“Yes, I know Small.” Kennebunk spoke hesitantly. “He runs a sand-and-gravel company, or used to. I hear he’s in real estate now. He lives way out on the Pig Road. I mean Songsparrow. It’s Songsparrow Road now. All the old pig farms are being turned into housing developments. Meadowlark, Songsparrow, there’s a whole lot of new ones out that way.”
“They’re trying to forget the malodorous past, is that it?” Homer leaned his elbows on the counter and leaned closer to Sergeant Kennebunk. “Do you know if there’s any truth in the rumor that Small beat his wife? Mary read it in one of those supermarket scandal sheets. What do you think? Was he the kind of creep who knocks his wife around just for the hell of it?”
Kennebunk glanced warily down the hall. “Well, maybe. Sometimes she had bruises on her face. I felt sorry for her, but there was nothing we could do unless she lodged a complaint.”
“And now she’s disappeared. Do you think she ran away?”
“Perhaps, but, then again, I wouldn’t put it past Small—” Kennebunk stopped in mid-sentence. “I guess you’d better wait and talk to the chief.” He sat back down and stared at his monitor, making it clear that he would answer no more questions.
The chief of the Southtown Police Department kept Homer waiting for twenty minutes. When he bustled down the hall at last, Homer stood up to greet him, but Chief McNutt didn’t look in his direction. He barked an order at Sergeant Kennebunk: “You’re due at the mall in ten minutes. What the hell are you doing here?”
“Tomorrow, sir,” said Kennebunk patiently. “That’s tomorrow. Griscom’s there today.”
Chief McNutt had lost face. “Well, then, get those invoices out pronto, and I mean right now.” Turning, he glowered at Homer.
Homer was charmed. Chief McNutt was that rare bird on the face of the earth, a genuine son of a bitch. There was nothing Homer enjoyed more than a good hate. He beamed at the chief and explained his errand.
At once McNutt shook his head. He did not offer Homer a chair, or invite him into his office. This was obviously a matter to be swept out the door. “Your wife thinks Fred Small was a wife-beater?”
It was clear that the testimony of wives was unreliable. “It was in the paper,” explained Homer, “the rumor that Mrs. Small was a battered wife.”
“My God,” said Chief McNutt, “it’s all the rage today, weepy women claiming they’ve been mistreated by their husbands. It’s like a virus, one female gets hysterical and the infection spreads and pretty soon they’re all screaming they’ve been beat up. Christ! It’s worse than sexual harassment.” McNutt reached across the counter, snatched up a folder from Kennebunk’s desk, and held it under Homer’s nose. “This here’s all rape cases. So-called rape cases. Oh, yeah, maybe one or two’s legitimate. Boys get liquored up, grab the nearest piece of flesh. The rest, well, you know those women, they invite it. Look at the way they dress, with those real tight skirts and low-cut necklines showing their tits. I wouldn’t mind having a go myself.” The chief slapped the folder down on the counter and laughed loudly.
Homer’s good humor vanished. He could clearly see the burly chief wrestling some poor woman into the back seat of a car. “But in this case, I think—”
“Forget it.” The chief turned and walked away, firing a final shot. “Fred Small is a law-abiding citizen of this town. His wife, the story is, she’s got a boyfriend. There’s some guy, used to hang around. Take my word for it. She’s gone off with some gigolo.”
Homer gaped at McNutt’s retreating back, and called after him, “Well, thank you very much.”
There was silence. Then Sergeant Kennebunk stood up and said softly, “I’m going off-duty now. How about meeting me at Jacky’s? Doughnut place, just down the road.”
“You bet,” said Homer. Outdoors, he sucked in deep drafts of air uncontaminated by the lewd breath of the chief of the Southtown Police Department, and climbed into his car.
Jacky’s stood in a sea of asphalt, sandwiched between a gas station and a mattress outlet. A gigantic plastic doughnut wobbled on the roof in the wind from passing cars. Inside, the place was fragrant with good smells wafting from coffee machines and kettles of simmering fat. Homer ordered coffee and a plate of sugary doughnuts and sat down with Kennebunk. The two men loomed over the plastic table nose to nose. Homer picked up a doughnut and ate it hungrily, spilling powdered sugar all over his coat.
Brushing it off his necktie, he said, “Why aren’t you the chief of the Southtown Police Department instead of that creep?”