Gates called every dealership and car rental agency to see whether any of the three had rented or gotten a loaner during the month of October. Nothing new, except about the M-car, and it had not been searched. Rudy’s uncle gave permission.
A joint city and county team stripped it to the metal frame, including the trunk, then reassembled it. Traces of marijuana and cocaine were found, but not enough to bother with prosecution. Other than that, nothing. No hair, no fibers, no link to the girl.
Gates was left with his earlier nagging suspicion that the investigation had yet to turn up the perpetrator. After another trip to the overlook for some quiet reflection, he had his next idea. While the high school was still in session, before the holiday break, he decided he would stake out the school every day for a week between the hours of 5:00 and 7:00 in the evening. Maybe there was something obvious that everybody was missing.
CONTRITION
Murray was sitting on the grass, trying to make some contact with James. He never said anything, and Murray was trying to figure him out. He had closed his eyes and become very still so he could picture James. He saw a hawk-faced, thin young man in a bloody uniform. He saw him wandering in the mud, a tattered barbed wire-fence behind him. His hands were dripping blood. And then Murray saw James on the ground. Dirt clods were raining down. His forehead and nose were still there, but his jaw and chin and part of his neck were missing. His eyes were open and he was staring at the clouds. Murray was thinking, “If you can’t talk, just send me some thoughts and I’ll get it. I’d like to know you.”
Someone cleared their throat softly behind him and broke his concentration. Murray turned. It was Pearl. He wondered if he had been speaking out loud.
“I came to say I’m sorry,” she said.
Behind her, the irregular shapes of tombstones reminded Murray of chess pieces.
“That was a mean thing I did. I was really pissed at you. You wouldn’t tell me what you were doing and … and I got so mad. I’m not even sure why.” Pearl scuffed the ground with the toe of her shoe.
Murray didn’t know what to say.
“Well, anyway, I’m sorry, and I won’t do anything like that again, so you can do whatever it is that you’re doing and I won’t bug you anymore. I promise. I told you I keep my word, and I do, so you’re safe from now on.”
They continued to look at each other, Pearl standing, folding and unfolding a sleeve of her jean jacket as she talked. Murray, sitting cross-legged about six feet away, wondering what he should say. She started to turn away.
“Wait!” It was out of his mouth, a bird flying out of a cage. “Have you ever been scared about what’s going to happen to you?” He didn’t know where these words were going. “You could get me thrown out of here … and I can’t … Wait just a second, please, and let me explain something.”
He gathered himself. “They could take me out of my home and put me someplace. I mean, I don’t really live there much, but they could lock me away in a”—Don’t say mental hospital!—“They might think I’m … I mean, you might tell your dad and then the County lady would come. I don’t have anyplace!”
How could he ever explain? Shit! “I’ve got to stay here!” He was too loud. Desperate. “These people need me!”
“I don’t have a mother,” Pearl said.
Murray was derailed. “What do you mean?” he was irritated by her interruption. How could he get her to see what it was like for him?
“She’s dead.” Pearl was looking right at him. “She didn’t want me. She kept leaving home. She only stayed around at the last when she was dying of cancer.”
Murray was struggling to assimilate this. He looked around. “Hold on, hold on! She’s here?” he asked, gesturing toward the cemetery.
“Don’t tell me to hold on!” Pearl yelled at him. “You’re not the only one who’s got problems. Who has things to tell. You’re not the boss of me!” She was backing up, getting ready to leave again.
He felt like he was talking to a burning fuse. “I know,” he said, placating, shifting the focus from himself to her. Searching her face. “I’m asking. Please. Slow down. Give me a second.”
She put her hands on her hips, then let them drop. “She’s cremated,” Pearl said. “My dad wouldn’t bury her here. He told me it would be too hard on him in the long run, so we sent her ashes back to her family in Tennessee.”
Murray was embarrassed, but it did make him feel better that she had some real sadness in her life. Maybe she could understand him a little.
He began again. “Let me start over. Okay?”
She didn’t nod. Stood. Waiting.
“I’m sorry about your mom. I didn’t know.” He paused. She hadn’t moved. He went on. “You know what I do here. I talk to graves … but it’s really not the graves I’m talking to.”
He gauged her reaction. She was still listening.
“This is the part I didn’t want to tell you … because it is really the most important thing to me. I thought if you didn’t understand what I’m going to tell you, you might get me kicked out like you threatened. And I can’t go. I love it here. I’m needed here. If I couldn’t be here, I don’t think I could be anywhere anymore.” He knew he was rambling.
The whole place was quiet. He couldn’t hear traffic or anything.
“You’re talking to the dead people,” she said.
His eyes welled.
“You’re talking to the dead people and you didn’t want to say it because you thought I’d think you were crazy and get my dad to make you leave.”
He couldn’t speak.
“Wow. That really is out there. I mean, I thought you … Wow.”
She pushed her hair back to her neck. She was shaking her head, slightly, side to side. “Why?”
“Because I hear them. I hear them. They talk to me! Sometimes I can even see what they looked like when they were alive.” Shut up! But he couldn’t.
Murray didn’t dare look at her. He had never planned to tell her the truth. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips.
She took a couple of steps forward and sat down beside him. “I won’t tell on you,” she said, “but I want to hear more.”
Murray felt a quick urge to yell, “What good would it do!” He didn’t. “Okay,” he said, “uh, cross your heart,” and that just seemed so damn hopelessly stupid. What a weenie!
But she did. And she kept looking right at him. And he started talking.
“I don’t even remember when it started. It was probably sometime last spring. I had been fighting a lot with my mom. I don’t want to talk about her. And I wasn’t getting along very well with anybody at school … and I came over here one day to be by myself. I got curious about what it would be like to die when you were young. And I looked at the tombstones like this one,” he said, pointing to
GEORGE ARTHUR DICKSON
GAVE EVERYTHING THERE IS TO GIVE
“And I guess, at one point, I was sitting, maybe resting against a tombstone, and I got a really strong picture in my head. It was a woman actually, ‘Elizabeth Chandler, Dearly Beloved.’ I was seeing her the way she was before she died. Clear as day, like we were connected. And I began to know her story, why she died and all. I was listening to her voice! And she was grateful to have someone pay attention to her, and we started talking.”
Murray looked over at her. Pearl was holding her chin in her hands, waiting for him to go on.
“Over time, I got to meet most of the young people buried here. I got to hear their stories. This may sound stupid to you, but I’m like a friend to these people. I’m a guy who comforts them, and they appreciate that. Everybody needs a friend.”
“Tell me about them,” she said.
Murray told her what he was beginning to learn about James and about Blessed and Edwin. He talked about Dearly—about the car accident, her clothes, and her love of wildflowers, but left out the part about the underwear.
Pearl took a deep breath. “Okay,�
� she said, “keep bringing me up to date.” She thought for a second. “And take me with you from time to time, like today.”
Murray made a decision, too. “I’ll do that. I’ll introduce you to my friends. I don’t think you’ll be able to hear them … but always, always keep your promise. Don’t tell anybody, not even your dad.” He checked her one more time to see if she accepted his terms.
She kept looking at him straight on.
“I promise,” she said.
MEDS KICK IN
Something good was happening for Robert and he knew it. Yesterday, his county case worker, Peggy Duheen, noticed it. She said he was looking great when he walked in for his appointment. She asked what was going on with him. He thought about telling her that he was feeling like he could concentrate better, was even starting to get some of his memory back, and he just a little bit suspected that it was because he was taking his meds, as prescribed, every day. He was keeping his log! And he had been for almost two weeks now.
A couple of days ago, he had gotten home after work and found himself remembering what he had bought for his mother’s birthday: a two-foot-high Asian-looking vase from the Bargain Emporium. And he remembered where he had put it, by his 33 rpm record album cover collection under his bed. He looked, and sure enough, there it was!
He couldn’t think of the last time he had felt so proud of himself. But he didn’t tell his caseworker about the log or any of those things. He didn’t want to get her hopes up, in case he blew it. He told her, instead, that he was making money at TacoBurger and that if he kept the job another two months, he’d get a raise, and if he stayed another six months, he’d qualify for benefits. He told her that he was exercising, taking long walks three or four times a week and that he felt like he was pretty healthy. He didn’t mention the cigarettes or the candy-bar diet.
Ms. Duheen was very supportive. She had probably never seen him so upbeat, probably never heard him talk about any long-range planning. She asked him how his medication was doing. Robert said it was fine, seemed to be working okay. She leaned toward him slightly and breathed in, like she might be checking if his clothes were clean, but she didn’t comment.
He wondered if she noticed that, during their fifteen minutes together, he had looked her in the eye a couple of times. He realized that he didn’t feel like complaining about the people in his hotel or his coworkers one single time. She didn’t ask him about his voices, maybe because he really was doing better and she didn’t want to bring him down.
Today he had taken his morning meds when he woke up to pee around nine, yes, there was the notation, and he had had a pretty good day at work with nobody bugging him too bad. He almost felt like celebrating, like calling his mom or something. He decided he would check the lobby newspaper when he got back to the Sadler and see what movies were playing at the downtown theater. He hadn’t been to a movie since he lived at the halfway house, and he had overheard his coworkers saying tickets were cheap if you got there in the afternoon. Maybe he’d go.
Or maybe he would start checking out these parked cars around the courthouse and see if anybody left his keys in the ignition. Go for a ride. Be a race-car driver. Dale somebody-or-other. That would be fun, too. He was doing good. Probably time to take it to the next level. He was looking inside a Mustang convertible when he noticed a security guard watching him from the courthouse steps. Bastard.
Robert continued back toward his hotel. He thought about buying a chain for his wallet. He was walking tough. Feeling strong. Anyone could see he was a street warrior.
CONDUCT UNBECOMING
When Billup went through the pressurized doors into the lobby of police headquarters, the duty officer behind the first desk said, “Fowler wants to see you.” Billup didn’t like his tone of voice.
“Now?”
“Now.”
Not good. Never good. Billup wondered what had happened. He climbed the stairs to the second floor and went down the hall past individual cubicles to Fowler’s office. Fowler saw him through the door glass and waved him in. He didn’t get up and he didn’t invite Billup to sit. Shit!
Fowler was wiry, nothing but bone and muscle, with an Adam’s apple like a golf ball.
“Brenda said she ran into you at the Tropicana last night. Said you were blotto. She said you hit on her and wouldn’t back off till she cracked you in the nuts.”
Billup made an effort to keep his expression blank. If he had hit on Brenda, there would be plenty of witnesses. So if he denied it, Fowler would probably discipline him for lying and conduct unbecoming and would probably suspend him without pay, pending an internal investigation. Worse, it might come to light that he was in a blackout at the time, and where would that lead?
“Yeah, I guess I had a couple too many and got a little too friendly. I’m sorry about that. I’ll go apologize to her right away.”
“That’s harassment, you dumb shit!”
Billup thought fast. “Oh no, sir, I was just a little loopy and trying to have some fun. Hell, you know, we all get a little wild sometimes after work.”
“After work won’t mean crap if she files a suit.”
“Uh … uh, let me go apologize to her right away and—and I’ll assure her this will never happen again. And I’ll remind her we used to be kind of buddies. We were both Cool April Nights parade monitors a couple of years ago.”
“Don’t go near her.”
Billup was pulled up short.
“Don’t … What? Why?”
“She doesn’t want to see you is why. She’s still deciding whether to file. Probably talking to the union today. I can’t afford this on my watch, numbnuts. And it’s not the only thing. I’ve got two reports on my desk about you bracing hookers and offering to trade favors.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Two different reports, two months apart, and neither of them knew each other.”
“That’s bullshit. Trying to slip a collar. That’s all that is.”
Fowler stared him down, and then looked at the bale of papers strewn across his desk. He picked up a departmental form of some kind.
“You don’t think you have to turn your car in every night?”
* * *
By the time Billup left the office, he was on two weeks’ suspension. No pay, no badge, no service revolver, and no contact with any member of the department during the internal investigation. Before his reinstatement hearing, Billup was to meet with a departmental employee assistance person who would assess his drinking and make a report to Fowler.
Billup was fuming on the way to his car. Police work never should have been opened up to women. Harass, my ass! I’ll shoot that slut.
THE MOVIE
The lobby of the Sadler House was spartan. There was a faded brown couch that faced the front sidewalk window. It was occupied, as usual, by an elderly man and woman who sat there and read the paper and napped through the daylight hours. Past the couch was another seating area with two large easy chairs, arms pitted with cigarette burns. Nobody there. At the rear of the lobby, near the elevator that never worked, was a pair of rickety card tables with wooden chairs, where residents often played checkers, spades, or dominoes. One guy was there today, reading a paper. Robert didn’t recognize him. Must be new, he thought.
Robert went up to the desk. The day manager wasn’t there, but the janitor was leaning on the counter looking at a magazine.
Robert stopped several feet away from the counter. “Got today’s paper?”
Without taking his eyes off the page, the man lifted his right hand and pointed to the guy sitting at a back table. Robert stood for a minute, trying to make up his mind whether the custodian had actually heard and understood him and whether the pointing was the answer to his question. Asshole. He turned and walked toward the back. If the guy treated him like the janitor had, Robert knew he was going to get super mad, and then he wasn’t sure what he would do.
The new guy was somewhere around Robert’s own age. He was wearing a
black stocking cap that covered most of his hair. What was showing was oily and dark. He had on an old Nike warm-up jacket, cargo pants, and dirty sneakers. As Robert got closer, he could see that the guy had acne that made his face rough and scabby, and he was frowning as if it hurt to decipher the newsprint. Robert stopped near the table and cleared his throat to get his attention.
The guy looked up. “Hiya,” he said. “I’m Bruce. I just got here from Felton. What’s your name?”
Robert knew Felton was one of the places where Butte and Sierra counties sometimes sent people when they no longer needed to be on a locked unit, but when they weren’t ready yet to return to the community. He wondered why the guy spilled his news so quickly. Robert tried not to tell anyone anything about himself. Safer that way.
“What’s your name?” the guy repeated.
“That today’s paper?” Robert asked.
“Yeah. I was just looking at it, trying to see what’s going on around here. I just got here. You live here?” he asked Robert.
The guy was friendly. Robert could feel that. But maybe he was just after something.
“Got the movie section?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I see it?”
“Yeah. Going to a movie?”
“Maybe.”
“Can I come? I like movies. Sometimes I watch movies for days.”
“How come you were at Felton?”
“My family thinks I’m crazy. I get all these ideas and I get doing ’em and I get where I can’t sleep or anything and then they make me go to treatment and that’s where I wound up last time.”
Robert was familiar with that scenario. That’s the way the system works. If you have great ideas or if you are being followed and people are trying to kill you, the system locks you up and tries to get rid of you. This guy, Bruce, reminded him of his pal Donny in Chico.
“So how come you’re here?”
“My dad didn’t want me back home. I don’t think I can go home anymore.”
Dead Connection Page 5
