A Grave Talent

an impossible run instead of making a pass. Quit before the end of the season, I think.'

'That sounds like him.'

'There was something else, too. What was it? Never had any problem with my memory before I retired,' he complained. 'Now it's like running in mud. There was something he was involved in, later, some kind of trouble. Ah, got it! That girl. It was that girl, the one who killed the little Brand child and went to prison. She was Lewis's girlfriend for a while, wasn't she? Is that why you're here? It was a long time ago. Wait a minute. Where did you say you were from?'

'San Francisco,' Hawkin admitted, and the coach was on it in a flash.

'Those little girls they've been finding in the mountains? Is that why you're here? You think she's done it again, and you're trying to find her through Lewis? You're wasting your time, I'd say. He's been gone for a long time.'

'Yes, Mr. Shapiro, I know that.' He neither confirmed nor denied the man's assumption, but retreated into a convenient, if true, formula. 'We have some questions we'd like to ask Mr. Lewis; we think he can help us clear up a case we're working on. One of the problems we're having at the moment is that we don't know what he looks like, other than vague descriptions. We're trying to find a photograph of him. Would you by any chance have one?'

The old man burst into cackles, slapped his knee, and pushed himself to his feet. He gestured for Hawkin to follow him and shuffled into the next room, which had once been designed as a bedroom but was now what might be called a study, or a storage room, or a segment of primordial chaos. Filing cabinets with overflowing, unclosable drawers sat on top of dressers and chests; storage shelves, floor to ceiling, towered along the walls, in front of the window, as an island in the middle of the room. Every flat surface was laden with precarious, bulging cartons and grocery bags filled with papers, books, ribbons, trophies, and just plain debris.

'Memorabilia of forty years' teaching and coaching. Always told myself that when I retired I'd spend happy days sorting it out, but somehow I never seern to find time for it. Can't think where to begin, for one thing. My wife wouldn't even come in here, terrified something would fall on her. I used to bring a chair in here to have a smoke. Damn fool of a doctor told my wife I had to give them up, but she'd never come in here.' He surveyed the incredible room with the complacent pride of a grandfather, and Hawkin's blood ran cold at the thought of what an errant spark could do. 'Anyway, to answer your question, there's probably a picture of your Andy Lewis in here somewhere, but God alone knows where.'

He led them back into his living room, which seemed in retrospect a paragon of tidiness and order. Hawkin drew a deep breath and prepared to spend a chunk of taxpayers' money.

'Mr. Shapiro, if I arranged some help for you, would you be willing to go through your… memorabilia… and see if you can find any photographs of Andrew Lewis?'

Chief Walker listened, screamed, and agreed to send a man the next day. Hawkin suggested three or four additional sorters—unemployed housewives?—and some muscular teenagers to carry and load. Walker screamed again, and Hawkin spoke the soothing words of financial responsibility and reminded him not so gently of the murdered children, to say nothing of the fire hazard. They parted, if not friends, at least colleagues.

Shapiro seemed thrilled with the arrangement, and they left him a-babbling of a show at the local historical society and pulling at Zawalski's coattails for a display of his prizes at the high school's next homecoming game.

Hawkin rode back to the school brooding darkly over the possibility of a conspiracy that reached back eighteen years, and the very absurdity of it put him into a foul mood. Kate, on the other hand, was positively bubbling over with news and had some color in her face for the first time that day.

'Al, you'll never guess what I found out.'

'Oh, Christ, Martinelli, let's not play guessing games, huh?'

Her face went blank and her chin went up, and Hawkin kicked himself for a clumsy fool.

'Yes, sir. Would you like to hear the results of my—'

'Casey, stop. I'm sorry, I've been drinking bad beer, thinking bad thoughts, and I need a toilet. I'll be back in a minute, and we'll start again.' He went out, and a while later there was a dim rumor of rushing water and he came back.

'Okay, now, what have you come up with?'

She eyed him cautiously, but retreated from formality.

'Walker couldn't find anything, but the town Lewis came here from is about sixty miles north of here, and Walker knows the man who was sheriff at the time. He's retired, but he still lives there. I phoned around and finally tracked him down at his daughter's house, and I explained who I was and asked him if there was a possibility that the name Andrew Lewis meant anything to him. He didn't answer at first, so I started to explain that it would have been twenty years ago and he had no record so he'd probably never even been arrested as a juvenile, but he cut me off and said in this very quiet voice that there was no need, he remembered Andrew Lewis very well, what did I want to know? I left it general, that we were looking for him for information he might have concerning a murder, but he cut me off again, and said—shall I read it to you? I got most of it.' She held up her notebook, and at his nod went on.

'He said, 'I wondered how long it would take before he got caught with something.' I started to say that we were only trying to find him, but he said, 'I knew twenty-five years ago that Andy Lewis was rotten, and I knew eighteen years ago that he had something to do with that little girl's death.'

'What?' said Hawkin, incredulous.

'That's what he said.'

'You mean he thinks Lewis did it?'

'He didn't say that. He was very careful not to. Just that Lewis was involved in some way. Shall I read the rest of this?'

Hawkin ran a hand through his hair, took out his cigarettes, and nodded for her to continue.

'I asked him if maybe he could explain that statement. He asked me if I had a few minutes, and I assured him that I had all the time in the world.'

Kate looked back at her notes, remembering that at this point in their conversation the retired sheriff had excused himself and laid down the receiver. She had heard footsteps going across a room, followed by an unintelligible mumble, and a door closing to shut out the sounds of children. Footsteps again, the scrape of a chair, and then his voice had come again. She found her place on the page.

' 'First of all,' he said, 'I want you to know that I'm not the kind of person who sees bogeymen in the woodwork and criminal psychoses in every kid who cracks somebody over the head. I'm sure that anyone who's ever worked with me would tell you the same thing that's on my first academy evaluation: I don't have a lot of imagination, and I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.' He sounded like that, too,' Kate added. 'Slow and thoughtful.

' 'Andy Lewis and his mother moved here when he was nine. It's a small town, and I live here, so I'd always hear when people came in or out, you know? Well, a couple of weeks later I had a phone call from the sheriff where they used to live, down near Fresno, a guy I'd met a couple of times. He told me, just casually you understand, that if people started reporting dead pets, I should keep an eye on the Lewis kid. Yeah, I know, I thought it sounded kind of crazy too, and I told him so, and he kind of laughed and agreed with me, and that was the end of it.

' 'Then about four or five months later an old lady found her poodle strangled. She'd thrown some kids out of her yard the week before. Four months later a cat and its kittens were found strangled, two days after their owner had shouted to a gang of kids to leave them alone. That time I remembered the phone call. Andy Lewis was in the gang, he had scratches on his arms, but what kid doesn't? And his mother said he'd been home all night. About two or three times a year, after that, somebody would make Andy Lewis mad, and one morning they'd find their dog or cat dead or their bird cage opened. No sign of a break-in, but in the country people are careless about locking doors and windows. I even began checking for fingerprints, on the collars and stuff, but nothing. Never anything I could prove, and never a valuable animal or livestock, but it made me nervous, especially the way he wasn't in a hurry about it. Nothing pointed to him, there was always a gap between the insult, if that's how he saw it, and the revenge. If it hadn't been for the phone call, I don't know how long it would have taken me to put it together. As I said, it made me nervous. And when I found that he didn't go bragging to his friends, well, that made me very nervous.

' 'He was cool, he was patient, and he was smart. Except for once, once that I caught him, I should say. You'll understand when I say that by the time he was a teenager I was getting more than a bit concerned about