Slow Fall Read online

  “I went down to the canal.”

  He smiled self-consciously.

  “I sort of s-s-slipped. Sheriff Beane had a deputy take a few of us down to see if we could—could identify the body. No one could.” He looked down at the dusty floor. “L-l-least no one did.”

  “What the hell time is it anyway?” Pickett pulled up his fly.

  “I dunno—two-thirty, maybe three. I'm sorry to bother you but… “

  Pickett motioned him in and walked to the table lamp. Mark dropped into a straight back chair as if he carried the weight of more years than he'd lived on his shoulders.

  He avoided Pickett's eyes.

  The older man drew some water from the tap and placed it on the burner. “Want anything?”

  “What? Oh, no. No thank you. I… “

  Mark didn't finish that either.

  Pickett chipped a teaspoon of brown crystals from the stuff cemented to the bottom of a small jar. “For someone who drops by at three a. m. to talk, you sure as hell don't have much to say.” The water kettle began to smoke and the room filled with the odor of stale grease. Pickett switched off the burner and poured the tepid water into a cup. He added the brown crystals and stirred optimistically.

  Mark looked down, took a deep breath.

  “I need to tell someone b-b-but… Damn!” Mark pounded a clinched fist against his knee.”

  Suddenly Mark looked up.

  “Can I trust you? I mean—”

  “Goddammit boy, don't you start up with that now.” Pickett tossed the black liquid into the sink. “Christ, what is it with you people? I don't know if I'm true or honest or good or… Jesus!” He slammed a cabinet door shut and slumped back against the refrigerator. “And if that means you can trust me, boy, then you can trust me.”

  Mark buried his face in his hands.

  Pickett glowered at him for awhile, then at the cracked linoleum under his feet. Finally, he closed his eyes, put a hand to his forehead and took a deep breath.

  “Look, boy, I'm sorry. I don't know if you can trust me, I don't even know what you've got to tell me. But I can tell you that there's something strange going on and more than one person's been hurt—”

  Mark suddenly looked up.

  “-- and if you know something, anything, then you might as well tell me as anyone. Then the two of us can decide if we should tell anyone else.”

  “No, please, no. No one else. You can't tell anyone. Or…”

  “Or what, for Chrissake? What are you talking about?”

  Mark grimaced and hit his knee again.

  “I've seen him before. Before today—I mean ton-n-night.”

  “Him who?”

  “The dead man.”

  “Did you tell the sheriff?”

  “I—” Mark looked down at his muddy shoes. “No. No, I d-d-didn't.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because…”

  Mark froze.

  “Look, Mark, I'm beat. Now, you see him before or not?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes.”

  “When?”

  “Yesterday afternoon. I mean the day before yesterday. The day before… b-b-before he was found.”

  “Where?”

  “That's just it. I saw him driving away from our house.”

  “Your house?”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  Pickett stared at him for a moment, then said:

  “What kind of car?”

  “Big—sort of copper colored. I remember because he honked at me. I was just pulling in, sort of blocking his way, and he cut loose with this big horn. Like he owned the place and I was a tr-r-respasser or something. Then he l-l-laughed.”

  “That's the fella, all right. What was he doing there?”

  “I dunno. I mean, I didn't ask. Lots of different people come to the house—especially during one of their drives.” He said it with contempt. “I don't ask about them. I try to stay away from them. I'm only on the sh-sh-show because—”

  “Seen him there before?”

  “No. I don't think so anyways. I'm pretty sure I hadn't.”

  “What did your parents say? You asked them about it?”

  “They… I don't think that they knew I'd seen him. And when they told Sheriff Beane they hadn't s-s-seen him before…” Mark smiled feebly and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Why didn't you tell Beane?”

  “I dunno. Scared, I guess. I thought—I didn't think they'd had anything to do with it, with the murder, but I was conf-f-fused. I didn't know why they'd lied.”

  “You'll have to go to the police with this, son. It's murder, and there's no way around it. You can get into a lot of trouble—the type that sends you to prison—for withholding evidence.”

  “I know, I know…”

  Mark put a hand to his forehead and looked down, shaking his head from side to side. Then, hesitantly, he looked up to Pickett.

  “But you could—I mean, would you talk to my f-f-folks? First, I mean? See if you can find out why they didn't say anything? I don't think I could. You've got to promise not to t-t-tell anyone—till you talk to my folks anyway. P-p-please.”

  “Puts me in a spot, son. With the Sheriff and your folks.”

  “I know. I'm sorry…” He sank down and began working at his brow again.

  “Why come to me anyway?”

  “I knew J.B.—your f-f-father, I mean.” Mark paused, looked up. “He used to talk about you. A lot. He came to the house once when Mom… Dad was buying the Temple property. We sorta hit it off.” Pride shown from beneath the fatigue. “I used to come here now and again. Just to t-t-talk. You know. Dad and I don't—well, can't talk about a lot of th-th-things. He—J.B., I mean—he told me you were coming. He said he'd written and that you'd be coming any day now. That was bef-f-fore—” He choked on the word, hiding it behind a cough. “That was a week ago. He used to… he used to say I reminded him of you before… uh… when you still l-l-lived here. In town, I mean. I would've talked to him I guess, but he's…”

  “Can't help that, son.”

  Mark shook silently, his face in his hands.

  Pickett placed a hand on Mark's shoulder. “I'll talk to your folks tomorrow. They'll talk to Beane. If not, well then… you and me will go talk to him. Okay?”

  “That's great. Th-th-thanks, Bo—Mister Pickett.”

  “Bo's fine.”

  “Thanks. Bo.” Mark made a brave show of tightening his tie and brushing at his trousers. He rose from the chair with a halfhearted smile, walked to the door, then stopped. There was something else on his mind. “When you brought Amy b-b-back. And after you called Sheriff Beane—even before you called—I knew something horrible was the matter. I thought it was Amy—that she'd done something, I mean.” Mark fidgeted with the doorknob. “Whatever it was. She—Amy's been so upset and con-f-f-fused.” He looked back at Pickett. “I was almost relieved when I saw the body. That's terrible, isn't it? But I was relieved because Amy—she couldn't have done that.” The last was almost a question. He looked up at Pickett as if for the answer. When Pickett looked the question back, Mark lowered his head and continued: “I dunno what I expected, but I expected something.”

  “Why's that, son?

  “I've been waiting for Amy to explode. She's keeping something in. I thought, at first…” Mark scrunched up his face, closing his eyes.

  “What did you think?”

  “That—well, there've been a lot drugs around. I don't just mean grass, but just—all of sudden—there's this super coke—”

  “Crack?”

  “T-t-that's what they call it. And all of a sudden a lot of different people are really, I dunno, messed over. A-a-and…”

  “And you thought Amy was doing crack?”

  Mark seemed encouraged by the puzzled tone.

  “N-n-no, not really. But she was acting so strange, and until I—” Mark paused as if the rest of the sentence were caught some where in the back of his throat.

  “Until… ?”


  Mark looked away and rubbed at his eyes with both hands.

  “Nothing, really. It's just that, well, then I thought she was having an a-a-a… that she was s-s-seeing someone. S-s-someone else. You know, that all those weekends she was g-g-gone, that she… I thought…”

  “You don't know where she goes then?”

  “Me?” He seemed shocked. “No. No, I don't know where she goes. She wouldn't tell me. She will hardly even s-s-speaks to me now. If I could just find some way to help. If—if I'd just never taken her there—”

  “Where?”

  “The T-t-temple. Everything was fine until then. We were going to get m-m-married. She hadn't actually said yes yet, but I knew. Then I took her there and everything ch-ch-changed.” Mark leaned his head against the door, hanging on to the doorknob now. “What a terrible place. Good people go there because they—they n-n-need something and…” He closed his eyes hard, as though crushing something between his lids. “Good people, too. And they come out all twisted and… h-h-hard, and…”

  Pickett rested a narrow hand gently on the boy's shoulder.

  “Go home, son. Get some rest. I'll call you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah?” Mark straightened under Pickett's hand, then he relaxed. “Y-y-yeah, thanks, Mister—I mean, Bo. Thanks. You'll call me to-m-m-morrow.”

  Mark disappeared behind the door. A moment later his sports car roared to life, the high performance rumble dissolving gradually into the sounds of the night, like the passing of a storm, replaced by the crackle of crickets and the hollow call of tree frogs.

  Pickett clicked off the light and, for a moment, sat on the edge of his father's unmade bed, listening. The wet slap of a bass brought a smile to his lips.

  He lay down on his father's bed and slept.

  10

  “Watch here! Here! Here! Here!”

  Bodie Pickett sat bolt upright with his hands to his eyes.

  The sun beat full on his face.

  He rolled to a sitting position, opened his eyes, and stood, watching his shadow fly across the dusty floor as if to escape his dreams.

  “What cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer!” came the cry again. A cardinal fluttered impatiently at the window screen, trying in vain to light on the narrow sill. An open bag of birdseed lay beneath the window.

  Pickett took a handful of seeds and unhooked the screen. The morning was bright, and half gone. Half a beer can littered with seed hulls hung from the clapboards beneath the window. He dropped the seeds into it. The cardinal settled gratefully to his breakfast.

  Pickett placed some water on the stove and went to the porch to escape the fumes. A folding lawn chair and an aluminum TV table were its only furnishings. The screen hung loose in several spots. Seed hulls littered the floor.

  The sun was already high, and the day would be another hot one. But, for the moment, morning still clung to the shaded canal.

  Pickett went back to the stove, and poured the boiling water into the jar with the brown crystals. He swirled it around until it was the color of mud, then poured it into a cup. He took the cup and the birdseeds to the porch and settled into the lawn chair. A handful of seeds tossed on the floor attracted three sparrows and a red-wing blackbird. Pickett looked away from the bird's scarlet wing to the canal that tunneled through the tropical growth below. Suddenly, gesturing grandly toward the canal, and in a voice low and theatrical—Orson Wells selling ancient wines—he said:

  “Death, random and impartial as life itself, the product of chance, necessity…”

  He paused, as if awaiting a reply. The canal, unimpressed, gave none.

  “And another senseless killing tonight in Belle Haven…”—his voice mellower now, and taking on the random cadence of the nightly newscast.

  Still nothing.

  “Death,” he boomed, Orson Wells again.

  The blackbird cocked its head, shat on the floor and took off for the other side of the canal.

  Pickett lifted his cup in a silent toast to the departed bird and drank, cringing as he sucked it in. He stared down into the murky water of the canal below. Then suddenly, in a stage whisper:

  “Murder!”

  Just as suddenly, a blue jay flashed through a hole in the screen. His squawk scattered the sparrows, and he settled down to the abandoned feast.

  Pickett stood and stretched.

  The jay took off for a cypress across the canal. The sparrows returned. Below, a black water turkey stalked brim, its long legs easing through stands of tiny elephant-ears as though crossing thin ice on stilts.

  Pickett drew a small black cigar from his breast pocket, hung it from his lower lip, and rifled the pockets of his trousers. His right hand emerged with the sticky wad of paper he'd pulled from the bronze Chrysler the night before.

  He sat back, smoothed the paper on his knee. It smelled of spearmint. It said—in Xerox grey:

  GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!

  Below this floated a grainy photo of a skinny hipped, large breasted woman whose grin suggested that she'd just impaled herself on a cattle prod. Tiny rectangles like parts missing from a puzzle blacked the woman's crotch and nipples—mouth and eyes of a face infinitely more obscene than the original nude.

  EXPERT MASSAGE! BY TRAINED PROFESSIONALS!, it said beneath, giving an address off I-4. It ended with a flourish:

  TRUCKERS WELCOME!

  Pickett grinned at the sparrows. “Some clue, huh?” He crumpled the flyer and tossed it to them. One pecked at it, cocked its head, pecked again, then went back to a black sunflower seed.

  Knuckles rattled against the door.

  The birds scattered.

  Pickett opened the door to Jan Ayers, busy brushing cobwebs from her dress. She looked up, smiling, then down at his bare chest. She frowned.

  “I'm sorry. I should have called first.” She slipped past Pickett into the middle of the room. “May I come in? Just for a moment?”

  Pickett looked at the empty doorway, then Jan Ayers. He smiled, raising his eyebrows. “Yeah, sure.” He shut the door. “Just let me find…”

  And he found his shirt draped over the refrigerator.

  Jan Ayers wandered around the room while Pickett slipped into it. She selected a straight back chair as the least filthy, then settled down into it as if afraid that she might break it. In a cotton print dress colored in blues and greens she neither looked like the woman at the Temple nor the one Pickett had met the night before. She set a straw handbag down by her side, crossed her pale, rounded legs, and smiled:

  “Nice place you've got here.” Her drawl was playful.

  “Yeah, well the maid's been sick.”

  She raised her chin in a silent laugh.

  Pickett worried with another button or two on his shirt, then gestured to the stove. “Can I get you any—”

  “I understand that you had a visitor last night.”

  Pickett turned his back, drew water from the tap.

  “You shouldn't take Mark too seriously. He's just a child. With a child's imagination. He—well, he imagines things. He's not sure in his faith.” She sighed. “He's a troubled child, I'm afraid.”

  Pickett hovered over the stove, saying nothing, watching the water not boil.

  “What—if you don't mind my asking—do you intend to do with the… information that Mark provided?”

  Pickett turned, counterfeiting her tense smile. “Talk to you.”

  Jan Ayers still smiled, but the ease with which she'd nestled into the hard wooden chair had become forced. Her crossed leg pumped up and down nervously. “And what would you like to talk about?”

  “Herbert Purdy for starters.”

  The movement of her leg had exposed an expanse of white thigh. Her eye caught Pickett's, and, without looking down, she smoothed the crisp material back down to her knee. “And who is Herbert Purdy?”

  “Was. Herbert Purdy was a nasty little fella who drove a great big ugly car. Last time I saw him he had an extra hole in his head and was under three feet of water in a creek not
fifty yards from your house. Now, last time Mark saw him, he was walking out your front door.”

  Her leg stopped. The smile remained, but the lips had grown thin. “And what do you suppose I or my husband would have in common with a man like that?”

  “I'm sure I wouldn't know, Mrs. Ayers,” Pickett ponced irritably. “Perhaps you could tell me.”

  She stood. Smoothing the dress down over her hips, she walked out onto the porch. She stopped, arms folded, and stared through the screen.

  Pickett switched off the burner and dumped the lukewarm water into the sink. When he turned, she stood in the middle of the room.

  “Can I trust you, Bo?”

  Pickett stared at her blankly for a moment. Then he exploded into laughter. He leaned back against the refrigerator covering his laughing face with both hands. He wiped his eyes, looking at the woman across from him, and, with an effort, began the process of straightening his face. His mouth, though, remained crooked.

  “Yeah, sure—” He waved both hands, loose at the wrists. “-- why not?”

  Her face had hardened during this.

  “None of this can get out, you understand. My husband is a public figure, and, well…”

  “Tell me about Herbert Purdy.”

  Jan Ayers hesitated. She wet her lightly rouged lips, then, suddenly, said:

  “It's quite simple, really. Though it could be, well, troublesome. You see, that man Purdy came to me for money. He said that he had, well, certain information—information about Edmund—that he would make public unless I paid him.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand dollars.”

  Pickett's brow rose. “Did you pay him?”

  “Certainly not. I told him that I wouldn't pay him a cent. And,” she added self-consciously, “to get out of my house or—or I would call the police. He did. Get out, I mean.”

  “Did you?”

  “What?”

  “Call the police.”

  “No! I mean I couldn't—you can't—” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “You must try to understand. Anyone in Edmund's position can be destroyed utterly by no more than—than rumor. No matter how base, no matter how disreputable the source, only the slightest tinge of scandal can, well, destroy him—his work, everything. Can you understand that?”