The Snow Angel (16 page)

“Sure,” Bell said.

He walked to the back door, pulled down an old parka from a hook and put on some rubber boots. He grabbed an axe leaning next to the door and turned on the backyard light. Then he went outside, to a pile of logs left by the previous owners.

Bell began to chop the wood, slowly at first, then faster and faster, venting his fury. He remembered the police aero unit lighting up the sky earlier, and then saw the young Viet Cong being thrown from the Huey. Past and present began to merge in his fevered brain as he chopped faster and faster, causing splinters to fly like shrapnel.

Vera watched from the window as her husband took his rage out on the wood. She closed her eyes and prayed for him.

She also prayed for the souls of Darryl Childress and Ralph Kane.

Kane drove aimlessly through the Christmas-lit city, paying scant attention to where he was, or even which precinct. Now the city's snow was lit by a full moon. The main streets were plowed and salted. Kane drove slowly, as if on patrol, sobering again, trying to pull himself
together.

He realized he was in the wealthiest part of town, the Sixteenth Precinct. His anger came up again. All these over-privileged pricks in their luxury cars….Kane never could shake his deeply ingrained resentment of the rich.

Get over it. There are more important things to think about tonight.

His breakdown in the alley had frightened him. Nothing like it had ever happened to him before. He needed to suck in his gut and regain control. Losing control is dangerous for a policeman.

He tried to keep his mind off the face of Darryl Childress. But he had inadvertently memorized the boy's features, having become so intimate with the photograph. Thus, in a bizarre way, the child had become a part of him. Then, to see him dead behind that dumpster.Kane shuddered violently.

Now, to distract himself from Darryl, he started paying attention to the police radio. Except for three or four holdups and the usual rash of car clouts, the air was quiet tonight. For some reason, in fact, the radio traffic was far lighter than normal at Christmas time.
Probably the weather.

He tried to picture what the uniformed officers were encountering on each call, how they were reacting, what they felt. A lot of the voices rogering the radio sounded young, and several were female.
Babies. They're nothing but babies. Was I ever that young?

He considered the toll this job took. Police work had never been a joyous profession. But, for the kids just coming on these days, it was even worse. This generation had never known America as a safe place. During Kane's lifetime, police work had mutated from law enforcement into a form of hit-and-run warfare. Sometimes he felt as if Vietnam had followed him home.

Now Kane drove past a strip mall standing where Skunk Hollow had once been. A child-abuse-in-progress call went out over the citywide hotshot channel, a code-three run clear across town in the Twenty-seventh Precinct, some fresh atrocity. A Lincoln unit answered up, some bluesuit working alone.

Don't go in there without backup. A man beating a child is capable of anything.

This was one of the worst times of the year for child battering. Old Howard Kane wasn't the only daddy who turned into an asshole at Yuletide.

Kane called to mind the day long ago when, at seventeen, he had dropped out of school and left home for good. Howard had been even drunker than usual and had mocked Ralph savagely, insisting that he would be back within two days. But Kane had fooled the bastard. He'd used fake documents to get into the Marine Corps, and never saw his father again.

He and Billy had talked about this that day in Statesville, a few minutes before Billy brought up the butterfly story. Billy revealed what had happened after Kane left to serve his country. Until then, Howard had two sons to brutalize. But Ralph's departure left Billy the sole target.

I never should have left him there like that. Running off to war was just another form of cowardice.

Again Kane snapped himself back to the present. He looked out the window at the night streets, observing the people he passed. There were a surprising number of them, despite the snow. Last-minute shoppers, he guessed. He studied them, like an anthropologist. He didn't feel like a member of the same species. He never had.

He passed into a seedier part of town. The crack dealers were out, of course, and the hookers. People of the night needed to work, regardless of the season or the weather.

Then he passed a homeless encampment, and was struck by the number of men he saw wearing military jackets. Was this still the country they had fought for? Was this still the country he had fought for? They were white and black and brown; war may be the most democratizing force of all.

Stop this, goddamn it. You're getting emotional again.

But then he passed a storefront church, decorated for Christmas. “Jesus Saves,” said the sign. With that, the impact of Darryl Childress' murder hit Kane all over again, hard. He was seized with rage. Christ himself would not be able to forgive such an act of savage cruelty.

Then Kane thought again of Pete, whom he never really knew. Kane and Jennie had split up shortly after Pete was born. Kane had faithfully kept up the support payments, and he sent gifts at Christmas and the boy's birthday. But, he had always told himself, it was Pete's good luck that he was gone: he carried Howard's genes.

In fact, after Pete's birth, it had terrified Kane to see how much like his own father he had become. Leaving them was one of the few decent
things he had ever done. He always hoped Pete had been able to see it that way.

Jennie, of course, knew about the curse of Howard Kane, and probably had explained it to the boy. But she had her own problems, so Kane never knew for sure what she had told him.

And now he never would know. A bad batch of heroin had seen to that.

A hideous feeling of loneliness overwhelmed Kane. He was accustomed to unpleasant feelings, but loneliness was rarely one of them. Now, for some reason, he felt an overpowering need to be with someone. He pulled over to the curb and found an old number in his wallet. Silently cursing himself for his weakness, he punched out the number on his cell phone.

Angela answered on the second ring. When she heard his voice, her tone went flat. She had been expecting someone else.

“How have you been, Ralph?” she asked.

“Fine,” he lied. “You?”

“I'm fine. Why are you calling me?”

“I don't know. It's Christmas. I was—I was just thinking of you.”

“I'm married now. We're expecting a baby in February.”

This was the last thing Kane expected to hear. Somehow he had figured that Angela would always be there if he needed her. “Congratulations,” he said weakly.

“At my age, can you believe it?”

“I'm glad you're happy.”

“My husband's name is Larry. He's a city fireman. He's on duty tonight. I thought this was him calling.”

“I'm sorry it's not.” He paused, trying to picture her pregnant. “Listen, I apologize for bothering you. I was just feeling kind of lonesome. We've got this big kidnapping and murder case, maybe you saw it on TV…”

“I don't watch the news. I don't want to get upset while I'm pregnant.”

“Right.”

“Have you been drinking?”

Kane shut his eyes tight against the pain. There it was again, that tone of voice. He fought the impulse to lie. “Yeah, a little bit.”

“Ralph, get some help. While you still can.” There was a long pause. “Listen, I
do
want to wish you a Merry Christmas. But I don't think you should call here again.”

With that, she hung up. Kane stared at the dead receiver.

Tonight. I'll do it tonight. I couldn't save Darryl Childress. He was my last chance, and I failed again.

B
ell sat in his television room, channel-flipping to the various accounts of the ghastly crime. The ghouls had spared nothing in their scramble for ratings.

Channel 2 ran a garish logo, “A City Weeps.” It referred to Darryl as a “local celebrity.”

Channel 4 played “The Little Drummer Boy” over a slow-motion shot of grim-faced morgue attendants wheeling the gurney from the dumpster to their black van.

Channel 7 ran a black border around the screen, over a year-old Pizza King commercial featuring Darryl laughing and sharing a pizza with Santa Claus.

Channel 11 re-ran the emotional appeal of Darryl's parents for the release of their son—even though by now the entire city knew the child was dead.

Channel 13 ran a man-on-the-street story, filmed in a departmentstore appliance section. Interviewees were crowded around scores of television sets—all, of course, tuned to Channel 13. The reporters cut back and forth between white and black citizens, all commenting about how horrifying the crime was.

Bell turned off the television and reflected on the irony.
Is this what it takes to bring the races together, the murder of a child celebrity?

But none of this, of course, was Darryl's fault. Bell thought about the boy's parents. He tried to imagine what they must be going through right now, and hoped they hadn't seen the sleazy television coverage.

Bell's guts screamed for a drink. He needed to get to a meeting soon, or do something else to ensure his sobriety.

But that would have to wait. The important thing now was to catch the motherfuckers who had done this to Darryl.

K
ane again sat on his bed with the Beretta in his hand. He couldn't get Darryl out of his mind. He took another hit from a joint. He set the pistol down and crossed the room to his little television set, turned it back on and rewound the VCR tape.
Why in the name of God did I tape the news tonight?
He hadn't the faintest idea. All he knew was that he couldn't let go of the boy.

Or maybe it's the other way around. He won't let go of me. Like that girl in Vietnam.

Kane sat down and watched the entire story again, all the way through. Then he rewound to Darryl's Santa Claus commercial, which he watched one more time. With the remote control, he froze the tape on the little boy laughing in sheer delight.

What was it like for you? What was it like to
know
they were going to put a bullet in your head?

He crossed to the refrigerator for a beer, oblivious to the newscaster's addendum to the tale of horror: “In more positive news, police announced that street crime was reduced dramatically today, for the second day in a row. All categories of offenses were down—a whopping thirty-two percent compared with last year's Christmas season.

“A spokesman for police chief Jefferson Mosely attributed the drop to the massive police presence out on the streets in response to the Childress kidnapping.

“This proves our theory that more officers on the street will prevent crime,' the spokesman said.”

Kane returned with the beer and shut down the VCR. He thought for a long moment, then went to his closet. He fished around on a shelf and pulled down another videotape. He wiped thick dust from it and returned to the television.

The video was an old documentary about Vietnam. Kane sat down with the remote control. He fired up the joint, then drank down half the beer. Then he fast-forwarded the tape to the most significant event of his own life.

There, in fuzzy but living color, was the evacuation of the American Embassy in Saigon. And there
he
was, Sergeant Ralph Kane, USMC,
wielding his M-16, holding off the terrified Vietnamese civilians from the embassy gates.

The little girl and her young mother were not in this film. They had not yet arrived when this footage was taken. But there were scores of people just like them.

Now, alone and drunk in his seedy room, Kane wished that they
would
magically appear in the video tape, that little girl and her mother—if only for a split second. That way the child would be alive. She would be alive forever.

But it was not to be. Kane felt certain she was dead. Just like Darryl Childress.
This country betrayed us by sending us there, then it betrayed these people by pulling us out. That's been my life, just a long series of betrayals.

Kane froze the picture again and looked closely at himself as a young Marine. He sat there with the beer in his hand, staring at the screen.

A boy. That's all I was, just a scared boy trying to be a man.

B
ell stood quietly in his back yard, looking up at the full moon through the naked branches of an old maple tree. The snow glistened around him.

Then he heard crunching footsteps. He turned to face Vera. She wore a heavy coat over her nightclothes. “Are you coming to bed?” she asked gently.

“In a few minutes.”