Mystery

Tom did not answer this question. “I wanted to see if they’d really burn it. I was pretty sure they’d burn the house, because it was so destroyed by gunfire that it must have been in danger of collapsing. And they couldn’t be sure of what might be inside it. But I wasn’t really sure about the car. They must have come over on the same night—come right through the lots, carrying their gasoline cans.” He looked up into Sarah’s puzzled face. “It was Hasselgard’s car.”

She frowned, but said nothing.

“You see how they act? How they do things? They don’t even sneak it away on the back of a truck—they just douse it with gasoline and burn the shit out of it. They solve everything with sledgehammers. The people around here certainly aren’t going to say anything, are they? Because they know if they do, their own houses’ll burn up. It wouldn’t even be on the news.”

“Are you saying that the police burned Hasselgard’s car?”

“Didn’t I make that clear?”

“But, Tom, why—”

It seemed, at last, that he had to tell her: the words nearly marched out of his mouth by themselves. “I wrote the letter the police got—the letter was supposed to be about that ex-con, Foxhall Edwardes. Fulton Bishop talked about it at his press conference. It was an anonymous letter, because I didn’t want them to know a kid wrote it. I told them how and why Hasselgard killed his own sister. The next day, all hell broke loose. They killed Hasselgard, they killed this guy Edwardes, they killed a cop named Mendenhall, and injured his partner, Klink, they let loose this huge black cloud—”

He threw up his arms, stopped short by the incongruity of saying these terrible things to a beautiful girl in a blue shirt and white shorts who was thinking about a lost dog. “It’s this whole place,” he said. “Mill Walk! We’re supposed to believe every word they say and keep on taking dancing lessons, we’re supposed to keep on going to Boney Milton when we’re sick, we’re supposed to get excited about a picture book of every house the Redwings ever lived in!”

She took a step nearer to him. “I’m not saying I understand everything, but are you sorry you wrote the letter?”

“I don’t know. Not exactly. I’m sorry those two men died. I’m sorry Hasselgard wasn’t arrested. I didn’t know enough.”

Then she said something that surprised him. “Maybe you just wrote to the wrong person.”

“You know,” he said, “maybe I did. There’s a detective named Natchez—I used to think he was one of the bad guys, but a friend of mine told me that he was close to Mendenhall. And this morning at the hospital I thought I saw that he and some of his friends …”

“Why don’t you go to him?”

“I need more. I need to have something he doesn’t already know.”

“Who’s this friend? The one who told you about Natchez and Mendenhall?”

“Somebody wonderful,” he said. “A great man. I can’t tell you his name, because you’d laugh at me if I did. But someday I’d like you to meet him. Really meet him.”

“Really meet him? This isn’t Dennis Handley, is it?”

Tom laughed. “No, not Handles. Handles has given up on me.”

“Because he didn’t get you into bed.”

“What!”

She smiled at him. “Well, I’m glad it’s not him anyhow. Are we still going to the old slave quarter?”

“Do you still want to?”

“Of course I do. In spite of what my parents want for me, I still haven’t completely given up hoping I might have an interesting life.” She moved nearer to him, and looked up with an expression that reminded him of the first time Miss Ellinghausen had brought them together. “I really do wonder where you’re going. I wonder where you and I are going too.”

She did not want him to kiss her, he saw—it was just that she saw more of him than he had ever expected her to see. She had not questioned or disbelieved him; he had not shocked her: she had taken every step with him. This girl he had just mentally accused of thinking of nothing more than a lost dog suddenly seemed surpassing, immense. “Me too,” he said. “Maybe I shouldn’t have told you all this stuff.”

“You had to tell somebody, I suppose. Isn’t that why you invited me on this excursion?”

And there she was again: in his very footsteps, this time before he had even made them.

“Are you going to introduce me to this Hattie Bascombe, or not?”

They smiled at each other and turned back to the car.

“I’m glad you’re coming to Eagle Lake,” she said, when they were both in their seats. “I have the feeling you might be safer there.”

He thought of Fulton Bishop’s face, and nodded. “I’m safe now, Sarah. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Then if you’re this great detective and all, find Bingo for me.” She gunned the engine and shot forward.