Too Close to Home (8 page)

It was storming that night. Figuring that the thunder had muffled the sounds of his arrival, he’d taken the opportunity to peer in through the tattered curtains of his home and spy
on his wife. As always, he expected to catch her with another man. Instead, he saw her talking on the phone that she was forbidden to use except to reach him in an emergency. She hung up when she heard him come in, thus confirming his paranoid suspicions.

Chad’s father had always questioned the parentage of his only child. That’s what the lawyer told the jury. It didn’t matter that his wife swore she’d never been with another man. Or that even the most casual observer could see a strong resemblance between father and son. What mattered was that, in his alcohol-poisoned mind, Chad’s father thought he finally had proof of his wife’s infidelity. So he dragged the sleeping boy from his bed, then forced the child and his wife at knife-point through the rain and into the truck.

With his family held captive in the cab of the old pickup, Chad’s father sped northward along Big Creek Road. As he drove, he raged at his wife, screaming about adultery and betrayal and brandishing a razor-sharp skinning knife in her direction. He told her he was going to kill her and the boy and leave their bodies out in the forest for animals to gnaw on. Their souls, he assured her, would burn in hell. As befitted a whore and her bastard child.

That’s when Chad, who was almost thirteen, lunged past his mother and grabbed his father’s wrist. But the boy wasn’t as strong as his rage-maddened father, and the man shook him loose. He used the back of his hand to knock the boy aside, then raised the knife—

Maybe it was God’s will that the boy lived, Chad’s father told the court. Just as it had been God’s will that Abraham not slay his son, Isaac. More likely, the prosecutor rebutted, it was the determination of the boy’s mother that had saved his life. There were deep scratches on her husband’s arm where she
had grabbed it in an attempt to deflect the deadly blade away from her son.

In the midst of his parents’ struggle for possession of the knife, the truck hit water where Big Creek had overflowed onto the road. Chad’s father grabbed the steering wheel with both hands, fighting to regain control of the skidding vehicle. That was when Chad’s mother opened the passenger-side door and pushed her son out of the truck.

He landed in the water, somehow scrambling to his feet in time to watch as his father brought the truck under control. Then the driver-side door opened. Chad watched as his father jumped from the truck and waded through the knee-deep water toward him. For a moment, Chad was sure it would be all right, was sure that his father had regained his senses and come to rescue him. But as his father reached his side, a flash of lightning revealed that the knife was still clenched in his hand. He struck at his son again, a heartbeat before the boy flung himself into the deeper, fast-running water of the creek. That time, the blade sliced flesh.

A red Toyota sped by, the radar gun registering sixty. The posted limit was forty-five, so I hit the siren and the accelerator, and pulled the car over.

The driver was a pretty gal from up north who accepted the ticket philosophically. The gray-muzzled black Lab riding on a big cushion in the backseat of the car seemed predisposed to liking cops. After I’d issued the ticket, the driver and I spent a few minutes chatting about dogs in general, Labs and German shepherds in particular. But there was no doubt in my mind that she wished I was male, preferably young and cute. Chad, I suspected, would have let her off with a warning.

I smiled as I thought of a quip I wouldn’t repeat to Chad.

You know you’re a male cop if…you consider traffic stops a social event.

I crossed the street and spent a little time monitoring the speed of northbound motorists who today didn’t seem to be in the same hurry as those heading south. My thoughts turned toward the remains near Camp Cadiz. Within a day or two, we’d have definite information about sex and age and a more accurate determination of height. There were no dental records—Chad’s mother had never gone to a dentist. But if everything else fit, a test might just match Chad’s DNA—already on file—with the unknown victim’s.

For Chad’s sake, I hoped the victim was his mother, that he could finally lay her to rest. But, realistically, the remains probably belonged to someone else. Most likely a stranger. For many decades, bodies had been disposed of with some regularity in the forest. The sparse population, difficult terrain and dense woods made it likely they wouldn’t be found. Except by accident.

If the DNA didn’t match—if our victim wasn’t Chad’s mom—maybe we could send the skull off for facial reconstruction and eventually have some idea about the victim’s appearance. But chances were we would never discover the identity of the victim. And a murderer would continue to walk free.

Just like Katie.

A
call from dispatch saved a tanned, lean-faced young man from Ridgway from a ticket. I’d just pulled the white-on-cream three-quarter ton Ford pickup over and was discussing the need for a safety sticker on a vehicle registered as a farm truck when the radio crackled to life.

“Your lucky day,” I murmured as I waved him on his way, then turned my full attention to a report of bad news from a familiar address.

“They’re at it again,” the female voice on the radio added to the end of one of her characteristically businesslike messages.

Feeling every bit as exasperated as she sounded, I acknowledged the call as I pulled out into traffic with lights and sirens clearing the way. As unlikely as it was that the call was, in fact, an emergency, I did my job and treated it as if it were. Minutes later, I left Route 146 and headed for an old neigh
borhood of neatly kept bungalows and—for the most part—law-abiding senior citizens.

I slowed down when I turned onto Honeysuckle Drive and parked my car between the two houses on the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. The emergency call had been made by the owner of 1231 Honeysuckle, but I had no doubt that I’d end up talking to the neighbor at 1233.

As I opened the wrought-iron gate and walked up the flagstone path to the first house, it occurred to me that the front porches of 1231 and 1233 accurately reflected the homes’ owners. The porch I was stepping onto was glossy white and furnished with wicker furniture, cushy floral pillows and hanging baskets of cascading petunias. Next door, the other porch was pony-spotted with multicolor layers of peeling paint, had rusted milk cans and cracked ceramic crocks overflowing with bright flowers decorating its sagging steps, and supported an old sofa. Also floral. No car in front of Marta Moye’s impeccably kept house—she no longer drove. A vintage yellow Cadillac was the only thing that was impeccably kept on the property next door.

Marta, who had recently celebrated her sixty-eighth birthday, was sitting on the wicker sofa, obviously waiting for me. Today, she was the one who had called 911, so hers was the story I needed to hear first.

Despite the flowing woven cotton jumper she wore, her usually pale, round face was flushed bright red beneath a halo of pink-toned gray hair. As much with agitation as with heat, I thought. She sputtered as she stood, still clutching her tiny Yorkie, Peanut, against her ample breasts.

“That…that…
man…
urinated on my hedge!” she shrilled the moment I set my foot on her porch.

That man
was Larry Hayes, the proprietor of the Antique
Attic and Marta’s senior by at least a decade. I glanced at my watch knowing that, these days, Larry opened the Attic closer to noon than ten. That was, when he bothered opening it at all. I shook my head slowly, thinking that his retirement hours were leaving him plenty of time for his feud with Marta.

Rumor had it that there was a good reason that the break in the fence between their backyards had remained unrepaired for decades. Scandalous, the usual local gossips maintained. Such carrying on—especially at their age! And they wondered if the affair had been going on before Marta’s husband had died and Larry’s young wife had deserted him.

But a month earlier, on my first official visit to the two frame houses, I’d noticed that the passageway had been crudely repaired—on both sides of the fence. A neat square of latticework on Marta’s side. Mismatched scraps of lumber on Larry’s. And the same ladies who had been happily outraged now happily discussed the inevitable consequences of “that kind of behavior.”

The feud between the two seemed to be escalating. In the past week, their calls to 911 had almost become a daily event. Most of them in the morning, when the two seemed to take particular pleasure in annoying each other. Usually, I tried to be patient. I liked Larry. I liked Marta. But today, with the memory of a root-ensnared skeleton fresh in my mind, their complaints were particularly irrelevant.

Twenty minutes later, after taking enough notes to keep Marta happy, I climbed the steps onto Larry’s front porch. He looked utterly relaxed as he sat on his battered floral sofa, sipping extra-sweet iced tea. He was dressed in slim jeans, aged and bleached to a soft blue, and a short-sleeved shirt in a shade of pearl-pink. The V of the shirt revealed a turkey neck
and a curl of white chest hair. Given the proximity of their yards and Marta’s volume as she’d spoken with me—and assuming that Larry had turned his hearing aid on—there was no doubt in my mind that Larry had heard every word of her complaint.

Difficult to know if it was friendship or anticipation that brightened Larry’s face when he saw me, but it prompted him to offer me tea from a nearby pitcher. When Katie and I were younger, Larry’s tea had ranked as one of our favorite beverages, though I’d probably had gallons to her quarts. I drank it to wash down the peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwiches that Larry and I ate while we sat in his battered, flat-bottomed boat and fished for anything that’d bite.

Katie had hated fishing. Hated, she’d said, to see defenseless things die. Not just the fish we caught, but even the worms that baited our hooks. At the time, I’d thought that odd. I still did, but for a different reason.

Today, as usual, the aluminum pitcher was stacked with ice and sparkled with beads of condensation. I was hot, sweaty and sorely tempted. But I’d turned down Marta’s lemonade just minutes earlier, so I couldn’t accept a cup of tea from Larry. There’d be no end of trouble if I appeared to be taking sides.

“Thanks, but no,” I said.

I perched on the porch railing just across from the tanned, skinny old man. I spoke in a normal voice and judged from his posture and expression that he was having no problem hearing this morning. A change from the visit I’d had to make a few days earlier, when I was sure he’d deliberately turned his hearing aid off. And he’d made a point of keeping his bad ear turned toward me.

“So, tell me, what’s going on?”

It took a few minutes for him to gather enough enthusiasm
to tell his side of the story, but he eventually endorsed Marta’s account. With a single addendum.

“I peed on
my
property, on
my
side of the hedge.”

Which explained it all, I supposed.

The day before, Larry had called 911 and, when I’d arrived, had complained about Marta encouraging her dog to relieve itself in the vicinity of the very same hedge. I had pointed out—quite moderately, I’d thought at the time—that there was no law against Peanut doing his duty on
his
side of the hedge as long as Marta didn’t allow the waste to pile up. Which she didn’t.

I allowed my exasperation to color my voice.

“Goddamn it, Larry.”

He raised an eyebrow at me, not because I’d called him by his first name—he’d given me permission to do that when I was ten—but because I’d taken the Lord’s name in vain. Larry was proud of being a God-fearing man. Marta, he’d assured me on several previous occasions, was the Almighty’s way of testing him. Just like the sores He’d inflicted on poor old Job.

I considered the possibility that Larry and Marta were God’s way of testing
me,
briefly rolled my eyes in His direction—toward a hazy blue sky that promised no relief from the already oppressive heat of the day—and prayed for patience. Then I tried again.

“I’ll throw you in jail if you pee on the hedge again.”

I figured that for a sufficiently unpleasant threat. The town’s solitary cell was a windowless room that had formerly served as records storage in the brick city building. At about the time I’d been hired, rows of filing cabinets had been replaced by two cots, a utilitarian sink and toilet and a locking steel door with a barred viewing window. The cell opened into my small office, was a dozen steps removed from the larger offices of
the mayor and the city clerk, and was at the far end of the building from an auditorium that was used for city meetings during the week and social gatherings on the weekends.

After a year’s worth of occasional overnight occupants and despite air-conditioning and regular scrubbing, Maryville’s lockup now smelled like most every other lockup. Summer humidity seemed to encourage the oily, persistent aroma of perspiration, urine, vomit and beer. Not that I served alcohol to the inmates, but beer was usually what landed them there. Lately, the smell had been bad enough that the mayor complained about it to anyone who would listen.

Larry was on the city council, so certainly he had heard the mayor complaining. He’d probably smelled the odor himself. So the possibility of ending up as one of the cell’s few sober visitors was, in my opinion, a deterrent. But Larry wasn’t looking deterred. Rather, the expression on his wizened face rivaled that of a Friday-night drunk-and-disorderly. His beetle brows pulled together into a wiry V-shaped gray caterpillar above pale blue eyes, and his lips twisted into a pettish scowl.

“What could you possibly charge me with?”

I thought about it for a heartbeat.

“Public indecency.”

I was serious.

He was outraged.

“I made sure she couldn’t see my privates.”

Based on Marta’s account, he wasn’t lying.

“He waited until I was out on the steps, watering my petunias,” she’d told me. “Then he shouted to get my attention. I could only see his head and shoulders above the hedge, but I could tell he was…you know…unzipping. And I could hear exactly what he was doing. Afterwards, he sighed, then waved at me!”

I looked down at Larry, who was still scowling, and resisted the urge to throttle him. Instead, I briefly rubbed my thumb across a couple buttons of my uniform shirt in a futile attempt to blot the itchy trickle of sweat between my breasts. The trickle was protected—in fact, encouraged—by a pair of 32Bs encased beneath too many layers for a hot summer day. Bra, T-shirt, vest, uniform. The vest was also layered—sixteen ultra-thin layers of Kevlar rated IIA and guaranteed to stop a.40 caliber Smith & Wesson bullet.

Sadly, the vest offered no protection against the likes of Larry and Marta. But living most of my life in Maryville did. I knew, for instance, that Larry and Marta attended the same Methodist church and that the minister’s wife was a reporter for Maryville’s gossipy weekly newspaper. The very paper that Ed Statler had been reading.

I took a deep breath, then deliberately slowed my speech and softened my vowels so my drawl was unmistakably southern Illinois. But I kept my tone unyielding. Important that Larry understand: I might be his friend and a hometown girl, but I would do whatever it took to keep the peace.

“This problem between you and Marta, I want you to resolve it, Larry. Resolve it or forget it. Leave each other alone. If I have to come out here again, I will tell Reverend and Mrs. Cox about the little war you two have going on. The Spirit might compel the reverend to bring it up during Sunday services, in the context of loving thy neighbor. But even if he doesn’t, his wife will certainly publish the details I’ll provide in the Police Blotter.”

Minutes later, I made a return trip to Marta’s house, delivered a similar message and left her sputtering on her front porch.

Then I crawled gratefully back into the SUV, cranked up the air-conditioning and thought about gossip. And scandal.
And how I now exploited almost daily and virtually guiltlessly the very thing that had victimized Katie and me throughout our childhoods.

No doubt having Katie and me arriving in town too skinny and never having set foot in a school, much less a church, set tongues wagging throughout Maryville. Only Aunt Lucy and Gran knew the actual circumstances that landed us in Maryville. Knew that—most likely scared off by the cops who swarmed our apartment building—our mother had never returned to claim us. No one in Maryville ever knew what had happened to Katie on the day our mother abandoned us. Or what, except for Katie’s brave intervention, would have happened to me.

But lack of information had never been a problem where Maryville gossip was concerned. Folks had pretty much always expected the worst from Lucy Tyler’s sister, Lydia. You could see it coming, I heard them say. That Lydia Tyler always thought she was better than everyone else. Her, with her Marilyn Monroe looks and too-tight clothing! But with a father not long dead from cancer and a mother who was too busy mourning and putting food on the table to notice much of anything, it was easy enough to understand how a teenager like Lydia might spin out of control.

To hear people talk, it was no surprise to anyone—besides, maybe, Gran and Aunt Lucy—when Lydia ran away with money and jewelry stolen from the Cherokee Rose and its guests. To Hollywood. And every once in a while Katie or I would hear folks snicker about my mother ending up doing
those
kinds of movies. And worse. They wondered aloud if our mother was still alive or if, by now, drugs or alcohol or one of
those
diseases had killed her.

As we got older, the inevitable comparisons between us and our mother began. Mostly because it was apparent to anyone with eyes that Katie was growing up to look just like our mother. Five foot five, blond, beautiful and voluptuous. Fortunately, folks whispered just loudly enough for us to hear, Katie was also quiet and shy and well-behaved. It was her spindly limbed, headstrong sister who had Lydia’s personality, who hadn’t learned proper respect for almost anyone, who used her fists in the school yard the way no proper young lady ever would. And because I looked nothing like my sister and because gossip always assumes the worst, folks speculated about whether Katie and I shared the same father. A woman like Lydia Tyler wouldn’t much care who she slept with if it got her what she wanted, they said. No doubt both girls were bastards.

Who my father might be plagued me, inspired a years-long search for my birth certificate in every nook and cranny of the Cherokee Rose. I stopped looking when I was twelve. That’s when I found a bundle of letters tucked beneath a floorboard. They were all addressed to Aunt Lucy at a post-office box address on the other side of the river. From the postmarks, I could tell that my mother had been writing to her sister ever since she’d run away. The series of letters, which ended about a year before Katie and I came to live at the Cherokee Rose, detailed my mother’s big career plans and her new clothes, described parties with movie stars and boyfriends who were talent scouts.