On the Loose (7 page)

"You shouldn't be here, Chief. This is too personal for you."

"You're absolutely right," Morgan said without
moving. He was no longer looking at Bobby but
gazing through him, beyond him, as if he could see
into another world. His wife was there, and Clau dia MacLeod in her best dress was just arriving.

Ben said, "At least sit down."

The others were coming down the stairs. The
big trooper carried a plastic bag bearing tainted
jeans and a sweatshirt. Harry Sawhill looked as if
he wanted to cry. Cleveland nodded to Ogden and
said, "I'm going to read him his rights."

"Sure," Ogden said, "but remember he's just a
kid."

In a dream, James Morgan was a child again, but
his mother was too old to care. His scraped knee
went unnoticed, his crying ignored. Waking, he
shivered through a vision of himself growing old,
aging into uncertainties, losing control of his bladder, chained by memories he didn't want.

By dawn he was showered and shaved and wearing shirt and tie and a dark suit not quite the fit it
had once been. Viewing himself in a mirror, he was
aware he hadn't made as much of himself as his father had hoped. Once that had mattered to him.
Now it didn't.

The telephone rang, jarring him. It was Meg
O'Brien. She said, "I knew you'd be up."

"I have to be," he said. "They're going to bury
her today."

"Don't come in. There's no need."

"You're in charge, Meg. You always have been."

"No," she said, "but it's nice of you to say so."

He drove from his house to Pleasant Street and
on up to Drinkwater's Funeral Home with no intention of going in. He hated the way embalmed faces of the dead hold no meaning. He parked at
the curb and sat for several minutes with his eyes
closed, his means of saying good-bye before the
others. At the Blue Bonnet he sat at the window
table where, apparently out of respect, no one
joined him. Then Reverend Stottle did. The menu,
which never changed, was chalked on a blackboard screwed to the knotty-pine wall. Reverend
Stottle ordered scrambled eggs. Morgan had a cup
of coffee before him. He looked at his watch.

"Plenty of time," the reverend said. "She's in no
rush, nor should we be."

A couple of town hall workers nodded to Morgan on their way out, and Orville Farnham, a selectman, did the same on his way in. Morgan said,
"It's the separation that hurts the most."

"But the dead don't stay dead," Reverend Stottle
said. "They wander into our dreams."

"Do you believe in heaven?"

"I believe in dreams."

"What about the soul?"

"The soul is fashioned from sounds too distant
to be heard. It's wound in light but free of time and
has an echo we don't hear."

The scrambled eggs arrived, and Reverend Stottle dug in, his appetite seldom affected by events.
Morgan said, "Another question for you. What
makes a kid a murderer? Is it a loose wire, a kink
in the machinery, a chemical imbalance? Is it a
matter of insanity or of cold rationality? Are we
talking genetics, upbringing, or something else? Is
it pure evil?"

"It's not an easy question, but I will say that if
God were Detroit he'd have to recall many of us.
Human defects, physical and mental, are rampant."

The waitress returned to the table. "Can't I get
you something, Chief?"

"An aspirin."

An hour later he slipped into the Congregational
Church, which had filled to standing room only,
and poised himself behind a spuming wave of
white-haired women. Reverend Stottle conducted
the service, and the assistant principal at the regional high school delivered the eulogy, which assigned goodness and generosity to the memory of
Claudia MacLeod. Then the church slowly emptied. All the waiting cars bore little funeral flags,
except the chief's.

Sergeant Avery stood on Burnham Road and
directed the cortege into the timeless green of the
cemetery. Much time was needed for the crowd to
assemble at the gravesite. Morgan hanging back,
seemed more an onlooker than a griever. He
edged forward when the ritual was ending and
approached Mrs. Perrault and her two sisters.
They stood in fixed positions like people in a
painting. Mrs. Perrault didn't speak, but her elder
sister did.

"We blame you, Chief. You should've stopped
her from buying that house."

He stared at Mrs. Perrault, who seemed to have
no thoughts, as if her skull were an egg sucked dry.

The other sister said, "Not now, Ida. It isn't the
time."

Morgan carried the blame back to the station,
where he felt it belonged. Reading sympathy in
Meg O'Brien's eyes he looked pointedly away and
glimpsed someone in his office, the head of a man
half buried in a newspaper held high. "It's that
state police detective," Meg said in a near whisper.
"I told him you probably wouldn't be back, but he
waited anyway."

Cleveland lowered the paper as Morgan stepped
past him, and he cast it aside when Morgan settled
in behind the desk. They regarded each other
through grainy light. "This is a courtesy call, Chief.
To bring you up to date."

"Good of you," Morgan said.

"I know she was a friend of yours."

"More than a friend."

"I know that too." Cleveland draped an arm
over the back of his metal chair. "We matched the
kid's sneakers to the prints at the scene, we even
got his fingerprints there, and we got a blood
match off his jeans. We got everything, Chief, except a confession. I've never seen a kid so cool.
Kinda scary. He admits to nothing."

"He's responsible for two deaths."

"Even if what you say is true, I don't think we
can prove it. We got him on this one for sure."

Morgan tightened. "I want to know the motive. I
want to know why he did one and then the other. I
want to know if the house had any significance. I
need answers, Cleveland. I need reasons."

"The kid's in a cloud. We may never know."

"But I have to," Morgan said.

Harry Sawhill and Trish Becker were alone together at a rear room at his brother's house. It was
a room of heavy drapes, wainscoted walls, and
club chairs. Harry was at the liquor cabinet,
though Trish had told him to stay away from it.
His brother had no vodka, only bourbon. He took
a belt of it and then another for good measure.
Turning, he said, "I don't know my own son. He's
a stranger."

Immobile in a club chair, Trish said nothing.
Since the murder, the macabre overshadowed the
ordinary.

"I don't know anything, Trish, not even myself."
He moved toward her and looked down at her.
"Are we still going to get married?"

"One thing at a time," she said in a voice that
barely carried.

"Stick by me, please. Don't leave me."

Since his son's arrest, she had scarcely left his
side, her shock as great as his. His sprang from the
horror of it all, hers from an unanswerable question, to which she now gave voice. "If he was going to kill anyone, Harry, why didn't he kill me?"
"Don't say that. We don't know he did."

"Yes, we do."

Ben Sawhill entered the room quietly and
dropped into a heavy chair beyond Trish's. Fatigue
had cut into his face, but his voice was clear. "It
doesn't look good," he said. "They have enough
evidence to charge him."

Harry teetered. "They're not going to let him go?"

"Didn't you hear me? They're charging him with
murder."

"What are you doing for him?"

"Everything I can, Harry." Ben glanced fleetingly
at Trish, who seemed inattentive. His voice lifted.
"For the time being he's in a holding cell at the
state police barracks in Andover. The odd thing is
he seems to be enjoying it."

"That's not my Bobby," Harry said forcefully.

"My question is do we know who Bobby is? He's
scheduled for psychological evaluation."

"I know my son. He's not a killer." Harry returned to the liquor cabinet. "What's the most we
can hope for, Ben?"

"That he won't be tried as an adult."

His first morning at the new place, a whole new
world to him, he submitted to a physical examination. He didn't mind the doctor peering into his
eyes and ears and down his throat, but he disliked
the rest. A nurse who seemed to have more authority than the doctor gave him orders. Standing
on a rubber mat, he felt pink and foolish with his
clothes off. Staring at him, the nurse's eyes turned
beady.

"You sure you're only thirteen?" she asked.

"I'll be fourteen soon."

He lifted his arms while the doctor palpated him
and relayed his observations to the nurse, who
transcribed them on a yellow sheet of paper fas tened to a clipboard. When he stepped on the
scale, the nurse adjusted the weights. He looked
for a tender light in her eyes but found none.

"Get dressed," she said.

A man in hospital whites took him away.

In the afternoon they wanted to measure the
electrical activity of his brain, but he turned stubborn and wouldn't let them. A different doctor
wanted to discuss his dreams, but he wouldn't do
that either. The room was bare except for a table
and the chairs he and the doctor occupied. The
chalk-blue walls held no pictures on which he
could rest his eyes.

"Is this a prison or a hospital?"

The doctor smiled out of an unblemished complexion. "Neither, Bobby. It's a facility."

"I've been read my rights."

"They don't apply here. Here there's nothing to
worry about. What's your earliest memory?"

He could remember far back in his life. He
could remember his thumb in his mouth. He could
remember being lifted off the potty. What he
couldn't remember was the warmth of the womb,
but curled up in bed at night, snuggled into the
covers, he could reenact his beginnings.

"Come on, Bobby. Give me an answer."

"I don't have one."

"Tell me about your mother."

When the doctor lowered his head, Bobby saw
thin places in his hair. "She's dead."

"I know, but tell me about her anyway. Do you
miss her?"

He missed coloring books, bedtime stories, toys
in his bath. He missed playing store with his
mother. Money was Necco candy wafers, which
they later ate, thumbprints and all. He missed his
mother's smell, her lap. Most of all, he missed
knowing she was there.

"Sometimes," he said.

"Some people say that when you lose your
mother you lose the world. Do you believe that?"

"I don't know."

"What bothers you the most, Bobby?"

"About what?"

"Anything. Everything."

He didn't like flowers. Red roses were funerals,
cemeteries, and white ones were clumps of nothing, the scent of each jumbling living with dying,
one no better than the other.

"Nothing," he said.

The doctor tried to bully him with a look. "Are
you sure? Do you hate anyone? Yourself, perhaps?"

"No."

"Do you like girls?"

"My cousins are girls."

"You like them?"

"They're OK."

"Do you like women?"

guess so."

The doctor went silent. He consulted his notes
and then returned his gaze to Bobby. A moment
passed as each seemed to reappraise the other.
Dropping back in his chair, the doctor said, "I
think I know exactly what you're doing, Bobby."

"What am I doing?" He was interested. He
wanted to know.

"You're playing an intellectual game with me.
You think you're pretty clever. The fact of the matter is you're in trouble. Deep trouble. Aren't you a
little scared?"

"What have I got to be scared about?"

"They got the goods on you. That's my understanding."

He said nothing. He felt he didn't have to. His
thoughts and the doctor's would meet and mesh in
the air. The doctor's stare pressed upon him.

"Some crimes leave no margin for mercy. Yours,
could be one of them."

Curiosity livened his face. "Am I going to do
hard time?"

"I certainly hope so." The doctor gathered his
notes, rose from the chair, and stood tall. "But I
doubt it."

Chief Morgan was not a welcome visitor, but after
a pause Ben Sawhill let him in and led him into a
room off the foyer. Open windows let in mild
breezes of the evening. Seating himself under a
lamp that cast a weak light, Morgan said, "I need
your help."

Ben, torn, shook his head. "I can't give it to you.
It shouldn't be this way, but we're on opposite
sides. Nothing I can do about it."

"Your nephew has killed twice."

Ben hurled up a hand. He didn't want to hear. "I
know what you're getting at, and I don't believe it."

"Perhaps you don't want to believe it."

"Look, Chief, I've known you a long time, I respect you, but don't you know what this has done
to my brother, not to mention me and my family?"

Morgan spoke in his quietest voice. "Don't you
know what this has done to Claudia MacLeod's
mother?"

"What exactly do you want?"