Read an Excerpt
prologue
An excerpt from a statement in the Brook City Police file on the death of Mildred Hanaman, dictated and signed by Hans Dettermann, also known as Kraut Dettermann:
“You could say what she wanted was for McAran to notice her, and she was halfway drunk when she found us in a back room at the Holiday Lounge in the four-hand stud game for small money, just killing time. She called him all kinds of dirty names, then he topped her with some worse ones, and she cried and went out, but she came back in from the bar a little while later with a drink in her hand. She stood behind him, watching the way the cards were falling, and sudden-like she poured the drink on his head. He swung backhand at her and she dodged it, but fell down, sitting, because she wasn’t so steady, and laughed at him. McAran went and got a towel and came back, drying his head and face, and she was standing up then, trying to make a joke out of it. There was music from the bar, and she did little dance steps in front of him saying something like, ‘Remember me? I’m your girl. Dance with your girl. Be nice to your girl, please, please, darling.’ But he pushed right past her not even looking at her and sat down to bet the pair of eights he had showing. She got real white in the face and she was breathing hard, and suddenly she jumped at him from behind, yelling and digging at his face. That was when he jumped up and she tried to run, but he grabbed her and backed her against the wall next to the door, and held her there and started hitting her. Pretty soon we knew somebody better stop him, so we stopped him. She slid down the wall and sat in a bent-over way. He came back to the table, and I remember it was his deal. After maybe three or four hands, she got up real slow. She held onto the doorframe. She didn’t look at us, but I could see her face was messed up. She walked out. I’d say it was about quarter to one in the morning. I never saw her again. She was a real pretty girl, but I guess McAran got tired of her, the way she kept chasing him after he’d called the whole thing off.”
i
When you can count the time you have left in big numbers, count it in years; whole weeks can go by when you never think of it. But it dwindles down, and as the time gets shorter it seems to go faster. It came down to months, and then weeks, and suddenly it was time for me to go up to Harpersburg, up to the big maximum security prison and get my wife’s half-brother and bring him home.
As the time got shorter I could see Meg tightening up. She’d look beyond me when I was talking to her, and I’d have to repeat what I’d said. She was short with the kids, impatient and abrupt.
“Five years out of the prettiest part of his life,” she would say. “From twenty-five to thirty, all that good time lost and gone.”
“It could have been more,” I told her.
“What’s he going to be like, honey? What’s he going to act like?”
“You’ve seen him once a month for five years, Meg. You tell me.”
She turned away. “We talk through the wire. I do most of the talking. He listens and sometimes he smiles. I don’t know how he’ll be. I’m—I’m scared of how he’ll be.”
I told her he would be fine, but I didn’t believe it. I went with her to visit him the first time. He told me not to come back. He meant it. So I’d drive her up there when I could, and wait in the car across the road from the big wall and try to pretend to myself they were never going to let Dwight McAran out of the cage. She would always come out looking as if they’d whipped her, walking heavy, her face dull, and half the eighty miles home would go by before she’d begin to act like herself.
“I should go with you to bring him back,” Meg told me.
“He made it plain in the letter. If we want to get him started right, we better do it the way he wants, honey. Maybe—maybe he just doesn’t want to see you anywhere near those walls again.”
“Maybe that’s it.” But her voice was dubious, her eyes uncertain.
And I wouldn’t know why he made that request until he told me. With men like Dwight McAran it’s little use trying to guess why they do things. We judge others by our own patterns. When a man doesn’t fit anywhere into the pattern of most people, you might as well try guessing how high a bird will fly on Tuesday.
Down at the station they knew I was going to drive up and get him. There’s more gossip in a place like that than any bridge club you ever saw. They’d even found out Meg wasn’t going with me. It isn’t very often a cop has a brother-in-law to bring on home from state prison. It would have been a rougher ride if I hadn’t made Detective Lieutenant, but the rank kept most of the boys off my neck.
The bad situation, the one I knew was going to be bad, was with Alfie Peters. He marched through the squad room and into my office the afternoon of the day before I had to go get Dwight. We started rookie the same year and he’d thought of every reason in the world why he got a little bit left behind, except the right reason, he’s too quick with his hands and his mouth. But he was the one who made the collar on Dwight all by himself, which is more than any one man should have tried or could have gotten away with, unhurt. All Alfie got was a dislocated thumb and a torn ear. Peters is a big man, quick and meaty.
He came in and stared at me and said, “The best thing you can do, Fenn, is drive him the other direction and leave him off some place.”
“If you got to yell, Alfie, go down in the park and holler up at my window.”
“You heard what McAran yelled at me in court.”
“I was there.”
“You give him a message from me. If I come across him any place at all in Brook City, and I don’t like the look on his face, I’m going to hammer on it until I get a look I do like. He doesn’t scare me a damn bit.”
I stared at Alfie until he began to look uneasy. “If you have reason to arrest him, bring him in. If he resists arrest, you can take the necessary steps to subdue him. If it’s a false arrest, I’ll do everything I can to make the charge against you stick. He’s not on parole, Peters. He served full time. There will be no arrests for loitering, for acting suspicious, for overtime parking. I’ve cleared that with the Chief. You’re not putting the roust on McAran, and you’re not working him over. And pickup order on him has to be cleared with the Chief.”
“Nice,” he said. “Real nice. Who gives him the keys to the city? The Chief or the mayor, or maybe we should invite the governor down?”
“Just handle yourself with a lot of care, Alfie.”
“The picture is clear. That son of a bitch gets the special deal. The brother-in-law of Lieutenant Fenn Hillyer gets every break in the book. Is it on account he’s a college man? He killed Mildred Hanaman and everybody knows it. You must be nuts to let him come back here.”
I leaned back in the chair. I smiled at him, even. “I don’t make the laws. He was arrested and charged and he stood trial and got five years for manslaughter. Now get out of here, Alfie.”
He hesitated, turned on his heel and walked out. It certainly wasn’t my idea Dwight should come back to Brook City. It was his, and Meg backed him up. She had some glamorized idea of Dwight becoming such a solid and dependable citizen everybody would realize they’d misjudged him. Personally, it had always astonished me he had gotten to the age of twenty-five without killing anybody. But what can you do when the woman you love is just using that natural warmth and heart which make you love her? She’s two years older than Dwight. They had a miserable childhood. She did her best to protect him. She’s never stopped trying. He’s the only blood relation she has, and she has enough love left over for forty.
Chief of Police Larry Brint caught me in the corridor as I was leaving. He’s sixty, a mild, worn man with a school teacher look, but with a deep and lasting toughness which makes Alfie’s bluster look like a comedian’s routine. He has made it known to me, without even putting it in so many words, that he wants me to have his job when he quits.
He fell in step beside me and we walked slowly toward the rear exit of our wing of City Hall. “Settle Peters down?” he asked.
“I hope so.”
“This can be a rough thing. You’ve got to handle it just right, Fenn. McAran could make you look pretty bad.”
“I realize that.”
“If there’s any slip, we can’t afford an ounce of mercy. Does Meg understand that?”
“She claims she does. I don’t know if she really does.”
“How long is he going to stay with you?”
“Nobody knows. I don’t know what his plans are.”
