Cause of Death

7

We’re at Evan’s Scavenge and Scrap, a local institution.

Deputy Terry Garner and I walk through the sloppy, soupy yard toward where Pax’s Nissan sits, along with six other wrecks. These aren’t sun-bleached, like many of the others. This must be the spot for the newcomers.

The junkyard bristles and spreads over endless acres. There are chassis and engines and odd shapes of metal and oil drums and tires and spidery windshields everywhere. It could be the set for a dystopian movie.

I’m looking over the wreck. It’s totaled. But the designers in Osaka or Detroit or Guadalajara know what they’re about, and the roof stands as tall as on that dealership lot in Clemson when we signed the papers and Pax christened her. Baby. (We’d been discussing having a child; at that point she’d seemed so inclined.) I now tuck the memory firmly away, in the shadow of the butterfly effect.

A tenor growl intrudes. I glance down. A black-and-white Chihuahua, neck encircled with a studded collar, is brandishing its toy teeth. He absolutely glares.

In train-engineer blue-striped overalls, a man ambles from the office. He has a shock of white hair. His nails seem permanently blackened. He’s as big as the dog is small; both are equally muddy.

“Don’t laugh. Don’t say nothing. He showed up one day and here he is.”

Its teeth are unnerving. Add fifty pounds and this would be a deadly weapon.

“Name’s Kitten.”

“No,” I say.

“I picked it, being sarcastic, but he don’t seem to mind. He’s more than he looks. Last night, somebody was prowling around, and he took care of things.”

Terry asks, “He did?”

“Well, he yipped his head off. I armed up and chased the prick off with my twelve-gauge.”

“Don’t go shooting trespassers in the back, Evan.”

“I know, I know.” The man seems disappointed at this particular state law.

Terry introduces me. “This’s Jon.”

We nod.

Terry continues, “We’re looking into that accident.” A glance at the Nissan.

“Oh, that. Sure. A shame, that lady dying.”

“Always is,” Terry says, not wanting to expand this portion of the conversation, out of deference to me, I assume. He doesn’t say anything about where I fit in the matter. Maybe the junkman thinks I’m a cop.

Historian as detective...

“You mind if we take a look?”

“Be my guest. Stop that!” This last part is directed to the dog, who has been grumbling at me. Kitten ignores him.

I say to Terry, “That grille? Does it look like it’s hit a deer?”

The deputy is crouching. He rocks a bit, unsteady in the mud, and starts to reach for the front fender but stops. He balances, studies, then stands. “Hard to say.”

I negotiate a tricky, slick route to the passenger’s side. I glance inside the car, taking in the driver’s seat — the exact place in the universe where Pax died.

Looking at the right front tire, I nod. “It’s what I was thinking, Terry. That’s the spare from the trunk. A Firestone.”

Minding the muck, he joins me.

“When she left the house, there was a Michelin on that wheel, like the other three.”

“Evan? Anybody change a tire on the Altima here?”

“No, sir. That’s how she came in.”

The deputy’s quiet for a moment. He says to me, “I’m just looking at possibilities. Maybe she had a flat, changed it and threw the old tire out.”

“And not tell me? That’s a subject that’d come up between husbands and wives. And who throws out tires? You fix them. Can you fingerprint it? The Firestone?”

“Not without opening a case.”

I point out, “But you didn’t touch the front of the car. You were thinking of prints then. Am I right?”

He doesn’t answer. He navigates back to the junkman. I follow.

Terry seems to debate with himself a bit. “Do me a favor, Evan,” he eventually says, “and leave the Nissan as is. Don’t move it. Don’t touch it.”

“Sure. You want me to tarp her?”

“Good. Yes. Thanks.”

Accompanied by the hound, Evan gets a big plastic sheet and covers the car.

To the Chihuahua, he calls, “Back inside,” and rattles a box of treats.

Meow Mix.

Evan notes my eyes on the food. “What can I say? He’s a confused soul.”

Terry and I stand together by the roadside outside Evan’s, our conversation ceasing when a loud car or truck breathes past.

“Jon—”

“You have a metal detector? You could search for the bullet on Palmer Mountain.”

“Ditto my comment about opening a case. And, no, we don’t have one.”

Standing in place, I wipe my shoes in the grass, removing some of the mud from the junkyard. Finally I tell him, “I was perfectly fine with the twist of fate, the absurdity of my wife dying because a dumb animal jumped in front of her. I could’ve lived with it. But that’s not how it was.”

A car speeds by, braking fast as the driver notes the Public Safety cruiser and the uniform.

“Jon, we’ve known each other years and years.”

“That’s a fact.”

His hesitation, his body language suggest another lecture is forthcoming.

“When I saw you night after it happened, brought the box over? You were like, ‘Okay, okay. Thanks for doing that.’ Like I was returning a set of tools. Could put it down to shock, I guess. But now, it’s the same. You’re holding in what you’re feeling, Jon. Looks to me like you’re putting a lid on things way too much. That’s not good for you.”

“How do you mean, Terry?”

“I’m no shrink, but you think there’s a chance you’re doing all this” — he waves toward the wreck — “so you don’t have to accept that, well, she’s gone?” The last words are delivered in a whisper. “You should be home grieving. Hell, you should be screaming. I’d be.”

At these words, a memory: My uncle sitting on my bed.

“Jonny, something I have to tell you. It’s not easy. But I have to.”

I told him calmly, “Okay. Go ahead.”

And he did.

I now say to Terry, “I’m not walking around like nothing happened. I’m walking around like something really bad happened and I need to find out what.”

A Peterbilt tugs a massive container past, doing sixty. Leaves and dust spiral around us. Terry is measuring his words like a seamstress before cutting from a bolt of wool. “Jon, we’ve had but a handful of murders in Martinsville County since I put on the badge.”

Nine years, I recall.

“And they’re spaced few and far between. The odds of two murders in a month?”

“You mean the girl in the river, drowned.”

He nods.

I say, “You flip a coin, you can get ten heads in a row.”

“Give you that. But look. Murder’s simple. Crazy people on drugs shoot other crazy people on drugs. Exes shoot exes with one of the five thousand guns we got here in the county. And you see the news the other day? That kid in Arizona? Shot another student and then himself after spouting some crap about purity of the white race. And the guy in Ohio last week? Killed a Muslim cleric. Hate crimes. That’s who murders people. What you’re saying, shot-out tires and deer? That’s not what happens when people go murderous.”

There’s something to his words. The historian in me thinks of how wars start. Most unfold according to familiar — even clichéd — conventions of action and reaction. But that’s not to say there aren’t outliers.

“Terry, humor me one more time. If this doesn’t pan out, that’ll be it.”

I think that to further convince him I should summon a tear or force my voice to crack, offer up the emotion he sees as lacking. I even try. But that just isn’t happening.

Instead I simply look at him, with a single raised brow.