God Save the Child

17

Marge Bartlett got to bed about four. I helped her up the stairs, and she stumbled into her bedroom in a kind of stupefied silence. The lights were on. Roger Bartlett was sleeping on his back with his mouth open. On the bureau a small color TV set flickered silently, the screen empty, a small barren buzz coming from it. Marge Bartlett moved painfully toward her twin bed. I closed the door, went to the guest room, undressed, and flopped on the bed. If I lived here, I might run away. The room was warm, and some of the smoke from downstairs had drifted up. But if the kid ran away, why the merry prankster kidnap gig? Why all that childish crap with the coffin? Maybe that was it. Childish. It was the kind of thing a kid would do. Why? “The little sonova bitch hates us,” Marge Bartlett had said. But Maguire, that wasn’t the kind of thing a kid would do. Or could do. Somebody had hit Maguire very hard. Where would the kid go if he ran away? Harroway’s place? He had something for Harroway, obviously. Harroway could hit somebody very hard. I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was ten o’clock. No one else was up. I stood for a long time under the shower before I got dressed. Downstairs looked like the rape of Nanking. Everywhere there was the smell of stale cigarettes and booze and degenerating shrimp salad. Punkin appeared very pleased to see me and capered around my legs as I let him out the back door. The Smithfield police cruiser was parked in the driveway again. Ever vigilant. I found an electric percolator and made coffee. I brought a cup out to the cop in the driveway.

I hadn’t seen him before. He had freckles and looked about twenty-one. He was glad to get the coffee.

“You going to be here all day?” I asked.

“I’m on till three this afternoon, then someone else comes on.”

“Okay. I’m going to be gone for a while, so stay close. If they’re looking for me, tell them I’m working. Don’t let her go out alone, either.”

“If I have to take a leak, is it okay if I close the door?”

“Why don’t you wait till you’re off duty,” I said.

“Why don’t you go screw an onion,” he said.

There seemed little to say to that, so I moved off. The morning was glorious, or maybe it just seemed so in contrast to the situation indoors. The sky was a high bright blue with no clouds. The sun was bright, and the leaves had begun to turn. Some of the sugar maples scattered along Lowell Street were bright red already. There weren’t many cars out. Church or hangover, I thought. I found the turn for Harroway’s house, drove about a hundred yards beyond it, and pulled off on the side of the road.

If my mental map was right, I could cut across the woods and get a look at the house and grounds from a hill to the right of the road we’d driven in. It had been awhile since I took a walk in the woods, and the sense of it, alone and permanent, was strong as I moved through the fallen leaves as quietly as I could. I was dressed for stalking: Adidas sneakers, Levis, a black turtleneck sweater, blue nylon warm-up jacket,38 caliber Smith and Wesson. Kit Carson.

A swarm of starlings rose before me and swooped off to another part of the woods. Two sparrows chased a blue jay from a tree. High up a 747 heaved up toward California, drowning out the protests of the jay. There was low growth of white pine beneath the higher elms and maples, and thick tangles of thorny vines growing over a carpet of leaf mold that must have been two feet thick.

The land rose slowly but steadily enough so that I began to feel it in the tops of my thighs as I reached the crest. The hill down was considerably steeper, and the house was below in a kind of punch-bowl valley, a shabby building in a cleared patch of gravel and weeds among the encroaching trees.

The engine noise had been a generator. I could see it from here. There were five-gallon gasoline cans clustered around it, but it was silent at the moment. Conserving energy? Out of gas? A late model two-toned pink and gray Dodge Charger was parked, sleek and incongruous, behind the house. I looked at my watch. Twelve minutes past ten in the morning. Probably sleeping late out here on nature’s bosom. I sat down and leaned against the base of a maple tree and watched. In the next two hours six more planes flew over. Then about 12:15 the young girl I’d seen before came out with a big cardboard box, jammed it into a rusty perforated barrel, and set it ablaze. She had on, as far as I could tell, exactly what she’d been wearing before. White too-big T-shirt, wide-flared jeans, no shoes. Maybe she had ten outfits all the same. She paused to light a cigarette from the blaze and then went back inside. At 12:30 the mongrel bitch came out and nosed around near the burning trash till she found a scrap of bone that hadn’t made it to the incinerator. She rolled on it several times, then took it to the corner of the house and buried it.

At 1:22 Kevin Bartlett came out of the house with Vic Harroway. The boy’s arm was around Harroway’s waist and Harroway’s arm was around the boy’s shoulder. Like lovers. They walked to the Charger, separated. The boy got in the passenger’s side, Harroway got in the driver’s side, and they drove away. Just like that. They drove away, and I sat on my butt under the maple tree and watched them. We never sleep. We just sit and watch.

I sat and watched for the rest of the day and into the night. They didn’t come back. I was beginning to hallucinate about cheeseburgers and cashew nuts by the time I gave up. It was after eleven when I headed back through the woods, stumbling more in the dark. Visions of pepper steaks danced in my head. When I got really hungry, I never thought about coq au vin or steak Diane. I wondered why that was, but I had trouble concentrating because I kept thinking about the American chop suey my mother used to make and how I felt after I had eaten it. It was a lot better than thinking how I’d found Kevin Bartlett and lost him in the space of say, fifteen seconds. By the time I got to my car, I had a long scratch across the back of one hand from the thorny vines, and one eye was tearing from a twig. That time of night is cold in September north of Boston, and I turned on the heater. I found a place to eat that advertised itself as a “pub.” I think I was the only person there to eat. I jammed in at a stool at the bar and ordered three hamburgers and a beer. The beer came in a big stein that must have held half a quart. I drank two before the hamburgers arrived with two slices of kosher dill pickle and a handful of potato chips on an oval platter. It was a little hard to distinguish the hamburg from the bun, but I didn’t mind; I was busy trying not to break into a sweat as I ate. The place was obviously a singles spot or pick-up bar. The sound system was up full blast and featured high velocity hard rock music without interruption. All the booths and tables were filled, with people, mostly subthirty, standing together in between them and moving but barely on a very small dance floor. It was dim and very smoky. The décor was standard: dark panels, red carpet, pseudobarn. I was jostled often as I ate, once while drinking, and the beer dribbled down my chin and soaked through my stalking sweater. A bartender in a red Ike jacket and a mod blond haircut put a bowl of peanuts in front of me and refilled my beer glass.

I sipped at it now that the beast within had been pacified. At least I knew that Kevin’s stay with Harroway was voluntary. They liked each other. Maybe stronger. That was apparent from the hillside. Almost like lovers. His parents would be relieved at least that he was safe. But that didn’t do anything for explanation. Or maybe it did. Maybe it made the explanation worse. Maybe Kevin was in on all that stuff. Maybe he was in on the death threats. Maybe he was in on Maguire’s death. Good news and bad news, Mr. and Mrs. Bartlett, your kid’s not dead. He’s a murderer. Which is the good news you say? How the hell do I know? If I knew that kind of stuff, would I be sitting alone in a singles bar in a strange suburb at 12:35 on a Sunday night? I’m a detective; I just find out things. I don’t solve things. Well no, I don’t know where your boy is right this minute, Ma’am. Yes, sir, they drove away while I was up on the hill watching. I watched closely, though. Balls. The next guy that jostled me while I was drinking beer I was going to level. Trouble was the place was so crowded if I swung at someone, I’d hit three people. I got up and shoved my way out of the pub. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to the Bartletts’. I drove on into Boston and went to bed in my own apartment. I took the phone off the hook, went right to sleep, and didn’t dream.