Winnie just made it.”
Through the door Greg spotted an open container of frozen drink by the sink. “The lemonade will be fine, thank you.”
“Ditto,” Kemmer said. While Vernon went to get the drinks, Kemmer looked at Greg and rolled his eyes to say,
Greg made a noncommittal smile and looked around. Most of the room was taken up by the couch and chairs. A faux fireplace mantel sat against the wall. On it sat several photographs of Grady. And one framed illustration of Jesus, his face raised into the light, his hands pressed in prayer.
Dixon returned with a tray with glasses and a pitcher of lemonade. “Do your people up there have any idea how Grady died, cuz the boys down here don’t have a damn clue?” He said that without even a glance at Kemmer.
“Not really,” Greg said. “But I’d like to ask you and your wife a few questions because we may have a similar case.”
“We’re goddamn questioned out. It’s answer time.”
Mrs. Dixon returned with the flowers in a glass vase and set it on the mantel next to the boy’s photos. Her eyes were red and puffy. She had been crying in the kitchen. “They’re lovely, thank you very much,” she said.
Greg nodded.
From a pack of Newport Lights, she punched out a cigarette and returned to the kitchen where she turned on a burner from the gas stove, stuck the cigarette into the flame until it started burning, then sucked it to a blush. She then returned to the living room. She looked shaky. “Do you have children of your own, Sergeant Zakarian?”
“No, I don’t.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what kind of a name is Zakarian?”
This was becoming tiresome. “Armenian.”
“That’s Christian, right?”
“Yes,” he said, hoping she wasn’t going to begin another inquisition.
“Well, we had a proper Christian burial for our boy last week. Malcolm Childers, the reverend at Mount Ida’s Baptist, gave a very special service for Grady. And after, his wife, Pammie Rae, held us a lunch. It was simply lovely. I swear half the county turned out.” Her voice cracked, and she struggled to maintain composure. “There I go again, and I thought I was cried out.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“You know, just to give us closure.”
“Closure!” Vernon grunted. “There’s no such thing. Never’s any closure when your kid’s been murdered.” He shook his head. “I just hope he didn’t suffer, is all.” His voice hitting gravel.
“Well, I feel better cuz he’s home where he belongs.”
“Only way I’ll feel better is if I had five minutes in the room with the sumbitch who did this to him. Five minutes is all.” As he said that, the muscles in his neck and arms tightened, and rage darkened his face. Greg could understand how Dixon had run afoul of the law.
Greg got up and went to the mantel to inspect the photographs. Several shots of the boy outside on the tire swing, at a birthday party, in the wading pool. “Handsome little guy.”
“Here’s the most recent one,” Vernon said. “It was his first school picture. And his last.” And he held up a T- shirt advertising missing children. On it was a picture of Grady along with his date of birth, height, weight, coloring, and an 800 number for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The boy was smiling brightly. He was a sweet-looking kid with a bright chipped-tooth smile, and Greg tried to shake away the image of the specimen on Joe Steiner’s desk.
“They posted his picture at airport kiosks, in public buildings, on the Internet, you name it. Mailed it all over the country, and even had a billboard on Highway 27 outta Chattanooga,” Mrs. Dixon said.
“Lotta damn good that did,” Vernon growled.
There were two rooms off the living room, and one of them was closed. On the door was a sticker with a cartoon bear. Greg walked over to it.
“We called him ‘Lil Bear,’” Mrs. Dixon said. She got up. “You can take a look if you like. All the other officers did.”
“He didn’t come for that,” Vernon said. “Fact is, I’m not sure what he came for.”
“I would like to see his room, thank you,” Greg said. He did not pick up on Vernon’s bait. It wasn’t the right time.
From a dish on the mantel, Mrs. Dixon removed a key and unlocked the door.
The room looked as if it hadn’t been touched since the boy’s disappearance. The air was close and scented with mothballs. There was a small bed with a stuffed bear lying at the foot. One wall was covered with banners and drawings signed by his classmates and teachers: “Come home soon” and “We Love You, Grady” and “We Miss You.” Another wall had decals and pictures of cartoon bears, snapshots of the boy and a dog, a UT football banner, a poster-board drawing of the Dixon house with the tree swing, signed by Grady; another of Jesus in a pasture with children and sheep. On a small table sat a nearly complete truck fashioned intricately with Legos. A box of loose pieces lay by it in expectation.
“He liked to build things,” Mrs. Dixon said. She opened a bureau drawer and pulled out some photos of Grady posed proudly with several different structures. “He’d sit in here for hours working away, his tape machine playing his stories.” She nodded at a yellow plastic device and a stack of tapes. “He was a very neat boy, always picking up after himself at the end of the day. I almost never had to speak to him. Some kids are pretty messy, especially boys, but not him.”
Against the rear wall was a small desk with a neat arrangement of books and a kid’s Fisher-Price electronic keyboard toy.
“We were saving to get him a computer for Christmas.” Mrs. Dixon sighed and began to close the door. “We had nothing to go on, but we always hoped he’d come back.” Tears flooded her eyes. “I prayed every day he’d come home.” Vernon put his arm around her.
Greg picked up Grady’s baseball glove. On the strap that went over his left wrist Grady had printed his name with a black marker. As he stared at it, he wondered how these people could go on. They had so little and now they had lost everything that mattered. But he sensed that they
They returned to the living room. “I want you to know that the investigation is ongoing in Massachusetts. We’ve not given up on Grady,” Greg said. “And that’s why I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may, because we’ve found some similarities to another case.”
Vernon Dixon didn’t look pleased.
“’Spose it can’t hurt,” Mrs. Dixon said.
“Three years ago, we found the remains of another child—a boy about Grady’s age—also in the waters of Massachusetts. We’re trying to determine if there’s a connection.”
“I know what you’re gonna ask,” Vernon said, “and the answer is no. It’s what I told him. We got no idea how he ended up in Massachusetts. We’ve never even been to Massachusetts. We ain’t even got relatives or acquaintances in Massachusetts. ‘Cept for you, I don’t think I ever met anybody from Massachusetts.”
Mrs. Dixon nodded in agreement.
“I understand that,” Greg said. “But the other child we found had markings on the skull similar to Grady’s.” Greg could not get himself to use the word
Mrs. Dixon’s face was a perfect blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Officer. What markings?”
“The perforations, the holes.” Greg raised his finger to the side of his head.
“What holes?”
He flashed a look at Kemmer for an explanation. Greg knew Joe Steiner had notified Gene Grzywna, the Gloucester case officer, about the holes, and he in turn had sent a report to Kemmer. Or he was supposed to have.
Kemmer made a faint shrug that said he didn’t have a clue either. If there was a screwup, Greg didn’t want to fan Dixon’s contempt of police.
From his briefcase, Greg pulled out a computer schematic of a child’s head, the holes in Grady’s skull
