The Lesson of Her Death

moussed brown hair. “What I heard was, Debbie Lipp told me, who’s ever behind that killing? He’s looking for brunets. I bought some Clairol yesterday. I mean, I had my colors done and going blond would throw it all off but …”
    Slocum watched a tear center in her eye and roll over the edge of the eyelined lid.
    “I wouldn’t go doing that, miss. He’s not looking for brunets that we know about. Your hair looks real nice just the way it is.” He smiled. “Sexy too.”
    “I’m
scared
, Officer.” Her brittle voice cracked. “I gotta drive home at night and Earl he’s my husband’s shift’s not over till eleven. Sitting there in the trailer for three hours! By myself.… I can’t watch TV, for the noises outside. I can’t read. I just sit. I’m too addled to even knit and I’m going to miss my niece’s birthday with the vest I promised her.” She cried, grim and silent, for a moment.
    “We’re doing everything in our power to get this son of a gun. Now I was asking about Tuesday?”
    “I can’t help you, I’m afraid. We close at seven on Tuesday.”
    Well, there you have it. Dead end
. “Tell you what, give me a quarter pound of those jelly beans. What flavor’d they be?”
    “The watermelon ones?”
    “Yeah.” Slocum paid. He took the change and smiled a flirt at her. “I get by here on occasion. I’ll look in on you and see how you’re doing.”
    She swallowed and lifted away a tear with a corner of her sleeve. “I’d rather you was out
catching
him.”
    “Well, we’re doing that too,” he said stonily and took the candy, walking to the door. He glanced at the Halpern boy. “You want a snack, eat apples,” he snapped.
    Slocum ambled through the recession-battered wasteland of the mall until he came to the last store on his list. Floors for All. Inside a young man with trim hair sat at a desk, carefully writing in an order book. “Afternoon,” Slocum said.
    “Howdy, Officer, what kind of carpet you interested in today? We got a special—”
    “This place here open late on Tuesday?”
    “Yessir. Lot of carpet stores close down weeknightsbut we’re number one with carpet, number one with service. Nights’re important. We get men come in after work to check out the carpet their little ladies’ve chose earlier in the day.”
    “You working this last Tuesday?”
    “No sir, that’d be Mr. Trout. Amos Trout.”
    “Will he be coming in today?”
    “Oh, he’s in. He’s not here right now because he got car problems. He took a late lunch. Should be back any time.”
    “I’ll stop back later.”
    Slocum left the store and halfway to the exit nearly walked into Adeline Kraskow. “Well, well, well.” Slocum circled her.
    “Hey, Jim,” she said in her husky voice. She was young and might have been pretty if she’d forced her salt-and-pepper hair into staying put. The strands reminded him of BX cable. She also needed to move some of her boob weight down to her toothpick legs (a rearrangement Slocum never thought he’d recommend to any woman). Addie had dry skin and high cheekbones and she wore little makeup. This made Slocum think that she was desperate for a man.
    He asked, “What’s happening?”
    “Doing a story on how this cult murder thing is affecting business.”
    “Bad?”
    “Yep. People’re scared. Staying home and not spending money. What are you doing here?”
    “I can’t really talk about it.”
    They stood for a minute, silent. Slocum had a fast series of thoughts: that he’d been promising to bring the wife to the mall, that he could do that on Sunday and that while she did her shopping he could talk to this guy Amos Trout at the carpet store. He asked, “I’m taking kind of a break. You interested in getting a drink?”
    Adeline Kraskow said, “Sure. I guess.” And she stuffed her notebook into her huge purse and together they strolled through the mall.
    They had known each other for exactly one year, ever since she started covering the police beat for the Harrison County
Register
. The top-heavy Ms. Kraskow didn’t know that Slocum regularly had acrobatic sexual intercourse with and had been fellated by her dozens of times—each instance of course in his Technicolor imagination while he was engaged in considerably more mundane sexual activity with his wife of eleven years, or with his right hand. He supposed that if in real life Addie had ever stubbed out one of her chain-smoked cigarettes and unzipped his fly he’d have gone limp