How would I respond if my down-the-road neighbor called to inform me there was a body in her front yard? With more questions
than Sue ventured, that’s for sure. She has such a strong reluctance to intrude it’s hard to get to know her. She did ask
if I knew whose body it was. When I told her, there was a little gasp, then “Oh, dear! He and Denny are like fourth cousins.
Not that they’re close or anything. I mean, we never even heard of Ryan till he moved here from Watertown.” And after a pause,
“It’s like, unreal. Of course the boys can stay here as long as you want. Or are you going to pick them up at the park?”
It seemed best not to speculate how difficult that mission might be to execute. “I’ll see how things look closer to time,”
I hedged. “If you don’t hear from me, can you make sure they don’t wander over here?”
“No problem.” Nor would there be. Sue’s not a yeller, but she keeps her two girls and a boy in line. Alex and Galen fell right
in with her system. It was slowly sinking in that kids are apt to do that, when the system’s perceived as user-friendly.
I stared at the phone in my hand. Was I being just plain dumb to impose on Sue and hang so much on my mobility? Why not get
Vicky to drive down and take the boys back with her to the city? So they’d miss the last day of the rec program—they’d be
off to the Adirondacks Saturday, anyhow with their big sister Gina and her boyfriend. I could even pack for them, so they
wouldn’t have to see …
I called the apartment. Jason answered, fortunately in one of his more cooperative moods; he doesn’t always pass callers along.
We didn’t chat while I waited for his mother to come on the line. I struggle to find anything to say to Jason that won’t antagonize
him.
Vicky’s managed to miss very little work since the second series of chemo treatments last spring, but she hasn’t gotten her
energy back. Her “What’s up, Sissy?” was delivered in the softened, tired voice that had become distressingly familiar.
My sister is a people person and genuinely enjoys waitressing, the only type of work she’s ever done much of. She makes very
good tips. I know it wouldn’t be good for her to knock off, let me support her. In many ways we aren’t much alike, but we
do share this compulsion to keep busy, to be doing something useful. It wouldn’t take her even a week to start feeling bored
hanging around the apartment.
Down here she’d get more acutely bored, faster. By choice Vicky still lives in our old neighborhood; she feels secure there,
though most outsiders wouldn’t. I’ve given up trying to relocate her to a nicer part of Albany. Or to this house—a day or
two of country living lasts Vicky a long time, and whatever would we do with Jason?
Alex and Galen’s dad, a Cuban immigrant, was stabbed to death trying to make peace in a trivial street argument among some
neighborhood teens. The city was three days into a brutal heat wave, the kids had too much time on their hands, some of them
were doped up; things like that don’t happen very often in Albany, but they’re not unheard of or even surprising anymore.
They’re worth a few days’ stories in the paper and on local television, more if anyone comes to trial, but the kids usually
plead out somewhere along the way. And life goes on.
God knows Vicky’s used to picking up the pieces. She would never have asked me to come back to this area and help her do that.
But I didn’t doubt I needed to, nor have I regretted the move, really: I must’ve been ready for this closer connection, this
family stuff. Okay, it was more fun being Aunt Val twenty miles down the road than it’s been with the boys in residence. And
if the cancer takes Vicky, which it likely will, I have no idea how the rest of us will cope with that. We’ll just have to.
Our crash course in breast cancer options and survival statistics materialized without warning last fall. Vicky was feeling
fine—she’d only gone to the doctor to see if anything could be done for a persistent soreness in her right elbow. The doctor
prescribed an anti-inflammatory drug, and while he was at it did a physical and suggested that at forty Vicky should get a
baseline mammogram. It all took off from there—the mammogram showed what looked like a tumor, the biopsy confirmed that it
was cancerous, the lymph nodes removed as part of the surgery showed the cancer had metastasized. There’s this dreadful formula
called staging: you consider the size of the tumor and whether or not the cancer cells have spread and you end up with a number.
Vicky’s is the second worst number you can have, which means her five-year survival prospects are not worth spit.
We’re doing all we can, and we don’t talk about it much. Vicky’s her normal cheerful self and tries not to show how much the
chemo takes out of her. If you hadn’t known her before, you wouldn’t realize she’s ill. But I can’t suspend that realization.
For me, sometimes the cheerfulness comes hard.
My news revved her up, and my sister is good at processing what she hears. “You’re worried people will think you killed this
man” was her first evaluation. “But since you didn’t …”
“They’ll believe me if I look sincere enough, do you think? Let’s be real: unless the cops find themselves a better suspect
…”
Vicky is a sucker for happy endings; she’s also spent her entire life among people whose confidence in the police is eminently
shakable. “Well, they’ll have to” was the best she could do.
“I’ll tell them. But you know, that may not happen right this afternoon, hon, so maybe you should come get the boys?”
“Or maybe not,” she said thoughtfully. “I mean, it’s not like they’re in danger, is it? You just don’t want them to know,
and of course they will.”
“Sure, but from a distance. They won’t have to deal with a roped-off crime scene out front, complete with uniformed guard.
And I may well have to go down to the sheriff’s office. Even if I don’t, it is not going to be fun around here any time soon.”
“Home’s supposed to be a fun place? Somebody should’ve told Ma. Val, if we want them to feel they belong there, don’t they
need to be part of things, even the bad ones? And you know Alex—the way he’d imagine that yard looking would be ten times
more gruesome than what’s really there to see. If you get hung up later, I’ll scoot right down. Otherwise, I think we should
wait and let Gina fetch them for that camping trip Saturday, like we planned.”
“Maybe you’re right. It’s just … Vicky, I don’t know how much control I’m going to have over any of this.” And scared shitless
to even think about me and police stations, I couldn’t bring myself to add.
“Hey, I’m a phone call away. Donna will be down there soon. I know you, Sissy. You’re going to handle things just fine.”
I’d barely put the phone down when it rang: Donna, between cases, wanting an update. “One important distinction,” she said
after I’d complied. “As long as they’re asking their questions at your house, use your own judgment about which ones to answer
and how. You’re doing all right so far. Nothing to gain by not signing the consent form to search your Bronco. Any judge would
grant a warrant, and in the interim the cops wouldn’t have let you near it. If the killer planted evidence in or on the Bronco,
it will be found— resign yourself to that. Claiming ownership of the pruner probably didn’t hurt, since they’d run that down
anyhow. Being open and cooperative can score points. The moment they ask you to come to the sheriff’s office, however, start
using my judgment: you have nothing to say until your lawyer is present.”
But I didn’t stab him just for the hell of it.
I flashed on trying to tell people that twenty-five years ago; it is an ongoing feature of my nightmares, though not the
highlight. That would be the scene where something makes me look off a little to the right from the homework I’m doing at
the kitchen table, and there’s this dark red pulsing thing extended out onto the green vinyl cloth. Jon Keegan, my new stepfather,
stands against the edge of the table, staring down, his expression hopeful. I pick up the scissors.
I tried not to sound as frightened as she’d made me feel. “Do you think that’s their next step?”
“It depends on what they hear when they ask around,” she answered calmly. “We’ve got to consider it a possibility.”
“What if they want to search my house?”
“I’m surprised they haven’t made noises about that already. Unless they bring a warrant, you have the right to refuse. Is
there anything incriminating in your house?”
“Of course not!”
“Think about it. Did you ever commit nasty thoughts about this man to paper? Paste up his picture and throw darts at it?”
“Who needs darts? I tend to voice my nasty thoughts as soon as I notice them.”
“That’s one of our problems. Val, I’d be more comfortable if you’d let me bring a criminal lawyer in on this.”
“I’m not a criminal!”
“I know. What I don’t know as well as you may need me to is the drill for this sort of situation.”
“Donna, I’m not ready for that, okay?”
There was a pause. “We’ll talk more when I get down there.”
This time the phone was still in my hand when it started ringing: Mariah, railing at what could not have been a significant
delay getting through, demanded amplification. Mariah knew the territory, what questions to ask, so it didn’t take long to
lay things out. Not waiting for commentary, I plunged on into my own demands. For starters, what to expect from Sheriff Dye.
“Baxter is one of those maddeningly self-contained people. You know, the type you break your balls trying to get a decent
reaction out of.”
“He doesn’t seem unfriendly. Especially for a sheriff.”
“I didn’t say unfriendly. He’s perfectly pleasant, so far as I know. A wonderful woodworker, by the way—the Shaker bench in
my foyer? Perhaps not what one would think of as a leader type. And of course he wasn’t supposed to be sheriff. Remember when
Jerry Barnes got caught with that underage girl down in Riverton last fall?”
“Afraid not.”
“Val, you really should pay more attention to these things. You at least know who Jerry Barnes is?”
“The other candidate?”
Mariah sighed pointedly. “The longtime incumbent everybody was satisfied with. You see, the two parties have an arrangement:
the Republicans take district attorney—to keep the Riverton police department, which is riddled with Democrats, in line—and
the Democrats take sheriff, so the district attorney can’t turn into a mini-dictator. But when Jerry all too literally screwed
up he had to bow out of the election, and the Democrats didn’t have time to get anyone else on the ballot. Even then the landslide
was hardly of epic proportions.”
“Shouldn’t the Republicans be celebrating? They get to run the whole show.”
“Yes, but, you see Jerry and Phil Thomson—our district attorney, as you undoubtedly could not have told me either— maintained
a comfortable working relationship. Phil and Baxter rub one another the wrong way. Vigorously.”
“Do I want to know why that is?”
“Oh, I think so. Phil’s a regular on our party circuit. Always shows up in appropriate costume and suntan; can keep a conversation
running half an hour without once engaging his brain. Has his eye on the State Assembly, if Sanderson ever retires. Baxter
is not into either costuming or small talk. Or politics, period, as far as I can tell—his father’s the one in that family.
The gears are not meshing. Phil can’t seriously believe they’re colleagues; Baxter doesn’t think he’s a servant.”
“You can guess which side I’d pick. But does the man know what he’s doing?”
“Well, he did make it through college eventually, even started law school, as I recall. He’s been in the department long enough
to learn his way around. When it narrows down to homicide work, who could say? Nobody around here’s had much experience with
that.”
“Should I have called the state police instead?”
“God, no. None of them knows this end of the country from his mother’s tits. I’d grade Baxter as at least reasonably competent,
and being native, he knows the territory. There’s a plus for you: his ex-wife and Kate Etlinger got to be best buddies back
while Kate was still a Donnelly. They’re very tight. I’m not sure how much of a hand Kate had in torpedoing the marriage,
but I doubt Baxter harbors very positive feelings toward either of the families he’ll most likely be investigating. And he’ll
stand up to Phil, who does.”
At our next encounter, he did not come on as my special buddy. Again, he crossed me up with the timing. When he said noon
at the latest, I took that time as an unlikely earliest. But it was just past eleven-thirty when he knocked on the kitchen
door, and I wasn’t looking at the solo visit I’d been prepping for. He stood there flanked by Joe, the red-faced guy who’d
been patrolling my driveway, and another deputy. Dye introduced the latter two as Frank and Steve, respectively. None of them
cracked a smile.
The sheriff, Joe, and this Steve, who hadn’t been among the cops in my yard, must’ve put in a busy few hours. Enlightening,
though not to my benefit. “Miss Wyckoff” was the sheriff’s brusque, disconcerting opener, followed by “there are some areas
in this house we need to take a look at.”
“Such as?”
“Entrances, sinks, showers, laundry machines. We’ll also want the clothing you wore last night. It’s all listed on this consent
form.” He extended a clipboard with a form that looked like the one I’d signed for the Bronco, except longer. In his other
hand was a ballpoint pen. “Now I need to tell you, I haven’t had time to get a warrant on this. Probably I can, but you never
know. Unless you see a warrant, you do not even have to let us in the door.”
I shrugged. “Why delay things? Where do I sign?”
He pulled back the hand with the pen in it. “Read it through first, please.”
I scanned. “As far as the clothing goes, I’m wearing the shoes; the rest is in the downstairs bathroom hamper. This looks
okay. Can I have that pen now?” He relinquished it and I signed. “About the Bronco. That’s my only transportation. When will
it be free for me to use?”
“So far we haven’t found any reason to impound it, but there are still several things that have to be checked. I’d say late
afternoon would be the earliest we might be finished. That’s not a promise, now—you might want to think about renting a car.
All right, while Frank and Steve are looking around, Joe and I have some questions for you. Again, you’re not obliged to tell
us anything you don’t want to.”