Second Watch

Both boys flushed beet red. “Please don’t tell our mother,” Donnie begged. “Please. We’ll be in big trouble.”

“So when did you take the crowbar from the garage?” Watty asked.

I closed my eyes and envisioned the house they lived in—a small 1940s vintage brick house with a detached single-car garage at the end of a narrow driveway. The house next door was an exact copy. When they were built, they were probably considered affordable housing for GIs returning from World War II.

“Like I said. We did it in the morning, before she woke up.” Donnie was back to doing the talking for both of them. “We knew there wouldn’t be time to open the barrel before we went to church. That’s why we decided to do it later. We told Mom we wanted to see Charlotte’s Web, even though we didn’t. We got in line at the Cinerama, but as soon as she drove away, we caught a bus back to the Magnolia Bridge. That way we knew we’d have plenty of time to open the barrel before we were supposed to get home. The next showing didn’t start until four thirty.”

“What did you think you’d find when you opened that barrel?” Watty asked.

“Treasure,” Donnie said.

“Money.” That was from Frankie.

They were two similar answers, but not quite the same. Not identical, as it were, and it made me wonder why. Treasure is something you keep; money is something you spend. What neither of them had anticipated finding in the barrel was what was actually there—the horrifying naked body of a murdered young woman.

“You said this all happened after midnight? Isn’t that kind of late for you to be out of the house and unsupervised?”

“It was the weekend,” Donnie said. “We didn’t have to get up for school.”

“Where was your mom?”

Donnie glanced in Sister Mary Katherine’s direction. “She was busy,” he said.

Remembering what Mrs. Fisk had told me, I could well imagine that the boys’ mother had been busy with something other than her sons on a Saturday night.

“And how did you get out of the house without your mother knowing you were gone?”

“We go out through the window in our room,” he said.

“I was by your house the other day,” I said. “I seem to remember seeing streetlights. Are you sure it was too dark for you to see that truck? After all, if you were close enough to see the barrel get pushed over the edge of the yard, you must have been close enough to see more of the truck than you’re telling us.”

“I already said,” Donnie insisted. “It was a Ford. And it was dark. Maybe it was black, or it could have been blue. And it was real loud.”

“Is it possible it belonged to one of your mother’s friends?”

“No!” Donnie said heatedly, unconsciously balling his fists. “And don’t talk about my mother.”

Obviously my comment about his mother’s friends had come a little too close to the truth of the matter. I had no doubt that Donnie had, on occasion, resorted to blows in defense of his mother’s somewhat questionable honor. The look Sister Mary Katherine leveled at me said that this wasn’t news to her, either.

“Is that all?” she asked. Her question was aimed at Detective Watkins, but we both nodded.

“For the time being,” Watty replied.

“All right then,” she said to the boys. “You may go back to your classrooms. And, Donnie,” she added. “You’d better schedule a time to see Father Hennessey.”

“You mean, like, for confession?”

Sister Mary Katherine nodded. “What do you think?” she replied.

“Yes, sister,” he replied. Then, biting his lip, Donnie followed his brother from the room.

“They may look identical,” Sister Mary Katherine observed, watching the two boys hustle from the room. “But there are definitely some differences, especially when it comes to brains. Frankie got held back last year. He’s doing fourth grade for the second time. Donnie is in fifth.”

“And you know about their mother?” I asked.

“Detective …”

“Beaumont,” I supplied.

“Detective Beaumont, we’re in the business of hating the sin and loving the sinner. Someone is paying for the boys to attend this school in the firm hope that we’re preparing them to make better choices with their lives. For all I know, what they witnessed over the weekend may well be part of God’s plan for keeping them on the right path. They did call the incident in, didn’t they?”

“Yes.”

“So they acted responsibly, correct? If it hadn’t been for them, the body of that poor girl might never have been found. Right?”

It was my turn to nod. Sister Mary Katherine seemed to have that effect on everyone—striking people dumb and turning them into complacent nodders, Detective Watkins and myself included.

“Being raised without a father, those boys have a hard enough time holding their heads up in polite society, so I’m asking that you give them a break. Their mother has been known to overreact on occasion. As far as I can see, they’re not suspects, are they?”

“No, but they might lead us to a suspect,” Watty objected. “If they could give us a better description of the vehicle involved …”

“If!” Sister Mary Katherine said derisively. “Let me tell you something for certain. If you rile up their mother about their sneaking out of the house and smoking cigarettes, she’s liable to take after both of them with a belt, because it’s happened before. I don’t know if the mother was the one who did the beating or if someone else did, but the point is, unless you want to accept the responsibility for that—for those two boys being beaten to within an inch of their lives—I suggest you leave Donnie and Frankie out of your crime-fighting equation.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Detective Watkins said, getting up and heading for the door. “Thank you for your help.”

His immediate unconditional surrender surprised me, but I waited until we were outside before I said anything.

“What happened in there?” I asked.

“Donnie and Frankie are off-limits,” he said tersely. “Either we’ll find our killer without their help or we won’t find him.”

“But—” I began.

“I had a stepfather with a belt once,” Watty said. “Been there, done that. If those two boys end up getting into trouble with their mother or with one of her johns, it won’t be on my account, or yours, either. End of story.”

And that was the end of the story, at least as far as Donnie and Frankie Dodd were concerned. Watty and I never interviewed those kids again, and by the time I was assigned to my new partner, Milton Gurkey, the Dodd family had left town.

Just for the hell of it, I picked up my iPad now and tried googling them. Donald Dodd. Frank Dodd. Nothing came of it. Not a single link.

While I was doing my computer search, time had passed. When Nurse Jackie hustled into the room a few minutes later, I was surprised to realize that it was already late afternoon. The sun was going down outside. I looked toward the window Lieutenant Davis had peered out of, expecting to see the Space Needle rising in the distance. Except it wasn’t there. The window was, but the Space Needle wasn’t. The window faced east, not west. There was no view of the Space Needle there in real life, only in my dream.

“I’m working this floor today. Now, what’s wrong with your phone?” Nurse Jackie wanted to know, jarring me out of my window problem. “Your wife’s on the line, and she won’t take no for an answer.”

Examining the phone on the bedside table, Nurse Jackie quickly discovered it was unplugged. As soon as she rectified that situation, the phone began to ring. She handed it over, and Mel was already talking by the time I lifted the phone to my ear.

“When you didn’t answer, I was worried. I was afraid something bad had happened, that there had been some kind of complication.”

“Sorry,” I muttered guiltily. “No complication. I must have pulled the plug on the phone without realizing it. What’s up?”