David Wiltse: Bone Deep

The rains began in April-the usual innocent sprinkles that accompanied spring-and they did not stop until mid-June, growing more severe with time. It rained by day and night, four days a week, five days a week, in a persistent shower that seemed to pause only to gather strength before continuing to pour. The winter had been hard, one of the worst on record, and at first the waters seemed to stand upon the face of the earth as if in a pan, unable to penetrate the still-frozen subsoil, as if Connecticut had been transported to the permafrost of Siberia. But then they sank and did their annual restorative work underground, replenishing the wells and the reservoirs and the water table. Lakes filled again and ponds began to swell. Rivers rose and the countless rills and streams that wound their way through the backyards and open woods of the little town of Clamden took on unaccustomed vitality.

When the earth had drunk its fill, water once again stood on the surface of the soil with nowhere to go. It drained into basements and spread across lawns, creeping up to the highlands many feet above the rivers, eating under roadbeds until the pavement buckled, then caved into potholes.

In the orchard, the stream forming the lower boundary of the property raged and foamed, ripping away at the bank, which crumbled and dropped into the tide, swelling the waters still further. Water surged over the sheared bank, climbing acquisitively up the slope that led to the trees, devouring more land with every day, splashing around the base of the nethermost trees, invading soil already sodden.

After five weeks of almost continuous rain, the rising waters in the orchard lifted out the first of the young fir trees, a four-foot-high dwarf that now would never decorate any child's Christmas tableau. The swollen stream carried it to the Saugatuck River, whose waters were already cluttered with debris from the floods. Water dug deeper into the hole remaining where the uprooted tree had once stood prying loose a plastic trash bag that rested there. The tree's roots had penetrated the bag over the years, and as the pressure of the water forced them reluctantly up and away, they'd torn the holes in the plastic still further. Buoyed up from the earth and teased by the continually lapping water, the contents of the bag sloshed back and forth in their confines, jostling each other, nudging the holes to widen even more.

On the day the rains ceased, the waters began to drain toward the streams and creeks. As the ebbing currents pulled at the bag one last time, a bone floated out from the gray plastic, was caught temporarily by the larger joint at one end, then slipped away altogether and was carried to the stream, which tumbled and spun it upon its still-frantic flood through the town of Clamden.

Thomas Terence Terhune, Clamden Chief of Police, carried a small cardboard tray holding two coffees and two bagels to his car. He set the tray on the car's roof as he opened the door and glanced at the clearing skies before sliding behind the steering wheel with some difficulty. His progress was encumbered by the radio, flashlight, and pistol attached to his belt-the hardware of police work.

"Might as well have been a carpenter," Tee said, adjusting the radio so it rode on his hip and not the small of his back, "instead of a highly respected peace officer."

"You'd make more money. Carpenters get about five hundred dollars an hour these days."

"I thought that was plumbers," Tee said. "Plumbers are not underpaid either, as I understand it." Tee handed one of the coffees to John Becker. "While it is true that my salary is not grand, you forget that as chief of police I have excellent opportunities for graft."

"Done any good graft lately?" Becker asked.

"You're drinking some of it."

"Did you extort this cup of coffee, or was it offered as a bribe?"

"I merely suggested she could give me a refill now instead of making me come back for it. But that's not all. Free coffee alone would not be enough to keep me in this job. Please note the difference between my bagel and yours."

"Your bagel has a very large and unhealthy glob of cream cheese on it,"

Becker said.

"You call it a glob, I call it a dollop. Some would refer to it as a shmear. However, you miss the point." Tee lifted a finger triumphantly before continuing. "Trained observer that I am, I saw the significant detail. While my bagel has cream cheese-now listen up, this is significant-yours does not."

"Good Lord, you're right."

"You mock."

"No, it's astounding. Did they teach you this in your six-week course on cop studies?"

"You still don't get it, do you?" Tee said. "Now, while it's true that you asked for a plain bagel-and got onenot only did I not specify cream cheese on mine, but I wasn't charged for it either."

"Free cream cheese."

"It might seem a small thing at first glance, but add it up over the course of a career."

"It would come to tens of dollars."

"And thousands of calories, don't forget."

"The things you cops get away with."

"You poor slugs in the FBI don't get opportunities like this."

"If only someone had told me these things when I was starting out, I would surely have chosen to be a small-town COP."

"Chief cop. This is not within the grasp of an ordinary officer."

"I know," said Becker, looking out the window. "I've been watching what is in the grasp of an ordinary cop."

Tee followed Becker's gaze. Across the parking lot of the tiny shopping plaza that constituted the Clamden town center, another policeman leaned out the window of his squad car, talking to a teenaged girl.

"The little prick," Tee said heatedly.

"McNeil?"

"I've warned him about the high school girls. I'm going to have to jump all over his ass."

"He's just talking," Becker said.

"Shit." The girl was a willowy blonde with classical features and a vacuous look. As befitted the current style, she was dressed like a farm worker, in overalls several sizes too large and work boots that would never know a day's labor. As she talked, she laughed, tossing her head back so that her ruler-straight hair flapped gently against her body, halfway down her back. Her pelvis was pressed against the car's front door.

"She doesn't seem to be unhappy," Becker said.

"She's a kid," said Tee. "What does she know? She's one of the Jorgensens, Corliss or Angela, I forget which. Father drinks. We've had to drive him home and pour him out of the car more than once. Probably abuses the kids one way or another-drunks usually do. The mother's useless, works in the city somewhere, just seems to accept whatever's going on. Not surprisingly, the girl's a mess and looking for trouble."

"What does she do, Tee? Hang around on the street corner and smoke cigarettes?"

"Boy, are you out of touch. First of all, you may not have noticed, but there aren't any street corners in Clamden to hang out on. The kids hang out here at night."

"At the center?"

"It's one of the places. They sit on their cars and congregate like a flock of starlings. And all of them smoke. I mean all of them. And drink. Starting at thirteen, fourteen. Kids are not what they used to be when we were young."

"So what makes Jorgensen any different?"

"She's fucking McNeil, for one thing. And doing some coke now and then.

Maybe more, I wouldn't be surprised. She's on her way. That's how McNeil got to her in the first place, I'm pretty sure. He responds to a neighbor's complaint about the noise, goes to a house where the parents are away and finds dozens of teenagers, drunk and drugged and generally out of control. He brings the kids who belong to the house to the station. The rest of them he lectures, scares a little bit, paints himself as a good guy for not running them in too. He picks a girl who's holding more than the others, or the one who seems more willing to oblige him-whatever it is he looks for-he takes her off in his car, strikes a deal. It's got to be somebody he knows isn't going to tell her parents a cop came on to her. Preferably someone who doesn't talk to her parents at all. He gets some head in the front seat, she gets to go free, and things develop from there. Suddenly the girl has a thirty-five-year-old boyfriend, and a gun-carrying boyfriend at that.