Winter and Night (19 page)

Small kindnesses in unexpected places, I thought, sipping my coffee. Sometimes, the only ones there are; and sometimes, it's enough. Lydia unwrapped the new tea bag, dunked it into her new hot water.

"There's something else," I said.

"You're not going to tell me about Scott?"

I looked up sharply. "There's nothing to tell. We told each other to go to hell. What did you expect?"

"I expect," she said slowly, "that when even thinking about someone makes you tighten your shoulders and look like you want to punch something, maybe you'd want to talk about him."

I looked at my left hand, the one not holding the coffee cup, and uncurled the fist it had made. I breathed out. "You're wrong," I said. "I don't want to talk about him. Nothing happened. We growled at each other like a couple of leashed dogs. It was my territory so he pissed on something. Then he left."

"You can't mean literally."

"That he left?"

She rolled her eyes.

"No, of course not," I said. "He tore up some papers. Faxes. I'd tell you what was on them, but you don't seem interested."

"No, you're wrong. Since you insist on being your most guylike, refusing to discuss what's driving you craziest, feel free to change the subject to anything that will take my mind off the fact that guylike guys drive me crazy."

"Umm, yeah. So I got these faxes."

"From?"

"Stacie Phillips."

"Girl reporter."

"Right."

The waitress brought our waffles, eggs, syrup, toast. She poured me more coffee, slipped Lydia another tea bag, and this time she smiled. Lydia smiled back.

"Stacie Phillips," Lydia said when we were alone again.

"Uh-huh. I'd asked her to fax me whatever she could find from the local paper on that old story."

"And I guess she did."

"She did." I poured syrup on the waffles. It was real maple syrup, not flavored sugar; this diner was full of surprises. "Goes like this: After one of those wild parties like at the Wesleys'—"

"They had them twenty-three years ago?"

"Warrenstown's always had them, it seems."

"Well," she said, "I shouldn't be surprised. You're always telling me tales of your wild, misspent youth, and I guess that was about that long ago."

"I'm not going to get a break here, am I?"

"No."

"Okay, just so I know. So: A girl walking home from this one was dragged into a yard down the block, raped, beaten up. An early-morning dogwalker found her."

"She was there for hours?"

"Yes."

Lydia shuddered.

"She was hurt pretty badly. In the end she recovered," I added.

"You're telling me the end so I won't worry?"

"Isn't that a good idea? You like happy endings."

"Does this story have one?"

"Not really."

"Great. Okay, go on."

"It was a day or so before she was conscious," I said. "She admitted to being both drunk and high and she didn't remember anything after she left the party. But she remembered Al Macpherson had been hitting on her there. She'd told him to get lost, he'd told her dozens of girls would be happy just to have him look at them, given who he was."

"Who was he?"

"Football co-captain. Warrenstown Warriors linebacker."

"Oh. Of course. What do you suppose was wrong with her?"

I ignored that, went on. "She left, she said, because Macpherson was grabbing her, pushing her around. He left soon after she did, which surprised some of the other kids because he was a party animal and always closed every place up."

Lydia dipped toast into her poached eggs. "So they arrested him?"

I nodded. "New Jersey law, they can hold you seventy-two hours on suspicion. They did, and then they let him go."

"They had nothing to charge him on?"

"Everything was circumstantial. The paper said there were leads they were following up, but they must not have come to anything. But in the end it didn't matter." I sponged up a puddle of syrup with a forkful of waffle. "There'd been a rumor from the beginning that another kid, who hadn't been invited to the party, had a thing for this girl and had been following her around."

"Stalking, we call that."

"Now we do; they didn't then, but a lot of fingers started pointing at him. They arrested him and sweated him, got nothing, let him go. Another kid alibied him, a friend of his."

"Someone else who hadn't been invited? And I thought you didn't have to be invited to those parties, by the way. I thought you just charged in and tore the place up."

"You know," I said, pushing my plate away, leaning back in the booth, "I wasn't there. Really I wasn't."

She narrowed her eyes. "If you'd lived in Warrenstown then, you would have been."

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm really a pretty nice guy when you get to know me."

"Which is not easy, incidentally," she said. "Okay, go on."

"Thank you. So this second kid, a few hours after the cops let him go, he shot himself."

She nodded. "The suicide."

I said, "He was seventeen."

"So Warrenstown did get a happy ending. A nut off their streets, the case cleared, everyone's girls safe."

"All of that, sure. But mostly, Macpherson was a brick-wall linebacker, he'd missed three days of practice already, and they needed him in the Homecoming game on Saturday."

She raised her eyebrows. "I'm surprised at you. That sounds like something I'd say."

"It's not me. There was an editorial in the local paper."

"Saying that?"

"Saying the police had some nerve arresting a Warrenstown Warrior right before the big game, the grudge match against Greenmeadow everybody waited for all year. And if Macpherson didn't perform well on Saturday, the cops would be to blame."

"The cops would— what about the girl, the rape, the fact they had a crime to solve?"

I shrugged. "You'll love this. A reporter went to see the girl in the hospital. The football team had sent a big fruit basket. Her jaw was wired, but she managed to say, 'Go Warriors.' "

Lydia shook her head slowly. "Life can stink, you know that?"

"That sounds like something I'd say."

"No, you'd use worse words. Listen, this was a horrible story and I appreciate your telling it to me, but does it have anything to do with finding Gary?"

"Well, it tells us a couple of things. One, that the Al Macpherson we saw last night was the Al Macpherson that always was."

"Do we need to know that?"

"Probably not. Just some depressing confirmation that people don't change much."

"Only depressing if they were awful children. What's the next thing?"

"Warrenstown, from what I read, was thrilled when it turned out to be this other kid. Nobody'd liked him; today they'd call him a freak, I guess. Twenty years ago we just called those kids weird and everyone kept away from them."

"Someone seems to have liked him enough to give him a phony alibi."

"That's true. But here's my point: He was a loner. An outsider."

Lydia paused a beat before she answered. "Gary's a jock. A football hero already. Didn't you say that?"

"Yes. But everyone I've talked to so far has also started everything they've said about Gary with, 'He's new.' "

"I can see what you're thinking," she said. "But people don't get lynched in New Jersey anymore."

"When Al Macpherson was in jail," I said, "there was a candlelight rally at the police station in support of him."

"The football team, I'll bet."

"Their parents."

"You have to be kidding."

"Maybe people don't get lynched in New Jersey anymore. But they still get railroaded."

Lydia looked away, watched the blond waitress collect dirty plates from a table in the corner. She brought her eyes back to me, seemed about to say something; but she didn't, just tossed her head, maybe to rearrange her hair, maybe to push some thoughts away. "Okay," she said. "Then we'd better find Gary before anyone else does. We were planning on that anyway. What's our next move?"

"You haven't figured out that the reason I told you this story was to make it sound like I at least know something about something, when in fact I'm hiding the fact that I have no idea what to do?"

"You're not," she said, "hiding it very well."

"Okay, smarty, make a suggestion."

Lydia finished her tea in silence. "Well," she finally said, "I think all we can do is, you can call Detective Sullivan to ask if he's found anything—"

"Which he may or may not tell me."

"He will. He'll be thinking that the more you know the more likely you are to stay away from his case like he told you to."

I considered that. "You're probably right."

"And if he doesn't know anything, we can take our photos and spread them around some more. Just get out there and slog. I think that's it. All we can do."

Our eyes met. Hers were soft, and I thought maybe she didn't really believe I'd have been at that party, if I'd lived in Warrenstown then.

I took out the cell phone, called the Warrenstown PD. "Where are you?" was Sullivan's first question.

"New York. Eating waffles in a diner. Nowhere near your suspects or your crime scene."

"Keep it that way. What do you want?"

"I want to know if you've found anything."

"Like Gary Russell?"

"Anything," I said.

Sullivan's voice lightened up a little. "No. I got lawyers sprouting all over Warrenstown like mushrooms. No one admits to being at the party or knowing who was. 'My fingerprints were there? Gee, must've left them last week when I went over to do homework with Tory.' "

"On the beer cans?"

" 'Brought her a six-pack. Not my fault when she decided to crack it.' "

"This is why I never wanted to be a cop," I said.

"I'll get through to someone. Soon as I do, the whole thing'll fall apart. Just a matter of time. Pretty impressive, though."

"Yeah, great. Team defense. Are Tory Wesley's parents back yet? They have any ideas?"

"Due in soon on a redeye. I talked to them on the phone yesterday. They had nothing to offer, but hell, they were in shock."

I forced my mind from the image that sprang up: Tory Wesley's parents, white-faced, staring at each other in a distant hotel room, their world suddenly, with one phone call, changed in a ruinous way.

I said, "You get the autopsy report yet?"

"Not yet. You actually clean Al Macpherson's clock last night?"

"That what he says?"

"No, he says you never laid a hand on him, he slipped getting out of the car."

"He's got a tough punch, but he's too straightforward. I'm not that good, so I depend on sneakiness."

"Well, keep away from him. For a guy who slipped getting out of the car, he's got a real hard-on for you."

"Thanks for the warning."

"Now your turn. Didn't you say you talked to a couple of Gary's friends?"

"Only Morgan Reed."

"Not Paul Niebuhr? Max White? Marshall Nelligan?"

"Niebuhr, I left a message on his voice mail. He never called me back. The others I never heard of."

"Your sister didn't tell you about them?"

"Are they friends of Gary's?"

"According to some of the other kids around here."

"My sister," I said slowly, "doesn't know much about Gary's life, I think. Were those kids at the party?"

"I have their prints."

"Maybe they left them last week when—"

"Stick it. You never talked to them?"

"No."

"Oh. You find Gary yet?"

"If I had, would I be calling you?"

"If you do," he said, "you damn well better."

That was the end of that. I lowered the phone, looked out to the street, three lanes of traffic moving haltingly, with a lot of noise, in the same direction.

"Anything?" Lydia asked.

"He asked if I'd found Gary," I said. "He knows I haven't stopped looking."

"You said he wasn't stupid."

"He also didn't tell me to stop, or threaten me again."

"As long as you're out of his jurisdiction and not breaking the law, what could he say that he could back up?"

"That wouldn't stop a lot of other cops I know."

"It couldn't be," she asked, "that he actually expects you to keep your word and let him know if you do find Gary?"

I didn't answer that because I didn't want to think about it. I flipped the phone open again. "Let me make one more call," I said. "And then let's go."

"You know," Lydia said, "for a guy who claimed to hate that thing, who avoided getting one until—"

"Excuse me," I said, thumbing in a number. "I'm on the phone."

I listened through three rings, was rewarded with, "Stacie Phillips."

"Bill Smith. Just wanted to thank you for the history lesson."

"For a source, anytime. Especially one who can punch out Randy Macpherson's father."

"You heard about that?"

"I'm a reporter; I hear everything. You have anything for me?"

"Growing respect."

"Oh, great. Well, because thoroughness is important to a reporter, I have something else for you," she said. "But part of it's bogus."

"Then why do I want it?"

"So you'll see how completely I hold up my end of a bargain. So when you find Gary—"

"Okay, okay. What is it?"

"Trevor called me this morning with more prints. This is from the furniture, not the beer cans. He really, really, wants to date my sister."

"I'm beginning to want to meet her myself."

"Let's not go there."

"She wouldn't date an old man?"

"Actually, she'd probably think you're cute. She's very weird."

"I'm sure you didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"Of course not," she said innocently. "Anyway: There's lots unidentified, and there are some of the same people I gave you yesterday, from the beer cans. Then there's Max White and Marshall Nelligan. They're sophomores. The bogus ones are the man next door, the cleaning lady, Tory's cousin Heather, and Paul Niebuhr."

"This is sad," I said, "but Jim Sullivan beat you to at least part of that, too."

"Sullivan's still speaking to you?"

"I have charms that aren't apparent."