“It means the sheriff what?”
“Didn’t know,” said the boy. “He didn’t know the deputy pulled me over.”
“How would he not know that?”
The boy was silent.
“What are you saying,” said Gordon, “—the deputy never told the sheriff? That it just slipped his goddam mind?”
The boy said nothing.
“Speak up,” Gordon said.
“That night,” the boy said, “when he pulled me over, the deputy, he walked all around my truck with his flashlight and then he let me go. No DUI. Not even a ticket for being in the park at night.”
“So?”
“So he would have seen it, Mr. Burke. He would’ve seen it then—wouldn’t he have?” The boy’s eyes had a glassy, faraway look to them. Like his mind had wandered off somewhere.
“Seen what?” Gordon said. “Seen what,” he snapped, and the boy came back, blinking. Then he pulled his hand from his pocket and held the hand palm-up to him. As if offering him something to eat.
It was a square of white cloth, so thin and light it would’ve blown from his hand but for the thumb holding it there.
Gordon’s heart began to slip. “What is that?” he said thickly.
The boy said nothing, and Gordon’s heart slipped all the way into coldness, into blackness. He knew what it was. He knew what it was and he knew there was no other like it in the world and he knew that only a handful of people even knew about it—ripped from her blouse, they said, ripped clean off and never recovered—and only one person in the world could have it and here he was. And then with no other thought or even movement he was aware of, he had the boy by the jacket and had thrown him up against the truck. No idea what he was saying, just the sensation of speech in his throat, as if he’d gone deaf. The boy holding his wrists, his cap fallen away, and though his head shook with the violence of Gordon’s grip his face was calm, and his voice was calm too, saying, “Mr. Burke… Mr. Burke, let me say one thing—”
What did Gordon say? Did he say anything? Did he say: Say it, you son of a bitch? Did he say: Say the last thing you have to say? He only knew he let the boy stand straight, keeping his grip on his jacket, the boy’s hands gripping his wrists, and the square of cloth pressed between the boy’s hand and his wrist like some thin bandage he could feel all the way to his heart, and at last the boy said, “Why would I show it to you, Mr. Burke? Why would I do that?” These words and all sound reaching Gordon through a dull roaring like water rushing in his ears.
“Because you want to torment me. Because you want to see if I will kill you.”
“No, sir.”
“Do you think I won’t? Do you think I care what happens to me?”
“No, sir, I don’t, but that’s not why.”
“Why then, God damn you.”
“Because…” said the boy. “Because it was on the truck. It was caught up in the license plate—”
Gordon renewed his grip and gave the boy a shake. “Boy—what are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that that deputy shined his flashlight all around that truck and didn’t see this piece of cloth, but when I got home I saw it right off. Plain as day.”
“Is that supposed to prove something?”
“No, sir. Only…”
“Only what.”
“Only why didn’t he ever say he pulled me over? Why wouldn’t he say that?”
Gordon closed and opened his eyes. Black flies swarming all through his vision. A great hard fist pounding on his heart.
“Why didn’t you say it?” he said. “Why didn’t you say the deputy pulled you over?”
“Because I thought they already knew. I thought the sheriff knew. But he never asked me, Mr. Burke. He never asked me about the deputy pulling me over.”
The boy staring at him and Gordon blinking—blinking away the black flies until he could see the boy’s eyes again. Open and blue and looking into his.
“The deputy,” Gordon said. “That’s what you’re telling me. The deputy put it on your truck.”
The boy said nothing.
“He put it on your truck and he never told the sheriff he pulled you over.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell him, Mr. Burke?”
“Because it never happened. Because you’ve had ten years to cook up this story.”
“No, sir. I’ve had ten years to wonder how this piece of cloth got on my truck. And all I’ve ever known is I never touched your daughter, Mr. Burke. Me or my truck.”
“But you kept it,” Gordon said. “Why did you keep it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know…” The boy shaking his head. “I thought I might need it.”
“The perverts always keep something. Like a kind of…” He couldn’t think of the word. He was so tired, suddenly. Dead tired. He needed to sit down.
He let the boy go. His hands were cramped and he put them to his skull and ran them backwards, as if to restore order to a head of hair gone wild. He looked toward the woods but did not see them. The whole world a meaningless flat arrangement of shape and color, sickening to see. He turned back to the boy and with effort brought his face into focus. He could see the streaks of yellow in the blue irises.
“Why now?” Gordon said. “Why show this thing now? Do you think anyone will believe you?”
“No, sir. I just didn’t want to be the only one anymore. If something happened—” He looked off, toward the house, and looked back. “I just wanted you to hear it, that’s all.” He put his hand into his jacket pocket, the square of cloth disappeared, and he turned to collect his cap from the bed of the truck.
“And all this while,” Gordon said. “Ten years. You never thought of this before—that it was the deputy?”
The boy turned back to him holding the cap. He stood looking into the bowl of it as if finding something there that shouldn’t be.
“I was young, Mr. Burke.” He looked up and gave a kind of smile, shaking his head. “I just didn’t think a man, a cop…”
He put the cap on his head and snugged it down.
“Moran,” said Gordon.
“Sir?”
“The deputy. Was it Moran?”
The boy held his eyes. “Yes, sir, it was him.”
PART IV
41
SHE AWOKE ONCE again in strangeness: the bed not her bed and the room not her room, and neither was it the hospital, or her father’s living room. Dim light of day behind the curtains—dawn or dusk, she had no idea. And, oh God, so hot under these blankets, the comforter, whatever else was piled on top of her… Audrey shoving at these, kicking and twisting until it all slumped off her and she lay there on her back, getting her breath and feeling the cool air find her.
She was wearing the same flannel shirt of her father’s she’d put on when she first got the chills however many days ago, and now she lifted the sleeve to her face and smelled it, but it smelled like nothing and she knew it had not been taken off her and that it must smell terribly, as she herself must.
She sat up, putting her feet to the floor, and sudden moons of color floated across the room. A half glass of water stood on the nightstand and she drank it down, then pushed up from the bed and got to her feet and stood through a second wave of colors and dizziness—then stood listening for any sound in the house that wasn’t her own heavy breathing.
No clock in the room, and no sign of her father’s phone or his watch. There was a bureau and a vanity and a chair, all in the same unpainted, pinewood style as the nightstand. The bureau top was bare but a middle drawer was pulled partway out, as if recently opened but then incompletely shut in the haste of dressing. She crossed to it and pulled it all the way open. Sweaters. Folded, of muted colors, soft to the touch. Clean-smelling when she bent to smell. In the drawer above she found panties and bras and camisoles. She lifted one bra to see the cup size and put it down again. In the drawer below, a bright bonanza of socks.