Idyll Hands: A Thomas Lynch Novel

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1972

CHARLESTOWN, MASSACHUSETTS

She watches the clock, checking the second hand to see if it’s time to go yet. Her freckled hand trembles as it brings a forkful of mashed potatoes to her mouth. She sets it down. The fork clanks against the dinner plate’s blue rim, and her mother’s eyes are on her.

Not hungry?

Her mother assesses the plate. Peas untouched, potatoes furrowed by fork tines, meatloaf covered in ketchup to conceal only a small piece has been consumed.

She tries to smile, but her cheeks feel tight. Guess I ate too many chips. She will accept this small sin if she may be forgiven the larger one coming. She touches the chipped crystal salt and pepper shakers. Years ago, she and her siblings had held the crystal shakers up to sunbeams, to create rainbows. Rainbow makers, they’d called them. Can you pass me the rainbow maker? they’d say at dinner, and their parents would exchange confused glances. And they’d laugh, giddy in the power of their shared secret. Secrets are not so nice now. They are dark and make her sick.

Her father, at the head of the table, says, Drink your milk. He doesn’t look up, but she knows the remark is aimed at her. You’d think her parents worked a dairy farm, the way they push milk. She lifts the sweating glass and swallows a mouthful. It is cold and wet and tastes of soap. Someone didn’t rinse the dishes well. It wasn’t her, not this time.

She pokes at the meatloaf and watches her brother, Bobby, eat. He is the only one left at home with her. Her other brothers and sister have grown up and moved to their own places. He will leave too, in a year or so. Bobby shovels potatoes and peas into his mouth. Then he chews and chews, twenty times at least, before he swallows. Has he always done this? He is the brother who scared her with stories of the boogie man when she was little. Who told her there were monsters under her bed. But he is the same brother who saved her from choking. Who stuck his grubby index finger down her throat and fished out the butterscotch candy blocking her airway. Tears come to her eyes and she blinks them away. They cannot see her cry. They’ll know something is up. She pinches the web of skin between her left index finger and thumb.

Her mother asks Bobby about his job, and he talks about a customer who didn’t know the difference between a spark plug and . . . she drifts off. Her father’s fingers are stained brown at the tips, and his hair is going gray. Even his mustache is streaked with silver. He would die if he knew what she was about to do. It would kill him. She bites down until her front teeth indent her lower lip, and then she asks, May I be excused?

Both parents eye her plate. Both frown. Her mother is about to tell her to eat more.

I told Lucy I’d meet her at 6:30. When they don’t respond immediately, she adds, I’m sleeping over, remember?

Whatcha doing? Bobby asks.

We’re going to a double feature. She twists the napkin in her lap, strangling the fabric. Thank God she checked the paper for this weekend’s listings. "The Last House on the Left and then Bluebeard."

Double feature? her father says. Is Mr. MacManus picking you up?

Yes. She pictures Mr. MacManus, reading the paper in his recliner, balancing a cigarette on his lower lip. He won’t be picking her up from the movies. Not tonight.

She prays her father won’t argue, that she won’t have to explain again that she is sixteen years old, old enough to go to the movies with her best friend. She doesn’t want to argue that she can be trusted. She’s not sure the lie would make it out of her mouth.

He sighs, but she recognizes the hollow sound in it that means he will give in. Her mother looks at her father. He sets the rules. He nods. Her mother says, Be careful.

She rises from her chair. The smell of her mother’s perfume, Wind Song, makes her wince. She used to love the smell, but now it makes her queasy.

Clean your plate, her mother says.

She takes the plate into the kitchen and scrapes her food into the trash, the potatoes sticking, refusing to budge, until she pushes them with her knife. They land atop empty cans and cigarette packets and discarded circulars. She sets the plates and utensils in the sink, where her mother will wash them using Palmolive. Her mother wears bright yellow gloves to prevent dishpan hands. She hums songs as she washes, Simon and Garfunkel or She Loves You by the Beatles.

The girl’s eyes water and she blinks, fast. On the yellow fridge is a picture of her and her siblings two Christmases ago. They are arranged before the Christmas tree. Bobby has his arm wrapped around her neck and Dave is making rabbit’s ears behind Mikey’s head. Carol ignored them all, posing. Her pregnant belly upstaged her smile. The girl will not allow herself to think of her nephew, Jimmy. Not now.

She grabs her knapsack from outside her bedroom. She will be gone two days, she tells herself. Only two days. And then she’ll be back, and it will be okay, things will be okay. She calls, See you later! and hustles downstairs, her feet thumping heavy on each step. Then she’s outside, and the sun is sinking and the air smells like hot dogs and lighter fluid. The neighbors are grilling though the air is nippy and it’s past grill season.

She sets her eyes to the road ahead and counts every car that passes. It keeps her from looking backward, to thinking of what lies ahead. It keeps her centered and present in the moment. That’s what she must be. She pushes her long hair behind her and leans forward as she walks, away from home and her life before. When she returns, on Monday, it will be fixed, and everything can go back to the way it was.

CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999

0945 HOURS

My sneeze erupted in wet spray. Droplets landed on an accident report. Bless you! Billy called from across the station. Allergies bothering you, Chief? Forty-six years I’d been on this planet and until last year I’d never had allergies. Had never had my eyes itch for weeks, had never woken each morning with a phlegm-coated throat, had never blown my nose through a tissue box in three days.

My mother has hay fever something awful, Billy said as he approached.

I never had allergies in New York. As if I could lay the blame at Idyll, Connecticut’s feet. Idyll had too many trees, shrubs, and flowers. You couldn’t walk four feet without stepping in a puddle of acid-green pollen. The crap coated cars and houses.

My doctor says you can get allergies any time, even when you’re old . . . older.

Old? I was in the prime of life. I sneezed again and grabbed a tissue. It tore in half. I fished the other half from the cardboard box. Blew my nose. God, when would this end?

You take anything? Mom says she wouldn’t survive spring without Allegra.

I’ll check it out. A paper airplane sailed past, coming to land atop a phone. Is spring always this quiet? It was my third here, but it seemed slow, even by Idyll standards. Idyll = idle. That joke never got old.

Slow? Billy said. We got that problem up on Piper Street. Right. Someone was tossing clamshells along Piper Street. The shells had meat inside and were creating a rotting, stinking mess. It was the season’s greatest crime.

Saw your fitness plan, Billy said.

How’s that? It was supposed to be under wraps for a week.

He got red. Mrs. Dunsmore was upset, so I asked what was wrong.

She’s upset about the requirements? They’re for policemen. Mrs. Dunsmore was the station’s secretary and had been here as long as the building. Okay, maybe not quite that long.

I figured, he said. Is it because of Dix?

Two weeks ago, Dix lost a footrace to a kid who’d defaced school property. The kid was nine years old. The guys had been teasing Dix, calling him Carl Lewis, ever since.

No. One look around our station revealed that many would benefit from a regular exercise regimen.

I think it’s great. Not surprising. Billy was young. He could do all the activities listed and barely break a sweat. Hopkins hauled himself out of a chair and waddled toward the newly hired dispatcher. Not everyone was so lucky. It’ll get us in shape in time for the softball game, yeah? He referred to the annual Idyll Cops and Firefighters match, which raised money for St. Jude’s Hospital. Historically, the victories had been largely one-sided. Not on our side.

Hope so, I said. Would be nice to win. I’d never played on the team. My first year, I didn’t know about it and so failed to volunteer, and last year the game was scheduled during my vacation break. I’d promised my nephews a trip to Six Flags and decided being the World’s Best Uncle trumped propping up the sad collection of Idyll Police softballers. This year, though. This year would be different.

The front door opened, and Mayor Mike Mitchell breezed inside. I walked swiftly toward the building’s rear. The mayor was Billy’s uncle. Those two could chat about Idyll’s softball games for hours. Me and the mayor? We had a more complicated relationship. He’d once been a fan. But then I’d come out as gay, and he’d tried to interfere with an arson investigation. Now he delighted in taking jabs at me during town meetings.

I walked inside the Evidence room and locked the door behind me. I hadn’t been inside in a year or more. No need. The room was the size of my guest bedroom, but it contained more stuff. Because this was Idyll, a lot of it was random. Sure, there were drugs and a couple of guns, but most stuff represented petty shenanigans: spray-paint cans, baseball bats, two bicycles, and a shelf full of fireworks. Leaning against the back wall were the twenty-two plastic flamingoes we’d recovered from the middle school principal’s lawn. They’d been arranged to spell DICK. There were also the rolls of toilet paper we grabbed every Homecoming. Apparently, it’s a high school rite of passage to toilet paper the trees of the football players’ houses. Startled kids, caught in the act, often dropped half a case rather than be caught. We used the toilet paper at the station, over time. It being May, we had only four rolls left. On the shelf nearest me were the cardboard boxes containing evidence from the North murder that took place in summer 1997, seven months after I started as police chief. On the highest shelf were three moldering boxes that looked as though they’d been placed there when Mrs. Dunsmore was hired as a fresh-faced secretary wearing a short skirt and tall hair.

The leftmost box looked soggy. It was labeled COLLEEN. The one beside it was marked Vacations, 1978–82. Why would they keep vacation records that long? The one closest to me wasn’t marked at all. It was a blue-and-white banker’s box. When I pulled it down and opened it up, it smelled musty, like old books. The box was filled with calendars of past police chiefs, detailing the exciting series of local town events they’d chaperoned. Memorial Day Parades, July Fourth Blast Offs!, and of course, the town’s biggest event, Idyll Days. Dear God, this was my future. No more murders or kidnappings, only a long string of town events and charity pancake breakfasts. I didn’t even like pancakes.

Another sneeze erupted from my nose. Too much dust back here. I moved to the door and set my hand on the knob. I heard the mayor say, Where has the chief gone? I dropped my hand and stepped back. A few minutes here wouldn’t kill me. I returned to the boxes and pulled down the one marked COLLEEN. I set it on the floor and unfolded the top flaps.

I’d been a homicide detective for twelve years before I came to Idyll. The foot-long bone lying in the box, its yellowed knobby end jutting above a plastic bag, didn’t startle me. It was a humerus bone, the one that linked the elbow to the shoulder. Under it, a plastic bag held a plaid fabric swatch. A smaller bag contained a watch with a cracked glass face and a pale pink wristband. At the bottom was a folder labeled JANE DOE. At last, something interesting.

A sharp squeak brought my head up. The door opened, and in stepped Michael Finnegan, our part-time detective, with a book in his hand. Originally from Boston, he had the accent to prove it. He whistled a tune, his eyes on the key he’d used to get in. He placed his keychain in the pocket of his mustard sports jacket and looked up. He saw me, a bone in one hand, and then looked down at the box by my feet. A line bisected his forehead, and his mouth turned down. Oh. I see you’ve met Colleen.

His frown was unusual. Finnegan was my sunny detective. He left the bad moods to Wright. I wondered if the frown had to do with the bone.

Who’s Colleen? I asked.

DETECTIVE MICHAEL FINNEGAN

FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999

1010 HOURS

Hiya, Mike! Hugh called from his dispatcher’s seat. Or do you prefer Finny? Hugh was hired two weeks ago. He still had that new hire shine. I gave it another three weeks before it dimmed.

Either is fine. Most guys called me Finny, a few called me Mike.

How goes it? he asked.

It feels like Friday the 13th. I’d had a call from ex-wife number two about her broken hot water heater, and my car was falling apart. It was shaping up to be a humdinger.

The mayor is here, he said, voice low. He was new, but he wasn’t stupid.

Sure enough, Mayor Mike Mitchell held court by the water cooler, pontificating about policing. I’d been a cop since 1971, so I figured I could skip his lecture. You never saw me, I said. Hugh nodded, and I walked toward Mrs. Dunsmore’s office. She’d offer me sanctuary. Besides, I’d finished The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and wanted to discuss the book with her. Try to convince her to read it. She thought all Stephen King could do was scare people with monsters. This would change her mind.

She wasn’t in her office, and her door was locked, so I headed for the Evidence room. I’d gotten a hammer, a flashlight, and many rolls of toilet paper from Evidence over the years. Maybe I’d grab the duct tape we’d impounded. A group of teen girls had used it to affix signs to utility poles declaring that Stacy MacMoore was a SLUT (the key word in pink glitter). The duct tape was heavy-duty, and my bumper was in need of repair.

Inside the Evidence room, Chief Lynch fondled a bone like a modern-day Neanderthal. I said, Oh. I see you’ve met Colleen, before I thought it through. He asked, Who’s Colleen? as he turned the bone in his large hands. Chief’s a big guy, well over six feet, and handsome if you like Rock Hudson–types. He squinted at it, and I wondered if he needed glasses. Not that I’d suggest such a thing. I’d leave it to my pal Lewis to make that mistake. He would, someday soon. I’d put money on it.

Mayor’s outside. I looked over my shoulder. Guess you knew that, huh?

Finnegan, he said. Who’s Colleen?

So much for distracting him. Colleen. Well, that’s a hard question to answer.

Why?

Because no one knows, I said. But I found her.

When?

How much had he seen? He’d opened the box, but the folder wasn’t in sight. He hadn’t read it, or he’d be asking different questions.

Wouldn’t you rather sit down while I spin you the story? There were no chairs back here, and it was cramped quarters for a guy his size.

Mayor’s still out there, right? he asked.

When will he be back? the mayor shouted. We could see his outline behind the frosted glass pane of the door. The chief winced. No way he was stepping out there, into the line of fire.

Okay. I set my book on a shelf, crossed my arms, and leaned against the metal shelving unit. It was summer 1983. July. And I was reciting poetry in the woods. Robert Frost’s Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. Only the woods weren’t lovely. The woods were hotter than Hades and full of mosquitos looking to suck my blood.

Why were you out there? He set the bone back in the box, carefully. Some guys would’ve tossed it.

"Mr. Graham had called to complain, again, that bonfire parties were being held in the woods behind his house."

Mr. Graham?

Dead now. He used to live on Oak Road. The house with the wraparound porch, though that’s new. Belongs to the Crawfords, those folks from California. Back when it was Graham’s, it didn’t have the porch or the blacktop driveway. Just a gravel drive sprouted with weeds.

He nodded, and I continued. That day, Chief Stoughton was in a mood to assign his ‘lead detective’ to check out Mr. Graham’s property. As if tramping through the woods at two o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon was going to solve the problem. I told Stoughton it was kids looking to drink during vacation, and there was no way they’d be outside in ninety-two-degree weather, hosting a bonfire. But reason had held no sway with Chief Stoughton. He’d been nursing a hangover that hot day, and he’d been eager to dish out punishment. I went and beat back tree limbs as best I could. After twenty minutes, I hadn’t seen a thing. I thought maybe Mr. Graham was losing it. He was eighty-six and fuzzy at the edges.

Chief Lynch waited. Other cops would’ve asked, When did you find Colleen? or begged me to skip the boring bits. But Lynch enjoyed a good yarn.

I headed back to my car, waving my arms to keep the mosquitos at bay. My foot kicked a log. Something bright winked on the ground. It was a watch. Its glass face was broken.

The one in the box, he said.

"I thought it was evidence of Mr. Graham’s nighttime trespassers, so I looked around. The pine needles and leaf cover looked disturbed, but that could’ve been from me lumbering through. After a minute or two, I saw something else under the leaves. It was a dirty piece of fabric. When I got it up, I saw it was a skirt, a plaid skirt. Could’ve been the bonfire kids had gotten frisky, but it bothered me. I was thinking, Why someone would leave a skirt in the woods? when I spotted the bone. My first thought was it was a rotted tennis ball."

I’d knelt to examine it and the ache in my gut sharpened. It felt like I’d caught the soft skin of my belly in a zipper.

There were divots and pockmarks, where scavengers had chewed on it. I tugged it out of the ground, turned it over, and saw it was the upper arm bone, the humerus.

Then what did you do? His face was alive with interest, and I realized I’d played this all wrong. I should’ve stressed that it was a dead-end case with no good angles. Now he’d want to know more. He’d definitely go through the box and read the folder, cover to cover. Damn it.

I marked the site with my handkerchief. Then I got back to the car and called it in.

But not before I’d stood where the woods met Mr. Graham’s yard. I’d stared at an old charcoal grill that hadn’t cooked a hot dog in a decade. Tilted to one side, its cover so rusty I couldn’t make out its original black paint. And I wondered why there was a bone in the woods, and how much trouble it was likely to cause.

I got on the radio and told dispatch what I’d found. Jonathan said, ‘A bone? You mean, like a deer, right?’ As if I’d call in about finding a fucking deer bone. When I told him it was human, he asked, ‘How can you tell? You take one of them adult ed classes?’

Jonathan sounds like a delight, Chief said. These comments made me like him. Some of the other cops thought he talked funny. They weren’t as fluent in sarcasm.

What did you think about the bone? he asked.

It had been outside for years. I wondered why there was only one and how it got there.

He glanced at the box. I’m guessing they didn’t recover much else?

I leaned away from the shelving unit’s metal frame. They found signs of a bonfire, burnt logs twenty feet from where I found the bone. There were beer cans and cigarettes. Some food wrappers and a discarded condom.

July 1983, he said. A cold case.

The coldest.

He cocked his head. Looked toward the door. Mayor’s gone.

You sure?

He grunted. He’s not capable of staying silent for so long. He bent and picked up the box. I hoped he’d put it back on the shelf, but he carried it, in his arms, toward the door.

Damn it. Chief, how ’bout I grab that for you?

I’ve got it, he said, and walked out.

I don’t mind.

You been talking to Billy? I’m not old. I can carry plenty heavier things than this.

I wasn’t implying— I stopped. And let him go. I needed to get my hands on that box before he read the folder, but there was no need to make a scene now. That would tip him off.

If you live your life like an open book, if you keep 90 percent of your info out there for anyone to see, they assume you’ve got no secrets.

That was the Chief’s mistake. He was 100 percent secrets when he arrived in Idyll, so we assumed he was hiding stuff, important stuff. He should’ve flooded us with information, most of it nothing we’d want to know. It would have silenced us, made us wish he’d stop talking. That’s how you go undetected for years—decades. How everyone thinks they know you so well. Trust me. I’ve been doing it for so long, I’ve forgotten I’m doing it most days.

CHIEF THOMAS LYNCH

FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1999

1130 HOURS

Billy walked into my office. My application for the drug squad program we discussed. He thrust the papers at me. Professional development. We had a small budget for it. Billy was one of three men who’d approached me about using those funds to get more on-the-job training. I promised to look the sheets over. They’re due Friday of next week, he said.

Got it.

He stared at the bone on my desk. That a human bone? Got closer to it. The humerus, right? Back in Boy Scouts we learned the differences between human bones and animal bones. People were always reporting they’d found body parts, and usually they were deer legs or bear bones. Our scoutmaster, Mr. Mulaney, he worked as an EMT, and he taught us to spot differences.

I thought Boy Scouts went camping.

We did that too. He peered at the bone. Where did this come from? Billy didn’t know. Interesting. Then again, Billy was young, and Finny said he’d found it back in 1983.

Woods back of Mr. Graham’s place, I said.

Whoa. Billy’s eyes widened. Is this Colleen?

What do you know about Colleen? Finny had made it sound like nothing was known about her.

She was our local ghost. As kids, we’d dare each other to spend the night in the woods behind the Graham place. Story was that a young woman had been murdered there. Her ghost was seen amongst the trees, screaming. People heard her. They wouldn’t always see her, but they’d hear her. That was the bit that freaked me out, the screaming.

Anyone ever do it? I asked. Stay overnight in the woods?

"Kids claimed to, but without witnesses, who’s to say if they did? I wouldn’t sleep out there. Tons of mosquitos, and, back in the day, Old Man Graham kept a shotgun he threatened to fire at trespassers. I figured Colleen was made up by him to keep kids out of the woods. But this bone . . . Are you saying there was a body in the woods?"

Just this bone, I said. Sounds as though they never identified it.

Shouldn’t that be at Farmington? Even a young patrolman like Billy knew the rules.

Let’s keep it between us, okay?

Sure thing. He looked at the bone. Huh. Never thought she was real. I mean, not now, not as an adult. Weird to think the story was based on truth. He frowned. I guess some legends turn out to be real, huh?

Guess so, I said.

He left me to dab at my eyes with a fresh tissue. My direct line rang. Outside call. 212 area code. New York City.

Tom? my brother, John, said when I answered. How are you?

Fine. Everything okay? He didn’t call me midday, at work. We communicated through his wife, Marie, or our parents.

Yeah, everything is fine. We’re having a get-together, and I wanted to invite you.

Get-together? Had I forgotten someone’s birthday? Anniversary? My mental calendar came up blank.

I won a teaching award, and they’re having a ceremony. Mom wanted to do dinner afterward. John had followed in our parents’ academic footsteps.

Congrats, I said. Do you get money? A statue?

My name goes on a plaque, and I get a tiny, one-time bonus.

When’s the ceremony?

Next month on a Tuesday night. You’re probably working.

Probably, I said. But let me look into it. What time does it start?

Well, the award thing is at 5:30 p.m. Mom wants to go out afterward.

Kids coming? I hadn’t seen my nephews since Christmas. It seemed like they grew an inch between my visits.

Yup.

Where’s it at? I’d been to NYU just often enough to realize I’d be lost without explicit directions. John gave them to me.

It’d be great to see you there. His voice was resigned. He didn’t expect I’d come.