The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Chris Muessig Bias from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

A couple of years ago, Chris Muessig and his wife relocated from New York State to Cary, North Carolina, where he currently does editorial work for North Carolina State University and occasionally teaches English. His debut story was percolating for years, he says, before he applied himself to it. Its crime was inspired by a rash of gas-station robbery/killings that occurred on Long Island twenty years ago.

Jack-o’-lanterns lit the crisp evening with their complicit leers, but Frank Creegan sensed a worse mischief coming round. Something else slouched below the dark horizon, pushing the dead ahead of it like a wave.

Coming up on the intersection of 29A and Drowned Meadow Avenue, he heard yet another call on his scanner. Red and blue lights flashed up ahead at the Usoco station. He cut over to the right, trying to remember who would be on duty at the pumps at 8 p.m.

He parked on the shoulder. Aside from a familiar white sedan parked at the side of the station, the police cruiser was the only vehicle in the lot. Check that — a huge bicycle leaned by the air pump that jutted from the brick wall between the closed bays.

Creegan crossed the macadam with a heavy heart. An odd-looking man in an oversized bicycle helmet turned to look at him from the office door. Creegan recognized him as a resident of the adult home near the train station, an odd young soul given to slow-motion tours of the town on his 28-inch dinosaur of a bike. Creegan remembered the red eyes of its oversized reflectors and the swath of the battery-driven headlamp patrolling the dusk — one of God’s special sentries.

Officer Ray Evers stood just inside the office talking into his portable radio. The uniformed patrolman gave Frank a surprised but not unwelcoming look.

“You doing a double tour, Lieutenant?”

“No. I was just down the block and heard the squawk. This is my neighborhood. This is where I usually buy my gas. Who’s on their way?”

Evers shrugged. “Everybody. Won’t be room to breathe in here.”

Creegan took out his notebook. The helmeted figure beside them shifted from one sneaker to the other with his hands up in front of his chest like a T. rex. This near to the pale chin and cheeks, Creegan saw salt-and-pepper stubble belying the childish mannerisms.

“Is this man a witness, Evers?”

“I don’t think he saw the shooting, but he did find the body and call 911. I was just around the corner. This didn’t happen very long ago.”

“On that phone?” Creegan pointed his chin at the pay phone by the inner door connecting office to work area.

“No, he used the booth on the corner out there. He was waiting in it when I pulled in.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jeremy Jordan — J.J., they call him.”

“Who’s they?”

“Well, shopkeepers, neighborhood people. You know. He’s harmless and keeps to himself, but he tools around.”

“Did he see anybody?”

“I really just got here, Lieutenant. And he’s a little... addled.”

The benighted one did not seem to know he was being talked about.

“You see what you can get out of him while I take a look. Excuse me, J.J., I need to get by.”

Creegan was ready for it now. He looked down at the floor as he placed his steps. A thin cordite haze scratched at his throat and nose. As Evers went outside to give Creegan more room, he said, “I asked the dispatcher to get hold of the station owners.”

Creegan nodded and looked over the counter.

The stitching on the dead man’s blue coveralls spelled out Sal, but it was Turgot, all right. He was on his back with his head propped in the corner of the cramped space. Creegan looked down on him with his hands by his sides; then he sidestepped carefully to the right so he could see around the edge of the counter and get a look at the body full-length.

He squatted down to get an angle on two apparent entry wounds. The lower one was even with the sternum on the left side. It had produced a sopping patch darker than the dark shirt. The other wound was a hand’s length above the first, near the collarbone, less bloody. No blood seeping from underneath the body.

Turgot’s face stared past him, not quite emptied of the good nature that had greeted every entrant to the store: “Hello, buddy!” The ghost of amiable welcome overlapped in Frank’s imagination with the ringing percussion of confined shots. He raised his right hand and sketched the sign of the cross over the body.

“I think he was more into Allah,” said Evers from the doorway.

Frank looked up at him; Evers retreated and began questioning J.J.

Frank’s eyes kept busy, and he stayed in his crouch. A small green pencil, the stubby kind without eraser, was resting on the dead man’s left thigh, up near the groin. Frank stood and his left knee clicked. He kept panning the room.

A blotter-sized calendar covered most of the countertop. The day squares contained appointments, calls, deli orders, and so on, in several different kinds of handwriting. The expired days were marked off with diagonals.

Someone had scrawled a small swastika on the top edge on the customer’s side. The penciled image stood out from what had been three fingers of blankness. Doodling cluttered the other three margins, penned and penciled perhaps by employees as they idled on the business phone — but no other swastikas.

He read the upside-down entries for that day, and then he returned to the bent cross. No more than a half-inch square, the cursive rounding indicated something hastily done. He took his eyes away and did another three-sixty.

Evers’s sergeant pulled up. The patrolman moved toward the car, pulling J.J. gently after him.

No casings in sight. Maybe a revolver, or the guy knew enough to pick them up. Or they’d rolled under the motor-oil rack or the soda cooler where Crime Scene would hopefully find them.

He looked again at the body. The blind gaze was locked on the cubbies behind the counter. Frank’s professional self refused to be drawn into the mystery of that deceptive intensity, but he could not help thinking about the history here.

Turgot had worked at the station for several years, often doing both shifts seven days a week. Frank had never pried, but he guessed much of the man’s pay went to an extended family in Turkey. Human industry, blood ties, and then murder setting it all awry — for what? Beer and cigarettes? How much treasure could the emptied cash drawer have possibly held in between the night drops? It would take some doing to balance out this equation.

Sergeant Mike Monafferi appeared in the doorway.

“Lieutenant?”

“I know the deceased, Mike,” Creegan said, which was not strictly true, but he wanted to rationalize his intrusion. “I live less than two miles from here.”

“Whattaya think? Robbery-murder?”

“Probably.” But he came back to the swastika. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to hang around until the investigators get here.”

“There’s only one coming from Homicide. Spread pretty thin tonight. Two floaters washed up from the Sound in different spots, and there’s that big bloody smash-up on Memorial Parkway.”

Creegan nodded; he’d heard the radio exchanges, hammer strokes from a dark forge.

Swastikas: the range brand of madness, which had begun reappearing on the facades of synagogues, Jewish tombstones, and the garage doors of African Americans settling into what had been exclusively white neighborhoods. The crooked marks had been incubating in the playrooms of crackpots. Hadn’t Manson carved one into his forehead? A special unit had even been proposed to investigate the rising number of hate-related crimes.

A third patrol car rolled up, followed shortly by the precinct detectives in an unmarked car. The sergeant went out to them.

The Crime Scene vans were all over the county, so Evers and a female officer were set to taping off the half-acre lot and bordering sidewalks to keep the gathering tramplers back. A detective began talking to J.J. The other, Ivey Coleman, a guy with a good work ethic, started toward Creegan but was called back by his partner.

Creegan stayed in the cramped office, continuing to move his eyes methodically across every surface at every level. One of the fluorescents winked and tsked overhead, not helping matters. It was the only sound in the room, although a small portable TV flickered on a side shelf. It was turned down so low that the local news played like a tiny mime show — a quiet, peripheral companion. Maybe Turgot had reduced the volume politely when the killer came in to him. No doubt exterior shots of the station would soon be feeding into the tiny screen, creating a fitful hall of mirrors.

On the counter, flush with the wall below the window sill, was a small cardboard box filled to the brim with the same type of green pencil that lay upon the body. Frank leaned over and saw that the pencils were presharpened and had been stamped with gold lettering: North Hills Country Club.

The pencils were obsolete; Peconic County had recently taken over the struggling private course and renamed it High Meadow Golf Club. Crews were already at work on the refurbishment. Apparently, just the one pencil was missing from the box, although several others were displaced into a tiny logjam.

Past impressions: Turgot rubbing his palms together, then a hand darting out to rearrange some item on the counter, always aligning and making the most of things that fell into his possession — the courtesy pens, promotional calendars, notepads with little logos or tiny letterheads on them, all straightened into a personalized symmetry on the counter, the walls, or the surrounding shelves. Outside, a tall, thirtyish guy with dark hair was crossing the macadam. His overcoat was much more stylish than Frank’s. It was the new guy in Lieutenant Stout’s crew, Joe Vecchio.

The son-in-law of a state assemblyman and a law-school graduate, Vecchio was getting a shot at the most prestigious unit in the county. It wasn’t the first time Frank had seen one of these preordained climbs up the ladder of influence. Yet, Homicide assignments had never been indiscriminate plums; curried or not, investigators had to demonstrate a proven combination of persistence and intelligence to be considered for that crack squad.

Vecchio stopped by Monafferi’s car. Creegan watched him through the plate glass and was watched in turn as the homicide investigator listened to the others. Vecchio sent Coleman’s partner, K. P. Satcher, over to help the uniforms canvass the onlookers and then headed toward the office with Ivey close behind. He stopped in the doorway with no detectable emotion on his square, handsome face.”Lieutenant Creegan, headquarters wants you to call the chief of detectives. He’s at home.” No self-introduction; no readable tone.

“I’m not officially here, Detective Vecchio.”

The other nodded tightly but said nothing. What was going on here?

“All right. In the meantime, I’d like to make a suggestion about the scene.” He made sure he also caught Ivey’s eye and ear.

“Don’t worry,” Vecchio said. “I already got the word to defer to you on everything.”

“Excuse me?”

“The chief wants you to call right away. You can have them patch you through on my radio. This way you can get it straight from the... source’s mouth.”

Vecchio had parked right behind Frank. Chief Dewey picked up after one ring. The long and the short of it was that Frank’s old friend wanted him to babysit Vecchio until he could break loose an experienced secondary from the rest of hell night.

Creegan made believe he had a choice.

“Okay,” he said, “but if I start this, I want to be in on the finish.”

“Suit yourself, Frank. Just make sure this Vecchio kid don’t screw the pooch.”

Creegan hung up the handset. Then he deliberately checked the interior of Vecchio’s car.

Homicide investigators were assigned specific vehicles whose interiors were usually good indicators of their drivers’ habits. This one did not look or smell like a fast-food eatery. Nor was it littered with odds and ends of paperwork.

A polyethylene file box sat square in the middle of the rear seat, and a fat binder in county colors occupied the passenger seat. The official plastic dividers were outnumbered by paper flaps that stuck out like a rawhide fringe. He flipped it open to the title page and read by reflected light: “Forensics and the Modern Investigator — A Seminar in Advanced Scene Analysis.”

Crime Scene pulled up as he emerged from the car. Creegan asked one of the techs to push the tape line out beyond the corner booth the cyclist had used for his 911 call.

“I don’t think anyone’s used the phone since we got here,” Frank said. “I want to keep it that way, and we need to get the tramplers back farther, but not so far they don’t feel talkative. I’ll have Monafferi block off Drowned Meadow Avenue.”

The tech had worked scenes with Creegan before and just nodded. Like everybody else, though, he was trying to figure out what the hell an off-duty shift commander was doing at a felony murder scene.

A responder from the volunteer firehouse sped past on 29A, heading west; an EMT vehicle and a pumper were not far behind, flashing by with operatic wails and big, blasting honks, gravitating to their own scene of misrule.

Vecchio was out of sight as Creegan strode back to the office; but from Ivey’s hovering posture, Frank could tell the murder investigator was down taking a look behind the counter.

Vecchio rose up to his full height just as Frank reached the open door.

“What do you think?” Creegan asked. “What’s your first impression?”

The other’s brow drew down slightly. He said, “Not everybody trusts first impressions.” Did he think he was being tested?

“I know, but it’s a way to start brainstorming.”

“Well, it looks like a robbery gone bad. What was that suggestion you were going to make before you went out for your call?”

Creegan positioned himself in front of the counter.

“Here’s the way part of this feels,” he said. “Either the shooter or somebody with him reached over real quick and fumbled out a pencil from that box there. He scribbled this little swastika right-handed on the blotter, real fast and sloppy, standing on this side, and then he flung the pencil towards the body, which was already on the floor. See it there on his leg? Maybe not the shooter, but an accomplice who watched his friend pull the trigger and grab the cash and decided on impulse that he had to do hisbit.”

Vecchio listened intently. “Okay,” he said. “We can probably eliminate our bike rider from doing any impulsive drawing. He acted out his every move for Evers. He came in to ask the victim to hook on the air hose so he could pump up a soft tire and as soon as he saw the body he backed out, hands up in front of him like this, and ran for the phone booth.”

They looked out into the lot, which was fairly well lighted. Monafferi was still working on J.J., but he seemed exasperated. J.J.’s body stooped in an absent, almost meditative posture. Where’s he looking? Frank wondered. Somewhere off to the right where a wooded lot abutted the macadam.

“That drawing,” Vecchio resumed. “That could have been done anytime after they pulled off last month’s sheet. And why couldn’t your friend here have had the pencil in his hand when he got shot?”

“We’re theorizing. He was a lefty, though, and he only used pens. He would hand a pen to anyone who was signing a charge slip — can’t use pencil for that — and when he wrote a note he always pulled a pen out of his top pocket — usually an insurance company or tree-trimmer’s promotional thing. See there?”

He pointed at the clicker end of a yellow-and-white ballpoint protruding from the pocket in between the bullet wounds. A kind of guilt about this easy summoning of Turgot’s mannerisms chafed the edges of his thought process. He pushed through it.

Vecchio grasped Creegan’s familiarity with the victim, but he seemed to have trouble with Frank’s intuitive leaps. What could he say, though, to someone who had methodically cleared nearly every homicide he had handled before moving up to command? Frank sympathized.

“If it had been in his hand,” he said, “I think it would have ended up on the floor, maybe off to his left where his southpaw is stretched out. I know that’s in no way conclusive, but I’m sure he wasn’t using a pencil.”

He looked over at the box. “That’s a fresh supply of pencils. Let’s find out how and when they got here. I think it’ll help our odds if we get the techs to work hard on the pencil and the box. They’ll be all over the blotter and the counter, but I’m hoping the pencils will give us a pristine chronology.”

“But this probably started as a robbery, right?”

“Well, the killer or killers probably took the money. Turgot’s pockets don’t look tampered with, but they may have been emptied out, too. We’ll see if his wallet’s gone when we move him. But whether that was the prime motive, I don’t know. That little Nazi logo there makes me think twice.”

“Someone in the shop probably would have erased it or scratched it out if it was made earlier,” Vecchio conceded.

“Good point.”

Vecchio’s eyes went out to those questioning the score or so of neighbors who’d walked over from nearby homes.

“I told them to start knocking on doors after they get through with the crowd. Are you going to stay with us while we collect evidence?”

“Yeah, sure; I’ll be back in a minute. You stay with it. Ivey here is good with scene work.”

As he hit the outer air, Frank let out a breath and saw it vaporize in the deepening chill. He relieved Monafferi of J.J. and stood side by side with the latter, trying to get in synch with his field of vision. The faraway gaze was aimed toward underbrush with a dark backdrop of adult maples and some pines. Creegan looked harder and saw a void about a jeep’s width near the back corner of the parking area. Fire trail?

“Hey, J.J. Did you see something happen over there?”

Creegan pointed with a grand gesture at the woods. J.J. leaned right and a little in front of his questioner, as if he were trying to see around a corner and farther along the trail.

“Did you see someone go in there, J.J.?”

J.J. straightened and the fingertips of the T. rex hands began rubbing together.

“J.J., did you?”

“Yeah. Two guys.”

“When was that? Tonight when you found Turgot?”

“Who’s Turgot?” J.J. asked, and his helmet slipped down a little on his furrowed brow.

“The man inside. The one who was shot.”

“His name is Tony. He said to call him Tony.”

“Did you see the two men go into the woods just before you found Tony?”

“Yeah. They was runnin’.”

Creegan looked at Monafferi. Together they assessed the lighting in the lot, the full moon riding clear of the scattered clouds behind them.

“Did they go in through that trail, J.J.?”

“Yeah. They ran in there. Can’t ride through there anymore. Too many sticks and bushes.”

Even as they spoke, a middle-aged couple wielding a flashlight strolled out of the overgrown trail and teetered on the cement curbing, watching the show.

“There’re houses back there with a dirt road access off of Twenty-nine,” Creegan said aloud, remembering.

“Yeah,” J.J. said. “Little houses but no sidewalks and no streets.”

Monafferi whistled at a tech, and then headed for the clueless couple.

“Did you get a good look at the two guys, J.J.? Were they coming out of the office when you rode in?”

The fingers stopped rubbing and curled in toward J.J.’s palms as he scanned his memory.

“No. Just two guys runnin’ into the woods. I didn’t see them in the office. No.” His index fingers unfurled. “No.”

“Did you see their faces? No? Did they have masks or hats on?”

“One guy had a baseball hat on backwards. The other guy had his hood up.”

“Like a sweatshirt hood? Yeah? Dark shirts, light? What kind of pants?”

Nondescript clothing, maybe jeans, grayish tops.

“What color was their skin?”

J.J.’s shoulders started to rise like they were being reeled up into the sky; his eyes squinted almost shut. “White,” he said. “They ran white.”

“What do you mean?”

“They ran white, not black.”

“Okay, J.J. Can you stay with us for a while? I want you to talk to Detective Coleman about what you saw. We’ll give you a ride home in one of the police cars if you can stay.” Frank signaled Ivey.

J.J. nodded, but had a second thought. “What about my tire? Tony can’t set up the hose ‘cause he’s dead.”

“We’ll see. Let me get the detective over here.”

They stood waiting for Ivey, oddly matched, the damp chill working into fingers and feet.

Walt Overholser, the M.E., appeared and did a strange duck walk under the yellow tape, heading for the office with big, outturned feet slapping the pavement. Frank looked at the high-shouldered, aging figure. What a target that man must have made as a corpsman on Guadalcanal.

“That’s the Scarecrow,” J.J. said. He looked radiant, like a celebrity hound who’s just spotted an idol.

But Creegan did not share his joy. Overholser had had his usual morbid effect upon him, breathing upon his worry for his son Michael, ashore in Lebanon with the Fleet Marines. Frank had his own surreal, quarter-century-old memories of hitting the beach in Beirut under the watchful eyes of women in bikinis and men astride horses and dusky kids dancing excitedly on the sand as he and his fellow Marines rode by in their amphibians on the way to the airport. Every generation seemed to have its Barbary shore, didn’t it?

Acting out of this sudden melancholy, he put an arm around J.J.’s shoulders. But the body inside the baggy clothing tensed with a strength beyond muscularity. Creegan dropped his arm. “Detective Coleman’s coming now,” he said. “I want you to tell him about everything you did and saw from the time you biked in — especially about the two men who went into the woods. Okay? Then we’ll get you home.”

“I don’t live at home.”

“Back to the place you’re staying, then.”

A couple was conferring across the tape with the female officer: the Hodges, both short, slender, faces looking like they’d been slapped repeatedly. They were dressed for a formal affair that must have seemed very frivolous now. The officer turned. He nodded and she lifted the tape for them.

They were nice people, in their early forties, and had owned this place fifteen years without mishap, other than a larcenous night-manager. Al Hodge started talking from a dozen paces. “My God, Frank, your guy said Turgot was shot dead. They wouldn’t say that unless they knew for sure, right? It’s not someone else in there, is it?”

“I’m afraid it is him, Al.”

Annie Hodge leaned into her husband with a contorted face that was painful to watch. She struggled to open her throat.

“He... we were robbed?” she asked. “Did he get shot... because he wouldn’t give up... the stupid money?”

Creegan shrugged sadly. “Folks, did he have any enemies that you’re aware of?”

“Turgot?” they said together.

“How about family disputes? Money problems? Expensive habits?”

“The only thing he ever got for himself was that white Chevy there, which he considered an investment. Right, Annie?”

“No run-ins with customers?”

“He was my meeter and greeter, for God’s sake. You always got the treatment, didn’t you? And he never forgot a face.”

“Just asking; there’s always crazies. But no one who might have had a problem with his being a foreigner, say?”

“He never said anything about that. And I’ve never had a crank call or letter about it, either.”

“Okay, but let me know if anything pops out of the memory bank. We’ll need a list of your other employees, too.”

“He got along fine with the mechanics and his relief.”

“Yes. But maybe they saw him having problems with someone that you didn’t hear about. Let’s find out about today’s customers — the past week’s. Maybe further back. Where’d he live?”

“He has people over in Drowned Meadow Depot. He had a room as small as a kid’s there. God, those folks are gonna wail when they hear this. Talk about a bunch that pulls together.”

“Can I have the address?”

He took it and put the Hodges with Satcher to work up lists of staff and customers and to sort out receipts.

Fresh tape now reached into the gaping darkness of the woods. Beams of light touched here and there under limbs and behind underbrush. A tech was breaking out the big lights, although only daylight would allow a proper ground search.

Monafferi came up. “A car was parked in a turnaround off that lane running from 29A to the bungalows. The couple that tromped in noticed it earlier. Beat-up old compact. Gray or light blue. No plate info. Didn’t see anybody parking it or leaving in it. There’s four families back in there; the ones that were at home didn’t see anything. One guy thought he heard some firecrackers go off at about the right time.”

The wind rushed through the pine tops with a highway sound. “Keep at it, Sarge,” Creegan said and headed back to the office. He could see Vecchio pointing out something to a tech. Frank considered the detective’s knitted brow and his narrowed eyes. The eyes lifted up from Turgot and rested on Frank without relaxing at all.

Frank’s rear bedroom had a picture window. He looked out with post-shower lassitude at the long, narrow yard. The grass was still green, but shot with silver, and had begun humping and clumping for the winter. A great oak towered over the thinned woods at the far end of the property. His gaze rose up the dark, rough bark, but he could not see the crown from this angle.

He had a troublesome pride in the ancient tree; he had never seen a larger one on the Island. It had withstood many hurricanes over the decades, although Agnes had snapped off a huge limb that had once pointed to the horizon like the arm of an archangel.

He and Mike had borrowed a monster extension ladder, some heavy ropes, and long saws so that they could separate the splintered bough from the upright trunk. The sawn lengths still stretched out in the shade at the back of the lot, moldering but substantial, like fallen columns. Mike had been very aware of being a real help to him, clearly doing a man’s work. The proud young face still shone out from a timeless grotto in Frank’s memory. He had seen the same expression on his son’s face when they had gone down to Parris Island to see him graduate from boot camp.

Elsewhere in the house was the murmuring chorus of his wife and daughter and younger son. Laundry was thrashing; female lines from The Merchant of Venice were being rehearsed. Curtis would be readying his arm. Frank thought about a quick nap before driving out to see the boy pitch in the fall-ball championship.

The phone rang. It was Vecchio. As Frank listened, he imagined his kid on the mound, looking toward an empty seat in the bleachers.

Fred Stout stood in the dark hall outside the interrogation room drinking boiled coffee from a Styrofoam cup. He was a blocky, large-pored man, with a brain that had as low a center of gravity as his body. He graced Frank with a direct look as he took another sip of sludge.

“Frank. Wonder Boy told the shrimp we had a synagogue break-in and that we think some old friends of his are involved. We got him a couple years back for helping two kids mess up Brith Sholom cemetery. The others were juveniles, but he was eighteen and took the heat. He’s bitter about that, so now that he thinks he can pay them back, he’s not being shy. I guess you got some bad news for him, right?”

Stout got a silent profile rather than an answer as Frank set up by the two-way glass. “Come on, Frank, before I can shake somebody loose, you’ll have this cleared.”

“Lieutenant Creegan?”

They both turned toward Ivey, coming up with his notebook fanned open. “Satch caught up with the victim’s family. The brother-in-law says he brought dinner over for the victim last night about six-thirty, about an hour and a half before the shooting, and he was as cheerful as always. No one else was there and he didn’t talk about any hassles.

“Oh, and I know you were real curious about those pencils, right? Well, the brother-in-law works for the county crew upgrading the golf course where the pencils came from. He says it was him that brought them. He handed over that box to the victim at dinnertime last night. The box was still taped shut when he gave it to him.”

Creegan thanked him. They continued watching the Q and A, and Frank put his hand up when it seemed Stout was going to make another overture. He wanted to read the suspect and observe Vecchio’s technique without any distractions before going in.

Dwight Apgard was almost without shape inside his baggy clothes. His hooded sweatshirt was a dingy gray devoid of logo or script. Under the table, the legs of his bleach-streaked jeans looked like they were draped over sticks. The dots and smudges of his pinched little features barely disturbed the roundness of a small, close-cropped skull. He looked as if he would crack like an egg.

Vecchio was listening intently while Dwight rewrote history, explaining how not he but someone else had masterminded the vandalism he’d been busted for. Evidently Apgard Senior had had to remortgage to make good on the property restoration, a consequence that had clearly taken Dwight’s life to a deeper circle of hell.

“You think he’s the twerpetrator?” Stout asked.

“No. He’s a passenger, I believe. We use him to get to the real guy. Here we go.”

Vecchio greeted Frank politely, feigning a trace of surprise at his appearance. Apgard tore his eyes away from his attentive listener, wondering perhaps if the wind had just veered.

“Dwight, this is Lieutenant Creegan. He’s working the case, too. He might have some news for us.”

Creegan sat down diagonally across from Dwight.

“You look like a priest with those glasses on and that turtleneck,” Dwight said.

Frank gave him a sad, crinkling look and then said, “Dwight, forget about this vandalism stuff. There was a shooting last night, and I know you were there when it happened.”

Vecchio widened his eyes and looked from one to the other. Dwight’s face began to mottle.

Vecchio said, “No way! Is that true, Dwight? Damn, I guess I have to read you your rights.” He did so with a hurt smile.

Stunned, but still clinging to their barely vacated rapport, Dwight waived his rights to an attorney.

“I don’t know nothin’ about a shooting,” he said after the formalities. “Where did it happen?” He sat back with folded arms, mimicking Vecchio’s widened eyes.

Frank turned to his left and said, “Detective, his print turned up at the gas station where that attendant was killed last night.”

“Really.” Vecchio looked even less cordially at Dwight.

“Oh,” the young man said. “You’re talkin’ about the Usoco deal. I heard about that on the news. Hey, I been in there a few times to buy gas. Maybe that’s why you found my prints. But I haven’t been in there for a while.”

Frank was shaking his head. “That pencil you used to leave your mark. That’s what the fingerprint was on. The box of pencils it came from got dropped off last night, just before the man was shot, so I know you were there. We also have a witness who saw two people leaving the scene. I guess it’s just a matter of letting him get a look at you in a lineup. But, here’s the thing. I think your pal did the shooting, not you. Who were you with, Dwight? That’s who we really want.”

Dwight’s arms tightened into a self-hug; he twisted sideways. “I wasn’t there last night.”

Vecchio took the folder Creegan had brought in and looked inside. “Huh! Sorry, Dwight, there’s no doubt about the match. You were in there after those pencils were dropped off.”

Creegan took in the torqued posture, the scrawny arms wrapping the ribcage. “Dwight, if you’re the only one we can place at the murder, you’re going to take all the blame. Again. Just like with the Jewish cemetery. That ain’t fair, is it?”

Suddenly, the kid sat up, dropping his arms, piling up his spine like a soldier. “All right, I was there. I did it.”

“Did what?” Vecchio asked.

“I shot him. I shot the Israeli guy.”

Creegan studied the new pose, the hands flexed like they were reaching for a different purchase, the challenging tone that had been pulled out of storage someplace.

“Dwight, that man you say you shot was not an Israeli.”

“His name was Sol and he had an accent. What else could he be?”

“Are you talking about the name he had stitched on his clothes? That was S-A-L, not S-O-L. And they were handed down from a guy that worked there before; they weren’t his. His name was Turgot. Turgot Suleymanoglu. That’s Turkish.”

Dwight squinted, as if he was mentally reshuffling a swollen, sticky deck of cards.

“What was he?”

“A Turk.”

“Like a towel-head, right? What have they done for us except sneak in and steal jobs?”

“He was here legally. Did you want the job he had? I didn’t think so. And I fought alongside the Turks in Korea. They were tough, brave. Good soldiers.”

“Well, that was in the old days. This guy was a migrant taking some American’s job.”

“Is that why he was killed?” Vecchio asked quietly. “This wasn’t just a robbery that went bad?”

Dwight gave a quick head shake. “Nah. He was my target of the week.”

Creegan didn’t like that answer. If the eradication program was for real, having Apgard in custody might not stop it.

“Where’s the weapon now, Dwight?” Creegan asked. “And where’d it come from?”

Dwight moved his tale into focus and said, “I chucked it in the harbor.”

“Where in the harbor?”

“I don’t remember. I was standing on one of the marina docks. By the gas pumps, maybe.”

“The lieutenant also asked where you got the gun,” Vecchio prompted.

Another hesitation. “I bought it off some guy in the city.”

“And how did you get on to him?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

“How long?”

Dwight shrugged.

“Why’d you chuck it? How were you going to hit your next target if your gun was in the harbor?”

“I can always get a gun.”

His story didn’t have much depth to it, but that didn’t seem to bother him. The main thing was that he had laid claim to the killing.

It was Creegan’s turn to prevaricate. Investigating crime was about the only situation in which he let truth take a backseat, matching lie for lie in line with some police wisdom his father had passed along to him: “To do a great right, do a little wrong.”

“Dwight, try to remember how long it’s been since you got the gun,” Creegan said earnestly.

“Why?”

“Because it was used in another bad crime. How long’s it been?”

“What crime?”

“How long? Think back and try to place it in time. What was going on in the world when you went into the Big Apple?”

“I don’t know. It was late summer.”

“Like August?”

“Yeah. Before the kids went back to school.”

“You’re real sure about that? Real sure.”

“Positive. It was hot as hell.”

“Ah, that’s bad. What if I told you that that gun was used to kill a pregnant woman in Belmont? And not a Jewish or a foreign woman. She was a blond, all-American deli clerk. Why did she get shot?”

“I didn’t shoot no pregnant woman.”

“Yeah, but Dwight, it happened three weeks ago, early October. You had the gun then. So why a young, pregnant woman all the way in to Belmont? You want to see the pictures to refresh your memory?”

He rotated the file and opened it so that Dwight could see the Polaroids of the woman on the floor, the damaged face, the gravid stomach, the cross at her blood-stained throat. Carrie Hedrickson, killed in Belmont on the far edge of Peconic County five years ago by person(s) unknown. Even if her case had gone cold, it served a purpose in the here and now.

The persona Dwight was trying for seeped away as he worked out the implications of Creegan’s lie. Some people would have asked for a lawyer at this point, but Dwight was at the tiller of a literal guilt trip, uncertain yet about the course he would follow.

“I didn’t shoot a pregnant woman.”

“Who did it then, Dwight?” asked Vecchio. “Did you loan the gun out to someone? You never knew what he used it for?”

Dwight did not know how to proceed. Creegan pitied the stunted mind and its vague, simplistic code, even though the deficiencies were to their advantage.

“That’s what happened, isn’t it, Dwight?” he prompted. “Like the detective said, you loaned it out and your friend used it for something you wouldn’t have gone along with.”

“It don’t make sense,” Dwight said. “Why would he go all the way to Belmont?”

“Who, Dwight?” Creegan asked. “Who are we talking about?”

Dwight shook his head.

“You don’t even have a car. Your dad says you didn’t borrow his last night, either. So your buddy drove his car, the one you parked in the woods. You were not alone in this.”

Vecchio said, “Dwight, in the little time we’ve spent together I can tell you’re not like this other guy. You’ll eventually have to tell us what went wrong at the gas station last night, but I don’t see you doing this Belmont thing. It’s too cold. What kind of person would kill a pregnant woman?”

Dwight was listening to something else inside his head.

“Dwight, listen to us,” Creegan urged. “I can understand you not wanting to give up a friend. But what kind of friend would use your gun on such a bad thing and then not even tell you? Whoever he is, he’s been holding out on you, leading you on. Setting you up. Hasn’t that happened to you before?”

Dwight looked up at him and asked, “Is my dad still out there?”

“Yes, but you can’t talk to him right now. We have to deal with this first.”

“I don’t want to talk to him. Can you tell him to go home?”

Creegan wondered if the kid would open up if he thought his father’s dysfunctional aura was gone from here. He stood up and said, “I’ll ask him to leave, Dwight, if that’s what you want.”

“Yeah, that’s what I want. Does my mom know about this?”

Creegan looked toward Vecchio, who said, “We haven’t been able to get hold of her yet. Would your father have called her?”

“He wouldn’t say anything to her. They don’t talk since she moved upstate. Can I call her?”

“When we finish here, Dwight.”

The kid slumped back. Frank went outside and stood next to Stout. Fred had reloaded his cup, and the burnt smell annoyed even Frank’s blurred receptors.

“I think he’s getting ready,” Frank said.

“His mutt of an old man is out there with Ivey.”

“Have we checked him out?”

“Domestic violence. Drunk driving. That’s it.”

“Maybe we should try harder to get hold of the mother.”

Stout pushed off like a rowboat. Inside, Vecchio was killing time until Creegan got back. He asked Dwight if he had any other family besides the split parents. There had been a little brother, but he had died of pneumonia. Sick little guy. And a girl cousin that he liked lived out in California. They had lost touch.

Frank went back in. “Your dad left already.”

“Did he say anything?”

“The detective says he just got up and walked out.”

Dwight disappeared a little deeper into his clothes. Was he feeling abandoned or relieved?

Creegan felt some real panic. “Jeez, Dwight, it wasn’t your dad that went with you last night, was it?”

He felt Vecchio stir slightly. But Dwight was absolutely convincing when he shook his head no. “My old man won’t even let me help him change spark plugs. He ain’t got no patience with me.”

“Well, he’s gone now.”

“Was this thing in Belmont maybe an accident?” Dwight asked.

“Look at the pictures again. Twice in the face. Once is maybe an accident, but not twice. He put two shots into Turgot, too. It’s a pattern.”

Dwight took another sidelong look at the photos, his rickety faith collapsing further in on itself.

“It can’t be.”

“Is this guy the only one who treats you square?” Vecchio asked. “Is that why you’re reluctant to tell us who he is?”

Dwight gave that some thought. “He doesn’t mind having me along when he does things.”

“What things?”

“Playin’ pool. Bowling, once in a while.”

“Any other things?”

“I’ve been along when he’s gone into a few stores and bad-mouthed the help if they don’t speak English good. We stole stuff on them. This thing that happened last night — it’s something we kicked around for a while.”

“Shooting someone instead of just bad-mouthing them?”

“Nah. I mean it was supposed to be just a robbery, a real robbery, not just shoplifting. We wanted to send a message to the ones stealing jobs.”

“Sounds like your pal tried out the robbery angle on his own first. In Belmont.”

“It wasn’t my gun,” Dwight said. “I lied about that.”

Creegan said, “Our witness told us that you guys didn’t hide your faces. If you didn’t plan on killing the man, why would you let your faces hang out?”

Dwight leaned forward now, resting his chin on folded arms like a kid in school detention. “I didn’t think he’d recognize me. I only been in there once or twice to fill lawn mowers.”

“Hello, buddy!” Creegan said, imitating Turgot’s voice and accent as best he could.

Dwight was startled. “Yeah. How’d you know he said that?”

“He said that to every guy that walked in. But he may have recognized you. At least your friend thought so, right? That’s why he shot him. If the man could finger you, then you could finger your friend.”

“Give us a name, Dwight,” Vecchio said. “We know you didn’t pull the trigger, but it’s because he recognized you that this man was killed. Admit it.”

Dwight stared at a point between the two men and said nothing. His face was desolate rather than defiant.

Vecchio’s fingers tapped the crime photos, and Dwight’s gaze was drawn back to them.

Creegan leaned forward with his fingers laced and waited until Dwight looked up at him. “Son, you’re wasting good impulses on a bad person. This guy’s not worth your loyalty after what he did to that young woman and to Turgot.”

He waited a beat.

“If you keep quiet now, you’ll be sending yourself away to a very dark and lonely hole that will go on and on forever. Never stops. Can’t you feel it closing in on you now? You had so little to do with this. You hooked up with bad company, that’s all. Basically all you did was grab a pencil and draw that little swastika, like when you went out that night with the kids in the graveyard, right?”

Creegan thought he sensed tiny connections closing.

“Who’s the real bad guy, Dwight? He’s still out there with that gun, and he’s not about what you thought he was, is he? Dwight, save yourself.”

Dwight’s features seemed to enlarge, like a dilated pupil. He said a name. Vecchio got an address from him and looked at Creegan, who said, “It’s yours, man.”

Vecchio got up and left. Creegan watched the momentary luster fading from Dwight’s face. He unlaced his fingers and extended a hand. “Thanks, Dwight. You did the right thing.”

The kid looked at the hand.

He said, “You talk like a priest, too.”

Then he took the hand as if the act were something new to him. Creegan gave it a good, firm shake and let go. He grabbed Vecchio’s pad and flipped it to a clean page. “Okay, let’s get it all down and behind us. I’ll stay with you through this.”

“Can I call my mom after I’m done? I can call collect. She’ll take a call from me.”

“Sure. But before you do, we’ll talk over the best way to break this to her. What about your dad?”

Dwight’s only response was to pick up the pencil.

Later, when the grimy-looking paragraphs had all been set down, Creegan asked, “Dwight, do you want to see a real priest?”

“I ain’t Catholic.”

“What are you?”

“I’m nothing. I don’t need a priest. I got you, right?”

On Sunday a steady rain held back the sunrise. Frank woke to the sound but did not try to go back to sleep. A ruthless, forgotten dream was waiting for him there.

While he got the coffee going, he thought about Dwight — and Curtis, too, who had waited up for him with Ellen last night. The kid had had a good outing and did not let resentment get in the way of telling about it. Frank had done his best to relive the innings as if he’d been there. He would remember both boys at Mass today, along with Turgot — and Mike.

He used an umbrella when he went out to fetch the paper. The headline of the special edition said, “MARINE AND FRENCH BARRACKS BOMBED IN BEIRUT; SCORES KILLED.”

Time charred to ash inside his head and heart. He was not sure how long it was before he was able to quiet his raging soul and hear the rain again.

He went in to wake his wife. As he stood over her, he glanced out the rear window and remembered the shy pride on Michael’s face as the two of them had dragged the great tree limb into the shade.