— Labour Day is over. All the kids are back in school, let’s put it that way. That makes me happy.
— Fall was always a quiet time, said Stan. A lot of people were too busy on the farms to mess around.
— Well, if things didn’t change like they do, I wouldn’t need half the cops I have now, fall or not. But that’s how it goes.
— That’s how it goes, said Stan.
Stan was back on the road a short while later. He was only eight years retired from the local detachment, despite what it had meant for his pension. At one time he’d known every street in town. He turned off the highway and five minutes later he passed the drive-in again. His headlights caught the same car he’d seen earlier.
Stan drove by. Then he pulled off to the side of the road. Gravel snarled against the underside of his truck as he moved from the hardtop to the shoulder. He brought the vehicle to a stop and sat holding the steering wheel. Then he got out of the truck and took out a D-cell flashlight that he kept under the seat. He didn’t turn it on just yet. There was enough light from the stars and the moon to bring everything out in halftones. He walked into the drive-in lot.
The silhouette of the car resolved itself. Stan looked to see whether it was rocking and he listened for the creaking of springs. He sniffed the air for dope smoke. This would be better, he thought, if Cassius was with him.
He turned on the flashlight, at first pointing it at the ground. He waited for something to happen and when nothing did he brought the flashlight up and shone it on the windshield. He moved the light along the side of the car.
One of the back windows was rolled down a few inches. The space at the top had been stuffed with a towel. Stan could see a garden hose tucked through. The hose was looped down through the wheel well and around to the rear of the car. He moved up.
The flashlight cast a yellow glow into the back seat. The girl’s face was slack, dismayed. Her eyes were marbled.
Stan stepped backward. He looked at the dark shapes of the drive-in, black against the stars and the frame of the old screen. When he looked again he knew who she was. Her name was Judy Lacroix. Recognition was a hand pulling at his shirt sleeve.
Not that he’d ever forgotten it, how it was his arrest and testimony that had hanged the dead girl’s uncle.
At six o’clock in the morning on Thursday, Lee went into a diner called the Owl Cafe, a block away from his apartment. He took a stool at the counter. He was wearing his new work boots, carrying his new tool belt. These he’d purchased the day before. He’d also purchased a measuring tape and a hammer and a retractable knife and a small collection of pencils, which he’d carefully sharpened. He put the tool belt on the stool beside him. There was a colour television behind the counter playing a morning news broadcast. The picture was coming in and out. A waitress passing the set reached up and adjusted the antenna before she came over to Lee. Her face was warm and the name Helen was embroidered on her shirt. Her hips and breasts were round and full.
— Morning, hon.
— Morning yourself, said Lee.
— Anything catch your eye?
— You mean on the menu?
She grinned: Come on. You just got here.
He ordered eggs and home fries and extra bacon. She brought him a cup of coffee and then she moved away and passed his order through a wicket into a steaming kitchen. Lee lit a cigarette. Seated around him were a few other patrons. He didn’t think he recognized any of them. There were a couple of truckers and a nurse along the counter, and four old men in a booth. A man with long dark hair and sharp features, wearing a down-filled vest and sitting near the window, might have been studying Lee if he allowed himself to think so. Lee tapped his cigarette into an ashtray. He flexed his toes inside his new work boots.
Helen came with his breakfast and refilled his coffee.
— Enjoy, Brown Eyes.
He slathered ketchup on his food and he hunched forward and dug into his breakfast. He sensed that Helen was watching him, amused. He looked at her.
— I don’t know where you usually eat, said Helen, but nobody’s going to steal your food here.
Before Lee could reply, she went back down the counter to take someone else’s order. The man in the down-filled vest raised a hand at her, snapped his fingers, but Helen ignored him. It was a different waitress who went to refill the man’s coffee.
Lee finished his breakfast. He got up and collected his tool belt and went into the washroom. When he came out, he saw Pete in a small car outside. The long-haired man with the sharp features was gone. Helen came over and Lee asked what he owed. After he’d paid, Helen said she hoped he’d come again.
He left the diner, feeling good and loose-limbed. Pete popped the trunk open and Lee dropped his tool belt beside the spare tire. He closed the trunk and got into the car.
— Morning, said Pete.
— Top of the morning to you.
— Ready for your first day?
— You bet, buck.
— I asked Barry to ask Clifton Murray where we’re going, said Pete. It’s out at the lake. Where all the new places are going up. My mom packed you a lunch. It’s on the back seat.
They went south out of town and followed a road along the bottom edge of Lake Kissinaw. Lee remembered the geography of it, the aspect of the trees, a certain house. A sign advertised a lakeside subdivision to be built in the next year.
— I hear you don’t go to school no more, said Lee.
— I … No, that’s true. I quit.
— Wasn’t to your liking?
— You could say that. I don’t know how to explain it.
— So you work at a gas station all the time?
— Pretty much, said Pete. I’m saving some money. Before Grandma got sick, I was planning to leave.
— Is that right? Where were you going to go?
— West, said Pete. Out to the ocean. I thought I would figure it out from there. For now I just have to keep focused.
Lee felt an immense sense of strangeness with Pete, now that he’d met him and put a face to the name. It was not entirely comfortable but it was not as bad as Lee had expected it might be. Overall, it was just hard to believe that they were sitting side by side in a car all these years later.
— Was it sort of the same way for you? said Pete.
— Say what?
The kid was giving him a sidelong look, trying mostly to keep his eyes on the road as he drove.
— Staying focused. When you were … inside.
Lee thought about the question, and about the strange feeling he had sitting next to this kid. Nobody had ever asked him how he’d kept focused in prison. After a moment, he said: Well, there was this and that, I guess. The first couple of years it was all the wrong things. But later on I started looking in different places. I thought the Bible was okay. All that talk about lands of milk and honey sounded good. Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me. That’s one of the Psalms.
— Yeah, I think I’ve heard that one, said Pete.
— I also had some dirty magazines. Those helped too.
They both laughed.
— There really wasn’t all that much, said Lee. You’ve got to get along with what you have. There was TV, which a lot of guys looked at, but I never cared for it. I thought a lot of the programs were bullshit.
— They mostly are.
Lee studied Pete’s profile. He never would have believed it, but this was alright, riding along with Donna’s son. This was alright. He had a fondness for the kid already.
— I haven’t known you real long, said Lee. But I can see you’re one of the good guys.
The job site was on the south shore of the lake, which was screened by a long, rocky point from the town waterfront. An orchard used to grow here and some of the apple trees remained yet, untended and straggling. A large cottage, four thousand square feet, was being built on the property. When Pete and Lee arrived, the building was just the framing and the roof and some sheathing. The ground was trampled mud. There were stacks of building material and a tall heap of half-inch crushed stone. A BobCat and two cars and two pickup trucks all stood in the driveway. Lee counted five men unloading tools. A wooden sign read MURRAY CUSTOM BLDG, CALL FOR ESTIMATE’S.