“Oh,” Harlan said. “Why didn’t they do more than that to check him out?”
“There was no evidence he did leave with her,” Johnson said. “The bookstore owner saw him drive away, because he came by to say goodbye. Had his trailer hitched to the back of his old pickup. That was where he lived, it seemed. Owner said he seemed normal, and nobody had seen the two of them together outside the bookstore, though that didn’t mean much, not if he lived in that trailer, someplace out of the way. The detective at the time—retired now, but a good man—figured that maybe he’d encouraged her to leave. Unhappy marriage, from what Grant said, though he didn’t say much. Maybe they even started out on the road together, but then they split up. It happens. And a guy with a record, being questioned by the cops because she’d disappeared … he’d be nervous.”
“Dad told us,” Harlan said, “that he tried to find her, to get her to pay child support, but the authorities couldn’t trace her. That she’d skipped. He said she’d probably moved to England or something. That she’d always wanted to live in England. She loved reading English books. Literature, murder mysteries, didn’t matter. Dad said she got to go follow her dreams, and he was stuck with us. Did he do that? Ask the … whoever it would be, to trace her, to get her to pay?”
“No,” the detective said, and Jennifer saw Harlan absorbing the syllable, and what it meant. “What was his attitude toward her, after she left?”
“He hated her,” Harlan said.
“He told me,” Annabelle said, her lips white and trembling, “that I was lucky he didn’t take off, too. That I was lucky I still had one parent who gave a damn about me. Why would he say that, if he … if he …”
“That was cruel,” Jennifer said. She’d been silent through all of this, but she couldn’t be silent anymore. “That was the other crime. Not letting you grieve your mother. Making you hate her.”
Annabelle nodded and sobbed once, then put her hand to her face, hiding her eyes, and Harlan had his arm around her. “Hey, Bug,” he said. “Hey, now. It’s OK. It’s hard to know, but it’s better.” Rocking her a little, the same way he’d done with Jennifer.
Kindness.
“Ma’am,” the detective said, formal for once, “could I ask you not to comment, please?”
“Yes,” Jennifer said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Harlan said. “You’re right.” His own face was pale and set, but he was composed. Probably too composed. Annabelle wasn’t the only one who was going to need to fall apart, and Jennifer was glad she’d rented the house. She wished this would be over and they could go there right now, because she had a feeling that the next questions were going to be bad.
She was right.
Harlan asked, “What does Dad say?”
He needed to know. He needed to know now.
It was what Jennifer had said. How cruel was that to Annabelle? To all his sisters? To make them hate their mother and feel guilty for not loving their father more, when, after all, he was the one who’d stayed?
The detective said, “He’s denied having anything to do with it.”
“When the car was buried on his land?” Harlan asked. “When you’d need an earthmover to do that, and he happened to own a farm-equipment business? Who does he expect to believe that?”
The detective said, “Does it surprise you to think he might have been violent?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Harlan still had his arm around Annabelle. She felt cold and shaky, and he wished he could do what Jennifer had done. Tell her to put on something warmer.
Then do it, asshole.
He said, “Bug. Go get changed into something warm. A big shirt, a sweatshirt. Warm socks. And start packing up. As soon as this is done, we’re leaving here.” He told the detective, “I’ll give you the address, and for where my other sisters will be. Any other questions you have, you can ask them there. We aren’t coming back here.”
Had his mom been killed here? In the house? The thought made his blood freeze. The place had felt alien, cold and bleak, after she’d gone. Was that why?
He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to run.
Annabelle asked, “Where are we going?” She didn’t question his right to decide. She needed somebody to decide. Her world was upside down.
No. Her world was gone.
“We’re staying in town for a couple days,” he said. “In case there are more questions. Arrangements to make.”
Mom’s body, he thought. We need to bury it. Again. When will they let us do that?
He had to breathe for a second. You can’t go there yet. Focus. Right now, you need to get Annabelle out of here. This is so bad for her. He said, “Jennifer will help you pack a suitcase. Or better yet, two suitcases. Better yet, pack everything.”
“I only have one suitcase,” she said.
“Then put everything on your bed,” he said. “Use laundry baskets, maybe. Jennifer or I will help you buy more luggage.”
“Of course,” Jennifer said, and stood up. “Come on. I’ll give you a hand.” Which was a relief. One thing he knew for sure that Jennifer knew how to do, besides booking travel, was taking care of a teenage girl.
He waited while the two of them left the room. Waited until he heard a distant door close, then turned to the detective and said, “No. It doesn’t surprise me that he could be violent. He was a big believer in physical discipline, and he wasn’t real controlled about it, though I never saw him hurt Mom.”
“When you say ‘physical discipline,’” Johnson said, “what do you mean?”
“I mean he’d grab his belt. Not on my sisters so much. He used his hand on them, mostly. That was bad enough. He saved the belt for me. You know how they say not to punish out of anger? Well, yeah. He never read that book.”
“But not your mother.”
Harlan breathed. In. Out. “He wouldn’t have done it once I was old enough to do something about it, at least not when I was home, but he had a hell of a temper. Not so bad when we were younger. It got worse over time. And he’s an alcoholic. You may not know that. Didn’t start out so bad, but it got worse. Not in public. Never in public. But by the time I left home, he was drinking every night, and he sometimes drank a lot. Now, it’s bad. There’ll be a garbage can in the kitchen filled with crushed beer cans right now.” He wanted to ask how it had happened, but he suspected Johnson wouldn’t tell him until he was done with his questions.
Did he want to know, or not?
He wanted to know. He had to.
“I heard him shout at her, though,” he went on. “On nights when he’d get through a six-pack and start on the next one. When he wasn’t selling enough, or whatever it was. It’d be just comments, other nights. Sarcastic. Afterwards, he’d cry. Sit in a kitchen chair with his head in his hands, sobbing. I know because I heard it, and a couple times, I saw it. Him crying, telling her he was sorry. So sorry. And her with her hand on his head, telling him it would be all right.”
He needed a few breaths after that, but then he forced himself on. “When the shouting was bad, though, she’d go outside, and he’d follow her. She didn’t want us to hear. When I got older, I tried going out there myself, telling him not to yell at her. She’d tell me to go back inside, tell me she was all right.”
This cold. It was coming from the inside. It was in his bones. In his marrow. The thought of his mother sitting, year after year, in the car she’d always kept so clean, because she was proud of it, because she’d bought it with the money she’d earned herself. He imagined the giant scoops of dirt raining down on the hood, smothering the car.
Smothering her.
He asked, “Was she dead before he buried her? Tell me. I need to know.” And tried to breathe.
Please. Please don’t let her have died like that. Please don’t make us have to imagine that.
The detective said, “Yes.” And he had to drop his head and take a minute.
When he raised his he
ad again, he said, “OK. What else do you need to know? I’ll help every way that I can.”
“Who told you she’d left?” Johnson said.
“My older sister. Vanessa. She called me at school and said that Mom hadn’t come home on Friday night after work. That her car was gone, too. That Dad had found a bunch of her clothes missing, and her suitcase. She said that they were going to call the police, but then Dad looked in her closet, and figured out that she’d …” He swallowed. “Left.”
It hadn’t been true. None of it had been true.
“When was that? What day of the week?”
He didn’t have to close his eyes to answer that. “Saturday.”
Close to noon, but he’d still been asleep. In a girl’s bedroom, in some sorority. He couldn’t remember her name. Mandy? Candy? She’d been blonde, because he remembered how she’d looked sitting up, startled by the phone, her hair falling around her face. He remembered the feel of her naked hip next to his, the warmth of it, and the betrayed look in her blue eyes when he’d told her, “I have to go.” Then the scramble to find his clothes. He’d never found his briefs at all, had just pulled his jeans on and left.
He’d known she’d thought it was another girl calling. He hadn’t been able to help that. He’d had to get home.
“She called, because you were …”
“In Nebraska. Lincoln.”
“At the university?”
“Yeah. Playing for the Huskers. Well, not playing much. Freshman.”
“What date was that?”
He passed a hand over his hair. “I don’t know. October sometime. We’d played Ohio State the night before. It was Homecoming the next week. I remember that. I’d thought my folks would come. But my mom was gone, and my dad didn’t come, either. You could look it up, I guess.”
“Did you play in that game? The one on that Friday night, the day before you heard?”
He raised his head again and stared. “What, me?”
“Yes. We’re trying to establish everybody’s whereabouts, that’s all.”
“You’re kidding. Me? I killed my mom? I buried her in her car? Why?”
“We’re establishing everybody’s whereabouts,” the detective repeated.
Harlan had never felt murderous in his life. He was murderous now. The red rage was rising into his head, behind his eyes. “I didn’t play,” he said. “I was on the bench. You could look it up. There’s a roster. Somebody might still have it. Afterwards, I went out and partied with the team, because we won, even though I was no part of it. And then I went home with a girl. I don’t remember her name. It takes almost ten hours to drive from Lincoln to Bismarck, and ten hours to drive back again. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t one of my sisters. I knew how to operate an earthmover. I’d have known how to get it off the lot, how to break into the office for the keys, and I’d have had the guts to do it. How to get her car out there. How to do the … logistics. They couldn’t have done any of that, and they sure as hell wouldn’t have helped our dad do it. We loved our mom. Our mom was great.”
Except that he hadn’t believed it. As the months had gone by, as the postcards had come and she hadn’t, and especially after the postcards had stopped, his belief in her had trickled away. Why had he accepted that? How could he have done that? All the time, she’d been right there, and their dad had gone on like nothing had happened. Driven onto that Deane Road land, probably. Driven right over her, like he hadn’t dumped that dirt on top of her and smoothed it over with the big teeth of some machine, deep in the night. Taken it back to the lot, parked it, and hung up the keys.
And gone home to tell their kids she’d left, because she didn’t love them enough.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” he managed to go on, “because you know exactly who it was. It was the guy who’s sitting in jail right now. The guy who thought my mom and I wrecked his life and told us so, over and over again. The guy who finally killed her for it and covered her with dirt, when she always wanted things clean. When she worked so hard to make them beautiful. To plant flowers. To show me …” He could barely go on through the tightness in his chest, his throat. “Owls. She was a nurse. She felt sorry for him. Don’t you get it? She felt sorry for him, and she died for it.”
33
Visiting Hours
It was after dark by the time they left. Both Annabelle and Jennifer looked beyond exhausted when Harlan finally locked the door behind them. He put the house key into his pocket and wished he could throw it into the field instead. As far as he could, and that was a long way. Just let it be harvested with the sunflowers or plowed into the ground. Just let it disappear.
Annabelle said, “I don’t want to come back here,” her voice small and hollow in the cold starlight, and Harlan said, “I know.”
As for him, he was in some other space. The one you went into when you knew you’d lost the game, but you had to play your hardest to the end anyway, because there was no other choice. When you thought, I can have emotion later. Right now, I need to do this. Digging deep for your last bit of strength, focusing on getting every action exactly right, and feeling nothing. He’d seen Jennifer taking the family pictures off the wall, going through the bookcase and packing barely-remembered children’s books and old photo albums into a cardboard box, like somebody would want to remember any of this, and all he’d felt was cold.
At her quiet suggestion, he stopped at Dan’s Supermarket on the way over to the other house. He pushed the cart through brightly lit, chilly aisles with Annabelle beside him and Jennifer putting milk and eggs and bread into the cart, and remembered pushing a cart just like it right here for his mom, with somebody hanging onto the end and the youngest one in the basket. She’d talk about ingredients while they shopped, educating all of them in the most casual way on picking out vegetables, on calculating which size of cereal was the best deal, and teaching them the difference between what you wanted and what you needed. It was his mom who’d told him that the store brand was usually the exact same thing in simpler packaging, except when it wasn’t, and when it made sense to pay for better. She’d taught them how to look for the creamy yellow spot on a watermelon, and had made it a game to thump them all and listen for the deep, hollow sound that told you it was good. When they’d chosen their pumpkins for Halloween, she’d made it an occasion. She’d let them draw the faces on for her to carve out with the sharp knife, and when Halloween was over, she’d showed them how to roast the seeds.
Easter egg hunts on the damp grass, the excitement of finding that plastic egg amidst the tulips, and when he’d gotten old enough to hold back and let a little sister find it instead, how she’d noticed, and how she’d smiled. Like kindness mattered more than winning, exactly like Jennifer had said. The Christmas stockings that she’d sewn for them on the machine, with their names picked out in glitter, that always had the things inside that you knew they would, the ones you were looking forward to. A jar of bubbles. A Matchbox car. A roll of tape of your own. They always had a surprise, though, too, that was just for you. A tiny ceramic dog, one year, that he’d kept on his desk. An Irish Wolfhound, because he’d longed for one, and she knew it. A little black notebook with a loop for a gold pencil, when he been a little older, when there were too many sisters and not enough privacy. “So you can write down your thoughts,” she’d said.
How could he have believed she’d left?
How could he not have looked for her? How could he not even have tried?
He was feeling now. He didn’t want to.
At the house at last, and Jennifer unpacking grocery bags as he brought them in. Purple shadows under her eyes, and her freckles standing out against her white skin.
Too tired. And pregnant.
He told her, “Go take a shower. I’ve got this. I’ll get something delivered for dinner.”
She smiled at him, a weary thing, and said, “I’ve got nothing to change into. I’ll wait for my shower until it’s time for bed.”
“Wait here
.” He ran upstairs to the bedroom where he’d dumped his hastily-packed suitcase, and came down with Devils sweatpants and sweatshirt, a T-shirt, a pair of boxer briefs, and socks. She looked at them and laughed, but she took them, and when she came downstairs wearing the sweats, he laughed. First time all day.
“Yeah,” she said, “go on and laugh. Dyma would tell you that this is how I dress all the time. ‘Oversized’ is my look. Maybe I’m transitioning from that idea, though. Other than at home, because I don’t care what you say, oversized is more comfortable.”
He said, “I think that would be a real good plan. Since regular-sized is a great look on you.” He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Another first for today. He hadn’t even smiled when he’d seen her sitting in the car at his gate, had he? He couldn’t remember.
That had just been this morning. It didn’t feel like it.
Dinner was Chinese, Bismarck style, which meant, “Not Chinese enough,” and as soon as they’d eaten and loaded up the dishwasher, Annabelle said, “I’m going to bed.”
He asked, “Want me to come up and talk to you?” With no clue at all what to say.
“No,” she said. “I’m really tired. I just want to go to sleep.” And once again, he wasn’t sure what to do.
Jennifer said, though, when Annabelle had disappeared, “It’s OK. She’s on overload. Sometimes, you need time to process first. Inside, I mean, before you talk about it. Before you even think about it. Don’t you find that?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I do.”
“Like the processing isn’t even happening in your brain,” she said. “Like it’s in your body. Tomorrow’s soon enough. I’m feeling a little that way myself, and I’m just the observer, not the one whose life has just been torn open.” Since she had lines of strain around her mouth now to add to the shadows under her eyes, that wasn’t hard for him to imagine. “You should have another beer, though,” she said. “I’m sure there’s a training regimen, but some nights …” She sat back on the couch in his red sweats, her hands between her knees, and sighed. “Sometimes, you just want to drink it all away until you can forget, don’t you? I think you’d be justified.”
Shame the Devil (Portland Devils Book 3) Page 26
