“Bullshit,” I said. “We didn’t say he was murdered. Read the story.”
Tillie stubbed out one cigarette and lit another. “You and your little friend may have gotten a little ahead of yourselves this time, huh?” she said.
Where’s that coming from? I thought. “No,” I said. “Joanie nailed the story and Dingus knows it, but it drives him crazy so he gets Tawny Jane No-brain to piss on us.”
“You have no idea what Dingus knows.”
“Do tell. Is there something else we should be reporting?”
“Maybe. Maybe this isn’t quite as horrid a place as you’d like to imagine.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Look around, young man. When Jack Blackburn died, this whole town went into mourning. While you were downstate chasing your little dreams, this place was falling apart. So now we’re finally getting ourselves together, and you come back here with your little friend and dig up this cockamamie story about Jack getting murdered.”
“The cops found the snowmobile, Tillie, I didn’t.”
She expelled a cloud of smoke. “Oh, please, save the ‘don’t-shoot-the-messenger’ claptrap. The police find plenty of things we just plain ignore. The cops go out to Tazwell’s damn near every weekend when Lloyd’s whacking Ellie around, but do we write about that? And how about the Barbie heads?”
I was still working in Detroit when town council member J. Rupert “Woody” Woodhams had to have his stomach pumped one night and doctors found eleven shaved Barbie-doll heads he’d apparently bitten off. Neither the cops nor the hospital would confirm the story. The Pilot never wrote it. Everybody knew anyway.
“So,” I said, “we should’ve ignored the snowmobile?”
“Hey, you’re the big-city reporter here, I’m just a stenographer. But let’s face facts. You hate this place. Stop taking it out on the rest of us who don’t mind it so much.”
She turned away. She was obviously upset, and it was obviously about more than just Pilot coverage. Maybe, I thought, it was just the whole spooky reemergence of Blackburn. She had dated him way back when. I’d seen her around the rink, her black leather jacket cinched tight beneath her bosom, watching from the uppermost row of the bleachers with an enormous Coke that all the Rats knew was laced with whiskey.
“Till,” I said. “I don’t mean-”
She pointed at the TV. “Listen.”
Now Tawny Jane was standing inside the sheriff’s department cafeteria. The lunch tables had been folded up and stacked against a pop machine in a corner behind her. Folding chairs were set up in three semicircular rows in front of a lectern surrounded by TV microphones. I counted eight reporters sitting in the chairs, a pretty strong turnout. I couldn’t see Joanie.
“We’re live at the Pine County sheriff’s Department,” Tawny Jane said. “Let’s join Sheriff Aho.”
The screen framed Dingus in his brown-and-mustard uniform. An accordion folder bulged under his left arm. He’d waxed his handlebar mustache. Deputies Frank D’Alessio and Skip Catledge stood behind him with their hands behind their backs. Dingus set his folder down, removed a sheet of paper, and nodded at the reporters and TV cameras. “Good morning,” he said. “I have a brief statement to read and then I’ll be glad to take your questions.”
He cleared his throat. “On Friday, February twenty-seventh, at approximately twelve fifty-eight a.m., the Pine County sheriff’s Department was notified that a number of unidentified objects had appeared on the shore of Walleye Lake. sheriff’s deputies were dispatched to the scene, arriving at approximately one-eleven a.m. Upon further inspection, it was determined that these objects were components of a snowmobile. This snowmobile had possibly been submerged in the lake for a lengthy period of time. The objects were classified as evidence and removed to-”
“Excuse me, Sheriff?”
I cringed. The camera stayed on Dingus, but the voice was unmistakably Joanie’s. “Didn’t you go out to Walleye yourself that night?” she said. “Can you tell us what prompted that unusual step?”
“Joanie, no,” I said. Tillie was shaking her head.
Dingus’s eyebrows and mustache rose as one in surprise. “Pardon me, young lady,” he said. “I’ll be taking questions after I’ve finished my statement.” He glared at Joanie briefly before continuing.
“After further investigation and testing, it was determined that the snowmobile had once been registered to John David Blackburn, a former resident of Pine County who drowned in an accident on Starvation Lake early the morning of March 13, 1988. Our investigation-”
“Excuse me, Sheriff, but everybody already knows it was Blackburn’s snowmobile.” It was Joanie again. I couldn’t believe it. “What we don’t know is why you personally went out there, and why you would send the snowmobile for forensics.”
“Forensics are-hold on-excuse me, Miss McCarthy, I will get to your questions at the proper time. But I-”
“Your deputies this morning have been telling TV”-here she turned and looked directly into the camera-“that my paper prematurely reported that Blackburn was murdered. We said nothing about murder, Sheriff. But since it’s apparently on the table now”-Clever, I thought-“would you confirm that Blackburn was not murdered? Some people are saying this whole thing has been ginned up to help you get reelected. Could you respond, please?”
“Joanie!”
The camera zoomed in on Dingus’s face, which was florid with disbelief and anger, as animated as I’d ever seen it on TV. The camera turned to the right, and there was Joanie. I wanted her to just shut up, but seeing her there with her legs primly crossed, her notebook propped on her right knee, I couldn’t help but feel a little rush of admiration for her sheer disregard of Dingus’s authority.
“Miss McCarthy,” he said. “I’m going to ask you one last time to allow me to finish. Or you can leave.”
Joanie, unfazed, scribbled in her notebook and continued as if she were conducting an interview. “Sheriff, haven’t you questioned an acquaintance of Blackburn about the very possibility that he was murdered?”
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Kick her little ass out, Dingus,” Tillie said.
The camera swung wildly back to Dingus. He blinked once, hard, and said, “This briefing is over. Deputies, clear the premises.”
I grabbed my jacket and ran out the back door. I thought I knew who Joanie’s last question was about. I had to get to the rink, fast.
I was too late.
By the time I crept in, the Zamboni shed had been cleared of nearly everything that belonged to Leo. The police scanner. The little fridge. The old River Rats cap hanging from a nail. The addiction aphorisms. Only his cot remained.
“Leo,” I sighed.
I glanced out at the rink through the little hexagonal window over the workbench. Young girls in short pastel skirts and white skates were cutting backward figure eights while their skating coach, a woman named Roberta, shouted instructions. My watch said 12:37. I figured Leo had resurfaced the ice for the noon session, then bolted. No one would notice he was gone until he was next scheduled to run the Zamboni at 1:00 or 1:30.
I had a few minutes to look around. I didn’t want to be seen if Leo really had left town. I wondered, was I obliged to alert the police to his parting? No, I quickly concluded. If they thought Leo had murdered Blackburn, they could’ve arrested him. I knew this was a rationalization, but I still wasn’t ready to believe that Leo had killed his best friend, regardless of what the cops thought.
I rifled the drawers and cubbyholes around Leo’s work area. Greasy parts, tools, and containers of lubricant and paint littered the bench. Leo had taken the jar of disinfectant that held his stitching utensils. I touched the sutures still in my jaw. I’d planned to have Leo remove them before the game that night.
Next to Leo’s cot stood a wooden filing cabinet. I tried a drawer and it gave. I pulled the drawers out one by one and peered inside, finding nothing. The last one, on the bottom, stuck when I tried to push it back in. I kept trying and it kept sticking. I pulled it back out, set it on the floor, and knelt to look inside the cabinet. The smell of mildew filled my nose. I couldn’t see for the dark inside. I found a flashlight on the bench and shined it inside the cabinet on the side where the drawer seemed to be catching. Taped on the inner wall was a torn piece of paper. I reached in and peeled it away. Another piece of paper was taped beneath it and, beneath that, two more. I peeled them all away and replaced the drawer.
