“Are you moving out?” the deputy asked.
“No,” I said, and then realized why he’d asked. All of our furniture is crowded in the center of each room, away from the windows.
Deputy and sheriff glanced at each other. The deputy walked to one of the front windows and peered out through the bars.
“Is that bulletproof glass?” he asked me.
“Yes sir.”
They glanced at each other again.
“Have anyplace we can sit?” Sheriff Bloch said.
I walked into our TV room, the house’s original dining room, and they followed. I sat on the couch, which gave off dust and a minor--chord spring squeak. I pulled my feet up and hugged my knees.
“This is Deputy Hencke.”
The deputy held out his hand toward me. I didn’t take it, and after a beat he let it drop.
“I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said. He had a blond crew cut and the dark blue uniform.
He went to sit on Dad’s recliner, and it happened in slow motion, like watching a knife sink into my stomach with no way to stop it.
“No!” I shouted.
Nobody but Dad had ever sat in that chair. It was one thing to let these -people inside the house. It was another to allow them to do whatever they wanted.
He looked around and then at me, his face a mask of confusion. “What? I’m—-I was just going to sit—-”
“Get a chair out of the kitchen,” Sheriff Bloch said.
The deputy pulled one of the aqua vinyl chairs into the TV room. His hands shook as he tried to write on his little report pad. He must have been as rattled by my outburst as I was.
“Spell your last name for me?”
“M--O--S--H--E--N,” I said.
“Born here?”
“No,” I said. “We’re from Detroit originally.”
His face scrunched and he glanced up.
“How’d you end up here? You got family in the area?”
I shook my head. I didn’t tell him Dad had moved us to Saw Pole, Kansas, because he said he’d always wanted to be a farmer. In Saw Pole, he farmed a sticker patch and raised horse flies but not much else.
“How old are you?”
“Twenty--one.”
He lowered his pencil. “Did you go to school in Niobe? I don’t ever remember seeing you.”
“Dad homeschooled me,” I said.
“What time did you discover the—-your dad?” The deputy’s scalp grew pinker. He needed to grow his hair out some to hide his tell a little better.
“The dogs started barking about two—-”
“Two A.M. or P.M.?”
“P.M.,” I said. “At approximately two--fifteen P.M. our dogs began barking at the back door. I responded and found no evidence of attempted B and E at either entry point to the domicile. I retrieved my Winchester rifle from the basement gun safe with the intention of walking the perimeter of the property, but the dogs refused to follow. I came to the conclusion that the disturbance was inside the house, and I continued my investigation on the second floor.”
Deputy Hencke’s pencil was frozen in the air, a frown on his face. “Why are you talking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Usually I ask questions and -people answer them.”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“Could you do it in regular English?”
I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.
“Look,” he said. “Just answer the questions.”
“Okay.”
“All right. So where was your dad?”
“After breakfast this morning he said he didn’t feel good so he went up to his bedroom to lie down,” I said.
All day I’d expected Dad to call out for something to eat, but he never did. So I didn’t check on him because it was nice not having to cook him lunch or dinner or fetch him beers. I’d kept craning my neck all day to get a view of the stairs, kept waiting for Dad to sneak up on me, catch me watching forbidden TV shows. I turned the volume down so I’d hear if he came down the creaky old stairs.
“So the dogs’ barking is what finally made you go up to his bedroom, huh?”
I nodded.
“Those dogs wanted to tear us all to pieces,” the deputy said, swiping his hand back and forth across the top of his crew cut.
I’d always wanted a little lapdog, one I could cuddle, but Dad favored the big breeds. Sarx was a German shepherd and Tesla a rottweiler.
The deputy bent his head to his pad. “What do you think they were barking about?”
“They smelled it,” I said.
He looked up. “Smelled what?”
“Death. Next I knocked on the decedent’s—- I mean, Dad’s—-bedroom door to request permission to enter.”
“So you went in his room,” the deputy said, his pencil hovering above the paper.
“Once I determined he was unable to answer, I went in his room. He was lying on his stomach, on top of the covers, facing away from me, and—-he had shorts on . . . you know how hot it’s been, and he doesn’t like to turn on the window air conditioner until after Memorial Day—-and I looked at his legs and I thought, ‘He’s got some kind of rash. I better bring him the calamine lotion,’ but then I remembered learning about libidity on TV, and—-”
“Lividity,” he said.
“What?”