Greg felt like a horse’s ass.
“Guess that’s not gonna help in your other case now, is it?” Vernon downed his lemonade.
“Maybe not,” Greg said.
Kemmer checked his watch. Their stay was growing cold.
“Well, I feel for the parents,” Mrs. Dixon said. “I know what they’re going through. Grady could be a handful at times. There were days when I wondered if I’d given birth to the devil himself. He could be mighty stubborn.” Her mouth quivered. “It’s just that I’d give anything to see him walk through that door again.”
She got up and went into Grady’s room and returned with a small wooden box, fashioned after a pirate’s chest. “These were some of his special things.”
While Vernon looked anxious for Greg and Kemmer to leave, Mrs. Dixon suddenly seemed compelled to tell them about Grady. “Some of it’s just his baby stuff,” she said. Inside were a baby brush and comb set, a silver rattle, a crucifix, and a little envelope. From it Mrs. Dixon removed a reddish curl of hair. “It’s from his first haircut. He had a head of ringlets, like a cherub.” Her voice broke up.
“It’s where they got the DNA stuff from,” Vernon said.
“He was such a clever little boy,” Mrs. Dixon continued, tears running down her cheeks. “He picked things up real fast. The teachers had him earmarked for the TAG program.”
“TAG program?”
“Talented and gifted. They were going to start him in the second grade.”
She put the box down and removed a sheet from a file folder included with the medical report. “In fact, he was so bored in kindergarten that his teacher said we should have him special-tested. He got a ninety-ninth percentile straight across.”
Greg looked at the score sheet. Listed in different boxes—Verbal, Analytical, Spatial, Logic, Sequencing, and so on—were numerical percentages. Each category was printed with a 99. At the bottom of the page was small print saying that the test was copyrighted by Nova Children’s Center, Inc.
Greg handed Vernon back the folder. “I know it’s in the file,” Greg said, “but if you don’t mind, I’m wondering when the last time was you saw Grady.”
“On that swing outside,” Mrs. Dixon answered. “Every day Tillie Haskell dropped him off from the school van in front. As usual, he came in and got his snack, then went outside to wait for Junie Janks to come by and play. Junie’s the boy who lives down the road. You passed their place coming in. Junie is short for junior—his real name’s Bernard, after his dad. About twenty minutes later, Junie shows up wondering where Grady is.” Mrs. Dixon took a deep breath.
Vernon continued for her. “The county police said not to worry, he probably just wandered into the woods. But that was pure bulltiki, because the first thing you teach your kids down here is to respect these woods. The next house on the other side is seventeen miles. I’ve lived in these parts for fortysix years, and I could still get lost a thousand yards in. It all looks the same, and we got that through his head from the day he could walk. You don’t go into the woods.
“Musta had two hundred people search for him—police, volunteer firemen, neighbors, and just about everybody at Mount Ida’s. We looked for a week. But when he didn’t show up by nightfall that first day, I knew we lost him. I knew somebody had taken him. I felt it in my bones. God only knows why.”
12
Brendan was checking out the odd head scars in his bathroom mirror when it crossed his mind to kill his grandfather.
The notion just popped into his head without the slightest shock—like deciding to clip his toenails.
And it would be one-two-three easy. No fuss, no muss. No telltale fingerprints or DNA evidence to sweat. No decision about weapons or modus operandi. No having to bury bloody meat cleavers. No burning or cutting up the remains. No witnesses.
And no motive, unlike going back to the diner and putting a knife in Angie for publicly humiliating him. He had no motive—just curiosity. (Besides, what kid would kill his own grandfather—his last remaining relative?) And it would be the perfect murder: Just hold back on his pills and sit back and watch him gasp to death on his La-Z-Boy. That would be something. Might melt some snow.
“Hey, Brendan! Where the hell are you, boy?”
“Coming,” he shouted. Richard wanted his refill. Grandpa Richard, although he never called him grandpa. Just Richard. Grandpa was a technicality of blood.
And no blood. No red hand.
His face would scrunch up in wincing pain as the realization swelled in his chest that he was going to die from arterial occlusion. Inarticulate sounds would rise from his throat, saliva stringing from his chin onto his shirt, his hands alternately flailing then clutching his breast, his feet kicking, his mouth shuddering, air squealing from a clenched larynx, trying to call for help, blubbering in disbelief that Brendan was sitting there transfixed in fascination just three feet away munching pretzel logs.
Maybe that would do it.
“Brendy?” he shouted from his chair downstairs in the TV room.
“In a minute!” Richard had called him that as long as he could remember, which wasn’t much. It came from Brendy Bear, as in Brendy Bear Hugs because Brendan was always hugging and kissing people, Richard claimed. He didn’t do that anymore. He hadn’t touched his grandfather in years. He hadn’t touched anybody in years. Nor did he understand the impulse. He had been misnamed.
Brendan really had nothing against Richard. In fact, he liked him the way a dog might like a devoted owner. He was a nice old man who treated him well, gave him money and, when he turned seventeen, his old Ford pickup which Richard had used for his plumbing business before retiring. Richard had taken him in when his parents died, raising him as best he could at his age. He was protective, kind, and generous with what little he had. There surely was no reason to kill him. It was purely academic. Brendan simply wondered what he’d feel—if anything. He wondered if he’d cry.
Richard had a bad heart. A couple years ago he had suffered a myocardial infarction and now suffered from ventricular tachycardia arrhythmia—rapid heartbeats. In his condition, Richard had maybe three years at best. His friends were dying off, one last week in fact—maybe his last. Brendan could tell that that bothered Richard.
“Old men know when an old man dies.”
Yeats was right about that.
In the medicine cabinet sat a row of maybe a dozen little amber plastic pill containers. Richard Berryman.
I measure my life in Walgreen vials, he thought.
Lipitor, Enalapril, Demerol, metropolol, Pronestyl.
WARNING: This drug may impair the ability to drive or operate machinery.
WARNING: Do not use this medicine if you are pregnant, plan to become pregnant, or are breast-feeding.
WARNING: This medication may decrease your ability to be human.
Generic name: Wintermind. Take as directed.
One must have a mind of winter …
Not to think of any misery in the sound of the wind …
Brendan closed the medicine cabinet and left the bathroom. At the bottom of the stairs the light of the television made the foyer pulse. Brendan walked down, the lines from Wallace Stevens’s “The Snow Man” drowning out all the other clutter in his head.
He entered the parlor.
The old man was sprawled out in his La-Z-Boy, his wispy white hair barely covering the old pink dome, his T-shirt rumpled, his pajama bottoms half up his pathetic white sticks of legs, his bare feet knobbed on the footrest like claws. According to the old photos, he used to be a big, strapping guy.