Happy Policeman (10 page)

Chapter Twenty

“Possible locations of the kids’ bodies,” Bo said, marking the points off in his notebook. His chestnut hair was dark with rain, and a lock of it had fallen into his eyes. DeWitt barely listened. “One, the trunk of Loretta’s car . . .”

Janet might have killed Loretta, but how could she put a knife into baby fat? Strangle bright round faces to a dull gray?

DeWitt’s own childhood had been so secure that it hadn’t prepared him for the trouble that would come. Bo was prepared: his mother an alcoholic, his father vanished before he was six, one sister a suicide, a brother in Huntsville Prison.

“. . . but Loretta’s car might have been in the garage when the Torku destroyed the house,” Bo was saying. “Okay. Two, the well . . .”

DeWitt’s daddy had been the perfect father, active in Boy Scouts and Little League. Yet Bo, despite his childhood, had grown up more self-assured than he.

Suddenly Bo stopped scribbling. “Where are you headed?”

“You ever think about when you were a kid?” DeWitt eased the car onto the two-lane asphalt highway, but didn’t accelerate. Blue-bellied clouds were scudding south, leaving the sky a newly washed azure plate.

“Not much. Where you headed?”

“Just poking around.” DeWitt pulled up behind a fire-damaged Dairy Queen and stopped.

The windows of the fast-food restaurant were boarded. Pooled rainwater pattered through a hole in the sagging eaves. He rolled down his window and heard music-as faint as that on Granger’s radio. “Remember Dandy Mill? The one that burned? We used to hang out there. Did you?”

“Burned down the rest of the way before I was big enough to bike out there.”

“What if the kids aren’t dead?” Bo looked up in surprise.

“Let’s get out. Don’t close your door.”

The two men crept to the rear of the building. The back of the ruined restaurant smelled of old smoke and stale urine. Over the persistent beat of rock music came a soprano giggle; a baritone laugh.

DeWitt stepped over the sooted threshold, his boots grinding charred litter.

“Preston?” a boy’s voice called.

DeWitt froze.

“Hey, Preston! You bring the stuff?”

“He’s trying to scare us,” someone said to someone else.

Three paces, and DeWitt was at the rear of the counter. Around a table sat five teenagers, cans of whipped cream on the grimy Formica, paper sacks in their hands.

Tammy put her can on the table with a rattling clunk. “Daddy, I can explain.” Her voice shook with inappropriate glee.

Bo walked to the table. DeWitt switched off the tape player.

“Get up,” Bo said.

Tammy, a small thing of pink and gold. Her face looked so much like Janet’s when Janet was a girl that it brought a catch to DeWitt’s throat.

Bo shouted, “On your feet!”

The three boys rose with the awkwardness of inebriation and youth.

“Empty your pockets.”

The boys glanced at one another. The girls snorted laughter into cupped hands.

“Now!”

DeWitt made his way to Bo’s side. Tammy wouldn’t meet his gaze.

The restaurant had the sordid, littered look of all secret places. Stubs of candles squatted on the tables. A tattered mattress lay in one corner. Greasy food wrappers were scattered on the floor.

There wasn’t much in the boys’ pockets. Candy. Pocket knives. A condom.

The red foil package of the condom gleamed in the light from the poorly boarded windows. DeWitt stared at it, mesmerized, until Bo swept it off the table.

“Any marijuana?”

The merriment evaporated. Heads down, the boys flicked cautious glances at Bo. “No, sir,” one said.

Eddie. DeWitt remembered the kid’s name. A sixteen-year-old. Maybe Janet wasn’t the one having an affair. Maybe sixteen-year-old Eddie had made it in the family Suburban with DeWitt’s thirteen-year-old daughter.

A humming silence pressed its thumbs into DeWitt’s ears. Distantly he heard Bo ask, “Glue? You boys got any glue to sniff?”

“No, sir.”

“You come in here, sniff laughing gas, and then go out and break streetlights? Do you? You spraypaint stuff on the walls in town?”

A girl tittered.

Bo whirled to her. “You think this is funny?”

Her smile died. “No, sir.”

“A nitrous oxide high doesn’t last for more than a minute or two. You’re sober. Act like it. Get up. I said
get up!”

The girl nearly fell getting to her feet.

A sound behind them. Preston Nix was standing in the doorway, a box of whipped cream in his hands. The carton fell with a crash. He ran.

“I could arrest you. You know that?” Bo asked.

They nodded. Tammy’s graceful neck was like her mother’s. Thirteen years old and there had been a condom in the boy’s pocket. Wadding leaked from the mattress like guts from a road kill. There were yellow stains on the ticking.

“There’s a murderer loose around here. He probably killed two kids already. We know he killed their mother. And you kids are out sniffing laughing gas?”

They made incoherent sounds of apology.

“Y’all go home. Y’all just go on home. But I’ll be watching you. Remember that.”

The kids filed past. DeWitt’s hand closed on Eddie’s arm.

“Wittie,” Bo warned. “Let him go.”

DeWitt caught the front of the boy’s jacket and jerked him up until they were face-to-face. The boy went rigid. DeWitt remembered the low-tide stench of sex in Billy’s hideaway; he thought he could smell it here, too, like a haunting.

Bo’s horrified cry of, “Wittie! No!”

DeWitt’s blow was quick and hard; his fist went deep into Eddie’s belly, and the force of it lifted the boy to his toes.

Something pulled on his shoulder. DeWitt reacted faster than thought. His hand snapped to the side, and hit with a wet, firm smack.

Tammy stumbled backward.

Bo caught her and turned, placing his own body between Tammy and DeWitt.

DeWitt stared at his knuckles, wondering how his arm had moved without his willing it, wondering where the blood had come from. Suddenly he was aware of the boy retching at his feet, of the dust motes in the streaks of dirty sunshine from the windows. He saw Bo with his arms around Tammy, and saw the new bright red on her lips.

Eddie scurried out of the Dairy Queen.

“Honey?” DeWitt reached for his daughter. She cowered.

Bo took a hankerchief out of his pocket and daubed at her mouth. “It’s okay. It’s all over. It’s all over now.”

DeWitt watched his daughter cry. It had been easier when she was young, when she came home with no more than a skinned knee, a stubbed toe. When comfort was measured in Band-aids and ice cream.

Now his hands weren’t clean enough to touch her. “Honey, daddy didn’t mean it. Baby? I didn’t mean to do that. Would you like some ice cream, punkin? Would you?”

Between sobs, she nodded. And DeWitt wondered, at this late and sour date, how sweet he could make the world.

Chapter Twenty-One

On the drive to town DeWitt listened to the sniffling of Tammy in the back seat, the soothing croons of Bo. Bo more than anyone knew the lure of excessive force.

His photo in the Dallas papers, the official portrait in police blue. With those disarming eyes he’d looked like a child playing dress-up; but then you noticed the ominous set of the jaw.

Did you mean to?
DeWitt had asked during the preliminary interview.

Bo’s expression hadn’t changed; but his hand, curled on the armrest, tightened into a fist.
The grand jury no-billed.

DeWitt was surprised at the calm, even tone of the reply. But then Bo had had practice repeating his innocence: to the press, to Internal Affairs, at the Coroner’s hearing.

That wasn’t what I asked you. Did you mean to kill him?

The only clue to Bo’s tension was a slight tremor in his hand.
I got separated from my partner. My fault. That never should have happened. A fistfight started, and I tried to break it up.
Emotionless. As if he had discovered that the key to indifference was repetition.

How did you feel toward Jerry Hardesty?

Feel? The round blue eyes widened. The victim was intoxicated, belligerent. The autopsy proved his blood alcohol level was
—

He was a faggot.

The tip of Bo’s tongue traced his top lip.

They were all faggots. The great Oak Lawn Halloween, everyone in drag. How did you feel about that?

Bo sat in the line of DeWitt’s questioning like a frog in a gigger’s light.

One of the witnesses was dressed like Marilyn Monroe, if I recall,
DeWitt told him
. And Hardesty himself was in leather, like a biker, only he was wearing a strand of pearls. Did that repulse you, I guess is what I want to know. Some men feel uncomfortable around that sort of thing. Frightened of it, I suppose. How did you feel?

At last DeWitt saw he had gotten past the recorded loop into thoughts too terrible to be voiced.
I felt the bone break.

What?

Bo opened his fist. There were half-moon prints of fingernails in the pale skin.
When I had him in the chokehold, I thought everything was in control. Then l felt the bone break.

It was only after Bo was hired that DeWitt learned Jerry Hardesty’s death hadn’t been the accident everyone, including Bo, believed it to be. The chokehold had been a symptom. It wasn’t that Bo felt above the law; but that he believed himself inseparable from it.

DeWitt parked on Main. They climbed out of the car. He wanted to tell Tammy he was sorry, but she wasn’t looking at him. Her head was down, her blond hair cascaded on either side of her face. A purple bruise was blossoming on her cheek.

“DeWitt,” Bo called.

DeWitt stopped and turned. Bo was standing by an old station wagon. Uneven white streaks ran down the red upholstery, and white blotches marred the dash.

“Chicken shit,” Bo said.

“What?”

“Miz Wilson’s car.”

“Let’s go have ice cream, “ DeWitt said abruptly.

“But—”

“I don’t want to think about it right now. We’ll find out what she’s up to later. First things first. Let’s go get Tammy her ice cream.” He started up the sidewalk fast, Bo and Tammy in his wake.

They passed the bank and entered the next open doorway. The drugstore aisles were empty, the front counters unmanned. Purposefully, DeWitt made his way to the soda fountain.

“. . . prayed about it.” Pastor Jimmy’s master-of-ceremonies voice, louder than the ubiquitous Muzak, drifted over a wall of products for feminine protection. “The chief of police is an adulterer, and he has joined the forces of Satan.”

Blue boxes of Stay-Free Maxi Pads at his shoulder, DeWitt stopped.
Adulterer.

Now Doc spoke. “Bo’s more used to writing up traffic tickets and killing queers than looking for a damned murderer. And ever since Bomb Day, DeWitt’s been cozying up to them Torku like a newborn looking for a tit.”

“Them just sitting there,” a female voice put in, quavering with indignation. “Sitting there, mind, while I’m up to my ears in that poisoned coffee. Who’s going to get them damned boys out of my well water, I want to know.”

Adulterer. Had Tammy heard? Had she understood?

“Well, now,” Doc said reasonably, “you just go on and stay with your people in town, Miz Wilson. That’s the best thing. I’ll get a sample of your water in a few days and see just what’s there.”

“In the meantime . . .” Pastor Jimmy began.

“Yeah, in the meantime,” Doc said, “we do what you suggested. We’ll get rid of as many of the Torku as we can. Soon as the sun’s down. And for God’s sake, Miz Wilson, will you not say anything to DeWitt-less or that wind-up rent-a-cop?”

“After prayer service,” Jimmy said. “It must happen after prayer service, so that we are sure the Lord is with us. And you must come, Doctor, to be anointed. You and all your people. Otherwise you cannot have my support. Around nine, then?”

A clunk. Someone had set a glass down on the counter hard. “Nine.” Doc sounded annoyed.

Muzak was playing a lethargic “Cecilia” as the three conspirators walked down the neighboring aisle, through the antacids, and out the door.

DeWitt heard the door close, the voices fade. “What kind, Tammy?’ he snapped.

“Huh?”

“Goddamn it! What flavor ice cream do you want?”

Tears welled. “You still mad at me, Daddy?”

DeWitt’s legs went weak. “Oh no, baby. No.” He took hold of her shoulders and pulled her close. Her hair smelled of shampoo and smoke. “Daddy’s not mad.”

There was no reason for his anger. The condom in Eddie’s pocket was old, like the one DeWitt had aged in his wallet through four years of high school. It wasn’t careful planning, but wishful thinking.

A clang startled them both. Bo was no longer in the aisle.

“Bo?”

“Here.” The answer came from the soda fountain. When DeWitt and Tammy walked around the end of the Kotex aisle, they found him, grim-faced, making three sundaes.

“Let’s eat the damned ice cream and get out.” Bo shoved one chocolate-on-chocolate sundae toward Tammy and another toward DeWitt.

DeWitt kept his head down, reluctant to meet Bo’s gaze.
The police chief is an adulterer.
Even now Bo must be wondering who. He would never suspect Hattie.

“Eat,” Bo said. “Then maybe we can go tell the Torku they’re about to be murdered.” DeWitt pushed the sundae away, untouched. Until today he had believed himself better than Bo. That was the reason he hired him. DeWitt might have a Spring’s quick temper, but he’d never injured a suspect. Never before raised a hand to a child, particularly one of his own. Had wanted, even at the cost of the law, to protect the town.

Bo finished his scoop of vanilla, rinsed the dish, and left the rest for the Torku to clean. “Come on. Let’s take Tammy home.”

“You drive.”

With a questioning glance, Bo took the keys.

They walked to the car, Tammy licking ice cream off the swollen side of her lip. It looked as though the bruise was hurting her.

When they arrived at the house, Bo insisted on accompanying Tammy inside. Janet came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She halted when she saw the three of them standing in the den. The towel dropped.

Denny appeared at the door behind his mother, a bag of Cheetos in his hand.

Janet rushed forward, looked at her daughter’s bruise. “What happened to you, honey?”

“I fell down and hurt myself, and Daddy brought me home.”

Janet turned to DeWitt, and he had the sudden urge to confess. To tell her of his own brutality, of his own affair. And that he knew of hers.

“Tammy fell,” Bo said. “She just fell down. Maybe you can put some ice on it or something.”

Janet looked at Bo, lips tightening. Bo stared evenly back. Then she put out a hand to her daughter and told her to come on.

Denny, a ring of Cheeto-orange around his mouth, was the last to leave the room, He lingered at the door, disappointed that the event had been defused.

When he was gone, Bo told DeWitt, “Okay. Now we talk to the Torku.”