Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

“You told me she hadn’t been talking to you.”

“It’s not what happened that night, dad. It happened a long time ago, something about her playing a jukebox. She says I was there but I don’t remember.”

“Did she tell you this in secret?”

“Well, she didn’t make me swear not to tell.”

“Then we can talk about it, okay?”

“I guess so. She said she was playing records, putting dimes or quarters in a jukebox and something made you mad. You and mommy were there. I was too but I don’t remember it. It was in some kind of restaurant or a bar. An argument started not with you and mommy but with some men. That’s all she’d ever tell me. Maybe that’s all she remembers. But whatever you did, I guess it scared her...”

How old had she been? Selby had to think about it. Eight, nine maybe. The details were vague, but he remembered... Shana in shorts and a halter, dancing by herself, snapping her fingers like adults she’d seen on TV. But where? Philadelphia, or New York? And two young men drinking beer and calling out something to Shana.

“Do you remember what scared her, dad?”

“Some character said something unpleasant to her. I told mommy and Shana and you to go outside. Then I tried to explain to a pair of morons that their language was out of line. They had friends with them and didn’t want to back down. But finally they heard me out. They hadn’t realized Shana was so young. They were sorry they’d embarrassed her. That’s the whole story, Davey. But Shana may have added some imagined details over the years.”

“Maybe so,” Davey said. “Maybe that’s it, dad.”

There had been one other thing, Selby recalled, as he turned the station wagon around and drove back to the bridge. She hadn’t been wearing shorts and a halter, it had been a fancy skirt, and she’d been sick on the sidewalk outside the bar and grill off Sansom Street when she saw the flecks of blood on his knuckles.

As they drove back to the bridge, Selby tried to isolate a thought that had been puzzling him all that day. “Davey, what was it you told me about you and Shana being lost in space?”

“About getting hit by asteroids?”

“No, something else.”

“Flying so low we could see Blazer staring up at us?”

Selby struck the steering wheel with his fist. “Right. Those aerial photographs in front of The Lakes were all taken at night . You could tell from the lights in the houses and swimming pools. Which means they were taken by a low-flying helicopter. The pictures have been on display a couple of weeks, the guard said. So the helicopter could have been flying around the night Shana... if she was somewhere near Dade Road that could have been the hornets she heard.”

At the drugstore in Buck Run, Selby checked a phone directory. Then after leaving Davey off at home he drove into East Chester.

The J. D. Parks photographic studio was in the business district of the old Quaker town. Parks himself was an energetic young man with high color and thinning but long, black hair which he had allowed to spread untidily over his forehead and ears. He wore a canvas windbreaker with slanted marks on the sleeves where chevrons had been removed, a yellow kerchief, boots and jeans.

Selby had caught him as he was leaving his studio on assignment, a folded tripod under one arm and a bulging leather camera bag slung over his shoulder.

“I remember the Lakes job, sure, but I can’t check the negatives now. I’m running late.” Parks put the tripod down, fumbled in his pocket, pulled out a wallet and gave Selby a business card. “How about you calling my answering service in a couple of days, give ’em the date and I’ll check my files when I get back to town. Brandywine Lakes, you wouldn’t believe the prices out there. There’s nothing for sale, but I hustled the management into a layout. Image. Eat your heart out, you peasants. First time I worked out of a chopper since ’Nam. I must’ve shot a dozen rolls each night. What was it you wanted to check on, Mr. Selby?”

“A car on Dade Road, a red sports car. Probably parked in a driveway.”

“I got it, you got it, pal — fair exchange? Call the service, okay? I’ll be in Marcus Hook, underwater shots of a ship with a busted hull. Insurance stuff. Her name’s Jenny, the answering service. Peace.”

A delivery truck was parked in Selby’s drive, the lights on and the motor running. The white door panels were decorated with smiling faces drawn inside fat doughnuts. As Selby got out of his car Normie Bride came hurrying along the flagged walk from the house.

“Evening, Mr. Selby. I stopped by to drop off some chocolate rolls for Shana. She likes them for breakfast sometimes.”

“Did you talk to her, Normie?”

“No, sir, she’s resting, Mrs. Cranston told me.”

Norman Bride was seventeen, almost as tall as Selby but thin as a fence post. His long, gangling arms and big hands, along with good reflexes, had earned him a starting slot on Muhlenburg’s varsity basketball team. Nights and weekends he made deliveries for the Dandy Doughnut Shop in Muhlenburg. His unformed boyish face became solemn as he said, “I wish you’d tell Shana, sir, that I don’t mean to bother her by coming around. But I know she likes those chocolate rolls.”

“I’m sure she understands.”

“If I ever meet that guy who hurt her, he’ll be sorry. I can sure tell you that, Mr. Selby.”

“I understand how you feel. But finding who did it and punishing him is a job for the police and the courts. Remember that, Normie.”

“Yes, sir. But it would be a temptation, if I ever saw him.”

Something occurred to Selby then and he asked Normie if there had been anything in the sports section of last night’s paper that might have been of particular interest to Shana.

“Well, she’s not really into sports, sir. Basketball scores at school, maybe. But I usually tell her about them. I used to, anyway. Let’s see. There was a story about field trials for gun dogs, and some pictures of old classic cars they’re showing out at Longwood.” He added, “I could call and ask her, Mr. Selby.”

“No, don’t mention it to her, Norm. I was just curious.”

Selby wondered later at his injunctions to Norman Bride about the perils of private justice and the necessity for leaving retribution to the community’s cops and judges. And other truisms and bullshit.

It was bullshit, or an excessive “tolerance,” attitudes that had been as natural to Sarah as breathing. She would even be worrying about the man who had tortured and violated her fourteen-year-old daughter... Just like her daughter...

Selby was working off his frustrations by splitting up the sectioned tree trunks that Gideen had brought down from the meadow. A light at the corner of the garage gave him a pale illumination to work by. Yes, Sarah would have said, “Think how dreadful his sickness must be for him . Because it is a sickness — you can’t send lynch mobs after him for that .”

He tapped wedges into place with the butt of an axe, battered them into the tree trunks with a twelve-pound sledgehammer, slugging their steel flanges until sparks flew in a stream and the apple wood cracked and sheared off into slick white staves that sharpened the cold air with the smell of wild fruit. Turn the other cheek, that beautiful, all-embracing absolution for everyone... even himself. Like hell... Turn the other cheek and feel noble all the way to the goddamn ovens...

Of Angela he remembered only the argument with Sarah about something or other on a bad connection from Pennsylvania to California, and then the Mark Hopkins Top-of-the-Mark bar and the girl with a gin drink in front of her. Of Big Sur and Angela he recalled most clearly that a stopper had worked itself out of a bottle of perfume in her luggage and that all her clothes, even her hairbrushes, smelled of violets. Why in Christ’s name had he needed to be forgiven for any of that?