Bloodline (11 page)

So I did. I talked and he smiled his Boy Scout smile. He reminded me of a nurse who says, “We're going to have a shot.” And as I told the story, from the call from the magazine to my stop at the high school, to Missy Hewett, Kenny, and the boys, I had this growing feeling that I wasn't the victim.

I was the suspect.

“This was the first time you met these guys?” Poole asked.

“First time.”

“You had no contact with them at all before yesterday?”

“Nope. Had no idea they existed.”

“But this one, Kenny, took some sort of dislike to you?”

“It appeared that way.”

Poole paused for a moment. Smiled. Walked back toward the window and looked out. My truck was parked out there and he considered it.

“Mr. McMorrow,” he said, still looking out. “Did you get any indication that these kids were involved in drugs?”

“Just that the kid said I was a narc. Maybe it was acute paranoia from chronic cocaine use.”

Poole turned to me.

“And you don't use drugs?”

“Not since Jimi Hendrix died,” I said. “Took all the fun out of it.”

“And that was in the seventies, right?” he said, straight-faced.

“It was 1970. But I was only kidding.”

“Oh, I see. So you don't use drugs or anything?”

“Me? No. I mean, of course not.”

He looked at me and smiled.

I gave Poole two pieces of buckshot, which he stuck in his pants pocket, but said there was no way to trace shotgun pellets, not like you can trace a bullet or a cartridge casing. He walked slowly through the house, his eyes running over everything like he was casing the place. At the back window to the deck, he stopped and stared at Millie's sculptures and junk.

“What's all that stuff?” he said.

“Art,” I said.

“Oh.”

To his credit he didn't even raise an eyebrow.

“Not mine,” I said. “The woman who owns the place is an artist.”

“Where is she?”

“Santa Fe, New Mexico. And sometimes New York City.”

“What's her name?”

“Millie Tint,” I said.

Poole looked at me.

“That's what she goes by,” I said. “I don't know her real name.”

“Cute,” he said.

We shook hands, and he said he'd be in touch, and to give him a call if I thought of anything that might be useful. Poole left and I watched him from the doorway as he paused by my truck, took out his notebook, and wrote down my license plate number.

You forgot to take my fingerprints, I said to myself.

Poole backed his cruiser into the driveway and headed out the way he came. As he went by he nodded. And smiled.

12

I
t got warm that afternoon and the bugs were out for an Indian summer fling, having such a good time that I decided I'd get new windows.

To hell with the ecosystem.

I measured the old ones and drove to the building supply store on Route 1 in Belfast, where a very earnest kid on commission tried to sell me some sort of double-paned, super-insulated window, the glass for which was probably developed by the space program.

“I don't think so,” I said. “I just need windows. You know, to keep the rain out.”

“That's the Dark Ages,” the kid said.

“I have deep Celtic roots,” I said.

He looked at me blankly.

But I got my windows, unpainted frames and all. They were packed in wooden crates which the kid helped me place carefully in the back of the truck. I got them home in one piece, carried them in, and considered calling Clair for help, but decided to tough it out. I almost reconsidered when, trying to get the old windows out, I found Millie had nailed them in with what appeared to be railroad spikes.
It took a hammer and a crowbar and more than an hour to pry them loose, which left a gaping hole in the wall just as the light was fading to dusk. As gnats and moths streamed in like refugees seeking political asylum, I lifted one of the new windows into the hole, holding it up with one hand while I reached for the wooden strips that would keep it in place. It was a stretch and I had just about reached one.

When the phone rang.

“Damn,” I said.

I grabbed a nail and drove it into the frame to keep the new window from falling, then sprinted to the kitchen.

“Yes,” I said.

There was a moment of silence, then a hesitant “Hello.”

A girl's voice.

“Hello,” I said.

“Umm,” she said, “is this Jack?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Who's this?”

“Oh, well, this is Belinda? From the school. You know. And the pit?”

“Right. How are you?”

“Oh, I'm good. I mean, I was just calling to say, like, I don't know, that the guys at the pit didn't mean nothin'.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, like Kenny. He's just like that. He gives everybody a hard time. I felt, I mean, we all felt bad.”

“Don't worry about it,” I said.

“Yeah, well, we felt bad, we really did. I mean, Kenny was being a real dink, but he can be that way. But sometimes he's this really good guy.”

“I'm sure.”

“I mean, I think maybe he thought, like, you were hitting on us. And he's, like, goin' out with Dulcy. Well, not really goin' out. They used to, but then she found out he was with other girls and they had, like, this big fight and stuff. Now they don't fight or anything, but he still really likes her.”

“Deep down,” I said.

“Yeah. So I think when he saw you, he, like, freaked. And we felt bad. We really did. We were talking about it after and we were like, ‘Jeez, Kenny, what is your problem? The guy's just trying to do this, like, article and you're all over him.' We gave him a real hard time.”

“What did he say?”

“Oh, he was all pissed off. Saying you were a cop and he could tell and all this. You were undercover and all this and we're like, ‘Kenny. Where do you get these ideas?' Even Scott, he was the really big guy, he was, like, ‘Kenny. Calm yourself down.'”

“So did he calm down?”

“Well, sort of, but not really. I think when Dulcy started saying this stuff, like you were a nice guy and all that, it just got him more pissed off, because it was Dulcy and he still has this, like, thing for her, but she doesn't have anything for him.”

“So what's with this narc stuff? Is he some kind of big drug dealer or something?”

“Oh, no, but Kenny—you gotta know Kenny. He hangs around with these kids in Belfast and they're, like, druggies, but he isn't. But he talks that way 'cause he's with them and they're, like, ‘Everybody's a narc, man.' But some of them got busted for selling all this coke and acid last summer, and a couple of 'em are eighteen, so they're gonna go to the correctional center. They got their pictures in the paper and everything.”

“And everything, huh?” I said. “Listen, Belinda, do these guys use guns? You know, to scare people?”

“Maybe … I guess. But they're not gonna, like, shoot somebody or anything.”

“No, of course not. I don't know what made me think that.”

“Yeah, well, those guys are pretty crazy, but mostly it's drugs. Now everybody's scared, you know? I mean, who wants to go to jail for, like, months and months?”

“Not me,” I said.

“Me neither,” Belinda said.

She paused. I didn't say anything.

“Hey, well, I don't know if you care about this, but you were asking about babies and Missy Hewett and all that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I know this other girl.”

“Yeah.”

“She had a baby and gave it up, too. I don't know if she'd talk to you.”

“She still around here?”

“Oh, yeah. She's living with her folks. She quit school.”

“How long ago did she do this? The baby, I mean.”

“I don't know,” Belinda said. “Maybe a year. Maybe a little more.”

“What's her name?”

“Tracy. Tracy Crown.”

“She a friend of yours, Belinda?”

“Well, I know her pretty good. We didn't, like, hang out, but I used to talk to her in school. When she was pregnant, she used to bum cigarettes from me. I even told her it wasn't good for the baby,
'cause the smoke goes right to the baby, too, but she said. ‘Come on, it's only one.'”

“One baby?”

“One cigarette. So I'd give her one, but I never really liked it.”

I thought for a second.

“Listen, Belinda. You think you could do me a favor? You think you could call Tracy and tell her I'm okay and all that, and see if she'd talk to me? It might be better than if I just go knock on her door out of the blue.”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, I guess so. Like, what would I say?”

“Just tell her I'm doing this story and you thought of her, and I'm just talking to some people, and if she didn't mind, you'd mention her to me.”

“Okay. I mean, I guess.”

“It would be a big help.”

“Okay. I'll call her right now.”

“Call me back?” I asked.

“Yeah, okay. Sure.”

And she did. Ten minutes later, when the window was again leaning precariously. I propped it up and prayed.

“She'll talk to you,” Belinda said. “I mean, she wasn't, like, thrilled about the idea. I think she thought she owed me one 'cause I was really nice to her when she was pregnant and some kids weren't. They, like, talked behind her back and stuff.”

“About her having a baby?”

“Well, yeah. And then about giving it away.”

“That's her business.”

“Yeah, well, not around here. Sometimes everything is everybody's business, you know what I mean? It gets to you.”

“I'm sure.”

We talked a little longer. Belinda gave me directions, which were somewhat vague. I thanked her and was ready to hang up, but she hung on, as if there was something else she wanted to say.

“So I'll stop and see her,” I said.

“Okay,” Belinda said. “So I guess I'll see you around.”

“I'll be around.”

She hesitated.

“That would be good, 'cause I'd like to see you again,” she blurted.

“Oh,” I said. “Sure.”

“Would you like to see me?”

Oh, no, I thought.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You've been a lot of help and I appreciate it. I do.”

“I can be more help than that.”

Whoa, I thought.

“Yeah, well, thanks,” I fumbled. “I'm sure I'll see you around.”

“We'll make a point of it, Jack,” Belinda said. “Bye-bye.”

I hung up and let out a long exhale of relief.

“Where do they get these kids?” I said. “And where were they when I was eighteen?”

The next morning the window was finished and I was back in the saddle early. Can't let a couple of shotgun blasts slow you down, I thought, pulling out of the driveway and bumping my way up the road. Of course, one or two more might give me pause.

Tracy Crown's house was on Knox Ridge, where I sometimes drove just to take in the view that rolled away far to the east. The hills
undulated all the way to the coast, like a vast rumpled blanket that changed color with the seasons. In the summer, it was a thousand shades of green, but now the green was tinged with pale yellows of birches and poplars and, in the coming weeks, the blanket would change into a patchwork quilt of red and orange and yellow on a background of dark spruce green. I suspected it was vistas like this that had kept these ridges and hollows populated over the years. How many farmers and homesteaders of the last century, on the verge of giving up their dream of independence and retreating to a town or city, had pulled their wagons over to the side of the trail, looked out over the rippling ridges and hills, and been filled with the strength that comes from being in proximity of anything of great beauty?

When I had climbed to the high point on the ridge, I pulled the truck over myself and watched balls of big puffy cumulus clouds far to the east. I imagined them far out over Belfast Bay, where seabirds rocked on the swells and bell buoys gonged but there was no one to hear them. I thought about that for a few minutes, and then, my spirit recharged, I pulled myself away and went to work.

Belinda had said the Crowns' house was blue, on the left as you drove out from Prosperity. It turned out to be green, a small singlestory ranch house tucked into a stand of oaks, but finding it was no problem because the name was on the mailbox by the road in those black and gold letters you buy at the hardware store. I parked out front and looked the place over as I crammed a notebook in the pocket of my hunting jacket. In the gravel driveway, there was a gold Toyota and an old red one-ton Ford truck with a stake body. In the back of the truck were gas cans and two chain saws.

Oh, great, I thought. Her daddy works in the woods.

I took a deep breath and tried to get pumped up. In New York, the equivalent to this had been a ten-story building in a project, unlit stairwells littered with broken crack vials, the smell of urine everywhere. A different world, but the jitters I felt then and now were the same.