“Why didn't you at least send help?” I asked.
She looked angrily at me. “I wanted to get out. Get as far away as I could.”
She didn't apologize for not sending help, and I had no intention of intruding on her pain. At the door Ralph apologized profusely. He said, “I'll try and get her to talk to you.”
We left. In the car Scott asked, “Is the fact that she's not pressing charges going to make it easier for Bluefield's dad to make a case against you?”
“I don't know. I hope not.”
“Now where?” he asked.
“I talked to most of the people at work today. I'd like to try Marshall Longfellow again.”
Longfellow lived in River's Edge, near the train station. We drove up to a gray brick two-story home. He answered our knock himself and let us in. We saw a great deal of the mass of red veins inhabiting the whites of his eyes as he stared at Scott. My lover introduced himself, and Longfellow continued to stare.
I gently nudged the man toward the interior of the house. We walked through an entryway crammed with boots, overcoats, hats, gloves, random tools, even a rusting snowblower in the corner.
This opened into a living room. A sleepy cat stretched itself across the floor and disappeared around a corner. Longfellow plopped himself into a cloth-backed easy chair. He motioned for us to sit. Looking around the room, I saw that the drapes covering the front window were water-stained and torn. The couch we sat on had been recovered from the dumpster Ralph and Clarissa would soon be bringing their sofa to. Cat hair and fur balls spaced themselves randomly around a carpet that at one time might have been pleasantly gold.
“Scott Carpenter,” he managed to gasp at last. “Mr. Mason, how do you know him? Why are you here?”
Scott said, “We live together. We'reâ”
Longfellow shook his head, “Mr. Mason, you live with a famous baseball player. I don't believe it. I didn't know that. Wow, that's incredible. Can I get an autographed baseball?”
Scott had been about to say that we were lovers. Scott's being gay didn't seem to be much of an issue any more. As his best friend on the team said, “Do you really think people don't know?” I went to his team functions and he came to faculty parties whenever they included the bringing of significant others. This happened rather less than one might suppose. School functions being inherently boring, most significant others didn't bother to attend, and
team functions were few and far between. Scott has an enormous speaking schedule that takes him around the country, but I'm usually stuck in the classroom.
So far the local media hadn't seen fit to place our relationship in the sports pages or the gossip columns. If you want to know why not, you'll have to ask them.
Poor Marshall Longfellow simply gaped at us.
“I wanted to ask questions about yesterday afternoon,” I said.
He gulped and stared at me. “Yesterday afternoon?” He began to look stubborn.
Scott said, “It would really help, Mr. Longfellow, if you could tell us who was there besides yourself, if you heard or saw anything suspicious.”
Longfellow nodded. “If I can help,” he said. He offered us drinks. I took a diet soda and Scott accepted a beer. Longfellow chugged on a pint bottle from one side of his chair, and from a beer can on the other. He looked to be functioning as well as he ever did at school. This wasn't saying muchâonly that he seemed lucid for the moment.
“Did you see anybody yesterday between five-thirty and six-thirty?” I asked.
He placed the liquor bottle on the left side of the chair and clutched the beer bottle tighter. He said, “I saw that chess-club lady, Fiona What's-her-name, lurking in the halls. She doesn't seem to ever leave. She must not have much of a home to go to.”
I considered the squalor around me. Great to be in a position to judge.
“Anybody else?”
“All the day-shift custodians went home at the regular time. I was with the night shift waiting for some supplies by the back door most of the time. Some of the kids are always roaming the hall. I think I remember seeing the Bluefield kid.”
“What time was this?” I asked.
“Pretty close to six, I think. It could have been him. Whoever it was looked like he had a cast on his arm.”
“Bluefield was still around,” I said. “He must have been talking to Dalrymple.”
Longfellow mumbled on for a while longer, but we got no further information from him. Scott got an autographed baseball out of the car and gave it to him. He carries around a supply of them.
We decided to stop at the River's Edge police station, then call it a night. I wanted to talk to Frank Murphy. From seeing him yesterday I knew he had the four-to-midnight shift. We found him in the squad room, working on reports. Only a few cops were around and none of them made a fuss over Scott. Frank had met Scott often before, so he didn't find it necessary to gush.
“It's good you came in,” Frank said. He sounded grim.
“What's wrong?” I asked.
“Plenty. Dan Bluefield says he saw you outside the school office ten minutes before you called in.”
“That piece of shit,” I said. “All that proves is he could have done it.”
“How'd he know the correct time?” Scott asked.
Frank shrugged. “Kid doesn't say, but it wouldn't be hard to guess from when all the commotion started. Just back up the times. Remember, we can't pinpoint the exact moment Jones was killed. There was nearly half an hour between when Tom left and when he came back and found the body. I wish I had the caseâit would be no problem. But Daniels and Johnson are tough. I don't think they'll do anything unfair, but they don't know you like I do. I know you didn't do it, but they have to go on the evidence. I've talked to them, and they know Bluefield's reputation, so it should be okay.”
“Should be?” Scott asked.
At that moment Daniels and Johnson walked in. They chatted with Frank a few minutes, then asked if they could talk to me. Meeting Scott did not deter them from the questions they wanted to ask.
For an hour and a half we sat in a windowless gray
cubicle while they went over my statement from the day before, line by line and comment by comment.
When we finished Johnson said, “You had the time to kill him, and you've got no alibi.”
“Lookâ” I began.
“No, you look,” Daniels said. “The blood on your shirt matches Jones's.”
“Maybe we have the same blood type,” I said.
They didn't even bother to respond to this but went on firing questions at me.
Finally I asked them if they were charging me with murder. They both said no, but they didn't sound any too happy about not doing it. I made an awfully good suspect. Arguing with the future corpse, last one to see him alive, finding the body, blood on my shirt, all very nasty things that would make any cop suspicious.
I found Frank and Scott in Frank's office. I slammed the door shut behind me and kicked a chair against the wall. Each tried to calm me down. Frank said he would talk to Daniels and Johnson again, but that I was to try to stay calm. He was going on vacation for two weeks, but he gave me his number in case things got worse.
In the car I managed to nearly dent the dashboard of the Porsche the third time I swung my fist down on it.
Scott is generally the calmer one in our relationship. It takes me a while to lose my temper, and my rages can be fairly spectacular, but I've calmed down a lot in the last few years. Getting old does that, I guess. Scott's known in the sports pages as the Ice Man. That calm exterior is tough on opposing batters. I've seen him lose it only on rare occasions. He spent the time in the car letting me rant, not even trying to calm me down.
Halfway home I said, “It's late, but we need groceries. It can't wait. We're out of toilet paper, orange juice, a couple of other basics.”
I hate taking him grocery shopping. If he survives unrecognized, he is a menace, worse than a little kid, throwing perfectly useless items into the cart. Stuff he's never
going to eat, much less have the time or expertise to cook. We've ruined enough meals together to write the
Don't Try This Cookbook
. I try to get any basic grocery shopping done without him. He's only a problem with food. He's fine in a mall with clothes, appliances, whatever. Tonight we were both subdued, managing to exit the Omni store on 159th Street with the only slightly odd item a package of mixed vegetables featuring okra, broccoli, and onions.
At my place I turned off the car. I left the window open and stuck my elbow on the door. The cool autumn breeze brought lingering whiffs of the smell of burning leaves.
He squeezed my arm gently. “You'll get through this,” he said.
“The kid out and out lied. I wasn't anywhere near the fucking office at that time.”
“I know,” he soothed.
“And the cops seemed to believe the little fucker. The little piece of shit is deliberately trying to ruin my life, and there's nothing I can do about it.”
“Easy,” Scott said. “I'm here. Nothing bad's going to happen as long as I'm around.” His support and his soothing tones calmed me down.
We keep a set of weights in my basement so we can work out together. He hadn't started on his off-season exercise schedule yet, and it was too soon after pitching for him to go full-out, but he did a light set. In deference to my still-sore arm, I punished the stationary bicycle for half an hour. After showering and dressing I grabbed a diet soda and moseyed to the living room to wait for him to finish his shower. I left the lights off and stared out the picture window to the moon-drenched fields of corn. I'd seen the big harvesters working early that morning on the crop across the road. They'd probably move over here tomorrow or the next day.
Scott padded up behind me in his stocking feet. He placed his chin gently on my shoulder. “Come to bed,” he said.
“In a minute,” I said.
He put his arms around me. I felt his chest, thighs, and legs against my back. He rubbed his five o'clock shadow gently against my cheek.
“Don't let it get to you,” he said.
“I didn't kill anybody,” I said.
“We both know that. So the cops were a little gruff. It's no big deal.”
“It's only because of Frank that I'm not in jail,” I said.
“It's going to be all right,” he said.
I began to turn toward him when a sudden flash from the fields caught my eye. I swung back.
“What?” he asked.
“Something's out there,” I whispered.
He stared out the window. “I don't see anything.”
“Hush. Let's move away from here slowly. We probably can't be seen, because there's no light behind us, but let's be careful.” We edged away from the window.
“Your imagination's getting the best of you,” Scott said.
Carefully I positioned myself so I could see over the windowsill.
I scanned the cornfield carefully, left to right and back. No sign of life. I hurried to the bedroom, slipped on some shoes, stopped in the kitchen for a flashlight, and marched into the front yard. The light I threw on the fields barely penetrated the dark.
Gentle rustlings from the wind moved the stalks in random bursts. Excellent cover for any skulking attacker. Scott came up behind me.
“I'm going out there,” I said.
“Are you nuts?” Scott said. “If you really think somebody's ready to attack us, then call the police.”
“I'm not calling the police. This is my home and I'm not going to put up with any bullshit. If someone is going to threaten me, especially that stupid fuck Bluefield, they're going to know they picked the wrong faggot to fuck with. I'm not afraid of some screwed-up teenager.”
“How about if I feel frightened enough for both of us? I don't want you hurt,” Scott said. “Don't do something stupidly macho just to prove a point.”
I glared at him. “This is my home, our home. If we aren't safe here, secure here, then it's for shit and we might as well pack up our tent and surrender. I will not live in fear. I better be able to go out into my yard on a peaceful autumn evening.”
“You're the one who said he thought he saw something,” Scott said reasonably.
I was feeling unreasonable and petulant. I watched the lights of cars passing on Wolf Road a hundred feet in the distance at the end of the driveway. I walked to the edge of the cornfield and stood poised uncertainly.
Lights flashed down at the road. A car turned up the driveway. Probably someone who missed a turn in Mokena, finally realizing they'd come the wrong way and needed to go back. One or two cars a day used the driveway for a U-turn.
This car kept coming up the driveway. “What the hell?” I said. It was just after midnight, no time for visiting.
The car was a four-year-old Oldsmobile. We walked over. Al Welman's head popped out of the car. His wispy gray hair seemed more disorganized than usual.
He said, “I'm sorry it's so late. I talked to Meg. I've been feeling awful about what I said to you. I was driving around. I turned in to see if any of your lights were on. If you weren't up, I was going to talk to you tomorrow at school.”
We invited him in. He apologized several more times for the lateness of the hour and for his rudeness to me earlier that day. “I feel such guilt,” he said. “You've been awfully good to me. I'm sorry.”
I told him to forget it. I introduced Scott to him. He recognized the name.
“You live here?” Welman asked him.
“We live together,” Scott said.
“You're lovers? You're gâ” Welman stopped. “The things you see today.”
“I appreciate the apology, Al,” I said, “but it is pretty late.”
“I came for another reason,” he said. “I”âhe pausedâ“I ⦠I saw something. I may have made a mistake.”
We waited for him to continue.
“I was near the office at ten after six,” he said.
“What were you doing there?” I asked.
“I ⦠I was going to talk to Jones. We didn't have a scheduled meeting. I wanted to appeal to him without anyone from the union around. I thought he might be less threatened. I know that might sound stupid to you, but I can't teach that biology class next semester. It'll kill me. So I was willing to try anything.”
Including murder? I wondered.
I let the silence lengthen beyond the uncomfortable. Finally Welman whispered, “He was dead when I walked into the office. I saw the light and knocked on his door. It was slightly ajar, so when he didn't answer, I peeked in. I saw the knife and I ran.”
He twisted his hands together and continued, “I should have done something. I know I should have, but I knew everybody would suspect me. I would be the one to find the body, a natural suspect, and I hate him so much. The police have talked to me several times already. If you weren't such a good suspect, they probably would have come after me. You won't tell the police I was there, will you?”
I said, “Did you see anyone in the hallway?”
“As I was walking to the office I saw that Fiona person at the far end of the east hallway, walking away from the office, and I think I saw one of the custodians way down the north hall. He was moving away from the office, too. I couldn't tell if either one had been inside.”
Fiona or the custodian could have been simply walking from one end of the complex to the other, but I'd talk to them.
“Could you tell who the custodian was?”
“Whoever it was had a uniform on. It could have been Longfellow, but he was too far down the hall for me to be sure.”
“Did either of them see you?” I asked.
“No, I was coming from the new section of the building. They were already at opposite ends of the halls they were in.”
“Opposite ends?” Scott asked.
I explained the school's geography to Scott. The south wing ended at the far west end of the main hall. At the office the main hall continued but was officially called the east hall. Just before the office the north hall branched off to the left if one was walking west to east in the main hall. The school's geography was screwed up because it had been built in sections starting just before World War I. The newest section, tacked onto the far end of the old south wing, made the place so spread-out that any kid going from a class in the new section to a class in the far end of the old north wing couldn't possibly make it in time.
“Why didn't you tell this to the cops? This makes them suspects.”
“I told you why. It makes me a suspect, too, and as far as I know those two have no reason to murder him.”
“Did you see Dan Bluefield?” I asked.
“No. Was he around?”
“He claims I was there.”
“I didn't see you,” Welman said.
“Could any other people have been around?” I asked.
“I didn't see any,” Welman said. “Are you going to tell the police what I told you?” he asked.
“I don't know,” I said.
Scott said, “We won't tell.”
I gave him a startled look. Scott said, “Mr. Welman, how could you leave him there like that? Maybe he was still alive when you got there. It couldn't have happened much before you arrived on the scene.”
Welman gulped. He rubbed his hands through his thinning hair. “I know,” he whispered. “I've thought about that. I may have let a man die. I ⦠I guess I was more worried about myself, and I ⦠I was, I was so glad to think he was dead, that the idea of helping him didn't cross my mind. Until later, that is. Then I felt awful. At the moment I only thought that the person being cruelest to me was dead, and I was glad. I know that sounds awful, but it's true.”
Scott said, “I understand. Tom's told me about the hard
time you've had this year. We won't make it tougher for you.”
The old man left a few moments, later shaking our hands gratefully and saying he hoped his information would lead me to find out who did it.
I wanted to go back outside to examine the cornfields for evidence of skulking watchers. Scott's grumbling about hunting around in the dark annoyed me, but his logic convinced me that stumbling through six-foot-tall corn in the dead of night with only a flashlight was dumb.
After we crawled into bed, Scott turned off his light and rolled over. I asked, “Why aren't we going to say anything to the police about Welman?”
Scott mumbled into his pillow, “He didn't do it.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
He turned his head to me. One eye peeked from the depths of the pillow. “I think he was telling the truth. Don't you?”
“I'm not ready to cross him off the suspect list.”
“Okay, don't. But I guessed if he thought we trusted him after he confessed, it might help him. He must be feeling awful guilt about not doing something to save the guy.”
“Jones probably died instantly,” I said. I'd seen stab wounds before, and this one had looked as nasty as any I'd come across in combat.
“Tell Welman that next time,” Scott said.
“Let him feel a little guilt,” I said.
Scott turned on his side to look at me. “You okay, Tom?” he asked.
“No, I'm not okay. The bastard is here practically confessing to murder, and you bid him go on his merry way, and we decide to keep quiet about it. I don't understand it.”
“Do you think he did it?” Scott asked.
“I don't know. If I wasn't so pissed about the police interrogation, I'd call them right now and tell them. That's the only reason I'm not going to. But let me tell you if they try an arrest, I may have to break your promise.”
“You didn't do it,” Scott said. “You don't have to worry.”
“Well, I
am
worried.” I paused. “I guess I'm more shook up about that inquisition than I thought. Sorry. If I weren't so pissed off I'd agree with you.”
“'S okay to be angry,” Scott said.
We talked for a while longer, but it was late and slowly we drifted off to sleep.
It seemed like seconds later that crashing sirens and flashing white lights blasted me awake. I reached for Scott, who was mumbling himself awake. I rushed to the center of the house. Threw open the doors to the other rooms. No fire. No intruders. I tore open the front door.
Light as bright as day flooded the perimeter of the house from lamps Scott had installed on the roof. Caught in the middle of the front lawn was a figure staring toward me. Seconds later it was gone. I ran across the grass, realizing after a few steps that I had no shoes on. I was surprised to note I'd thrown on a pair of pants. A few steps into the corn told me pursuit was impossible. No shoes, and the enemy had a million places to hide.
I trudged back to the front porch. The alarm cut off and moments later Scott joined me. Seconds later, we caught a brief glimpse of a car, tires squealing, pulling around the corner onto 179th Street.
“Did you see the guy on the lawn?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Could have been Bluefield. I don't know. What time is it?”
Neither of us knew. We examined the perimeter of the house. At the back door we found evidence of where the visitor had tried to insert something, maybe a crowbar or a screwdriver, between the door and the jamb. He didn't get far, because the alarm had tripped.
Back inside I paced the living-room floor and ranted about Bluefield.
Scott sat on the couch. When I paused for breath he spoke, “You said you couldn't be sure who it was.”
“The fucking kid is out to get me. I am not in the mood
to be reasonable.” I glanced at the time on the VCR display. “It's three in the morning and I don't give a shit about proof or evidence. The little bastard will not frighten me out of my home.”
“Fine,” Scott said, “you're going to go over to his house and beat him to death. In the meantime I'm scared. For you. I agree he probably did it, but we have no proof and you know as well as I do that there isn't a thing we can do. Tom, do you understand? I'm scared. I don't want you or me hurt, and somebody wants to hurt you. We'll be safe in the city. My building has good security.”
I picked up the book I'd been reading from next to the battered old chair I usually read in. I hurled it across the room. Scott didn't move. With my foot I slammed a chair against the wall. The pictures on the wall rattled. The one of him and me with both sets of parents fell to the floor. Scott jumped to his feet.
“Tom.” His low voice soothed and thrummed at its deepest level. After a few minutes under his penetrating gaze, I eased myself down onto the edge of my favorite chair and hung my head. He came over and rested a hand on my shoulder. After a couple of minutes of silence he murmured, “Everything's going to be okay.”
I nodded without looking up at him.
We said little to each other as we made our way to bed for the third time that night. I'd picked up the book and carefully placed it on the coffee table. He'd rehung the picture.
I stared up at the ceiling in the darkness, listening to him breathe. I could tell he was still awake. I thought about the day, kids, murder, and fear. A long while later, almost in spite of myself, I felt sleep coming on. As I drifted off, Scott moved close and placed his arm gently on my chest. “I love you,” he whispered.
Â
Early the next morning Scott drove me to school. He would pick me up later. I took my cup of coffee and trudged up the stairs to the library to talk to Meg.