Эд Макбейн - Love, Dad

“Well, in case he... you see, sir, in something like this...”

“They dropped her off here at the house,” Larry said wearily. “At two in the morning. I heard the car in the driveway, I heard Scarlett calling good night to them, I heard the car leaving, I heard her coming in the house.”

“Then the Klein kids couldn’t have had anything to...”

“No, nothing at all.”

“I’m sorry, sir. We have to...”

“I understand.”

“After your daughter got home, did you hear her go out again?”

“No.”

“Did you see her or talk to her?”

“She put on the radio in the living room...”

“This was at two in the morning?”

“Yes. A rock-and-roll station. I called down for her to cut it down a bit. She said, ‘Okay, Dad,’ and lowered the volume and... and... we... we didn’t say anything else after that.”

“Didn’t hear her leave the house or anything?”

“No.”

“Did you know she was gone? I mean, this morning when you got up, did you...?”

“Not until the police came here. The Rutledge police. To... to ask if I’d come down to the... the old logging road near the reservoir... and... and... identify the body.”

“I’m sorry about all this, sir.”

“Yes.”

“Real sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“We’ll leave you now, sir. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry.”

The state troopers filed out of the room. Lester Blair closed the front door behind them, and then asked Jamie if he wanted a drink or anything. As discoverer of the body, he had obviously taken a proprietary interest. Jamie looked at his watch. It was still only ten-thirty in the morning; the call from Larry seemed to have come hours ago. He declined the drink, and Lester went out to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry I had to interrupt your weekend this way,” Larry said.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jamie said, and found himself putting his arm awkwardly around Larry’s shoulders.

“You were the only one I could think of,” Larry said. “Because of the way Scarlett felt about you. How close you were.”

Jamie looked at him, not understanding.

“Your joking with her all the time, she got such a boot out of that, Jamie. Your asking her if she was just home from Atlanta, she always repeated that to me. And if we were having a party or anything, she always asked me was Mr. Croft coming. Made me envious sometimes, the way she admired you. Do you remember the story you had in one of those magazines last year, I forget which magazine it was, Jamie, you’ll have to forgive me, but it was about these runaway kids in the Village, do you remember it?”

“Yes, I remember it,” Jamie said.

“Read that story cover to cover, pointed out each and every picture to me. She was art editor of the school’s magazine you know, and later president of the Photography Club, which was when she became so deeply interested in your work. But it was as a man and a father she admired you most, and that was because Lissie was such a fine person and Scarlett loved her to death. Wanted to be just like Lissie in everything she did. Tried to dress like Lissie, combed her hair like Lissie’s, would’ve changed places with Lissie in a minute if a way could’ve been devised. I guess that’s why I called you first, Jamie. I guess I figured that as a father you... you might understand what I was feeling, what I’m feeling now for... for my little girl.”

“Yes, Larry, I do.”

“These times... I don’t know about these times. The kids... I think she was taking some kind of pills, Jamie, I’m pretty sure she was, she seemed so... I don’t know... out of it all the time. I kept wishing she’d go back to school again... she was at Risdee, you know, up in Providence for a while, studying photography there, she was always interested in photography, I guess I told you that, you’ve got to forgive me, I’m sort of, this happening today, all of it so... so sudden, you know. The cops appearing on my doorstep, Jimmy who works in the post office during the week, all dressed up like a proper cop on Sunday and ringing the doorbell to tell me there’s somebody in the woods over near the reservoir, little bag on her belt has my daughter’s driver’s license in it, would I come have a look to identify her? Identify her? I said. Because, Jamie, you don’t have to identify somebody unless she’s dead; if she’s alive she can identify herself, am I right? So if some girl was there in the woods with my daughter’s driver’s license in her bag, and they’re asking me to identify her, then this has got to be her and she’s got to be dead. Melanie was still asleep, I didn’t wake her up. As I was leaving the house, she called to me, asked me what it was. I told her it was nothing, I’d be back in a minute, go back to sleep, honey, I’ll pick up the Times in town.

“She was lying on her side in the leaves, Jamie. The leaves were all covered with blood. That was the first thing I saw, the blood. And the first thing I thought was somebody did this to her, somebody killed my daughter, all that blood shining on the leaves, the sunlight coming in over the reservoir and setting all those leaves on fire with her blood. And then I saw the shotgun on the ground beside her, and I recognized the gun, it’s the gun I keep in the garage, right outside there, right on the wall in the garage, keep the cartridges in a box on a shelf beside it, that was my shotgun, the initials L.H.K. on it — Lawrence Harold Kreuger — burned into the stock, my gun, and my daughter lying dead beside it with chunks of her skull and her hair and her... oh, Jesus, Jamie, oh, God, oh, Jesus, oh, God...”

Jamie held him close, his arm tight around his shoulders. He did not truly know this man, he still could not believe this man had come to him for comfort, nor could he understand why he was offering it so freely. Had that tired routine with Scarlett really registered over the years, “Oh, lookee heah, it’s Missy Scah-lutt home fum Atlanta!” and the blank, unblinking stare on Scarlett’s face each and every time, her green eyes wide, and on that freckled face the certain knowledge that poor Lissie Croft’s father was certifiably nuts. And yet... she’d admired him. As a man and as a father. Admired him most as a man and a father. Those had been Larry’s words. Jamie felt tears beginning to brim in his eyes, and he blinked them back guiltily; he was not on the edge of crying for Larry’s daughter who’d blown off the back of her head with a shotgun, but instead for his own silent daughter in India, who seemed not to admire him at all as a man and as a father.

“I told them yes,” Larry said, “that’s my daughter, that’s my Scarlett. But, you know, Jamie, I’m not so sure that was Scarlett lying there in the forest. Oh, yes, that was Scarlett’s pink party dress that girl was wearing, and her face was Scarlett’s sure enough, the face hadn’t been harmed, you see, she’d put the gun in her mouth and what it did was take off the back of her head, but the face was still Scarlett’s, the green eyes open and looking up at the sun, wide open, way she used to stare at me when she was a little girl asking me all sorts of questions. People said she wasn’t too bright, Jamie, I heard people saying that about her, but she was the most inquisitive little girl I ever knew. There... there were... she was lying there with her eyes open and her mouth open and there... there were flies buzzing in the... in the bl—”

And he began weeping.

He was a southern male, born and bred in the sovereign state of Georgia, and was not expected to break down in a time of crisis, but he turned his face into Jamie’s shoulder, and wept unashamedly, clinging to him like a son in his father’s arms. Jamie kept patting him, muttering sounds of reassurance, nonverbal, simply little umms and ahhs and uhhs, his hand constantly patting while Larry wept out his despair against his shoulder.