Good Neighbors(35)



Sweet fumes wafted up. Together, they dropped the box down. It fell for so long they didn’t hear the splash of its landing.

Arlo hammered each rivet back into place. Tested, to make sure the slab was solid again. They walked back home feeling lighter. Julia picked some hydrangeas from a bush in Sterling Park and tied them with a leaf. Gertie pulled a pen from her purse and wrote a note on her Century 21 business card:

Thinking of you.

—The Wildes



They deposited this on the Schroeders’ front porch. Then they walked to their house, ready to recover from so much.

They slept deep and dreamless that night, the kids in bed with the grown-ups, and everyone tucked close. In the morning, there was coffee and sugar cereal and extra harmonicas. There was the optimism of a new day. But then their front bell rang. They opened the door to the police.





Sunday, July 25


Two detectives, a black-and-white cop car parked out front. Gertie assumed they were partners, but who knows how these things worked? They wore plain clothes and showed their badges. They actually handed them over, so Gertie and Arlo could read every word.

The first was an older Black woman named Denise Hudson, the other a younger red-haired Asian man named Gennet. Both had sweat through their business-casual work shirts. They informed Arlo and Gertie they were wanted at the police station. Now.

Neither detective offered a smile, not even to the children.

This was not Gertie’s first clue that something was wrong, but it was the most startling one.

“Sure! We’ll go now!” Arlo said, nervous and high-pitched. After deliberation with Gertie and also with the detectives, they headed over to Fred and Bethany’s house. Though Bethany lay on the couch with pillows piled along her sides and behind her back (her eyes rimmed with what looked like smeared, dark blue eyeliner, but was in fact her actual complexion), the Atlases agreed to watch the kids.

“Oh, you sweethearts,” Bethany cooed. “Fred? Do we have milk for them? Go get some milk!” She winced when she craned her neck to look at the children, pained from just that small movement. “Darlings? Why don’t you bring that deck of cards over here? I’ll teach you rummy.”

Arlo gave Fred a sorry shrug. “I owe you big.”

Fred, looking exhausted, squeezed Arlo’s shoulder. They’d missed the last two movie nights—life had gotten in the way. “It makes her happy,” Fred said. Then he raised his voice loud enough for the detectives outside to hear: “Call me if it gets serious. I know people at the DA.”

Arlo and Gertie took the Passat. They followed the cop car to the Garden City police station.

Inside, they walked past reception and through a deep atrium with open desks to the back, where they were ushered into a small, closed-off room, folding chairs surrounding a long table. Gertie and Arlo took one side, Detectives Hudson and Gennet took the other, deploying an old-fashioned tape recorder in the middle. The table was pale wood under polyurethane—school desk material. It was clean, save for pen smears. Hudson and Gennet had replaced their muted suit jackets, both of which were ill-fitting, and Gertie now understood why: the room was over-air-conditioned. Both Gertie and Arlo shivered.

“Rhea Schroeder reported a crime last night,” Hudson explained.

Gertie squeezed the table. Despite the chill, her palms left a sweaty trail.

“Crime?” Arlo asked. His voice remained overly cheerful. His sales voice. In it, Gertie could hear fear, and worse than that, ignorance. The kind of ignorance that waits out its trial at Rikers, because free lawyers don’t mean shit.

“She claims her daughter was raped on the morning of the fall.”

Gertie froze. Her conscious mind refused to conceive of where this was going. But the deeper part, the part that had survived the pageant circuit and all those cutthroats, that part understood exactly.

“Witnesses testified that she’d been bleeding,” Hudson continued. “She’d also cut her hair.”

Gertie wanted to say something, but nothing came out.

“Mrs. Schroeder believes she cut her hair due to post-traumatic stress. She was running away from you when she was pushed down the hole by your children, who were likewise traumatized, and trying to conceal their father’s crime.” Hudson looked them in the eye the entire time, betraying no emotion. Gennet scribbled notes.

Gertie started. “Running away?”

“Crime?” Arlo asked. His voice lost that personable quality and took on something like a growl.

“She believes you raped Shelly Schroeder, and this action directly resulted in her death.”

Arlo leaned forward, looked Gennet, then Hudson in the eyes. “I did not do that.”

“That’s insane,” Gertie said. “It’s not even possible.”

“Why isn’t it possible?” Hudson asked. She wore a mask of indifference, but emotion boiled underneath. She gripped the table with her hands, so tight it made her fingernails white.

“Because he’s not a hunter. I’ve known hunters my whole life and he’s not. He’d never do that—”

“I work in the city,” Arlo interrupted. “I didn’t get home that night until around four in the morning, when I crashed into bed. With Gertie.”

“That’s right!” Gertie cried.

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