EQMM, July 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I was the detective in the five-man sheriff's department, meaning that I had gone through the police academy in Chicago and taken four night-school courses in criminology. At that, I was lucky to be anything in the way of law enforcement. I had been the law-breaking son of the town cop. Drugs, reckless driving, more than a few fights, and ten nights spent in one of my father's cells over a two-year period. Amy had been my salvation. We'd been high-school lovers until she could no longer deal with my drinking. Four years after graduation, when my father had a serious cancer scare, he made me promise that I would give up drinking. Even though I promised, it shouldn't have worked. Liquor trumps loyalty. But between giving my word and meeting Amy again after she'd worked in Chicago for a few years, I've managed to stay dry since the day I told the old man I would.

  The river was on my right. Pale full moon riding the far piney bend in the river; the silver-limned water cold and forbidding; and several cars lined behind the blue-flashing box of ambulance.

  I could see my father talking to one of the paramedics. Like most of us males who bear the name Winters, Con (for Conor) Winters is a tall man who gives the impression, and a true impression it is, of rangy prairie-boy power. He has the red hair, now going to gray, and thoughtful, somewhat melancholy face of our tribe. His pride is that he is not a hayseed lawman. He is, like his own father who preceded him as county sheriff, a reader and a thinker and a man who weighs his words.

  The limestone cliff loomed in the lights. I parked and started walking toward the ambulance. Behind me I could hear cars pulling up, parking. The vampires. No matter how late at night, no matter what the weather conditions, they come out. To stare at death. Maybe they think it will buy them some extra time of their own. Voodoo.

  The paramedic saw me before my father did. “Here's Cam now,” he said, watching me approach.

  The night was cold enough for breath to run silver. Mike Sullivan was the paramedic's name. We played softball on the same team in the hot months.

  My father said, “Neely's on the gurney over there."

  If we'd been alone I would have pointed out that procedure was to leave the body for the detective and the medical examiner before moving it. But I didn't want to criticize my father in front of Sullivan.

  "Looks like he won't be bed-hopping much anymore,” Sullivan said.

  "Not anymore he won't.” My father had disliked Neely from the first day the man had moved here six years ago. I remembered sitting in Millie's Cafe and my father saying, “He'll be trouble, you wait and see.” Neely had been here all of two days then. His feelings had never changed. Even the mention of Neely had always brought a harshness into my father's blue gaze.

  "Head caved on the left side from the fall,” Sullivan said. His lean face brightened into a smirk. “I'm sure even Dr. Thomas'll be able to figure this one out.” Sullivan was one of those who found it hard it believe that a black man could be a competent doctor.

  "You think you and your crew will ever give him a break, Mike?” It came out harsh, the way I intended.

  "You think you two could hold off the bullshit till we figure out what happened here?” my father said.

  The children had been chastised.

  I walked over to the gurney and pulled back the sheet. In the beam of my flashlight the left side of Neely's head was a stew of blood and bone and brain. His carefully kept dark beard gleamed with soaked red highlights. Neely had been a commercial artist working from the A-frame he rented. But his real work had been in posing as a serious painter. He lectured at the local library frequently, spending most of his time talking about Van Gogh and hinting that his own work, which even I could see wasn't very good, might someday be compared to the man he called “his mentor.” If he hadn't been a swaggerer and a pretty-boy none of the married women he'd slept with would have paid any attention to him.

  Sullivan came over and stood next to me. “I piss you off?"

  "Yeah."

  "I'm sorry I shot my mouth off."

  "Dr. Thomas is a good man. I'm sick of you and everybody else in this town cutting him down."

  "I'll watch it.” He nodded to the body. “You can see bone sticking out of that arm."

  "Yeah."

  "Your dad found three of his imported beer bottles near the cliff. He must have been drunk off his ass. He drank all the time anyway. I saw him half in the bag plenty of times in the afternoon. I was surprised he could service so many women when he was like that.” Neely had indeed had a problem with alcohol. Two DUIs and a pair of drunk-and-disorderlies.

  Sullivan smiled. “I have a few too many and my little man goes right to sleep."

  My father stood beside us now. “Dr. Thomas just pulled up, Sullivan. You heard what Cam here said."

  "I hear you, Sheriff. I already apologized to Cam."

  "You want to get to work, Cam? I'm assuming this is an accident, but I won't settle on that until you tell me that that's what it is."

  * * * *

  In the academy I learned all about such modern crime scene techniques and tools as blood spatter and flight interpretation, electrostatic dust print lifters, portable lasers, and alternate light sources. The problem our little shop has is that these are way too expensive for our budget. On a homicide, we have to get the state boys and girls involved.

  One other thing I learned in the academy is that most detectives approach crime scenes pretty much in their own way. They develop their own approach over the years. The two rules are to gather evidence scrupulously and to document everything to help the county attorney make the case when the time comes.

  Josh Cummings, our night deputy, arrived at the scene after helping the highway patrol with a two-car accident on the asphalt strip north of the town limits. Teenagers drag racing. Bad pileup, nobody killed. I tried to sound as angry about it as Josh did, but since I'd done a lot of drag racing in my teenage years I suspect my words sounded hollow.

  We spent an hour inside the A-frame. At one point, Josh came out grinning. He held a super-size box of super-size condoms. “No wonder the ladies liked him.” That was the highlight of our search. No evidence of any foul play. Three dozen or more bad paintings lay against the wall of Neely's large office. No sign of any of the advertisements or brochures he produced. He apparently wanted to keep them secret even from himself.

  When we got back outside, my father was working the backyard with a flashlight big as a trapped sun. He had his pipe going, too. The cancer scare had had to do with throat cancer. My mother and I had badgered him into quitting for a few months, but he started smoking again down at the shop and gradually eased back into it at home. My mother told me that she lights a special votive candle once a week for him. But she'd quit arguing with him about it. My father reasoned, quite unreasonably, that all the bike riding he did kept him healthy. A bright, ordinarily realistic man kidding himself into an early grave.

  Josh and I used our smaller flashlights to join in the search. The brown autumn grass gleamed with frost. I walked toward the pine trees that formed a windbreak on the far side of the A-frame, the scent of them sweet on the cold night. A narrow trail ran down the center of them. Long before the A-frame had been built, kids my age had ridden their bikes up here much against their parents’ will. The cliff, of course, dangerous to play near. And, in fact, since both my grandfather's time as sheriff, there had been three deaths of children who'd fallen from it, smashed on the road below. I'd walked right on the edge of it many times; one time, on a dare, blindfolded.

  When the light found something red flashing in the grass I stopped and bent down to see what it was. A large reflector used on the rear fender of a bicycle. With a jagged crack down the middle.

  "You find something?” Josh said as he walked toward me.

  "Nah,” I said, slipping the reflector into my pocket. “I dropped my keys and was just picking them up. You find anything?"

  "Just a few beer cans. He sure liked his booze."

  We drifted back to the A-frame, where my fat
her stood talking to Dr. Thomas. The doctor is a quiet, slender man who, at forty-five, is starting to lose his hair. His clothes of choice run to button-down long-sleeved shirts, dark neckties, and dark slacks. He carries both a beeper and a BlackBerry. In addition to being the county M.E. he also oversees our little clinic, which he's improved considerably with the meager funds the county has been able to give him.

  "Evening, Stephen."

  "Evening, Cam."

  "I was just telling your father that I should have something for him around breakfast time."

  "That makes for a long night. What's the rush?"

  My father put his hand on Stephen's shoulder and said, “Cam doesn't understand how us old-timers like to get things done right away."

  I smiled at Stephen. “Dad's sixty-three, in case you didn't know."

  "Oh, that's all right. My kids think I'm an old-timer, too. I'm used to it. And I don't mind pulling an all-nighter. Have to earn my keep.” He nodded to the A-frame. “Well, he didn't die the way I thought he would."

  "Oh?” my father said.

  "He's been a patient of mine for the last year. The alcohol was starting to do serious damage to his liver. I suggested him trying AA or even going to a rehab center somewhere. He wouldn't hear of it.” He zipped up his blue windbreaker and said, “I'd better get going. Night, everybody."

  We said goodnight and watched him walk to his gray Saab.

  "Good man,” my father said. Then: “I guess that's about it for tonight. Thanks, Cam. Sorry I had to drag you out of bed.” He pointed to Josh. “You may as well start making your rounds for the night."

  "Right,” Josh said. “See you two later."

  As we were walking back to our cars, my father said, “You all right?"

  "Tired, I guess."

  "You never could kid me, Cam. You seem tense. Everything all right at home?"

  "Why wouldn't everything be all right at home?"

  He stopped and looked at me. Studied me, actually. “You're wound pretty tight, Cam. I just asked a question. A harmless one. And you climbed on my ass. Now I'm asking you, is everything all right at home?"

  He was wrong. I'd kidded him all my life and gotten away with it. I kidded him now. “You're right, Dad. We just had a little argument tonight about that outboard motor I want to buy. You know how Amy is about staying on a budget.” There'd been no argument, of course. But in the chill and shadow and weariness of the moment it sounded true.

  "I knew it,” my father said. “I knew something was wrong. And I'm the same way Amy is about budgets. About staying on them. You've always been like your mother. Budgets are just something you write down and then throw away. I'd give that new outboard some more thought before you buy it. The one you've got now is fine."

  "Good idea, Dad."

  Then we said good night and got into our cars.

  * * * *

  In the morning I drove over to the county seat. I had to testify in a trial in which a drunken driver I'd arrested had caused considerable damage to a house he'd rammed his car into. When I got back to the shop just before lunchtime I stopped where my father's bike was padlocked to a steel pole. He rode the ten-speed back and forth to work. I saw what I was afraid I would find.

  Millie's was crowded. Tuesday lunches are meat loaf and mashed potatoes. They're as good as the Wednesday spaghetti lunches are bad. There should be a federal investigation into what Millie can do to spaghetti.

  My father was in the last booth with his newspaper. It was town etiquette that you did not bother the high sheriff when he was reading his newspaper. Sons were the exception to this rule.

  "How'd it go in court?"

  "No problem. Open and shut."

  He yawned. “Late nights remind me that my retirement's coming up in another year or so."

  "I'll believe it when I see it."

  "Oh, you'll be seeing it all right. Even if I didn't want to turn in my badge, your mother would force me to. She watches those damned travel channels on cable all the time. She thinks we should spend the rest of our lives being tourists."

  "Here you are, Cam."

  Millie had gotten her hair tinted red again. The color clashed with her pink waitress uniform. Her dentures gleamed in one of her soft smiles. “Now tomorrow, young man, I want you to tell me how good my spaghetti is."

  I'd been coming in here since I was fourteen. I would always be “young man.” “As long as I don't have to swear it on a Bible."

  "I think you should arrest this boy of yours, Sheriff."

  We laughed as we always laughed. It was a ritual, the dialogue, the smiles, the laughs.

  I cleaned half my plate before I said anything. “I saw the autopsy on your desk."

  "Accidental death, just the way we figured."

  "Drunk and walked too close to the edge."

  "Forty-five-foot drop. That'd kill anybody. Plus, he landed on his head."

  "Still."

  He had his coffee cup halfway to his mouth when I said it. He looked at me straight and hard. And set his cup back down. “Still? Still what, Cam?"

  "It's possible—just possible—that somebody gave him a little help falling off that cliff."

  "You read the autopsy report."

  "Nothing wrong with the autopsy. But an autopsy doesn't give us any sense of whether he fell off or was pushed off."

  The blue of the eyes was that special simmering color of my teens and twenties, the eyes that assessed me with anger and disappointment. “I'm halfway through finishing up my report. I'm listing it as an accidental death. Nobody who knew him would have any doubts about that.” He made a show of smiling. “Except my son the detective."

  I took it from my shirt pocket and laid it in the center of the formica-covered table.

  "What's that?"

  "Bike reflector."

  "I can see that. But what's it supposed to tell me?” But the voice was tighter now and the gaze nervous.

  "Nothing special about the reflector. Round, red. One of those that ignites in the dark when light strikes it. There's just one thing wrong with it. Notice the crack down the center."

  "I've got eyes, Cam."

  "Same as your bike reflector. Cracked in shipping. You took it because it was the last one they had."

  He sat back in the booth. “All right. And this is amounting to what?"

  "It's amounting to nothing, Dad. I found it near the pine trees at Neely's last night. Right about where the trail was. All I'm wondering is why you didn't tell me you were up there recently."

  "I ride my bike all over this town. Up on Indian Cliff included. Not that it's any of your particular damn business. I lost that reflector several days ago—though I don't know why the hell I owe you an explanation about it."

  "Look at the condition of it, Dad. That reflector hadn't been there very long. The adhesive on the back still works if you press it against something hard enough. It rained yesterday morning and there was frost last night. The adhesive would have been ruined by either one of those if it had been there for more than a few hours. . . . And you had the body on the gurney before I could look at it."

  He was out of the booth before I could say anything else. Out of the booth and out of Millie's front door.

  * * * *

  Halloween came and went with the usual damage to a few gravestones and dirty words spray-painted on the high school. In a town this size, it was easy to find the culprits and put them to work undoing their damage. Cindy insisted on wearing her Halloween Cinderella costume every night before bedtime. We had a light snow one night but it melted by noon. And the few downtown stores that had survived the outlet malls a few miles to the west started putting up Christmas decorations. Or Xmas decorations, as a few of them insisted on calling them.

  I never mentioned the bicycle reflector again to my father. I'd even begun to wonder if he'd been telling the truth after all. Maybe the reflector really had been in the grass for several days. The first few days after our talk at Millie's had been straine
d, but one night he and my mother were sitting at our dinner table talking to a delighted Cindy. She much preferred them to Amy and me. They never gave her orders or scolded her. And they gave her a king's ransom in gifts. Finally, Cindy, as she often did, climbed up on my father's lap and gave him a kiss. Seeing them together I realized how much I loved him and how I needed to let it go with Neely. I wasn't sure what had happened. And now I didn't want to be sure. I wanted to will it all out of existence.

  After the meal we were father and son again. With icy rain coming down every other day, we were busy with traffic accidents large and small. And it was because of one of the accidents that I found the photographs.

  I was alone in the office, working late, on the computer. Even with a Mac, reporting on traffic accidents is tedious work. My father was bowling that night and I told him I'd file his work, too. I was grabbing his reports when I realized that I needed a requisition form for more supplies. The town council takes its work too seriously. We always joked that one day they'd make us requisition permission to take a piss. The requisition forms were in my father's middle drawer. There was a pile of them. I skimmed three off and was about to close the drawer when I saw the edge of a photograph sticking out from under the stack I'd dislodged.

  Who can resist looking at a photograph? I tugged it free and held it up. A minute later I'd pulled four more photographs from under the requisition forms. I took them back to my desk and sat down and stared at them for a long time. They were the kind of thing a private detective takes for a client worried that his or her mate is cheating. They'd been taken with the digital camera my mother had bought my father for his last birthday.

  I spent five minutes with them. Given that they showed David Neely and two different women from town entering one of those old-fashioned garden motels, they didn't need to be pornographic to tell their story. In some ways they were worse than pornographic. The prurient mind, and I certainly have one, could paint any picture it wanted to.