Chapter Seventeen
By the time we got on the road, it was beginning to get dusky. It must have been about seven-thirty. Sheriff Martin drove and Sally Ann and I sat in the back seat, holding hands.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The home of the father of an old friend,” he replied. “His name is Peter Crane. He’s disabled from an accident years ago, and his daughter looks in on him every day. She’s working a double shift at the hospital today, though--she’s a nurse’s aide--and she hasn’t been able to get him to answer the phone. I told her I’d stop by and make sure he was okay.”
“How do you know them?” I asked.
“His wife used to clean house for us, years and years ago. Remember, Sally?”
“Just vaguely,” she answered. “Momma Hattie, we called her. I was just a little girl,” she told me.
We drove past the center of town on Seventh Street before making a right turn onto Buford. At South Twelfth Street we made another right, and Sheriff Martin pulled the cruiser up in front of the third house on the right, parking in the street.
“Can we come, daddy?” asked Sally. “I’d kind of like to see him.”
“Sure,” he replied, and we all got out of the car.
The parched grass of the front lawn had a lifeless, yellow-brown color in the early evening light. Sally Ann and I followed Sheriff Martin up the front walk to the porch, climbing the three wooden stairs. They had been a bright white once; now, weathered wood showed through in spots where no faded paint remained. The green paint on the screen door was in even worse shape. A rocking chair sat empty on our right, still in the evening quiet.
Sheriff Martin opened the screen and rapped on the front door that stood solid and closed behind it. There was no answer.
“He usually leaves it unlocked in the daytime,” Sheriff Martin told us, “but then again he’s usually sitting right here on the porch from sunup to sundown.” He knocked again, then tried the doorknob. It turned in his hand, and he pushed the door open, slowly, not wanting to scare a paralyzed old man.
“Peter?” he called out. All was quiet. “What do you think?” he said to us. “Should we go in?”
I looked at Sally Ann. “Looks like we’d better,” I said.
We stepped through the door and into the past. The front hall was dark, with rooms off to either side, stairs leading up, and a room at the end that looked to be the kitchen.
“Look around,” Sheriff Martin told us. “Peter?” he called out again. There was no reply.
Sheriff Martin walked forward toward the kitchen. “I’ll have a look upstairs,” I told Sally Ann, and she began searching the rooms off the first floor hallway.
I put my hand on the bannister and slowly climbed the stairs to the second floor. Frayed green carpet ran down the middle of the staircase, and flowered wallpaper covered the wall on the way up. As I made my ascent I studied the photographs on the wall, hung in a diagonal line going up. They were all in black and white. There was one of a young black man in an Army uniform, smiling at the camera. In another, the same man was in a suit that I guessed was from the 1940s, with his arm around a young black woman. I wondered if she was Sally Ann’s Momma Hattie. Other photos traced these two people and included a young girl, who I figured was Crane’s daughter, the hospital nurse.
These observations sped through my mind in the few seconds it took me to climb the stairs. At the top was a landing, where a wooden floor was partially covered by a dusty throw rug.
The upstairs hallway was darker than the downstairs. There were three doors leading off of it, each a different shade of dirty white. The doors were all closed. I approached the first door and opened it. Inside was the old man’s bedroom. With only a hazy film of early evening light playing through the tired, drawn curtains, it was hard to see very much, but I could see enough to tell he wasn’t there.
The second door was locked, and I wondered if it was his wife’s old room.
The last door stood closed at the end of the hallway, and it opened easily. Inside was the bathroom. I ran my hand up the wall until I found the light switch; it was the type with two buttons that you don’t see much anymore. I pushed the button and the small room was bathed in a harsh light.
I had never seen a dead body before, but I had no doubt that I was looking at the lifeless form of Peter Crane. He was sitting on the toilet, his upper body bent back so that the tank supported his shoulders. His head rested against the tiles on the wall behind the tank, and his head was cocked just to the side, as if he were looking at something unusual.
His pants were around his ankles. He looked like he had died while going to the bathroom. I backed out into the hallway, unable to take my eyes from the sight. “Sheriff Martin!” I yelled. “Sally Ann!” I heard footsteps downstairs.
“Did you find something?” the sheriff yelled.
“I think you’d better come up here,” I yelled, and he bounded up the stairs, with Sally Ann close behind.
I pointed into the bathroom and he brushed by me, motioning for Sally Ann to stay back.
“My god,” I heard him remark. “Someone did this.”
I didn’t understand. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Peter Crane couldn’t walk. He couldn’t control his bladder or his bowels. He used bags.”
“So what?” I said.
“So what? So he never used the toilet like this. Someone had to put him here. He carefully examined Crane as I stood in the doorway. Sally Ann was in the hall; she didn’t want to look.
Sheriff Martin stood up from the body and turned around. “I think this man was murdered,” he told me.
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