Max Collins - Midnight Haul

“No big coincidence. We only have three full-time people on the force, Chief included. Plus a few part-timers.”

“Must have your hands full.”

“Not really,” Turner said, sipping his coffee, smiling again. “We don’t have a highway running through town, you know, so we don’t use a radar car. What’s the point of a speed trap, if you’re off the beaten path? We do have schools to look after, morning, noon, afternoon. Run regular patrols at night, checking buildings and such. And accidents happen, now and then; we cover some of them out on the highway, if we’re closer to it than the state patrol. Otherwise it’s real quiet around here.”

“So a suicide must be pretty unusual.”

“Not really. We’ve had our crimes here. Bank was robbed, a year ago. We’ve had our murders. A few months ago a guy shot his wife and two kids and himself.” Turner gazed into his coffee, distractedly. “ ‘They’ killed his wife.”

“Pardon?”

“Nothing. Something the guy said before he blew his brains out.”

“He said, what? That somebody else killed his wife?”

“ He killed her, and his kids, too. Poor sad sorry son of a bitch. There was only one gun in the house and that’s the one he used. ‘They’ were going to kill him , too. Typical paranoid nut.”

“I see.”

“That kind of thing doesn’t happen everyday, Crane. I won’t lie to you. This is a pretty soft job.”

“Tell me about Mary Beth.”

“I really didn’t know her. Just to speak to.”

“No. That morning. Tell me about that morning.”

“Oh. Her mother called the station. That’s over in the basement of City Hall. The Chief got the call. He called a local doctor, and the County Examiner. Informed the state patrol. Then we went over there. She’d cut her wrists, that you know. It was a little messy. The mother and sister were upset, so I asked them their minister’s name and they told me and I called him and he came over. The County Examiner was there within forty-five minutes. He pronounced her dead, of self-inflicted wounds, wrote it up in his book, and turned the body over to the family. I called the funeral home for ’em. They were upset, like I said.”

“Right. So then there was no investigation?”

“Of what?”

“Her death!”

“I just told you. It was clear-cut. There’s no doubt with a thing like that.”

“I suppose you see suicides every day.”

“Not every day,” he said, smiling, without humor. “I been working here a year and a half and there’s been four, five, including the guy I told you about. People get depressed. Life’s a bitch, ain’t you heard?”

“I heard. Look, I don’t mean to be insulting, Officer Turner. Ray. But if you Greenwood cops act mostly as crossing guards and ride around checking buildings after dark, how can you be sure you’re up to investigating what could be murder?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Mary Beth’s death. How do you know it wasn’t just supposed to look like a suicide?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just... nobody really looked into it. It could’ve been something else, other than the way it looked. Can you deny that?”

“It was suicide.”

“Why didn’t the state patrol investigate it? What qualifies a glorified security guard to...”

“Hold it. Right there. First, we did call the state patrol, I told you that. We’re supposed to do that, it’s the procedure. If we think they should come in on it, or if they think they should come in on it, they come in on it. But any cop worth a damn knows a clear-cut open-shut suicide when he sees it. Second, this wasn’t my first job, pal. I worked in Newark for two years and got my fill of real police work. I didn’t like it. So I came back to my hometown here and took this candy-ass job. But I been there. I seen murders. I seen suicides. This wasn’t murder. It was suicide. I know what I’m talking about, here. I know what I’m doing.”

“I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t.”

“Sure you did. Glorified security guard my ass. You think we didn’t talk to the family, the mother, the sister, to see if she had been depressed lately or not? They said she had. Why didn’t you know that? You’re the boyfriend. Didn’t she write you or anything?”

“Nothing she wrote me or said on the phone indicated her state of mind was so...” He swallowed. “Look. Both Mary Beth’s sister and mother were asleep when she died, which was in the middle of the night. Who’s to say somebody didn’t sneak in, maybe... what, chloroform Mary Beth and cut her wrists for her and... it sounds far-fetched, but couldn’t it have been that way? Shouldn’t you have checked to see if it happened like that?”

Turner looked at him for what seemed like a long time. “I know how you feel. What you’re going through. You’re looking for reasons, answers, and there aren’t any. Life gets to people, sometimes. And sometimes they do something about it.”

“I guess.”

“Your girl killed herself. It begins and ends there. Let it go. Go home. Bury it.”

Crane nodded, got up from the booth.

Walking out, he didn’t feel much like Andy Hardy, anymore. Behind him he heard Turner call out to the “girl” for more coffee.

He walked back to the motel, stopping for a few seconds to look at Boone’s house. Some of the trees in her yard looked dead.

He packed.

He had one thing to do, before he left. Then he’d leave it behind him, like the cop had said. Leave it buried.

There were no cars in front of Mary Beth’s mother’s house, now, just a several-year-old Buick in the drive. The relatives, the mourners, had faded back into their own lives. Mary Beth’s mother, her sister Laurie and little Brucie would be alone, now.

Laurie was coming out the front door as he was coming up the walk; she was digging her car keys out of a jacket pocket, and smiled when she saw Crane.

“Crane. How are you today?”

“I don’t know. Okay, I guess. You?”

“Better. Not feeling so blue. You don’t have to worry about me, if you were.”

“Well it did seem like the strain had got to you a bit. But you’ll do fine, Laurie. You and your kid’ll do fine.”

“I’m just going to get some groceries. There’s plenty of cake and cookies and garbage left from yesterday, but no food. You can ride along, if you want to talk.”

“Actually, I kind of wanted to chat with your mom. I haven’t really had a chance to, yet. How is she?”

“Not bad. Existing. She hasn’t said much, but it’s her nature to be on the quiet side. Doctor has given her some mild sedatives, too.”

“Would it be all right if I went in and talked with her?”

“I’m sure the company would do her good. She and Brucie are in the living room. Just go on in.”

“Thanks, Laurie.”

“I’ll see you later, then.”

“Well. Maybe not.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I’ll be leaving this afternoon. That’s why I wanted to make this call on your mom, actually.”

She gave him a long look and smiled as she did; it was a very good-natured, and very sad, smile. Her plumpness and wide face did not diminish the strong resemblance to Mary Beth. It made him want to be around her and at the same time not.

She kissed his cheek.

“Good-bye, Crane,” she said, and turned and walked to the Buick.

Laurie had said to go on in, but he knocked anyway, and a soft, childlike voice from within said, “Come in, please.”

He went in.

Mary Beth’s mother was sitting on the couch, just as she had the day before, after the funeral, when she’d sat framed by relatives. It was as though she hadn’t moved since. Brucie was nearby, where she could watch, her hand on the edge of his playpen, barely moving, a photorealistic sculpture.