No Cure for Death

NINE

I was hunched over, staring into the microfilm viewer at the city library, turning the crank that caused day after day of Port City Journals to glide across my vision. I’d started with January three years past, had gone through the first roll, which took me to April, and was now on the second, just into May. I was half-hypnotized by the filmed pages as they swam across my path of sight, but was shaken awake by a screaming headline: SENATOR NORMAN DIES IN CRASH. A smaller, unintentionally ambiguous headline above said WIFE AND CHILD CRITICAL.

A studio photograph of Norman, his wife and daughter, taken only a month before, was on one side of the single column story that ran down the center of the page. On the other side was a long shot of the precipice at Colorado Hill where the Norman car had gone over. The picture showed Sheriff Brennan standing at the edge, looking down over the drop-off, much as he’d been last night when John and I approached him.

According to the Journal account, the Norman family had been on the way home after spending an evening with friends in Davenport. The night had been a particularly dark one, no moon, and the senator apparently had “simply misjudged” the curve at the Hill. The account said the senator had not been speeding, and that the senator had not been drinking. This denial raised the questions it sought to suppress.

I spun the manual control on the machine and eased the next day’s front page into view. Reported there was the death of Norman’s wife, and both Mr. and Mrs. Norman’s obituaries; printing an obituary on the front page is (speaking as an ex-newspaperman) the highest honor a paper can pay a corpse. From Norman’s obit I learned nothing John’s sister Lori hadn’t already told me. I kept turning. Two Journals later I read of the young daughter’s death. Her obit was shortest and saddest.

I got up from the machine and went over to the desk where Brenda Halwin was working. Brenda is a nicely built, pretty blonde, a year ahead of me at the college, four years behind me in age. The sight and company of her could cheer me up after almost anything, and I hoped this would be no exception.

“Finished?” Brenda asked.

“I’m not sure. For right now, maybe. How far back do these microfilmed Journals go?” I’d never gone back past the early forties.

“Very far. Seventy years, I think.”

I thought about asking Brenda what she was doing tonight. I thought about the night two weeks ago when Brenda had been with me at my trailer. I thought about another blonde, almost as pretty, but with roots, and dead.

I said, “I guess you better pull out the thirties drawer for me, Brenda.”

I wasn’t cheered up; it wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to be. I just wasn’t.

Brenda started me with January, 1930, and half an hour later I was beginning January, 1931, and had yet to see the name Simon Harrison Norman in print.

“Reading the old comic strips again, Mr. Mallory?”

I looked up from the machine. It was Miss Simmons, an elderly, attractive lady who’d been head librarian for as long as I could remember. She was the kind of “old maid” who makes it difficult to understand how she got that way; in Miss Simmons’s case, so gossip went, her true love had died in the Great War. Whichever war that was.

“Frankly, Miss Simmons,” I said, “I’m trying to avoid the comics, though I find them and the old movie ads tempting. I’ve got more serious research on my mind.”

“What subject, Mr. Mallory?”

“A local recluse of sorts. Rich recluse. Simon Norman.”

“Ah, Mr. Norman.” She smiled a small, mysterious smile, a smile out of a Gothic novel, and said, “Quite a personality, our Mr. Norman. But you won’t find much of him in the pages of the Port City Journal.”

“Oh?”

“That is, outside of, perhaps, a scathing editorial or two.”

“Why’s that?”

“Mr. Norman was competition. He was publisher and editor of his own daily newspaper, the Midwest Clarion, which gave the Journal a run for the money. The Journal saw fit to exclude coverage of Mr. Norman in their pages.”

“No kidding,” I said. I looked at the microfilm machine and the box of spools beside it. “But it does present a problem for me.”

“Yes, of course. And for a long time now, Mr. Norman has displayed a distinct dislike for publicity, so recent write-ups are few and far between. You could check the Reader’s Guide for national coverage, but our magazine collection of the thirties is quite limited.”

“You wouldn’t have microfilm files on the Clarion?”

“No. None have survived to be filmed.”

“And nothing on him in recent years? What about during his son’s political campaigns?”

“Well, there were some attempts to smear the Norman boy by dredging up his father’s misdeeds. But such reports would hardly be objective. Besides, most of the newspapers in the state-the Journal and the Register included-supported young Norman and declined giving detailed accounts of the speeches that included such smears.”

“Well.”

“You seem disturbed, Mr. Mallory. More disturbed than problems with a research paper might warrant.”

“This isn’t a research paper I’m working on. This is something more important than that.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “I think I can help you.” She turned away and disappeared into her office.

Five minutes later, while I was standing flirting with Brenda, Miss Simmons came up to us, gave her employee a sharp look that was mostly pretense, and handed me a small, square magazine. The magazine was marked with a white shard of paper.

“If you can tear yourself away from Miss Halwin,” Miss Simmons said, “and rekindle your enthusiasm for research, this should prove sufficient.”

I did, and it did.