Читать книгу Blackbird - Tom Wright - Страница 11

THREE

Like a lot of things that had completely and permanently changed my life, it hadn’t seemed like much at the start: the day after Braxton Bragg’s Homecoming – I’d just walked into the Skillet, looking back when I thought I heard somebody call to me and almost bumped into a girl I didn’t recognise under the orange and white GO TIGERS! banner spread across the wall.

‘Hey, you’re number twenty-two, aren’t you?’ she said, holding out her thin warm hand to shake. ‘I’m Kat Dreyfus. I watched you play last night!’ I could see the name Katherine engraved in flowery loops on the gold ID bracelet she was wearing. In her loose-fitting khakis and baggy white cotton sweater, she looked like a little girl lost in her big brother’s hand-me-downs. But there was nothing little-girl about her clear, bottomless sea-green eyes, shining black hair, and lips that looked almost as if she were about to blow me a kiss. ‘It was hard to hear the announcer,’ she said, ‘but it sounded like he was calling you Jay Bonham.’ Her accent was strange, like something from a movie, the sound of far places and unknown worlds.

‘It’s James, but everybody calls me Biscuit,’ I said. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Boston.’

‘Sorry I didn’t see you last night.’

‘You had other things on your mind,’ she said. ‘Come on, sit with us.’

At the table she introduced me to Ronnie Geddes, a pale, thin-faced guy about our age with curly blond hair and very little to say, and Father Beane, a redheaded man in his thirties wearing jeans and a white polo shirt, probably a tennis player, I thought – or maybe in Boston it was squash or something.

‘Father Beane’s our supervisor,’ Kat said. ‘He’s a Jesuit.’

He was cheerful-looking, but I could sense that under the surface he was sure of himself and had a certain kind of controlled toughness, his eyes intelligent and quick. I had the same thought I always had about Roman Catholic priests: how could their job mean more to them than sex? Which probably tells you something about the state of my knowledge at the time.

He reached out to shake, saying, ‘Pleased to meet you, Biscuit. That was some unbelievable running you did last night.’ His hand was soft but strong.

‘Thanks, Father.’

‘Call me Al.’

We talked football and the playoffs for a while until the waitress came with her order pad and a paper bag full of carrot tops and apple trimmings, Saturday being beef stew and apple pie day at the Skillet. She took my order for a Coke, stuck the pencil in her hair and went back behind the counter while Kat eyed the sack.

‘Any scholarship prospects?’ asked Al, sipping from his drink.

‘Yes, sir. A couple of scouts have been down.’

‘Where are you going to college?’ Kat asked.

‘TCU, probably. How about you?’

‘I’m already enrolled, at Wellesley. But I’m taking my first year off for this.’

‘What’s this?’

‘VISTA,’ said Rick, looking at Kat with some expression or other.

She said, ‘It’s to keep poor and black kids in school down here, get people registered to vote, help them find better jobs, stuff like that.’

‘Where are you staying?’

‘Zion Hope Church.’

Zion Hope was the little black COGIC church out toward Spoon Bottom on Elam Road, where the pastor, a retired felon whose name I remembered as something like George Washington Hooks, could be heard from at least a quarter of a mile away when the windows were open and he was in the spirit. Visualising white faces scattered through Spoon Bottom like dimes in a dark pool, I said, ‘We’re cooking out tonight – why don’t y’all come over?’

Al shook his head. ‘Too much paperwork, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I’ve got a meeting at eight.’

‘Thanks a lot, but I think I’ll pass,’ Rick said in an accent from somewhere farther west than Boston. Halfway smiling, he looked me up and down in a way that made it clear he and Kat were not together.

Kat was watching me and thinking, her ocean-coloured eyes seeming to radiate a delicious heat at me.

‘It’s just me and my folks,’ I said. ‘We’re gonna barbecue burgers out at the horse farm.’ The Flying S was really more of a ranch, but it was called a farm because we grew crops on it and because its main purpose was breeding quarter horses.

‘Horse farm!’ Kat said. ‘That’s what the scraps are for, the horses! Hey, c’mon, Al, how about it?’

Al looked at Kat, then me, thinking it over. Finally he nodded to her. ‘Bed check at twelve,’ he said.

My old sunblasted red and used-to-be-white Ford pickup sat at the curb just outside the Skillet, the antenna lopping over a little and the rear fender rusted through in a couple of places. I walked to the passenger side, kicked the back corner of the door with the heel of my boot and opened it for her. Sliding in behind the wheel, I cranked the engine and we rattled up through the gears and out to the Lone Oak road, heading north toward the farm and my family.

Now, turning my collar up against the rain, imagining I could still smell the old Ford’s permanent bouquet of gasoline and exhaust fumes after all these years, I tried without much success to picture Dr Gold as part of a family, or as anybody’s wife. But I knew she had been; the last I’d heard she was married to a guy who owned a local data-services company called QuikCom. After a few seconds his name came to me: Andy Jamison.

The rain actually seemed to be getting colder, and the body looked more bedraggled than ever, causing me to wonder if this was going to create any additional problems at the autopsy.

Again remembering my lunch date with Danny Ridout at the Auction Barn, but still having no appetite, I called him to ask for a rain check.

‘That must be what the learned among us refer to as a “wisecrack”,’ he said.

‘It was a waggery.’

‘Naw, you’re thinkin’ of a whim-wham there.’

I went around checking the name tags of the uniformed cops I didn’t know until I found Hardy, Jason L. and asked him what he’d seen when he got here.

He glanced over at the body with a focused but not self-important expression, organising his recollections. ‘Naturally the first thing I noticed was her, just like she is now,’ he said. ‘I gloved up and checked for a carotid pulse, but it was obvious there wasn’t gonna be one. About a dozen civilians milling around, so I was thinking no footprints that would do us any good, but I herded them back anyway and went ahead and secured the scene. All the tyre tracks I could make out down there were accounted for by the vehicles present, and the vehicles were all accounted for by the onlookers. That’s basically it until the geeks and suits got here.’ He glanced down at my street clothes and cleared his throat in embarrassment. ‘I mean – ’

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I’m undercover. Any other thoughts?’

‘Well, I looked inside all the vehicles the best I could without touching them, but I didn’t see anything.’

‘What were you looking for?’

He shrugged. ‘Nothing in particular – a bloody knife maybe, rope, tape, maybe a mallet or some big nails – just anything that looked interesting.’

I nodded. ‘Anybody volunteering theories, talking like a cop, trying to posse up with you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘How about anybody hanging back, watching the crowd instead of the body, antsy, looking flushed or too pale, anything like that?’

‘No, sir. When I was looking into the cars I’d give it about a five-count, then turn and check the crowd. Nothing looked funny.’

I wondered if I’d been anywhere near this smart when I was starting out.

‘Hear anybody say anything at all that made you take notice?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Okay, Jason, you know what we need now?’

‘Yes, sir, I think so,’ he said. ‘A clean twenty-ten.’

‘Which means – ?’

‘Lawyer-proof,’ he said. ‘I can get it to you by end of shift.’

‘But first, I think this woman’s husband is Andy Jamison, the computer guy, and I need somebody to find him and make the notification. You ever done that?’

‘Yes, sir, once.’

‘Then you know how it goes. If you’re going to get anything interesting in the way of a reaction, it’ll be when he opens the door and sees the uniform or when you hit him with the news, so stay alert. Pay attention to whether he wants to know what happened, when, where and why, or tries to talk you out of it really being her – all that stuff. If he doesn’t, he’s probably our best suspect. Either way, don’t act like you suspect him of anything, don’t get spiritual with him and don’t say you know how he feels. Just keep it simple and make sure he’s okay before you leave.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Hardy nodded and headed back downslope toward his cruiser.

By now Hazen must have lost interest in my take, because he was nowhere to be seen. I looked around the scene one last time, as usual not wanting to walk away for fear of missing something. But I knew Wayne and his people were too good at what they did for that to be a legitimate worry.

‘Okay,’ I said, stripping off the gloves and stuffing them into my jacket pocket. ‘I’m going back to Three and get the paperwork started. Let me know if anything else turns up.’

Mouncey moved to join me. ‘First time I ever seen you do that, Lou.’

‘Do what?’

‘Send a kid blue to get first look at the old man.’

‘Maybe he’s not the usual kid blue,’ I said, but my mind wasn’t on the conversation. I was wondering exactly how crucifixion causes death and how long it takes to kill the victim.

‘So you be workin’ this one youself, boss?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ I said as we headed down the way Hardy had gone. ‘I wouldn’t want to fall into sloth.’

Then I remembered Coach Bub again, a man who was never troubled by hesitation or self-doubt, and wondered what his advice would be if he were here. After that I thought of my friend Jonas McCashion, a history teacher, and the reason was no mystery. The title of his most recent book was The Blood Imperative: Barbarity Through the Ages, and I intended to track him down for a free consult.