The Detective's Garden (19 page)

CLARKE DROVE THE
Dodge Charger though he
didn’t really know how. The car jerked forward and braked too
hard. Elsie braced one hand on the dash and threw her head
back and laughed. Spit stretched in a shimmering line from an
upper dogtooth to her lips’ lower vermilion border.

The darkness had lifted suddenly like a window shade. They
drove past a dun-colored suburb, every house pockmarked
with the dual rectangles of sliding doors, and they took a left
into turned-earth fields where a huge red tractor pulled a red
twelve-row corn planter. Elsie ran her hand up Clarke’s leg and
left it sitting on top of his crotch.

“You hit him with a goddamn tire iron,” Clarke said. His
voice was louder than a whisper.

“You wanna see something?” Elsie said. She unbuttoned
three buttons on her shirt and pulled it underneath her bra. She
pushed her chest forward.

“Oh,” Clarke said. He kept his eyes half on the road. Three
silos rose on the horizon as the nose of the Dodge pushed for
ward. Her hands moved toward him. He said, “They’re going
to find out you own this car.”

“It was my mom’s,” she said. Her mouth curled as though
she was going to spit. “Let’s see them track her down.”

A tiny hill rose and then fell as they passed it. Their stomachs
heaved inside them. A lane led toward a tired ranch home. A
dog barked. Clarke didn’t want to think about what lay ahead.

“You know what?” Elsie said. “It felt kind of good.”

“What did?”

“Hitting him with the tire iron.”

“It did? Good how?”

“I don’t know. Scratching poison ivy until it bleeds. That
kind of good.”

The vinyl whispered as she slid across the seat. She took one
of his hands off the wheel and put it to her chest. Her lips
against his neck were wet. Alongside the road, two children
dressed in dark coats stared and waved as they passed. In the
rearview mirror, the two kids fell behind, losing facial details,
and then the distinction between cloth and skin, and then any
sense of shape or size beyond two black gnats in a dust cloud.

Elsie’s hands burrowed into him. He felt soft and earthen. “I
don’t care if your father kills people,” she said.

“You don’t?” Clarke said.

She opened the fly of his pants. The road ahead curved to the
right and then ran straight as far as he could see. Not another
road in sight. Not a building. Nothing but tilled earth. Her
mouth pressed close to his ear. He grunted and said, “I don’t
know where we are.”

“I do,” Elsie said.

In the trailer, King dreamed that the back field was filled
with bees. Hundreds upon hundreds of them. King was in the
field, too. The bees skittered in the air and she held still. Some
dangled long dark legs, some were covered in soft fur, and some
had wet shining midsections. Dozens alighted on clovers in the
same moments that others took flight. They made as much
noise as an airfield. Near the plum tree, her mother waved at
King with both arms. Her mouth moved but King couldn’t
hear beyond the buzzing. Her mom wore a red scarf and hat but
her eyes looked like they were all pupil. She gestured at King
with both palms spread. Don’t move! Don’t move! Even across
the spread of grass, King could see her long hair twitching with
insects. A hornet crawled across an eyebrow. Both of her hands
remained outstretched and the small dark shapes began to lace
between her fingers. King froze in the field. The air held an
autumn chill. Her mother’s mouth opened and the tip of her
pink tongue touched her bottom lip. She gestured with her
hands. She pointed at herself, then at the ground. She tried
again to speak. She tried to say something to King and some
sound must have come out and trailed across a few feet of with
ered grass. King cupped a hand behind an ear so that the soft
cartilage hooked forward. She couldn’t hear anything beyond
the bees’ communal hum.

Outside the door to King’s room, Dominick sat on the
stinking couch and loaded a clip for his Beretta handgun. Each
bullet clicked into place with the satisfying sound of a routine.
The metal held the bullets in a straight line. Dominick’s eyes
were half closed and unfocused. His hands moved with the rote
swiftness with which an adult ties a shoe.

Clarke drove back to find a dark cloud atop the trailer home.
The gravel driveway crunched beneath the Charger’s tires. Elsie’s
eyes were wide. When the car stopped, Clarke said, “Wait here.”
As he got out of the car, the trailer door opened and a huge man
stood on the threshold. Hair cut close to his scalp. Squared jaw.
The skin by his eyes was wound tight. Clarke walked up the
stairs. The father leaned forward and put his arms around the
son. They stumbled backward into the house.

Inside, a shotgun leaned beside the door. A pile of thick red
shells. On the coffee table sat three handguns and boxes of bul
lets. His father’s Wharncliffe knife. A scoped rifle. The house
was filled with some dark vapor. Clarke had trouble seeing
clearly. The ground seemed to shift beneath his feet. Something
rumbled intestinally. His father said, “Jesus, Clarke!” His voice
sounded faint. He said, “Don’t do this to me.”

“Do what?” Clarke’s body stiffened. He felt the stiffness of a
tactical vest beneath his father’s shirt.

“You scared me,” his father said.

“Scared you?”

“I didn’t know what happened.” His father seemed to col
lapse against him. His arms feebly held his shoulders. His neck
leaned forward. “God,” he said, “God, I’m glad you’re okay.”

Clarke exhaled hard, as though his lungs had collapsed. He
pushed his father back. “Fuck you,” he said. His voice was low
and tight. He stepped toward his dad. He raised his voice loud
enough that others could hear. “What the fuck’s wrong with
you?”

The trailer seemed to shake. The guns vibrated against the
coffee table and the single bookshelf seemed to waver as though
it was about to fall. King appeared in the doorway to the hall
that led to the bedrooms. She held a blue blanket. She braced
herself against a wall with one arm. Outside, the darkness gath
ered at the windows in loose bodily shapes and pressed inward
and the house timbers groaned as they shifted. “Stop!” King
yelled.

Dominick pushed Clarke onto the couch. He swelled up
ward, his strength returning. The floor felt uneven. Dominick
was not surprised, he had spent so many dark hours fumbling
with the flint and steel of his narrow mind. The dark outside
pressed inward so that the indoor shadows crept across the floor
toward them. Something outside pressed its great dark face
against the windows and looked in. “What’s it want?” Dom
inick shouted. He thrust himself over the trembling floor out
into the hands of the darkness, and stumbled, and came up
looking at a young woman with long dark hair and a tiny star
in her pierced nose.

“Are you okay?” Elsie said. She pulled her shirt tightly
around her. “What’s going on in there?”

The kids gathered in the door frame and looked at their fa
ther on the gravel. He pushed himself up and swept inside and
through the house, searching, until he stopped by the bath
room sink. He saw the lines of salt on the vinyl floor.

Elsie stood on her tiptoes behind Dominick’s kids. Her
mouth hung open.

Map, read the words in salt, Finger, Bone.

CHARLIE BASIN SWUNG
his feet out of a hospital
bunk. He wore a greenish gown. He flexed his thigh muscles,
then rolled his head on his shoulders. His navy blazer hung on
the back of a chair near the door. His shoes sat on the seat of
the chair, their fine black laces were untied and the tongues
had slipped into the cavities. With his right hand Charlie felt
the bandage on his head. He took careful inventory of his body.
Feet hanging over the edge of the high bunk. Mild ache in his
calves. Legs like sandstone plinths waiting to bear weight. An
intestinal barrenness. How long had it been since he’d eaten?
He needed to piss. Throat a little dry. A mild wooziness. He
held a palm out in front of him. It did not shake. He could get
up. He could stand.

He knew what would happen now. It was what always hap
pened. Dominick Sawyer would run and run hard. Charlie
needed roadblocks. He needed police cooperation, search par
ties, a SWAT team. He needed a helicopter. His phone began to
ring. Where was it? He put his hands against the white sheet
and pushed himself up. He pulled his phone from his jacket
pocket. He lifted it slowly.

“Charlie?” Andrew Fry said.

“I’m here.” Charlie Basin’s voice cracked like a stone snapped
in two.

“You sound like shit,” Andy said. “The hospital called us.
You okay? What the hell happened?”

“Fine,” Charlie said. “My head hurts. Got taken by surprise.
Can I tell you the particulars later? They’re right here, Andy.
We need roadblocks. We’ve got to move.”

“You’re up for this?”

“I told you I’m fine.”

“You want me to call Rosamund?” Fry said. “Let her know
what’s going on?”

“I’ll get in touch with her after I take care of things here.”

“Okay, then,” Fry said, “get over to the Rockford field office.
I’ll let them know you’re coming. You’re in charge.”

KING WADED OUT
into the cold river. She shivered.
She was waist deep and she pressed in further. A muskrat worked
its way upstream. On the far bank, hundreds of small dark birds
blanketed the cottonwoods. The spaces between trunks were
filled with knotted brambles. Her wet jeans and shoes held her
down like ankle weights. Her jaw chattered. She pushed deeper.

Beneath her the water ran clear and she watched her shoes curl
around colored stones. Deep blue stones the size of her fist. Chips
as red as blood. Orange-and-white striations. Black orbs. Smooth
white eggs. When the water deepened, she treaded water. Slow
circles with her arms and legs. She floated downstream. Way
down the river she thought she could see someone else in the
water. The dark figure of a woman. After a while King stopped
shivering. Rectangles of light shone from the trailer home. The
air around her face felt superheated and the water on the surface
felt good. The river seemed to be separated into layers or bands
of temperatures. Eighteen inches of warmth sat atop the surface.
A colder layer ran underneath and washed around her chest and
thighs. She stopped moving her arms and let her legs hang, and
the water rose up and covered her mouth. Like that, her dangling
feet sank just deep enough to touch the icy undercurrent that ran
like a secret life beneath the surface.

King waded back out of the river and hurried to the trailer.
She put on dry clothes and sat at the table with Clarke and El
sie. A few moments later, Aunt Annie pushed through the front
door and stood in the middle of the living room. She wore a dark
blue fleece. She carried two brown bags of groceries. “What?” she
said. “Why the long faces?” For the moment, she ignored Elsie.

No one had anything to say. At the table, Clarke’s brown
hair curled across his forehead. King, hair still wet, squeezed
both hands between her knees. Elsie held a glass of milk. Dom
inick rustled about in the bedroom, packing. He appeared in
the hallway with his arms full of backpacks and duffels. The
handle of the Beretta jutted from the holster beneath his belt.

“Where you going?” Annie asked him. “What’s happened?
And what’s that for?” She pointed to the pistol at his waistline.

“That guy you spoke to,” Dominick said. “The fed.”