Flying Shoes (32 page)

Teever closed his eyes to get the visuals and drew the Stuckey’s blanket up to his neck. It would be so badass, his Mexican trailer garden. Plenty to eat, some to sell.
Maybe
even put a little chronic between the corn rows. Maybe Ernest would help him move some of that. They’d all get healthy and happy as heifers in deep hay. Maybe Dog and Lena would let him put a little stand out in front of the liquor store, catch some of that doctor action, and Mudbird might get some ladies to buy his vegetables. O-fucking-kay, then. But
now
I see!
He heaved a big, raggedy sigh that started him coughing and he kecked a big wad into the fire. The loogie, dark and big as an oyster, sizzled for a second. In spite of his excitement, he realized he was tired. No one had said anything for a long time. The music had stopped. Keeping his eyes shut, Teever hoped for sleep, even though he knew that in an hour or two that damn trailer rooster would be crowing for real, and he’d wake up at the crack by a heap of cinders, lying in his chaise longue alone, all the other chairs and crates empty, frosty weeds between the trailers all glittery in the sun’s first rays of the new day. He didn’t care. He did not
care
. That was
mañana.
He’d worry about
mañana
mañana
.
Fuckin’ ay. Right now he was home, because home was where they might fuck with you but for some reason they’d let you stay. Okay then, he sighed to himself. O-fucking-kay, then.

Eleven

When Mary Byrd woke on Monday morning she had to think to remember where she was. Her mother’s rose-colored, frilly guest room. Recalling that, and what her mother had told her Saturday night, and what the day had in store for her, she closed her eyes and drew herself up into a ball. Her heart pounded and goosed up her pulse so that she knew she wouldn’t be going back to sleep, which was all in this world she wanted. From the wicker nightstand she reached over and pinched up the Xanax half she’d left there the night before and swallowed it with a swig of water. Later, she promised herself, she’d take another. When she got back home she’d ask Ernest for some more.

Outside the guest room came the sounds of her mother bustling around, talking to the cats over Howard Stern’s annoying yammer. Her mother and James loved Howard Stern, but whenever she listened to him it was always about big tits or his small dick. Now she heard the back door and heavy footsteps in the kitchen. Mary Byrd rolled over and looked around the room. Her mom had good taste but it had started getting Target-ish. Maybe when you got old you just lost the will to be original and went instead for easy and inexpensive. Your
things
just became a pain in the ass. She was already feeling it sometimes with her own stuff, which was about to bury her. Her grandmother went around labeling things with masking tape so the family knew who got what, but if she could make you take it
now
, she would. “My life is over, my children are gone,” she’d say. “I can’t take it with me. No ice buckets in heaven. Maybe you can use it.” To which Mary Byrd’s uncle would tease, “Jesus, Mama. What makes you so sure you’re going to heaven, anyway?” and Nonna would pretend to be hurt.

Sunday with her family had passed peacefully. They had been sad, and tense, but glad enough to have some time together. The ordeal before them hadn’t been brought up, and they had treated each other politely, if not tenderly. Mary Byrd and Nick had been careful to avoid politics or current events. They had reminisced, telling the same old funny family stories, and Stevie and Pop had come up in some of them, but it was as if they were like Pete: alive and well, just off someplace else, just not with them at the moment.

In the afternoon while the boys watched sports, Mary Byrd had walked around the yard and had listened to her mother talk about her plants and her birds, and then in the kitchen they’d cooked and talked recipes. They ate the delicious but random dishes their mother had made—no main dish, but a little of this, a little of that—something to please each of them. They had talked about their children and what they were up to, and watched tapes of their favorite old
Twilight Zone
and
Little Rascals
episodes on the new VCR they’d given their mother for Christmas, laughing as if they hadn’t seen them dozens of times before. They’d teased their mother and mocked her admonishments, given out as if they were still children: “
Handwashing is very important.
”

As Mary Byrd had lain in bed afterward, she’d thought about how they had so little in common with one another, family anecdotes, mom-mocking, and TV shows aside. They didn’t see each other often, and her brothers weren’t married, although Nick had been, briefly, and had only one child—a great kid in spite of being smothered and overprotected. There was no tribe of cousins like she and her brothers had grown up with. She’d wondered how different things would be if they’d grown up more normally. Or more happily. But there were no
normal
families, were there. Why hadn’t Stevie’s death brought them closer together? She thought that it must be true that happy families are all alike. If a family didn’t have a dead child, why
wouldn’t
it be happy?

Monday, Monday
. Mary Byrd’s mother rapped on the door and Mary Byrd cringed. “I’m up!” she called. One of the demented cats was yowling somewhere down the hall. On Cherry Glen Lane in the mornings, her mother had awakened Mary Byrd to get a head start in the bathroom before the boys by banging the broom handle on the kitchen ceiling, which had been right under Mary Byrd’s bed. The sound she hated most in the world, that broomstick reveille, and now she meanly used it on William and Eliza.

“The boys are here,” her mother called. “It’s seven thirty. We need to leave the house in an hour.”

“Okay, I’m coming. I hope there’s coffee,” she yelled back. Somehow she was the only person in the family who drank it. She wished she could say, “If there’s not coffee, I’m not going” or “I can only go if there’s an original Chanel suit, navy blue bouclé shot through with white, size two, hanging in the closet for me,” but she shuffled out barefoot, her black curls all wacky, wearing the old flannel nightgown she kept at her mom’s, to greet her brothers, drink coffee, and sit with them silently for a few minutes until it was time to dress and go downtown and talk to some strangers about the murder of their brother and stepson.

The four of them sat in a dingy police waiting room. A little dulled out from the pill, Mary Byrd wished for more coffee to face whatever this meeting was going to be. While they waited, the boys looked at leftover
Times-Dispatch
es and a smattering of testosterone publications.
Varmint Masters. Guns and Ammo.
“Couldn’t they at least have some fishing magazines?” Nick said.

“Not enough blood,” said James.

Their mother silently crocheted a granny square. She’d made dozens of afghans—they each had several—and they were the only pretty ones Mary Byrd had ever seen. The yarn was getting fuzz on her mom’s navy blue Chanel suit, size zero, and Mary Byrd picked it off. She smoothed her own suit—her black Banana Republic she wore to funerals and meetings.

A police lady came in. “Y’all can just go on in and take a seat. Detective Stith will be right with you.”

Detective Stith wasn’t in his office when they sat down. Mary Byrd looked around for some clues about the guy. Other than a big piñata—a Halloween spider that hung in the window—there wasn’t much: a stack of
Sports Illustrated
and another of
Vanity Fair
.
Vanity Fair
? she wondered. Must be because they had all those great murder investigations and muckraking articles cleverly stashed in between the reeky perfume and celebrity gossip. Or maybe Stith was into perfume, fashion, and celebrity gossip. Her head started to hurt. On the wall behind the desk hung some certificates and diplomas, and she rose and leaned forward to make them out. UVA BA, UVA Law, Virginia Institute for Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Crime Scene Academy, something from Penn, something from the FBI, blah blah.

All were awarded to Sooraji Mehta Stith. An Indian guy? But if he was a Stith, there ought to be an ancient FFV connection. William Byrd had had a friend named Stith back in the day. A small, framed piece of needlepoint was propped on the console behind him. It read:
a stith in time saves nine
. A funny guy, too. He’d better get his smart, funny ass in here.

The door opened and in walked a handsome black guy with a bright, bruisey complexion. His lips were purple and his ears stuck out boyishly, framed by hair clipped so close it made his head appear to be flocked. Mary Byrd was intrigued by the mix of people he seemed to be.

“Hi,” he said, tossing a pack of Marlboro Lights on the desk. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Got that Marlboro monkey on my back.” Good old Philip Morris. Keeping Richmond, doctors, and hospitals everywhere afloat and population numbers down.

He loped easily to the window where a coffee pot sat on a mini-fridge. “Coffee? Or a Coke?” He popped open a can of Diet Dr. Pepper, taking a sip and raising it to them.

“Nothing, thanks,” her mother said. Mary Byrd resisted her own desire for coffee. She’d only have to go to the bathroom.

James said, “We’re good.”

Stith was a skinny guy, or
poor as a snake,
as Teever might say. A dark red sweater, navy corduroy jacket, and khakis gave him a little gravitas, but he still looked way too cool and way too young to be a detective who had a clue about anything. She didn’t know what she’d expected—someone off the TV, past his prime, seedy, cockeyed, gimpy or bald. A gut, crappy clothes. She thought of the detective who’d questioned her the day Stevie died. Had he been the one who’d suggested the connection between her and Ned Tuttle, and asked for her diary? She couldn’t remember. They’d all seemed creepy.

“
Diet
Dr. Pepper?” she asked him, wrinkling her nose.

“Diabetic.” He smiled. “Dr. Pepper is like me: ‘
so misunderstood
.’ A cold-case guy isn’t the most popular guy on the force.” Quickly, all business again, he said, “I want you to be comfortable with this. I won’t keep you long, and I don’t want this to be too much of an unpleasant experience.”

She felt a smirk twitching at the corners of her mouth. “Is there the possibility that this could be pleasant?”

“It can be really
un
pleasant, stressful, and pointless, or it can be not too bad, and useful.” He sat back in his chair and looked at her—what? Reprovingly? “Your call.”

“Let’s do this,” said James. “We’re ready.”

“I could have explained a lot of this when I called each of you last week,” Stith said, “but the department is trying to keep these cards close to our chest. For this to have the best . . . the most productive outcome, I figured that to have you all here at once would be the way to go. I hope you agree.”

Mary Byrd spoke up again. “But isn’t this mostly so y’all don’t get scooped by that reporter and look lame and inept? You must know about her, right?” She knew she was being a jerk and needed to stop. Let Nick be the asshole.

Somewhere outside the door, men laughed and walkie-talkies crackled. “This is not exactly going to be a great chapter in the history of our police department. Maybe in the Annals of Great RPD Bungles of the Twentieth Century. But we need to be the ones to solve it, make it public, and get it right. Then she—or anyone—can do what they want with the story. Reporters are not the law, and can’t bring this case to a resolution. We can, though, and I think we will.”

A policeman in uniform opened the door and said, “Hey Sunshine—oops! Sorry, Raji. Want anything from the Sonic?”

“I’m good, thanks,” Stith said. The cop left.

“Sunshine?” asked Nick.

“Yeah,” he smiled. “My motto around here is ‘sunlight is the best disinfectant.’ It beats being called ‘Mud’ I guess.”

They didn’t smile. They were focused on the word
bungles.
James shifted uncomfortably on his small chair and said, “I have to admit that I feel a huge amount of anger at you guys—not you, but all these people who were involved then, and never figured this out, and here we are again. Or at least, here are most of us.” He gestured at Mary Byrd, Nick, and their mother. “I was only three, and our brother Pete was just a baby.”

“I was in diapers myself when this happened,” Stith said. “But I sure heard about it all my childhood. My mother never let me or my brother out of her sight. The boogeyman was still out there. That has something to do with why I’m personally so interested in this case.” He paused. “I certainly understand how you feel. You’re entitled to that,” he went on. “We—”

“Really? You think you really do understand?” Nick said. His eyes narrowed and his jaw worked.

“Look. Balls were dropped, and a lot was overlooked, for sure. I can’t explain exactly how or why. Not everything, anyway. The guys who were working on this case then are dead or retired, or clueless; their memories can’t be trusted. But that’s my job now—to clean up some old messes. I was brought back down here from New York, where I worked on the Etan Patz case, and I worked the Southside Strangler case, if you remember that. We finally got that . . . taken care of. That dude is
gone.
”