The Detective's Garden Read Online Free PDF Page B

and to obey. He couldn’t hold his tongue anymore. He looked over at his father. He said, “What happened?”
    “What happened where?” asked Dominick.
    “Give me a break, Dad.”
    “We worked it out,” Dominick said. “He let me go.”
    “That’s it?” Clarke said.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “What did Sheriff Pope say? Why did he pull us over? Is he on your side? Is he helping you get away from here?”
    “I said that’s it,” Dominick said. “That’s it.”
    They drove for half an hour, then encamped in a roadside hotel outside Lewisburg. A Days Inn. Their father parked to the rear of the hotel, the only other car in the back lot a battered red coupe. The man behind the desk had no hair and gray skin and deep uneven lines on his face. His eyes looked as near death as the orbs of a strung fish. Their father wrote Jon Howland’s name in a broad flourish and the hairless man handed them a key while he looked at the clock fixed above their heads. They gathered ice and Styrofoam cups and packaged food from vend ing machines and ate around a small round table in a plain clean room. Fake roses stood in a vase at the center of the table. The children were quiet. They avoided looking directly at one another. Finally, Clarke spoke. “Dad, what’re we doing here?”
    “We can’t just drive,” his father said. “We’ve got to know where we’re going.”
    “Aunt Annie’s?” King suggested.
    “Too predictable,” their father said. “I’ve got to think.” He sat at the table in his peacoat and watch cap. The kids were tired.
    “I have a question,” Clarke said. He sat on the floor. King sat down and leaned against him.
    “Go ahead, Clarke,” Dominick said.
    “Why should we go with you?”
    “What do you mean why?”
    “Maybe we should stay here. King and me.”
    “You’re children,” Dominick said. “We’ve got to stick to gether. I need to keep you safe.”
    King slumped against Clarke. He had gotten so big already, but not as big as her father. Her eyes were closed. Clarke could hear a slight hitch in her breathing. Her head rocked against Clarke’s shoulder and he felt her weight, light in pounds yet heavy with responsibility. When she spoke, her eyes stayed closed. “I want to be with Dad,” she said.
    Clarke lifted King quietly into the bed. He picked her up, set her in the bed, and then got in beside her. Their father pulled the bedcovers over them. The children’s eyes closed. They slept like the dead.
    When they woke the room stood empty. A Styrofoam cup of coffee steamed on the table. Father-sized scuff marks in the carpet. The kids lay in bed looking at one another. Clarke said, “Let’s go look in the back of the pickup.”
    “What for?” King asked.
    “You know what for.”
    “I don’t want to,” King said. The bedcovers slid off them like shed skins and they cracked the door to the room and looked out. The front parking lot was empty.
    “I’m going,” Clarke said. He slipped out the door and around to the rear lot. The Ford sat near a line of trees and a sycamore limb curled over it like a finger. The sky had grayed into a vortex of clouds. There was no one around. At the front of the truck bed lay their father’s green duffels. Behind the bags, a blue grommet ed tarpaulin folded over a lumpen mass. Clarke froze. He went pale. King walked across the lot and stood beside him. Clark held up his hand and moved it, glacially, toward the tarpaulin.
    King called, “Don’t!” and the word hung as Clarke’s hand pinched onto a grommet and pulled slowly back. They found a green sleeping bag. Inside the sleeping bag were a police-is sue shotgun, a bulletproof vest, speed cuffs and keys, a bivouac sack, a side-handle baton, a stun gun, a tactical flashlight, and three canisters of tear gas.
    Relief shivered down Clarke’s legs, and he touched King’s shoulder where her hair tickled his hand, and they were joined together by a conflicted architecture of fear and love. They heard