by Josh Thomas
“Phil’s a good man. I’m glad you’re working together.”
“He says I should talk to you some more, that you know more than anyone about these strangulations.” Jamie could smell the butter coming. “And I could save a lot of time just talking to you. So what do you say? I know your mom’s your first priority, but I’d like to get together and compare notes.”
Jamie couldn’t find anything wrong with the mutual-using game. “Sure. What do you want to know?”
“No, not over the phone, man. Let’s get together somewhere.”
Jamie stalled. I’m not going back to that state police post. “I’ve got to be at the hospital at seven, and my Mom has things she wants me to take care of here.”
“I could swing by later tonight, if that’s all right. What would be a good time? Let’s get together this evening after the hospital. Why don’t I bring a pizza? We could talk there at your house, no other ears around.”
Don’t let this cop buy you stuff. Don’t let this cop look at your mother’s things, snooping around over pizza.
But Jamie didn’t have any better ideas. “Hey, you gotta eat,” Kessler coaxed. “I don’t want you going to the trouble.” Jamie knew as soon as he said it that it was lame. “No trouble!” Kessler boomed. “The best pizza in town’s there on Salisbury Street. Whaddya say?” He pronounced it Sal’s Berry. Jamie cast about, then knew he was licked. “Okay,” he mumbled, and gave the address. “I’ll be there at 8:30 sharp.” Jamie took it as a warning. ***
Thelma muted Pat and Vanna as soon as she saw him. But she didn’t look well.
Jamie kissed her forehead, noticed her fever had returned. “Do you hurt?”
“Yes. I do. And they won’t do anything about it.”
“Tell me.”
“They say,” she coughed again, “they can’t give me but so much pain medication, that if they give me more, my blood pressure will go way down again. Yes. I hurt.”
Jamie swung into action. “Maybe I should talk to them. Sometimes it helps to have an advocate, someone who’s not the patient but is on the patient’s side.”
She looked doubtful. She also looked afraid. “Maybe. But don’t, you know…you hafta be polite.”
Jamie looked grim and also light. “Oh, I’ll be polite. I know how. I’ve done this before, remember?”
She nodded, thinking of how much Rick suffered, how strong Jamie was for him.
“They have to balance the pain meds and the blood pressure. That’s what the science is all about.”
“They’re afraid I’ll be addicted.”
“They’re always afraid people will be addicted. But you and I know better. You are not a drug-taker.”
“I won’t even take an aspirin unless I really, really need it.”
“So meanwhile you don’t have to be in pain. I’ll talk to them.” Jamie
picked up her hand. “I’ll be polite. I’ll ask for information. I’ll find out how they see the problem.” Thelma squeezed back, but it wasn’t with her golf grip. “That might be a good idea.” ***
At 9:20 he hit the sidewalk, walking briskly past the last smokers, the scaffolds and piles of bricks. Kessler just had to wait. Jamie’d left a message at the post, didn’t feel the least bit guilty.
After an hour’s gentle, in-control but very assertive harangue, he finally got Sandra the Mennonite to phone the anesthesiologist, who was in charge of post-op pain meds in this hospital instead of the surgeon, a policy Jamie had never encountered before. A pharmacist delivered a new pain shot, explaining that they’d had to compound the substance by hand. Thelma liked hearing that. Jamie waited till she was asleep before he left.
He drove out to the Bypass, turned north and sped up the hill. He was angry and filled with pride and stressed out; he had run interference with doctors and nurses and social workers and fucking hospital administrators so many times with Rick, and before that for buddies with AIDS, he knew exactly how to get what he wanted. It was a crock that people in pain had to have an advocate to make the system meet their needs. What if I hadn’t been there?
He crossed the river. It was the loneliest stretch of Bypass at night, between the two cities. A tear spilled out as he crested the hill to the West Side. He let it roll as far as it wanted to, which was barely to the bridge of his nose.
A huge red pickup, complete with running lights across the roof, sat on the left side of Thelma’s driveway. Its rear window showed a gun rack. Chrome custom wheels gleamed extravagantly. It was called a Ford F-250, and it even had some kind of cow-catcher thing on the front. Testosterone on wheels. Jamie checked; no Confederate flag. He was a little proud of the guy for that.
He punched the garage-door opener and eased the Acura next to Thelma’s GrandAm. Kessler swung down from his truck, smiling and holding a pizza box. Jamie got out of his car, left the garage door up, said hello and headed toward the front door, not the garage entrance to the family room. “I got your message, how’s your mom, is she all right?”
“She’s in a lot of pain tonight. We got her a shot. She’s resting.” Jamie unlocked the front door and hit a light switch in the living room.
The cop was inside the house. “Table,” Jamie said, pointing to the dining area. He didn’t want Kessler in the private rooms; this was to be formal. “Be right back.” He headed to the main bath to get himself together.
Soon he was back, through to the kitchen without turning on lights, taking two Corelle dinner plates down from the cupboard, finding forks and a sharp knife in the drawer below. He placed them on the glass cocktail table in front of the living room couch, carefully picked up his mother’s porcelain birds to set them out of danger. He hadn’t figured out how to bring in napkins without turning on a light in the kitchen, because he’d have to turn on a light to find them. He didn’t grow up in this house, so he didn’t always know where things were.
She had to sell his favorite house to pay off his father after the second divorce.
Kessler stood tensely in the middle of the living room. “Listen, I’d better go. You’re upset. I have no right to put you through this when your mom’s laid up.”
Jamie remembered a light over the oven. “It’s all right, sergeant,” he called over his shoulder as he found napkins, tried to remember where the salt and pepper shakers were. He skipped them. “Let’s get this over with. I’m ready to work.” He retrieved the pizza box and set it in the middle of the coffee table. “Have a seat. I’ll nuke Mr. Pizza. I’m very sorry if you had to wait.”
Then he noticed something surprising, Kessler’s taste in clothes. People dress for their peer group, to say “I’m one of us.” Kessler did not dress like an off-duty Hoosier cop; his peers were top athletes. He wore expensive jeans, a short-sleeved pullover with MCI Worldcom Challenge noted tastefully on the chest; one sleeve had a small Nike swoop. He also wore tiny white socks, marketed to women as anklets and to men as joggers, just enough cloth to protect his feet. He probably sported a gold chain under the pullover—a fine athlete who quietly looked like one.
“No, Jamie, I’m sorry to trouble you. The case can wait, it’ll still be there tomorrow. I wanted this to be easier for you, not harder. I’ll go.”
“I’m quite all right,” Jamie said firmly. “We can talk. It’s important.”
But Kessler headed toward the door, and Jamie realized he felt relieved. He turned on the outside spots, gazed at the night before turning to face the trooper. Kessler looked down at his very white Nikes, then back at his subject. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in police work, it’s this. Nothing should interfere with family.” He stumbled, “Or, or friends.”
Jamie registered the amendment in spite of himself.
The cop raised a big hand, placed it awkwardly on his host’s shoulder for 1.5 seconds, said softly, “Jamie? Please call me if I can help.” Jamie looked up at empathic brown eyes; then Kessler was gone. Big chrome wheels flashed away into the night.
Jamie sat motionless for an hour in a dark living roo
m as the last pizza smells died. He didn’t eat. The hospital didn’t call.
14
Slough
Jamie arrived at ICU the next day. He’d left a message for Kessler, but he was out, so Jamie came in early. Thelma was finishing lunch. “Hi,” she said, much more energetically than yesterday. She was even wearing her new satin pajamas.
“How are you doing, sweetie?” he asked, bending to kiss her. “You look good. Did you get some rest last night?”
She swallowed a bite of bread. “Yes. That shot really helped.”
“Great.” He spritzed her jammies with perfume.
She smiled and sniffed the scent. “Nice. I feel much better today.”
“Wonderful. Now what’s this?” he teased. “Bread, butter and sugar?”
“See how I am?” she grinned.
He hadn’t seen bread, butter and sugar since, well, since he was a kid and she fed it to him. “Comfort food,” he pronounced it.
“It’s the only thing that tastes good,” she said, sprinkling sweetness onto her Wonder bread.
“Well, then it’s what you shall have, madame,” he said grandly, waving his arm in a headwaiter’s flourish.
“That and Jell-O. I’ve had more Jell-O in the last few days.”
“It’s good for your stomach,” he opined.
“I can keep it down, anyway.” She munched her bread, took two more bites and set it on her tray. “Here, will you get rid of this? I’m done, I think.” He removed the tray, busied himself with straightening the room. “How is your story coming?”
What should he say to this? “Well, there may be a story, but I haven’t had a chance to get the updates.”
“Are you going up there? To Willow Slough?” He stopped in mid-motion, looked at her. She saw his concern. “You could go up there. I don’t know if you’ll find anything, but you won’t know till you get there.”
“I don’t want another incident like last night.”
“Last night was bad. I’m glad you were here, that’s what got things taken care of. But I feel so much better today.”
“I’m not going anywhere till you’re out of here.”
“Jamie, look around you. This is ICU. They provide wonderful care, they just don’t know me like you do.”
“Hospitals are always paranoid about drug addiction.”
“And your father was a prime example of why. But I’m doing better. They had me sitting up in a chair today.”
“Really? How was it? Was the transfer hard?” Transfer was a Rick word, moving a sick body from bed to chair, wheelchair to car seat.
“Yes, but I got through it. They helped me. I sat up. They’re even talking about moving me to med-surg.”
“Terrific. I wish I’d been here to see you sitting up.”
“It was about 10:00. I only lasted 20 minutes. Then I asked if I could go back to bed. I think I fell asleep, and then it was lunchtime, and then you came.”
“Who’d have thought your dance card would be so full?”
“That’s what I’m saying. My calendar’s full, and yours is empty. This is your story, you’ve worked hard on it and won all those awards. It’s okay if you want to take off for an afternoon. You know where to find
me when you get back.”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“The weatherman said it’s going to rain tomorrow. Chance of thunderstorms 80%. You don’t want to be tramping around that slough muck in a thunderstorm.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Jamie, I’m trying to be proud of you.”
What could he do but give her a hug?
***
Kent found he had e-mail from Foster, a canned but friendly note thanking him for his purchase, reminding him of the other great links through infashion.com, and listing his upcoming appearances—in Europe, this magazine, that fashion show, a TV interview “where I’ll practice my Italian. Hope with me that when I mean to say, ‘The pasta’s divine and all the women well-dressed,’ it doesn’t come out, ‘The pesto’s dead and your Grandma’s naked.’”
He offered an easy way to unsubscribe and a free download of a head shot. Kent printed it out and added it to the case file.
They hooked up by phone and arranged to go to the Slough together. Nothing was said about e-mail. Jamie didn’t know and Kent wasn’t telling.
***
Sgt. Kessler eased the patrol car away from the last stoplight in West Lafayette, and Jamie settled back for the hourlong trip. He was glad they were taking the old road and not the interstate. He stowed a small paper bag in front of him.
On their right, a woman made her way from a blue pole barn toward a white frame house. She looked up as they passed, in case she would recognize the car. But she turned away. Farming and farm culture— agriculture—began one foot outside the great college town.
The corn was tall and green; in a month it would yellow and dry. Corn and beans filled the prairie as far as the eye could see, the landscape punctuated by silos here, a stand of trees there, protecting a farmhouse, marking a stream. There were a lot of trees—it was Indiana, not Kansas—but before the White man it was all forest and prairie grasses. Then those gave way to feeding people. The land was beautiful to Jamie; it was where he was from, and he was glad to be back home again, even under the circumstances.
The college town was home, too, but not in quite the same way. There’s a difference between home when you’re 13 and home when you’re six.
Towns whizzed by without their having to slow down. Every town had a grain elevator, even if it no longer had much else. They were all on the main highway once, before it was relocated to skirt them. Then the interstate came through with zero tolerance for towns. “Oh, look,” Jamie said, pointing. “Cattails.”
“A strange brown wildflower, unique to the wetlands.”
“I love the tall, wavy leaves. Cattails symbolize home to me. I remember as a kid picking some to take to my grandmother. She thanked me and put them in a vase, but maybe she was thinking, Lord, what do I need with a bunch of weeds?”
Kessler smiled, “I’m from south of here. When I was a kid, if we traveled two towns away from home, we’d gone pretty far. Now we’re so mobile, all these towns are pretty much the same, the distance is nothing.”
A memory came back to Jamie, one of the few good ones about Ronald. “I remember a scorching summer night when we lived in Morocco. I was eight. My father got inspired and piled us all into the car to go for ice cream in Kentland. We had to go there if we wanted ice cream at night, there was no place in Morocco to buy it. So off we went—an exciting, amazing extravagance, all that way just for ice cream—a whole 15 miles down the road. It was expensive, the gasoline and all, just for a treat? My parents had nothing extra to spend. What’s funny is, I had never been to Kentland before. I’d been to Chicago, he’d take us to White Sox games, but I’d never been to the county seat. And here I am, telling you about it 20 years later, it’s such a clear memory. The Amazing Ice Cream Excursion. You’d have thought we were going to Saudi Arabia.”
Kessler laughed. “That’s how we lived then. Now it’s nothing for me to zip from one end of the state to the other, then back home again by nightfall.”
“And the towns do look alike. It’s just that some are more prosperous than others.”
“Your dad liked the White Sox?”
“And the Indians. He saw Larry Doby play.”
Kessler looked at him sharply. “Is that a fact.”
But Jamie was scared of discussing sports, much less baseball, with this man, so he searched for a way to broaden the topic. “I grew up watching the Cubs, I’ve been to Wrigley many times. It’s the best ballpark I’ve ever been to, so easy to strike up a conversation. ‘The friendly confines.’ Midwesterners are friendly.” If the topic stretched any broader it would collapse.
“Who do you think will win the home run derby this year, McGwire or Sosa?”
“I hope it’s Slammin’ Sammy, in
honor of Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray; but Sammy says Mark’s the man, so I believe him. I hope they both break Maris’s record, if only so his triumph can finally be honored. New York mistreated Roger Maris for the sole reason that he wasn’t Babe Ruth. No city’s more hometown provincial than New York.”
“Who’s your favorite player? One all-timer, one current.”
Jamie thought. “The greatest player in history changed America itself.” Kessler nodded. His grandfather proudly played against the man.
“Jackie Robinson stood for human rights and dignity. Among active
players, Tim Virdon.”
Kessler looked away.“A pitcher? Most people go for home run hitters.”
“He’s smart. He looks sensitive. He doesn’t just hurl the ball, he pitches. He can win a ballgame all by himself. He’s even good at the plate.” Not only that, he was cute.
“Ol’ Spot. Nice choices.”
“I don’t know much about the game,” Jamie apologized, sorry that he’d ever mentioned baseball, because Tim Virdon won Cy Young Awards for the Atlanta Braves.
“What makes you a sports fan?”
“My brother Danny; plus I’m a competitor. All reporters are.”
“What’s a home run in journalism?”
“The exclusive, the scoop.”
“You get many?”
“Yes, actually. Rather a surprising number.”
“Home run hitter, man, I believe it.”
“It’s my job to put the issue in play.”
“Issue of the paper, you mean?”
“No, the Gay and Lesbian civil rights issue.”
“Oh.”
So much for that. They got to Fowler and were hit by the traffic light. Jamie went to work. “Do you want to start with the background or the latest victim?”
“Both, maybe. You know the area around the Slough, so I’m hoping you’ll help navigate some of those country roads; last time a trooper from Rensselaer drove me over, and it was jog and turn and zig-zag and double back, confusing.”
“I need to hear about the victim, what IPD has come up with.”
“I need your help. Jamie, I don’t know a thing about Gay life. And I don’t know that Glenn Ferguson—that was his name, Glenn Archer Ferguson—was Gay, but it was a male roommate, Gary Tompkins, who
