In the Night Season (18 page)

“My name’s Philip,” he said. “I’m sorry you have to go through this.”

“It’s fine,” she said, though he could see that it was not fine at all.

“You’ve probably already answered some questions. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.”

“Yes.”

“Do you feel up to it?”

She indicated with a look that she was.

“May I have your name?”

“I told the other one,” she said. “I’m Marjorie Powers.”

“Ms. Powers, I’m so sorry to have to put you through this.”

“I cleaned for him,” she said. “I do it in several houses around here. Every week. I have two children in school, and it’s extra money. My husband’s a carpenter.” She shook again, pulled the woolen cloth tight around herself. “Oh, God.”

“I’ve got a little girl,” he told her. “I—I had a son.” The level of this confidence briefly shook him; he had not known that he would say it.

The woman’s gaze only brushed by him. “You have a little girl—” Evidently she had decided not to address it.

“We started late,” he said, relieved. “She lives with her mother.”

“You’re—divorced.”

“Right,” he said.

“I’m so sorry.” Now she seemed to mean she was sorry about everything. Her eyes took him in, and in.

“Well,” he managed. It was becoming clear to him that he was not fit for this work now; his mind was a fog of old sorrow and this young woman’s pitying gaze.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“I know.” Shaw reached for his handkerchief. But she sat forward and pulled one out of her small purse, which lay on the coffee table. He took the purse and set it carefully on the floor. “I’m gonna need to talk to you,” he got out. “I know it’s hard. Do you—would you want to wait a little?”

“I’m shaking.”

“It’s a terrifying thing,” he said to her. “An awful thing.”

And she started to cry. “I was—I would never just walk in. Never. But the door—” She pointed. “That door was ajar. Sitting open. I—I knocked on it several times. Then I—I stepped in and called him. Calling him, you know. And I heard the music. So I—I went out to the car and waited for him to see me. I waited ten minutes—fifteen. A long time. A long time. And then I went back, and knocked again, and called him. Nothing. So I—I went in there, into the kitchen, and saw the drawers open and the glass on the floor. And then the blood.” She sobbed. “I thought he might’ve cut himself or something. And there was the music going on, and then it stopped and I yelled his name. And then the music started again, I heard it—heard the needle drop down—and I—I think I knew. I ran outside, but—but it seemed so—I thought I was crazy. You know, you think there’s some reasonable explanation. So I went back in, calling him, and I went up there. Oh, God.”

“It’s all right,” Shaw said. “You’re all right.”

“I called the police on my car phone. I didn’t know which ones to call.”

“You did fine.”

“Oh,” she said, sniffling. “I’m so terrified. What kind of world is this anyway? What’s happening to us? I didn’t know what I was doing or anything. I just ran.”

He put his hand on her shoulder and patted softly. “You did all the right things.”

“I cleaned house for him. Oh, what kind of people are out there?”

“Mrs. Powers, I need to ask—have you received any kind of sign that somebody might find your coming here to be—that someone looked upon it in any way that might be construed as—”

“I just cleaned his house—”

“I’m asking if you got any sign of an objection—a nasty letter, say, or even somebody saying something to you.”

“I didn’t even know him all that well. I’ve worked for him five years. He was a nice man, a good man.”

Shaw took the page from his pocket and opened it, so she could see what was printed there.

“Oh,” she said, rocking slightly and sobbing.

“Have you seen anything like this?”

“It’s not me, is it? They don’t mean me, do they? How could they mean me? It has to be the one—oh, God, I don’t know what I’m saying. He was—he was friendly with the lady who lives in that old house over the way. In the horseshoe, he called it.”

“I know the place,” Shaw said. “I think she’s on the answering machine. Actually, that house was in my family before I was born. My grandfather used to own part of this land.”

This held of course no interest for her. “Well—he—Mr. Bishop used to go over there in the afternoons—” She began to sob, the tears rolling down her lovely cheeks.

“I knew something about that,” Shaw told her. He waited a beat. “Did—did Mr. Bishop ever say anything about this?”

She looked at him. “No.”

“Any—tensions or conflicts that you know of? You know—regarding his, um, color. With anybody?”

“He never talked about anything like that. We never talked about it.”

“Do you happen to know who his next of kin was? Anybody in the area that we ought to notify, you know.”

“He had a sister, I think. But I don’t know where she lived. I don’t even know if she’s alive—he talked about her a little.”

“He didn’t have any kids living here with him, or visiting him, right?”

“He lived alone. Nobody ever came here that I know of. Except me.”

“Did you ever talk to him about his—the people he knew. Anything like that?”

“The Jameses—up the hill. He talked about them now and then. I think he was friendly with them maybe, years ago. They went to school together—I don’t know. Now and then he’d do things for them. Help them out. I said I don’t think he had any family here.”

“Okay,” Shaw told her. “You’ve been really helpful. Would you—how do you feel? Would you like us to have a doctor look at you?”

“No.”

“He could prescribe something to calm you.”

“Well,” she said, sniffling. “Maybe.”

He said, “I’ll get right on it.”

Out in the kitchen, two troopers were standing over an open drawer. They stepped back with a little startled motion when he entered the room. One of them was older—the lined, pale, yellowish look of someone with bad drinking habits. Shaw knew the look well enough.

“What do we have?” he said.

“Pictures,” said the older one.

The younger one still held a few playing cards. He looked like a teenager—his cheeks were pocked with acne, and obviously he was not shaving on a regular basis yet.

“You boys get those out of the drawer?” Shaw asked him.

“Well, yeah. Take a look—”

“Put them the fuck down, please.”

The trooper started to put them back in the drawer.

“Not there. On the counter.”

He did so.

“Okay,” Shaw said. “Now one of you go out to your car and radio that we want a doctor here, with some sedatives for the lady.”

“I’ll go,” the younger of the two said.

When he was gone, his partner stood staring at Shaw, who stared back. “Think we’ll ever find the doers?” the trooper said.

“Not if we keep fucking with the evidence,” said Shaw.

T
HE COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER
and the trace evidence team arrived in front of several cars full of newspaper reporters and two vans from the local television station. Soon, two more television vans pulled up, both from Washington. They emptied out, and technicians began laying wires and setting up cameras. It looked to Shaw like a movie set. He went out to meet the gathered media and to make sure that Marjorie Powers was safely on her way home. She moved inconspicuously through them all as they rushed to speak to Shaw. They thrust microphones at him, all talking at the same time.

“It’s a homicide,” he said in answer to the general run of the shouted questions. “We don’t know much else right now.”

“What was the method,” asked one reporter in the tone of a command.

“There’ll be more to say later. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Is this a serial killing?”

Shaw looked at the face—a handsome, bony, dark female face, dark hair perfectly arranged around the sharp features; thin lips, very white teeth. “Not unless there’s another one that I don’t know about yet.”

“Is that a no?”

“Yes, that’s a no.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I just said how. Are you listening?”

“What is your feeling about the fact that it happened here, so far from the city?”

“You know,” Shaw said to her. “You folks never come out here. Hell, we don’t even get into your weather reports. Please excuse me, I have work to do. If you have any other questions, please put them to the commonwealth attorney.” He started to walk through them.

“This killing is racially motivated, isn’t that right?” A blocky, broad-shouldered blond woman had reached with a microphone, almost hitting his face. He recoiled from it. She repeated the question.

“We don’t know that for certain,” he said.

“The victim received hate mail and threats from a group calling itself the Virginia Front. Isn’t that so?”

“I don’t want to get into any of that yet.”

Another leaned in—a skinny, bald man with strands of very black hair pushed across the bald place. “Do you deny that there is any racial overtone to this killing?”

“The victim received some hate mail,” Shaw said. “We’re taking it into account.”

A black woman wearing a blue pinstriped suit said, “This is a hate crime, then.”

“I’d rather not jump to any conclusions.”

“Weren’t the communications from this group in the form of threats?”

Shaw looked at her. “They were.”

“Then isn’t it logical to suppose this is the work of the same people?”

“The logic doesn’t always add up. When we know more, we’ll be able to say. It’s too early to say.”

“Do you have experience investigating homicides?”

“Some,” Shaw said.

“You’re not ruling out the Virginia Front?”

“I’m not, at present, ruling anything or anyone out.”

The other was persistent. “You’re not ruling out the possibility that what we have here is a hate crime.”

“I’m saying it’s one of the possibilities,” Shaw said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He walked through them and their shouted other questions and protests, to the car, and got in. Frank Bell was already sitting behind the wheel.

“Where to?” he said.

Shaw sat back and rubbed his hurting eyes. “Any idea how they got all that so fast?”

“Troopers, maybe. They’ve been talking to everybody.”

Shaw sat there.

“Bad news gets around fast, doesn’t it,” Bell said.

“Well, they’d have known about it soon enough.”

“Where to?”

“Let’s canvas a little.”

Bell pulled out and started up the mountain. The road wound through dry dead branches, and the sunlight pouring through had a strobelike effect—brightness pulsing too fast for vision to fix on. Shaw closed his eyes. “I’m so damn tired, Frank. And I’ve got a headache.”

“Me too.”

They rode on in silence, reached the top of the rise, and came to a narrowing of the road. It was gravel and packed dirt here, with big holes and the edges of what might well be glacier-sized stones pushing through. The car bounced over these uneven places, and twice the undercarriage scraped against the rocky surface. Beyond the first rough curve there was a clearing and a small dirt drive which led between two red-clay banks. The clearing became a wide grass field bordered by barbed wire. Frank Bell took the turn and pulled them up into another clear space, surrounded by thick underbrush and trees. In the middle of this was a small white house with a side porch and a barn. There was a car on cinder blocks in the side yard. Chickens ran in front of them and fluttered toward the porch. A woman came out, wiping her hands on a towel. She was solid-looking, with heavy, ruddy features and iron-gray hair.

“Hi,” Shaw said, getting out of the car. He introduced himself, offering his hand. She looked at it, then clasped it with a surprisingly strong grip and let go. She said, “I’m Agnes James.”

Behind her, a younger woman emerged, thinner, with darker hair, but with the same florid complexion and the same heavy features. Shaw introduced himself again. Then he turned and introduced Bell. Agnes James said, “This is my younger sister, Marsha.”

Marsha looked faintly suspicious.

As if in some sort of intuitive response to the look, the older sister emitted a small throat-clearing sound and stood straighter. “What do you want with us?” she said.

“We wondered if you knew Mr. Bishop.”

“Of course we—what’s happened to Mr. Bishop?”

Frank Bell told them.

Agnes James put the towel up to her face and seemed about to fall. The younger woman took hold of her.

“Oh, Lord,” Agnes said. “Who would do such a thing?”

Shaw said, “It looks like someone broke in. There’s a—there’s something more too.”

Shaw took the folded piece of paper out of his shirt pocket and held it toward them, open. Agnes James seemed to sink again, and her younger sister took hold of her under the arms.

“Agnes? It’s okay. You’re okay.”

“I’m really sorry,” Shaw told them, putting the paper back.

The younger woman peered out at the borders of her property.

“If you—if anything seemed at all unusual yesterday, we’d like to know. I mean if you saw anything, or anybody—you have to go right by his place in order to go out to the highway.”

“We haven’t been out for days,” Marsha James said. “My sister’s been feeling ill. My daughter, Missy, rides the school bus by there every morning and afternoon. But she’s gone already this morning. She didn’t say anything.”

“I went to school with him,” Agnes James said, not really addressing anyone. “So long ago. Nobody remembers—nobody could ever—” She halted. Her sister was holding her up.

For a small space both men waited. Agnes James sat down on the top step of the porch, watching the line of woods, as her sister had. Marsha stood over her and frowned.

“I’d appreciate it if you could tell us about the people Mr. Bishop knew,” Shaw said, as gently as he could. “Anybody he might’ve been having trouble with in that way, you know, anything like that.”

“I knew him a long time ago,” the older woman said. “We—we were never close.”

“We didn’t really know him that well,” said Marsha. “We’d wave to him when we went by.”

“Oh, Lord, Marsha,” the older woman muttered, standing, turning. “I’m terrified.”

“It’s prob’ly gonna be all right, ma’am,” Frank Bell said. “We’ll catch whoever did this, you can rest assured.”

For a moment, no one spoke. There was just the sound of Agnes James’s breathlessness.

“Well,” said Shaw. “If you think of anything, don’t hesitate to give us a call.”

“Murder,” said Agnes James. “All the way out here, after all these—” She stopped herself.

Shaw drove on the way back down the mountain. The car rocked with the deep crevices in the road, and each jarring sent a throb up into the reaches of his skull. They came back past the Bishop house, with its crowd of reporters and onlookers, and drove on, down the slow decline, winding around to the Michaelson place—the house he had never entered, that his father had spent a good part of his boyhood in. Because his father was a good storyteller and liked to talk about those times, Shaw had a pretty vivid idea of some of the details of the place: the walk-up attic that ran across the whole length of the upstairs; the oak-paneled sliding doors of the dining room; and the basement, where a boy could play undisturbed for hours on end, and where Shaw’s grandmother had hung her laundry to dry during the winter months.

“This feels so strange, coming here,” he said, pulling into the driveway and stopping. “What time do you have?”

“It’s after eleven.”

There was a small Datsun in the drive. Shaw walked up onto the porch and rang the doorbell. He waited, looking at the reflection of himself in the glass of the window.

Frank Bell stood out in the yard, looking toward the Bishop house. “You can just see the top of the roof from here.”

Shaw pushed the button again.

“Maybe nobody’s home.”

The door opened a crack, and a shadowed face looked out, the eyes red-rimmed and dark—a bottomless brown. There was something taut and held-in about the expression. “Yes?” she said.

Shaw introduced himself and asked if he could come in.

She said, “I’ve been ill.”

“I wondered if you—if you could spare me a minute of your time,” Shaw said.

She waited there, without speaking.

“You—ah. This is hard. You’re a friend of Mr. Bishop’s?”

She nodded.

When he told her about Mr. Bishop, she closed her eyes, the head drooped slightly. Then she straightened, as if expecting to have to resist something beyond him.

“I’m awful sorry to have to tell you a thing like this,” he said.

She stepped back a little space. She wore a bathrobe, wrapped tightly about her. Shaw stepped into the frame of the door, but she didn’t give any ground.

“I just have to ask a couple of things of you, Mrs. Michaelson—” He halted.

The dark eyes were brimming. “Ed Bishop was my friend.”

“Has there been any kind of trouble—from any quarter, even hints of disapproval—about the fact that you and Mr. Bishop were friendly?”

“No.”

“Nothing in the mail? No phone calls, anything at all?”

“No. Nothing.”

He brought the paper out and showed it to her. “You never got anything from these people?”

“Oh.”

He waited.

“No,” she said.

“Did Mr. Bishop ever mention this to you?”

She shook her head.

“Have you or your son—”

“My son—”

“Yes.”

The dark eyes gave him nothing.

“The lady who found the—who found Mr. Bishop. She says he used to come over and check on your son. Mrs. Michaelson, your son’s name is Jason, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

Shaw nodded, folding the paper and putting it back. “I listened to a message you left on Mr. Bishop’s phone, I guess yesterday?”

“No.”

“Well—recently.”

“A couple—a few days ago. Last week, maybe.”

“He didn’t play his messages every day?”

“He forgot sometimes. I don’t know. I didn’t call there yesterday.”

“Mr. Bishop used to come look in on the boy in the afternoons, is that right?”

“Sometimes.”

“Have you seen anything unusual—anybody you didn’t recognize, or anything at all out of the ordinary, Mrs. Michaelson?”

She considered this, then shook her head slowly. “I’ve had this virus. I’ve been sick since yesterday when I got home from school.”

“You sounded a little—well, bothered, I guess, in the phone message.”

“I don’t recall. I didn’t call him yesterday, I told you. I’ve been going through my husband’s things.”

“Pardon?”

She stared back.

“Is your son at home today?”

“No.”

“Would it be all right if I spoke to him at some point?”

“Why?”

“Well—”

“I’m sorry, I—this is such a terrible shock. I don’t feel well.”

“I understand. I could stop by the school—”

“No,” she said. “I don’t want Jason bothered at school. He’s not doing well as it is. My husband—you see, my husband—”

Very gingerly, Shaw interrupted her. “I—uh, I know about it. The—the lady who cleans for Mr. Bishop—”

“Yes, I know about her.”

He left a pause. The fact that he had known of her trouble before today made him feel oddly as if he’d lied to her. Behind him, Frank Bell made a throat-clearing sound.

“You can talk to my son,” she offered. “But I mean—he’s out. With—he’s—with his grandfather.”

“He’s been with his grandfather how long? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“Two days ago. They went in the car. They were going south together.”

“You took him out of school?”

“It’s a week. He hasn’t been doing well. Why do you want to speak with my son?” Her features appeared about to collapse.

“I’m sorry,” Shaw told her. “If they’ve been gone two days, it doesn’t matter. We found some—there seems to have been someone else in the house around the time—or I mean just after it. It appears that it could’ve been someone—younger. How old is your son, Mrs. Michaelson?”

“Eleven.” She looked beyond him—just a glance, but it made him turn, too. When he faced around again, she had put her hands to her face.

“Mrs. Michaelson, any of your boy’s friends—anybody his age or maybe a little older, that might’ve been in the area yesterday evening?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything, no. I’m sorry.”

“And there was nobody Mr. Bishop was having problems with, that you know of?”

“No.” She seemed momentarily irritated, but then she got hold of herself. “I didn’t really know him that well. Not well enough for someone to—” She seemed to catch herself. “Some types of people will think whatever they choose to think.”

“But you’re not talking about anyone in particular?”

“No.”

“And you never got the sense—any kind of sense—of trouble about him coming here in the afternoons.”

“No,” she said. Then she sobbed again. “I’m really—I’m not feeling well at all. I wish I could be more helpful.”