Bryan Gruley - The Hanging Tree

“I had no idea,” I said.

“Why would you?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something moving on the street outside. I turned and saw the back end of a blue sport-utility vehicle sliding slowly past the house.

“What?” Trixie said.

“Nothing.”

I moved to the foot of the bed and started riffling through the first stack of programs on the trunk. I was looking for one from that Detroit-versus-Chicago playoff series when I thought I had seen Gracie. But Trixie grasped my shoulder and pulled me toward the door.

“Come on, I don’t have all afternoon.”

She left the door to Gracie’s room open, stepped across the hall, and produced a pair of keys that unlocked the two locks on the door to the other room. She pushed the door half open and stood across the threshold. “Gracie called this her dark room,” she said.

“Not for photography, though.”

“No.”

I peered into the room, couldn’t see a thing. I looked at Trixie. “Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.”

“Did Gracie have a son?”

Trixie held my gaze for what seemed like a full minute. Then she looked away. “No,” she said. “Grace…” She looked back at me. “Her employer said she couldn’t be pregnant. But Grace let… let the baby go. It was her choice.”

“What employer?”

Trixie looked at me again. “You’ll see.”

“I will? What about that drawing in the other room?”

“Part of her rehabilitation was volunteering at a local grade school. The kids in Melvindale love the Red Wings, too.”

So Darlene was right about the abortion. I thought of the baby shoe Gracie had hidden in the Zam shed. Something approaching sadness swelled then receded in the pit of my stomach.

“When did she have it?”

“What?” Trixie said.

“The abortion.”

She pursed her lips. “I don’t think Grace would want me talking about it.”

“Grace is dead.”

“Not yet. Not to me, at least. And not to you, either, or you wouldn’t be here now, would you?”

“Do you talk in riddles with the women at the center?”

“Do you want to see what’s in this room or not? If you prefer, we can leave right now and you can go chase down whoever was outside the bedroom window.”

Trixie didn’t miss a trick. “All right,” I said.

She stepped aside and let me pass.

The room was tiny, more like a sewing room than a bedroom, with the musty smell of a place no one had been in for a long while. And it was indeed dark, the shades drawn on the window opposite the door. Trixie flicked a wall switch. A bare bulb in the center of the ceiling threw a dim oval of yellow light that left the corners of the room in shadow.

Next to the window hung a glassed-in frame containing a medal pinned on white satin. The Purple Heart.

“Is that her father’s?” I said.

“Why else would she have it there?” Trixie said.

“Don’t tell me-she got it off the Internet.”

“How did you know?”

For $33.50, I thought. “Things get around in Starvation Lake.”

Cardboard boxes sat along the baseboards on two walls. Above them, to my left, hung four pages that had been clipped out of newspapers and thumbtacked to the wall. I stepped past Trixie to see them up close.

“Holy shit,” I said.

The first was the front page of the Detroit Times, Sunday, March 3, 1996. A thirty-six-point headline ran across the top: “ Teen’s Fiery Death Shines Harsh Spotlight on Superior Pickup Truck.” The story beneath it ran under the byline of A. J. Carpenter. Augustus James Carpenter. Me.

“What does she have this up here for?”

“Maybe you had a fan,” Trixie said.

I shook my head as I read the first few paragraphs of the story, remembering. “Gracie never gave a damn about what I did. She used to call me a fag if I got an A in school.”

“I don’t know what she used to do. Keep going.”

The next page, yellower than the first, was also from the front of the Times, Friday, January 31, 1992. Under my byline again, barely above the fold: “ Local Attorney Nabs Another Big Verdict; GM Vows Appeal.” The amount of the verdict, which someone had underlined in red ink, was $28.3 million. The copy wrapped around a small black-and-white photo, circled in red ink, of the local attorney, a handsome smiling man named Laird Haskell.

That’s quite a coincidence, I thought.

I turned and glanced at Trixie. She was leaning against the doorjamb, watching me. “What?” she said. “Something wrong?”

I ignored her and turned to the third page, which was not from the Times but the Free Press, page B4, Friday, September 1, 1995. “Strip-Club Owner Acquitted of Role in Explosion” read the headline over the story by Michele Higgins:

The prosecution of a prominent area strip-club owner blew up in Wayne County Circuit Court yesterday when a judge dismissed charges that Jarek A. Vend paid to have a bomb planted in the kitchen of a rival gentlemen’s club in Romulus.

Vend, 46 years old, owner of more than a dozen strip clubs in Metro Detroit, had insisted he had nothing to do with a minor explosion that occurred at the Landing Strip one afternoon in May. But he told reporters he was amused that someone appeared to have played a prank on a competitor. No one was injured in the blast, which police said appeared to be designed to frighten rather than inflict real harm.

There was no photo.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Please,” Trixie said.

I spun around to face her.

“This is the guy who gave Gracie a job when she needed book money?”

“Who?”

“Vend.”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “He was probably the guy’s boss. Vend doesn’t talk to the help, unless he’s sleeping with them.”

“I was at his house earlier.”

“Over there?” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “That’s his mother’s. His late mother’s. It’s in his name. The press eats that crap up about him being a local guy. He has a high-rise in Windsor overlooking the river. Just in case the cops here ever decide to really go after him, which they never will. Talk about a goddamn bastard.”

And I thought Starvation was a small town. She probably knew who was in that Suburban cruising past the house too.

“What about this lawyer?” I said, pointing at the page with the Haskell story. “Why was Gracie so interested in him?”

“What’s his name?”

“Haskell. You haven’t looked at these?”

“Grace’s hobby, not mine.” She nodded past me. “What’s the last one?”

The front page of the Times was dated Thursday, July 24, 1997. I knew what was there. After forcing me to resign, the Times had agreed to publish a retraction of my stories about Superior Motors’ deadly pickup trucks. Four hundred and fifty-two words ran in a one-column slot at the bottom of the page, next to the index. Gracie had carefully clipped it and tacked it up as part of her “hobby.” I didn’t have to read it. But I stared at it anyway, cursing Gracie, picturing her in the Zam shed telling me I played hockey like a pussy, wishing she were alive so I could tell her to go to hell. Even things she hadn’t intended for me to see wound up stinging.

“She’s a fan, all right,” I said. “What’s in these boxes?”

The four boxes were closed but not taped. I bent over, flipped one open, reached in, and pulled out a tangle of black leather.

“What the-,” I said, holding it up in front of me. A collar equipped with a drawstring was attached to thick straps that ran down to an adjustable belt that presumably wrapped around someone’s waist. More straps fitted with buckles and Velcro jutted from the belt. I dropped it on the floor and pulled more leather from the box. A hooded mask with a zipper running down the back. A girdle with thin silver chains dangling from the crotch.