“What makes you interested in them?”
“Were they related to you?”
“I bought the place from their estate. This is a long time ago.”
“Their estate?”
“They died.”
“Died?”
“That’s right. Why are you interested in them?”
“I’m interested in their three children…”
Again the man hesitated, as if considering what Ricky had asked.
“They didn’t have no children. Died childless. Just a brother lived some ways away. He’s the one sold me the place. I fixed it up real good. Made their business into something. But no kids. Never.”
“No, you’re mistaken,” Ricky said. “They did. They adopted three orphans from New York City through the Episcopal Diocese of New York…”
“Mister, I don’t know where you got your information, but you’re wrong. Dead wrong,” the breeder said, voice abruptly filling with barely concealed anger. “The Jacksons didn’t have no immediate family ’cept that brother who sold me this place. It was just the old couple and they passed away together. I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I think maybe you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Together? How?”
“That wasn’t any of my business. And I don’t know that it’s any of your business, either.”
“But you know the answer, right?”
“Everyone lived around here knew the answer. You can check the newspaper. Or maybe go to the cemetery. They’re buried right up the road.”
“But you’re not going to help me?”
“You got that right. What sort of private detective are you?”
“I told you,” Ricky responded swiftly. “One that’s interested in the three children that the Jacksons together adopted in May of 1980.”
“And I told you, there weren’t any children. Adopted or otherwise. So what’s your real interest?”
“I have a client. He’s got some questions. The rest is confidential,” Ricky said.
The man’s eyes had narrowed, and his shoulders straightened, as if his initial shock had worn off, replaced by an aggressiveness that spoke loudly. “A client? Somebody paying you to come around here and ask questions? Well, you got a card? A number where I can reach you, if maybe I remember something…”
“I’m from out of town,” Ricky lied quickly.
The breeder continued to eye Ricky. “Telephone lines go state to state, fella. How can I reach you? Where do I get hold of you, if I need to?”
Now it was Ricky’s turn to step back. “What is it that you think you can remember later that you can’t remember now?” he demanded.
The man’s voice had finally cooled completely. Now he was measuring, assessing, as if trying to imprint every detail of Ricky’s face and physique. “Let me see that identification again,” he said. “You got a badge?”
Everything about the man’s sudden change screamed warnings to Ricky. He realized in that second that he was suddenly close to something dangerous, like walking in the dark and abruptly realizing he was at the edge of some steep embankment.
Ricky took a step back toward the door. “Tell you what, I’ll give you a couple of hours to think this over, then I’ll call you back. You want to talk, you remember something, we can get together then.”
Ricky quickly maneuvered out of the office and took several strides toward the rental car. The breeder was a few steps behind him, but turned to the side, and within a second had reached the kennel containing Brutus. The man unlatched the gate and the dog, mouth agape, but still silent, sprang immediately to his side. The breeder gave a small, open palm signal, and the dog instantly froze, eyes locked directly on Ricky, waiting for the next command.
Ricky turned around to face the dog and owner, and took the last few steps to the car door backing up slowly. He reached into his pants pocket and removed the car keys. The dog finally emitted a single, low growl, just as menacing as the coiled muscles in its shoulders and the ears perked, awaiting the release from the breeder.
“I don’t think I’m going to see you again, mister,” the breeder said. “And I don’t think coming around here and asking any more questions is a real good idea.”
Ricky moved the keys to his left hand and opened his door. At the same time, his right hand crept into the suit coat pocket, gripping the semiautomatic pistol. He kept his eyes on the dog, and he concentrated hard on what he might have to do. Flick off the safety latch. Pull the pistol free. Chamber a round. Assume a firing position and take aim. When he did this on the range, he was never rushed, never hurried, and it still took several seconds. He had no idea whether he could get a shot off in time, and whether he could hit the dog. It occurred to him, as well, that it might take several rounds to stop the animal.
The Rottweiler would probably cross the space between them in two, three seconds at most. It crept forward, eager, inching a little closer to Ricky. No, Ricky thought, less than that. A single second.
The breeder looked at Ricky, and saw his hand creeping toward the pocket. He smiled. “Mister private detective, even if that is a weapon you have in your pocket, trust me, it isn’t going to do the trick. Not with this dog, right here. No chance.”
Ricky closed his hand around the grip of the pistol, sliding his index finger onto the trigger. His own eyes were narrow and he barely recognized the even tones of his own voice. “Maybe,” he said very slowly and carefully, “just maybe I know that. And I won’t even bother to try to put a round into your dog there. Instead, I’ll just nail one right in the center of your chest. You’re a nice big target, and trust me, I won’t have any trouble hitting you. And you’ll be dead before you hit the ground, and you won’t even have the satisfaction of seeing your mutt there chew me up.”
This reply made the breeder hesitate. He put his hand on the dog’s collar, restraining it. “New Hampshire plates,” he said after a moment. “With the motto Live Free or Die. Very memorable. Now get out of here.”
Ricky did not hesitate to slip into the car and slam the door shut. He removed the pistol from his jacket and then started the car up. Within seconds he was pulling away, but he saw the breeder in his rearview mirror, the dog still at his side, watching him depart.
He was breathing heavily. It was as if the heat outdoors had overcome the car’s air-conditioning system, and as he bumped off the driveway up onto the black macadam road surface, he rolled down his window and took a gulp of the wind created by the car’s motion. It was hot to the taste.
He pulled over to the side of the road to regain his composure, and as he did, he saw the entrance to the cemetery. Ricky steadied his nerves and tried to assess what had happened at the breeder’s house. Clearly the mention of the three orphans had triggered a response. He guessed it was one from deep within, almost a subliminal message. The man had not thought about those three children in years, until Ricky arrived with a single question, and that had stirred up a response recalled from deep within him.
There had been something dangerous about the meeting that went far beyond the dog at the man’s side. Ricky thought it was almost as if the man had been waiting years for Ricky, or someone like Ricky, to show up with some questions, and once his initial surprise that the moment he’d been awaiting for years had finally arrived, he knew precisely what to do.
Ricky felt a little queasy in his stomach as this thought churned about.
Just inside the cemetery entrance there was a small, white clapboard building, tucked off a little ways away from the roadway that sliced between the rows of graves. Ricky suspected it was something slightly more than a storage shed, and he pulled in front of it. As he did, a gray-haired man, wearing a matching blue set of work clothes not all that dissimilar to what Ricky wore at the university maintenance department, came out from the building, taking a step or two toward a riding mower parked to the side, but stopping when he saw Ricky emerge from the rental car.
“Help you with something?” the man asked.
“I’m looking for a pair of graves,” Ricky said.
“Got lots of folks planted here, who in particular you looking for?”
“A couple named Jackson.”
The old man smiled. “Ain’t nobody been up to visit them in a long time. People probably think it’s bad luck. Me, I think anybody taking up residence here has experienced all the luck, good and bad, they’re ever gonna have, so I don’t care much. Jacksons’ graves in back, last row, way over to the right. Take the road to the end, get out and head that way. You’ll find it soon enough.”
“Did you know them?”
“Nope. What, you a relative?”
“No,” Ricky said. “I’m a detective. Interested in their adopted kids.”
“They didn’t have no family to speak of. Don’t know nothing about no adopted kids. That would have been in the papers back when they passed, but I don’t remember nothing about that, and the Jacksons, they were front page for a day or so.”
“How’d they die?”
The man looked a little surprised. “Figured you know, coming up to see the graves and all…”
“How?”
“Why, it was what the cops call a murder-suicide. The old man shot his wife after one of their fights, then turned the gun on hisself. Bodies stewed for a couple of days in the house before the mailman realized nobody’s picked up the mail, gets suspicious and calls the local cops. Apparently the dogs got at the bodies, as well, so there weren’t much left, except some mighty unpleasant remains. Lot of anger in that house, you’d best believe.”
“The guy that bought it…”
“I don’t know him, but they say he’s a piece of work. Just as nasty as the dogs. Took over the breeding business, too, that the Jacksons had going there, but at least he killed all the animals that had eaten the former owners. But I’m thinking he’s likely to end up that way, hisself. Maybe that’s what wears on his mind. Makes him the nasty folk he is.”
The old man gave a grisly laugh and pointed up the incline. “Up there,” he said. “Actually, a pretty nice spot to rest for eternity.”
Ricky thought for a moment, then asked, “You wouldn’t know who bought the plot, do you? And who pays for maintenance?”
The man shrugged. “Checks just come in, I don’t know.”
Ricky found the grave site without any difficulty. He stood for a second amid the silence of the bright midday sun wondering for a moment whether anyone had given thought to a headstone for him after his suicide. He doubted it. He’d been as isolated as the Jacksons. He wondered, as well, why he’d never put up some sort of memorial to his dead wife. He had helped establish a book fund in her name at her law school, and he’d annually made a contribution to the Nature Conservancy in her name, and he’d told himself that these acts were better than some cold piece of stone standing sentinel over a narrow slice of earth. But standing there, he was less certain. He found himself caught in a reverie of death, thinking about the permanence and the impact on those left behind. He thought, we learn more about the living when someone dies, than we do the person who passed away.
He was uncertain how long he remained there, in front of the graves, before finally examining them. It was a joint headstone, and it merely said the names, the dates of their birth, and the date of their death.
Something bothered him, and he stared at this small bit of information, trying to discern what it was. It took several seconds before he made a connection.
The date of the murder-suicide was the same month that the adoption papers were signed.
Ricky took a step back. And then he saw something else.
The Jacksons were both born in the 1920s. They would have both been in their mid-sixties when they died.
He felt hot again, and he loosened the tie around his neck. The fake stomach seemed to pull at him, weighing him down, and the fake contusion and scar suddenly began to itch on his face.
No one can adopt a child, much less three children, at that age, he thought. The guidelines for adoption agencies would rule out a childless couple that age almost immediately, in favor of a younger, far more vigorous couple.
Ricky stood by the graves thinking he was looking at a lie. Not a lie about their death. That was true enough. But a lie somewhere in their life.
Everything is wrong, he thought. Everything is different from what it should be. Ricky was almost overcome with the sense that he was treading on the edge of something larger than what he’d expected. Revenge that was boundless.
He told himself that what he needed to do was to get back to the safety of New Hampshire and sort his way through what he’d learned, make some sort of rational, intelligent next step. He halted the rental car outside the office of the Econo Lodge, and stepped inside, spotting a different clerk. Omar had been replaced by James, who wore a clip-on tie that still managed to be skewed around his neck.
“I’m going to check out,” Ricky said. “Mr. Lazarus. In room 232.”
The clerk pulled up a bill on the computer screen, and said, “You’re all set. Except there were a couple of phone messages for you.”
Ricky hesitated, then asked, “Phone messages?”
James the clerk nodded. “Guy from some dog kennel called, asking if you were staying here. Wanted to leave a message on your room phone. Then, just before you came in, there was another message.”
“Same guy?”
“I don’t know. I just push the buttons. Never talked to the person. It just sticks a number up here on my call sheet. Room 232. Two messages. You want, just pick up the phone over there and punch in your room number. You can hear the messages that way.”
Ricky did as instructed. The first message was from the kennel owner.
“I thought you’d be staying someplace cheap and close. Wasn’t too hard to figure out where. I been thinking about your questions. Call me. I think maybe I’ve got some information that might help you out. But you better get out your checkbook. Gonna cost you.”
Ricky pushed the numeral three to erase the message. The next message was played automatically. The voice was clipped and cool and astonishing, almost like finding a piece of ice on a hot sidewalk during a summer day.