Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“You bet,” said the woman. “Mr. Pocum put that up there himself. He says the needle’s too good for him. For Beachum. Just putting him to sleep like that is too damn good for him. Amy didn’t get any put to sleep. They oughta bring back the chair, that’s what I say, really let him have a jolt of something.”

I greeted these philosophical musings with a contemplative frown. “Were you here when it happened?”

She shook her head regretfully. “Nah. We just moved into the neighborhood a couple years ago.”

“I was!” It was the other woman. She had come out of the aisle now. She joined us before the fatal counter, excitement brightening her pinched face. “I mean, I was living in the neighborhood at the time. My house isn’t three blocks away from the family. They live right over on Fairmount, not three blocks away. They still do. Right near me, three blocks. I used to see Amy on the street all the time. She was such a sweet girl.”

Here, I favored them with an expression of rue: the poor sweet girl. Of course, I wondered how you could know a person was sweet just by seeing her on the street now and then. But what the hell? Everyone loves this stuff. Everyone wants to be part of a killing. If they didn’t, I’d be out of a job.

“She was pregnant too,” said the counterwoman darkly. “Can you imagine? What kind of person …?”

“Can you imagine how her parents must feel?” said the other woman.

“I saw her husband talking on TV,” the counterwoman went on. “Just the other night. Real nice fellow. You ask me, they oughta bring back the chair and turn it on real low.”

I liberally dished out facial expressions of appreciation, lamentation, contemplation and outrage. As I did, I started to wander away from them, eyeing the place up and down. I stuck my hands in my pockets, and moved casually a few steps into one of the aisles. I considered the rows of Brillo pads and cereal boxes and jars of spaghetti sauce as if they were fine, rare exhibits in a museum.

Up ahead of me, at the rear wall of the store, I saw a row of freezers full of TV dinners.

“There’s the bathroom back there,” called the counterwoman, playing guide. “Fellow was in there when it happened, came out and saw the whole thing.”

“Hmp!” I said. “Really!”

With that sanction, I wandered the rest of the way back. Past the freezers to an open entryway in the back wall. This was the entryway where the witness-his name had slipped my mind-where the witness had stood when he saw Frank Beachum running out the front door with his gun. I took a step through and peered curiously round the corner, down a short hall to the bathroom. The bathroom door stood ajar. I could see the edge of the toilet and the sink within. That’s where this guy-this witness-where he’d been when he heard Amy’s desperate cry and the shot fired. Well , I thought, there it is, all right. The Bathroom. It sure is a bathroom, all right .

Because by this time, of course, I was feeling very sophisticated about the whole thing, very ironical. Because of the two women in the store, because of their avid desire to be part of the story, part of the murder. All their tour-guide expertise, and their high feelings about something that had had nothing whatsoever to do with them. Their moral outrage. They were ludicrous, I thought. And so I felt sophisticated and ironical, compared to them. Because their avid desire, and their grisly rubbernecking-they were very much different from my avid desire and my grisly rubbernecking. Because my avid desire and my grisly rubbernecking were sophisticated, not to mention ironical. And when you were sophisticated, you see, and ironical, well, then, that is very much different.

And so, standing in the rear entryway with a sophisticated smirk on my ironical face, I turned back into the store.

And the smirk froze on my lips.

I hate when that happens-it looks so stupid. But what I saw in front of me took the wind out of my belly, hollowed me like a low blow. It was a feeling of panic more than anything. I remember once when I was rushing off to a rendezvous with a gang leader in the Bronx; a hard-sought interview. I really wanted to get to that meeting. And I jumped in my car and stuck the key in the ignition-and the shaft of the key snapped off. Ruined the key; jammed the ignition. And all I could do was sit there and think, Well, gee, what’s going to happen now?

It was a feeling like that. I stood in the doorway, smirking stupidly, blinking stupidly behind my wire-rims. Trying not to accept what I saw in front of me.

Because I saw potato chips.

A whole row of them. Plump yellow bags sitting side by side ever so jolly. They were perched there together on the top shelf of a metal rack with bags of pretzels and do-dads and snick-snacks or whatever the hell they were, filling the shelves underneath them down to the ground.

But it was the potato chips that got to me. There on the top shelf. About six feet off the floor so that the ridged upper seals of the plastic bags were inches above my head. So that the centers of the stout, jolly yellow bags themselves ran right across my eyeline and the happy owl mascot of the brand gazed winningly right back into my own gaping face.

And so you couldn’t see the door. Standing there in the passageway to the bathroom. Where the witness said he was when he saw Frank Beachum run out of the store. You couldn’t see the door at all and you couldn’t see the counter. Hell, with that tall shelf in front of you chock full of munchy goodness, you couldn’t really see any damn thing except the narrow passage along the back wall. You would have had to step round the rack. You would have had to step to the right-on the left, the door was still out of sight behind the pasta boxes. You would have had to step all the way back to the freezers before you could even see the counter where the shooting took place. And even then, you had to come forward another step or two before the door became visible above the spices shelf.

But from where I was standing, where the witness said he had stood, you couldn’t see anyone shooting anybody. And you sure couldn’t see anyone running out the front.

You couldn’t see anything except potato chips.

No , I thought. No, I cannot do this. It’s absurd. It was six years ago. They probably moved the rack, they probably changed the whole store. The witness was probably seven feet tall. How should I know? I cannot do this . I had to get home. I had to keep my wife happy. I had to take my Davy to the zoo. It was time. It was time to go. It was past time.

And still, for the next minute, for the next full sixty seconds with that damn owl, with that whole row of owls, smiling and smiling at me from the yellow bags, all I could do was stand there. Smirking. Blinking.

And thinking, Well, gee, what’s going to happen now?

Bonnie Beachum was sitting on the edge of the motel bed when the Reverend Harlan Flowers entered. Sitting, with her hands folded in her lap, staring blankly down at her daughter, Gail. Gail was kneeling on the carpet, in the little space between the beds and the cushioned chair. She was drawing a picture on newsprint, her Crayola box open and the crayons spread out around her. At seven, Gail was a small child, thin and frail like her mother, with mouse-brown hair tied back in a long ponytail. She drew ferociously, pressing the crayons hard, her tongue clamped between her teeth.

Bonnie raised her eyes slowly at Flowers’s soft knock. When he pushed through the unlocked door, she smiled at him weakly. She felt as if she were seeing Flowers from very far away. A figure on another shore, very far away.