Sandra Brown - Smoke Screen

“Do you remember the cop’s name?” Raley asked. “Was it Burgess?”

“I don’t remember.”

“McGowan?”

“I said I don’t remember.”

Britt nudged Raley’s thigh with her knee, her way of saying to let her ask the questions since his, as predicted, seemed to rub Jones the wrong way.

“You never knew what Cleveland had done that caused him to be in the police station that particular day?” she asked.

Jones snorted a sound that could have been generated by either humor or disgust. “No telling. He’d just about done it all. His mother run off, you know, leaving me with him. He was wild from the get-go. Always skipping school and causing trouble when he went. Getting expelled, stuff like that. Busted his gym teacher’s nose once when he made him run extra laps. He quit after tenth grade.”

He made a dismissive gesture. “I didn’t make him go back. I’m not that big on public education myself. Schools only teach you what the government wants you to know. Not the truth. Not the real history of this country.”

He paused as though waiting for them to take issue with his stance on education and government interference, but when they didn’t, he continued. “I tried to discipline the boy, knock some sense into him, but…” He made another gesture of indifference. “He was just one of those kids born bad. Stole, lied, fought with anybody who looked at him crosswise.

“He killed a neighbor lady’s cat once for keeping him up all night. It got romantic outside his window. Next day Cleveland went over to her trailer and wrung the cat’s neck while this old lady carried on something awful. She threatened to call the police, but she didn’t, or else they didn’t care about her dead cat because they didn’t come for him that time.”

Suddenly he sat forward in his chair and shook his index finger at them. “But that business with the girl? Now that? Un-huh,” he said, shaking his head adamantly. “That was a bad rap, was what that was.”

“The business with the girl?” Britt asked, her voice going thin.

Jones sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest again. “She looked more twenty-two than twelve,” he said scornfully. “You ask me, I think she was a little tart that got scared after her cherry got popped and blamed it all on Cleveland. But I don’t think he had to force her into doing nothing.”

Raley’s gut tightened with repugnance, and he sensed Britt was experiencing much the same. Cleveland Jones hadn’t been any great loss to the world. By his own father’s admission he was a thief, a violent thug, and a rapist.

But was his character really the point? He’d been in police custody when he died. The sworn duty of law enforcement officials was to protect every member of society, no matter how loathsome that individual might be or how heinous his crime. Until society changed the rule, that was the prevailing one, and it had been broken.

But it was unlikely that Lewis Jones would be able to help him prove it. He seemed to know no more about his son’s arrest than Raley did.

“The policeman who came to see you,” he said, “did he mention that Cleveland’s autopsy revealed that he actually died of an acute skull fracture, not smoke inhalation or burns?”

“Yep. Said he’d had his head busted in a fight just before his arrest. Said the officers who brought him in didn’t know the injuries were serious till he started acting funny. They were going to take him to the hospital and get his head X-rayed, but then he started the fire. If the brain injury hadn’t killed him, he’d have died anyway.” He rubbed his jaw. “Actually, I was glad to know he just blinked out and didn’t suffer. And he didn’t have to answer to that arson business and all those folks dying. That’s some serious shit.”

After several moments of silence, Raley asked, “Where is Cleveland buried?”

Jones got up and reached past Britt’s head toward a shelf affixed to the wall. On the shelf was a small statue of Jesus with bleeding palms and side, a metal swastika soldered onto an upright pipe, and a cardboard canister that might have contained a half gallon of ice cream.

“Cleveland.”

Raley and Britt stared at the cylinder Jones held out for their inspection. Raley said, “You had his remains cremated.”

“Not me. That cop told me there wasn’t much of him left, especially after the autopsy, and the PD felt bad on account of him dying while he was incarcerated, so unless I had already made other plans for burial, they’d take care of the arrangements and pay for everything. I said sure. I signed the paper saying it was all right for them to burn the rest of him. A few days later that cop brought me this.”

Raley looked at Britt; she looked at him. Each had things to say about this information, but their discussion would keep until they were alone.

Lewis Jones returned Cleveland to his final resting place and sat back down. Raley said, “I never got to complete my investigation into your son’s death, Mr. Jones.”

“Why’s that?”

“Circumstances suspended my involvement. But now, new evidence has come out.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not prepared to disclose that yet, and won’t be until I’ve gathered all the facts.”

“That’s why we’ve imposed on you,” Britt said. “Will you help Mr. Gannon by answering some more questions, particularly questions relating to Cleveland’s arrest?”

“Already told you, I don’t know nothing. Have you asked the cops? Wouldn’t they have records?”

Dodging that for the moment, Raley asked, “Do you know the names of any of Cleveland’s friends?”

“No.”

“Enemies?”

Jones snorted. “He was sure to have plenty of them, but I didn’t know them.”

“You don’t know who he fought with that day, or who may have struck him hard enough to fracture his skull?”

“No.”

“You weren’t told?”

He shifted impatiently in his chair. “Ain’t that what I said?”

Raley pressed on. “Was he employed?”

“Ain’t likely.”

“Was he involved with a woman?”

“Prob’ly ever’ night and twice on Sundays,” Jones said with a proud grin. “But not one woman in particular. Not one I knew of.”

“Do you know where he was living?”

“No.”

Dead ends. They sat through another silence. Finally Britt said, “You mentioned that none of Cleveland’s effects were salvaged.”

“Nothing. The stuff they’d emptied out of his pockets when they hauled him in got burned up. So did the list they’d filled out, but this cop remembered what Cleveland had on him.”

“Did he mention anything in particular? A weapon?”

“Nope. Just the usual stuff. Some money. Sixty dollars and thirty-seven cents. That cop paid it back to me. He said Cleveland had a key, but it never turned up, and I wouldn’t have known what it belonged to anyway. A pack of cigarettes. That’s all.”

Raley sat forward again. “Cleveland was a smoker?”

“Since he was a kid. Used to steal cigs from me and my old man, and wasn’t long before he was up to three, four packs a day. Never without one.” He hitched his thumb toward the photo of the Klansman. “Once, when we all went to this carnival that came to town, Daddy bought Cleveland a lighter. Not the cheap disposable kind, but the real thing. Had a naked girl on it. A whachacallit. A hologram. When you turned it a certain way, her legs opened.” He slid a sly glance toward Britt.

“The old man thought it was funny. Cleveland felt all grown-up. He loved that thing. Even when he wasn’t lighting up, he played with it. Always was fiddling with it, like a nervous habit, you know?”

“You’d think the policeman would remember an unusual lighter like that,” Raley said. “He didn’t mention it?”