The Dead Past (23 page)

Anna's gaze became very sharp. "I think someone must have scrawled obscenities and he has spent time eliminating them."

"Any idea what they were?"

"None."

"That sounds as if they're being harassed," I said. "So why isn't he talking? Getting the rest of the force involved?"

"Clarice was extremely agitated. Still, I must confront either her or Franklin with pertinent questions. While avoiding further servings of cheesecake."

"I'll have to do this the hard way. Sneak into
Broghin's
office and snatch the note, if the damn thing even exists."

"That is not wise, Jonathan," she said, which I knew was not the same thing as her telling me not to do it. "Don't you have a date tonight?" she asked.

I checked my watch. It was already after six.

"Oh, shit," I said.

~ * ~

I had no idea how long
Broghin
would be tied up at the park, or whether he'd go straight home afterwards—I thought he would—but either way I had to see Katie before anything else. Breaking our first date did not bode well for continued romantic liaisons. Meeting her had been the only good circumstance of my return, and I didn't want to give her up.

Prairie Lane was a circular street that led to The Orchard Inn, a sort of boarding house. It had ten or fifteen rooms run by Mr. and Mrs. Leone, an elderly Italian couple who used to always tip well and feed me Florentine recipes when I was their paperboy. I walked in and Mr. Leone greeted me in his customary manner; he was a big man who liked to give bear hugs. I tightened my muscles and tried to keep my ribs from being crushed. He went so far as to pinch my cheeks before giving me Katie's room number.

It was at the rear of the second floor. I knocked and waited half a minute before Katie opened the door, smiling. She wore a snug, strapless black dress that ended a mile and a half above her knees. Her earrings matched her eyes. I wondered how big a puddle a man of my size would make if he spontaneously combusted in the hallway.

Katie gave me the once over, frowned, and said, "I think I may have overdressed."

"You're perfect," I said. "And it also proves you're not a big TV watcher."

"Not today, anyway. I spent the past couple of hours making myself beautiful."

"You have achieved your purpose."

"Now that you know my secret, have I broken the spell?"

"It has been duly reinforced."

"You say the sweetest things, but I have the feeling I'm getting the brush off."

"Not exactly," I said.

She went, "Hmmm," and drew a fingernail along her lower lip. I began to realize what I was giving up to go steal a letter from the sheriff who would then throw me back into jail. I began to realize I was a pretty stupid person.

"Don't mind the boxes," she said. "I've been unpacking for weeks, but I keep buying junk so it's a never-ending battle to find spots for everything. I know the place is small, but I like it."

"It's bigger than my apartment."

She walked to the sofa and motioned me beside her. I sat and couldn't quite manage to free myself from her eyes. "So what are we doing here, Jonathan?"

I gave her an edited report on the events of the afternoon and told her why I had to break our date—nothing sounded especially dramatic when you laid it so simply on the line—Anubis killing a man came across like a scene from a Disney movie, as if we'd all just been playing in the snow. Katie's face filled with concern, warmth, and real fear. She slid over and held me and seemed to understand volumes about what I never could have told her anyway. Her intuition led her to whisper all the right things. We kissed and I drew her to me and pressed against her, the moment lengthening as the kiss grew more intense, and she wrapped her arms around me and the raw flash of pain lit up my head.

"What?" she said.

"Nothing."

"Is it your chest again?" She took the edge of my shirt and lifted it in the same way Wallace had. Her hands were skillful and cool. "This might seem a little barbaric," she said, "but I can fix this up for you here and now with my first aid kit. If you wait much longer it might turn septic and become a rather awful scar."

"Okay."

She dug for her kit in four different places before finally finding it at the bottom of a large box which also contained pillows, magazines, tablecloths, magic markers, dishes, aspirin, candles, and everything else this side of Atlantis.

"If I'd cut myself shaving I would have bled to death by now," I said.

"Bitch, bitch, bitch," she said. She took the kit into the bathroom and ran water and opened and shut the medicine cabinet. She returned with a couple of bottles and her jaw set firmly. "Sit on the sofa and stare straight ahead. It will only take a minute. Don't look while I do this."

"Exactly what are you going to do?" I asked.

"If I told you, Jon, it would be as bad as if you were looking."

Whatever she did, it hurt like hell, but at the same time there was a certain sexual electricity in her touch. Her fingers moved gracefully and tickled when I wasn't cringing. She cleaned the wound and gave me a glass of ice water and then we made out for a few minutes. There came a point when I knew I would either leave right then or I'd lose any chance of getting out of there.

"I have to go," I said.

Katie nodded and smiled. She took off her earrings and threw them onto the coffee table. "Hell of a first date," she said and gave me a last peck. "I hope I don't have to visit you in the hospital for our second one."

~ * ~

I passed two news vans as they headed back for the turnpike. The parking lot of the police station was empty; inside, the boiler remained broken and precipitation ran down the open windows. Meg was at her desk, packing things into her purse and getting ready to leave. Roy and two other deputies were deep in hushed conversation. They glanced up without stopping and gave me curt nods. I passed by quickly, hoping cops couldn't really sense criminal activities in their guts as many of them suggested.

Lowell was in his office, leaning back in his seat, looking out the window again, a spire of paperwork on his filing cabinet ready to topple onto his shoulders. I snuck by without quite getting onto my tippy-toes.
Broghin's
door stood open and the room was empty. I went in and left the door a few inches ajar, shadows looming. I recalled Robert Wagner from
It Takes a Thief
, and thought that being a cat burglar wasn't so difficult.
Broghin's
desk was from another age, two hundred pounds of squatting mahogany with gouges and burns. I opened drawers and rummaged through them, and it didn't take me long to find the note. He hadn't bothered to hide it; the letter proved to be yellowed and crinkled from the years, and the hands, and snow which had fallen on it while covering Richie
Harraday's
leg.

The windows in the sheriff's office were closed. Sweat dripped into my eyes as I read the letter that Lowell had said was a love note from
Broghin's
wife, Clarice.

I sat in the sheriff's seat and carefully went through the letter again; it was only one side of a page, three lengthy paragraphs written in a diminutive script. I didn't learn much more on the second reading; Lowell had been right, it was what you would consider your basic love letter, full of lots of emoting and weak metaphors and garden imagery—but there was a nuance beyond that, something out of kilter, maybe a little obsessive.

I got up and walked into Lowell's office and tossed the letter in his lap. He picked it up and said, "Even when you have no slack at all you find a way to hang yourself."

"It's unsigned," I said. "And there's no salutation."

His eyes narrowed as he stood. Even his hair looked muscular and irate. He took a breath and his chest expanded to an incredible degree, and I had no doubt he could pick me up with one hand and launch me through the window if he wanted to. Actually, it was clear he wanted to, I just hoped he didn't choose to.

"Why do you keep putting pressure on when it'll get you nowhere?" he asked.

 
"Look at the note," I said. "There's something weird.”

“What?”

“Read it.”

“No, I've had enough of your game.”

“Read the goddamn thing. Don't skim this time." His face hardened and flushed. Strong as he was, he'd never make it on the NYPD. There was a line of probity he wouldn't cross, and on occasion that held him back from getting to the bottom of things. "Look at the style. The tilt of the handwriting."

Lowell finally read it through carefully, taking his time. He folded his arms. "Yeah.”

“A man wrote this. It's not to
Broghin
from his wife.”

“You're right," he admitted. "So did he write it?”

“No, not his script." Roy walked in and Lowell shot him a look and Roy turned around and left. "I don't know if you're crazy or if this means something. If it doesn't I'm going to hand you your head. But I'm willing to talk to him."

Lowell snatched the phone and called the sheriff at home. He spoke politely, without intimation of what we'd been discussing. At one point, he rolled his eyes. He hung up and said, "I should've known. Your grandmother's over there. You shoot high and she shoots low. You two are like tag team mud wrestlers."

We sat staring into space for fifteen minutes, the heat of the office making it hard to breathe even with the windows open, and then
Broghin
walked in. He saw the letter on the desk and his eyes clouded. He looked far off at a point somewhere between Lowell and me and whispered, "Who the hell do you think you are?" He was already covered in sweat, droplets plinking off the end of his nose. "You went into my desk, through my stuff, as if… as if. ..." He couldn't come up with any-thing more than that, but maybe he wanted to say
as if you had the right
. I felt angry and apologetic, and I still didn't know if the love letter meant anything.

I said, "The note was left on Richie's body." He was silent, staring. "You took it off him. Why?"

"Get out of here," he said.

"Who wrote it?"

"I said—"

"Why was it left behind?"

He jabbed his meaty fingers into my chest and pain erupted. "I'm sheriff of Felicity Grove. I am the law. You don't order me around, boy." He shoved me back-ward and poked harder in the same spot and blue stars flared at the edges of my vision. "You don't steal from me." I held up my hands and he swatted them away and kept jabbing. The room got smaller and the heat was like the pressure of an ocean on top of us. "You don't ride me." Jab. We both looked at the desk chair at the same time. "You don't even think about getting in my face, boy, 'cause I'll bury you under the jailhouse." He shoved me again and pressed me back to the wall, and then came at me once more. I blocked him and turned and he swung on me, his stomach bouncing as if he'd eaten three belly dancers. I ducked and punched him in the stomach—there was really no place else you could hit him—and then we were into it. His meaty right fist caught me on the jaw and I hit him in the nose, and he drew his gun. He pointed it at my face and Lowell got in front of me the same way he had protected Aaron
Bubrick
.

Roy ran in and said, "Jesus Christ, Sheriff, Lowell." He didn't know what to do and fumbled at his gun belt. "Jesus Christ."

Broghin
bled from where he'd bitten into his lip. Flowing pink swirled along the sweat trails down his chin. "You'll get more than three months this time," he said. The gun was still pointed at Lowell's heart.

Time is relative, so perhaps we all didn't remain like that for the hour it felt like.
Broghin's
shirt was drenched, his face swimming. Roy's head bobbed back and forth between me and the sheriff as if he was watching tennis. Only Lowell remained calm. Another deputy ran in, and my hopes of making a timely escape continued to dwindle. He wet his lips, eyes on the gun, and quietly said, "It's your wife, Sheriff, she says somebody's trying to break into the house.”