Summitt

Chapter Fifteen

J. D. Parks’s darkroom was a converted closet in the rear of his office suite. It smelled of acid and was eerily illuminated by a green “safe” light.

Harry Selby stood in that cramped space with Parks, watching pictures forming on sheets immersed in shallow developing pans.

They had been at this for several hours, since Parks returned that afternoon from an assignment in Marcus Hook, struggling from the elevator with a pipe in his mouth, a yellow scarf about his neck, burdened down with two leather sacks of gear and a tripod, and full of apologies for having kept Selby waiting. “Don’t worry,” he said, unlocking his office. “I got most of the stuff on the Brandywine Lakes job enlarged, must be a ton of it. I think what you want is buried in there someplace. You’re a big fella, Selby. Want a beer or anything?”

Much of the film, even those shots featuring cars, Selby had been able to dismiss with a glance; aerial views of Brandywine Lakes homes and fairways, the cemetery near the development, a drive-in theater and high school stadium, rows of houses with lighted windows.

They stopped at last for beers and sandwiches, which Parks brought out from a refrigerator which doubled as a support for developing frame racks.

“I was using Tri-X film that night, f-14 at 60,” Parks told him, as he unwrapped a pastrami on rye. “Shooting with a Hasselblad, a Graflex, a Kodak Extarlens. Pretty sensitive stuff. But maybe we didn’t fly close enough to the place you’re looking for.”

Selby doubled the beer can with a snap of his fingers before tossing it into a wastebasket.

Parks went on. “We might have turned back to Brandywine Lakes before we got to Vinegar Hill.” In the same tone, he added, “I saw you play once. It was back in Philadelphia. I remember, I guess, because you got hurt. It was third down, and it looked like a pass play coming up. That’s when you got that scar on your cheek. You could hear it clear up in the press box when the helmet bar broke. But it was a long time ago. You might not remember.”

“I remember it pretty well,” Selby said.

“I’ll bet.” Parks wrapped the crusts of their sandwiches in a waxed bag and stowed that behind a window plant. “For the birds in the morning,” he explained. “The super tells me it attracts ants, but everybody’s got to live. I got a kind of Buddhist slant on things in ’Nam. Let’s get back to work, okay?”

They found what they were looking for about a half hour later, the images swirling in the suffused light, Vinegar Hill’s short driveway leading away to the house and garage. When Selby leaned forward, straining to see through the trembling emulsion, he could make out the silhouette of an automobile.

“That’s it. There it is,” he said, surprised that the tension building in him didn’t sound in his voice. “How much closer can you get?”

“More details? Let’s see. This is as much enlargement as I can get with any real clarity from the four by fours. I’ll have to cut the negatives into thirty-five-millimeter frames and change the lens in the enlarger. That’ll take time.”

Selby used Parks’s phone and called Shana. “I should be home in an hour or so,” he told her. “But don’t you and Davey wait dinner. Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything’s fine. We’re all right.” Her impersonal tone, the one he was accustomed to, changed slightly. “But Miss Brett, she called a few minutes ago. She’s with that sergeant. They wanted to talk to me. I said okay.”

“You’re sure you feel up to it?”

“I told you, daddy, I’m fine.”

“Did she — did Miss Brett say what she wanted to talk to you about?”

“No, she didn’t.”

Parks glanced at Selby, held up a strip of film and pointed to the darkroom. Selby nodded and said to Shana, “Okay, honey. I’ll see you at home.”

Parks took the new enlargement sheets from the developing pans, washed them and clipped the wet proofs to the frames above the refrigerator. After inspecting them, he said, “Take a look,” and handed Selby a magnifying glass.

The postage-stamp-sized pictures expanded magically under Selby’s artificially strengthened vision; through a tangle of trees flecked with streaks of moonlight, he saw the metallic glint of a bumper, and the oblong shape of the license plate. He couldn’t make out the letters or numbers; they reproduced only as separate black squares.

“We could try a reducer,” Parks suggested. “The film is blocking up now, it’s too thick to let the light through. There’s a computer process, electronic gadgets that could do this faster, but I can try for a finer gradation and see if that helps.”

He worked on sheet after sheet, experimenting with reducing mixtures and attenuating the emulsion’s density, talking to himself while he studied the results, in arcane references to exposure lines, light values, Farmer’s Reducer, ASA ratings...

“About how long will this take?” Selby asked.

“Twenty minutes, maybe half an hour. But I got a different slant on how long in ’Nam, Selby. Buddhists think babies are as old as God because they’re complete. That’s a heavy idea. You better make that forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll be back,” Selby said.

He walked from Parks’s studio to the offices of the Brandywine Standard. Buying a back issue, he went through the paper until he came to the photograph Shana had cut out of their copy, a four-column picture taken at Longwood Gardens. A group of people stood near a four-door sedan that was identified in the caption as a Maserati Quattroporta. In the background were other antique cars, cordoned off by ropes in front of a greenhouse.

An elderly couple in bulky tweeds was prominent in the photograph. Behind them stood three young men. Two wore crew cuts and military school uniforms. The third young man was taller than his companions and wore a cardigan jacket and a long scarf. A thin chain glittered at his throat. His head was bare, his thick, dark hair blown about by the breezes.

Selby cut out the picture, folded it and put it in his wallet. Discarding the Standard in a trash receptacle, he returned to Parks’s studio and joined him in the darkroom.

“Pay dirt, geronimo, eureka and other sundry shit,” Parks announced cheerfully. “Take a look, pal.”

Selby wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and stared closely at the surface of the shimmering developing solution. Mag wheels gleamed dully through the liquid, and the details of the license plate were coming into a trembling focus. Selby saw a letter emerging, clearly and sharply, the letter “N,” and after that, two numbers, “9” and “6”...

The other numbers remained lost in smudged shadows.

By the time Selby left Parks’s studio, the streets were empty. Shop windows were slick and white with frost, and some had Christmas decorations up, holly wreaths and strings of colored lights.

The uniformed black lady at the counter of the detective division didn’t remember Selby. She asked his name and pointed to a stack of forms.

“Write it on one of them, and your business.”

“The name’s Selby, Harry Selby. I was here before. Would you tell Captain Slocum I need to see him? It’s important.”

She regarded him dubiously. “You got to write your name down anyway, but I’ll tell him. You better take yourself a seat. Captain’s on the phone. They got a homicide downtown.” I he floor of the narrow reception room was covered with brown linoleum, patterned randomly with cigarette burns. A framed photograph of a smiling uniformed policeman hung on the wall. A caption told anyone interested that Patrolman Anthony Vito had died in the line of duty 11/13/1972.

Selby didn’t recognize the detectives on this shift. A constant clatter sounded as they typed reports, answered phones, talked to witnesses and/or victims. A woman was crying; someone had struck her in the face; her jaw was round and shiny as a big, red apple. A shabbily dressed black man with blood dripping from his hand responded to a detective’s questions with exaggerated, head-bobbing smiles. In whining, righteous tones, a drunken white man was reporting the theft of a blanket by a teenager he had given a lift to. A white hooker complained that a trick had cut her leg with his belt buckle and hadn’t paid her for—

The black clerk said, “Captain says he’ll see you soon as he can, Mr. Selby.”

He stretched his legs and rested his head against the wall beneath Patrolman Vito’s smiling picture. Take a number, wait your turn... Pay the two dollars... He thought of the night he had taken Sarah’s mother to the hospital for the last time.

Her pain had become constant by then, but it wasn’t particularly worrisome. It was just an inconvenience, so pay the two dollars.

“The bad thing about being sick,” Tishie said on the way to the hospital, “is that you think you got squatter’s rights on what’s real. You stop believing other people are buying and selling things, cooking and putting food on the table. Sick people think their world is the only one that’s real.”

Her eyes were bright when she came out of the doctor’s office.

“She never liked bad news at night, my Sarah,” she told him on the way home. “We won’t spoil the evening for the children. We’ll have a nice dinner and I’ll tell Sarah when they’re off to school in the morning.”

Shana and Davey had never known their grandmother was sick and in pain. Tishie could handle that kind of thunder and lightning. She was slim and small under her bed covers the next morning, the pink of her best nightgown showing against the blankets, the empty bottle of Demarol on her night table...

Selby’s number came up. “Captain’ll see you now, Mr. Selby.”

Slocum was at his desk, his thinning hair and broad face shining under strong fluorescent lighting. His tie was pulled down and a day’s beard smudged his wide jaw. Glancing up, he said, “We’re pretty busy tonight, Mr. Selby. What’s on your mind?”

Selby dropped the stack of photographs on his desk. “Captain, those are pictures of a parked car. It’s parked in the driveway of a place called Vinegar Hill over on Dade Road. That’s where my daughter was taken and raped. The pictures were taken that same night. What you’re looking at, Captain Slocum, is the car the rapist used to drive her there. It’s a Porsche Turbo 924, a distinctive, customized job. One letter and two digits of the license are visible. That’s what’s on my mind, Captain.”

Slocum looked steadily at him, patches of red darkening his cheekbones. “Maybe you better come around and sit down at my desk, Selby. Maybe you better take over the whole job.”

After flipping quickly through the photographs, he punched a button on the base of his phone. A pulse leaped in his throat, a pounding rhythmically under his carotid artery.

“I thought we had an understanding, Selby, about who was the cop and who was the civilian.” His voice was thick, hard with anger. “Remember our talk? I told you not to go off on your own. I told you it was our responsibility to investigate your daughter’s kidnapping and rape.”

“I remember that,” Selby said. “But I’ve been getting the impression you’re too busy around here to pay much attention to that. There’s a room full of cops and detectives outside spending time on hookers and winos. Somebody’s typing up a report about a teenager who stole a blanket from a car.”

Slocum said, “So you figured we were too busy, is that it, Selby? Figured that gave you a green light to handle things yourself? Well, this probably hasn’t occurred to you, but when you go off chasing shadows with bloodhounds, or horsing around with local photographers, you could be destroying leads we’re already working on. You want to play the outraged citizen who thinks the local police are a bunch of fuck-ups, be my guest, Selby. I’m used to it. I get priests in here with long hair and windbreakers, complaining we’re too hard on faggots, that they’re God’s chilluns just like the rest of us. Every time a drunk falls down a flight of stairs into the basement, we get screams of police brutality from the ACLU Jew boys. Last week, a professor of African studies—”

His office door opened and the noisy clatter from the outer office spilled in. A detective sauntered to Slocum’s desk, glancing curiously at Selby.

“Where the hell’s Wilger?” Slocum asked him.

“He’s not back yet, Captain. Took a ride over to Muhlenburg a couple of hours ago.”

Slocum waved irritably from the detective to Selby. “Lieutenant Eberle, Mr. Selby.”

Eberle nodded. “Selby, sure. That kidnapping out on Fairlee Road.”

The lieutenant could have been anywhere from thirty-five to fifty; his face was fat and pale, his eyes appearing as little more than slits of blue light set deep in pouches of gray flesh. Strands of black hair were combed across his scalp. His brown suit was a size too large for him, and his heavy hands were tracked with veins as thick as lead pencils. He wore a wide red tie.

“What we have here, Eberle,” Slocum said, “are some pictures that could help us in that Selby case.” He handed them to the lieutenant. “Check out the photographer, but call Harrisburg first and get a make on this Porsche. Tell them to put their computers on it.”

When Eberle went out, Slocum stood and leaned over his desk, supporting his weight on his clenched fists. The pulse in his throat seemed to be trying to jerk itself free from the tight flesh around it.

“Like I was saying, I had this educated darky in here the other day, Selby. Wearing a turban and one of them African bathrobes. He didn’t like how we treated his brother boogies. He told me they had cities of ivory and gold in Africa ten thousand years ago, libraries, museums, hospitals and were doing eye surgery and things like that while we were still learning to count our fingers and toes. I asked him what happened to all those beautiful African cities, and he told me they were the victims of floods and disease, historical cycles and so on. Know what I told him? I said the same thing happened right here in beautiful America. To Detroit and New York and Cleveland and what’s left of Newark, New Jersey. And the people who destroyed civilization in Africa are the same people who are doing it here and now in America. He said that was an unfair comparison and I told him the only thing his people know about fair or unfair is that it rhymes with welfare... so we get all kinds here and I’m pretty fucking thick-skinned. We’re the pros, we got the troops and we’re paid to do the job.”

He jabbed a button on his phone. “Now I got a couple of homicides and some other shit coming down, Selby, so would you mind letting me get back to work? You heard what I told Eberle. When we get a make on that car, we’ll be in touch.”

Selby nodded. “You obviously needed to make that speech, captain. Naturally, I’m wondering why, since the lost cities of Africa don’t have a goddamn thing to do with checking out that plate number. As a pro, I imagine you know that... I’ll hear from you, Captain, or I’ll be back,” Selby said, and walked out of the office.

When Selby got home, everyone was in bed except Blazer. He made himself a sandwich, poured a beer and went through the notes he had made of Shana’s outbursts under sedation. He had checked what she had said, Bartlett’s Quotations and Sarah’s college books and reading guides.

The list now read:

Selby took Blazer for a walk to the top of the meadow. From there he thought he saw a car slow down, then make a turn on Fairlee Road, its headlights flickering through the trees. But when he got back to the house with Blazer, the lights were gone and the woods were dark again.

Before turning in for the night, Selby slipped the photograph from the Standard under Shana’s bedroom door. They could discuss that tomorrow.

Captain Slocum called the next morning, before Selby had a chance to talk to Shana. The captain’s voice was cheerful and expansive.

“Well, we’re finally making some progress... sorry if I rubbed you the wrong way last night. But we had those homicides and a string of burglaries going off like goddamn firecrackers around here. So let’s forget the other shit, okay? The important thing is, we got a lead. You know the old saying, Selby, nothing cheers a cop like overtime and a break in the case he’s working on.”

Selby was in his bedroom, still in his robe. “Glad to hear it, Captain. Who did that plate lead you to?”

“Just a second. I’ll get my notes sorted out.” Selby heard papers rustling. “Okay now,” Slocum said. “Here’s where we are. Lieutenant Eberle got a reply from Harrisburg, the Motor Bureau, around one-thirty this a.m. Computers kicked out the whole plate number. It’s N4796, issued this year to a 1978 Porsche registered to an Earl Thomson in Wahasset.

“Late as it was, Eberle and I drove out to his house and got him out of bed. That’s always best, don’t give ’em time to think. It was Earl Thomson’s Porsche at Vinegar Hill, no doubt about it.

“Thomson told us he was in Muhlenburg that afternoon at a bar called The Green Lantern. Around five-thirty. After a few beers, he went out and found his car gone. He’d left the keys in the ignition like a damn fool. Two things struck us kind of funny. One, he didn’t report his car stolen until the next morning. Second, The Green Lantern’s a colored joint. You know the old saying, a redbird don’t sit on a blackbird’s nest. Thomson’s white, comes from a wealthy family, went to good schools, doesn’t have a police record. So we shook his story pretty goddamn hard to see if something else funny might fall out of it.”

Selby said, “Is this the Thomson family that owns the Harlequin Chemical Company?”

Slocum hesitated. Selby heard him grunt. “Yeah, I think it is. His father’s George Thomson. But I got news for you, Selby. A stud walks into my office with a smoking gun, I don’t give a shit about his Dun and Bradstreet rating. It doesn’t matter who Earl Thomson’s father is. He’s got nothing to do with this, understand?”

“I hear what you’re saying.”

“Okay. Thomson told us he’d been to The Green Lantern to look at a shotgun some colored boy wanted to sell. Boy name of Charlie Lee. I sent Eberle and two other men out to Muhlenburg to check that out. They also talked to a waitress at The Green Lantern—” Again Selby heard a rustle of paper. “Here it is, a colored chick, Elbe Mae Cluny. It all checks out. Thomson was at The Green Lantern, no question about it. After he found his car gone, he called home for a lift. Miguel Santos, he works for the Thomsons, picked him up around six-thirty and Thomson was home for dinner with his mother a half hour later. We checked them out, too, Selby, the Puerto and Thomson’s mother. Thomson’s in the clear, Selby. No doubt of it. But eliminating suspects is ninety percent of a cop’s work.

“So we eliminated Earl Thomson, Selby. That’s for sure. We taped everything he said to Lieutenant Eberle and me, so that’s part of the case record now. The Thomson kid was never at Vinegar Hill. He told us that. Told us he had a vague idea where Dade Road was, but he’d never been to anyplace out there. Never heard of you or your daughter either, by the way. On the plus side, Selby — thanks to you, we’ve got a positive make on the stolen car the rapist used, license, engine number, all the other specs. When the bastard tries to sell it or trade it, we’ll have his ass. An APB went out on it early this a.m. If that heap’s still on the Atlantic seaboard, we can expect a report any time. Like I told you last night, the minute I had news, I’d be in touch. Anything else comes in, same thing holds.”

Selby said, “Why didn’t Thomson report his car stolen when he found it missing?”

“Well, who the fuck knows? You and me, we’d report it for sure. But maybe we weren’t born with a rich old man who’d buy us another one without thinking twice about it. But what Thomson told me sounded reasonable. Said he figured some friend might have borrowed it as a gag. There’s an antique car show in town and quite a few of his pals are here for it. But the theft was reported the next morning. We checked that. Selby, I’ll keep in touch.” What, what the hell, Slocum thought, it was what Lorso had told him Earl had said. It just happened at a different time. And he had gone through the motions of interrogating Earl and hearing it all once again...

After hanging up, Selby stood for a moment or so looking out at the meadow. The surface of the pond was flat and bright. A crow flew through the cold, heavy air and settled in a bare locust.

Selby showered, put on slacks and a flannel shirt, and lit the logs in the small corner fireplace.

Davey came in later with the Sunday papers and a tray of orange juice and coffee. Mrs. Cranston had gone to church, his son told him, but had left breakfast in the warming oven.

Davey was in an animated, excited mood, eager to talk about Miss Brett and Sergeant Wilger. “I did something dumb, really stupid, dad. I asked him if he’d show me his gun.”

“He’s probably used to that. Where’s Shana?”

“I don’t know. She helped Mrs. Cranston with breakfast, and then went down to the pond, I guess.”

Davey squatted on a three-legged stool beside the fireplace. The flames glinted in his light, silky hair. “But the detective, the sergeant, showed me his gun, dad. He didn’t take it out of the holster, but he pulled his coat back so I could see it.”

“Well, that’s something,” Selby said. “Did you talk to Shana this morning?”

“About what, dad?”

“I left a photograph from the newspaper in her room. I wondered if she’d mentioned it.”

“She was pretty busy with Mrs. Cranston. The lady’s first name is Dorcas.” Davey was speaking very quickly now. “Dorcas was the last name of one of her father’s best friends, that’s what Miss Brett told Shana.”

“How long were they here?”

“About an hour, I guess. Then they went for a drive. I wanted to go, too, but—” Davey sighed. “They had fun, I guess. Shana thought there was a car following them, but it wasn’t. I’d of known what kind it was, all Shana knows is whether they’re new and shiny. But Sergeant Wilger told me I’d better stay here and hold the fort. He really said that, dad. ‘Hold the fort.’ ”

“You’re even then,” Selby said. “You asked for a look at his gun, he said ‘hold the fort.’ Where did they go from here?”

“They drove into Muhlenburg. They stopped at Goldie Boy’s church. Then they drove over to Dade Road.”

Selby poured himself coffee. “What were they looking for?”

“Shana didn’t say. But she told me about Miss Brett. She’s got a niece and two nephews. She’s twenty-eight, and she’s divorced. Shana asked her, which I thought was kind of nosy. Her father and mother lived in Florida and he’s retired. Her sisters are both older than she is, they live in Maine.”

Selby watched the meadow and pond while Davey informed him that Dorcas Brett had been a deputy district attorney for almost a year, had been to college at Bryn Mawr and at Yale.

Miss Brett told Shana, Davey went on, enthused now, about some of the scary things she’d been afraid of when she was young... She had been locked in the gym at Bryn Mawr one night alone in the swimming pool. The janitor forgot her and turned off the lights and locked all the doors.

There was no movement at the pond. Blazer was in the high meadow barking at a squirrel. Davey was saying, “Then, dad, then Miss Brett got the feeling there was someone else in the pool with her — or something was. It was dark and she couldn’t see anything, the water was black, and she was afraid she’d brush against it, or it would reach out and brush against her — she told Shana it was just her imagination working overtime—”

“Davey, hold it a minute.”

“Miss Brett said that when people are too frightened, they can forget what really happened—”

“Davey, where’s Shana now?”

“Don’t be made at me, dad.” Davey’s voice trembled. “She did find the picture this morning, and called Normie... She made me promise not to say anything...”

Selby put an arm around his son’s shoulders. “Level with me, Davey.”

“Normie picked her up about an hour ago. She waited for him out at the driveway.”

“Where were they going?”

“There’s a car show at Longwood Gardens.”

“Are they looking for someone in that newspaper picture?”

“I don’t know, dad. But she didn’t want you to go out there. I brought up your coffee and just tried to make everything normal. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did fine,” Selby said.

They went down to the foyer then, Selby keeping an arm about the boy’s shoulder. Davey watched him pull on a duffel coat and gloves.

“Can I go with you?”

“No, you and Blazer stay here.” Without smiling, Selby added, “Hold the fort.”

“Yes, sir.” Davey used this formal response only when his father’s expression told him further discussion would be pointless. At such times, which were infrequent but easily recognizable, his father’s emotional temperature was as obvious as the heat from a furnace.

Longwood Gardens had been funded by the late Pierre Du Pont in an attempt to preserve a particular variety of estate garden that was to be found decades earlier in wealthy regions of the eastern United States.

Each season was celebrated for its distinctive features. In the summer, brilliant outdoor flower beds and shaded paths, views of malls and playing fountains — sounds of water mixing naturally with the songbirds. Hyacinths, daffodils and other spring bulbs were to bloom in greenhouses through the winter months. Thousands of chrysanthemums grown under glass for Thanksgiving, and Christmas to blaze with poinsettias, and miles of tiny lights in fir trees glittering like swarms of strange polar fireflies.

On this morning that Harry Selby drove to the gardens, the Grand Concours Automobile Club of Chester County had scheduled its all-class exposition in Longwood’s flag mall, taking advantage of what was likely to be the last decent weather before winter set in.

The rain clouds had blown away, the sky was clear and white. A brilliant sun spread a pale light over the tweedy crowds strolling through the wide green mall past the standards of fluttering flags.

Protected by squares of velvet rope were Ferraris, fifty-year-old Packards, Daimlers, Jaguars and Cords. The prize of the show, standing out among famed Lamborghinis and Royces, was a Mercedes roadster built in 1933 in France, where it had remained through World War II. Its immaculate tires had never touched German soil, its engine had never drawn deeply from the air of the Fatherland, and these facts together with the owner’s name — Robert “Beetle” Burkholder of San Francisco — were displayed on a placard in front of the car.

As to what exactly occurred that frosty morning at Longwood Gardens, there was considerable disagreement, even among those who witnessed the events, but the most complete and reliable account was provided by a security guard named Clarence Summerall.

A retired policeman, Summerall made careful notes on what he was told, and what he personally saw and heard, and incorporated them into a report which was delivered later by a sheriff’s trooper to Captain Walter Slocum of the East Chester Detective Division.

In his report, Summerall wrote: