The Lesson of Her Death

  "You said you'd polish them."

  "I'll polish them."

  "You said today."

  "I'll polish them today," Amos Trout said, slouching in his lopsided green Naugahyde easy chair. He scooped up the remote control and turned the volume up.

  His lean, wattle-skinned wife poured the Swan's Down cake mix into a Pyrex bowl and decided he wasn't going to get away with it. She set down the egg and said, "When I was to church Ada Kemple looked right down at my feet, there was nothing else for yards around, had to've been my feet, and if that woman didn't have a gleam in her eye when she surfaced I don't know what. I liked to die of embarrassment."

  "I said I'd polish them."

  "Here." She handed him the navy blue pumps as if she were offering him dueling pistols.

  Trout took them then looked at the TV screen. It wouldn't've been so bad if Chicago wasn't playing New York and it wasn't the bottom of the sixth and the score wasn't tied with Mets go-ahead on third and only one out.

  But She had spoken. And so Amos Trout turned the sound up again and carried the shoes down to the basement. (Don't seem so scuffed that the toothless bitch Ada Kemple has anything to snicker about through her smear of cheap pasty makeup.)

  "... a grounder to left ... snagged by the shortstop, backhand! What a catch! There'll be a play at home.... The runner--"

  CLICK. The TV went silent. His wife's footsteps sounded above him on their way back to the kitchen.

  Ah, it hurts. Sometimes it hurts.

  Trout grimaced then snatched a newspaper from the huge stack that had accumulated while they'd been on vacation in Minnesota. He spread it out on the mottled brown linoleum. He stood slowly and got the paraphernalia--the blue polish, the brush, the buffing cloth--and set it all out in front of him. He picked up each shoe and examined the amount of work. He turned one upside down. A broken toenail like a chip of fogged ice fell out. He set the shoe down on the newspaper and as he applied polish he focused past the shoes to the paper itself.

  Trout read for a moment then stood up. He tossed the shoes on top of the clothes dryer. One left a long blue streak on the enameled metal. He carried the newspaper into the kitchen where his wife sat cross-legged, chatting on the phone.

  "The game was too loud," she said to him. "I shut it off." Then returned to the phone.

  He said, "Hang up."

  Her neck skin quivered at the command. She blinked at him. "I'm talking to my mother."

  "Hang up."

  She looked at the yellowed rotary dial for an explanation of this madness. "I'll call you back, Mom."

  He took the receiver from her and pressed the button down to clear the line.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Making a phone call."

  "Aren't you going to polish my shoes?"

  "No," he said, "I'm not." And began to dial.

  The Oakwood Mall. How Bill Corde hated malls.

  Oh, the stores were clean, the prices reasonable. Sears guaranteed satisfaction and where in the whole of the world did you get that nowadays without more strings attached than you could count? Here you could buy hot egg rolls and tacos and Mrs. Field's dense cookies and frozen yogurt. You could slip your arm around your wife, walk her into Victoria's Secret and park her in front of a mannequin wearing red silk panties and bra and a black garter belt then kiss her neck while she squirmed and blushed and let you buy her, well, not that outfit but a nice sexy nightgown.

  But malls for Corde meant the Fairway Mall in St. Louis, where two policemen had died because of him and that was why he never came here.

  He glanced at a Toys "" Us. In the window a cardboard cutout of Dathar-IV stood over an army of warriors from the Lost Dimension. Corde looked at this for a moment then walked on until he found Floors for All. He wasn't more than ten feet inside before a sports-coated man all of twenty-one pounced. "I know who you are," the kid said. "You're a man with a naked floor."

  "I'm--"

  "Floors are just like you and me. We want new threads sometimes, so does your floor. It gets tired of the same old outfit. What's in your closet right now? A double-breasted suit, slacks, Bermudas, Izod shirts, ha, a khaki uniform or two, ha, am I right? Think how jealous your floor is."

  "No--"

  "You don't know what a difference new carpeting makes. To your peace of mind. To your marriage." He was a pit bull with a feeble blond mustache. "Do you want to talk about stress? What color's your carpet now?"

  "I'm not really interested--"

  "Bare floors? Whoa, let's talk stress."

  "No carpet. Just Amos Trout."

  "You're not here to buy carpet?"

  "No."

  "Detective?" Trout came out from the back room. They shook hands.

  "Hey, Sheriff," the kid said, "your police station have carpeting?"

  Trout waved him away.

  When they were seated by Trout's desk Corde said, "Eager."

  "How. No. Pain in the ass. But he sells carpet. He'll be down at the Nissan dealership in three years and probably selling Boeings by the time he's twenty-eight. I can't keep boys like that long."

  Corde asked, "You said you saw the ad in the Register?"

  "The wife and I were to Minnesota on vacation for a while after that murder happened. Just a coincidence but I saw it when I spread out the paper to shine her shoes. You shine your wife's shoes, Officer?"

  "They do love it, don't they? Now tell me, you were driving along Route 302 that night. That'd be Tuesday night, April 20?"

  "That's right. I was driving home. It was about ten, ten-thirty or so. That Tuesday was our acrylic pile sale and we'd done so well I'd had to stay late to log in the receipts and mark down which're checks, which're charges, which're cash, you get the picture. So I got me a Slurpee and was driving past the pond when this man suddenly runs into the road in front of me. What happened was that my left high beam's out of whack. And I don't think he could see me coming because there was this bush hanging out into the road that the county really oughta take care of."

  "You had a clear view?"

  "Sure did. There he was in front of me, leaping like a toad on July asphalt. Then he saw me and just froze and I swerved out of the way and that was that."

  "Was there a car nearby?"

  "Yessir. But I didn't see what kind."

  "Was it light or dark?"

  "The car? Lighter more'n darker."

  "You recall the plates?"

  "Don't even know if it had plates or was a truck or sedan. I just didn't notice, I was so concerned with not running that man over. What was left of the Slurpee went onto the floor and for the first time I was glad I got the maroon interior."

  "He was a man, not a boy?"

  "Not a boy, nope. Probably late thirties, early forties."

  "Could you describe him?"

  "Solid build but not fat, short hair, not real dark, combed straight back. He was wearing dark pants and a light jacket but the jacket was covered with dirt."

  "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, "I'll be home all day." Then she added, "We'll be home, I mean."

  Sarah ran outside. "I'll 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 watching 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 moral 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. Affect?"

  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 some 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 th
e 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 may've. 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."