The Fallen

I handed it to her.

“Just make sure the lock is secure before you leave,” she said.

I thanked her, knowing she would check the lock again after I had left. I glanced up to the window but the children were gone. I wandered the pool area. A mockingbird jeered at me from one of the big pine trees. I shot his picture and he stopped. Far above the mockingbird a vulture traced a lazy black circle in the blue sky.

I watched a young teenage boy clamber across a neighbor’s yard and press himself close to the chain-link fence that divided the properties. Most of the fence was overhung with climbing jasmine but this boy had either found or worn away a spot between the fragrant white blooms. He wore red bathing trunks and nothing else. He was hunched, big-eared, clumsy.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Robbie.”

“What are you doing?”

“Taking a few pictures. How about you?”

“That’s where it happened. Samantha drowned.”

“Yes,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Jeremiah.”

“Were you at home that night?” I asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“See anything?”

“The fireworks were really, really good.”

I looked back toward the former Asplundh house, over which the fireworks would have been visible, and realized that Jeremiah would have had a pretty good look at them from just about anywhere in his backyard.

“Where did you watch from?” I asked.

“Back there. Mom wouldn’t let me go closer.”

“Did you see Samantha?”

“She was really, really nice.”

“Jeremiah!”

He flinched and turned. I saw the pronounced and crooked curve of his spine beneath his skin. Then he looked back at me with a dull annoyance on his face. A small woman stood in the sliding glass door of the house. She started across the patio toward us.

“I got to go,” he said.

“Did you see her fall in the pool, Jeremiah?”

“Jeremiah!”

“No. I had to go to bed. I love those fireworks but I had to go to bed. Mom put me to bed before it was over. I heard sirens later.”

The woman came down the sloping lawn, hands on her hips, head angled.

“Jeremiah, it is time for your nap.”

“Yeah, uh-huh. This is Robbie.”

“Ma’am,” I said.

“You talking about Samantha again, Jeremiah?” the woman said.

“Uh-huh.”

“He didn’t see anything and he doesn’t know anything and if one more of you insurance investigators or reporters or whatever you are comes around here I’m going to call the police.”

“I am the police.”

Jeremiah smiled crookedly as she shooed him away from the fence and got him headed in the direction of the house. He labored up the slope hunchbacked and bandy-legged and without self-consciousness that I could see. It looked as though his bones had been melted at birth, then hardened out of shape.

“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “I’m his mother. It was horrible. Jeremiah really liked that little girl and she seems to have stuck in his mind in a way that very few things do. He’s challenged, as you see.”

“There’s no need to apologize,” I said.

“He didn’t see her drown. None of us did. I guess each parent thought the other was with her. Do you suspect foul play?”

“No.”

“Good-bye, then. Please don’t question Jeremiah. He was in bed when it happened. It’s all we can do to keep him in the present in a healthy way.”

She raised a hand, turned and walked off.

I shot a few more pictures, locked the gate, pulled the lock hard three times, and left.