Of course you know why, she told herself. There’s a body down there, all right, there really is, and Dave Reed vomited at the sight of it. Vomited and got some on himself, poor kid.
She saw people in front of every house or from every house except the old Hoba rt place, which was empty, the ex-cop’s house, and 247, the third house down on their side of the street. The Wyler place. There was a bad-luck family if there had ever been one. Neither Audrey nor the poor orphan child she was raising (not that a boy like Seth could ever exactly be raised, Belinda supposed; that was just the hell of it) were outside. Gone for the day? Maybe, but she was sure she’d seen Audrey as late as noon, lackadaisically setting up her lawn sprinkler. Belinda mulled this over and decided she had the time about right.
She remembered thinking that Audrey was letting herself go-both the shell top and the blue shorts she’d been wearing had looked dingy, and why the woman had ever dyed her perfectly nice brunette hair that horrible shade of purplish-red, Belinda would never know. If it was supposed to make her look young, it was a miserable failure. It needed washing, too-had a greasy, clumped-up look. As a teenager, Belinda had occasionally wished she were white-the white girls always seemed to be having more fun, and to be more relaxed-but now that she was pushing on toward fifty and menopause, she was very glad to be black. White women seemed to need so much more putting together as they went on. Maybe their glue was just not naturally strong.
“I tried to call the cops,” Johnny Marinville was saying. He stepped out into the street as if he meant to cross over to the Josephsons, then stopped. “My phone…” He trailed off, seemingly unsure of how to continue. Belinda found this extremely odd. She’d have thought this was one fellow who would keep on rattling even on his own deathbed; God would have to reach down and carry him through the golden door just to shut him up.
“Your phone what?” Brad asked.
Johnny paused yet a moment longer, seeming to sort through a variety of responses, then settled on a brief one. “It’s dead. You want to try yours?”
“I can,” Brad said, “but I imagine Entragian’s already called them from the store. He pretty much took over.”
“Did he?” Marinville said thoughtfully, and looked down the hill. “Did he indeed?” If he saw the two men with the rippling tarp between them and understood what they were up to, he didn’t say. He seemed lost in his own musings.
Movement caught Belinda’s eye. She looked up Bear Street and saw an olive green Lumina approaching the intersection. Mary Jackson’s car. It passed the yellow van parked near the corner, then slowed.
Made it back before the rain, good for you, Belinda thought. Although they were far from bosom buddies, she liked Mary Jackson as much as anyone on the street. She was funny and she had a strutty, no-bullshit way about her… although just lately she seemed preoccupied a lot of the time. It hadn’t gone to her looks like it had with Audrey Wyler, though. In fact Mary had just lately seemed to be blooming, like a dry flowerbed after a shower.
The pay-phone was by the newspaper rack, which was empty except for one lonely left-over copy of USA Today’s weekend edition and a couple of Shoppers. Last week’s. It gave Collie Entragian a queer, thoughtful feeling to realize that the boy who would have restocked the rack with a supply of the current issue was lying dead on his lawn. And meanwhile, this lousy convenience-store pay-telephone-
He slammed it into its cradle and walked back to the counter, using the towel to wipe the last of the shaving cream from his face. The cutiepie with the tu-tone hair and the aging hippie-type from the Ryder truck were both watching him, and he was acutely aware that he was minus his shirt. He felt more like a cashiered cop than ever.
“Damn pay-phone doesn’t work,” he told the girl. He saw she was wearing a little name-badge pinned to her smock. “Don’t you have an out-of-order sign, Cynthia?”
“Yeah, but it was working fine at one o’clock,” she said. “The bakery guy used it to call his girlfriend.” She rolled her eyes, then said something which Collie found almost surreal, under the circumstances: “Did you lose your quarter?”
He had, but it didn’t much matter, under the circumstances. He looked through the E-Z Stop’s door and saw Peter Jackson and the retired vet from up the street, approaching his lawn with a large piece of blue plastic. It was obvious that they meant to cover the body. Collie started toward the door, meaning to tell them to stand the hell clear, that was an evidence scene they were getting ready to screw around with, and then the thunder rolled again-the loudest blast so far, loud enough to make Cynthia cry out in surprise.
Fuck, he thought. Let them go ahead. It’s going to rain, anyhow.
Yes, maybe that would be best. The rain would very likely come before the cops got here (Collie didn’t even hear any sirens yet), and that would play hell with any hypothetical forensics. So, better to cover it… but he still had a dismaying feeling of events racing out of his control. And even that, he realized, was an illusion: nothing about the situation had ever been in his control to start with. He was, basically, just another citizen of Poplar Street. Not that that didn’t have its merits; if he fucked up the procedure, they couldn’t very well put it in his jacket, could they?
He opened the door, stepped out, and cupped his hands around his mouth so as to be heard above the rising wind. “Peter! Mr Jackson!”
Jackson looked over, face set, expecting to be told to quit what he was doing.
“Don’t touch the body!” he called. “Do not touch the body! Just kind of shake that thing down over him like it was a bedspread! Have you got that?”
“Yes!” Peter called. The vet was also nodding.
“There are some cement blocks in my garage, stacked up by the back wall!” Collie yelled. “The door’s unlocked! Get them and use them to weight down the tarp so it won’t blow away!” They were both nodding now, and Collie felt a little better.
We can stretch it to cover his bike, as well!” the old man called. “Should we?”
“Yes!” he called back, then had another idea. “There’s a piece of plastic in the garage, too-in the corner. You can use it to cover the dog, if you don’t mind carrying some more blocks.”
Jackson flashed him a thumb-and-forefinger circle, then the two of them started for the garage, leaving the tarp behind. Collie hoped they would get it spread and anchored before the wind strengthened enough to blow it away. He went back inside to ask Cynthia if there was a store phone-there had to be, of course-and saw she had already put it on the counter for him.
“Thanks.”
He picked it up, heard the dial-tone, tapped four numbers, then had to stop and shake his head and laugh at himself.
“What’s wrong?” the hippie-type asked.
“Nothing.” If he told the guy he’d just dialled the first four numbers of his old squadroom-like a retired horse clip-clopping back to the old firebarn-he wouldn’t understand. He tapped the cutoff button and dialled 911 instead.
The phone rang once in his ear… and it did ring, as if he had called a residence. Collie frowned. What you got when you dialled 911-unless they had changed it since the days when listening to the recordings had been part of his job-was a high toneless bleep sound.
Well, they did change it, that’s all, he thought. Made it a little more user-friendly.
It started to ring again and then was picked up. Only instead of getting the 911 robot, telling him what button to press for what emergency, he got soft, wet, snuffly breathing. What the hell-?