John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

Clumly said, “What did you do then?”

“Then?” She seemed to study him crossly, though he couldn’t be certain. The veil obscured her expression.

“After you closed his eyes.”

“I’ve no idea,” she said. “I think you’ve missed my point.”

“No no,” Clumly said, “it’s very interesting, yes. But what did you do then?”

She made no effort. “I’ve no idea,” she said.

“Ah well, not surprising,” Clumly said. He considered the caning of the chairback behind her shoulder, the bloodless fingers of her son, the curling hairs on the backs of the fingers, the wide gold wedding band. “At times like these …” he began. He let it trail off.

Elizabeth Paxton leaned forward in her wheelchair. “Why are you questioning me?”

It caught him off guard, and he could think of no answer. He merely stared more intently than before at the eldest son’s fingers. It came to him that her eyes were not the only ones boring into him, there was someone else, staring at him from behind. He turned slowly, holding his cap in his two hands, and saw Will Hodge.

“Afternoon, Will,” he said.

“Hah!” Hodge said, and reached out to shake his hand.

“Why were you questioning her?” Kozlowski said, as they went toward the car.

“Later,” Clumly said.

Ben and Vanessa were beside the police car waiting for them, Vanessa with her pink nylon glove around Ben Hodge’s arm. “Yoo-hoo!” she was calling, and both of them were waving, getting him to hurry.

“They’re calling for you on the radio,” Ben said, when they were closer.

Kozlowski leaned into a trot and went around to the driver’s side and answered.

“Any developments?” Ben said. He stood with his weight on his heels, leaning back a little, giving the impression that he did not mean to butt in. But it did not occur to them to move away out of earshot of the radio.

“I don’t know,” Clumly said.

Kozlowski handed him the mike. There was news now. The pawnshop check had turned up nothing, as Clumly had expected. The Boyle trial would not be wound up until tomorrow, but it was not too early to predict that the whole thing was hopeless. The D.A. had been by. And one thing more. A car had been reported missing.

“Go ahead,” Clumly said. He glanced at Ben Hodge.

“It was taken from a garage two houses away from the jail,” Wilbur Haynes said dryly over the radio.

“Find it,” Clumly said.

“We did,” Haynes said. “It was right back where they took it from. In the man’s garage.”

Clumly chewed it awhile. “Ok,” he said. “How far’s it been?”

“Man’s not sure exactly. Forty miles, he thinks.”

“Blood?”

“Not a sign.”

“Christ. Ok, don’t let anybody touch it. Is Miller handy?”

“He went out. He got a phonecall.”

“You know who it was?”

“Not sure. It sounded like the Mayor.”

“Mmm,” Clumly said. The order he’d meant to give slipped his mind for a moment. “He head for City Hall, you happen to notice?”

“I didn’t watch, Chief. Sorry. I can phone and see.”

“Forget it. I’ll talk to him later.” At last he remembered. “Get vitas on the Paxton boys. Clive Paxton’s sons. Everything down to the color of their underwear. Find out where they were when he died.”

“Something up?”

“Hell no, I’m just curious about ’em. Gonna sell them a bridge.”

“Yessir.”

“That’s all. Ten-four.”

“Ten-four.”

“Correct. So long.”

He handed the mike to Kozlowski, though he himself was nearer to the hook. He turned to Ben Hodge. “Some business,” he said.

Hodge nodded sympathetically. “Well, you were right, your hunch about him.”

“Correct. Lot of good it did.”

Vanessa shook her head sadly. “Esther says it’s got you half sick. I can see it’s so.”

“I still manage,” Clumly said. He hunted for a cigar. He was out. “At least he was able to steal a car without murdering somebody. I had a feeling we were going to find some farmer …”

“Thank goodness for that,” Vanessa said.

Clumly nodded. “Well, so long, Ben, Vanessa.”

They nodded and wished him luck. Kozlowski started up. The sunlight had yellowed now, as it always did late on a summer afternoon. It made the trees seem taller, their colors richer, and gave a new sharpness to the lines of the Richmond mausoleum and the iron urns beside its gate. It was as though all the world were alive with spirit: in the woods beyond the graveyard there might have been satyrs and dancing nymphs, or at least parked cars.

“Where to?” Kozlowski said.

“Just drive,” Clumly said.

“You serious?”

Clumly turned to squint at him, scowling. “Does it seem to you I’m a playful man, Kozlowski?”

“You’re serious,” he said.

They drove.

At last Kozlowski said, “You got a theory, haven’t you.”

“No,” he said. “Stop at Deans’, I need a cigar.”

Kozlowski nodded and, when they came to the drugstore, pulled over.

Then afterward, smoking, sitting on the middle of his back in the seat, Chief Clumly said, “I got hundreds of theories, Kozlowski. I believe them all. Some of them I believe in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some of them I believe when it’s late at night. You follow me?”

He opened his hands on the steering wheel, a kind of shrug.

“It ever occur to you that a cop’s just like a philosopher, Kozlowski?” He leaned forward a little to look at him.

“No,” Kozlowski said.

Chief Clumly sighed. “It’s occurred to me sometimes,” he said, petulant. “A cop’s just like a philosopher, and a robber’s just like—” Imagination failed him.

They drove in silence. Then Kozlowski said, “Like a magician.”

Clumly shot a glance at him to see if he was mocking. “You serious?” he said. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“Only in the late afternoon,” Kozlowski said.

Clumly frowned and thought about it. “You’re a good man to work with, Kozlowski. You make a man think.”

Kozlowski sighed.

Cops and Robbers, or Philosophers and Magicians. That was good. A title for a speech.

“You’re kidding,” Chief Clumly said suddenly. “That’s pure nonsense, no meaning at all.” He squinted at him, watching for a sign. The young man’s face was a mask.

6

Miller stood in the high, dry grass of the bank watching. The car looked as if it had grown there. It was up to its doorhandles in silt, and it was seaweed green all over, even the windshield and windows. Willowtrees hung motionless and unreal behind and above it, their tops reddened by the setting sun. Beyond the willows stood the crumbling stone walls of what had been, long ago, a flourmill feedstore and carriage shop. Beyond that you could see a little of the black brick of the box factory. Borsian, of the State Police, stood with his foot up on a rock, his right arm leaning on his knee. “How long the fucking thing been here, you think?”

Miller shook his head.

Borsian said, “Current must’ve brought it down, that’s all I can figure.”

Miller nodded. If the current had brought it, it had done it a long time ago. Fifteen, twenty years. There were tin cans, tires, a snarl of old barb wire on the creekbed around it; mostly they weren’t as green. The creek was down to nothing — a trickle along one side, here and there a muddy, isolated pool. Inside the car there were two skeletons with bullet-holes in their heads. All the windows of the car were closed and there were no holes in them except the one in back that the three boys who had found the skeletons had made.

7