Nellie looked around the room at the gathered detectives.
‘Anyone?’ she said. ‘Anything?’
‘Can you go over them one more time?’ Ollie said. ‘In order this time?’
* * * *
He went through each and every murder yet another time, chronologically in present time, and then chronologically in past time as well. He was eight and called Carlie when his mother abandoned the family…
I had my own key, I let myself into the apartment. My father was at work, my brother had basketball practice after school, but my mother should have been home. The house was so still. Sunlight coming through the windows. The clock ticking.
I went to the fridge to get myself a glass of milk and some cookies. My mother always had a snack prepared for us when we got home from school.
There was a note on the refrigerator door.
Hand Lettered.
Dear Andrew and Carlie …
I couldn’t pronounce ‘Charlie’ back then, I was only eight.
Dear Andrew and Carlie…
Forgive me for this, but I must leave without you. He does not want your father’s children.
One day you will understand.
Mom
I thought, Who does not want my father’s children?
Who does not want Andy and me?
I thought, Understand what?
There wasn’t any milk or cookies in the fridge.
‘You killed your own fucking mother,’ Parker said.
‘She stopped being my mother when I was eight.’
He was ten and still called Carlie when the priest molested him…
It wasn’t like behind closed doors or anything, no covert nook in some secret cloister, no dark corner with vaulting arches and windows streaming fractured light, no solemn silent afternoon seduction.
This was in broad daylight.
On the front seat of a Chrysler convertible.
The top down.
Sunshine everywhere.
Insects buzzing in the road in the fields on either side of the little dirt road.
I was ten years old.
‘Now, isn’t this nice, Carlie? A ride in the country? Isn’t this lovely?’
‘Look, Carlie.’
‘No, here, Carlie.’
‘Look at my lap.’
‘Do you see, Carlie?’
‘No, don’t be afraid.’
‘Touch it, Carlie.’
The insects buzzing.
‘Yes, Carlie. That’s a good boy, Carlie.’
His hand on my head.
Guiding me.
Leading me.
‘It wouldn’t have happened if I still had a mother,’ he told them.
He was fourteen-year-old Chuck when a thirteen-year-old beauty refused to dance with him…
The church was this big yellow stucco building on the corner of Laurelwood and I forget which cross street. Dominated the corner. Looked moorish somehow, I don’t know why it should have, there was a big cross on top of one of the turrets.
The recreation hall was very large. There was a stage up front, with a record player sitting on a folding card table. A young priest was in charge of picking the songs. There were two big speakers, one on either side of the stage. If ever there was a lecture or anything, they would set up these wooden folding chairs. But for the Friday night dances, the chairs were pushed back along the walls, so that when you weren’t dancing, you could sit. Mostly, it was the girls who sat, waiting for guys to come ask them to dance. The guys all stood around in small clusters, mustering courage to go ask the girls.
I remember the song they were playing that night.
This was forty-two years ago, but I still remember it. It was I Can’t Stop Loving You by Ray Charles, a big hit that year. It was all about this guy who can’t stop thinking of this girl he spent so many happy hours with. His heart is broken, you see. But he can’t stop dreaming of her.
Girls don’t know how long and how scary a room can seem when you’re walking across it to ask someone to dance. Alicia was sitting with two of her girlfriends at the very farthest end of the room, her legs crossed, she was wearing a yellow dress, kind of ruffled, her legs crossed, jiggling her foot, she had such gorgeous legs, I loved her to death. The room was so long, Ray Charles singing about lonesome times, Alicia with her hair long and blonde, thirteen years old, Ray Charles singing about dreams of yesterday, Alicia laughing, looking beautiful, I stopped in front of her, the laughter stopped. I held out my hand to her.
‘Would you care to dance?’ I said.
I can’t stop wanting you.
Alicia looked up at me.
‘Get lost, faggot,’ she said.
‘Let me get this straight, okay?’ Carella said. ‘You killed Alicia Hendricks because she wouldn’t dance with you…”
‘Yes.’
‘… when you were fourteen?’
‘She called me a faggot!’
He was still Chuck at eighteen when a high school teacher refused to give him the A that would have kept him out of the Army…
‘But you promised…’
‘Promises, promises,’ she said.
‘You don’t understand, Miss Langston…”
‘Oh, yes, I understand quite well.’
On the field outside, the football team was running plays. I could hear the coach shouting. A whistle blew. I had turned eighteen in September. If I didn’t get into college…
‘If you give me a C, it’ll drag my average way down…’
‘Then ask one of your other teachers for an A.’
‘Please, Miss Langston, the college will turn me down!’
‘Apply to another college.’
‘You promised me an A. You said if I…”
‘Oh, please don’t be ridiculous, Chuck. I was joking and you know it.’
‘Miss Langston, please. Christine, pl…’
‘Don’t you dare call me Christine!’
Her words snapping on the air like the cold November itself. Her eyes glinting pale blue in the bleak grayness of the afternoon.
‘They’ll send me to Vietnam,’ I said.
‘Pity,’ she said.
In the Army, he was Charlie…
