Dad nodded, smiling. “Impressive. I’ve always loved the lingo — DOA, DT, OC, white shirts, skels — isn’t that right? You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve watched more than my share of Columbo. I can’t help but regret never going into the profession. May I ask how you got into it?”
“My father.”
“How wonderful.”
“His father too. Go back generations.”
“If you ask me, there aren’t nearly enough young people going into the force. Bright kids all go for the high-flying jobs and does it make them happy? I doubt it. We need sound people, smart people. People who know their head from their elbows.”
“I say the same thing.”
“Really?”
“Good friend of mine’s son went to Bryson City. Worked as a banker. Hated it. Came back here, I hired him. Said he’d never been happier. But it takes a special kind of man. Not everyone—”
“Certainly not,” said Dad, shaking his head.
“Cousin of mine. Couldn’t do it. Didn’t have the nerves.”
“I can imagine.”
“I can tell straight off if they’re going to make it.”
“No kidding.”
“Sure. Hired one guy from Sluder County. Whole department thought he was great. But me. I could tell from the look in his eyes. It wasn’t there. Two months later he ran off with the wife of a fine man in our Detective Division.”
“You never know,” said Dad, sighing as he glanced at his watch. “As much as I’d love to keep talking—”
“Oh—”
“The doc out here, I think he’s pretty good, he suggested Blue get home to rest and get her voice back. I guess we’ll wait to hear about the others.” Dad extended his hand. “I know we’re in good hands.”
“Thank you,” said Coxley, rising to his feet, shaking Dad’s hand.
“Thank you. I trust you’ll contact us at home in the event of additional questions? You have our telephone number?”
“Uh, yes, I do.”
“Terrific,” said Dad. “Let us know any way we can be of service.”
“Sure. And best of luck to you.”
“Same to you, Marlowe.”
And then, before Officer Coxley knew quite what had happened to him, before I knew what had happened to him, Officer Coxley was gone.
One Hundred Years of Solitude
In severe circumstances, when you inadvertently witness a person dead, something inside of you gets permanently misplaced. Somewhere (within the brain and nervous system, I’d imagine) there’s a snag, a delay, a stumbling block, a slight technical problem.
For those who’ve never had such bad luck, picture the world’s fastest bird, the Peregrine Falcon, Falco peregrinus, splendidly diving toward its quarry (unwitting dove) at over 250 mph, when abruptly, seconds before its talons are to strike a lethal blow, it feels light-headed, loses its focus, goes into a tailspin, two bogies, three o’clock high, break, break, Zorro got your wingman, barely managing to pull up, up, righting itself and floating, quite shaken, to the nearest tree on which it could once again get its bearings. The bird is fine — and yet, afterward, really for the rest of its life span of twelve to fifteen years, it is never able to nosedive with quite the same speed or intensity of any of the other falcons. It is always a little off-center somehow, always a little wrong.
Biologically speaking, this irreparable change, however minute, has no right to occur. Consider the Carpenter Ant, who allows a fellow ant recently found dead on the job to remain where he is a total of fifteen to thirty seconds before his lifeless body is picked up, hauled out of the nest, and tossed into a pile of debris composed of bits of sand and dust (see All My Children: Fervent Confessions of an Ant Queen, Strong, 1989, p. 21). Mammals, too, take an equally humdrum view of both death and bereavement. A lone tigress will defend her cubs against a roving male, but after they are slaughtered she will “roll over and mate with him without hesitation” (see Pride, Stevens-Hart, 1992, p. 112). Primates do mourn—“there is no form of grief as profound as a chimpanzee’s,” declares Jim Harry in The Tool-Makers (1980) — but their anguish tends to be reserved only for immediate family members. Male chimpanzees are known to execute not only competitors but also the young and disabled both inside and outside their clan, occasionally even eating them, for no apparent reason (p. 108).
Try as I might, I could summon none of the c’est la vie sangfroid of the Animal Kingdom. I began to experience, over the course of the next three months, full-blown insomnia. I’m not talking about the romantic kind, not the sweet sleeplessness one has when one is in love, anxiously awaiting the morn so one can rendezvous with a lover in an illicit gazebo. No, this was the torturous, clammy kind, when one’s pillow slowly takes on the properties of a block of wood and one’s sheets, the air of the Everglades.
My first night home from the hospital, none of them, not Hannah, Jade or the others, had been found. With the rain blathering endlessly against the windows, I stared at my bedroom ceiling and was aware of a new sensation in my chest, the feeling that it was caving in like an old piece of sidewalk. My head was seized by dead-end thoughts, the most rampant of which was the Moving Picture Producer’s Yen: the tremendous and supremely unproductive desire to scrap the last forty-eight hours of Life, rid myself of the original director (who obviously didn’t know what He was doing) and reshoot the entire affair, including substantial script rewrites and recasting the leads. I sort of couldn’t stand myself, how safe and snug I was in my wool socks and navy flannel pajamas purchased from the Adolescent Department at Stickley’s. I even resented the mug of Orange Blossom tea Dad had placed on the southwest corner of my bedside table. (It read, “A Stitch in Time Saves Nine” and sat there like an unpopped blister.) I felt as if my fortunate rescue by the Richardses was akin to a first cousin with no teeth and a tendency of spitting when he talked — downright embarrassing. I had no desire to be the Otto Frank, the Anastasia, the Curly, the Trevor Rees-Jones. I wanted to be with the rest of them, suffering what they were suffering.
Given my state of turmoil, it will come as no surprise that in the ten days following the camping trip, St. Gallway’s Spring Break, I found myself embarking on a sour, irksome and altogether unsatisfying love affair.
She was an insipid, fickle mistress, that two-headed she-male, otherwise known as the local news, WQOX News 13. I started seeing her three times a day (First News at5, News13at5:30, Late Night News at11:00), but within twenty-four hours, with her straight talk, shoulder pads, ad-libs and commercial breaks (not to mention that backdrop of faux sun permanently setting behind her) she managed to strong-arm her way into my unhinged head. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t try to sleep without supplementing my day with her half-hour programming at 6:30 A.M., 9:00 A.M., noon and 12:30 P.M..
Like all romances, ours began with great expectation.
“We have your local news next,” said Cherry Jeffries. She was dressed in Pepto-dismal pink, had hazel eyes, a tight smile reminiscent of a tiny rubber band stretched across her face. Thick, chin-length blond hair capped her, as if she were a ballpoint pen. “It’s called the Sunrise Nursery School, but the D.S.S. wants the sun to go down on the center after multiple allegations of abuse.”
“Restaurant owners protest a new tax increase by city hall,” chirped Norvel Owen. Norvel’s sole distinguishing characteristic was his male pattern baldness, which mimicked the stitching of a baseball. Also of note was his necktie, which appeared to be patterned with mussels, clams and other invertebrates. “We’ll talk about what it means for you and your Saturday night on the town. These stories coming up.”