Everyone knows I grew up here. There isn’t a street I don’t know. There’s barely a person I don’t know. When Mildred Sheffler got locked out of her house in the middle of the county after a snowstorm, I got the call. When Eddie Millett got picked up for shoplifting, I got the call. We went to school together, so the boys figured I had the best chance to get him to fess up, and he did.
No, I know these streets and these people, every last one of them.
I did not know this one, however.
New York media? Seriously? She came all the way out here, and from the looks of things, she isn’t leaving. She moved into the old Murray Estate, where that writer lived a few years back. He died in there, never did finish the book he’d been talking about. Yeah, I forgot about that. Used to go in and see Cassie at Riverside and, after a few glasses of wine, he’d pop off about his first bestseller, then his second, then he’d walk home. Every night the same thing. Cassie would roll her eyes at whomever was sitting there and everyone knew just what she meant.
Anyway, Susan was full of questions. Seems my job these days is less about investigating than it is about answering media requests. Seemed like a nice enough woman. Tougher than the Marjories or Bernies of the world. Personally, I think she’s barking up a bunch of wrong trees, but I guess she’ll need to figure that out.
One of her questions stuck with me though: Why here? Why now?
We really don’t see much in the way of crime around here, and I told her that. I mean, it’s like someone did this awful thing and decided to dump it here. My feeling, and I told her this too, is that this is an outside job. No one I knew would ever do something like this, and certainly no one I know would be clever enough to keep living here if they did.
Everyone knows everyone here … which means someone knows something. This Susan person knows that, and now she’s living here.
Now we’ve got a race.
Gunnar Olafsson