“And you believe that?”
“No, I’m sure it’s bullshit, but belief isn’t the point. It’s a metaphor.” Samuels tried to soothe the cowlick down. The cowlick refused. “We followed Terry’s tracks, because that’s our job. Our duty, if you like that word better. We followed them until they stopped on Monday morning. Is there a mystery? Yes. Will there always be unanswered questions? Unless some new and amazing piece of information drops into our laps, there will be. Sometimes that happens. It’s why people continue to wonder what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. It’s why people keep trying to figure out what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste. It’s why people argue about whether or not Oswald acted alone when he shot JFK. Sometimes the tracks just stop, and we have to live with that.”
“One big difference,” Ralph said. “The woman in your story about the footsteps could believe her husband was still alive somewhere. She could go on believing that until she was an old woman instead of a young bride. But when Marcy got to the end of her husband’s tracks, Terry was right there, dead on the sidewalk. She’s burying him tomorrow, according to the obituary in today’s paper. I imagine it’ll just be her and her girls. Along with fifty news vultures outside the fence, that is, yelling questions and snapping pictures.”
Samuels sighed. “Enough. I’m going home. I told you about the kid—Merlin Cassidy’s his name, by the way—and I can see you don’t want to listen to anything else.”
“No, wait, sit back down a minute,” Ralph said. “You told me one, now I’m going to tell you one. Not out of a psychic magazine, though. This is personal experience. Every word true.”
Samuels lowered himself back to the bench.
“When I was a kid,” Ralph said, “ten or eleven—around Frank Peterson’s age—my mother sometimes used to bring home cantaloupes from the farmers’ market, if they were in season. Back then I loved cantaloupe. They’ve got this sweet, dense flavor watermelon can’t get close to. So one day she brought home three or four in a net bag, and I asked her if I could have a piece. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Just remember to scrape the seeds into the sink.’ She didn’t really have to tell me that, because I’d opened up my share of cantaloupes by then. You with me so far?”
“Uh-huh. I suppose you cut yourself, right?”
“No, but my mother thought I did, because I let out a screech they probably heard next door. She came on the run, and I just pointed at the cantaloupe, laying there on the counter, split in two. It was full of maggots and flies. I mean those bugs were squirming all over each other. My mother got the Raid and sprayed the ones on the counter. Then she got a dish towel, wrapped the pieces in it, and threw them in the swill bucket out back. Since that day I can’t bear to look at a slice of cantaloupe, let alone eat one. That’s my Terry Maitland metaphor, Bill. The cantaloupe looked fine. It wasn’t spongy. The skin was whole. There was no way those bugs could have gotten inside, but somehow they did.”
“Fuck your cantaloupe,” Samuels said, “and fuck your metaphor. I’m going home. Think before you quit the job, Ralph, okay? Your wife said I was getting out before Johnny Q. Public fired me, and she’s probably right, but you don’t have to face the voters. Just three retired cops that are this city’s excuse for Internal Affairs, and a shrink collecting some municipal shekels to supplement a private practice on life support. And there’s something else. If you quit, people will be even more sure that we screwed this thing up.”
Ralph stared at him, then began laughing. It was hearty, a series of guffaws that came all the way up from the belly. “But we did! Don’t you know that yet, Bill? We did. Royally. We bought a cantaloupe because it looked like a good cantaloupe, but when we cut it open in front of the whole town, it was full of maggots. No way for them to get in, but there they were.”
Samuels trudged toward the kitchen door. He opened the screen, then whirled around, his cowlick springing jauntily back and forth. He pointed at the hackberry tree. “That was a sparrow, goddammit!”
3
Shortly after midnight （around the time the last remaining member of the Peterson family was learning how to make a hangman’s noose, courtesy of Wikipedia）， Marcy Maitland awoke to the sound of screams from her elder daughter’s bedroom. It was Grace at first—a mother always knows—but then Sarah joined her, creating a terrible two-part harmony. It was the girls’ first night out of the bedroom Marcy had shared with Terry, but of course the kids were still bunking together, and she thought they might do that for some time to come. Which was fine.