The Best American Mystery Stories, Volume 17

by Lisa Scottoline

  “Yes, you did.” Cort rubbed his forefinger against the double triggers. “Where’s Jacob?”

  “He’s dead. We found him in the woods.”

  “And your brother?”

  “In the house.”

  “Call him.”

  “I will not.”

  Cort smiled again. “Call him, son.”

  Henry tightened his lips.

  “You know, when I was your age, this was something I wondered about every day,” Cort said. “How often you get a chance to see the end before it comes. You ever wonder about that?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Now that’s a shame.”

  Cort settled back on his heels and lowered the shotgun level with Henry’s chest. Something flashed and boomed behind Henry; his right arm stung like hornets and he cried out. Cort stumbled sideways. He squeezed both triggers of the sawed-off. A chunk of the porch exploded. Splinters peppered Henry’s legs. The air smelled like firecrackers.

  When Henry looked up from his bleeding arm he saw Sam standing on the porch, holding the Browning, smoke curling from the mouth of the barrel. Cort had fallen onto the front gravel path; he lay there, coat shredded and blood blooming across his white T-shirt. Henry knelt by Cort’s side and inspected his face. His breathing was shallow. A few pellets were embedded in his cheek.

  “You got him,” Henry said.

  Sam dropped the shotgun and ran to his brother. Henry let him hug as he gazed across the field, toward the edge of the woods. His arm throbbed and he didn’t know how he felt. Sick, or sad, or maybe even excited. Maybe all three.

  “Fetch the wheelbarrow,” Henry said.

  Sam stared down at Cort.

  “Sam.”

  Sam blinked.

  “Go on and fetch the wheelbarrow,” Henry said.

  “But he’s still breathing.”

  “Don’t you worry about that.”

  They pulled Cort out of the wheelbarrow. Henry grabbed him by his belt with his good arm and hauled him over the lip of the well as Cort groaned and his eyes fluttered beneath his lids. Sam dropped the sack of money into the yawning hole, watching the white disappear.

  “On my count,” Henry said.

  Sam pressed his hands against Cort’s warm side.

  “One. Two. Three.”

  Cort fell. The two boys peered over the edge, staring into the dark, waiting to hear the sound of his body. They waited a long time.

  JOYCE CAROL OATES

  So Near Any Time Always

  FROM Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

  Oh! he was smiling at me.

  Was he smiling—at me?

  Quick then looking away, looking down at my notebook—where I’d been taking notes for a science-history paper—while spread about me on the highly polished table were opened volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica, World Book of Science, Science History Digest.

  A hot blush rose into my face. I could not bring myself to glance up, to see the boy at a nearby table, similarly surrounded by spread-open books, staring at me.

  Though now I was aware of him. Of his quizzical-friendly stare.

  Thinking, I will not look up. He’s just teasing.

  In 1977: still an era of libraries.

  In the suburban branch library that had been a millionaire’s mansion in the nineteenth century. In the high-ceilinged reference room. Shelves of books, gilt-glinting titles, brilliant sunshine through the great octagonal window so positioned in the wall that, seated at one of the reference tables, you could see only the sky through the inset glass panes like an opened fan.

  Will not look up, yet my eyes lifted involuntarily.

  Still he was smiling at me. A stranger: a few years older than I was.

  Never smile or speak to strange men, but this was a boy, not a man.

  I wondered if he was a student at St. Francis de Sales Academy for Boys, a private Catholic school where tuition was said to be as high as college tuition and where the boys, unlike boys at my school, had to wear white shirts, ties, and jackets to class.

  Smiling at me in a way that was so tender, so kindly, so familiar.

  As if, though I didn’t know him, he knew me. As if, though I didn’t know him, yet somehow I did know him, but had forgotten as you feel the tug of a lost dream, unable to retrieve it, yet yearning to retrieve it, like groping in darkness, in a room that should be familiar to you.

  He knows me! He understands.

  I was sixteen. I was a high school junior. I was young for my age, it was said—not to me, directly—which translated into an adult notion of underdeveloped sexuality, emotional immaturity, childishness.

  It wasn’t so unusual that a boy might smile at me, or a man might smile at me, if I was alone. A young girl alone will always attract a certain kind of quick appraising (male) attention.

  If whoever it was hadn’t seen my face clearly, or my skin.

  Seen from a little distance, I looked like any girl. Or almost.

  Seen from the front, I looked like a girl of whom relatives say, Her best feature is her smile!

  Or, If only she would smile just a little more—she’d be pretty.

  Which wasn’t true, but well-meaning. So I tried not to absolutely hate the relative who said it.

  This boy was no one I’d ever encountered before, I was sure. If I had, I would have remembered him.

  He was very handsome! I thought. Though I scarcely dared to look at him.

  Mostly I was conscious of his round, gold-rimmed glasses, which gave him a dignified appearance. Inside the lenses his eyes were just perceptibly magnified, which gave them a look of blurred tenderness.

  His face was angular and sharp-boned and his hair was scrupulously trimmed with a precise part on one side of his head, the way men wore their hair years ago; unlike most guys his age, anyway most guys you’d see in Strykersville, he was wearing an actual shirt, not a T-shirt—a short-sleeved shirt that looked like it might be expensive.

  Smiling at me in this tentative way to signal that if I was wary of him, or frightened of him, it was okay—it was cool. He wouldn’t bother me further.

  He’d been taking notes in a notebook, too. Now he returned to his work, studious and intense, as if he’d forgotten me. I saw that he was left-handed—leaning over the library table with his left arm crooked at the elbow so he could write with that hand.

  A curious thing: he’d removed his wristwatch to position it on the tabletop, so that he could see the time at a glance. As if his time in the library might be precious and limited and he feared it spilling out into the diffuse atmosphere of the public library, in which, like sea creatures washed ashore, eccentric-looking individuals, virtually always male, seemed drawn to pursue obsessive reference projects.

  So I continued with my diligent note-taking. Amphibian ancestors. Evolution. Prehistoric amphibians: why gigantic? Present-day amphibians: why dwindling in numbers?

  Trying not to appear self-conscious. With this unknown boy less than fifteen feet away facing me as in a mirror.

  A hot blush in my cheeks. And I regretted having bicycled to the library without taking time to fasten my hair back into a ponytail so now it was straggly and windblown.

  My hair was fair brown with a kinky little wave. Very like the boy’s hair, except his was trimmed so short.

  A strange coincidence! I wondered if there were others.

  My note-taking was scrupulous. If the boy glanced up, he would see how serious I was.

  ...environmental emergency, fate of small amphibians worldwide...

  ...exact causes unknown but scientists suggest...

  ...radical changes in climate, environment... invasive organisms like fungi...

  Then, abruptly—this was disappointing!—after less than ten minutes the boy with the gold-rimmed glasses decided to leave: got to his feet—tall, lanky, storklike—slipped his wristwatch over his bony knuckles, briskly shut up the reference books and returned them to the shelves, hauled up a heavy-looking backpack, an
d without a glance in my direction exited the room. The soles of his size-twelve sneakers squeaked against the polished floor.

  There I remained, left behind. Accumulating notes on the tragically endangered class of creatures Amphibia for my earth science class.

  Did it occur to you to exit the library at the rear? Just in case he was waiting at the front.

  Did it occur to you it might be a good idea not to meet up with this boy?

  Of course it didn’t occur to you he might be older than he appeared.

  He might be other than he appeared.

  Of course it didn’t occur to you, and why?

  Because you were sixteen. An immature sixteen.

  A not-pretty girl. A lonely girl.

  A desperate girl.

  “Hey. Hi.”

  He was waiting for me outside the library.

  This was such a shock to me, a relief and a wonder—as if nothing so extraordinary had ever happened and could not have been predicted.

  I had assumed that he’d left. He’d lost interest in me and he’d left and I would not see him again, as sometimes—how often, I didn’t care to know—male interest in me, stimulated initially, mysteriously melted, evaporated and vanished.

  But there he was waiting for me, in no way that might intimidate me: just sitting on the stone bench at the foot of the steps, leafing through a library book he was about to slide into his backpack.

  Seeing the look of surprise in my face, the boy said “Hi!” a second time, smiling so deeply that tiny knife cuts of dimples appeared in his lean cheeks.

  Shyly, I said hello. My heart was beating in a feathery light way that made it hard for me to breathe.

  And shyly we stared at each other. To be singled out was such an unnerving experience for me, I had no idea how to behave.

  To feel this sensation of unease and excitement, and so quickly.

  Like a basketball tossed at me without warning, or a hockey puck skittering along the playing field in the direction of my feet—I had to react without thinking or risk getting hurt.

  Boldly, yet not aggressively, he asked my name. And when I told him he repeated “Lizbeth.”

  He told me his name—Desmond Parrish.

  Amazingly, he held out his hand for me to shake—as if we were adults.

  He’d gotten to his feet, in a chivalrous gesture. He was smiling so hard now, his glittery gold glasses seemed to have become dislodged and he had to push them against the bridge of his nose with the flat of his hand.

  “I wondered how long you’d stay in there. I was hoping you wouldn’t stay until the library closed.”

  Awkwardly I murmured that I was doing research for a paper in my Earth science class...

  “Earth science! Quick, tell me, what’s the age of Earth?”

  “I—I don’t remember...”

  “Multiple-choice question: the age of Earth is a) fifty million years, b) three hundred sixty thousand years, c) ten thousand years, d) forty billion years, e) four point five billion years. No hurry!”

  Trying to remember, and to reason: but he was laughing at me.

  Teasing-laughing. In a way to make my face burn with pleasure.

  “Well, I know it can’t be ten thousand years. So we can eliminate that.”

  “You’re certain? Ten thousand years would be appropriate if Noah and his ark are factored in. You don’t believe in Noah and his ark?”

  “N-No...”

  “How’d the animals survive the flood, then? Birds, human beings? Fish, you can see how fish would survive, no problem factoring in fish, but mammals? Nonarboreal primates? How’d they manage?”

  It was like trying to juggle a half-dozen balls at once, trying to talk to this very funny boy. Seeing that I was becoming flustered, he relented, saying, “If you consider that life of some kind has been around about three point five billion years, then it figures—right?—the answer is e) four point five billion years. That’s a loooong time, before October ninth, nineteen seventy-seven, in Strykersville, New York. A looong time before Lizbeth and Desmond.”

  Like a TV standup comic, Desmond Parrish spoke rapidly and precisely and made wild-funny gestures with his hands.

  No one had ever made me laugh so hard, so quickly. So breathlessly.

  As if it was the most natural thing in the world, Desmond walked with me to the street. He was a head taller than me—at least five feet eleven. He’d swung his heavy backpack onto his shoulders and walked with a slight stoop. Covertly I glanced about to see if anyone was watching us—anyone who knew me: Is that Lizbeth Marsh? Who on earth is that tall boy she’s with?

  It seemed natural, too, that Desmond would walk me to my bicycle, leaning against the wrought-iron fence. Theft was so rare in Strykersville in those years, no one bothered with locks.

  Desmond stroked the chrome handlebars of my bicycle, which were lightly flecked with rust—the bicycle was an English racer but inexpensive, with only three gears—and said he’d seen me bicycling on the very afternoon he and his family had moved to Strykersville, twelve days before: “At least, I think she was you.”

  This was a strange thing to say, I thought. As if Desmond really did know me and we weren’t strangers.

  Somehow it happened Desmond and I were walking together on Main Street. I wasn’t riding my bicycle; Desmond was pushing it while I walked beside him. His eyes were almond-shaped and fixed on me in a way both tender and intense, which made me feel weak.

  Already the feeling between us was so vivid and clear—As if we’d known each other a long time ago.

  People scorn such an idea. People laugh, who know no better.

  “Lizbeth, you can call me Des. That’s what my friends call me.”

  Desmond paused, staring down at me with his strange wistful smile.

  “Of course, I don’t have any friends in Strykersville yet. Just you.”

  This was so flattering! I laughed, to suggest that if he was joking, I knew he’d meant to be funny.

  “But I don’t think that I will call you Liz—Lizbeth is preferable. Liz is plebian, Lizbeth patrician. You are my patrician friend in plebian western New York State.”

  Desmond asked me where I lived and where I went to school; he described himself as “dangling, like a misplaced modifier, between academic accommodations” in a droll way to make me smile, though I had no idea what this meant.

  At each street corner I was thinking that Desmond would pause and say goodbye, or I would summon up the courage to interrupt his entertaining speech and explain that I had to bicycle home soon, my parents were expecting me.

  On Main Street we were passing store windows. Pedestrians parted for us, glancing at us with no particular interest, as if we were a couple—Lizbeth, Desmond.

  Desmond’s arm brushed against mine by accident. The hairs on my arm stirred.

  I saw a cluster of small dark moles on his forearm. I felt a sensation like warmth lifting from his skin, communicated to me on the side of my body closest to him.

  Though I was sixteen I had not had a boyfriend, exactly. Not yet.

  I had not been kissed. Not exactly.

  There were boys in my class who’d asked me to parties, even back in middle school. But no one had ever picked me up at home; we’d just met at the party. Often the boy would drift off during the course of the evening, with his friends. Or I’d have drifted off, eager to summon my father to come pick me up.

  Mostly I’d been with other girls, in gatherings with boys. We weren’t what you would call a popular crowd and no one had ever singled me out. No one had ever looked at me as Desmond Parrish was looking at me.

  Walking along Main Street! Saturday afternoon in October! So often I’d seen girls walking with their boyfriends, holding hands; I’d felt a pang of envy, that such a thing would never happen to me.

  Desmond and I weren’t holding hands, of course. Not yet.

  Beside us in store windows our reflections moved ghostly and fleeting—tall lanky Desmond Parrish with his
close-trimmed hair and schoolboy glasses, and me, Lizbeth, beside him, closer to the store windows so that it looked as if Desmond were looming above me, protecting me.

  At the corner of Main Street and Glenville Avenue, which would have been a natural time for me to take my bicycle from Desmond and bicycle home, Desmond suggested that we stop for a Coke, or ice cream—“If this was Italy, where there are gelato shops every five hundred feet, we’d have our pick of terrific flavors.”

  I’d never been to Italy, and would have thought that gelato meant Jell-O.

  In the vicinity there was only the Sweet Shoppe, a quaint little ice cream–candy store of another era, which Desmond declared had “character”—“atmosphere.” We sat at a booth beside a wall of dingy mirrors and each of us had a double scoop of pistachio butter crunch. This was Desmond’s choice, which he ordered for me as well and paid for, in a generous, careless gesture, with a ten-dollar bill tossed onto the table for the waitress: “Keep the change for yourself, please.”

  The waitress, not much older than I was, could not have been more surprised if Desmond had tossed a fifty-dollar bill at her.

  In the Sweet Shoppe, tips were rare.

  For the next forty minutes, Desmond did most of the talking. Sitting across from me in the booth, he leaned forward, elbows on the sticky tabletop, his shoulders stooped and the tendons in his neck taut.

  By this time I was beginning to feel dazed, hypnotized—I had not ever been made to feel so significant in anyone’s eyes.

  Kindly and intense in his questioning, Desmond asked me more about myself. Had my family always lived in Strykersville, what did my father do, what were my favorite subjects at school, even my favorite teachers—though the names of Strykersville High School teachers could have meant nothing to him. He asked me my birth date and seemed surprised when I told him (April 11, 1961)—“You look younger”—and possibly for a moment this was disappointing to him; but then he smiled his quick dimpled smile, as if he were forgiving me, or finding a way he could accept my age—“You could be, like, thirteen.”