chapter 11

LIEUTENANT BAIRD

After Merrimack Hose Company comes Merrimack Pee Dee. That’s how Uncle Drum says it. Pee Dee means police department. Well, it is the station, really. There are a lot of word things that seem funny to me. This is one of them. I have heard of firehouse. But not police house. Fire station and police station. And of course we have Merrimack Hose Company. But I have not ever heard of a police company. Maybe they have that somewhere. I don’t know.

Out in front of the Merrimack Pee Dee is the American flag. And a shield. Blue and gold. Painted on the door. There is a brick wall that makes an arch over the drive. Today, the number 003 cruiser is parked. Number 003 is Lieutenant Baird. Tell you what. That’s good. Means he’s not at my house today.

He will come again soon. Probably. He is a person I think I could like. But we have got this problem. He still wants the same thing he wanted more than a year ago. He wants help. He wants me to remember everything that was going on the day that Benny Kilmartin died.

He even gave me that black-and-white-spotted notebook. He folded the orange pencil inside it. He said, “Now, Mason, you write it all down.”

I choked. I said to him, “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

Tell you what. That was no wisecrack.

If Lieutenant Baird had just gone over to the school they would have told him how it is with me. The reading. The writing. My troubles with that. Grandma did tell him. Uncle Drum too. He said, “Lieutenant, you should know that the kid kind of hit the trifecta of troubles.” He said that poking his thumb at me. Then he said something about how you can see the sweating but the learning disabilities are invisible. He said, “We got major dyslexia here.” Waggled his fingers in front of his eyes. Dyslexia is about the letters going all faded or fat.

But the lieutenant made me keep that notebook.

“Give it a try,” he said. Big smile. He pushed the notebook at me like it was a big birthday gift. Thing is, it was more like a death-day gift. He gave it to me right away on the day Benny died. I remember. I let a flood of tears go right onto the cover of that thing.

Writing it down doesn’t go well. But the lieutenant wants me to write anything. Even if it doesn’t seem important. He said I can make a list of words and we will talk about them. Because that’s how an investigation goes. With everyone not knowing what’s important until it’s all put together. Like a puzzle.

Tell you what. I have tried. But I don’t think I have those pieces.