The Quiet Streets of Winslow (33 page)

“What can you tell us?” Dad said.

“To start with, there are people besides Nate we've been looking at. I believe I've told you that, Lee, or implied it. In any case we have a good deal of circumstantial evidence, which wouldn't be so problematic
if we weren't looking at more than one person. So we have complications. That's not unusual. Unless you have somebody caught in the act, or a clear confession, nothing about a case is simple, and that's true here. It's doubly true. As a result the investigation is now at a standstill when it comes to the legalities of the justice system.”

“Which means what?”

“Without more evidence we can't prosecute. We can't move forward, on anybody, with what we have.”

“What do you mean, more evidence?” Dad said. “What kind of evidence do you expect at this point?”

“I'm not sure I'd use the word
expect
. But it could happen. Things cool down, and somebody comes forward, somebody who knows something or has something or comes across something. Even a confession is possible, although in my experience few people feel that guilty.”

“So what you're saying is—” Mom started to say.

“He doesn't know, Julie,” Dad said. “There's no certainty about anything. For all we know a stranger killed Jody Farnell.”

“It's not that open-ended,” Sam said. “We have a fair amount . . . well, no point in going into it. I can't anyway.”

“But it's possible that somebody you didn't know about,” Dad said, “or couldn't have known about, did this thing.”

“That word,
possible,”
Sam said, “is tricky. But yes. I suppose so.”

The kitchen door was open. Soon it would be summer, I thought, and this would be in the past, all that had gone on and was going on now. With every day we woke up to, this would be further away, and we would be closer to a time when we wouldn't talk about it anymore and maybe we wouldn't think about it. I kept thinking that the whole time they were talking.

“But what you're bringing up, Sam, is just evidence and legalities,” Mom said. “What do you think happened?”

“Julie,” Dad said.

“Listen,” Sam said. “It doesn't matter what I think. In fact, I don't much think. I collect information and see what picture emerges. You believe one thing one day and another thing the next. You say something somebody else takes on faith, and it turns out to be wrong. That's the biggest danger.”

“The problem with the question is that it's irrelevant,” Dad said.

“You could put it that way,” Sam said.

“But how would you put it?” Mom asked him.

“The way I just did, Julie.”

“We just get on with our lives, finally, and leave it behind us,” Dad said.

“Yes,” Sam said, “to the extent that you can.”

“Meaning everything will be different,” Mom said.

“Meaning I don't know what,” Sam said. “Honestly.”

He looked at the piece of cake on his plate and broke off a piece but didn't eat it.

“What does Nate get told?” Dad said. “Unless or until there's more evidence, et cetera?”

“No. If he asks, I'll say the least I can.”

Sam looked at me as if to make sure I understood. Then he rose to leave. Mom wrapped up slices of cake for him, and Dad walked him outside.

T
HE RING WAS
wrapped in a Kleenex shoved into my cowboy boot at the back of my closet. Every night since finding it I had lain awake
going through my choices: I could give it to Sam Rush and ask him not to tell Nate where he had gotten it. But I knew that Sam would have to tell the truth in court, if things went that far. I could give the ring to my father and leave it up to him to make the decision and ask him to leave me out of it, which probably he would do. Or I could call Nate saying I needed to tell him something important, and he could leave a message for me on Billy's cell; Nate knew I didn't have one. Or I could put the ring back in the Airstream and leave it for somebody else to find.

Each time I went through the choices I believed there had to be more that weren't occurring to me and that I needed to wait for those to appear. But they never did. I didn't know what the ring meant, but now, after what Sam had told us, it seemed he was waiting for it or something like it.

I locked the bedroom door, got out the ring, put it in the pocket of the jeans I would wear in the morning, folded the jeans, and placed them under the bed. Then I sat and thought, while in the background I heard my parents in their room talking quietly, arguing, then going silent and starting again.

I called Billy and asked if he wanted to go to the Indian Ruins in New River tomorrow. “Can your mom drive?” I said. “That way we can bring your dad's stuff with us. Otherwise we'll have to take Damien.”

Once that was arranged I knocked on my parents' door and told them our plans, and they said fine, as long as I was home by six. Then I went back into the bedroom and sat on the bed, listening to the sounds outside and to the television in the den. It wasn't on for long. Mom went in, then Damien came into the bedroom with the dogs coming in after him. After that everything was quiet, including my parents in their universe on the other side of the wall.

B
ILLY'S MOTHER PICKED
us up from school, looking heavier around the middle than she used to, although if I hadn't known, I wouldn't have noticed. She said she would be back at five thirty. “Don't make me wait,” she said. “I'll worry.” She had gotten us provisions, as she called them, which we put in Billy's backpack; that was where the pot was stashed. I left my backpack in the car.

Then we were on our own, hiking down into and out of the shooting range, then across the stretch of open grazing. The sun was hot and fifty yards or so from us a bull was grazing.

“Want to go fuck with it?” Billy said.

“You go. I'll watch.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

As we walked we talked about what we would do that summer. I would work for my dad at the vet clinic four days a week, and Billy would work at the grocery store for Cy the asshole. That was how Billy referred to him, and it was catching. I had come close to saying it in the car with his mother but managed to stop myself.

We made the steep climb to the ruins, then sat in one of the enclosures and lit up the joint. It wasn't easy in the wind. There was nobody around but us—weekends were when people came. Cumulus clouds were billowing up over the big rock formation at the southern edge of New River. It was called Indian Head or used to be. There was a new name nobody could remember. We inhaled the pot as deeply as we could and held it as long as we could, coughing as if we were acting out a Cheech and Chong movie; we used to watch them with Billy's father.

“I don't know where we'll get pot now,” Billy said. “I thought about calling Dad's girlfriend, but I hardly know her. Who knows what she might do.”

“Just ask at school,” I said. “Somebody will know.”

“I'll have to get used to that.”

“Well, it's not like your dad was giving it to you.”

“He knew I helped myself to it,” Billy said. “So he got extra. That was how it worked with us.”

He lay back on the rocky ground with his backpack under his head, while I looked south over New River, then west at the interstate, where cars and trucks were going somewhere to do something that seemed a thousand miles away from being important.

“I don't suppose your folks would let me live in the Airstream,” Billy said.

“They might, but your mom wouldn't.”

“When's Nate coming back?”

“No idea,” I said.

Billy closed his eyes, and I got up and walked north through one rock enclosure after another until there weren't any anymore, and I was standing at the edge of the steep rock face that led into the mountains. The ring was in my pocket, and I took it out and looked at the coral stone and the silver around it. Decisions you make can affect the rest of your life, my father said, but it was only now that I understood what that meant. Like a lot of things, you had to have it happen first. But even if I had understood beforehand, I'm not sure I would have done anything differently. Because the decision didn't seem to have been made by me. From what I could see, life sometimes told you what to do instead of the other way around. Maybe that was how it was for everybody.

I threw the ring as far as I could and waited to hear the ping of it landing, but the wind was loud, and it was so small. Nobody would ever find it.

acknowledgments

T
O
J
ACK
S
HOEMAKER
, Megan Fishmann, Maren Fox, Liz Parker, Kelly Winton, and everybody else at Counterpoint Press, thank you for your exceptional professionalism, artfulness, attention to detail, kindness, and enthusiasm. It was wonderful to work with you.

My heartfelt thanks to Georges and Anne Borchardt for their expertise and unfailing belief in me. I owe them more than I can say.

A thank you to the Yavapai County deputy sheriffs, Dennis McGrane of the Yavapai County Attorneys' Office, Alabama State Trooper David Jones, and Len Williamson for their invaluable help. Any mistakes in the novel are due only to me.

My continued thanks to the Whiting Foundation. I remain grateful every day. My sincere thanks to Mark Siegert, for all his help and support. And a thank you to La Posada, where parts of this book were written.

Above all, I thank Miller—for his honesty and humor, for his doing more than his share, and for twenty years of married love.