The detective who’d been bending over the body took off down the hill. The young man was crying and shouting by the time he got to him. “I didn’t mean to do it!” he cried as he was stuffed into the back of the patrol car. The detective got in the passenger seat in front of him.
He watched as the car drove off. Turning back to the body, he wondered if Brenda would be here soon to help take care of Shannon. He didn’t think he could do it on his own. How could he possibly bury his own wife? No, his daughter, wasn’t it? Then he remembered that it wasn’t Shannon, or Karen, underneath the sheet. She was away at college, wasn’t she? Or was she married now? Who was this dead girl, then?
The other detective came over to him and handed back his badge. He took it and looked at the bright shield nestled in its black case. He was glad the other detective had found it. Had he accidentally dropped it while he was examining the crime scene?
“You did a pretty good job here tonight,” the detective told him.
He nodded. “That’s the job we’re supposed to do.”
The detective smiled. “I guess you’re right. Hey, would you like a ride home?”
He looked down to where he had parked his car. He could drive home all right. He’d gotten here, hadn’t he? He’d solved the case too. They’d found the killer. The girl’s parents could at least have that. Darby was with the killer now, probably getting a full confession from him. No, he could drive all right. But as he stood there staring at his car, thinking he should get home before Brenda worried about him and called the station, he thought he could use some help from the detective after all.
“I’ll be all right driving,” he told the other man. “But could you tell me where it is exactly that I live?” He stared at the badge in his hand again. It was bright and heavy and felt as if it belonged there. “For the life of me, I can’t seem to remember.”
A Change in His Heart by Jack Fredrickson
Detective Edrow Fluett leaned the aluminum shovel carefully against the shingle siding, brushed snow off one boot, then the other. It was a laugh; the snow was inside his galoshes. They were as old as the siding, and just as cracked. Better he should have shuffled up and down the driveway a few times, scooped up snow with the gaps in his boots, instead of risking a heart attack, shoveling.
He eased open the kitchen door, lowered himself to sit at the top of the basement stairs. Blanche’s snoring came through the ceiling, steady and righteous, but a nickel bouncing in the next block or, God forbid, a drop falling from his galoshes, could jerk her awake, angry, in an instant.
He bent to pull off his right boot. Too hard; his foot popped out with a sudden, loud sucking sound, like he’d freed it from a swamp. Out too came water, puddling onto Blanche’s linoleum.
He held his breath, strained to listen. Upstairs, she slept on.
Every winter, he told her there was no more fixing the boots, showed her the patches curling away like shriveling corn plasters. But every winter, she refused to hear, turned back to the television, telling him he should use better glue.
Slower this time, he pulled off the other boot, peeled off his drenched socks. His naked feet were gray and wrinkly, ghost prunes. Carrying the dripping boots and socks, he padded down the stairs, made wet footprints of flat arches as he crossed the cold concrete. He set the boots by the floor drain, the socks atop the pile of laundry, crept back up the stairs to the kitchen.
The slow, steady engine of Blanche’s snoring continued above his head.
Gently, he separated two paper towels from the roll on the wall. Blanche had fits when he used them for the floor, but he’d forgotten to bring up the sponge mop, and his frozen feet were in no mood for another walk down to the basement. So long as he remembered to take the towels out, hide them in the neighbor’s trash, she might not know.
He dropped the towels on the puddle by the door. In an instant, they were drenched. Two sheets wasn’t enough, but there was no sense risking a third. Blanche was known to keep track of the sheets on the roll. He bent to pick them up, cupping one in each hand, like melting snowballs. With luck, the floor would dry and he’d be gone before she came downstairs.
“Edrow,” Blanche screamed, firing his name like a cannon shot through the floor.
Splat, splat, the soaked paper snowballs hit the linoleum, loud enough to hear upstairs. “It’s barely six o’clock,” he yelled, hurrying to pick them up, as though she could see through the floor. “Go back to sleep.”
“You made it impossible with that ruckus, shoveling.”
No. She’d heard him taking the paper towels, here-a-penny, there-a-penny, from the roll. “There’s a foot of snow, wet like fresh cement. Heart-attack snow,” he shouted, hustling to set the dripping wads in the sink.
He just had to remember to take them with him when he left for work.
“Couldn’t you have pushed the snow instead of scraping it so loudly?” she shrieked.
“Lucky for you that damned snowblower hasn’t started for ten years. That would have really been loud.”
“I told you, you got to drain the gas from it every spring.”
“You told me to buy that blower from the bandit at the Closeout Hut. Piece of crap. It doesn’t even have a name on it.”
“Don’t leave boots by the back stairs.”
“They’re in the garbage, draining,” he shouted, pleased by his wit. “I’m buying new ones, fifty-dollar ones.”
“Glue,” she screamed.
“No more glue,” he yelled.
There was silence, maybe a whole minute’s worth, and then the bedsprings groaned. “The Closeout Hut ran an ad for boots. Seven ninety-five.”
Her voice had lost a decibel, maybe two. His feet were winning. He pressed. “Their stuff is crap,” he shouted to the plaster.
The bedsprings groaned again. “Don’t slam the door,” she yelled.
JERZY SAT AT his desk in the crammed second-floor storeroom, looking down at the cars inching through the blizzard. “We’re going to sell boots today,” Reggie had said that morning, laughing, cupping his hand to catch a few flakes as he dropped into the Seville. And, like always, he’d been right. Downstairs, the old plank sales floor vibrated from all the shoppers, stomping in like cattle being led to trucks on their way to becoming meat. They’d started coming, just like Reggie had said, right as Jerzy taped the banner in the window: BOOTS, $7.95. Fake, fur-lined, vinyl boots, they looked a nice deep blue under the Closeout Hut’s low-watt fluorescents. In direct sun, Jerzy knew, they would be purple. But there would be no sun today; just snow, dirty clumps of it, big as squashed marbles, falling all over the little town just west of Chicago.
Jerzy would be glad when those boots were gone. Slitting open the shrink-wrapped cartons that morning, spreading the boots on the big tables, had set the place to stinking of mildew and smoke so bad that Jerzy had to pinch his nose. The boots had been in a fire. Reggie had smiled, the day’s never-lit cigar already wet in his mouth, and told him to turn on the overhead fans. No one would notice fans turning on a thirty-degree day, Reggie had said, so long as they thought they were getting a great deal. And from what Jerzy could hear coming from downstairs, Reggie had sure been right about that too. Mixed in with the stomping feet and the babushkas chattering in Polish came the chirpity sound of Reggie humming along with the ringing of the old mechanical cash register. Nobody was saying “fire” in Polish, English, or anything else.