Every Dead Thing

Martin drove me to the sheriff’s office. The motel had been sealed up and my clothes had been moved to a cell. I showered, wrapping my bandaged arm with plastic first, and then slept fitfully in the cell until the rain stopped falling.

Two federal agents arrived shortly after midday and questioned me about what had taken place. The questioning was perfunctory, which surprised me until I remembered that Special Agent Ross was due to fly in later that evening. The woman had still not regained consciousness by 5:00 P.M., when Martin came into the Haven Diner.

“Did Burns turn up anything on Catherine Demeter?”

“Burns has been tied up with the feds since this afternoon. He said he’d check some of the motels before calling it a day. He’ll let me know if there’s any sign of her. You still want to see Walt Tyler, we’d better get going now.”

23

WALT TYLER lived in a dilapidated but clean white clapboard house, against one side of which leaned a teetering pile of car tires that were, according to a sign on the road, For Sale. Other items of varying degrees of sellability that rested on the gravel and the well-trimmed lawn included two semire-stored mowers, various engines and parts of engines, and some rusting gym equipment, including a full set of bars and weights.

Tyler himself was a tall, slightly stooped man with a full head of gray hair. He had been handsome once, as his picture had suggested, and he still held himself with a kind of loose-limbed grace, as if unwilling to admit that those looks were now largely gone, lost to cares and worries and the never-ending sorrow of a parent who has lost an only child.

He greeted Alvin warmly enough, although he shook my hand less cordially and seemed reluctant to invite us in. Instead he suggested that we sit on the porch, despite the prospect of further rain. Tyler sat in a comfortable-looking wicker chair and Martin and I on two ornate metal lawn chairs, the lost elements of a more complete set and also, according to the sign hung from the back of mine, For Sale.

Without Tyler making any effort to ask for it, coffee was brought out in clean china cups by a woman younger than he by maybe ten years. She, too, had been more beautiful once, although in her the beauty of youth had matured into something perhaps more attractive yet, the calm elegance of a woman for whom old age held no fears and in whom lines and wrinkles would alter but not erase her looks. She cast a glance at Tyler, and for the first time since we arrived, he smiled slightly. She returned the smile and went back into the house. We didn’t see her on the porch again.

The deputy began to speak but Tyler stopped him with a slight movement of his hand. “I know why you’re here, Deputy. There’s only one reason why you’d bring a stranger to my home.” He looked hard at me, his eyes yellowing and rimmed with red but with an interested, almost amused, look in them.

“You the fella been shooting up folks in the motel?” he asked, and the smile flickered briefly. “Excitin’ life you lead. Your shoulder hurt?”

“A little.”

“I was shot once, in Korea. Shot in the thigh. Hurt more’n a little. Hurt like hell.” He winced exaggeratedly at the memory and then was quiet again. I heard thunder rumble above us, and the porch seemed to grow dark for a time, but I could still see Walt Tyler looking at me and now the smile was gone.

“Mr. Parker’s an investigator, Walt. He used to be a detective,” said Alvin.

“I’m looking for someone, Mr. Tyler,” I began. “A woman. You probably remember her. Her name is Catherine Demeter. She’s Amy Demeter’s younger sister.”

“I knew you weren’t no writer. Alvin wouldn’t bring one o’ them”-he searched for the word-“leeches here.” He reached for his coffee and sipped long and quietly, as if to stop himself from saying more on the subject and, I thought, to give him time to consider what I had said. “I remember her, but she ain’t been back since her pappy died and that’s better’n ten years. She ain’t got no reason to come back here.”

That statement was taking on the sensation of an echo. “Still, I think she did, and I think it can only be connected with what happened before,” I replied. “You’re one of the only ones left, Mr. Tyler, you and the sheriff and one or two others, the only ones involved with what took place here.”

I think it had been a long time since he had spoken of it aloud, yet I knew that no long period went by without him returning to it in his thoughts or without him being dimly or acutely aware of it, like an old ache that never fades but that is sometimes forgotten in the throes of some other activity and then returns in the forgetting. And I thought that each return had etched a line in his face, and so a once handsome man could lose his looks like a fine marble statue being slowly chipped away to a memory of its former self.