The Ruinous Sweep

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “Go see the movie,” Donovan said. “Please.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Max.

  Donovan made no attempt to resist the removal. Bee knew he wouldn’t. The guards were just doing their job, after all. And whatever it was that exploded in him, there would be no follow-ups, only remorse. Only regret that it had happened. Again.

  She looked back through her journal to August 24, last year, eight months ago. They’d gone to see Turn play. It hadn’t gone well. He’d been thrown out of the game in the sixth inning. Max had disappeared with him and helped to jolly him out of his funk enough to get him to the movie theater that night, but that was as close as it got. She shook her head, turned the page.

  She was sitting on her bed. It was seven in the evening and she was in her pajamas. She’d never gotten out of them all day. Mom was allowing her a grace period before she went into professional therapist mode. They were giving her space. She just wasn’t sure if there was enough space in the whole world for her to find a way out of this.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed her thumb and forefinger into the sockets. She leaned into the pressure until the darkness was filled with little squiggling jolts of light. She was so tired.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “No, Dad,” she said. “But thanks anyway.”

  There was a pause before he spoke. “You really can distinguish my knock from your mother’s?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  He knocked again. More of a rapid rap this time.

  “Close, but it was still recognizably you.”

  “Startling,” he said. “The breadth of your talent never ceases to amaze me.”

  His attempts to chivy her out of her depression were sweet and, mercifully, short. They weren’t really frightened for her, she didn’t think. No one was on red alert. No one was counting the Advil tablets or ridding the house of razor blades. She was reliably sane. She was sad, not suicidal. She was also mad. Mad at herself and mad at Donovan and mad at his hapless dead father and mad at the unknown driver of a possibly red pickup truck.

  She looked at her notes, the attempts to understand Turn, to come to terms with him. They stretched way back. They had been together almost a year and her first worried entry was as early as June of last year. She shook her head and flipped the pages to the last entry she had made, an entry of utterances — a sound poem. She got up. She went to her desk, sat down at her computer, and opened a new document. She titled it. And began to type. A poem, if that’s what it was.

  The Last Words Of

  The last words of Donovan Turner as transcribed by his amanuensis, Beatrice D’Amato Northway

  Are you?

  See

  Dad

  Dead

  Killed

  Killed him

  Bee?

  Beeeeeee!

  Didn’t mean

  No, no, no, no

  Jill

  Jilly

  Kali

  No, no, no, no, no

  Bo

  Hun

  There was more — stuff she’d missed when she’d crashed his room behind Nurse Winters’s back. So much stuff but not much of it really comprehensible. So this was the distillation of it: sixteen or seventeen words, if you didn’t count repetitions.

  She’d scribbled some notes in her journal. When he said, “Didn’t mean . . .” she had finished the sentence for him, as if he had meant to say, “I didn’t mean to.” He had said “no” right away, as if it might really be a response to what she’d said, but that could be taken two ways: “No, I didn’t mean to kill him” or “No, you’ve got it wrong. That wasn’t what I was going to say at all.” She wasn’t sure anyone else would interpret it that way.

  There were other interpretations to “killed him,” as well. Donovan hadn’t necessarily been confessing that he killed his father. He said “killed him,” which could have meant someone else killed him. And the word “no” could be taken to mean it wasn’t him who did it.

  Bee leaned back in her chair, the little maroon journal closed in her lap, staring at the words until the screen saver kicked in: a photograph Daisy had taken of Bee and Turn at Daisy’s cottage last summer. They were sitting on a rock in their bathing suits. She was reading a book. He was untangling a fishing line. Neither of them was staring at the camera; they were each happily engaged in what they were doing. She loved the picture. She wondered how long she would leave it there.

  She picked up her journal and flipped to the heading “April ninth.” Seven days before Donovan died. She read what she had written and the scene came back to her.

  “I’m going to end it with my dad.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What I said. You were right, as usual. It’s gone on way too long. I’m doing it.”

  Bee lay back on her bed, the phone to her ear. “I’m almost afraid to ask what that means.”

  He laughed. “Sorry, totally bad choice of words. We’re going to talk. And I’m going to say, you know, I won’t be coming anymore. You’re a bad influence, et cetera — all that stuff you said.”

  Bee closed her eyes. “That wasn’t what I said —”

  “No, I know. But you were right. I mean, I get it.”

  Why wouldn’t Donovan really listen to her? She tried to keep her voice low and even. “I still think you need to see someone, Turn.”

  “And what’s the first thing a shrink will say? I need to break with him, climb out of the snake pit. So I do that — I can — and we go from there, right?”

  She couldn’t speak.

  “Bee?”

  “I’m here. I’m just afraid it’s not going to be easy.”

  “Of course not, or why would I still be putting up with his shit? I just needed a shove. Thanks for that.”

  She chuckled darkly. “You mean threatening to leave you? I was only —”

  “Not true. You were kidding in one way, and in another way you weren’t kidding. I am just so, I don’t know, preoccupied with his crap.”

  “Like obsessed, for instance?”

  “Right. I get it. And it was really brave of you to lay it on the line. I can’t go on like this. So now I’ve got to, you know, step up to the plate.”

  “Always the baseball analogies,” she said.

  “Yeah, well.”

  There was a pause. A long one.

  “He’ll set you off, Turn. You know he will.”

  “He’ll try. Yes. That’s the test. And I’m ready. No, seriously. I won’t let him. You’re right, he’s a manipulative bastard —”

  “I never said that.”

  “You didn’t need to. It’s true. He plays people. But I can beat him at his own game.”

  She froze. “What does that mean?”

  “Okay, okay. Bad choice of words again.”

  “Donovan. Don’t —”

  “I’m going to prove this to you,” he said, his voice game-ready. “I am going to rock this.”

  The boyish streak of optimism he got from his mother. He could go into the ninth inning down a hundred runs and still fully believe they could win. He could make everyone on the bench believe it, too. “You know what I love about baseball?” he’d said to her early in their relationship, when she would have had to say that there was nothing about baseball she loved other than maybe Cracker Jack.

  “Do they even have Cracker Jack?”

  “What?”

  “Like in the song, ‘Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.’”

  He stared at her with an expression that led her to believe he had no idea what she was talking about.

  “You were saying why you loved baseball.”

  “Right. Do you know why?” She shook her head. “There’s no game clock.” He held out his hands as if inviting applause.

  “There’s no game clock. That’s it?”

  “Exactly,” he said. “There’s no two-minute drill to work on. No Hail Marys, no desperate flinging the ball from midcourt. An inning can last for eternity,
the runs piling up and up; the sun could rise and set a hundred times and the game would not be over.”

  She had smiled at that image. She did not possess a single sports gene, as far as she knew, but she did have genes that responded to boundless confidence. “Are you saying it’s not over till it’s over?” she had said, and he had nodded like an eight-year-old, with his eyes bright and his whole face shining, as if she had made up the line herself.

  That was then.

  “Okay,” she said. What else could she say?

  He took a deep breath. “I’m going to make you proud of me,” he said.

  “Turn —”

  “I know, I know. That’s not the point.”

  “But do it soon. Do it when you’re fresh.”

  “Tomorrow evening. Soon as I get there.”

  “Okay.” She hated the uncertainty in her voice.

  “Come on, Bee. Trust me.”

  And as a theater girl, she said, “Break a leg.”

  He winced at that. A wince she could hear over the phone.

  She had trusted him. But he couldn’t talk to his dad Sunday because . . . Well, she couldn’t even remember why now. And Monday went by and Tuesday, too, and when she and Donovan met at school Wednesday for lunch, she pushed him up against the lockers, hard enough for him to say, “Ow!” and she said, “You can’t do this. Don’t you see? There’s no shame in that. He’s your father. He’s bigger than you even though he’s two inches shorter and half-rotted-out inside. He’ll always be bigger than you in your head.” She poked him in the forehead to push home her point.

  “Take it easy,” he said.

  “No, because you won’t listen.” Then she was up in his face, her body pressed against him, holding him in place, needing only some tacks to pin him to the wall, her favorite poster boy. “You. Need. To. See. Someone.”

  “I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll see someone?”

  “No, I’ll talk to him! End it.”

  And she said, You’re not listening, and he said, I don’t want you to leave me, and she said, Don’t try to talk to him because he OWNS language, Donovan, and he knows all the words to destroy you and the ninth inning can go on for frigging ever but he’ll always beat you because — do you know why? — because he’s a bully, Donovan. And you’re not.

  There was a knock on Bee’s door, raising her from the memory. “There’s someone here to see you, honey.”

  “I’m not in.”

  “It’s a detective and I already told her you were.”

  Inspector Stills.

  “Alone?”

  “Yes. She seems nice enough.”

  Her mother, professional psychologist, sadly misjudging a well-put-together face and vaguely hippish attire.

  “Just a minute.”

  “Good girl.”

  No, not a good girl, thought Bee, a girl who pushed too hard, a bully herself. Demanding harridan, harpy, crone, virago. Pick one.

  She went to close her computer and realized she hadn’t saved “The Last Words Of.” She called the document “Essay topics,” in case anyone came sniffing around. She hid her journal under her mattress and then, as she left the room, wondered at how common a hiding place that was.

  Sergeant Stills was in black slacks and a black turtleneck under her blue leatherette jacket. She wore a thin gold necklace. Classy. She was also wearing heels, which suggested to Bee that the detective wasn’t planning on any chase scenes, not on foot. Her makeup was good. Did they learn that at the police academy? Hard edged, no nonsense. Just enough mascara to turn her blue eyes into lethal weapons.

  Bee had quickly dressed into what her father called, a little unthinkingly, her “widow’s weeds.” She preferred to think of her outfit as basic mourning: black tights, black funnel neck, black turban headband. She wore no makeup. Her own brown eyes seemed drained of whatever luster it was that sometimes made them glimmer. They were dirt brown, set in a face that looked, by her own assessment, like the hoarding around a construction site in winter.

  Stills was sitting in the living room with Bee’s mother, who rose hurriedly, as if caught fraternizing with the enemy. She asked if anyone wanted coffee. When the answer was no, she glanced hopefully at Bee and then evaporated.

  Stills remained seated. It struck Bee as a ploy, reverse psychology, as if the detective wanted her to believe she wasn’t going to play any power games. And Bee thought that if she herself remained on her feet, she might gain some advantage. So she leaned against the fireplace. “No Bell?” she said.

  It took Stills a moment to translate. “Leadership conference,” she said. “So you’re stuck with me.” She chose an expression of concern from her bag of tricks. “How are you feeling, Bee?” she said. Bee shrugged. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  Bee crossed her arms. There were these empty phrases to get through, and she’d learned how to play her part. People meant well. Most people. She didn’t feel like playing now. “Have you found anything?”

  Stills nodded. “That’s why I’m here. I figured you’d want to know that Donovan’s autopsy revealed no sign of alcohol or drugs.”

  Bee had to fight the sick feeling in her stomach. Autopsy? She hadn’t seen or talked to Trish or Scott since that day at the hospital. She hadn’t known there would be an autopsy. Didn’t want to think about it.

  “Sorry again,” said Stills, reading the signs.

  “It’s okay. I just . . .” Then Bee straightened up. This was actually kind of good news, if there was any to be had. “So he didn’t just stumble into the path of the red truck,” she said.

  Stills held up her hand. “Whoa,” she said. “We haven’t heard anything from the lab about the paint chip. But you’re right. As far as we can tell, his perception was not compromised by substance abuse.”

  Did she mean to put a spin on what she’d just said? “So, is what you’re saying that it wasn’t an accident?” Stills nodded her head tentatively, not sure of the tone of Bee’s voice. “As in you think he chose to get himself run over?” said Bee. “Is that it?”

  Stills tilted her head. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You kind of insinuated it.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because suicide is the only thing that makes sense, as far as you guys are concerned. You don’t think a truck or whatever it was could have run him over on Wilton Crescent at the corner like that. It wouldn’t have been possible.”

  Now Stills looked genuinely interested. “Go on,” she said.

  Bee sighed again. Why was she doing this? She was playing into Stills’s hands. But if she was going to try to convince the cop that they were wrong about Donovan, she had to say something. “I went over there. The vehicle had to be coming from Oakland Avenue, right, in order to . . . to, you know, throw him where it did?” Stills nodded. “He’d have had to be a race-car driver to take that turn at speed fast enough to, like, hurl Donovan halfway down the hill. If the driver had been drunk and going too fast, he’d have lost control and more likely ended up in the bush west of where the hit-and-run happened.”

  Stills looked impressed. “That’s how we see it.”

  “Unless,” said Bee, holding up her finger and then immediately dropping it, as if playing at Sherlock Holmes was not going to win her any points. “Unless the driver was parked at the end of Wilton just where it curves into Oakland, parked on the north side of the street facing the wrong way.”

  Stills frowned. “That seems a little . . . imaginative, don’t you think?”

  Bee shook her head, deciding to ignore the implied insult. “No one ever parks there, let alone facing the wrong way. It’s signposted — ‘prohibited’— so the spot is always available. It would be a perfect place for waiting.”

  Stills looked perplexed. “Waiting?”

  Was Bee really going through with this? “Waiting. You know, for Donovan to arrive home. The killer would be able to see him walking down from Bank Street, time it perfectly. With one turn
of the wheel, he’d be facing directly toward where Turn got hit. And although it would only be like fifteen yards or so, there would be no steering involved. They could just ram him straight on — pow!”

  She hadn’t meant to put it quite so graphically and immediately suffered a queasy feeling in her stomach.

  Stills leaned back in her chair. “You think this hit-and-run was premeditated?” said Stills. Bee nodded. “Why?”

  Bee sat on the hearth and wrapped her arms around her woozy stomach. “Because I don’t think Donovan would have killed himself.”

  “Not even if he had killed his father?”

  “He didn’t kill his father.”

  “Now that interests me,” said Stills, leaning forward. “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t know it. I just know Donovan.” She swallowed. “Knew Donovan.”

  “I gather he had quite a temper,” said Stills. She pulled her little notebook out of her pocket and thumbed through a couple of pages. “Incident at school last November.”

  “He was breaking up a fight, a bully beating on some freshman.”

  “Thrown out of a baseball game in the National Capital Baseball League for unsportsmanlike conduct twice last season. A reported incident at the Cineplex Odeon out at Southbank last August.”

  Bee shook her head. “Wow, you’ve really been hard at work. Have you got enough evidence now to prove your case?”

  Stills glared at her. “We collect all the facts, Bee. We can’t ignore that Donovan had anger management problems.”

  “Which was only ever aimed at douchebags.”

  “Which Allen Ian McGeary was, I gather.”

  “Donovan does not kill douchebags. He gets angry, yes. And sometimes he lashes out.” She caught the look in Stills’s eye and quickly added, “Never at me. Never at anyone who isn’t a complete . . . oh, forget it. The point is, he gets mad and then he goes straight to remorse. He does not pass go and does not collect two hundred dollars.”

  Stills looked interested again. “What are you saying?”

  “You told me there was a witness. Someone saw Donovan leave his dad’s place in a hurry at eight o’clock or something like that. They’d heard a lot of noise and he’d slammed the door. Is that what you said?”