“I assume you realize there’s nothing to lecture about. Why have the police dismissed the account of the one eyewitness to the kidnapping of Natalie Keene?” I picked up my pen to show him we were on record.
“Who says we dismisse
d it?”
“James Capisi.”
“Ah, well, there’s a good source.” He laughed. “I’ll let you in on a little something here, Miss Preaker.” He was doing a fairly good Vickery imitation, right down to twisting an imaginary pinky ring. “We don’t let nine-year-old boys be particularly privy to an ongoing investigation one way or another. Including whether or not we believe his story.”
“Do you?”
“I can’t comment.”
“It seems that if you had a fairly detailed description of a murder suspect, you might want to let people around here know, so they can be on the lookout. But you haven’t, so I’d have to guess you’d dismissed his story.”
“Again, I can’t comment.”
“I understand Ann Nash was not sexually molested,” I continued. “Is that also the case with Natalie Keene?”
“Ms. Preaker. I just can’t comment right now.”
“Then why are you sitting here talking to me?”
“Well, first of all, I know you spent a lot of your time, probably work time, with our officer the other day, giving him your version of the discovery of Natalie’s body. I wanted to thank you.”
“My version?”
“Everyone has their own version of a memory,” he said. “For instance, you said Natalie’s eyes were open. The Broussards said they were closed.”
“I can’t comment.” I was feeling spiteful.
“I’m inclined to believe a woman who makes her living as a reporter over two elderly diner owners,” Willis said. “But I’d like to hear how positive you are.”
“Was Natalie sexually molested? Off the record.” I set down my pen.
He sat silent for a second, twirling his beer bottle.
“No.”
“I’m positive her eyes were open. But you were there.”
“I was,” he said.
“So you don’t need me for that. What’s the second thing?”
“What?”
“You said, ‘first of all…’”
“Oh, right. Well, the second reason I wanted to speak with you, to be frank—a quality it seems you’d appreciate—is that I’m desperate to talk to a nontownie.” The teeth flashed at me. “I mean, I know you’re from here. And I don’t know how you did it. I’ve been here off and on since last August and I’m going crazy. Not that Kansas City is a seething metropolis, but there’s a night life. A cultural…some culture. There’s people.”
“I’m sure you’re doing fine.”
“I’d better. I may be here for a while now.”
“Yes.” I pointed my notebook at him. “So what’s your theory, Mr. Willis?”
“That’s Detective Willis, actually.” He grinned again. I finished my drink in another swallow, began chewing on the stunted cocktail straw. “So, Camille, can I buy you a round?”
I jiggled my glass and nodded. “Bourbon straight up.”
“Nice.”
While he was at the bar, I took my ballpoint and wrote the word dick on my wrist in looping cursive. He came back with two Wild Turkeys.
“So.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “My proposal is that maybe we can just talk for a little bit. Like civilians? I’m really craving it. Bill Vickery isn’t exactly dying to get to know me.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Right. So, you’re from Wind Gap, and now you work for a paper in Chicago. Tribune?”
“Daily Post.”
“Don’t know that one.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“That high on it, huh?”
“It’s fine. It’s just fine.” I wasn’t in the mood to be charming, not even sure I’d remember the drill. Adora is the schmoozer in the family—even the guy who sprays for termites once a year sends doting Christmas cards.
“You’re not giving me a lot to work with here, Camille. If you want me to leave, I will.”
I didn’t, in truth. He was nice to look at, and his voice made me feel less ragged. It didn’t hurt that he didn’t belong here either.
“I’m sorry, I’m being curt. Been a rocky reentry. Writing about all this doesn’t help.”
“How long since you’ve been back?”
“Years. Eight to be precise.”
“But you still have family here.”
“Oh, yes. Fervent Wind Gapians. I think that’s the preferred term, in answer to your question earlier today.”
“Ah, thanks. I’d hate to insult the nice people around here. More than I already have. So your folks like it here?”
“Mm-hmm. They’d never dream of leaving here. Too many friends. Too perfect a house. Etcetera.”
“Both your parents were born here then?”
A table of familiar guys about my age plopped down at a nearby booth, each sloshing a pitcher of beer. I hoped they wouldn’t see me.
“My mom was. My stepdad’s from Tennessee. He moved here when they got married.”
“When was that?”
“Almost thirty years ago, I’d guess.” I tried to slow my drinking down so I didn’t outpace him.
“And your father?”
I smiled pointedly. “You raised in Kansas City?”
“Yep. Never dream of leaving. Too many friends. Too perfect a house. Etcetera.”
“And being a cop there is…good?”
“You see some action. Enough so I won’t turn into Vickery. Last year I did some high-profile stuff. Murders mostly. And we got a guy who was serially assaulting women around town.”
“Rape?”
“No. He straddled them and then reached inside their mouths, scratched their throats to pieces.”
“Jesus.”
“We caught him. He was a middle-aged liquor salesman who lived with his mother, and still had tissue from the last woman’s throat under his fingernails. Ten days after the attack.”
I wasn’t clear if he was bemoaning the guy’s stupidity or his poor hygiene.
“Good.”
“And now I’m here. Smaller town, but bigger proving grounds. When Vickery first phoned us, the case wasn’t that big yet, so they sent someone mid-range on the totem pole. Me.” He smiled, almost self-effacingly. “Then it turned into a serial. They’re letting me keep the case for now—with the understanding that I’d better not screw up.”
His situation sounded familiar.
“It’s strange to get your big break based on something so horrible,” he continued. “But you must know about that—what kind of stories do you cover in Chicago?”
“I’m on the police beat, so probably the same kind of junk you see: abuse, rape, murder.” I wanted him to know I had horror stories, too. Foolish, but I indulged. “Last month it was an eighty-two-year-old man. Son killed him, then left him in a bathtub of Drano to dissolve. Guy confessed, but, of course, couldn’t come up with a reason for doing it.”
I was regretting using the word junk to describe abuse, rape, and murder. Disrespectful.
“Sounds like we’ve both seen some ugly things,” Richard said.
“Yes.” I twirled my drink, had nothing to say.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
He studied me. The bartender switched the house lights to low, an official signal of nighttime hours.
“We could catch a movie sometime.” He said it in a conciliatory tone, as if an evening at the local cineplex might make everything work out for me.
“Maybe.” I swallowed the rest of my drink. “Maybe.”
He peeled the label off the empty beer bottle next to him and smoothed it out onto the table. Messy. A sure sign he’d never worked in a bar.
“Well, Richard, thank you for the drink. I’ve got to get home.”
“It was nice talking with you, Camille. Can I walk you to your car?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You okay to drive? I promise, I’m not being a cop.”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Have good dreams.”
“You too. Next time, I want som
ething on record.”
Alan, Adora, and Amma were all gathered in the living room when I returned. The scene was startling, it was so much like the old days with Marian. Amma and my mother sat on the couch, my mother cradling Amma—in a woolen nightgown despite the heat—as she held an ice cube to her lips. My half sister stared up at me with blank contentment, then went back to playing with a glowing mahogany dinner table, exactly like the one in the next room, except that it was about four inches high.
“Nothing to worry about,” Alan said, looking up from a newspaper. “Amma’s just got the summer chills.”
I felt a shot of alarm, then annoyance: I was sinking back into old routines, about to run to the kitchen to heat some tea, just like I always did for Marian when she was sick. I was about to linger near my mother, waiting for her to put an arm around me, too. My mother and Amma said nothing. My mother didn’t even look up at me, just nuzzled Amma in closer to her, and cooed into her ear.
“We Crellins run a bit delicate,” Alan said somewhat guiltily. The doctors in Woodberry, in fact, probably saw a Crellin a week—both my mother and Alan were sincere overreactors when it came to their health. When I was a child, I remember my mother trying to prod me with ointments and oils, homemade remedies and homeopathic nonsense. I sometimes took the foul solutions, more often refused. Then Marian got sick, really sick, and Adora had more important things to do than coaxing me into swallowing wheat-germ extract. Now I had a pang: all those syrups and tablets she proffered, and I rejected. That was the last time I had her full attention as a mother. I suddenly wished I’d been easier.