Every Dead Thing

  “How you doin’?” said the Rat. The bar was quiet now and the group of men at the pool table were no longer lounging but stood rigid in anticipation of what was to come. One of them smiled and poked his neighbor with an elbow. Obviously, the Rat and his buddy were the local double act.

  “Great till now.”

  He nodded as if I’d just said something deeply profound with which he had a natural empathy.

  “You know,” I said, “I once took a leak in Thom Robb’s garden.”

  Which was true.

  “It’d be better if you just got back on the road and kept driving, I reckon,” said the Rat, after a pause to figure out who Thom Robb was. “So why don’t you just do that?”

  “Thanks for the advice.” I moved to go past him but his pal put a hand like a shovel against my chest and pushed me back against the bar by flexing his wrist slightly.

  “It wasn’t advice,” said the Rat. He gestured back at the big guy with his thumb.

  “This here’s Six. You don’t get back in your fuckin’ car now and start raisin’ dust on the highway, Six is gonna fuck you up bad.”

  Six smiled dimly. The evolutionary curve obviously sloped pretty gently where Six came from.

  “You know why he’s called Six?”

  “Let me guess,” I replied. “There are another five assholes like him at home?”

  It didn’t look like I was going to find out how Six got his name, because he stopped smiling and lunged past the Rat, his hand clutching for my neck. He moved fast for a man his size, but not that fast. I brought my right foot up and released it heel first onto Six’s left knee. There was a satisfying crunching sound, and Six faltered, his mouth wide with pain, and stumbled sideways and down.

  His friends were already coming to his aid when there was a commotion from behind them and a small, tubby deputy in his late thirties pushed his way through, one hand on the butt of his pistol. It was Wallace, Deputy Dorito. He looked scared and edgy, the kind of guy who became a cop to give him some sort of advantage over the people who used to laugh at him in school, steal his lunch money, and beat him up, except he found that now those people still laughed at him and didn’t look like they’d let the uniform stand in the way of another beating. Still, on this occasion he had a gun and maybe they figured he was scared enough to pull it on them.

  “What’s goin’ on here, Clete?”

  There was silence for a moment and then the Rat spoke up. “Just some high spirits got out of hand, Wallace. Ain’t nothin’ to concern the law.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Gabe.”

  Someone helped Six to his feet and brought him to a chair.

  “Looks like more than high spirits to me. I reckon you boys better come on down to the cells, cool off for a time.”

  “Let it go, Wallace,” said a low voice. It came from a thin, wiry man with cold, dark eyes and a beard flecked with gray. He had an air of authority about him and an intelligence that went beyond the low cunning of his associates. He watched me carefully as he spoke, the way an undertaker might eye up a prospective client for his casket.

  “Okay, Clete, but…” Deputy Dorito’s words trailed off as he realized there was nothing he could say that would matter to any of the men before him. He nodded to the crowd, as if the decision not to pursue things any further had been his to make.

  “You’d better leave, mister,” he said, looking at me.

  I stood up and walked slowly to the door. No one said anything as I left. Back at the motel, I rang Walter Cole to find out if anything had developed in the Stephen Barton killing, but he was out of the office and his machine was on at home. I left the number of the motel and tried to get some sleep.

  19

  T HE SKY WAS GRAY and dark the next morning, heavy with impending rain. My suit was wrinkled from the previous day’s travel, so I abandoned it for chinos, a white shirt, and a black jacket. I even dug out a black silk-knit tie, so I wouldn’t look like a bum. I drove once through the town. There was no sign of a red jeep or the couple I had seen driving it.

  I parked outside the Haven Diner, bought a copy of the Washington Post in the gas station across the road, and then went into the diner for breakfast. It was after nine but people still lounged around at the counter or at the tables, mumbling about the weather and, I guessed, about me, since some of them glanced knowingly in my direction, directing the attention of their neighbors toward me.

  I sat at a table in the corner and scanned the paper. A mature woman in a white apron and blue uniform with Dorothy embossed at her left breast walked over to me carrying a pad and took my order of white toast, bacon, and coffee. She hovered over me after I finished ordering. “You the fella who whupped that Six boy in the bar last night?”

  “That’s me.”

  She nodded in satisfaction.

  “I’ll give you your breakfast for free, then.” She smiled a hard smile, then added: “But don’t you go confusin’ my generosity with an invitation to stay. You ain’t that good lookin’.” She strolled back behind the counter and pinned my order to a wire.

  There wasn’t much traffic on Haven’s main street, or much human activity in sight. Most of the cars and trucks seemed to be passing through on their way to someplace else. The town seemed to be permanently stuck in a grim Sunday morning.

  I finished my food and left a tip on the table. Dorothy slouched forward over the counter, her breasts resting on its polished surface. “Bye now,” she said as I left. The other diners briefly looked over their shoulders at me before returning to their breakfast and coffee.

  I drove to the Haven Public Library, a new single-story building at the far side of the town. A pretty black woman in her early thirties stood behind the counter with an older white woman whose hair was like steel wool and who eyed me with obvious distaste as I entered.

  “Morning,” I said. The younger woman smiled slightly anxiously while the older one tried to tidy the already immaculate area behind the counter. “What’s the local paper around here?”

  “Used to be the Haven Leader,” answered the younger woman after a slight pause. “It’s gone now.”

  “I was looking for something older, back issues.”

  She glanced at the other woman as if for guidance, but she continued to shift pieces of paper behind the counter.

  “They’re on microfiche, in the cabinets beside the viewer. How far back do you want to go?”

  “Not far,” I said, and strolled over to the cabinets. The Leader files were arranged in date order in small square boxes in ten drawers, but the boxes of files for the years of the Haven killings were not in their place. I ran through them all, in case they had been misfiled, although I had a feeling that those files weren’t available to the casual visitor.

  I returned to the counter. The elderly woman was no longer in sight.

  “The files I’m looking for don’t appear to be there,” I said. The younger girl looked confused but I didn’t get the impression that she was.

  “What year were you looking for?”

  “Years. Nineteen sixty-nine, nineteen seventy, maybe nineteen seventy-one.”

  “I’m sorry, those files aren’t”—she seemed to search for an excuse that might be plausible—”available. They’ve been borrowed for research.”

  “Oh,” I said. I smiled my best smile. “Never mind, I’ll manage with what’s there.”

  She seemed relieved and I returned to the viewer, idly flicking through the files for anything useful with no return other than boredom. It took thirty minutes before the opportunity presented itself. A party of schoolchildren entered the junior section of the library, separated from the adult section by a half-wood, half-glass screen. The younger woman followed them and stood with her back to me, talking to the children and their teacher, a young blonde who didn’t look long out of school herself.

  There was no sign of the older woman, although a brown door was half open in the small lobby beyond the adult section. I slipped behind
the counter and began rifling through drawers and cupboards as quietly as I could. At one point I passed, crouching, by the entry door to the junior section, but the librarian was still dealing with her young clients.

  I found the missing files in a bottom drawer, beside a small coin box. I slipped them into my jacket pockets and was just leaving the counter area when the office door outside slammed and I heard soft footsteps approaching. I darted beside a shelf as the senior librarian entered. She stopped short at the entrance to the counter and shot an unpleasant look in my direction and at the book in my hand. I smiled gamely and returned to the viewer. I wasn’t sure how long it would be before the dragon behind the counter checked that drawer and decided to call for backup.

  I tried the 1969 files first. It took some time, even though the Haven Leader had been only a weekly newspaper in 1969. There was nothing about any disappearances in the paper. Even in 1969, it seemed that black folks didn’t count for much. The paper contained a lot about church socials, history society lectures, and local weddings. There was some minor crime stuff, mostly traffic offenses and drunk-and-disorderlies, but nothing that might lead a casual reader to suppose that children were disappearing in the town of Haven.

  Then, in a November issue, I came upon a reference to a man named Walt Tyler. There was a picture of Tyler beside the piece, a good-looking man being led away in handcuffs by a white deputy. Man Held in Sheriff Attack, read the headline above the picture. The details contained in the piece below were sketchy but it seemed Tyler had come into the Sheriff’s Office and started busting the place up before taking a swing at the sheriff himself. The only indication of a reason for the attack came in the last paragraph.

  “Tyler was among a number of Negroes questioned by the Sheriff’s Office in connection with the disappearance of his daughter and two other children. He was released without charge.”

  The 1970 files were more productive. On the night of February 8, 1970, Amy Demeter had disappeared after heading out to a friend’s house to deliver a sample of her mother’s jam. She never made it to the house and the jar was found broken on a sidewalk about five hundred yards from her home. A picture of her was printed beside the story, along with details of what she had been wearing and a brief history of the family: father Earl an accountant, mother Dorothy a housewife and a schoolteacher, younger sister Catherine a well-liked child with some artistic potential. The story ran for the next few weeks: Search Goes On for Haven Girl; Five More Questioned in Demeter Mystery; and, finally, Little Hope Left for Amy.

  I spent another half hour going back and forth through the Haven Leader but there was nothing more on the killings or their resolution, if any. The only indication was a report of the death of Adelaide Modine in a fire four months later, with a reference to her brother’s death buried in the piece. There was no description of the circumstances of the death of either, but there was one hint, once again in the last paragraph. “The Haven Sheriff’s Office had been anxious to talk to both Adelaide and William Modine in their ongoing investigation into the disappearance of Amy Demeter and a number of other children.”

  It didn’t take a genius to read between the lines and see that either Adelaide Modine or her brother William, or possibly both, had been the main suspects. Local newspapers don’t necessarily print all the news; there are some things everyone knows already and sometimes the local press merely prints enough to throw outsiders off the scent. The old librarian was giving me the evil eye so I finished printing off copies of the relevant articles, then gathered them and left.

  A Haven County Sheriff’s Office cruiser, a brown-and-yellow Crown Victoria, was pulled up in front of my car and a deputy, wearing a clean, well-pressed uniform, was leaning against my driver’s door, waiting. As I drew closer I could see the long muscles beneath his shirt. His eyes were dull and lifeless. He looked like an asshole. A fit asshole.

  “This your car?” he asked in a Virginia drawl, his thumbs tucked inside a gun belt that glittered with the spotless tools of his trade. On his chest, the name Burns stood out on his perfectly straight identity badge.

  “Sure is,” I said, mimicking his accent. It was a bad habit I had. His jaw tightened, if it was actually possible for it to tighten more than it was already.

  “Hear you were looking up some old newspapers?”

  “I’m a crossword fan. They were better in the old days.”

  “You another writer?”

  Judging from his tone I didn’t think he read much, at least nothing that didn’t have pictures or a message from God. “No,” I said. “You get a lot of writers around here?”

  I don’t think he believed I wasn’t a writer. Maybe I looked bookish to him or maybe anyone with whom he wasn’t personally acquainted was immediately suspected of covert literary leanings. The librarian had sold me out, believing me to be simply another hack trying to make a buck out of the ghosts of Haven’s past.

  “I’m escorting you to the town line,” he said. “I’ve got your bag.” He moved to the patrol car and took my traveling bag from the front seat. I was starting to get very tired of Deputy Burns.

  “I’m not planning on leaving just yet,” I said, “so maybe you could put it back in my room. By the way, when you’re unpacking, I like my socks on the left side of the drawer.”

  He dropped the bag on the road and started toward me. “Look,” I began, “I have ID.” I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket. “I’m—”

  It was a dumb thing to do but I was hot and tired and pissed at Deputy Burns, and I wasn’t thinking straight. He caught one flash of the butt of my gun and his own piece was in his hands. Burns was quick. He probably practiced in front of the mirror. Within seconds I was up against his car, my gun was gone, and Deputy Burns’s shiny cuffs were biting into my wrists.

  20

  I WAS LEFT cooling my heels in a cell for what I reckoned to be three or four hours, since the careful Deputy Burns had taken my watch along with my gun, my wallet and ID, my notes, and my belt and laces, in case I decided to hang myself in a fit of remorse for annoying the librarians. These had been entrusted to the safe care of Deputy Wallace, who made some passing reference to Burns of my involvement in the previous night’s incident in the bar.

  Still, the cell was just about the cleanest one I had ever visited in my life—even the can looked like it could safely be used without needing a course of penicillin later. I passed the time by mulling over what I had learned from the library microfiche, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle into some recognizable picture and refusing to let my mind drift to the Traveling Man and what he might be doing.

  Eventually there was a noise outside and the cell door opened. I looked up to see a tall black man in a uniform shirt watching me. He looked to be in his late thirties but something about the way he walked and the light of experience in his eyes told me he was older. I guessed he might have boxed at one time, probably middle to light-heavy, and he moved gracefully on his feet. He looked smarter than Wallace and Burns put together, although no one was likely to hand out gold stars for that particular feat. This, I guessed, was Alvin Martin. I didn’t rush to get up, in case he thought I didn’t like his nice, clean cell.

  “You want to stay there another couple of hours, or you waiting for someone to carry you out?” he asked. The voice wasn’t Southern; Detroit, Chicago maybe.

  I stood and he moved aside to let me pass. Wallace waited at the end of the corridor, his thumbs tucked into his belt to take the weight off his shoulders.

  “Give him back his things, Deputy.”

  “Even his gun?” asked Wallace, not making a move to do as he was told. Wallace had that look about him, the look that told you he wasn’t used to taking orders from a black guy and didn’t like it when he had to. It struck me that he might have more in common with the Rat and his friends than was really wise for a conscientious lawman.

  “Even his gun,” replied Martin calmly but wearily, giving Wallace the eye. Wallace shoved off from the
wall like a particularly ugly ship setting out to sea and steamed behind the counter, surfacing eventually with a brown envelope and my gun. I signed and Martin nodded me toward the door.

  “Get in the car, please, Mr. Parker.” Outside, the light was starting to fade and there was a cool wind blowing from the hills. A pickup rattled by on the road beyond, a covered shotgun rack on the back guarded by a mangy hound.

  “Back or front?” I asked.

  “Get in the front,” he replied. “I trust you.”

  He started the cruiser and we drove for a time in silence, the a/c blasting cool air into our faces and onto our feet. The town limits receded behind us and we entered woods thick with trees, the road twisting and winding as it followed the contours of the land. Then, in the distance, a light shone. We pulled up in the parking lot of a white diner, topped by a green neon sign blinking Green River Eatery on the road beyond.

  We took a booth at the rear, far away from the handful of other patrons, who cast curious glances at us before returning to their food. Martin took off his hat, ordered coffee for both of us, then sat back and looked at me. “It’s usually considered good manners for an unlicensed investigator packing a pistol to drop into the local lawmen and state his business, at least before he goes around beating up pool players and stealing library files,” he said.

  “You weren’t around when I called,” I said. “Neither was the sheriff, and your friend Wallace wasn’t too keen on offering me cookies and swapping race jokes.”

  The coffee arrived. Martin added creamer and sugar to his. I stuck with milk.

  “I made some calls about you,” said Martin, stirring his coffee. “A guy called Cole vouched for you. That’s why I’m not kicking your ass out of town, least not yet. That and the fact that you weren’t afraid to whip some cracker ass in the bar last night. Shows you got a sense of civic pride. So maybe now you’d like to tell me why you’re here.”