Furnace

‘Shouldn’t be overlong till the test results get back. This don’t mean nothin’, bein’ in here for now. Just procedure.’

Josh looked up at him and returned the nod. The policeman closed the door gently and locked it.

The sleep that immediately overwhelmed Josh was so deep he had no recollection of even lying down on the hard mattress. His next sentient moment after the locking of the door was the unlocking of it, and that, he discovered with a bleary glance at his watch, was at least five hours later. A different policeman was regarding him coolly, waiting for him to come round.

‘It’s this way,’ he said, as though answering a question.

Josh stood up unsteadily and followed him out of the cell, along a corridor and into the room where the sheriff and his colleague had interviewed him hours before. He entered, sat down on one of the unsteady wooden chairs arranged around the metal table, and waited with his hands folded in front of him. The deputy pulled out a chair opposite Josh, sat down and cleared his throat.

Outside the closed door, phones were ringing in the distant office and men were talking in low voices. Not the voices of conspiracy or suppressed anger, but rather the voices of visitors to a desperately sick hospital patient. The deputy scratched at an armpit.

‘Got some more stuff to ask you if that’s amenable to yourself.’

Josh blinked and sat back, marginally opening his palms in acquiescence.

‘While you been sleepin’ we got most of the information we need ’bout what went on back there.’

Josh sat up. ‘The woman? You found her?’

The man looked back at Josh with a mixture of embarrassment and impatience. ‘I’m goin’ to stick to what we know here right now. You with me?’

Josh said nothing, and his silence was taken as permission to continue.

‘You ain’t been drinkin’ or poppin’ pills, an’ the marks from your tyres out on the road, along with them witnesses that saw it, say you weren’t speedin’ unduly neither. But I guess you know you’re in violation with your log book.’

Josh’s mouth twitched.

‘I told you where I pulled over, and for how long. I was going to fill it in when I stopped here.’

‘Trucker with all them years behind a wheel knows that’s against the law.’

‘Sure. I know it.’

The man’s demeanour was changing. Beneath his officious politeness, Josh could read a glint of malice.

‘Log books ain’t there for your recreation, mister. We got to know where and when you stop. In case you been doin’ somethin’ you shouldn’t.’

The policeman waited a beat, as if hoping for some display of emotion from his interviewee, then continued. ‘Like drivin’ illegal hours without sleepin’.’

Josh stared back at him, his closed mouth failing to conceal a jaw that was clenching, making the tiny muscles beneath his ears protrude.

‘You have a good sleep in the cell?’

‘Sure. Thanks.’

‘Mighty tired, huh?’

‘Yeah. Been working hard lately.’

The deputy sighed, long and deeply, as though growing weary of this. ‘Your stopover. It checked out. Highway patrol saw your truck there three times in the time you said you parked.’

Josh stared at him, watching him closely as he continued to see if there were a trap being set.

‘Guess it was lucky you pulled over in a tourist bay instead of a truck stop, huh, Mr Spiller? Attracted attention.’

‘Never thought about it.’

The deputy leaned forward, his voice menacingly conspiratorial. ‘Yeah, it’s real lucky. ’Cos if we thought that you’d been drivin’ for more than the legal ten hours when you killed that little baby, I guess I don’t know what the sheriff might do.’

Josh stared back, trying to look unmoved. The deputy hissed, ‘You’re gonna get a fine that’ll make that shaven head of yours curl the goddamn hair it got left. You’re goin’ to think about how poor you are every time you open your log book.’

‘It was a mistake.’

The deputy looked back at him with naked contempt. ‘Sheriff needs a final statement.’

He got up and left the room. Clearly, the impromptu interview had been nothing more than a device to work out his anger at an obvious injustice. If things had been different, Josh wondered how many teeth he might be missing right now, how many broken ribs he might be nursing after having ‘fallen’ in his cell. There was no doubt. They had been trying their damnedest as he slept to nail him with something, and they had failed.

Josh screwed shut his eyes and clenched his teeth. Ten hours? Try thirty-six. The lie was more intolerable for being a lie that could never be uncovered. Only Josh Spiller knew he hadn’t slept. Did it really matter? He hadn’t killed the baby. That woman, that nightmare of a creature, had killed it. How would a night’s sleep have altered that?

Unless …

The tiny seed of doubt that he might have fallen asleep for a split second, for that crucial life-changing, life-ending second, wormed its way back into his mind. He slammed it down. No. He knew what he’d seen. A woman, a mad evil woman, had deliberately murdered a child.

He composed himself and forced himself to concentrate on waiting. For what, he was unsure, but the process of sitting still and expectantly was surprisingly calming. It was out of his hands. Someone, some unseen witness, would have told the police about the woman in the suit and they would be out there looking for her, if indeed they hadn’t already got her locked up. If they could trace Jezebel’s whereabouts to the parking lot last night, surely they would already have her behind bars. Maybe she was in the next cell. He would just wait and see.

He didn’t have to wait long.

The door opened and the square sheriff entered with two deputies, each carrying a cup of coffee. The sheriff carried two, one of which he put down in front of Josh.

‘Coffee. Take cream?’

Josh nodded his head dumbly and cupped his hands around the warm styrofoam as the man serviced his coffee with some mini-cream cartons from his pocket.

The sheriff sat down on the chair opposite and the two other men leaned against the wall, but their presence was casual rather than threatening.

‘I introduced myself earlier, Mr Spiller, but I guess you were pretty spaced out by the whole thing so let me do it again. I’m Sheriff John Pace.’

Josh looked at him expectantly, hoping by the tone of his voice that he brought not a further reprimand, but some news.

John Pace, however, looked back as though the reminder of his name was all that mattered here. When he realized that the man was going to say no more, Josh spoke:

‘Did you get her?’

Pace looked down at his cup and then glanced quickly out the corner of his eye at one of the deputies. The look, unlike that of his deputy before him, was one of disappointment, of someone letting him down. He sighed before he replied.

‘Who might that be, Mr Spiller?’

Josh’s hands, still cupped round the coffee, changed to fists.

‘The woman. The one who pushed the baby under the truck.’

The sheriff cleared his throat. ‘Mr Spiller,’ he hesitated, then said, ‘Can I call you …?’ he fished Josh’s licence from his top pocket and peered at it. ‘Josh? That’s it?’

Josh stared at him as if he were mad.

‘Josh,’ the sheriff continued with renewed confidence. ‘I know how shook up you are, but we need to pull ourselves together here a piece. We already got statements from the witnesses. We just need yours. You know we’ll have to fine you for your log book violation. There’s an eight-hour shut-down goes with that. Guess you know. But since you’ve been out of action damn near that, I reckon once you’ve paid up you’ll be free to go. We know you stopped where you said.’ He hesitated. ‘But ’fore I let you leave I need to know you’re goin’ to be okay. Shock makes you tired. Confused. Whole bunch of stuff. You feel better after your sleep?’

Josh searched the sheriff’s face for irony and oddly found none. He fought back his guilt.

‘What did they say?’

‘Who?’

‘The witnesses.’

John Pace leaned forward and his hand lifted slightly as if he wanted to put it on Josh’s arm. He stopped himself when the look in Josh’s eye warned him that he didn’t want to be touched.

‘No one’s blaming you, son. It was an accident. You weren’t speeding, you weren’t drinking. Just an accident.’

Josh swallowed. He spoke quickly with panic in his voice.

‘A woman pushed the baby under the truck. Deliberately.’

The sheriff was shaking his head.

‘The mother left the brakes off the stroller and the wind caught it. She told us so. Saw the whole thing herself. You think she’d lie about a thing like this?’

It was Josh’s turn to shake his head. Pace looked perplexed.

‘Why you doin’ this to yourself, fella?’

‘I can describe her. In detail. I want it on my statement.’

‘I’m goin’ to say this again. Shock plays tricks on you.’

‘I know what I saw.’

The sheriff sighed deeply and turned to one of the men leaning against the wall behind him.

‘Archie?’

The man opened a notepad, pulled out another chair and joined the two men at the table. John Pace ran a hand over his short sandy hair and sat back in his chair.

‘So?’

Pace gestured at him like a sultan allowing a feast to commence.

Josh took a sip of the bitter coffee in front of him, nervously coughed his throat clear and told them it all again.

He spoke slowly and deliberately, and when once more it came to describing the woman he paused, making sure that the man with the notepad had caught up with his tale. The deputy looked up expectantly, holding his pen like a high-school student paying attention to a dull but insistent lecturer. Josh concentrated on his description of the woman, making it more detailed than when he’d first blurted out his hysterical, ragged tale hours ago, and as he spoke he noticed a change come about the men. The one writing glanced across at John Pace who in turn narrowed his eyes. When Josh had finished Pace sat back in his chair and looked thoughtfully across the table. He nodded to himself for a second or two, then rose slowly to his feet and made for the door. He pointed at Josh as he left the room.

‘Hang on there. Got somethin’ for you.’

Josh blinked at the man’s back then looked quizzically at the two men left in the room. They returned his stare with the dull gazes of small-town policemen and Josh looked elsewhere to avoid those vacant eyes. They waited several minutes until Pace re-entered the room clutching a piece of paper. It had ragged fragments of Scotch tape adhering to three comers, with the fourth corner missing, and looked like it had just been ripped clumsily from a wall.

Pace sat at the table, looked down at his prize for a second, moved Josh’s cup to one side then slid the paper in front of him. Josh looked down and the breath left his body.

It was her.

The photo was monochrome, but she was wearing the same suit. She was in a room that looked like a court or schoolroom, with a large flag propped in the corner behind her, and she was smiling up at Josh with even white teeth. She looked good in the picture, younger than Josh had initially guessed, and her make-up was more gentle and sophisticated. But it was her. The murderer. No doubt.

Below the picture a large caption read, ‘Vote for Councillor McFarlane. You talk. She listens.’

Underneath in smaller print the handbill informed Josh that Councillor Nelly McFarlane would be holding a question and answer session at Furnace junior school on May nineteenth.

When Josh looked back up at the sheriff’s face, John Pace was registering a peculiar mixture of triumph and sympathy. But if the man was feeling smug, he concealed it well.

‘This her?’

Josh nodded once, almost imperceptibly. Pace did the same.

‘Like I say, shock’s a crazy thing.’

‘Where was this?’

‘All over town.’

‘You think I saw it somewhere.’

‘I know you did. Hard to miss.’

One of the deputies sniggered and Pace threw him a look.

Josh slumped forward, the core of determined revenge dissolving in him, leaving his body slack and empty with misery. He let his hot head touch the back of his hand. This time, Pace allowed himself to put a hand on Josh’s arm and found that it was not resisted.

‘But I saw her.’

Josh’s words were muffled, spoken into his own skin. Pace replied to the top of his head. ‘You just had the worst day of your life, Josh. But you have to realize it weren’t your fault. The mind makes up all kind of mixed-up shit to help us deal with guilt and grief. Once ran over a neighbour’s dog. Couldn’t sleep for weeks. God alone knows what it must be like to have killed a child. You ain’t goin’ mad, Josh. It happens.’

Josh raised his head and squinted at the man whose big hand was still resting on his arm. ‘You’re wrong. I know I saw her.’

Pace shook his head, and tightened his grip. ‘Then the mother of that poor little baby girl? She gone mad?’

Josh lowered his eyes, aware of how he must seem to these solid, unimaginative men. ‘Maybe.’

Pace withdrew his hand, rubbed his chin roughly and thought for a moment.

He stood up.

‘I’m goin’ to do somethin’ outside police procedure here, Josh. But I reckon it’s goin’ to help things along. You want some air?’

Josh unconsciously rubbed at his arm where Pace’s hand had been.

‘I guess.’

Pace nodded, and opened the door for him. They left the room, re-entered the small, neat office that smelled of new carpet, and walked outside towards the car. The sheriff waved a dismissive hand above his head to the calls from his staff as he left the building.

‘Shit, they’ll live without me for ten minutes,’ he said to no one in particular.

7

Thank God it was over. They’d made the delivery and everything was in order. Bernard Epstein didn’t like his job any more than his companion did, but as he got back into the car, Harry gave him a long look.

He returned the stare and shifted the driver’s seat back so that he could unzip his overalls.

‘She say anythin’?’

Harry’s tone was accusing.

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. Like what we do next, I reckon.’

Bernard wriggled out of the top half of his suit and lifted his buttocks to slip the legs off.

‘You know what we do next. Nothin’. That’s what we do.’

Harry looked forward out of the windshield to the gracious sweep of the street. ‘You done it before, ain’t you?’

‘Yeah. The once.’

‘So that’s all I’m askin’. Like what next?’

‘It’s different each time. Has to be.’

Harry looked at his hands. ‘Delivery’s the same.’

Bernard pulled the last of the overall from his foot and turned to look at his companion with a sigh. ‘She doin’ well, huh?’

Harry blinked at him.

‘Huh?’

‘That daughter of yours. The one you got in that fancy twenty-thousand-dollar-a-term college up in New Hampshire.’

‘Yeah. She’s doin’ fine.’

Bernard waited a beat, his eyes never leaving Harry’s, then nodded. ‘Mighty glad to hear that. Can we get back to the sawmill now? Them backs ain’t gonna stack themselves.’

While Harry looked at the floor and cleared his throat, Bernard crumpled up the overall and threw it in the back seat beside the other one. The blood would come off in the wash. It had stained the green cross and half the word ‘paramedic’, but it would be fine with some rub-on detergent before the rinse cycle.

And anyway, they wouldn’t need them again for a long time. They were woodsmen. They had their own work-wear.

Pace helped Josh into the passenger seat as though he were an elderly female relative visiting for Thanksgiving, then climbed breathily into the driver’s seat and drove off slowly at policeman’s speed. Josh looked across at him, waiting for an explanation. Pace kept his eyes forward.

‘How were you feeling before the accident? Just when you thought you saw the woman.’

Josh’s temples throbbed. He put a hand to his head. How had he been feeling? He had been feeling guilty, sad, screwed up and crazy without sleep. That’s how. So crazy he even thought he might have invented the woman to chastise himself for driving away from his problems. Remember, Josh? Remember? Oh, he remembered all right, and he wrestled with the truth of it before answering.

‘I felt fine. Hungry. That’s all. I needed something to eat.’

What else could he have told this man? That he had fallen asleep at the traffic lights, then woken thinking about how his girlfriend was going to kill his baby? Just seconds before he killed someone else’s?

Pace nodded as though that was what he wanted to hear, and steered the car carefully into a wide tree-lined avenue. Josh looked away in shame and turned his attention to their destination. If Furnace’s suburbs had been impressive then this was even more so. They had arrived in the land of the seriously rich. The houses here were set far back from the road, and the maturity of the gardens, ringed with ancient oaks and high rhododendrons, told the story that they’d been here a long time. The same uncomfortable alienation that had introduced him to this town was returning. He turned back to Pace.

‘What’s the deal with this town? Where’s the money coming from?’

Pace raised an eyebrow as if the question was not only irrelevant but also impertinent. He shrugged. ‘Same as anywhere. Rich folks here got old money, poorer folks do what poor folks do. Work.’

Josh shook his head, undeterred by this oblique answer. ‘No, I mean what’s the bottom line? Farming? Mining? What?’

Pace looked like he was thinking hard. ‘Well, I guess that’s a good question. I reckon mostly it’s land and timber, but we got a few people here deal mostly in money, know what I mean? Like they don’t make nothing, they just sit on the phone or the fax and move money around the world. Seems to make more.’

‘Up here? In the mountains?’

‘You got a phone and a fax it don’t matter if you’re on the moon. I guess they like the mountain air.’

Josh nodded, disappointed at the mundane explanation. The easy resolution of the mystery did little to make him feel better. But then he was far from feeling good. He was feeling worse than he’d ever felt in his life. The image of that tiny foot, that thick black blood, bobbed to the surface of his consciousness like a plastic ball held under bath water and released. He swallowed hard, fighting back his horror, as Pace brought the car to a stop outside a sprawling white house. The sheriff cut the engine and sighed deeply. He tapped the wheel thoughtfully for a moment, then turned to Josh.

‘This is out of order and I ain’t no psychiatrist but I reckon if you meet this lady you’re goin’ to realize that you made a mistake.’

Josh felt cold. My God. This was her house. John Pace was going to make him talk to her, make him look again into those eyes that had drilled him just before she …

‘But I don’t want you tellin’ her why we’re here, you understand? That’s important. No way am I goin’ to treat Councillor McFarlane like a suspect. This here visit is just so you can straighten things out in your mind and get on your way again. Can you handle that?’

Josh looked up to the dark windows of the great house and knew he had to see her. He nodded. Pace studied his face for a moment returned the nod, then got out of the car. Josh followed him, a few steps behind.

The arrival of the police car had already made one of the drapes twitch. A child’s face looked out from behind pale flowery material, and opened its mouth in naked delight that the sheriff was coming up their driveway. The drapes fell and swung as the child dived away.

Pace rang a doorbell that buzzed deep inside the house. There were voices, children’s and an adult cheerfully telling them to be quiet, and then the mock-period door swung open.

She opened it. The murderer.

Councillor Nelly McFarlane was wiping her hands on an apron that hung loosely around the waist of a plain denim knee-length dress. Her red hair was tied back in a knot and her open friendly face was without make-up. Clinging to her skirt was a girl of about nine or ten, and in the background a younger boy and a slightly older girl hopped around with open curiosity.

Nelly McFarlane looked at them both and smiled, showing those fine white teeth that graced her campaign handbill.

‘John! Hi! Come in.’

She motioned to the men to enter, but looking questioningly at Josh. He was aware that he looked like a criminal. Take a trucker from his truck and he always does. He was well used to being followed round factory outlet malls by store detectives who fixed on his clothes and haircut like pointer dogs on a duck. But right now, he was more aware that he was looking at a criminal. A first-degree murderer. Pace put a hand behind Josh to push him gently forward, speaking to the woman as he did so.

‘I want you to meet Josh Spiller. He’s a trucker from Pittsburgh.’

She widened her smile and raised her eyebrows. Josh was grateful that she didn’t offer a hand to shake. He was barely in control, but to have been forced to touch the flesh that had launched the baby into oblivion …

The children scuttled away inside and vanished, satisfied that the police visit was to be a dull social one.

Josh hesitated, his heart racing in his chest. The space between his shoulderblades told him that he was about to be clubbed from behind with a baseball bat, but his eyes, his logic, his head told him he was the unannounced guest of a bewildered and respectable Furnace citizen. He stepped into the large, cool hall. In the spacious living room to which she led them, a television was blaring cartoons to a room now vacated by children. Nelly McFarlane moved to a low mahogany coffee table, picked up the channel changer and silenced the noise.

Josh flicked his eyes to it just in time to see a coyote being pursued on a dusty road by a huge rolling rock before the picture fizzled away to black. He looked away quickly, a hot, sick feeling returning to his head. She sat down on a long sofa and motioned for the men to do the same on an identical one on the opposite side of the coffee table. They sat, and Pace clasped his hands on his knee.

‘Sorry to trouble you, Nelly, but there’s been a real bad accident.’

Josh watched her face carefully as a line of fear and confusion passed over its undoubtedly handsome structure. She was much younger than he’d thought. In her late forties maybe. It was hard to tell. But she looked good. He held his breath. He was confused and light-headed. Pace saw what she was thinking and hurried along to halt it.

‘Alice Nevin’s baby was killed this morning.’

Her hand went to her mouth. ‘Oh sweet Lord. Alice? Berry Nevin’s girl?’

Pace nodded.

‘How?’

Her voice was croaky.

‘It was out the front of the mall. Maybe you saw some of the commotion if you were in town early?’

He looked at her carefully, but if there was to be any flicker of guilt or duplicity it was not going to register on this woman’s sympathetically open face.

She shook her head slowly, her hand now at her neck.

‘We haven’t been out yet, John. What happened?’

‘Stroller rolled right out into the street. I’m here to tell you ’cos I know that’s a big piece of your campaign, Nelly. To get them metal barriers up in front of the store.’

She was shaking her head in disbelief now, and Josh watched her, seeing only a woman in genuine distress at an appalling tragedy. Pace was continuing.

‘Mr Spiller here, well, he was the real unfortunate one who just happened to be passing by slowly in his truck. Just shows you, you were right about an accident waitin’ to happen. He was way under the speed limit, braked an’ everythin’, but there was nothin’ he could do. Little Amy rolled right under there. Didn’t stand a chance.’