The Party (17 page)

The funeral for fifteen year old Alice McCoy was held on the Thursday following her Saturday night party, at twelve o’clock in the afternoon. The McCoy family, though rich, was not large. And despite the many friends Alice had made during her short days on earth, few came to the funeral. People mourn easily the victim, the unfortunate, but seldom the suicide. A notice in the local paper had listed the cause of death as a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Standing beside the coffin above the open grave, a yellow rose in his hand, Michael looked around and counted, including the black robed minister, only twenty eight people.

There should be thousands.

He was in a tunnel. There was a dim glow up ahead, twilight behind, black enveloping walls all around. He had not slept since the party, nor had he been properly awake. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in shock. He had been crying too much for that. But only when he was alone. That was how he wanted to be from now on, alone, always alone until the day he died.

He listened to the last words. Old written words—it didn’t matter whether they were true or not, he thought, the lines about “life everlasting” and “the valley of the shadow of death.” They were still just words. It was foolhardy to believe they could bring any real comfort. They brought him none. It was ridiculous they even had funerals. He was glad when everyone began to leave.

He sat down beside the coffin, near the mound of brown dirt that would cover it. Clouds came and went overhead, and with them, the sun. He couldn’t decide whether it was hot or cold. One minute he was sweating, the next, shivering. He still had his flower in his hand. He tried planting it in the dirt but it kept falling over. He couldn’t imagine he was never going to see her again.

Time passed, a long time. Someone finally came up behind him. He assumed it was a grave digger, come to shoo him away. You have to go, Bud, we have to stick her in the ground now. But whoever it was said nothing, and finally Michael turned around.

“Hi, Nick,” he said. “Were you at the funeral?” He honestly didn’t know.

When Nick had come into the store that first day, he had had trouble saying two words. Then he had gone out with a girl and stood off whole mobs. Now he seemed to be back where he had started. He bowed his head, mumbled his words.

“I’m sorry I was late. They just let me out of jail.”

“Lieutenant Keller let you out?”

“Yeah.”

“That jackass,” Michael muttered. “He had no right holding you.”

“I wasn’t alone.”

Michael nodded. The lieutenant had detained The Rock, Russ, and Kats. Michael had spoken to Keller last night on the phone. Kats was the only one he was holding, he said, and that was only because they had discovered a number of unregistered firearms back at the hole Kats called his apartment. Keller did not feel Kats was guilty of murder. “It was a suicide, Mike. None of those kids killed that girl. She put the gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Simple as that. Let it go.”

Ass
.

“I want to talk to you about a few things,” Michael said. He hardly recognized the sound of his own voice. His vocal cords felt as if they had been scratched with sandpaper. “Could I see you down by the parking lot in a few minutes?”

“Sure.” Nick glanced nervously at the coffin, with its shiny azure colored paint and inlaid gold flowers. As far as boxes went, it was nice. But who wanted to be in a box. “I didn’t bring any flowers,” he said apologetically.

“It doesn’t matter.”

Nick swallowed. “I’ll wait for you.”

When Nick left, Michael knelt by the coffin, touching it. A final goodbye, that’s what he wanted to say. He thought about it a minute, but nothing came. And he knew why. She wasn’t here, in this dead body. She had left that night. He had seen her leave.

Nevertheless, he suddenly wrapped his arms around the box as if he were hugging a flesh and blood person. He couldn’t help himself. He cried as though she had just died in his arms.

Nick was sitting on the curb, next to his bike, when Michael, calm and composed, finally descended from the rows of tombstones. Nick had bought the bike with his first—and last—paycheck from the store.

“I have some bad news for you,” Michael said. “While you were in jail, you got fired. I told the bosses you had nothing to do with what happened. They didn’t care.” He shrugged. “If you’d like, I can quit in protest?”

“No, don’t do that.” Nick did not seem surprised, nor did he seem to care. “It’s always been this way in the ghetto. Go in the slammer, lose it all. Everything.”

“Maria?”

Nick nodded.

“She doesn’t think you did it, for god’s sake?”

Nick winced, turning away. His voice came out small and hurt. “I don’t know. She won’t talk to me.”

“Well, to hell with her then.” He went and sat beside Nick on the curb. He had a bad taste in his mouth. He hadn’t eaten that morning. He could taste only his bitterness.

“Did you want to ask me something?” Nick said hesitantly.

“Yeah, who killed Alice?”

That surprised him. “I don’t know.”

Michael sighed. “I’m sorry. I know you don’t know. And I’m sorry about Maria. And your job. But I’ll speak to some people around town I have connections with. I’ll find you another place to work.”

Nick nodded, hunched over. “I’d appreciate that,” He paused. “I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“OK.”

Nick spoke as if he were repeating something he had repeated endlessly at the police station. “I got up to go to the bathroom. I saw Bill in the kitchen. He was by himself. He looked upset. I went upstairs. I passed the first door on the left. I didn’t hear anybody inside. I tried the second door on the left, the bathroom. It was locked. I
thought
there was somebody inside. I heard water running. I tried the one door on the right, the door to the porch. Kats was standing out there, by himself.”

“Did he see you?”

“No.”

“Go on.”

“I tried the third door on the left. It was locked. It sounded like someone was sleeping inside. At the police station, Russ said it was him.”

“Yeah, he also said he slept right through the gunshot and all the commotion. I don’t see how anybody could have done that.” He would talk to Russ himself, to all of them. “Goon.”

“I went around the turn in the hall. There were two doors on the left. The first one was locked. But there were people inside. One of them sounded like they were crying.”

“Are you sure?”

“No. It sounded weird. I don’t know what was going on in there.”

“But there was definitely more than one person in the room?”

“I’m sorry, Mike, I couldn’t swear to it.”

“I understand.”

“I went to the last door. It lay wide open. The light wouldn’t work. I went inside, anyway, went to the bathroom, and then came back out. That was it. I was on my way back down, at the top of the stairs, when I heard the gunshot.”

“You didn’t see anyone in the room where Alice died, didn’t hear anything?”

No, but—”

“What?”

“There was something in that room.” He stopped for a moment, thinking, then he shook his head. “I can’t say.”

“Please, Nick. What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“You must have seen something, heard something?”

“No, it—I was scared.”

“Scared? Of what?”

He shook his head again, perspiration appearing I his forehead. “I don’t know. Just something in that room scared me. It scared me bad.”

Nick had grown up in a dangerous environment. He could have developed instincts to recognize a threat even if it was invisible. “When you turned on the light in the bathroom, you didn’t happen to notice anything behind you?”

“I didn’t turn on the light. I could see enough without it.”

“That’s odd.”

Nick was worried. “The police thought so, too They kept asking me about that. But you know, Mike. I’m telling you what I told them. I’m telling you the truth.”

“I believe you.” He thought of how often Bubba used that same line to call people a liar. Bubba had a way with words. The police hadn’t arrested him. “Could Alice have been in the room?”

“I didn’t see her. The police think she could have been, waiting to, you know, waiting with the gun,”

“Or they think she could have entered the room from the bedroom next to it, right after you started back down? From the bedroom where you thought you heard someone crying?”

Nick nodded. “They say that’s probably what happened, that it was Alice I heard crying.”

A wave of disgust engulfed Michael. “What did they say when you told them you thought you heard more than one person in that next to the last bedroom? That you had heard wrong?”

Nick was watching him uneasily. “Mike, they’re not trying to hush anything up.”

“No! But they’re not working overtime, either. They’re looking for the simplest explanation. And they think they’ve found it. Alice put a gun in her mouth and pulled the trigger. Neat. Clean. Fill out the paperwork and close the file.”

Nick pressed his knees together, fidgeting. “Who do you think killed her?”

“Someone! Another person. That’s all. Or maybe a couple of people.” He buried his face in his hands, the tears too close. “She was my friend, Nick. She was full of love, full of life. I know she didn’t pull that trigger. I know it.”

Nick wisely didn’t say anything, letting Michael be. Michael finally sat up. He could feel sorry for himself later. M Lieutenant Keller told me last night where everyone said they were at the time of the shooting. Let me go over it again with you and see if it’s any different from what you got out of him.” He held up his hand, counting off the points on his fingers. “Bill said he was in the kitchen, having a glass of water. The Rock said he was in the upstairs bathroom, taking a shower. Kats said he was standing on the porch, looking at the stars. Bubba said he was out front with Clair, talking about the stars.” Michael clenched his fingers into a fist. “The stars. Kats couldn’t even tell you what one looked like, and Bubba and Clair—” He shook his head in disgust. “Is that what Keller told

“In the beginning, they separated us, got each person’s story. They always do that. But this morning Keller told me exactly what you just said.”

“Did he tell you about the gun and the bullet?”

Nick nodded. “The gun belonged to Kats. It was the same one he pulled on us in the store. Kats admitted it was his.”

“Right away? Before we identified it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about prints? Keller told me yours, Alice’s, and Katz’s were on the gun, but only Katz’s were on the bullet shell.”

“Same thing he told me. Mike, I honestly don’t think Keller’s holding back on us.”

“I wonder. Did Kats have an excuse for how his gun got in Alice’s—hand?”

“He said he had no idea. He had it in his car, in the glove compartment. He didn’t say why he brought it to the party. He’s one of those strange dudes, you know, always has to have his piece handy.”

“If he was out on the second story porch, how come he didn’t get to the bedroom until after us?”

“I don’t know. But he’s in trouble. He didn’t have a license for the gun. Keller hasn’t released him yet, and won’t until someone bails him out.”

“That just breaks my heart.” Even if he hadn’t pulled the trigger, if it hadn’t been for Kats’s weird hobby Alice would probably still be alive. Michael stood. “Thanks for the information. Can I give you a ride anywhere? You bike will fit in my trunk, I think.”

Nick got up, too. “No. Being cooped up these last few days—I feel like I need the exercise. What are you going to do now?”

“Go to Alice’s house.”

Nick was concerned for him. “Why?”

“To look around.”

Nick glanced in the direction of Alice’s coffin, resting alone on the hill. “She seemed like a real neat

Michael coughed painfully. “I always thought so.

The McCoy residence, from the outside at least, had not changed: high roof, long driveway, steep front lawn—all that money and what difference did it make in the end?

The red sedan parked out front, however, was something new. Michael stopped his car beside it, got out warily. The front door opened before he could knock. The honorable Lieutenant Keller himself.

They’d met the night of the party. He was nothing to look at. Although a trim six feet two and less than forty years of age, he struck Michael as soft, someone on the physical road downhill. He didn’t know how to dress. He favored plaids, but the squares on his sports coat were much too big. He had a bald spot he tried to hide by parting his hair low and combing the thin brown strands over it; it only made his head look lopsided. And he had that grayish skin so often seen on the movie sleaze ball. Michael disliked shaking his hand.

On the other hand, Michael realized, his appearance probably had nothing to do with the dislike. When Keller had arrived at the scene of the crime approximately half an hour after the shooting, he had failed to take charge. True, as Nick said, he did separate them and, along with his fellow officers, had taken down their accounts of the events. But Michael had watched him the whole time, and he never saw the sharp eye, the attention to detail he would expect from a good detective. Also, the lieutenant had appeared to decide right from the start what had happened. To Michael, that showed an unforgivable lack of professionalism.

Yet it would be unfair to discard his positive qualities. He had proven himself sensitive to the stress they were under. He had personally taken it upon himself to make sure Polly was immediately given over into the hands of a psychiatrist who specialized in the care of victims of emotional trauma. He was not a bad man.

He’s just not Sherlock Holmes. Or his distant cousin.

They said hello and shook hands. He asked how the funeral had gone.

“Fine, I guess.” Michael shrugged. “I haven’t really been to a lot of funerals.” He nodded at the yellow ribbon in Keller’s hands. “What’s that from?”

“The doorway to the bedroom. We’d placed it off limits until our investigation was complete.”

Michael found the remark ironic. Polly’s aunt was staying with a cousin, and Polly was sedated in the hospital. Off limits to whom? His bitterness refused to stay down. “So now you can go home early, I suppose?”

The lieutenant looked disappointed. “Everyone keeps telling me what a sharp kid you are, Mike. They say you could be a genius. Think about it for a minute, the whole situation. Then tell me what you’d like me to do. Go ahead, do it.”

“I don’t need a minute to know you shouldn’t have told the papers it was a suicide. Why didn’t you at least say she’d died from an accidental gunshot?”

Keller sighed. “Mike, she had the gun stuck right in her mouth. How could that be an accident?”

Michael wished he would stop calling him by his name. He was going out of his way to be personal when Michael felt like screaming obscenities in his face.

“Right, you felt morally obligated to be a hundred percent honest and to ruin Alice’s reputation. But never mind that, your question’s a good one. How could it be an accident?”

The lieutenant shook his head. “We went over this last night. The facts have not changed since then.”

“I’d like to ask you about a few of those facts.”

Keller glanced at his watch. “I have to be at the station in a few minutes. I really don’t have the time.”

Michael chuckled without mirth. “But you said it yourself, I could be a genius. I might spot something you missed. Or is that impossible, that you might have missed something?”

“Are you always this rude?”

“I must be in a bad mood.”

The lieutenant took a weary breath, looked past him over the lawn, northwest, in the direction of Jessica’s house. Michael had seen Jessica at the funeral. She’d worn a black dress. It wasn’t her color. Although he remembered her saying hello, he was unsure if he had answered her. For reasons unclear to himself, he hadn’t even wanted to stand near her.

“You’re talking about a locked room murder, you know that,” Keller said. “The screens on the windows in that bedroom were screwed down. Our best man went over them with a magnifying glass. No one’s removed them in years. There’s an opening to the attic in the bedroom closet, but there’s a stack of boxes pressed against it. Those boxes, by the way, couldn’t have been moved and replaced in five minutes, never mind five seconds. When you get down to it, there was only one entrance into that room. The door.”

“And it was lying wide open. How can you call that a locked room murder?”

Keller caught his eye. “Do you think Nick did it?”

“No.”

“His prints were on the gun.”

“Because he took the gun out—away from Alice.”

“But if I was the murderer, I would have done the same thing. Touch the gun as quickly as possible so I’d have an excuse for having my prints all over it.”

“Nick didn’t do it.”

“I don’t think he did, either. But, from a purely technical point of view, he’s the only one who could have.”

“That’s not true. When the gun went off, he had the entire hallway behind him. All those rooms at his back that someone could have ducked into.’”

“And how long did Nick take to get from the top of the stairway and back to the bedroom? Three seconds? Four seconds? He ran straight there, didn’t he?”

Michael paused. He hadn’t asked Nick that specific question. “I would assume.”

“He did, he told me he did. And looking at him, I’d wager he can run pretty fast. Face it. Mike, there just wasn’t time for anyone to enter the room with Alice, force a gun in her mouth, pull the trigger, and then hide in one of the other rooms.”

Michael put his hand to his head. He couldn’t think as clearly as he usually did. He needed sleep. “You’re overlooking something. You believe Alice entered the room immediately after Nick exited, right?”

“Yes. Or she could have already been in there when he used the bathroom.”

“But the first possibility, you feel that’s the most probable?”

Keller nodded. “Chances are she was the one Nick heard crying in the next to the Iast bedroom.”

“Let’s say she did enter the room right after he left. But let’s also say she wasn’t alone, that someone was with her, or that someone followed her. And let’s imagine he, or she, killed her, but
didn’t
leave the bedroom.”

Keller frowned. “I don’t know if I follow you?”

“The murderer didn’t have to rush from the bedroom to hide in one of the other rooms. He could simply have stepped into the bathroom.”

“Did you see anyone step
out
of the bathroom?”

“No. But Alice was lying on the floor, and the—Well, in the shape I was in, Kats or The Rock or Clair or Bubba could have slipped into our group without my knowing it. To tell you the truth, I don’t know where any of them came from.”

Keller thought for a minute. “They came in through the door,” he said finally.

“Admit it, you never considered the possibility.”

The lieutenant started to protest, stopped. “You are clever, Mike, like they said. All right, I didn’t think of it. But I had a good reason. You had Maria, Jessica, Sara, Nick, Polly—part of the time—and yourself, and yet, not a single one of you said anything about someone coming out of the bathroom.”

“
We
may have had a good reason. Perhaps the murderer didn’t come out of the bathroom until we left the room. That’s what we did, you know. None of us could stand to stay in there,”

“And then, when you were all back downstairs, did this murderer calmly stroll out the front door in front of you all?”

“No. But he could have gone out onto the second story porch, off the roof, and into the backyard.”

“Are you ruling out those you’ve mentioned as possible suspects?” Keller asked.

“If the murderer joined our group without our seeing him, no. If he snuck off after we left, yes.”

“How did he get ahold of Kats’s gun?”

“He took it out of his car. Kats hasn’t been able to lock that Mustang in years.”

Keller thought some more. This time he ended up nodding. “There is merit in what you say. But it doesn’t explain how he was able to get the gun into Alice’s mouth and her fingers wrapped around the trigger?”

“That is a problem,” Michael admitted.

“And what about a motive? If you don’t have that, you’ve got nothing. Who would want to kill Alice? Who was this outsider?”

“Did anybody tell you about Clark?”

“No. Who’s Clark?”

“He was Alice’s boyfriend.”

“Was he at the party?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“Then why bring him up?”

“I told you, he was Alice’s boyfriend. You asked for a possible motive. He was a weird guy.”

“What’s his last name?”

“I don’t know. I checked around and nobody knows. I even went to the hospital where Polly’s being treated. I managed to get a note slipped in to her asking for his last name. She doesn’t even know, and she used to go out with him.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“He never told her.”

“Wait a second, Polly used to go out with Alice’s boyfriend?”

“Yeah. I met him once.”

“And?”

“He had the strangest eyes.”

“Who cares about his eyes. Did he seem capable of murder?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know anything about him? Where he goes to school? Where he works?”

“No. All I know is that he’s an artist, like Alice.”

Keller took out a tiny notepad, jotted down a couple of notes, “How come I never heard about his guy earlier?”

“Clark is only a possibility. The others—they could have motives of their own.”

“Such as?”

Michael shook his head. “Not right now. I need to think about it longer. But you could do me a favor I want a look at the autopsy report.”

“What for? She was killed by the bullet that out of the gun. It’s cut and dry.”

“I’d still like to see it.”

“I appreciate your desire to clear your friend . name. But you are only that, a friend. You’re not family. I can’t turn over that report to you without permission from Alice’s aunt.”

“If I get permission, will you give it to me?”

“What do you want it for? You’re not going to discover something the coroner missed.”

“I like to be thorough. What was the name of the coroner?”

“I’d have to look it up.” He glanced at his watch again. “I really have to go now. If you want to talk more, Mike, call me at the station in a few days. Try to get me Clark’s full name.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Keller went to close the front door, “I don’t have to tell you that what you’ve suggested is a long shot. From what Jessica Hart said, Alice sounded like a very unhappy girl.”

Michael found every muscle in his body suddenly tense. When he tried to speak, he distinctly heard his jaw bone crack. “What did she say?” he whispered.

“How Alice still hadn’t gotten over her parents’ death. In fact, it was Jessica who gave me the name and number of Alice’s psychiatrist.” Keller consulted his notepad. “Dr. Kirby. I have a call into her, but she hasn’t called me back.”

“She wasn’t seeing a psychiatrist,” he said indignantly. “I knew her as well as anybody and she never said a word about—”

“
I probably dream too much. That’s what my doctor says.
”

He lowered his head. It changed nothing. Lots of people saw psychiatrists and didn’t kill themselves. That goddamn Jessica, spreading such lies…

“Anything wrong?” Keller asked, peering at him.

“No.”

“What were you saying about her psychiatrist?”

“Nothing. I’d—forgotten.” He needed to change the subject, to get rid of this man. “Could you please leave the front door unlocked? I promise to lock it when I leave.”

Keller trusted him. Giving Michael a fatherly pat on the shoulder, he got in his car and drove away.

Hope you have time to stop for doughnuts.

The instant he stepped inside the house, Michael felt slightly nauseated. More than anything, he wanted to turn around and leave. He walked up the stairs slowly, listening to his heart thumping against his rib cage. It was the only sound he could hear. He realized he was holding his breath, and had to make a conscious effort to let the air out of his lungs.

The bedroom door where Alice died was closed. Turning the knob, he half wished it was locked. But it wasn’t, and the first thing he saw as the door swung open was the yellow chalk outline the police had drawn on the floor around Alice’s body. He hadn’t stopped to think how short she had been. He walked into the room and closed the door at his back.

There was another outline on the floor, at the top of the yellow chalk, rounder, darker: blood always left an awful stain. For a morbid moment, he wondered if any had seeped through the floor onto the aunt’s bedroom ceiling.

The rest of the house was furnished exquisitely. This room, except for the lamp and nightstand in the corner, the shades above the windows, was empty. No paintings, ornaments, not even a photograph, hung on the featureless white walls. Alice had told him Polly had simply cleaned it out one day. Why? The parents were dead. The parents had slept here. Alice had died here. Curious symmetry…

The police had drawn a small circle of chalk beneath the east facing windows. A black dot pinpointed the center. Michael knelt beside it. This was where the bullet had gone after it had exited the back of Alice’s head.

He peered into the shallow hole. It appeared to go straight into the wall, parallel to the floor. He sat beside it and faced in the direction of the door. The hole was about level with his Adam’s apple.

Was she sitting when she died?

The possibility filled him with disquiet. If a murderer had been holding her, it would have been easier for him to do so with her standing up. It would give the others another reason to think she had killed herself.

He noticed an aluminum ladder resting against the wall beside the bathroom. He figured the police had brought it in to assist in studying the room until he vaguely recalled having seen it when they had discovered the body. Why had Alice or Polly brought a ladder into the room? To get down the paper cups?