The Detective's Garden (29 page)

“Bullshit,” Clarke said. He laughed once.

“That’s how she disappeared?” King asked.

Their father nodded sorrowfully. He glanced first at King
and then at Clarke.

“You expect us to believe this?” Clarke asked.

“I don’t expect you to believe anything.” His hand reached
past King and grasped Clarke’s thigh hard. Triangular sails
floated in the middle distance.

“What kind of bees?” King asked.

“All kinds,” his father said. “Paper wasps and Africanized
honeybees.”

“Killer bees, you mean?” King said.

“Sure. There were mud daubers. Sweat bees. Hornets.”

“You just don’t want to say that Mom left you,” said Clarke.

“Fine,” Dominick said. “I don’t want to hear it, either.”

DOMINICK HAD AN
urge to tell his kids about his
relationship with their mother. That they had tried so hard.
That they had pushed each other too far. That finally neither
could look at the other without the urge to spit. That they had
fought but not like lovers.

Day and night, they’d argued. Once, to avoid waking the
kids, they walked by the Susquehanna River. Where the riv
erbank had eroded from beneath the great trees, a huge tangle
of roots rose out of the water. In a willow tree, wasps swarmed
around a papery hive. Neither of them was saying anything.
The way she looked at him, he’d seen it before in the faces of
men who wanted to pull a gun from their belt, or slip a knife
between his ribs, or pull a thin wire around the soft skin of his
neck. “God,” he said to her, “what’s happened to us?”

“We used to be okay,” he said.

She turned her back to him.

“Sarah?”

She wore a white woolen sweater and a thin red scarf. The
flat surface of the river was blanched with moonlight. A few
brown leaves showed the current. Up the hill toward the house
sat the woodpile and the chopping block and the ax handle
with its head buried and its handle pointed up. The night was
a many-headed beast. An ink-black sky filled with colonies of
stars. A siphonophore spiraling slowly in the night.

She stood by the edge of the river with her back to him.
“One of us,” she said, “is going to have to leave.” Her shoulders
lifted and fell, then lifted and fell again.

They were supposed to raise their kids together, be a family.
They were supposed to get along. They were supposed to put
things behind them. But they put the kids to bed and fought
like hungry animals, like they could smell each other’s blood.
In the morning, they woke with baleful eyes in the same bed.
Their faces felt fixed in their positions. Their kids made noises
in the kitchen. Spoons in bowls. Poured milk. His wife had a
fist-sized bruise on the side of her chest. Claw marks ran across
Dominick’s face. Their bodies moved stiffly. Each had said so
many things from which the other believed they would never
recover. He laughed when she bit him, and her mouth filled
with blood, and her face contorted into something hard and
unfamiliar and wrinkled like a prune. He yanked his arm out
of her mouth and shook it there in front of her as if to show her
what she had become. Her face fell. She crumpled against the
scab-colored carpet. She tucked her chin under and her hair lay
flat against the dome of her skull. When she spoke, she spoke
quietly. She said, “Why didn’t you die in the war?” He had to
strain to hear her.

CHARLIE BASIN DROVE
west on U.S. Route 2.
Dark evergreens rose on either side of the road. An oncom
ing car dappled over small hills, its brights cutting across the
windshield and leaving him with blotchy reddish afterimages.
Twin suns hovering in a night sky.

The drive between Leavenworth and Bellingham would take
three hours. He had wanted to be on the road before he picked
up the phone to call Andrew Fry.

“Andy,” he said, “I know where they are.”

“Good,” Andy said. “Where? How’d you find him?”

“He’s staying with an old Army buddy. A Ranger. The guy
turned him in.”

“He deserves it,” Andy said. “You want to have SWAT and
the locals move in?”

“I’m driving now,” Charlie said. Bits of dust or ash or ice
rushed against the headlights. “I’ll be there in less than three
hours. I want to go in first thing in the a.m. Yes to the SWAT
Team and get the Bellingham police up to speed so they’re
ready when I get there.”

“Sure, I’ll get everybody ready,” Andy said. “We need to put
an end to this. You up for it?”

“What do you mean am I up for it?” The thin trees blurred
at the side windows. A spatter of town lights hung in the rear
view mirror.

“I talked to Rosamund,” Andy said.

“What for?”

“We bumped into each other at the gas station. She told me
about Charlene.”

“What’d she tell you?”

“The suicide attempt,” Andy said, “the hospital.” He paused
and Charlie heard the noise of stubble grinding against the
mouthpiece of the phone. “Jesus, Charlie, that poor kid. What
can I do to help?”

“Shit,” Charlie said. The line crackled. “You see your kids
often?”

“Well, they went to boarding school,” Andy said. “Then to
Yale. All three of them moved out to the West Coast when they
graduated. Two to LA. One to grad school at Stanford. We do
our best to get together on holidays.”

“How’s that suit you?”

“It suits me fine.”

“You talk to them on the phone?”

“Sure,” Andy said, “when I’ve got something to say.”

Bats flitted in the headlights. The road canyoned through a
steep rise of coniferous trees.

“Listen, Charlie,” Andy said, “there’s nobody I’d rather have
on this case. But if you need to you can turn around right now.
You can go home. Let the locals take over.”

“No,” Charlie said, “I’m going to be the one to take this guy
down.”

THE WINDOWS WERE
dark. Elsie rolled up onto her
side and rested her head on one hand. She asked, “Why did
your mother leave?”

“I don’t know, Elsie.”

“Do you miss her?”

“Yeah, I miss her,” Clarke said. “She was great.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“Just under a year, I guess.”

“Did you know she was going to leave you?” Elsie said.

“No,” Clarke said, “I didn’t.”

“Did you see signs?”

“What’s with all the questions?”

“I want to know what it’s like to be you.”

“You can’t,” Clarke said.

“Maybe I can if you tell me about the signs.”

“I found her packing a suitcase once,” Clarke said. “I asked
where she was going. She wouldn’t tell me. It was a few weeks
before she left for good.”

“Anything else?”

“When my dad got out of the Army, she asked him if he
would go back.”

“Why?”

“He was gone so much she got used to it being the three
of us.”

“Were you mad when he came home?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes.”

“Did they get along?”

“They got along okay.”

“Did they fight?”

“They fought,” Clarke said. “They fought a lot.”

“Like every night? Did they leave bruises?”

“Jesus, I don’t want to be like them.”

“That’s not something you have to worry about.”

“Why not?” Clarke asked her.

“Because you aren’t.”

Inside the house, Dominick paced. His feet knocked hol
lowly against the floorboards. He stopped in front of a pho
tograph of a group of men, he and Benny among them. He
scanned the faces. Half of them had died in the Middle East.
One had killed himself stateside. The sky in the photo was just
a shade lighter than the sand. Behind them were buildings and
walls made of dirt. Nearly every one of them had a can of beer.
Their M4 carbines piled on the ground. A few of them wres
tled. Only one or two of them wore shirts. All of them were
muscled and ruddy with health. Their skin swam with sweat.
All of them wore Friday-night smiles.

Dominick opened the refrigerator and closed it again. He
filled a glass with water. He held it up and looked into it in the
light. The slow drift of particulates. Tiny bubbles adhered to
the sides of the glass. When he swallowed, he listened to the
epiglottal flap. He reached behind him, put his wrists against
the small of his back, and thrust upward until his spine cracked.

At the kitchen table, he flipped through a stack of gun mag
azines. Inside one, he found a white paper folded in half. He
unfolded it and found his own name.

UNLAWFUL FLIGHT TO AVOID PROSECUTION —
FIRST-DEGREE MURDER

DOMINICK CLARKE SAWYER

Aliases: Dominick C. Sawyer, Dominick Saw
yer, Dom Sawyer

DESCRIPTION

Date of Birth: July 1, 1977

Place of Birth: Pennsylvania

Hair: Brown

Eyes: Blue

Height: 6’4”

Complexion: Light

Weight: 230 to 240 pounds

Sex: Male

Build: Large

Race: White

Occupation: Former Army Ranger

Nationality: American

Scars and Marks: sua sponte tattoo on
back of neck

Remarks: Sawyer has ties to Pennsylvania
and Illinois. He is an expert marksman. He
may be in possession of a Springfield Armory
M1A rifle and a Beretta M9 handgun.

CAUTION

DOMINICK CLARKE SAWYER IS WANTED FOR MUR
DER IN SNYDER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, AND
DEKALB COUNTY, ILLINOIS. SAWYER ALLEGEDLY
SHOT AND KILLED A SHERIFF IN PENNSYLVANIA
AND TWO CITY POLICE OFFICERS IN ILLINOIS.

CONSIDERED ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION CONCERNING
THIS PERSON, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR LOCAL
FBI OFFICE OR THE NEAREST U.S. EMBASSY OR
CONSULATE
.

REWARD

The FBI is offering a reward of up to
$100,000 for information leading directly
to the arrest of Dominick Clarke Sawyer.

Dominick blinked. When he closed his eyes, the wanted pa
per ceased to exist. But it burned back to life when his eyelids
opened. It shook in his hands. Benny Ward and Dominick had
tented together. They’d been responsible for each other’s lives.
They’d dug into the sand and watched tracer rounds arc into the
night. Was this what all that had come to be balanced against?
He couldn’t believe it. He paced the rooms. He thought he was
lucky to love all of them the way that he did. His wife and chil
dren. Benny, too. Because of them, he was more than just the
poor assemblage of himself. They were living prostheses. Did
he deserve them? He knew he didn’t. All great things come
without being earned.

He waited out the dark until he couldn’t wait any longer.
Then he went to find Clarke. He pounded on the cabin door
until Clarke rose to walk the property line with his father. Nei
ther of them could see anything in front of them. The air was
humid and warming up and the night pushed against them wet
and black. It was almost funny, the slow shuffle of their feet.
Their arms extended in front of them into unknown spaces.
Their forward movement might have been useless.

Clarke heard his father’s footsteps stop ahead of him. The
ground beneath his feet was soft and springy. When his body
bumped into his father’s, he felt he’d run up against something
huge and immovable. He heard his father draw in a breath and
then hold quiet, waiting for some unknown signal before he’d
speak.