Ed was wondering what’d happened to Billy by then. But since wandering was one of Billy’s most aggravating traits, he hadn’t been too worried. He took the guy’s statement, asking him how he happened to be out near Ryan’s. The guy whisked his hunting license out, told Ed where he was staying, and left, pretty shaken up. Of course, the hunting season for anything other than squirrel and rabbit had been over for months, but Ed had other things on his mind.
After checking the phone log and talking to Helen, Ed called me, trepidation in his voice. We drove out there, immediately spotting Billy’s figure in the doorway. It was almost certain someone had hit my boy with the iron shovel lying next to his body. There was blood everywhere: blood and parts of Billy’s skull and brains. My stomach, churning all day from the damned virus, went suddenly calm. Ed’s reaction was different though: he ran inside, making it to the john in time but defiling the crime scene with his dirty shoes. Me and my men weren’t used to the protocol for something like this.
Within a half-hour, the area swarmed with my squad and men from the neighboring town. I put in a call to Traverse City, and they sent over their forensics team and a detective more experienced than me in handling crime scenes and homicides.
“Do you realize these bloody footprints probably belong to your own man?” the detective asked me.
I nodded. “We’ve never investigated a murder.”
“You get the same training we do.”
“It’s his kid, you know,” Ed told him, going quickly from ashamed to angry. “The body you just carted away.”
“Sorry for your loss,” the detective said quietly, hanging his head.
Those were the words we’d been taught to say, and for the first time, I realized how hollow they sound. How perfunctory.
I hung back from the start, letting others take the lead, allowing them to turn my son’s body over, letting other men carry him away. I never set foot in the house. It wasn’t up to me to find my son’s killer. Anything I did was likely to screw up a subsequent trial because of my inexperience in homicides and my relationship to the victim.
At least a dozen times in the weeks ahead, Billy’s actions were questioned, and I repeatedly admitted Billy shouldn’t have been there, shouldn’t have been employed by a police department, shouldn’t have been allowed to think himself capable of answering such a call.
If I’d grieved plenty over Ellie’s death twenty years earlier, Billy’s death damn near sent me ’round the bend. Why hadn’t he called me? I hadn’t given enough thought to a situation like this arising, and Billy paid the price. The only thing keeping me sane was the conviction the murderer would be caught and brought to justice—that I would see him put behind bars for the rest of his days.
But it didn’t look like there was going to be a trial anytime soon because the one and only piece of potential evidence was a Spiderman wristwatch, the kind you can buy in any department store. It wasn’t even certain the watch—found about ten yards from the door—hadn’t been lost by some summer guest months earlier or a more recent passerby.
It’d only been spotted because the glint of the glass caught someone’s eye.
“What do you think, Chief?” Ed asked. “Has it been lying out here since last summer?”
We both looked at the watch. It was in pretty good shape for a watch lost six months earlier. The band was surprisingly long for a kid.
“Do adults wear these things?” Ed asked.
Billy would’ve loved such a watch, I thought to myself.
I looked at it again. “It may not belong to whoever killed my boy, but it hasn’t been here long. It would’ve been a foot deeper in the snow and a lot dirtier. Nobody would’ve found it, and I don’t think it’d still be running.”
We both consulted our own watches and found Spidey kept pretty good time.
“Plus,” I said, “if it’d been here since last summer, the time would be an hour off.”
Ed looked impressed I’d thought of it; this was the depth of investigation our force could muster: remembering the existence of daylight savings time.
There were other signs people had been there: cigarette butts, beer cans, a few empty chips bags. These items were eventually run for fingerprints but none matched any prints on file. No doubt whoever it was wore gloves for the cold.
I buried my boy five days after his murder, putting him next to Ellie, the spot where I was meant to be. There was nothing to hold up a funeral when a shovel to the head was all there was.
“One quick jab,” the coroner decided. “Guy must have been an ox.”
The whole town turned out and the folks from the neighboring ones. People are like that up here. The investigation continued, mostly at my prodding. But finally the new leads, the people to question, the timetables to work out faded away. There was no way to keep it going.
I’m a patient man. Billy taught me to be. I knew whoever killed my son had found another crib—if that’s the current term—but they hadn’t disappeared entirely.
Small-time drug dealers don’t disappear. They’re peasants like me. And peasants don’t travel well. They like their own john if nothing else. I knew they’d never return to the Ryans’ house, but the area had dozens of similar setups.
I waited through spring and summer with nary a report of noise or unusual traffic. Summer fills the towns in northern Michigan, but by October, the houses are being boarded up. It was then reports of unusual activity began to surface, lighting up our phone lines or coming across the Internet. Local kids partying a bit too hardy, odd movement at night, a few DUIs, which didn’t seem like the usual beer-induced euphoria. I spent most nights driving or walking the streets of our town and the ones nearby.
“You’re not sleeping much, are you?” Ed Stuyvesant asked as we stood in front of the station’s coffee machine in November. “Saw your car on Huron Street last night, Chief.”
“Just making sure our taxpayers are safe.” We watched silently as the machine dripped its God-awful coffee into the scarred pot. “And what were you doing out there, Ed?”
“Marge’s sister, Brenda, lives out there. Her dog had some pups in the middle of the night. Ever since I delivered that girl’s baby in the squad car, those women think I’m an ob-gyn.” He held his hands up. “Do these look like the mitts of a skilled vet?”
I smiled. “She hear anything? Brenda, I mean.”
He shook his head. “Sometimes, Chet, if you’re looking too hard…” Sampling the brew, he made the requisite face. “But if you come across anything, give me a call—no matter what time of night. I never did care about eight hours sleep.”
“I’ll give you a call, Ed. I’m not aiming to screw it up now.”
“Still hoping to convict someone?”
I nodded. “If I don’t see this piece of shit behind bars, I’ll never get past it”
“Odds are against it by now. Those cowboys are probably long gone.”
“And where would they go? Detroit? Chicago? Bet they can’t even read a map.”
The week after New Year’s I picked up two reports of activity in Duck Hollow. Duck Hollow’s fifteen miles down the road. It’s even less of a town than West Lebanon, mostly attracting folks who just want to fish or hunt. Loners. There’s a general store with a gas pump outside and not much else.
Most of the houses sit deep in the woods. They’re really just barebones cabins—not meant for families. Duck Hollow uses the schools, police, and services of the neighboring towns to get by. Off-season population is one hundred sixty-six and most are men over sixty, holed up in tiny cabins they knocked together with a few drunken buddies over a couple of weekends thirty years ago. Nobody tells them how to live their lives in Duck Hollow; taxes are among the lowest in Michigan.
The first suspicious report came from one of the few couples. They reported New Year’s Eve had been celebrated eight
hours straight at a cabin nearby. The man said it sounded like a machine gun was being fired. It may have been a pump BB gun, but the officer who took the information thought it was probably a semi-automatic shotgun.
Two more reports came in: the sound of windows being broken, cracking branches at night, possibly more gunshots.
When I looked at a map, the locations called in as suspicious lay in a straight line if you traveled through the woods. Maybe someone without a car, who was tramping from house to house, looking for food, opioids, booze, or stuff to steal. Ed and I went up there, scouting every cabin and succeeding only in drawing attention from two men with shotguns.
“Police,” Ed yelled. Both times, the gun was silently withdrawn through a crack in the door. No idle chatter in Duck Hollow.
But the third time, we found their lair. Although the boards facing the dirt road were still up when we circled the house, the ones over the back door and window had been ripped off enough to allow entry and a bit of light. Smoke curled out of the chimney and two pairs of dripping boots sat at the back door. Nice, they’d removed their boots before entering the cabin. Someone had taught these guys manners.
“They’re waiting for us, Ed.”
Ed kicked in the flimsy door and I peered in cautiously. Inside was a barely furnished room with a kitchen at our end. Two guys sat at one of those fifties-era kitchen tables watching a tiny TV. It must have run on batteries since the electricity was turned off. They both looked up, blinking at the sudden light and at the poised Glocks in our hands.
Before they could move, I yelled, “Freeze,” which they immediately did.
The older one, a beefy, red-faced guy, was around forty-five; the other, a kid who was even larger, was maybe eighteen or twenty.
“Put your hands where I can see them,” I added. The kid’s enormous arms shot right up—probably something he’d seen in movies.
“Like this?” he called out in a surprisingly pip-squeaky voice. I could see his wrists clearly, and it nearly took my breath away. He was wearing a Spiderman watch. Red band this time.
“Where’d you get the watch?” I asked, grabbing his wrist and twisting it for good measure.
The kid screamed, nearly falling off his chair. I yanked him back onto it and he sat there, his mouth hanging open, not saying a word.
I repeated the question, “Where did you…”
“Look, he ain’t right,” the beefy guy broke in. “And all you’re doing is scaring him half to death.” His voice softened considerably. “His Dad bought it for him when he lost his old one. Right, Johnny?” The kid nodded. The older man looked at me. “What’s with the watch anyway? Someone stealing them?”
“Could you be the guys who killed a boy in West Lebanon last year?” I asked. “Left him dead in a doorway.”
The beefy guy shook his head. “No way. I was inside Jackson ’bout then. Didn’t get out till June.” He looked at me, answering my next question. “Stole a car and drew a sentence.”
“What about him? He do it?”
“He ain’t right,” the beefy guy repeated. “He don’t remember what he did yesterday. His dad just lets him hang around.” He looked around as if the father might be listening, then added, “He don’t know what else to do since Johnny’s mom took off. He’s found some place gonna take him after the holidays. Up near Marquette.”
“Ever hit a guy with a shovel? A guy wearing a shirt like mine?” I asked Johnny, knowing I shouldn’t be asking questions. Knowing I should call the cops in Traverse City and let them handle it. Knowing I was screwing things up. But I had to know. I could feel Ed flinching beside me.
The kid shrugged.
“I toll you. He probably don’t remember,” the beefy guy said. “And if he did do it, which I ain’t saying he did, he didn’t know it would hurt the guy. A kid like Johnny, well, you know how it is. Everyone knows a kid like Johnny. Right?”
“Either of you have guns?” I asked, ignoring his last comment. I nodded to Ed and he started to search them.
“Nah, I’m just a minder, you might say,” the guy told me. “John here gets minded since those events. I’d just as soon stay out of Jackson so it’s okay with me. Money’s less but it’s somethin’. Don’t think I’m saying anythin’ happened over there. Who knows how scared a kid like John might be to see a uniform come through a door. Who knows what he’s liable to do.”
“You’re not saying it, huh?”
“It’s just daycare,” the guy continued, in case we still didn’t get it.
I looked at the table where the boy sat, head down. A tear slid down his cheek, his hands still up in the air.
“A place in Marquette, huh. After Christmas.”
The bigger guy nodded. “No more than a month till he goes.”
“Why don’t the two of you get out of here?” I said, avoiding Ed’s shocked face.
“What ’bout the other stuff going on?” Ed asked me. “The break-ins. You know.”
“These fellows won’t give us any more trouble. Right?”
“Right. Right! You mean we can go?” The guy was rising, looking for his coat. “Get your coat on, John.”
Johnny lowered his arms slowly. “I don’t need a coat, Shep.” He looked longingly at the TV where Oprah Winfrey was interviewing a female guest. One of those skinny blondes you saw everywhere nowadays. “You ain’t gonna leave the TV behind, are you?”
“You do too need a coat, Johnny. It’s not ten degrees out there.”
Shep helped the boy into his coat, grabbed the TV, and started for the door.
“Get out of this county now,” I said from the doorstep. “As far away as possible. Don’t ever come near it ’cause next time it’ll be different.”
I stood at the doorway, watching them head toward the forest. “I may not remember what it’s like for a kid like him next time.”
I was shouting the last words and Johnny covered his ears. Just like my Billy would have done.
Pox
Hanna planned on burying the baby behind the house where a gnarly walnut tree had shaded the berry-covered vines that surprised them last summer, their first summer in Wisconsin. This was what she’d decided in bed last night, weaving the fringe on the crocheted blanket between her fingers, sliding her warm cheek across the icy bedrail. She’d get up and do it first thing—before the chickens were fed, the cow was milked, before she washed her face. It wouldn’t wait.
But the ground was stone beneath her spade in the morning. A hard frost had settled as she watched winter etch the isinglass and darken the house, felt fingers of cold poke into cracks where the mud had thinned. All of this happening in the hours after her baby slipped away.
A city girl, she’d never thought of the consequence of frozen ground before. Raising the spade above her head, she jabbed at it, the handle coming loose as she assaulted the unyielding earth. It was like chipping a block of ice; minuscule pieces of frozen dirt flecked her face, flew into her eyes. On her knees finally, she scrabbled with numb fingers, but it would not give. Nothing in this wretched place would yield to her. Who but a stubborn man like Claas would choose to live here? Her eyes stung too badly to cry again, but a stray shudder flitted across her chest. Her throat felt like she’d been screaming for hours. Had she?
They came to this place last spring. She wrongly thought nothing could be worse than the wall of fire rushing across the fields in August. Mr. Hatcher, their nearest neighbor, showed them how to dig a firebreak, changing the fire’s course as the flames hurried toward them like a rabid animal. The wind’s fury whipped the sky with bouquets of burning grass ripped from the ground. They saved their house by hastily erecting a clay armature to surround it, but their precious windows—two of them real glass ordered from Chicago despite Claas’ mutterings—shattered from the heat. The reproaches they so often hurled at each other were lost in the wind. Ha
d they fought this often in Chicago?
Afterward, they looked in amazement at the black path zigging and zagging for miles. As if Satan himself had charged through the countryside, leaving a sooty trail to remind them of their impotence. The smell of smoke defied bucket after bucket of lye soap and water, and only Freddie didn’t mind a shaved head.
“Look at me! I’m an old man,” he said, using a charred stick for a cane. Annie had her mother wrap her head, though only the four of them ever saw each other. Had an evil eye found their homestead? Did she need to fashion one herself?
Tell me it’s time to go home, she pled, mostly silently, with Claas. But he continued with late summer chores like the fire was nothing. Like her loneliness didn’t matter. But angry silences could melt away when a plea for help with a loose animal or a ravaging storm came along. And sulking or not, Claas couldn’t help but turn to her in the dark.
She’d have to bury Martha inside. Put her in the ground near the stove where the earthen floor remained soft. Place Martha deep inside the bowels of this cursed place. She flung off her shawl and unwrapped the baby again, examining her fingers, her toes, and the perfect, unmarked face. Trying to memorize her daughter’s features, she decided Martha had Annie’s delicate face in shape, but her own ruddy coloring. This was what she’d remember when she lay in bed on future nights. Sometime later, she set Martha back in the cradle and then looked in the toolbox for the fire shovel. With a start, she noticed the toolbox’s size. Dumping the other tools on the floor, she put it aside, wondering if Claas would mind its confiscation. He’d have no idea of why it was needed.
Annie hadn’t even wanted to go back to Chicago with Claas. “I don’t remember Opa,” she insisted two weeks ago, combing the wooly, black hair on her rag doll with her fingers. Almost nine, she’d be putting her doll aside soon. This doll, poor thing that it was, was the only childlike thing about Annie now so Hanna clung to it too, making dresses with any scrap of material she came upon, using twigs for furniture, drying bits of mud shaped like plates and food. Annie would glance at the newest offering politely, stowing it away without comment. Only the doll itself found its way into her hands. It was more habit than fondness, like the blanket babes often clung to.
I Bring Sorrow_And Other Stories of Transgression Page 4
