Go home. There’s still time. He’s a cop. Don’t throw everything away over an insult, a voice said.
Another voice replied, Don’t let anyone get over on you ever again.
She tapped on the door with her left hand, her breath coming hard in her chest as she stared through the glass at the detective’s face approaching hers.
When he opened the door, she could smell the whiskey and cigarettes through the screen. He worked the light switch up and down, his expression puzzled. “Must have burned out a bulb,” he said. “Who’s that?”
Her scarf was tied down tightly on her head, the lenses in her glasses as dark as a welder’s goggles. She tightened her hand around the can of Mace. On the living room wall was a framed photograph of the detective holding a little girl in a pinafore on his hip, both of them smiling. Another photograph showed him with a little boy. “You the lady from the church?” he said.
“Pardon?” she said.
“The one who called about Sarah going to Bible camp? Why are you wearing sunglasses?”
“I’m Gretchen Horowitz, and I need to talk to you about a comment you made.”
His eyes went away from her. Then he smiled with recognition. “Oh yeah, I got it. Come in,” he said, pushing open the screen. “I need to explain some things.”
Don’t do it, the voice said.
“I heard what you and your deputy said.”
“I’m sorry about that. I’m expecting a phone call,” he said, stepping back, motioning her in. “My granddaughter is gonna be visiting in June. I’m supposed to enroll her in Bible camp. That’s why I thought—” The phone rang on a hallway table. He made a face and picked it up, leaving her in the doorway, gesturing at her to come in while he talked.
She could hear only part of the conversation, but it was obvious he was agitated and conflicted, trying to suppress his irritation and at the same time please the party on the other end of the line. “No, sir, Dixon may be a partner in the crime, but not necessarily,” he said. “We have the arrow somebody shot at the Robicheaux girl. I found a salesman at Bob Ward’s sporting goods who remembers a guy buying a bow and arrows of the same kind three days ago. He remembers the guy wearing a bracelet woven from metal wire... No, sir, the guy paid cash, so all we have on him is the salesman’s description. Trust me on this, sir. I’m gonna nail the man who did this to your granddaughter.”
She was standing inside the doorway when he hung up. He seemed to look at her without seeing her.
“Was that the grandfather of the Indian girl who was killed?” she asked.
“I was just doing a little outreach,” he said. “Where were we? My treatment of Wyatt Dixon this morning? He’s got people around here fooled, but I knew him when he was a member of a white-power group down in the Bitterroot Valley, the same bunch at Hayden Lake over in Idaho. I saw what somebody did to that Indian girl, and this morning I went a little crazy. I lost it. I wish I hadn’t.”
She had taken off her glasses and placed them in her tote bag. She continued to stare at him, not speaking.
“You want a drink?” he said.
When she didn’t answer, he sat down on a couch with a cheap flower-print cover. He pulled the cork from a whiskey bottle and poured into a teacup. “Let me catch my breath. Sit down, will you, please? Okay, this is what it is: I went up there on the logging road, and the deputy made a wiseacre sexist remark, and I thought I’d say something smart back. I shot off my mouth. I’m sorry I did that. Look, this doesn’t excuse my behavior, but I’ve got a couple of problems myself, one with my prostate, the other with my daughter, who can’t get her life on track.”
He looked down at his teacup, then picked it up and drank it empty. “I got the Big C. I might beat it, I might not. If I had my way, I’d be down in Muscle Shoals, crabbing with my grandchildren. Except I need the income for my daughter and her kids, and I can’t retire. Maybe you can help me with something here.”
“I doubt it.”
“Your friend the Robicheaux girl? She’s sure she didn’t see who shot that arrow at her?”
“Ask her.”
“Like I was saying on the phone, we got the arrow from her, but the only prints on it were hers. That means the guy who shot it wiped it down. Which means he was operating in a premeditated fashion to commit a homicide. Wyatt Dixon had no reason to target the Robicheaux girl.”
“Then who was it?”
He rubbed his palms up and down on his thighs, a spark of static electricity jumping off the heel of his hand. “I got a theory. Close the door and sit down. You want a glass of wine or a Pepsi? My guess is you’d rather have a Pepsi.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you’re all business, lady. You don’t mess around. I doubt you ever take guff off a man, either.”
He went to the small kitchen just off the living room and opened the refrigerator and placed the ice tray and a tall glass on the counter and ripped the tab on a soda can and filled the glass, all the while talking about his grandchildren with his back to her. She was standing in the same spot when he came back into the living room. “Mind if I close this? I think it’s fixing to rain again,” he said, pushing the front door shut. “Dixon may not have shot at your friend, but that doesn’t mean he’s an innocent man. He stays viable through deception. He loved what I did to him this morning because he was center stage. I’ve known his kind all my life, ignorant peckerwoods always spouting from the Bible. They say they’re born-again, but they’ll cut your throat for a quarter and lick the cut clean for an extra dime.”
“You seem to really hate him.”
“What I hate is deceit. I’ll tell you something I don’t tell many people. My father was a brakeman on the old L and N line. He took pity on a black vagabond and fed him and let him sleep in a boxcar parked on a siding. When the guy woke up, he killed my father with a pocketknife and took his billfold and left his body on the tracks. We moved to a place on an alley in Macon, and I grew up shining shoes, and my mother and little sister did housecleaning. You learn a lot about the world looking up from a shoeshine box. How do you think that Indian girl got killed? Somebody deceived her. We know she knew Dixon because she bought a bracelet from him. Maybe her killer was Dixon’s friend, maybe a partner of some kind.”
She sat down in a chair across from him. “Run that by me again.”
He went into a circuitous history about Dixon’s background, the crimes of which he was suspected but never charged, the fact that Dixon had been a member of a separatist group in Texas and on the edge of the same circles as Timothy McVeigh. She sipped from her glass, the fatigue of the day starting to catch up with her, her concentration starting to stray. She noticed the tidy drabness of the room, the frayed carpets, the nicked furniture, like a re-creation of an impoverished working-class home from many years ago. He seemed to become frustrated with her inattention, his hands moving more rapidly, his chest swelling. He loosened his collar. “Are you listening?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why did you come here?”
“To talk.”
“Then why don’t you talk? Maybe you came here for something else.”
“I think we’ve straightened it out.”
“What were you going to do if that didn’t happen?”
Her mouth was dry, the muscles in her chest not working right.
“Why don’t you answer the question?” he said.