Clean Slate

Chapter 24

The early evening sun was burnishing orange and gold through the dense tall trees as Earl Bucaro went into the rough-board wood shed. Beneath the glassy forever-stares of animal heads on the rough plank walls, Corky sat on an old typing stool by a tilted drafting table that served as his desk. His sleeveless camo teeshirt was stretched to a breaking point by the bloat of his flesh. His bare white arms were chalky and saggy, their bat-wings reminding Earl of his late grandmother. Corky's head was shaved clean, his eyes blue globes in a face that was otherwise plain except for a glinting stud in his left lobe. Between wheezes, he asked in a surprisingly high pitched voice, "All set?"

"Yup." Opening his wallet, Earl began counting out hundreds onto the desk.

"Where'd you leave it?" Corky asked.

"Back there. East fence."

With hairless, surprisingly effeminate hands Corky scooped up the bills. "Went pretty smooth, huh?"

"Fat bastard could hardly get out of his own way. What'd you dope him with?"

"Trade secret," Corky said with a high short giggle. Slowly he began to count the bills, giving his thumb a savoring lick before each one. "Need any processing? Taxidermy?"

"No, Corky," Earl said, impatient to get going. "I do not require any taxidermy or processing."

"Hey man, no call to get pissy with me. I done all you asked. Dint even charge you for a license or stamp. DNR finds that out, my ass is in hock."

"My guess is, the DNR got better things to do," Earl said shortly, "than to go chasing around after a shit-hole like this. All square?"

"All square," Corky said, folding the bills and tucking them under his teeshirt, into some sweaty crevice about which Earl had no desire to speculate. "Glad your sister enjoyed it."

Earl headed for the door. "She's not my sister," he said, and walked out.

Ruth Wildern sat on a log bench under a thick-limbed boxelder tree. Prim, quiet, watchful as always, except there was a noticeable blush to her cheeks, extra light in her eyes. Amazing, Earl thought: it still hasn't worn off. She rose, holding the blued handgun in an oddly intimate way in the slender fingers of both hands. "Come on," she said, with low-key urgency. "Let's go."

"You unload it?"

She held up the clip, then worked the action once – click-snick – to show that the chamber was empty, and handed Earl the weapon. Now her eyes were really glowing. "Let's go," she said again, with the same urgency, and they started up the narrow wood-chip-strewn path toward the parking area. She wore jeans and high black boots, a white shirt and light denim jacket, plus the canvas slouch hat that Earl had insisted on. He didn't think anyone would recognize her, all the way out here, but they had to be as careful as possible, for the whole thing was just ungodly risky. Earl had had trouble finding a place close enough to St. Marys to make the timing do-able, yet far away to assure some sense of anonymity. If it weren't for the timing problem, he'd have set it up for much farther out – Clark County, or maybe even the Twenty Towns. Hell: in a perfect world, Earl would not have undertaken this insanity at all.

But now it was done. Ruth had had her bloody fun. Earl would never forget the look of intense breathless excitement on her face as she aimed her weapon, two-handed as he'd shown her, and started to shoot: pop-pop-pop – as the enormous black boar lumbered blearily away, managing a screech or two as the bullets hit. It had taken her one clip to knock him down, and another to finish him off, as she stood close, aimed down, fired with focused, jaw-clenched deliberation. Finally the beast shrieked, gasped, and wriggled its last. Ruth, breathing hard, turned to Earl, and said hoarsely: "Wow."

And she wasn't over it yet, Earl could tell; hyped up, she was walking quickly. Well, he was in a hurry, too. Evening was upon them. She had to get home before the Judge smelled a rat. More important, Earl had a date with Clarisa tonight. He was not about to let this nutty errand interfere with that.

Their ride, a battered navy Ford Econoline van, another unofficial loaner from the impound yard, sat alone in the clearing where the gravel two-track ended. Earl got in behind the wheel and fired up the engine. Ruth climbed in her side, but she did not sit. Instead, she squeezed between the seats and went crouching back into the dark cargo area. Earl looked over his shoulder at her. "What are you doing?"

What she was doing, he saw, was unbuckling her jeans. "Get back here, you."

---

Mac sat at his desk – an antique white-pine roll-top that had belonged to his grandfather – in the alcove off the ground floor bedroom of his farmhouse. Through the tall narrow rippled-glass window beside the desk, the evening sun glowed a lovely burnt orange, making the streaks of high white clouds glow orange also in the deepening evening sky. As he hacked with unsupple, seemingly too-large fingers at the computer keyboard, putting final polish on his batch of pre-sentencing reports, the low growl of R. L. Burnside, accompanied only by his National Steel guitar, wailed softly through the speakers to Mac's left and right. It was a CD of classic Delta blues, all the pain and sorrow of the human condition rolled into terse lyrics and crying guitar. It was a measure of Mac's day to day state of mind that songs of misery and grief actually made him feel better.

And, for him, he felt pretty good tonight. Thanks to Abigail's hard work – about eight e-mails with attachments had dropped into his computer when he booted up this evening – he was caught up on the reports. He'd spent the afternoon at the Court House, mostly swearing out affidavits, and the rest at a couple of late appointments with offenders that seemed actually to have a clue. He'd had dinner with Scoot at a Coney Island over by St. John's. Over chili-soaked foot-longs drowned in melted cheese, Mac told his friend about Eddie. "I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted. "What's even worse is, I'm not quite clear on why I'm doing it."

Scoot wiped his mouth, leaned back, sipped some coffee. "Check out Isaiah 6:8," he suggested.

"Gonna keep dragging me back there, huh?" Mac grumped.

"Gonna keep dragging you back there," Scoot agreed.

Mac left the dinner stuffed and revitalized, as only time with one of the Terrible Trio could make him. But he was no more sure about the Eddie Fant "thing," than he'd been before. He'd tracked down Metro Wheels all right, and they even admitted to having a driver named Leon. But Leon, they told him, was on vacation, due back tomorrow morning. Mac would have to touch base with him then.

Finishing the last report, Mac saved it, and then, one laborious step at a time, emailed all the documents to his DPP address. He felt a large sense of accomplishment as he did that. He was, with tiny tentative steps, learning his way around this cyber-world that had become so central to his work. And he was dazzled with the speed of the DSL. By golly, he thought, this whole computer / internet thing, there may be a future in it! Grinning, he was just shutting down his computer when his cell phone rang.

313 area code.

"Mac here," he answered.

"Jesus, man," came the male voice. "Jesus God."

Mac squinted. Familiar voice – "Perkins?"

"You could have told me," the detective said.

"About what?"

"About your son."

Mac felt a knot in his throat. Swiveling his chair to face away from the window, he crossed one leg over the other. "It's not, uh. . .it's not connected with --"

"Bull shit," Perkins cut in. "It happened in Detroit, at the Tuller Hotel. I remember it now. Fifty-two floors. Good God almighty."

"Yeah," Mac said shortly.

"Why did she bring him up here?" Perkins asked. "Was she out of her mind?"

"She wanted time away with him," Mac said dully. "Big city and all that. It was okay with me. I thought it would be – a nice – treat." Perkins said nothing. "I took him on trips, too, a time or two," Mac added. "Just him and me alone. So it was okay."

"Not if she actually came up here to sneak-around courtin' and sparkin' some fuckin' sleazebag up here!"

"Yeah, well," Mac said dully, "there is that angle."

"Because if so, that makes this alleged wife of yours about as cold as. . . ." Perkins trailed off.

"Find him yet?" Mac asked.

"Who? The guy? No. Nothing yet. I've been working the back-field. The hotel people, of course the big shots won't talk to me. I think they're still bracing to be sued."

"Good," Mac grunted. "Let 'em brace."

"But I've wormed my way in good with the Tuller small fry," Perkins went on. "And it's pretty clear she had no visitors, let alone guy-visitors. So if she was dating somebody --"

"She went out to see him," Mac finished.

"Yeah, probably during the day, during this conference thing. Which I'm just starting to dig into."

"Okay."

"So far I've confirmed she was officially registered. So if she was scamming, she carried the scam at least that far. Question is," Perkins went on, "did she actually attend the thing."

"Well," Mac said, "she did go out during the day, and she said it was the conference she was going to. She left Nicholas with a babysitter set up by the hotel. Talk to her at all?"

"Nope," Perkins said. "Not so far anyways. She's lawyered up too. Even though she wasn't there when – um, when, uh --"

"Nicholas fell out the window," Mac finished.

In the ensuing silence – well, it wasn't silent; there was cell phone hiss in Mac's ear – he forced his mental vision to another sight, this one the red rock formations and desert visions of the Island in the Sky in Utah. At times like this he had to do things like that, to keep his fertile brain from painting other pictures, such as Nicholas, ever curious and utterly fearless, playing with the latch of the 52nd floor window –

"I have a daughter," Perkins said then. "Going on two now. And when I think about her, and what happened to you --"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't be where I am. Even second-hand," Mac said. "Just hug your girl every chance you get."

"Yeah." Perkins cleared his throat. "Well. Like I said, I'm working on the conference now. See if we can account for her time."

"Okay. Keep me posted?"

"I will indeed."

"And thanks."

"For what?"

"For talking about Nicholas. For thinking about him. Most of the folks around me, they pretend like he never existed. So thanks."

"Whatever I can do," Perkins said. "Whatever."

Later, Mac fell into bed and began the nightly ritual of forcing himself to relax, unwind, empty his brain, in hopes of getting some real sleep before the night's selection of dreams started up. He felt close to his boy tonight, but it was a pleasant, comforting kind of close, like the time in France when Nicholas had appeared at the foot of his cot and said, "Don't worry, I'm all right." Tonight the issue he could not seem to put to rest was Eddie Fant. Thinking about the day's chase, from the scrap yard to the boat dealer to the Third Base Bar, Mac acutely ridiculous and futile. Why am I pursuing this thing? he wondered. Why can't I banish the notion that Eddie's death was murder? And even if it was murder, what business is it of mine? Really?

A long while later he had finally played those thoughts out, and was easing down into some semblance of sleep, when he remembered Scoot's suggestion. After trying, and failing, to whisk it away, he turned on the light and headed back down the creaking stairs. It took a while to track down his Bible. He had not seen it since coming back from Cambodia. Standing at the kitchen table in his underwear, he leafed through the pages to Isaiah 6:8:

Then I heard the Lord asking,
"Whom should I send?. . .Who will go for us?"
And I said, "Lord, I'll go! Send me."

---

Around the corner, on Thirteenth Street, Earl found an alley to tuck the van into. Clanking the door shut, he briskly walked back around to Central toward Clarisa's place. Though it wasn't late, traffic was light this Thursday evening. Earl did not particularly care whether or not he was seen. He could have been a process server, salesman, or even a fairly well dressed repair guy. But to most denizens of this street, Earl looked, he knew, like nothing but Law. And most, if they were smart, would avert their eyes, as if from the blinding sun, to avoid being noticed, stopped, questioned, remembered.

All was silence on Clarisa's stoop. Earl tapped the door. Oddly, it jiggled. Peering in the gloom, Earl saw that the door was not latched. He waited and listened. Not a sound from inside. Placing the flat of his palm on the steel face of the door, Earl pushed just slightly. The door edged in. Not even latched, let alone locked! Earl's old cop-instinct gave him pause, just for a second. There is little in life coppers like less than the unusual. But any sense of unease was supplanted by the thought that perhaps this was a game. Clarisa, he knew, had a playful side. He'd seen it in her eyes, at unguarded moments. She'd come to loosen up with him, over the course of their dates. Tonight she was up to something special.

Okay then.

Earl pushed the door open, stepped inside, eased it back shut. The living room was half dark, the only light coming from a lamp beside the window. The air was thick with the scents of spicy food. Two big sofas sat at angles on the toy-cluttered carpet. Back to the right, Earl knew, was the eating area and then kitchen, pitch black now. Back to the left was the bedroom. That must be where she is, he decided. In the bedroom. Waiting.

For such a bulky man Earl could step lightly as a cat, and that's what he did now, carefully avoiding floor-clutter as he made his way around the sofa and into the deepening darkness toward the just-barely-visible bedroom door. He could see it was ajar. Faint light shone in the crack. He reached out a hand. From behind came a sound – footfalls – and Earl was just turning when an arm threw around his chest, pulling Earl back in an iron grip, against the chest of a man – a taller man, Earl knew, breath hot on his neck – and a long knife-blade glinted in front of his face.

"You fuck Clarisa," came a harsh accented voice in his ear. "Now I fuck you."