JUST PAST A cluster of rusted mailboxes, Richard North pulled his car off Route 12 on the outskirts of the neighboring town of Ivers and down a dirt road whose sign read: BARKER FARM MOBILE HOME PARK.
Inside the park, the road turned to dirt at a T and made a one-way loop through the park. Drivers entered on the right and exited back out on the left. There was no sign but everyone knew that was the way it worked. The trailers sat perpendicular to the road to allow more of them per acre, placed so close together the only real estate between them was a shared dirt driveway; and so close to the road that dust from cars blew into open windows to collect, North imagined, on the tops of big-screen televisions and the arms of beer-stained velour loveseats.
A Rottweiler charged out from under a parked pickup truck. It barked and bared its fangs and black gums, lunged at North’s door to be yanked hard onto its back when it hit the end of its rusted chain. It yelped and lunged again, was yanked back again, saliva slinging from its mouth. Dope dealers owned dogs like that. There were plenty around. Marijuana: cash crop of Vermont. The nascent craft brewing rage had nothing on the dope growers. Not yet, anyway. He had nothing personally against marijuana. Didn’t believe it was a gateway drug, and in his day as a patrol officer had always been far more at ease and safe when he dealt with stoners rather than drunks during a call in the middle of the night.
North crept the cruiser along.
A gaggle of barefoot boys dressed in torn jeans and sleeveless flannel shirts played football in the road. They disassembled and shuffled slowly to the roadside, where they gawped at the patrol car. Their faces glistened with sweat as they stood with their hands on their hips, thumbs crooked in the corners of their pockets, or arms folded across their chests. They spat and scuffed their feet and kept their narrowed eyes on North. The boy with the football stood with the ball tucked under his arm. Blood trickled from his nose into his mouth. He licked at it.
Trailer #47, painted a sunny lemon yellow, occupied a piece of ground a good three times larger than any of the other trailers. A recently painted green door and green shutters graced the façade. Tidily shorn shrubs grew along its skirt not quite concealing the cinderblock base, which was also painted yellow. From window flower boxes, dried husks of geraniums faced a long winter before they would see weather warm enough to bloom blood red again.
Jessica’s mother, Marigold Cumber, had owned all of this land in the late eighties. It had been what was left of her family’s generational dairy spread. Marigold had sold the land to a shyster developer from Montreal in a knee-jerk decision after her brother and husband were killed in, of all things, a marijuana raid gone bad. She’d moved down to Florida to be with her mother. But years later, moved back after her mother passed on. Right back where she started. Except now instead of living proudly in a modest trailer with astounding views of open family land all around her, she paid rent to a crook to live among folks who hooked Rottweilers to chains.
Marigold had returned home with a three-year-old daughter in tow. Rumor had it that the father was some teenage kid named Jessup that Marigold had fallen in with and who’d moved away after Marigold set out for Florida. The math didn’t work, but maybe Jessica was his namesake for other reasons.
Now, that daughter, the only child Marigold would ever have, was dead.
Some people lived lives of perpetual hardship. Endured rather than lived.
Good people.
How is that? North wondered.
The driveway sat empty. North pulled the cruiser in and shut down the engine.
He got out.
The sun shone keenly, cruel and cold. In a window of the neighboring trailer, a curtain flicked. North was still bothered by what had happened at Jed King’s place. If he hadn’t needed to come out here, he’d have gone after Detective Test and spoken his mind freely. Told her just what he’d thought of her actions. But, duty called. He’d make it a point to find her later. It was not something he wanted to say over the phone. It was something better left in person.
A tiny porch enclosed Marigold’s front steps.
An American flag hung limp in the cold, dead air.
North walked up the two steps and rang the bell with a sense of dread. He knew patrol officers had come in the night to inform Ms. Cumber of her daughter’s death. But the look on a mother’s face, her posture, when the wound was so fresh was almost unbearable. There was nothing that could be said, nothing that could be done, to help those drenched in such profound and piercing grief. They were alone in their suffering, even if they were in conversation with God.
He rapped on the door.
No answer came.
He rang the bell.
No one came.
He rapped on the storm door’s Plexiglas window.
The boys who had been playing football now stood on the road out in front of the trailer and stared up the driveway at the porch, hands stuffed deep in their pockets. At least there were no media lurking about the park. Perhaps they’d come and gone. More likely they were more interested in the gay-marriage angle. It was juicier, seamier. It sold papers and got page views. True or not.
North was about to knock again when the main door opened just enough to straighten its chain lock. A sliver of an old woman’s face appeared in the crack. Too old to be Marigold Cumber’s face. An eye worked over North. The woman pulled the collar of a plaid bathrobe up around her neck. Cigarette smoke drifted through the screen and North held back a cough. The woman did not open the storm door. “No comment,” she said. “Hear?”
“I’m not a reporter, ma’am,” North said.
“Who’re you then?”
“A detective, with the Vermont State Police, ma’am.”
“Quit calling me ma’am, we aren’t in Alabama.”
“I need to speak with Ms. Cumber. Is she in?”
“You expect her to be out shopping? The reporters finally pushed off, now we have to deal with you?”
“May I see her?” North said. He showed her his ID.
The old woman disappeared from the door. Muffled voices found their way to North from inside. The old woman reappeared. She glanced toward the cruiser. “She’s too tired.”
“I really do need—”
“Not now you don’t. She’s—”
The woman’s eyes drifted to look behind North. He heard a car with a bad exhaust pull in and a car door shut. He turned around. Unbelievable.
Sonja Test was walking toward the trailer. Did she never give up? There was nothing he could do to prevent her from speaking with witnesses or persons of interest, but to come to the mother’s home. It took a pair. She was—.
The old woman opened the door slightly as Test came to stand beside North on the crowded porch steps.
“She your partner,” the old lady said.
“No,” Test said.
“You a cop too?” the old woman said.
“A detective.”
“A lady cop.” The old woman disappeared from the door without any warning.
“Look,” North said, facing Test. The two stood closer than King and Test had been to one another earlier. “About earlier, you need—”
The old woman returned, waved her cigarette at Test. “You can come in. He”—she clicked her teeth at North—“can’t.”
North saw a smile quiver at the corners of Test’s lips.
“No,” Test said, surprising North.
“How’s that?” the old woman said.
“All due respect,” Test said, “Detective North is the lead on this investigation and he’s here for one thing only: to help find who murdered Ms. Cumber’s daughter. So. Please. Don’t impede him from—”
“Don’t do what?” the old woman said.
“Please, let him in with me,” Test said.
The woman shut the door.
North stared at the door, confounded. “Thanks,” he managed.
“I only said it because it’s true. And all I care about is—”
The door opened. The old woman waved them in as if waving at a mosquito in her sleep.
North opened the door and the two detectives stepped inside.