On the Loose (24 page)

"Can you afford it?"

"Depends on what I get for the house. Think
about it, Gloria. Could be a good move for you.
The two of us together again."

Gloria gave her a cynical smile. "We're a couple
of ex-school chums, two gals growing old. We'd
end up hugging each other in the night."

"That's bad?"

"It's not what I want." Gloria mopped up
tomato sauce with her bread and pushed away a
clean plate. "Besides, I've started a garden."

Chief Morgan and Ben Sawhill met at a rest area
on County Road and stood between their parked
cars. Ben's eyes were red from an early exuberance
of goldenrod. Morgan's chin was cut from a hurried shave. Neither had a smile for the other.

"The word's got around he's back," Morgan said.
"People aren't happy. Meg O'Brien's taken most of
the calls. Some are ugly, the rest are scared."

"I blame myself," Ben said. "I should've let him
be tried as an adult."

"I blame you too, but that doesn't solve anything. How do you read him?"

"I don't. He speaks mostly with his eyes, and all
they do is chill me. I have this crazy feeling he's the
player and I'm the toy."

Morgan watched two pickup trucks speed by, one
on the tail of the other. "Has he made any threats?"

"None." Ben's face seemed ready to crack from
holding the same strained expression too long.
"Are we overreacting?"

"What else can we do? I can try to keep an eye
on him. Beyond that, I don't know. You have any
suggestions, Counselor?"

Ben breathed evenly, to prove to himself he was
calm. "None legal. None I'd care to tell a policeman."

Crackling came from Morgan's car. Meg O'Brien
was trying to reach him on the radio. "Excuse me."

Ben began moving in the opposite direction, his
legs wooden and his shoes weights, as if a dream
torn loose from his sleep had trapped him in it,
no hope of escape. He emptied his bladder behind
a tree.

"Someone heaved a rock through your nephew's
window," Morgan said when he returned. "The
good news is I have an excuse to post a cruiser in
front of his house."

Two afternoons later Bobby Sawhill rode his tenspeed bicycle, the seat heightened considerably, around the green. No one bothered him, but many
eyes were on him. Sergeant Avery, who had followed him in his cruiser from Summer Street, was
parked near Pearl's Pharmacy. Chief Morgan stood
outside the Blue Bonnet. Malcolm Crandall came
out of town hall and joined him. Shading his eyes,
Malcolm said, "The balls on that little prick!"

"He's not so little anymore," Morgan said. "If
you stood up to him, he might get you in a chokehold and not let go. Easier to throw something at
his house and hide."

Malcolm stiffened. "You accusing me of throwing that rock?"

Morgan turned on him. "Somebody saw you.
You do it again, you and I will be playing poker
through the bars after I lock you up. Understood?"

"You protecting him?"

"I'm keeping the peace."

Bobby got off his bicycle, propped it near the
entrance to Tuck's General Store, and went inside.
Sergeant Avery inched the cruiser to Prescott's
Pantry, putting him closer to Tuck's. Morgan ambled up the library and stood near the veterans'
memorial, which gave him a clearer view across
the green. Holly Pride descended the stone steps of
the library and spoke in his ear.

"I've been watching him too. What should I do
if he comes into the library?"

"Issue him a card and check out his books,"
Morgan said. "He's a resident."

Bobby reemerged with a soda can and remounted his bike. A man stepping out of the bar ber shop stopped in his tracks and stared. Bobby
pedaled past Sergeant Avery and headed back toward Summer Street. Morgan cut diagonally
across the green to the church and followed the
path to Reverend Stottle's house.

Answering his knock, Mrs. Stottle whispered,
"He's napping."

"Wake him, please. It's important."

Morgan waited inside the doorway. Reverend
Stottle appeared presently, smoothing his sparse
hair. One shirtsleeve was rolled to the elbow, the
other had unraveled. He smiled with pleasure.

"Emergency, Chief?"

"I want you to visit Bobby Sawhill. I want you to
talk to him."

"You bet. Anything special?"

"I want you to find out what's in his head."

Bobby Sawhill was trying to reach his uncle. He finally got him through the Boston number and said,
"The window's still broken. Who's going to fix it?"

"I called someone," Ben Sawhill said. "Didn't he
come by yesterday?"

"No."

"I'll call someone else. Bobby, have you been
phoning my house and hanging up when Aunt
Belle answers?"

"No. Who said I was?"

"I was only asking. Is everything going all right?"

"There's always a police car around. When I go
out on my bike the policeman follows me."

"Chief Morgan is protecting you. What you have to understand is that many in town wish you
hadn't come back. They think you should've gone
somewhere else to live."

"This is my house," Bobby said and consumed
the last few drops in the Pepsi can. "Where's my
father's car?"

"I sold it long ago. The money's in your investment account. Do you want to learn to drive?"

He hesitated. "Sometime."

"We could get you a car. You might want to do
some traveling on your own. See something of the
United States."

He heard the ringing of a bell. "I have to go,"
he said.

Reverend Stottle brought a six-pack of light beer
with him, a mistake. Bobby told him he didn't
drink beer. The reverend should have brought a
quart of ice cream, the kind with three flavors.
They were sitting in the kitchen with a box of graham crackers Bobby had taken from the wellstocked cupboard. Munching, Reverend Stottle
said, "I used to eat these as a boy. Crackers and
milk. My mother had them waiting for me when I
came home from school."

Bobby glanced away.

"And -I did my homework fast so I could listen to
Jack Armstrong and Tom Mix on the radio."

"I don't listen to the radio. I watch TV. Sometimes I read."

"Television tells you one thing, reading tells you
so much more. My favorites were Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. " Making himself at home,
Reverend Stottle went to the refrigerator, then the
cupboard, and poured himself a glass of milk
while reaching for another cracker. "Let's get
down to business, Bobby. Do you believe in God in
heaven and the devil in his den?"

Bobby pushed crumbs into a little pile. "Is there
a heaven?"

The reverend deliberated. "I don't want to delude you."

"Will I see my mother again?"

"You carry her in your head and heart as she
once carried you in her belly. You two are never
apart."

"Sometimes I see her in dreams."

"When you go to sleep at night, Bobby, one
world vanishes and another comes into play.
Who's to say with absolute certainty which is the
real one? I can't. Can you?"

"I like dreams, but not all of 'em."

The reverend dunked a cracker. "What do you
believe in?"

"I don't know. Nothing. Oblivion."

"Now you've hit on what we all fear. The zero at
the end of life. It turns a cemetery into exactly
what it is. Is that the way you feel, Bobby? Are you
sometimes aware of an emptiness inside you and
the cold draft that comes from it?"

"I don't know."

"Are you never really happy?"

Bobby squeezed up crumbs and ate them off his
thumb. "At Sherwood I was."

"Are there angers in your heart you can't explain? I know there are in mine. Mine are at God,
and he might not even care. Am I getting closer?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

The reverend winked at him. "I think we speak
the same language."

"Do you want some more milk?"

"I better not." The reverend looked at the box of
crackers and then at his watch. "I hope I haven't
spoiled my dinner. Mrs. Stottle will be mad."

"I eat when I want."

The two of them made their way to the front
door, the reverend in the lead. When he opened
the door, the warmth of the late afternoon swept
in. Officer Wetherfield had replaced Sergeant Avery in the cruiser. A neighbor across the street was
peering out her front window.

"Will you come back to see me?" Bobby asked.

"Most certainly," the reverend said.

Using Gloria Eisner's cellular phone, Chief Morgan interrupted Reverend Stottle's dinner. "What's
your reading?" he said. "What do you see in him?"

"Darkness."

"I need more than that, Reverend."

"I see death. I see a man-child with one foot still
in the womb and the other in the grave. I see myself in him."

"But you don't kill people. I need to know if he's
on the edge."

"We're all on the edge, Chief, but most of us are
able to keep our balance. The good news is I've made headway with him. We're on the same wavelength. He wants me to visit him again."

"Good." Morgan moved from one window to
another and viewed a leafy branch, a patch of sky.
Lowering his voice, he said, "See if you can get
him to talk about Mrs. Bullard."

When he got off the phone, Gloria said, "What
was that all about?"

"Bobby Sawhill."

"Trish's stepson," she said lightly.

"Hard to think of him as that."

"She used to be afraid of him. I don't think she
is anymore."

"Then she should be," Morgan said.

Gloria moved close to him, contemplated the
lines in his brow and the groove down each cheek.
"You're getting to be a habit, James. I don't know
if that's good or bad."

"Good for me. I don't know about you."

"We should've met before we were toilettrained. We might have had a chance."

"We still do," he said. They were talking mouth
to mouth, their lips occasionally brushing, a phase
of foreplay more intimate than kissing.

"We're from different worlds."

"But you're in mine now," he said.

The telephone rang in the half dark. She grappled
with it and finally spoke into it. "For you," she said
seconds later and passed it over. Morgan lifted
himself out of tortured sheets and sat up. Listening, he frowned.

"How did you know I was here?"

"What d'you mean, how do I know?" Randolph
Jackson said. "Whole town knows where you're
sacking out."

"What do you want, Randolph?"

"I want you to get that goddamn cruiser away
from the kid's house. All it does is draw more attention to him and advertise we got a killer in town."

"I'm trying to keep an eye on him."

"Find a better way."

The line dead, Morgan put the phone down,
swung his legs over the side of the bed, and sat
with his hands on his knees. Gloria's hand crept
up his bare back, producing goose bumps.

"Am I making your job harder?"

"Yes," he said. "It's you I'm worried about."

"I'm not Claudia MacLeod."

"I know who you are."

"He doesn't."

Morgan stood up. "He didn't know her either."

"James."

"What?"

"You have a nice ass."

Reverend Stottle brought ice cream, three flavors,
which they ate on the back porch, where for a
while they simply listened to the eerie stridulation
of grasshoppers, which at times seemed to mimic
music. The only shade came from a tired maple
barely able to put out leaves. Bobby said, "Let's
not talk about God."

"He does become tiresome, I admit." Reverend Stottle, seated on a camp chair, held his dish of ice
cream high and was careful not to drip any. "What
would you like to talk about?"

"I don't know. Something different."

"How about ourselves? When I was your age,
studying for the ministry, I was coping with a desperation I was afraid to give a name. Do you know
what it was, Bobby? Sexuality. First I thought I
was queer, but I wasn't. I was a mama's boy. Sound
familiar?"

"No."

"Then I realized I was preoccupied with women.
Their private parts."

Bobby scraped his dish and placed it under his
chair. "I know what they look like."

Reverend Stottle ate the chocolate and vanilla
portions, saving the strawberry for last. "But am I
getting warm?"

"I don't think of those things."

"I keep a private journal so I can dig into myself.
Most people are afraid to dig deep, afraid they'll
hit mud. Is that what you're afraid of, Bobby?"

"No mud in me."

Reverend Stottle disposed of his dish. "There's
mud in all of us. Want me to prove it? Tell me your
thoughts when you killed Claudia MacLeod."

"I didn't have any."

The music of the grasshoppers hit high notes, as
if someone had turned the heat up. Bobby's face
was reddening. The reverend said, "You must have
had some when you pushed Mrs. Bullard down the
stairs."

"You're trying to get in my mind."

"Aren't you lonely there? Aren't there things you
want to tell?"

"I didn't like the flowers."

"What flowers?"

"I don't want to talk anymore."

"I think we should."

Bobby's hand shot sideways and clenched the
reverend's wrist. The reverend yelped. The strength
of the grip astounded him, the hold on him seemed
lethal.

Bobby said, "I don't want you coming back."

Sarah Stottle placed ice on her husband's swollen
wrist and told him he was a fool to have gone
there. "If I were you," she said, "I'd swear out a
complaint. That was an assault."

"I gave him cause. I'm at fault too."

"You're lucky you lived to tell about it."

"I intruded into his private chaos."

"Then you're real lucky."

"I have to call the chief."

"Stay where you are," she said and brought him
the phone, then keyed the number for him and
hovered.

When the chief came on the line, he said,
"You're right to worry."