第 42 页

White?'

'Pardon?

"What was his race?'

'Oh. Yeah, he was white.'

'Jewelry, hats, shoes?'

'No, like I say, I swerved past him real fast.'

'If you saw a picture of him would you remember it?"

'Like in a lineup or something? I could try.'

'Anything else you remember?'

'No.'

'Nothing unusual? Try to think back.'

'No, nothing. Well, except I figured he was handy. I mean, he knew about cars. He was going to replace the ignition cable himself. Not everybody can do that. That's why I almost stopped. To help him.'

'Ignition cable?'

'But it was late and the wife gets a bee in her bra I don't get home by eleven, sale or no.'

'He was working on the car?'

'Not exactly, he was carrying that piece of wire over to it.'

'Could you describe it?"

'You know, ignition wire. White, thick. Looked to be wrapped in plastic like from NAPA.'

'Could it've been rope, like clothesline?'

Amos Trout went silent for a moment. 'Could very well've been.'

* * *

Diane walked into the living room and found Ben Breck cutting letters out of sandpaper. Sarah sat on the couch watching him. 'I owe you a new pair of scissors,' he said. 'Beg pardon?'

He said, 'I only had coarse sandpaper. It pretty much ruined the blade.'

"Well now, I wouldn't worry about it,' Diane said. "What exactly are you doing?'

'"Storage",' Breck said solemnly and handed an E to Sarah. Touch it, feel it.' Sarah ran her hand over the letter. 'E,' she said. The letter joined STORAG on the table. Sarah spelled the word out loud, touching each letter. Breck scooped them up and hid them behind his back and would hand her one at a time. Eyes closed, the girl would touch it then tell him which letter it was.

Diane watched, engrossed in the drill. After ten minutes he said, That's it for today, Sarah. You did very well but keep working on the b and the d and the q and the p. You get those mixed up.'

'I will, Dr Breck.' Sarah assembled the sandpaper letters and put them into her Barbie backpack, in which she kept her tape recorder, cassettes and exercises she was working on. Diane slipped her arm around her daughter.

Breck said, "Next Thursday?"

'Fine,' Diane said, Til be home all day.' Then she added, 'We'll be home, I mean.'

Sarah ran outside. Til be back later, Mom.'

'Stay close to home.'

Breck and Diane walked into the kitchen and Diane poured two cups from a Braun coffee maker without asking if he wanted any. Breck glanced at her red polished nails then his eyes slipped to her blouse, two buttons open at the chest. He seemed to enjoy the route his gaze followed. She reserved judgment on this reaction.

She reserved judgment on her own as well.

Breck spent a long moment studying a picture of Corde in uniform. It was taped to the refrigerator next to an eagle Sarah had cut out of construction paper.

'It must be exciting being married to a policeman.'

'More of an inconvenience, I'd say. We get calls at all hours and our friends are always wanting Bill to do something about P&Z or fixing tickets or something. Ever been married, Ben?'

She had checked his heart finger at their first meeting.

'No. Never have been so lucky.' He sipped the coffee. Diane watched him closely.

That too strong, there's hot tap water. Our boiler gets it to about one forty-five."

'It's fine.'

Diane said, The thing about Bill is, he's obsessive. He-'

You probably mean compulsive.'

'I do?'

'Compulsive is when you do something repetitively, obsessive is when you think about something repetitively.'

'Oh. Well, then he's both.' They laughed and she continued, 'He just doesn't stop. He's a workaholic. Not that I mind. Keeps him out of my hair and when he's home he's pretty much home if you know what I mean. But once he gets his mind set he's like a terrier got hold of a rat. Last night I went to bed and he was still burning the midnight oil. Bill says a case is like building a brick wall. There are always plenty of bricks if you take the trouble to look for them.'

'And he takes the trouble?'

'Whoa, that's true.'

'I've been an expert witness in court a few times, testifying on the psychology of observation. How witnesses can see things that aren't there and miss things that are. The senses are extraordinarily unreliable.'

'All I know is I don't get much involved in his cases. It's so, you know, grim. It's different when you watch it on television.'

So why hasn't he been married?

'I've done research into violence,' Breck said. Two associates of mine have done work with sociopaths-'

'Is that like a psychopath? Like, you know, Tony Curtis in Psycho.'

Tony Perkins, I believe.'

'Right, right.' Forty-one and never married.

They've worked with some pretty odious characters-'

Odious.

'-and their theory is that commercial entertainment does a disservice when it minimizes violence. That it tends to distort mental judgment and leads to situations where individuals act violently because they feel the impact in human terms will be inconsequential. We're seeing-'

Diane's palms moistened as she leaned forward, trying to follow what he said.

'-many cases of blunted affect on the part of young people in response to films and-'

'Uhm. Af-fect?'

He saw that he'd lost her and shook his head in apology. 'Affect. It means emotion. Kids see people getting blown up and murdered on screen and it doesn't move them. They don't feel anything. Or worse, they laugh.'

'I'd rather Jamie didn't watch those movies... Well, look at his friend. They got caught up in that Lost Dimension. Look what happened.'

'That boy who killed the girls?' Breck asked. 'He might have been influenced by the movie.'

The corner of Diane's mouth hardened. Well, even with him getting killed and all, Bill still doesn't think the boy did it.'

'He doesn't?' Breck asked with surprise. 'But your bodyguard is gone.'

"Wait till the story hits the news.'

'Story?'

There's a new witness.' She slung the words bitterly.

'But the papers all said the boy did it.'

The papers and just about everybody else in town. They were all too happy to close the case. But not my Bill, oh no. He's still investigating. He doesn't give up. He went charging off this morning after sope new lead. He thinks he can prove the boy didn't do it.'

Diane noted the anger in her voice as she gazed outside at the spot where Tom's cruiser had been parked all these long weeks. 'When you're young, when you're Sarah's age, everything's clear, all the endings are tidy. You know who the bad guys are and if they get away at least they're still the bad guys. At our age, who knows anything?'

Breck finished the coffee. 'You have a lovely home here.'

It seemed to Diane that he said it wistfully but before she heard anything that confirmed that impression, he added, 'Know what I'd like?'

'Name it,' she said, smiling, coquettish as a barmaid.

'Let's go for a walk. Show me your property.'

'Well, sure.' She pulled a jacket on and they walked outside.

She showed him her herb garden then the muddy strip of potential lawn then the spots where the bulbs would've come up if the deer hadn't been at them. Breck muttered appreciative comments then strolled toward the back of the lot and its low post-and-rail fence. 'Let's check out the woods.'

'Uh-un,' Diane said, leading him around to the side. 'We have to go the long way.'

'Around that little fence? We can jump it, can't we?' Breck asked.

'Uhm, see those cows?'

'What about them?'

'How expensive are those Shee-caw-go shoes of yours?' she asked.

'Oh,' he said, 'got it.'

They both laughed as they walked around the pasture and into the strip of tall grass and knobby oak saplings that bordered the forest. Diane wasn't the least surprised when, out of view of the house, Breck took her hand. Nor was she surprised that she let him.

* * *

"Weren't the boy after all?'

Uh-uh. They got a new witness.'

Their eyes would make troubled circuits of the room, following the green-gray checkers of linoleum to their conclusion in the dark reaches of the County Building cafeteria. Then they'd turn back to watch the half-moons of ice slowly water their Cokes.

'Necessitates something.' The man speaking was fat. Through a short-sleeved white shirt his belly worked on the elasticity of his Sears waistband. He had white hair, crisp with dried Vitalis, combed back. His name was Jack Treadle and in addition to other jobs he was supervisor of Harrison County. All aspects of his face had jowls - eyes, mouth, chin. He poked his little finger into his cheek to rub a tooth through skin.

'Suppose so,' said the other man. Just as jowly though not so fat. He too wore short-sleeved white and on top of it a camel-tan sports coat. Bull Cooper was a real estate broker and the mayor of New Lebanon. These two were major players in the Oval Office of Harrison County.

'Way it sizes up,' Treadle said, 'the boy-'

Cooper said defensively, 'He had a gun.'

Well, he mayVe. But I don't give two turds about the incident report. We shouldn'ta arrested him, we shouldn'ta let him get loose, we shouldn'ta shot him down.'

'Well...'

'Hi ho the derry-o, somebody's gonna get fucked for this.'

'Boy got shot bad,' Cooper agreed.

'Got shot dead,' Treadle snorted. Around them, slow-talking small-town lawyers and their clients ate liverwurst sandwiches and plates of $1.59 macaroni and cheese while they waved away excited spring flies. Treadle was a man who did best with ignorant friends and small enemies; he was in his element here and had nodded greetings to half the room during the course of this meal.

He said, 'Hammerback and Ribbon were playing cute. I mean, shit, they were playing big-time sheriffs and they wanted press, they wanted a big bust and they wanted to tie that other co-ed killing last year in with all this serial killer, goat skinner fucking crap. Well, they got press, all right, which are now wondering why we let a innocent kid get killed. We got the SBI looking over our shoulder and we probably got some ethics panel up in Higgins about to poke its finger up our ass. We gotta give 'em somebody. I mean, shit.'

'And you're thinking somebody from New Lebanon, I know you are.' Cooper hawked and cleared his mouth with a thick napkin.

"Naw, naw, don't matter to me. If we pick a county man and I make the announcement then it looks good for me. If he's town and you make the announcement it's good for you. You know, like, it hurts us to do it but we're cleaning out our own. No cover-up.'

'I didn't think of that.' Cooper relaxed then added, 'What about that Mahoney?'

'What about him?'

'Corde copied me on this letter he sent the Missouri AG. He wants Mahoney's nuts, Corde does. Whoa, Ribbon's got a feather in his ass over that, I'll tell you.'

'What's the point?'

Cooper said, 'Mahoney shouldn't've even been on the case. He's a civilian.'

'Well.' Treadle guffawed. 'I don't give a shit about Mahoney. What's done's done. Things like Mahoney fall through the cracks and that's the way of the world.'

'What's the options? Who bites the big one?'

There's Ellison,' Treadle offered casually, stating the obvious. Then there's Ribbon. But if it's somebody too high up it'll look bad for us - like you and me weren't enough in charge.'

Cooper said, 'We had a couple county deputies working on the case. And Bill Corde was running the investigation for a while.'

'Corde's a smart guy and he, he..." Treadle stammered as he groped for a thought.

'Found this new witness.'

'He found this witness,' Treadle agreed. 'And he ..."

'He doesn't take any crap,' Cooper offered.

'No, he doesn't take any crap.'

'But,' Cooper said slowly, 'there's the trouble.'

What trouble?'

'Didn't you hear? He may've accidentally on purpose lost some evidence. There was word he'd been fucking the Gebben girl. She was a regular little c-you-know-what. Anyway, some letters or shit got burnt up that may've connected her with Corde. They dropped the investigation-'

What investigation?'

'What I'm saying. About Corde, about him eighty-sixing the evidence. But he wasn't ever found innocent. They just dropped it.'

Treadle's eyes brightened. Think that's something we can use?'

'I suppose that depends,' Cooper said, 'on whether we want to use it or not.'

Bill Corde was talking on the pay phone to Diane. It was after dusk and he was in front of Dregg's Variety, perilously close to Route 117. Every sixth or seventh car whipped by so fast he felt his uniform tugged by the slipstream as if the drivers were playing a fun game of cop-grazing.

'Jamie?' Corde asked, What's the matter with him?'

'He got home late. He didn't call or anything. I want you to talk to him. It's the second night in a row.'

Well, I will. But I'm...' Corde let the cyclone from a Mack eighteen-wheeler spin past then continued, 'But I'm a little busy right at the moment. This lead on the Gebben case. He's okay?'

Diane said testily, 'Of course he's okay. I just said he's okay.'

'I'm out here on the highway,' Corde said to explain his distraction. Then he added, 'I'll talk to him tonight.'