by Matthew Iden
“Well, now you do. Is there anything else you need to know? Perhaps access to my tax records or a complete medical history?”
“No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary.” I picked at a flake of rust on the arm of my chair. “But I’ll get back to you.”
“Are those the questions you came to ask?”
“No,” I said, then framed my thoughts carefully before speaking. “I’m curious, Mrs. Hope. I want to know how a boy raised in a home like this, in a quiet, rural community with almost zero crime, with an upper-middle-class and perfectly law-abiding family, grows up to be a drug runner, crook, and thief.”
I was hoping to shock her out of her shell of superiority, but she simply smiled frostily and shook her head. “I’m afraid I can’t take any credit for that, Mr. Singer. There was a time when I would’ve told you nurture would triumph over nature, every time. Certainly, no mother wants to think that their love isn’t enough to overcome a child’s innate tendencies if they appear to be taking the wrong path. But I saw J.D. with my own eyes turn from a toddler to a mischievous boy to a rebellious teen and, eventually, into the criminal who you knew.”
“What was he like as a child?”
“The same as any boy, I would think. He liked snakes and frogs and rocks. He threw things for no reason. He ran when I wanted him to walk and wouldn’t budge when I needed him to hurry. As he got older, he would hide in the house—you see how big it is—and I wouldn’t see him for days. He would sneak around to get food and use the commode, but the only clues I had that he was even alive were crumbs on the kitchen counter and the sound of water running through those old pipes.”
“You never saw him?”
She shrugged. “I was nearly alone in the house. It wasn’t difficult to keep from being found.”
I had no easy way to ask the next question. “Your husband was…”
“Dead, Mr. Singer,” she said. For a moment, while recounting J.D.’s childhood, Dorothea’s face had gone misty and introspective. But her eyes came back to sharp focus as she spoke to me. “Charles died not long after I gave birth to Mary Beth.”
“You raised both of them by yourself?”
“Yes.”
“That must have been incredibly difficult.”
“You can save your sympathy, Mr. Singer. My husband had done well with his investments and we were perfectly comfortable after he passed.”
“How did he die?”
“Not that you’re entitled to that information,” she said, “but I suppose I should tell you in case you accuse of me of obstructing your inquiry.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” I said dryly.
“Charles collapsed from an aneurysm. He lingered in a coma for some time until I told them to end his suffering. The doctors counseled me to wait, that there might be some small chance at recovery, but they were asking me to invest in a miracle. I threatened them with a malpractice suit if they wouldn’t remove his life support and that was the end of that.”
I was quiet for a moment, absorbing what I’d just heard. “That seems…harsh.”
“Does it, Mr. Singer?” she asked. Her eyes were piercing. “To be decisive? To be strong in the face of adversity? Harsh is living for years with a vegetable for a husband or father. Or forcing yourself and your children to believe in a hope that doesn’t have reason behind it. Or making the victim who suffers, suffer longer for you. Too many people confuse strength and willpower with cruelty. They don’t understand that the nature of true love is the strength to do what is right, no matter how terrible it might seem.”
A slight breeze that had soughed through the yard died and the morning was still and quiet. A green, verdant smell hung in the air, like fertile ground turned over in the sun.
“Is there anything else you’d like to know?” she asked.
“Who do you think killed your son, Mrs. Hope?”
She stared at me for a moment before answering. “Whoever they are, they’ll get what they deserve, I have no doubt.”
“I didn’t take you for a religious woman,” I said.
“I observe the Sabbath, but I didn’t say anything about the day of reckoning being in the afterlife,” she said. Her face was a tapestry of grief and anger and patience and something else. “There are many ways to suffer in this life, Mr. Singer, and many ways to pay. Whoever killed my son—or had him killed—will do both.”
Chapter Ten
After thirty years as a cop, I know the sound of a police cruiser’s engine like I know the sound of my own humming. It’s not a field of study, just time logged driving, riding in, and being around the car. Given enough time, I could identify the year by listening to the way it shifts. I know whether it’s an old-fashioned LTD from its throaty gurgle or a Crown Victoria P71 from the uniform purr. No matter what model and which year, few cars can make the sound of that 250 horsepower attached to a solid frame. A contained threat on wheels.
So, when I heard that deep-in-the-chest thrum behind me as I walked along Main Street, I knew what the car was. Who was in it was the only question. Cabbies like to buy old, decommissioned CVs since they’re reliable and the body is easy to fix. But I’d be around for the Second Coming before I saw a taxi in Cain’s Crossing. That left cop wannabes trying to live the law-enforcement life vicariously and old ladies who had driven Crown Vics all their lives and happened upon a secondhand police model at auction. It was an interesting thing to ponder without turning around.
The mystery was solved when the driver goosed the gas to pull alongside me. I heard the whine of automatic windows, then, “Mr. Singer.” A statement, not a question.
I looked. Chief Palmer was leaning across the middle console so he could look at me through the passenger-side window. The cruiser inched along to keep pace with me. Eventually, he was going to plow into a telephone pole, so I stopped and walked to the car. I bent over so he could talk to me without breaking his neck.
“Chief,” I said.
“I’d like to have a word with you.”
“Okay.”
He jerked his head. “Hop in.”
I opened the passenger-side door and slid in. Palmer glanced in the mirror and wheeled back into traffic, heading through town at a steady twenty-five with one hand on the wheel and the other propped on the door frame. The AC was on low despite the windows being down. Chief Palmer wasn’t a green sort of guy. What he did seem to be was relaxed but ready, more comfortable and proficient driving a beat cruiser than I would’ve given him credit for. Not that he’d struck me as a desk jockey, exactly, but he’d certainly given the impression he was more spit-and-polish than Shane Warren. Who had seemed more like just spit.
“You know, when I came to Cain’s Crossing four years ago,” he said, watching the road, “it was like stepping into another world. The town that time forgot. Folks were kind, if slow, and crime was all but nonexistent. Just a dot on the map.”
I waited. He wanted to get to something, so I figured I’d let him get to it at his own pace.
“Now, I came from Philly. Twenty years busting goombahs and coke heads and a whole sewer-full of lowlifes that had somehow decided my city was the best place to take root. Though, to be fair, most of them were homegrown. Just a couple of transplants from New York and Atlantic City. Whatever. I’d had my fill. I don’t have to tell you what that’s like, I know. You’ve had your fill, too.”
Palmer made a slow, arcing turn onto Pickett Street, a pretty lane much like the one that Dorothea Hope lived on. The scene was peaceful. Shutters and white fences and shady lawns were the norm. A breeze that I couldn’t feel at street level made the treetops sway. The sedate pace at which Palmer was driving and the cool, serene environment started to put me to sleep.
“So, you can imagine my delight when I found Cain’s Crossing. Low crime, no drugs. Last murder was in 1967 and that was right at the corporate limit, so you can almost give that one to the next town over. All this place was missing was a police chief. Totally ripe for the picking.�
�� He looked over at me. “For someone looking to retire, I mean.”
I knew the story. Police work is a mobile skill. Crime is universal, so fighting it is, too. But after the thrill of the big city wears you down, organizing parades and pulling cats out of trees in a quiet, rural town starts to sound pretty good. If you weren’t ready to cash it in a hundred percent and head for the Caribbean, or if you still needed the work, Cain’s Crossing would look like Shangri-La.
“Problem is,” Palmer continued, “city work will make you arrogant. You figure, what could this pissant little town possibly throw at me that I haven’t seen a thousand times before? You’re thinking the biggest challenge is not falling asleep in your office after lunch. Then something shows up that you didn’t expect.”
Even at twenty-five miles an hour, we were heading for the edge of town, so Palmer made another lazy left. A sign said we were on Little Run Boulevard. I didn’t recognize where we were. We could’ve been in any burg in America. A kid passed us going the other way, pedaling furiously on a bike with a low seat and high handlebars. He seemed oblivious to the heat, his head bowed to get as much thrust as he could from his legs. His crew cut, jeans, and gray sleeveless shirt could’ve been straight out of 1953.
Palmer had gone quiet, so I asked, “What was the something?”
“Hmm? Oh, it was a bunch of things, really. J.D. Hope was one of them, of course. That erased the nice run of non-murders. There were some other things, issues that you’re probably discovering as you poke around. My point is, these things took me off guard, at first. I was a big-city cop, right? I could enforce the law in this whistle-stop with both hands in my pockets. But when this latest situation got out of hand, I was a little surprised.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I probably don’t have to tell you that surprise leads to anger. Leastwise, it does for me. So, after I got over my initial setbacks, I took steps to set things right. No way I was going to let a couple of punks or an unsavory situation push me around. It didn’t happen in twenty years in Philly and it wasn’t going to happen here.”
We made another left, past a school. The chief took his time going over the speed bumps. The CV’s suspension took it in stride, jouncing gently up and down as we rolled over the rise. Palmer raised a hand and waved, smiling, to a pair of spandex-clad ladies out power-walking. They smiled and waved back enthusiastically.
“And, quite frankly, I like it here. This is my home now. My wife’s gotten used to the heat and we don’t have to plow the driveway in the winter or fight traffic on the Blue Route for two hours just to see our daughter. We’ve settled in Cain’s Crossing and that means something to me.”
Palmer made one more smooth turn, hand over hand, and then we were in familiar territory, not far from the Mosby. I smiled to myself. Despite the fifteen-minute drive, I’d made it precisely one block. He stopped in front of my hotel and put the cruiser in PARK, then turned to me square, his eyes drilling into mine. The jovial, glad-handing chief of police dropped away, replaced by someone harder, professional, and dangerous. I hadn’t been fooled by the chummy pleasantries back in the police station, but now I saw the steel under the soft façade.
“You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this.”
“You could say that.”
“I wanted you to have some background. You were a cop, so I owe you the courtesy. But make no mistake. This town is mine. I’ve taken possession of it and it’s under my protection. That means, no matter how it might look to you, things are under control. I’m sure you mean well and plan to do good by the Hopes, but the help isn’t needed. And it’s not wanted.”
“So, this is my warning?”
He smiled and shook his head. “I don’t do warnings. A warning would imply that you might do the wrong thing. And I know you’ll do the right thing. Won’t you, Mr. Singer?”
iii.
Through the glass, the kid is skinny, feral-looking with a patchy blond beard and hollowed-out eyes. The bony tips of his collarbones are bumps in his red-and-white faux-vintage Lucky Strike t-shirt. I blink and he’s pumping gas or working on cars or driving tractor in some whistle-stop a thousand miles away. Not sitting at a table across from Stan, about to get leaned on for multiple counts of first- and second-degree homicide. With nothing much to pin on the kid, Stan’s going for the rollover.
“So tell me again,” Stan says with exaggerated patience. “You come up from Hicksville looking to find work and fall in with the wrong crowd. You got no money and start running errands for this guy Maurice.”
“Yeah.”
“And he pays good and you don’t want to rock the boat, so you do whatever he says.”
The kid looks down at his hands.
“Dropping off baggies, right? Picking up cash?”
The kid says nothing.
“Look…” Stan glances down at his sheet. “J.D. We already know that part. Friend of mine’s been watching you for the last two months. We don’t care about any of that. You coulda delivered a pickup truck worth of crack and we wouldn’t give a shit. We’re Homicide. We want the guy who’s snuffing people. Who killed that little girl.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with that,” J.D. says. His hands squeeze the edge of the table and his shoulders bunch.
“Relax. I didn’t say you did,” Stan says soothingly, and J.D.’s body unclenches fractionally. For all his faults, Stan had a touch in the room that I’d never acquired. “But here’s the problem. For you, I mean. You are the only white guy working in an all-black gang. Maybe they’re paying you well. Maybe you think you’re going to climb the corporate ladder there or something. But someone’s killing homeboys left and right. Now, guys like Maurice are smart. They know too many bodies bring guys like me around. That’s not going to keep them from knocking off whoever they want here and there, but they know better than to go on a killing spree. So, why would they do that?”
J.D. says nothing.
“I’ll tell you why.” Stan leans forward. His patrician face is concerned, sympathetic, eager to help. “They got the perfect fall guy. A white kid from the sticks who does whatever he’s told. Who’s afraid of getting cut out of the loop. Who no one would miss if he happened to go up the river for half a dozen murders.”
“I told you, I didn’t do any of that.”
“You think that matters?” Stan asked. He slides his coffee mug into the middle space between the two of them, waves his hand over it. “You know what this is, J.D.? It’s my crystal ball.”
I sigh, close my eyes, open them. J.D. says nothing.
“You know what I see in it? I see us finding you in some shitty apartment or some shitty alley or in your shitty car a few months from now with two bullets in the back of your head. And you know what we’ll find on your body? A couple bucks, some rock, and the nine millimeter that’s been used in every one of these killings. Will we like it? Hell, no. But you know what? We’ll take it. One homicide to solve five? We’ll do that deal all day long, my friend.”
J.D. swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.
Stan spread his hands, palms up and pale. “There’s one easy way to keep that from happening. And you know what it is. Now…what’re you going to do?”
J.D. stares back at him.
Chapter Eleven
With its high turrets and crooked frame, the Cain’s Crossing Municipal Library could’ve been the backdrop for a horror movie, but it had a peaceful side garden with a sundial and a trio of marble birdbaths. I took a seat on a wrought-iron bench in the shade of a crape myrtle and tried to move and breathe as little as possible in the heat. I thought about Eskimos and penguins and polar bears, but sweat still formed between my shoulder blades and trickled down to the small of my back.
Mary Beth turned the corner of the library ten minutes later, wearing a white pantsuit and a floppy sun hat. Her makeup was in place and gold earrings gleamed from under the hat. There was something about Southern women, I thought. They dresse
d to the nines no matter what the occasion. Mary Beth probably had an outfit to clean the bathroom and another one to do the laundry. Despite the high fashion, the look on her face was unhappy and unwelcoming. Probably the one she wore when she cleaning the bathroom.
Her eyes scanned the garden until she spotted me in my little patch of shade. I stood as she came through the gate of the white picket fence and walked over. We sat down simultaneously, though she crowded herself against the far arm of the bench. Her back was stiff and her movements overly precise.
“Thanks for coming,” I said. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”
She stared straight ahead for a moment, mouth pinched, a younger version of her mother. I let her handle the silence. Finally, she asked, “Do you remember me?”
“What do you mean?”
“At the trial. Do you remember me?”
I looked down at my hands, thinking about lying to her. “No, I’m sorry.”
Her mouth pinched again and she breathed out a long breath through her nose. “I watched you and that other officer the entire time. You seemed so bored, so weary of the process. I don’t think you even knew how you sounded. You were barely awake during J.D.’s testimony.”
I hesitated. “I don’t have any nice way to say this, but your brother’s trial was one of about a dozen arraignments, hearings, and trials that I went to that week. Maybe the same day. Not remembering the details of his trial or your presence at it doesn’t say anything about me. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It meant something to him,” she said. “It cost him twenty years of his life.”
I took a deep breath. “Look, Mary Beth. You can be mad at me for helping put J.D. away or for zoning out during his trial. But you can’t change the fact that he was a crook. I can’t tell you that he got what he was coming to him; that was for the jury to decide. But what I can tell you is that it’s all spilt milk. Now, you can keep raking me over the coals for doing my job decades ago, or you can help me find your brother’s killer now.”
