David Wallace - Broom of the System

“Well, good,” Fieldbinder said.

“Right.”

“Right.”

Slotnik put down his mug. “So you said you wanted to talk to us.”

“Yes,” Fieldbinder said. Evelyn was staring out the big living room window at the bright green front lawn.

Slotnik looked as if he would have glanced at his watch, had he been wearing one. “So?” he said.

“So you didn’t know Mr. Costigan all that well, then, is the sense I get.”

“We were neighbors. We knew him fairly well for a neighbor. We spoke over the fence. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” Fieldbinder said. He looked at his hands, in his lap. “How about the kids. Kids know him well?”

Slotnik’s forehead became a puzzled forehead.

Evelyn cleared her throat again. “No,” she said. “Well, not any better than we did. They played in his yard, sometimes, when things overflowed from ours. We agreed to make the fence only between the houses, not the yards. He was nice about that. He obviously liked children. The kids liked him, I know, because he gave really good Halloween treats. Giant Hershey bars, that they couldn’t even eat all at once. He was nice, but he kept to himself.”

“As a good neighbor should,” Slotnik said.

“I don’t think the kids knew him any better than we did.”

“Especially Steve, I’m wondering about,” Fieldbinder said.

Slotnik’s forehead got worse. “Well, no, Monroe. What exactly seems to be the problem?”

Fieldbinder sniffed and reached down and popped his briefcase latches. He brought out a large photograph and handed it over the coffee table to Evelyn, all the time looking at Slotnik.

The photo was a color shot of a boy walking up the Slotniks’ brick walk, toward the front door, with a backpack over his shoulder. The boy was about thirteen, healthy, rather big and strong for the age of his face. He had short, dull-blond hair. The photo looked to have been taken from a distance. There were some maple trees in the way of the shot, partly. Fieldbinder himself could make out maple-leaf shapes.

“Now as I recall that’s Steve,” he said. “Right?”

The Slotniks looked up from the photo. “Yes.”

“What happened was I got it out of a room in Mr. Costigan’s house,” Fieldbinder said. He folded his hands in his lap. “Pretty clearly taken from over there, too, up high, with the maples out over the fence in the way.” He gestured through a side window above Evelyn’s head at some maple trees leaning over the fence, their new leaves looking extra green in the morning light. “Taken with a hell of a strong lens, too, as you can see. See the detail on Steve? Costigan had some really nice equipment.”

“Okay,” Slotnik said slowly. He made no move to give the photo back to Fieldbinder. “But I’m not sure I understand. We didn’t know Costigan was a photographer, but so what? It’s a good picture, you can see.”

“Yes. It is,” Fieldbinder said. He did something to a pant-leg. “So are the literally hundreds of other pictures of Steve I found in this particular room in the guy’s house.”

The Slotniks looked at Fieldbinder.

“Which pictures themselves were not all that hard to find,” Fieldbinder continued, “seeing as how this particular room in the house was wall-papered with them.”

Slotnik put down his mug again.

“And I mean floor to ceiling, Don.” Fieldbinder looked at Slotnik. Slotnik looked at Evelyn.

“Also in this room”—Fieldbinder cleared his throat—“this room on the second floor, with a window directly out of which I could see across the fence into a window in your home, a window with a ‘Go Phillies!’ pennant hanging in it, a window I’m going to assume, unless you tell me differently, is Steve’s…” He looked at Slotnik, who said nothing. Fieldbinder sniffed. “Also in this room were”—he ticked off with his fingers—“who knows how many sketches, in charcoal and pencil, and some oils, really quite good, of someone who looks like… no, quite obviously is Steve. Some equally quite good pieces of sculpture, in varied media, I couldn’t really tell, but again with just Steve as the subject, as far as I could see. Also some sort of video recorder set-up that’s rigged rather ingeniously to play a continuing loop of a certain tape, a tape of some games of football in your yard, in Costigan’s yard, of Steve raking some leaves, of Steve mowing the lawn, of Steve and Scott making a snowman, using what looked to me like a frozen sock for the thing’s nose. Sound familiar?” Fieldbinder looked up at the Slotniks. “Also some… items, in a sort of very solid and expensive wooden box, that looks to me like a jewelry box, and is at any rate listed on Costigan’s personal-assets sheet as an antique.”

“Just what sort of items?”

“Now you said Costigan would take care of your house when you were away.”

“Only sometimes,” Evelyn said. “Usually Mrs. Frick…”

Slotnik ignored her. “What sort of items, Monroe?”

Fieldbinder made a bland face. “A few baseball cards. Some strands of hair, light hair, glued to an index card. A Popsicle stick, from an orange Popsicle. A couple of… Kleenex.” He looked at Evelyn. “There was a tee-shirt, a white tee-shirt, Fruit of the Loom. Very neatly pressed, folded, but not laundered. An unclean tee-shirt. And tagged, with a date, sometime in August of last year.”

Evelyn twisted toward Slotnik. “When we were at the Cape.”

“Can you remember Steve maybe ever losing some clothes?” Fieldbinder said.

“Oh, he’s always losing things — they both are. You know how children are.” Evelyn almost started to smile.

“No,” Fieldbinder leaned forward in his chair, “the thing is, I really don’t.”

“What do you mean did Steve ever lose some clothes,” Slotnik said.

“Well Don the thing is that the tee-shirt wasn’t the only… Fruit of the Loom item in Costigan’s box.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Basically it means size twenty-eight briefs, Don.” Fieldbinder looked at Evelyn, whose eyes were no longer quite focused. He took a tiny wrinkle out of the crease in his slacks with a thumbnail and refolded his hands in his lap. He looked back at Slotnik.

Slotnik stared into the air in front of him for a moment, trying to smooth his cowlick, which sprang right back up again. “I’m going to call the police,” he said quietly.

Fieldbinder made a wry smile. “Well, now, Don, and have them do what?”

Slotnik looked at Fieldbinder.

“Maybe what we should do first, if you want my opinion,” said Fieldbinder, “is have you two try to remember if there might have been any occasions when anything could have possibly happened.” He looked at the Slotniks. “Anything even remotely bad.”

Slotnik looked at the coffee table.

“Is Steve ever here alone? Without one of you around?”

“Neither of them, no, never without a sitter,” Slotnik said firmly. “And if they’re out, they’re either with us, or at school, or with friends, or we know exactly where they are.”

“That’s what I figured.” Fieldbinder bent over for a moment to reclose his briefcase. “Now but can either of you ever remember Costigan maybe doing or saying anything strange, having to do with Steve, when you were around? Did he ever say anything to him? Did he ever do anything out of the ordinary? Did he ever maybe touch Steve, at all?”

“Never,” Slotnik said.

There was silence.

“No, he did, once,” Evelyn said quietly, looking out at the lawn. “Just once.”

Slotnik turned uncomfortably to look at his wife under his arm. Fieldbinder looked at them blandly.

“It was so tiny I never thought to say anything to you, honey,” Evelyn said. “I never thought to even think about it. It wasn’t really anything.”