by Nina Post
"I'll send you a map right now," Trainor said. "I circled the spot where you can look. It would be impossible to get more specific. That's the best I can do."
Shawn checked the mail on his phone. The message popped up. He opened the image and zoomed in to the highlighted location. Trainor had written, 'sand and rough grass.' The area was right along the Lake Erie shoreline between the lighthouse and Sunset Point, and overlapped a path.
"I had to look in two different microscopes for this," Trainor said.
"Two microscopes!" Shawn said. "Well, that calls for two more tickets."
"That's great, because I have my fam -- "
"But all I have are these two tickets to Bennett's Nursing Home's production of Equus."
He heard a click. "Hello?" Shawn hung up the receiver, then picked it up again to call the owner of the house next to Jasper's. Shawn was relieved when someone answered.
"Yes? Hello?"
"Is this Mr. Stuart Acker?"
"Dr. Acker. Who wants to know?"
"Detective Lieutenant Shawn Danger with the Erie Police Department."
"Then it's your lucky day, Lieutenant. What can I help you with?"
"I noticed you have security cameras on the outside of your house. I'm hoping you have footage saved from Sunday. Yesterday."
"My house on Poplar Street? I'm not at that house now. Won't get there until late June. We have a neighbor look in on it every week, and they check the videos from the cameras then. We do the same for them when they're out of town, so there's mutually-assured destruction." Jasper's neighbor chuckled.
"Do they check on the same day each week?"
"Usually Tuesday. But I can have them play the videos for you before then, if you like."
"That would be very helpful," Shawn said, relieved.
"Let me contact my neighbor first. I don't want to scare the crap out of them. What's this about, anyway?"
"I can't say."
"Hmph. Well, let me call you back. I've got your number stored here."
Shawn waited. The phone buzzed a few minutes later, and Stuart Acker gave Shawn a name, Greg Moreland, and a number.
"Is Moreland available today?"
"He's probably just watching golf on TV."
Shawn made one more call, to the Battles Museums, and left a voice mail for Annabelle Grey. He needed to find out about Jasper's involvement there.
Chapter 7
Shawn met Greg Moreland in front of the house next to Jasper Stowe's. Sarah had to do something for her father at his law office and needed the money for the documentary.
Moreland was in his forties and had a sunburn. He was wearing boat shoes, khaki pants, a t-shirt that said something about hang-gliding in the Bahamas, and a brown barn coat. Shawn quickly flashed his badge then put it away. "Did something happen?" Moreland asked as he unlocked the door and disabled the alarm. Shawn didn't know if Moreland knew he was talking to a homicide detective, and didn't want to enlighten him.
"It's part of a current investigation, but probably nothing for you to be concerned about."
Moreland went into the house, shut the door behind Shawn, then went to a small video screen in the kitchen. He poked around on the side of it and brought up a screen full of files, each with a name of a long string of numbers. "This is what we've collected since Tuesday. That's when I stop by, water the plants, go through each of these videos, and take in the mail."
Just as Shawn was wondering what Acker did for Moreland in return, Moreland said, "Dr. Stuart gives me Z-Packs. I take them with me on cruises. They're like gold, so I'm happy to look after the house. Which camera do you want to look at? There are three outside cameras."
"The one that faces the house next door." Shawn gestured toward the northeast.
"Where that weird fella just moved in? He do something wrong?"
"You think he's weird?"
"Well, he didn't bother to come to the New Year party we have in the neighborhood, or the Super Bowl party. He just keeps to himself a little too much. Okay. Here's that camera. What day are you looking for?"
"Sunday morning, from three a.m. to eight a.m."
After some searching, Moreland found the videos and played the first one. Shawn leaned in and watched, but it was only a cat walking the top of a fence that partially separated Dr. Acker's house from Jasper's. Aside from the fence, the camera showed only a sliver of Jasper Stowe's front path, and the southwest front corner of his house.
"I'm guessing you're not interested in a feral cat as your suspect, so let's skip to the next one," Moreland said. The next video was of three raccoons scrambling over the same fence with an unnerving symmetry. Moreland went to the next one, which was a delivery person wheeling up a large cardboard box on a hand truck.
"Pause it."
Moreland hit pause.
"Can you zoom?"
"I don't think so. Wait, no -- maybe I can." Moreland tried a few options and was able to zoom in on the deliveryman just a little. The delivery guy had dark hair that fell to his shoulders, a plain dark baseball cap, and sunglasses. In the corner of the video was the front of a white van. The same van the employees at the Flagship Creamery saw?
"Okay, play it out," Shawn requested.
Moreland let the video play through. The delivery guy paused at the entrance, brought a cell phone up to his ear for a moment, then cut around to the back, wheeling his cart over the soft grass until he dropped off camera view.
"I need this video."
Moreland shrugged. "I'll give you the memory card." He ejected the card and handed it to Shawn.
Jasper was in that box.
***
John worked in the garden before dinner. He planted a row of marigolds and thought of Darcy's hair, a white-blonde beacon. It used to be wild, riotous, embedded with the occasional twig and leaf, like a crafty fairy. He wondered when Shawn would realize there would be no point in trying to find her. Did Shawn find his note? Did he check the neighbor's security cameras yet? Would he find prints, hair, blood? Shawn would question Darcy's husband, her employees, and anyone else she knew, but all the poor bastard had was a note with a stick figures on it. John was most fascinated by Darcy, but felt most similar to Shawn. Their anger had a different quality than anyone else's, like the flame of the Vestal Virgins. Shawn pretended it wasn't there, but John knew it was, under that compulsive need to work, to control his environment. In that contained life he led, constructed to keep people away.
He positioned the bulb in the hole he had made. Didn't they both have the same kind of life, for the most part? At least he was conscious of it. They were both hard on themselves -- for letting other people inflict such misery on them, for putting up with it, for not being courageous enough. If anything good happened, they couldn't enjoy it, not really, because the world was threatening, and their defenses were so infallible they could've been erected by Medieval cathedral builders. But Shawn probably conveniently forgot all that. He was just this guy with a cat doing his job.
He patted down the soil. Darcy was always tough on the outside but so much more fragile than anyone thought. She was always the first one to do anything dangerous and the last to leave, but withdrew into her own head more than any of them. John always wondered where she went. He wished he could go with her. She put up with at least as much crap as they all did. And so, in what seemed like a completely different life, he broke the League's rules to have supper at her house. He wanted, in a way he didn't with Jasper or Shawn or Paul, to have the chance to protect her at least one night. Her situation couldn't have been worse than his, so it wasn't anything he couldn't deal with.
Darcy's dad wanted dinner on the table at exactly 5:30, not one minute under or past. He sat there, hitting the dull end of the knife on the table like a battle spear. Softly, but that seemed worse somehow. Thump, thump. Beginning his domination of the room and of Darcy's mother, a slow-moving woman with dull, unwashed brown hair and tentative doe eyes and a rump like the bear in the Charmin ad.
John picked up the spade again, dug out a small amount of soil, picked up the flower.
Thump, thump. Countdown to 5:30. John remembered it so clearly he could put himself right back in the memory. He could smell the meatloaf, the sweat of Darcy's father.
Darcy sat still as a fence post, hands on her lap. John didn't know if she was letting him handle her life for one dinner, but he was glad to give her some breathing room. A blue plastic headband kept her hair out of her face, and he had a spark of pleasure looking at it. It made him feel good, to handle this for her. It made him feel useful, like the man he was trying so hard to be, as long as it was nothing like his old man.
Her dad fixed his alert, intense dark eyes on John, mouth curved in a sly grin that made even John nervous, though his old man was probably even more balls-out crazy. He could handle this.
Darcy's cornflower-blue eyes were focused on nothing. They seemed blind.
"Brower kid, huh?"
"Yes, sir." John knew well enough you had to use to sir, like tossing a hamburger to a dog whose black lips were lifting to show its long teeth. Using sir chafed, but it was also a shield, because without sir, you might as well paint a fucking target on your forehead.
"I know your Pop."
This didn't surprise John one bit. All these assholes knew each other from the VFW, where some of them seemed nice. They all had a radar in their heads, like bats. But the nice people were someone else's family, and no friends of his old man. "He's a son of a bitch," Darcy's dad said, drawing out the words.
John almost laughed, but tried to keep his face neutral. There was an art to the neutral face. It wasn't as easy as one might think. There was 'smart-ass neutral,' which his old man perceived as a smirk, and 'mocking neutral,' where his dad thought he was laughing at him, which would get an immediate backhand. There was another fine line between those and 'respectful neutral.' You had to get as close as possible to 'respectful neutral,' though John thought it was pretty arbitrary and depended on his old man's mood that minute. John could think he had 'respectful neutral' nailed, but his dad would read it as 'smart-ass neutral,' or even worse, 'mocking neutral.' Usually he wanted 'chastened neutral,' but John was defiant -- he wasn't willing to go that far.
"Yes, sir."
Darcy's dad laughed suddenly, a sound that made John's balls recede. That laugh was so clear even there in the garden so many years later. He carved out another hole, placed the bulb inside, smoothed the soil over it. He was making good progress.
Her dad slid those disturbing eyes up to the cat clock on the wall. John remembered that it was so close to 5:30. Darcy's mother was moving like a tranquilized bear. He willed the woman to hustle, get the food on the table, but she was so lumbering. He wanted to go grab the plates and run them to the table, but knew he'd be knocked down for it.
Darcy had a thousand-yard stare. This was his family now, whatever happened.
"Bets," her dad said. A growl from the black-lipped dog, a command from the Red King.
"It's almost ready!" John was taken aback that Darcy's mother sounded so exasperated.
Platter of mashed potatoes. Bowl of peas. It all passed in slow-motion.
"Bets!"
"Hold on!" her mother said, exasperated. Whatever she had in the oven was still there. She put on a silver oven mitt and removed a cast-iron skillet of cornbread from the top rack. In the present, mixed in with the scent of the soil, he could smell the cornbread.
"Bets!" A roar now. John remembered that her hand shook, spilling some gravy out of its boat. She got the meatloaf onto the table by the potatoes and peas, but it was too late. Darcy's dad stood up, toppling his chair to the floor, and backhanded her. John's heart jumped at the sound of it, but Darcy didn't even move. John wondered what the hell she was doing in that mind of hers.
"I hate peas and you goddamn know it." Darcy's dad swept his arm and knocked the plastic bowl of peas off the table. "I work my ass off all day and I want one simple thing. Is that too much to ask for supporting this family?" His voice ended in a roar.
Darcy's mother fled the room in tears. John cleared his throat. He thought that was shitty of her mother, to leave Darcy there to deal with it herself, even if he was there. He had a feeling that his presence didn't matter much.
"You got something to say?"
John didn't answer. He had a lot to say. But he always kept most of it inside, until he couldn't take it anymore.
"No, sir."
The flowers were planted. He stood, wincing a little at being in the same crouched position, then headed inside to clean up. He liked it here. He'd chosen it after so many years of seeking that elusive sense of order and balance, worn down by believing life was nothing was one random occurrence after another. After years of working, he needed a cave to hide in. So he'd used one of his names, formulated a story, and settled in. What the hell else was he going to do? He was angry at the circumstances he was born into, angry at his father, angry at his mother, angry at the system he joined, angry at everyone around him who never bothered to help him, angry at the whole fucking world. Angry at himself for not changing, or not changing in the right ways.
Now, though, with his new family and new purpose, the heat of his anger was starting to solidify into something like pyroclastic rock.
John wondered if Shawn would work the cold cases unit after he retired from active detective work. He'd never stop trying to fix chaos, to create his own little pocket of order within it. In a way, John envied him.
He went to his room to change his shirt.
His mind turned it over and over, but he was confident nothing was left at Jasper's he didn't want to leave on purpose. He was probably on video, but that wouldn't give them anything, and even if Shawn found the kill site, that scene was as clean as he could make it, considering it was in the woods. Shawn would scrape the tree Jasper had clawed, which would be meaningless. Even the note he left was of no use to Shawn, and soon he would release a limited profile to the media, with a still shot from the video and a description of the van, none of it useful.
Shawn would never find him here. He would never get to Darcy. And it would break him, but that's the way it had to be.
At the table, John gratefully settled into the comforting room with soft lights and polite voices, acceptance and bountiful food.
After the meal, he excused himself from the table, then without bothering to notify anyone, slipped out through his window. He took the first several blocks on foot before accessing another single-car garage he rented, thankful he had lived frugally all these years, not presuming his hay-making days would last forever.
Chapter 8
Monday afternoon
"Do I have this right?" Sarah said. "You're taking me to the Battles Museums of Rural Life for my birthday? What's next year, the Maple Museum?"
Shawn smiled and opened the car door for her. "Everyone knows the Maple Museum closes in December. Besides, I thought you loved farm chores."
"No, I love farm mores," Sarah corrected. "The customs and rituals of farm life."
"Ah, different pronunciation. I had written it out and got it completely wrong."
"You know, the stolid Presbyterian refusal to be idle, the agrarian self-reliance, the Poor Richard's Almanac-ness. The pies. I hope they'll have pies. What's in season now, rhubarb?"
"Your guess is as good as mine," he said. "But while we're here, I may as well ask them about Jasper Stowe, their most generous donor and a recent member of their board."
On the grounds were two Civil War-era homes, one a farmhouse, which had both been converted into museums. They approached a rotund, lazy-eyed bald man just inside one of the houses, wedged in behind the reception desk and dressed in a maroon bib-front shirt. The man looked up at them, though his eyes weren't on either of them. "Two adults? Welcome. Need a map? Welcome. Is this your first time here? Welcome. Zip code? Welcome. If you'd like to apply for a membership, your admission fee can be credited towards the annual dues. You guys g
et a yellow stamp because you've been extra good today. Welcome."
The process was a blur, and they walked away with a yellow stamp on their right hands. Sarah laughed so hard she handed Shawn her camera. "I like this place already." She wiped a tear from her eye. He flagged down a passing employee. "Excuse me, I'm here to speak to Annabelle Gray. Do you know where I can find her?"
She turned to him with a broad but closed smile. She had a solid build, hair in a bun, green glasses, and sensible shoes with a low heel. "I'm Annabelle Gray. How can I help you?"
"I'm Lieutenant Shawn Danger from the Erie PD. We spoke on the phone."
"Oh, yes. Danger! That's quite the name." She had a strong midwest accent.
Sarah reached out her hand. "Sarah Baio."
Annabelle's eyes lit up. "Baio? Any relation to Scott Baio? I loved Happy Days! You know, I was on an airplane once with -- "
Sarah made her so-sorry-to-disappoint-you face and cut her off. "Sadly, no relation. Is it all right with you that I film this? It's for a documentary."
Annabelle pursed her lips and waved her hand around. "Oh, I don't mind. Just make sure my rear end doesn't get on the final cut."
"I'd like any information you have on Jasper Stowe," Shawn said.
"Yes, and I'm still not clear as to why…?"
"Jasper Stowe is dead."
Annabelle recoiled slightly and made a silent 'Ohhh.' "Why, that's terrible. Just terrible. What happened?"
"He was killed."
"Oh! Oh my goodness." She put a hand over her mouth.
"I'm sorry to upset you," Shawn said. "But whatever you can tell me about Jasper's role here would be a great help."
Annabelle nodded and indicated they should follow her. She led them to her office and closed the door, then settled into her chair. "The last time I saw Jasper was at the gala."
Shawn leaned forward. "What gala?"
"We hold a fundraising gala every year. I may have some photos from our press kit." Annabelle opened a file drawer, rummaged around, then pulled out a file and opened it on her desk. She rifled through the contents and pulled out two glossy photos, handing them to Shawn. Both photos showed Jasper Stowe, dressed impeccably -- he must have taken at least one suit with him from L.A. -- and standing next to Darcy, in a black dress with her white-blonde hair pinned up.
