that gray slit of a path, that patch of a lawn, to that paint-peeled farmhouse, he was dreading the interaction. He’d left all interaction with his own girls to his wife, years ago. Lady stuff. He didn’t know how to, nor did he want to know how to, talk to young girls. Just leave them be. Somehow, he thought, that was all you could do.
He hadn’t expected the little girl to answer anyway. Even his knock was unwilling. Too bad for him, his knuckles made it to the door, the door concurred and opened.
Dammit. But no. Not out loud.
Keep it professional.
She is tiny like Beth. She is Beth’s age. She is shaking somehow.
“Excuse me, Miss, I am looking for Shauna Boggs . . . is that you?”
Silence.
“Yessir.”
“Well, okay, then. My name’s Detective Barnett. I’d like to ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.”
“DA-AD!”
The screen door can fly at you if you’re not used to getting it slammed in your face. Step back. Step back. Easy there. Take things slow. The girl’s probably traumatized.
Troy Boggs. Yes, I know him. Just like I knew it was you, Shauna. It’s okay. I know your mama left. Everyone in town knows that dirge. Poor thing.
“It’s okay, Miss Boggs . . . Shauna…I’m just here to ask a few quick things. Won’t take a minute.”
The way Troy Boggs shades his way into sight, you’d think he was there all along, just idling. Like the light changed and there he was.
“Sir.”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Boggs. Sorry to bother you. I just have to ask a few questions. Routine. About the . . . incident. I’d like to ask your daughter. If that’s all right with you.”
Quiet house. Empty house. No-mom house.
“Officer, we’d be happy to help. Anything. I just wish I had something more to offer you, something to drink maybe? Some saltines maybe?”
Open the screen door goes and now the little cluster moves inside. It’s a pale-yellow kitchen, what could be the sweetest of kitchens, but not anymore.
It’s a card table in the middle and some metal chairs, one plastic. Troy Boggs dusts off the head chair for the officer, sits down his daughter and takes a seat beside her, concerned.
“Shauna, do you remember the last time you saw Beth Krause?”
Silence.
That little brunette sure knows how to stare at the ground.
“Approximately?”
“Yes. I saw her on her way to work. She was coming back from practice at St. John’s. I tried to get into that choir but, I guess I didn’t have the voice, so . . . ”
“So, she was coming back from choir practice, back from St. John’s Presbyterian?”
“Yessir.”
“Do you remember where, exactly?”
“On Spring Street, past the Farmer Jack.”
“Okay, good. That’s good, Shauna.”
It was funny looking at this girl. What was she . . . eighteen, nineteen, twenty, maybe twenty-one? It was like she was locked in time. Strange. You would never take her for more than fifteen. Even her gestures were childlike. Flinching. Samuel thought about his two middle-school girls bounding down the stairs, buzzing, stampeding toward their dinner, snickering, talking about God-knows-what. But this girl. This girl made of glass. A reed ready to snap.
And poor Troy. There next to her, troubled. A tear in his eye. You could tell he was shook up, too. Well, hell, why wouldn’t he be? If it were my daughter’s best friend I’d have them both put in a tower by now. Lock ’em up and throw away the key.
“She was real rushed, you know. Said she was on her way to work.”
“At the Green Mill Inn . . . is that right?”
“Yessir.”
“And did she call you or did you hear anything from her since, from the Green Mill Inn?”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing?”
“No.”
Now she is putting her head down and her father is putting his hand on her shoulder. Oh, God, please don’t break down in front of me, Troy Boggs. You’re a grown man!
Shauna looks up from the bottom of the world.
“Mister. She was the sweetest girl I know. Just real kind. She didn’t deserve this.”
Detective Barnett knows his lines well.
“Miss Boggs, no one knows why or how any of this happened but you can rest assured of one thing. We’ll find who’s to blame.”
“That’s right, honey.” Troy Boggs holds his daughter square on the shoulders. Such a good man. Such a good father. What with his wife leaving him and all.
You could make a funeral here today. With the sky bright blue for miles, the rolling green lawn, on and on, never mind the tombstones. You couldn’t have picked a better day.
It’s a hole in the ground. Nine by four. Around it are the tops of people’s heads. Black hats. The chapel choir is there, too. At the service, back at St. John’s, they’d sung “Walk with Me Lord” and “Dona Nobis Pacem.” Now, here on the lawn, Beth Krause sang at her own funeral. The conductor from the chapel choir dutifully quietly, pressed PLAY on the tape recorder and there she was.
Even when she was alive, the timbre of that voice, the pale white-haired girl bellowing out the “Ave Maria” to such great heights, even then, it had been hard for the stoniest of hearts to “keep a grip,” to “maintain” as it were. Such a thrilling voice from such a shy, tepid girl. A girl in a baby blue sweater with, what was that? A bow? A butterfly? A tiny little piece, a minuscule piece, of vanity. Maybe it was a dragonfly. A cameo behind it.
But now, here, with the chapel choir standing to the side and the service over, with Lt. Colonel Charles Krause and his wife, Dotsy, the two of them standing there, stoic, the voice coming out of the tape recorder, Beth Krause singing at her own funeral, might as well have been made of tears. The girls, Shauna and her friends, were shaking uncontrollably, sobbing themselves into convulsions. Even Troy Boggs had to stand them straight. Please, girls, please. Oh Lord. Stand still.
The chapel choir, twenty-six of them, simply stood stooped in tears, a row of weeping willows, unabashed.
It was a wonder to think, looking on that little hill in Muskegon, Michigan, on that big blue day in mid-winter that the hill itself
