She looked straight at me and said, “I don’t believe you.”
“About me being a free lancer?”
“Right.”
“Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She paused. Handed the card back. “I want you to leave.”
“But ma’am, I—”
“You don’t have any right to be here. And when I ask you to leave, that’s what you should do.”
“But ma’am, I—”
She leaned down and took Sara by the collar and eased her back beyond the threshold. Then she slammed the door shut.
I stood there feeling like an Amway salesman on a very bad day.
A moment later, apparently thinking I’d left already, or unable to restrain herself, she began sobbing.
It got to me. I wanted to go in there and hold her and just let her cry. She needed somebody to do that for her. I was like that after Kathy died.
On the sidewalk, I turned and started back toward town, watching a golden butterfly sit tentatively on a hedge already occupied by a quick bright cardinal. There were days when I wanted to be a boy again, when my biggest concern was where to find an even bigger steelie than the one I had, and when the next Batman would make its appearance down at Choate’s Rexall pharmacy.
Before I got three steps, a gray car pulled up to the curb and a gray little man stepped out of it and walked quickly toward the McNally home. He too had a Sears suit on, a brown one. He wore a buff blue shirt and a yellow tie. It seemed to me that this kind of getup should be illegal. I wasn’t exactly a dandy, but not even a blind guy could be excused for wearing this particular combo.
I stopped him. “Are you going to see Mrs. McNally?”
He seemed confused. “Yes. Why?”
I shook my head. “She’s not in a visiting mood right now.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Just some family problems.”
“Oh,” he said. “Oh. Then that makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“Are you a friend of the family?”
I nodded.
“I’m Don Murphy, assistant principal at Wilson Middle School. Where Melissa goes.”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well, she hasn’t been there for nearly a week and we’ve been very concerned. We’ve talked with Mrs. McNally on the phone a few times and she assured us that Melissa would be back soon but — well, it seemed more appropriate to just drive out here today rather than waste any more time on the phone.” He grimaced. “Family problems?”
I nodded.
“The husband, as usual, I suppose? No offense.”
“No offense.”
“She’s such a decent woman,” he clucked. “And Melissa’s just about a perfect student.”
“Why don’t I have Eve call you when she’s feeling a little better?”
“I’d appreciate that. Today if possible.”
“I’m just going to get her a few things. Then I’ll be back and tell her.”
“I appreciate that. I really do.”
He was gone, then, and I walked back downtown. The husband was missing, and the daughter hadn’t been to school in nearly a week, and Eve McNally was given to sudden fits of sobbing.
I wondered what the hell was going on here.
2
Lunch, a couple hours later, after a morning spent sitting in the tiny red-brick library and looking through newspapers to acquaint myself with the town, was a Big Mac and fries eaten at a bright orange table in a bright orange seat overlooked by a poster of Ronald McDonald, who looked curiously sinister. Ever since John Wayne Gacy — who murdered, that we know of, thirty-six young boys, often while wearing a clown costume — clowns sort of spook me.
The main drag told an interesting story. If I’d sat at this window a few years ago, I’d have seen brand-new cars and brand-new pickup trucks parading down the street past the two- and three-story buildings.
But no longer.
In the 1980s the rural economy, like the urban economy, suffered a setback from which it had never recovered. People talk about the urban underclass, those ragged, bleak denizens of rattling, rusted-out hulks that emit clouds of black smoke and that idle as if they’re in death spasms — well, there’s a rural equivalent, and I saw a lot of them on the street today, coming into town for more food stamps or a visit to the free clinic on the east edge of town or to apply for a minimum-wage job at one of the fast-food places. Andy of Mayberry had done moved away.
I was just finishing my Pepsi, just starting to want a cigarette the way I still do after each meal, when I looked up and saw a tall red-headed woman with cat-green eyes and a cute dinky nose and enough freckles for three people standing there watching me.
“Are you Mr. Hokanson?”
I was out of practice and so the question caught me off guard, but at least I was smart enough to respond. “Yes.”
“Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.”
She had a kid-sister grin touched with a certain disingenuous eroticism. “Even brought my own coffee. I’m a real cheap date.”
She sat down on the other side of the small orange table. It wasn’t easy. Slim as she was, her big leather rig — holster and gun and nightstick — took up room in quarters this cramped.
“I should introduce myself, I guess. I’m Jane Avery. I’m the chief of police.” The grin again. “I know that sounds impressive, but just keep in mind that it’s a very small police department.”
“I’m impressed anyway.”
This time it was just a smile. She sipped her coffee, looked over and waved at somebody who waved and called her name. At noon, the customers ran to downtown workers, people who looked retired, and truckers. The back lot held maybe ten sixteen-wheelers.
“I forgot to tell you, Mr. Hokanson, I’m also a celebrity.” She sipped coffee. “Boy, that’s hot.”
Her name was called again, this time by a guy who had to be a banker. He looked born to it.
She waved.
“They seem to like you,” I said.
She shook her head, her short red hair baby-soft and baby-fine. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, she wasn’t even exactly pretty, but she sure was fetching. “Guilt.”
“Guilt? Over what?”
“The way they treated me when I first came here. Three years ago.”
“They weren’t nice?”
“Not nice is an understatement. The mayor, a man named Glickson — he’s dead now, by the way — saw a piece about me in a Des Moines newspaper, how I was a young cop who was getting her master’s in criminology at night school. His police chief had just quit, and so he offered me the job. It was good timing. My husband had just asked me for a divorce. He’d never been happy about me being a cop, he found it a very unfeminine job, and he couldn’t help himself, and gee whiz — he was sorry, but he’d fallen in love with a woman at the ad agency and gosh, wouldn’t I just give him a divorce so we could all be happy? So I took the job here.” She laughed softly. “At least it distracted me from my broken heart, though God knows why I was brokenhearted about Ron. Anyway, among many other misdemeanors, some of the old-boy network in town here pinned a Kotex on the antenna of my police car, and called me at all hours of night and day with all kinds of sexual suggestions, and tried three different times to have the mayor fire me. I think he had a heart attack and died because of all the stress. Then the young professionals in town finally got sick of hearing about it and took my side, and that put everything into a kind of stalemate. So here I am.” The grin again. “Boring story, huh?”