It was a big square studio that obviously used to be somebody’s bedroom when the house was somebody’s single-family residence; no kitchen, but he had a small microwave on a kitchen table, and no private bathroom, although somebody had installed a small sink. There was a single bed with a blanket thrown over one sheet, and an armchair and a boom box for music, a small television with a VCR on top of it with a tape sticking partway out of it. Clothes and other belongings were heaped on top of each other in a single tiny closet like leaves stacked up in a compost pile. The whole place smelled strongly of the leftover pizza that lay open in its box on the table beside the microwave.
I strode to the drapes and pulled them open, revealing big old-fashioned windows. “It’d be halfway cheerful in here if he’d open these things.” I hooked both of my hands around the handle of one of the windows and tugged, opening it several inches. “Smell better, too, if he’d keep these open.” It wasn’t air-conditioned, but there was a floor fan in one of the corners, although it wasn’t turned on.
“Where is he?” Geof said, walking around restlessly, picking things up, laying them back down, as if he were searching for David under the papers, the books, the scattered messes of teenage stuff. “Where the hell is he at this hour?”
It was, by that time, almost seven-thirty A.M.
“Could be working,” I suggested. “Jogging, running, staying at a girlfriend’s, or maybe he never came home last night. Maybe he went to school early for some extracurricular activity.” I caught Geof’s sardonic expression and conceded, “Okay, not that. Should we be here? Should we be touching things, Geof?”
“What does should mean?”
I shook my head. When he wanted to be obtuse, no one could beat him at it. “Forget it. What do you want to do now?”
He had walked over to the television and was playing with the VCR.
“I want to see what he was watching.”
I waited, half expecting to see David’s mother show up on the screen again, but what did appear there made me exclaim out loud anyway … and step backward as if somebody had tried to touch me with something burning.
It was a man seated in a chair in a doorway with a white wall behind him. Looking straight into the camera, which meant he was also looking straight into my eyes.
Geof turned to stare at me when I cried out, and he opened his mouth to ask me what the matter was when the man on the television screen started to talk. With the man’s first words, Geof, too, stepped back from the picture as if he were suddenly afraid of it.
“My name is Dennis V. Clemmons,” the face on the screen said, although “snarled” was more like it. He was visibly sweating, and his eyes darted this way and that as if he were looking at a lot of different people. “I confess to coveting another man’s wife. I confess to being a thief. I confess to fornication and adultery. I confess to assaulting and grievously injuring another man’s wife. I confess to being a man of violence and murderous lusts. I accept my penance commensurate with the depth of my depravity, and I beg the forgiveness of my Lord Jesus Christ.”
This time, we heard the other voice more clearly.
“Good,” it said, like a kind and loving father, and it was definitely a man’s voice, that was also more clear this time. The same voice, the same word, the same soothing, encouraging, approving tone, a voice full of forgiveness and … love.
“Jesus Christ,” Geof whispered.
“Take the tape,” I said before I could think about it.
As a father, he obeyed me on impulse, grabbing the tape out of the machine; as a cop, he turned to me with the plastic box in his hand and said, “What am I doing, Jenny?”
“The right thing,” I assured him, adding quietly to myself as we hurried to the door, “I hope.”
We walked out with the key, too.
That was the third thing I’d stolen or helped to steal in the last two days, counting the tape of David’s mother making her confession and Clemmons making his. Now the key. It was quickly getting difficult to tell the cops from the robbers in our family.
At the front door, the landlady poked her head out.
Geof thrust one of his cards at her. “Call me when he comes home, will you?”
She nodded vigorously, and took the card.
“You notice the priority of sins here?” I demanded furiously as I slammed the door of the Jeep. “If you’re a man, the first deadly sin is coveting somebody’s wife, and next in line in importance is stealing, and then you get to screwing, and only then do you get around to admitting, oh, yeah, by the way, I beat up a woman and injured her for life.”
“And what was his penance, I wonder?”
“Not harsh enough,” I retorted.
Geof glanced at me as he accelerated away from the curb. “You don’t think the death penalty is tough enough?”
“We’ve got to drive through a McDonald’s anyway,” Geof said a block away,“’cause I can’t face any more of this without coffee.”
I directed him to the one where David worked.
He went in to get our coffee and talk to the manager while I waited in the car.
“Think about that tape,” he told me, “and when I get back, tell me everything you can remember about it.”
Five minutes later, he was sliding back under his steering wheel and handing over a white cup with a lid to me. “They fired him yesterday after he took off on the cycle with you, and they haven’t seen him since. Has it occurred to you that he might have been setting up an alibi with us last night?”
“No, it hadn’t.” I stared at him.
“Who better to alibi you than a cop and his wife?”
“But not if the cop is also your father.”
He shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t think that far.”
“If he’s the kid and we’re the grown-ups, how come he’s so smart?”
“Tell me your impression of that last tape.”
As we sat in the McDonald’s parking lot, I recited for him: “He looked younger than he did when Sabrina and I saw him yesterday. On the tape, I thought he looked angry enough to kill somebody, but I also thought he looked really scared, didn’t you?”
“Yes. Go on.”
“He was wearing a long white-sleeved shirt and white pants and white socks, but no shoes. There was a white wall, like the one in the video of Judy. The phrasing of what he said was similar to what she said, but it sounded insincere when he said it, as if somebody was making him say the words. I thought Judy sounded as if she meant every word of it even though it sounded stilted, like a script. I think she was sitting in a yellow kitchen chair, but I couldn’t see the chair he was in. This time, I could see the floor, and it was wood. I can’t remember what color.”
“White. That kind of whitish wood stain that’s popular.”
“Oh. That’s all I can remember except for the voice at the end. Geof, this tune it sounded kind of familiar to me. Did it to you?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, maybe it’s only because I heard it last night on the other tape, but it wasn’t just the voice, it was also that one word, and the way he said it: ‘Good.’ ” I rolled it over on my tongue, tasting for familiarity: “ ‘Good.’ ”
“You caught some other things I didn’t,” Geof said as we turned in the direction of the old fishermen’s houses downtown, where Dennis Clemmons had lived. “But I caught one thing you didn’t …”
“Which was?”
“Did you see the way he moved about halfway through?”
“I don’t know, what do you mean, what did he do?”
“He raised his left leg and put that foot on his right knee.”
“So?” And then I got it. “He could move his legs! This tape was taken before he went into the wheelchair!”
He nodded. “After Judy. Before the chair.”
“My God,” I said, appalled at my next thought. “The penance?”
“What?”
“His injury, maybe that was the penance he
paid. Geof,” I said on a sudden inspiration, “did you see white walls like that in Ron’s parents’ house when you were there yesterday?”
“No, but I only saw a couple of the rooms.”
“Didn’t we hear that they’re religious fanatics?”
“I’ll talk to Lee about it.”
He was about to get that chance soon, because we were pulling onto Clemmons’s street. Geof parked behind a police car—we can’t call them “black and whites” anymore, because here in Port Frederick, they’re baby blue with navy blue designs on them—and he threw the car into idle and turned to look at me. “I’m staying here. Take my car, go see Ginger, just like you planned on doing, but don’t go home until I can go with you. Do me a favor when you get to Ginger’s: Call the high school, see if the kid’s in school today. I’ll drop by when I’m through here, so I’ll see you in just a little while, all right?”
“What about the videotape?”
“Put it in the glove compartment.” His smile was quick, cynical, unhappy. “Nobody’ll ever look there.”
“I love you,” I said as he got out of the car.
“Great, that’ll keep me going when they throw me in jail.”
He slammed the car door, and holding his McDonald’s coffee cup, he loped off toward Sergeant Lee Meredith, who was waiting for him alone at the scene.
I remained on the block long enough to finish my coffee and to stare at the scene of Clemmons’s death until it sent queasy chills throughout my body. The sliding glass door to his second-floor apartment was wide open and the actual ramp was still standing as it had been when Sabrina and I had seen it for the first time the day before. But where there had been a solid-wood first-floor landing then, now there was only a gaping space where a couple of long boards hung down into empty space. It looked to me as if Dennis Clemmons had slid back his door, rolled himself out confidently into the wide space that was the first landing that had been especially built for him by his friends, and instead of a trustworthy wooden floor to support him there had been only empty air, and he had fallen helplessly two tall stories to the ground, riding down all the way in his wheelchair.
It was a horrible way to die.
It made my legs so weak even to think about it that I had to wait a few more minutes before I could get my feet to work properly on the floor pedals of the Jeep.
The gas pedal required even more substantial reinforcement before I drove much further, so I stopped by my Amoco station and pulled into the full-service bay. I just didn’t feel like moving from where I sat.
“Morning, Jenny! Got yourself a mouse in this car, too?”
“Oh, hi, Joe. Would you fill it with Silver, please?”
“Drinks gasoline, does it? The mouse?”
I worked up a smile for him.
He laughed as he pulled a nozzle down from a tank. “Check everything?”
“Please, Joe.”
I slumped down and leaned the back of my head against the seat and hoped Joe wouldn’t think I was being rude because I didn’t get out of the car to talk to him. Silly thought: You don’t have to get “out” of a Jeep; with the top off, you’re already half out of it, and people just naturally carry on conversations with you, especially at stoplights if you look their way. I closed my eyes, thinking how odd it felt to meet a man one day and learn he died the next. I’d have to call Sabrina to let her know.
And who was the man, Dennis, who died?
I reviewed the facts and the theories: Juvenile delinquent, adult criminal, married man, divorced man, stepfather, ex-stepfather, laborer, unemployed laborer, convict, ex-convict, able-bodied soldier, disabled veteran, and all-’round bad apple. This was the man that Judy had left her husband to marry? I suddenly wondered: Could Ron Mayer have been even worse? Was there a possibility that he was so awful that even Dennis Clemmons had looked like “up” to her?
Yeah, but his son loved him, so how bad could Ron be?
Kids will love anybody, my mind reminded me, and they’ll persist in doing it against all odds.
When I opened my eyes, Joe was right in front of me, carefully sponging down the windshield. I realized I had to make an effort. After all, Joe always did, whatever the weather, however many customers were waiting to be helped, no matter whether I stopped by to pick up a map or called to ask him to send a kid to recharge a dead battery.
“Why am I so privileged today, Joe?”
“Hmm?” He looked through the glass at me, smiling as always. “What’s that?”
“To what do I owe the honor of having the owner himself clean my windshield?”
He laughed and rubbed with his clean red rag at a bug stuck to the glass. “Shorthanded. One of my men got married over the weekend, and he’s off honeymooning. Another kid quit, went to work for a car wash, decided rubbing down wet cars was more fun than standing out here in the sun pumping gas, I guess.” He grinned at me. “That must be hard for you to imagine, I mean what could be more fun than doing this? There!” He lifted his rag and beamed at the shining clean spot. “Got the little bugger!”
“I know a kid …”
What was I saying! Shut my mouth …
“Yeah?”
“I can’t really vouch for him, I don’t know anything about his skills or anything like that, but I do know he needs work.”
“How old?”
“Seventeen.”
“Sure, have him come by, I’ll interview him.”
Good, I wish somebody could, and would you please ask him where he was last night when his stepfather was getting killed, and find out if he painted graffiti on his own house, and ask him …
“If I can find him.”
“Whatever. I’m always glad to get a kid who’ll work. Do you think he knows anything about cars?”
“He’s a seventeen-year-old boy, Joe.”
He laughed as he wiped his hands. “You’d be surprised.”
Not by anything this kid does, not anymore …
“He has a motorcycle.”
“Well, that doesn’t make him a bad kid. But it does make it a little more likely that he can tell an oil filter from a spark plug.” He smiled at me again. “Be right back with your change, Jenny.”
Change. Just what we needed, more change in our lives … So, well, hey … maybe David would need a job … to earn the money to pay us back for the bail the judge would set when he released the boy into Geof’s custody while he awaited trial on charges of killing his …
“Whoa.” I sat up, shook my head, grasped the steering wheel to steady myself. “Just … whoa.”
I accepted my change from Joe’s clean hands and drove off under the benediction of his friendly wave. He was a walking commercial, Joe was—a commercial for believing in those angels that my friend and our town’s mayor, Mary Eberhardt, believed in. Always willing, infinitely patient, smiling and kind, Joe practically wore a sign that said, I love to help.
Angels … love to help …
Those words were lighting sparks in my brain, but unfortunately it was already so fried that nothing more this morning could light a fire in it or under me. I put eager Amoco angels out of my mind and drove with extreme caution to Ginger’s gigantic house in the many-mansioned part of town. I knew I was tired and upset, knew I couldn’t have passed a safe driver’s test at the moment, knew I’d better pull to full stops at every sign, look both ways—twice—at every opportunity, and give other drivers a wide berth for the sake of their well-being. My slow, careful route took me past the cul-de-sac where Geof had said that David’s grandparents lived, and on a whim, I drove slowly around it, taking a covert look at the property, hoping to get a glimpse of them, but all I got was a duty look from a neighbor.
“What’d you think this is anyway?” I muttered as I left him in my rearview mirror. “Your private street?”
But at least my annoyance shot some adrenaline into my system. I picked up speed to Ginger’s.
17
GINGER STILL HAD ON HER PAJAMAS—A sh
ortie set that made her look like some little girl’s cuddly doll—when she answered the doorbell that I had to ring three times to wake her up. Her hair stuck up in thick clumps all over her head, just like those dolls look after little girls have handled them for a few days. Her cheeks were flushed from sleep and from running down the stairs from her bedroom on the second floor, and her mouth was caught in an O, just like one of those dolls that was always, hopefully, waiting for a bottle. I could just picture her stuck under some little girl’s arm, plump legs in the air, head hanging down behind the child’s rump. She would have been the treasured one, the favorite. The proof of her affection for me was that she was managing to look pleased as well as surprised to see me standing there so unaccountably early for our appointment.
“What are you doing here?” she blurted, then she found her more mannerly self. Laughing at her own tactlessness, Ginger amended that to, “I mean, hi, Jenny! Did I oversleep? Are you early? What time is it anyway?”
“I’m sorry, Ginger. Could I use your phone? Make some coffee, fix myself some breakfast, use your makeup, borrow your comb. Have you got an extra toothbrush?”
“Sure.” She held the door open for me and peered closely at me as I walked past her. “All of the above. Jenny, you’re hysterical, aren’t you? And you look like shit, unless there’s a new fashion in plaid with stripes that nobody told me about, which, God knows, is entirely possible. What’s the matter with your hair? Why does it look like mine usually does? What’s the matter with you? Why are you here so early? Did you and Geof have a fight or something?”
“We never fight” I kept right on walking—stalking might be a better description—toward her big beautiful new kitchen, the one that Mayer Construction Company had renovated for her when they built her new addition the year before. Eventually, I knew, I’d get there, I’d reach that damned kitchen, even in the endless halls of her enormous home. Eventually, I’d eat something, my blood sugar would return to normal, I’d drink more coffee, my caffeine level would return to normal, I’d smooth down my hair, my clothes, my emotions. Eventually, I’d have a normal life, like a normal woman married to a normal man. Eventually, someday, maybe not this day. “We don’t fight. We debate. We discuss. We never fight. Did you know I got a perfect idea for a gag gift for him for his fortieth birthday? I’m going to have one of those glamour photographs made of myself and give it to him like a serious gift that I expect him to put up on his desk at the police station. What a hoot, huh? Toast, do you have any whole wheat toast, maybe a couple of eggs, a quart of orange juice, a pound or two of bacon?”