The World's Finest Mystery Part 22

Richie nodded, unconvinced. There was nothing else I could say to him; I turned to go.

"The other time," I heard, and turned back to see him looking away again, speaking softly and not to me, "I was just a kid the other time. I'm a cop now, I've been trained, I should've been able..."

"No," I said again.

He raised his head, as though surprised to find himself not alone. Our eyes met, Richie waiting to hear what I had to say. But there was nothing. Christ, Smith, I thought. You really have something to tell this kid about being a hero?

I couldn't help him. I turned and left.

I drove out first to the repair shop on Route 3, Hurst's job. His shift ran until six; I just wanted a look at him, make sure he hadn't left early. A picture's one thing, but when you're going to break into a guy's house you want to size him up, if you can.

I stopped the car at the park where kids played softball. I sat and looked across the street, at the repair yard. Half a dozen guys were hard at work there, erasing the scars of things that had happened. The yard rang with the pounding of metal on metal. A circular saw screamed its way through a steel sheet. I spotted Hurst, a big guy, brown hair, a little thick in the waist. His jaw set, he gripped a wrench in both hands, fought with a bolt that wouldn't budge. The wrench slipped. Hurst's knuckles sc.r.a.ped, drawing blood. He shook the pain out, set the wrench on the bolt again. Sweat ran down his face; his T-shirt was black-streaked and damp.

I watched, then drove away. Hurst, nothing in his world right then but the solid refusal of the rusted bolt, never saw me.

It took me forty-five minutes to get out to the place Hurst lived, a squat wood cabin on the landlocked side of the county. The neighbors on each side were far enough and the scrubby trees between big enough that I figured I was okay. I parked off the road about fifty yards beyond Hurst's driveway; he wouldn't see the car, coming home after work, if I was still there. I made my way back to the house and around it: the back door's always a better bet than the front, hidden, usually a weaker lock. I went to work, for ten minutes moving nothing but my fingers, concentrating as hard on the thin steel picks as he had on the five-pound wrench clenched in his fists. The lock finally gave. I wondered if the rusted bolt had.

The cabin wasn't much, and there wasn't much there. Old shabby furniture, battered pots and pans. The back door opened into the kitchen, and the kitchen, with a change of flooring, became the living room; a bedroom, shades still pulled, was off beyond the living room to the left, bathroom beyond that, and no more.

I moved through the place, opening closets and drawers. It was clean enough but with a stale, closed-up air: people up here left their windows wide in heat like this, home or not, but Hurst's were closed and locked. In prison nothing you have is your own. Some guys, when they get out, build a fortress.

The magazines and books weren't hard to find, just hard to look through: kids, doing things they would never get over. Like anyone else, people who went in for this had preferences and favorites. Hurst's was young boys, not infants, not teens: around eight years old, and blond. I wondered, briefly, what Hurst had looked like when he was eight.

I went through the stack and left them in the bottom of the bedroom closet where I'd found them. I dumped the trash can looking for mailing wrappers. Possession of this stuff was legal, but getting it through the mail wasn't. If I could show Hurst had done that it would be a parole violation, and Ben could pick him up.

But the trash held nothing. I did the rest of the place, hope fading with the lowering sun. No photos, no kid's clothing, no letters, no diary. If Ben had been able to get a search warrant it would have gotten him nowhere.

All right. I put a cigarette in my mouth but didn't light it, stood in the middle of the floor, looking around. This had been an unlikely route to a payoff, but it had to be tried. There were a couple of other things I could do. One was talk to Hurst, but for that I needed to sound convincing. I let myself out the back door. A breeze rustled branches. I stood for a moment, letting it brush across my face, breathing air that was moving, that had come from somewhere clean.

I drove to the sh.o.r.e. Near Gray's Cove I parked on the shoulder of the road. Small stones rolled down the path under my feet as I worked my way to the water. The sun was almost gone from the land by now and the sea was in darkness.

A small sand beach curved like a new moon, backing onto the cliff I'd come down. Where it narrowed to nothing, waves crashed on piles of boulders, jetties stretching away into the water. I walked along the beach just beyond the reach of the lapping waves, smelling the salt, feeling the spray, listening to the roar, the murmur, the roar again, of the endless sea.

The towering cliff was black now, and I stopped to look, to learn its contours. I took the measure of the beach, estimated the jetties. I listened to the waves and counted their rhythm. I was going to lie to Hurst, and I was going to be good.

I reached the boulders that marked the end of the beach. For a while I stood and looked out over the sea. The lights of boats on the surface of the water gleamed through a thin mist that, above me, hid the stars. I turned and started to walk back, heading along the beach to the rocks at the other end.

I got near and realized I wasn't alone. A figure sat on the rocks, arms wrapped around knees, unmoving in the blowing spray.

My feet slipped along the wet stones as I climbed to where he was. I came to stand next to him and he turned, then turned his face back to the sea.

"Larry Crandall?" I asked. I raised my voice above the crashing of the surf.

He didn't look at me this time. He took a while to answer, and when he did it was only to say, "Be careful how you step."

"I'm Bill Smith," I told him. I squatted beside him on the rocks. He didn't move; it was as if I wasn't there. I looked where he was looking, watched the waves rear back, break over the rocks.

"Someone should do something," I said. "When it's a kid, someone should do something."

Waves rolled in and broke, slipped out again. White foam flew, briefly airborne, but could not keep the height. It fell and was taken back by the sea.

Crandall finally spoke. "No one will."

"I will, if I can."

"They say they want to." He wasn't speaking to me now, but to the sea, or to the past. "Sorry, Larry, we tried. They say."

"I'm not them."

"Another chance. It was the same." He turned his head to me, his eyes and voice suddenly full of the ferocity of the waves. "He should have saved my boy. Ah, but he's only a kid himself, Ben says. He did what he could. And Frankie? He's a man now. What about Frankie?"

At first I didn't understand. A man now? A shift of the wind covered us in salt spray. Then I thought: Richie, Ben's deputy. He didn't save Crandall's son, and he and Ben didn't save Frankie. Crandall's eyes blazed; then all the fury faded, like a wild surf subsiding. He turned back to the water.

Carefully, I asked, "Did you see Frankie here, that day?"

In a voice as dull as fog, he said, "Frankie rode his bike on the cliff."

"That day?"

Crandall shrugged. "Frankie rode his bike on the cliff."

"Did you see anyone with him?"

"No one will help."

"Was anyone with Frankie?" Calm, Smith, I told myself, stay with the rhythm of the sea.

Crandall answered, "I don't know him."

I kept my voice even. "Who?"

"They had ice cream cones. But I don't know him."

"Would you recognize him?"

Crandall turned his head from the crashing surf to stare at the black cliff rising like a stone wave above us. "There," he said. Then, "No."

I scanned the cliff top. It was far, and in late afternoon the sun would have been behind anyone up there. And Larry Crandall's word might not be good for much, in court. But someone had been with Frankie Rogers at Gray's Cove that day.

"I'm going to do something," I said. "About Frankie."

Crandall looked at me as though what I'd said meant nothing, was in a language he didn't speak and didn't care about. His face was flat and dull, but tear tracks glistened on it like the water left behind by a pulling tide.

I straightened, standing over him now. "Thank you."

He didn't answer. I turned and left, picking my way along the boulders to the beach, careful how I stepped.

I drove back to Hurst's place, working out what I would say, the lies most likely to work. By the time I got there the darkness was complete, lying heavily on the cabin and the spindly trees. The cabin's windows were dark and no car was parked nearby. I hadn't locked the back door when I left and I let myself in it now. In the closet with the magazines, earlier, I'd spotted Hurst's Winchester; it was empty when I found it, but a half dozen sh.e.l.l boxes were piled on the closet floor. I broke it open, loaded it, and, setting it across my lap, sat down in the dark to wait.

I don't know how long the wait was; it was however long it takes to smoke three cigarettes, and to let the need between them build up hard. I don't know what I thought about, either, in the heat, in the dark, in that closed-up house, but I was ready when headlights swung into the driveway and a moment later a car door slammed.

When Hurst switched on the light inside the front door I was still in the chair, facing him squarely, the rifle raised. The bag he held dropped to the floor in a thud.

"Close it, Bob," I said.

"What-"

"Close the door."

I moved the rifle. He closed the door.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" His voice was ragged. Fear widened his eyes.

"I want to talk to you."

"Get out," he tried, because he had to, though the game was obviously mine.

"Frankie Rogers," I said. "The little boy you raped and killed up at Gray's Cove."

Hurst flinched. "I never saw that kid. Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"State police," I said. "Out of uniform, but that doesn't mean I won't shoot you. I was out of uniform the night you killed Frankie Rogers, too."

"I never saw that kid."

"Bulls.h.i.t."

"What kind of-?"

"I saw you."

Hurst stood, mouth half open. He took a step toward me.

"No," I said, moving the rifle again.

He stopped. I could smell the cup of coffee that had smashed on the floor in the bag he'd dropped. Other things had been in there, too, eggs, milk. A pool grew slowly at Hurst's feet, reaching toward me.

"You saw me what?" Hurst said. "What the h.e.l.l does that mean?"

"With the kid. Up on the cliff, late afternoon. You bought him ice cream. That where you raped him, Bob?"

His faced reddened. Good; it was that word. I used it again. "After you raped him you killed him, right? So he wouldn't tell. So he wouldn't tell anyone you're a monster."

"It wasn't like that!" he shouted. Eyes wide, he stopped, clamping his mouth shut.

I waited. Then, "It wasn't like what?" I asked softly. Hurst said nothing, jaw clenched, eyes blazing.

"I know it wasn't, Bob." I kept my voice low, gentle. "That's why I'm here."

A pause; then, "What the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" His voice was a whisper.

"I told you: I saw you. You cared about that kid, Bob. I saw that. I'll bet you cared about them all."

I watched Hurst, one thing in his eyes, another in the line of his still-clenched jaw.

"And this kid, the Rogers kid, he liked you, too, didn't he, Bob? You were nice to him. That's all he wanted, someone to be nice to him. You cared about all of them, you were nice to them. That's why this is so unfair."

"What..." Hurst's shoulders slumped. He looked around the room, his place, his closed-up fortress. He brought his eyes back to mine, saying nothing.

"It's like this," I went on. "I saw you with the kid. I'm a cop and I have to report that. But I wanted to talk to you first, give you a chance. Because I know how it is. Because it isn't like they say."

Everything in the cabin was still, no sound, no movement. Just the smell of coffee from the puddle on the floor.

"He was a good kid," I said. "He liked you. They say you killed him, Bob."

For a long time, nothing.

"If you don't tell me," I said, "I have to report it just like I saw it. But I wanted to talk to you, Bob."

Slowly, Hurst shook his head. "I want to sit down," he said.

I nodded, gestured with the rifle to the couch in front of the living room window. He settled tentatively on it, as though it was not something he knew.

"I never wanted to hurt that kid," he said, hands on his knees.

"I know, Bob. But they're saying you did."

"No one cared about him," Hurst said. "Frankie. Someone needed to care about him."

"And that was you."

A long silence. Finally, "No one else cared about him."

"He played baseball out by your job, didn't he?" I said.

Hurst nodded. "He liked baseball. After a game he'd come looking for me. After a game. He knew."

"Knew what?"

"He knew I cared."

I slipped a cigarette into my mouth, lit it. "So tell me what happened, Bob. At Gray's Cove."

But something more important was on his mind. He looked up at me. "You said 'rape.' That's wrong."