Chapter 35



I WENT TO SEE Chief Cromwell in his office at Dowling Police headquarters. DiBella had called ahead for me, so they wouldn't open fire when I arrived. But I still had to wait a long time at the front desk. I was willing to. And finally, they sent me on in.

Cromwell mad-dogged me for a while, giving me the deadeye cop stare he was working on. I moved a chair a little closer to his desk and sat down and crossed my legs.

"Hi," I said.

Cromwell stared some more.

"How ya doin'?" I said.

More staring. Then, when he had me softened up, he spoke.

"You just won't learn," Cromwell said.

"I can't," I said. "Nobody tells me anything."

"What do you want to know, for crissake. We got the killers. They've confessed. What the fuck are you after?"

"I know where they got the guns," I said.

"Yeah?"

"And how they got the money to buy them."

"Yeah?"

"You ever have any complaints about either of them?" I said. "Clark or Grant?"

"Yes."

Cromwell leaned back in his chair. I noticed the pearlhandled .45 was back in its shiny holster on the corner of his desk. Looked good there.

"Well," Cromwell said after a while. "I can't talk you out of this, and I can't seem to scare you off."

"You could try charming me," I said.

"Would that work?"

"No, but I wouldn't have to punch you in the balls."

He rocked his spring-loaded swivel a little.

"Nobody wants this opened up," he said after a while. "The kids' parents, the school, the kids themselves."

He looked at me heavily for a minute.

"I don't. Town doesn't. We want to wrap it up neat and put it away and get on with it."

"How 'bout the people who lost someone in the shooting?" I said.

"They want it over. They know we got the bastards. They want to see them fry, and they want to move on as best they can. Nobody wants you opening up all the fucking wounds again."

"They won't fry in this state," I said.

"I know, just a manner of speaking," he said. "Been simpler if we'd shot them dead on the spot."

"That would have required you all to actually go on in there and maybe interrupt things," I said.

Cromwell nodded slowly. All of the General Patton crap seemed to have drained from him. He seemed gray and tired, almost human.

"I know," he said. "I know."

"You didn't know what to do," I said, "did you."

He shook his head.

"We're a small town," he said. "Upper-class. Quiet. We never ran into this sort of thing. Most of my guys never fired their weapons except on the range."

"You?" I said.

He looked at the big six-gun on the corner of his desk as if he'd never seen it before.

"No," he said.

"Hard to learn on the job like that," I said. "Most people aren't ready the first time."

"God, I hope there's no second time," he said.

"There'll be something," I said. "Sometime. And you'll be more ready."

"You're not going to leave this alone," Cromwell said.

"No," I said. "I'm not. Either of these kids got a history with you?"

"I don't give out juvie files," he said.

"I'm not looking for files. Just information. You and me. Alone in the room. Either of them been in trouble you know about?"

"We talked to the Grant kid couple times," Cromwell said.

He was looking past my left shoulder, out an office window, at the nice, neat stretch of lawn in front of the station. Orderly.

"He was shooting cats with a pellet gun," Cromwell said slowly. "Strays mostly, but he got a coupla pets and the owners complained and we brought him in and talked with him and his mother. He was maybe thirteen."

He shook his head.

"I've met his mother," I said.

"She just sort of said the hell with him. Like he's some sort of aberration. It's not my fault."

"Talk to his grandfather?" I said.

"They begged us not to. Both of them. I felt bad for the kid, tell you the truth. His mother's just a waste of time."

"The last hippie," I said.

"Yeah," Cromwell said. "So we confiscated the pellet gun and told him he was on probation and we were giving him a break, so if he got in any more trouble, we'd go hard on him."

"Did he?"

"Nothing official. I heard he hung out at the Rocks with the burnouts and freaks. But we never had any reason to bring him in again."

"What'd you do with the pellet gun?" I said.

"Give it to my sister's kid, lives outside Stockbridge."

"And he probably uses it to shoot cats," I said.

Cromwell shrugged.

"Maybe," he said. "But he's not doing it here."

"Anything with Jared Clark?"

"No. Never even heard of him until the Grant kid fingered him after the shooting."

"Ever talk with anybody about him?" I said.

"Talked with the school shrink."

"Dr. Blair?"

"Yeah. You met her?"

I nodded.

"She's something, isn't she?"

"She is," I said. "What did she tell you?"

"Classic stuff," Cromwell said. "Jared was bullied a lot. Kids picked on him. Pushed him around. She feels he allied himself with Grant so that Grant would protect him."

"Why would Grant protect him?" I said.

"Don't know. He was the school tough guy. Big kid. Football player. Who would have thought it, him having the mother he did?"

"Sometimes, I guess, the apple falls as far as it can from the tree," I said.

He nodded.

"You know of any previous connection between Clark and Grant?" I said.

"No. But, you know how it is, they don't pop up on the screen unless they are causing trouble."

"And these guys weren't?"

"Except for the cat killings," Cromwell said.

"Love to know how they got together," I said.

"Maybe Blair knows," Cromwell said. "Ask her. Be a good excuse to talk with her."

"I will," I said. "Maybe she'll show me her knees."

"You gonna tell me about where they got the guns?" Cromwell said.

"No," I said.

"Isn't that sort of like withholding evidence?" Cromwell said.

"It's not like you need it for a conviction," I said.

Cromwell nodded.

"Just thought I'd ask," he said.

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