadth of her hips for the fit of her jeans.

  She had tea and toast for supper and watched television until it hurt her head. Still hungry, she made a sandwich and picked up the phone. She punched out a wrong number before she got the right one. Belle came on the line, and then, after a wait, Ben did.

  "Please," she said, "come over here. I need to talk."

  She ate a bit of the sandwich and threw the rest away, good liverwurst and tasty cheese. Then she gave herself second and third looks in the mirror before Ben arrived. She was at the door when he rang.

  Facing each other in a well-lit room, she told him in heavy tones what was wrong, and he said sharply, "Harry's not your responsibility. Never was."

  "I promised to marry him."

  "Makes no difference."

  "How can I back out at a time like this? He'll fall apart."

  "His problem, not yours."

  She grappled for a hold on herself, on him. "Don't you want to sit down, Ben?"

  "No." He towered. He was strength, the handsome prince in her childhood fantasies, a chunk of her father in him. He said, "You can do anything you want. You're under no obligations."

  She fought to steady her voice. "I never liked Bobby. He must've known it."

  "What's happened has nothing to do with you."

  "I don't know what murder is, Ben. It's for the newspapers, not real life. Can I tell you about a dream I had?"

  "No."

  She told him anyway. In the dream Harry was the attacker and she the victim. Blood ran in sparkles, as if rubies had been crushed and scattered. "Honest to God, that's the way it looked."

  "I think you should get away," he said. "Take another one of your vacations."

  Desperate, she swayed close to him. "Everything's wrong. I'm on and off my diet. I'm getting fat, Ben. My breasts are too big. They could knock people over."

  "Don't exaggerate yourself."

  She jostled against him, her breath a spill. "Hold me for a minute. That's not asking a lot is it?"

  Reluctantly he looped an arm around her, and at once she pressed in on him and imparted anxieties and needs through the net of her jersey top and the small rips in her jeans. Seconds later his other arm stretched around her and tightened. Gently he kissed her cheek and ran a hand into her hair. She murmured his name. When he suddenly disengaged and stepped aside, she felt a blissful moment unwind into a sad one, which didn't dull an edge of triumph in her voice.

  "Something was almost going to happen, wasn't it, Ben?"

  Stepping to the doorway, he concurred with a nod. "But it didn't."

  In June Trish Becker and her friend Gloria Eisner left on a European vacation, the beginning weeks nearly ruined by rain, discourteous waiters, and bands of disrespectful young people flaunting their arrogance and bad manners. In Paris Trish stained her most expensive dress, and in Rome she got the runs. Spain was better, the weather gorgeous. Lying on a nude beach she and Gloria appraised other women and ranked the men according to their potential. Later, at a seaside restaurant, Trish grew weepy over wine and wondered what life was all about.

  Gloria, pouring more wine, said, "Nothing's perfect, nothing's certain, nothing's permanent, nothing's absolute. If you keep that in mind, you have a chance in life."

  "You were always brainier than me."

  "I've been through more," Gloria said.

  "You have a better body."

  "You're eating too much."

  "Nerves."

  Two days later, though it wasn't on their schedule, they flew to London and checked into Dukes Hotel in Mayfair. In the cozy sitting lounge, where the Duke of Wellington's portrait hung over the fireplace, they sipped strong tea and flirted with a balding Pakistani businessman, who didn't quite know what to make of them. With a grin, he said, "Oh you Americans."

  "We're women of the world," Gloria corrected him. "In disguise."

  In the week that followed they visited the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Shepherd Market, and Madame Tussaud's, and saw two plays in the West End. They lunched in pubs on Fleet Street and dined at the Cavendish. They shopped on Regent Street, joined the crowds on Oxford, and strolled through Soho. Relaxing on a bench in St. James's Park, Gloria said, "In New York you look at the beautifully dressed women. In London it's the wonderfully tailored men. I love their breastpocket hankies, don't you?"

  Trish's smile was cryptic. "I don't know what I love. I'd like it to be myself."

  In their hotel room, while Gloria was taking a shower, Trish telephoned Harry Sawhill, whose voice was scratchy. Alcohol gave him a dreamless sleep that extended deep into each day. Waking, he told her, he felt he'd passed through death. "When are you coming home?" he asked.

  She fudged. She mentioned the possibility of Ireland, the charm of Dublin, Bewley's on Grafton Street. "Have you been there, Harry?"

  "Ben told me I shouldn't depend on you, but I do."

  S
he didn't want to hear that. And she didn't want to ask about Bobby. "We've each got to stand on our own two feet. It's the only way."

  "You must be having a good time."

  "I'm off my diet. I'm inflating myself."

  "Bobby's compos mentis."

  "What?"

  "They say he's in his right mind."

  She didn't want to hear anymore. She wanted to swim in quiet waters, and he was dragging her straight back into rough ones. "Help me," she said, her hand clamped over the mouthpiece.

  "Come home, Trish. I need you."

  Her hand lifted. "Soon, Harry. I'll let you know."

  She killed one light and dimmed another. Satin lounging pajamas, varicolored, gave her the appearance of a brilliant bird, predatory but wounded. She crawled into one of the twin beds and drew the covers to her chin. Gloria emerged from the bathroom in a short white robe and peered down at her.

  "What's wrong, Trish?"

  "He's tearing me up."

  "Of course. He knows just where to claw. You never should've called him."

  "I don't know what I should do."

  Gloria sat on the bed's edge and rubbed the top of a knee still humid from her shower. "Do nothing. Sometimes that's best."

  Irish's voice was weak, clinging. "I don't want to be a coward."

  "You're living in a man's world, kid. Your only obligation is to stay healthy, positive, and relevant. The rest is birdseed."

  "I wish I had your attitude." Her head moving on the pillow, Trish freed a beckoning hand. "Remember when we used to sleep over at each other's house?"

  Gloria joined her under the covers and took a share of the pillow. "I remember it well."

  "We pretended about boys."

  "We pretended a lot of things." Gloria placed an arm over her. "You're shivering."