What I discovered, when I followed Mr. Harvey’s stare to the crawlspace, were these animals that had gone missing for more than a year. People thought it stopped because the Ellis boy had been sent to military school. When they let their pets loose in the morning, they returned in the evening. This they held as proof. No one could imagine an appetite like the one in the green house. Someone who would spread quicklime on the bodies of cats and dogs, the sooner for him to have nothing left but their bones. By counting the bones and staying away from the sealed letter, the wedding ring, the bottle of perfume, he tried to stay away from what he wanted most – from going upstairs in the dark to sit in the straight chair and look out toward the high school, from imagining the bodies that matched the cheerleaders’ voices, which pulsated in waves on fall days during football games, or from watching the buses from the grammar school unload two houses down. Once he had taken a long look at Lindsey, the lone girl on the boys’ soccer team out running laps in our neighborhood near dark.
What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child.
By August, Len wanted to establish some boundaries for his sake and for my father’s. My father had called the precinct too many times and frustrated the police into irritation, which wouldn’t help anyone be found and just might make the whole place turn against him.
The final straw had been a call that came in the first week of July. Jack Salmon had detailed to the operator how, on a morning walk, his dog had stopped in front of Mr. Harvey’s house and started howling. No matter what Salmon had done, went the story, the dog wouldn’t budge from the spot and wouldn’t stop howling. It became a joke at the station: Mr. Fish and his Huckleberry Hound.
Len stood on the stoop of our house to finish his cigarette. It was still early, but the humidity from the day before had intensified. All week rain had been promised, the kind of thunder and lightning rainstorm the area excelled at, but so far the only moisture of which Len was aware was that covering his body in a damp sweat. He had made his last easy visit to my parents’ house.
Now he heard humming – a female voice from inside. He stubbed out his cigarette against the cement under the hedge and lifted the heavy brass knocker. The door opened before he let go.
“I smelled your cigarette,” Lindsey said.
“Was that you humming?”
“Those things will kill you.”
“Is your father home?”
Lindsey stood aside to let him in.
“Dad!” my sister yelled into the house. “It’s Len!”
“You were away, weren’t you?” Len asked.
“I just got back.”
My sister was wearing Samuel’s softball shirt and a pair of strange sweatpants. My mother had accused her of returning home without one single item of her own clothing.
“I’m sure your parents missed you.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Lindsey said. “I think they were happy to have me out of their hair.”
Len knew she was right. He was certainly sure my mother had seemed less frantic when he had visited the house.
Lindsey said, “Buckley’s made you the head of the police squad in the town he built under his bed.”
“That’s a promotion.”
The two of them heard my father’s footsteps in the hallway above and then the sounds of Buckley begging. Lindsey could tell that whatever he’d asked for our father had finally granted.
My father and brother descended the stairs, all smiles.
“Len,” he said, and he shook Len’s hand.
“Good morning, Jack,” Len said. “And how are you this morning, Buckley?”
My father took Buckley’s hand and stood him in front of Len, who solemnly bent down to my brother.
“I hear you’ve made me chief of police,” Len said.
“Yes sir.”
“I don’t think I deserve the job.”
“You more than anyone,” my father said breezily. He loved it when Len Fenerman dropped by. Each time he did, it verified for my father that there was a consensus – a group behind him – that he wasn’t alone in all this.
