True Crime (12 page)

I greeted these philosophical musings with a contemplative frown. “Were you here when it happened?”

She shook her head regretfully. “Nah. We just moved into the neighborhood a couple years ago.”

“I was!” It was the other woman. She had come out of the aisle now. She joined us before the fatal counter, excitement brightening her pinched face. “I mean, I was living in the neighborhood at the time. My house isn’t three blocks away from the family. They live right over on Fairmount, not three blocks away. They still do. Right near me, three blocks. I used to see Amy on the street all the time. She was such a sweet girl.”

Here, I favored them with an expression of rue: the poor sweet girl. Of course, I wondered how you could know a person was sweet just by seeing her on the street now and then. But what the hell? Everyone loves this stuff. Everyone wants to be part of a killing. If they didn’t, I’d be out of a job.

“She was pregnant too,” said the counterwoman darkly. “Can you imagine? What kind of person …?”

“Can you imagine how her parents must feel?” said the other woman.

“I saw her husband talking on TV,” the counterwoman went on. “Just the other night. Real nice fellow. You ask me, they oughta bring back the chair and turn it on real low.”

I liberally dished out facial expressions of appreciation, lamentation, contemplation and outrage. As I did, I started to wander away from them, eyeing the place up and down. I stuck my hands in my pockets, and moved casually a few steps into one of the aisles. I considered the rows of Brillo pads and cereal boxes and jars of spaghetti sauce as if they were fine, rare exhibits in a museum.

Up ahead of me, at the rear wall of the store, I saw a row of freezers full of TV dinners.

“There’s the bathroom back there,” called the counterwoman, playing guide. “Fellow was in there when it happened, came out and saw the whole thing.”

“Hmp!” I said. “Really!”

With that sanction, I wandered the rest of the way back. Past the freezers to an open entryway in the back wall. This was the entryway where the witness—his name had slipped my mind—where the witness had stood when he saw Frank Beachum running out the front door with his gun. I took a step through and peered curiously round the corner, down a short hall to the bathroom. The bathroom door stood ajar. I could see the edge of the toilet and the sink within. That’s where this guy—this witness—where he’d been when he heard Amy’s desperate cry and the shot fired.
Well
, I thought,
there it is, all right. The Bathroom. It sure is a bathroom, all right
.

Because by this time, of course, I was feeling very sophisticated about the whole thing, very ironical. Because of the two women in the store, because of their avid desire to be part of the story, part of the murder. All their tour-guide expertise, and their high feelings about something that had had nothing whatsoever to do with them. Their moral outrage. They were ludicrous, I thought. And so I felt sophisticated and ironical, compared to them. Because their avid desire, and their grisly rubbernecking—they were very much different from
my
avid desire and
my
grisly rubbernecking.
Because my avid desire and my grisly rubbernecking were sophisticated, not to mention ironical. And when you were sophisticated, you see, and ironical, well, then, that is very much different.

And so, standing in the rear entryway with a sophisticated smirk on my ironical face, I turned back into the store.

And the smirk froze on my lips.

I hate when that happens—it looks so stupid. But what I saw in front of me took the wind out of my belly, hollowed me like a low blow. It was a feeling of panic more than anything. I remember once when I was rushing off to a rendezvous with a gang leader in the Bronx; a hard-sought interview. I really wanted to get to that meeting. And I jumped in my car and stuck the key in the ignition—and the shaft of the key snapped off. Ruined the key; jammed the ignition. And all I could do was sit there and think,
Well, gee, what’s going to happen now?

It was a feeling like that. I stood in the doorway, smirking stupidly, blinking stupidly behind my wire-rims. Trying not to accept what I saw in front of me.

Because I saw potato chips.

A whole row of them. Plump yellow bags sitting side by side ever so jolly. They were perched there together on the top shelf of a metal rack with bags of pretzels and do-dads and snick-snacks or whatever the hell they were, filling the shelves underneath them down to the ground.

But it was the potato chips that got to me. There on the top shelf. About six feet off the floor so that the ridged upper seals of the plastic bags were inches above my head. So that the centers of the stout, jolly yellow bags themselves ran right across my eyeline and the happy owl mascot of the brand gazed winningly right back into my own gaping face.

And so you couldn’t see the door. Standing there in the passageway to the bathroom. Where the witness said he was when he saw Frank Beachum run out of the store. You
couldn’t see the door at all and you couldn’t see the counter. Hell, with that tall shelf in front of you chock full of munchy goodness, you couldn’t really see any damn thing except the narrow passage along the back wall. You would have had to step round the rack. You would have had to step to the right—on the left, the door was still out of sight behind the pasta boxes. You would have had to step all the way back to the freezers before you could even see the counter where the shooting took place. And even then, you had to come forward another step or two before the door became visible above the spices shelf.

But from where I was standing, where the witness said he had stood, you couldn’t see anyone shooting anybody. And you sure couldn’t see anyone running out the front.

You couldn’t see anything except potato chips.

No
, I thought.
No, I cannot do this. It’s absurd. It was six years ago. They probably moved the rack, they probably changed the whole store. The witness was probably seven feet tall. How should I know? I cannot do this
. I had to get home. I had to keep my wife happy. I had to take my Davy to the zoo. It was time. It was time to go. It was past time.

And still, for the next minute, for the next full sixty seconds with that damn owl, with that whole row of owls, smiling and smiling at me from the yellow bags, all I could do was stand there. Smirking. Blinking.

And thinking,
Well, gee, what’s going to happen now?

B
onnie Beachum was sitting on the edge of the motel bed when the Reverend Harlan Flowers entered. Sitting, with her hands folded in her lap, staring blankly down at her daughter, Gail. Gail was kneeling on the carpet, in the little space between the beds and the cushioned chair. She was drawing a picture on newsprint, her Crayola box open and the crayons spread out around her. At seven, Gail was a small child, thin and frail like her mother, with mouse-brown hair tied back in a long ponytail. She drew ferociously, pressing the crayons hard, her tongue clamped between her teeth.

Bonnie raised her eyes slowly at Flowers’s soft knock. When he pushed through the unlocked door, she smiled at him weakly. She felt as if she were seeing Flowers from very far away. A figure on another shore, very far away.

The minister was a handsome man with a fine, sculpted head on a tall, broad, portly frame. He rarely smiled himself and had developed, over the years, that appearance of lowering dignity that went down well among the faithful of his community. But the dignity was real too, and inward; Bonnie knew it, no one more. And yet today, his face, even just the color of his face—because he was black, and very dark—made Bonnie feel distant from him, estranged and lonely; even lonelier still. Who was this man, this black man? she wondered wearily. What had he to do with her? Why couldn’t all these strangers just leave her in peace?

She turned away from him—or rather, her stare swung back to Gail and went empty again. This feeling toward Flowers was wrong, she told herself in a dim, dull voice. It was unworthy of her. It was ungrateful. He and his congregation had cared for her these last years. They had taken her in with a true Christian spirit. When the people of her old church had condemned Frank and rejected her, when she had lost the Dogtown house and been forced to move to the very border of the northern slums, Flowers had brought her into his church, even knowing who she was and who her husband was. When she had developed the cancer in her breast, Flowers’s wife Lillian had taken care of Gail. She had sat with Bonnie before the operation, and the minister himself had consulted with her doctors. He had gotten her bookkeeping work—under her maiden name so she wouldn’t lose the jobs, and off the books so she wouldn’t lose her welfare. And he had gone to the prison and become Frank’s minister too. And Frank loved him. Bonnie knew all that.

But today he looked strange to her. Black and strange. And she hadn’t the strength to overcome the feeling; she only wished, wearily, it would go away. It was the same, sometimes, when she sat in his church on a Sunday. Sat there, white, in a pew toward the rear. And the minister churned the soul-bed of the congregation with a voice like measured thunder, with rhythmic, passionate invocations, drawing groans and cries from the upturned faces.
Hallelujah. Yes, Lord. Hallelujah. Amen
. All those brown faces, with accents that were not like hers, from lips that were not like hers. Everything was so strange and she was so very distant from it, so very far away. How she ached sometimes to be among her own, and the things she knew. How she longed for the old days, and the way her life had been with Frank.

The minister stepped over the threshold and closed the door softly behind him. Gail went on drawing, pressing
down hard, clutching the crayon in her fist. She didn’t look up until Flowers spoke.

“You ready?” he said. “We better go.” Even speaking normally, he had a grumbling bass.

Gail raised her face quickly—a small, pinched face with large, deep brown eyes. “Is it time to go see Daddy?” she asked, excited.

Flowers tried to smile at her, but his dark brown features only flinched uncomfortably. “It sure is, sweetheart.”

“Yes!”
said Gail. She jumped to her feet. “I’m drawing a picture for him of green pastures. See?”

She held the newsprint up by one corner so that it curled and dangled askew. Flowers could only see a diagonal swath of the picture, but he could tell it was a collection of her usual, painfully inept scribbles. Harsh splotches of muddy color, lollipop trees, lopped cottages, people with big shoulders but no arms. Gail loved to draw—she was always drawing. But Flowers had seen five-year-olds who could do better—he had even seen some modern artists who could do better—and it hurt him inside when she showed her work to him.

He gave another uncomfortable smile. “That’s fine, Gail. Your daddy’s gonna love that.” He turned back to Bonnie as soon as he felt he could. The false heartiness dropped from his voice. “We should get started, Bonnie.”

Bonnie was already standing. Reaching for her purse on the bureau. “Get your things together, Gail,” she said, over her shoulder. She spoke in a high, hoarse Show-me twang that cracked musically.

She flicked the clasp of the purse open and brought out her lipstick. Leaned toward the bureau mirror in the pale light from a nearby lamp. Her reflection pained her. Her face, she thought, had lost its sweetness; had been cheated of its sweetness. She had never, she thought, been pretty. But
her small pert features were so lined now, the cheeks so dragged downward, that she could have been fifty instead of thirty-three. She didn’t look at the image too closely and drew her lips in with automatic strokes.

She dropped the lipstick back into her purse and snapped the purse shut. In the mirror, she saw her daughter kneeling on the floor again. Not moving. Bonnie turned around.

“Come on now, Gail. We need to hurry.”

Gail had put her crayons back in the box and was holding the box in one hand. In her other, she still held the corner of her picture of green pastures. “Where’s green?” she said. “I can’t find green, Mommy.”

Bonnie and Flowers glanced at each other. Then both lowered their heads, scanning the floor. There were no loose crayons in sight.

Bonnie rubbed her forehead. “Well, I guess we’ll have to do without green, sweetheart. We have to go.”

Gail raised her eyes. Her lips were already beginning to tremble. “But I
need
green. It’s green pastures. I
have
to have
green.”

The two adults exchanged another look, more serious now. Bonnie swallowed.

“Well, look around for it. It has to be …”

“Maybe I can …” Flowers said. He crouched down and began to move his eyes slowly along the floor.

“It’s gone,” said Gail hollowly. “It’s lost. I can’t find it
anywhere!”
Her voice rose higher—then broke. Tears started down her cheeks. “It isn’t here anymore!”

“I’m sure Daddy won’t mind what colors you use,” said Flowers.

He was still peering over the carpet when, suddenly, Gail wheeled on him. He bucked back, startled, as she started shrieking.

“You don’t understand, you don’t understand! It’s ruined without green, it’s green pastures, the whole thing is ruined!”
The tears coursed more heavily down her cheeks. She was moaning. Her face was contorted and ugly.

Bonnie stood and stared at her. She couldn’t trust herself to speak. She hated that look. She hated Gail when she got like this. It made her so furious. It lit a hot, clenched ball of anger at her center. Weren’t things bad enough, for God’s sake? She took a step and stood over the child, her body humming like a plucked string. One fist clenched and unclenched at her side.

But, when she spoke, her voice was soft. Still gentle and twangy and mild. “Now don’t talk to the reverend that way, sweetheart. It’ll be all right. We’ll all try to find it togeth …”