On the Loose

by Andrew Coburn

  "I like what you've done with the place," Trish said, "but are you happy here?"

  "Do I look unhappy?"

  "No, that's what bothers me. I thought you'd miss me."

  "I moved out of the Heights, not Bensington."

  Trish ate sparingly, Gloria with appetite. Gloria buttered another slice of bread.

  "That's what I hate about you," Trish said. "You stuff yourself and never gain an ounce. What's with you and the chief?"

  "Dear James is overprotective. He sent someone to check all the locks and made a big deal about the one on the bulkhead."

  "That's understandable. Harry's kid is out."

  "'That's more a problem for James. I'm not foolhardy, but I won't let my life be influenced by some kid I don't know Besides, most nights James is here."

  "So you two have become that thick, huh?"

  "It's a life. It's what I want for now. So tell me what's with you?"

  "I love my job. I drive into Andover each morning and take Amtrak. Miss all the brutal traffic. I have my own office and share a secretary. No men in my life, and it doesn't bother me."

  "So you're happy."

  "I'mnot overjoyed, but I feel good about myself, better than I have in years. I'm putting my house on the market. I want to live in Boston, a condo on the waterfront."

  "Can you afford it?"

  "Depends on what I get for the house. Think about it, Gloria. Could be a good move for you. The two of us together again."

  Gloria gave her a cynical smile. "We're a couple of ex-school chums, two gals growing old. We'd end up hugging each other in the night."

  "That's bad?"

  "It's not what I want." Gloria mopped up tomato sauce with her bread and pushed away a clean plate. "Besides, I've started a garden."

  Chief Morgan and Ben Sawhill met at a rest area on County Road and stood between their parked cars. Ben's eyes were red from an early exuberance of goldenrod. Morgan's chin was cut from a hurried shave. Neither had a smile for the other.

  "The word's got around he's back," Morgan said. "People aren't happy. Meg O'Brien's taken most of the calls. Some are ugly, the rest are scared."

  "I blame myself," Ben said. "I should've let him be tried as an adult."

  "I blame you too, but that doesn't solve anything. How do you read him?"

  "I don't. He speaks mostly with his eyes, and all they do is chill me. I have this crazy feeling he's the player and I'm the toy."

  Morgan watched two pickup trucks speed by, one on the tail of the other. "Has he made any threats?"

  "None." Ben's face seemed ready to crack from holding the same strained expression too long. "Are we overreacting?"

  "What else can we do? I can try to keep an eye on him. Beyond that, I don't know. You have any suggestions, Counselor?"

  Ben breathed evenly, to prove to himself he was calm. "None legal. None I'd care to tell a policeman."

  Crackling came from Morgan's car. Meg O'Brien was trying to reach him on the radio. "Excuse me."

  Ben began moving in the opposite direction, his legs wooden and his shoes weights, as if a dream torn loose from his sleep had trapped him in it, no hope of escape. He emptied his bladder behind a tree.

  "Someone heaved a rock through your nephew's window," Morgan said when he returned. "The good news is I have an excuse to post a cruiser in front of his house."

  Two afternoons later Bobby Sawhill rode his tenspeed bicycle, the seat heightened considerably, around the green. No one bothered him, but many eyes were on him. Sergeant Avery, who had followed him in his cruiser from Summer Street, was parked near Pearl's Pharmacy. Chief Morgan stood outside the Blue Bonnet. Malcolm Crandall came out of town hall and joined him. Shading his eyes, Malcolm said, "The balls on that little prick!"

  "He's not so little anymore," Morgan said. "If you stood up to him, he might get you in a chokehold and not let go. Easier to throw something at his house and hide."

  Malcolm stiffened. "You accusing me of throwing that rock?"

  Morgan turned on him. "Somebody saw you. You do it again, you and I will be playing poker through the bars after I lock you up. Understood?"

  "You protecting him?"

  "I'm keeping the peace."

  Bobby got off his bicycle, propped it near the entrance to Tuck's General Store, and went inside. Sergeant Avery inched the cruiser to Prescott's Pantry, putting him closer to Tuck's. Morgan ambled up the library and stood near the veterans' memorial, which gave him a clearer view across the green. Holly Pride descended the stone steps of the library and spoke in his ear.

  "I've been watching him too. What should I do if he comes into the library?"

  "Issue him a card and check out his books," Morgan said. "He's a resident."

  Bobby reemerged with a soda can and remounted his bike. A man stepping out of the bar ber shop stopped in his tracks and stared. Bobby pedaled past Sergeant Avery and headed back toward Summer Street. Morgan cut diagonally across the green to the church and followed the path to Reverend Stottle's house.

  Answering his knock, Mrs. Stottle whispered, "He's napping."

  "Wake him, please. It's important."

  Morgan waited inside the doorway. Reverend Stottle appeared presently, smoothing his sparse hair. One shirtsleeve was rolled to the elbow, the other had unraveled. He smiled with pleasure.

  "Emergency, Chief?"

  "I want you to visit Bobby Sawhill. I want you to talk to him."

  "You bet. Anything special?"

  "I want you to find out what's in his head."

  Bobby Sawhill was trying to reach his uncle. He finally got him through the Boston number and said, "The window's still broken. Who's going to fix it?"

  "I called someone," Ben Sawhill said. "Didn't he come by yesterday?"

  "No."

  "I'll call someone else. Bobby, have you been phoning my house and hanging up when Aunt Belle answers?"

  "No. Who said I was?"

  "I was only asking. Is everything going all right?"

  "There's always a police car around. When I go out on my bike the policeman follows me."

  "Chief Morgan is protecting you. What you have to understand is that many in town wish you hadn't come back. They think you should've gone somewhere else to live."

  "This is my house," Bobby said and consumed the last few drops in the Pepsi can. "Where's my father's car?"

  "I sold it long ago. The money's in your investment account. Do you want to learn to drive?"

  He hesitated. "Sometime."

  "We could get you a car. You might want to do some traveling on your own. See something of the United States."

  He heard the ringing of a bell. "I have to go," he said.

  Reverend Stottle brought a six-pack of light beer with him, a mistake. Bobby told him he didn't drink beer. The reverend should have brought a quart of ice cream, the kind with three flavors. They were sitting in the kitchen with a box of graham crackers Bobby had taken from the wellstocked cupboard. Munching, Reverend Stottle said, "I used to eat these as a boy. Crackers and milk. My mother had them waiting for me when I came home from school."

  Bobby glanced away.

  "And -I did my homework fast so I could listen to Jack Armstrong and Tom Mix on the radio."

  "I don't listen to the radio. I watch TV. Sometimes I read."

  "Television tells you one thing, reading tells you so much more. My favorites were Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. " Making himself at home, Reverend Stottle went to the refrigerator, then the cupboard, and poured himself a glass of milk while reaching for another cracker. "Let's get down to business, Bobby. Do you believe in God in heaven and the devil in his den?"

  Bobby pushed crumbs into a little pile. "Is there a heaven?"

  The reverend deliberated. "I don't want to delude you."

  "Will I see my mother again?"

  "You carry her in your head and heart as she once carried you in her belly. You two are never apart."

  "Sometimes I see her in dreams.
"

  "When you go to sleep at night, Bobby, one world vanishes and another comes into play. Who's to say with absolute certainty which is the real one? I can't. Can you?"

  "I like dreams, but not all of 'em."

  The reverend dunked a cracker. "What do you believe in?"

  "I don't know. Nothing. Oblivion."

  "Now you've hit on what we all fear. The zero at the end of life. It turns a cemetery into exactly what it is. Is that the way you feel, Bobby? Are you sometimes aware of an emptiness inside you and the cold draft that comes from it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Are you never really happy?"

  Bobby squeezed up crumbs and ate them off his thumb. "At Sherwood I was."

  "Are there angers in your heart you can't explain? I know there are in mine. Mine are at God, and he might not even care. Am I getting closer?"

  "I don't know. Maybe."

  The reverend winked at him. "I think we speak the same language."

  "Do you want some more milk?"

  "I better not." The reverend looked at the box of crackers and then at his watch. "I hope I haven't spoiled my dinner. Mrs. Stottle will be mad."

  "I eat when I want."

  The two of them made their way to the front door, the reverend in the lead. When he opened the door, the warmth of the late afternoon swept in. Officer Wetherfield had replaced Sergeant Avery in the cruiser. A neighbor across the street was peering out her front window.

  "Will you come back to see me?" Bobby asked.

  "Most certainly," the reverend said.

  Using Gloria Eisner's cellular phone, Chief Morgan interrupted Reverend Stottle's dinner. "What's your reading?" he said. "What do you see in him?"

  "Darkness."

  "I need more than that, Reverend."

  "I see death. I see a man-child with one foot still in the womb and the other in the grave. I see myself in him."

  "But you don't kill people. I need to know if he's on the edge."

  "We're all on the edge, Chief, but most of us are able to keep our balance. The good news is I've made headway with him. We're on the same wavelength. He wants me to visit him again."

  "Good." Morgan moved from one window to another and viewed a leafy branch, a patch of sky. Lowering his voice, he said, "See if you can get him to talk about Mrs. Bullard."

  When he got off the phone, Gloria said, "What was that all about?"

  "Bobby Sawhill."

  "Trish's stepson," she said lightly.

  "Hard to think of him as that."

  "She used to be afraid of him. I don't think she is anymore."

  "Then she should be," Morgan said.

  Gloria moved close to him, contemplated the lines in his brow and the groove down each cheek. "You're getting to be a habit, James. I don't know if that's good or bad."

  "Good for me. I don't know about you."

  "We should've met before we were toilettrained. We might have had a chance."

  "We still do," he said. They were talking mouth to mouth, their lips occasionally brushing, a phase of foreplay more intimate than kissing.

  "We're from different worlds."

  "But you're in mine now," he said.

  The telephone rang in the half dark. She grappled with it and finally spoke into it. "For you," she said seconds later and passed it over. Morgan lifted himself out of tortured sheets and sat up. Listening, he frowned.

  "How did you know I was here?"

  "What d'you mean, how do I know?" Randolph Jackson said. "Whole town knows where you're sacking out."

  "What do you want, Randolph?"

  "I want you to get that goddamn cruiser away from the kid's house. All it does is draw more attention to him and advertise we got a killer in town."

  "I'm trying to keep an eye on him."

  "Find a better way."

  The line dead, Morgan put the phone down, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and sat with his hands on his knees. Gloria's hand crept up his bare back, producing goose bumps.

  "Am I making your job harder?"

  "Yes," he said. "It's you I'm worried about."

  "I'm not Claudia MacLeod."

  "I know who you are."

  "He doesn't."

  Morgan stood up. "He didn't know her either."

  "James."

  "What?"

  "You have a nice ass."

  Reverend Stottle brought ice cream, three flavors, which they ate on the back porch, where for a while they simply listened to the eerie stridulation of grasshoppers, which at times seemed to mimic music. The only shade came from a tired maple barely able to put out leaves. Bobby said, "Let's not talk about God."

  "He does become tiresome, I admit." Reverend Stottle, seated on a camp chair, held his dish of ice cream high and was careful not to drip any. "What would you like to talk about?"

  "I don't know. Something different."

  "How about ourselves? When I was your age, studying for the ministry, I was coping with a desperation I was afraid to give a name. Do you know what it was, Bobby? Sexuality. First I thought I was queer, but I wasn't. I was a mama's boy. Sound familiar?"

  "No."

  "Then I realized I was preoccupied with women. Their private parts."

  Bobby scraped his dish and placed it under his chair. "I know what they look like."

  Reverend Stottle ate the chocolate and vanilla portions, saving the strawberry for last. "But am I getting warm?"

  "I don't think of those things."

  "I keep a private journal so I can dig into myself. Most people are afraid to dig deep, afraid they'll hit mud. Is that what you're afraid of, Bobby?"

  "No mud in me."

  Reverend Stottle disposed of his dish. "There's mud in all of us. Want me to prove it? Tell me your thoughts when you killed Claudia MacLeod."

  "I didn't have any."

  The music of the grasshoppers hit high notes, as if someone had turned the heat up. Bobby's face was reddening. The reverend said, "You must have had some when you pushed Mrs. Bullard down the stairs."

  "You're trying to get in my mind."

  "Aren't you lonely there? Aren't there things you want to tell?"

  "I didn't like the flowers."

  "What flowers?"

  "I don't want to talk anymore."

  "I think we should."

  Bobby's hand shot sideways and clenched the reverend's wrist. The reverend yelped. The strength of the grip astounded him, the hold on him seemed lethal.

  Bobby said, "I don't want you coming back."

  Sarah Stottle placed ice on her husband's swollen wrist and told him he was a fool to have gone there. "If I were you," she said, "I'd swear out a complaint. That was an assault."

  "I gave him cause. I'm at fault too."

  "You're lucky you lived to tell about it."

  "I intruded into his private chaos."

  "Then you're real lucky."

  "I have to call the chief."

  "Stay where you are," she said and brought him the phone, then keyed the number for him and hovered.

  When the chief came on the line, he said, "You're right to worry."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  He bicycled through September heat to the Heights and turned up the drive to his uncle's house. Fruit trees he remembered being planted had grown considerably. Apples on the ground were juicing into cider, inebriating hornets. He propped the bicycle near arborvitae. Touch-me-nots cascaded from a hanging pot on each side of the front door. He felt he didn't have to ring the bell. He was family.

  He heard no voices.

  Paths of sunlight took him through archways into rooms where the furniture was familiar but the arrangement wasn't. In one room he saw on the wall a large framed photograph of his grandfather, whom he knew only by that picture. In another room Dresden porcelain in a china closet caught his attention as it had years ago when he sought meaning in the design on the cups. In the sunroom he saw his aunt.

  Aunt Belle was napping, stretched out with one a
rm folded and the other thrown straight. Her satiny shirt looked like fabric from an undertaker's most expensive casket. Except for stray strands of gray in her black hair, she looked no older from the last time he had seen her. He wanted to lie beside her but knew better.

  In a long sitting room he looked out an overlarge window at the swimming pool and saw two female figures on chaises. At first he thought they were naked. They were in bikinis. For more than a moment he could not believe they were Sammantha and Jennifer. They were no longer children.

  He entered the pool area through a low gateway. His sneakers marked the wet tiles. At first the twins didn't see him. They were engrossed in themselves, in their chatter. He knew Sammantha by her voice, bigger than Jennifer's. The last time he had seen them was at a Sunday dinner. They were eight or nine, and Sammantha didn't like her dessert and gave it to him. Sammantha noticed him first and sat upright.

  "I'm your cousin," he said. "I'm Bobby."

  Jennifer reached for a shirt. Sammantha stood up as she was and said, "You look the same but so much bigger."

  He smiled. "Aren't you going to kiss me?"

  Without hesitation, she pecked his cheek. "Was it bad where you were?"

  "No, it was good," he said, his gaze taking in the two of them. Jennifer had drawn back. "You're both so beautiful."

  Sammantha grinned. "If one is, the other has to be."

  He looked at the pool. "Let's all jump in."

  "You don't have a bathing suit."

  "I'll go in my underwear."

  "No," Jennifer said. "I don't think you should."

  "Oh, go ahead," said Sammantha.

  They watched him pull off his sneakers, shed his T-shirt, and drop his jeans. Holding his nose, he leaped into the green-blue water and made a tremendous splash, which drove them back. He surfaced with a snort, whipping his hair back. He was not a swimmer, but he kept afloat.

  "Aren't you coming in?"

  Sammantha would have, but Jennifer clutched her arm. "Mom's coming."