Very Bad Men (12 page)

“He might be the one who goes to prison for it,” Elizabeth said.

“I can't believe that. The truth will come out. Justice will be done. It has to be.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Kyle's innocent. I have to think that's what matters most. Don't you?”

“I'd like to,” Elizabeth said, reaching into her bag beside her on the sofa. “And as a matter of fact, I believe he's innocent.” She drew out a copy of Sarah's sketch of the man in plaid. “Have you ever seen this man?”

I didn't hear Madelyn Turner's answer. She crossed to a desk in a corner of the room, looking for her reading glasses. Out in the yard Nick Dawtrey was standing by the tire swing. He seemed to be staring in at me. I picked up my glass of lemonade and excused myself, saying I needed to stretch my legs.

Passing through the entry hall to the kitchen, I found a screen door that opened onto a patio. I circled around to the side yard and walked toward the elm tree. Nick swayed on his toes, one arm wrapped through the center of the tire. He wore a shirt that hung loosely on him and blue jeans torn at the knees.

As I approached him, I could see Lucy Navarro in the distance. She stood next to her Beetle on the roadside by the end of the long driveway. There was a dog out there with her, part spaniel and part something else—a raggedlooking thing, brown and white. The dog yapped playfully, its tail wagging. Lucy was feeding it scraps from a fast-food wrapper. I watched her tear off a chunk of hamburger bun and toss it in the air, watched the dog leap up to catch it.

Nick Dawtrey was watching too. “Do you know her?” he said.

Across the distance, I could hear Lucy laugh. The dog danced for her on its hind legs.

“Not really,” I said. “Whose dog is that?”

“He's a stray,” said Nick. “I've seen him around.”

Lucy ran out of scraps and spread the wrapper in the grass by the road. She got a bottle of water from the car and poured some into the shallow bowl formed by the wrapper so that the dog could drink.

Beside me, Nick let go of the tire swing and it swayed back and forth like a pendulum.

“Are you a cop?” he asked.

He hadn't said much in the house and I thought he'd be shy. But he seemed self-assured.

“I'm an editor,” I told him.

“Your wife a cop?” He meant Elizabeth. I saw no reason to correct him.

“Yes.”

“She from here?”

“She's from Ann Arbor.”

“I mean originally. Is she Ojibwa?”

I wasn't sure I'd understood him. “Did you say Chippewa?”

“Ojibwa. Only a white man would say Chippewa.”

“I don't know if she's Ojibwa or not.”

That earned me a disappointed stare. “Maybe you should find out, sport.”

“Probably,” I said.

Out by the roadside, Lucy was pouring the dog another drink of water. I turned away from them to focus on Nick.

“I'm sorry about what happened to your father,” I told him.

He made a sour face. “Everybody says that. What do you know about it?”

“I know he was murdered.”

“You prolly think Kyle did it.”

That
prolly
was the first thing he'd said that sounded like a fifteen-year-old.

“Actually, I don't.”

“What about your wife?”

“She doesn't think so either,” I said. “She wants to find out what really happened.”

That brought a laugh. Knowing, bitter. “No,” he said. “She doesn't.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“She's a cop. Cops look out for each other.”

The tire swing spun slowly in the air.

“You think the cops murdered your father?”

“Course they did. Why you look so surprised, sport?”

“I don't think cops generally go around murdering people.”

“That's something else only a white man would say.” His voice made
something
into
sometheen
.

“You have freckles,” I said.

I could see that it confused him.

“So what?” he said.

“So you're as white as I am. You can knock off the Indian routine. Why would the cops kill your father?”

“Think about it. They kill him. Terry comes to the funeral. They kill Terry.”

“Terry tried to escape.”

A shrug. “If he didn't, they would've found some other excuse.”

“You think they planned to kill him all along?”

He looked at me as if I'd disappointed him.

“Terry shot a cop,” he said. “Put him in a wheelchair.”

“That was seventeen years ago.”

“You think the other cops forget something like that?”
Sometheen.
“You ever met the sheriff—Delacorte?”

“I've met him.”

“You think he's sorry Terry tried to run? You think he's working hard to find out how that happened? You want some roses, sport?”

My turn to be confused. “What?”

Nick pointed toward the house, where a cluster of rosebushes grew not far from the patio. I'd walked past them without noticing.

“I'll cut you some roses,” he said. “You can give them to your wife. You want some fern to go with them, I'll give you that too.” He pointed toward a line of trees. “It grows wild in the woods.”

I thought about Terry Dawtrey and the handcuff key someone had left for him on the cemetery lawn. With a vase of roses to mark the spot.

“Did the sheriff come by here to talk to you and your mother?”

“Sure he did.”

“Did you offer him roses?”

Nick Dawtrey grinned. “You catch on quick for a white man. I offered. He didn't want any. Tell you what else, I rode over to Sault Sainte Marie last week. Sheriff's office is on Court Street. I spent an hour riding around the block, over and over.”

I understood what he meant when I saw his bike leaning against the side of the house. Two strips of yellow cloth hung from the handlebars like streamers. Just like the strip of cloth someone had tied to the fence at Whiteleaf Cemetery.

He was telling me he had ridden that bike in circles around Delacorte's office. “And I know he saw me,” he added, “because he came outside. I did everything but hand him a confession. He doesn't want to know. He's happy with the way things turned out.”

W
here'd you get the vase?” Elizabeth asked.

She was soaking in the tub in our hotel room, white clouds of foam floating on the surface of the water. A trio of candles on the counter cast a golden light over the room. Nick Dawtrey's roses and some wild fern stood in a glass vase on the edge of the tub.

“The desk clerk gave it to me,” I said. “She also gave me the bubble bath. They've got a basket of it behind the desk, in case you forget to bring your own.”

I was sitting on the tile floor, leaning against the tub. The fingers of my left hand skimmed through the white clouds.

Earlier, we had stopped for dinner in Brimley at the Cozy Inn—a chance to question waitresses. One of them thought the sketch we showed her looked familiar. The man in plaid might have been in the bar on the night Kyle Scudder and Charlie Dawtrey had their fight. But if he was, he paid with cash, not credit. We weren't going to find him that way.

Madelyn Turner hadn't recognized the sketch. Neither had Nick.

I took the wheel on the drive back to Sault Sainte Marie. Elizabeth made phone calls. She talked for a while with Sarah and checked in with Owen McCaleb. The department had people watching Sutton Bell's home and workplace, but so far there had been no sign of the man in plaid.

Elizabeth tried calling Sam Tillman, but the deputy's wife said he still wasn't home. There was no answer at Paul Rhiner's house.

Now I watched the candlelight play over the ceiling and felt the warmth of the water on my fingertips. I heard Elizabeth say: “If they don't want to talk to me, I can't make them. I don't have the authority up here to question anyone. I was pressing my luck today with Madelyn Turner. If Walter Delacorte wanted to shut me down, he'd have every right.”

“But there's something rotten about Delacorte,” I said. “He's not even trying to find out what really happened at Whiteleaf Cemetery. It's like Nick said: He doesn't want to know.”

“I could make an issue of that, but I can guess what would happen. They'd arrest Nick for conspiring to help Terry Dawtrey escape. And they'd make him rat out his friends—the kids who lit the firecrackers, and probably helped him steal the getaway car. Would you want that?”

“No.”

“Neither would I.”

Her knee came up out of the water, just beneath my hand. I trailed my palm down the smooth skin of her calf.

“I don't think he'd rat anybody out,” I said.

She closed her eyes. “You like him.”

“What's not to like? If I were in a tough spot, I'd want a brother like Nick Dawtrey.” I came to her ankle and started back up again. “So what are we going to do?”

“Nothing. If Delacorte's hiding something, he's going to keep hiding it. McCaleb wants me back home tomorrow.”

“But there are other people you could talk to—people who were at Charlie Dawtrey's funeral.”

“I could. And maybe someone got a glimpse of the man in plaid up on the hill. But that won't help me find him.”

I watched her in silence—the way the strands of her black hair moved with the water.

After a time I said, “Are you part Ojibwa?”

Her smile came first, then her eyes opened. “Where'd you pick up that word?”

“From Nick. He wanted to know if you were from around here.”

“I was born in Bay Mills, a few miles from his mother's house.”

“You should have shown me. I'd like to see where you grew up.”

She tipped her chin from side to side in the water. “There's nothing there anymore. Just an overgrown field. They tore the house down a long time ago.”

The muscles of her calf felt tense beneath my fingers.

“You still haven't answered my question,” I said. “You didn't answer when Delacorte asked either.”

She drew a long breath and let it out. “My father was named Parish. His ancestors came from England. My mother was Ojibwa.”

“How come you never told me that?”

“I wasn't sure how you'd react.”

“What do you mean?”

Mischief in her blue eyes. “I was afraid you'd think I was some sort of exotic creature. You wouldn't know how to behave.”

She sat up slowly, braced her palms on the rim of the tub, got her feet under her, and stood—in what seemed like a single smooth motion. I stood at the same time, admiring her in the candlelight, and though I kept my eyes on hers I was aware of the water and the foam flowing down between her breasts and along her stomach and over her thighs. I trailed my fingers over her collarbone until they came to the hollow of her throat.

“You should have told me,” I said. “It wouldn't have made a difference. I already thought you were an exotic creature.”

 

 

A GOOD WHILE LATER I woke in the dark under the thin covering of a hotel sheet. Elizabeth lay beside me, her hair spread over both our pillows. Sometimes she sleeps on her stomach, with her head turned to the side. And though I didn't expect her to spontaneously stop breathing—not really—I put my hand on her back between her shoulder blades to make sure. I felt a gentle rise and fall.

I slipped out of bed and made my way toward the bathroom, following the faint glow of candlelight. Closing the door, I ran water in the sink and drank some from my cupped hands. My clothes lay scattered on the tiled floor. I put them on, blew out the candles, and went out again.

I found a key card on the bureau and took it with me out into the hallway. The carpet felt rough against my socked feet. A low hum led me to an alcove with an ice maker and vending machines. Nothing there to my liking. I wanted fruit. An orange would be perfect.

I took the stairs down to the first floor and passed through the lobby to the dining room. A television mounted on the wall played a cable news show at low volume. On the long buffet counter stood a lone pot of coffee, a pitcher of ice water, and a bowl of apples.

“Mr. Loogan,” a voice said.

Lucy Navarro had on the same twill shirt she had worn earlier. It came down to her thighs, which were bare. I had to look twice to make sure she had gym shorts on underneath.

She said, “I see you've managed to get all the pine needles out of your hair.”

I picked up an apple. “I didn't know you were staying here.”

“It's the only hotel that suits my purpose. Pour me some water, will you?”

I filled two Styrofoam cups from the pitcher and brought them to a nearby table. She sat across from me with her back to the television.

“Did you ever talk to Paul Rhiner?” she asked me.

I took a bite of my apple and shook my head no.

“He wouldn't talk to me either. And Sam Tillman's wife slammed the door before I could finish a sentence. What do you think they're hiding?”

I studied the apple and said nothing.

She went on, undeterred. “I didn't get anywhere with Madelyn Turner either. Apparently someone told her I work for a cheap tabloid.”

“Huh.”

“She wouldn't let me near the boy, of course. You were with him in the yard for a while. What did you talk about?”