Read Online Beneath the Weight of Sadness by Gerald L. Dodge - Free Book Online

reason.
    Every inch of the park—trash, drains, inside World War I and II and Vietnam War artillery and statues—had been checked, and we’d found no cell phone, no baseball bat or other blunt object. A subpoena was in the works to acquire all his phone records, both incoming and out-going, but the process was full of legal jumping-through-the-hoops bull.
    I met Amy Engroff in the same living room where I’d met her husband the day before. Her washed-out eyes reminded me of a sky where the earliest parts of high rain clouds are moving in. She never once looked at me during the interview. I was already seated when she entered the room. She was wearing a flowery dress with shoes like ballet slippers.
    “I’m sorry I have to talk to you under these circumstances, Mrs. Engroff.”
    She walked directly to me and extended her hand. I took it and it was as if I was touching something made of cold papier-mâché.
    “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure you are.”
    She released my hand. After an unsteady journey to the couch she finally sat opposite me with her knees pressed together, her hands listless in her lap. Under any other conditions I would’ve thought she was beautiful. Even looking so pale and tired, she was.
    “What do you want to know, Mr.…?”
    “Parachuk,” I said. “I’ve already spoken to your husband about the circumstances of Truman’s death.”
    She looked at me as if I’d said her lawn needed manicuring.
    “Whatever did he say? I can’t possibly imagine. Truman was found dead in the park. He was beaten to death. He only identified him.”
    From where I sat I could see the photograph of Truman in what his father had called his “black period.” She turned and looked, too.
    “Truman is Truman,” she said.
    “How do you mean?”
    She smiled, a twisted gesture.
    “That’s a wonderful question. A grand question. That question would be like me asking you how you do a police procedure. I wouldn’t have the foggiest idea what you meant even if you told me.”
    “It might be easier to understand than you think. Where was Truman going the night you and Mr. Engroff last saw him?”
    “I don’t know, Mr.…”
    “Parachuk.”
    “Yes. I don’t know. Truman didn’t say. He was very private most of the time.”
    “So he didn’t say where he was going. Didn’t mention anything during the day? He didn’t have someone who he knew you might assume he was going to see?”
    From the look on her face I could tell she thought the question was stupid and didn’t deserve an answer. When she didn’t offer one up, I said, “I’ve been told by the students who knew Truman at school, and his teachers and administrators, that he was brilliant.”
    “Fuck them,” she said with equanimity.
    Her fierce words were made even more startling by her flat aspect.
    “Do you respond that way, Mrs. Engroff, because you think they had reason to fabricate that judgment?”
    “No, I say it because all the people are terrible. All of them.” She glared at me for a moment and I was certain she was including me.
    She stood and walked to a long table I hadn’t noticed on my first visit. There was a decanter of wine and two wine glasses. She poured a glass and, with the decanter poised, asked, “Would you like a glass of wine, Mr. Parachuk?”
    I put my hand out like I was surrendering.
    “No, thank you.”
    She walked back to the couch and sat, took a large sip of wine.
    “I’m not supposed to drink, but then…” she didn’t finish.
    “In general, Mrs. Engroff, how do you think people felt about Truman…in school? In Persia?”
    For the first time I saw some small sign of torment and sadness.
    “I told Ethan we shouldn’t move here. I told him it was a horrid place with horrid people.”
    She said this with a violence in her voice and I suddenly understood she was blaming her husband. I wasn’t surprised: Someone had to be at fault.
    “Why?” I asked.
    She laughed but it was a laugh like heat lightning,