The Letter Of The Law

CHAPTER 8

A troop of towering white thunderclouds was pressing down from the north, threatening to ruin Bolinger's day off. He'd rented a pontoon boat for the day, and he sat now waiting by himself in the morning sun while the boat bumped steadily against the marina's aluminum dock. His brother, Kurt, was bringing his family. Only last night, Bolinger had been informed that that would also include Kurt's wife's sister from Atlanta and her new husband, whom Bolinger had never met before. He wasn't thrilled.

"Hey, he's a good guy," Kurt had told him. "You'll like him. He's a cop."

"Great," Bolinger had replied, "we can talk about bad guys, like the mailman going for a walk on his day off."

"You'll like him."

Bolinger shook his head at the thought. He didn't like anybody. Kurt, on the other hand, thought everyone was swell. He lived in a nice suburb, had a nice wife, a little on the heavy side but she could cook, two kids, one boy and one girl, and a job as an accountant at a telemarketing company with a great 401(k) plan. Although Kurt was younger and taller and had thinning blond hair, the two of them looked like brothers. But it was almost comical how different they were. When they were children Bolinger had teased Kurt by telling him that he was adopted.

With both their parents dead, they were all each other had in the way of family, and as they got older that seemed to mysteriously transcend any differences. When the silver Volvo wagon pulled into the gravel lot, the kids piled out like excited puppies. Their joy was infectious. Even Bolinger had to smile. Renting a pontoon boat was something beyond Kurt's scope. Too much wind, too much sun, too many things that could go wrong with the outboard motor with no way to fix it. So it was with great pride that Uncle Bob came up with schemes that his niece and nephew would look back on as memorable.

Bolinger got up from the captain's chair to catch the kids as they shot off the dock and into his arms. He kissed his sister-in-law, Luanne, as she stepped boldly onto the bow and shook hands with her sister, Eileen, a pretty little dish with bleached blond hair that was pulled back tightly into a ponytail. The last time Bolinger had seen her, at Kurt's wedding, she had been a skinny little kid with freckles and teeth too big for her head. Time went fast. The cop husband was bringing up the rear with Kurt, lugging more than his half of a big, shiny blue cooler. He was short like Bolinger, but much younger and pumped up like a gym rat. His hair was like Bolinger's, too, cut really short, only black instead of gray.

"I told you I had everything taken care of," Bolinger said without disguising his surly nature. He took the cooler from the two men and set it down disgustedly on the deck beside his own rusty green Coleman model. He didn't like people cutting in on his territory when he was the host.

"It's gonna rain, Bob," Kurt fretted, casting a baleful eye at the sky.

"Maybe not," the young cop put in, gazing northward himself. "Maybe it'll pass right over."

Bolinger nearly smiled, and held out his hand. "Bob Bolinger," he said.

"Vince Cubbins," the young man said. "But call me Cubby."

"How about a beer, Cubby?"

"I've got wine coolers," Kurt offered, dramatically zipping his Polo windbreaker against a gust.

"Beer sounds good," Cubby said.

Bolinger reached into the green Coleman and pulled out two cans of Foster's from under a stack of cellophane-wrapped bologna sandwiches. He opened them with a satisfying hiss, took a long swig, and began unmooring the boat.

He eased the boat away from the dock and made his way through the chop to a secret spot in the lee side of a cove where he had had some luck before. By the time they got there, everyone was spray-soaked. The sudden calm allowed the sun to warm them, but that only lasted long enough for Bolinger to set up the kids with some battered old fishing rods. The tall clouds blotted out the sun and rain sprayed down from above in warm, heavy sheets. The kids were gleefully drenched, while their dad was tucked in a dry corner of the boat under the roof next to his wife. Kurt had that I-told-you-so look on his face, and Bolinger thought he heard him mutter something about the whole thing being ridiculous. He was relieved when Cubby suggested another beer and Eileen got right in there with them. Whenever the call for alcohol came from a guest, it got Bolinger off the hook for looking like he had a problem.

For nearly an hour, it rained as hard as they drank. The downpour drummed the boat's flat tin roof like a thousand tap dancers, forcing them to raise their voices to be heard above the din. Bolstered by the children's glee, the beer, and his newfound ally, Bolinger ignored his brother's whining pleas to head back to shore. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the clouds stormed south and the sun shone brightly. The fish stopped biting, but the beers tasted better and better, and the laughter of Cubby's wife, Eileen, rang out clear across the cove, echoing off the rocky hillside. Even Kurt joined in by telling a funny story about how he'd tried to return a cordless phone he'd had for over a year.

Soon the whole crew was hungry, and while Kurt and his wife spooned yogurt from plastic cups, the rest of them threw down Bolinger's sandwiches, a simple selection of bologna on white bread sloppily dressed with either brown mustard or ketchup. By mid-afternoon it became unexpectedly warm, warm enough for a dip. Eileen stripped to her underwear and went in. Cubby followed in his shorts, while the kids tittered and pinched each other until the boy, who was ten, threw his older sister in. Bolinger sat in his own sweat smoking and smiling and forgetting about everything until Eileen thrust herself out of the water and onto the bow, where she stood soaking in the sun, a dripping-wet goddess.

"You're livin' right," he said later to Cubby. The two of them were sitting by themselves on Kurt's patio, trying to outlast the night.

Cubby only nodded. Everyone else had gone to bed long ago, and the conversation had finally begun to wane. A shooting star streaked across the vast dark sky, briefly outshining the mosaic of constellations.

"What's the worst you ever saw?" Cubby asked pensively.

"What do you mean?" Bolinger said, drawing on his Winston hard enough to make his face briefly glow in the orange light. His eyes were dark like empty pits.

"I mean, what's the worst thing you ever seen on a job?" Cubby asked, staggering out of his chair and over to the bushes where he could pee. Over his shoulder he said, "I mean you been at it a long time. You must have seen some bad shit."

Bolinger nodded. "Yup."

Cubby shook himself, zipped up, and began to pace back and forth. "I guess I'm wondering if you ever get used to it, or if there's things, some things, that you just never forget."

Bolinger considered. He hated to see the day end like this, but the kid really wanted to know, and Bolinger already had an affection for him. "I guess it depends on you. Some guys just start to laugh about it. They get hard on the inside. Hard and cold, but they seem pretty cheerful 'cause they're always looking for the humor in it, the dark humor. But me? I guess there's a couple things I'll never forget. Yeah, that's how I am. I just carry it around. I'm not saying it's a good way to be, probably not…"

Cubby nodded and was silent for a moment before he blurted out, "I saw a woman who was taped up and strangled and she was cut open like one of those frogs you dissect in high school biology class. Her guts were all over the place."

His voice was on the edge of hysteria and he spoke fast. "It was like a doctor or something operated on her. I can't get it out of my head. We heard the call, and I wanted to go on break, you know, get a coffee, we were due. But my partner, he was into that kind of stuff. He said we should go check it out." Cubby's voice broke off here like an adolescent's. "Everyone was there, but we got to the scene before the lab closed it down, and I go in there and saw it. I… I… Do you have something like that that you just can't let go of? Goddamn, it was almost two years ago, and it's affected everything for me, even my marriage. I used to be… you saw Eileen. You know what I'm saying? I think about it when I see her naked. It just comes into my mind and it… it affects me…"

Cubby was standing now in front of Bolinger, swaying drunkenly, with tears running down his face.

"I'm sorry, man," he said, suddenly coming to himself. He sat back down beside Bolinger and quietly opened another beer. They sat for quite some time. Bolinger began to think Cubby might have fallen asleep. Then he suddenly took a swig from his beer, and Bolinger said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, "You don't know, do you, if her gall bladder was missing?"

"How'd you know that?" Cubby said, staring suspiciously at him.

"Did she have anything to do with the law, not police work, but lawyering?"

"She was in her third year at Emory Law School," Cubby said, after a shocked pause.

Bolinger felt a shot of energy go through him. Most people thought that law enforcement agencies from around the country had some clearinghouse for information. But unless it was a federal crime with the FBI involved, bizarre crimes even within the same state were never matched up with similar crimes unless by rare chance. Cops searching for similar crimes and desperate for clues would often send out a Teletype to neighboring jurisdictions soliciting information, but typically such requests went unanswered. Then, every once in a great while, things got matched up by sheer luck. Bolinger got up out of his chair.

"Where you going?" Cubby asked.

"To make some coffee," Bolinger told him. "I gotta go to work."