The young one bounced slightly on his toes as if preparing to throw a punch.
“Your wife went out at this time of night?” His accent was straight out of Southie, many generations of Boston distilled into his broad nasal vowels. “Where’d she go?”
Ray paused. “She wanted milk and we’re all out.”
“She goes for milk at one in the morning?”
“She’s a night owl. And she likes the Star Market that’s open twenty-four hours.” Ray hoped that would be enough. He couldn’t explain Evelyn’s behavior even to himself; there was no way he could explain it to these cops.
“Got any enemies?” the young one asked.
This made Ray think of a detective story he’d once written in college—he’d used the exact same phrase.
“Or anyone at the party you argued with?”
“No. They’re all friends from my firm. From work.”
“You a lawyer?”
“I’m an architect. An architect with no enemies.”
In his collegiate detective story, the shooting victim had plenty of enemies: a blonde spy, a sinister fellow businessman, a corrupt police chief.
“Anyone you owe money to?”
Dumb dialogue, Ray thought, and wondered if he were in shock. “No,” he said aloud, “nothing like that.”
The older officer wrote something down in his notebook, then looked at Ray and spoke for the first time since introducing himself.
“Some townies causing trouble, most likely. Or maybe the Newell Academy kids. Just last week a couple of them wrote IMPEACH REAGAN outside the front steps of City Hall over in Newell Center.” He smiled a faint, tired smile. “Your tax dollars pay to wash it off again, right?” He glanced at the washcloth Ray still held to his forehead. “The blood’s seeping through. Why don’t you let us take you over to St. Mary’s? It’s always better to have a head wound checked.”
“It was a shard of glass that cut me, not the rock,” Ray said. “I don’t have a concussion. Besides, my wife will be home soon. She’ll look after me.”
The young one was already halfway to the door. “We’ll cruise around the area,” he said, “see if we can pick up any punks.”
“We won’t find anyone,” said the tired officer, more to the ceiling than to his partner or Ray. “The kids are probably back in the woods by now.” He sighed and added, “Springtime of the year, there’s always kids in the woods.”
At the door he held out his hand and Ray shook it. “This kind of thing happens sometimes,” he said, “even in Randall. Sorry it happened to you.”
Ray watched them drive away, then went into the kitchen and looked at the clock. It was quarter past one now, and Evelyn still wasn’t back.
2.
There were kids in the woods, just as the officer had said. It was the last Friday before summer vacation and two parties were going on—one boarding school, one townie. The public school townies were down near the reservoir, and the Newell Academy kids were up on Swan Hill. Each party had as its centerpiece a pony keg of beer, in both cases Budweiser, both bought by seventeen-year-olds with fake I.D.s from the same package store in Newell. By the time the police car passed, both groups had dwindled. Among the townies, most had gone home when the beer ran out. Up on Swan Hill, one couple had gone off behind the trees, a few boys were pissing over an outcropping of rock overlooking the reservoir, and two girls had taken their paper cups of beer and gone to lie on their backs at the top of the hill.
“See?” said the taller girl, the pink-haired one. She swung her arms across the grass as if she were making a snow angel. “I told you you’d feel better up here.”
The other girl was small, with spiky black hair and black army boots. She rolled over on her side and looked at her friend. “Yeah, I feel so much better I think I’ll kill myself at the end of the weekend rather than now.”
“Come on, Ingrid,” the pink-haired girl said. “You’ll figure something out. Maybe Ms. Luce will change her mind about suspending you.”
“Oh, don’t talk about it,” said Ingrid. “Let’s just sit and smoke and listen to Rob Jacobs throwing up over there.” She sat up and kicked the heels of her boots against the ground. They were real combat boots, bought second-hand at an Army Navy store in Boston. She could still feel against the soles of her feet the contours of the soldier who had worn them before her. In moments such as this one, when the future looked particularly bleak, it was comforting to imagine what hells her boots had been in, perhaps even having their previous owner get killed while wearing them; she kicked her boot heels hard against the trampled grass, down into the damp June earth, and felt a tiny bit better.
She had been summoned to see Ms. Luce, the dean, that afternoon. She’d expected a weekend of community service and a talking-to, which she had been given so many times that it didn’t hold any real unpleasantness for her, or, she suspected, for Ms. Luce, who unlike some teachers never pretended she didn’t like you anymore just because you’d screwed up.
She went in without knocking, and the dean looked up from her desk, on which a manila folder labeled “Slade, T. Ingrid,” lay closed.
“There you are, Ingrid,” she said. “You’ve changed hair colors, I see.”
Ingrid’s hand went to her spiky head. Jessica Rosen had helped her dye it black a few days earlier.
“I like it better than the purple,” Ms. Luce said. “Sit down.”
“Your necklace is purple,” Ingrid said. Ms. Luce was wearing her usual aging hippie jewelry, and today the beads around her neck looked like they were made out of painted Tinker Toys.
Ms. Luce ignored this and looked hard at the manila folder without opening it, as if she could see through the cover to the writing inside. “This is your second drinking offense this semester,” she said after a moment. “You already have fifteen demerits for smoking, so J-Board has suspended you for six weeks.”
“How can I be suspended for six weeks when there’s only a few days left of school?” Ingrid asked.
“Because,” Ms. Luce said, with a gentleness that was lost on Ingrid, “you won’t be allowed to attend Summer Intensive this year.”
Ingrid sat back as if she’d been slapped. “But Summer Intensive is what I’m supposed to do this summer.” She leaned forward again, pressed her hands against the edge of Ms. Luce’s desk so hard her knuckles cracked. “I can’t go home—there’s no one there.”
Ms. Luce’s hands twirled the beads on her Tinker Toy necklace. “I’m sorry, Ingrid. The consequences are right there in the student handbook. You’d better call your father.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you—he’s not there, he left today for New Mexico.”
“I’m sure his company has a way of getting in touch with him.”
Ingrid gave a disgusted snort. “His ‘company’ is the Department of Defense. Go ahead, call them and see how far you get.”
Ms. Luce opened the file, saw that Ingrid was trying to read upside down, and closed it again. “Most parents prefer to hear about a suspension from their children,” she said, “but if you really don’t want to call him yourself, I’ll do it.”
“I was drinking one beer,” Ingrid said sulkily. “It’s not like I was shooting heroin.”
“The point, however, is that you know the rules and you broke them.”
“Can’t I miss fall term instead?”