Then again, I don’t get the chance to beat Diane very often. I put down my three queens and swept the pot toward me, forty-five dollars or so plus a gold-colored badge.

‘You wouldn’t have let me keep it anyway,’ she grumbled.

I shrugged. Hey, you never know.

Later, I watched Diane get out of bed to stand by the window. She was a big, haunchy girl with an athletic way of moving. I liked to watch her. The soles of her feet scuffed along the floor. At the window she lit a cigarette and puffed it distractedly, arms folded across her belly. She seemed lost in thought, her nudity forgotten, irrelevant. Outside, the hills were silhouettes against the moonlit sky.

‘What’s wrong, Diane?’ I propped myself on an elbow.

She moved her head vaguely but did not answer. The tip of the cigarette glowed orange in the dark room. ‘Did you ever think that maybe this is all we’re going to have?’

‘What? You mean’ — I wiggled my finger between us — ’this?’

‘No! Don’t worry, Ben, I know what this is.’

‘I only meant-’

‘I know what you meant.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, what if this whole thing is all there is for me? Shitty little apartment, shitty little town. This whole shitty life. So-called life.’

My neck began to stiffen and I sat up. ‘Well, you can change it. If this place isn’t for you, you can go anywhere you want.’

‘No, you can go anywhere you want. It’s different for you, Ben. Always has been. You could always go anywhere you want. I can’t.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘Ben, don’t. Just don’t. I’m not asking to be cheered up.’

‘Oh.’

I sneaked a glance at the clock. 2:17 A.M.

‘We’re not all like you, Ben. You’ve got choices. You’re smart, you went to a fancy college, fancy graduate school. You’ll be okay wherever you go. You’re not even as butthole-ugly as I say you are. You’re actually-’ She looked back at me, then returned her attention to the window. ‘You’re not that bad.’

‘You’re not bad either.’

‘Right.’

‘I mean it, Diane.’

‘I used to be not bad. Now I’m not even not bad.’

‘That’s just not true.’

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. ‘Ben, tell me what you’re going to do when you leave here.’

‘Go home, I guess. I have a meeting in Portland tomorrow.’

She shook her head again, the long-suffering Diane. ‘Not when you leave the room. When you leave this fucking town.’

‘Oh. I don’t know. Go back to school, I guess. Maybe just go have an adventure somewhere.’

‘Right. Prague.’

‘You could come, you know. There’s nothing holding you here.’

‘I don’t know from Prague.’ She slid a hand over her hip, smoothing the clothes that were not there. A gesture to fill the space. When she was ready, she said, ‘I thought you were going to be a professor. Isn’t that what you were in school for? English or something?’

‘History.’

‘You’ve got a good name for a history professor. Professor Benjamin Truman. Very intellectual.’

‘It’s probably not going to happen, Diane.’

‘Yeah, it will.’

‘I only got through one year of grad school. It takes a lot more than that.’

‘You say it like you flunked out. You got called back here. That’s different. You came back to help your mother and now she’s dead, so — You don’t have to stay, you don’t have to be here anymore. You should go back to school. It’s where you belong. Join the chess club or the prom committee or whatever.’ She took a drag on the cigarette and looked out at the hills, then, as if she’d reached a decision, turned to me. ‘You should go to Prague. I have some money, if that’s what’s stopping you.’

‘No, Diane. It’s not about money.’

‘Well, you just make sure you get there. Go to Prague, then get back to school. You know, those guys — Bobby and Jimmy, even Phil, all them guys — they look up to you. They want you to do all that shit you talk about.’

I had no response.

‘It’ll make them happy to see you out there somewhere. Just to think of you out there, like, flying. It’s important.’

‘How about you, Diane? Would it make you happy if I left?’

‘I’d get over it. There’ll be a new chief after you. Maybe I’ll just use him for sex, same as I did you. Maybe he won’t even be a prude like you.’

‘They might hire a woman. They do that now.’

‘That’d be just my luck.’

Neither of us spoke for a while.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore, Ben. It’s starting to feel like a bad idea.’ The tip of her cigarette hovered at the window like a firefly. ‘We both got places to go.’

5

Monday, October 13. 10:00 A.M.

We met at the Attorney General’s office in Portland, a two-hour drive from Versailles. There were twenty or twenty-five people there, a number that necessitated theater-style seating. At the front of the room — onstage, as it were — was the Boston Homicide detective Edmund Kurth. He stood off to the side, arms folded, watching people find their seats. There was still that luminous intensity about Kurth. He looked like he was itching to knock somebody’s hat off.

The audience consisted mainly of state troopers from Maine and Massachusetts, husky guys with buzz cuts and friendly smiles. There were prosecutors from the Maine AG’s office too. It had been a long weekend for the lawyers; they had a gray, haggard look. Cravish, the Game-Show Host, stood off to the side.

I slipped into the back row of metal folding chairs, feeling vaguely like an eavesdropper. My invitation to this meeting was a formality, a courtesy extended to the locals. There were no illusions about that. My job was to show up, have my ticket punched, and go home. I hadn’t even bothered to put on my uniform. I wore jeans and a sweatshirt. (The outfit was more than an expression of my outsider status, though. The truth is, the Versailles police uniform is pure hayseed and I try not to wear it any more than necessary. The uniform consists of a tan shirt, brown pants with a tan accent stripe, and a ridiculous Smokey the Bear hat, which my father insists on calling a ‘campaign hat.’ I dislike the whole getup, but it’s the hat especially — no citizen could respect a policeman wearing that hat.)

Kurth struggled to remain still as the troopers and prosecutors found seats. The muscles in his face played under the skin. After a while — but before his audience had completely settled — he’d had enough of waiting. He walked to a corkboard at stage left, tacked a mug shot to it, and announced, ‘This is the man we’re after: Harold Braxton.’

I craned my neck to see the photos, the traditional twin frames showing the suspect face-on and in profile. Braxton looked to be in his twenties, African-American. The sides of his scalp were shaved and the remaining hair was pulled back tightly and gathered in a little tuft at the back of his head. The hairstyle seemed more Tibetan than hip-hop. His skin was as smooth and dark as a seal’s.

Kurth added: ‘He’s an absolute fuckin’ animal and we’re going to hunt him down.’

The audience shifted uneasily. Kurth was from away, and the Maine troopers didn’t like being lectured by him,

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