The Devil's Own Rag Doll (23 page)

I had dreamed again about my sister. She had simply been too weak to hang on to life, I thought. She had come out of our mother a step behind. It wasn't until after she died that I began to feel the guilt, though. I had always been strong, even as a kid. The other kids called me Bull. I never knew the two older brothers I might have had, of course. Somehow, even though I had been only two years old, I thought I remembered when Tommy came along. And then, another two years later, little Eliza. Weak, pale, and thin from birth to death. It was not a surprise that she should die in 1920, after so many others fell from the flu. It was not a surprise, but I could never erase from my mind the one image that summed it all up for me: on her deathbed, Eliza clinging with her limp fingers to my big paw, already rough and strong and scarred up, though I was only twelve years old. I kept reliving that image in dreams. To me it meant that I had somehow robbed her of something, health or physical strength or grim determination, that she needed to survive. I had been given more than my share.

So.
I lived in a world where my father could be strung up by a group of hateful rednecks. It was a world where a detective like Bobby could take a blade in the gut and spill out his life on a sunny day in an alley as if it were just the luck of the draw. It was a world where a girl like Jane Hardiman could get ripped up and killed and the boys who did it could still walk around. There was malice enough in the world to make Alex a target—a boy without a father, a boy who shared the tie of blood with me. I had promised his widowed mother that I'd bring him back to her.

Enough,
I thought.
Enough thinking. While I've still got juice in me, while I can still squeeze a trigger, somebody's going to pay for all of it. I won't change the world any, but somebody's going to pay.

*   *   *

I walked darkly into police headquarters, my head down, eye straight forward. I saw Johnson jump up from one of the steel chairs in the lobby.

“Detective!” said Johnson. “I guess you're all right, then.”

“Keep your voice down, Johnson. This ain't a swing joint.”

“Well, I have something for you, finally. It's an actual break.”

“Johnson, goddamn it, spit it out,” I muttered. “You're acting like a woman.”

“I'm sorry, I know I'm talking too much. The coffee does it to me. I've been here all night, haven't slept.” He rubbed the sparse bit of stubble on his chin. “Yesterday after you left, I got back here and took a call for you—priest at the church said he'd been watching out for the boy, just like you said—and spotted him laying up in a tool shed on the grounds.”

“So?”

“So I went and picked him up. He's in one of the cells downstairs.”

I looked around the lobby to see who might be listening. “Anybody else know about it yet?”

“Just Kibbie, watching the desk last night. Kibbie's all right, I guess. And Walker's down there with him now.”

“You talk to the boy?” I asked.

“No. He's scared to death. Been moaning for his granddad all night.”

“Did you feed him anything?”

“No.”

“Good, good. See if you can find me some food around here. Bring it down.” I pulled at my lower lip. “How long has Walker been down there with him?”

“Ten minutes, maybe.”

I turned and made my way down the narrow stairs to the first basement. I was surprised to see the old colored janitor shuffling along with his mop and pail of water, and I grunted a low greeting and watched him keenly as he passed by me, heading into his maze of storage and records rooms. Toward the back, in front of the few seldom-used cells, I saw Walker drooping in a chair. I motioned, and Walker stood up and walked toward me.

“He say anything to you?”

“No,” said Walker, “he's just laying on the bed. Lets out a little moan once in a while.” He gave me a careful look. “Poor kid.”

“Poor kid my eye. Girl gets killed and he knows something and runs off like a sissy.”

“I don't know what he could tell us that would help. You say it's the same guys that killed Detective Swope.”

I said, “Whatever he's got to say, he's going to say it now.”

“You're not going to rough up that boy, are you?” Walker's voice was quiet.

I stopped in my tracks and stood square to Walker. I rubbed my thumbnail across the stubble on my chin. “I might,” I said. “Does that bother your stomach?”

“Not my stomach, no,” replied Walker.

“If you've got something on your mind, Walker, I'd just as soon you did your thinking out loud. It ain't good to keep yourself cooped up like that.”

“I'm just thinking,” said Walker, “that I could get that boy to tell everything he knows without making a fuss.”

“I guess you could,” I said. “I don't doubt that you could. But some days, you get up and what you want is a little fuss. You want to let out a little anger. You keep it all stoppered up inside, like I figure it, you wind up with the cancer, see?”

Walker stood stock-still for a moment. He wasn't challenging me with his eyes, but he wasn't exactly turning away, either.

“Can you see it my way?” I asked him.

“I follow you,” he said. “You're the senior man here.” The tone of Walker's voice betrayed nothing of what I figured he must be feeling.

“I want you to stay right here by the stairs,” I said, “and give a little whistle if you see anyone coming. Can you do that?”

Walker nodded. He seemed eased a bit that I had not sent him away entirely.

“When Johnson gets back,” I said, “send him on down to me and sit tight here by the stairs.”

Walker nodded and leaned against the wall, one foot resting on the bottom step. There was a stillness about him, a way of standing without fidgeting, that worried me. It meant he was thinking so much that he forgot about being restless.

I pulled the key to the cells from a metal case on the wall and slipped it into my pocket. I let my shoes slap the floor as I made my way down the short row of cells. When I caught sight of the boy's sharp shoulders poking through the fabric of his old shirt, I stopped and watched for a moment. On a ratty tick mattress, Joshua rocked himself slowly and mumbled, hummed a few words. I guess he must have heard me and seen me in some part of his mind, but he seemed intent on blocking things out.

I barked, “Get up, boy!”

Joshua jerked and turned and immediately pulled back when he caught proper sight of me. He sat up and pressed his back against the wall and drew his knees up to his chest.

“I said get up!” I threw as much grit and gravel into my voice as I could, but it was hardly necessary; if the boy hadn't wet his pants already, he would soon. “Get up and come over here!”

“No!”

“Did you just tell me no, boy?”

Joshua slowly let his legs drop and stood up from the cot. He stood shaking, his clothes falling off of him.

I stood a step back from the bars and glared. I said nothing but clenched my jaw and breathed deeply through my nose as I watched the spindly boy fidget. He brought an embarrassing smell to the place—unwashed, in between boy and man.

“I didn't see anything!” Joshua blurted. “I won't ever say anything about it! I haven't told anybody about it!”

I lurched forward and shook the bars with both hands. I yelled,
“Why'd you kill that girl?”

“No! No!”

“Don't you lie to me!” I shook the bars again but eased off when I realized that the concrete they were sunk into was flaking loose. “Answer me!”

“I never killed her!”

I stepped back and shook my head slowly. “That's not what I want to hear, boy.” I drew the key from my pocket and pushed it into the lock, turned it, and felt the bolt sliding in, metal over metal. “I want you to think real hard, see if you remember how you did it.” I entered and swung the door closed behind me, locked it, pulled the key out, and tossed it across the floor outside the cell. “Now it's just you and me, all alone.”

Joshua skittered away, searching the cell blindly for the farthest place from me, panicked, now a mouse before a gnarled alley cat.

“Sit down!” I said. “If you make me chase after you, it'll be worse!”

Joshua sat on the edge of his cot, as far from me as he could get, and began to stammer and sob, snot and tears running down his face. “I-I-I never killed her! I-I-I never touched her!”

“Shut up, kid! I know you didn't kill her. How could a sissy kid like you do that? Do you think I'm stupid?”

“What? N-n-n-no.”

I stepped toward him and leaned close. I whispered, “Now you tell me everything you saw that day and don't leave anything out or I'll rip you limb from limb. And it won't do you any good to cry for your mother down here.”

“M-m-my m-mother's dead.”

“Shut up about your goddamn mother and tell me what you saw!”

“Well, I didn't see anything until the guys made me go up—”

I placed a hand on either side of the boy's head and lifted him from the cot. I kept lifting until Joshua's feet dangled and the tips of his bare feet scraped the floor. I drew the boy close until we were nose to nose and said softly, “Bullshit.”

Joshua's wet brown eyes danced and twitched. “Okay,” he said. As I lowered him to the bed, he sighed and croaked, “I wet myself.” He looked down dully at the spreading stain on his trousers.

“Just tell me everything you saw. Everything.”

“Well, it was three guys.”

“Was one of 'em a big fat guy with a mustache, bald on top?” I watched the boy closely.

“What? N-no. It was two big guys and a little guy. Smaller guy dressed in a suit.”

“Well, what were the other two guys wearing? What did they look like?”

Joshua looked up at me.

“What did they look like, boy? I'm not playing footsie with you anymore!”

“They looked like the police. They was wearing uniforms and all.”

“The police.” I thought for a moment, rubbed my jaw. “Were they driving a police car?”

“No, it was just a regular old car. A big car, almost like a truck.”

“So you saw three guys. And then what?”

“Well, they was carrying a … looked like a old rug. Big old rug. And the little guy was watching out, you know, peeking around. Just smoking a cigarette, you know, walking up and down. Then they all went up to Donny's place.” Joshua stole glances at me as he talked, beginning to relax.

“A carpet.” My eye went out of focus as I took it in.
Carpet.

“That's right, a carpet, like. They was in there for a while, and then they come out. And this little fella, he's looking around, looking out for something, and we's all right there across the street, and he's acting like he don't even know we's there.” Joshua was looking down at his pants.

Johnson came down the stairs and ambled toward the cell with a sack of pastries and a cup of coffee for me.

“Johnson!” I said. “Let me out of here. This boy's pissed himself.” I felt the acid rise from my stomach, bubbling up so that now the tail end of my throat felt raw. “The key's on the floor there.”

I turned to the boy. “Now, kid, you tell me what you saw when you went into Pease's place.”

The boy turned away and hung his head between his bony shoulders. “They made me look.”

“What did you see there?”

“I saw the girl.”

“Did you touch her?” I spoke almost gently.

“I wouldn't! We didn't none of us touch her! We was afraid!”

“All right. All right. Stop that sniveling.”

I stepped out of the cell and noted that Walker had quietly moved himself close to the cell. I spoke to Johnson softly. “Take the boy out the side door. Give him back his shoes and his belt. Clean him up a little. You and Walker can take him back home in a scout car. Maybe we can make some points in the neighborhood.” I took the sack and the coffee from him. The heavy, buttery pastries had made a greasy stain on the waxed paper, and the sight of it turned my stomach; I tossed the sack to the boy.

“Listen, Johnson. After you drop the boy off, let Walker take the car. You go home and get an hour or two of sleep. Then you get back here and dig up anything you can about a Harlan Sherrill. Check the property records here and in Macomb and Oakland counties, marriage records. Possibly military records if you've got the time. You go up and talk to Mitchell and see if he'll let you have that secretary you've got your eye on—that Betty or Sally or whatever her name is—to help you out. I'll be back here. I don't know when. And keep it all under your—”

I turned away abruptly. I saw that Joshua was hunched over and sobbing gently over the bag of pastries. “What the hell is wrong with you now, boy?”

“I don't want you to kill me,” he said.

“Boy, why would I kill you?”

“Because I know it was the police killed that girl.”

“If I was going to kill you, I'd've killed you already. You listen here. Them boys wasn't the police, and if they were, they won't be for long. You understand? That was just some guys playing dress-up, see?”

“Okay.”

“Stop that goddamn crying. You're acting like a girl.”

He turned away and tried to pull himself together.

“Walker,” I said, “I want you to go down to the Valley and talk to Pops Brunell. See what he knows about the syrup he's been getting from Bobby. You tell him I sent you, and if he gives you even a little bit of lip, bring him down here and throw him in one of these cells, all right? And you don't need to be nice about it. Can I trust you to do that?”

“I'm generally trustworthy,” he said.

I had a good long look at Walker's face. His eyes were almost black and seemed very watery to me, but from what I could see there, he was a solid man. It galled me to think that he might be smarter and know more than me, and so I turned away and stalked down the hall, gulping coffee. The liquid swarmed down my gullet and over my bare stomach, hot but still soothing.