No Way Home (22 page)

He crossed a narrow road, no cars in sight, and plunged into woods of maple and oak, where there were no paths and the sun didn’t always reach through the trees and where the bramble could throw thorns at you and other bushes could sprinkle you with little pickers that traveled up your pant leg like bedbugs. But he moved with immunity, for he had been through here too many times to count, ever since he was old enough to wander on his own. Had he not been on a mission he might have had fun with himself behind a tree and then put himself away still drippy. Instead he pushed on, sure of foot and deep in purpose.

He passed through a meadow and avoided looking at the woodlot into which he and Papa had snuck and Papa had gone down on one knee to put the pieces of the rifle together, and then had thrust it at him whole and said, “Go ahead, you think you can do it.” It was too heavy and smelled of oil and was not like anything he had ever aimed before. He wished now he had never seen it, never smelled it.

He made his way to a street and walked under shade trees, houses on each side. A Yard Sale sign was nailed lopsided to a power pole, and a few cars were stopping. He scurried along. When he neared two girls playing hopscotch he started to smile and decided against it when they stuck their tongues out.

Soon he passed the big white church, where people were filing out in their best bib and tucker, some in a hurry. With anxiety mounting, he raced across the green, scattering birds, and trotted across the street to the town hall. His feet slowed considerably when he made his way around the side to the police station. His heart began banging when he stepped inside. A woman with big teeth looked up from what she was doing and said, “I know you. You’re Junior Rayball.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and his voice startled him. It was stronger than he had thought it would be.

“What can I do for you?” she said.

“I want to see the chief.”

“I see. Can you tell me what it’s about?”

“My mother,” he said.

• • •

They slept late. Lydia Lapham would have slept even longer had Morgan not risen first and taken a long shower. The sound of the water came through the wall. He returned tracking wet, a towel slung around his neck. He used a hand as a fig leaf. “You don’t have to hide it,” she said from her pillow.

He looked into eyes that still craved sleep. The left side of her face was blotchy from the way she had lain on it. Her dreams, he suspected, had been bad. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, “I used your father’s razor.”

“I don’t mind, and he wouldn’t either.” When he retrieved his underwear from the floor, she advised him where he could find fresh. He looked at her questioningly. “Good God, James, he’s not ever going to wear them again.”

He looked deeper into her. “Am I already getting on your nerves?”

“It’s not you, it’s me. I don’t know exactly who I am anymore. I used to be Matt’s lay. Now I guess I’m yours. Am I?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“Am I as good as your ladies from the Heights? Or are you just being kind to me, James?”

“This isn’t you talking. What’s wrong, Lydia?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Nothing’s real. Not even you.”

Dressed, also wearing her father’s white socks, he went down to the kitchen and made coffee. It seemed his job now. He wondered about breakfast, which he never ate anywhere except in the Blue Bonnet. He suspected she ate none. The telephone rang while he was watching the coffee perk down. She was ensconced in the bathroom, where undoubtedly she couldn’t hear it. He planned to let it ring, but it got on his nerves.

“Hello,” he said and heard Meg O’Brien’s voice. She told him she had been trying everywhere to reach him. He said, “How did you know I was here?”

“I took a chance, I don’t know why, call it intuition.”

“Is that the truth?”

“No,” she confessed. “Ethel Fossey saw your car parked there. She phoned the station about something else and happened to mention it.” The voice dipped, assuming authority with solemnity. “Should you be there, Jim? Should you really be there?” When he did not answer, she said, “What about Matt?”

“You’re leaping to conclusions.”

“Won’t he?”

“Why are you calling, Meg?”

“You had a visitor, but he wouldn’t wait. He did for a while, but got jittery.”

“Who? Do you have a name?”

“Sure I have a name. I didn’t have to ask, I knew who it was.”

She was milking it all the way, for all it was worth, and he said, “OK, who was it?”

“Junior Rayball.”

His heart jumped, and his stomach took a chill. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know.”

He mounted the stairs, slowly at first and then rapidly, stumbling on the top one. He rapped on the bathroom door. “I have to go.”

“There’s a John downstairs,” she said through the door.

“I have to leave.”

The door opened. “I heard you the first time.”

• • •

They ran into each other in Tuck’s General Store, where they were picking up the Sunday papers. Arlene Bowman had the
Times
in her arms, Christine Poole the
Globe.
The store was crowded. People who had just gotten out of church were buzzing among themselves as if something unholy had gone on. Arlene nudged Christine with her shoulder and said, “Let’s get out of here. I want to talk to you.”

Outside, in the full strength of the sun, Christine said, “I’ve lost two pounds.”

“That’s great,” Arlene said. “But you might have more to worry about than your weight. Have you had a visitor lately?”

“A visitor? I don’t quite follow.”

Balancing the bulky
Times
in one arm, Arlene gave an impatient swipe to her hair. “A visitor. To your house. Like a man.”

“No.”

“Has your husband?”

“Not that I know of. I don’t know, why?”

“Then maybe you have nothing to worry about. Depends on Gerald, what he does.”

Christine, who attended Christ Episcopal in Andover but had not gone that morning, had on a yellow dress. The sun tickled her bare shoulders and was melting her makeup. “Can you tell me what you’re talking about?”

“I’m talking about a man who came to the house, someone Gerald apparently knows, from the town. He mentioned you, not by name, but it was obvious. You and the damn old chief.”

She faltered. “Me and the chief?”

“You and the chief. And me too. What I’m saying is he spilled the beans to Gerald.”

The
Globe
, an unwieldy bundle bigger than the
Times
, nearly slipped from her grasp. Her throat was parched. “They played golf yesterday. Calvin. Your husband.”

“Did they? No repercussions?”

“Nothing.” Her eyes flew here, there. On the green a man aimed a camera at children who did not want their picture taken. “No, he said nothing.”

“Nothing? Then maybe you have nothing to worry about. The chief, however, that’s another matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gerald. I’ve never heard him speak in any tone but neutral. What I’m saying is he never gets mad, he gets even.”

Christine hurried away, still struggling with the paper. Parts slipped away, then most of it. She stopped to gather up the loss. A man rushed to help her. “My name’s Fossey,” he said, smiling. “I handle veterans’ affairs.”

She left him with the ad inserts and the comics and rushed to her car. She was struggling with the door when Arlene called to her over the roof of a Mazda sports coupe. “I can handle my husband, Christine. If it comes to it, can you handle yours?”

• • •

As soon as Chief Morgan came to a bumpy stop near the house, Papa Rayball appeared bare-chested in the screen door. Before Morgan could switch the motor off, Papa shouted, “What d’you want? I got nothin’ to say.” Morgan silenced the motor, opened his door, and stuck a leg out. Papa hollered, “You can’t come in. I ain’t dressed. I ain’t even pissed yet.”

“Where’s Junior?”

“I ain’t seen him. He goes off.” Papa scratched his chicken chest. “You wanna talk to anybody here, you talk to Clement. He’s handlin’ our business now.”

“All right,” Morgan said. “Tell him to come out.”

“He ain’t here. He lives better than us. You wanna talk to him, go check the motels. He’s wearin’ his fancy watch, maybe he’ll give you a minute, though I ain’t promisin’.”

The screen went blank, as on television, and Morgan backed the car down the rutted drive to the road, onto which he spun quickly, with a squeal. He drove to stretches where he thought Junior might be walking and eventually to a lonesome one where pine rose up on one side and hardwood on the other. No luck. He cruised into the cemetery, past Eunice Rayball’s grave, past his wife’s, past the Laphams’, and saw no one except Fred Fossey with flowers and flags.

Back on the road, a warning light flashed from the dash. He pulled over, climbed out, and raised the hot hood. The motor was a furnace, hissing hard and pinging loud. Teenagers in an open car worth three of his sped by with catcalls. The smart-ass driver blasted the horn. He returned to the wheel, radioed the station, and said, “I need help.”

Meg O’Brien said, “Are you sure you called the right place?”

Lieutenant Bakinowski, sitting in his car in front of Matt MacGregor’s house, stared out over a can of Diet Coke. He had been parked there for nearly a half hour. From the porch, his feet on the rail, MacGregor stared back over a can of beer with a malevolence that looted his boyish face of its better qualities. “I can sit here longer than you can,” he said.

Bakinowski said nothing, nor did anything spring from his eyes, which he kept caged. He sipped his Coke as a boy flitted by on a bicycle. Next door a neighbor came out on her porch and stared with curiosity.

“You don’t bother me,” MacGregor said, flourishing the beer can. “I don’t even know you’re there. But I know what you are. You’re just a fucking Polack, no brains. If you ever had any, they fell out your ass a long time ago.”

Bakinowski’s eyes started out of his head and then drew back. The neighbor woman retreated into her house as if some things were better left alone.

“You know what I heard about you, Polack? Not nice, believe me.” MacGregor let out a harsh laugh. “I heard you blow dead dogs.”

Bakinowski placed the Coke can on the dash. Reaching between his jacket and sweat-soaked shirt, he removed his snub-nose and, turning slightly, aimed it.

“Go ahead, Polack. We’ll both go to hell.”

He replaced the revolver in his hidden holster, smiled his sweetest, and said, “Guess who’s sleeping with your girl?”

In the cemetery the sunlight stung, and the heat hung heavy. May Hutchins, with fire in her hair, came up on Fred Fossey and said, “We meet again.”

“I saw you in church,” he said.

“I mean we meet again
here.
”

“This time I brought flowers.” He had laid them all on Flo Lapham’s marker. “I brought flags for some of the guys. I already put ‘em in place. Earl’s got a new one.”

May sucked her cheeks in. “Can you believe what that damn Reverend Stottle said?”

“I think he hit it on the head. I think Earl did choose to go. I know I would of.”

“I mean about saying only one — ”

“Let’s not talk about it, May, not in front of them.”

May fanned a hand near her face. “You got a hankie, Fred? Mine’s sopping.”

He reached into his pocket and dragged out a big one. “I don’t know if I used it. I don’t think I did.”

“It’s all right.” She made it into a neat square and dabbed her throat and just inside the top of her dress. “I saw Chief Morgan on the road. His car’s broken down.”

“Didn’t you stop?”

“He didn’t want me to. He waved me on.” Burning through her dress, the sun lit her plump knees. She sighed sharply. “I heard he’s looking close after poor Lydia. Maybe too close.”

Fred’s eyes leaped. “Who told you that? Ethel? When she’s right she’s only half right, and when she’s wrong she’s all wrong. If the chief’s doing anything, he’s protecting the poor girl.”

“Everything’s so fishy, Fred, you don’t know what to believe.”

He stiffened. “We shouldn’t be talking this way, not here.”

They moved away, over the hot grass, toward graves where the occupants were too long dead to care, no interest in anything. May said, “Here’s your handkerchief.”

“You keep it.”

She winked at him. “We keep meeting like this, I ought to bring sandwiches.”

He winked back. “And some lemonade. The real stuff. Not from the mix.”

“What would Flo say?”

“She won’t tell on us.”

Felix from Felix’s Texaco picked up the chief’s car, and Meg O’Brien picked up the chief. Meg drove an old Plymouth with a radio in it just like a real police car, a fishpole aerial quivering in the air. Morgan was surprised to see her. “Where’s Eugene?” he asked.

“He never came back from church. He’s still got a bug.”

“Who’s minding the store?”

“Bertha came in to rest her feet. But she doesn’t think she’ll be in this evening. Do you want me to take her shift?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“I don’t want to,” she said, “but I will. You don’t have to thank me. I can always use the extra money.”

“What extra money?”

“I was joking.”

Morgan sat straight, on the alert, for Meg tended to drive in the middle of the road. The good thing was that she was driving slowly. She wanted to talk. “People,” she said, “not just Ethel Fossey, noticed your car parked all night at Lydia Lapham’s, last night and the night before.”

A crow feeding on the road flew away. The heat in the car was enervating. Morgan, trying to concoct a response, came up dry.

Meg said, “She’s always been Matt’s girl, I don’t have to tell you that.”

“I know,” he said. “But she’s not seeing him anymore.”

“James.” Her voice was a reprimand, the tone censorious. “You took advantage.”

It was a thought that had nagged him. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. I hope not.”

“She’s not one of those Oakcrest Heights women. She’s one of us, James. Don’t hurt her.”

He stuck his elbow out the window and let the heat hit his face. Harder on him was the pressure of Meg’s eyes. “Watch the road,” he said as a car came up from the opposite direction. They missed it. “You know how you’re always telling me to settle down?” he said. “I think I could with Lydia.”