‘That happens to be the dirty truth.’
They sat silently for a bit. Ralph’s office door was open, and the station’s main room was almost deserted, as it usually was on Sunday mornings in this small southwestern city. Ralph thought of telling Samuels that the video had jolted them away from the elephant in the room: a child had been murdered, and according to every bit of evidence they had gleaned, they had the man who’d done it. That Maitland appeared to have been seventy miles away was something that had to be addressed and clarified. There could be no rest for either of them until it was.
‘Come up to Cap City with me, if you want to.’
‘Not going to happen,’ Samuels said. ‘I’m taking my ex-wife and the kids to Lake Ocoma. She’s bringing a picnic. We’re finally back on good terms, and I’d like not to jeopardize that.’
‘Okay.’ The offer had been half-hearted, anyway. Ralph wanted to be by himself. He wanted to try to get his head around what had seemed so straightforward and was now looking like a colossal clusterfuck.
He stood up. Bill Samuels put his iPad back in his briefcase and then stood up beside him. ‘I think we could lose our jobs over this, Ralph. And if Maitland walks, he’ll sue. You know he will.’
‘Go on to your picnic. Eat some sandwiches. This isn’t over yet.’
Samuels left the office ahead of him, and something about his walk – the slumped shoulders, the briefcase banging dispiritedly at his knee – infuriated Ralph. ‘Bill?’
Samuels turned.
‘A child in this town was viciously raped. Either before or just after, he may have been bitten to death. I’m still trying to get my head around that. Do you think his parents give a rodent’s behind if we lose our jobs or the city gets sued?’
Samuels made no reply, only crossed the deserted squadroom and went out into the early morning sunshine. It was going to be a great day for a picnic, but Ralph had an idea the DA wasn’t going to enjoy it much.
12
Fred and Ollie had arrived in the Mercy Hospital ER waiting room shortly before Saturday night became Sunday morning, no more than three minutes behind the ambulance carrying Arlene Peterson. At that hour, the big waiting room had been jammed with the bruised and bleeding, the drunk and complaining, the crying and coughing. Like most ERs, the one at Mercy was extremely busy on Saturday nights, but by nine o’clock on Sunday morning, it was almost deserted. A man was holding a makeshift bandage over a bleeding hand. A woman sat with a feverish child in her lap, both of them watching Elmo caper on the TV set bolted high in one corner. A teenage girl with frizzy hair sat with her head back and her eyes closed and her hands clasped to her midriff.
And there was them. The remains of the Peterson family. Fred had closed his eyes around six and drifted off to sleep, but Ollie only sat, staring at the elevator into which his mother had disappeared, sure that if he dozed, she would die. ‘Could you not have watched with me one hour?’ Jesus had asked Peter, and that was a very good question, one you couldn’t answer.
At ten minutes past nine, the door of that elevator slid open and the doctor they had spoken to shortly after arriving stepped out. He was wearing blue scrubs and a sweat-stained blue surgical cap decorated with dancing red hearts. He looked very tired, and when he saw them, he turned to one side, as if wishing he could retreat. Ollie only had to see that involuntary flinch to know. He wished he could let his father sleep through the initial blast of bad news, but that would be wrong. Dad had known and loved her longer than Ollie had been alive, after all.
‘Huh!’ Fred said, sitting up when Ollie shook his shoulder. ‘What?’
Then he saw the doctor, who was removing his cap to expose a thatch of sweaty brown hair. ‘Gentlemen, I’m sorry to tell you that Mrs Peterson has passed away. We tried hard to save her, and at first I thought we were going to be successful, but the damage was simply too great. Again, I’m very, very sorry.’
Fred stared at him unbelievingly for a moment, then let out a cry. The girl with the frizzy hair opened her eyes and stared at him. The feverish toddler cringed.
Sorry, Ollie thought. That’s the word of the day. Last week we were a family, now there’s just Dad and me. Sorry’s the word for that, all right. The very one, there is no other.
Fred was weeping with his hands over his face. Ollie took him in his arms and held him.
13
After lunch, which Marcy and her girls only picked at, Marcy went into the bedroom to explore Terry’s side of the closet. He was half of their partnership, but his clothes only took up a quarter of the space. Terry was an English teacher, a baseball and football coach, a fund-raiser when funds were required – which was like always – a husband, and a father. He was good at all of those jobs, but only the teaching gig paid, and he wasn’t overloaded with dressy clothes. The blue suit was the best, it brought out the color of his eyes, but it was showing signs of wear, and no one with an eye for men’s fashions was going to mistake it for Brioni. It was Men’s Wearhouse, and four years old. She sighed, took it down, added a white shirt and a dark blue tie. She was putting them in a suit bag when the doorbell rang.
It was Howie, dressed in duds much nicer than the ones Marcy had just bagged up. He gave the girls a quick hug and bussed Marcy on the cheek.
‘Are you going to bring my daddy home?’ Gracie asked.
‘Not today, but soon,’ he said, taking the suit bag. ‘What about a pair of shoes, Marcy?’
‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘I’m such a klutz.’
The black ones were okay, but they needed a polish. No time for that now, though. She put them in a bag and went back into the living room. ‘Okay, I’m ready.’
‘All right. Step lively and pay no attention to the coyotes. Girls, keep the doors locked until your mom gets back, and don’t answer the phone unless you recognize the number. Got it?’
‘We’ll be okay,’ Sarah said. She didn’t look okay. Neither of them did. Marcy wondered if it was possible for preteen girls to lose weight overnight. Surely not.
‘Here we go,’ Howie said. He was bubbling over, cheerful.
They left the house with Howie carrying the suit and Marcy carrying the shoes. The reporters once more surged to the edge of the lawn. Mrs Maitland, have you talked to your husband? What have the police told you? Mr Gold, has Terry Maitland responded to the charges? Are you going to request bail?
‘We have nothing to say at this time,’ Howie said, stone-faced, escorting Marcy to his Escalade through a glare of television lights (surely not necessary on this brilliant July day, Marcy thought). At the foot of the driveway, Howie powered down his window and leaned out to speak to one of the two cops on duty. ‘The Maitland girls are inside. You guys are responsible for seeing they’re not bothered, right?’
Neither responded, only looked at Howie with expressions that were either blank or hostile. Marcy couldn’t tell which, but she leaned toward the latter.
The joy and relief she’d felt after looking at that video – God bless Channel 81 – hadn’t left her, but there were still TV trucks and microphone-waving reporters in front of her house. Terry was still locked up – ‘in county,’ as Howie had put it, and what a terrible phrase that was, like something out of a lonesome country-and-western song. Strangers had searched their house and taken anything they pleased. The wooden faces of the policemen and their lack of response were the worst, though, far more unsettling than the TV lights and the shouted questions. A machine had swallowed her family. Howie said they would get out of it unharmed, but it hadn’t happened yet.
No, not yet.
14