Killing Mr. Griffin (19 page)

of an electric razor. Where is Brian? And then, quickly, she had shoved the question away. I will not ask myself now. I’m not ready to think about that yet. Desperately she tried to shove herself back into the safe cocoon of oblivion, but it had sealed itself behind her. I must sleep—I have to sleep some more! But while her arms and legs lay weighted upon the mattress, and her body remained a leaden lump, too heavy to think of lifting, her mind kept opening, inch by dreadful inch. Where is Brian? Where—is—Brian? Where—is-he? I—know.

I—know. There was a crack in the ceiling over the bed. Brian had been planning to fix it during Easter vacation. “It won’t take much.

Just some sort of plaster filler.” “You’ll never get around to that and you know it. You have a million books you’re going to read that week.” “Well, I’ll make the sacrifice. I’ll hold myself down to a million minus one, and fix the ceiling. We can’t have the whole roof caving in on top of Brian Junior.” In the far corner of the room there was a cobweb, a wisp of lace caught in a beam of morning sunlight. Had some industrious spider created that masterpiece overnight, or had it been there, unnoticed, for days? It was strange the things you saw when you looked at the ceiling—really concentrated on it to the exclusion of everything else. The plaster ran in waves and swirls, and here and there, there were little lumps in it, as though it had been spread too slowly and had dried before it was smoothed. “People who do halfway jobs shouldn’t do them at all,” Brian said. If Brian had been a plasterer, the swirls in the ceiling would have been symmetrical and

all the lumps would have been smoothed away.

Where–-is–-Brian–-I–-know–-I–-know. I–-know. Somewhere in the house a telephone rang. It rang only once. A moment later the bedroom door opened a crack and then came open wider. “Oh—you’re awake,” a woman’s voice said. “Semi-awake,” Kathy said. “I feel like I’ve got a hangover.” “There’s a telegram from your parents. They’re getting an afternoon flight and will be in late this evening.” The owner of the voice came into the room and stood next to the bed. “What can I get you, hon? Coffee?” “I don’t know. Yes, coffee, I guess.

You haven’t been here all night, have you, Rose?” “Of course I have.

What are neighbors for if not to be on hand when—things happen?” The woman said, “There have been a lot of phone calls already. Briarf s principal called, and several of the teachers, and some professor at the college who said he was head of the English Department there. I’ve kept a list of the names.” “That’s good of you, Rose.” Kathy pulled herself, with effort, to a sitting position. “Well, Brian Junior’s still with us. He just kicked me a good one. How do they all know about it? Is it in the paper?” “There’s a big write-up on the front page,” Rose said. “They even have Brian’s picture, though it doesn’t look much like him without the mustache. I don’t know where they got that.” “It was probably taken back when he was at the university.

They must have got it out of a yearbook file or something.” Her tongue felt thick and her head ached to fall back onto the pillow. “Can I see

it?” “You don’t want to read it all, hon. It’ll only upset you.”

“What is, is,” Kathy said. “Reading about it isn’t going to make it any worse. Maybe when I read it, it will go into some sort of perspective. Maybe it will start to make sense. Who could possibly hate Brian enough to do this thing? What kind of person hates like that?” “They’ll find him. That’s what police are for.” “But they don’t know where to start. All they could talk about was the Windbreaker. There has to be something more than that, some better starting place. When I was with them yesterday I must have been in shock. I couldn’t think. Everything they said to me seemed to run in and out of my brain like water. I kept trying to grab hold of things, but they kept sliding away from me before I could put them together to make any sort of meaning.” “That was a blessing, maybe.” “There was something—the name of somebody-that meant something to me. I remember having a feeling of recognition when I heard it. I started to tell them, and then I couldn’t remember any longer what it was I was going to say.” The telephone rang again, clearer, now that the bedroom door was open. “I’ll get that,” Rose said, “and then I’ll bring you coffee.”

“And the paper,” Kathy said. At eleven-ten on Sunday morning, Mrs.

Irma Ruggles sat in a chair by her bedroom window and played with the circle of gold on the fourth finger of her right hand. First she turned it so she could see the tree and read the German words; then she

released it and

let its own weight twist the ring so that all she could see was the band. The ring was loose on her finger, but not too terribly loose.

If it had been even a fraction of an inch smaller it might have been difficult sliding it over her knuckle. Whosever this is has a thin hand for a man, thought Mrs. Ruggles, turning the ring again so that the tree appeared on top. She could not have said exactly when it was that she had stopped thinking of the ring as belonging to her son and had inserted a nameless owner in his place. Yesterday morning, when she had found it in David’s bureau, she had been so certain that he had gotten it from his father. The shock of seeing it there, among the dimes and nickels and tie tacks and shirt studs in the box she always visited for candy money, had jolted her terribly. It had been like hearing her son’s voice crying out to her across the years. But later, when she had confronted David with her suspicions, things had not occurred as she had expected. He had been rattled, yes, and he had certainly acted guilty, but not guilty as a boy might be who had a glorious secret. “I haven’t seen my dad since I was a little kid,” he had told her, and the words had rung true. David was not good at deception. He could not have falsified the pain in his voice, any more than he could have injected convincing sincerity into his next statement: “I found it.” And the girl—the plain, mousy, bespectacled girl, who was so exactly the opposite of any girl she would ever have picked for David—that girl had lied so badly that anyone with half a brain could have realized she was not telling the truth. And then, the

look on her face when she had been told, “There was no stone in the ring. There was a tree” Her eyes had gotten a wild, glazed look, and then she had closed them and stood there, silent, as though wishing herself a million miles away. Irma had not accepted it then, perhaps because she did not want to accept it. But little by little in the long hours since, the dream had fallen away. Her son was not in town.

He would not turn up suddenly on the doorstep, his beautiful face alight with joy and love. Her David, the first David, had vanished from their lives with the finality of a bright bird flying straight into the sun, leaving nothing behind him but the memory of a feathered touch and the rustle of restless wings. She would not see him again in this world and perhaps, if the things the Reverend Chandler preached were true, not anywhere. “Those who refuse to shoulder their earthly burdens will never know the glory of everlasting life,” the reverend had said straight from the pulpit seven years ago, and Irma had refused to attend church since. This had upset her daughter-in-law terribly.

“He didn’t mean anything personal, Mother Ruggles,” she had said. “My goodness, with the hundreds of people he has in his congregation, he can’t stop and worry about the effect every single thing he says will have on every one of them. How’s it going to look, if you stop attending services with David and me? Why, people will think I won’t take the trouble to bring you.” “They won’t think that,” Irma had told her. “They know how responsible you are. Just tell them I’m feeling poorly.” “Every Sunday?” “I’m an old woman. When you get old, you

can feel poorly whenever you want to.” She had meant this as a little joke, but her daughter-in-law had not found it amusing. The fact was, she seldom found anything amusing. Irma was sure that was one main reason why Big David had left her. The winds of freedom are filled with laughter. But now she was wandering. She knew she did that lately; concentration became more difficult when you grew old.

The thing she wanted to think about now was the ring. If David had not found it and had not gotten it from his father, then where had it come from? He was not going to tell her, that was evident, and his refusal was a challenge to her innate stubbornness. This morning he had come to her again, scrubbed and shining, dressed in his church clothes, as handsome as his father had ever been as a boy, and had said, “Gram, please let me have it.” “Have what?” she had asked with feigned puzzlement, knowing that his mother was right in the next room and wondering if he would mention it in her hearing. He wouldn’t. “You know,” he had said in a low voice. “Gram, look, it’s really important to me. You don’t know how important. It belongs to somebody, and I have to give it back to him.” “To who?” “You don’t know him, Gram.

His name wouldn’t mean anything to you. Where are you keeping it? If you’ll get it for me, I’ll—” “David, aren’t you ready yet?” his mother had called from the living room. “We’re going to be late and have to sit in the back.” And so he had gone, glancing back at her

with a pleading, worried look as he left, and she had experienced a subtle shift in her own emotions. David was honestly upset, as upset as she had ever seen him. And the girl had been also. There was something very wrong here, somehow. Where had this ring come from, and why was it so important? She was back to the beginning again. She turned the ring slowly on her finger, staring at it as though the answer might suddenly appear interspersed with the words of German.

Could David have stolen the ring? Such a thing was hard to imagine, but young people today did seem to be under all kinds of intense pressures that drove them to do strange and unpredictable things. Davy didn’t have much spending money, and now that he was beginning to date, this might be suddenly important. At the same time, common sense told you that if you were going to steal for money, there were all sorts of things more marketable than a college ring. Lost in contemplation, Irma Ruggles did not hear the front door open, only the sharp click as it was shoved closed. Could time have passed so quickly? She glanced up, startled. “Davy,” she called, “is that you?” There was no answer.

“Davy?” she said again, turning to face the figure that had appeared silently in the bedroom doorway, and then she stopped, bewildered. Her hands rose with a jerk which sent the ring sliding off her finger, into her lap. “Why, you’re not Davy!” she said to the boy with the funny eyes.

The wind began in the early afternoon. It rose slowly at first, but increased steadily, as winds do in the Southwest in March, lifting the dust from the vacant lots and unpaved roads and mesas and sending it sweeping into the town.

The Sunday twilight was muted and pink, as the sun’s last rays slanted through the thick, red air, and when dark came the wind did not drop but seemed to grow stronger, whining around the corners of houses and stripping the first new leaf buds from the trees.

Susan brought two logs in from the pile beside the garage and built a fire. She felt foolish doing it, for the evening was not cold, but some inner part of her seemed to be freezing. It took some time before she could get the fire to catch; this chore had always fallen to Craig or her father. Once she got it going she sat on the floor, huddled as close as she could get to the fire screen, taking comfort as much from the friendly, crackling sound as from the heat of the flames.

“Are you sure you won’t change your mind and come with us?” her mother had asked one final time before they had left. “I know how low you’re feeling, but Sunday suppers at the church are always fun, and seeing other people might give you a lift.” “I’m sure,” Susan had told her. “I just couldn’t face it.” “There’s going to be a sing-along,”

Francis had reminded her. “I said, I don’t want to come.” The thought of the crowded church basement with her parents’ friends chattering and munching and hordes of shrieking children racing about between the long, food-covered tables had in itself been enough to exhaust her.

Now, alone in the house, she wondered if she had made a mistake in not going. Although she dreamed often of solitude, she had seldom actually experienced it. With the comings and goings of a large family, the McConnell house was seldom empty and almost never silent. Tonight its absolute stillness, accentuated by the moan of the wind outside, was oppressive and almost frightening. Hungry suddenly for the sound of human voices, Susan turned on the television and flicked the dial from channel to channel. On one a comedian and his newly divorced wife were trading insults; on another a female singer was wailing about the agony of lost love. Ironically, on the third channel, the first words she heard were “Brian Griffin.” “.. . for Brian Griffin, Del Norte English teacher, whose body was found yesterday in a shallow grave in the Sandia Mountains. Results of the autopsy show the cause of death to have been coronary arrest, possibly preceded by a severe angina attack. Griffin’s wrists and ankles were bound with twine, tightly

enough to

obstruct circulation to the hands and feet, and there were bruises on his arms and legs, the coroner’s report said. “Mrs. Katherine Griffin, the wife of the deceased, said that a new prescription for the medication Griffin took for angina was on order at the…” Susan turned off the set. In the kitchen, in a pan on the back of the stove, was stew from last night’s dinner. Her mother had set it out for her before she had left. “Be sure to eat, Sue,” she had told her, and Susan had nodded agreement. Now she went out to the kitchen and stood for a moment in front of the stove, trying to decide if she would be able to face a meal. The mere smell of the food, with its combination of onion and spices, made her slightly nauseated. She had almost decided to put the whole concoction down the disposal, when the doorbell rang. “Who in the world—” Susan hesitated, feeling reluctant to open the door when she was alone in the house. Then she thought of David. Of course, it would be he, come to give her a follow-up on the situation with the ring. By this time Mark would have talked with him, and perhaps they would have worked out a solution. Setting the stew pan back on the burner, Susan went to the door and opened it. To her surprise, she found her visitors to be Jeff and Betsy. “Are you here alone?” Betsy asked, glancing quickly about her. “Yes,” Susan said.