In Plain View (13 page)

“Everybody’s got to start somewhere.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets, elbows locked.

“What’s it called?” I asked.

Cable shows are the pulp fiction of television. I concede a secret fascination for them.

“One Heartbeat Away.”
Ainsley’s grin stretched another inch. He cocked a shoulder in half-a-shrug. “I was into Tom Clancy at the time.”

The sheriff’s office door opened and the Amish boy shuffled out, Curzon behind him. The boy was hunched over, elbows pressed to his sides, the brim of his hat clutched between his hands as if that black anachronism were the lifeline to his identity.

Curzon pointed toward the way out. A man in uniform with a freshly shaved skull guided the boy away. Curzon’s back was to me. That world-weary slump wasn’t his usual stance. One hand came up to rub his forehead, in that classic masculine indication of simultaneous feeling and thinking. Always looks to me as though it gives them a headache. Suddenly, he snapped around to look at me. I expected hostility, but his expression was mostly wary, as if he wondered
what do you see?

I didn’t look away which was the only answer I knew.

The things we see change us. I know this in my bones as much as in my head. I wouldn’t do what I do, if I didn’t believe it. That old saying, “the eyes are the window to the soul,” means more than just a view from the outside; it’s a way to enter someone’s soul, as well.

The thing is, Sheriff Curzon and I probably had a lot in common. We both made a living walking through shadows looking at stuff nobody wants to see. Neither of our souls were all that shiny anymore.

Of course, when I felt threatened and shot at things in the dark, nobody died.

The sheriff signaled
get in here
with a snap of his head. I waved back.

“I’ll go with you,” Ainsley said.

“Oh, most definitely,” I replied, grabbing a handful of his jacket above the elbow to keep him close.

Curzon held the office door open and I slipped past. Ainsley was stopped at the threshold.

“Rick,” Curzon called. “Show Prescott’s kid the break room.”

Rick was the skinhead cop who’d escorted the Amish boy. He had a chest circumference that would have matched Ainsley’s and mine combined. I could feel his voice, like bass notes through a subwoofer, when he reverberated, “Do they let you drink coffee yet, kid?”

Ainsley answered with a long-suffering sigh as Rick led him away. He shot me a look over his shoulder that was part woe, part vengeance.

“Trade with you,” I called out. I freely admit it’s easier to play hard-ass on home territory. I was not looking forward to a private meet in the sheriff’s inner sanctum.

The wood blinds clacked against the office door glass as it shut behind him.

“Talk,” Curzon rumbled.

“Nice place you got here.”

His office had an old-world gangbuster air. Dark, paneled walls, designed to muffle everything from shady deals to gunshots and a mahogany desk larger than some of the parking spaces downtown. On top of the desk sat a stack of files, a pad of paper and a phone. Everything was laid out in parallel precision to the desk’s edges. Including the shiny, brass plaque that faced a pair of parochial wooden chairs. It read Sheriff J. Curzon.

The man himself took a seat behind the desk. “What’re you doing here, Ms. O’Hara?”

“I came in for a press parking pass. There was a little altercation in the hall, and…” The intro sounded lame, even to my ears. I cut to the chase. “I heard your cousin is connected to Tom Jost’s suicide.”

He folded both arms across his chest. “Says who?”

Tough talk is a variation of playground rhetoric; to do it right you have to get in touch with your inner child.

“Says me.”

“They had an interaction almost a month before his suicide,” Curzon stated.

“Which led to an ‘interaction’ with his boss over at station six. And further ‘interactions’ with his co-workers. You heard about any of that?”

He smiled at me curiously. He wasn’t a bad-looking man under the right circumstances. But I didn’t like the glow behind those green eyes. Didn’t like the timing, either. According to playground rules, he shouldn’t be smiling.

“Where are you going with this, Ms. O’Hara?”

“Wherever it leads, Sheriff.”

“Uh huh.” He opened a file on his desk and in an extremely polite tone of voice asked, “How is your niece—Jennifer—getting along these days? She doing all right?”

My hands clamped down around the wooden arm rests. “I beg your pardon?”

Curzon looked frighteningly sincere. “I’m sure it must be hard for both of you.”

“How do you know anything about ‘both’ of us?”

“According to the file, we never found the man who ran your sister down.”

Double-shit.
“No. You didn’t.”

He spread his arms wide along the edge of his desk and pushed himself back, assuming the immoveable object position. His weapon bulged in a highly visible lump beneath the shadow of his armpit.

The black handle caught me up short. I don’t know why. I’ve been around guns.

They have a lot in common, guns and cameras. Most people have enough sense to be scared at first. Very few realize how bad it can get until the damage is done.

“Why do you ask?” I snapped.

“It seems relevant.”

In a very calm voice I asked, “Do you think there is a conflict of interest? That I might be pursuing this story as a way of getting back at your fine—”
useless, Mayberry,
“—department?”

“I think you have legitimate frustrations.”

“I have legitimate questions, Sheriff Curzon. Such as, is it department policy to rat out somebody to their employer for minor violations of the civil code?”

“No.”

“Then why’d your cousin send Tom Jost’s boss a note, tattling that he’d been caught—what?—with dirty pictures and a high-school sweetie past curfew?”

“A letter was sent. It shouldn’t have happened. Nicky thought he was doing the right thing.”

“Do you think he was doing the right thing?”

Curzon made a face. “What does that matter? Nicky took his reprimand and moved on. It’s over and done.”

“Then why are you still trying to protect him?”

“I’m not protecting anybody here. I’m telling you, Nicky’s a good kid.” Curzon’s voice was getting loud. “And a good cop.”

“What about Tom Jost? What kind of kid was he?”

“I can’t help the fact that Tom Jost didn’t have people watching out for him.” The volume dropped abruptly. He leaned forward, crumpling paperwork in his effort to close the space between us. “Nicky is a member of the team, like everybody else. I treat him the same as anyone. I don’t turn my back on somebody for making a reasonable mistake.”

Translation: whatever anyone else thought, Curzon didn’t believe his cousin had done wrong. And he’d kick the ass of anyone who said different.

“Is that what happened to Jost? He made a mistake and people turned their backs on him?”

“Jost’s life sucked,” Curzon summarized curtly, then started rubbing his forehead the way I’d seen earlier. “I can’t do anything about that. Nicky crossed a line and took his lumps for it. As his superior I see
no
justice in ruining his career over this.”

“I’m not trying to ruin your cousin’s career.” I was starting to feel indignant. “I’m not looking for a scapegoat, Sheriff.”

He stood up and the sheer size of him looming over me was enough to shut my mouth for the moment. He walked slowly around the desk, propped one hip on the corner and stared down into my face. “What exactly are you looking for then?”

I stood up, my chair raking the floor with a screech. “I want to understand what the hell happened.
Something
happened here. Something more than cheap thrills.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, what it’s like to always be different, no matter what you do. Such as, risking everything and then—giving up.” I was riffing, with no firm sense my story would end up being about any of those things. Maybe it would be about all of them.

Curzon locked on to me with a brain freeze of a look. Then, he nodded sharply.

I decided that was a go-ahead. “How you are characterizing Jost’s death? Suicide?”

For a moment, I wasn’t sure he’d answer. He blinked twice and the tired lines beneath his eyes revealed the flicker of tension he tried to hide. “What else would it be?”

“Accident.”

“No. The report won’t call it that.”

Which wasn’t what I’d said, of course. “Why not?”

“No reason to. Jost wasn’t on duty. He wasn’t vested in his pension yet. There’s no insurance. Why do that? Guy has a family. Such as it is.”

“But if that’s the truth?” I didn’t believe Jost had killed himself accidentally in the throes of a sex act. But a sheriff must have a reason not to believe. “Wouldn’t you have to report it?”

Curzon snarfed loudly. His expression was quite the cocktail of dry humor and skepticism. “What’s this? A reporter who’s concerned about
truth?
”

“Yeah,” I laughed along, irritation locking my back teeth. “About as rare as a cop who’s interested in
justice.
”

Both of us spontaneously leaned backward. Sarcasm like that’ll scar at a close range. Curzon relaxed his arms and fiddled with the papers on his desk. He started to say something and stopped, then like a bolt from the blue, he asked, “Would you like to come to my father’s for dinner tomorrow?”

“Excuse me?”

“My family’s getting together for a cook-out. It’s casual. Nicky will be there. You two can…talk.”

“Yeah, sure,” I answered, trying not to sound suspicious. “That would be great. Can I bring a camera?”

“No. But you can bring your niece. There’ll be other kids there.”

“Well.” I stood up. I couldn’t think what to do next. I knew it wasn’t, but I felt like he’d just asked me for a date.

“Funny.” He tilted his head and that reluctant smile crooked his mouth again. He was back to studying me like a specimen, hardly blinking. Days gone by, mobs would drown people with eyes his shade of spooky green.

“What?” I did a quick visual check down the front.

“The way you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Come on like a light bulb when there’s an audience, but here, the two of us behind closed doors, it’s all frosty—” he sliced a finger through the air, “—back-off.”

It wasn’t his comment, so much as the implication that threw me. I slid sideways toward the door, opened it and threw back over my shoulder the first playground defense that came to mind. “Yeah, well, I think you’re cute when you’re pissed-off, too, Sheriff.”

Somebody heard me and whistled. Some other joker called, “Ooh—so do we, Sheriff.”

I could feel the heat in my face.

Should have kept it simple and gone with
oh, yeah?

5:27:54 p.m.

“Are you okay?” Ainsley asked me for the third time.

“Same answer. Stop asking,” I said. Town hall was not where I wanted to be. “We’ve got work to do. Let’s blow.”

“Not much of an afternoon person either.” Ainsley amused himself. “Follow me.”

My funk made it hard to appreciate either the tour by the mayor-elect or
Our Town
’s Sesquicentennial celebration. College seemed to have a vision, so I let him go with it. He shot general footage and some distance shots of Amish mingling with the crowds, selling vegetables and sizing up livestock. I interviewed a couple geezers in plaid shirts about how the town gets along with the Amish community. Unraveling a story with so little of the groundwork prepped was tricky. The whole thing could end up flat, dull or predictably salacious. After an hour of shooting B-roll we had decided to call it quits.

While Ainsley packed the truck, I phoned home. Tonya reported she and Jenny were on the way out to the Sally’s Discount Beauty Supply—no need to hurry back. She also told me they’d taken a weird call an hour before.

“I think it was a kid,” T explained. “Said her name was Rachel and you were expecting her to phone. Told me she’d wait in the Buona Beef parking lot until sundown.”

“Until sundown?”

“Yeah. Sounded like she’d been watching too many old movies.”

More like living them. I’d be willing to bet Rachel Jost didn’t own a watch. “Thanks, T. See you back at the house.”

Two hours had passed since Ainsley had last put food in his mouth, which meant the boy’s blood sugar was plummeting. He whined about making another stop until I told him where we were going. Buona Beef is a Taylor Street original, straight from the downtown Chicago neighborhood where real Italians have lived and cooked since before the city had indoor plumbing. The suburban copy isn’t totally authentic, but they serve a decent beef sandwich “joo-zee, wid peppas.” It was one of the few signs I’d seen that civilization had crept west with the population.

“There she is.” Ainsley pointed as we rolled into the lot.

Rachel Jost was sitting at a picnic table in the dusty grass that edged the parking area. She’d changed from her dark gown, white apron and bonnet, into jeans and a shirt that would blend at any mall. Her braid was tucked down the back of her collar, disguising the length. But everything she wore was a size too big, and her shirt was mis-buttoned; the tail long on one side, collar cock-eyed at her neck. Her feet were bare, her heavy farm boots abandoned nearby. She looked like a runaway in stolen clothes. I doubted it was ignorance of modern clothing that rumpled her. It looked to me like grief, that great disheveler.

Ainsley brought both cameras from the van. Rachel eyed them like attack dogs.

“What are those?” she asked bluntly.

“This is my assistant, Ainsley Prescott. He helps me make the TV show.” I sat down beside her on the wooden bench. Ainsley sat down at the second table with the cameras. I settled in for a wait. Sometimes an interview only happens if you’re willing to sit first. I doubted we’d get any footage but maybe I’d get an idea about where to go next.

Ainsley was rapt. He stared at the girl with the expression of a big game hunter on his first safari. I wasn’t sure if he had work or recreation in mind. The girl was pretty enough. She made me think of that statue of
The Little Mermaid
—classic features, solid feminine curves, all frozen forever in a permanent state of yearning.