The Quiet Streets of Winslow (27 page)

SAM RUSH

W
HEN
I
DROVE
up to Alice Weneka's house on North Prairie, she was sitting on her porch swing in a dress and white sweater. She motioned me to a wicker chair, asked if I would like coffee, and came out a few minutes later with two cups on a tray. I asked how her grandson was, and she said he was fine now.

“Children get sick quickly but recover quickly,” she said, “lucky children, that is,” then waited for me to tell her that I had spoken to Joe Weneka, as he was called now, and that I knew she already knew about our conversation. She didn't say yes or no to that, but waited for me to continue.

“Let's start with what happened to Hannah,” I said. “Am I right in assuming that she didn't survive?”

Alice took a drink of her coffee before beginning. She held the cup as she spoke.

“My sister and I are both nurses,” she said. “We knew from the beginning that Hannah's chances weren't good. Everybody did. She had an enlarged heart, her lungs had not developed normally, she had fetal alcohol syndrome, mental retardation, most likely, although
that early you can't know for sure. There's a list I could give you. But her breathing was the immediate concern. We had her at my sister's house, in Leupp, where we were both looking after her. Wes—Wes, he was then—stayed there often as well. That's where we were when she started struggling, and we brought her to the Indian Clinic here in Winslow. This was when she was five months old.”

“So she died at the Indian Clinic.”

“On the way.”

“Of what exactly?”

“Respiratory failure,” Alice said.

“Why didn't you just tell me this the first time I asked about her? Why all the mystery?”

Alice put down her coffee, went inside, and returned with the death certificate.

“Because we changed her name,” she said. “We gave her my sister's husband's last name, and for her first name we chose Rowena, which was Wes's mother's name.
Hannah
had been Jody's choice, not Wes's.”

“And you changed her name why?”

Alice looked across the street, where a heavyset neighbor in a red shirt was soaping his pickup.

“Jody's mother didn't know about Hannah's death, and we didn't want her to know. We wanted to bury Hannah in the cemetery beside my sister's church, outside Leupp, rather than in Jody's mother's church in Holbrook. We wanted Hannah near us. That was important to us. Maybe Jody's mother wouldn't have raised a fuss, even if she had known. Maybe she wouldn't raise a fuss about it now, if she knew. But we didn't want to take that chance.”

Alice watched the neighbor rinse off his truck.

“In addition to her troubles with drugs,” she said, “Jody's mother had her prejudices. We just thought it was easier this way.”

“So the map, then, found in Jody's car? That's showing the way to the cemetery outside Leupp?”

Alice didn't disagree.

“And the symbol indicated the burial plot?”

She nodded.

“Explain the symbol to me,” I said, and she went inside again and was gone for a few minutes. She returned with a high school English textbook.

“It's from a poem Wes liked in high school,” she said. She showed me the poem.

Western wind, when will thou blow
,

The small rain down can rain?

Christ, if my love were in my arms

And I in my bed again!

“What I was trying to draw was
small rain,”
Alice said, “but how would you draw that? I didn't know. I'm not an artist. I told Jody what it was supposed to be. I told her that the symbol was on Hannah's gravestone, done by somebody else, better than I could have.”

A cool wind was blowing, and Alice buttoned her sweater. She took her time before speaking.

“Jody came to see me after she moved back, and I drew it for her,” she said. “She knew the child was dead. She knew the day it happened. Wes went to her house, took her for a drive, and told her. How many of the details got through to her, he didn't know. But she heard it, Wes said. She wasn't going to tell her mother. Her mother
couldn't handle it, she told Wes, but we didn't feel as if we could trust anything Jody said.

“Jody looked and seemed different when she came to see me. That was a relief. We talked for a few minutes. She told me she had been in Chino Valley, and she talked about her mother being sick, and that in her opinion drugs were going to kill her mother before long. Then she thanked me for the map, and a month later I read about her death in the newspaper.”

Alice put her coffee cup on the tray and set the tray on the floor.

“Do you know whether she visited the cemetery?” I asked.

“I'm hoping she did.”

T
HE
H
OLBROOK
C
OURT
Trailer Park was on Nelson Avenue, not far from the railroad tracks. There were seventeen trailers in all, lined up more or less parallel to each other, with a space of about twenty-five feet between them; no trees, no landscaping of any kind. The windows of two were boarded up; three looked empty. Kevin lived in the green-and-white trailer two from the back. His vehicle was parked in front, but there was no answer to my knock.

The trailer, I had learned, was rented to an Ida Rainey Spencer, in Show Low, now deceased. She was Kevin's grandmother—Paulette Hebson's mother. The owner of the trailer park had told me that Kevin Rainey paid him in cash, each month. “I don't care whose name is on the lease so long as the rent in paid,” he told me. The station wagon Kevin drove had been given to him by his grandmother; the outdated plates on it were in her name.

I parked at a distance and waited half an hour or so before Kevin walked up, carrying a paper sack—toilet paper, it turned out to be. He
was close in size to Nate Aspenall, but with a more muscular frame. Light hair, green eyes, nice looking at first glance, then a hint of something else on the second. Tarnished somehow. Damaged. Somebody you might not trust if you were a perceptive female. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt.

“Why don't we go inside and talk?” I said.

He turned the door knob—with his left hand, I noticed—and reluctantly let me in. I had expected dismal, but it wasn't in that category. It was serviceable, uncluttered, and clean, although he didn't have much. A brown sofa, a small television. The bedroom door was open, and I could see a made bed and a small dresser. We sat on kitchen stools across from each other at the counter.

“Tell me about your relationship with Jody Farnell,” I said.

“The girl who died? I didn't know her very well.”

“You'd talk to her at PT's, am I right?”

“I would see her there, sure.”

He put one elbow on the counter and rested his chin in his hand.

“As I understand it, you knew where she lived, you'd been over a few times. How did that come about?”

He changed position, then fingered the glass salt and pepper shakers on the counter.

“I was doing yard work down the street,” he said. “I saw her move in and asked if she needed help. I didn't realize it was against the law.”

“Come on, Kevin. You had a relationship with her. You had feelings for her. I respect that. I'm just asking how things were between you two.”

His green eyes wandered from me to his plain, clean living room, which is what he looked at as he spoke.

“We fooled around a little is all that happened. That was twice, maybe, at her house. Then at PT's, well, we were friends. I liked talking to her. She was a nice girl.”

“Fooled around as in had sex?”

“We didn't have sex. We did . . . other things.”

“Why only twice?” I said. “You didn't want to anymore, or she didn't?”

“She had a boyfriend, by then.”

“Who was that?”

“Nate something. He was from before. She had lived with him somewhere. She told me about him at PT's.”

“Where was this Nate from?”

“I can't recall.”

“What else did she tell you about him?”

“That he knew about me,” Kevin said. “How's that? He knew my name.”

“She told him about you?”

“That's what she said. She told him my name and where I lived, and I asked her why, and she said she didn't know, that it just came out. And that he was a good person and I would like him. I don't know where that came from. I mean, it wasn't like I wanted to hear about him, and I told her that.”

“You were angry then.”

“No. Not angry. Sorry.”

He followed a crack in his counter with his finger.

“Hard to be sorry and not also angry. Under the circumstances, I mean. Not only does she dump you, she tells you about her boyfriend.”

He shrugged. It seemed an unnatural movement for him, a little staged.

“You bought her a drink one night, the bartender said. She didn't want it. Didn't drink it. What was that about, Kevin?”

“She was just trying to tell me it was over between us, that's all.”

“She hadn't already told you that?”

“She had. But I thought we could be friends, you know. So what if there was this other guy? I don't get that about girls. If she had liked me enough to . . . well, you'd have to still feel something. I didn't see why we couldn't still talk to each other.”

“And she didn't want that.”

“No. I guess she didn't.”

“Boy,” I said. “That's a harsh way to tell you, if you ask me. Humiliating. You buy a girl a drink, and it sits on the bar all night. There must be nicer ways to get that point across.”

“It's not how I would have done it,” he said.

“How would you have done it?”

“Said yes to the drink but please don't buy me more. Something polite like that.”

“So what she did was impolite.”

“She could have had that one drink and thanked me for it.”

“So here she hurts you, tells you she has another boyfriend, and then she does this. Hurt on top of hurt.”

Kevin moved his hand across the counter—his right hand—and scooped up crumbs I couldn't see.

“This was a few weeks or so before she was killed, I understand.”

“Something like that.”

“Did you see her again after that?”

“At PT's once or twice.”

“You didn't want to talk to her about it? Have your say?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“What good would it have done?”

“So you considered it,” I said.

“Not really.”

He got off the stool and opened his refrigerator. I could see a six-pack of Budweiser from where I sat.

“Go ahead and have a beer if you want,” I said.

He seemed to think about it. “No,” he said, and moved to the sink and drew himself a glass of water before sitting back down.

“The night she was killed, Kevin,” I said, “April 24—it was a Thursday. Where were you that night? You understand that I have to ask.”

“That was weeks ago,” he said.

“Yes.”

“I was probably here, alone at home. That's where I usually am.”

“Well, the bartender remembers you at PT's,” I said. “He says you talked to Jody that night. In fact you left your station wagon in the parking lot.”

“Did I?” Kevin said. “Well, I might have. I go there enough.”

“How is it you get a ride home when you leave your vehicle there?”

“Usually I don't,” he said. “I sleep in the back seat.”

“Your mother ever come get you?”

“A few times,” Kevin said. “Sure. I'll call her if it's cold enough out.”

“What did you and Jody talk about that night?” I said.

He glanced up at me, then down at his glass of water. He took a quick drink.

“I have no idea,” he said. “Maybe I drank too much. When I drink too much I don't remember. I turn into an old person.”

“Most guys your age get fired up, drinking. That's how I was. Quick to lose my temper and so forth.”

“I'm not that way,” he said.

I stood up, stretched my back, and took in as much of the trailer as I could. Nothing in view was incriminating or even interesting. Kevin stood as well, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

“Why was it you moved to Holbrook?” I asked. “To be closer to your mother?”

“There's more work here,” he said, “here and in Winslow. I worked at a mining operation for a while, until it shut down. For a while I was really making money. I thought that . . .”