On the Loose

by Andrew Coburn

  Belle Sawhill strode straight to the pool's edge and told the twins to leave. "Back to the house!" she said when Sammantha was slow to obey. Sammantha gave her a look but joined Jennifer and left. Trembling only a little, Belle said, "Get out of the pool, Bobby." He used the ladder. She was stunned by the size of him, the brawn. "What are you doing here?"

  "I came to see my cousins."

  "Did you tell your uncle you were coming?"

  He shook his head. His genitals, visible through his soaked underpants, were too prominent to ignore.

  "Get dressed."

  "I'm all wet," he said, and she tossed him Sam- mantha's towel. He turned his back to her, got out of the underpants, and dried himself with care, al most as if he were performing. "You never invited me to dinner."

  "I don't intend to. You're not welcome here."

  "The twins got each other. I got nobody."

  "That's your fault."

  He was in his jeans. Turning, he pulled the zipper up. She kicked his sneakers toward him. She was a lioness protecting her young. "You're a bitch," he said.

  "That's right. And I mean business."

  His sneakers on, he crouched down and knotted the laces. Rising, he slipped on his T-shirt. "I hate you."

  "That doesn't scare me," she lied. "It doesn't even bother me."

  A rage built as she escorted him around the side of the house to the front, where she watched him take his time mounting his bicycle. She wanted to attack him.

  "Why did you kill those two women? Do you even know?"

  He stared at her as if scarcely aware of what she was talking about, the events softened by time, not worth bringing up. She was struck by what she saw in his eyes. He seemed to be expecting a goodbye kiss.

  She said, "Don't let me see you here again."

  From the Heights he glided down Ruskin Road and steered right onto Spring Street, which bent one way and then another past small neat houses with large front windows. A little white car idled in a driveway and pulled out as he sped by. On Summer Street it bounded after him and would have hit him had he not heard it coming. He swerved sharply and ran the bicycle up onto the sidewalk, where he lost control of it.

  The little car, a Dodge Colt, had also gone out of control, jumping the curb and coming to a stalled stop. Bobby walked his bicycle up to it and peered at the driver, an elderly woman with wild white hair.

  "Why did you do that? You almost hit me."

  The woman didn't speak. Her mouth was aquiver.

  "Are you sick?" He leaned closer. "Who are you?"

  The woman thrust out a hand and tried to scratch his face. "You don't even know!"

  Chief Morgan received calls from two residents of Summer Street, each reporting the incident, each readily naming the bicycler but declining to identify the motorist, mentioning only the size and color of the automobile. Both expressed regret they had no need to call an ambulance. Morgan thanked them for civic responsibility.

  Meg O'Brien appeared in the doorway. "Someone to see you."

  "I'm not surprised. Come in, Bobby."

  Bobby spoke as he entered. "An old lady in a car tried to run me down."

  "Good thing she was old," Morgan said. "Younger, she might've got you. Sit down."

  Bobby planted himself on a metal chair. "You said anybody gives me trouble I should call you."

  "When did I say that?"

  "When I was five, almost six."

  Morgan sat back in his rotary chair, his elbows on the armrests. "Who was the old lady, Bobby? Do you know?"

  "No. But she had funny white hair."

  "Who did she remind you of?"

  "Nobody."

  "You sure? Did she have the rose you gave her when you were twelve, almost thirteen? How do you know it wasn't her?"

  Bobby's gaze was steady. "You don't scare me."

  "I'm not trying to, but how can I help you if you don't tell me the truth? You want me for a friend or an enemy? That's what it comes down to."

  Bobby stood up. "I don't need your help."

  Morgan also rose, moved swiftly, and came faceto-face with him. They were the same height. "You hurt anyone again, Bobby, I'll come after you. This time I'll have a gun."

  Bobby didn't blink. Nothing in his face moved. It was as if he had accepted a challenge.

  Morgan followed him out of his office and watched him leave. Turning to Meg O'Brien, he said, "Call Mrs. Perrault. Tell her she pulls another trick like that I'll take away her license."

  In bed Ben Sawhill turned to his wife, but she pushed him away. For a while they lay in silence in the dark. Finally she said, "That's your way of relieving tension, it's not mine."

  He had no response, no defense.

  "Aren't you worried?" she asked.

  "Of course I am," he said. "I'm arranging for another lawyer to handle his financial affairs."

  "Big deal. That's nothing, Ben."

  She turned on her side, her back to him, the covers pulled half over her head, and tried to fall asleep. Ben lay flat, his breathing bothering him from tension in his chest. Both were wide awake when they heard the scream. Belle, out of the bed before Ben could move, knew instinctively which twin it had come from.

  Ben behind her, she rushed into Jennifer's room as Sammantha came out of hers. Ben clawed the light switch. Sitting up, her face stark, Jennifer said, "I'm all right."

  Belle threw her arms around her. "What happened?"

  "I dreamed Bobby killed Sammantha."

  Belle, unable to sleep, went down to the kitchen and made coffee. Presently Ben joined her. He looked worse than she did. When he reached across the table for her hand, she withdrew it. "He's poisoned everything," she said. "Even our marriage."

  "Don't talk that way."

  She scrunched her face up to sip coffee too hot for her lips. "Did you think I didn't know?"

  "Know what?"

  She left the table, carried her coffee with her, and went to an open window where she laid an ear to the night and heard stray breezes, twitterings, animals coming out of hiding. Ben came up behind her and was going to touch her but pulled back at the last second.

  "I want you to do something about him," she said. "I don't care what, I don't care how extreme, but I want you to do something."

  "I promise," he said.

  Gloria Eisner frowned. The garden was indifferent to her. Rose bushes she'd faithfully watered through the spring and summer showed no gratitude and little growth. Tiger lilies had long ago sulked and died without blooming. Two azaleas were losing their leaves, perhaps purposely. Gloria tossed aside the hose, turned off the water, and said, "Fuck 'em!"

  A voice behind her said, "Women shouldn't swear."

  She spun around and saw a young man in an open print shirt worn loose over jeans. "Women shouldn't do a lot of things. What are you doing on my property?"

  "I came to look at the garden. It's not like I remember."

  "I can believe that. If you're done looking, I think you'd better leave."

  He started to turn away, then glanced back. "Are you her daughter?"

  "Whose daughter?"

  "The lady who used to live here."

  "No." She regarded him more prudently. "I'm slow, very slow," she said. "You're Harry Sawhill's son, aren't you? You're Bobby."

  He nodded vigorously, as if happy to be recognized. He was wearing something under his shirt, on his belt. She wasn't sure what it was.

  She said, "Unless you leave this very minute, I'm going to piss my pants."

  He smiled. "You're funny."

  "No, I'm telling you the truth. And then I'll scream."

  He backed off.

  She waited a moment and crept to the gate. He was mounting a bicycle. She watched him ride off and vanish down the street. The woman who lived in the next house appeared on the sidewalk.

  "I already called the police."

  Gloria latched the gate. "Did you tell them he had a knife?"

  Chief Morgan stood on Bobby Sawhill's doors
tep, face-to-face with him. They were the same height, though Bobby had the heavier physique. Morgan said, "Lift your shirt."

  "I don't have to."

  "If you're carrying a concealed weapon I'm arresting you."

  Bobby opened his shirt and pulled the tails back. Morgan expected to see a sheathed knife for hunting or fishing, the sort Harry Sawhill might have had in the house. Instead, clasped to Bobby's belt, was a slender flashlight.

  "What's that for?"

  "I hear noises at night. I investigate."

  "What kind of noises?"

  Bobby shrugged. "I don't know. From the yard."

  "Officer Wetherfield tells me he sees you on the green at night, sitting on a bench, midnight or later. What are you doing there?"

  "I like to look at thevstars. We're all made of stardust, that's what I read. My friend Dibs was coal waiting to become diamond."

  Morgan didn't know who or what Dibs was and didn't care to. He said, "You went back to the Bullard house. That's rubbing it in our faces. That's thumbing your nose at the whole town."

  "I didn't do anything wrong."

  "You trespassed."

  "The gate was open. The lady living there told me to leave and I did."

  Morgan lowered his voice. "Do you think I'll let you take another woman away from me? No way."

  "I don't have to talk to you," Bobby said and, stepping back, closed the door in Morgan's face.

  Trish Becker, glad to be home from a busy workday, shucked off her professional clothes, including her bra, which had left red ridges under her breasts. Views of herself in the triple-paneled mirror in the bedroom pleased her, even excited her, as if her excess weight had turned into an advantage and rendered a truer definition of the woman lurking inside her. She slipped on an outsize sweatshirt and jeans she couldn't button at the top, which didn't matter. She'd buy new ones.

  In the kitchen she began making a light supper for herself. Not until she began laying out flatwear did she notice the watch on the table. Harry's Rolex. A voice behind her said, "I don't want it anymore."

  She whipped around, yet was calm. "How did you get in?"

  "The door was open," Bobby said.

  "No, it wasn't."

  "Then it was unlocked."

  "You're lying on both counts," she said and tried to stare him down, an impossibility.

  "I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

  "Why would you even say that? I was good to your father. I was good to you." She placed a plate and a water glass on the table. "I'm not afraid of you. Does that surprise you?"

  "Good, I don't want you to be." Smiling shyly, he said, "You have big titties."

  She gave a start. "You watched me change."

  "I won't do it again." He had something vital to ask her, she could see it in his face. He took a breath. "Can I live with you, Aunt Trish?"

  She recoiled without showing it. "Why would you want to?"

  "I don't feel safe."

  "No, Bobby, you can't. The house is for sale. Didn't you see the sign? I'm moving away."

  His face went blank with what passed for acceptance. He nodded as if he understood and turned to leave.

  "Bobby, why did you kill those women?"

  "I don't know," he said. "Nobody ever told me."

  From a window she watched him pedal in and out lamplight down the drive and vanish around the stone gateway. Then she went to the telephone, rang up Ben Sawhill, and in a composed voice related everything.

  "You're not to worry," he said. "The chief and I have been talking."

  "What good's that going to do?"

  "We're working something out," he said. "Trust me."

  "Belle doesn't. Why should I?"

  From a bench on the green Bobby Sawhill engaged in a lonely study of the starlit sky. It was a bright cloud-streaked night in which the moon was a moth snared in a web, a situation Bobby likened to his own. He saw the stars in a more benign light. They were signals, messages, if only he could read them. He wanted Dibs to have been wrong about oblivion. He wanted to believe his mother remembered him.

  The swish of footsteps on the grass behind him should have frightened him, but he was too tired and too wrapped in himself. Besides, the voice was his uncle's.

  "What are you doing, Bobby?"

  "I like to look up."

  "Can you name the planets? Can you point out the Big Dipper?"

  He shook his head. "I just know what I see."

  His uncle, wearing a thick jacket, sat beside him. "I heard about the woman trying to run you down. The chief says you hear noises outside the house. God knows, who's out there. You're right not to feel safe." Ben Sawhill removed something heavy from his jacket pocket. "This is for you, Bobby, in case anyone tries to hurt you. It was your father's."

  Bobby looked at it and did not want to take it. It was a snub-nose .32-caliber revolver. "I'll get arrested," he said.

  "No, you won't. The chief knows I'm giving it to you. He thinks you should have it too. There's only one round in it. Someone tries to hurt you, you fire it in air. That'll scare whoever it is away." Ben waited. "Don't you want it?"

  "I don't know "

  "It's up to you, but I think you need it for protection. You're a man now, Bobby. You have to take care of yourself."

  His thoughts returned to the sky. One night at Sherwood he, Dibs, and Duck had watched a lunar eclipse, the earth's shadow pilfering the moon. That was how Dibs had explained it.

  Ben laid the revolver between them on the bench and rose wearily. "You take it if you want, Bobby. There's only so much I can do for you."

  He closed his eyes when he heard his uncle leave. The night air, which hadn't bothered him before, began to creep into his clothes. The moon, escaping the web of clouds, shined bright. Bobby mounted his bike.

  Chief Morgan, standing in the dark under the green's single red maple, watched him pedal away. Ben Sawhill surreptitiously joined Morgan, and the two of them headed toward the bench. Neither spoke. Morgan flashed a light on the bench.

  Ben said, "He took it."

  Chief Morgan and Ben Sawhill had entered into a conspiracy and hoped to draw Reverend Stottle into it. Neither was especially religious, but as if to lessen their load they wanted his blessing, which was the reason they were seated in his study, the door closed. The reverend sensed intrigue and was excited.

  "What is it, gentlemen?"

  "We have to do something about Bobby," Morgan said, sitting back, one leg athwart the other. His eyes signaled Ben to take over.

  Ben spoke from a deep-rooted sigh. "My own nephew, and I'll never know who he is. I don't think he knows either."

  "Do any of us?" Reverend Stottle offered. "I look at your nephew and see a lost child who had done evil."

  "At Sherwood he could pretend he was still a child. Here, that's impossible. The chief and I are racked with terrible concerns."

  Morgan seemed to come out of a trance. "We're sure he'll kill again."

  "Oh, dear." The reverend appeared sad but not shaken. "Much of human life is a destructive force."

  "We don't know who, when, or where," Morgan said commandingly, "but we have to stop him. Force his hand."

  "How do you do that?"

  "Provoke him. Ben will explain." Morgan forced himself to his feet. "May I use your bathroom?"

  The reverend gave directions, and Morgan slipped away quickly, like a fugitive. The overhead light in the little bathroom infused his face with an unhealthy quality. His gaze into the oval mirror above the sink was cold and rejecting, as if he were confronting another self. Water gushed sideways from the tap. Bending over, he filled his hands and soaked his face.

  He took his time returning. Reverend Stottle's expression was strangely serene. Ben, who appeared gutted of all emotion, said, "Austin understands ... and agrees. It's not a question of right or wrong. It's a matter of the common good, the protection of the innocence."

  The reverend nodded. "It's not God's work, it's man's."

 
"The question," Morgan said, "is whether we have the will to do it. And then if we can live with ourselves."

  "I don't think we have a choice," Ben said.

  "And you'd like me to be there."

  "That's up to you, Austin."

  "Yes, I think I should be. It's a mission of mercy."

  Morgan spoke sharply. "Let's not kid ourselves, it's murder. But maybe murder for the right reason."

  The day had been unseasonably warm, and the night was extremely unsettled, at times tropical. Windows were opened, curtains blowing in. Reverend Stottle and his wife were watching television in the sitting room, though the reverend's mind clearly wasn't on it. He thought he heard birds singing and cocked an ear.

  "Weird night," he said.

  "No weirder than you," Sarah Stottle said caustically. "You've been at sixes and sevens since dinner. What's the matter with you?"

  "The soul is restless." On his feet, he went to the window and bathed his face in dark breezes. "You know, Sarah, I think I may take a stroll around the green."

  She viewed him incredulously. "At this hour?"

  "I want to look at the heavens, talk to God."

  "Cut the shit, Austin. You haven't given him a serious thought in years."

  "You're wrong, Sarah. Actually it's the other way around."

  At that moment, at his home in the Heights, Ben Sawhill was slipping on a dark athletic jacket. A few hours earlier he had thrown up his dinner, but he was feeling better now and had some of his color back. The twins were in their rooms, and Belle was reading the current issue of Vanity Fair. He looked in on her.

  "I'm meeting with the chief," he said.

  She looked at her watch. "An odd hour."

  "I don't know how long I'll be. Don't wait up."

  She turned a page of the magazine. "Anything you want to tell me?"

  "I don't think you want to know," he said.

  Chief Morgan at that moment was arming himself with a 9mm-semiautomatic pistol he had never fired. The pistol, a replacement for an old service revolver, was a gift from Meg O'Brien several birthdays ago. She thought he should have a proper weapon in the event of emergency. The revolver had never been comfortable on his hip, and neither was the pistol compatible with his underarm. Gloria Eisner, whom he thought was engrossed in a rented movie, came up behind him.