Callisto (23 page)

“What neighbor's cat? My neighbor's got a parakeet.”

“You said it was a cat.”

Her face changed all of a sudden from looking annoyed to this big smile. “And a cat too, that's right, only the cat keeps trying to eat the parakeet, like Sylvester and Tweety Pie, so yeah, he asked me to look after the cat. But he'll have to take it back when I move out to Bree's place.”

That made my ears prick up. “When are you gonna do that?”

“Oh, soon as the will gets probated and the place is officially mine and Dean's, only I don't think Dean'll be moving back there anytime soon.”

If only she knew it, Dean has moved in permanent and forever.

“What about me?” I asked her.

“Well, what about you?”

“Do I get to stay there?”

“I already said I need someone out there taking care of the place, keeping away vandals and souvenir hunters now that Dean's got so famous. You might want to watch out for that kind sneaking around.”

“I mean after you move in. I could be the lodger, kind of.”

“That's weeks and weeks down the line, Odell. One thing I've learned, you take it one step at a time whatever the plan, that way you don't get all backed up with timetables and schedules and expectations that don't work out the way you intended. Easy does it and see how it goes. Just relax and
enjoy being out there paying no rent and pocketing the lawn-mowing profits like I let you do, that's plenty for right now.”

She made it sound like I have got it good, which I guess I have, anyway I run out of conversation momentarily and just listened while Lorraine talks about the funeral service next Monday which I'll be expected to be there with a rented suit for the right appearances and the best place for that is the prom rental store downtown, although she's wondering if they'll have something my size.

Then the food come and we ate it. She told me it's potatoes but I only believed it because I love her, anyway I ate it but will not order that dish again whatever it's called. I was not so impressed by French cooking as expected by what everyone always says, but did not say this to Lorraine who ate everything up regardless. There was wine too that I didn't like the taste of, too sharp, not mellow like beer or with a tang to it like Captain Morgan, but Lorraine says it's great so I drunk a couple glasses of it to please her. That is what being in love is all about, pleasing the one you love, so I did that. At least I was not expected to make more conversation while we ate, which Lorraine did like she has been starving herself. At the end she says to go pay the cashier while she uses the bathroom, and you would not believe how much that little bit of food and bottle of wine come to in payment for it, a very big shock to me but I paid because it's my treat. Lorraine dropped me back at the funeral place to get the truck. She said I should go to the police station and wait and she'll be there to come in with me for what she calls moral support. So I did that, drove the truck over to the police station and parked outside, and pretty soon she drove up alongside and we went in together and she says to the guy
at the desk, “Where's the Chief?” which right at that exact time Andy Webb comes out of his office and looks at us.

“What are you doing here?” he says. “

You told me to,” I said, but he's talking to Lorraine.

“Any reason I can't be here?” she asks, and the Chief only shrugged.

He pointed down the corridor. “Second on the left, Odell,” he says, sounding friendly, not like when he pulled me over before. To Lorraine he says, “Are you his lawyer?”

“Well, I don't think so, do you?”

“Just asking. He can have his lawyer present but nobody else.”

“He hasn't got one.”

“That's okay, he just needs to waive that part and we can proceed.”

“Odell, you don't have to do anything without a lawyer present.”

“That's okay, I don't need a lawyer. I didn't do anything.”

They both looked at me, then Andy says, “What's it gonna be? Getting a lawyer on a Saturday afternoon, how easy's that gonna be?”

“You don't have to, Odell,” Lorraine said again.

I started walking down the corridor to show them I am a man that knows his own mind and can do without advice which I don't need anyway. That wine I drunk was making my head swirl some, so it's more strong than you might think from the taste of it. Andy come along behind me and I went in this room which has got a little table and some chairs and a video camera set up ready with the same young cop as this morning standing ready to run it.

“You already met Officer Dayton,” says Andy, which I did but he never told me his name at the time. We nodded to each other and I went and sat in the chair in front of the camera. The chair had got a machine sitting next to it on a trolley cart with wires and so forth so I figured it's some kind of old-fashioned tape recorder to back up the video they're making of me. Then another guy comes in the room, an older guy with a cigarette hanging off his lip like it was superglued there. He's got his sleeves rolled up and did not look like a cop on account of no uniform. “No smoking,” says Andy, and this guy gives him a look I would not call friendly and flips the butt over in the corner because there is no ashtrays in a room with a No Smoking rule. It surprised me the way he did that, though. Then he lifts up this cover on the machine and I see a roll of paper there with little metal arms coming down to touch the paper. That's when I recognized what it is – an earthquake recorder.

“What's that there for?” I asked Andy.

“Just routine,” he said back to me.

“Lean forward,” says the other guy, and after I did it he wrapped these elastic band things with wires around my chest, and that's when I knew this was not an earthquake machine, it's a lie-detecting machine. Andy had not said to me anything about this, only about the video statement, so now I'm confused about what's happening here.

“That's a lie-detecting machine,” I said, just to let them know I was not fooled.

“Better not tell any lies then,” said Andy with a little smile.

“Well, I wasn't going to.”

“That's good. Truthfulness is always best, isn't it, Dannyboy.
Odell, this is Dan Oberst, kind of a specialist we brung in today just for you, so be aware you're getting special treatment here.”

“Afternoon,” I said to him and Dan just grunted, really pissed off about something, maybe he didn't want to work on a Saturday same as Officer Dayton said he didn't this morning out at Dean's place. I bet I was the only one in that room that isn't grumpy about this being Saturday, but sitting to get videoed is easier work than lawnmowing any day of the week. Dan Oberst put one of those blood pressure cuffs around my arm and stuck a couple little plastic gizmos on the palm of my hand.

“All set,” says Dan. “I'm going to ask you a series of questions which you will answer without hesitation either Yes or No. Do not answer my question any other way, just Yes or No, you understand that?”

“Yes,” I said, and laughed because it's a pretty good joke, but they didn't get it.

He switched on the machine and the paper started scrolling through real slow, then he stopped it because he's only testing that it works, which it did, so then he rolled the trolley back behind me and sits himself on a metal chair next to it.

“Face the front, Odell,” Andy told me, meaning the camera, where Officer Dayton gave a nod that he's rolling too. The lie machine started up again and from behind me Dan says slow and careful, “Is your name Odell Deefus?”

It was real tempting to say No and see if the machine beeped or whatever, but everyone is so serious in there I didn't do that. “Yes,” I said, very firm and serious too if that's how they want me to be.

“Your date of birth is November 21 1985?”

“Yes.”

He asked other stuff with obvious answers. If the quiz shows on TV were this easy I'd be a billionaire, I'm thinking.

“You are an associate of Dean Leonard Lowry?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have knowledge of his current whereabouts?”

Well, of course I did, he's buried in the back yard. I knew if I lied about that the machine will know, so I said Yes. I felt safe about that because they can't ask me where he is because that's not a Yes or No question.

Andy butted in then, saying “You know where he is?”

Dan hissed and says, “Chief, do you mind? Now we have to start over.”

“Well, that question has got to be addressed directly,” said Andy, getting pissed. “If he knows where the guy is, we need to know that right now. Odell, where's Dean?”

“In America,” I said, which is a perfectly truthful answer.

“Where in America?”

Dan switched off the machine. “If I get any further interference I'm going to have to clear the room of anyone not directly involved in questioning or taping, do I make myself clear?”

“The question should've been put different,” says Andy.

“You had the opportunity to check the list,” says Dan. “Don't blame me if you didn't bother doing that beforehand. Now we have to start again.”

He started in doing stuff to the lie machine. Officer Dayton asked Andy, “Should I keep shooting?”

“Keep shooting.”

By now I had figured out that they were going to try and trick me into telling things I knew and they didn't, which means incriminating things like where Dean is, so it was a good thing Andy screwed up the questioning like he did because I know now what to do. I had heard that the only way to beat a lie-detecting machine is not to be yourself. What that means is you have to think about things that have got nothing to do with the questions they ask, so the answers you give will tell the machine you're lying even if the question they asked is something like Is today Saturday? Which you say Yes to, only you're thinking about the day your dog got run over or the day your daddy slapped you in front of folks for no reason because he's an asshole, stuff like that. This makes you sweat and your heartbeat goes faster, so the machine says you're a liar about something perfectly straightforward like What day is today, which means it can't be trusted to get the right reaction from all those other questions either, so the test is a washout.

But you have got to be able to concentrate to make it work, so I did that, concentrated hard on being Jody in
The Yearling
when he gets told his pet fawn has got to be shot because it keeps eating the crops Jody's family worked so hard to raise. That fawn has got to go even if Jody loved him so hard it hurts to think about shooting that pretty little creature with the long flickety ears and the little rows of spots along his back and those big brown eyes and that soft wet nose and dainty little hoofs he has got and that little white standy-up tail that gave him his name – Flag. Flag the fawn that even slept in the bed with Jody when he's little they loved each other so, and now Flag has got to be shot and killed like a bad creature, a wolf or a snake, shot down dead with a bullet in his little
beating heart behind his little chest where the hair grows in these little whorls that'll be covered in blood when the bullet strikes home …

“What the hell are you doing, Odell?” Andy sounded very sore all over again.

I couldn't answer him, I'm sobbing so much, my whole body shaking in the chair with tears leaking down my face just thinking about a terrible thing like shooting your own pet fawn that you love to pieces he's so cute and loving in return, but you have to do it because your daddy told you to …

“Oh, for chrissakes … What the hell is the matter with you, Odell?”

Behind me Dan said, “I'm canceling this interview right now. The best you could hope for is Inconclusive. I have professional standards and nothing here comes up to scratch. If you want to put in a complaint, Chief, be sure and include the fact that everything right up till now has been videoed to back me up on this.”

He started taking off the stickems and pressure cuff, breathing very fast through his nose so I can tell he's as pissed as Andy about the way things went, only it's not me he's pissed at, it's the Chief. “You can go,” he says, and I stood up.

“He can go when I say he can go!”

Officer Dayton asked, “Should I stop shooting now?”

“Hell yes!” says Andy.

“Can I leave?” I asked, still sobbing I feel so bad.

“Get out!”

I went along the corridor to where Lorraine's waiting. She took one look at me and said, “Odell, what's wrong?”

“I didn't want to …” I said, my face still wet. What I mean is,
I didn't want to shoot Flag the fawn that I loved so, only Lorraine didn't get that, of course.

“Didn't want to what? What did they do in there?”

“They had a lie-detecting machine … The guy hooked me up …”

“What!”

Andy come along the corridor then and she says, “Lie detector? You didn't say anything about a lie detector, Andy, just a camera. What kind of a crooked setup are you running here? A
lie
detector! Exactly what kind of lies do you think he's been telling, the difference between Saturday and Sunday? He's already told you he was drunk, and now he's in there getting a polygraph without a lawyer's say-so? What the fuck, Andy …”

“Back off, Lorraine, this has got nothing to do with you.”

“The hell it doesn't! It's
my
goddamn brother they're out there hunting down,
my
aunt that got murdered and
my
friend getting shafted for no good reason except he happened to walk into something weird because his fucking
car's
on the fritz! Fuck!”

“Okay, that's enough.”

“You're playing this all wrong, Andy, trust me.”

“Trust! You?”

They breathed hard at each other, staring daggers as the saying goes. I wasn't upset about Flag anymore, just curious about the way Andy and Lorraine are fighting over me. Lorraine called me her friend, I definitely heard her say that, and I'm hoping that before too long she'll add one little word to that word, what I mean is
boy
friend.