Eleven Little Piggies (15 page)

‘No. Skinned in a couple of places. Nothing serious.'

‘Rosie said the folks at your domestic disturbance tried to kill you.'

‘My own detectives saved my life.' He kind of chortled, an unusually cheerful sound, coming from him. ‘What do you think of that?'

‘It's a touching folk tale. Those people did kind of destroy your shirt, though, didn't they?'

He waved away his missing buttons. ‘The uniforms had it under control when we got there, but when the fighters saw fresh meat walk in . . . they just had to show all over again how tough they were. That case is going to take a while to sort out – it's an extended family and there are several badly traumatized kids.'

‘But no fatalities, right?'

‘I hope not. We sent a couple of kids to the hospital for check-ups. The dad's a big guy and he just went berserk.'

‘Rosie said you made two arrests?'

‘Yeah, there's a family friend . . . looks like he got a little too friendly with Mom. I think that's what started the fight.' Ray's expression took on the swampy gloom I have come to think of as the Full Bailey. ‘No matter how hard we work we can never fix stupid, can we?'

‘No. Listen, may I go back and ask a question about Matt before I forget?'

‘Sure.'

‘Why did you come on with all that admiration at the beginning and try to snow him? I've never seen you behave that way before.'

‘Oh . . . well.' He looked at the ceiling light. He was actually blushing! ‘My wife . . . Cathy talked me into joining a Toastmasters Club. She said sometimes she thought I was too . . . reserved, I think is the word she used, for my own good.

‘So I went to a meeting this week and they talked a lot about what they called
cordiality.
But the way they described cordiality, it sounded a lot more like plain old fawning and flattery, to me. And they went on and on about how it greases the wheels, gets people to loosen up and talk about themselves and then you're friends and great work gets done. I decided to try some of the things they suggested.' He managed to smile and look morose at the same time. ‘Sorry about that. I shoulda known I'd screw it up.'

‘Oh, you didn't. You really had him going till you got the part about verifying. Then I think he just needed a way to get out of the room, and he looked around and there I was with my face that doesn't fit the Kester world view. After that I thought you handled it very well indeed.'

‘Uh-huh. Is that another little dose of Toastmasters?' He rubbed his cheeks, started over. ‘Let's talk about the good news. The chief approved a rehire for Bo?'

‘He wants to talk to him first but yes – if Bo convinces him he's back to stay we can have him.'

‘He'll do it. Then I think I'll put him to work – Bo, I mean – on this new pile of family garbage so the rest of the crew can get back out to the farm.'

‘Did Andy find the fence menders yet?'

‘He said he was just starting to talk to them . . . he'll get back to it as soon as he's done chaining up Dad so he can safely take him to booking. Dad still wants to fight.'

‘But Clint can get back to finding the truck driver?'

‘Yeah, he's already on his way. Man, but there's so much else to do out there – we still haven't found the weapon that killed Owen, we don't know for sure how his body got to the field and we don't know where half the farm's crew were Saturday morning.'

‘Also, we haven't looked in any of the buildings at that farm where the dairy is, have we?'

‘No, and that barn over there's got a hayloft the size of a football field: you could hide an armory in it. Every time I think about this case I line up another two days' work.'

‘So I better not mention that I'd like to talk to you about Matt's interview.' He steepled his hands in prayerful desperation. ‘Never mind, I'll make notes.' I left him punching in a phone number with one hand while he buttoned a fresh shirt with the other. Back in my office, I got about three words typed on a fresh screen before my phone rang.

‘Got a cancellation,' Pokey said without saying hello. ‘Gave me time to finish autopsy report. You want lunch? My turn to buy.'

I so seldom hear that offer from him that I accepted at once. I thought maybe he'd found something unusual in the body of the victim and wanted to celebrate, but when he handed me the fat envelope he said, ‘No hurry about digging through that, I guess. It's just what it looked like: healthy young guy got offed at point-blank range with powerful weapon.' He took his time over the menu, finally maxing out his grease and salt content with a Reuben sandwich and fries.

‘You know,' I said, ‘if I ate the way you do my arteries would clog up and kill me in about a year. How do you manage to graze like a goat and still look as if you ran marathons?'

He turned his palms up. ‘Generations of dirt-poor Ukrainians,' he said. ‘I'm descended from blockheads who learned how to thrive in any conditions.'

‘I don't think that's logical but who am I to argue with success?'

‘Longer I do autopsies,' he said, tapping the envelope he had just put on the table, ‘more I think it's . . . what's that thing they say in poker? Yeah, luck of the draw. Most of life is luck of the draw.' He gave me the smile that makes him look like a devious fox. ‘So don't worry, be happy.'

‘Maybe you're right. Owen Kester, for example,' I nodded toward the envelope, ‘lived a good, clean life, didn't do drugs any stronger than a little pot and got plenty of exercise. Now he's died young because somebody, what? Didn't like his attitude, I guess.'

‘Mmm. Boy, nothing like hot sauerkraut, huh?' He stuck his tongue around his greasy sandwich to nab some cheese melting off the edge. ‘Tell the truth, though, the guy who shot Owen Kester probably helped him dodge another bullet down the road.'

‘Whaddya mean?'

‘Pretty sure I saw precursor signs of Alzheimer's in his brain. Didn't put it in my report. Would take a specialist to be sure.'

‘No kidding? You can tell in advance?'

‘Years in advance. Funny little folds of protein . . . I ain't no expert, so don't quote me. You might want to tell his family, though . . . if they want to be sure, they could hire a diagnostician while the victims' still in the morgue.'

‘You mean,' I said, thinking about Benny, ‘any one of us might be carrying the beginnings of our doom around for years and not know it?'

‘Of course. Where the hell you been? Everybody carrying a lot of crap around. Just depends what triggers it. But hey, cheer up,' he punched my arm, ‘you're a cop, chances are some stupid lummox gonna off you before disease can get you.'

‘Oh, hey, thanks – you're a great source of comfort.'

‘No trouble. Victims' brain don't matter to him now,' he said, still nudging around the edges of his testing idea, ‘but in case his brothers ever gonna need 'em, you know, better treatments coming soon.'

‘I'll think about it.' I remembered Anna Carrie's strange behavior in Ray's office, and her husband saying, ‘She gets spells . . .' But if the brothers couldn't even accept the idea that Owen's death wasn't accidental, how hard was it going to be to convince them to test for an allele that might eat their brains?

I decided to put off trying.

‘That's a real shocker, Pokey. I thought Owen Kester looked exceptionally healthy. I mean, for a guy who just bled out.'

‘Now there we have expert cop's opinion worth quoting.' Pokey's smile lit up the whole booth. ‘Probably oughta embroider that one on pillow.'

 

Bo hustled into Frank's office soon after lunch, and satisfied the chief's concerns about his intentions. He took his drubbing like a soldier when he got to Lulu's desk too. When she had made it crystal clear how little she enjoyed self-duplicating tasks, he appeared in my workspace, only slightly paler than usual. I waved away his attempt to express gratitude.

‘We need you more than you need us,' I said. ‘You'll soon see how much. Let's go talk to Ray.'

The two of them had had an uneasy relationship when Ray first took the helm at the newly created People Crimes. Part of the problem was Bo's somewhat anomalous position as our specialist in drug interdiction – he was in Ray's department but often working independently, and I added to the problem by giving him some orders I forgot to clear with Ray. That problem was disappearing fast in our rear-view mirror, because thanks to the explosive growth of both Rutherford and the Midwest drug trade, most of Bo's former workload had been taken over by the feds.

And right now we had to deal with this epidemic of disruptive and violent behavior that had broken out in Rutherford like a bad rash. Ray's only question for Bo today was, ‘How soon can you start?' I left them prioritizing his tasks for the following morning.

I finished three pages of notes about the Matt Kester interview and added them to the case file. Ray poked his nose in my office shortly after, to say that Winnie was the first detective to finish up at the domestic carnage and he had sent her back to the farm to try again to get a list of employees from Doris.

He also reported that Clint had found the driver of the milk truck that had hit Doris's horses. ‘Get this, his name is Rhodes. So of course his nickname is Dusty. I mean, why not Bumpy?' When Ray gets tired his sense of humor, never the sharpest in the building, begins to slide back to about sixth-grade level. ‘Anyway, he's meeting him in Dusty's favorite after-work bar, which is that raunchy Blue Moon joint in the North End.'

‘You sure Clint didn't pick it? Let's hope he comes back with all his buttons. Are Andy and Rosie . . .?'

‘Still booking their prisoners.' He laughed. ‘Our guys got stuck at the end of a long queue. Property crimes guys grabbed a trio of knuckleheads today. Get this: they were loading a houseful of furniture into a truck with an expired license and a broken tail light. Kevin's boys stopped to cite the driver and everybody ran away.'

‘So it turned into a chase?'

‘Yup. The furniture, the truck – even the two-wheeler – it was all stolen goods.'

‘What's come over our peaceful village? Never mind, there seems to be a lull right now. I'm going to sidle out of here while it lasts and pick up Benny. On time for once!'

 

My son was sitting in a high chair, pounding on the tray and whimpering. As soon as he saw me he put up his arms, but when I picked him up he went on whining.

‘I think he's teething,' Maxine said. ‘I've been expecting it. He's red and swollen here in front, see?' She tried to hold his lip down so I could see, but he jerked away and yelled louder. ‘Trudy's got a teething ring in the refrigerator at home – take it out and let him chew on it.'

He complained without interruption all the way home, drooling and punishing his car seat. For some time we had been mercifully free of the weeping rides homeward that he had subjected me to in his infancy, and I'd forgotten how hard it is to listen to. I'm sure we'll be glad about his fine big voice when he's older – maybe he'll win oratory prizes in high school and make me proud. But all I could think about that afternoon was that kids should come with volume control.

I pretty much tore the refrigerator apart looking for anything that might possibly be a teething ring – was it metal? Would it be in the freezer? – I'd never seen one and had no idea what I was looking for. Finally, in the butter cooler, I found an unopened blue box labeled ‘teething ring'.

‘Egad, Watson,' I said, ‘a clue.' I pulled it out and read the cover as if it was Holy Writ. It said it was cold, harmless plastic and I should let him chew on it.

I tore the device out of its wrapper and stuck it in his mouth. Looking startled, he growled around it, spat it out a couple of times and then settled down to serious chewing. By the time his bottle was warmed up, he had a hard time deciding which pleasure he wanted more.

Then Trudy walked in and said, ‘Why's all the food out of the refrigerator?'

I may have overreacted. Not to put too fine a point on it, I blew my cork.

‘Would it be too much,' I asked her, ‘to let me know when one of these epochal changes is coming at me? How in the flaming fuck am I supposed to know what a teething ring looks like? I never even—'

‘It looks like whatever comes out of a box labeled “teething ring”, usually,' she said. ‘And I told you where it was when I said Maxine thought Benny looked about ready to pop a tooth.'

‘You did?'

‘Twice.'

‘I never heard you say that.'

‘I'm not surprised. You've been so obsessed lately about your precious injury-and-arrest-prone Vikings, that getting your attention is often like pulling, pardon the expression, teeth.'

She stomped upstairs, where she made a little more noise than usual changing clothes. Like mother, like son, I thought – I mean, ordinarily it isn't necessary to slam all the dresser drawers five times to get out a sweatshirt.

I held my son close while he finished his supper. Trudy came back downstairs in soft clothes and felt slippers. When she was close enough to hear I told Benny, ‘You know, son, some days your father misses perfectly good opportunities to keep his trap shut.'

Trudy snorted and switched around a while, then came and touched the baby's cheek and said, ‘And sometimes your mother has a bad lab day and comes home looking for a fight.' She leaned a hip into my arm. ‘Is any of that beer still cold? Let's each have one and cool down.'

‘Excellent idea. And if you stay close to us while you drink it, I will seize the opportunity to tell you how good you look today.' She leaned some more. ‘And feel,' I said, shifting Benny a little so I could nuzzle her neck.