On the Loose (6 page)

"Who's to say, Gloria? Who's the hell to say?"

Later she phoned Ben Sawhill at his office in
Boston and told him what she was considering.
Silent for a moment, he cleared his throat and said,
"Sounds like a good deal for Harry. Is it for you?"

"It's not a business deal, Ben. It's two human beings looking ahead. My concern is Bobby. Do you
think he'll be a problem?"

"Isn't he already one?"

The wind sounded like a truck charging the
house. Her face to the window, she saw snow gusting like heavy smoke. Much had fallen, reshaping shrubs, burdening trees, and cushioning a stone
bench. "Really getting bad out there," she said.
"Shouldn't you be starting home?"

"I'm staying over. I booked a room at the Ritz."

"Do you want company? I'll drive in."

He was silent. She had known he would be.

"Just joking, Ben." She turned from the window.
"I called for advice. Yours means a lot to me."

"Comes down to one thing," he said. "Can you
survive another upheaval in your life?"

"No sweat," she said in a reckless voice. "Things
don't work out, I'll just say shazam and fly away."

In February Amy White and Claudia MacLeod met
with their lawyers at the registry of deeds in
nearby Lawrence and swiftly passed papers on
Mrs. Bullard's house. The lawyers, anxious to
move on, snapped their briefcases shut and said
good-bye. Pocketing a check, Amy turned to Claudia and said, "It's really yours now. I know you'll
be happy in it. My aunt was."

Claudia waited until the mild part of March to
move in. Chief Morgan helped her. Standing outside together, they admired the little balcony over
the front door. Claudia called it a fairybook house
while ignoring the uncertain condition of the roof
and the missing slats in one of the shutters. She
opened the door for him, and he lugged in a box of
her belongings. On the parlor walls were oblong
patches where family pictures had hung. In the
kitchen waterdrops twitched out of a leaky faucet.
From the attic came the scurry of mice.

"I know what you're thinking," she said.

He placed the box on a chair. When he opened
the cellar door, a draft flew up at him. The light
cord was a string tied to a stub of chain. He pulled
it and peered down the stairs, more narrow and
warped than he'd remembered.

Is that where she fell, James?"

"That's where it happened," he said.

Without telling her, he replaced the lock on the
bulkhead with a heavy-duty one, the best Brody's
Hardware had to offer, and placed the key on the
kitchen table, a tag identifying it.

"You worry too much," she said.

He kissed her and undid a button on her blouse.
When he brushed the back of his hand across the
start of her breasts, she shuddered as if he had
crept across her grave.

"I do," he said, a chill inside his skull, as if memory, running ahead of itself, were recording what
hadn't happened yet. They made love upright,
against the cellar door, she with a knee hiked high.

Afterward, he didn't want to let her go. "I wish
we had more time," he whispered. "Why can't a
second be a minute and a minute an hour? Why
can't we hold our breath forever?"

"My back hurts," she said.

In April she hung new curtains in the parlor and
gazed out at forsythia gushing into bloom while a
naked magnolia tree waited to be clothed. In another window she shaded her eyes from the sun.
The promise of daffodils spiked the gray earth of a
garden that still looked wretched from winter. Holding her gaze, fascinating her, was the agile
strength of a robin drawing up a worm from the
packed ground, stringing it out whole, careful not
to break it.

One evening, at Morgan's request, Sergeant Avery arrived unannounced with a battered toolbox
and fixed the dripping faucet in the kitchen. When
she tried to pay him, he said, "No charge. Chief
and I are buddies."

Morgan arrived a little later with pizza and beer
and a large smile. He immediately tested the
faucet. "Not bad, huh?"

She said, "Let me take care of myself, James."

His feelings were visible on his face. "Don't shut
me out."

In May the garden vibrated with colors. Crimson tulips of an exotic variety danced with daffodils among lilies not yet in blossom. Irises
floated high over their foliage of knives. Awaiting
a wearer was a gown of flowering almond.

In the early light of a Saturday morning the garden was tremulous, vaporous, colors riding over
muted green. Claudia was on her knees weeding
and listening to birdsong. The loudest was an elaborate trill from a cardinal whose mate was unresponsive. Then she heard a voice halfway between
a man's and a child's.

"I knew the lady who lived here before. You her
daughter?"

"No." Getting to her feet, she nearly scratched
herself on a thorn.

"Those are rose bushes."

"I know," she said. He looked familiar and absurdly young for his size. "What's your name?"

"Bobby," he said.

Meg O'Brien fidgeted at her desk. Her oldest cat
was incontinent and needed to be put away, which
she could not bring herself to do. Chief Morgan,
trying to be helpful, offered Sergeant Avery's services and immediately wished he hadn't. Her pony
face tossed high, she said, "I'll take care of my own
cat, thank you."

Morgan retired to his office to watch baseball on
a miniature TV set. Among the Red Sox players
was Crack Alexander, who had bought a house in
the Heights and was the town's celebrity. Morgan
watched him line the ball to center field, where it
was caught at the base of the bleacher wall. Morgan's groan joined that of the crowd.

Meg peered in at him. "Matt just called in sick."

Matt MacGregor, one of his youngest officers,
worked the second shift. Without removing his
eyes from the little screen, Morgan said, "No problem. I'll be around."

"You got nothing better to do?"

"That's right."

Resettling himself behind his desk, Morgan piddled away an hour watching the Sox lose to the
Orioles, the game never close, though Crack
Alexander hit a solo home run in the final inning.
Rising to stretch his legs, he heard a shrieking
horn from a car circling the green. Teenagers. He heard Reverend Stottle ringing the church bell not
for a service but for the early start of a bean supper, tickets available at the door. Then he noticed
that Meg was back in the doorway.

"Mrs. Perrault says she's been trying to reach
Claudia all day. She wants you to go over and
check on her."

Morgan sighed. "She's either out in the garden
or, more likely, not answering the phone. Her
mother calls constantly, not to mention her aunts."

"You're not going over?"

"Send Eugene," he said and drew a frown. Hand
on her hip, Meg awaited an explanation, as if she
had the rights of an elder sister. He said, "We're
not getting along so well."

"What's the matter now, Jim?"

"She thinks I'm too much in her face."

"Are you?"

"Probably. I know she cares for me, but I don't
think she loves me."

Meg stared intently. "Would you like a hard
truth, Jim? A woman loves only once. After that
it's pretense, reenactment, wishful thinking."

He stared back. "How would you know that?"

"I was young once, remember?"

He half smiled. "Is it the same for a man?"

"You tell me," she said and turned away.

Coffee at his elbow, he scanned a newsletter
from the Massachusetts Association of Police
Chiefs and, with slightly more interest, browsed a
magazine article on urban crime. Then he heard Meg calling to him from her desk. The cadence
went out of his stride when he stepped out of his
office and saw her face. She stood with the telephone receiver down by her side.

"It's Eugene," she said. "Get over there, Jim."

Trembling, Sergeant Avery said, "I'm sorry, Chief."

Edging into the kitchen, Morgan felt the hair
move on his head, and all of a sudden his breathing was choppy. Claudia MacLeod's final moment
was frozen on her face.

"You want me to call the state police?"

Morgan lacked a voice, so he nodded. The blood
on the floor seemed as much an arrangement as
the crimson tulips on the table.

The weapon, a carving knife from a rack near
the sink lay near the body. He thought he heard a
footfall, but it was phantom. Then he heard a real
one. Returning, Sergeant Avery was careful where
he stepped. The killer had tracked blood.

"They're coming. You all right, Chief?"

"Go question the neighbors, Eugene. I'll wait
here."

Standing alone, he let his mind glide to other
things, to the day the old chief pinned a badge on
him and gave him a gun, to the evening he and his mother spoke in hushed tones at his father's casket. Neither would have been surprised had his father, whose opinions had always come first, risen
to interrupt them. Deeper in the murk of his
thoughts was a school desk with a pair of initials
dug into the varnish.

He heard abrupt sounds in the house, as if a
cover had been lifted and voices let out. An overlarge trooper in full regalia and a detective in mufti
appeared and spoke to him. The detective asked a
number of quick questions to which he gave automatic answers. Then they sidestepped him and ignored him.

"She put up a fight," the detective said, crouching. "Defensive wounds on her hands."

The trooper said, "Wonder whose broken
glasses those are, hers or-"

"Hers," Morgan said.

Rising, the detective pointed here and there.
"Those look like sneaker prints." He wore his responsibilities the way judges wear their robes. His
gaze shifted. "Haven't touched anything, have you,
Chief?"

Morgan went outside, controlled his breathing,
and wandered into the garden. A dragonfly-a wire
with wings-hovered over a blue grape hyacinth.
Slithering from a crowd of daffodils was a garter
snake whose head suggested a small inquisitive
mind. Its tongue flicked out like a struck match.
Though afraid of snakes, Morgan stood his ground.

"Chief!"

Sergeant Avery was running toward him. A car dinal shot out of the magnolia tree, which seemed
to stretch its limbs. Sergeant Avery was winded.

"Two houses away. Mrs. Crabtree."

Morgan waited.

"She remembers seeing a kid sneaking through
backyards. She thinks she knows who it was."

Morgan, looking up at the sky, said, "Why?
Y?

The detective, whose name was Cleveland, sat
with leg over leg in a wing chair in Harry Sawhill's
house. Bobby Sawhill sat in a mahogany rocker
and rocked. A stiff figure, Chief Morgan remained
standing. Harry Sawhill, also on his feet, looked at
his son and said, "Just tell the truth, Bobby. You've
got nothing to hide."

"I wasn't there," Bobby said, rocking nonchalantly.

"Bobby, sit still."

"But you were in the neighborhood," Cleveland
said.

Bobby shook his head, as if coming out of a half
sleep. His blue eyes were lusterless. "I was at the
library most of the time."

"Did you take out a book?"

"I was reading magazines."

Cleveland smiled like an uncle. His features were
bland, as if his face were an afterthought. He was
buying time, waiting for a search warrant to be processed. His head turned. "What did you say, Chief?"

Morgan had spoken in words too closely
stitched together to be understood. He was staring at Bobby. He spoke again, spacing the words. "Did
you know Mrs. Bullard?"

"Who?"

"Did you break into the house back in January
when no one was living there?"

"Why would I do that?"

"Maybe you were tired," Morgan said. "Maybe
you wanted to lie on her bed."

Something shifted inside Harry Sawhill and
deepened the gray look of his face. "What's he
talking about, Bobby?"

"Let's take one thing at a time," Cleveland said
in a deadly calm voice. "All right, Chief?"

Morgan's gaze did not leave Bobby. For a stunning moment he had a notion of taking him by the
throat. He thought of hunters who throw the guts
of their kill to their hounds. He said, "You have
stains on your sneakers. Did you change your
clothes but not your sneakers?"

Cleveland raised a warning hand. "He's going to
tell us all about it-,aren't you, Bobby?"

"I think I'd better call my brother," Harry
Sawhill said.

"A lawyer would be better," said Morgan.

Ben Sawhill arrived out of the dark of the night at
the same time the overlarge trooper appeared with
the search warrant, another trooper behind him.
They dominated the room. "Do you think he did
it?" Ben asked the chief in a whisper and received
no answer. He glanced at his brother, who looked
crushed, and went to his nephew.

"Don't say anything more, Bobby."

Bobby gave out an enigmatic smile. Cleveland
had been interrogating him, each question, slowly
asked, trailing tentacles. Bobby had said little.

"Stay here ," Cleveland said to Morgan and signaled the second trooper to stay put. Harry
Sawhill, with an air of inevitability preceding each
step he took, led Cleveland and the big trooper out
of the room.

Ben placed a caring hand on his nephew's shoulder. "They're going up to your room, Bobby. Stay
calm."

The rocker moved gently. Nothing seemed to be
touching Bobby, not even his uncle's hand. He was
oblivious of Morgan's eyes, which had never left
him. Then, as if by accident, their eyes met. Morgan took a step toward him.

"Tell me why."

"Leave him alone," Ben said evenly. "His lawyer's
coming."

The lawyer arrived within moments. Morgan
knew of him. His name was Ogden, his office in
Andover, near Rembrandt's. He was short and
stout, with hair fuzzy blond and eyes points of
blue. He conferred with Ben in whispers and then
glanced at Morgan.