Last Night in Twisted River (14 page)

“Of course you did, Daniel—I know you did.”

“Were you
do-si-doing
her?” the twelve-year-old asked.

“Yes,” his father answered. “I loved Jane, too. Just not like I loved your mom,” he added. Why was it necessary for him to say that? the cook asked himself guiltily. Dominic had truly loved Jane; he must have been yielding to the fact that there was no time to grieve for her.

“What happened to your lip?” the boy asked his dad.

“Six-Pack smacked me with her elbow,” the cook answered.

“Were you
do-si-doing
Six-Pack, too?” his son asked him.

“No, Daniel. Jane was my girlfriend—just Jane.”

“What about Constable Carl?” young Dan asked.

“We have a lot to do, Daniel,” was all his dad would tell him. And they didn’t have a lot of time, the cook knew. Before long, it would be light outside; they had to get started.

IN THE CONFUSION
and sheer clumsiness that followed, and in their frantic haste, the cook and his son would find a multitude of reasons to relive the night of their departure from Twisted River—though they would remember the details of their forced exit differently. For young Dan, the monumental task of dressing the dead woman—not to mention bringing her body down the cookhouse stairs, and toting her to her truck—had been herculean. Nor did the boy at first understand why it was so important to his father that Jane be
correctly
dressed—that is, exactly as she would have dressed herself. Nothing missing, nothing awry. The straps to her stupendous bra could not be twisted; the waistband of her mammoth boxer shorts could not be rolled under; her socks could not be worn inside out.

But she’s
dead!
What does it matter? Danny was thinking. The boy wasn’t considering the scrutiny that Injun Jane’s body might soon come under—what the examining physician would conclude was the cause of death, for example. (A blow to the head, obviously, but what was the instrument—and where was it?) The approximate time of death would need to be factored in, too. Clearly it mattered to the cook that, at the time of her death, Jane would appear to have been fully clothed.

As for Dominic, he would forever be grateful to Ketchum—for it was Ketchum who’d acquired a dolly for the cookhouse, on one of his drunken binges in Maine. The dolly was useful in unloading the dry goods from the trucks, or the cases of olive oil and maple syrup—even egg cartons, and anything heavy.

The cook and his son had strapped Jane onto the dolly; thus they were able to bring her down the cookhouse stairs in a semi-upright position, and wheel her standing (almost straight) to her truck. However, the dolly had been no help getting Injun Jane into the cab, which the cook would later recall as the “herculean” part of the task—or one herculean part, among several.

As for the instrument of death, Dominic Baciagalupo would pack the eight-inch cast-iron skillet among his most cherished kitchen items—namely, his favorite cookbooks, because the cook knew he had no time, and scant room, to pack his kitchenware. The other pots and pans would stay behind; the rest of the cookbooks, and all the novels, Dominic would leave for Ketchum.

Danny scarcely had time to gather some photos of his mom, but not the books he’d kept her pictures pressed flat in. As for clothing, the cook packed only the bare necessities of his own and young Dan’s clothes—and Dominic would pack more clothes for himself than he did for his son, because Daniel would soon outgrow what he was wearing.

The cook’s car was a 1952 Pontiac station wagon—the so-called semiwoodie Chieftain Deluxe. They’d made the last real “woodie” in 1949; the semiwoodie had fake wooden panels outside, offset against the maroon exterior, and real wood inside. The interior had maroon leather upholstery, too. Because of Dominic’s lame left foot, the Pontiac Chieftain Deluxe came with automatic transmission—in all likelihood making it the only vehicle with automatic transmission in the settlement of Twisted River—which made it possible for Danny to drive the car, too. The twelve-year-old’s legs weren’t long enough to depress a clutch pedal all the way to the floor, but Danny had driven the semiwoodie station wagon on the haul roads. Constable Carl didn’t cruise the haul roads. There were many boys Danny’s age, and even younger, driving cars and trucks on the back roads around Phillips Brook and Twisted River—unlicensed preteens with pretty good driving skills. (The boys who were a little taller than Danny could depress the clutch pedals all the way to the floor.)

Considering the contingencies of their escape from Twisted River, it was a good thing that Danny could drive the Chieftain, because the cook would not have wanted to be seen
walking
through town, back to the cookhouse, after he drove Jane (in her truck) to Constable Carl’s. By that early hour of the morning, in the predawn light, Dominic Baciagalupo’s limp would have made him recognizable to anyone who might have been up and about—and for the cook and his son to have been seen walking
together
at that ungodly hour would have been most unusual and suspicious.

Of course, Dominic’s maroon semiwoodie was the only car of its kind in town. The ’52 Pontiac Chieftain might not pass unnoticed, although it would pass more quickly through the settlement than the cook with his limp, and the station wagon would never be parked within sight of where Dominic would leave Jane’s truck—at Constable Carl’s.

“Are you crazy?” Danny would ask his father, as they were preparing to leave the cookhouse—for the last time. “Why are we bringing the body to the constable?”

“So the drunken cowboy will wake up in the morning and think
he
did it,” the cook told his son.

“What if Constable Carl is awake when we get there?” the boy asked.

“That’s why we have a back-up plan, Daniel,” his dad said.

A misty, almost imperceptible rain was falling. The long maroon hood of the Chieftain Deluxe glistened. The cook wet his thumb on the hood; he reached inside the open driver’s-side window and rubbed the spot of dried blood off his son’s forehead. Remembering his goodnight kiss, Dominic Baciagalupo knew whose blood it was; he hoped it hadn’t been the last kiss he would give Daniel, and that no more blood (not
anyone’s
blood) would touch his boy tonight.

“I just follow you, right?” young Dan asked his dad.

“That’s right,” the cook said, the back-up plan foremost in his mind as he climbed into the cab of Jane’s truck, where Jane was slumped against the passenger-side door. Jane wasn’t bleeding, but Dominic was glad that he couldn’t see the bruise on her right temple. Jane’s hair had fallen forward, covering her face; the contusion (it was swollen to the size of a baseball) was pressed against the passenger-side window.

They drove, a caravan of two, to the flat-roofed, two-story hostelry where Six-Pack was renting what passed for a second-floor apartment. In the rearview mirror of Jane’s truck, the cook had only a partial view of his son’s small face behind the wheel of the ’52 Pontiac. The Chieftain’s exterior visor resembled that of a baseball cap pulled low over the windshield-eyes of the eight-cylinder station wagon with its shark-toothed grille and aggressive hood ornament.

“Shit!” Dominic said aloud. He had suddenly thought of Jane’s Cleveland Indians cap. Where was it? Had they left Chief Wahoo upside down in the upstairs hall of the cookhouse? But they were already at Six-Pack’s place; not a soul had been on the streets, and the dance-hall door had not once opened. They couldn’t go back to the cookhouse now.

Danny parked the Pontiac at the foot of the outside stairs to Pam’s apartment. The boy had squeezed into the cab of Jane’s truck, between poor dead Jane and his father, before Dominic noticed Injun Jane’s missing baseball cap—young Dan was wearing it.

“We need to leave Chief Wahoo with her, don’t we?” the twelve-year-old asked.

“Good boy,” his dad said, his heart welling with pride and fear. Regarding the back-up plan, there was so much for a twelve-year-old to remember.

The cook needed his son’s help in getting Injun Jane from the cab of the truck to Constable Carl’s kitchen door, which Jane had said was always left unlocked. It would be all right if they dragged her feet through the mud, because the constable would expect Jane’s boots to be muddy; they just couldn’t allow another part of her to touch the ground. Naturally, the dolly would have left wheel tracks in the mud—and what would Dominic have done with the dolly? Leave it in Jane’s truck, or at Constable Carl’s door?

They drove to that forlorn part of town near the sawmill and the hostelry favored by the French Canadian itinerants. (Constable Carl liked living near his principal victims.) “What would you guess Ketchum weighs?” Danny asked, after his dad had parked Jane’s truck in her usual spot. They were standing on the running board of the truck; young Dan held Jane upright in the passenger seat while his father managed to guide her stiffening legs out the open door. But once her feet were on the running board, what then?

“Ketchum weighs about two-twenty, maybe two-thirty,” the cook said.

“And Six-Pack?” young Dan asked.

Dominic Baciagalupo would feel the stiffness in his neck from Six-Pack’s headlock for about a week. “Pam probably weighs about one-seventy-five—one-eighty, tops,” his dad answered.

“And what do
you
weigh?” Danny asked.

The cook could see where this line of questioning was going. He let Injun Jane’s feet slide all the way to the mud; he stood on the wet ground beside her, holding her around her hips while Daniel (still standing on the running board) hugged her under her arms. We will both end up in the mud with Jane on top of us! Dominic was thinking, but he said, as casually as possible, “Oh, I don’t know what I weigh—about one-fifty, I guess.” (He weighed all of 145 with his winter clothes on, he knew perfectly well—he had never weighed as much as 150 pounds.)

“And
Jane?”
young Dan grunted, stepping down to the ground from the truck’s running board. The body of the Indian dishwasher pitched forward into his and his father’s waiting arms. Though Jane’s knees buckled, they did not touch the mud; the cook and his son staggered to hold her, but they didn’t fall.

Injun Jane weighed at least 300 pounds—maybe 315 or 320—although Dominic Baciagalupo would profess not to know. The cook could scarcely get his breath as he dragged his dead paramour to her bad boyfriend’s kitchen door, but he managed to sound almost unconcerned as he answered his son in a whisper: “Jane? Oh, she weighs about the same as Ketchum—maybe a little more.”

To their mutual surprise, the cook and his son saw that Constable Carl’s kitchen door was not only unlocked—it was open. (The wind, maybe—or else the cowboy had come home so drunk that he’d left the door open in a blind, unthinking stupor.) The misty rain had wet what they could see of the kitchen floor. While the kitchen was dimly lit, at least one light was on, but they couldn’t see beyond the kitchen; they could not know more.

When Jane’s splayed feet were touching the kitchen floor, Dominic felt confident that he could slide her the rest of the way inside by himself; it would help him that her boots were muddy and the floor was wet. “Good-bye, Daniel,” the cook whispered to his son. In lieu of a kiss, the twelve-year-old took Jane’s baseball cap off his head and put it on his father’s.

When the cook could no longer hear Danny’s retreating steps on the muddy street, he steered Jane’s great weight forward into the kitchen. He could only hope that the boy would remember his instructions. “If you hear a gunshot, go to Ketchum. If you wait for me in the Pontiac for more than twenty minutes—even if there is
no
shot—go to Ketchum.”

Dominic had told the twelve-year-old that if anything
ever
happened to his dad—not just tonight—go to Ketchum, and tell Ketchum everything. “Watch out for the next-to-last step at the top of Pam’s stairs,” the cook had also told his son.

“Won’t Six-Pack be there?” the boy had asked.

“Just tell her you need to talk to Ketchum. She’ll let you in,” his father had said. (He could only
hope
that Pam would let Daniel in.)

Dominic Baciagalupo slid Injun Jane’s body past the wet area on the kitchen floor before he let her come to rest against a cabinet. Holding her under her arms, he allowed her immense weight to sag onto the countertop; then, with excruciating slowness, he stretched her body out upon the floor. While he was bending over her, the Cleveland Indians cap fell off the cook’s head and landed upside down beside Jane; Chief Wahoo was grinning insanely while Dominic waited for the cocking-sound of the Colt .45, which the cook was certain he would hear. Just as Danny would be sure to hear the discharging of the gun—it was more than loud. At that hour, everyone in town would hear a gunshot—maybe even Ketchum, still sleeping off his bender. (On occasion, even from the distance of the cookhouse, Dominic had heard that Colt .45 discharge.)

But nothing happened. The cook let his breathing return to normal, choosing not to look around. If Constable Carl was there, Dominic didn’t want to see him. The cook would rather let the cowboy shoot him in the back as he was leaving; he left carefully, using the outward-turned toe of his bad foot to smear his muddy footprints as he left.

Outside, a wooden plank was stretched across the gutter from the road. Dominic used the plank to wipe flat the drag marks where the toes and heels of Jane’s boots had carved deep ruts—marking the tortured path from her truck to the constable’s kitchen door. The cook returned the plank to its proper place, wiping the mud from his hands on the wet fender of Jane’s truck, which the increasingly steady rain would wash clean. (The rain would take care of his and young Dan’s footprints, too.)

No one saw the cook limp past the silent dance hall; the Beaudette brothers, or their ghosts, had not reoccupied the old Lombard log hauler, which stood as the lone sentinel in the muddy lane alongside the hall. Dominic Baciagalupo was wondering what Constable Carl might make of Injun Jane’s body when he stumbled over it in the bleary-eyed morning. What had he hit her with? the cowboy might speculate, having hit her more than once before. But where is the weapon, the blunt instrument? the constable would be sure to ask himself. Maybe I’m
not
the one who hit her, the cowboy might later conclude—once his head cleared, or most certainly when he learned that the cook and his son had left town.