Sarah Sparrow - A Guide for Murdered Children

A decade flew by like a dirigible on fire. Ten years of booze and coke, of stealth waitresses and skimming money from small-time drug dealers, of beating the shit out of arrestees during joyrides back to the station—Brave Old Cop World before the nightmare of political correctness and nonstop social media surveillance put a stake through its black heart. His suffering wife began a last-ditch pillow-talk campaign about how much better their lives would be if they got out of Dodge. A homeboy who worked violent crimes in the 4th District (and grew up in Macomb County) told him that the police department in Saggerty Falls, Michigan, was currently recruiting. “Dubya, you just might be overqualified for the job.” When it looked like Willow might be fired for his latest tomfoolery, he and the Chicago PD parted ways, with both parties pretending to be amicable.

The village had a goofy Thomas Kinkade flavor, sans water mills and thatched-roof cottages. The houses were all newish, the neighbors awesome and the schools decent—which meant it took all of fourteen months for Willow to lose his mind. He kept a grip on his insanity by playing musical waitress chairs, but there were only so many coffee shops in the surrounding townships. Adelaide knew what was going on. He’d begun to think that she always did, and wasn’t sure whether to love or hate her for that.

At least he appreciated the company of the man he shared a squad car with. Owen Caplan enjoyed a drink himself and was simpatico to his partner’s borderline behaviors. But Owen was destined for greatness—which included Willow’s wife. “I guess the best man won” was how the loser chivalrously characterized the soap opera in the years that followed the divorce. He got a lot of mileage out of all those three-minute sad-funny shares, honed to perfection in sundry rehabs and midtown Manhattan 12-Step meetings. Women really seemed to go for his sly, self-deprecating line of bullshit.

He moved out of the house in ’97. Pace was thirteen, that vulnerable, invulnerable age when a girl hates her mom and needs her daddy. Like every couple who separate, they still held out hope, trying to keep it together for the kid, the pension, the fraud of makeup sex, the whatever. Willow hung around for another year. But there always comes that moment when the stoned, exasperated husband throws something at a wall and it bounces back and glances his wife; or he makes a menacing macho move and she backs away in fear, stumbling, and hurts a wrist while breaking her fall. Then one of those events—pick one—becomes alt-fact legend, passed on to the neighbors, the coworkers, the children and generations to come.

Your father hit me…

Not to say that men don’t beat and kill their women. But Willow Millard Wylde wasn’t remotely capable of that.

After the split with Addie, he and Owen still rode together but his cohort started getting squirrelly. A little weird, a little distant—like Adelaide!—then one day Owen was pulled from the car and partnered with someone else. Owen evinced mild outrage, acting like he’d been blindsided, but Dubya knew he requested the change. Willow thought it was chickenshit, but it didn’t really rock his world. He just kept drinking and whoring his way through his shifts, going through the merry motions, because he knew it was all coming to an end, some kind of end. And soon. His daughter hated him because he basically ignored her existence. Everything fell in Adelaide’s lap: Pace’s abortions (three), Pace slicing up her thighs (an X-Acto), Pace stealing unused drugs from the room of the dying father of a girl she babysat (Dilaudid), Pace’s correspondence on the Internet with a fifty-something teacher in Fort Wayne. When Adelaide caught Willow driving her to a ballet lesson drunk, she put the plug in the jug and filed for divorce. In six weeks’ time, he said goodbye to all that—the waitresses, the marriage, the whole shitty postcard of a town—and decamped to Manhattan to become prince of the city.

He said goodbye to Pace too and never forgave himself.

The last thing he did before departing Port Hope was to paint over the mural composed of Owen and Adelaide’s address that he’d colored the wall with on his return from the disastrous outing to New York. Like some magnificent coral reef, the numbers and letters had grown into explosive, abstract glory. Somehow it wouldn’t have been right to leave it behind unattended. But Willow had high hopes for the fresh canvas of the new place in Sterling Heights.

He was already feeling inspired.

3.

A photo montage—

Willow in his Port Hope double-wide, contemplating his navel… staring at the ceiling while being serviced by Miranda… scrubbing the floor like a man condemned. Willow in Armada, sweaty and disoriented, on a fresh-out-of-the-box Casper, staring at the ceiling of his ex-wife’s guest room. Willow in Sterling Heights, staring at the ceiling of an empty utility apartment from a thrift-store futon (the Casper was on its way).

Such was life—a succession of random walls and rooms, of tiny spaces that we convince ourselves provide continuity, secrecy, safety.

He’d met a few neighbors during the move, the most notable being an attractive RN named Dixie Rose Cavanaugh. Even the name got him horny. He hoped she didn’t work alongside Adelaide at Macomb General—that would be such a bore. Another was a Viet vet who still managed to climb on his Harley and ride off each day at exactly 11:50 on an excursion to Early World Diner, where all the wounded warriors hung out. A clockwork public lunch dropped them into the babbling brook of humanity and broke the spell of loneliness. It was pretty much the only thing left on their schedules, that and field trips to the VA for whatever was slowly or quickly killing them.

A week ago he showed up at the administrative building of the Macomb County Sheriff’s Office and peed in a cup, just like Owen promised. Good ol’ Charlie Powell did the test. How ’bout that? Took out the dipstick, gave it a glance-over and pronounced, “Dubya, you’re clean.” Willow had always called him Charles in Charge, from back in the day. When Owen bailed on their partnership, he and Charlie rode together, becoming the Falls’ new Starsky and Hutch. Years later, by the time the former Saggerty Falls PD chief snagged the brass sheriff’s ring, Charlie’d already had a few heart attacks. Owen pulled him out of his retirement and depression, anointing him as his de facto assistant and all-around man Friday. Charles was back in charge.

Sheriff Caplan was supposed to accompany them on a tour of the building on Gallup Street in Mount Clemens but texted that he couldn’t make it. The Cold Case Task Force took up the first floor and climate-controlled sub-basement of a nondescript edifice housing nondescript departments that performed nondescript county services. He and Charlie strolled through empty rooms—most of the rented furniture was yet to arrive—but there were folding chairs and a beat-up metal desk in the space designated for Willow’s office.

At least there was a guard in the lobby. Greeting him on that first day, Willow couldn’t help thinking such a fate could have been his. Maybe still would be. Becoming a badge monkey might just be the pot of shit at the end of the rainbow.

“It ain’t Trump Tower,” said Charlie. “But we’ll get the place looking half-decent. Central heating works like a champ. Hang a picture or two, get some carpet. A little paint job.”

“It’ll do till they realize how important we are.”

Charlie smiled warmly and said, “It’s real good to see you again, Dubya. Life sure takes some funny turns, huh?”

“Oh, don’t you know it. Though I have learned that some turns are funnier than others.”