"… So, naturally, you came." He finished my sentence for me. "Yeah," I said. "What exactly is it you do for the city?" I asked. "I investigate homicides?'
"Oh… " How could I have missed it? The bad haircut, the cheap clothes, the bowling-alley personality. Cop. I was standing here like a moron, shooting the shit with the very guy who was employed to catch me.
I'm not one to spend a lot of time worrying about bad karma, metaphysics, or spiritual payback, but even for me this was a little spooky. For a second, I stood looking away from him, trying to figure out how to take it from here. I'd already sorta stepped in it by telling this guy I'd only known Chandler for a few months-telling him I came all the way from L. A. If I'm such a recent acquaintance, why would I be at the funeral? Of course, you can see the problem-there was only one easy answer to that question. The old Mickey Spillane favorite: "The killer always returns to the scene of the crime." Of course, I was just at the funeral, but it's really the same thing, isn't it?
I glanced at my underdressed companion and found him still staring at me with those sharp gray lasers. Except for the eyes, he didn't look all that smart. Maybe the steel glint I was seeing was just mean, North Carolina stubbornness. After all, the brothers in this state had been marrying their first cousins since the Civil War. Inbred people are supposed to be stupid, stubborn, and mean. At least that's what I was hoping.
I kept trying to ease my way out of this, but for the moment I was stuck in the conversation, so I plunged on. "So you're investigating Chandler's death?" I said, trying to make it conversational.
"Not his death. Coroner investigates the death. I'm investigating his murder."
"Murder? I thought it was just a hit-and-run."
"Second-degree homicide."
"Oh."
Silence descended while I tried to decide what to say next. "Why are you at the funeral?" I finally asked.
"Always go to the funeral."
"Really?"
"Yep… yep, ever time."
He actually said "ever" instead of "every?' I was starting to feel slightly better. He obviously had never gone to college. If you're gonna commit a second-degree homicide, I guess it's better to be investigated by an undereducated, inbred, southern cop than some knuckle-cracking Harvard criminologist.
"You're here because you think the killer might show up?" I asked. I don't know what I was doing. Why was I leading him on like this? It was almost as if I was intentionally trying to get myself caught. Of course, acting dumb but interested could also serve to throw him off. After all, like I said,… Make that as I said,… he didn't look too bright.
"Yep… more times than I can tell you, the killer shows up. These perps think they gotta put flowers on the coffin. Sometimes, it's a complete stranger. Sometimes it's a good friend, sometimes just a recent acquaintance:' He paused, smiled, then added sleepily, "Like you."
I smiled back, but my heart, I swear, was pounding on the walls of my chest like a deranged mental patient trying to get out. Then he went on, still smiling, "There's something, some inner force that seems to make these people want to come to the funeral."
"Really?" I was scrambling for a casual attitude.
"Yep."
"What do you suppose it is?"
"Well, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm just an underpaid flatfoot, but I expect it's two things, maybe three."
"This is fascinating."
"Ya think?"
"Like, yes… " I said and then smiled at him. "So come on, what are they?"
"Like, okay," he smiled back. "One is hubris. Some killers just want to put it all out there. They're sayin"I'm smarter than all a you blue flannel assholes. I can watch the coffin go into the ground, stand right here out in the open and you'll never get me.' So, hubris is the first one."
"And the next?"
"Stupidity comes next. Some killers are just plain box-a-rocks stupid. They want to experience the funeral because they hated the victim, or they had some fiscal or personal reason to commit the murder, and they don't think any cops are gonna be here looking at who shows up. So stupid is the next, pure and simple."
I nodded. Of course, this was the category I so neatly fit into. But I was committed to this line of questioning, so I asked him what the third was.
"The third is 'cause it would be inappropriate not to come. Cause suspicion. Brother, husband, wife… that kinda thing. Course everybody in that category is gonna get a hard look from me anyway."
"Paige obviously didn't do it," I said, rushing to her defense.
"Pretty sure a that, are ya?"
"You kidding? She loved him. She worshipped him."
He took out a notepad and started writing.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I'm writing that down. Don't want to forget it," he said, and right then I had a shiver of fear. It went down my spine and chilled my balls.
Why did this smartass remark frighten me? I'll tell you why. It frightened me because this cop had obviously decided to start fucking with me. He was being sarcastic and offhand. Two things about that: One, it told me he had already formed a healthy dislike for me, and of course this is the last thing I needed. The second thing was even more distressing than the first. That little piece of sarcasm gave me a glimpse of the man looking out at me from behind those gray eyes. He was not some stupid, inbred country bluecoat. He was a shrewd, smart, cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch.
In that brief second, I saw this ending badly. In that moment, I suspected that this narrow-shouldered man in the fifty-dollar sport coat might one day actually arrest me for Chandler's murder.
Chapter 17
BY THE END OF MAY, THE ANGER THAT HAD SPORADIcally been hitting Paige settled on her like a vengeful cloak. She needed to get it out, so despite her painful back, she enrolled in a full-contact martial arts class. Her instructor was a half-Asian, half-German roughneck named Hans Mochadome-Moch. She was athletic, and the four hours a week she spent in the dojo helped to take the rage away as she methodically tried to beat the shit out of her quick, agile classmates.
Paige also decided to take the next school year off. She was in no frame of mind to teach kindergarten. Whether she even wanted to stay in Charlotte was still up for grabs. It had been her hometown after her parents died, and when she and Chandler decided to get married, he had agreed to relocate there for her.
But now she felt maybe she needed a change. The loneliness since Chandler's death was overpowering and the anger debilitating. She knew she was terrible company and in a bad place emotionally.
Six weeks had passed since the funeral and she was still clobbered anew every morning by the stark realization that he was gone, that she was all alone.
Her religious beliefs precluded suicide, but her memories made going on seem pointless. She had two general conditions-sad and angry. When sadness hit, she more or less just sat. Sat in her house with all of Chandler's things. Sat in the park watching other people's children play. When she was angry, she went to the dojo and tried to kill anybody stupid enough to stand in front of her.
She slept on Chandler's side of the bed, not changing the sheets for the first two weeks because his smell was still there. She sat in the back of his closet with his clothes hanging over her, crying until she had no more tears.
Bob Butler made weekly visits and brought her up to date on the investigation. At first these visits seemed to calm her, to take her out of these two polarized moods. With Bob Butler, she was seeking retribution. With him, she could look toward the future. Admittedly, that future only encompassed catching the asshole who ran down Chandler. But it was still a step out of lethargy and anger.