On the Loose (26 page)

She recoiled without showing it. "Why would
you want to?"

"I don't feel safe."

"No, Bobby, you can't. The house is for sale.
Didn't you see the sign? I'm moving away."

His face went blank with what passed for acceptance. He nodded as if he understood and turned
to leave.

"Bobby, why did you kill those women?"

"I don't know," he said. "Nobody ever told me."

From a window she watched him pedal in and
out lamplight down the drive and vanish around
the stone gateway. Then she went to the telephone,
rang up Ben Sawhill, and in a composed voice related everything.

"You're not to worry," he said. "The chief and I
have been talking."

"What good's that going to do?"

"We're working something out," he said. "Trust
me."

"Belle doesn't. Why should I?"

From a bench on the green Bobby Sawhill engaged
in a lonely study of the starlit sky. It was a bright
cloud-streaked night in which the moon was a
moth snared in a web, a situation Bobby likened to
his own. He saw the stars in a more benign light.
They were signals, messages, if only he could read
them. He wanted Dibs to have been wrong about
oblivion. He wanted to believe his mother remembered him.

The swish of footsteps on the grass behind him
should have frightened him, but he was too tired
and too wrapped in himself. Besides, the voice was
his uncle's.

"What are you doing, Bobby?"

"I like to look up."

"Can you name the planets? Can you point out
the Big Dipper?"

He shook his head. "I just know what I see."

His uncle, wearing a thick jacket, sat beside
him. "I heard about the woman trying to run you
down. The chief says you hear noises outside the
house. God knows, who's out there. You're right
not to feel safe." Ben Sawhill removed something
heavy from his jacket pocket. "This is for you,
Bobby, in case anyone tries to hurt you. It was your
father's."

Bobby looked at it and did not want to take it. It
was a snub-nose .32-caliber revolver. "I'll get arrested," he said.

"No, you won't. The chief knows I'm giving it to
you. He thinks you should have it too. There's only
one round in it. Someone tries to hurt you, you fire
it in air. That'll scare whoever it is away." Ben
waited. "Don't you want it?"

"I don't know "

"It's up to you, but I think you need it for protection. You're a man now, Bobby. You have to
take care of yourself."

His thoughts returned to the sky. One night at
Sherwood he, Dibs, and Duck had watched a lunar eclipse, the earth's shadow pilfering the moon.
That was how Dibs had explained it.

Ben laid the revolver between them on the
bench and rose wearily. "You take it if you want,
Bobby. There's only so much I can do for you."

He closed his eyes when he heard his uncle
leave. The night air, which hadn't bothered him
before, began to creep into his clothes. The moon, escaping the web of clouds, shined bright. Bobby
mounted his bike.

Chief Morgan, standing in the dark under the
green's single red maple, watched him pedal away.
Ben Sawhill surreptitiously joined Morgan, and
the two of them headed toward the bench. Neither
spoke. Morgan flashed a light on the bench.

Ben said, "He took it."

Chief Morgan and Ben Sawhill had entered into a
conspiracy and hoped to draw Reverend Stottle
into it. Neither was especially religious, but as if to
lessen their load they wanted his blessing, which
was the reason they were seated in his study, the
door closed. The reverend sensed intrigue and was
excited.

"What is it, gentlemen?"

"We have to do something about Bobby," Morgan said, sitting back, one leg athwart the other.
His eyes signaled Ben to take over.

Ben spoke from a deep-rooted sigh. "My own
nephew, and I'll never know who he is. I don't
think he knows either."

"Do any of us?" Reverend Stottle offered. "I
look at your nephew and see a lost child who had
done evil."

"At Sherwood he could pretend he was still a
child. Here, that's impossible. The chief and I are
racked with terrible concerns."

Morgan seemed to come out of a trance. "We're
sure he'll kill again."

"Oh, dear." The reverend appeared sad but not
shaken. "Much of human life is a destructive
force."

"We don't know who, when, or where," Morgan
said commandingly, "but we have to stop him.
Force his hand."

"How do you do that?"

"Provoke him. Ben will explain." Morgan forced
himself to his feet. "May I use your bathroom?"

The reverend gave directions, and Morgan
slipped away quickly, like a fugitive. The overhead
light in the little bathroom infused his face with an
unhealthy quality. His gaze into the oval mirror
above the sink was cold and rejecting, as if he were
confronting another self. Water gushed sideways
from the tap. Bending over, he filled his hands and
soaked his face.

He took his time returning. Reverend Stottle's
expression was strangely serene. Ben, who appeared gutted of all emotion, said, "Austin understands ... and agrees. It's not a question of right
or wrong. It's a matter of the common good, the
protection of the innocence."

The reverend nodded. "It's not God's work, it's
man's."

"The question," Morgan said, "is whether we
have the will to do it. And then if we can live with
ourselves."

"I don't think we have a choice," Ben said.

"And you'd like me to be there."

"That's up to you, Austin."

"Yes, I think I should be. It's a mission of
mercy."

Morgan spoke sharply. "Let's not kid ourselves,
it's murder. But maybe murder for the right reason."

The day had been unseasonably warm, and the
night was extremely unsettled, at times tropical.
Windows were opened, curtains blowing in. Reverend Stottle and his wife were watching television
in the sitting room, though the reverend's mind
clearly wasn't on it. He thought he heard birds
singing and cocked an ear.

"Weird night," he said.

"No weirder than you," Sarah Stottle said caustically. "You've been at sixes and sevens since dinner. What's the matter with you?"

"The soul is restless." On his feet, he went to the
window and bathed his face in dark breezes. "You
know, Sarah, I think I may take a stroll around the
green."

She viewed him incredulously. "At this hour?"

"I want to look at the heavens, talk to God."

"Cut the shit, Austin. You haven't given him a
serious thought in years."

"You're wrong, Sarah. Actually it's the other
way around."

At that moment, at his home in the Heights, Ben
Sawhill was slipping on a dark athletic jacket. A
few hours earlier he had thrown up his dinner, but
he was feeling better now and had some of his
color back. The twins were in their rooms, and Belle was reading the current issue of Vanity Fair.
He looked in on her.

"I'm meeting with the chief," he said.

She looked at her watch. "An odd hour."

"I don't know how long I'll be. Don't wait up."

She turned a page of the magazine. "Anything
you want to tell me?"

"I don't think you want to know," he said.

Chief Morgan at that moment was arming himself with a 9mm-semiautomatic pistol he had
never fired. The pistol, a replacement for an old
service revolver, was a gift from Meg O'Brien several birthdays ago. She thought he should have a
proper weapon in the event of emergency. The revolver had never been comfortable on his hip, and
neither was the pistol compatible with his underarm. Gloria Eisner, whom he thought was engrossed in a rented movie, came up behind him.

"What have you got there?" Her voice acquired
an edge. "I thought you didn't carry a gun."

"Police business."

"Something's wrong," she said, facing him.
"What is it?"

He slipped on a windbreaker. "I'm playing God."

"That's a big part. Care to explain?"

"I've never been able to protect my women.
About time I did."

Something altered in her eyes, which affected
her breathing. "This isn't for me, is it, James? If it
is, I don't want it."

"Not only for you," he said.

In the sultry dark Morgan felt like a soldier entering battle, his legs unsteady. In Vietnam he'd
looked upon them as temporary, likely to be blown
off. Here on the green he cut an uneven path,
thwarting imaginary trip mines, and rendezvoused
under the red maple, where Ben Sawhill immediately whispered in his ear. "He's here. Same
bench."

Reverend Stottle murmured, "He's the wolf,
we're the lambs."

Straining his eyes, Morgan made out the shape
of Bobby Sawhill's head and the set of his shoulder, nothing else.

"If you're having second thoughts," Ben said,
we can walk away. We can do that right now."

A slash of lightning gave the night a lurid moment of daylight, in which the world looked like
bone. The thunder that followed was big and bad.
Morgan imagined cats hiding in their fur, dogs
cringing, babies bawling. In Vietnam he'd participated in kill counts, women and children included
in the totals.

Reverend Stottle said, "What if he fires at us?"

"The gun will make a noise, that's all," Ben said.
"The shell's empty."

In Vietnam Morgan had been a grunt. Ben
Sawhill, whose service had come later, had been a
captain on the adjutant general's staff.

Ben said, "Can you do it, Chief?"

"We'll see."

They moved forward in unison, Reverend Stot- tie's bearing more military than theirs. He even
seemed taller, a Christian soldier. A voice rang out.

"Who's there?"

Ben responded. "It's me, Bobby. Chief Morgan's
with me. And Reverend Stottle."

"What do you want?"

Streetlight stretched in far enough so that Morgan could see half of Bobby's face, panic in it, a
fear without a name. Reverend Stottle had raised a
hand, as if to bless. Ben said, "Chief Morgan's going to take you in. Lock you up."

They all saw Bobby reach into his jacket pocket.
They all glimpsed the revolver. Morgan had his
pistol out.

"It's now or never," Ben said.

Another flash of lightning, and the world was
lurid again. Years shaved from it, eyes youthful,
Morgan's angular face was a naked nerve, a Vietnam face, Bensington-born, the military one thing,
his sensibilities another. The weapon was a
weight.

"Do it, Chief."

Shifting from one altered state to another, he
shook his head and proffered the pistol. "I can't.
Can you?"

Bobby fired the revolver high into a roll of thunder. In the same instant a uniformed figure sprang
up to the left of him, the figure immediately recognizable to Morgan.

"No, Floyd!"

A schooled officer of the law, legs spread and
feet set, young Floyd Wetherfield gripped his ser vice revolver with both hands and fired twice. He
was saving the chief's life, justifying the chiefs
faith in him.

Both shots missed.

"Bobby, run," Ben hollered.

Two days later, the morning brisk and windy, Ben
Sawhill and Chief Morgan sat on a bench on the
green, the same bench Bobby had occupied. They
sat with their shoulders hunched and their coat
collars hiked. Each held a paper cup of take-out
coffee from the Blue Bonnet. Ben, who sounded
bone-weary, said, "I don't know where the hell he
is. He hasn't slept in his bed. I don't know if he's
been back to the house at all."

Morgan peered into his coffee. "We've had an
eye out. No sign of him."

Winds had ripped off the last leaves of the red
maple. Small branches soughed, larger ones
creaked. Ben said, "What have we done, Chief?"

"I don't know. Probably made it worse."

"We were operating in a moral vacuum. No matter what we did, it wouldn't have been right. Doing nothing wouldn't have been right either."

"You look like hell," Morgan said. "You oughta
go home, go to bed."

Ben finished off his coffee and crumpled the
cup. When he stood up, the wind yanked at his tie
and flipped it over his shoulder. "What could we
have been thinking of, Chief?"

"Ourselves."

"You going to be all right?"

"No," Morgan said. "But thanks for asking."

He was sound asleep on the leather sofa in his
study when his wife woke him and told him he had
a call from Sherwood, from Mr. Grissom. "It's
about Bobby," Belle said. "He's there."

"Of course!" Ben said, slapping a hand over his
eyes. He went to his desk and took the call.
"Thanks for calling, Mr. Grissom. How'd he get
there?"

"I have no idea." The voice was professional and
aloof. "How do you want to handle this, Mr.
Sawhill?"

"I'll come get him."

"I want no trouble."

"I'll bring the local police chief with me, that all
right?"

"That's fine. I'll expect you in a couple of hours,
no later."