Killer, Come Back To Me

‘I won’t say it’s a mystery,’ said the Sheriff. ‘You know who done it?’ I asked.

‘Not exactly, and shut up,’ snapped the Sheriff, thumb-rolling a cigarette; and sucked it into half ash with his first flame. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘Can I help?’ I asked.

‘You,’ snorted the Sheriff, looking up at me on top of my mountain of bones and body, ‘help? Ha!’

Everybody laughed, holding rib bones like bundles of breathing sticks and blowing out cheeks and glittering their sharp shiny eyes. Me help, that was sure something to tickle.

Mr. Crockwell, he was the farmer man, he laughed, and Mr. Willis, he was the hardware-store man and tough as a rail spike, he laughed like tapping a sledge on a beam iron, and Mr. Duffy’s Irish bartender laugh made his tongue jig around pink in his mouth; and Jamie MacHugh, who would run away if you yelled boo, he laughed too.

‘I been reading Sherlock Holmes,’ I said.

The Sheriff raked me over. ‘Since when you reading?’

‘I can read, never mind,’ I said.

‘Think you can solve mysteries, eh?’ cried the Sheriff. ‘Get the hell away afore I boot the big rump off you!’

‘Leave him be, Sheriff,’ laughed Jamie MacHugh, waving one hand. He clicked his tongue at me. ‘You’re a first-rate sleuth, ain’t you, Peter?’

I blinked at him six times.

‘Sleuth, detective, Sherlock Holmes, I mean,’ said Jamie MacHugh.

‘Oh,’ I said.

‘Why, why-high,’ laughed Jamie MacHugh, ‘I’d bet my money on big Peter here any day, ann-eee day! Strong, strapping lad, Sheriff. He could solve this case with one shuffle of his big left shoe, couldn’t he, men?’

Mr. Crockwell winked at Mr. Willis and Mr. Willis tonked a laugh out like cleaning your pipe on a flat stone, and everybody shot little sly glances at the Sheriff, nudging one another’s ribs and chuckling.

‘Sure, I’d bet good money any autumn on Peter there. Here’s fifty cents says Peter can solve the case afore the Sheriff!’ said Jamie.

‘Now, look here!’ bellowed the Sheriff, standing stiff.

‘Here’s seventy cents says the same,’ drawled Mr. Willis.

And here came round money silver shining, and green money like little wings flapping on their hairy hands.

The Sheriff kicked a boot angrily. ‘Odd dammit. No feebleminded giant can solve any murder case with me around!’

Jamie MacHugh tilted back and forth on his heels. ‘Scared?’

‘Hell’s gate, no! But you’re all riding my goat!’

‘We mean it. Here’s our money, Sheriff; you meeting it?’

The Sheriff crackled he sure as hell would, and did. Everybody boomed out laughter like on bass drums and with brass trumpets. Somebody slapped me on the back but I didn’t feel it. Someone yelled for me to go in there and show him, Peter, show him, but it was all underwater, far away. Blood pounded around on big red boots in my ears, kicking my brain back and forth like a wrinkled football.

The Sheriff looked at me. I looked at him with my heavy hands hanging. He laughed right out.

‘God, I’ll solve this case before Peter has time to open his mouth for spit!’

The Sheriff wouldn’t let me be in the room with the corpse unless I stood on one leg and put both hands out in the air. I had to do it. The others said it was fair. I did it. I must have stood there during most the time we talked, on one leg, hands out to balance, and them snickering when I toppled.

‘Well,’ I said, over the corpse, ‘he’s dead.’

‘Brilliant!’ Jamie MacHugh had a bone of laughter caught in his throat, choking him.

‘And he’s been head-bashed,’ I said, ‘with a heavy thing.’

‘Colossal! Wonderful!’ spluttered Jamie.

‘And no woman done it,’ I said. ‘Because a woman couldn’t have done it so heavy and hard.’

Jamie laughed less. ‘True enough.’ He glanced at the others, eyebrows up a tremor. ‘That’s true; we didn’t think of that.’

‘That counts out all females,’ I said.

Mr. Crockwell teased the Sheriff. ‘You didn’t say that, Sheriff.’

The Sheriff’s cigarette hissed sparks in a Fourth of July pinwheel. ‘I was going to say it! Damn, anyone can see a woman didn’t do it! Peter, you go stand in the corner and do your talking!’

I stood in the corner on one foot.

‘And –’ I said.

‘Shut up,’ said the Sheriff. ‘You’ve had your say, let me have mine.’ He hitched up his trousers on his rump. Silence. The Sheriff scowled. ‘Well, like he says, the man’s dead, head stove in, and a woman didn’t do it and –’

‘Ha-ha,’ said Mr. Crockwell.

The Sheriff shot him a blazing look. Mr. Crockwell covered his mouth with his hand.

‘And the body’s been dead twenty-four hours,’ I said, sniffing. ‘Any dimwit knows that!’ yelled the Sheriff.

‘You didn’t say that before,’ said James MacHugh.

‘Do I have to say, can’t I think a few?’

I looked around the empty room. Mr. Simmons was a strange man, living alone with no furniture in the house and only carpets here and there, and one cot upstairs. Didn’t want to spend money on stuff. Saved it.

I said, ‘There wasn’t much fuss or fight; nothing’s upset. Must’ve been killed by someone he trusted.’

The Sheriff started to swear but Jamie MacHugh said for him to let me talk, this was damn interesting. The others said so too. I smiled. I closed my eyes, grinning soft, and opened them again and everyone looked at me for the first time in my life as if I was good enough to stand beside them. I stepped from the corner, slowly.

I crouched beside Mr. Simmons, looking. He was blood ripe. The Sheriff quick followed, imitating me, on his knees. I peered close. The Sheriff peered close. I fussed with the rug. Sheriff fussed with the rug. I smoothed Mr. Simmons’s right sleeve. Guess who smoothed Mr. Simmons’s left sleeve? I made a humming sound like a comb and tissue in my throat. The Sheriff ground his teeth together. Everybody stood high and sweating sour in the summer-heated quiet.

‘What was that about him being murdered by a friend?’ Mr. Crockwell wanted to know.

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Someone he trusted, no commotion.’

‘That’s right,’ said Mr. Willis, who didn’t speak much.

Everybody said it was right, all right.

‘Now,’ I said, ‘what people didn’t like the cold man here?’

The Sheriff’s voice was high and stringy with irritation. ‘Simmons wasn’t liked by many. Always fightin’ with folks, tetchy-like.’

I looked at the men, wondering which one I could detect to be the murderer. My eyes kept snapping in rubber-band moves to Jamie MacHugh. Jamie always was flighty. You lost your matchbox and stared at Jamie, he’d whine, guilty, ‘I didn’t take it.’ If you dropped a nickel and it went away Jamie’d say, ‘I didn’t do it!’

Funny. Something scared him as a kid, all the time he felt guilty, whether or not he was. So I couldn’t help but see him now, and go up and down him with my eyes, him so nervous and losing his head over things. Just opposite of Hardware Willis, who would stand rock stiff while lightning bounced around him.

‘I heard Jamie say Mr. Simmons should be killed,’ I said.

Jamie opened his eyes. ‘I never said that. And if I did, you know how you say things you never mean.’

‘I heard you say it, anyways.’

‘Now, now, now,’ said Jamie three times. ‘You, you, you are not Sheriff for this city, city. You just shut your trap.’

The Sheriff fox-grinned. ‘What’s the matter with you, Jamie? Second ago you was egging Peter on, all het up for his side.’

‘I don’t want anybody accusing me, that’s all, you big slob,’ said Jamie to me. ‘Go stand on one foot in the corner!’

I didn’t blink my eyes. ‘I heard you say Mr. Simmons should be dead.’

‘You look sort of nervous, Jamie?’ remarked the Sheriff.

‘I remember,’ said Mr. Willis. ‘You did say that, Jamie. Say, Peter, you got a good memory.’ He nodded at me smartly. ‘I bet fingerprints of Jamie are around here,’ I said.

‘Sure,’ cried Jamie, pale. ‘Sure, they’re here. I was here early yesterday afternoon to try and get back my thirty dollars from that damn scoundrel lying limp on the floor, you elephant!’

‘You see,’ I said. ‘He was here. His fingerprints all around like ants at a picnic.’ And I added, ‘I bet if we looked in his pocket we’d find Mr. Simmons’s wallet full of money, I bet we would.’

‘Nobody looks through my pockets!’

‘I’ll do it,’ I said.

‘No,’ said Jamie.

‘Sheriff,’ I said.

The Sheriff looked at me, looked at Jamie. ‘Jamie,’ he said.

‘Sheriff,’ said Jamie.

‘Who was it picked me to solve this case?’ I said. ‘Jamie did, Sheriff.’

The Sheriff’s cigarette hung cold on his lip, twitching. ‘That’s right.’

‘Why’d he want me solving it, Sheriff?’ I asked, and answered, ‘Because he thought I’d only kick up mud in the creek, rile you so you wouldn’t get nothing done.’

‘Well odd damn, imagine that,’ murmured the others, moving back.

The Sheriff squinted tight.

‘Peter, I got to admit, you got something. Jamie was sure hot to bring you up to mess around. He started them goddamn bets. Irritated me with you until I can’t see beans from breakfast!’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Well now, I didn’t kill nobody, I didn’t sic Peter on you for that purpose, Sheriff, oh, no, I didn’t,’ said Jamie MacHugh, sweat gobbering out his head like water from them fancy park sprinkling systems in the concrete skulls of them pretty naked women statues.

The Sheriff said, ‘Let Peter search you.’

Jamie said no, as I grabbed his wrists with one big hand and held them while I put my other hand in his rear pants pocket and pulled out the dead man’s wallet.

‘No,’ whispered Jamie like a ghost.

I let him go. He swung around next thing, gibbering, and slammed out the door, crying, before anybody could stop him.

‘Go get him, Peter!’ everybody yelled.

‘You really want me to?’ I asked. ‘You’re not kidding like with the skyhook and shore line?’

‘No, no,’ they cried. ‘Get him!’

I thundered out the door and ran after Jamie in the hot sun over a green hill, through a little woods. What if Jamie gets away, I thought. No, he can’t do that. I’ll run fast.

Just near the edge of town I caught up with Jamie.

He never should have tried to fight me.

Crunch.

So now people sit around the Sheriff’s office on summer evenings dangling their shoes in a little laced pattern and speaking with smoke blowing from their easy mouths about how the Sheriff let me solve the case. And the Sheriff says he don’t care, he’s just as pleased that I caught the criminal as if he’d done it himself; but the Sheriff winces when he says this.

Kids on the street don’t kick my shins no more or throw rocks at me. They come ask to hold my hands as we walk downtown. They ask me to tell how I did it. Even ladies in pretty blue or green dresses look over back fences and ask. And I shine up the battered silver star the Sheriff had left over from twenty years ago, catch it on my chest where it sparkles, and I tell everybody again how I solved the Simmons case and caught the murderer Jamie MacHugh, who broke his neck trying to get out of my hands.

Nobody ever tells me to run get a skyhook or shore line or a left-handed screwdriver no more. They think my silences are thinking ones. Men nod at me from cars and say hello Peter and they don’t laugh so much, they sort of admire me, and just this morning asked if I intended solving any more cases.

I’m very happy. Happier than in all my days. I’m certainly glad now that Mr. Simmons died and I had a chance to catch Jamie MacHugh that way. No telling how much longer these people might have pestered me.

And if you’ll promise, cross your heart, hope to die, spit over your left shoulder, not to tell nobody, I’ll let you in on a little secret.

I killed Mr. Simmons myself.

You understand why, don’t you?

As I said at the beginning – I’m not so dumb.

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