The Bluest Blood

by Gillian Roberts

  Mackenzie smiled and nodded at the cops, in a way that reestablished that he was part of the same fraternity. “You can see there’s a lot of anxiety around here—are you able to let us know any more of what this is about?”

  “We need a statement from the boy,” the older officer said. “A full statement.” He looked down at his belly, pleating his chin into a series of chinlets.

  “You want custodial interrogation,” Mackenzie said.

  The cops both nodded.

  “Yet he’s not charged with anythin’.”

  “Correct.”

  “More like he’s a material witness, then?”

  I thought about the night of the burning, about the two boys across the way with a probable view through winter-bare treetops to the scene of the crime. Two boys who hadn’t been asked about their whereabouts by either the police or the Roederers. Until now.

  “Hope I’m not out of line,” Mackenzie said softly to his suburban counterparts, “but this early of a Saturday morning, two days after his stepfather’s demise, this seems somethin’ new and serious, and it’s surely not about china animals.” Neither of the other policemen moved a muscle. “A homicide, it’d be, wouldn’t it? Another one.”

  Both officers nodded.

  Another murder? Another murder to which Jake was somehow connected?

  “And the victim would be…?” Mackenzie continued.

  The two men looked at each other, and then the younger one nodded, cleared his throat, and spoke. “The victim would be Edward Franklin Roederer.”

  Neddy. Gentle, charitable, book-loving Neddy. Mackenzie’s pick as Harvey’s killer. Instead, Neddy was a victim himself. I felt a wave of nausea at the only thing that was evident: two angry boy-men with two now dead, despised, surrogate fathers.

  Mackenzie, who is generally a master of looking impassive—even dreamily absent—no matter what’s going on behind the facade, reflected my own shock on his face.

  Neddy, the elegant and refined, who’d tried to call a cop, who’d had something he felt needed telling. I turned hot, then cold with guilt—I hadn’t speedily transmitted his message—a call for help? It didn’t matter that Mackenzie couldn’t have responded in time. Neddy, whom I’d involved in the politics of our school, whose generosity—prompted by me via the school paper—triggered what now felt like an endless series of conflicts and deaths. Neddy was dead. I felt partially responsible.

  But for all my growing apprehension, other muscles relaxed that had been in a state of tension since I’d seen the burning effigy and said nothing fatal had happened yet. As if I’d always known something was waiting even beyond Harvey’s murder, which was never the end of anything because whatever caused it wasn’t over.

  Now, the second shoe had dropped. The something else had happened. There was a chilling comfort in the news.

  Sixteen

  “Goes to prove they have too much time on their hands in the sticks,” C. K. said. “Comin’ all this way to retrieve the kid for a statement. Why didn’t they take it here, on the spot? For that matter, they could have called it in, an’ I could have taken it.” Mackenzie, Loren Ulrich, and I were on the pavement in front of the Spiers’ home.

  “With…” I glanced at Loren Ulrich, then mentally shrugged. “Betsy? She’d make it—”

  “Impossible.” Ulrich finished my sentence. “Betsy makes most things impossible. Flighty, we used to call it. It even seemed cute once, a kind of giddy hyperreacting. Then it stopped being charming or bearable. And now, she’s a whole lot worse.”

  I wanted to say what I thought of a father who could describe his ex that way while leaving his son with her. If Jake was involved in the murders, then Loren and Betsy were coconspirators.

  C. K. busied himself with his cellular phone, trying to learn more about what was going on. Neddy Roederer was headline news. If the departments were cooperating, somebody would know.

  Betsy had taken to her bed after we collectively promised her that Jake would not be locked up, and that we—I wasn’t sure about the graduation to a plural pronoun, but we it was—would make sure he was returned from the police station.

  “You don’t think they’re lying, do you?” Loren asked. “I mean, when they said he wasn’t accused of the crime. Or the other one.”

  Mackenzie covered the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand. “It was a hit-and-run,” he said.

  “Roederer?” Ulrich said. “Then why question Jake? He doesn’t even have a car!”

  “Between midnight and dawn,” Mackenzie continued. “Except there are inconsistencies.” He listened again. “Roederer was walking the dog on one of those dark lanes around there.”

  “Gertrude,” I muttered. “The old blind and deaf creature.” My stomach felt bloated with sickening possibilities.

  “Griffin Roederer’s car has damage, blood…” Mackenzie said.

  “Then they have him? Have Griffin? They’ve found him?” I asked. Mackenzie shrugged.

  “Then question Griffin, not Jake!” Loren insisted. “Stop picking on my son.”

  I knew that Griffin’s car did have to do with Jake. He had been with Griffin on a night when the pressure had been ratcheted to explosive levels. They’d had a falling out, but Jake hadn’t said about what. Could it have been the result of a hideous accident? Or worse—of something that wasn’t an accident at all? Could Jake have gone to the police about that, not for a ride home at all, then realized he’d walked into a mob of partygoers and their parents and let his real mission go?

  Was anything that Jake had told me true? That whole story about the party, and the guilt, and the aborted plan to run away—was that a fabrication to hide the fact that he’d been in a car that killed a man? He’d said they drove without headlights on back roads. Intentionally or not, a perfect stealthy way to kill and disappear.

  Both their oppressive parents were dead. I heard echoes of one of Jake’s favorite expressions: “Coincidence? I think not.” But he meant it as a joke. All I said was, “I was with Jake from four A.M. on. And he was at the station before that.”

  “For how long?” Loren asked. I shrugged.

  Mackenzie’s ear was still to the phone, then he said, “Right,” and turned off the power. “Time of death’s vague. The weather was cold and wet, and the dog could have wanted out any time at all, no matter its regular routine. Or not wanted to go out at all. After all, the R’s came home, found the place wrecked, had to deal with police, missing kid, theft, vandalism. Roederer might have wanted to get away and walk it off with the dog as an excuse. Dog’s alive, by the way. A broken leg, is all.”

  “Wouldn’t Tea Roederer know what time her husband left the house?” I asked.

  Mackenzie shrugged. “Apparently not. She assumes it was after two o’clock, but she’s not sure because they have separate bedrooms, and in her words, the whole night was a ‘tangle.’”

  So time of death was murky and would remain so for a while longer. And meantime, Jake’s story became less and less invulnerable.

  “Where’s a decent hotel?” Loren Ulrich asked. “I figure I have time to check in and dump my stuff before picking up Jake.”

  “Stayin’ long?” Mackenzie asked, although given that the Canadian was carrying only an overnight bag, a daypack, and a computer case, the answer seemed obvious to me, despite my not being the one of us who was trained to detect.

  “Overnight,” Ulrich said. “I didn’t expect to find Jake in trouble. I came because Harvey was killed and Jake seemed worried about where he was going to live. I thought, foolishly, Betsy might finally be open to reason.”

  His stock rose a few points. He was actively, if belatedly, involving himself in his son’s future welfare.

  “That was wishful thinking on my part.” He shook his head in mock-exasperation with himself. “Betsy does not like reason and she’s incapable of making plans.”

  I remembered. Betsy had impaired linearity. Whatever. “Poor Jake,” I said.

  “What’s t
hat?”

  “He’s lost two significant people in four days. His stepfather and a man he liked very much.”

  “What are you saying? You make it sound like he’s connected to these deaths.”

  “Poor Jake is what I said and meant.” Well, mostly.

  Mackenzie glanced at his wrist. “I have to get back. Where are you parked?” he asked Loren. “If you follow us, we’ll lead you to a hotel.”

  “I’m not,” Loren said.

  “Not what?”

  “Parked. I took a cab.”

  We should have realized. He’d been carrying his luggage all morning, had no place to leave it.

  “I didn’t know the area, and I wanted to get here as quickly as I could—Jake’s message sounded urgent. Thought I’d rent a car after, and I thought the house would be more central. The kind of place you could always hail something.”

  It made sense, but so do a lot of things that are based on false premises. Mackenzie could call a cab with his cellular. Or, as seemed more fitting in the City of Brotherly Love, we could give the man a lift.

  “How about you drop me off,” Mackenzie said to me. “Then get Loren fixed up with a hotel and car rental, and I’ll meet you later, back home. I won’t be long—have to tie up loose ends about the Kansas guy, take care of a few other things. I’ll call.”

  I had hoped for time with him, for catch-up and a sense of what I wanted to think of as normality with us, but I made do with a quick kiss and a “see you later” as I dropped Mackenzie off. Maybe that was the real normality and I’d better get used to it.

  I’d been wrong about the daypack. It wasn’t Loren’s, but Jake’s. When the two of us were driving toward the center-city hotels, Loren apparently realized he’d taken it with him. “Damn,” he said. “I should have left this at Betsy’s.”

  “No big deal. Give it to him when you pick him up.”

  “I’m sure he’ll love being handed homework.”

  “I suspect that’s the least of what’s in those bags.” I knew part of the contents were the china cat and dog.

  Jake’s motive for thievery made me sad. He’d wanted pets and other impractical, beautiful objects. His home and home life were so unrelentingly bleak that whimsies represented hope, tangible proof that life could be lived differently.

  Ulrich cleared his throat. “I feel awkward asking, but would you tell me about my son? He’s changed physically, emotionally. It hasn’t been all that long, maybe two years.”

  “Two years is a big proportion of his lifetime.” My surge of righteous anger—that such a question should be necessary—wasn’t simply about the sins of Loren Ulrich. He’d become my scapegoat for all parents who earned failing grades, and their numbers were legion. Maybe Ulrich didn’t deserve the full force of my fury, but he was available.

  “It’s been difficult,” he said softly. “More than I ever anticipated, living in separate countries.”

  “Come now, the Canadian border is almost a formality. We’re not talking Checkpoint Charlie,” I snapped.

  “In Betsy’s mind, it’s international espionage.”

  I shrugged. Betsy’s mind could not an argument make.

  His tone became confidential. “Plus there’s a woman in my life again. A serious relationship, and she…there isn’t a whole lot of time for me to fly down or anything.”

  My rage-ometer skyrocketed. What I heard was a man justifying A New Beginning. Running through meadows with one who isn’t particularly fond of secondhand adolescents, who may in fact be almost an adolescent herself. And then there’d be a new family, with Jake relegated to ex-child.

  “Betsy’s made it nearly impossible, making all kinds of Harvey-type claims of moral turpitude. Or saying I planned to kidnap him. Harvey was convinced that Jake was bad, and I’d corrupted him. He had to keep us apart to save Jake’s soul. And Betsy…” He shook his head in ongoing incredulity. “Betsy let it go on. Betsy agreed with him.”

  I was a hanging judge with no interest in the defense’s arguments. I didn’t want to hear about extenuating circumstances. I wanted all parents to be like Scarlett the cat, she who’d gone into the burning building five times to save her kittens. She hadn’t talked about difficulties, complications, or extenuating circumstances. All she knew was that her offspring were in danger. All she did was insure that they survived until they could be independent. I wanted Loren Ulrich to have the level of heroism and concern of a stray cat.

  And a bit of that anger just might have been in privately acknowledging that my mother, in her own way, wanted only to be that cat and save her kittens. And that in real time and real life, it could be a royal pain. And very complex.

  But not where Loren was concerned. So while he may have been waiting for me to commiserate about Betsy and life, I said nothing. Together in silence, we waited at an intersection, while a trailer-truck tried to back around the opposite corner. The light changed from red to green and back again without our moving on in any sense. Finally, I was able to drive again.

  “You don’t like me, do you?” Loren asked so abruptly and aptly, that I felt my cheeks flame. “Why is that?”

  I clenched the steering wheel and stared straight ahead. “I don’t even know you. But I do know Jake, and I care about him. He’s been put in an untenable position, pushed to the extreme, his options cut off. It’s awful for him.”

  “You sound like somebody explaining what drove a kid to murder. Is that what you think?”

  I looked sideways to see if the man was serious, and he was. This was not the first time he’d touched on that idea, which infuriated me because, of course, it brushed against my own fears. “That wasn’t what I meant at all,” I said. “I meant that Jake’s been seriously depressed. With reason.”

  “But when he e-mails, he sounds like he’s having a great time. The newspaper column, his pals—”

  “Pal. Griffin Roederer. Your son is shy. A loner.”

  “Jake? He was never—”

  “That was then. He’s had his life revised at a difficult stage. He’s awkward around his classmates. He and Griffin were—are—best friends, very tight. Otherwise, there aren’t hordes of pals, from what I can see. It would be hard for him to get close and to keep his stepfather’s identity a secret, for starters.”

  “No wonder he likes you so much. You’re his defender, his friend, aren’t you?”

  “I’m his teacher. That’s a long shot from being enough.”

  “But the computer. He was always excited about that. It worried me, his interest in crime: writing about it, finding that Web site, sending me things, asking me to do research about people who got away with crimes. Then, with Harvey’s murder, I panicked, and now—”

  “For Pete’s sake! He’s not interested in the Cheshire Cat or any of those crimes. He’s interested in you. Desperate for attention. A Canadian crime was a way to reach you, and he probably searched long and hard for it because you might care about it, about the news story itself, about what your paper had done with it—anything. The caring was important because maybe then, you’d care about Jake.”

  His voice was a low whisper. “I always care about him.”

  “It doesn’t count unless he notices.” We’d reached the Omni Hotel on Walnut Street. Convenient to movies, theatre, and a multitude of historic sites, should he not really want to spend his time here with his son. “I’ll wait here until you’re registered, then drive you to a rental place,” I said.

  He shook his head. “I’ve put you out enough. I’ll be fine.” He opened the car door, and exhaled audibly. “Thanks,” he said. “Not that what you said doesn’t hurt like hell, because it hit the mark. Things I didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to think about because they felt too complicated. So thanks. You’re obviously good at your profession, because you taught me a lesson I won’t forget.”

  I watched him walk into the hotel, and I wondered if the lesson would stick when homework was required. I am leery of revelations and dramatic transformati
ons, and Loren Ulrich seemed a man who had charm in place of a backbone.

  Home wasn’t far, and I drove toward it trying to remember what Saturday plans I’d had. Surely there’d been something in mind that didn’t involve adolescent jailbirds.

  Sometimes, it felt as if an autopsy of my brain would reveal a bulletin board pocked by overburdened thumbtacks barely securing layers of lists. Lists of lesson plans, meetings, problems with students, plans to make, and deadlines to meet. Lists of the depleted resources of my home. Lists about life—reservations to make, tickets and gifts to buy, people to call, letters to write. By comparison, Moses seemed lucky, having been given precisely one to-do (or not-to-do) list in his whole life, and that with only ten items on it.

  I remembered that we needed unglamorous items like onions and tissue. Restocking them seemed a waste of energy, but not having them was worse. I forced myself to stop at the market near Fifth and Spruce. I gave a dollar to a woman who stood by the doors reciting a pathetic set of woes. But once inside, my mind went on free fall, rolling through the past week as I lifted boxes and jars off shelves. I thought about the precipitous tumble from golden Neddy Roederer reverently holding a precious copy of Pilgrim’s Progress to Edward Roederer, dead under the wheels of his runaway son’s car. From madcap Tea in her spangled flapper’s dress to the Widow Roederer in her separate bedroom, unaware of her husband’s permanent leave-taking. From Harvey Spiers’ all-powerful ability to upend the universe to Harvey Spiers, hoisted by his own petard.

  And Griffin, the boy Cinderella, a runaway and perhaps a murderer. Even Glamorgan, the stone mansion that had seemed the citadel of safety and permanence, even its treasures were now scarred and depleted.

  And Jake.

  Seven days and the world unmade.

  Only Betsy seemed in stasis—hysterical at the start, hysterical at the end. I stopped in front of the frozen food section, thinking about that perverse craziness, her manipulation, accusing Jake of the very “crimes” she created, like not calling her when—

  But he had called her and there’d been no answer, although later last night, she’d spoken on the phone several times. Now that we knew Neddy Roederer had been killed, Neddy, who she thought might have killed her husband—the question grew in urgency. Where had Betsy Spiers been last night when she didn’t answer her phone?