Pleasantville (15 page)

The girl,
Lori, is standing in the kitchen when Jay stumbles in, confused by the sight of a child not his own. In a loose T-shirt and plaid boxer shorts, she is studying the contents of his refrigerator. She turns at the sound of his bare feet slapping on the stone tiles and drops the open bottle of apple juice in her hand. It bounces, but doesn't break, spilling juice in tiny waves across the floor. She is staring at the gun in his hand. “I was just getting something to drink,” she says, eyes darting between Jay, Ellie's mild-mannered dad, and the .38, unable to put the two together. Lori is half Filipina and half white; her parents were high school sweethearts. She has black hair, stick straight, save for an unexpected and girlish curl at the edges. She backs into the refrigerator's open door, bumping against a ketchup bottle and a jar of Del-Dixie pickles. Jay sets the pistol on a nearby countertop, raising his hands a little to show he's harmless. “I thought I heard something outside,” he says, trying to explain. “It's nothing. You should go back to
bed.” He walks to the laundry room, pulling out a string mop and a bucket. Lori leaps on her toes across the spilled juice, skittering out of the kitchen as fast as she can . . . until Jay calls her back. “Lori,” he whispers.

When she turns, he's holding a fresh bottle of Mott's apple juice for her. Bernie, he remembers, used to get up in the night, both times she was pregnant with the kids. “You get hungry,” he says, “take anything you want.”

She grabs the juice and then hustles back to Ellie's room.

At the sink, Jay fills the plastic bucket with warm water.

He actually works up a sweat, mopping every inch of the kitchen, even past the place where the juice spilled, because it's Saturday, and he's sure no one's touched it in at least a week. Later, the bucket put away and the mop drying in the laundry room, he walks down the hall to his bedroom, trying to think what to do next, what calling the police would do at this hour besides frighten his children. To say nothing of the fact that this recent incident, like the one at his office on Tuesday, feels outside the bounds of what HPD is actually good at–solving crimes with the bluntest, basest of motives, lust and greed, hunger and hatred, cases put together as simply as stacking a child's set of building blocks.

This was no theft, Jay thinks.

Not in any conventional sense, at least.

Someone sent that kid here, he's sure of it, just as he's sure that the kid didn't stumble into his office by accident or opportunity. He was looking for something, something to do with Jay's old cases. Jay remembers finding the business card of Jon K. Lee in his office, a day after the break-in, and the car bearing Lee's license plate idling at the curb in front of his house. He remembers Lee's connection to Cole Oil and curses that family's name. It just barely crosses the threshold of coincidence, none of it proven. But it's late and his wife is still dead and so this
is where it gets tucked in for the night, his unanchored rage. Somewhere, Thomas Cole is laughing at him. Plotting against him, as he did years ago, the first time he put a dangerous man on Jay's tail.
No
, Jay thinks. No cops. He called the police Tuesday night, and what good had it done him? He slides the loaded .38 across his wrinkled sheets, tucking it beneath his pillow. He throws himself across the bed, exhausted. It's after one in the morning by now. He stares at the ceiling, asking sleep to have mercy on him, trying to push out thoughts of yet another pregnancy under his roof, and all it stirs up for him.

Bernie thought
she was expecting, that's how it started. The fatigue, the nausea, and the familiar, peculiar sensation below her navel, like lightning, she said, a sure sign of something growing inside her. They'd been down this road before, but Bernie was strangely ambivalent this time, thinking about her work at the school district, what a baby at thirty-eight would do to her newfound career, never mind her body. She waited a week or so for her period, lining her panties with Kotex, before finally giving in to the idea, going so far as to check the boxes in the garage for new-life inventory. They'd need a new crib and car seat, but they were covered for clothes, boy or girl. She took three drugstore tests before she finally made an appointment to see her doctor, who did an ultrasound right there in her office and then referred her to a specialist. Bernie tacked the doctor's business card on the memo board in the kitchen, the word
ONCOLOGY
printed clearly in black ink, the writing literally on the wall, a message Jay had missed on his many weekend jaunts home from Arkansas and the Chemlyne trial, whole hours swallowed up spending time with his kids, driving Ellie to the mall, and taking Ben to the movies, or catching up on his other cases. He hadn't noticed anything was wrong,
hadn't noticed when the boxes of baby clothes went back into the garage, and Bernie never said a word. She went alone to Dr. Klotsky, on a day when Jay was at the courthouse in Little Rock and the kids were in school. Days later, it was Evelyn who drove her to and from the biopsy, sworn to secrecy. “Mama and Daddy will just worry,” Bernie had said, never mentioning her husband, and Evelyn, she told Jay months later, had assumed that he knew, had even cursed him for not walking off the trial and coming home.

“Why didn't you tell me?” he says now, rolling over in bed to look at his wife. She tells him plainly, “It wouldn't have made more time.” The woman next to him, it's Bernie as he first met her, at twenty-three, her hair in twin French braids. She looks tired, though, and uncomfortable, lifting her head every few seconds to find a cool spot on her pillow. Her forehead is damp, and her lips are chapped, as if she's been laboring at some task that has no end, not yet. He keeps thinking he should get up and get her a glass of water. But will she be here when he gets back? Will she wait for him? “It wouldn't have changed a thing, except throw away a case you worked years for, men and women bound to end up like me if they couldn't get to the right doctors. They needed you.”

“You needed me.”

“Oh, Jay,” she says, sighing, reaching to touch his face.

He tries to put his hand over hers, but feels only his own stubble, the feverish skin beneath it. “Bernie,” he says softly. “I'm worried about Cole.”

“You did the right thing,” she says. She closes her eyes, wincing slightly. She licks her dry, cracked lips. He worries she's in pain, a wave of it hitting her.

“Bernie?”

“I'm okay. It's
you
I don't know about.”

“I'm going to be fine. I got a plan,” he says, hot tears stinging
his eyes, sliding down the sides of his face, pooling in the hollow of his neck. “I can just lie here and wait. I can wait it out, B, long as it takes. I can wait till I get to you. It's
this
I can't do.”

“But you got to.”

He hears the clang of a bell, a shriek and a command at once, like the ones that used to ring through the hallways of his junior high school, calling an end to the day. He turns when he realizes the sound is coming from his bedside phone. It's nearly shaking with the vibration of whatever is coming through the line. He goes to answer it, but Bernie grabs his arm. This he feels through to his bones.

“The girl, Jay,” she says.

It takes him a minute to understand what she's saying. “Alicia?”

“The news, it's not good.”

When he opens his eyes, Ellie is standing in the doorway to his bedroom, holding the cordless phone from her room, shivering in a nightgown. Through his window, pale blue light pours across the thick carpet, the first breath of dawn blowing in. Jay looks at the tangled sheets on his bed, touching the cold, empty place beside him. He doesn't remember falling asleep. “Dad,” Ellie says, her voice quivering, on the verge of tears. Unable to say more, she simply holds out the phone. It's Lonnie on the line. Jay sinks back onto the bed at the sound of her voice at this hour.
The news, it's not good
. “They found her,” Lon says.

Jay is dressed
by seven o'clock, in a suit and tie. He wakes Ben and tells him and his sister to do the same. “Church clothes, please.” But not Lori, he says. Lori is going home. The doorbell rings at quarter to eight. Ellie doesn't seem to believe he actually called Lori's mother until Mrs. King is standing in their foyer, literally wringing her hands. “Let's go,” she says sternly, as Lori shuffles in her direction. Her mother grabs her oversize bag and kisses the top of her daughter's head. As the two leave, Mrs. King mumbles a thank-you to Jay. He closes and locks the front door, turning then to see Ellie standing across the room, pointedly still in her nightgown, her arms crossed in righteous anger. Behind her, Ben is in a navy sports coat and tan slacks, his big-boy uniform. He's nibbling the edge of a Pop-Tart.
“What's going on?” he says, looking between his sister and his dad. Jay doesn't answer, instead asking Ellie if she wants toast and eggs. “I can't believe you just did that,” she says.

“Get dressed.”

“You promised you wouldn't say anything.”

“No, I didn't.”

She glares at her father. “I will never trust you again.”

“You told me
because
you trust me, because you wanted me to know, because, deep down, you wanted my help. Lori can hate me all she wants.”

“You had no right to do that to her!”

“She's fifteen years old, Ellie! She needs her mother, not me.” Which was the wrong thing to say to his daughter. He wants to take it back immediately, to say it with more grace, all of it, every word that's come out of his mouth since her mother died. He takes a step toward her, but she backs away, tears pooling. If there's an emotional place past devastation, he's looking at it right now. More than hurt, she looks stunned. “Don't touch me,” she says, fleeing. He follows, calling her name as he hears her bedroom door slam. He puts a hand on the door, but can't bring himself to barge in on her. It's a line he feels he can't cross.

“Get dressed, we're leaving in ten minutes.”

“I'm not going anywhere with you.”

“Then don't do it for me, okay?” he says. “Don't do it for me.”

Twenty minutes
later, she emerges wearing a dark olive green dress.

She asks Ben, and not her dad, to help with the buttons, which tiptoe up the back of the silk bodice. It's the dress she wore to her mother's funeral, the only nice one she has. In silence, the three of them line up and go out the back door, Jay careful to set the alarm before they go. Outside, Ellie climbs
into the backseat of the Land Cruiser, leaving Ben up front with his dad. This early, it's still cool in the car, and Jay can see his breath all the way until they get to the 610 Freeway. He takes it north, heading toward the neighborhood of Pleasantville.

Lonnie is waiting outside the church.

Along with reporters from every TV station in the city, including Univision and the UHF channels, standing under umbrellas to block the rising sun, running through their lines ahead of the cameras starting to roll.

“Cool,” Ben says, seeing the media hubbub.

“Shut up, Ben.”

“What?”

Ellie kicks the back of his seat. “Someone
died
.”

“Oh,” he says, because he will never again hear those words and not know what they mean, the thorny path some family's about to start down. He looks at his dad, next to him in the driver's seat. “Is this the funeral?” he asks, sudden nerves showing. He'd had a terrible time at his mother's service.

“No,” Jay says. “Just folks looking to gather. It's Sunday, son.”

He pulls into the grass-and-gravel parking lot across the street from the Pleasantville Methodist Church, Pastor Morehead's house of worship. Along the cracked concrete at the curb, there are campaign signs, bent and softened by yesterday's rain, a cockeyed line of red-white-and-blue, waving like parade drunks at passersby.
HATHORNE FOR HOUSTON
!
A WOLCOTT WIN IS A WIN FOR YOU
!
LEWIS ACTON MEANS ACTION FOR HOUSTON
! Jay squeezes the Land Cruiser between a Ford and a white Pontiac, cutting the engine. The second he steps out of his car, buttoning his suit jacket, he hears the music, pouring through the open doors of the white clapboard church. The hymn is a knee buckler, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” daring God to say something about the organist's secular,
twelve-bar take on it. But blues is the only color for this solemn morning. Jay nods to the sisters in the parking lot. Decked out in feathered hats, decorated with plumes of purple and gold, bands of rose and coral, they walk quickly, making sure to get a seat for the ten o'clock service, their only chance to hear Pastor Morehead's sermon. Young and unmarried, he does not have children of his own, but he had coached the other two girls who'd been killed, in intramural girls' basketball and track, had held the hands of their grieving parents. Jay crosses Tilgham, meeting Lonnie at the edge of the church's lawn. She sucks down the last of a Parliament, then grinds the spent cigarette against the heel of her shoe. She's wearing a black pantsuit, too big through the shoulders. “Hey,” she says, following Jay and the kids up the church's walk, whispering, “The boyfriend, he's got no alibi, by the way.”

Jay sends Ellie and her brother ahead.

“Sit wherever you can,” he says.

“There's no accounting for him Tuesday night,” Lonnie tells him, the two of them standing in the doorway to the church. “He skipped dinner in the dorm and his roommate didn't see him until the following afternoon. And get this, the boyfriend, name of Kenny Ester, he had an eight
A
.
M
. statistics class Wednesday morning, but he never showed.”

“You talked to the school?”

“The roommate. I bought him dinner.”

“It would be something to look at those pager records again. Any sense from the roommate whether Kenny was in contact with Alicia on Tuesday?”

Lonnie shakes her head. “He'd never heard of her. Apparently, Kenny never mentioned word one about a girlfriend, let alone one that was missing the better part of a week.” She raises an eyebrow as they enter the packed church.

The air inside Pleasantville Methodist is thick and warm,
tinted amber by the rows of stained glass windows on both sides of the church, the sun pouring in from the east, spinning a mélange of colors into gold. Folks are waving hand fans, Johnson's Funeral Home advertising on one side, a grim promotion on this morning in particular. Jay and Lonnie take the two remaining seats in the back-left pew, sliding in beside Ben and Ellie, who are squished against the congregants on the other side. It smells of hair lotion in here, Love's Baby Soft, and aftershave, all of it together making Jay wish he had one of those hand fans himself. He feels his armpits grow damp. He has to reach over and touch Ben's leg to keep his son from fidgeting. After the opening prayer, Morehead, in his deep blue robe, the edges trimmed in gold braid, looks out across his congregation. “I think by now some of you have heard the news about Alicia Nowell.” There are a few gasps in the sanctuary, cries of
Oh, no
. “The young woman, her body was found early this morning along the railroad tracks behind Demaree Lane, just a block from here.” Here, his voice breaks, a wave of something unexpected washing over him, choking his words. He pauses, trying to gather himself. A few of the women in the church hold up their hands in support.
That's okay
, they say.
Take your time.
Morehead nods his gratitude for the encouragement of his church family. “I'd like to call up one of our own now, a man raised in Pleasantville, a good, god-fearing man, who telephoned me first thing this morning asking if he could say a few words to his people. For you
are
his people,” he says, nodding at the chorus of
amen
that follows. “Let's welcome Brother Axel Hathorne to Pleasantville Methodist.” He steps aside, ceding the pulpit to Axel, who rises from the front-right pew, Jay's view of which is obscured by the hats of the women in the congregation. Axel, four inches taller than Morehead, towers over the plain white pulpit. He is a gentle giant, utter humility written in his hunkered stance. “I spoke with Maxine and Mitchell Robicheaux
earlier this morning,” he starts, his voice dry and slow. “Beyond the pain this brings to their family, I also know this stirs up old wounds for the people of Pleasantville, in particular the families of Deanne Duchon and Tina Wells.” He nods toward the girls' families in the front row. Jay can't quite see them from here, but he does see the four Hathorne sisters, Ola, Delia, Camille, and Gwen, well-kept women in their fifties, all as striking as their mother, Vivian, seated beside them. Jay is surprised Sam isn't here. Or Neal. Axel, in the same suit he wore to last night's debate, lowers his head solemnly, looking at the families. “I want to make the same promise to you that I made to Alicia Nowell's parents this morning. Whether I'm in city hall or not, whether I have to camp out in Chief Tobin's office, I will find who did this to your daughters,” he says before stepping down.

After Councilwoman Johnetta Paul has a turn at the pulpit, dabbing her eyes throughout a tone-deaf declaration of commitment to the people of her district, shamelessly working in a few key phrases from her stump speech, Jay slips out of the church for a quiet moment on his own. He wants to see it for himself, the place where Alicia Nowell was found. He walks west on Tilgham, crossing Demaree to walk through a patch of tall grass and weeds, the thick strip of untended land between the neighborhood proper and the railroad tracks. There are four stakes in the ground, strung with yellow police tape meant to secure the scene from pedestrian traffic. Standing in waist-high weeds, Jay wonders why she was left
here
and not in the field where the other two girls were discovered. He can hear the church music playing. He can see the back of Pleasantville Methodist, the staff parking lot with a row of Fords and the Sunday school van. The hymn washes over the whole scene. Jay finds it easier to talk to god out here than inside any church. Away from the heavy robes and stiff pews, it's just him and blue
sky. He strings together a few words for Alicia Nowell, a prayer whispered to the wind.

At the
close of service, Jay meets Lonnie and the kids in front of the church, where a crowd has gathered under a cloud of hickory smoke. An enterprising neighbor has set up a barrel pit in the bed of his pickup truck and is selling hot links and brisket. There's a line forming, men loosening their ties and women dabbing their foreheads with eyelet handkerchiefs. It must have jumped fifteen degrees since the day started, a warm one for November, even in Houston. Ben asks his dad for a few dollars. Jay pulls a ten from his wallet, telling Ben to get something for his sister too. “I'm not hungry,” Ellie says. Pastor Morehead, composed now, comes down the church steps to greet his parishioners. He goes out of his way to say hello to Jay, who introduces him to Lonnie and Ellie. “You a ballplayer?” he says to Ellie, asking about school, her grades, then asking Lonnie where she worships. Jay waits until he's moved on to say to Lonnie, “You should see what else you can pull on the original suspect.”

“Hollis?”

Jay nods. “He's not at Sterling anymore, and he's moved around in the last few months. I just wonder if there's some clue in your old files as to where he might be. Relatives, previous employers, something. Maybe if you get a chance tomorrow, you could comb through your notes, see if anything jumps out.”

“Maybe,” she says, sounding stiff, distant. Jay turns to her. “I've got a job interview tomorrow.” She shrugs, rolling her eyes to take the sting off it.

“At a paper?”

“At a restaurant.”

And then, because she can't bear the look on his face, the concern inching toward pity, she says, “I figure I can sling
drinks at night, still try to write some during the day. I'm not giving up or anything, I'll have you know. I'm not.”

Jay nods absently, but is distracted by a distressing sight: his dissatisfied client, Jelly Lopez, with his wife and four-year-old daughter, Maya, walking through the crowd with a man Jay doesn't recognize. He's Mexican, like Jelly, with a Pat Riley slick-back and a very nice M Penner suit. They're with a few of Pleasantville's newest residents: Bill Rodriguez, Arturo Vega, and Patricia Rios, all clients of Jay's too. He watches as they make their way through the Sunday crowd, using the moment of community solidarity to press an agenda, crossing religious lines to make their pitch. They're shaking hands with their neighbors, making introductions, “Pat Riley” smiling covetously at everyone he meets.
Ricardo Aguilar
. Jay would put money on it.

He's about to confront the man when Johnetta Paul, likewise making the rounds, stops him. “Jay Porter,” she says, dabbing at her hairline with a pink handkerchief, an act, he thinks. He has never ever seen her sweat. “I don't believe I've seen you at any of my fund-raising events this season.”

“You don't need my money, Johnetta.”

“Ha,” she says, laughing at the very thought.

“Besides, I don't live in your district, remember?”

“Neither does he,” she says, nodding across the church lawn toward Ricardo Aguilar. “But he understands the value of spreading a little goodwill around.”

“Buying his way into your heart, I'm sure.”

“Buying his way
in
,” she says, as if this were obvious. “He knows how to play the game, unlike you, Jay. Whatever happens going forward, I want you to know I've always had the utmost respect for you. But I can't afford to ignore the concerns or interests of Mr. Lopez, Mr. Rodriguez, and their faction, not with the numbers the way they're going. Pleasantville isn't
always going to look like this,” she says, gesturing to the hot links and hair grease, Bobby “Blue” Bland playing on somebody's car radio, black folks as far as the eye can see. “You'd do well to take that into consideration,” she says, before moving on through the crowd, shaking hands, maneuvering her way to the front of the barbecue line.