Boy Who Shoots Crows (9781101552797) Read online

  Cindy: Those can be a good investment. The kids love them. You don’t have any kids, Mrs. Dunleavy?

  Charlotte (wincing slightly): No, I don’t.

  Cindy: I’ve got some other ones for girls too. Ballerinas, I think. (And she starts digging around in her filing cabinet drawers.)

  Charlotte: Maybe around Christmas, okay? Don’t bother for now.

  Cindy: I’ll remind you, come about Thanksgiving.

  Charlotte smiles, then turns to the Bouffant Lady: So what does Donnie think, I mean about where—

  Just then, the bell above the door tinkles and in walks an older gentleman, sixtyish, tall and thin with a full head of silver, slicked-back hair. He’s wearing neatly pressed chinos, a pale green knit shirt, and a light jacket. He smiles at Charlotte when he first enters.

  Gentleman: Afternoon, all.

  Cindy: Jack. How’s the flower business these days?

  Gentleman: Bright and blooming. (To Bouffant Lady) But never as lovely as you, Maggie.

  Bouffant Lady (pats his arm on her way to the door): Sweet as sugar, same as always.

  Gentleman proceeds to the meat counter and orders two skinless chicken breasts. Cindy looks at him, looks at Charlotte, gives her a wink, and jerks a nod toward the gentleman. Charlotte scowls and shakes her head no, though the truth is she noticed him at the search that morning. Even in her ruined state, she couldn’t help but admire his poise, his aplomb, the dignified carriage she used to consider her own but lately found impossible to muster.

  Now she has a pained look on her face as she considers how tasteless her role in this play is, how tasteless this play and all of its players are.

  Gentleman (to Charlotte): Damn shame about that boy. I was really hoping we would find something.

  Charlotte: It breaks my heart.

  He nods, then faces the display case again, stares at the meat. Now Cindy reaches over the counter, gives Charlotte’s sleeve a tug, and jerks her head at the gentleman again, all with a hot adamant gleam in her eye.

  Charlotte: So are there . . . any theories circulating? Any credible scenarios being proposed?

  Gentleman: Credible? I really don’t know. It’s difficult to ascribe credibility in the total absence of anything concrete, don’t you think?

  Charlotte nods. He gives her a brief, warm smile, pays for his chicken breasts, then heads for the door.

  Gentleman: Have a good day, all.

  Cindy (who can hardly wait until the door eases shut behind him): So? What do you think?

  Charlotte: What do I think?

  Cindy: He’s a retired professor. Runs a flower shop now, specializes in orchids. Just your type, if you ask me.

  Charlotte: I only came here for the stamps, thank you.

  Cindy (to Rex): You plan on making a move, big boy, you better quit your dillydallying! (To Charlotte) He’s shy but he’s as honest as the day is long. Course, it all depends on whether you prefer the brawny type or the brainy type.

  Rex (with a scowl aimed straight at Cindy): I think I’ll go cut up a pig.

  Cindy (as soon as Rex disappears into the back room): On the other hand, why even have to choose? Keep one for the pillow talk, and one to do the heavy lifting. (And here she gives Charlotte a knowing look.)

  Charlotte, feeling suddenly lost, disoriented, pats her pockets: Did you give me my stamps?

  Cindy: In your right side pocket. And I’ll tell you something else about him, too, if you want to know it.

  Charlotte: Thanks, but I need to—

  Cindy: Just don’t ask me who told me this because I promised I’d never tell (and here she cuts a glance toward the back room). But from what I hear, he’s built like a bull in more ways than one.

  Charlotte is unaware of what she says in response or if she says anything at all. She removes the stamps from her pocket and looks at them, some foreign curiosity, as she crosses to the door, as she enters into the sunlight, too bright, and retreats to her vehicle, the safety of metal, closed glass, and locked doors.

  16

  THE moment the green Jeep swung into the driveway, Dylan looked up from the porch steps, sat straighter, his eyes glistening with torment, mouth squinched tight with fear.

  At first Charlotte failed to recognize him. The sunlight coming in through the windshield was too bright; it stung her eyes. Only then did she remember the sunglasses she kept in the compartment to her right, and she reached for them as the Jeep rolled forward over the gravel driveway. Then the recognition came to her, Dylan Hayes, and the world went tight and dark around its edges again, her chest tightened, and her hand fell away from the sunglasses, went back to the steering wheel, guided the Jeep up close to the garage and brought it to a halt.

  She tried to sound normal as she approached the porch, but her voice was pinched, throat raw. “Isn’t this a school day?”

  “I can’t stand it there anymore,” he said. “The way everybody looks at me.”

  She paused in front of him, had no words, no idea of what to do or say.

  “I’m not blaming you,” he said, and at this her heart lurched, because his words confirmed what she had been trying to push away. “But I wasn’t in those woods for no forty minutes. It was no more’n five.”

  She stood there breathing so fast and hard through her nose that she could hear the inhalations, could feel them matched by a racing heart.

  “Sheriff didn’t mention you by name, but I know it had to’ve been you, told him that. Who else would’ve seen me?”

  “I didn’t . . .” she started, but faltered, stumbled against the truth.

  “All I did was to go in there to take a crap. That’s all I did! I was back on the tractor again in five minutes at most.”

  “I never said you were in there for forty minutes, Dylan. I said I heard the tractor starting up again maybe forty minutes later.”

  “Well I don’t know how that could be because I left it running the whole time. I never shut it down until it was back in Mike’s barn.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know what . . . whether I misspoke or the sheriff misheard, I don’t know what to tell you. I was doing chores here in the house, I . . .” The way he looked at that moment, the way he looked up at her, she felt small, tiny, a smudge, a smear of spilled paint.

  His eyes showed his panic, but he sat as still as a stone in his big, muddy boots, big, raw hands squeezed together between his skinny legs. Only his eyes gave him away, those dilated pupils huge and dark, as shiny as black water.

  “I never accused you of anything,” she told him, “I swear. I never suggested to anybody that you had done anything wrong.”

  “That might be so but the thing of it is . . . he thinks I’m lying about it. Just before you got here, he made me show him where I’d been. Where I was when I took a dump, you know? But I couldn’t find it. I mean, I know where it was, I know exactly where I was because of this low branch I was holding on to when I squatted. Except now there’s nothing out there. Nothing but leaves. I mean, how could that be?”

  “Maybe an animal or something . . . Maybe the rain.”

  “I never even seen that kid!”

  A part of her wanted to go to Dylan now, to take his hand, sit beside him, collapse against him.

  “I could go to prison for this,” he said.

  “No, no, that will never happen, I’m sure it won’t. They have to have evidence to even charge you. There has to be solid evidence of some kind, and there isn’t. There isn’t anything, right?”

  He shook his head as if nothing she said mattered. “Most of the kids at school won’t even look at me. The ones that do just stare like I’m some kind of pervert or something.”

  “It has to be terrible for you, I know, but . . . I mean, there’s no evidence of any kind. There’s no reason for you to be so worked up over this. Nothing is going to happen to you, I promise.”

  He regarded her with glistening eyes. “You know what Reenie asked me this morning? When I stopped to pick her up for school?�
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  She waited, said nothing, couldn’t even shake her head in answer.

  “She wanted to know if I liked doing it to little boys.”

  “God, Dylan. Jesus, I . . .”

  “I always walk up to her door to meet her, you know? I mean, she’s always lugging a bunch of stuff to school with her. Books, gym clothes, her clarinet . . . you know? So I’m standing there at the door when it opens, but she just steps out and gets right up in my face and you know what she says? ‘Just tell me one thing,’ she says. ‘You like doing it to little boys?’ ”

  He was crying in earnest now, the tears streaming down his cheeks. “And I fucking slapped her for it! I mean, I wasn’t even thinking, I just hauled off and did it. I didn’t mean to, I swear I never done nothing like it before, I just—”

  Charlotte’s own cheeks burned as if slapped, needed to be slapped, deserved his pain. She moved closer to him now, put a hand on his shoulder, though she was uncertain if it was to comfort him or steady herself from falling. Then she sat on the edge of the porch beside him, sat huddled as he was huddled, bent forward, brittle, hands clamped between his knees.

  “It will be all right, I promise. Nothing is going to happen to you, you didn’t do anything. I know you didn’t.”

  He trembled and wept. “I can’t even tell you what she said to me after I slapped her. I can’t even repeat it.”

  “It will be okay,” she told him. “I promise it will.”

  “I wasn’t in those woods for no forty minutes. You’ve got to tell the sheriff you were wrong about that.”

  “I will, I’ll tell him.”

  “You promise you will?”

  “I’ll call him. I’ll tell him I wasn’t even paying attention, I wasn’t watching, it was just a guess, that’s all. Just a bad guess is all it was.”

  “I swear to you that all I did was to take a quick dump and then climb right back onto the tractor.”

  “I believe you,” she said. “I believe you with all my heart.”

  Even after he left, she could not move. After he stood and walked away, disappeared around the corner of her house. After he passed through her backyard, into the long fields at the rear of the house. After he had probably reached Mike Verner’s farm, was probably talking to Mike, probably still proclaiming his innocence. Even then Charlotte remained on the edge of her porch, hands clamped between her knees, knees squeezing hard, eyes squeezed shut, not wanting to see this world again, this place, this idyllic life so suddenly gone so irremediably wrong.

  17

  IN her studio, the dimmest room on the first floor, the room whose scents and memories comforted her, she opened her cell phone. It took the sheriff a while to answer the call; in fact, the recorded greeting had already started on his machine before he picked up. The sound of his actual voice, as soft and nonthreatening as it was, came like a swat to knock away the relief she had felt just seconds earlier when the recording started.

  “Marcus, hi. This is Charlotte Dunleavy. I apologize for interrupting your afternoon.”

  “Is it still afternoon?” he said. “Feels like it should be at least midnight by now.”

  “I know,” she said. “Such a long, unhappy day.” She had recognized the weariness in his voice because it echoed her own, and she would have liked to have ended the conversation there, that shared moment, shared recognition in the gravity of the air they breathed, though miles apart. It was the closest thing to intimacy she had experienced in a long time, and now that she felt it, she felt, too, how sorely she had missed it.

  But her promise to Dylan Hayes, her obligation to the boy, was impossible to avoid. She said, “I had a talk with Dylan a few minutes ago.”

  “Where are you?” Gatesman asked. His voice was more animated now, almost brusque. “At your place?”

  “Yes. He came here.”

  “Tell me what he said, Charlotte.”

  “He didn’t threaten me or anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. He was distraught, Marcus. The boy is terrified.”

  “And maybe rightfully so.”

  “Not if you’re basing your suspicions on what I told you yesterday.”

  “Oh?” he said.

  “You realize I was just guessing, don’t you? About how long he stayed in the woods?”

  “You were estimating, is what I thought. That’s different than a guess, isn’t it?”

  “I know I told you forty minutes, but . . .”

  “But now you think you were wrong?”

  “Now I think I might have inadvertently misled you. That I might have implied something I didn’t mean.”

  “Well,” he said, “how about if you tell me what you did mean?”

  “I saw him get off the tractor and go into the woods, yes. But afterward . . . It’s not like I stood there at the window watching his every move. I started vacuuming . . . no, I was lying on my bed. Yes, I was thinking about my work, my painting . . . My mind was elsewhere for I don’t know how long. The truth is, I forgot about Dylan entirely.”

  “Until you heard the tractor start up again.”

  “Until I became aware of the sound of the tractor again.”

  “Not start up?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. What I mean is . . . you know how sometimes at night or whatever, you’re sitting there alone in your house, and suddenly you become aware of some sound? Maybe it’s the refrigerator running, maybe it’s a bird outside, it could be anything. When I lived in the city—I mean, God, there were sirens going off all the time. Horns blaring down on the street, traffic noise, phones ringing in other apartments. You just learn to tune it out, you know? I mean, it doesn’t stop, it never stops, but you tune it out. Then every once in a while it just sort of registers again. And suddenly you’re hearing it.”

  “As if it just then started up again.”

  “Exactly!”

  “So what you’re saying is . . . maybe the tractor had been running a lot longer than you’re aware of.”

  “I’m sorry, Marcus. I never meant to imply . . . or to implicate or . . .”

  “I understand,” he said.

  In his silence then she heard his desk chair creak. She pictured him leaning back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling.

  “And why was it Dylan came to see you?” he asked.

  “He knew it had to have been me who told you he was in the woods for forty minutes. Who else could have seen him get off the tractor and take something from behind the seat?”

  “Do you think now you know what that thing was?”

  “It was a roll of toilet paper, Marcus.”

  “You didn’t know that when I first asked, though.”

  “He told me, and then suddenly it was like, aha, yes, of course, of course that’s what it was. I mean, I see it happening now, I see him climbing down off the tractor, reaching behind the seat . . . I can even see it in his hand. It’s as clear as day to me now.”

  “That’s how the memory works sometimes. He says it was a roll of toilet paper, and now that’s what you see whenever you think back on it.”

  “Marcus, really, honestly, I mean, let’s think about this. Could that boy have gone into the woods, found Jesse, done something to him, hidden the body where nobody can find a trace of it, and then climbed back on the tractor and spent another two hours or so spreading lime like nothing had ever happened?”

  “If he was in there for forty minutes, maybe he could have.”

  “Marcus, please. You’re a sensible man.”

  His chair creaked again. She imagined him swiveling around to face the window, gazing out onto the street.

  She told him, “You know as well as I do that Dylan didn’t hurt that child.”

  “I never said he did. But something happened to Jesse. It’s my job to find out what.”

  “I understand. I just wanted to let you know that I . . . I really have no idea whether Dylan was in the woods for forty minutes or four minutes. I’m sorry if I implied that I did.”
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  She could hear another phone ringing in his office, and she wondered what it must be like for him. One human tragedy after another. A good day would be a day when the phone didn’t ring. Did Marcus ever have a good day?

  “Can I put you on hold for just thirty seconds?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Is this how God feels? she wondered as she waited. Was there ever a day, an hour, when He wasn’t bombarded with prayers and pleas? Carnage everywhere He looks. Flesh and spirit coming apart at the seams.

  “Oh God,” she said aloud, and thought about hanging up the phone, clicking it shut, clicking everything shut.

  “You still there?” the sheriff asked.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “Sorry about that. But anyway. I just wanted to say that I appreciate you calling. And to make sure that, you know, he didn’t put any pressure on you or anything like that.”

  “Dylan? My God, no, nothing. He never so much as implied it. He’s frightened to death, Marcus. He’s just a child really. Just a frightened little boy.”

  Gatesman was silent for a moment, then asked, his voice softer now, “Are you crying, Charlotte?”

  “I just . . . I feel so bad for everybody. For everybody involved.”

  “It’s hard, I know. This kind of thing . . .” He would have said more, wanted to, but then told himself, Now isn’t the time.

  Finally he said, “Okay then. Thanks again. You take care of yourself, okay?”

  “You too,” she said. And the closeness she felt for him at that moment, the impossible closeness, it took her breath away, hollowed her out and made her body ache with emptiness. She waited, hoping for more, Do you want me to come over? Could you use some company tonight? But there was only silence, two people silently waiting. And finally she folded up her phone.

  18

  THREE years, she told herself. Four years this July. Four years so alone.

  If only Mother were here, she thought. Mother always knew what to do. Somehow she always knew.