Cold Water Burning

by John Straley

  “You’re going to be a pain in the ass about this, aren’t you, Cecil?”

  Doggy set the chair upright and sat down in it like an old man resting after two rounds of golf. “You know, Cecil, every cop, I don’t care who he is, starts out with some sense of fairness.” He waved his hand as if swatting flies. “Oh, I know there are some kids who get into police work for dumb reasons: the guns, the cars . . . the power, of course. But almost every cop has some basic sense of fairness, like scales he uses to sort of weigh out his conscience as he does his job. Some work harder at tuning those scales up. Some work harder at how much they pile on each tray, you understand what I mean? But all of ’em got something.” He was holding up both hands as if he were adjusting a balance.

  “Every once in a while there’s a case that just screws things up,” Doggy said.

  Art Blakey rode the high hat behind Freddie Hubbard’s horn. A light wind found its way through the walls of the warehouse and swirled tiny dust storms across the floor.

  “You and I don’t ever talk about the Mygirl, do we, Cecil?”

  I shook my head. A gust of wind rattled the metal roofing on the warehouse. I could hear water slapping on the beach below the floor.

  Doggy wasn’t looking at me; he was staring at the images on the back wall. “I worked the Mygirl scene, Cecil. I helped them pull those dead children out of the boat. Richard Ewers was laughing and throwing money around in the bar while that boat was still burning. They say we lost or mishandled all the evidence. Weak circumstantial case. Ewers’s lawyers walked away from the jury and that sniggering little bastard walked out on the street.”

  I watched Jackson staring at a dust mote caught in the light of the projector. His eyes were focused and intent, then he leaped toward the painting, clawing the air.

  “Why were you so certain Richard Ewers had done the killings on the Mygirl?” I asked Doggy. “The evidence just wasn’t there in the trial. You have to admit that. Did you have illegal wiretaps on him, something substantial you couldn’t use? There had to be something that made you so sure it was Ewers.”

  George Doggy looked at the cat jumping at shadows and he smiled sadly.

  “Cecil, you haven’t worked many bodies, have you? “

  I shook my head. I had been a defense investigator and as such I had never showed up in time to try to save a life. I dealt in the stories people told after a murder, all the different versions. George Doggy had spent more time in blood-spattered rooms than any other man I had met. He had held children in his arms as they closed their eyes and stopped breathing. He knew the details of crime personally; I had only imagined them, or else tried not to.

  “The Mygirl killings were like nothing else. This was a person who had killed his friends, a woman and little children. He had to stand so close to them they could have touched him as he put the last bullets into them. This was a world-class brutal murder, not some anonymous drive-by or a drunken dispute spun over the edge. The person who did this executed people he cared about at close range, and he incinerated their bodies . . . all for money.”

  Doggy seemed older now than I had ever thought he could be. He bent over and made an odd cricket-chirping sound by rubbing his fingers together. Jackson stopped stalking phantoms in the shaft of projected light and moved cautiously toward Doggy.

  “You wear a murder like that, Cecil, for the rest of your life. No one walks away from that clean. I don’t care what the shrinks say. I don’t care how cynical a world you think we live in. A person wears a murder like that.”

  Jackson curled around Doggy’s leg and the old policeman lifted the cat into his arms. “I interviewed Ewers. You know that, you saw the transcript but you couldn’t know that Richard Ewers wore those killings on his body. He wore them over his hunched-up shoulders and down deep in his eyes. He wore those killings as if they were his shadow and he knew I knew it.”

  Jackson purred and I could hear his sound churning along with Art Blakey. “So what was it that kept him from telling you?” I asked the master interrogator.

  “Two things. The investigation had gone on too long. The de­fense lawyers were right about one thing: we’d wasted too much time chasing after crazy leads. We wasted time looking like we were doing everything right. We should have focused on Ewers all along. Thrown everything at him. Ewers knew too much about what we had been up to and he knew we didn’t have anything on him.”

  “And the other thing?” I asked.

  “This is just my own personal theory, but I believe Richard Ewers was dead by the time I got to him. I think he was dead down in his bones. You know what I’m saying? He knew he was going to die for this crime and there was no reason to tell anybody anything. He was just biding his time before that shadow he was wearing swallowed him alive.

  “Most guys confess because they want forgiveness. It’s the urge that moves them to spill their guts, and I do everything in my power to be the man who can offer them that forgiveness. Ewers knew there was no forgiveness for this killing. He also read in my eyes that I wasn’t ever going to offer him anything, and that’s how I blew that interview.”

  Wayne Shorter and Cedar Walton scampered around inside the tunes coming from the old record. Jackson jumped down off George Doggy’s lap and went back to stalking phantoms.

  Doggy took off his hat and patted it against his legs. “Did Sands ask you to find the money? “

  “Yeah, he did.”

  “Then I think you should,” Doggy said.

  I took two steps closer to him. “George, tell me what’s going on.”

  “Let’s just say this case is still open.”

  “Which case? The Mygirl killings? Patricia Ewers’s death? Or Richard Ewers’s disappearance?”

  Blakey rollicked around his drum kit, and Jackson started licking sour milk off the planking.

  Doggy said nothing.

  “Can I ask you some more questions?” I said, as the needle hit a scratch and one phrase of Wayne Shorter’s saxophone line re­peated over and over again.

  “It will cost you.” George Doggy stood up and walked toward the door. “It will cost you about fifty thousand dollars,” he called out over his shoulder. “Fifty thousand in blood money.”

  The plywood door flapped in a gust of wind, letting milky daylight into the room. Jackson stopped purring as he stood in the middle of Jonathan’s studio and stared after George Doggy. I took the needle off the record, turned off all the lights, and went home to take a shower.

  6

  I needed to follow the money. This is a maxim for most investi­gators but it was a new experience for me. Most of my clients were either too poor or too unsuccessful as thieves to have any money to follow.

  Kevin Sands was a career petty criminal. I hadn’t expected straight­forward honesty from him. George Doggy was a man of authority and high esteem and I wasn’t allowed to question his honesty. So I was going to have to follow the money that people were either looking for or giving away. I wasn’t looking forward to it, but I needed to speak with the police.

  It was Monday morning at the airport coffee shop, and sitting behind the restaurant table Officer Pomfret seemed even bigger and more inert than he did out in the world.

  “Cecil, do you have any legal authority in this matter?” Pomfret asked. He leaned back in his chair so he could bring his coffee cup to his lips without clattering the gear on his utility belt against the wooden table.

  “Look . . . Officer . . .” Pomfret’s first name was Roy, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to call him that. I kept thinking about the Mouseketeers on that old TV show of my youth, and I just couldn’t shake the image of that fat old guy named Roy who wore the ears.

  “You can call me Roy,” he said, and I winced.

  “Yeah, thanks. Anyway, I have all the legal authority of a con­cerned citizen. You know that.”

  “It�
�s Roy,” Pomfret said. “Otherwise it’s ‘Lieutenant Pomfret,’ not ‘Officer.’” His voice had a chilliness, and I thought this could have been a record for the shortest route to loggerheads I had ever come across.

  “Great then, Lieutenant . . .” The waitress brought cream for my coffee. “I want to know how it happened that one of your offi­cers killed Patricia Ewers.”

  “You think we did that on purpose?” Pomfret smiled as he looked at me across the mouth of his mug.

  “You don’t care what I think, Lieutenant.” I watched a small plane turn off the runway apron and head back to the tie-downs.

  Pomfret put down his mug and tapped his fleshy finger on top of my knuckles to get my attention.

  “What does your good friend George Doggy think about her being dead? Now that’s something I’d be interested in. He’s the guy with the hard-on for Ewers.”

  Pomfret was staring at me with dead-fish eyes and I looked back out the window to avoid them.

  “The Mygirl case has been open a long time. When are you guys going to solve it?” There was more sarcasm in my voice than I had intended.

  “That case is not open.” Pomfret let out a disgusted grunt. He jabbed my hand this time and there was a dark sparkle to his eyes as if he were willing me to catch fire. “Cecil, I don’t care a hoot what those defense lawyers tell the papers, the Mygirl is a solved case. Richard Ewers was guilty as sin and he skated away because of some bullshit lawyer and some stupid bad luck.” Pomfret scowled out the window and the waitress brought him his cinnamon roll.

  “Come on, Cecil. Tell me the truth. You’ve been hired by that goddamn Teller again, haven’t you?”

  “Now you know I can’t tell you about that.”

  Pomfret had one hand on his cinnamon roll. With the other, he reached across and thumped my chest with the tip of his index finger. “You can tell those bastards I’m not going to do their jobs for them. I’ll find Richard Ewers. I’ll find Ewers because it’s my job, not because of some crap about him being innocent.”

  His finger felt like the end of a lead pipe. He took a big bite of his roll and pulled his hand back across the table.

  I looked squarely into Pomfret’s beefy face to see if it would tell what he was holding. “So you know about Ewers being missing. Does Doggy know where he is?” I asked.

  “Yeah, right. I guess we can always call the great George Doggy,” Pomfret grumbled. “George was a good cop. Hell, probably a great cop in his day, but he’s not God,” Pomfret said, averting his eyes from mine, as if he were nervous about this sacrilegious statement.

  “Something for which I’ve always been grateful.”

  “Yeah.” Pomfret tried to chuckle. “He’s not, you know. He’s not God. We just keep him in the loop out of professional courtesy. And I get a little tired of everybody throwing him back at me all the time. Everyone makes mistakes, Cecil. Even the great George Doggy.” Pomfret spoke to me with his mouth full. He kept staring out the window, keeping an eye on the building wind.

  “Richard Ewers was in Ketchikan last week,” he said. “Ewers checked into a hotel and checked right back out again. There’s not a frigging thing those lawyers are going to do about this. We’re going to find Ewers or what’s left of him. I’m sure of that, Cecil. Now go peddle your damn papers somewhere else. I know what you’re up to.”

  “I wish I did,” I told the storm building outside.

  Pomfret shrugged. “Everybody makes mistakes. Stay clear of this, Cecil. You’ll be all by yourself. No one’s going to pull you out of the shit you’re going to land in.”

  Of course I hate to admit it, but he was right.

  There were a couple of volunteer firemen in the restaurant; they looked like they were carpenters by profession but they all wore their fire department beepers. The waitress was standing next to one of them with her forearm draped over his shoulder holding the coffeepot in a sexy, careless way when the volunteers began fumbling for their beepers and Pomfret’s radio started squealing. Everyone in the restaurant tensed. One of the volun­teers was having his coffee topped off when he brushed the coffeepot aside. The waitress began to say something until she saw his look of concern. Pomfret ran out of the restaurant. He left his unfinished roll.

  I could hear the transmission from the fire hall coming through the firemen’s beepers: “All available EMS personnel . . . all available EMS personnel, respond to Verstovia Elementary School. Possible mul­tiple patients. Possible GSW. P.D. responding. Again, possible multiple GSW. All personnel must stand by perimeter of school under direction of Sitka P.D.”

  One carpenter looked up at the waitress, the blood drained from his face.

  “GSW?” the waitress asked, as the men headed toward the door without paying their checks.

  “Gunshot wounds,” one threw over his shoulder. “Somebody’s shooting up at the elementary school.”

  I followed after the firemen and begged a ride from one. He asked me if I was a volunteer and I told him, “No. I just have a kid up there,” which wasn’t strictly a lie but would prove to be inaccu­rate anyway. As the carpenter’s truck sped across the bridge with the blue light flashing on the dash, I knew with a certainty the body tells the brain that Sean Sands would be dead by the time we arrived.

  Everywhere were flashing lights and people running. A roundish woman in a denim smock was running from the building. She had her arms sheltered over a child’s shoulders. The woman had a handkerchief to her mouth and the little girl was crying so that her face was a silent grimace. All the running men in blue coats were headed in the same direction: across the playground. Three small boys cantered along the edges of a fence where a male teacher kept trying to corral them back into the building. The wind blustered through the swings, and a few raindrops pattered down on the rubber pads beneath the monkey bars. The empty swings squealed back and forth on their chains. I stepped forward and picked up a piece of garbage that was tumbling across the pavement. It was packaging for gauze dressing. The blue lettering on each side was wet with blood.

  The police had not yet established control of the scene. Some had their weapons drawn. Others were standing behind pillars and speaking into their radios. The three wild boys ran through the school doors and the teacher chased after them and slammed the door behind. Past the fence line near the trees, a tight knot of EMTs was squatting on the ground. A man in plainclothes and two women in police uniforms stood staring at the muddy ground at the edge of the playground. One of the EMTs squatted on one knee; another bent over something, pumping his shoulders up and down.

  I walked toward the group as the school principal pushed his way through a group of kids standing near the glass door of the school. The principal scanned around, making certain he covered every foot of the play area. His face was pale and his mouth was turned down at the corners. He was looking for children. The front of his shirt had a bright spatter of blood running parallel to the buttons. His blue tie was pulled loose. He stood at the doorway, blocking the view of the children inside.

  I nodded toward him and he barely let his eyes pause on me. “I’m locking this,” he muttered as he reached into his pocket. He dug and dug in his slacks; apparently he couldn’t find the key. “I’ll lock this now,” he said again, then he looked down at the blood on his shirt. “Oh,” he said. “One of the children fell while running in­side. She cut her lip . . .” and his voice sagged on the last syllable. He fumbled in his empty pocket and started to cry.

  I put my hand on his heaving shoulder. He reached up and took my hand as if to pull it off his shoulder, but he held it instead. “They shouldn’t see me . . . like . . .”

  “Just wait a second,” I said.

  “Oh Jesus . . .” he moaned and wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist. “It’s awful to say, but it could have been much, much worse. That officer just happened to be here . . .”

  I dropped my hand an
d he said, “I had a note from him. That boy. He said he was bringing a gun to school. He said he was going to give it to the cops. He said he was going to give it to our school personal safety officer. Why would he want to kill a policeman, for gosh sakes?” He looked at me as if I had just appeared. “I’m sorry, are you a parent?” he asked, trying to ease back into his official position.

  “No. I’m with them.” I nodded toward the growing crowd of people in uniforms.

  “Ah” was all he said. Then, “We’re trying to get them settled into their seats to do the final count.”

  “Do you know how many were injured?” I asked.

  “As far as I know . . . just the one,” the principal said, and he wiped his hands absently against his stained shirt and tie before he turned and shut the glass door without locking it.

  Under the trees, two candy wrappers blew across the body of the child laid out on the blanket. Blood smeared his white skin where they had cut his shirt off. The top of his blue jeans was un­buttoned and his soft belly spilled out over his belt buckle. The men squatting around him were all in agreement that he had been dead before they had even arrived, and the police officers were now insisting that the scene not be any more disturbed. Sean Sands could have been a sleeping baby, but there was no peace in his expression. An alder leaf blew up against Sean’s face, and one of the EMTs absently brushed it away.

  “Nothing left now but to write it up.” George Doggy was standing behind the EMTs. He was holding an AK-47 and had an empty leather holster clipped to his belt. The AK-47 had a skateboard sticker on the stock. I could read the words No Doubt from where I stood.

  “You did this?” I asked him, not looking at Sean.

  “I went to the trailer. I wanted to go through it once more. I found materials in the trailer which led me to think Sean might be meaning to do someone at the school some harm. Then I got in­formation Sean was taking a weapon to the school. I came here. I saw him with this weapon.” Doggy held up the AK-47. “He was walking toward the playground. He brought the weapon up and was taking aim. I told him to stop. He ignored me. I fired one warning shot. He turned toward me and I warned him again. He would not put the weapon down. I fired. I don’t like it, Cecil. I never wanted to be in a position where I’d have to shoot that boy. I had no choice.”