release Willis’s name either today or tomorrow.”
“Probably,” I said. “They’re bound to be feeling some pressure to show they’re making progress on the case.”
“I figure the Knoxville media will pick up the story, too,” he said, “since Willis lived in Knoxville till a few months ago.”
“But of course,” I sighed. “Local angle on a kinky case.”
“I keep thinking about the parents of that kid,” said Art. “This is going to dredge up some intense feelings for them. Rip the scab right off the wound-if they’ve even managed to get as far as scabbing over. Maybe the newspaper isn’t the best way for them to hear about it.”
I tried to put myself in the position of the parents. I imagined my son Jeff and his wife Jenny; I pictured what it would be like for them if Tyler or Walker had been sexually abused by a trusted adult, and how they might feel if they read about the abuser’s death in the paper. “That would be intense,” I said, “but not necessarily negative. Might be the best news in the world to them. Might be just what they need to set it behind them and get on with their lives.”
“You don’t ever set this sort of thing behind you,” Art said. “It’s a lot like the death of a child; it haunts you forever. The pain dulls after a while, but it doesn’t take much-a birthday, a scene in a TV show, a crayon drawing you find in the bottom of a drawer-to put a sharp edge on it all over again.”
I suddenly realized what he wanted to do. “You’re planning to go tell the kid’s parents yourself?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Not me. We.”
“We? You and me? Why?”
“We ID’d the body,” he said. “That makes us the logical messengers. We’re witnesses to the death, in a way; we’re the two people who can say, with firsthand knowledge and absolute certainty, ‘The man who molested your son is dead, and here’s how he died.’ Besides,” he added, “telling them is the decent thing to do, and we’re the only decent guys I can think of at the moment.”
I could think of several, but I knew Art well enough to know that his mind was made up. And his reasoning, if not strictly logical, was emotionally compelling. “Okay,” I yielded. “When?”
“Tiffany doesn’t get home from school and cheerleader practice for another couple hours,” he said. “How about I pick you up at your office in half an hour? That gives me time to call the folks in Chattanooga.”
“You want me to be waiting down by the end-zone tunnel?”
“I’ll call you when I’m turning onto Stadium Drive,” he said. “That should give you time to wash bone cooties off your hands and come downstairs.”
Half an hour later, he called back. “Okay, I just turned off Neyland onto Lake Loudoun Drive, and I’m turning onto Stadium now. Hey, what’s going on in Thompson-Boling Arena? I see a ton of media trucks.”
“A creationist rally,” I said miserably. “I mean, ‘intelligent design.’ Oh, and thanks for rubbing salt in the wound.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’ll use lemon juice next time. Or maybe lemon meringue pie.” He snorted with laughter.
“Bye,” I said, and hung up. I made a pit stop in the bathroom that adjoined my office-a useful vestige of Stadium Hall’s former life as a dormitory-then locked up and headed down the stairwell.
Just as I walked out of the building, Art rounded the end of the stadium and stopped at the chain-link gate to the end-zone tunnel. He was driving an unmarked gray Impala I hadn’t seen before. Unlike the battered white sedan he usually drove, this car had glossy paint and clean upholstery, and the interior did not reek of spilled coffee and stale cigarette smoke, the way police cars often do. “Nice wheels,” I said. “How’d you rate a fine steed like this?”
“Blackmailed the chief,” he said. “Not on purpose, though. He asked me last week how the undercover work was going, and I said, ‘Pretty good, Chief; by the way, I see you’re doing a little undercover research on adult web sites yourself.’ Hell, I was just messing with him, but he turned red and broke into a sweat. Next thing you know, I get a call from the motor vehicle pool telling me to come swap my old beater for this thing. I guess you were right,” he added.
“About what?”
“Chance does favor the prepared mind.”
“I don’t think Internet porn and accidental blackmail were what Louis Pasteur had in mind when he said that.”
“No, but it makes me feel better about driving the car if I can quote something highbrow to justify my accidental good fortune.”
“You think the chief ’s into any of the really bad stuff?”
“Naw,” he said, “he’s a good guy. But he’s a guy. The percentage of adult males with Internet access who have never visited a porn site is about the same as the percentage of adult males who’ve never jerked off.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Once again, I find myself outside the mainstream.”
“Which one you talking about? No, don’t tell me-I don’t wanna know.”
Art drove north on Broadway, in the direction of Broadway Jewelry amp; Loan. A few blocks shy of the shopping center, though, he turned left onto Glenwood, then left again onto Scott. A sign on one corner announced that we were entering Old North Knoxville. Scott Avenue, like most of the neighborhood, was a street in transition. At one time, it had been an elegant neighborhood of two-and three-story Victorian homes occupying large, shady lots. Over the de cades, though, many of the homes had gone to seed; some had been carved into apartments and smothered in aluminum siding; others had burned and been replaced with bleak brick boxes. The past few years had brought something of a rebirth, in a scattered, piecemeal sort of way. We drove past several houses in varying stages of decay, their lawns overgrown, tree branches clutching at sagging roofs. Then we passed a pocket of beautifully restored homes. Some of these were painted in neutral colors or subtle pastels; others, decked out in vibrant, contrasting colors-one combined turquoise siding with gold windows and orange gingerbread-were what my colleagues in the Art and Architecture Department called “painted ladies.” They reminded me of the drag queens Jess and I had seen at the nightclub in Chattanooga, and the analogy made me smile. I would never paint a house so boldly, but I could appreciate the way they livened up a neighborhood.
“So tell me about these lucky folks we’re about to drop in on,” I said. “And how do you know if anybody’s even home?”
“I called the house just before I phoned you,” he said. “Woman answered; I said, ‘Sorry, wrong number,’ and hung up. I didn’t want to get into it by phone.” I nodded. “Parents are named Bobby and Susan Scott; kid’s name is Joseph. Joey. Dad’s a contractor of some sort; mom works part-time as a dental hygienist.”
“Any other kids?”
“Don’t know.” He slowed to check a house number. “Must be the next one on the right.”
The next one on the right was a three-story Victorian with an immense porch that stretched the width of the house and then wrapped around one side. Two of the bedrooms on the second floor had covered, columned balconies as well, and the third floor-which might have been servants’ quarters a century ago-was a marriage of slate roof and dormer windows. The house was a microcosm of the neighborhood itself: a work in progress; a study in transition. One side of the facade was freshly painted, its cedar shakes an elegant blue-gray with white trim; the other side was sheathed in a tower of scaffolding through which I glimpsed a patchwork of peeling paint and new, unpainted shakes.
A minivan was parked beside the house, beneath a porte cochere whose roof was supported by fluted white columns. “Now that’s what I call a carport,” said Art. “They just don’t make ’em like that anymore.”
“They don’t,” I agreed, “but I bet your heating bill in the winter is about one-tenth what theirs is. Look at all those windows with all those little bitty panes of glass. Some of ’em missing, too, looks like. Probably no insulation in the walls, either-I bet when the winter wind blows, you can feel it inside the house.”
“Cuts down on the germs,” he said. “Toughens up the immune system, too.” He parked at the curb and cut the engine. “Okay, you ready?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I never am, for this kind of thing. You just have to take it slow; don’t dump too much on them at once.” He took a deep breath, and I did the same, and then we walked slowly up the sidewalk and climbed the porch stairs.
The front door was a massive slab of fine-grained oak and bubbly, rippled old glass. The wood-hand-carved in
