Home Body, page 15
It was Divan, the deputy. Standing beside her was a guy wearing a tie and brown sports coat. The tie was blue with little red pistols all over it. Divan’s cruiser was in the yard. The guy’s car was behind it. It was blue and unmarked, cop written all over it.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“Mr. McMorrow, this is Detective Cobb of the Maine State Police.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Could we come in, sir?” the detective said.
“Sure. But what is it? What’s the problem?”
I backed away from the doorway and they followed me. Barefoot, I moved toward the front of the room and paused.
“What is it? Is it Rocky?”
“Do you mind if we sit down and talk, sir?” Cobb said.
“No,” I said. “Of course not.”
I showed them to the dining table. The detective was my size, but chunky. A round face and a bald spot like an underdone pancake stuck to the back of his head. He glanced out the big window.
“Pretty woods,” he said. “Lotta deer?”
“Some,” I said. “You hunt?”
“No,” he said. “I see enough, you know what I mean?”
I didn’t offer a reply and he didn’t seem to expect one. He looked around more and unzipped his parka. I said I’d be right back and went to the bathroom behind the stairs and washed my face and brushed my teeth. As I opened the door, I heard the stairs creak above me. Divan and the detective were looking up. Roxanne was coming down.
“Hello,” I heard her say.
“Hi, there,” the detective said. “Sorry to bother you, but we just needed to have a word with your husband.”
“Oh,” Roxanne said. “Is everything okay?”
They didn’t answer. She came down the stairs and introduced herself. The detective nodded, then awkwardly shook Roxanne’s hand.
“Would you like coffee?” she said.
“Sure,” the detective said.
Roxanne turned back toward the kitchen and met me. She was wearing jeans and one of my flannel shirts. She took both of my hands in hers and squeezed them.
“I’ll be right out,” she said. “Or do you need me to leave?”
“No,” I said. “Stay.”
Roxanne went into the bathroom and closed the door. I went to the table.
“Sit down, officers,” I said.
They did. The detective put a small black tape recorder on the table in front of him. His hair was thin and fuzzy but his forearms were taut and muscular, the arms of a guy who did something other than ride around in a car and ask questions.
“Mr. McMorrow, Deputy Divan here told me about her last call here. The one where the boy was here but then he ran away? Is that right?”
“Yeah. Rocky. But is he okay?”
“We were going to ask you that. When did you last see him?”
I hesitated. Swallowed.
“Last night,” I said.
“Where, sir?”
“In Bangor. I left him with a friend. Well, she’s not really a friend, she’s sort of an acquaintance. She owns the paper I work for. The Clarion.”
“Who’s this?”
I told him.
“And you left the boy with her?”
“Yeah. He didn’t have any place to stay. And he was—”
Roxanne came out of the bathroom and walked past me to the kitchen side of the room. Her hair was pulled back. She opened a cupboard and took out mugs.
“He was what?” the detective asked.
He did the talking. Divan watched me closely. A red light showed on the tape recorder like the eye of a snake.
“He’d been sniffing paint.”
“How do you know that, Mr. McMorrow?”
I told him what I’d seen, down by the river.
“So he’s huffing and then he goes with you voluntarily?”
“Yeah.”
“Just said, ‘Okay, pops, let’s go?’ ”
“No, he didn’t say much. It was kind of a scene. One of them tried to stop us.”
“But he wasn’t successful,” Cobb said.
“No,” I said.
He paused. I didn’t elaborate.
“So Rocky left with you voluntarily?”
“Yeah. I’d say he was glad to get out of there. He was in over his head. This wasn’t a bunch of Cub Scouts. All juveniles except this one older guy they call Crow Man. A real dirtbag. If you want to go after him for endangering or something, I’d be glad to—”
“We can talk about that, Mr. McMorrow. Now, the kid went with you to this lady’s house. Then what?”
“Then I drove home.”
“Here.”
“Right. Home. Where I live.”
“Oh. Well, Officer Divan here said she thought you lived in Portland some of the time.”
I looked at her. She didn’t speak, didn’t let me off the hook.
“Sometimes. Roxanne has a condo there. South Portland, on the harbor.”
“So you came here and just went to sleep.”
I felt a tingle of irritation but fought it off.
“I talked to Roxanne, had a beer, and went to sleep.”
Roxanne walked over and put the mugs down in front of them.
“We talked about Rocky, about our baby,” she said.
They both glanced at her belly, then away. Divan said, “When are you due?”
Roxanne told her April or early May.
“How exciting,” Divan said, but she didn’t sound excited herself. I supposed she meant it would be exciting for us. Cobb took a sip of coffee and said, “That’s good, Ms. Masterson,” about the coffee or the baby, I didn’t know which.
“So what is this about?” I said. “Is Rocky dead?”
“Getting to it,” he said. “So that day when the kid was here. Can you tell me about that. You got up early. The kid was here, right?”
“Right. But he was gone when I got up.”
“And then what?”
“And then the stepfather showed up.”
“Looking for the kid?”
“Right.”
“But he’s GOA?”
“Gone on arrival?”
“Right,” Cobb said.
“Yeah. He bolted out the door and into the woods.”
“So the dad must have been a little unhappy, huh?”
I stared at Cobb.
“He was angry. He said if I’d touched his son, he’d kill me. Stuff like that. I figured he was just emotional.”
“And what made him think something like that might have taken place?”
Cobb smiled. Roxanne looked at him coldly.
“I guess he didn’t believe that I’d help the kid for the sake of helping him,” I said. “That anyone would do that just to help out.”
“So if you bothered with the kid, it had to be because you were a pedophile,” Cobb said.
“You got it.”
“So you had words?”
I shook my head.
“He had words. I didn’t want to listen to it so I left.”
“And you went?”
“Down the road.”
“To where?”
“To work on my truck. At a friend’s house. In his barn. It’s got heat. Then I came back here and got ready for work.”
“That’s in Bangor.”
“Right.”
“Drove right up there?”
It was Divan all of a sudden. I could see Cobb watching my reaction.
“No,” I said.
I told myself to remain calm.
“I stopped in Woodfield on the way. Where Rocky lives.”
“Why did you go there, Mr. McMorrow?” Divan asked.
“Just curious.”
“About what?”
“About Rocky. Where he lived. Why he wouldn’t go back there.”
“So what’d you do?” Cobb said.
“I stopped for coffee. Right in the little downtown. This little lunch-counter place. But you know that.”
“What do you mean, we know?”
“You’ve talked to Rusty Clement, and he fed you some line of crap, and now you’re coming here to check it out. Why is it you can’t even talk to a kid these days without people thinking you’re a pervert? I don’t know what that guy’s problem is. I know he can’t stand the kid. You should ask him why his stepson won’t go home.”
“Did Rocky tell you?” Divan said.
“No. Not really. But I’ll tell you, he left this piece of paper in his pocket, all worn like he carried it everywhere. Something about Kitty. I mentioned it to the mother—I drove by the house and she was outside and we talked for a few minutes—and she went white as a ghost. You should ask her about that.”
Divan looked at Cobb. He looked at me.
“We’d love to, Mr. McMorrow,” Cobb said. “But she’s dead.”
30
k
“How’d she die?” I asked, still stunned, still picturing the fragile woman in the big black coat, collapsed before my eyes by some sort of grief.
The cops said they couldn’t say how she died. The autopsy hadn’t been completed.
“When?” I asked.
They said they didn’t know that, either.
“Who found her?” I asked.
“The husband,” Cobb said. “He said he was out of town on a logging job and she called, all upset.”
I waited. Roxanne listened intently, too. Under the table, she reached over and took my hand.
Cobb brushed at his hair, working on the thinning spot.
“He said she was distraught about the kid,” he said. “He said you stopped to talk to his wife about her son, and whatever it was you said, it must have made the wife, Flossie Clement, despondent.”
“So you think she killed herself?” Roxanne asked.
“That’s what the initial investigation seems to indicate.”
“But I barely said anything. She said she was worried about Rocky, and I told her how he was. She was worried. But not hysterical or anything. I told her what you”—I looked to Divan—“told me about Rocky being hit by the truck. Which turned out not to be true. He told me they almost hit him, but missed, and then they gave him a ride to Bangor.”
“And that upset her?” Cobb said.
“Yeah, but not to the point of killing herself. We talked after that. This was just standing there in the street. I was going to stop and knock and she came out to get the mail. So we talked right there in front of the house.”
“About what?” Divan asked.
I took a deep breath, tried to remember it all. Flossie had just rambled, and I did, too. I told them about the Legos and the four-wheeler, but that was a year ago. The kid reading all the time, the stepdad saying he was too soft for the real world.
“She kind of just went on, how she didn’t understand it, there hadn’t been one thing to make him run. And then I told her about Kitty. And that seemed to shock her.”
“This is this note?” Cobb said.
I told him what it said, word for word.
“And you told Mrs. Clement?”
“Yeah. I thought maybe she’d know what it meant.”
“What’d she say?”
“Nothing. Just turned white. Said, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ or something like that, and walked into the house.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. I went to work.”
There was a lull. They looked at each other and the red eye on the recorder looked at me. Roxanne sipped her coffee. Cobb looked up at her and brushed hair over his bald spot.
“So where’s this note?” Cobb said.
I told him I’d given it back to Rocky. I told him what I’d found checking out papers around that date: the woman named Katia, killed in the hit-and-run.
“Katia?” Cobb said.
“Right. Katia, Kitty. Maybe it was a nickname.”
They looked at me, unimpressed.
“And that’s all you said to Mrs. Clement?” Cobb said.
“Yeah. She walked away. Up until then, she seemed glad to hear about Rocky. I could at least tell her he was all right.”
“Unless he’d been run over by a dump truck, right? That wasn’t such good news, was it?” Cobb said.
He smiled.
“You think this is funny?” I said.
Roxanne squeezed my hand to shut me up. Cobb’s face hardened. Divan’s, too.
“No, sir,” he said. “This is what I think. I think I’ve got a guy—you—who’s got a history of attracting trouble like flies attract—whatever. I’ve got a thirty-three-year-old woman who’s dead. I got a guy—you—who keeps turning up with her fourteen-year-old son.”
“He keeps turning up with me.”
“Uh-huh. I got DHS involved with this juvenile who’s on the streets. Now I’ve got a note that’s supposed to be some sort of clue, about some kitty, but maybe it’s some other name that sounds like kitty or starts with K or something. This information shocked the deceased shortly before her death. And the note is gone.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s with Rocky. I’ll bet he still has it. Just ask him.”
“We’d like to do that, too,” Divan said.
She took a notebook out of her breast pocket and flipped the pages.
“At zero thirty-three hours today, a Theresa Danforth, 161 Broadway, called the Bangor Police Department to report a theft. A boy she identified as Rocky had stolen sixty-three dollars and a pizza from her home and fled.”
“The little bugger.”
“You know where he might be now?” Cobb said.
I started to shake my head.
“He isn’t here, is he, Mr. McMorrow?” Divan asked.
“No, he’s not here,” Roxann snapped.
Divan gave her a cool stare. No more baby talk.
Cobb looked at her curiously.
“Now, you work with—”
“Department of Human Services,” Roxanne said. “Child Protective.”
“Right. I’ve seen your name. In reports. Our paths have crossed, at least on paper.”
“Homicide cases?” Roxanne said.
“Sometimes,” he said. “Sometimes just CID.”
“So does it look like a suicide?” I said. “Gun in her hand or something? I really need to know.”
“There’s been no ruling on cause of death,” Cobb said. “Until there is, I can’t comment on that at all. She’s dead. It doesn’t appear to have been natural causes.”
He pursed his lips and looked up at me and said, “So maybe Rocky had a cat?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you discussed it with him?”
“He said he couldn’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“He couldn’t say. Just said, ‘Because she’s my mother.’ ”
“Who’s his mother?” Divan said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I figured his mother was his mother.”
“Okay,” Cobb said slowly. “So where can we find this kid, do you think?”
“I don’t know. He could be in Bangor. When I first saw him, it was in Portland, Monument Square. He doesn’t like shelters. In Bangor, he was afraid the huffer kids were going to come after him because of what happened to this older guy, Crow Man.”
“What happened to him?” Cobb said.
I looked at Divan and Roxanne.
“I had to kick him a couple of times. Pretty hard.”
“Why?” Cobb said.
“He came after me with a bottle.”
“So you kicked the crap out of him and took the kid and left,” Cobb said.
I shrugged. They looked at me curiously, like I was a museum specimen, something to examine from various angles. Then Cobb stood up and reached for the recorder. He clicked it off and the eye went black.
“So what is it you do at this newspaper, Mr. McMorrow?” he said, slipping the recorder into his jacket pocket.
“I’m a copy editor.”
“Is that right?” he said. “What do you do if the writers spell a word wrong? Break their fingers?”
31
k
They left, but said they’d probably be talking to me again. I said that was fine, but it really wasn’t. After the door closed, and their cars crunched out of the yard and down the road, I went to the window and stood. Roxanne put their mugs down on the counter and came and stood beside me. I put my arm around her waist and we both looked out.
The wind had shifted to the north and the temperature was dropping. The trees were towering figurines with brittle glass branches. At the edge of the woods, the brush glittered in the sun. The tall grass was encased in crystal, like upended icicles poking from the snow.
“It’s beautiful,” Roxanne said.
“It’s not right,” I said. “This isn’t the way I want it to be. Not for us.”
I looked at her.
“All of us, I mean.”
“I know.”
“They think I caused her death.”
“They don’t know what to think. They’re just asking.”
“Or they think I’m some sort of pervert.”
“That will work itself out,” Roxanne said.
“I just want them to leave us alone,” I said.
“They will, Jack.”
“I suppose. But what if—”
“What if what?”
“What if I do get dragged into this thing somehow? This Rusty guy, if he really thinks that something I said put his wife over the edge, then I don’t know. He could—”
“But you know that’s not true, Jack,” Roxanne said softly.
“No, I don’t. I don’t know what that note meant.”
“Maybe it didn’t mean anything. If she killed herself, it was a lifetime of, I don’t know, sadness, frustration, mental illness. I don’t know. But it wasn’t you.”
I looked out at the woods, the silver trees like knives against the blue sky.
