Virginia Lovers (13 page)

“Hey, sorry, Croom,” said Thomas when Croom returned.

“Hell, man, don’t worry about it. My boy’s grown, but he sure pulled stuff like this in his day. I know how you worry. Steve always turned up down at the boardwalk in Carolina Beach, hungover and broke, but you never know until that phone call comes. It’s right to worry, especially these days.”

“Didn’t sleep that well last night.”

“Imagine not.”

“So what do we do now?”

“I’ll put a call out, get the shift to keep a lookout for the Ford.”

This news, though he’d come here to ask for it, unnerved Thomas.

“You know which of them was driving that night?”

“What night?”

“Last Saturday,” said Croom. “Night of the murder.”

Thomas hesitated. If either of them could show up at the wrong place at the wrong time, it would be Pete. Danny did not need protecting.

“Danny,” he said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Pete left the house with his buddies.”

Croom scribbled on his legal pad.

“Which buddies we talking about?”

“That I can’t say for sure, but I know his friend Cozart was with him.”

“Them two are tight, are they not?”

“Siamese twins. I feed Cozart more than his mother does.”

“I’ll have one of the boys stop by and talk to Cozart, then.”

“I’ve already talked to him. He doesn’t know anything. Said he hasn’t seen Pete since school.”

“Well, I still want to talk to him. Maybe I can get something out of him about the night of the murder.”

Croom adjusted his glasses. “You know, Tom, maybe this is as good a time as any. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about Pete.”

“What about him?”

“Nothing you don’t already know, probably. We believe he’s heavy into pot.”

Heavy into pot. Croom’s slang sounded comical to Thomas, though he knew better than to smile.

“I suspected that. Don’t know what I can do about it though.”

Croom eased out of his chair, extracted his handkerchief, removed his glasses to clean them. Thomas had never seen the man without his glasses. His eyes were small and red and bland.

“Say you don’t know what you can do about it?” said Croom.

“No,” said Thomas. “If he wants to experiment some, not much I can do to stop him, is there?”

“I believe this is a little more serious than experimenting, Tom.”

“You believe? Or you know for a fact?”

Thomas regretted saying this as soon as it was out of his mouth. He’d heard Croom complain before about parents whose kids were always innocent, no matter what crime they’d been caught in the act of committing.

“Look, maybe this ain’t the time to have this talk. I’m just trying to help, though. No need to get defensive.”

“I know. Pete’s a smart boy, but he worries the hell out of us. I know some of those boys he hangs out with don’t give a damn about anything. You know, I’ve never had a bit of trouble with his brother. I guess Pete’s hard to deal with because we’ve had no experience. I tell you though, he might smoke a little pot, drink too much now and again, but he’s not a murderer.”

“Okay. We’ve got to check out everything we’ve got, and we ain’t got all that much. You understand how it is?”

“Of course.”

“Go home and get some sleep. I’ll call if we turn up something.”

“I’ll be at the office. Call over there.”

As Thomas stood, Croom said, “Do me a favor, Tom. I know you have to put something in this week’s paper about this thing, some kind of follow-up and all. Work with me here on what you print, okay? I’ve got Jim Pierce calling up here every hour wanting to know everything, and if you go emphasizing how little we’ve got, it’s just going to make things a whole lot worse.”

Thomas hovered above his chair for a moment before straightening slowly and half-turning toward the door. Croom had never asked for a favor like this—he’d always accepted, if not respected, Thomas’s right to print whatever he could find. It bothered Thomas, but he felt as if some other bargain were being struck here, one that involved his family, and he promised Croom Beatty he’d work with him on this thing, whatever that meant.

Somehow he muddled through breakfast with the Kiwanis and lunch with the Rotarians. He found it as hard to pay attention to the speakers at each meeting as he did to the day’s work, which involved mostly phone calls to various law-enforcement agencies, excepting the police department, and working on his column and the week’s editorial. As for the latter, he had planned on writing something about the Pierce murder, something sympathetic and yet pertinent about the lack of activities for area youth, which drove them to seek out unchaperoned and potentially dangerous situations. Now, in light of recent developments, he could not believe how ignorant and presumptuous this line of thinking was, and though what brought him to this knowledge was far from welcome, he was glad not to have embarrassed himself by suggesting, however rhetorically, that the Pierce boy might still be alive if the city council had budgeted for a teen center.

Caroline called several times that day and left messages with Bea, whom Thomas had asked to hold his calls. As of three o’clock, Thomas had yet to call Caroline back. It wasn’t that he did not want to talk to her—despite their disagreements, it was impossible to stay angry at her for more than an hour. He just wasn’t sure how much to tell her about his talk with Croom. He told himself, to make it easier, that she didn’t need to know anything now that there was nothing really to report except for some rumor that the Ford was parked outside the Pierces’ house on the night of the murder. What bothered him was that Dan had said, when he told him about the murder, that he had not seen Brandon Pierce for a while and was no longer friends with him. He wasn’t one to lie, and it made no sense for him to lie about attending the party if he had nothing to lie about.

All these thoughts distracted Thomas. He could not get any work done. He told Strickland he had a headache and went home early. The empty house was not nearly so comforting and relaxing as it had been the day before. In fact, it was eerie—the silence, the stillness, only reminded him of his sons’ absence, and rather than sit there staring out the window for the sight of their car in the drive, he took to the highways in search of them.

The afternoon was cloudy, the countryside muted by low-hanging haze. Driving the back roads, Thomas admired the farmhouses barricaded from the expansive acreage of corn and tobacco by lines of pecan and oak trees. When he’d first moved to Trent, he’d wanted to buy one of these places in the country, but this country was lost on Caroline, who’d grown up in the high foothills of the state and was accustomed to views and rocky rivers and the brilliant autumnal foliage of the almost-Appalachians. To Caroline, Trent was dusty and tarnished; she told him once that the whole town seemed flattened by the elements. He understood this to mean the heat, the heavy wet air that held sway for six months of the year and was capable of showing up unannounced and furious even in February. They’d spent many a Christmas in shirtsleeves, slapping at bugs. She was the one who chose the house they’d lived in for the past twenty years, arguing that it was in a neighborhood with lots of kids, and boys would need to be ferried back and forth if they chose to live out of town. She said the tobacco barns, leaning and tarpapered, depressed her. She was used to real barns, the massive regal structures of dairy farmers. She was used to hills, rivers that bubbled instead of the tawny static Tar. She was used to sunsets shadowing the faint, mystical Blue Ridge.

She won, but Thomas always worried if it was the right choice, especially for Pete. He’d grown up with the boys in the neighborhood, and they’d remained close—only Danny and a few others had dropped out of their group when they reached high school. Thomas liked to think that Pete might take school more seriously if he had fewer partners in crime. He’d always thought that raising his kids in a small town like Trent was a gift to them, for he had been raised in a town only slightly larger, an hour’s drive northeast, and it had provided him with all sorts of lessons he’d drawn on for the rest of his life. He was always willing to forget how much he’d disliked it at the time. He was always willing to take the longer retrospective view, which seemed to him what being an adult was all about. But now that his boys had disappeared, he wondered if they would not have been better off in a place that had more to offer them. They were smart kids and they needed stimulation, in school and out of it, and the local schools were far from challenging. Of course there was less competition for academic honors here; Danny was a shoo-in for valedictorian. What if he had a test today? What if there was something else he’d missed, an election? Surely the football coach would bench him for missing practice. The thought of his son slumped dolefully in his shoulder pads at the edge of the bench reminded him that he had a game to cover tonight, which in all the day’s drama he’d forgotten. He turned the car around in the driveway of a trailer park.

Caroline’s car was in the drive. He knew he’d have to explain why he did not call her back, as well as choose what to tell her about his visit with Croom. Once inside he headed straight for the liquor cabinet, mixed a bourbon before venturing into the bedroom where she lay fully clothed across the bed.

“No word,” he said.

“You could have called and said as much.”

“There was nothing to report,” he said.

“Then you should have reported nothing,” she said. “I needed you this afternoon, Tom.”

He put his drink down and went to her, but she made no room for him in bed, and he stretched out on the sliver of bedspread, clinging to the edge of the bed, aware of how he’d failed. He wanted her to slide over and he wanted to hold her, and because she did not pick up on his wants he filled the painful silence with news: he had a ball game tonight.

“Jesus, Thomas. Get somebody else. Or just let it go.”

He knew she was right and he was wrong to mention the game. He didn’t think, said the first thing he thought of, which was work related, something that needed to be done. Wasn’t that a natural response to the circumstances? To keep busy? But to her it was tantamount to saying he did not care where his boys were or what kind of trouble they were in, and it infuriated him, her attitude.

“I can’t just sit around here waiting for the phone to ring.”

“Like me, you mean? Is there something I should be doing instead? Going out to dinner with friends? You want me to go with you to the game?”

He tried to hold her, but she pulled away at his touch. He fought that sharp, almost gleeful instinct to draw her into an argument, but before he could speak the phone rang.

“Croom Beatty, Thomas.”

“You got news for me?”

“Got some news for you and some for the paper. Unfortunately, it’s right much the same, and I doubt you’re going to want to print what I got to tell you.”

Croom’s voice sounded heavy and distant at once. Thomas scanned the room for his drink, spotted it on the nightstand, and was about to reach for it when he noticed Caroline’s eyes following his.

“What is it, Croom?”

“I got witnesses putting both your boys at Pierce’s house that night.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I had Bill Cozart bring his boy in. He admitted he and Pete rode over there that night with a kid named Lee Tysinger.”

“The football player?” Thomas knew the name from articles he’d written about the Stallions. He didn’t know Pete even knew the boy

“Correct,” said Croom. His word choice rankled Thomas. Just like a cop to say “correct” instead of “yes,” or “right.” This cop talk made Thomas feel that he, too, was being implicated in the unraveling of this crime. It occurred to him that Croom had jumped to conclusions and that Thomas had encouraged him to do so. He wished he’d kept Croom out of this. He wished he’d never paid him a visit and he wished Caroline would quit watching him as if she were waiting for him to reach across her for his drink.

“Tysinger’s down here now. He’s telling us some things that might explain why your boys are running.”

“I’m coming down there,” said Thomas, lowering his voice.

“No you aren’t. We’re not through talking to this kid yet, and we won’t be for a while, and I don’t want you down here until I got the story straight. But I told you I’d call you if I heard anything and what I’m hearing doesn’t sound good.”

“You got something to tell me, Croom, you better tell me now if you don’t want me down there.”

Croom was silent. Thomas could hear his breathing, a wheezy breath that seemed even before he spoke to convey contradictions: relief at having solved some part of this puzzle, regret that he had to tell Thomas his news.

“The Tysinger boy is saying he walked in on Danny and Brandon Pierce. He was looking for a bathroom and he’s claiming he found the two of them, well, in bed together.”

Thomas managed to avoid Caroline’s gaze as, with one miraculous stretch he had his drink in his hand, and then to his mouth.

“You there?” said Croom.

“I heard what you said. He’s lying.”

“It gives us a motive, Tom.”

“What?”

“Danny’s upset about getting caught in the act, he takes it out on the Pierce boy. Things get out of hand.”

“I’m not believing this, Croom. That kid’s lying and you’re too goddamn lazy to find out what really happened, so you’re taking his word for it. I know that boy’s parents, and it doesn’t surprise me at all—”

“Whoa, now, Tom. Don’t say anything you’re going to regret later on.”

“I would offer you the same advice, Croom, but I believe it’s too late.”

“It’s all I got, Tom. I know it’s hard to hear, but hell, it’s all I got. Both of your boys were there that night—I got proof of that. And now both of them are missing. If Tysinger’s lying, why’d they run?”

Thomas drained his drink. Though he’d wondered the same thing all day long, it was only then that he allowed himself to really wonder, to really worry.

“I’ll understand if you’ll want to hold off on your story,” said Croom.

Thomas said there was nothing to write yet anyway, which Croom was decent enough not to challenge. He thanked Croom brusquely and hung up. As soon as the receiver was cradled, Caroline told him she wanted to know.