Lie in Wait (6 page)

“How do you know she liked him?”

“She could barely even look at him let alone say hi. He moved away though. Like to Florida or something. Last year.”

“Anyone else?”

“She and this one kid.” Rachel took off her glasses and rubbed a lens in her shirt, then set the glasses back on her nose. “We used to go to the movies and stuff. Our parents would drive us. She didn't make out with him or anything. She's not like that. I mean she's kind of serious. She likes to get good grades and likes to work hard. I hardly even saw her myself that much the last few months.”

“Why's that?”

“She got a ­couple Bs on tests in September. She said she had to knuckle down. She doesn't want to end up like her mom, you know? She wants to go to college. Be a veterinarian. We're going to apply to the same schools together. Dorm together. And when we—­” She stopped speaking as if she'd been slapped hard across the face.

She stared at Test then shut her eyes.

She sat stock-­still. Then, slowly, she began to moan. It was a moan that came from some well deep within her, sad and tortured. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms over the back of her head as if to protect herself from a blow as the moan morphed into a howl too terrific and too ancient to come from such youth.

“Do you want me to get your parents?” Test said.

Olivia waved a hand. “No, no,” she said, her voice hitching. “Please. No.”

Finally, her sobbing diminished to gasps and she wiped at her tears and her runny nose with the back of her blouse sleeve. She tried to smile but it would not come.

“I haven't been much help,” she said, hiccupping.

“Yes you have. You've been wonderful.”

She closed her eyes again, and squeezed her small hands into tight fists. “She was my best friend.”

Test put a hand on the girl's knee.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Olivia sobbed.

A
LL AFTERN
OON IT
was the same conversation with the students, at times with parents present, though most students preferred their parents not be in the room.

“Did Jessica have a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Had she made any guys mad or jealous?”

“No.”

“Did she have a crush on anyone?”

“No.”

Tears were shed.

A boy named Eugene Franks had begun to weep before he'd even sat down. At first, Test had thought she might have a lead, as the young boy, through his hitching breath confessed, “I loved her.”

Test had pressed. “Did you ever tell her this?”

“Yes.”

“And what was her response?”

“She loved me too.”

“Did she?”

“Sure.”

“She told you this?”

“Yeah.”

“Did other friends—­did they know?”

“Why wouldn't they?”

“No one's mentioned you.”

“Oh,” Eugene said.

When she asked the next student, a girl, about Eugene, the girl said, “Eugene. He's harmless. He's gay. They were like, pals. Sister and brother.”

Test asked each of the boys if he had feelings for Jessica. Two had. Secret little crushes. Not one of the students knew of a boyfriend. Why would Jessica keep a boyfriend a secret? Or maybe that wasn't it. Maybe Jessica had lied to Bethany that night Bethany had seen a boy leave the house. Or made it seem the boy was a boyfriend when he wasn't. But if he wasn't a boyfriend, who else could he be?

 

Chapter 12

T
HE
B
EEHIVE
D
INER
buzzed.

Below a hornet nest suspended in tree branches, Victor, who'd just come from the morning mass that consisted, unfortunately, of just five of its total forty-­six souls, sat at a counter stool, loosing bits of bacon gristle from between his teeth with a toothpick. His gums bled as he swigged at his cup of black coffee and swished. Swallowed.

Larry Branch sat next to him. Victor had known Branch all his life: a small-­engine repairman, Branch had owned the Two-­Stroke Shop in town for thirty years. Now semi-­retired, he fixed Black and Decker engines for Sears in St. Johnsbury. He claimed to love it; said he could still get his fingers dirty, listen to the farm report on AM 640, and call it quits by 4
P.M
. without having once to deal with a single customer. An old independent Yankee finding peace at Sears.

God works in mysterious ways, Victor thought as he opened the
Lamoille Register
to the sports page.

The waitress ambled over and rested a bowl of oatmeal and a small pewter pitcher of maple syrup in front of Victor. “Boy must make you proud,” she said, nodding at a photo of Victor's son on the front of the sports page, the boy's arms thrown up, face jubilant yet nearly savage in victory.

Pride bloomed in Victor, and crossed himself, secretly admonishing himself and reminding himself to keep his pride in check.

“He needs to work on his mechanics if he wants Division One teams looking at him,” Victor said. “He throws off his back foot too much, and across his body when he should just throw the ball away. Andrew Luck, he's not.” Victor always compared Brad to more talented QBs in conversation. Partly to practice humility. Partly not to jinx his son, who
was
blessed with talent. Victor was thankful each day of his life for this blessing. The kid was everything Victor had almost been. Should have been. Victor did not deserve such a son.

Victor removed the toothpick from his mouth. “He's got interest from a ­couple Ivy schools. Scholarships from plenty of Division Three programs. I'd like to see a bigger program redshirt and develop him. But from this state it's a tough slog just to get any Division Three to look at you. Let alone Division One. He wins a fourth state championship this year, he may get a glance. He set every state record there is to set, a year ago.” There he was again, unable to help himself from the seamy vortex of vanity. Much as he tried, he couldn't be humble for long. Could not resist the temptation. There were worse transgressions than vanity, he knew. “He could use some help from the Lord.”

He held up his mug. “Hit me again, Gwynne.”

Gwynne topped him and stood with a hand on her cocked hip. She glanced at the front page of Victor's newspaper. “Awful 'bout that poor girl.”

Victor looked at the headline: L
OCA
L
G
IRL
S
LAIN IN
A
TTORNEY'
S
H
OME.
He had avoided the story, and just seeing the headline now caused a trickle of sweat to leak from under his arms down along his sides. Last night had been a long and arduous one, and had not gone as planned in some respects. “Merryfield should know you can't do certain things in this world and expect not to have trouble,” he said. Even as he said it, he felt the spike of hypocrisy stab him in the ribs.

“That's a terrible thing to say, especially from a deacon,” Gwynne said. “I'm sure he didn't expect a child to be killed.”

“Of course not.” Victor was sweating profusely now. “But you can't just have men marrying men and—­”

“Why's that?” Branch spun to face Victor. His faded canvas ball cap bore the logo of his son-­in-­law's company: Cut-­the-­Crap Plumbing. “All these folks yak 'bout marriage like it's the greatest damned thing since the microwave when half of us have been divorced. Been married twice myself. Divorced twice. Let the homos have their insurance and let half of 'em get divorced just like the rest of us.”

“You can't make it legitimate,” Victor said. “Where's it end? Brother marrying sister?”

“Half a what you probably do with your wife ain't
legitimate
according to the blue laws still on the books. Who knows what all any of us get up to?” Branch winked at Gwynne.

“I don't do anything of the kind with my wife,” Victor said.

“Missing out,” Branch said.

­People thought it was easy, living up to the Lord's standards. But the Lord sometimes asked that hard tasks be done by his flock. Just ask Abraham. “They certainly don't need to be teaching it in our schools,” he said.

“Jesus,” Branch said. “If a kid's bent that way, he's bent that way. You can't
teach
a kid to be homo. You can teach respect though. School ain't gonna turn 'em the other way any more than you would have turned me off girls.” Branch took off his cap and scratched at his bald crown. “What the hell you so afraid of anyway? What do you care what two men do with their dicks? Long as they aren't molesting kids.”

Victor bristled as Branch handed Gwynne a ten-­dollar bill. He didn't care at all for this kind of talk.

“Keep the change, darlin',” Branch said and headed toward the door.

Victor watched Branch go. The man was as full of crap as an outhouse at a chili contest. He acted as if he knew something. Maybe he did. But not about God.

 

Chapter 13

T
HOUGH
D
ETECTIVE
N
ORTH
parked his cruiser a block behind the back of Greg and Scott's place, two reporters still hustled toward him as he got out of it.

North waved a hand at them. “No comment,” he grunted and picked up his pace, entered the backyard through a small wooden gate.

“Are you close to making an arrest?” a reporter shouted.

North ignored him.

The back yard grew wild with autumn flowers and ancient apple trees. The air here smelled of rotted leaves and turned loam.

Near the back steps, North paused beneath an apple tree whose few stunted apples lay on the ground, gone soft in the dead grass. Yellow jackets clung to the rotted fruit, wings quivering drunkenly.

North heard a moan like that of an old man awakening and looked to see, in the shadows beneath the tree, a yellow Labrador retriever, its muzzle grizzled, cataract eyes. The dog whined and North gave it a good scratch behind the ears.

In the flower bed, a clutch of purple asters had somehow survived October. They were Loretta's favorite fall flower and she had just tossed out a bouquet of them that had wilted in the vase on the formal dining room table they never used. She got fresh flowers every Friday, often wild ones she picked herself. Fresh Flower Friday. North's granddaughter would abbreviate it to FFF. Loretta's mother had brought fresh flowers into the home every Friday when Loretta had been a child. Loretta had picked the practice back up now that her mother was living—­dying—­in the mother-­in-­law apartment they had built above the garage, outfitted with a wheelchair lift.

As North reached to pluck a handful of asters, a yellow jacket stung him on the back of his hand.

“Bastard,” he said and sucked at the sting on his hand.

The back door of the house opened and Gregory Sergeant stood there, barefoot in frayed cords and a yellow V-­neck sweater that may have been cashmere. He was a slight, compact man with alert savvy green eyes, ginger hair cut close and a goatee.

“Practicing your kissing?” Gregory said, nodding at North sucking at his hand.

“If I don't have it down by now, I never will,” North said.

“You're the detective that phoned?” Gregory said.

Over Sergeant's head, a rainbow flag and a Vermont state flag hung from rods sticking out from the small back porch. Sergeant looked over North's shoulder at the reporters gawking from the edge of the yard.

“We've been ever so popular today,” Sergeant said as he escorted North into the house through a dining room to a kitchen straight out of Ozzie and Harriet.

The 1860s eyebrow cape had a funk of cigarette smoke about it. Liquor, beer, and champagne bottles stood about, many tipped over to sit in pools of their spilled drink. Bowls of coagulated dip sat on platters beside dried hanks of smoked meats.

“Please sit,” Gregory said. His partner, Scott Goodale, sat at a kitchen table that had a baby-­blue Formica top speckled with silver stars and trimmed with chrome, its tubular legs curved like swan necks. A refrigerator of the same baby blue and chrome sat beside a bomb-­shelter-­era gas stove. Either the two men had intentionally made a retro art installation of their home, an ironic slap in the face to McCarthy's TV-­dinner-­era of Closet Queens and homo bashing, or they actually liked this stuff. Whatever the case, North half expected to be served some pineapple upside-­down cake and a cup of Sanka.

North knew both men from news coverage and from public meetings. Scott appeared different this morning. His eyes were bloodshot and he wore a ratty Billabong T-­shirt, Emerson College sweatpants, and purple Converse All-­Stars. North had never seen him in anything but a suit and tie, groomed impeccably. He was good-­looking, with silvery eyes that shimmered like hot solder and the slight roundness of face found in men in their thirties who still maintain the suggestion of the strong jaw they once had but will soon lose forever. A smudge of a cleft that marked his chin was obscured by black stubble that grew in contrast to the blond hair atop his head, which while still in enviable abundance was a wayward thicket this morning.

The chair's vinyl cushion wheezed under North as he sat.

“Get you anything?” Gregory asked from where he remained standing.

“Ovaltine?” North quipped.

“How's that?” Scott said sliding a mug back and forth on the table between cupped hands.

“Nothing,” North said, “water's good.”

Gregory snatched an old jelly jar from the cupboard and opened the refrigerator. The bottled water, tofu, organic milk and yogurt inside the refrigerator disappointed North. He'd envisioned casseroles and Jell-­O molds and Hi-­C to go with the decor.

Gregory plucked a bottle of Evian from the refrigerator and handed both bottle and glass to North. He lay a hand on Scott's shoulder from behind, tapped his right ring finger, adorned with an Irish devotion ring, against the back of the chair.

“You like the décor,” Scott said, noting North's exploratory gaze.

“Gives me an urge to hide under a school desk, frankly,” North said.

Scott smirked and rolled his eyes. “Doesn't it? Place was like this when we moved in. God-­awful.”

North was surprised to hear this, and remiss at having started to form an idea about the two men and their decorating tastes.

“Not our taste, I'll tell you that,” Scott said.

“Just as long as we don't trade up to stainless steel and polished granite,” Gregory said and affected a shiver.

“Give me Formica and linoleum,” North said, running with it, banter a fine way to loosen up interviewees. “Just no baby blue and twinkling stars.” The décor here made his wife Loretta's kitchen—­for it could not be thought of as anyone else's kitchen, despite who paid for it—­of granite counters, terra-­cotta flooring, stainless-­steel appliances, and gas stove even less urbane, as Loretta had argued, and more bloodless and unoriginal, as North saw it. Well, she had her kitchen, and her living room, parlor, formal dining room, and breakfast nook; and her mother had the mother-­in-­law apartment; and North had . . . what? The shed in the back corner of the yard, under the pine trees next to a small trout pond fed by a cool clear brook. It was perfectly fine with North. It was all he needed. A place to have a beer, sit back and watch trout dimple the pond's surface as they rose to mayflies; his need to cast to them, to catch them and tear them from their underwater world having long ago abated. He preferred to use the serenity of his modest retreat to crack open a biography of famous and infamous men, and to dwell upon his most pressing cases.

He plucked a pencil from his shirt pocket, tapped it on the tabletop. “So,” he said.

“So,” Gregory said. He turned a kitchen chair around and sat with his arms folded on the back of it.

“I have to ask these questions,” North said.

“Of course,” Gregory said.

“Do you know of anyone who hates what you stand for enough to kill a child to send a message?”

“What do we stand for?” Scott said. He blew on his coffee.

“Challengers of the status quo,” North said, embarrassed without knowing why exactly. “Champions of civil rights.”

“Are you a champion for straightness because you're straight?” Scott said.

Gregory drummed his fingers on the edge of his backward chair. “You know what he means,” he said. “We're suing the state after all. We're not just sitting around being our gay selves.”

“Plenty of ­people despised us,” Scott said, “before we sued. More ­people hate us than ‘tolerate' us.”

“Enough to kill a girl?” North said.

“You think someone killed that girl because of us?” Scott said.

North didn't think anything, not yet. For all he knew, and he knew nothing except that a girl had been killed with a savage blow to the head, there was no link at all to the case. It paid to keep an open mind.

“Maybe they went in there for your attorney's wife,” North said. “Found the girl down there and thought that would be good enough to get the point across.”

“How'd anyone know Bethany would be home alone?” Scott said.

“I don't know,” North said. He didn't. It was a good point.

“You said ‘they.' ” Scott lit a cigarette with the snap of a gold lighter.

“If it was a kid, he was put up to it, I'd bet,” North said. He didn't believe anyone was put up to anything. But he rarely told anyone he interviewed the truth, or what he believed. He told them what he thought would get the most useful reaction out of them. He told them things to take them off guard, set them on edge, or make them think.

“Think,” North said. “Is there anyone at all you think might be capable of this?”

“Jed King,” Gregory said. Fast. Without thought.

Jed King. Ah yes. He'd been in the paper recently. He and his infamous plow blade. North had arrested him for domestic violence when North had been a trooper. King's wife had dropped charges, of course.

“I don't know. I despise King,” Gregory said. “But killing a young girl—­”

“He could do it,” Scott said. “Easily. I could see that fuck doing it in a heartbeat.”

This got North's antennae up. “Why do you say that?”

“Fucking bully. The looks he gives Gregory and me,” Scott said. He blew a thread of smoke toward the ceiling. “I've seen that anger, that
fear
in the faces of every asshole whoever teased me or kicked the shit out of me in a locker room or outside a bar. Until I got big enough to give it the fuck back. The man has serious issues.”

“His last wife left him for domestic abuse,” North said to test the reaction of the ­couple.

“Surprise, surprise,” Gregory said.

“Was she raped? The girl, I mean,” Scott said.

The abruptness of the question caught North off guard. “I'm not at liberty to say.”

“It's one sick fuck who does something like that,” Scott said. “And they think fags are sick.”

North flinched at hearing the word
fag
dropped so casually.

“No one thinks pedophiles represent straights any more than they think Leopold and Loeb were typical gays,” Gregory said.

“Don't bank on it,” Scott said. “And no straights except those into esoteric fucking
art
films even know who the fuck Leopold and Loeb were. Thank fucking God.” He took another drag of his cigarette.

North didn't know what the two men were talking about, but he knew he wanted to gag from the cigarette smoke. It had been ages since he'd been forced to breathe in secondhand smoke and his eyes were tearing up, the back of his throat burning.

“King is a first-­rate bigoted asshole, but he's no dummy,” Scott said. “He's too self-­serving to put his own neck on the chopping block. I could see him convincing some poor redneck kid. Get him drunk. Get him worked up into a lather of bigotry.”

“Who?” North said. One quick blow. Expert. Not luck. Full of rage. Yet. Dispassionate. Perfunctory. Or was it luck?
Damn it
, North thought,
I haven't a clue
.

“Victor Jenkins,” Gregory said. “Worst kind of bigot: Proud. God on his side. King's the arrogant lout who shouts the
Truth.
Jenkins is scary because he comes from it with some cockamamie religious-­based theories—­quiet, sneaky, with backward logic and the Old Testament behind him. Some born-­again Chris­tian: doesn't know to keep the Old Testament out of it.”

“Both dipshits were born in the forties or fifties,” Scott added. “But it's harder for the Jed Kings of today to rally the troops than it was back then. If he had put those stupid signs out twenty years ago, he'd have ­people in town openly clapping him on the back. New laws send the Jed Kings into the dark corners. Unless they make it about religion.”

Gregory grinned. “Scott's been rehearsing his stump speech. He says we gays should give the general populous of homophobes the age-­old argument they can relate to: We like cock. You like pussy. More pussy for you.”

“Except they think we're after their cocks too and you'll never convince the fucks otherwise,” Scott said.

“There's the rub,” Gregory said. “Pun intended.”

“And you two, you were where last night?” North said. He'd waited for a moment when the two men were at ease and unsuspecting to drop the question on them.

Scott laughed and flicked cigarette ash into an empty champagne flute. “You're fucking kidding right?”

“No.”

“Here,” Gregory said. “We were both here. I assure you. We were having—­” he swept his hands around at the place, “—­a bit of a do.”

“Others can confirm that?” North said.

“Wouldn't be much of a do with just two, would it, Detective?” Gregory said.

“What time did this do start?” North asked.

Gregory glanced at Scott. “Eight-­ish?”

“What were you doing prior to that?” North inquired.

The men were agitated now, body language prickly.

“Getting ready for the do, of course,” Gregory said.

“I worked out and went for a run,” Scott said.

“Alone?” North asked.

“Yes.”

“Time?”

“You're thorough, I'll give you that. Six thirty to seven or so.”

“Right,” North said.

“What does ‘right' mean?” Scott said.

“Nothing. So King's at the top of the list?” North said, shifting gears.

Scott nodded. “Or maybe it's some sicko radical from out of state. You can't rule out someone like that.”

“I haven't ruled anything out,” North said.

Not even you two
, he thought.