you?”
“Sure.”
“So it’s happened to you?”
“Two or three times.”
“The funny thing was, Bryce was never that way about me. But I’m sure he was about Karen. He had this little metal box that he kept in the garage with his tools. A pretty good hiding place if I hadn’t been looking for a screwdriver one day. I saw the box there and it looked wrong. Just out of place. So I took it down and opened it and I thought I’d pass out. I really did. I had to keep my hand against the wall to hold myself up. I managed to get to the steps of the back porch. I sat down there and opened the box again and started looking through all the photos of her he had. Her whole life. Teeny-tiny baby pictures right up through high school. Now, that’s love. Caring about somebody that way. I don’t think I’ve ever been hurt like that in my life. But I hurt myself. He’d hidden the photos from me. He had to know what they’d do to me if I ever saw them.”
“Did you ever ask him about them?”
“Oh, no. How could I? But I never quite got over them. I still think about them three or four times a day. Sometimes I want to take a knife and cut that part of my brain out. It probably doesn’t take up much space up there. Just slice out that one little part, the part about that little metal box.”
I’d been thinking the same thing about Jane since she’d left. Some freak accident that would magically cleave away all memory of her but leave everything else intact.
“I was such a bitch in high school. Sometimes I think this is just me getting what I deserve.”
She had a small soft laugh. “Nobody was as bad as Diane. You remember what she wrote in the yearbook about what she planned to do after graduation? ‘I plan to become a goddess.’ She was only half kidding.”
There was a breeze. I wanted to close my eyes and ride it. It made me realize how comfortable I felt sitting here with Wendy. That had been something neither Molly nor I had ever felt with each other. The simple pleasure of just hanging out together. We’d been all jittery with the need to talk about being dumped and then to have vengeance sex as balm for our wounds. One of Kenny’s best serious stories was called “Grudge Humping on the Amazon.” He’d gone through the same thing himself.
Inside, the phone rang. “That’ll be Linda. She keeps calling and telling me to come back. According to her, my proper place is in the mansion.” She pushed up, dusting off her bottom with finely turned hands. She sighed and shook her head. “Maybe I’m just being a bitch. Maybe I’d better take it.”
I stood up and she took my hand. “Thanks for coming out, Sam. I really needed to talk to someone.”
And then what I’d always wanted to happen, happened. She kissed me on the mouth and then took me to her. I had to imagine myself wearing an invisible pair of handcuffs, otherwise I’d do something very foolish.
“All right,” she said as we broke apart, nagging at the nagging phone. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Then she was inside and I was walking to my car.
10
In the lobby of the new police station, you can find three large framed photographs. One is of our governor, which is only fitting, while the other two bear a remarkable resemblance to Cliffie himself. In fact, they are of Cliffie. Both show him in his khaki uniform and campaign hat. One of them depicts him in a crouch aiming his Magnum right at the viewer. It’s a pulp-magazine cover pose. The other shows Cliffie standing next to the gallows where prisoners were hanged. The picture remained even after the legislature voted against capital punishment a few months ago. Cliffie didn’t want to deprive his fans of any thrills.
The woman at the front desk was Marjorie Kincaid, a buxom middle-aged woman with a tinted black beehive hairdo and a sweet, somewhat mannish face. She was supposed to hate me-that was an official order in this department-but if nobody was looking she always had a quick grin for me. Marjorie and my mom had been friends in school.
“How’s your dad?”
“Not very well, Marjorie.”
“I always told your mom she got the best one. We used to double-date all the time. I got Hank.” She made a face. “He fell off the wagon again last month.”
“I’m sorry, Marjorie.”
“I know it’s not his fault. I went through that program with him, where they teach you that it’s a disease and everything. But that doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Well, why don’t you serve him some coffee and then you two can really get cozy?” A familiar and unwelcome voice.
There are times when I think Cliffie has superpowers. He can just appear, like one of those invisible avengers who can pop in and out of visibility in comic books.
Marjorie swiveled in her chair and started typing. Maybe I’d have Jamie come over here and get a few lessons.
“I’d like to see Harrison Doran.”
“No can do, McCain. I told you it’d be at least tomorrow.”
“I take it you haven’t talked to your cousin.”
“What cousin?”
“Your cousin the district attorney?”
“What about him?”
“I called him about twenty minutes ago. He said you have to let me see him. By law.”
“Bullroar.” Cliffie always watched his language in the presence of a woman.
“Go call him.”
His face was flushed now. He was so mad I wondered if his campaign hat would start spinning around on his head. “You wait here.”
I knew better than to talk any more to Marjorie. I went over and sat on one of the new scotch-plaid couches and smoked a cigarette.
An attorney named Dix Tolliver came in and nodded at me. He looked as if he’d just spotted a pile of doggie excrement. He was one of the Brahmins, a second-generation Brahmin in fact. He always dressed as if he was about to appear before the Supreme Court. I wondered how many gray flannel suits he owned. While he waited for Marjorie to finish up her phone call, he said, “So I guess that whole story about Doran being a rich boy from Yale isn’t true?” The patrician nose sniffed the plebian air. “And he already had a warrant out for his arrest back East?”
I tried not to look surprised. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he knew something vital about my client that I didn’t know. And saying anything could be dangerous. If, for instance, I said, “Yeah, but it’s a minor matter” and he said, “You mean killing a family of six is a minor matter?” where would I be then?
Fortunately, Marjorie hung up and distracted him. He was here to see a detective on another matter. She spoke into an intercom and before you could say kiss my ass a detective appeared. The men shook hands and joked a bit like the golfing buddies they were and then disappeared into the innards of the station. Face it. I was just jealous I didn’t get that kind of treatment.
Cliffie would be damned if he debased himself by telling me that I had the legal right to see Doran. He sent a uniformed cop named Winslow to guide me back to one of the interrogation rooms.
“I assume you’ve got the room bugged?”
“That supposed to be funny?” Winslow, all khaki and malice, said as he scratched at his cheek as we moved along the hallway. He had a boozer’s nose.
He opened the door for me then stood aside to let me pass. A long narrow room with a long narrow folding table and six folding chairs and several cheap chipped glass ashtrays. Woolworth specials. Despite the air conditioning, the room smelled of used old sad griefs.
“We’ll bring him in. You have fifteen minutes.”
“The DA said I have half an hour.”
“Around here, the chief makes the rules.” He made sure to slam the door.
