Dora Neale Marston: Children of a Lesser Bacon.(Snap of the Chain, #100)

"My God, my God, what have I but to curve inward on myself, pointing the accusing appendage back at my own sins and the balance, recompense of a life, such as is the fires of hell awaiting."

The other cops got out of his way like being repelled by magnetic force, repulsed: they parted like the Red Sea, but they were blue and slightly stupid, too, for their own balance--they got out of his way, and he wasn't a particularly big man, either, but that sort of Angry Inch of unction repulsed them in some fundamental innate animal way, like bacon drippings or sweat or teenager's sex-evidenced bedsheets.

"I'm the f*cking Inspector, the ranking officer on site, Willbarger."  Jerry was right there in a big clump of them, lording over like the top-dog, the biggest vulture.  His polo shirt was pure discount store, but his attitude was PGA or Ivy League, trying to put ownership on the thing.

"Report to him, Will" seconded Detto, hoping just to hold the peace, at least in front of the victim's family.  Detto was still new to this department, and so he felt he owed a little deference, if not primarily to his partner, than the unproven and untested thus far command structure.

Without a center, what does everything connect to, but a discount store polo shirt, pulling at the South American fabric beyond limitation.

Willbarger stopped, hands on hips, and slowly turned, looking not at the other cops, even the taller, but quite over and above them, surveying the scene.  Even the television people near the door seemed to wince audibly when his glance fell on them; it came and went, that withering hard glance: it was a universal balance, as if to say, you kill someone, no matter who you might be, in recompense, we'll kill you right back.

Then Willbarger stomped back outside into the dooryard that was in better times part of the driveway, he basically powerfully stepped outside as if daring anyone to follow him, and for all he cared, he might as well have been the ranking officer, and he was senior based on years of service, though of smaller rank than some of the others.

Luckily for the others, they usually had a good sense of when to push on the old cop and when to just let him be.  Jerry had to take charge for the sake of the paperwork, the cameras, state investigators on site, but all the locals knew one word from Willbarger was worth more than anything Jerry could put together.  The rank patrol officer would be later all over the photos, evidence logs, and doing everything but the press conference for the regional media.

Detto drifted out like flatulence from an open bathroom door, he was cock-sided, turning to shut the door, but contorted looking for Willbarger, like Willbarger didn't generate his own repulsive force, a kind of gravity that contorted, too, the throng  of people, town county and state, the blue shirts, brown shirts, drab shirts, and the state boys in their polo shirts and cargo pants.  

Willbarger and Detto were loyal little brownshirts, given to the county stripe, given over also to patrol the county on saturday nights from one end to other, cruising the state roads for traffic incidents, drunk drivers, between other aggravated causes like boyfriend and girlfriend arguments.  Going through the crowd, parting the crowd, was that same kind of gravity Willbarger threw on the drunken lovers, protesting one and another until the old cop cut right through the noise.

There was no victim name yet, not in polite company, because the family was being notified, but they all had a whiff of the name, all between them, among them, even the television people taking notes on an electronic tablet, probably having sent the name.  Like it was said of politics, all politics being local, the girl was a local, from a few roads away, known to some even among the cops, and the very bereaved family got unknowingly to see the swarm of police vehicles before curiosity pulled them towards the fray, and they saw the girl, too, some of the family, naked as a Jay Bird, clad only in a bit of dried blood at the edges, where she had pooled blood somewhere at a kill site.

What they had was a dump site: no weapon, no suspect yet, canvassing only beginning then after the boys got their marching orders, and the whole community had swarmed the little house at the edge of the woods with the asbestos siding.  Tips and character references, people generally talking like it were a family reunion, or a wedding, or a community barbecue: that was the fabric of the community kind of going solid to hold onto something, though they did no such while the girl was still alive, and the murderer's whatever grievance something against that knit of the community, too--a rebuke big as a tractor trailer coursed through the community on that score, and these were all, basically, the outsiders, the community, the cops and the regional news team, they were all the killer's victims, in a sense.  The girl was dumped dead and nude in a contractor tarpaulin in the woods in that very community, and the house was just the nearest place to the scene, where they could make coffee and park their numerous SUV's.

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