The Death and Life of Gabriel Phillips (11 page)

“Yeah,” Andy said as he headed toward the door to leave. “I think he did.”

Andy sat in his car for a few minutes and processed what he’d just heard. In his mind, he’d never been able to figure out how a father, even a bad one, could willingly kill his child. But if the child wasn’t his, that changed everything. That also provided the missing piece to the puzzle as to why John would flip out and kill Gabe when he did. Loraine left him six months earlier, and by her own admission, she’d let John know she’d found someone else. Even if she hadn’t, Gabe had surely told him about the new man in his mother’s life. If John was going to fly into a jealous rage, it surely would have come earlier, during one of these other milestones in their breakup. But it wasn’t just jealousy that drove him to kill. If John wasn’t Gabe’s father, that little boy now represented everything that had destroyed John’s life. It all started to make perfect sense to Andy. Now he just needed to find enough evidence to convince Ted Jackson to go to the D.A.’s office for an indictment.

L
IFE GOT IN
the way of Andy building his case, specifically, life as a cop in a small town. The first week of August marked the annual Goat Cheese Festival in Trask. Apparently, back in the early twentieth century, one of Trask’s leading families had a large goat cheese operation. They opened a goat-cheese-processing plant just outside of town, and for a while it employed more people than anything else around. As ridiculous as it sounds, at its peak, Trask became known as the “Goat Cheese Capital of Indiana.” The goat cheese craze didn’t last, but the Goat Cheese Festival did. On the first week of August, the town blocks off the town square, brings in carnival rides and booths selling elephant ears and lemon shake-ups, and celebrates goat cheese. Back in the 1930s or ’40s, every food booth had to sell only foods made out of goat cheese, but that didn’t last. The festival, however, got bigger every year. By the 1970s, they had a Goat Cheese Festival Queen contest, along with a parade that featured Shriners on minibikes and all the Goat Cheese Queen candidates in convertibles, along with fire trucks from every fire department in the county. Everyone in town loves the Goat Cheese Festival, even if it doesn’t have much goat cheese left in it.

Everyone, that is, except the Trask Police Department. The Goat Cheese Festival means pulling double duty for a week straight, along with setting up nonstop nightly patrols across from the bar to watch the carnie workers. At least half a dozen carnies end up in the drunk tank every year. The festival also increases the reports of burglary, assault, and shoplifting. All in all, it is a really fun week for the already overworked police department.

Andy’s Goat Cheese Festival week kicked off on Tuesday afternoon around four with a complaint from Harlan Masters, who lived in a house on the northwest corner just off the town square. He called in claiming that some carnies were urinating in his bushes. Andy couldn’t drive straight up the square because the road was already blocked with a Tilt-A-Whirl, haunted house, and some kind of a caterpillar ride, so he walked the one block from the station to the square, then up the square to Harlan’s house. Andy figured the sight of a cop in uniform might send a message to the carnies putting the rides together that they were being watched. Walking past the carousel, he shot a look at the greasy thirty-something man hanging horses on the poles.
You and these other sons of bitches better watch yourselves, because I am,
Andy said without speaking a word.

“Andy, you’ve got to do something about these damned carnies,” Harlan said as Andy walked up onto his porch. “Every year it’s the same damn thing. I don’t know why we still have this damn festival. There hasn’t been one damn piece of goat cheese eaten in this damn town in fifty damn years.” When it came to profanity, Harlan had a rather limited vocabulary.

“I know, I know, Harlan,” Andy said. He’d had this same conversation with Harlan every year since he’d joined the force. “You know we’ll put on extra patrols, try to keep them off your property.”

“That’s damn right. This is my property. That damn town square doesn’t come over to this side of the street. I should have never bought this damn house. Thanks to this damn goat cheese, I can’t sell it. What kind of damn fool wants to live next door to the goat cheese festival.” Andy heard the same rant every year. “HEY! You damn carnie, get away from there. Don’t you go pissing on my tree,” Harlan yelled to a carnival worker walking down the street.

“Now, Harlan, if you want, you can put up a sign that says ‘private property,’ and ask people politely not to come up into your yard. The carnival workers who come here every year already know to stay off your property. I will make sure they get the word out to the newbies,” Andy said.

“I would like that,” Harlan said. “Thanks, Andy. I know you’re the only one around here who hates this damned festival as much as I do.” Then, turning his attention to another worker walking down the street, he yelled from his porch, “Stay off my yard. This is private property, not some damn public restroom.”

“I’ll see you, Mr. Masters,” Andy said as he walked off Harlan’s porch and made his way down the other side of the town square.

The festival didn’t officially begin until the next day, but the square was already filled with activity as the carnival workers put the finishing touches on the rides. “Hi, how are you?” Andy posed to two men working on the motor of the Ferris wheel. They did not respond. “How are you this afternoon?” he said to a familiar-looking heavyset woman cleaning the glass on the dunk tank. She wore a flower print blouse whose flowers had long since faded into something more like light spots than flowers, along with a well-worn denim skirt that was frayed along the hemline.

“Fine, thank you,” she said with a smile that hadn’t seen a dentist’s chair in years. “And you, Officer?”

“Couldn’t be better,” Andy lied. After five years on the force, and five years of Goat Cheese Festivals, Andy recognized the faces of many of the workers. The same carnival company came through year after year, and they retained a surprising number of their employees.

Halfway down the west side of the square, another crew had set up an open-sided tent in a town parking lot. Under the tent were tables and chairs. It looked like a food booth, only larger. Andy walked over to check it out, but stopped short at a sign hung on the flap of the tent: redeemer’s house of deliverance. welcome. Ducking under the tent, he discovered that the group was indeed serving food, but this wasn’t another elephant ear and lemon shake-up booth. A group of men and women were preparing meals for the carnival workers. Looking around, Andy noticed there wasn’t a cash register anywhere. The meal was free. He walked up to the serving counter to find out more about what was going on, when the man dishing ice into plastic cups said, “Hello, Officer Myers. I was hoping I might run into you here today.”

The sight of John Phillips took Andy aback. It was his first time seeing him, much less speaking to him, since John had moved from
suspicious
to
guilty
in Andy’s mind. Andy could feel his heart beating in his ears, his face flushed red.
Dammit,
he cursed to himself,
don’t give too much away
. He wanted to drag John out from behind the counter and beat the crap out of him; he wanted to yell,
Yeah, I’d hoped I would run into you, you child-killing son of a bitch, wanted to run into you at about seventy miles per hour.
He wanted to do and say all kinds of things, but he didn’t. Andy kept his composure and asked, “So what are you guys doing here, this afternoon?”

“We’re out here for the carnies,” John said. “They spend so much time on the road that we wanted to give them a good, home-cooked meal. Just a simple way to show them how much God loves them.”

“Well, that sounds real nice.” Andy laid it on thick. “I’m sure they will appreciate it.”

“I think they will. It’s our first year to do something like this in Trask. About five years ago someone got the idea of giving the carnival workers a meal on the night they set everything up over in Crosse during their September Apple Festival. That’s the last stop of the season for a lot of the carnies. The meal went over so well, we thought we ought to try doing the same thing for some small-town festivals. This is our first year in Trask. Hopefully, it won’t be our last,” John said.

If I have anything to do with it, it will be
your
last
, Andy thought, but he didn’t say it. He just smiled and said, “That’s great. That’s a real nice thing you’re doing. Most people look at the carnies as a nuisance, if they look at them at all.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” John said. “You’re welcome to come back over in a half hour when we start serving, if you would like. I know you’re a single man. There are some great cooks in our church. We’ve got fried chicken and mashed potatoes and gravy and sweet potato pie. You don’t want to miss a meal like this.”

John’s statement took Andy by surprise.
How in the hell did he know I’m single,
Andy wondered. “Er, what? Uh . . . yeah, yeah, I might just do that. Nothing I like more than a hunk of sweet potato pie,” he lied. “Well, John, I’ve got to get back to the station. It sure was good seeing you again, and under better circumstances at that. By the way, are you doing okay? It must be hell, I mean, heck, to lose your son the way you did. Walking in and finding him lying there in all that blood could sure haunt a man for a long time. How are you getting along?”

“Thank you for your concern, Officer,” John said, smiling. “That means a lot to me that you’re worried about me. It’s been tough, but I’m hanging in there. I don’t know where I would be without God’s promises and the hope they give me.”

“Good. Good,” Andy said. “Well, if you ever need to talk to anyone, I’m always around.”

“The same goes for me, Officer. I’m available if you need to talk. I have the hope that God gives through Jesus to carry me through. I’m afraid you don’t have that, and I don’t know how you can see the things you see on your job without it,” John said.

Andy couldn’t maintain the little show any longer. He’d gone past his tolerance for small talk with murderers, and his eyes showed it. “That’s very nice of you. I will keep that in mind,” Andy said as he turned and walked back onto the town square heading toward the police station.

Chapter 8

T
HE FIRST COUPLE
days of the Goat Cheese Festival passed without any major incidents. Andy had to make another visit to Harlan Master’s house after someone stole his Private Property, No Trespassing sign and he had to break up a fight between a couple of fifteen-year-old boys. Testosterone and Mountain Dew are never a good combination. Other than that, Wednesday and Thursday of the festival were pretty much business as usual for this time of year.

Friday night, however, was “Wristband Night,” and “Wristband Night” was always the biggest night for both attendance and trouble. You could buy a wristband for three bucks and ride all of the rides for free. Every Trask police officer had to work that Friday night. Since Andy had more seniority than anyone other than the chief, he pulled the plum assignment, working undercover at the festival. Undercover didn’t exactly mean undercover, since everyone in town knew him. All this meant was that Andy and three other officers didn’t have to wear their uniforms. Instead, Andy got to wear his favorite pair of Levi’s and a Trask Tigers T-shirt and walk around the festival gorging himself on hot dogs, corn dogs, and Pepsi, like any other good resident of Trask. Two uniformed officers were also on duty, but the chief didn’t want to flood the place with cops and take away from the townspeople’s ability to have a good time.

The carnival opened at 4:00 and closed at 11:00 p.m., with wristbands going on sale at 5:00 p.m. Andy arrived at four-thirty and checked in with the other undercover officers and the Trask police chief, a sad-eyed Trask native named Ed Spence. Spence assigned each of them a quadrant of the town square, which they would work for an hour, before rotating counterclockwise to the next quadrant. “The Goat Cheese Queen is supposed to show up around six,” Spence reminded them, “so everyone keep your eyes open for her. Remember last year when one of the girls who lost came up and pelted her with dog poop. We don’t want that to happen to our queen again. So keep your eyes open.” After the briefing, Spence went home. I guess he figured, since he was the chief, that was his privilege.

Andy’s night started in the northeast corner of the town square, which placed him right between the kettle corn booth (his favorite) and old man Master’s house (the royal pain in the butt). He stuck pretty close to the kettle corn, but by his third bag, he thought he ought to walk around a little more before he made himself sick. Most of the people in this quadrant of the carnival were under four feet tall, since it was the kiddy-ride section. He walked across the street to the pony ride on the vacant lot on the far east side of the square, sat on a bench, and watched. His stomach ached from too much kettle corn, but that didn’t stop him from daydreaming about a corn dog. The crowd had steadily grown over the past hour, and although it would be larger still by seven, it was already large enough that you couldn’t walk far without bumping into someone. He hadn’t sat on the bench long before someone’s butt knocked his arm off the bench seat back. “Excuse me,” a young woman said, a boy in tow beside her, “I didn’t see you there.”

“That’s all right, miss.” That’s when Andy recognized the boy. “Miss Paul, isn’t it?” he said.

“Yes?” she said in a voice that hinted that she should recognize him, but she was also suspicious of any stranger who called her by name.

“I’m sorry. I’m Andy Myers. You probably don’t recognize me out of my uniform. We met a couple of weeks ago at your apartment complex in the middle of the night. I was the first police officer on the scene for—”

She cut him off. Andy figured it was because she didn’t want the sound of Gabe’s name to upset her son. “Oh, yes, I do remember you. It’s good to see you again.”

“So, are the two of you here by yourselves?”