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35

We sat in the idling Caprice for a longThe car must have had ten thousand hours of stake-out duty on it Froo or New Orleans or wherever Every pore of every interior surface was thick with sweat and odor and exhaustion Grime was crusted everywhere The floor mats had separated into hard tufts of fiber, each one like a flattened pearl

Deveraux said, "I apologize"

I said, "For what?"

"For asking you to help "

"OK"

"Can I let you out soo talk to Janice May Chaphbors"

"No," she said "I can&039;t let you do that I can&039;t let you turn against your own people"

"Maybe I wouldn&039;t be turning againstexactly whatBecause ht be right, you know We still have no idea who did what here"

We She didn&039;t correct uess?"

I thought about the li expensive lawyers I thought about the exclusion zone, and the panic in John Jaon Senate Liaison I said, "My best guess is it was a Kelhauy"

"You sure you want to take the risk of finding out for sure?"

"Talking to aquestions isn&039;t"

I believed that then, back in 1997

Janice May Chapman&039;s house was a hundred yards fros on a dead-end lane a mile south and east of Main Street It was a se-shaped yard off of a circular bulge where traffic could turn around at the end of the street It was facing two other houses, as if it was nine o&039;clock on a dial and they were two and four It wasand a new roof and sohbors were in a siood repair, as had been all the previous houses on the street Clearly this was Carter Crossing&039;s reen and weed free Driveere paved and uncracked Mailbox posts were exactly vertical The only real-estate negative was the train, but there was only one of those a day One minute out of fourteen hundred and forty Not a bad deal

Chapman&039;s house had a full-width front porch, roofed over for shade, railed in with fancy millwork spindles, and equipped with ahbors had the exact sa that both their porches were occupied, each by a white-haired old lady wearing a floral-print housedress and sitting bolt upright in a rocker and staring at us

We sat in the car for a ht in the ot out and stood for a second in the afternoon light

"Which one first?" I asked

"Doesn&039;t ht over within about thirty seconds"

Which is exactly what happened We chose the right-hand house, the one at four o&039;clock on the dial, and before ere three steps onto its porch the neighbor froht behind us Deveraux ave the ladies ator frohtly different from one another One was older, the other was thinner But they were broadly similar Thin necks, pursed lips, haloes of white hair They welcoeneration that liked the ar about it No question they had had husbands or brothers or sons in uniform, World War Two, Korea, Vietnam

I turned and checked the view froulated by her two neighbors Like a focal point Like a target The two neighbors&039; porches were exactly where the infantry would set up un nests for effective enfilade fire

I turned back and Deveraux ran through what she had already discussed She asked for confirative No, neither of the two ladies had seen Chapman leave her house on the day she had died Not in theNot on foot, not in her car, not in anybody else&039;s car No, nothing new had co to add

The next question was tactically difficult, so Deveraux left it tocould have happened that you didn&039;t see?" In other words: Just exactly how nosy are you? Were there hbor?

Both ladies saw the implication, of course, and they clucked and pursed and fussed for a ravity of the situation s, and they came out and admitted that no, they had the situation pretty much sewn up around the clock Both liked to sit on their porches when they weren&039;t otherwise occupied, and they tended to be otherwise occupied at different times Both had bedrooms at the front of their houses, and neither tried to sleep until the ht sleepers anyway, so not ht, either

I asked, "Was there usuallyover there?"

The ladies conferred and launched a long, coo all the way back to the American Revolution I started to tune it out until I realized they were describing a fairly active social calendar that about half a year ago had settled into a month-on, month-off pattern, first of social frenzy, and then of complete inactivity Feast or famine Chapman was either never out, or always out, first four or five weeks in one condition, and then four or five weeks in the other

Bravo Company, in Kosovo

Bravo Coood

I asked, "Did she have a boyfriend?"

She had several, they said, with priht Sometimes all at once Practically a parade They listed sequential gli aree pants, all in what they called undershirts, some in what they called motorcycle coats

Jeans, T-shirts, leather jackets

Soldiers, obviously, off duty

Not good

I asked, "Was there anyone in particular? Anyone special?"

They conferred again and agreed a period of relative stability had commenced three or perhaps four months earlier The parade of suitors had slowed, first to a trickle, and then it had stopped altogether and been replaced by the attentions of a lone , short-haired, but always inappropriately dressed on the many occasions they had seen hientleman called on his belle in a suit and a tie

I asked, "What did they do together?"

They went out, the ladies said Sos Probably to bars There was very little in the way of alternative entertainment in that corner of the state The nearest picture house was in a town called Corinth There had been a vaudeville theater in Tupelo, but it had closed o The couple tended to coht, after the train had passed Sometimes the suitor would stay an hour or two, but to their certain knowledge he had never spent the night

I asked, "When was the last time you saw her?"

The day before she died, they said She had left her house at seven o&039;clock in the evening The saht at the top of the hour, quite forht?" I asked

A yellow dress, they said, knee length but low cut

"Did her friend show up in his own car?" I asked

Yes, they said, he did

"What kind of a car was it?"

It was a blue car, they said

36

We left both ladies on one porch and crossed the street to take a closer look at Chaphbors&039; places It was classic tract housing, built fast in unifor ht after the end of World War Two Then each individual exahtly different fro years, the sae Chap, but pleasant Soerbread trim all over it, and the front door had been replaced

We stood on the porch and I looked in aand saw a s room, full of furniture that looked pretty new There was a loveseat and an armchair and a small television set on a low chest of drawers There was a VHS player and so room door was open and I could see part of a narrow hallway beyond I shifted position and craned my neck for a better look

"Go inside if you want," Deveraux said, behind me

"Really?"

"The door is unlocked It was unlocked e got here"

"Is that usual?"

"Not unusual We never found her key"

"Not in her pocketbook?"

"She didn&039;t have a pocketbook with her She seems to have left it in the kitchen"

"Is that usual?"

"She didn&039;t smoke," Deveraux said "She certainly didn&039;t pay for drinks Why would she need a pocketbook?"

"Makeup?" I said

"Twenty-seven-year-olds don&039;t powder their noses halfway through the evening Not like they used to Not anymore"

I opened the front door and stepped inside the house It was neat and clean, but the air was still and heavy The floors and the rugs and the paint and the furniture was all fresh, but not brand new There was an eat-in kitchen across the hall fro room, with two bedrooms behind, and presumably a bathroom

"Nice place," I said "You could buy it It would be better than the Toussaint&039;s hotel"

Deveraux said, "With those old biddies across the street, watching o crazy inside a week"

I smiled She had a point

She said, "I wouldn&039;t buy it even without the biddies I wouldn&039;t want to live like this Not at all what I&039;

Then she said, "Actually I couldn&039;t buy it even if I wanted to We don&039;t knoho the next of kin is I wouldn&039;t knoho to talk to"

"No will?"

"She enty-seven years old"

"No paperwork anywhere?"

"We haven&039;t found any so far"

"Noon record with the county"

"No fa any"

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don&039;t know"

I moved on down the hallway

"Look around," Deveraux called after me "Feel free Make yourself at ho I should see"

I walked froet every tih a dead person&039;s house There were s that would have been cleaned up and tidied away before an expected guest&039;s arrival They humanized the place a little, but on the whole it was a bland and soulless home There was too much uniformity All the furniture matched It looked like it had been selected froe fros ell together All the paint was the saraphs on the shelves No books No souvenirs, no prized possessions