Killing Mr. Griffin (18 page)

All the money we spent sending him to that big college in California, I ought to know the ring. I even know the inscription. “Die Luft der Freiheit Weht,” it says. He used to read it out loud in German and then translate it because he liked it so much. It means “The winds of freedom blow.” ” “Then it was you who got into my things,” David accused her. “I was just going to borrow a couple of dimes to get me a candy bar. You know your mother, she never leaves a single penny anywhere, and a person does get hungry sometimes for a little something sweet.” “I don’t care about the money,” David said, “I want the ring.

What have you done with it?” “I didn’t say I took it.” “Gram, you did!” David put his hand on the blue flowered shoulder. “Look, I’ll get you a dozen candy bars if you want them, just give the ring back to me. You know you wouldn’t like it if I got into your things and took something.” “It wasn’t yours, Davy,” Mrs. Ruggles said. “It was your daddy’s. Your daddy was wearing that ring the day he left here. The only way you could have it is if he’s come back again and given it to you. You’ve been with your daddy. You know where he is. Why are you keeping it a secret?” “I swear, Gram, that’s not my father’s ring,”

David said. “I haven’t seen my dad since I was a little kid. You’ve got things all mixed up.” “I’m an old woman, Davy, and I want to see my boy before I die.” “Then I hope you will, but I can’t bring him to you. I didn’t get that ring from my father.” “Then where did you get

it?” Irma Ruggles asked him. “I found it.”

“Where?” “On the sidewalk.” “If it’s just a found thing, why does it mean so much to you?” The old woman turned to Susan. “Where did Davy get the ring?” “He found it,” Susan said thinly. “Just like he said he did.” “You were with him?” “Yes. It was lying there on the pavement, and the sun hit it, and the stone sort of caught the light, and David picked it up and said—and said—“Somebody must have dropped this.” ” The words came stumbling forth, sounding so contrived to her own ears that she almost strangled on them. She was not surprised to see the look of disbelief on the wrinkled face. “There was no stone in the ring,” Irma Ruggles said with dignity. “There was a tree inscribed. The German words go all the way around the ring, and the tree is in the middle.” Silence settled heavily upon the room. Susan closed her eyes. When I open them, she told herself, this whole room will have vanished and this dreadful woman with it. Ten years will have gone by, and I will be grown and far away in my private cabin on the shore of a lake. I will look out through my fine window onto deep, calm green, with millions of tiny ripples shining and sparkling in the sunlight, and a breeze will come, clean and sweet across the water, smelling of pine trees. I will think back and ask myself, where was I ten years ago. What was I doing? What was I feeling? And I won’t even remember. But when she opened her eyes once more it was all still there, the cramped room with the two” narrow beds stripped of their

sheets to reveal the thin, sagging mattresses, the portable television set sitting lifeless on its stand in the corner, the old lady glowering from the depths of her chair. Through the window behind her there was another window and another bedroom and another woman, this one with her hair in curlers. The neighbor woman stared at Susan with undisguised interest and then glanced past her at the unmade beds and began to smile. “Come on, Sue,” David said in a low voice, “I’ll walk you home.” “But you haven’t gotten what we came for!” “That’s okay. I’ll get it later. Gram will change her mind.” No, she won’t, Susan thought with a sick sort of despair. She will keep that ring hidden away like a squirrel with a nut, day after day, week after week, while she waits for David to produce his father. And then one day she will realize that the father is not coming, and she will pop forth the ring from under her pillow or out of a cold cream jar or wherever she has put it, and she’ll say to David’s mother, “Look what Davy says he found on the sidewalk? Though he didn’t really find it there, because this girl he brought home with him one day, who was supposed to have been with him when he discovered it, couldn’t describe what it looked like. Why did they lie to me about this? Where did he really get it?”

And David’s mother will say-She could not force her mind any farther.

“You don’t have to walk me,” she said to David. “It’s not far. I can go home by myself.” “I’d like to take you.” “No—please—I don’t want you to.” Susan turned quickly away from him. “I’m glad to have met

you, Mrs. Ruggles.”

Whirling on her heel, Susan rushed through the bedroom doorway and stumbled through the living room, bruising her shins against the edge of a coffee table that was lost in a shadow pocket by a plastic-covered sofa. She pushed past a chair and a telephone stand, and found the door to the outside. She pulled it open and burst through, and the soft, spring dusk came upon her in a gush of cool air and golden, slanted light. The car that David had driven the times he picked her up at the house was parked at the curb, and a tall woman with thick, dark hair was lifting a laundry basket from the backseat. Another time Susan would have looked at her curiously, but now she sped by with hardly a glance, intent only on putting distance between herself and the place she was leaving. Halfway down the block she began to run, grateful for the cold purity of the wind against the heat of her face.

That is where David lives, she thought incredulously. That is where he goes when he leaves school in the afternoon. That place and the people in it are his lifel “The winds of freedom blow,” Susan thought, and she could have wept for him, but the panic that had started to build within her now began to take her over. David’s grandmother was not dumb. She was old, yes, and confused, but there had been a sharpness in her eyes and a craftiness in the way she had managed to twist the conversation that denied stupidity. David would not have an easy time getting the ring away from her. That much Susan knew with certainty. With the

ring in her possession, and among the shifting lights and shadows of her faded mind, Mrs. Irma Ruggles was dangerous. We’ve got to do something, but what? Susan asked herself frantically. David could not handle the situation alone, and she herself could do nothing to help him. There was one person who would know what to do, one person who always knew what to do. Susan entered her house by the front door and went straight through the hall to the stairs. She could hear the voices of her father and brothers, raised in friendly argument in the den; from the kitchen there came the clink of pans and dishes. The warm, familiar odors of the dinner hour filled the stairwell. Susan went up the stairs and down the hall to the phone. She looked up a number in the directory, lifted the receiver, and dialed. A woman’s voice answered. “Hello, is this Mrs. Garrett?” Susan said. “I’m trying to get in touch with Mark Kinney. Is he there with Jeff? Oh, good. Please, can I speak to him?”

The Sunday paper carried the complete story. “Terrible,” Mr.

McConnell said. “Utterly unbelievable. What kind of maniac would do such a thing! What sort of motive could there have been? The man wasn’t carrying anything of value. All that was missing when they found him were a couple of dollars and his Stanford class ring.” “His poor wife!” Mrs. McConnell exclaimed. “With a baby coming! How dreadful this is for her! It says the funeral will be on Tuesday. You will be going to it, won’t you, Sue?” “No,” Susan said. “Mother, I just can’t.” She could not shift her gaze from the photograph on the front page. The picture was not a recent one, for it lacked a mustache, and devoid of this protective camouflage the mouth looked young and oddly vulnerable. What could not be denied were the eyes.

Susan, had looked into those cool, challenging eyes five mornings a

week for the past school year. Good morning, class. Good morning, Mr.

Griffin. “Sue, dear,” her mother said, “I know how you feel and how hard it must be for you, but I really feel you ought to go. It’s bound to mean something to his wife to see that his students were fond enough of him to turn out for his funeral. Perhaps Dad and I should go with you. After all, Mrs. Griffin was here in our home just the other night.” “Does it say how he was killed?” Craig asked with interest.

“They’re doing an autopsy. There were bruises on the body, but no other signs of violence.” Mr. McConnell was scanning the story. “He had a history of heart-related problems, so they think it’s possible he suffered coronary arrest. “This says police were led to the discovery of the body in ‘a secluded area of the Sandias’ by a girl named Lana Turnboldt. She and a former boyfriend used to go hiking in the area.

Yesterday she was up there with her fiance for a picnic and found a medicine vial with Griffin’s name on it and a few yards away a patch of newly turned earth. She reported this to the police who investigated and found it was a grave.” “Do you feel real bad, Sue?” Melvynne asked respectfully. “I never knew anybody who got dead.” “Of course, she feels bad,” his mother said, putting her arm around Susan’s shoulders.

“It’s a tragic thing. I just pray whoever did this will be caught and punished to the full limit of the law.” “The one clue they mention is a blue Windbreaker that was wrapped around the body,” Mr. McConnell said. “It was a man’s size, small. It says, “Detective James Baca who is in charge of the investigation said there were no identifying marks

on the jacket. “It

came from Sears. Millions of people wear these things,” Baca said.” “

“We ought to send flowers,” Mrs. McConnell said. “The shops will be closed today, but I’ll order some in the morning.” She gave her daughter a squeeze and released her and went over to the stove. “How many want eggs this morning?” “John, I want to talk with you about something,” Paula Garrett said. “Jeff has been up since dawn working out in the garage on Mark Kinney’s car.” “So?” her husband grunted.

“Tear yourself away from the income tax and listen to me a moment. This is Sunday, Jeff’s one day to relax. He has practice tomorrow and Tuesday, and Wednesday night is the last day of the tournament.” “So?”

John Garrett said again. “Jeff never misses practice.” “I know.

That’s just my point. He throws himself so hard into his sports activities, he needs to get rest when he can. Mark takes advantage of their friendship to a point where it’s disgraceful, and as far as I can see, Jeff never gets anything back from it. It’s all give on one side and all take on the other.” “You worry too much,” John Garrett said.

“What’s this about Mark Kinney’s car, anyway? I didn’t think the kid had a car. If he’s got his own wheels, how come Jeff drives him around all the time?” “Mark just bought the car, or I guess he did,” Paula said. “It’s a beat-up old thing, purely secondhand. He and Betsy came over in it yesterday afternoon and drove it straight into the garage.

Jeff says he’s going to help him fix it up, but there’s no ‘helping’

about it. Mark got a phone call from some girl a couple of minutes

after he got here and took off immediately. Now this morning Jeff’s out there painting that car all by himself, and it’s not even his.”

“Jeff likes working on cars. He had some other kid’s car out there for a while last month. You didn’t hit the roof over that.” “No, I didn’t, because Greg Dart was out there with him working right alongside him, and besides that, he paid Jeff for his work. You can be sure Mark isn’t going to fork over a penny. I bet Jeff’s even buying the paint.” “They’ve been friends for a long time, Paula.” “I know,”

Jeff’s mother said. “I can remember the first time he brought Mark home with him. I thought then that their friendship couldn’t last a week. That weird little weasel of a boy and our Jeff—why, they had nothing in common. Jeff would be out back shooting baskets, and Mark would be slouching against a tree, staring off into space like he was half asleep. I thought Jeff was just being kind because the boy was new in town and didn’t have parents.” “Well, likely he was,” her husband said. “And I think it shows the goodness in Jeff that he’s continued to help the kid. From the things Mark’s let drop when he’s been over here, I gather he’s got no kind of home life. He’s got an uncle who beats him and an aunt who won’t fix his meals; the only nourishment he gets comes from that greasy-spoon soda shop or out of our refrigerator. No wonder he’s attached himself to a solid, well-adjusted guy like Jeff. It’s his anchor in life.” “Maybe so,”

Paula said more slowly. “I could be overreacting. It’s just that I’ve never been able to get really fond of Mark. He and Jeff are together

so much, and he’s in and out of here every day, and he’s polite enough, but I don’t feel I know him at all as a person. Do you?” “I never thought about it,” John Garrett said. “Maybe there’s not much there to know. The kid’s a shadow of Jeff, trailing along in his footsteps. It’s kind of pitiful actually, since he’ll never be able to begin to measure up to him. You can tell he’s got a crush on Betsy, but what girl would look twice at him with Jeff around? It’s sort of sad.” “Well, when you put it that way,” Paula said. “I guess Jeff’s a big enough boy now to handle his own relationships. It’s up to the strong in this life to take care of the weak, isn’t it? And our boy’s pretty special.” “Darned right he is,” John Garrett said, turning back to his tax return. “All you have to do is open the paper or pick up a magazine, and you see a bunch of messed-up kids in trouble. It makes you wonder where the parents are while all that’s going on.” Kathy Griffin lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. She had slept, dreamless, through the night as a result of the sedative they had given her. When she wakened, it had been slowly, in stages.

Consciousness had inched upon her, first with the knowledge that she was no longer sleeping, then as she automatically turned and reached into the bed beside her. It was empty. He’s up ahead of me, she had thought drowsily, but even as the words formed in her mind she had known there was something wrong with them. There were no sounds of movement in the room, no thumps of bureau drawers being opened and closed. The shower was not running in the bathroom. There was no hum