T Is for Trespass

morning?”
    “I believe so, yes.”
    “Well, good. Then I’ll be on my way. Enjoy your meal. Nice meeting you, dear.” She folded the brown paper bag and tucked it under one arm before she let herself out.
    “Meddlesome,” he remarked, but I didn’t think he meant it. He just liked to complain. For once, I was reassured by the crabbiness of his response.

16
    My visit with Gus lasted fifteen minutes more, at which point his energies seemed to flag and mine did as well. That much high-decibel small talk with a cranky old man was about my max. I said, “I have to go now, but I don’t want to leave you in here. Would you like to go into the living room?”
    “Might as well, but you bring that bag lunch in and set it on the couch. I get hungry, I can’t be running back and forth.”
    “I thought you were having the chicken casserole.”
    “I can’t reach that contraption. How am I supposed to manage when it’s up on the counter in the back? I’d have to have arms another three feet long.”
    “You want me to move the microwave closer?”
    “I never said that. I like to eat my lunch at lunchtime and my dinner when it’s dark.”
    I helped him get up out of his kitchen chair and steadied him on his feet. He reached for his walker and shifted his weight from my supporting hands to the aluminum frame. I kept pace beside him as he crept into the living room. I couldn’t help but marvel at the inconsistencies of the aging process. The difference between Gus and Henry and his siblings was marked, even though they were all roughly the same age. The journey from the kitchen to the living room had left Gus exhausted. Henry wasn’t running marathons, but he was a strong and active man. Gus had lost muscle mass. Holding his arm lightly, I felt bony structure with scarcely any meat. Even his skin seemed fragile.
    When he was settled on the couch, I returned to the kitchen and retrieved his lunch from the refrigerator. “You want this on the table?”
    He looked at me peevishly. “I don’t care what you do. Put it anywhere you like.”
    I placed the bag on the couch in easy reach. I was hoping he wouldn’t topple sideways and crush the damn thing.
    He asked me to find his favorite television show, episodes of I Love Lucy on an off-channel that probably ran them twenty-four hours a day. The set itself was old and the channel in question had a certain snowy cast to it that I found bothersome. When I mentioned it to Gus, he said that’s what his eyesight was like before cataract surgery six years earlier. I fixed him a cup of tea and then made a quick check of the bathroom, where his container of pills was sitting on the rim of the sink. The plastic storage case was the size of a pencil box and had a series of compartments, each marked with a capital letter for each day of the week. Wednesday was empty so it looked like he’d been right about taking his pills. Home again, I left the key to Gus’s house under Henry’s doormat and headed off to work.

    I spent a productive morning at the office, sorting through my files. I had four banker’s boxes, which I loaded with case folders from 1987, thus making room for the coming year. The boxes I stashed in the storage closet at the rear of my office, between the kitchenette and the bathroom. I made a quick trip to an office-supply company and bought new hanging files, new folders, a dozen of my favorite Pilot fine point rolling ball pens, lined yellow pads, and Post-its. I spotted a 1988 calendar and tucked that in my basket as well.
    While I drove back to the office, I did some thinking about the missing witness. Hanging out around the bus stop in hopes of spotting him seemed like a waste of time, even if I did it for an hour every day of the week. Better to go to the source. At my desk again, I called the Metropolitan Transit Authority and asked for the shift supervisor. I’d decided to chat with the driver assigned to the route that covered the City College area. I gave the supervisor an abbreviated version of the Lisa Ray two-car accident and told him I was interested in speaking to the driver who handled that route.
    He told me there were two lines, the number 16 and the number 17, but my best bet was a guy named Jeff Weber. His circuit started at 7:00 A.M . at the Transit Center at Chapel and Capillo streets, and ran a continuous loop through town, up along Palisade, and back to the center every forty-five minutes. He generally finished his shift at