The Last Government Girl. Ellen Herbert

Vernon.”

      Vernon took the cherry, brought it to his lips, and almost guzzled the whole thing in one gulp. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You going to arrest me for taking the pin?”

      “No.” Jess sipped his grape soda. “Tell us about that night and morning again.”

      Vernon went back over everything.

      Jess leaned across the table and looked into Vernon’s gray ghost eyes. “The mind can be like a crowded cupboard, Vernon. Sometimes things get stored in its darkest reaches, things we don’t even know are there.”

      Alonso cut the lamp, while Jess studied the man’s strong face.

      Vernon’s eyes fixed on Jess, while his hand reached for the pop bottle he set on the floor beside him. He finished off the soda, set it back, and took another drag on his cigarette, depositing its ash in the saucer.

      Jess marveled at how two-handed people juggled items. “Vernon, do you understand what I’m saying?”

      Vernon dropped his chin in a deep nod. “You’re talking about things we know, but don’t know we know.”

      “Exactly,” Jess said, “even if it sounds like a riddle.” If ever there was a candidate for Al’s technique, it was Vernon Lanier. “Bear with us a minute, Vernon.” Jess got up from his chair and went to stand beside Vernon.

      Alonso sat in Jess’s place. “This isn’t going to hurt, Mr. Vernon.” Alonso produced the railroad watch from his pocket. Actually it was their father’s watch, which Alonso carried. Jess disliked anything heavy in his pocket. One-armed, he was unbalanced enough.

      “I want you to relax and keep your eyes on this here watch.” He dangled it by its chain a few inches in front of Vernon’s eyes. “Don’t look away now. Stay with the watch, stay with it.” He kept repeating, his voice going lower.

      For a few minutes, Vernon’s eyelids fluttered, the refrigerator’s hum the only sound in the room.

      “Your eyes feel heavy, heavy. Let them close let them sink into their sockets.”

      Vernon’s eyes closed. Jess had to fight to keep his own eyes open. His brother’s soft voice always lulled him.

      Alonso said, “Go back to that night in March. You’re asleep in the lockkeeper’s cottage. You’re lying on the stone floor, sleeping, but something almost awakens you. What do you hear?”

      Vernon was silent for a long moment. “I’m so tired.” He speaks in a whisper. “I have a crick in my neck. I roll my head and hear soft thunder, once, twice.” Vernon slumped forward and flinched. “A roar and white metal comes at me…”

      Voices from the alley interrupted. Ruth was explaining about the time difference between here and Europe. “Our Jasper is already in France, Mama.” Ruth was talking about her brother in the Army.

      “Lord Jesus, keep him safe,” Miss Minnie said.

      Vernon shook his head like he had water in his ears. “I was dead asleep. What did you do to me?”

      Alonso stood. “I was helping you remember that night.” He got the Farmer’s Almanac from the bookshelf and checked the date.

      Jess sat, wrote soft thunder in his notebook then flipped through his pages of notes. “You said you heard soft thunder in your sleep that night. Twice you heard it.”

      Vernon looked surprised. “I don’t remember thunder.”

      “According to the Almanac the night of March 25th was clear and cool,” Alonso said, “with a full moon.”

      “Yep. That’s what the police report says, too.” Jess studied Vernon who shrugged. “Then you said there was a roar and white metal came at you.”

      Vernon brought his thumb and index finger to either side of his mouth and wiped. “That happened the next day, after I found her.” He told them about a white delivery truck whose brakes must have given out and almost hit him on the way home.

      Jess and Alonso exchanged a puzzled look. Maybe the killer followed Vernon and tried to run him over. “You say a man appeared and helped you back on the road?”

      “He was in a chicken truck heading to West Virginia. Nice fellas. They rode me almost all the way home.”

      “Is it possible that chicken truck was the one that tried to run you over?”

      Lowering his eyes, Vernon said, “I travelled in the back, so I never seen the front of the chicken truck, but I don’t believe they were one and the same.”

      “Do you remember the license number of the truck that tried to run you over?”

      Vernon closed his eyes. “Don’t believe it had a front plate.”

      “How long a time was it between you finding the girl’s body and almost getting hit by the truck?”

      “Maybe half an hour.”

      Jess said, “Describe the truck.”

      “Well, it was white and smaller than the chicken truck. And when it picked up speed, it rattled like the exhaust pipe was loose. And it still had its chrome bumper.”

      He said this because the War Productions Board encouraged drivers to hand in their bumpers for scrap metal. “What kind of things might this truck have carried?”

      Vernon made a face. “Bread, laundry, newspapers, maybe even milk…I don’t know.”

      Jess stuck his pencil behind his ear and sat back. “When it comes to murder, I don’t believe in coincidences, Vernon. You find a young woman dead and a little while later a truck tries to run you over.”

      “I see what you mean.” Vernon scrubbed his bristly jaw. “But I don’t know why he would want to do that.”

      “Tell me about every person you saw after you found her body.”

      “Nobody except a fisherman I passed on the bridge, but it was misty. I didn’t see him too good.” Vernon closed his eyes tight. “One thing, though. He told me he caught a big catfish, but he didn’t have a bucket, so where’d he put his fish?”

      Alonso picked up his orange soda from the desk. “He didn’t catch a catfish from the bridge,” he said. “Catfish are bottom feeders. You fish them in shallows.”

      “Describe this fisherman.”

      Vernon closed his eyes. “He wore an old canvas hat stuck with lures pulled low on his head. That’s all I remember.”

      Jess wrote this in his notebook.

      Vernon stood. “Look, I gave you the pin. Now I’ve got to get back…”

      “So you work for District Construction?” Jess stood as well and faced him.

      “Uh-huh.” Vernon’s eyes skated from Jess’s.

      He was lying, something he wasn’t good at. “Give me your address in case we need to talk to you again.”

      “2010 Prospect, Georgetown. It’s a rooming house.”

      Jess sat and wrote it, noticing how Vernon had touched his left ring finger, where he’d once worn a wedding ring. His lies had to do with a woman, probably not his wife.

      Alonso said, “The smell from that rendering plant in Georgetown must keep you up nights.”

      “Amen to that. You don’t want no breezes off the water.” His eyes avoided theirs.

      But Jess didn’t smell the rendering plant’s stink on Vernon’s clothes.

      “We’ll let you go, Vernon. But first we need to fingerprint you. We can do it here or take you downtown. It’s your choice.”

      Vernon dropped back in the chair.

      Jess