John Case - The Murder Artist

“We were at the joust,” I say. “The boys went up to cheer for the Green Knight…”

Once I’ve recounted this part, we start at the beginning. I attempt to reconstruct the day. The red diode glows, I talk, Shoffler listens.

The fair is for the most part deserted now, the booths shuttered and padlocked. Shoffler and I head toward the jousting arena. The detective stops everyone we meet, noting name and position at the fair in his careful handwriting, telling them they’ll have to check out with Jack at headquarters before they leave the grounds. He asks each of them if they remember seeing a set of twins. No? What about me? No.

We’ve been through about a dozen such encounters when Shoffler stops walking, cocks his head, and looks at me. “Hunh,” he says with a look on his face that I can’t read.

“What?”

Shoffler shakes his head. “I’m just surprised nobody remembers them, that’s all. I mean – identical twins.”

The remark skitters past me like a mouse in the walls.

At the arena, Shoffler follows me as I walk through the hay bales.

“About here,” I tell him, coming to a stop. “We were sitting just about here.”

“And you were here the last time you saw them?”

“More or less.”

“And where were they?”

I gesture toward the ringside, where “the Green Machine” once stood cheering. I describe – for what must be the fourth or fifth time now, exactly what happened. Shoffler pages back through his notebook and checks something. “So the last time you saw them, they were down there, cheering for the Green Knight.”

I close my eyes, concentrate. “No,” I say. “That’s not right.”

“No?”

“Last time I saw them was right before the final joust. They were in a crowd of other kids, petting a dog.”

“A dog? What kind of dog?”

“Skinny dog – what do they call it? Like a greyhound, but smaller.”

“Whippet?” Shoffler asks.

“Right. It had a thing around its neck – you know, a collar. A ruffled white collar.”

“You mean – like out of Shakespeare? A… what do they call that? A ruff?”

“That’s right. A ruff. In fact” – the image jumps into my mind – “the guy was wearing one too.”

“What guy?”

“There was a tall guy with the dog.”

“And they were both in ruffs. In costume.”

“Right.”

“Huh,” Shoffler says. “So you took your eyes off the kids to watch the joust and then the next time you looked, they’re gone.”

“Right,” I say, with a trapdoor feeling in my chest, as if I’m on a plane that’s suddenly dropped twenty thousand feet. “They were gone.”

As we approach the ring, I see that someone’s inside the arena: a skinny guy in a faded red Adidas T-shirt. He’s raking up horse manure.

He answers Shoffler’s questions politely. “Allen Babcock,” he says in a British accent. “A, double L, E, N. I’m the head groom, take care of the horses and all that.” He gestures to the manure. “Take my turn doing the scut work, too. Mind if I ask what’s this about?”

“We’ve got a couple of young boys missing. Twins.”

Babcock’s eyes dart over to me. “Your lads, then?”

I nod. “Six-year-old boys. Blond hair. You see them?”

Babcock shakes his head. “Sorry. No one’s about now, and if you mean earlier – I’m not out front much. A few fans find their way back to the entrance chutes, but not many. No twins. Not today. I’d remember.”

“Entrance chutes? So where exactly are you during these events?” Shoffler asks.

“Have a look?”

We follow Babcock through the arena and out a gate at the opposite side to what amounts to a staging area. Two metal chutes, consisting of lengths of tubular metal fence chained together, lead to two wooden corrals. “In one chute,” Babcock says, “out the other. The horses can be a bit headstrong – they don’t like all that fancy tack they have to wear for competition. So I’m back here, helping with the horseflesh, and getting the knights on and off their mounts – a right trick with all that armor.”

“What happens afterwards? You trailer the horses away until the next day or the next weekend?”

“No, no. We stay right out back here.”

“Where’s that?” Shoffler asks.

We follow Babcock toward a six-foot-high perimeter fence. “This fence enclose the entire fairgrounds?” Shoffler asks.

“Right,” the groom says, unlocking a padlock and pulling open the gate.

As soon as we walk through the gate into the area outside the fence, into the wide-open world, I feel panicked. There’s a whole wide world out here. If Kevin and Sean are not inside the fairgrounds, they could be anywhere.

“Horses and tack in there,” Babock says, nodding toward a white clapboard barn. “Humanfolk in the caravan.” He gestures toward a large Winnebago. “The knights – well, they’re actors really, aren’t they? As well as riders. They live in the compound with the others. It’s just me and Jimmy here where we can look after the animals.”

Beyond the barn, a field enclosed with white four-board fencing leads back toward the dense woodland. The cicadas roar.

A huge black horse stands next to the barn, tied on either side to a framework. A short, dark-complected man holds one of the beast’s massive hooves and pries out dirt with a metal pick. Babcock introduces the man as Jimmy Gutierrez. After a few words with him, Shoffler writes down his name and telephone number in his notebook.

“Mind if we take a look in the barn… and in your Winnebago?” Shoffler asks.

“Bit untidy in the caravan,” Babcock says. “But go ahead.”

We’re through the perimeter fence and on our way back into the jousting arena when I see it, near one of the metal chutes: a small white Nike shoe with a blue swoosh on it.

The sight of it stops me cold. Shoffler and Babcock are through the gate and into the arena before the detective notices I’m no longer with them.

“Mr. Callahan?”

I beckon, unable to speak. I stare at the shoe. It’s just sitting there, in the dirt, perfectly upright, as if someone just stepped out of it – although, I see that the laces are still tied.

“That looks just like one of Kevin’s shoes,” I say.

“What?”

“Right there. That shoe.” I point to it, a small white shoe with a smear of mud on its laces. “My son Kevin has shoes like that.”

The sight of the shoe there in the dirt, its laces still tied, reminds me of all the times – the surprisingly numerous times – when I’ve caught sight of shoes separated from their owners. Tied together and dangling over a wire. Stranded solo on a roadside shoulder. Dumped in a trash bin. There’s something about abandoned shoes – even shoes outside hotel rooms, even tagged shoes in a shoe repair shop – that’s always struck me as sad, even ominous.

And this shoe – is it Kevin’s? – seems to me a terrible sign, proof of haste and violence. I lean forward, as if to pick it up, but Shoffler stops me, extending a stiff arm across my chest.

“Wait a minute,” the detective says, his voice suddenly sharp. “Don’t touch it.”

Ten minutes later, Christiansen arrives and the shoe ends up with its own little fence of traffic cones and yellow police tape. Christiansen will stay to await the arrival of the evidence technician. The word evidence worries me almost as much as the shoe itself. Allen Babcock claims he never noticed “the trainer” (as he calls it). Jimmy Gutierrez never saw it, either.

“How do you know it belongs to Kevin?” Shoffler asks, as we walk back toward the entrance gate. “I thought they’re identical twins?”

“They don’t dress the same,” I tell him.