He remembered writing his story in the newsroom, as helpless as the two young men he'd seen die, trapped by the images that slid from him onto the page.
But at least I didn't die, he thought.
Just a tiny part of me.
He shuddered again, turned it into a shrug, and rose, stretching and flexing his muscles as if to reinvigorate himself. He needed to be alert, he admonished himself. Today he would interview the two detectives. He wondered what they would say. And whether he could believe any of it.
Then he went to the shower, as if by letting the water flow steadily over him, he could cleanse his memory as well.
4. The Detectives
A secretary in the major-crimes offices of the Escambia County Sheriff's Department pointed Matthew Cowart toward a lumpy fake-leather couch, and told him to wait while she contacted the two detectives. She was a young woman, probably pretty but with a face marred by a frowning boredom, her hair pulled back severely and a rigid set to her shoulders beneath the dull brown of her policewoman's uniform. He thanked her and took a seat. The woman dialed a number and spoke quietly, so that he was unable to make out what she was saying. 'Someone'll be here in a couple,' the woman said to him as she hung up the phone. Then she turned away, examining some paperwork on her desk, studiously ignoring him. So, he thought, everyone knows why I'm here.
The homicide division was in a new building adjacent to the county lockup. It had a modern quiet to it, the noise disappearing in the thick brown carpet and baffled by stark white wall partitions that separated the detectives' desks from the waiting area where Cowart cooled his heels. He tried to concentrate on his upcoming interview but found his mind wandering. The quiet was disconcerting.
He found himself thinking of his home. His father had been the managing editor of a small daily paper in a midsize New England city, a mill town that had grown up into something more important, thanks to some lucky investments by large corporations that brought in money and new blood and a certain undeniable quaintness in the local architecture. He was a distant man who worked hard, leaving before light, coming home after dark. He wore simple blue or gray suits that seemed to hang from an ascetic's lean body; an angular sharp man, not quick to smile, fingertips stained with nicotine and newsprint.
His father had been possessed, mostly with the never-ending ins and outs, details and dramatics, of the daily paper. What had electrified his father had been the gathering of news, a story, particularly one that burst on the front page, crying for attention. An aberration, an evil, some wrongdoing – then his father's rigidity relaxed, and he would spin with a sort of jumpy, exhausting delight, like a dancer hearing music for the first time after years of silence. In those moments, his father was like a terrier, ready to latch on to something and bite tightly, worrying it to oblivion.
Am I that different? he wondered. Not really. His ex-wife used to call him a romantic, as if it were an insult. A knight-errant – he looked up and saw a man enter the waiting area – but, he thought, with the heart of a bulldog.
'You Cowart?' the man asked, not unfriendly.
Cowart rose. 'That's right.'
'I'm Bruce Wilcox.' The man held out his hand. 'Come on, it'll be a few minutes before Lieutenant
Brown gets back in. We can talk back here.'
The detective led Cowart through a warren of desks to a glass-walled office in a corner, overseeing the work area. There was a title on the door: LT. I.A. BROWN, HOMICIDE DIVISION. Wilcox closed the door and settled behind a large brown desk, motioning to Cowart to take a seat in front of him. 'We had a small plane crash this morning,' he said as he began arranging some documents on the desk. 'Little Piper Cub on a training run. Tanny had to go to the site and supervise the recovery of the student and the pilot. Guys went down at the edge of a swamp. Messy business. First you've got to wade through all that muck to get to the plane. Then you've got to haul the guys out. I heard there was a fire. Ever have to try to handle a burned body? God, it's a mess. A righteous mess.'
The detective shook his head, clearly pleased that he'd managed to avoid this particular assignment.
Cowart looked at the detective. He was a compact, short man, with long but slicked-back hair and an easygoing manner, probably in his late twenties. Wilcox had taken off his sportcoat – a loud, red-checked design – and slung it over the back of the chair. He rocked in his seat like a man wanting to put his feet up on the desk. Cowart saw a set of wide shoulders and powerful arms more suited to a man considerably bigger.
'… Anyway, the detective continued, 'hauling bodies is one of the drawbacks to the job. Usually it's me that gets the duty…' He held up his arm and made a muscle. 'I wrestled in high school, and I ain't big, so I can squeeze into some space half the size of most of the other guys. I expect down in Miami they got technicians and rescue people and the like who get to fiddly-fuck about with dead folks. Up here, it kinda falls to us. Everybody dead is our business. First, we figure out if there was or wasn't a murder. Of course, that's not so hard when you've got a crashed plane smoldering on the ground in front of you. Then we ship them off to the morgue.'
'So, how's business?' Cowart asked.
'Death is always steady work,' the detective replied. He laughed briefly. 'No layoffs. No furloughs. No slack time. Just good, steady work. Hell, they ought to have a union just for homicide detectives. There's always someone up and dying.'
'What about murders? Up here
'Well, you're probably aware that we've got a drug problem up and down the Gulf Coast. Isn't that a great way of putting it? A drug problem. Makes it sound kinda cute. More like a drug hurricane, if you ask me. Anyway, it does create a bit of extra business, no doubt.
That's something new.'
'That's right. Just the last couple of years.'
'But before the drug trade?'
'Domestic disputes. Vehicular homicides. Occasionally, a couple of good old boys will get to shooting or stabbing over cards or women or dog fights. That's pretty much the norm for the county. We get some big-city troubles in Pensacola a bit. Especially with the servicemen. Bar fights, you know. There's a good deal of prostitution about the base, and that leads to some cutting and shooting as well. Butterfly knives and little pearl-handled thirty-two-caliber handguns. Pretty much what you'd expect, like I said. Nothing too unusual'