This Is What I Want (19 page)

THE CHIEF

Adair was behind her desk, winnowing her e-mail, when Sakota came in.

“Hey, Phil, listen to this.” She tugged her glasses down her nose until she had the right angle.

Chief Underwood: We’ve had a look at the dog your man fished out of the river. We dug two .22-caliber bullets out of the carcass. Looks like we have a different problem. Will advise when we know more. Please pass on our condolences to the owner.

“Somebody shot that dog, Phil.”

She looked up. Sakota’s face looked as if he’d swallowed sour milk.

“What?” she said.

Sakota walked closer.

“I wasn’t going to say anything about it,” he said.

“What?”

“I was just up by the old Zelnov place—you know, up by the irrigation canal?”

“Yeah,” Adair said.

“I was making rounds through the neighborhood and Gabe Bowman comes running up, flagging me down,” he said. “He said there were some kids up there looking to steal a dog.”

“Who? What kids?”

“Wait a second,” Sakota said.

“Where are they now?”

“Adair, wait.” Sakota mopped his forehead with the back of his hand. “I went up there. They weren’t doing anything. I mean, I think they were drinking, but I couldn’t have cited them for anything. I just, you know, tried to throw a little scare into them and told them to clear out of there. Which they did.”

“Who?” Adair said.

Sakota spat out the names.

Adair came around the desk. “So what’s this Bowman kid’s story? What was he doing up there?”

“He said he was just sneaking around, you know, having some fun, and he overheard these kids talking about grabbing the dog.”

“He was sneaking around alone?”

“That’s what he said.”

“You believe that?” she asked.

Sakota shrunk a bit at the question. “Well, shit, Adair, I didn’t really think about whether I believed it or not.”

“Maybe he has something against these boys.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Bowman’s pretty well liked, from what I understand.”

“You know,” Adair said, “I see him running around with Omar Smothers a good little bit.”

“There wasn’t anybody up there but me, Bowman, and those four boys,” Sakota said.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Adair paced the floor, looking for answers in the ceiling blocks. “I don’t have a good feeling about this. What about you?”

“I’m sweating like a whore in church, Adair. You know I don’t feel good about it.”

She liked the answer. On the general subject of Officer Sakota and his readiness to cop to fear and unease, she remained undecided. That could be a real liability for a police officer. But it made him a good, forthright person. She’d take that, for now.

“I want to talk to that Rexford kid,” she said.

Sakota shook his head as though he were trying to clear water from his ears. “No. Come on. On what basis?”

Adair had to give him that one, although she suspected it fell more in the area of concern about who Rexford’s daddy was than it did her lack of probable cause.

“OK,” she said. “I’ll talk to Bowman.”

Sakota exhaled in a short blast. “Well, good luck. He was pissed. I drove him home and he was all, ‘I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have minded my own business.
’ ”

Adair sat across from Gabe Bowman in his basement. His mother and father stood in the doorway, observing. Adair ran her eyes along the walls, noting the Marvel Comics posters. In the corner, by the TV, sat three kinds of game consoles. On the other side of the room, an electric guitar stood lonely in its stand. The tools of exquisite distraction. At once, she felt all of her thirty-four years and the crushing quaintness of how she’d filled her own teenage hours with sports and visits to the public library.

She’d already gone round and round with the boy. He’d said maybe he was mistaken, maybe he only thought he heard what he’d reported to Officer Sakota. She’d coaxed him, pressed at the soft spots of his story—“Are you sure you were alone, Gabe?”—but he’d held steady. Only once had he shown some indication of where his fear might lie. “You know, those guys saw me in the car. They know who turned them in.” That stung her. Dumb move by Sakota. He should have just sent Gabe on his way.

“OK,” Adair said. “I’m going to let you get back to it. If you think of anything else, let me know, OK?”

“Yeah, OK,” Gabe said.

The Bowmans walked her upstairs to the front door. Fred stepped outside onto the porch with her.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I think he’s scared.”

“Yeah.”

“I think there’s probably not much more I can do than keep an eye on the Rexford kid.”

“He’s holding something back,” Fred said. “But you have to understand. Gabe is a good kid—”

“I don’t doubt that, Mr. Bowman.”

“Let me finish. He’s a good kid, but he’s a little out of step here, and that’s hard in such a small place. There were almost three thousand kids at my high school. It was impersonal, yeah, but you could find your crowd. Gabe doesn’t really have a crowd. And there’s this other thing.”

“He’s black,” she said.

“Yeah. I’m not the kind of guy to hide behind that—can’t change it, wouldn’t want to, gotta deal with it. But I hear things. I see things. You can bet Gabe does, too.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“If some kid is killing dogs, I hope you can stop him. I’m just saying that it’s asking too much of my son to help you. Understand?”

Adair made the loops in town, looking for Rexford and his hot new Mustang, a show of his old man’s ostentatious ways if there ever was one. Grandview’s leaders had made the decision long ago to outsource legal matters, and Pete Rexford had been there to pick up those nuggets at his usual rate, plus anything else he could drum up through his private practice. By Adair’s reckoning, that gave him a pretty sweet deal. On most matters, Pete Rexford held the only opinion about whether he was in conflict between his public and private duties and so far, she’d observed, he’d found in his own favor.

This alignment of players put her in a particularly delicate spot now. She supposed that if additional information emerged and she could put more attention on John Rexford, she’d have to go down to Sidney and see the county attorney. In the meantime, she figured, she’d send a subtle yet unmistakable message: she was watching.

Sakota’s voice broke in over the radio.

“Adair, you better come down to Clancy Park.”

“What’s up?”

“Somebody’s beat the hell out of Alfonso.”

She pulled into the dirt driveway at the Kelvig farm, backed out, and pointed the nose of the cruiser toward town. She tore out of there, pushing sixty on the back roads.

“I’ll be there in a second,” she said.

NORBY (SAMUEL)

Samuel and Megan were carrying Indian tacos across Main Street toward the Double Musky when Alfonso Medeiros staggered out of the shadows of Everly’s Welding Service and leaned against the streetlamp.

“Holy shit,” Samuel said. He handed his food to Megan and sprinted across the street to Alfonso, who’d slipped down the lamp pole and dropped his ass onto the sidewalk. Someone had pounded Alfonso’s face into misshapen rawness. Both eyebrows had been split, spilling blood that stained his T-shirt. His left eye was like an eight ball, and his nose bent right at an impossible angle.

“Jesus,” Samuel said. “What happened?”

“Fell down.” A bloody bubble formed on the outside of Alfonso’s nostril and popped.

“Bullshit.” Samuel knelt and looped Alfonso’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get up. We’ll get you across the street.”

Samuel bent his knees sharply, then extended his legs like pistons, driving the heavier man up. He struggled with the dead weight of Alfonso, inching him across the street in haphazard lurches.

“Go tell Dea,” he said to Megan, who set down the food and ran toward the taco truck on the other side of the park.

A murmuring enveloped them, and Samuel for the first time saw that some of the crowd had peeled off from the festivities down the street to check on the commotion. He spotted Steve Simic, still in sunglasses this deep into the night.

“Come on, man,” Samuel said to him. “Give me a hand.”

Simic handed his drink to a buddy and loped over. He slipped under Alfonso’s right shoulder, and together the long-ago friends found a pace and hoofed him across the park. A few others fell in, following them.

“What happened?” Simic said between grunting breaths.

“Somebody beat the hell out of him.”

“Fell down,” Alfonso said.

“Nobody’s going to buy that,” Samuel said.

Simic looked down at his own shirt. “He’s getting blood all over me.”

“Just hold him. We’re almost there.”

Dea was out of the truck, waiting for them, her wails of “
Dios mío, Dios mío
” growing louder as they approached.

Samuel and Simic turned Alfonso around and gently sat him on the steps leading into the truck. His head seesawed on his neck, and Dea let out a cry.
“Querido Dios en el cielo, mi marido.”

Samuel looked at Megan. “You have your cell?”

“Yes.”

“Call the cops.”

“They’re coming,” said somebody in the pack of onlookers.

“Alfonso,” Samuel said. “What happened?”

“Fell down.”

Dea dabbed at his brow with a towel that came back bloody. In the better light, Samuel found welts all along Alfonso’s jawline.

“Don’t give me that. What happened?”

“Fell down.”

Dea dropped her head onto her husband’s shoulder, sobbing.

Samuel looked up at Megan, as if he could find an answer there.

Officer Sakota arrived first, and after staggering around a bit and letting loose with “oh, shit, man,” he put out the radio call for Chief Underwood and the ambulance crew, which would have to come in from Sidney.

Dea’s quick work had her man less bloody, at least, but the sweeping away of the plasma brought the full extent of his injuries to greater light. Samuel’s amateur assessment had Alfonso fitted for plenty of stitches and a heroic dose of morphine to keep the pain at bay.

“Joe, you out there?” Sakota said into his radio.

Feedback shot through Sakota’s speaker. “Yeah.”

“You gonna come down here and take a look?”

Chief Underwood’s voice broke in. “Hold your position, Joe. I’m almost there. Keep an eye on things around the concert, OK?”

“Roger that.”

Seconds later, the lights on Chief Underwood’s cruiser sprinkled the park in alternating surges of blue and red. Alfonso had lain down in the grass outside the truck while Dea beat back the insurgent blood. Sakota knelt beside Alfonso and held his hand as he waited for the chief to get there.

“Ambulance is on the way, Adair,” Sakota said.

Underwood also went to bended knee beside Alfonso and took hold of his arm. “Who did this to you?”

“He’s not going to say, Chief,” Samuel said.

“Come on now, Alfonso.”

“Fell down.”

“Baby, please.” Dea looked at her man, tears streaking her cheeks.

Alfonso looked up at her, his features jumbled and mournful. “Fell down.”

Adair rocketed to her feet. “What is with this fucking town?”

They huddled around Alfonso and his crying wife for fifteen minutes or so, waiting for the Sidney ambulance. When it at last arrived, Sakota waved the driver onto the grass so the technicians could get at Alfonso more easily. While the crew bundled Alfonso up and put him on a stretcher, Dea micromanaging the entire affair, Samuel broke off from the group and found Chief Underwood.

“Tough night, I guess,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m Sam’s son.”

Chief Underwood shook his hand. “How’s your dad doing?”

“OK, I guess. Sleeping, Mom says.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.”

“Anyway, I just wanted to introduce myself,” he said. “I found Alfonso over by Tut Everly’s place. Be happy to talk to you for your report, if you need me.”

“Not going to be much of a report if he’s not talking.”

“I guess not.”

She turned to him. “You think he fell down?”

Samuel blurted a laugh, which he quickly smothered out of respect for the gravity of the situation. “I was born at night. But not this night.”

By the time the chaos cleared and folks migrated back to the downtown scene, Megan looked as though she’d had enough many times over. She said she’d just as soon go home, and Samuel offered to walk her the three blocks before cutting across town to his folks’ place.

“You going to be around tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yeah. I might hang close to the house, though. Not sure I can take more partying.”

“No party,” Samuel said. “Just a pancake breakfast and the Raleigh Ridgeley thing. I guess I’m in charge of cleanup now.”

“When are you heading back?”

“Monday night. I’ll stay in Billings, then fly out Tuesday morning.”

“Well,” she said. “No pancakes for me. And definitely no Raleigh Ridgeley. Read him in college. That guy lives in his own asshole.”

Samuel snickered. “My mom loves his stuff.”

She did an exaggerated eye roll. “Whatever. But listen, I’d like to hang out a bit more. Tomorrow afternoon?”

“That’d be great.”

She reached for him, a hug in the offing. Samuel let himself relax into her, and he breathed in the scent of so many long-ago summers.

The thump from the band downtown found Samuel’s ears as he zigzagged through the neighborhood between Megan’s house and his parents’, marking time and memory by matching houses with occupants, past or present. He’d surprised himself the first night in town, as he tried to remember the names of everybody who’d graduated in his class. Such a small group, it shouldn’t have been difficult, but Samuel couldn’t do it. He finally had to consult an old yearbook to put the names together. He’d lingered over Rich Buckner’s photo, the consommé of what might have been and what came to be almost too much to contemplate.

Now, his phone buzzed, and with it another piece of his past came calling.

When u coming back?

He checked the time. 12:18, 11:18 back in California. Not too early for Derek to be drunk texting.

Not for a few days.

Hurry back. I miss u.

Revulsion and despair collided in Samuel’s gut. At once, he wanted Derek again, and then in the next beat he didn’t want anything more to do with him. For preservation’s sake, he stuck with the second blush.

Don’t fuck with me.

I miss my Norby.

Norby’s dead.

Now the phone rang.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s you,” Derek said. Samuel listened closely. He didn’t detect any slurring.

“Of course it is.”

“You said Norby’s dead.”

“Figure of speech.”

“Oh, OK.”

“What do you want, Derek?”

“I want you to come home so we can talk.”

Two women, maybe early twenties, came veering up the sidewalk at Samuel. He nodded and moved aside so they could pass. Their alcohol-tinged air hung like a cloud as he pushed on.

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Don’t be mean,” Derek said.

“Don’t be manipulative.”

“Don’t you want me?”

Samuel brought himself to a dead stop on the sidewalk. Now there was a question worth pondering completely. And, as it turned out, it was a remarkably quick job.

“No, I don’t.”

“But why, Norby?”

“Samuel.”

“Who?”

“Never mind. Just shut up, OK?”

“Don’t be mean.”

Samuel ran a hand across his face, forehead to chin. That gave him just enough time to let his impulses settle and the right words queue up on his tongue.

“I don’t expect you to understand it, Derek, and I couldn’t explain it in a million years. So let’s just be honest, OK?”

“OK.”

“I don’t want you. In fact, I want you to fuck permanently off. Clear enough?” He pulled the phone from his ear and ended the call.

Nobody had left the porch light on. Samuel fumbled with his keys before getting the right one in the lock.

The door let out a moan as he stepped through, and he immediately hit a soft spot in the floor, the sharp creaking of the underlying wood cutting through the silence. He rued another bit of memory lost. He used to know where all the noisy steps were and could dance around them like a teenage ballroom swinger. Now, every step betrayed his position.

“Have fun?” His father’s voice found him from the kitchen.

“Yeah.” At once, he felt foolish for going with the pat answer rather than the honest one. “What are you doing awake? Where’s Mom?”

“Your mother is not here.” Sam fingered the rim of a half-full cocktail glass.

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.” His father took a slug of whiskey. “I was hoping she was with you.”

“No. She’s not.” Samuel shrugged and tried to pass it off with nonchalance. A flailing attempt, he figured. This wasn’t like her.

Sam threw back the remainder of the booze.

“Well, that’s curious, isn’t it?”