Black Light

knew he was not all there, but somehow he could not get out of the track, which was a kind of infantile literal-mindedness, an unwilled concentration on petty things. He wanted to cry: Where did my mind go? Who took my mind?

Finally, a squall of clarity blew in by midafternoon, and everything popped briefly into place. He felt sane, cool, smart again. Taking advantage, he quickly went to his basement and remembered that he had originally committed to discovering his brief to the Coroner’s Office on the Earl Swagger shooting for Bob Lee Swagger. But that would have to wait. This was so much more interesting. He seized the file that he’d looked at the day before and this time he really bore down, sliding through the documents with a professional’s easy authority, examining the case against Reggie Gerard Fuller.

It held together. It might not hold together today, when the evidentiary rules were much tighter and the fact that Reggie’s initials were RGF and that those initials were found on the pocket crumpled in Shirelle’s hand might not constitute probable cause for a search warrant. But it sure as hell did then, as even Judge Harrison confirmed. Sam had a moment of pleasure: I did it by the book, by God. I don’t have to look back and be ashamed that somewhere I took a shortcut, I cut a corner, I faked this or that or lied about the other: no sir. The law was the law. The law was always right.

And the law looked at the shirt and the blood and Reggie’s absence of an alibi and said: Reggie Gerard Fuller did it.

He was satisfied. What else could he do? He had no other files. The actual evidence was burned in that damn 1994 fire. Nothing else could be learned.

But then … oh, little niggle of doubt. Little qualm, little tremor, little twitch.

He thought back on that night and his actions. What cast the longest shadow over the case was the RGF initials. Once they’d identified RGF—done, really, before he’d put his full concentration on the matter—the case developed a peculiar momentum that could not be stopped. It was such a fat, huge piece of evidence, like a proverbial eight-hundred-pound gorilla, that it sat anyplace it wanted to. It shaped all thought, all interpretation, all investigation; it became the central organizing principle of the case, a perceptual reality that could not be avoided.

In fact, Sam had even played that one out straight. He’d spent one whole day with Betty Hill, the town’s switchboard operator, going through the phone listings to ascertain if just possibly there wasn’t another RGF, of any color or sex. There wasn’t. He’d gone to the town registry looking for other RGFs who might not be on the phone list. He’d gone to every motel in a hundred square miles looking for another RGF in the area. No such thing.

That RGF: that was the monster.

It occurred to Sam: Suppose there was no RGF? Suppose we never found that RGF? Would we have ever tied the killing to Reggie? No, he thought not. If it weren’t for the dying girl’s spasm and the angry boy’s fury, the case might never have been solved.

But then he thought: Imagine an investigation without the weight of that discovery, that wasn’t misshapen or guided by it, that progressed quite naturally and led where it led, if anywhere. Of course he couldn’t imagine such a thing: RGF made that impossible.

Little tingle, little tremor, little buzz. Where did it come from?

What was he feeling?

He couldn’t pin it down: nothing. Forget it.

Then he had it.

Earl.

Earl Swagger had discovered the body. Earl had investigated the crime scene. Earl took notes. Earl made observations and suggestions. All of it untainted, or untouched, or unseduced by the mighty power of the RGF initials pointing the finger right straight into the heart of Reggie Gerard Fuller. Earl was dead before they ever linked anything to Reggie Gerard Fuller.

Too bad Earl hadn’t lived long enough to …

Another bell went off in Sam’s old mind. His son, Bob, had brought Earl’s notebook. And some other effects. With that fool boy, Rusty, Rufus, whatever. The notebook. Whatever was in the notebook was put there without any knowledge of Reggie Gerard Fuller.

Only trouble was: where the hell was the notebook?

The old man was on a goddamn toot. Duane had never seen him like this. His gears had slipped or something. He was literally destroying his house from the inside out.

Duane had worked his way around back of the proud old dwelling on Reinie Street, which sat under a canopy of elms and maples with its stately porch like the house that Andy Hardy lived in, and peered in through the windows. Though it was not yet dark, the old man had turned on all the lights. One by one, he was emptying the insides out of every drawer, every closet, every box, every cupboard, every vase in the house. He had cracked, finally. He was in a frenzy, jabbering insanely to himself.

After doing the downstairs, he moved upstairs. Though Duane could no longer see him, he took a chance and opened the door. Inside, he could hear crashes and dumpings and things being thrown against the wall and curses.

“Goddamn sumbitch, where the goddamn hell are you?” came the screams, as from a desperate man, a man close to an attack or something.

Mr. Bama wasn’t going to have to worry about this old guy. He’d end up doing himself in before the moon rose. A vein would pop, he’d be a lump in a body bag for the Coroner’s Office.

Duane called in a report, but there was no immediate answer. Where the hell was Bama?

* * *

You old worthless goat. You dying old bastard, you brainless worthless old dog, you ain’t good for nothing. Ought to put you down. Take you out and put a bullet behind your ear. Only merciful thing.

Sam looked about him. The house was ruined, smashed, destroyed. The rooms where his children played, the room where he had loved his wife, the room where so many Thanksgiving dinners had been eaten, the room where so many Christmases had been celebrated: all gone, all lost, all ruined, all wrecked and for what, for nothing, because he couldn’t remember where he put the goddamned notebook.

Only the garage remained.

He was full of despair. How had he gotten so old and feeble, so infirm? He hated and loathed himself: he— prosecutor, man of the law, war hero, deer hunter, father, husband, lover, American: how had all that gone away and he come to this current state of nothingness? His daughter had told him it was time to move in with them or if he wanted into an apartment or even a home and his eldest boy had said no, Pop’s all right, but now he thought she was right. He could—

The office!

You old goat! You never brought it home! He remembered now—Bob had handed it to him at the office and he’d locked it in the safe.

He looked around for his coat, but the only thing he could find immediately was his wife’s pink bathrobe from years back. He threw it on and, miraculously, found his keys. He stepped into the garage, fired up the Cadillac and backed out with a shriek and a lurch, hitting something—he wasn’t sure what.

He drove and a new fear assailed him: the combination. Did he know it? Could he remember it? Or was it gone like so much of the past?

He felt a whimper, or possibly a sob, rise from his chest, and felt enfeebled by the task ahead. He lacked all confidence. He was over, finished.

But after parking and somehow getting up the steps, unlocking the office and walking through the waiting room into his lair, a mercy came from on high, and as his fingers flew to the ancient lock, he saw the numbers before him big as daylight and in a second he had the vault open and the cardboard box out.

He took the treasure to his desk, clicked on the light and stopped for just a second to fill his pipe with tobacco. Lighting it, he drew a hot burst of smoke into his mouth, felt it buzz, then expelled it, and for just a second was back in the good part of his life, in command, a man of respect and power, not a cornpone, backwoods Lear raging on the moors of Polk County.

The box held but two objects and then he remembered that Bob and Rusty-Rufus-Ralph-whatever had taken