'How do you know that?'
'Well, hell, Tanny. I'm just guessing. But the man looked like he was pretty seasick with all he'd heard. And I don't think he told the half of it.'
Brown sat back, listening to the excited tones in his partner's voice. It was easy for him to picture the reporter squirming under the pressure of information. Sometimes, he thought, there are things we don't want to learn. His mind calculated rapidly, like doing sums.
'Bruce, you know what I think?'
'Bet it's the same thing I'm thinking.'
I bet Cowart got told something he didn't want to hear. Something that screwed around with the way he had it all figured out.'
'Life ain't quite so neat and tidy, sometimes, is it, boss?'
'Not at all.'
'Well, it wouldn't have fazed that cold-hearted bastard to listen to someone tell him about any bunch of murders, no matter how many. I mean, just about everybody had Sully figured for more than he'd owned up to, so that weren't no great surprise…' Wilcox began, only to be interrupted, the thought finished by Brown.
'There's only one murder that means anything to him.'
'That's for damn sure.'
And only one murder that means anything to me, Tanny Brown thought.
He drove through the weak dawn light slowly, his mind churning with questions. He spotted the paper boy on his bicycle zigzagging up the street, and he pulled in behind him. The boy turned at the sound of the car, recognized the detective and waved before rising up on his pedals and racing ahead. Brown watched him maneuver amidst the wan morning shadows that blurred the edges of the neighborhood, making it appear like a photograph slightly out of focus. He pulled into his driveway and looked about for an instant. The detective saw modern security: measured rows of clean stucco and cinder-block houses painted in shiny white or quiet pastels, all marked with well-trimmed shrubs and bushes, green lawns, and late-model cars parked in the driveways. A simple, middle-class existence. Every house within a ten-block neighborhood planned by a single contracting company, designed to create a community both unique and uniform at the same time. No Old South here. Some doctors, some lawyers, and what was once the working class, policemen, like himself. Black and white. Just modern America moving forward. He looked down at his hands. Soft, he thought. A desk man's hands. Not like my father's. He glanced at his thickening middle. Christ, he thought, I belong here.
Inside the house, he hung his shoulder holster on a hood next to two book bags stuffed with notebooks and loose-leaf papers. He removed the pistol and, as was his habit, first checked the chambers. It was a.357 magnum with a short barrel, loaded with wadcutters.
He hefted the pistol in his hand and reminded himself to book some time at the department's shooting range. He realized it had been months since his last practice session. He opened a drawer and found a trigger lock, which he slid around the firing mechanism. He put the gun in the drawer and reached down to remove his backup pistol from his ankle holster.
He could smell bacon frying in the kitchen and he walked that way, past Danish furniture and framed prints. He stood for a moment in the doorway to the kitchen watching his father, who was bent over the stove, cracking eggs into a skillet.
'Hello, old man,' he said quietly.
His father didn't move but cursed once as some bacon grease splattered onto his hand.
'I said, good morning, old man.'
His father turned slowly. 'I didn't hear you come in,' he said, smiling.
Tanny Brown grinned a greeting. His father didn't hear much anymore. He went over and put an arm around the man's wide shoulders. He could feel the old man's bones beneath the thin cotton of his faded work shirt. He gave his father a small squeeze, thinking how skinny he'd become, how fragile he felt, as if he would break under the pressure of his son's hug. He felt a shadow of sadness inside, remembering a time when he thought there was nothing those arms couldn't lift and hold, now realizing there was little they could. All that strength robbed by disease. He thought, You grow up angry and pushing for that day when you're stronger and tougher than your father, but when it comes it makes you embarrassed and uncomfortable.
'You're up early,' the son said as he released his grip.
His father shrugged. He hardly slept anymore, Brown knew. A combination of pain and stubbornness.
'And what you calling me "old man" for? I ain't so damn old. Still whup you if I had to.'
'You probably could,' Brown replied, smiling. This was a lie both enjoyed.
'Sure could' insisted his father.
'The girls up yet?'
'Nah. I heard some shifting about. Maybe the bacon smell will wake 'em. But they're soft and young and don't like getting up none. If your mama was still with us, she'd see they got up right and smart first cock crow, yessir. It'd be them in here fryin' this bacon. Making biscuits, maybe.'
Brown shook his head. 'If their mama was still here, she'd tell them to sleep in and get their beauty rest. She'd let them miss the school bus and take them herself.'
Both men laughed and nodded their heads in agreement. Brown recognized that his father's complaints were mainly fiction; the old man doted on his granddaughters shamelessly.
His father turned back to the stove. 'I'll fix you some eggs. Musta been a tough night?'
'Wife shot her ex-husband when he came looking for her with a handgun, Dad. It wasn't anything unique or special. Just mighty sad and bloody.'
Sit down. You're probably beat. Why can't you work regular hours?'
'Death doesn't work regular hours, so neither do I.'
'I suppose that's your excuse for missing services this past Sunday. And the Sunday before that, too.'
Well…'he started.
'Your momma would whip you good if she were alive today. Hell, son, then she'd whip me good for letting you miss services. It ain't right, you know.'
No. I'll be there Sunday. I'll try.'
His father scrambled the eggs in a bowl. 'I hate all this new stuff you got in here. Like this damn electric stove thing. Nuclear food cooker, whatever the hell it is.'
Microwave.'
'Well, it don't work.'
"No, you don't know how to work it. There's a difference,'
His father was grinning. Brown knew the old man felt a contradictory superiority, having grown up in a world of icehouses and outhouses, well water and wood stoves, having made his life out of an old, familiar world, and finally, been taken in his old age into a home that seemed to him closer to a rocket ship than a house. All the gadgets of middle class amused his father, who saw most of them as useless.
'Well, I don't see what the hell good it's for anyway, 'cept maybe for thawing stuff out.'
He thought his father correct on that score.
He watched as the old man's gnarled hands swiftly dished the omelet into the skillet and tossed the eggs, folding them expertly. It was remarkable, the son thought. Arthritis had stolen so much of his mobility; old age, much of his sight and hearing; a bout with heart disease had sapped most of his strength, leaving him gaunt with skin that used to burst with muscles now sagging from his arms. But the old tanner's dexterity had never left him. He could still take a knife and slice an apple into equal pieces, take a pencil and draw a perfectly straight line. Only now it hurt him to do so.
'Here you go. Should taste good.'
'Aren't you gonna join me?'
'Nah. I'll just make enough for the girls. Me, just a bit of coffee and some bread.' The old man looked down at his chest. 'It doesn't take a lot to keep me going. Couple a sticks on the fire, that's all.'
The old man slid slowly, in obvious discomfort, into a chair. The son pretended not to notice.
'Damn old bones'
'What?'
'Nothing.'